Branded Wings

by S. I. Hayes

  Sig laughed uncomfortably and I looked at him with wide eyes. Nobody had told Keegan about the fire we had to set.

  “What?” Keegan asked, seeing the guilty looks on our downturned faces. “I’m not so broken after all.”

  “He, he, yeah. Boss, about the carriage house.”

  “I know it needs to be cleansed and remodeled now that Charles is gone, but it’s still my home and my domain.”

  “About that.” Sig let out a high pitched nervous chuckle. It was time to break the bad news.

  Chapter 5 KEEGAN

  “YOU BURNED IT TO THE ground!” I snarled. I couldn’t believe them. “Gone, all of my gear. I built those scaffolds and the bench myself! For fuck’s sake, why didn’t you get my stuff out first?” I was livid. I had been building that fetish collection since I was eighteen, and now, according to Ryane and Sig, it was all gone.

  “The place was unsalvageable Boss. There was blood and gore everywhere. Seeped into the rugs, the tile, Hell, the walls had viscera on them.”

  “Fire was the only way to clean it up and not have questions asked later. I’m sorry, baby.” Ryane tried to console me, but I was really, truly good and angry. She pulled back her hand before it could touch my left arm, the mangled one and I noticed it finally. I thought she had been staring earlier, but this was a definite avoidance. I was sure of it. She was uncomfortable with how it looked, or maybe how it felt... I didn’t care which, but it was the nail in the coffin of my rage.

  “Just get the fuck away from me. You don’t understand! I wouldn’t have given a fuck about the mess. I went feral, I tore the place apart. Don’t think I don’t know that, but it was mine... Charles and I built that collection together, you two had no right!” I was roaring, I was irrational, as I stormed up the stairs and to my room. Well, Samuel’s room, I looked around, it was modest, with its oak furniture and sparse decorations. I needed something to break, but there wasn’t anything that would make the kind of crashing and smashing sounds that I was craving.

  My mind traveled back to Charles and how I had misused him, keeping him close, but never as close as he had wanted. I lived out my fantasies in that carriage house with him. My most depraved and forbidden desires were pushed on him and he took it all, always, he was always loyal to me. All he ever wanted was my love and I couldn’t give it to him because when I looked at him, I saw the darkest parts of myself.

  I stripped the blankets from the bed, tearing them to pieces. I kicked and swore as I demolished the bed and its hard, wooden frame. Tears stung my eyes as I screamed, bitched and moaned. It wasn’t until I knew it was gone that I realized just how much I needed it. How much I had needed Charles and his unwavering devotion. He would never have swayed from me or my touch just because I wasn’t so pretty anymore, not like she had, just moments ago. What had I done in making her like me? Was Charles right? Had I simply fallen in love with the idea of her, in her innocence? Did my lust for that virgin throat cloud my senses and make me think it was love? Was it just the blood bond between us that made me lust so hard for her, ache for her so badly?

  I was so caught up in my head that I didn’t see the door as it swung open. I don’t know how long she stood there, but she stayed quiet until, finally, I had reduced the bed to splinters and I stood in the middle of the room with a heaving chest and a heavy heart.

  “Did that help?” Ryane leaned into the doorway, her piercing blue eyes watching me from beneath thick black lashes.

  I turned my head away from her voice with an unhappy nod. She stepped toward me and I put out my hand to stop her, but she pressed her lips against my fingers, kissing them gently. I was rigid and my arms burned from the exertion it took to tear the bed apart.

  “Don’t,” I snapped, which only made her break into my space more.

  “Or what? You’ll tear me to pieces too?” Her voice was soft, filled with hurt. “You’ll find I’m no longer that easy to break.” She pulled me toward her, wrapping me up in the scents of her. Brown sugar and vanilla. She always smelled and tasted of vanilla. She fit perfectly in the hollow of my chest as she put her head against my heart. “Steel yourself, my love.”

