'Twas the Darkest Night

by Sophie Avett

  The gargoyle stepped off the dais and was swallowed by the void blanketing the audience.

  The baroque curtains split open once again.

  Leather riding crop in hand, Mistress Ingrid sauntered down the dais, followed by two strapping young weres. Marshall’s baser instincts raised their demonic heads with interest. Their mistress had decided to present them nude for the occasion, save for the matching resplendent silver cuffs braced about their corded necks.

  Marshall recognized the smaller of the two. Sebastian, if he remembered correctly. A fox-shifter with slanted blue eyes, silvery blond hair, and a most interesting quirk in his pouty mouth. He followed his mistress with an easy, sure stride. Full of the confidence only the owned could claim.

  Taller than his counterpart by a few feet, the size of the man at his shoulder wasn’t the only thing setting the hulking black bear apart. It was in everything. The rigid set in the large mantle of his shoulders, his spine pulled straight. Piercing green eyes roving around the dark room as the heavy soles of his calloused bare feet pounded against the marble. Uncertainty. Apprehension. He was new.

  The room quickened with tension, the last of the whispers dying as Mistress Ingrid halted in the center of the dais. “Tie Brendon to the cross, Sebastian.”

  The fox didn’t offer a reaction. The black bear raised his head. If he had any objections, Brendon kept them to himself as he followed instructions, spreading his arms and legs out to meet the corresponding limbs of the cross. Sebastian set to work on his cuffs. Chain links clinked, rattling as leather cuffs banded the bear’s massive arms against the supple leather.

  Mistress Ingrid watched, her muddy green eyes bright with interest, expression smooth like the backside exposed for her pleasure. A blank canvas on which to carve any story she liked.

  She swatted her thigh with her riding crop. “Introduce yourselves to my audience, gentlemen.”

  He shuddered in his bonds. “I am Mistress Ingrid’s Brendon.”

  Finished with his task, Sebastian retook his spot at his Mistress’ rear, bracing his arms behind his back as he sank to his knees. He bowed his head, feathery locks swishing forward to shield his face. “I am Mistress Ingrid’s Sebastian.”

  Her zombie print heels clicked smartly across the marble floors as she closed the distance between herself and the cross, leather swishing about her legs, offering delicious glimpses of her milky thighs and smooth-shaven pussy.

  “Brendon wishes to be mine.” She trailed her fingertips down the expanse of a powerful shoulder and he shuddered, leaning into the touch as far as his binds would let him. “Isn’t that right, slave?”

  He nodded, his voice a gruff whisper. “Yes, Mistress.”

  She surrendered her crop and plucked a wicked-looking whip from the bounty on the side table. “If you wish to be mine, you must love all that I love.” She lovingly caressed the blunt handle. “Desire all that I desire.”

  “I do, Mistress.”

  Thwack! The whip curled out like a righteous hand and cracked in the center of his shoulder blades. Chains clinked as Brendon swayed in his binds away from and then toward the sting.

  She sneered. “I will decide that.”

  “Yes, Mistress.”

  “Sebastian,” she snapped. “Your mouth.”

  Marshall observed the rest of the scene with vague interest. Honestly, it was interesting. He’d even venture to say arousing. Vampires in particular had a fascination with pushing the depths of sexuality. It was a quirk shared by most monsters. It didn’t change the fact that he wasn’t in the mood. Not even remotely. He was out of place standing in a quagmire of lust and sexual tension.

  Marshall spotted Elsa clinging to a far corner nearest to the immediate side exit out of the club. Her hood was still drawn, shadowing her expression, but it was clear her face was turned to the dais. As bewitched as the rest of the crowd. She touched her throat and he turned his attention to the stage.

  Brendon’s cock slipped into Sebastian’s mouth. His own length hung heavy and lightly veined between his legs, swelling with every suck. On his knees before Brendon’s bound body, his arms braced behind his back—Sebastian was the picture of submission. And it was delicious.

  The emotions playing over Brendon’s face were far more varied. Shock. Revulsion. Pleasure. Anger. Each one took its turn. Baring his inner dialogue for the world. A strangled moan stained the air. “Fuck.”

