by K. A. M'Lady
Believe you me, my gut was seriously telling me that I may not need to do it now, but it would definitely be expeditious to do so. From somewhere, in that small part of my brain where my Darkness wanders, it recognized the evil glint staring back at me in the paleness of his eyes. Because I knew if I didn’t do it now, I would probably have to do it later.
“I haven’t even started,” he replied, his voice dark and full of promise as he suddenly took me by the waist, pulled me against him and pressed the warm heat of his lips against mine.
Immediately shock rolled through my spine. My breath hitched, and the heat of his tongue swept into my mouth, knocking me further off-kilter. I had no choice but to reach for him or fall over. Lucien took every advantage of it and kissed me deeply, his tongue delving in to taste me.
The spark of fire erupted inside of me. Lust washed through my veins as unchecked emotions overloaded and I felt that small stir of desire in the pit of my stomach before realization of the moment swept back through my mind, along with Kieran’s voice.
He is a master at this game, lass. Do not let him sweep you too far from me.
Kieran, what the fuck is going on? I swore as I clung to my sanity.
Your master can not help you, Hunter. Release me of your own accord, and you are free. Do not, and I shall take you. I will take you while they watch. I will take you any way that I wish, and no one will stop me. Lucien’s voice was the dark growl of lust and hunger as it stirred through my mind, forcing out Kieran’s connection to me.
Immediately I felt Kieran’s loss, like an empty ache in the pit of my stomach. An ache you only feel after a bad breakup. An ache you’ve had after you’ve wept for days, just realizing that you’re now suddenly alone.
I opened my eyes as this strange fear and loneliness ran through me. I tried to turn towards where I knew Kieran sat in the living room but Lucien’s hands on the small of my back sent chills through my limbs, driving the loneliness away.
“That’s it, cheri, feel what I can give to you. So much more do I have to offer,” he said, his hands sweeping down the planes of my body, his tongue delving once more into the heat of my mouth, and my body suddenly burned.
Images of Lucien stripping my clothes from me piece-by-piece, jacket and shirt, boots, and jeans, filled my mind as his mind flooded me with heat, desire and overwhelming need. My brain was bombarded with images of his hands on my body, removing each piece of cloth, the warmth of his lips following until I was standing in the comfort of his arms. Nothing covering me but my bra and panties; his dexterous fingers caressing, seeking.
Mind and body burned; his mouth hot on mine, lips tasting, nipping. The feel of his canines against my tongue. Then the copper tang of blood as he nicked me, purposely. Adding flame to the fire he stirred within me.
My mind was awash in sensations, my body alive with desire and need as Lucien turned up the flames of my desire. Stripping me of my connection to Kieran. Stripping me of my reality, of my sense of self. He stripped me of everything but him, and his need of me.
His thoughts were of nothing but taking me, fucking me in front of Kieran and his family; burying the thickness of his rigid shaft deep in the wet heat of me while he drank my blood. Fucking me until I screamed for more, then taking me again. Thoughts so dark, so erotic and intense that they felt real.
And I wanted him to do it. My need was so immense, so incredible my body burned with desire, pulsed with the need for him to do it. To take me; to fill me up and drink from my font until I was nothing but need in his hands. A need that only he could fulfill.
His warm fingers on the cool firmness of my breast, snaking their way around the peak of my nipple, brought my reality crashing back. Realization and the web of his deceit split my mind like an oak in the forest. Blinking several times, I found myself standing in my living room in nothing but my panties; the heat of Lucien’s mouth a breath from the bareness of my breast.
He had stripped me of all vestiges of clothes, dignity, and—he thought—power. My body quivered with unspent need.
Lucien was busy finding his way along the hollow of my breasts, my body glowing like a beacon in the heat of the moment. I am, after all, a Pixie, glowing is what I do. But my gaze found Kieran’s over the crown of Lucien’s head.
He watched with his own dark hunger. All of them did. His family—my family now too. And they wanted, no, yearned to warm their bodies in the heat of my Light.
