Chapter Seven
The last tremors of release slowly shuddered through Cadan as he stared down at where his body met Bliss’s. There, skin to skin, flesh to flesh, his cock was fully embedded inside the sweet haven of her pussy as he spilled the last of his seed inside her.
How long had it been since he had found a woman who could take every inch of his enflamed erection? Since he could bury himself to the hilt and know the glorious heat of a woman’s vagina caressing the whole length of his cock? More years than he remembered.
I told you, she will be the perfect host, Cerise’s thought drifted through his mind as he slowly pulled back, watching, entranced as his still-hard flesh slid from her cunt.
Bliss moaned beneath him, her eyes drifting open, drowsy, her expression replete.
Shut up, he thought absently to the symbiot as he reached out and touched Bliss’s pale cheek gently.
She smiled back at him, her lips curving lazily.
“Is this where you suck my blood, stud?” she asked him, amusement coloring her voice.
If only he could.
He shook his head slowly. “Not yet,” he whispered as his fingers trailed between her breasts, down the damp flesh of her stomach to the soft, curl-covered pad of her pussy.
“Not yet, huh?” Her legs shifted as her arms lowered from where they had once been restrained. “You wouldn’t let me touch you, Cadan. I wanted to pleasure you as well.”
Cadan shook his head slowly. “More pleasure than what you have already given me would have sent us both up in flames,” he said ruefully as he rose from the bed, aware of the confusion in her eyes.
“You’re leaving?” Bliss rose up on her elbows, staring back at him frankly.
There was no anger in her expression, only faint confusion.
He picked up his pants and pulled them on quickly. He wanted nothing more than to lay beside her, to gather her into his arms and send them both hurtling into the madness of the passion he had found within her once again.
“I have things to do.” He nearly winced at the words. How callous he sounded, how cool and aloof when he felt anything but.
She watched him with a small, sad little smile.
“Of course you do,” she said softly. “Necks to bite, blood to suck, women to fuck. It must be a busy life.”
There was no heat in her voice, and perhaps that stung worse than true anger would have.
Aldon, your host is a fucking moron, Cerise informed his symbiot. Do something with him, immediately.
He knows what he’s doing. As always, there was understanding in Aldon’s thoughts. He must work it out himself.
She’s a host. My host, dammit. Don’t let him walk away like this.
Be still, Cerise. Cadan knows his duties. Allow him to fulfill them as he sees fit. Only he can live with them.
There was silence then. Cadan could feel the female symbiot’s pain and confusion. Similar to the confusion he saw in Bliss’s gaze.
“Take care, Cadan,” Bliss said softly as he jerked his boots on then reached for his shirt.
He paused. Grimacing, he stared up at the ceiling for long moments, wondering at the choices that now must be made. He hadn’t faced this situation in all his years as host. This choice had never confronted him; the needs of his symbiot had never been so powerful as they were now.
Perhaps because, for once, their needs were the same.
Cadan shook his head at that thought, aware of the silence within his consciousness as the alien presences watched him carefully. Just as Bliss was watching him now.
“I need the blood to survive,” he told her softly. “The same as you need the air you breathe, the water you drink, I need the blood.” He turned to her then, seeing the quiet concentration in her eyes as she took in each word. “I’m not dead. I don’t turn into mist, nor can I take wings like a bat. I’m not a monster, though trust me, they exist, and neither am I some creature that can perform great feats of evil works. I’m a man, Bliss. One who made a choice ages ago, and until this day, gloried in the freedom it has always given me. But in this moment, I realize how tight the shackles about me truly are. I can only plead your forgiveness in involving you in such a way.”
She tilted her head curiously as he finished speaking. Cadan jerked the shirt over his head as raw disgust filled him. For centuries he had fought and laughed and partied his way through the years, enjoying each second. Every battle, every wound, every triumph had been like a heady brew. But nothing had been as intoxicating as coming inside Bliss.
“We had sex.” She shrugged carefully. “Now you’re walking away. No recriminations, no tears or fury, Cadan. Yet, you’re upset anyway. Why?”
She lay there in her nudity, her high up-thrust breasts tempting him. Her rounded stomach, the plump softness of her thighs, the sight of his seed marring the crisp dark curls between them filled him with such male satisfaction that it made him nearly euphoric.
His gaze came back to her. “I am just a man,” he said again. “A host to a life form that requires the blood. One I can never live without, ever again. But since two evenings ago I have also been host to a female symbiot who lost her own in a battle with those I fight. You, Bliss, are a perfect companion for that life form. Strong, young, filled with the need for adventure, for freedom.
Make him stop! Cerise was screaming within his mind now. Aldon, he will ruin it all. Make him stop.
There was no answer from Aldon.
Bliss was watching Cadan in shock.
“The blood I take feeds those life forms. Without it, they will feed on mine until there is nothing left of either of us. To me, it is a more than adequate exchange. No one is harmed, and I live my life to the fullest.”
“How…” She swallowed tightly. “You’re saying there is something inside you?”
She was clearly struggling to understand and yet was fighting the knowledge.
