by Ana Calin
“You can help me with that.”
“What? How?”
I look behind us at the silver chains hanging from the walls, and think about the moment when I’ll feel them around my wrists again. And how I need my wrists to be bruised and bleeding. I step closer to Lazarus and cup his face in my hands, surprising him. He makes to step back, but I keep him still.
“Please, listen,” I whisper. “I need those cuffs to hurt my wrists, and that won’t happen because I’m immune now. But if you—” I pucker my lips, preparing myself for the backlash if he finds my proposal disturbing, or if he rejects me bluntly. “You can bruise and wound my wrists so that it seems it was the cuffs.”
A feeling crosses his eyes, and I think it’s pity, but I refuse to dwell on it.
“You can’t stay here, it’s too dangerous.”
“It will get me to the next person in line and, if I play my cards right, to the Serpent Lord.”
“No, it’s madness, I won’t let you take the risk.”
I smile, but I’m full of sadness. “You wouldn’t have cared how dangerous things got for me a few days ago.”
“Yes, I would have.” He cups my face, too, his hands big and dependable on my skin.
“I can’t say it doesn’t cost me effort to admit,” he says, sweeter and softer than he’s ever talked to me before. “But you are an extremely worthy person. Think about what you mean to Lady Rux, Dracula’s wife. You’re the sister she never had. You saved her life and stood by her side in the hardest moments. And what about Tristan? He’s Dracula’s left hand, you’re his right, and you’re like war siblings to each other. His love for you is deeply brotherly, and he’d never be the same man again if you left this world. The wound you’d leave in his heart would never heal.”
“Your words mean a lot, Lazarus, they do,” I say truthfully. “But what these people need from me is exactly this sacrifice. If I don’t go all the way to discover the truth about how the secret to human immortality is being handled and used, the whole world can turn into hell on Earth. Lord Dracula, Rux, Tristan, even your beloved Juliet put their trust in me for this one, they depend on me.”
“They put their trust in us, they depend on us. You’re not in this alone.”
“But we’ve reached a point where we have to split. I stay here, and go as deep as I can go with Geneva—”
“Geneva? Geneva Daniel?”
“Yes. Turns out she is the bigger boss behind Herald Gruff, but there’s someone even higher than her.”
“It can only be the Devil’s Son.”
“Probably. In the end, the Serpent Lord raised him as his own, no doubt they share this big project with each other, plus that Geneva says the man I’ll meet and I have more or less of a history. I’m now in Geneva’s power, and I will go wherever she takes me until I get to the person behind her. Things may happen to me along the way, but they are worth—”
“No, Irina, don’t say that.”
“You,” I interrupt him, hands firm on the sides of his face, and eyes firmly on his, “will have to keep close to Herald. He may yet have some roads open to the Serpent Lord.”
“This could end up really bad for you,” he whispers.
“I’ve made my decision. But I need your support. Make my wrists bloody. Make it look like the silver has hurt me.”
His hands close warmly around my wrists, taking my hands off his face and keeping them between his, looking down.
Minutes later I’m hanging in the silver chains again, my wrists rough and bloody as if rubbed against thick rope, my latex red dress hardly more than rags hanging on me. My bra and panties are visible, my black stockings torn. Full of the my last meal’s blood as I am, my looks correspond exactly to the identity I’ve always felt most at home with—a former child prostitute turned killer, who rips throats open before she lets another bastard have his way with her.
But the way Lazarus stares at me now awakens in me cravings I never thought I’d feel. I want him to roll my panties down my legs, then lift me up and plunge his cock inside me while I hang from these chains. But he’s not gonna do it, even though he wants to. The only man I want to take me in the dirtiest way, choosing not to.
“You can do it,” I try, even though weakly. “You’ve already had me, we’ve shared the deepest intimacy two people can share. I know you hate yourself for it, but be honest—you enjoyed it. And rest assured, I sure as hell loved it. Not to mention that all this danger and adrenaline gets me in one hell of a mood to have sex.”