Kieran and Dragon’s eyes watched me with a knowing light all their own. It was there as well as in Jade’s. A look of possession. Ownership, in a way. Hunger and lust looked back at me from Ien and Gararic and I realized that all of them yearned, in their own ways for something that only I or my power had to offer them.
Funny thing is—I have no idea what.
Kieran’s eyes found mine, dark, knowing. I did the only thing I could think of to let him know I was back in my own skin. I winked at him.
His small, secret grin and the raising of his brow was his only telling sign that he approved of whatever repercussions I was about to give.
I knew I didn’t want to think about it. If I did, Lucien would hear the wheels turning. I knew I couldn’t transfer any thoughts to Kieran or ask for his help, I had to do this on my own. So I did the only thing that made the most sense—well, to me, at any rate. If Lucien wanted to fuck, I was going to make sure he got fucked.
My hands delving into the length of his hair stiffened his spine, his tongue but a tickle from the tip of my nipple. “Don’t stop!” I crooned. “Take me, Lucien. Take me. Let me burn by your dark fire,” I begged, twining my fingers through his hair and pulling him towards my breast.
His dark smile of triumph and the wet flick of his tongue across my nipple stirred my desire. I had to clench my teeth to keep my sanity in check. Lucien had ruled this game far too long, and I’d be damned if I let him saunter into my home, strip me of everything and walk out of here the winner.
His teeth nipping across the tip of my aching breast as he suckled me, firmly, fully capturing first one tight peak in the wet heat of his mouth before moving on to the other did things to my body that I didn’t think my mind could handle.
Until he broke the rules.
Some would probably argue that it wasn’t such a big deal. He is a Vampire, after all. But a girl has to have a line. Rules that she follows. A line in the sand that the monsters just don’t cross. And this, for me, is one of them.
No fucking blood without permission!
Some would probably even argue that it was just a small taste that he took, and I really shouldn’t be so pissy about it. But it’s my damn house and my damn rule—and he didn’t fucking ask! As of that moment, all bets were off.
My anger was instantaneous, rage following soon on its heels. Here I actually considered playing nice, giving him a little as he gave me before I turned the stake, so to speak. But no, he had to go and break a rule I didn’t even realize I had until just this very moment. He just had to fucking bite me.
The glow to the room was turned up so brightly that it brought Lucien’s head up, two trails of blood running down my breast where he hadn’t even bothered to close the wound. I glared from the bite marks to him.
“Jesu. Cheri, what is it?” he asked, his pale eyes bleeding to dark blue spheres as he stared at me in shocked wonder.
I couldn’t speak, anger roaring through my mind like a caged demon in hell. All I could see was red. Blood-red rage, to match the rivulets that ran down my breast.
“Kieran, what the hell is wrong with her?” Lucien questioned, wonder and awe filling his voice.
“I am afraid, mon ami, that you have made a serious transgression where our Rihker is concerned.”
Lucien looked at him strangely, waiting for an explanation.
With a sigh, Kieran said, “You have taken her blood without her permission. And now, it is you who must be released from her.”
At his words, my anger exploded into a crimson rage. I threw all
that rage at Lucien, my hands spread out, power fluxing through my body like quicksilver as I envisioned him trapped against the wall, his chest a mass of slashes, each one bleeding in a fury of crimson.
The red pulsed and danced like the flow of the moon and the ocean tide, and all I wanted was more. More blood, more pain. More.
I could feel Lucien’s fear vibrating through my mind, racing along my skin as he clung to my living room wall and bled at my command. At my will.
“Rihker, please,” he said, his voice a thin whisper of fear. Imploring. Beseeching me. “I beg of you. Do not do this.”
His white ruffled shirt that I hadn’t noticed before was now matted to his flesh, quickly becoming dark chartreuse as his blood seeped into the fabric. Frustrated by my inability to see his wounds, I flexed my fingers and his shirt tore to shreds, falling from his body, leaving him bare to the waist, nothing but the slash of wounds filling his flesh with red.
