Doing It To Death

by Kaia Bennett

  Evie! She ran within her mind from a killer’s sharp fangs, from the refracted light of death. She couldn’t run from me, not when I flowed in her veins. My lungs bled from the pursuit, from the vision shredding through my insides.

  She saw her cousin, floating face up with milky dead eyes. She saw Liam’s black eyes devoid of light and streaming with inky tears.

  I slapped her. The jolt shook her free. She inhaled a breath with me at the sting. Being connected to an empath is such a bitch.

  “You’re not this girl!” I roughly tilted her head to make her look at the smiling, dying thing we’d fed on. “She’s not you, Evie. Stop running.”

  “She’s not me,” she echoed.

  “You’re safe now.”

  “I’m safe now.”

  Unnerved by her wooden parroting, I stroked the cheek I’d slapped, tracing the redness with regret. Still, I couldn’t help but enjoy the sight of her face dwarfed by my palm. The softness of her skin made me draw her into a gentle kiss.

  “I won’t hurt you. Stop running.”

  She inhaled a shuddering breath, and finally, recognition returned. Her gaze scanned mine, some unknown calculation filtering through her vague thoughts.

  “She’s not me.” Her swallow and the flatness of her voice said she felt something other than happiness about those words.

  Vaughn stalked in our direction, zipping up his fly and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  A jolt of arousal slapped me in the groin. Evie pressed my palm closer to her cheek, replaying the stinging impact of my slap. A magnet from her clit to the head of my cock tugged our hips with desire. Fuck, she’d become so raw from trying that mind meld shit with her prey, I couldn’t tell what sensation would hit me next.

  She narrowed her eyes and pushed my hand away, then winced and gripped her pussy through her jeans. “Jesus. I was trying to do something, Jesse. You could’ve waited.”

  I barked out a laugh. “That slap wasn’t foreplay.”

  Evie could take more punishment the more her vampire side emerged. The full moon beckoned, her period approached, and her mind apparently had gone as tender and malleable as her body. Hunger sizzled under her skin when I touched her. Pain and pleasure were much the same thing now. I took full advantage every day, several times a day.

  Because I’m counting down to the moment I can’t have her anymore. Trying to cheat death, one orgasm at a time.

  I hurried to block out the thought before her sensitive mind could snatch the truth. “You were able to mess with her mind a little, but you got lost in there. She liked to run and you started running in your mind, running to the past.” She’s trying to return to the moments before me. She’s ready. “It’s almost time to go. We’ve come too far for you to go insane now.”

  Her brilliant smile surprised me. Vaughn stopped in his tracks, and dropped to the balls of his feet in a crouch to stare at her face. He’d never seen her grin. Every smile had doubled as a grimace and drained the light from her eyes, before now. Now, she lit up like the sun. She shot up into the air with an exclamation of pure joy.

  “It worked! It fucking worked! It’s messy but I was there, all the way there! I just need to practice more. Next time we hunt, I know you’ll be able to pull me back if I go too—”

  Despair. Deep, penetrating, oil-black despair rocked me. I averted my stare as I stood. Every muscle in my body seized with near-physical pain, but I couldn’t fight the enemy. Silence pierced the clearing. Only Vaughn’s sigh at the finality of this strange crew we’d forged penetrated.

  Evie tried again. “The… t-the next time I hunt, maybe I can make it stick.”

  We wouldn’t hunt together after the bond broke. Would I ever see her again? Doubtful. She’d probably find safe haven in some coven. Funny how I’d never asked what she had planned when this mate bond ended.

  I don’t want to know. I don’t give a shit what she does once I’m free.

  Vaughn stayed in his crouch, his arms dangling over his knees. He stared at the girl with a curious expression. Damn near thoughtful.

  “Maybe I did make it stick this time. If I give her some of my blood—”

  “She’s dead.” Vaughn didn’t look up. He whispered the words as he watched the girl’s peaceful face slacken. “Still early. Maybe you could bring her back, but we ain’t got that kinda time.”

  I don’t think either of us had ever seen prey die like this, with contentment on their face, instead of resignation, fear, anguish.