  “Your love?” I mocked, still not looking directly at her. I was afraid that if I did and she shied from me again, my heart would shatter or worse, I would fall into her and forget all the hurt that was coursing through me. I needed my pain. I deserved it for letting Charles die. I could still feel the tears, they burned my cheeks and made my face feel tight.

  She sighed, squeezing me, and for the first time in months I felt her emotion and her mind as it reached out to me.

  ‘Please talk to me.’ She was pleading with her whole heart as her body forced itself to connect to mine. Her guilt over my present state spilled over and I could feel the tears as they fell from her eyes. “You miss him?”

  Chapter 6 Ryane

  HE WAS SO STIFF IN my arms, as if he was afraid to touch me. I didn’t know what I’d done to bring this out of him, it was certainly about more than just the carriage house. I mentioned Charles with bile in my throat as my stomach lurched. I couldn’t understand how he could miss someone who had harmed him so, but I knew now that he was suffering from the loss.

  I didn’t know what to do, what to say to him that would take away his pain. Holding him, my head against his heart, I could feel it as it thumped too fast. “Please baby. You need to talk to me,” I whispered, reaching out, trying to pull his hands down onto me. He resisted and I let go, looking up at him. He didn’t look at me, so I reached up, taking his face in my hands, forcing him with his incredible height to finally bend.

  “What do you want from me?” He finally spoke and the question cut me through and through.

  “Nothing. If not everything you have and are. Keegan, I love you. That hasn’t changed. I think I’ve loved you since I met you, maybe before. All I know is that you are in pain and I don’t know how to stop it.”

  “You can’t.” There was a choke in his voice as he swallowed, I could feel the tightness of it, as though it was my own body forcing down the words.

  “You’re right. I can’t. Not if you don’t talk to me.” I held his face, making him see me, not just look at me, but see that I wasn’t going anywhere. “If you miss him, then miss him. The fact that I don’t understand it doesn’t change how you feel, and how you deal with those feelings, that is what matters to me. This lashing out? It isn’t going to work. If the carriage house means so much we can rebuild it. Just how it was, perhaps dedicate a part of the garden to him. You told me once how much he loved to run the path.”

  “My doing something like that wouldn’t offend you?”

  “There is little you could do that would, my love.” I felt his jaw twitch in my hands as he swallowed back his tears. His entire body gave and we sank to the floor. He wrapped his arms around me, finally nuzzling into the crook of my throat. I stroked his head as he began to cry.

  “I miss him so much.” He admitted aloud, at last.

  “I know, and that’s perfectly okay, it’s okay that you loved him too.” He pulled into me tighter, his hands running up my length and I felt the burning when his teeth broke the skin of my throat. I cradled his head, if this was what he needed, then I would let him have it.

  Chapter 7 SIG

  BOY, WAS KEEGAN PISSED. I mean, what else were we supposed to do? There had been too many bodies to just explain it away. The three women he had torn apart for one, were enough to cause an upheaval in the Otherkind community, but there had also been the bodies of the Guardians who had attacked him. There was little to do, none could be helped, not in the condition he had left them. Or with Rayne killing the last of them in that brutal manner. It had to be cleansed with fire and my Dragon’s breath left little to find. If it hadn’t been for the one woman who had escaped Keegan’s grasp, no one would have known what happened, it would have just been another unfortunate fire. We were trying to protect him, for fuck’s sake.

  I let Ryane go upstairs to d
eal with him, not that I had much to say about it that would have deterred her from going up there in the first place. She was his life thread, his mate and perhaps his equal, but she also seemed to be looking at it all from a place of levelheaded detachment. If it had been me, I would have started a fight with him. Especially since I could hear the destruction he was causing up there. I had told them they needed to get their shit together, perhaps this was the way. Letting them sort it out for themselves. She loves him, which has to count for something and since he’s met her, his rage has been controlled. As controlled as the rage of any Pureblood can be, but the things he did in his spare time, the need he had to break a person and be broken in return, were still deeply ingrained. Even now, after the very tools of his debaucherously lustful lifestyle were used to harm him, he still craves it, like the blood he drinks to survive, he cannot escape its allure.

