Eternal Bondage

by Vita Anne Hoffman

  Charity received a few interested glances, some of which she cheekily returned. On the inside, Avna was less pleased to be ogled by strange men. I breezed across the familiar lobby. My sandals clicked on the octagonal beige and pink tiles. I sidestepped a group of flamboyantly garbed men and women—none, I realized with a shiver, mortal—gathered near the waterfall. As if united, the odd clutch gave off a vibe of antagonism. I could feel several pairs of eyes watch my progress to the elevator. Hostility seemed to follow me. Distracted, I punched the down button, and, since I had seen no other reflection but my own on the back wall of the elevator, I hurriedly stepped inside even before the doors had fully opened. When I pivoted toward the front, I nearly jumped out of my skin. Marc and Max were in the elevator, only they had, indeed, cast no warning reflection against the mirror-like chrome.

  Nor had I felt them. I put that down to saturation. Most likely once I was in close proximity to several vampires my body quit giving off the warning signals rather than try to ratchet up their volume. It wouldn't be worthwhile to buzz continuously due to the emotional and physical stress once I was initially alerted. For instance, I had already had one major, draining jolt on the outside of the hotel perimeter. Or, more likely, it was plain old inexperience that made my newly acquired vampire alert system flawed. Hey, it wasn't like I had an owner's manual!

  "Avna.” It was Marc, ever friendly, that offered me a greeting, and a quick glimpse of his golden tongue stud as he spoke my name.

  Max stared balefully, finally giving me a nod.

  "Guys.” They were exquisitely attired, alike in brown suede jackets over top of crisp mocha trousers. With their hair artfully spiked, they made an identical pack of double trouble. And, even though they stood one on either side of me, exchanging secretive smiles at my expense, there was still no sign of them on the reflective walls. It was disorienting.

  "What brings you to the Constantinople?” Marc leaned nearer, letting his gaze drift down my body, waggling his brows in a suggestive Groucho Marx fashion. Yet the flaring of his nostrils, as if breathing in the aroma of my thick perfume, dimmed some, but not all, of his prankishness. “Business or, hopefully, pleasure?"

  "I'm back to square one in the search for Tanya. I don't know where else to go."

  Max tensed. “It's too late for her.” His voice was gruff, choked off.

  "Maybe. Then, again, maybe not.” The elevator opened onto the hallway of the Bete Noir Club and Escort Service. I stepped off, leaving Marc and Max to hastily catch up.

  "What do you mean?” Max exchanged his anger towards me for concern over Tanya. For all that he mocked my humanness, despised my mortal weakness, did he secretly believe I could help?

  "I ... felt her last night. She's trapped somewhere in the city. She's not insane, at least, not yet.” I stopped in my tracks, closed my eyes, and let go a harsh breath, trying to banish the terrible memory of her.

  "She's still sane,” Max whispered, disbelieving. Marc consolingly squeezed his brother's shoulder.

  "Yes.” But when I calmed enough to look once more upon the world, staring by turns between the twins, they saw Tanya's anguish within my eyes. “Now, go away, like good little boys. I have work to do, and I don't want you to cramp my style. By the way which door is parlor B?” I stood a few feet from one of the two doors that opened off the right hand side of the long hallway, which itself led to the night club proper.

  Their eyes met. They shared a smirk. “That's parlor A. Parlor B is the second room.” Marc offered the information. “Are you going to the shindig?” At that idea, another flicker of humor at my expense passed between the brothers.

  "As a matter of fact, I am.” I struck out for Parlor B and the private party which Madam Waken had told me was booked there. I warily glanced at the guards on duty down next to the Bete Noir Club. I did not recognize them from my first visit, nor did these men resemble the no-neck, no-brain brawn that seemed to be the only requirement for employment. They actually looked somewhat intelligent, with the stature and expression of ex-military.

  I deliberately did not pause or hesitate at the threshold of the party so as not to be plagued with second thoughts. I opened the door, pushed inside, and was instantly assailed by the fact that the huge gathering was mostly of the vampire persuasion. The place was a chaotic mass.