  Stark made himself known, loping through the woods and panting from his sprint. He would lead us, but this time, not to our tent. This time, we were headed for the coven gates.

  Her witch mind still lurked in the black depths of her eyes when she met my gaze. She cast one last, mournful glance at the dead girl. She’d wade through an ocean of them if she lived a vampire’s life span. Or maybe, she’d find a way to crawl out of the bloodlust, like she had in her mental sprint for safety. I wouldn’t be around to find out.

  “You think you can keep up?” Vaughn asked Evie. He rose to his full height and cast a doubtful look at the bond witch as he flexed his muscles for the journey.

  Evie quirked the corners of her lips in a tight smile. A vampire’s smile, a dominant predator accepting a challenge.

  She met Stark’s glowing shifter eyes, nodded, then whirled and took off behind the wolf. We followed close behind, speeding through the forest, dodging or smacking branches out of our way, leaping underbrush or plowing through the snags at our feet. We raced like a dead girl who loved to run.

  We raced like two cousins in the vastness of the ocean.

  We ran for the valley between the surrounding mountains, for the foggy borders of a hidden country. I sensed, in the trees around us as we drew closer, that we weren’t alone. Then, I saw several vampires converging on the same spot, as darkness consumed the horizon. We all wanted to penetrate the same egg, all hungry for something the predator within couldn’t hunt or fuck. Healing.

  A wolf joined Stark, coming from the direction of the Gate. One of the four alternating guards ending his human shift at the entrance.

  Evie kept pace with us all, with every vampire who once would’ve hunted her, with every vampire who might’ve feared her, if they’d known what she’d become.

  She beat me there by a hair’s length and broke through the mists before me.

  I’d already begun to lose her.

  35

  Just like before, the world inside the coven made me feel strangely exposed. Nothing seemed to change at first but the energy. The skyline still revealed the mountains. The air still held the winter chill and the dead branches of spruces mingled with the needle green brilliance of firs and pine. So sweet and clear I could believe I’d woken up centuries ago.

  A line of wolves, damn near fifty, formed a semicircle of protection, punctuating the silence with snarls and barks. Behind the semicircle, a hundred witches or more stood, clasping hands. All were nude with their hair unbound. Every shape, every color, every sex stood before us, from the youngest adult to those at the peak of their prime, to those on the precipice of ending fertility. They radiated power and their blood sang with a sweetness that made me dizzy with hunger. Especially the females, all bleeding from their wombs.

  The only things they seemed to have in common were their adornments. They’d marked the upper half of their faces with swirls and lines of bright henna, forming a mask of symbols that I couldn’t decipher. Their bodies were streaked with red lines that drew the eye to their supple flesh. Every man bore a smear of blood along the length of his cock. Every woman wore a chain that dangled around her navel with a bone phallus caressing her mound. Each painted face blazed with vibrant alertness and each body hummed with desire. My own cock stirred with the palpable pull of sex in the air. Like a distant drumbeat, the throb began.

  At the forefront, equally nude and hands clasped, stood a man and woman

  I gaped, stunned by the resemblance to t
he woman in my dream, the woman I’d called Mother.

  I knew this witch couldn’t be the witch my father had loved and murdered, but I felt the pull of a mother’s love. She had long dark hair streaked with threads of silver so fine they looked like spider’s silk or a trick of the light. The straight strands swayed down to her waist and fluttered around bronze skin so like my own. She no longer bled—her curvy body had aged beyond the need to breed—but I couldn’t call her past her prime.

  She vibrated with more energy than any other witch, save the man standing at her side. While her power pulsed with aggressive welcoming, the priest’s gave off a steady thrum, comforting and warm. The man beside her resembled burnished sable, his dark-skinned body muscled and strong despite his age. He radiated gentle energy, an energy so unlike my father’s despite his powerful appearance. Yet he seemed as much a father as the priestess seemed a mother. Thick locs, threaded with the same silver as his beard and pubic hair fell over his shoulders, reminding me of a vampire from long ago, the vampire I’d seen in a vision, half of a mate bond that preceded my own by thousands of years.

