Neon White Season One: A Tooth, Claw and Horns Chronicle

by Wulf Francu Godgluck

  “Stop,” Raven panted into that wet mouth, “not like this. Not while I’m struggling with this thing inside me.”

  Bla’Gar parted from Raven, but still held him delicately and closely. “Agreed, my pet, not here, not now, but in my bed, with you in my arms, once you have recovered.” Blue light licked across the demon’s face, creating hard shadows on his skin, the luster itself painting the green eyes, crackling with red, to a purple hue as the halo glowed around Bla’Gar’s pupils.

  “Have you feasted enough?” he asked.

  Raven bit the inside of his cheek, nodding slowly, his brain felt like pulp and even listening was a strain for him. He was lying; his body yearned with pain for more of Bla’Gar’s blood. He didn’t care if the demon cut open his own stomach in concern for him; Raven only cared for more blood.

  He licked his lips, his mouth dry. “The blood, it’s feeding him…making him stronger, I…can feel him.” Raven pressed his hand to his chest, dragging his nails into the flesh over his heart. He let out a heavy breath, his stomach forming tight knots as the words left his lips. “He’s still here, inside me.” With effort, Raven reached up, touching Bla’Gar’s hand, still on his cheek, before he grimaced in remembrance that the demon didn’t like to be touched, but Bla’Gar made no sign of displeasure at the contact. “Why?” Raven cringed as the shadowed version of himself laughed, the silent sound like an infestation of worms wriggling under his skin.

  Raven shivered.

  “It is you… A part of you.” Bla’Gar’s warm breath lapped at Raven’s face, his thumb brushing Raven’s cheek. The demon’s hand trembled under his. “As humans, we all carry light and darkness inside of us. It’s the one we feed that determines the nature of our soul. The Strigoi virus gives rise to the one left to wither inside us. In your case, it is your darker nature.”

  “It fucked me, violated me…did things to me… And I…I enjoyed it. What does that say about my ‘good nature’ then?”

  Bla’Gar’s squeezed Raven’s cheeks tenderly and slid his palms down Raven’s neck, fingers curling around his throat, gently hugging, before lips brushed his forehead. “Pet, you—”

  “No.” Raven pulled away. He glared at him. “Is it over? Or is this it…? Am I constantly going to be at war within myself? Switching natures from time to time when one has reached their limit and can’t push the other back?”

  Bla’Gar’s silence was unearthly, making Raven shake.

  “Yes.”

  Raven swallowed. The truth that he wasn’t prepared to admit out loud; each time, each bloody fucking time that thing placed its lips against him, fucked him, made his cock piss out come…it felt as if a small morsel of himself had been ripped off and consumed, becoming part of the other, never to exist again. Raven closed his eyes, biting down on his fang so hard it split his bottom lip. It scared him, because his so-called good nature wanted it, had allowed the other to do those things to him… He never really fought the other Raven, never even tried to.

  “Go,” Raven snapped when the icy breath of that thing slithered along his soul. He forced movement into his limbs and shoved against Bla’Gar’s chest. Spittle dripped from his mouth as his fangs burst out. “I’m being dragged back… You should leave us…” he snarled, before his vision dipped into black, and he once more glared into the ice-blue eyes of his younger self.

  “Welcome back, friend,” he said to himself.

  A spitting black bubbled in Bla’Gar’s gut. He understood Raven’s conflict, why he blamed Bla’Gar for what had happened. Regardless how deeply those words hurt, he would ask forgiveness a thousand times. Raven was his, and Bla’Gar was more than willing to be the young vampire’s mule to lash out his anger on.

  Bla’Gar snarled, he was going to love the feel of organ juices splatting through his fingers as he popped them from the ones responsible for Raven’s horror… One by one.

  The millennia had been kind to her, youth imprisoned as stone by immortality, yet her features remained soft. But as so many Strigoi had, she too had come to hate her own love of her appearance. Her deceptive, heart-shaped face revealed nothing of the odium lacing her soul, its soft, olive glow almost ethereal. Large, round blue eyes drew others to her, the pulsating crystal beauty a sign of the past she’d left behind. What she wouldn’t have given to feel the salt in the air again, to see the diaphanous depths of the Black Sea once more. It was a pain as sharp as the one her sire’s incarceration had left in her, slipping through her mind, clawing its way to her heart. Bla’Gar knew she would give anything to regain the past that had been stolen from her.

