Eternal Bondage

by Vita Anne Hoffman

  "I'm not ready. I'm not ready,” I tossed my head away from him in a refusal of his kisses. “I don't want to join like this."

  Constantine was not swayed. His fingers tugged at the bit of burgundy colored nylon and lace which covered me. “Your body craves me. Soon your heart and mind will follow. Give in to me. I'll have my Soulsmith. Now."

  "Don't, Constantine,” I rasped, asking him to stop. He was too far gone to hear.

  The weakness of fighting against my own capitulation nearly buckled my knees. I wobbled. Behind me, the wine stand rattled. The unnerving clatter gave me some focus. I awkwardly gripped the bottle of champagne, and I swung it up and against his temple. For all that it was weak and ill-aimed, the blow—or perhaps the fact that I could break his mesmerism enough to wreak violence—stunned him enough for me to break away and run for the door. I flung it open and rushed pell-mell for the elevator. It seemed an eternity before it arrived. By then, Constantine had stepped into the hallway. Again, as within hotel room 709, he slowly stalked me. This time he loomed large to fill the entire far end of the hall like a wrathful genie spewing from the prison of a bottle. I watched his approach with dread, and I blindly punched at the elevator panel. When the door opened, I collapsed inside, relief flooding over me because I had escaped him.

  Only ... I had not ... escaped Constantine, who easily, surreally slid into the elevator as it closed. Perhaps, after it had closed? My mind refused to interpret his oily vaporous entrance. Vampires couldn't transform themselves, could they? That was another myth, wasn't it?

  He leaned back against the chrome elevator door, watching me through heavy hooded eyes. His inhuman beauty seemed accentuated by his fury. An internalized inferno gilded his sculptured nose, mouth, chin, sparked in his shuttered ice-blue eyes, heightened the lustrous sheen of his wavy coal black hair. The breath caught in my throat. I, Avna Marie Soulsmith, had refused sex with a god! But I'd made my choice, and I had to stand by it.

  "If you so much as touch me, I'll despise you forever."

  "I don't need to touch you,” he tilted his head and raked a dismissive, insulting glance up and down my body, “to pleasure you.” And, as he stood stock still, his dark-clad muscular body indolently reclined against the shiny chrome upon which he cast no reflection, I was firmly pressed by invisible hands against the opposite side of the elevator. Shocked, I drew in a huff of air. Carnal sensations instantly bombarded me, surpassing the point where we had left off in room 709. I shook and trembled with pent up frustration.

  Constantine, however, remained an aloof but intent spectator. He crossed his arms over his chest and watched me squirm. It felt like he knelt directly in front of me. Hands, determined and strong, plastered my hips to the chrome-like surface, spread my legs very wide, rucked up the hem of my short, sequined plum dress, and ripped off my burgundy panties. (I had no doubt that this particular progenitor's trick will never be written up in any of the Von Hesling Vampire Annals.)

  At first, his beringed hand toyed with me in a tantalizing ruffle through my feminine curls. With extreme sensitivity, I felt him fluff my pubic hair, and I enjoyed that playfulness. Then, abandoning such gentle foreplay, his fused fingers slicked into my wetness in a long satisfying motion. He repeatedly dragged across my plumped up flesh. Rather roughly, but agreeably, he caressed my insides. My thighs, jittery and weak, sagged wider. His disembodied touch rewarded me by gently scrubbing at my swollen lips, my hard clit. My heart beat in time with the pulse in my quim, and my breath came in short, labored pants.

  Constantine continued to watch me from afar, still pretending indifference, but his body language spoke eloquently. He slouched no longer but stood straight and stiff. His arms were clasped across his chest. His features were brittle, drawn into a sinister grimace of sexual tension. And his assault continued, escalated, when his expert tongue took over in a succession of quick touches that flicked, then thrust into me. For several strokes, he licked hard and deep.

  "It should be my real, true hands upon you, my mouth tasting of you.” His whisper was hoarse, his body taut.

  But still he continued to pleasure me orally. His methodical laps at my sex drove me wild. I pushed hard against him, against his wraithlike presence at my feet, against the mouth so intimately pressed to me.