“Sex,” he repeats calmly, still regarding me as if pondering some words of wisdom. “I don’t even believe in that word.”
I frown. “Believe in it?”
“Juliet used to say that there was no such thing as a woman who simply craves sex, or a naturally promiscuous woman. That whenever a woman appears to be like that, what she actually craves is emotional intimacy, which men don’t usually offer without sex.”
“Do you think that’s what I need? Emotional connection? Love?”
“I don’t know if that’s what you need. But I know that you’re totally worthy of it.”
Then why won’t you give it to me yourself, I want to blurt out, but I keep it in.
He walks to the stone he lifted to get in here, but he moves slowly, as if he’s unwilling to leave. He stops beside the stone, looking back at me.
“I respect you, Irina, I want you to know that.”
My chin tightens with anger. I don’t give a fuck about his respect, I want him to love me, I want someone to love me at least once is this wretched existence. My ex Radek respected me, but wouldn’t fuck me even once, giving me a chance at his love. I know I’m worthy of respect, because I’m worthy of fear. Hell, even Dracula sees my worth. Love is another story.
“If that’s true,” I hiss, my eyes filling with provocation, “then humor me before you go—fuck me. Bad and hard. Fuck me so deep I won’t be able to walk straight when they get me out of here.”
My pheromones rise and float around me like particles of dust, shrouding this bloody ex hooker with torn clothes in pure desire. Lazarus’s whole frame tenses, his fists tightening by his sides. He’s either angry, or he’s arming himself against my power.
“Is this you making a point?” he says, still calm but I can hear the repressed temper.
“This is me asking you to prove your respect, and give me what I need.”
He walks to me, slowly, but it only angers me more because I know it’s my pheromones and not his own will, not even a little bit. When he stops in front of me, tall and handsome, the young professor with the kind blue eyes and the charming black locks, my insides melt, and I could slap him for it if my hands were free.
“You won’t give me your love,” I say darky, “but you will give me your lust.”
Compelled by my power he grabs my thighs and hoists me up, my legs in the torn black stockings wrapping around his hips. He opens his fly, his big hard shaft ready for me. I gasp when I feel his naked cock against my craving folds.
“God, I love how big you are,” I say. It turns him on like fire, I can see it in his handsome chiseled face even though he tries to maintain a film of composure. He winds a hand around the back of neck, sinking into my hair.
“Tug,” I tell him. “Tug hard.”
I swallow the groan of pleasure in my mouth, fisting my hands against the cuffs that keep my arms apart, and pressing my chest against the delicious sinews of Lazarus’ body, feeling them as they move under his simple black t-shirt. I breathe in his scent, my eyes delighting in the sight of him horny as fuck, his whole body moving like he’s lost it.
“That’s it, my sweet handsome college professor, have your way with me,” I challenge him while his naked buttocks move faster and faster, his strong fingers splayed over my ass as he keeps me in place and thrusts with that huge cock of his, so big that I’m swimming in the most delicious mix of pleasure and pain.
I start laughing a mean laugh as I watch his face, rea
ding in it that he wants to stop, but he just can’t. He loses the battle and cries out in frustration, which makes my walls clench and give him a jolt of unbearable pleasure. His cock throbs between my squeezing walls as he cums, baring his teeth like an animal. I’d take full delight in this, if it weren’t for the noises far outside the barred cell door that tell me the Goons heard us.
I unwind my legs from around him like a ballerina, holding myself steady against the cuffs as I push him back with my foot, practically throwing him out of me.
“Leave, now,” I order under my breath. “The goons are coming.”
The noises turn louder, a heavy metal key being worked in the first lock outside of the cell around the corner. One more turn and the watch will be here, seeing Lazarus with his own eyes. But the noise prompts Lazarus to flash over to the loose stone and remove it, giving me one last gaze that’s full of need and desire before the guard appears behind the bars. I’ll remember the look on his face for a thousand years, it was better than any orgasm. No one has ever stared at me like that, and the emotional fulfillment is like the best dope.
