by I. T. Lucas
“Not likely.” Julian started loading his plate from one of the platters Atzil had put on the table. “Gerard rarely leaves the kitchen, and all of his employees are human.” He chuckled. “It won’t matter if they notice anything unusual about him. They revere him like a god, so they will think nothing of him healing a cut in seconds.”
“Wait until Atzil hears about this.” Kalugal put his fork down. “He will beg on his knees to be allowed in that kitchen.”
Julian shook his head. “Carol wanted to apprentice with Gerard, but she quit right away. The guy is a prima donna and a major jerk.”
Rufsur arched a brow. “So not every clan member is a pure angel? What a relief. The village be a very boring place otherwise. What would there be to gossip about?”
“I like boring.” Julian wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Boring means no crisis and no looming catastrophe. Which brings me back to Eleanor. Bridget said that if she’s feeling fine and nothing has started yet, it shouldn’t be dangerous to administer the truth drug. And as long as it remains in Eleanor’s system, it might halt her transition. However, Bridget is not sure whether it will stop it in its tracks or just delay it.”
Kalugal took one more bite from his roast chicken and put the fork down as well. “I’m ready as soon as you are.”
Julian nodded. “I’m ready.”
“Finish your dinner first,” Jacki said. “Five more minutes won’t make a difference.” She cast a glance at Kalugal. “You too.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He picked up his knife and fork.
Rufsur stifled a smirk. If anyone had any doubt who the real boss in the house was, they should have seen that little exchange. Not that it bothered him in the slightest. He enjoyed watching Kalugal getting bossed around by Jacki when it was for his own good. The question was how far Kalugal would allow it to go. Would he move to the village because that was what his wife wanted?
Ever since Eleanor’s capture, Jacki had been dropping hints the size of elephants, but so far Kalugal had chosen to ignore them. Perhaps Jacki should take a more assertive stance and just demand it.
Except, that wasn’t in her nature. She thought of herself as an advisor, not a decision-maker.
“I’m done.” Julian pushed his plate away. “Please tell Atzil that it was delicious.”
“I’m ready as well.” Kalugal wiped his mouth with a napkin and turned to Jacki. “It shouldn’t take long. I only have a few questions for Eleanor, and then we can join you in the library for after-dinner drinks.”
She nodded. “I’ll wait for you.”
“I just want to reiterate that the drug is not a real truth serum,” Julian said. “It will put her in a very suggestive state of mind, but she can still lie. The trick is to make her believe that it is foolproof.”
“Naturally,” Kalugal said. “Perhaps when her defenses are down, I’ll be able to use my compulsion on her.”
Julian shook his head. “Lokan tried that. It didn’t work.”
“With all due respect to my brother, I’m a much more powerful compeller than he is.”
“Good luck then.”
As the three of them made their way down to the bunker, Kalugal didn’t say much, and both Julian and Rufsur kept quiet to let him think and prepare his questions.
After they stopped at the office to collect the drugs that had been delivered while they dined, the three of them continued to Eleanor’s room.
Rufsur entered the code and then knocked before opening the door. “Hello, Eleanor.” He smiled at her to put her at ease.
“Are you going to do it now?” She looked at Julian with frightened eyes.
“It’s not dangerous,” the doctor reassured her. “I’m going to give you a very small dose. You will feel drowsy and a little loopy, and then you are going to sleep it off.”
“So, you are not making me forget yet?”
They were, but the idea was to put her in a receptive mood so she would talk, and that would be easier if she believed it wasn’t time yet to say goodbye to her memories.
“We will do it in stages,” Julian said. “This evening, Calvin is going to ask you some questions. You might feel a little confused tomorrow morning, and perhaps even forget a few things, but not all of it.”
Eleanor let out a breath. “That sounds a lot less scary. I was afraid of waking up a mindless blob.”
He sat next to her on the bed. “I’m a doctor. I took a vow to do no harm, and I take it very seriously. I will not do anything that will cause you damage.”
“Okay,” she whispered. “It’s not like I have a choice, right?”
Julian shook his head.
Once it was done, they waited patiently for Julian to let them know that the drug had taken effect.
“What’s my name?” he asked her.
“Julian.”
“What’s your name?”
“Eleanor Takala.”
“Have you ever been married?”
“No.”
“Have you ever been in a committed relationship?”
She nodded. “But it was bad, and it ended a long time ago.”
Rufsur knew what Julian was doing. It was a basic interrogation technique. He was priming Eleanor to answer truthfully by asking her questions she had no problem answering, and then progressively making them more personal.
“Why was it bad?”
“He didn’t really want me, not long term. But I wanted him, so I compelled him to stay with me. That’s never a good thing. You can’t compel someone to love you or even desire you.”
“Do you like Greggory?”
“I like him a lot. He’s such a hunk, and he wants me.” She waved a hand over herself. “I’m nothing special, but he makes me feel desirable, and the sex is out of this world.” She snorted. “And I don’t even mind the fangs. He can bite me anytime he wants.” She rolled her eyes. “What a trip. Who needs drugs?”
