RW1 Ravyn's blood

by Downs Jana

  “What is she carrying on about whorehouses for?” Dageus wondered aloud. From the sour expression he wore, it seemed like he had developed an instant dislike for the trollop. Her eyes flashed fire in his direction once again, letting him know she felt the same.

  “Don’t you remember, Kalel?” Her voice was poisonous. “Don’t you remember Padma’s embrace? He took me with him to the slave markets the day he bought you. You were practically a virgin then. So thin and puny in comparison to Padma’s strength. He wanted you from the first moment he saw you. He took you on your knees right on the slave block after he bought you, while I watched. You were his favorite. Tell me how you got away from such a strong demon, Kal. Did you fuck someone to whisk you away?”

  Dageus was finally starting to lose his temper.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” he growled. “From what I can smell, there is only one whore in this room, and I’m looking at her.”

  The brothers chuckled at his comeback. Salvatore raised a hand to silence them.

  “Have you anything productive to say, Angelina? Make your report,” Salvatore commanded.

  She ignored him. “You mean he really doesn’t remember? Kalel, don’t you remember me?”

  Dageus shook his head. “My name is Dageus, woman, and I have no idea who the hell you are and why you insist on insulting me.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I see,” she said simply, and something dark moved behind her eyes. “Where are my manners? I’m Angelina Marquis. His majesty’s consort and personal spy. I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else.” Satisfied with her answer, he nodded and relaxed a fraction of an inch. Salvatore did the same.

  “Your report, Angel,” Salvatore reminded her.

  She smirked and stepped forward. “Of course. Desmond is planning on killing you.”

  Salvatore rolled his eyes. “I knew that. Anything new?”

  She shrugged delicately.

  “Just that he’s planning a huge attempt on your life soon and that he might have a spy on the inside looking for you. He said that you were getting more lax every day, and soon nowhere in Demontia would be safe for you.”

  “When is this alleged attack supposed to be?” Tony demanded, putting a hand on the hilt of his sword.

  She smiled sweetly. “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

  The Ravyns exchanged another of their infamous looks.

  “You’re dismissed, Angelina,” Salvatore said hurriedly, wishing her out of his sight.

  “As you wish, your majesty.” She bowed, but there was arrogance in her expression that belied her sweet tone.

  As the doors closed behind her they all breathed a sigh of relief. “Wow…” Allasandro said.

  “She’s hot and all but…wow,” Druas agreed wholeheartedly.

  “She’s a real piece of work, Salvatore. Where did you dig up the hell bitch?”

  Salvatore smiled at the memory of where he “dug her up.”

  Dageus snorted. “You’re a pig.”

  Salvatore clapped him on the shoulder in affection.

  “I found her at one of the whorehouses in Freka before I was confined here by you all. The master of the house was a mean son of a bitch called Padma. He sold her to me, and I enlisted her special service to spy on Desmond. She’s done quite well actually. This is the first time she’s been late.”

  Dageus was startled at the mention of Padma, the supposed slave trader that Angelina had spoken of. “So is it true?” he whispered with barely constrained disgust. “Was I a whore in another life? Is that what Judgment made me forget?”A pounding headache started to form in his head, and it echoed along their bond so even Salvatore felt the first curling edge of pain. Dageus’s eyes filled with tears at the memories just out of his reach. He gripped his temples between his hands as the pain intensified.

  “Stop trying to force the memories, brother,” Tony whispered. He was suddenly embraced by his brothers, all of them pressing close to him, sharing in his pain. The telepathic link between them grew stronger.

  “Am I a whore?” he asked again, turning his glittering eyes to Salvatore. Salvatore’s copper eyes were filled with uncertainty.

  “Honestly? I don’t know.”

  The answer struck Dageus like a blow, and he gave a little cry of protest as Salvatore continued. He hadn’t meant to hurt his Ravyn, but he wanted to be honest.

  “I never asked you before the transition. I never ask any of you. It is at times like these when I would want to tell you. But then I remind myself that the reason you forget is so that it doesn’t distract you.” Salvatore put a comforting hand on his shoulder, the only spot on his body that his brothers weren’t touching. “It doesn’t matter what you were. Only what you are.”