  Something sweet and decadent, rich chocolate, and spice from the Jamaican coast, emanated from Clarissa as Bla’Gar neared her on silent footsteps.

  The fog was thick around these parts. A whisper played in the murk, something sinister arose farther southwest. It held but one word, its tone dark and wrong even to Bla’Gar’s demonic ears...Hel.

  Bla’Gar shivered, so too did the devil inside him.

  There were some things even demons had been warned not to meddle with.

  Clarissa lifted her chin, squaring her shoulders. She turned towards him, her crow-black mane flowing with the movement. The pale moonlight gave life to the shadows on her face. She stared him up and down, her face a frozen mask of chicanery. A game Clarissa had made her personal bitch.

  Bla’Gar curled his lips. She would never change, no matter how desolate her financial situation, Clarissa would remain a slave to vanity. Her leather jacket smelled new, the leather pants too, and those red stilettos had not seen a day in this world until tonight. Bla’Gar would not be called a fool if he did not acknowledge that the lingerie peeking out so innocently from her corset’s cups and hugging her breasts had been shipped straight from La Ville Lumière. Still, after all these years in the earth realm, Bla’Gar could not fathom why any female creature would risk their neck tracking through uneven soil on heels thin enough to slide down a man’s urethra. Though a potential broken neck was not something Clarissa would have been bothered about.

  Bla’Gar grinned when she hugged her arms beneath her breasts, the action making them appear fuller. She tilted her head to the side as she waited patiently for a compliment.

  “Madame, I beg your pardon, but I do not see le convoyeur accompanying you on this cold night. It is not safe for such a beauty to wander all on her own.”

  “Fuck that, I’ll just rip off their dicks, Monsieur.” Her tone and choice of words always spoiled the image her beauty portrayed. “And all three of yours, if you didn’t choose such an annoyingly handsome vessel,” she hissed. “Now, we have a problem.” Clarissa looked away, a tear on her cheek captured the light of the moon, making the droplet sparkle against her skin. She pressed her hands under her arms, seizing them tightly as she said in a quiet voice, “Laevius is not here… His tomb is empty.” Her words held far more emotion than they should have.

  Bla’Gar hooked his fingers over his chin. It would explain why she’d come alone, and no human was present to wake Laevius. “Might I ask if the young lord was killed?”

  Clarissa shook her head, her shoulders quivered, the anomaly completely distracting Bla’Gar from his vigilance.

  “I would have known. I would have felt it.” She gazed up at him with wet eyes. “His blood is still in me, Bla’Gar.”

  “After all this time?” He frowned. Strigoi could sense the emotional state of the one they had drunk off for the two days the plasma took to be depleted. Even the slightest chemical changes would alert the Strigoi drinker. That was, if the meal was still alive. However, Laevius was also a Strigoi, and the time that had elapsed since Clarissa last saw her sire had far surpassed two days.

  “It’s different with the older Strigoi, even more so with those first bitten. Their blood is purer.” It was neither anger nor sadness that caused Clarissa’s vulnerability, but fear. “We are connected. We don’t need our father’s blood to remain linked to them, to feel and sense their presence. But I can�
��t sense him, nor feel him. Death…” She swallowed. “Death is something entirely different. It serves a deeper connection from our souls. It would be as if ripping out a part of us, if you will.”

  “This does not help me,” Bla’Gar rumbled, cracking his knuckles.

  “No, but it might shine some light on the situation regarding your fuck.”

  He snagged her around the neck, eyes narrowed, his spine snapping under his human skin, vertebrae rippling and twisting in a slither of fury. Bla’Gar’s lips vibrated as he snarled, “Be heedful what that tongue of yours spits about my pet.” He breathed out a mist of pink. The poison wouldn’t harm her much, but would leave her with one hell of a headache.

