The Mammoth Book of Hot Romance

by Sonia Florens

  The shock grated through Selene, her entire body frozen, pinned like a butterfly. Marya laughed and settled her hips more firmly. Her hands tightened just a little on Selene’s throat.

  I don’t need to breathe, Selene reminded herself. But if I don’t, I’ll burn through my cellular stores more rapidly and my body will start cannibalizing. Great. She’s bound to have another means of killing me, this is just theatre.

  “Demoskenos Kirai Nikolai.” Marya’s laugh was a chill little giggle, high-pitched. She sounded so young, it was the worst thing. “This is going to take a long, long time.”

  So you think. Selene gathered herself. Nikolai’s eyes glittered. He hung there, and she could see the iron bolts driven through his wrists and ankles. The pain would have been excruciating.

  But he was alive. Alive. All this time. How had he … He had been dead. She had been so certain.

  There were more dragging sounds. One of the thralls was heaving another wheeled thing towards the platform. It was an iron frame, and the things stacked and hung neatly on it would have turned Selene’s stomach if she hadn’t spent so much time seeing the different ways a body – even a preternatural body – could be broken.

  It had lost its power to shock. She wasn’t sure if she should be grateful for that. The medallion flared with heat against her breastbone, a familiar old sensation.

  Marya’s fingers bit down. “This is just for beginnings,” she chortled, and her hands turned into a crushing vice. “First I’ll take your voice, so you cannot even scream. Then there will be the irons, and the rack, and the open flame—”

  Selene pitched aside, every muscle tightening. The chains were strong and the cuffs were tight, but you don’t spend your human life as a sexwitch without learning how to slip out of tight handcuffs. It would mean stripping flesh off the bone, but she’d heal.

  If she escaped this.

  She yanked, her skin ripping and the pain like a red bolt of fire up her arm, and her claws bit into the other Nichtvren’s face, unloosing a gout of blood.

  The pain was a spur, and she welcomed it. Her other hand ripped free, leaving a significant amount of flesh behind, and she shoved, getting good contact on the other Nichtvren’s chest and heaving with every ounce of preternatural strength she owned.

  Which was considerable, and battle-hardened as well. Marya went flying, a shattering wail of rage trailing behind her and threatening to pop Selene’s eardrums. Selene curled up, her claws slicing through padding and closing on the chains holding her feet down. The metal parted with a screech and she was up in a flash, crouching on the platform and taking in the entire circular room with one sweep. Know your ground, another cardinrule of survival.

  Another exit over there. And … Christos, that is an actual rack. She wasn’t kidding.

  Selene threw herself aside, tucking and rolling. Stone grated against her naked back, bullets chewed the platform bed. Explosive ammo, meant to bleed her out. At least some of the thralls were free to act in an emergency. She gained her feet, moving smoothly through the roll, her legs bending and releasing as she leaped, twisting to avoid another spray of bullets. They were thralls, yes, but they were only human.

  And Selene … was not, now.

  She landed behind the knot of thralls with submachine guns, her claws out and the growl filling her chest. Blood flew, bones splintering, and there was a shattering, ripping sound. Marya’s howling changed pitch, and Selene bent backwards like a gymnast, her foot flashing up and catching the last thrall under the chin with a sickening crack. She rolled aside again as the blonde bitch arrived out of thin air, her clawed face splattering blood, blue eyes rolling with mad hate.

  That’s going to hurt as it heals. The thought was a flash. Selene’s body did the work for her, once she got out of the way and let training and instinct take over. Goddamn, she’s fast. Her feet slapped the floor, cuffs and broken chains jingling musically, Selene’s claws sank into the stone roof and she twisted, agonizing pain in her wrists, her hands spattering more candy-smelling blood. There was enough of the red stuff here to craze a newly Turned; the thirst threatened to close a veil of red over Selene’s vision. She landed on the floor, whirling and throwing her hands out in flat palm-strikes, Power burning through her as she connected.

  Hit me with flesh and Power both, Selene, Nikolai whispered in the dim recesses of her memory. Anything else is useless.