  We, all of us of the so called Deviant class at Grigori University have a kink of some kind, but Keegan’s has always been more, harder, longer and more prevalent. Where the rest of us keep things to ourselves, his dominant nature has always showed through. Since it happened and he was taken by Charles, it had seemed to be gone, replaced by a nervousness and anxiety that I have never seen in him before. Perhaps it’s something he has never felt and that is why he has lashed out all of a sudden. We saw the condition he was in when we found him, trussed up and naked, his body disfigured by a silver blade. It had to have left more than just the outward scars and it seems those wounds are still very fresh.

  I’ve seen it in soldiers, warriors and others who have seen battle or been in other traumatic situations, the body physically reacts and overreacts to stimuli that reminds it of the trauma. The littlest things could set him off now, even something unrelated could have a way of upsetting him. Sigh. We would rally around him. We would do whatever he needed, while taking care of the things that needed caring for; Ryane and her newness to the fold being a priority, as well as finding out who was behind everything that happened to Keegan. Someone had to be pulling Charles’ strings.

  It was quiet up there now, I wished I had better hearing, but walls and concrete tend to get in the way. Not that I was intentionally trying to be nosey. Well, maybe I was, but I worry about the two of them. There was still so much we didn’t have answers for, Ryane’s newness to the blood was proving to be interesting. She was also already on to Humans if the two girls I stumbled over are any indication. Did they not intend to try her on the synthetic? I really did need to talk to them both. I couldn’t do my job if I didn’t know what was going on, and so far, I was being kept out of the loop. Frankly, I didn’t like it one little bit. I heard doors open and close up there, a scattering of movement, and the sound of some light feet on the stairs, I sat myself down, although I couldn’t keep my legs from shaking as Ryane rounded into the room.

  “I put him to bed.” She sighed, running her hands through her lengthened pixie cut, trying in vain to smooth it out. “He’s really hurting over what happened.”

  “We can rebuild the space; we’ve got the whole summer.” I looked her over. She seemed tired all of a sudden, her face sallow as she took the top off of one of the coffee cups and took a long sip.

  She closed her eyes, letting it coat her throat. “That’s good...” She let out a happy little moan. “It’s more than that, what Charles did, he feels responsible for all of it, like it was all his fault, right down to me losing Sam.”

  “But that’s- “

  She put up her hand to bring my voice down, and it shut me up entirely. My throat went dry as if she’d commanded me by my bond. What the Hell?

  “Shush.” Her hand was still up and she seemed to be listening. “Okay, so it may be stupid, but it’s how he feels.”

  “How did you do that?” I asked, standing and walking to her.

  “What?” She looked up at me with a crook of her brow.

  “You shouldn’t be able to command me to do anything.”

  She scrunched up her nose. “I wasn’t commanding, I just told you to shush.”

  “Yeah, you told, not asked. That’s a command, and the only person who can command me is the one I’ve sworn my sword to, and that person is Keegan.”

  “Okay, so it’s weird and one more thing to add to the list of odd things I can do. You know those two girls who were here?”

  “Yeah, I tripped over them coming in. Looked like you’d had a good time while I was gone.” I strummed my fingers against my arm, we would certainly be coming back to that command thing.

  She let out a short laugh. “I was hungry... Anyhow, they came by because they knew Sam. Just showed up with an apple tart, I don’t know what I was thinking, but I invited them in and the next thing I knew I was coaxing my fangs right into Tessa’s throat. Something told me that I could do it, so I did.”

  “Yeah? That’s compulsion, it’s a survival tactic built into you. Some have it stronger than others and it can sometimes let you read people who would be susceptible to it.” I found myself wondering why Keegan hadn’t explained it to her, maybe a bit of jealousy, he wasn’t very capable with it from what I understood. She eyed me curiously, apparently I wasn’t very good at hiding my thoughts from her as they were all over my face.

  “Why do you look confused all of a sudden?” She poked me in the cheeks with her little fingers, trying to turn up my seriously lacking smile. I turned my head with an off put laugh.