“There are two somethings inside me,” he told her. “And unless you want to learn what my life is about and the very nature of who and what I am firsthand, then you had better run, sweetheart. Run hard and fast because you would make the perfect mate, and I am a man desperate, not just for the woman my soul has claimed, but also for the host this damned big-mouthed symbiot inside me is raging for.”
Cerise was screaming in his head. Fury pounded at him in waves, female fury, lightning-hot and filled with pain. She needed a host of her own or they would all die.
Bliss rose slowly, dragging the blanket around her as she stared back at him in disbelief.
“Vampires don’t have life forms,” she told him, her voice caustic. “They’re infected or something. Not inhabited.”
Cadan snorted with bitter amusement. “Baby, you’ve been reading way too many fiction novels,” he drawled mockingly. “I’m not infected or damned or cursed, and the love of the perfect woman isn’t going to save my black soul. Truth be told, my soul is no blacker now than it was in fourteen hundred and fifty seven when my Druid father convinced me to sacrifice myself to what he believed was a god.”
He laughed over that one often. Mordan expected Cadan to emerge from the caves, depraved and filled with power. He had been more than astonished to find a stronger, undefeatable Cadan as filled with laughter and pranks as he ever had been, but also one who saw the black heart his father possessed. Ever since that day Cadan had fought to protect what Mordan would destroy. The honor and innate purity of the symbiots.
Bliss shook her head. “Fourteen fifty-seven?” she said hoarsely. “I think you’re too old for me, Cadan.” She inched slowly across the bed away from him.
Cadan had to restrain himself, to hold back, to keep from straddling her scrumptious little body and fucking her silly as he fed from her graceful neck. Damned symbiots. Sex and blood sucking were a powerful aphrodisiac. If it weren’t so important that Bliss be at full strength to accept Cerise…
He tensed at the thought.
No, he snapped at the silent female symbiot. I won’t
be worked so easily.
There was a measure of surprise that filtered through his brain.
Don’t blame me for these small glimmers of intelligence you’re showing, Cadan. I was being silent as ordered, Cerise mocked him, anger echoing in her thought.
He gritted his teeth, thankful that he couldn’t wring her damned neck.
“I am likely much too old for you, Bliss,” he said then. “Too old, too jaded and too much of a risk.”
He remembered seeing the wasted body of Cerise’s host. The woman, though experienced in fighting, had been an easy mark for the Dark Knights. They had surrounded her, catching her weak from lack of blood due to her hesitancy to feed from her own people. It had killed her. It was a hesitancy he feared Bliss would share.
She rose on the other side of the bed, her black hair framing her heart-shaped face like a cloud of midnight silk, her green eyes watching him warily.
“You’re agreeing too easily.” She narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “Why don’t I trust agreeable men?”
You are making me so mad, Cadan. She is perfect for me. If Cerise could stomp her foot in fury, she would have.
“You should trust no men.” He sighed wearily.
He didn’t want to leave her. He wanted to laze in that big bed the rest of the day. Nap with her, hold her, fuck her until they both collapsed from exhaustion. He wanted to laugh with her, fight with her and stay by her side—and that terrified him. He could see her watching his back, filled with fire and fury as she fought him with their enemies. He could see her broken and bloodless, staring through empty eyes, her face frozen in horror. Dead. Taken from him forever.
“Watch yourself,” he muttered as he turned quickly from her. “Goodbye, Bliss.”
He walked from the bedroom one step at a time, forcing himself to leave her, to walk away as he knew he should. Honor had never plagued him in the past and it bothered him that it did so now. Not that he wasn’t honorable, he assured himself, it was just that the choices had never been in conflict with what he desired for himself. But now, what he wanted most could well be the death of him, because he didn’t know if he could survive in a world that Bliss did not inhabit.
Chapter Eight
Oh, when I get my host I’m so going to kick your ass! The female symbiot wasn’t in the least pleased, but neither was he, Cadan thought. Leaving Bliss had been incredibly hard to do.
Shut up, Cerise, before I turn you over to some ugly old toad with rotting teeth and stinking armpits, Cadan threatened her darkly. Her discontent was wearing on his nerves.
So she didn’t have a host. Big fucking deal. He had to deal with a female symbiot with perpetual PMS and a bad attitude to boot and he was getting damned sick of it.
You wouldn’t dare! The mental gasp was outraged.
Uh, yeah, he would. Perhaps it would be best if we allow Cadan to work this out himself. Cadan could hear Aldon’s amusement at the female and he didn’t appreciate it. He was being flooded with female hurt feelings, confusion and anger and he didn’t like it a bit. Damn, the creature was as contrary as hell one minute and full of soft feminine hurt the next.
I can’t believe you, of all symbiots, chose such a stubborn, intractable creature. It makes no sense to me at all. You’ve grown weak in your old age. Yep, there was the feminine hurt mixed with a sarcasm that could have cut the thickest skin.
At least I’m not a harpy with little else to do but torment the host providing me a haven in my time of need.
Cadan was stomping in anger by the time he entered his own apartment, several blocks from Bliss’s. The symbiots were fighting amongst themselves now, which would have been fine indeed if they would have bothered to do it a little less strenuously within his head. They were giving him a frigging headache. Just what he needed.