  The couple wore the same masks as the other witches, but they held hands like consorts, like the embodiment of something I didn’t believe in. Gods and goddesses, power older than my bloodline, lust thicker than bloodlust.

  The pair searched the crowd, looking at the line of twenty or so vampires gathered at their gates. When Stark and his wolf friend entered behind us, the priestess smiled and raised her hands. She spoke with a musical voice that boomed through the valley.

  “Sisters and brothers, you’ve traveled far and waited long. The coven welcomes you on this night of sacred magick. Please undress.”

  Vaughn huffed, and tugged off his T-shirt. “I better get balls deep in one of these bitches. Stripping just to sit in a circle is dumb as shit.”

  I took his quiet voice as a testament to the power of his surroundings. Even he seemed to be in awe as he stripped off his jeans.

  I threw him a warning glance and peeled off my own long-sleeved shirt.

  Beside me, Evie undressed. I noticed the man beside her looking with dazed eyes at Evie’s body. He leaned toward her, nostrils flaring as if he smelled the blood rising in her womb. I could almost taste my mate’s flow, and marveled at the magical timing. I’d know with every taste leading up to the moon that her period approached, but the precision left me in awe.

  The priestess, positioned some thirty feet away, stared straight at Evie, her mouth falling open. Her gaze lowered, directed in the general direction my mate’s chest. Her heart, maybe? I thought so when the priestess pinned me with a stare then lowered her eyes to my chest. The strange witch seemed to look so deep into me, that I felt dazed by the intensity of her stare. My entire body tingled with pinpricks of energy, and Evie echoed my shudder.

  When everyone stood nude, the priest and priestess held their free arms out to us and intoned with a voice that echoed in my bones:

  “Come, children of the Goddess. We offer you drink from the Great Cup and flesh from the Great Hunt. We offer you healing and hope. We offer you love and pleasure.”

  The wolves all sat in unison, like tamed gargoyles unlocking their gate with invisible keys of acceptance. Every vampire passed between the giant bodies of the witch guardians, swerved around the priest and priestess like a forked river. When we approached the witches behind them, each lifted their clasped hands, forcing us to walk under their bridged arms. Immediately, a rush of heat greeted us.

  Like falling into bloodlust, a gasp echoed through me. Distantly, murmurs of awe, like my own, fell like snowflakes. I marched through the trees, as if on the hunt, and broke through the tree line.

  In the real world, the circle situated several feet away with a circumference of thousands of feet, shouldn’t be there. We should’ve been miles away from a clearing this large, based on maps of the outside and our hunts in the woods surrounding the coven.

  This enormous seat of power, outlined with thick worn stones the size of my feet wouldn’t just contain us. The circle seemed to contain magick beyond time, magick that defied the rules of nature, even as this coven fed from nature.

  In the center of the circle, on a slight elevation, sat a small gathering of witches, visible through a ring of pyres. I realized, as I stepped into the fertile field growing in the dead of winter, that those men and women swayed to a drumbeat they set. The vibrations pulsed through the ground, calling to me, calling to my blood. No wonder that first vampire, thousands of years before, had been drawn to his bond witch.

  The women bled in the drum circle, feeding the earth the way Evie, Vaughn and I had fed the soil in Masilda’s first rite. Part of me wanted to run to them and rip out their throats, but a snarl behind me quelled the spark of natural violence. I swayed with dizziness, wondering if and when I’d been drugged, how I could’ve been drugged. My cock stood at attention, hard to the point of pain. The pain made me feel alive.

  Wolves and witches formed a huge circle around us, alternating until our little band of vampires were huddled together like prey. Snorts from the wolves and wet, insistent noses prodded us across the low barrier of stones. The moon tugged obedience from me like a thread around my neck and the tip of my cock.

  The spacious circle allowed for a few feet’s distance between each wolf and witch. A pregnant moon presided over this strange fever of the senses, casting silver light on my unraveling.