  The whip sang out in the silence. Thwack! “Say his name, Brendon.”

  He shook in his chains and his hips jumped as Sebastian ruthlessly sought to do his Mistress’s bidding. “I...”

  The fox-shifter shuddered and swayed forward, taking the other man’s cock deeper until the tip of his Roman nose brushed Brendon’s wiry black bush. Slurping and sucking with deep satisfaction as if Ingrid had untapped a secret fantasy.

  Marshall turned his eyes to Elsa. He watched her as she watched them. Though he could not make out her face, he couldn’t shake the impression that she was stricken. Perhaps with desire. Perhaps with longing. Perhaps with shock. Honestly, it didn’t matter. He was content to absorb her minuscule reactions as if they would provide him with some doorway into her psyche.

  “Say his name, Brendon,” Ingrid commanded. Blood droplets from the whipping flicked across her cheeks and the upturned faces of the crowd, splattering across the marble dais.

  Elsa pushed her hood back and her eyes were fogged. Vacant. Like she was here and not. She wandered farther from the dais and Marshall tried to get through the crowd, but she was gone. The back exit doors clanged shut and he cursed and followed after her.

  Smoke billowed from the club’s back exit and emerged into the alley as a serpentine fog. The stretch of alley behind Club Brimstone was called the Pit. A rumble pen for creature and man alike, though no human was ever so foolish. Even the leather minis didn't brace stiletto across this hallowed ground. Moonlight washed the snow in pale blue and changed the soot and dust into a sparkling blanket beneath an obsidian sky.

  Shaded, leaning figures against the warehouses slid and slithered by him like a smoky deck of cards. Some tapered and lean. Others stout and solid. Faint, insidious whispers of risky dealings. The deeper into the alley he drew, the higher the shadows crept across the walls and he took to them, allowing them to envelop him in their protective embrace as he wove through the sparse pockets of monsters.

  The shadow of a silver wing. The gleam of a fang. The throaty sigh of the witch caught between them. Blood spilling down the valley of her generous breasts in a glorious wash of scarlet.

  To his left, a fight broke out. Were-tigers, half-shifted, battling one another. Claw met claw. A piercing roar. Blood splattering across the brick. Silence. And a head…rolling.

  Marshall’s spaded tongue darted across his lip to sample the air. Now, this was more like it—this was more…natural.

  A few yards ahead, the werewolf from earlier grabbed Elsa’s arm and halted her purposeful march through the slush. Marshall's lips thinned. Weres—tactless beasts.

  Wind carried snowflakes and knocked her hood back on her shoulders. Frizzy red curls snapped wildly around her face as she peered down the slope of her long nose at the offending hand. “Release me, were.”

  Tension vibrated around them, thick, red, and shimmering. Those around them started to take notice and conversations trailed off.

  “So much power in such a wee little thing.” He took an appreciative whiff of her hair, nonplussed at the rigidity pulling his flower's spine taught. “What are you, cricket? Your scent is not familiar to me,” he mused in a gruff voice. “You are no kin of mine. And you do not look like any vampire or demon I've ever seen. Are you fey? Or coven?” He sniffed. “Too much magic.”

  Elsa's meaty hand closed around the ornate amulet hanging idly against her breasts from a fat braided chain. “I will break you, were.”

  Warning teased a trail up Marshall’s spine, lifting the sensitive hairs on the back of his neck and he instinctively
retreated. A few moments ago, he'd had every intention of breaking the were's arm, but now, in the face of the angry magic zagging off of her shoulders in waves, slowly urging the crowd up against the buildings, he couldn't help his morbid curiosity. Witch or not, what did she really think she could do against a pack of weres?

  Weres almost never traveled alone. Preferring, as was their nature, to hunt and mingle in packs of three or four. This one did appear to be alone, but the chance that he wasn’t should've given anyone pause. Monster or not, the vampire’s only advantages were shadows and surprise. Anything else would be a real fight. One he wasn’t sure he could win.

  His shrewish landlord did not seem at all afraid. On the contrary, with every passing second, the string of tension pulled tighter…and tighter.