Julian patted her arm and got up. “Your turn,” he said to Kalugal.
Taking the doctor’s place, Kalugal took Eleanor’s hand and kissed the back of it. “You are a very attractive young lady.”
“You really think so?”
“I do. You just need to smile more.”
It was true. When drugged, Eleanor’s pinched facial muscles relaxed, making her look softer and younger, and when she smiled, she was actually pretty. She was still too skinny, but he had a feeling that if she had someone who gave a damn about her, she would eat more than just enough to survive.
“Who are you working with, Eleanor?”
“On what?”
“Anything at all. Do you have friends, coworkers, a team of any kind?”
She shook her head, and a tear slid down her cheek. “I’m alone. I don’t have friends, or family, or a team. I know that it’s mainly my fault, but life just wasn’t fair to me.” She snorted. “That’s such a stupid thing to say. I can compel people to do whatever I want. It’s unfair to them, not me. But I can’t compel them to love me. Boohoo.” She mocked herself. “I’m like the rich girl complaining about how hard her life is because she didn’t get something that she wanted. I hate myself so much.”
It seemed that the drug was working, or maybe Eleanor needed to get things off her chest, and the drug was providing her with the permission she needed to do that.
“Why did you come looking for us? What were you hoping to achieve?”
“I wanted to see what paranormal talents you guys had. Not that I knew the house would be full of men.” She snorted. “That was a nice surprise. Especially since you are all so good-looking. But anyway, I had the stupid idea that I could sell you to the Chinese. They are looking for paranormal talents too, you know. And if I could prove that I can get them the talents, they would hire me to work for them.”
Rufsur wasn’t surprised. In fact, he was relieved that they finally knew the reason for her going after them.
“Why was the idea stupid?” Kalugal asked.
She waved a hand at the three of them. “I shou
ld have taken it easy and investigated more before jumping in. I didn’t know that your organization was so big, or that you had several branches, or that you had people with all kinds of strange mutations. If I had known all that, I would have concentrated on joining you instead of trying to profit from you. I have enough money to last me a lifetime. I don’t need more. But I need to belong somewhere.”
As tears pooled in the corners of her eyes, she wiped them away with her hand. “But now it’s too late. I blew it.”
“Did you contact the Chinese already?”
Eleanor shook her head. “I wanted to find out more before approaching them, but Greggory turned out to be immune to my compulsion, so I couldn’t get any information out of him. I thought that we would start dating, and I’d get access to the house and to his friends that weren’t immune, but the next thing I knew, I woke up in your basement.”
30
Edna
Edna took a wine bottle and a glass to her bedroom, put both on the nightstand, got in bed, and propped her phone on a pillow.
Even though she’d talked with Rufsur only a few hours earlier, she couldn’t wait to hear his voice again and see his handsome face on the screen, smiling at her with those adorable dimples in his cheeks.
The nights were when she missed him the most.
During the days, she was busy with work and tried not to think too much about how much she missed him. Except, given the numerous times she sneaked peeks at the photo she’d attached to his contact, she was only partially successful.
Edna sighed. Rufsur had been gone only three and a half days, but it felt as if it had been months.
When her phone rang, she pushed up against the pillow and accepted the call. “I see that you are in bed already.” She smiled.
“And so are you, my delight. Should we do something naughty?”
“Definitely. But first, tell me about Eleanor. Did Julian give her the truth serum?”
“You know that’s a misleading name for it. It makes people loopy and easier to influence, but they can still lie or withhold the truth. The trick is to make them believe that they are defenseless against it.”
“Did it work on Eleanor?”
He chuckled. “Like a charm. We verified that she worked alone, and we also found out that she was planning on selling us to the Chinese.”
“What? That doesn’t make any sense. She didn’t know that you were immortal.”
“Just like Simmons, Eleanor believed that we were an organization of paranormally talented people. She’d learned from his notes that the Chinese have a similar program, and that they are also searching for talents. It turns out that Simmons had a double agent in their organization that was supplying him with information. Since Roberts fired her, Eleanor thought to offer her services to the Chinese program, and to show them that she could deliver, she wanted to bring them samples.”
Edna shook her head. “The woman is a sociopath and she’s not that smart. How did she think to achieve that on her own with no backup?”
“She was counting on her compulsion power. If it worked on us, she could have compelled Greggory to accompany her to the Chinese, or even deliver himself into their hands.”
“Compulsion is a dangerous power. If you and your men were human, she could have pulled it off.”
“Luckily for us, we are not. Are we done talking about Eleanor?”
“Not yet. What is Kalugal planning to do with her?”
“Since she was working alone, he’s not in a hurry to do anything. He still hasn’t decided whether he’s going to keep her locked up in here until he finds a new place for us, or let her go if the drug takes care of enough of her memories. Our guys in West Virginia are going to dispose of the original files in Simmons’s house, and that will be the end of this episode.”
“I think he is being too complacent. Don’t you? She could have lied despite the drug’s influence. You said yourself that it’s not fail-proof.”