  "More!” I again forcefully bumped my groin at him. Vigorously, he sucked me, and I plumped and creamed all the more. At this raunchy provocation, his tempo grew frantic. The throes of my arousal increased. My insides throbbed, slick and sopping. I was horny as hell! Momentarily, I could not even feel shame for letting go and enjoying such swollen pleasure. I moaned and thrashed my head, begging him for more, more ... rougher, faster, deeper. He lapped ever more rapidly, convulsively. I almost reached that ultimate peak. I neared it, hotter and higher, lashed to that point by his hungry mouth and wiry tongue. His name caught in my throat. My scream of release was building, burgeoning....

  "You're almost there,” Constantine murmured. There was a silky undertone to his words.

  "Ye ... s, yes,” I panted turning glassy eyes upon him, “Yes ... almost!” My face scrunched up in the pleasure that was pain. Just another second, just another slick wipe, and I would peak like a wailing banshee!

  "THERE SHALL BE NO CLIMAX.” The sexual caresses instantly, harshly ceased. The erratic, sexual pulse in all parts of my body jangled with unquenched desire. In an instant, he had doused my climax. “As I was denied, so shall you be."

  It felt like he had thrown a bucket of ice cold water on me. I wilted almost to the floor, but managed to regain enough strength—and shredded dignity—to stumble upright, and fumble my dress back into order.

  "Prick."

  He smiled, a sleazy evil leer. “Exactly, my dear."

  The elevator, which he had stalled between floors, now reached the lobby. We stood antagonistically facing one another, both wound tighter than a watch spring and blaming the other for the problem. The air between us was charged with anger and unspent sexual force, thick and heavy as a fog bank. The doors swept open.

  Marc and Max halted on the brink of a headlong entrance. They exchanged startled looks. It was Marc, flashing his gold tongue stud, who asked of us. “Are you interruptible right now?"

  Constantine threw me an annoyed glance, then growled at Marc. “Apparently."

  This time Max spoke. “There's a messenger here for Avna."

  Snitch, hunched in upon himself, his one good eye constantly moving, stepped into view, not quite in line with the twins. He carried a slip of paper. “For the Soulsmith."

  I took the note, trying to keep as much distance between myself and Snitch as possible. He made my skin crawl. So did the mere texture of the note. I somehow knew the contents before I read it. “They've taken another of your people."

  "Which?” Constantine took a small but menacing step toward the pock-marked, eye-patched vampire, causing him to shrink even further.

  "The brown haired vampire,” Snitch rasped, but he did dredge up some courage. “Her loverboy."

  "Josh Warner.” With a shocked tremble, I exhaled his name. I stared blankly into space, immersed in his nightmare. My voice thinned with pain and outrage. “They have hurt him.” And, I knew, too, that he lay almost comatose, drained by a pack of ravenous vampires, feeding in a frenzy upon their own kind. He lay in cool earth, with more being shoveled over top of him, helplessly sealing him within a mass of dirt clods and fertilizer. He whispered to me for help.

  And, then, Tanya, nearby to him, added her own weak pleas.

  I shook my head, trying to snap loose of my disorientation without breaking the connection to them. I tried to walk but staggered. Constantine held me up.

  "What is it?” His arms braced me.

  I trembled uncontrollably. Tears ran down my face. “I know where they are. I know ... I know ... where Tanya and Josh are buried. Across the street in the city garden."

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Chapter Fifteen

  Possess
Vs. Protect

  No one doubted the surety of my words. In fact, without any preamble, the group, with Maxamillian surging to the fore, nearly trampling Snitch, scrambled from the elevator, charged across the beige and pink octagonal-shaped tiles of the lobby, and battered the slow-to-open automated door. I kept pace with the others, barely. Constantine had disengaged himself from me, thinking me too dazed to follow.

  I was last to break out into the tropical, humid warmth of an early summer night. Overhead the sky was velvety black. A stale breeze ruffled over me, yet I felt smothered. I, too, felt buried along side of Tanya and Josh, covered in dirt, unable to move, trapped in a cramped makeshift grave. The one-way, three-laned thoroughfare was still busy as usual on a late Saturday party-hearty night ... for all that a monster was loose in the city.