  Marshall's senses tingled. More weres. Three pairs of heavy footsteps marching with purpose drew Elsa's attention.

  Mistake.

  Seizing the opportunity, the were manacled her wrist, his nostrils flaring into her curls. She struggled against him, her cheeks reddening as her entire body flushed with anger. Even as short, stocky, and heavy as her stout frame suggested her to be, the were lifted her with ease and the solid wall of his chest absorbed the onslaught of her thrashing.

  She stood less of a chance now than ever.

  The were’s gruff chuckle was lost in her hair as he buried his prominent nose farther under her scarf, trying, it seemed in vain, to glean an image of the source.

  That's enough. Shadows roiled and he darted forward to strike.

  A scream. The sound was ripped from the base of the beast's being, raw and vulnerable. Fear thickened like thick smog. The man's corded neck was caught in her grip, the veins in her wrist bulged, her lips moving as she murmured. Words of power stained the air, searing it with true and potent dark magic. Grappling weakly at her hand, the man who had fearlessly towered over the small witch sank to his knees, his descent slowed only by her chokehold.

  Her eyes brightened into glowing red orbs. “Now break, boy.”

  Another scream. His wolf-form tore through his skin. Flesh giving way to a thicket of brown fur. His jaw extended into a menacing muzzle, teeth replaced by gleaming white incisors. Bones broke, rearranged themselves into a hulking black wolf. His evergreen eyes waxed over, and a little agonizing mewl escaped from the animal’s throat—a last cry for mercy before its entire body went slack.

  She lifted the wolf’s limp body like a terrible trophy. High and proud for all the naughty creatures in the alley to see and memorize as an example. Her attention narrowed and Marshall, along with the other bystanders, followed her pointed glare.

  Three slack-jawed weres in similar sandy brown leather jackets stood shoulder to shoulder in the middle of the alley. Teeth bared out of instinct to save or avenge their fallen comrade. Two of them had already begun the change, fingers breaking into claws, snouts pushing out of their faces.

  “Weak,” she spat and flung the wolf at their feet. The body hit the ground with a heavy thud and rolled to edge of his pack-mates' brown boots.

  For a moment, all was still. All except the persistent hum of whispers.

  “Such strength…”

  “Is that a woman?”

  “So what if it is?”

  “How did she do that?”

  “What is she? Can you tell?”

  The third were in leather growled, his bones shifting and rippling beneath his tan skin. Tension sang hot in the air, boiling with every passing second. And then the sands shifted—the air sharpening with the arrival of something bigger and badder.

  Heavy black steel-toed boots splashed through the slush, and the largest were Marshall had seen yet stormed out of the mist and fog. His fierce gold eyes cut the vapor like sun beams as he stalked past his pack-mates. They lowered their chins, fury momentarily quelled in the presence of the Alpha. He consumed Elsa in his massive shadow.

  If she was afraid or concerned about the new arrival, she didn’t show it. On the contrary, she pursed her lips and stuck out her chin in unmistakable challenge. “It was warned.”

  The were’s eyes raked across her face, studying her with blatant suspicion. She let him, without so much as an awkward twitch. And when he was done, she pulled a tiny vial from her sleeve and extended it toward him. He sniffed the ampule.

  She stiffened and slanted her eyes away. “It will help with the pain when he wakes.”

  How…strange. Marshall frowned. He would never have done that. Ever.

  The were’s arched white eyebrows lifted with surprise, but he accepted the vial. And just like that, it was over. The Alpha gave the crowd a long look and they dispersed. He pivoted on his heel and started back down the alley, pausing to allow time for his pack to collect their fallen member, and disappeared into the mist.

  Elsa folded her arms. “Well?”

  Marshall held his place, blinking rapidly. Can she see me?

  She snorted as if she’d heard his unspoken question, and his plan came together as perfectly as if he'd manipulated all the tokens from the start.

  He abandoned the darkness. “I have a proposition for you, witch.”

  Chapter Three

  It was decided—she was never leaving the sodding house again.