  Behind me, Marc and Max hemmed me in, forcing me to move into the noisy pulsing room. Music, heavy on synthesizers and drum machines, thrummed. Purplish red lights flashed in tempo to the music. Of course, in the center of the cavernous banquet hall, entertainment of the lewd sort was in progress. Three women, in various stages of undress, were doing a group strip tease on a raised platform. One I recognized as Helga, the Swedish masseuse, whom I had encountered at the office of the Bete Noir Escort Service.

  Set in a rectangle about the stage were banquet tables. The centerpiece of each was a woman, dressed in a period costume, wigged and jeweled from bygone centuries, Elizabethan England, Italian Renaissance, Pre-Revolutionary France, Czarist Russia. Periods of great aristocracy, of wholesale decadence, of unquestioned historical significance. But what did these women, dressed from those eras, those times and places, represent? What did they have in common? Constantine, The Great.

  He, a progenitor, and far older than I had ever suspected, must have lived during them all. This private party was his! Thus the decorations were living models of the women he would have known, intimately, wantonly, frenziedly, over the countless years. That accounted, too, for a guest list almost exclusively of his immortal kind. Suddenly, I felt panicked, being but one of the few hot-blooded living beings in the crowded room. I did not feel like a glorified hostess so much as the buffet.

  Bodies, lithe, lean, attractive, jostled all around me. Marc and Max, standing behind me, anchored me to that one spot, even as the driving music seemed to mute and the pulsing purplish lights to still, while the crowd, that glorious gathering of undead, surged forward slightly, catching me up in their excitement. Something was happening, a bit of entertainment that overshadowed the ongoing striptease. I tiptoed to see above the throng. Theirs was a distinct hungry anticipation.

  That feeling was reinforced by the sight of one of the male guests, his athletic back to me, sexily garbed in black leather pants and dove gray satin shirt, rising onto one of the banquet tables where he proceeded to publicly taste of the woman in Elizabethan dress, bending her back over his arm, running his free hand up over her torso, cupping and massaging at her breast, then lightly biting her neck, daintily sipping, seeming to pump their bodies in orgasmic unison. I thought I heard her moan with pleasure but she was too distant and the place too noisy. I was merely supplying the sound effects in my head.

  When he finished, and, thankfully, he did not drink too deeply, or too long, he sat her back upon her feet and, with a seductive slowness, he stuffed a bill—again, I thought I could see that far, to make it out as a hundred—into the depths of her bodice, repeatedly fingering the money until it disappeared in the recess between her large up-thrust breasts. It was obvious, even at a distance, that she had enjoyed herself. Tremendously. She smiled and tried to detain him, grabbing his hips, rubbing her voluminous-skirted self against him, whispering some enticement into his ear.

  He threw his head back and laughed, but he still abandoned her, turning to lightly jump down, instinctively knowing where I stood, that I had seen, that I was transfixed. Constantine, of course, would be the first to try the party favors.

  Marc and Max mumbled some parting words, then made themselves scarce. After all, the lines waiting to take a turn with the women were growing fast. They knew that Constantine might willingly share the women on the tables, but his generosity only went so far. It was more than obvious that he considered me all his, especially given the icy glitter of his pale eyes targeted exclusively upon me.

  I stood my ground, gripping hard at the shoulder strap of my heavy bag, but my legs shook. He gracefully parted a way through the crowd, aiming directly f
or me, capturing me with his bright blue vampire's gaze. My lungs felt stifled. I hastily sought some escape, catching a few familiar faces, Haley Davis, the vampires who had helped clear up the aftermath at the Tattoo Emporium, and, finally, Josh Warner, although he quickly turned away from me. In fact the crush of bodies thinned, dissipated, at Constantine's approach. Gazes, too, were averted. I alone faced the progenitor. My breath stayed shallow and shaky. I had a rush of dizziness. And Constantine was at my side.

  Neither of us spoke. His eyes were so powerful that he did not even have to physically touch me. It seemed, here, in one sheltered spot amid a mass of heated bodies and frantic but muted music, that his hands were everywhere upon me. He stroked a shoulder, touched a thigh, caressed my stomach, excited every nerve in my body. And, as he thoroughly perused me on a psychic level, he physically divested me of my offensive weapon-filled handbag. He slipped the strap down off my arm and casually tossed it away. Ensnared by his hot roving gaze, I allowed him to disarm me without any protest.