  The medallion burned, a sudden sharp spike of heat, a jolt of pure Power. Surprising, but Selene welcomed it. Any tool to do the job at hand.

  That was, she thought briefly, the biggest difference between her human self and what she was now.

  Marya flew back again, but not as far as Selene had hoped. The blonde hit the iron frame with its torture instruments, everything collapsing and flying with musical jangles. The noise was incredible – Selene’s instinctive growl and the howling the blonde was doing, more gunfire somewhere outside the room.

  And a deep, powerful thrumming underlaid every other sound. It was coming from the plasteel beams where Nikolai hung. His head was up, the mad glitter of his eyes suddenly scorching, and Selene’s heart gave an amazing leap.

  Stop staring at him and mo—

  It was too late. The blonde had gathered herself, and she collided with Selene. The sound was like a good hard break on a hoverpool table, and Selene flew. Claws tangled in her ribs, pulling – the bitch was trying to pull her heart out the hard way.

  Selene punched her twice before they hit the stone wall, a shock wave jolting through her abused body. A life spent disassociating herself from the omnipresent swell of desire a sexwitch was prey to was good practice for learning to disregard pain, but she was losing blood fast now and hadn’t fed in four days.

  Stupid, silly, goddamn it, Selene, start thinking!

  It was too late. Marya’s claws sliced further in, and the queer floating feeling of too much blood loss began in Selene’s flayed fingers and bare toes. She brought her knee up before they landed, her back scraping the stone wall. Another punch, blood flying from her knuckles as they fell. Hit the floor in a tangle, Marya’s flesh feverish against hers, and Selene’s chin snaked forwards. Her teeth champed, a bare inch fpresent ser woman’s throat. Naked blood-greased skin slid, straining, and if she didn’t end this fight soon, Selene knew she would lose.

  Over Marya’s blood-slick shoulder, Selene caught a flicker of motion. A familiar shape fell from the plasteel beams, the X toppling backwards with a heavy clangour.

  Chaos. Screaming. The red haze of bloodshed. Selene’s teeth clamped home, breaking through the hard crust of a Nichtvren’s skin, just over the carotid minora. A hot flood of candy-spiced blood filled her mouth. She didn’t precisely want to drink, just to bleed. If she could weaken the bitch enough—

  More screaming, more gunfire. Selene’s eyes rolled. She hugged Marya close, arms and legs pinning the other woman, disregarding her rapidly weakening struggles. If she could just hold on long enough, swallowing what she could of the other woman’s strength, it might be enough …

  Marya tore free, howling. The sound battered Selene’s damp hair back with clawed fingers, sharp spikes against her sensitive eardrums.

  “Let go!” he yelled, and the command rang through her, a gong inside her head.

  She fought, of course, the instinct of her own Mastery rising to deny him control. But he was older, and he had Turned her, and her arms and legs loosened of their own accord. Her teeth slid free of Marya’s flesh, and the other Nichtvren hissed feebly as she was jerked back, her blonde braids looped around a bleeding, broken fist.

  “You,” Nikolai snarled, his gaunt dirty face contorted. He dragged her as she writhed, somehow avoiding the wild strikes of her claws. “You.” A sudden movement, preternatural bones crunching, and more blood flew. His fangs were out, and a cold prickling weight settled over the room.

  How had this crazy blonde beast ever held him?

  Selene blinked. She lay on her side against cold stone, her
fingers twitching as the flesh repaired itself. Candy-sweet blood burned her tongue, sank into her parched throat. She’d always loved sugar – any child growing up in the camps learned to take as many calories in as possible, the sweeter the better – and this was so good. The best candy-spice burn was from the blood of another predator.

  How much did I take? There was a lump of warmth behind her aching breastbone, another answering it from above.

  Nikolai’s chest swelled with the growl, a wall of subsonic vibration. His mangled hands tightened, swollen pale fingers, the ring and middle fingers terribly crunched and distorted, and he twisted sharply. There was a crack like well-seasoned wood, and Marya’s body convulsed.

  Nichtvren don’t throw up, Selene told herself, swallowing hard. The habit of nausea was strong, even after all these years. One day, she supposed, she’d outgrow it. If she survived.