He threw himself down on his bed and turned his head to look at the sunlight behind the curtains. The Knights would be moving out soon. They would creep from their shadowed places, their dark dens, and move about the city searching for the violence and pain they so enjoyed.
He closed his eyes at the thought. The Dark Knights had been created in his time by the newly arrived symbiots searching desperately for life. The last of the symbiots’ energy had been used to escape their exploding spacecraft, after gaining their freedom from those who had stolen them from their home world.
The Dark Knights were a band of warriors, depraved, evil, searching for the riches and power that were rumored to be hidden within the land of Cadan’s birth. Instead of riches they found the hidden power.
The Knights had burst into the cavern where the life pods had held nearly two dozen of the creatures. They had crushed the metal containers, releasing the sleeping symbiots, forms of energy and light that must have a host to survive.
Desperate to live, the symbiots had flowed into the human animals ravaging their resting place and fell victim to the madness that inhabited them. There had been no stopping them. For centuries Cadan had searched for the Knights in an attempt to release the symbiots from their prisons and to find pure hearts, worthy honorable hosts for them to inhabit instead.
Not that killing the Knights was easy. It was damned hard. They stayed bloated on terror-laced blood, strong and cunning. They were the most dangerous creatures on the face of the earth. And they were searching for the few remaining capsules that housed the symbiot warriors awaiting hosts. God help the world if they managed to find where Cadan had hidden those capsules.
If only he could find more of the lost containers that sustained the symbiots when there were no hosts. Then he could get rid of the smart-mouthed vixen arguing with his own symbiot in his head. Dammit, he needed to sleep, not to listen to the two of them trade insults.
Do you honestly believe just walking away from her is going to solve this little problem he has? Cerise questioned Aldon furiously. You know what will happen, and yet you let him merrily walk away.
Enough! The sudden strength of Aldon’s thought had Cadan tensing in warning.
Silence filled his head now. Cadan sat up slowly, frowning.
Do we have a problem here? He asked them both carefully.
There wasn’t a thought to be found from the two. For the first time in all the years he had fought with Aldon, he realized the symbiot was holding back. There was information, knowledge that Cadan hadn’t been given access to.
You swore complete fealty to my life, my safety and my happiness, no matter what that might be, Cadan reminded him. Withholding information would be a contract breaker, I believe.
He could feel the discontent moving through him.
Cerise, would you like to find a new host on your own? He asked her silkily.
He could never rid himself of Aldon and live, but Cerise was another story.
If I could tell Bliss was host material, then the Knights can as well. Remember, their female symbiots inhabit male bodies, unable to breed or to reproduce. As long as this is true, then the world is safe from the creation of more like the Knights. But if they find her, it would be easy for Mordan to kill one of his followers and to have the girl awaiting the symbiot as it flows from its host. It would then be a simple matter to enchain her, rape her and breed her time and again.
If it would be so easy, then why has it not been done before? Cadan fought back the fury that the mention of his bastard father brought.
Because, the females have a cycle, Cadan. One century out of every six they are able to breed along with the female host. If impregnated by a male who carries One of the Light. It was a term Aldon often used to describe the symbiots, because of the pure white light of their energy forms. Then the child that is born will carry its own immature symbiot. Kill the child, the symbiot can then be taken, placed with a dark host and the instinct and power that grows within it will be at the mercy of the host. There will be no safeguards. There will be no handicaps. It will be pure evil.
Chapter Nine
The Knights. Cadan processed the information that Cerise gave him whi
le a somberness he fought to keep buried moved through him. They were more than just Knights really. Several were family members, and despite the name they carried had never been knighted in any way.
The Knights were once the scourge of England, carrying the titles yet betraying the trust placed within them in ways that made Cadan cringe at the thought of the pain they had inflicted.
As he drew in a deep breath and headed back to Bliss’s apartment, he realized that a time he had long feared had finally come. He had danced through the centuries, no responsibilities other than ones he had imposed on himself weighing him down. He had been careful with friendships; he didn’t like losing friends. They aged and died far too quickly. Cadan retained his youth due to the symbiot’s amazing powers and the immortality it afforded him. As long as he kept the being fed, he would enjoy an almost limitless life, as well as powers only dreamed of by others.
Powers that had drawn his father. He rubbed at his chin wearily, grimacing at the thought of Mordan. Another of those experiences he preferred to pretend didn’t happen and yet he lived the consequences of it daily as he battled the Knights and struggled to find a way to save the symbiots they carried.
His life then hadn’t been free of danger, but Cadan had embraced each day. He lived for knowledge and freedom of his father’s dark life, awaiting the time that he could finally break free of the small tribe he lived within. It was on the dawn of that freedom that he had been brought to the sacred caves.
There, two dozen large pod-like casks had been discovered in the farthest cave. There, his father had convinced him to open the warmest cask, which sat in a place of prominence within the room.
Normally, he would have refused any directive his father gave. But as he touched the cask, relying on his own inner sixth sense, he had felt a peace and yet a cry for freedom that touched his soul. When he released the locks at the side, pure energy and light had swept over him, around him, then infused him with such power and strength he had collapsed against the onslaught.
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