  “I was just wondering why Keegan hasn’t sat you down to talk to you about what it is that you’ve done to yourself in becoming a Vampire.”

  “Well...” She bit her lip with a mischievous smile. “I’ve sorta been keeping him occupied all night and I think he’s just so exhausted that he hasn’t gotten around to it.”

  “Christ woman, he’s still recovering and you keep pawing at him.” I glowered. “I guess you’re making up for lost time then, huh?”

  “I’m just really horny all of the sudden, I can’t help it.”

  “Yeah, well, try and keep it in your pants with me around alright? Seeing it once and hearing it twice is enough for this old man. “

  “Old man?” She shoved me playfully, before taking another sip of her coffee. “You look younger than me for fuck’s sake, don’t give me that old man shit.”

  “Actually, I’m quite older than I look. I remember holding Keegan the day he was born.”

  Her eyebrows went into her hairline and she coughed her coffee up a tad. “That was like thirty-five years ago! But you look like you’re twenty-two...twenty-five tops.”

  “That’s the beauty of immortality. I’ve looked like this for more than half a century. I was born in 1919, in a little village just outside Bordeaux, France. My parents were sworn to a Vampire Lord and his Human wife. Eventually Ferdinand and I were sworn to him as well, trained as Guardians, like our parents before us.”

  She looked at me, confused, biting her lip. “Who’s Ferdinand?”

  I smiled, I never did mention having a brother. Not even Keegan knew, it just wasn’t something that ever came up in conversation. “I had a twin, Ferdinand, born just a few minutes before me. He was the more outlandish of us, more adventurous, and in the scheme of things, more reckless with his heart.”

  She squeezed my arm as my scales started to lift in my growing emotional state. “You don’t have to go on, Siggy.”

  I let out a little chuckle and a sniff, patting her hand. “It’s fine. Really. He fell in love with Michaela Rumancik, a Gypsy princess and Pureblood Vampire. They were blood bonded like you and Keegan...” I swallowed hard, remembering the day we found out she had died. “She had been taken by Hunters, strung up as an example to the Clans of the area...” I ground my teeth, my jaw tightening. “There was a time the Hunter’s Association did what it wanted and we suffered for it. Ferdinand, unlike you, refused to bond with a family member, and the bond took him to his death soon after. It was why I was so afraid when you two became bonded.” I looked at Ryane who was crying softly, hugging on to me
. My face was, however, dry. I had shed all the tears I could on the subject many years ago.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “It was a long time ago. When I was a much younger Dragon.” I smiled genuinely.

  “So you’re, like, over a hundred years old. You look damn good.” She tried a small giggle, reaching up and patting me on the head.

  I was thankful that she could switch her emotions so easily. I blew smoke from my nostrils in response. “I’ll be one hundred and eleven in the fall. November ninth to be precise.”

  “Ooh! I get to throw a party! And bake a cake, but it’s gonna have to be huge to fit all those candles! You can light them all at once with your breath! That’s awesome!”

  I shook my head as she jumped up and down like an over excited cheerleader.

  “Oh! Oh! What do you want for your birthday, Siggy?”

  “How about a five-foot ten, golden blonde with really big tits? Think you can arrange that?”

  She stopped, putting a finger to her chin. “That’s really precise. What did happen to that girl? I never did ask.”

  “I missed my window, she’s off to Amsterdam.” The look of disappointment on her face matched my own as she frowned.

  “Aww, Siggy, I’m sorry.”

  “Please don’t call me that. It’s really rather disarming.”

  “Yeah, well too bad it’s my new nickname for you.” She cooed, making baby noises at me.

  “You have lost your damn mind woman.” I batted her hands away as she tried to tickle me.

  “Aww you love me, Siggy. You know it! Now why don’t you come upstairs and help me get all that mess cleaned up, since you left me with the garbage this morning all over the floor.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that.” I chuckled as I followed her upstairs to see what Keegan had done.