  “Suck it up, big boy,” she sniped back at him, gripping his wrist and trying to pull his hand away. Bla’Gar clutched her tightly for a few seconds more before he released her. “First, the whole demon blood-drinking thing. If you say he is your pet, claim him. The demon bond might lesson the situation somewhat. He won’t need as much blood after, and you would be able to control him if his dark persona is of such a nature that he thinks himself a god. Who the fuck knows how strong or what he will be capable of if he continues to drink demon blood? What if his mutation is harboring something far more sinister, that he’s currently not aware of? He could be dangerous to all of us!”

  Bla’Gar sighed, turned and averted his gaze from her, showing his back. What the bitch was actually saying was that he had fucked up—he should have killed Raven the moment he’d taken his first drink of demon blood back in the professor’s home. But how…how could he? After all these years he had been given another opportunity at finding a pet, and now he was forced to watch his heart die by his own hand, a second ti—?

  “Of course, it’s just a theory. For all I know it could go horribly wrong and your pet could be rendered to nothing but ash when you claim him.”

  Bla’Gar didn’t have to stand here and listen to her stab venomous doubt into his already bleeding heart. He spun and faced her again, words ready to explode from his lips, but it was the steely glare in Clarissa’s eyes that had the power to freeze him.

  “Hear my warning, demon. To burn in moonlight and not sunlight is not natural, neither is the consumption of demon blood. And something else… Four days is too long for your pet to dwindle in his battle against his darker nature. By now if his natural side has not won, you know what is happening. His darker self is feeding off its split part, sucking it into itself to take permanent control.”

  Bla’Gar frowned. “I don’t understand. All of these facts I am fully aware of, Dacian—”

  “For a demon, you’re actually quite fucking dumb. All those eons in Hell and you know nothing of the human realm you now walk in. The pet you know and so deeply care for will die, forever. His darker nature would be the only part left.”

  Bla’Gar swallowed. Her words made more sense than the theory that the weaker part of the soul would only be trapped within… It made sense if the more powerful one rid itself of such a hindrance.

  “Which brings me to my final concern—Wraiths.”

  “Do you know why they exist?” Her eyes narrowed, however, a gloom-ridden fear seeped from her gaze.

  “To reap the souls of those that have escaped death.”

  Clarissa huffed. “To reap that which is unnatural to paranormal and supernatural, including the preternatural. To reap that which should not be. Even you, as a demon, cannot stand against a wraith—and trust me, the fuckers love to hunt in swarms. Death created them for a reason. They don’t distinguish, they will reap anything and everything in their path. This is a new realm, big boy. The rules are different. The playing field’s open for all takers. And when a wraith cuts you with their scythe, your soul burns away. Or maybe I should use a word that you would understand.” Her eyes darkened, eerie shadows taking up residence over her face. “Your soul gets Ciylosed.”

  Bla’Gar sneered.

  “Your pet’s existence is an anomaly—the wraiths will come for him. It’s simply a matter of when.”

  He closed his eyes, a devastating mass of pandemonium churning in his chest. Bla’Gar understood what was being asked of him. He needed to save Raven, save him before he would be lost for all eternity. No matter how it would destroy Bla’Gar, he needed to do it for the one he loved.

  He glared at Clarissa, knowing the unspoken question on her face. “Someone as old as Laevius should not be that hard to find, even for someone like you.” Bla’Gar turned his back and started to walk. A delightful shiver hobnailed down his spine when Clarissa’s painful sob burst into the night.

  “Bastard,” she yelled. “I will end you, Bla’Gar. I swear, I will end y—!” Her hell cry faded into the night as Bla’Gar was swallowed up by the fog.

  He would have helped her look for her sire, but right at that moment, Bla’Gar had something more fundamental to take care of. He needed to decide on the best way he would end Raven’s suffering, without causing too much pain to the man he loved, despite the fact he had stated so boldly he would never hurt his own pet.

  Jessy struggled with her emotions, walking into the precinct early that following morning after stopping at the morgue. She crumpled Raven’s death report tightly against her chest. There was not a cell inside her that didn’t hurt, that hadn’t been scratched and mauled to a red pulp, bruised even to her bones that felt like brittle, cracked glass. The heavy thud of her heart, a constant reminder of what she still had to do. She’d wasted enough time, tried and pursued too many people not to tell the Captain what had happened to Raven.