  Nikolai straightened. He drew one wasted leg up, the knee a grotesque knob of bone and skin, and the fury twisting his face turned Selene’s stomach even more. You wouldn’t think it was the same maddeningly gentle, inflexible, always controlled Nikolai she dream-remembered every time the sun rose and waking consciousness fled her.

  He stamped down, hard. There was a sound like a stone watermelon breaking, and the screaming outside the room took on a frantic quality. Of course, every one of Marya’s thralls would feel her skullspatter-death. They were condemned to an agonizing death of their own without her animating influence, unless Nikolai took them under his wing.

  Or Selene. Or any other Master.

  Marya’s body twitched, her misshapen head lolling as Nikolai drew his foot away. Blood spread in scallops, a crimson lake. Selene swallowed again, hard, and flexed her fingers.

  Nikolai stood, staring down at the body. The remaining rags of his clothing fluttered, but he was utterly motionless. The tension leaked out of him bit by bit, and Selene gathered herself.

  He lifted his head. The mad twin gleams of his eyes, reflecting differently than a human’s, were a flat catshine as he studied her in return.

  You were dead, she wanted to say. Her lips twitched. But in the end, she said nothing. There was no use in stating the obvious. She tensed, slowly, one muscle at a time, and when she was certain everything was more or less functional, she pushed herself upright.

  A soft breeze touched her cheek. Selene flung up a hand, her claws extended, their razor edges a hair’s breadth from his carotid minora. The majora was more deeply buried under the changed structure of the throat; she didn’t have the right angle for a strike.

  There was no need. He simply watched her.

  He was on his knees. Right next to her. The faint breeze died as the gunfire spattered to a halt. There were other sounds she recognized – the calls and short bursts of mopping-up instead of an actual battle.

  Nikolai’s thralls, she realized. Why had Marya left any alive? Or had they staged an assault?

  Of course they had staged an assault, probably from outside. Once Nikolai, bleeding and bound on that iron X, had told them to.

  Well now, don’t I feel silly. She swallowed, roughly. Her hands were still raw, her ribs ached, but the worst of it had stopped. The wounds were closing over, and if she found a bar with a cloned-blood counter she would be right as rain in a few hours.

  Another survival.

  She eased away, along the wall. Twinges and vicious little nips of pain rang stitched through her. The trickles of blood slowed. Her exhaustion was a human habit, but still. Even a Nichtvren could get tired.

  “Jesu Christos,” she whispered. “That was entertaining.”

  Nikolai crouched, staring at her. His face didn’t ease, and his eyes were now dark holes.

  Selene sighed. So many things changed as the years passed, and so many didn’t. “You could have killed her at any time.” She braced herself against the wall, leaving a long wide smear of blood as she pushed herself to her feet. “You were waiting. For me to show up, apparently. Whatever morality play you put together is concluded. I’ll be on the next transport out. Nice seeing you again.”

  “Selene.” Everything in the room rattled as he said it, from the wheeled carts to the scattered implements. Broken bodies lay everywhere. The blood seeping from Marya’s broken body ruffled along its liquid surface. Someone was going to have a hell of a time cleaning that up.

  She tested her legs. They would hold her up. The broken chains rattled as she took one step away from the wall. Another. Thirst prickled in her throat; it would rapidly become unbearable.

  He likely wouldn’t begrudge her hunting live prey here. But still.

  “Master?” A thrall at the door – a tall bald man with a familiar voice, his submachine gun pointed at the floor and his well-cut suit spattered with fluids it was probably best not to think about. Selene almost shut her eyes. If she blinked every time something here reminded her of the past, she was going to look like a narcoleptic vox-sniffer.

  “Jorge.” Nikolai sounded like himself again. “Attend her.”

  Selene took another step. Really doing well, she congratulated herself. Now let’s find some clothes.

  Nikolai was suddenly there next to her, his mangled hand closing around her upper arm. “You need blood.”

  The first touch, after so many years – and her traitorous body lit up like a marqu. A different weakness spilled through her, and her breath caught. Selene tore her arm away. “I need a lot more than that, Nikolai.” She could have sounded irritated, she supposed, but the only thing that came out was weariness. “Leave me alone.”