  If only he were mortal, I could revel in those caresses, thrill to them, return them in kind. But, as hard as it was to pull away from him, I had to do so. I used anger as my weapon, for how flattering was it to have a man, or rather a vampire, come to you immediately after having been with another woman? Not very.

  He knew I had erected barriers between us. His low resonant voice actually sounded hesitant. “Part of me is glad to see you."

  "Which part?” I looked down at his groin.

  "I'll forgive your vulgarity,” he latched on to my wrist, uncannily knowing I was about to walk away, “since I have upset you."

  "I'm not upset, you hypocrite. You practically fornicate on stage with some costumed bimbo, and you dare to call me vulgar!” My chest, in the too-tight scoop-necked polyester top, heaved. He was right. I was upset. Damn him.

  Constantine tightened his hold on my wrist. Those delicate bones felt incredibly fragile within his clasp. “Normally, I'd welcome you here with me. Tonight, however, I must send you away. I have invited far too many dangerous guests. I shall have the twins take you home. Now.” He spotted the brothers on the other side of the teeming room, Marc in a clench with some rail-thin half-naked waif while Max sat back watching with indifference, and Constantine wordlessly commanded them to him. As one, they obeyed, immediately wading through the mass of vampire kind.

  I attempted to shake loose of Constantine's hold on my wrist. “You have got to be kidding. I came on my own, and that's how I'll leave ... WHEN I'm good and ready.” I was a bit startled when Constantine, instead of releasing me, yanked me directly up against himself. He fisted a hand, the right one upon which he wore his gleaming gold signet ring, into the thickness of my short dirty-blonde crop of hair. He suddenly jerked my head back, extending the length of my throat.

  "Learn to obey me without question, my little Soulsmith, or I will take away your ability to deny me once and for all.” As if his words, his cold tone, weren't menacing enough, he ran his tongue up the side of my neck. He then picked one spot, over my carotid, which he slowly lavished with attention. He applied his silky tongue and mouth as a child would to a melting ice cream cone, in long greedy strokes.

  I stifled a groan. How, I hazily wondered, could he exercise enough self control to resist biting me? For I was definitely beyond trying to stop him. In fact, some perversity made me try to entice him. I leant more fully, more aggressively into him, pressing every inch of flesh and bone against him. Because of one sloppy, wet tongue lick, my hormones overruled all my considerable willpower! Such had never happened before. This behavior was beyond reckless, beyond irrational. My eyelids drooped shut in a narcotic-like stupor. I breathed out a whisper.

  "I don't want to be this attracted to you.” My words were desolate.

  "But you can't help yourself. STOP FIGHTING.” Constantine's mouth traced up to my ear. His tongue flicked like a hummingbird sipping nectar.

  "Then,” I quelled an ecstatic shudder, “these sensations are an illusion? They're a beguilement?” I clenched at his shoulders, just as surely as I grasped at the notion that Constantine's aura compelled me against my nature to feel so debauched.

  "Hardly.” That word was tinged with humiliating arrogance. Heat flashed in Constantine's eyes. He nuzzled his face into my hair. “You, my little Soulsmith, are trying to resist the irresistible."

  "Damn straight,” I muttered, reacting to Constantine's insufferable conceit by trying to shake free, mentally and physically, from him. In a lessening daze, I continued to withdraw from him.

  Defeatedly, his eyes closed. His head bowed low. He allowed me to pull away only so far, retaining a looser hold on my hair, keeping a bare touch of his hip against me. He seemed bereft. Or, so, I thought. His hooded gaze slowly opened. He pressed his hand hard against the back of my head, forcing me to look directly into his icy blue eyes, to see and hear and accept the depths of his next words.

  "One day I shall taste of you, and drink my fill, and gain your heart and soul."

  To him, it wasn't a threat, just the truth. What he desired, he took. For the present, for whatever unfathomable reason, I was what he desired.