  His memorial was tomorrow.

  She closed her eyes as she neared the door. She couldn’t look in that direction, her stomach clenched into a tight ball of raw nerves she didn’t know what to do with when she stepped past their office. With the lights off, the room was cast in deep darkness, due to the lack of windows on that side of the building. The black did not steal from her the emptiness or the reaction she was fighting, even though she would have welcomed it.

  Air surged through her lungs as she finally broke free from the vestige of emotions. A voice coming from the Captain’s office drew Jessy closer. The door ajar, casting a long line of light to wash in the dark hallway.

  Jessy froze; she knew that arrogant, silky-sly talk. Her knuckles crackled as she hugged the file closer. With a flare of her nostrils, she turned, marching past the darkened office, with its obscured claws trying to snag her into the icy memory, and out into the main space of the station’s second floor.

  She scanned the open office area, most of the desks empty so early in the morning; her gaze found its target quickly. He wasn’t easy to miss though. Stocky and short, Landon was a bull-bear hybrid of a man, better known for his brutality and taking down suspects against the book, unattractive with his bald head and copper beard.

  She couldn’t understand what in the living hell Aden saw in the man. He was rude, choleric and so… Un-Raven.

  Instead of the cold shiver raking its nails down her spine that she expected from the reference, fire fueled her determination. She marched across the space and snagged Landon’s tie.

  “What the blundering fuck,” he grunted and grabbed onto her wrist, jerking his ugly green tie back. Jessy didn’t let go, clenching the tie as if it was a life line.

  “I need your help.”

  Landon sneered, while still having a tugging contest with his tie, the folding skin and hooded brows making his eyes appear sunken. She tried to avoid the coffee stains so clearly visible on his white shirt, and his overbearing man-smell of sweat. God, could the man use an affair with a shower.

  “Why?” He finally got his tie back.

  “The only way to take down another asshole is by bringing an even bigger one to the battlefield.”

  “Why can’t you get Rave to do it?” he grumbled, making a poor attempt to fix his tie.

  Jessy flinched, and Landon’s face paled, his gaze darting anywhere but to her. “Fuck. Sorry, it just slipped,
didn’t mean to—” Dammit, there was actually hint of sadness and regret thick in the man’s voice. It made what Jessy had to do, forcing Landon into this situation, so much more barbaric.

  She clasped the folder under her right arm. “That’s exactly why I need you—” she slapped his hands away from his uncoiled tie, lifted up his collar and quickly made work of fixing it for him “—to back me up when I go speak with the Captain.”

  “You haven’t told her yet? Jesus, woman. She’s going to shave the skin off your back.” Landon rubbed one of his large hands and short thick fingers over his face, huffing out a breath reeking of too many cups of coffee.

  “No, James has been keeping the coroner’s report back. I have it here.” She hugged the file closer. “But there’s another problem in the Captain’s office.” Her gaze flashed briefly to his before she let slip, “Ryder Tsouras.”

  The name ignited a blaze of fury across Landon’s face, black hell a chaotic paroxysm in his eyes. The man looked like death incarnate, ready to split open the earth. It made Jessy feel more inhumane than she already did, but she needed Landon.

  Ryder and Landon had blighted blood between them. Before the Revelation, before Ryder had been shifted over to the NY Para-Super Tact Division, he’d been just a regular old detective, known for his talent of solving cold cases. One such case, that had been gathering dust for three years in Landon’s heart, had lured Ryder to Quebec. He believed he knew who the killer was, due to a recent murder case in New York that shared similarities to the one in Quebec. Ryder had refused to work with Landon, solely because he felt Landon was too close to the case. Eventually the old Captain had taken Landon off the case and suspended him with an enforced vacation, after Landon had shoved his fist in Ryder’s face and broken the man’s nose.

  As everyone had expected, Ryder closed the cases: the one Landon had been working on and the one Ryder had been investigating. It wasn’t so much a thing of pride over who did a better job, or even that Landon had been ripped away from the case. It was more personal for Landon.