  Max streaked across the street disregarding oncoming traffic. Marc was only slightly more cautious. He chose to circle behind a motorcycle rather than to outrun it, as his brother had done. Constantine crossed through the traffic like living quicksilver. He charged in and around the speeding vehicles. The nearness of their passing rippled the ruffles on his dark shirtfront, waved his coal black hair from off the tops of his shoulders. He looked like a crazed matador. One frightened driver laid on her horn, loosing an uninterrupted, slow-to-fade wail. The screeching sound raised the hackles at the nape of my neck.

  I watched from the curb, unable to brave cars, and trucks, and jeeps, as they did, with disregard and fluid unbelievable speed. Snitch, alone, remained with me. He cast a sideways glance at me with his one good eye.

  "Best stay, here, Soulsmith. It's safer. For the time being."

  I used an expression I never thought to say to a vampire. But with Snitch, I risked it. “Bite me.” And I stepped into a small break in traffic, then pounded across the three lanes on rubbery, weak legs. My stomach felt like an empty frightened pit as I unsteadily trailed the others onto the sidewalk which now widened into the park's entrance. Someone had busted most of the overhead street lights, replicas of turn-of-the-century gas lamps.

  In the shadowed night, the bark of the sparse trees shown eerily. The concrete statuary, modern shapeless obelisks, was menacing. The footpath upon which I now slowly trod wended off in several directions. The ghostly scene, a gray obscured garden-scape of annual flowers, of low banks of roses, of any number of azaleas, hydrangeas, and dogwoods, of a gazebo at the far end of the park, was devoid of any color, washed in shadows of gray and black.

  And, positioned at intervals along this main entry, decorating the walkway, were the deep, mammoth, trough-like planters that I had seen being dug up only last week by city workers, or so I had thought at the time, doing some of the more bothersome fertilizing and transplanting at night so as to not interrupt the tranquility of the garden for daytime visitors. It had been during my first ever visit to the Constantinople, and the novelty, the complete oddity, of seeing such work at such hours had not registered, because my complete focus had been upon an impending and unwanted introduction into the world of vampires. All-the-while, Tanya had been buried within feet of me. Last night even, I had passed by this park, buzzing with an erratic sense that vampires were near. I had mistakenly believed them all to be within the Constantinople ... I had failed the poor girl, entombed here for more than a week, after having been tortured by the enemy for over two weeks.

  I swayed, overwhelmed with a shared agony. Pain and misery encompassed both of us. Not even the hope of rescue could lessen the terrible desolation. Through my eyes, Tanya could see Max begin to dig into the first of the huge concrete planters. He used his bare hands although there were several abandoned shovels strewn about, one cast to the ground, another propped against Tanya's own tomb. Our arrival had obviously interrupted the fiends’ work.

  Josh, in the next sarcophagus-like planter, was only partially buried. Dirt covered his legs and torso, but his chest and face were still visible through a light layer of dirt, sand, and rock. I took a few steps closer. His beautiful hazel eyes were open, staring sightlessly up into the dark sky. Hundreds of bite marks, many ragged and seeping, mottled his hands and neck, plus I could even make out many that punctured directly through the sleeves of his light cotton shirt. It was ghastly. Marc worked to free Josh, his twin having refused any help in liberating Tanya, Max's first fledgling.

  Max dug frenziedly. The earth had compacted. But, with his super human strength, he tore ever downward. It still took time. Tanya was buried in at least three feet of dirt. I began to add my own puny efforts, whether welcome or not. My skin soon abraded against rocks and pebbles. My nails broke and tore. I kept clawing. It was me trapped down there as much as Tanya.

  Soon, but still after a seeming eternity, she was unearthed. I gasped. This Tanya, no longer the tall, voluptuous girl who Max fought to recover, looked like an emaciated husk. Bones protruded through the last tatters of a modest sundress, now discolored and stained with dirt, and blood, and excrement. Her puny little arms were more twisted than folded across her pitiful chest. She was one step from mummified, having been drained of her life's blood then buried in a tight constricted hole and starved further still. A worse indignity, for me, was looking down into a face which had been horribly enclosed in a plastic bag, rubber banded tightly around her neck. I could not clearly see the piteous face beneath, could not clearly make out the remnants of peaches-and-cream skin, the straight little nose, full rosy lips, the shuttered eyes. It was as if I looked at her through a depth of unfathomable water.