“Give me a reason, Lucien. Give me a reason not to crush your life in my hands.” I felt the beat of his heart race through edges of my power like the frail thing that it was.
He screamed and I slashed him again, power flowing through me, blackness filling my mind as anger and Darkness danced through my soul; comforting the dark beast that moved within my madness.
“I can…I can,” he stammered, his accent thick in the wake of his shock.
“You can what, Lucien?” I growled, the Darkness riding me. It swept over and through me like a remembered lover’s caress, and I wanted nothing more than to embrace the allure of its empty, dark touch.
“I can help you find your book of power,” he swore, his eyes fading a dead sea blue, his canines fully exposed, salivating against the dark stain of my corruption. “I can help you find the Tablet of the Way.”
Chapter Five
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
The Hollow Men – T.S. Elliot
“Walks as one with the Darkness, she does?” The voice resonating in my head was scratchy, grating against the bone of my skull as though wind in a hollow forest.
I wanted nothing more than for the voice to shut the hell up, for the pinpricks of pain that were erupting throughout my brain and causing my hysterical meltdown to cease before my mind exploded. But the voice just kept on with its squawking, hammering away like the last nails in my coffin.
“Wake, child. We’ve much to discuss, and time tolls the passing.”
I cringed against the haze and flashes of light flooding my vision. My eyes clung together; sealed shut as though a burn victim’s. Spikes of pain continued to rip through my mind. Horror washed through me as my brain clung to an image I never hoped to see again this side of hell’s great madness.
I reached for my face, afraid to open my eyes. Afraid not to, and yet afraid if I didn’t try I’d never see again. I remembered Maebe’s burned-out eyes; the puckered flesh sealed up where her eyes were supposed to be. My stomach cramped in fear and images of dark, scabby flesh, and the horrific possibility ripped through my mind.
Slowly, almost too afraid to know, I brought my hands up. My fingertips tentative, reaching, brushing my eyelids; fingers quaking, the pit of my stomach clenched so tightly I felt as though I’d barf at any second.
Prophets, not my eyes! Not my eyes… I was screaming the plea over and over in my head as adrenaline spiked like an ax in my heart.
“One does not need eyes to see the Way, Rihker.”
There it was again. That voice. That fucking voice! Maebe. My Wandering Wanderling. My own personal ever un-useful Wandering Witch. Sent straight from the Prophets-know-where to torment me. To make my life a living hell.
“Maebe! What the fuck have you done to me?” I screamed, disrespectful as always. But I didn’t give a shit. Fear was filling me up like an overflowing caldron, the Darkness too close to the surface to hold on to any precious bit of decorum.
“Open your eyes, Rihker. Open them and see. The Way is before you,” she cackled.
One breath. One small command. Yet so full of power, heat and purpose. It too filled me with fear. Fear and anger, and the Prophets save me—hope.
I blinked, once. Twice. A rapid succession as light engulfed my vision. My living room. We were in my living room. Me and Maebe, and all the Others. Only they were dead! They were fucking dead!
“What the hell have you done to them?” Rage; black and destructive. Hate filling my mind like a tar filled pit at the end of the world as I stared at the unmoving bodies of those I’d grown close to.
The Darkness consuming me. Bile rising in my throat. Pain and darkness consuming me once again. Eating away at my sanity.
“Affection she feels for the dead and the shifters—eh? Careful must she be with her heart. Aye, quite careful.”
Maebe was nodding to herself, her hooded black cloak bobbing up and down, strands of her strangely grey hair escaping the hood.
“Maebe!” I bellowed. “What the hell are you blathering about? What have you done?”
“The Darkness will use all to gain that which it most desires of the Halfling child. The child of the Prophesy.”
“Maebe, so help me, if you have done something to them, I swear by all you hold holy I will kill you where you stand.” Conviction filled my every word, followed by deed as silver orbs of power now filled my hands—called without aid or thought. Called without wisdom or worry. She might clean my clock, but for this, for their deaths, this bitch was going down.