  “There is—” he began.

  No comfort in alone. She could have finished the sentence in her sleep. “Shut. Up.”

  Miraculously, he did.

  “Since you’re so bent on being helpful, I’ll need clothes. And cloned blood, preferably cut with cafetrol. Then I’ll be on my merry.” Her eyes fixed on the floor. She took another step, another. Did not sway.

  “Very well.” Chill and hurtful, now. “I owe you my thanks, after all.”

  Selene shrugged. “You could’ve killed her anytime you wanted to.”

  “Yes. But you came.”

  There was no answer to that. She put her head down, her naked skin prickling under the blood absorbing back into its surface tissues, and headed for the door.

  A short, scorch-hot shower restored her. Her wrists would scar once more, from whatever Marya had painted the cuffs with. They flushed an angry red, traceries crawling down her hand and up her arm. She’d never tanned anyway, and now she was marble pale; the crimson spider webs as her flesh reacted to the mixture was shocking contrast.

  Selene took three long swallows of cloned blood, the sting of cafetrol hitting the back of her throat. She’d never drink espresso again, but the half-second jolt as her body burned through the artificial additive was enough.

  It made her feel almost human.

  She would have preferred jeans and a T-shirt, but Jorge brought her midnight-blue silk, a long flowing skirt, low cut, with spaghetti straps. It fit perfectly, which was … thought provoking.

  It also showed the medallion’s gleam, and the mottling on her arms as the flush of nutrition from the cloned fought the allergic reaction. Her ankles weren’t too bad, just a mild itching and a pinkish bloom on the skin.

  Of course, the wrists were the most vulnerable. Her weakest point, the delicate structures of the claws and hand still not fully settled from her Turning.

  She set the tankard down with a click. The table was a restrained ebony wood piece, and the room was done in oak, restful dark-blue velvet swathing the bed and hanging on the stone walls. Still underground, of course, and dust in the air. Had Nikolai changed his Nest, or was this Marya’s doing? This looked like a female’s room, with more delicate furniture and that massive, choked-velvet bed. The bookshelves ranked along one wall were mostly empty, except for some little tchotchkes. Two brass elephants, their trunks raised. An antique crucifix on a stand – it had to be pure gold, and the ru
bies dewing it were probably worth a pretty penny.

  A gleam of blue caught her eye. Selene let out soft breath, brushing past the bed and its hangings. Silk rustled as she reached up, her aching fingers meeting cold glass.

  It was the glass apple. It had fallen from her bag in the tunnel under Nikolai’s Nest, the passage behind the bed she’d arranged his dead body on.

  Dead body. Well, he’s looking pretty alive to me.

  At least now she knew this was one of Nikolai’s abodes, and Marya had invaded it.

  Selene tapped the apple with a fingertip. She could still remember the panic at the bus station, the familiar weight missing from her canvas bag. It was, she reflected, the last time she’d had a wholly human reaction to something. Even though she had been Nichtvren then.

  Afterwards, simle survival had taken the place of human fear. She’d run as far and as fast as she could, as if something had been chasing her.

  Maybe something was.

  It would be ridiculous … except for the note. Come home. And this, waiting here for her.

  The storm-tingle in the stillness warned her, so she didn’t flinch when he spoke. His breath touched her hair. “You look lovely.”

  Selene’s fingers curled around the glass apple. The bracelet of pain around her wrist sent a sharp jolt up her arm.

  “I did not think you would come. I told her you wouldn’t. That you cared so little for me, and indeed believed me dead.” Still the same voice, soft and inflected a little oddly. He spoke the Merican of her human life, as if he knew what a thorny pleasure it was to hear.

  No to the first. Yes to the last. She shrugged, silk moving against her skin, her arm up and the glass apple cool against her fevered palm. She would run warm until she metabolized the blood. Then it would be time for more, possibly before she stepped on the transport to take her away from this goddamn town.

  Anywhere in the world, now, you could walk into a bar and get a tankard of cloned. A Nichtvren always had money. The biggest change?

  Saint City was no longer home. Now that she knew he was still alive.