The stone makes a faint clattering sound, yet by the time the goon scowls at it, it’s perfectly sealed. But the stark smell of sex and Lazarus’ natural scent still fill the place.
The goon sniffs around.
“What is it?” I croak, staring at him like a murderous cat. “Why do you look at me like that, huh? I’m a whore, I fuck men for a living, what do you expect me to wear?” My reference to my attire explains the smell, too, and the goon backs off, drawing the conclusion I must have struggled against the silver chains that are burning me, and made noise.
Lazarus
I SLAM HERALD GRUFF against the wall. He stares at me with an open mouth at first, not recognizing me behind the sunshades, and the heavy amount of special sunscreen that covers my face. It takes a few seconds before he understands who I am.
“What are Geneva’s plans with Irina? Where is she taking her? I saw them escort her out of the establishment last night, in cuffs, so don’t you even try to lie to me.”
“There’s nothing you can do for her.”
I stare at him so close to his face I almost touch my nose to his. I have to get him talking at all costs, because by the time Irina directs her thoughts at me in a manner that would help me locate her, she might be in mortal danger.
“You may want to reconsider your loyalties, you piece of shit. The Serpent Lord, or Geneva Daniel, or whoever talks to you in his place may have promised you human immortality, but that won’t save you from murder. I’ll still be able to suck you dry, and there’s nothing the best doctors in the world can do to bring you back.”
He looks around at the bustling streets. No doubt he told his driver to let him off here especially because he thought no one would attack him in a crowded place, especially not a vampire sensitive to daylight, so he was unprepared for my appearance. I press my advantage.
“Herald, I never made my bad opinion of you a secret. I think you’re a decadent prick that doesn’t deserve to live, I think you’re ugly inside and out, and you stink like a corpse no matter how much cologne you use, but I know you’re a smart man. Can’t you see that the people you’re loyal to don’t give a fuck about you? They don’t bother to ensure your safety, and you know why? Because they never planned to make you immortal.”
“Get over yourself, pretty boy, with your conclusions. They couldn’t make me immortal so far,” he caves.
“They’re playing you, Herald. Think about it. People as powerful as the Serpent Lord don’t need to wait. They’re just using you, they’ll never give you even a taste of immortality.”
Silence. Herald stares at me as he lets my arguments go through his head. They’re influencing him, even though he fights hard not to let that happen.
He chews the inside of his cheek, then he caves. “I’ll make you a deal, pretty boy. Your sexy vamp Irina is in over her head. She probably thinks she can handle it, but she doesn’t stand a chance. I’ll show you where they’re taking her, but not for nothing.”
“I never expected it would be. Name your price.”
“My price is immortality, Lazarus.” He lifts his chin, forcing himself to look me straight in the sunshades. “I sacrificed a lot to get to this point, I won’t lose everything now.” He looks me up and down as if it’s hard for him to say the following words, but he doesn’t have a choice. “And I’m starting to think you’re my best bet of ever getting what I want.”
“I am. Humans are simple tools, minions for the Serpent Lord. He uses them like lemon, squeezing until there’s nothing left, then he tosses them in the trash. It’s much easier for him to dispose of people than to give them true power, don’t you ever forget that. I mean, why give you immortality when he could just kill you after you’ve served his purposes.”
“Then it’s on you to deliver what he promised.” He pushes a finger into my chest with the wild look of someone who’s gambling everything he’s got on his last card. “Otherwise you won’t see your vamp again, except maybe dead. By the way. I’ve been wondering from the start.” He tilts his head to the side inquisitively. “How come the two of you are working together? Last time I checked she was offering her pussy to Prince Radek, and you were worshipping the ground that Juliet Jochs walked on.”
I pull him closer, my fists clenched around his lapels.
“Unless you want to become an immortal with a punched-in nose, you better watch your mouth about Irina. If you as much as look at her wrong, I swear I’m gonna have your fucking head and drain you of your blood till there’s nothing left.”