  The priest and priestess strode into the center of the circle with confidence, and in defiance of the mounting hunger of every vampire. Every cock stood at attention around me, even the priest’s, though he handled himself with grace. Every woman’s nipples pebbled and I smelled the slick heat of pussy, arousal and blood, vampire and witch. Some vampires were rubbing their sex already. Some doubled over with the spikes of need, kneeling as if in pain, fangs erect.

  The drumbeat thrummed, the sway of the drummers increased, and as they did, the vibrations inside me screamed. My entire body became my cock, every nerve ending pulsated like the straining tip. Even my fangs tingled to touch flesh.

  The priest and priestess picked up burning torches on the edge of the inner circle. Each took a stance and lit half of the pyres surrounding the drum circle. The beat drove harder, as if the witches within were the burning sticks sucking up the oxygen, the flames containing them.

  Fire lit up the night. The wolves who surrounded us lifted their muzzles and howled until my spine crawled with a million taps of energy. Energy rained here, energy drowned me here. Inside I felt a spark, a flame growing. Had I been like any of the other vampires here, I would’ve burst from the weight of my hunger. I would’ve incinerated, dropped to my knees, and humped the air. But I stared at Evie, who stared at me with hunger. A hunger she controlled. She fed me that control like grapes from a decadent hand, panting with desire. Black eyed and sharp fanged, she still held the reins like a witch. Like a vision from long ago.

  “We honor the moon with the rising tides in our wombs,” the priestess called.

  She approached the priest. Wolves began to whimper and bark, then emitted strangely human roars of pain as they shifted out of their beastly forms.

  “We honor the earth with blood, salt, and seed,” the priest called. He met his mate in front of the pyre, visible to us once more, and despite their ages, I saw passion. I saw hunger like steel, tempered in a forge of love.

  No. The wolves weren’t changing out of their beastly forms. The beast had its way with them instead, shifting them into monsters. Wolves clawed at the ground and cried out, instead of modulating their transformation with that ancient hum. Muzzles stretched but didn’t complete their transformation into human mouths. Something about their faces still carried a hint of humanity, as if they were stuck mid-change. But, these faces were too well formed to be accidental or stuck in the midst of a shift.

  This was another face of the wolf, a merging of beast and human, as natural as my fangs. In this circle, guardians straddled the li
ne between beast and human, between pack and individual. Their arms bulged with muscle and fur. The female wolves grew breasts but the nipples adorning their abdomens didn’t disappear. Claws on human-long fingers ravaged the grass, while powerful thighs and calves strained somewhere between human and beast. Spellbound, by each transformation, I didn’t see their singular ear-ringing howl coming. I wouldn’t have been surprised if every being in the world felt this song shivering over their skin.

  Finally, in unison, the priest and priestess shouted, “By your will, Lady, we give birth to great magicks and give death its due. Let what is done in this circle nourish the land, as the land nourishes us.”

  They shared a kiss, then melted into an embrace. The fires flared in the face of their passionate call. The drumbeat pounded in my ears like my heartbeat on a hard run before I reach my prey. As the priest sank to the ground and pulled his priestess into a straddle over his lap, the drum circle struck their drums in one hard beat that echoed to the treetops and shook my senses. The world shattered in my vision. I closed my eyes to gain some control, but the beat punched me in the gut. Magick skittered across my skin like rainfall on still water. I couldn’t escape. I couldn’t contain. I could only feel. For the first time in my life, I felt. Everything.

  When I opened my eyes, the ritual had begun.

  36

  Fur brushed my back as a wolfman surged past me. He grabbed a wolfwoman from behind. I watched in horrified arousal as the beast mounted his willing prey and shoved a huge red cock into her slick passage. A growl sounded from the wolfwoman’s lips, like the one I’d heard tumble from Stark’s mouth on the rack. Feral, bestial pleasure. I blinked and spun, unable to focus on any one pairing, unable to find my mate.

  A female witch sank to the ground, pulling her witch partner between widespread thighs. He didn’t need her blood, but he wanted her flesh and she wanted his.

  A male vampire licked the red line of ceremonial blood from a male witch’s cock, then bit into his thigh, gentle as a kiss.