  Dageus nodded, closing his eyes.

  “You’re right. It doesn’t matter.” He started to relax under his brother’s hands. Druas nuzzled his neck.

  “You can be my whore anytime,” he joked.

  They all started laughing, and the tension instantly disappeared. Dageus shoved at Druas’s face.

  “Only if you’re on bottom,” Dageus retorted.

  That elicited another laugh from them. Everything was going to be all right.

  Chapter Seven

  Angelina wrapped her long legs around his hips as he thrust into her. Dageus moaned as her muscles contracted around him.

  “Harder, Dageus!” she gasped as his hips surged against hers.

  His hard cock worked its way in and out of her with the precision of a skilled lover. He should be on guard duty right now, Dageus reminded himself. He shouldn’t have let her seduce him so close to his shift. He was going to be late. But it was only a few minutes. Salvatore would be all right for just a few minutes. When she’d confronted him, he had been in the middle of an erotic daydream, hard from the vision of his blond-haired male lover. Her snips about his sexuality had upset him more than he admitted, and when she’d suggested that he prove his masculinity by fucking her, he’d allowed himself to be convinced.

  She bucked beneath him, and he suckled the coral tips of her white breasts into his mouth. She clawed at his shoulders. He smiled and lifted his head from her chest, never losing his rhythm.

  “Are you ever going to call me a whore again, pretty one?” he whispered, pausing.

  She was on the edge of a terrific orgasm, and her moans said that she was desperate for a feel of him.

  “No!” she moaned. “Please, please, Dageus. Please let me come!”

  With an inhuman growl, he pounded into her silken folds.

  “Yes!” she screamed as her orgasm tore through her into a fit.

  Dageus closed his eyes and began to imagine.

  “Oh, Goddess!” Dageus moaned as his cock was caught between the silken lips of his fantasy lover. Sea-blue eyes regarded him in a deeply satisfied fashion. Dageus barely registered that it was a man sucking on his cock and that he was enjoying it with a gusto that normally would shock him.

  “God, don’t stop!” he pleaded as the stranger began to work his cock with his right hand.

  “My sweet one, you’re going to come for me so good.” The stranger crooned and nibbled on the inside of his thigh.

  Dageus shivered. “Please…”

  He begged, thrusting his hips in a wanton fashion. The blue-eyed stranger grinned, revealing sharp, elongated canines.

  “Bite me, Master,” Dageus panted.

  Without further encouragement, he sank his fangs into Dageus’s thigh.

  He stiffened against her as his own orgasm caught him off guard. He gave an inhuman noise of satisfaction, buried deep within her, and her still-spasming sheath milked him for every last drop.

  He collapsed against her.

  “Sweet Gods,” she said, still contracting from the aftershocks of orgasm. “Shouldn’t you be getting back to duty?” she murmured, running a hand down his sweat-soaked back. He mumbled something incomprehensible.

  “What was that?” she purred. He lifted his he
ad from the curve of her neck.

  “Yeah, I really should.” With a groan, he pulled out of her, his member still twitching. He quickly pulled his pants up from the floor.

  “Will you come to me tonight?” she asked almost desperately.

  He smiled but on the inside cringed. He shouldn’t have let it go this far. He hadn’t meant to sleep with her when he confronted her. Damn. He could still remember the image in his head as he pounded into her. He cringed again. He was a freak. He tore his thoughts away from the image of a blond-haired man from his fantasy. A man! Ugh. Yes. He was a freak.

  “I need to go.”

  She looked disappointed.

  “But, I’ll see you soon,” he added, lying through his teeth.

  She dazzled him with a smile just before a scream echoed through the house.

  “Oh shit!” he yelled, recognizing Salvatore’s shout. He took off in a dead run, not even pausing to look back.

  When he burst through the door, he found two of his brothers locked in a bloody fight. Druas’s sword connected with one of five assassins in the room. It sent the other man staggering, but it wasn’t fatal.

  “Jesus Christ!” Dageus yelled, pulling his own sword from its sheath.

  Allasandro was fighting nearby, and Dageus caught a glance at him falling to his back.

  “Ravyns, link up!” Tony screeched from somewhere inside the darkened room.