Irina
AT FIRST SIGHT THIS place appears to be a brothel like the last one, but instead of perfumed steam and scented oils it reeks like a graveyard full of fresh corpses. Soon I realize that’s exactly what it is, because the hookers dancing here aren’t human. They’re vampires, dressed in leather and latex, their mouths smudged with blood, their high heeled legs prancing among dismantled bodies littering the floor.
I look around, wondering if I’ve ever seen something quite as bad before in my entire existence as a slimy serpent shifter in a black suit that’s soaked with his slime pulls me by the cuffs deeper inside this den. Vamps dance languorously on the bar, on tables, around poles of stainless steel, spurred on by the bass and the clients that are slowly feeding them fresh parts of human bodies, having them suck the blood off the wounds like dogs nibbling bones. They bend to all fours, craving it, letting men take them from behind while they do it.
Something is mighty off about these women. Their eyes are hooded, as if they’re high on their own senses, not fully aware of what’s happening around them. And they look sick, skinny, their faces a shiny white like they’re sweating from illness.
The slimy shifter pushes me onto a leather couch in a booth, but I keep assessing my surroundings, scanning for means of escape.
“It’s the humans we used for experiments, their blood drugs the vamps.” That voice rips me from my observation of the place, making things painfully clear through all the smoke and the now muffled music. The finest hairs stand all over me.
“It can’t kill them of an overdose because, well, you know vamps, we’re resilient,” he explains as a serpent pushes his wheelchair near the table. “But it does keep them in a phase that’s similar to terminal cancer. It’s quite unpleasant.”
I look at him in shock. Geneva Daniel’s crippled husband, whom we’d all thought a human at her whims, and whose face we’d never seen, is no stranger to me. And I’m damn sure he was never Geneva’s victim either. He was the one playing her all along, not the other way around.
“Have you ever tasted the blood of an immortal human, Irina?”
“Wow, you know my name. I always wondered if you knew it when you killed me.” I’m boiling on the inside.
“No.” His serpent bodyguard hands him a fancy looking pack of cigarettes and lights it with his white, almost transparent fingers. My eyes move t
o Geneva’s husband. His skin is paper-like, almost translucent on his bones. “You weren’t important back then, your name didn’t matter.” His reddish eyes find mine, penetrating. “But even though I never cared about your name, I cared about you. In my own way.”
“Oh, I know.” I keep my head up, my shoulders tight. A storm is raging inside of me, but on the outside I keep calm, cool, as if nothing.
I can feel his tense expectation. He wants more feedback from me, but I know better this time.
“You know what you meant for me? Why I did it?”
I look to the side, towards the horror club with the horror-sick vamp hookers, and summon all my experience and the hard skin I developed as Dracula’s spy and warrior to suppress the revolt in my stomach.
“So you were behind this all along? Behind this entire project of deciphering the secret to human immortality?”
“No, the Serpent Lord is behind that. I’m merely his right hand. Or, better said, his left one. The Devil’s Son is his adoptive son, so I guess it’s fair to say he’s the next person in command after the Serpent Lord.”
“You sick man. You live to cause pain, don’t you? Tell me.” My head snaps to him. He sits there looking all vulnerable in his wheelchair. The two serpents behind him could very well be his nurses—the highly trained and thuggish nurses of a morbidly wealthy man, but still.
“Someone has to, I guess. Pain is one of life’s best teachers.”
He gives me the precarious grin of someone with implants. Shit, he’s supposed to be a vampire, but he doesn’t even have fangs.
“Oh, so you took it upon yourself to fill the shoes of that teacher, right?” I hiss.
“And how are you different from me? You’re the reason I landed in this wheelchair,” he says.
“Me? You did unspeakable things to me and left me for dead. I would have loved to have caused you all this suffering, and trust me, I wouldn’t deny it if I had. But sadly I had nothing to do with it.”
“No, not directly. But your maker found me and did it for you.”