  Elsa marched across the bridge, gritting her teeth against the bitter cold swatting her cheeks. Behind her, shadows crackled and popped in his presence, his light footsteps crunching the snow as they trekked across the bridge that would lead them home.

  Of all the nights…

  Of all the times for him to intrude on her…

  Jord’s shriveled tits. What could he want with her? What could he possibly have to talk about at this time of night? Had he seen the display at the Pit? How long had he been following her? Watching her?

  They had said very little due to his insistence they speak in relative privacy. She’d only been able to take the oppressive silence in the cab until they’d cleared the city and the bridge had appeared in the blizzard and fog. After that, she’d yelled at the banshee to pull over. Her shop loomed ahead and her stomach knotted with the possibility that the vampire’s sudden need for conversation pertained to the bills she’d left strewn across her oak table.

  An answering warm yellow glow from the bay windows filtered across the street, guiding her final hurried steps across the icy pavement. Wind smacked the damp fabric against her calves and she muttered under her breath, cursing Jokul Frosti for trying to freeze everything off—not that she could bloody focus on that with the vampire riling up the blasted shadows everywhere he went. What the hell kind of vampire wielded the darkness and shadows like a fey? A damned kind, that’s what.

  “Oh, will you be still,” she hissed at the leaning Victorian house’s shadow, and pulled a rusted ring of skeleton keys out of her frock pocket.

  Elsa pushed the shop door open and the spectral pewter bell hanging over the door dinged faintly. Shuffling inside, she tugged at the knotted wool beneath her chin and grumbled words of power. Levers were turned by her will and gas-light sconces lit between broad shelves. Embers sparked and crackled, a fire surged in the stone hearth behind the scratched teak counter. The rarest of the amulets and charms twinkled like beacons in the glass display box beneath the antique gold register.

  She squeezed between a cabinet of potions and narrow bins of used wands and tossed her scarf on the bills on her oak table. The front door banged shut and sure footsteps fell across the uneven, rotting floor planks with fluid grace. He stopped to stand somewhere in the middle of her shop. Probably near the life-sized wax figures of the Addam's Family and crates of freshly boiled human bones laid out near the grinding wheel.

  “If this is about the shop,” she mustered her pride and lifted her chin, “I assure you we will not be closing any time soon. There is no need to worry about your lease being interrupted due to change in management.”

  “I see.”

  Hiding her hands from the lingering chill in her generous sleeves, she pulled her att
ention from the dancing flames and steeled her expression. Marshall's inquisitive gaze flitted from a shelf of edible sleeping-curses to a narrow urn of staves. He fingered the ebony twisted stem of a nettlebane spear and squinted at the calligraphic veins engraved in the mystical wood. “Is this the language of the Winter Court?”

  “Yes,” she groused, “is that why you followed me? To buy something ? Last minute Christmas shopping?”

  “I don't Christmas shop.”

  One hand still pocketed in his trench, Marshall turned over the spear head in the light. His hair was even more disheveled than earlier. His features were symmetrical and strong with a note of sensuality. He had an innately captivating appearance. And she wondered how much of it was the man and how much the monster. Freya, he was beautiful.

  Bloody-fucking-spoils. Elsa bunched her shoulders and ducked farther into her habit like a turtle. Something big and hairy ought to eat my stupid eyes just to spare me the misery.

  Fire popped and sizzled, and he replaced the spear in the barrel without so much as a clink. He pointed at the wing-back chair nestled by the grandfather clocks. She nodded, mesmerized by the fluidity of his movements.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Ansley? What was so important that it couldn't wait until dusk?”

  He folded his silhouette into the seat with grace. “Allow me to be frank, Ms. Karr, I ask a favor.” His voice was round and deep, cool and breathy, like the shade. “It is correct that your shop specializes in glamours?”

  Elsa’s fingers crept to her amulet. “What do you hunt, vampire?”

  “A partnership in my agency.” He steepled his fingers. “Actually, I would like to pay you to accompany me to I-don't-know-where to help me locate a fey. She's old and powerful. Probably has ties with Unseelie court.”

  “What do you want with a fey?”