  In an instant a psychic connection formed between them, and they started to fight as one sentient being. Dageus felt Germany, Tony, and Druas combine their strengths with his own, and weakly, Allasandro did as well. The connection shifted, and suddenly a hole formed in their connection, throwing them all off balance.

  “What the hell—” Tony began before catching sight of Allasandro’s limp form on the floor.

  “Ally!” Dageus screamed, hacking through one of the assassins with one sword swing. He made his way to Allasandro’s side with brawn and collapsed beside him. “Wake up!” he begged Allasandro, willing him to awaken and say he was all right.

  “Dageus, get back in your position. We have to get to the Prince.” Tony commanded, drawing him away from their fallen brother.

  “He’ll be all right, won’t he?” Dageus asked pleadingly.

  Tony shrugged and pushed his own pain from his mind.

  The Prince was holding his own in the center of the room. A ruby-red sword hung from his grip, and he dispatched another enemy to hell.

  “About time, boys!” he gasped. Though he was a fine warrior, he was not trained to have the stamina needed for a battle. He was a Prince, for God’s sake! Sweat poured off his body in rivulets. Obviously they’d caught him just as he’d awoken from the day’s rest. The Ravyns closed in on all sides of the assassins, systematically picking them off. When the last one fell, they all embraced their Prince.

  “We’re sorry we weren’t here sooner, your highness,” Tony gushed. “We expected Dageus to give the call if anything came up but…well, it didn’t happen. Obviously he was dealing with too much to sound the alarm,” Tony offered up as they all made their way back to Allasandro’s side.

  Dageus was the first to reach him, cradling his head in his lap as he stared into the unconscious features of his brother. His eyes flooded with tears.

  “Wake up, Ally-cat. Please wake up. I’m so sorry!” Tears spilled down his cheeks, and he kissed his brother’s forehead. His lips came away smeared with blood from the cut on Ally’s temple.

  “Tony, do something!” he begged, fingering the edges of the cut with horror. “Please!”

  “Would you stop being such a drama queen? Jeez.” A hoarse voice startled him out of his panic. Allasandro gasped, coming awake, his gold eyes halfway closed in pain. He groaned at the pain in his head. He rubbed his temple with his hand and pulled it away bloody.

  “You son of a bitch! You scared me half to death!” Dageus growled, repressing the urge to shake him.

  “You’re going to need the healing springs for that,” Druas said, offering him a hand up.

  “Man, what happened? Did we get them?”

  They all nodded, and Allasandro smiled.

  “Good. Bastards.”

  Tony continued to talk to the Prince as they spoke. “So, we’re all very sorry we were late,” he offered lamely.

  “Did they incapacitate Dageus?” he asked Salvatore. “Is that why your call was late in coming?” Dageus shifted uneasily from foot to foot.

  Salvatore frowned and spoke. “I’d thought the guard lineup had been switched. Dageus never showed up for duty.”

  Tony’s eyes bulged. “What?!” He turned his fiery gaze toward Dageus. “Where the hell were you instead of guarding your Prince?”

  Dageus swallowed visibly. “I was, ah, I was…”

  “He was with me,” a feminine voice crowed from the doorway. Shock set in as Angelina stepped forward, an aura of magick surrounding her.

  “Is that true, Dageus? Were you really screwing some girl instead of doing your duty?” Tony looked like he was about to have a coronary.

  Dageus stammered and hung his head in shame. “Yes,” he whispered.

  Angelina gave a smile of victory before leaning against the wall with a gloating smile. “Told you he was a whore. You’re a fool to trust in the reliability of whores.”

  Salvatore’s eyes narrowed to pinpoints.

  “Get her out of here,” he growled to the nearest of his morning guard. “Get her out of my sight before I kill her myself.”

  She smiled at Dageus with cold eyes.

  “If it makes you feel any better, Kal, you were the best lay I’ve ever had,” she called over her shoulder as she was led roughly from the room. Dageus felt like he was going to throw up.

  “I’m so sorry, Tony.” he whispered, sick to death of his behavior. “I just wanted her to take it back. When she came and offered, I don’t know what came over me. I’ve failed you all. I’m sorry. If you want to banish me from the order, I leave judgment up to you.”