  During the frenzied rescue, Constantine had stood watching. Silent. Angry. Vengeful. His features were shadowed, a concealment that nevertheless did not obscure the power raging off of him. I realized that by comparison our own confrontations only rated as lovers’ spats. He had never, yet, unleashed such a crushing fury upon me. Or, else, I would not still be living at this moment. Very little could withstand him. Except, perhaps, another progenitor.

  Speaking—or rather thinking—of the devil apparently conjured him, in the shapely form of Donata. Accompanied, of course, by Sylvana, and over a half dozen vampirelings. At first sight of her, red suffused my vision, adding color to the black and gray of the night. My hands curled around the top edge of the concrete planter. Without its support, I would have fallen face first to the ground. This reaction, this deep loathing hate, came from Tanya, who shot me a rapid remembrance of Donata repeatedly, viciously biting her, taking flesh as well as blood.

  "So, Constantine, you managed, not so surprisingly, to save your luscious little prize, your foretold Soulsmith.” Donata, dressed this night in a backless, and nearly frontless, slinky leopard wrap dress, slits cut up both legs, her trademark leather bracelets on her slim arms, moved to within feet of where we stood. Sylvana, in a peek-a-boo blouse and fluorescent green thong underwear, came forward with her. She swayed with the grace of a model on a runway. The others, however, hung back. I didn't blame them. Constantine was about ready to erupt. When he did, there would most likely be casualties of the underling variety. Apparently, vampire loyalty only went so far.

  "Confronting me here, of all times and places, was not very bright, Donata. Not even for you."

  Her scarlet lips twisted. She tossed her head in a temperamental gesture that swished her lifeless black-dyed hair. “You are the one out numbered, you arrogant cocksucker."

  "Still the same old Donata. Always overestimating your own prowess. When will you ever realize how ineffectual you are?"

  "We shall see who is weak.” Her attention turned to me. Her avid gaze sucked at my consciousness. “Did he tell you about Zemaralda Draconnetti's prophecy? How he would make any sacrifice to possess you? That to own a Soulsmith is a great triumph?"

  My insides curdled at her words. Donata had been with him at the fortuneteller's! He had traveled in company, most likely in intimate consort, with that evil thing. She had been with him four centuries ago and knew of the prophecy. That fact reduced me, once again, to vampire bait. They all believed that possessing m
e, a so-called Soulsmith, strengthened them. Regardless of what Constantine pretended, of however much he might profess love or affection, he only wanted one thing. Not me so much as my supposed power. And, then, too, each had phrased the gypsy's prophecy differently, by a single but important word. That word being possess versus protect. For some reason, I believed that Constantine was the one lying

  Well, screw him ... only not literally.

  "I heard one version of the story. So I know enough.” I looked between the two progenitors, nauseated by both.

  Donata laughed, a low throaty sound. “Good. We wouldn't want Constantine to offer happily-ever-after, only to renege on it. He can be very charming. Seduction, as you assuredly will discover to your sorrow, is his especial forte."

  Constantine took a step forward. His skin glowed, white-hot, nearly translucent. His eyes glittered, diamond-like. Fire seemed to kindle within him. “I'm going to rip your heart out."

  Donata fell back. She signaled to her followers. They grudgingly complied, attacking in a broken line. Constantine met them in a rush and easily vanquished any who dared block his path. He snapped the neck of one, twisted his opponent's head completely around, then dropped him in a heap on the ground. The second, who by then was trying to flee, he gripped like unbreakable steel and pulled to himself. He bit through the side of his neck, ripped, then spat out a huge gob of flesh and arteries and gooey stuff. Marc and Max engaged and dispatched two more with equal ease. Marc used a glittering steel filet knife on his, while Max simply jammed his hands into the chest of another. I turned my face so as to not witness what he pulled, abracadabra, from out of his enemy. I was already overloaded with gore and violence.

  Constantine was an unstoppable killing machine. His terrible power imbued his followers, allowing Marc and Max to overcome anyone or anything that they encountered. They were an extension of all the power, skill, and prowess which their progenitor possessed.