“What are the chances of another immune coming to us here? With his ability, Kalugal feels that he’s safe enough to build his own village at his own pace. I just wish we could dump Eleanor somewhere. I don’t like the idea of her being locked up in here for so long.”
“Don’t feel sorry for her. Prison time is the least she deserves for what she did.”
“I’m not sorry for her. But having a prisoner is work. She will need to be fed, taken out to breathe fresh air, etc.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.”
He chuckled. “I suggested giving her to Lokan to drop off on the island. If she weren’t an immune, that would have solved our problems. But then if she could be thralled or compelled, we wouldn’t have a problem in the first place.”
“It is what it is.” Edna sighed. “What I regret is that Eleanor’s capture wasn’t the impetus we hoped for. Since security does not seem to concern Kalugal, we will need to emphasize other points in our sales presentation. We need to focus on the future generation and how much better it would be for his children to grow up in a larger community of immortals.”
Rufsur smirked. “Speaking of having kids makes me think of procreation. How about you take your clothes off and get comfortable?”
Edna lifted her wine glass and took a sip. “Why don’t you strip for me first? I miss seeing your magnificent body in the nude.”
“Aha. I was wondering about that wine and what it was for. But my mind conjured different scenarios than yours.”
What else could the wine be used for in a sexual context? The only thing she could think of was relaxation.
“What did you have in mind?”
“If I was there with you, I would have poured drops of it over your breasts, and then cleaned them up with my tongue.”
As Edna’s nipples stiffened, she put the wine glass on the nightstand and cupped her breasts.
Rufsur’s eyes shone with an inner glow. “Take your shirt off and play with your breasts.”
“Give me what I asked for, and I will.”
31
Rufsur
Rufsur smiled. “You want me to give you a show, my delight?”
“Yes, please.” Edna rubbed her nipples with the palms of her hands.
“How can I refuse when you’re asking so nicely.” Easier said than done.
His eyes riveted to her breasts and the slow circles her thumbs were making over her sleep shirt, he didn’t move an inch.
“Am I distracting you?” She looked at him from under lowered lashes.
“Yes, but don’t stop.” Turning around without moving his eyes from her breasts, he propped his phone against a stack of pillows. “Can you see me?”
“Yes. Now take your shirt off.”
“On one condition. Pinch your nipples for me.”
Biting on her lower lip, she did as he asked.
“Beautiful.”
Stripping for an audience wasn’t something Rufsur had practice in, but he was going to give his woman the best show he could.
Still keeping his eyes on her, he slid back until his feet touched the floor and stood up.
Usually, Rufsur just got rid of his clothes as fast as he could, but now he had to go slow, and it felt unnatural. The T-shirt was first. Gripping the bottom, he pulled it over his head and tossed it on the floor. “How do you like it so far?” He smoothed his palms over his pectorals, going down his six-pack and stopping at his belt.
“Love it.” Edna moistened her lips.
“Do you want to see more?”
“I do.”
“Then take your shirt off and let me see those mouthwatering nipples of yours. Are they hard for me?”
Edna nodded.
“Say it.”
“They are.”
“Are they aching for my hands? My lips? My tongue?”
“They do.” Edna lifted on her knees, turned around, propped her phone against the pillows, and leaned back.
“Take it off,” he commanded.
As she pulled her sleep s
hirt over her head, exposing her beautiful nude body, Rufsur’s erection punched out over his belt line.
“My naughty girl is not wearing panties,” he hissed from between elongated fangs.
Edna chuckled. “I’m not a girl.”
“You are my girl. Now turn around and let me see your magnificent ass.”
She did as he asked and looked at him over her shoulder. “I thought that you were supposed to strip for me.”
“We are taking turns. Cup your ass cheeks.” He groaned when she did. “I want my hands to be there instead of yours. Squeezing, spanking, kissing.”
Over the phone’s speaker, he could hear her breathing getting heavier, and when she leaned forward, exposing her moist petals, he almost came in his pants.
Looking at him over her shoulder, she smirked. “Your turn. I want to see what I do to you.”
Rufsur unbuckled his belt. Pulling it out through the loops as slowly as he could, he tossed it on the floor. “Play with yourself. I want to see those naughty fingers doing naughty things to your sweet pussy.”
So far, she’d been following his instructions, but he should have known that it wouldn’t last.
Bracing her weight on one forearm, Edna reached with her hand behind her and cupped her center, hiding it. “Like that?” She pretended innocence.
With a groan, Rufsur popped his jeans button. “Not like that. Give yourself a slap on the ass for blocking my view.”
Surprisingly, she obeyed his command, and the sound of that slap sent an electrical shock straight to his shaft.
Looking over her shoulder, she assumed a wide-eyed expression. “Like that?”
“It was perfect. Now reach with your hand from the front and stick that beautiful ass out so I can see you fingering yourself.”
Edna was no doubt scandalized, but she was responding beautifully, and he was loving every moment of it.
When her fingers feathered over her clit, he dropped his pants together with his boxer shorts and fisted his erection. “Do it harder.” He spread the drops of pre-cum that had accumulated on the tip down his erection.