  “Stop being so melodramatic!” Allasandro said, rolling his eyes even as he winced at the actions. “So you fucked up. Who doesn’t? You’ll never do it again, I wager.”

  Tony cut him off. “We forgive you, brother, but I don’t know if our Prince does.”

  They all looked at Salvatore expectantly.

  “I must say I am disappointed in you, Dageus,” Salvatore said. Dageus hung his head in misery. “However, I fell for her charms once upon a time myself, so you are forgiven for that. Don’t disappoint me again.”

  Dageus dropped to his knees in front of his Prince. “I offer you a vow of celibacy for my disloyalty.”

  They all gasped at the offer. Dageus knew this to be right. After all, wasn’t it his insecurity over his fascination with men that had caused him to screw up during practice as well as screw that hell bitch?

  “I realize now that was what was making me slow and what caused me to falter. It won’t happen again, my Prince.”

  Salvatore’s eyes widened in response to Dageus’s proposal. “You don’t have to offer that, Dageus. We all get into debacles once in a while. It’s normal.” Dageus shook his head.

  “Not for me, my lord. I will allow nothing else to distract me from duty. My life for yours. My chastity so that I may be more loyal to you.” He bowed his head. Salvatore petted his head in acknowledgement, a warm expression on his face.

  “Then I can do naught but accept your offer. Thank you, my Ravyn.”

  Dageus smiled and clasped the Prince’s hand. If he couldn’t control this freakish urge to be fucked by men, and he couldn’t be trusted to fuck women, he just wouldn’t fuck at all. He decided. His brothers would never have to know. He felt better already.

  Chapter Eight

  They sat around a round table, discussing what to do about Desmond. Dageus watched the brothers volley ideas between them in fascination.

  “We can’t do anything from here. He knows all the hidden places of the Ravyns. He’s studied o
ur lore, and he has scouted our dens. It only makes sense that we travel to a different realm for now and plan to attack from there,” Tony concluded, watching each Ravyn’s face for reaction. They all seemed to be in agreement.

  “It’ll be safest for the Prince if we chose a location far from Demontia as well as off the beaten trade paths. Any suggestions?” Allasandro added, the thin line of the scar that graced his forehead making Dageus choke up all over again. Almost two months had passed, and it still wasn’t healed completely, and it was all Dageus’s fault.

  “Earth,” Salvatore suggested out of the blue from his position at the head of the table. “That is one place that has had little exploration and has human forms like ours.”

  They all nodded in agreement.

  “Sounds good. The only thing Demontia gets from there is slaves,” Druas agreed.

  “Never been there,” Dageus said, smiling.

  “You’ll enjoy it, little brother. The city that Salvatore has in mind looks right up your alley,” Allasandro said reading his Prince’s mind.

  “Haven, Minnesota is one of my favorite cities. Well, it can’t really be considered a city, but it is a lovely town,” the Prince said chuckling.

  “Why, my lord?” Dageus asked out of curiosity.

  “Haven is home to my favorite entertainments, La Petite Morte. They’re a wonderful theater group that deals mainly in the exotic tales of vampiric origin. The owner is the Master of Minnesota, as matter of fact. I have all their DVD performances if you want to see,” Salvatore said eagerly. Dageus grimaced. He wasn’t one for ballets or plays or anything else that involved people twirling about fruitlessly.

  “No thank you, my lord Salvatore. I’ll pass.”

  Salvatore laughed at his horrified tone. “None of you have any taste.”

  “So we’re in agreement? Earth?” Tony asked. One by one, they nodded their approval.

  Chapter Nine

  Dillian sniffed the air as the thunder rolled in with the clouds. Rain was coming. He looked at the setting sun and sighed, wishing he was with his pack mates inside the protective circle of the LuNar. Instead, he was on guard duty because his King had gotten ill over Dillian’s dalliances with his only daughter, Kyra. He sighed. This is what he got for screwing royalty. Guard duty was the most boring job to be given on the night of the full moon. The Jaguars would be out hunting, and he would be stuck guarding the entrance to the LuNar. Nothing ever happened on the full moon.