  "You bloody bastard. Keep your hands off me.” I wanted to cry. From fear. From fury. From frustration. Talk about being caught between the proverbial rock and the hard place. My body ached to be with him, but my mind rebelled. How could I succumb to a soulless man who wanted nothing more than sex mixed with my very life's blood? Far too easily, I mentally cringed. A woman's libido didn't care about love or respect or commitment or CONSEQUENCES. In this case, the price for bliss was self determination. When he held me in his arms, it seemed a reasonable trade. Ergo, I needed to get out—and stay out—of his unnatural embrace. I shoved hard against his chest, using the momentum to twist out of his hold and to stagger further away.

  I was brought up short. Two vampires, female, barred my way. Standing several feet behind them were their followers, lounging together in a tight knot, waiting for what was to happen next. And, like a leper amongst his own kind, one-eyed Snitch lurked just beyond them. This, then, was the hostile group that I had bypassed in the hotel's lobby!

  The space that had earlier emptied to accommodate Constantine had widened. En masse, the partying vampires had gotten out of harm's way, save for a scattering of thrill seekers and Constantine's own people, hovering in the foreground. However, the human strippers on the stage and the period-costumed models on the tables remained motionless, caught-in-the-crossfire, rooted to the relative safety of their spots.

  And, as for myself, well, I stood out front and center, facing the newcomers like some warped wild west showdown.

  Constantine fluidly strolled forward even with me, while his eyes focused upon the two. As, in fact, did mine. They were incredible. A beauteous pair of physical opposites. One was ebony black, skin flawless, dark, perfect. Her sensuous body, clad ONLY in a see-thru shimmering citron-hued dress of lace, was a sculpted, muscled, triumph. Every bit of her was visible through the sheer material, her large dusky areolas, the sharp indent of her belly button, and, if one had the nerve to look, the tight black curls between her shapely legs. Her thick hair, of a length down to her long tapered waist, was a striking shade of white, framing a face of extreme beauty, amazing cheekbones, liquid brown eyes, a generous mouth. Those parted, pouty lips promised immoral pleasures.

  Yet, as striking and beautiful as she was, she was obviously subordinate to the other whose beauty housed such a palpable viciousness, emanating off her like a physical entity, that I flinched. Her skin, next to her slightly taller ebony compatriot, shown pale and creamy and unblemished. The charms of her slender but large breasted body were not likewise openly displayed, but were more cunningly revealed in a form fitting sea green gown, cut low almost to her navel, with a slit up the leg. Her hair, too, was waist length, a lifeless shade of black, that had no sheen or shimmer, like an extremely cheap dye job. She had a slim face, triangular, the chin rather pointy. Her almond
shaped eyes, drooping and concealed, were some indeterminate shade, perhaps dishwater brown. Her mouth was a harsh scarlet gash, lush, full, and cruel. On her bare arms twined lengths of braided leather, bracelets of cord that spoke of dominance and submission, of pain without pleasure.

  Even before Constantine spoke their names, I knew who they were—the owners of the extra coffins at the Tattoo Emporium. There was no doubt as to which of the pair was the progenitor.

  "Hello, Sylvana,” Constantine uttered softly, with a brief nod at the long limbed ebony nymphette. His pale blue eyes shifted to the other, the one standing dominantly to the fore. “Donata.” From him, the name sounded musical, seductive, full of hidden meaning. “How good of you to come."

  "But, Constantine, darling, how could I not return the favor when you have cum for me on so many occasions?” Donata's heavy lidded gaze raked over me.

  I tried not to cower, but I was way out of my league, wearing castoff clothes and exuding no supernatural aura, sexual or otherwise. And Donata obviously wanted to catfight with me—over Constantine!

  "Honey, if you still want him, he's all yours.” I took a step to the left, away from Constantine, but no closer to the evil female vamps. I had just openly disavowed him, but all Constantine did was speculatively glance in my direction. Still I felt the censure of that minute gesture. It caused a dry lump to form in my throat.

  Donata smiled unpleasantly. “I have had my fill of him. And I left him sucked dry."

  Constantine disputed her. “If you—or any woman—left my bed, it was because I kicked you out."

  Donata practically foamed at the mouth. The air seemed to vibrate with menace. It was Sylvana, running the tips of her fingers up her progenitor's arm, that calmed her. “Remember why we are here, Donata. Not for him, but for her,” Sylvana, her head tilted slyly, her liquid brown eyes meant to enrapture, nodded at me, “for the Soulsmith, the great prize. Rasputin will be much pleased."