“Kill me, can she—the Halfling? The Half-breed child? Your Darkness grows within you, yes. But what of the Light, Rihker? Where is the Light in void of Darkness? Found you the book? Have you your Tells? Can’t kill the Wanderling without all your powers,” she taunted. “Can’t kill the Wanderling without all your Tells.”
She was all but laughing at me, and I wanted nothing more than to choke the bitch. I wanted to choke the life right out of her. Her and her fucking hou-ha bullshit voodoo wack! Frustrated once more by her aggravating ‘Yoda-Zen’, I screamed, “What the fuck do you want from me, Witch?”
“To find the book, of course,” she scolded, like I was a complete buffoon.
Who knows, maybe I was. I definitely felt like one whenever she was haunting my every waking moment.
“But to find the book and gain her powers, she must walk both worlds of Light and Darkness,” she advised, her voice low and mysterious as she stalked towards me. “In shadows lie the secrets. Seek them by a mother’s light; beyond the secret brother’s door. Tis there you will find the answers. Answers, and so much more.”
“No more fucking riddles, Maebe! Anything but your goddamn riddles,” I begged, clutching the sides of my head, agony tearing through me as it always seemed to do whenever I had to deal with her and her damn chants; her secret words of screwy wisdom.
“Be warned, Rihker.” She pointed her bony, deathlike finger at me. “Deceit plays in the dark with the Death Stalkers. Not all are what they seem.”
“What the hell does that mean, Maebe? How do I walk both worlds? And why the hell would I want to? Maebe?” Nothing. No response.
“Maebe?” I turned in a circle, searching for her. But just like the flipping of a switch, she was gone, the room suddenly back to its living—and not so living—state.
In the measure of two blinks Gimlit was through the front door, all seven feet of him bearing down on Lucien like a trainwreck about to wreak havoc all over the world. “Death Stalker!” Gimlit growled, his voice low and deep, resonating through the living room with enough force to shake the photos on the walls and the knickknacks off the shelves.
One minute Lucien was a bloodied ruin clinging to my living room wall, and the next he was clutching my throat, a blade in his hand from who-the-hell knows where.
“Be careful, Ogre, you really wouldn’t want The Chos
en One’s blood on your hands, now, would you?” His long, agile fingers tightened around my throat as he pulled me tight against his body.
The blade in Gimlit’s hands as he leveled it towards us was streaked in black sludge that didn’t resemble blood at all. Glancing from the miraculously agile and unhindered Vampire who was now threatening my life to seven feet of pissed-off Ogre, I wondered what the hell Gimlit had slain and where the hell he’d been while all this freaky-ass shit had been going down in my living room. Come to think of it, I had been kicking Lucien’s ass. How the hell did he turn the tables?
“Ah, cheri, so perplexed,” Lucien stated, a delighted lilt to his French accent; his lovely blue eyes gleaming with morbid satisfaction. “One should never underestimate their opponent. Should they, Ogre?” he asked Gimlit, never taking his eye from Gimlit’s or his blade tip from my throat.
“I do not know what game you play here, Death Stalker, but you are a breath from leaving this existence. Release my Ward, or suffer as your Shadows now suffer.”
Anger and arrogance flashed across Lucien’s face so quickly if you hadn’t been watching, you wouldn’t have seen it.
“What are you doing with Shadow Slaves, Lucien?” Kieran asked. He and Dragon slowly skirted the distance around the coffee table to stand at Gimlit’s side. The Werewolves had silently crept around behind us—though I had the distinct feeling that Lucien allowed it. They now stood at the other side of Gimlit as well, creating a unified front. There was no place for Lucien to go. Nothing for him to do but to kill me. Or release me. I didn’t think he had any other options.
“So much you wish you knew, Kieran,” Lucien said, laughing as he pulled me tighter against him, trying to shuffle us towards the open doorway.
“You’ll not be leaving with my Ward, Death Stalker,” Gimlit stated, his voice heavy with conviction as he angled the length of his wicked sword towards the Vampire.
