by Nya
Coarse, unwashed animal undershirts eventually rubbed the skin raw. Add a vigorous workout in the gardens and a little sweat, and you had a nice recipe for achieving atonement.
Special occasions, usually post-indulgence with a Cardinal or a papal legate, called for more stringent measures. Nothing purged impurity faster than a healthy flogging, rendered with or without the enthusiastic assistance of one of the brothers.
All that presupposed getting caught in the act, always a big part of the fun. Solitary transgressions might help a serial killer get his rocks off, but I preferred a more communal approach.
You certainly can’t ever fault the Church on their indoctrination techniques.
As I slipped the fine wool turtleneck over my head, I uttered a prayer that Stefan, my dearest lupine alpha, would see fit to berate me, to scream or curse me roundly … anything to acknowledge my presence.
Even with bones still on the mend from his savaging, I would have offered up my body to more punishment if he would only show me a smidgen of interest.
Instead, he was cold as a marble statue. It wasn’t a simple matter of deliberately ignoring me, putting me in my proverbial place. No. For him, I no longer existed. And that’s the bit that was going to kill me slowly.
If that made me a sick fuck, guilty as charged.
Jefrumael entered the room and hissed to get our attention, then placed a finger to his lips and beckoned us closer.
Whispering, “We have trouble,” he directed our attention to the clumping of boots coming up the first set of stairs. Combat boots make a distinctive sound, especially when worn by dim-witted wolves.
“Shit.” That came from Fane who apparently scented his comrades way too late for us to make a fortuitous getaway in the nick of time.
A small part of me rejoiced that he might have been distracted enough by our confrontation, or lack thereof, to recognize the warning signs. Another part wondered what the hell Jeffy had been up to while the pack saw fit to engage in a full frontal assault.
That left just enough room for well, this sucks, along with I’m a lover, not a fighter, to cover our tactical options.
Then the two of them were looking at me … like it was my fault.
The trouble was … my gut hinted they were right.
Chapter Six
For an assassin, Jefrumael hardly looked the part. Tall, wiry, built like an inverted pyramid, all hunkalicious across the beam and narrowing down to a splendid set of thighs adorned in silver-flecked eider down, he’d have been at home on a runway or trotting the fabled avenues in Le Marais, the fourth arrondissement of the flower of my heritage.
He looked lickably effeminate, tossing those blond curls and pursing his full lips into a Clara Bow expression of come hither. That made it easy for dear old Dad’s enemies to misjudge him, always a fatal error.
Jeffy also had the reputation for playing with his targets, maxing out the pleasure quotient before dispatching his quarry. I’d heard it whispered that if the poor unfortunates who’d sparked Pop’s ire tickled Jef’s fancy, then the marks often died with a smile on their faces.
None of that nudged my brain cells in the direction of a solution for our looming problem: a wolf pack on the hunt, tenacious and single-minded in their pursuit. But for whom?
For the love of my life, Fane, most assuredly. For me? I just didn’t see the percentage in that.
Fane and Jef apparently disagreed. They were still lasering question marks in my direction, as if being a vamp-demon mutt gave me special powers.
It didn’t. At least not for this situation.
The clomp of boots paused now and then but it was clear they’d mounted the second set of stairs and were spreading out on a seek and dispose of mission, eschewing subtle in favor of efficient, blunt force trauma. That explained the splintering of ancient oak doors being ravaged by steel-toed boots and the occasional grunt and whimper of terror.
Hearing that hubbub should have normal folk either crawling under the bed or jumping out the windows. From the sounds of it, beds it was.
We were on the third floor, with some eaves and chimneys and other fixtures visible from the narrow set of windows. Not an especially daunting height but surely not something I cared to tackle, given my still fragile state and incompletely knit bones.
I pointed that out with a whine of, “But it’s too far to jump.”
Fane growled, “That’s not the problem,” and Jef concurred with a grunt, leaving Fane to explain, “…because they’ll have left two or more down there to scoop us up before we hit the ground.”
The wolves might have been trained to an army-of-one standard but they sounded like the Mongolian horde after a night of hard-drinking and whoring. So I asked, “Exactly how many are we dealing with?” I used ‘we’ advisedly, trying to keep this communal and not have the entire cluster fuck sit on my narrow shoulders.
Jef smiled. A sharp, pointy-toothed grin. I caught a glint of red in his eyes but he was saving the going all demon on someone’s ass in check.
Fane, the one with the sensitive nose, answered, “Four inside,” pausing to give a confirming sniff, “but not Elliot.”
That would account for the relatively undisciplined approach. While a guest at the dacha on the Black Sea, I’d noticed that only Elliot and Samuels had their fingers on the pulse of sensibility. The rest were junk yard dogs, content when fed and jollied but generally mean as snakes on a short tether. Elliot gave them means and opportunity for self-expression. That kept them loyal, it didn’t impart IQ points.
My darling boy was still in his snit over speaking to me directly, his comments directed over my head to Jef. It was time to move past that and start dealing with working together. Like it or not, all our stars were linked: by circumstance, by emotions, and by job assignment.
Jef wasn’t exactly up on the pack hierarchy so he asked, “Who’s Elliot?”
Fane answered, “Pack alpha.”
“Ah.”
Annoyed, I said, “Can we move this along? Where’s Samuels?”
I had good reason to wonder. Of them all, Samuels was smart and dangerous and manipulative. He was second-in-command only because it suited, not because Elliot had beat the living crap out of him to make the point, like he did with the others on a regular basis.
No, Samuels had Elliot by the short and curlies, much the same way Fane had had my undivided when we first met. But unlike moi, Samuels wasn’t ready to shop for a ring and plan the nuptials. That man kept his alpha satisfied with frequent flier miles but the minute he saw a change in the weather he’d be boarding the next flight out.
That metaphor—or analogy, I was never clear on the difference—brought up a new line of thought. It over-rode the why me, why not just Fane consideration and musings on lupine social structure.
About the second-in-command’s whereabouts, Fane shrugged in answer. That might mean he didn’t know, unlikely, or Samuels wasn’t close enough to scent. That left the pack’s enforcer available for all manner of mischief should we escape the net being drawn around us.
Only slightly less troubling was the fact that I still didn’t have a clue about Elliot; but big, dumb and ugly would be nearby, directing traffic. He didn’t worry me so much, being sort of the devil I knew. For some reason, he thought I had value. So long as we all agreed on that, it would be an easy matter to distract him should the worst occur and we got taken by the brute squad.
The sound of jackhammers came closer, but more cautious, this being the last flight of stairs and the landing at the top the final obvious refuge for their quarry.
Fane had sidled to the windows and was keeping watch. He didn’t look particularly hopeful.
What finally convinced me to take charge was the clack of nails on hardwood, distinctively out-of-place. At least two of them had shifted.
Fane recognized the sound and crouched, ready to meet the challenge, like with like. They’d rip him to shreds while he tried to protect us. Four-on-one weren’t good
odds, no matter how bad-assed my wolf might be. They’d even let me and Jef go, knowing their asses were covered by whoever, whatever, lurked outside the Inn.
Turning to Jef, the demon assassin with the beguiling blond curls, I said, “Poof us.” Actually it came out more as a question, flavored with a hint of annoyance because when it came to logical thinking, sometimes I was two bricks shy of a load. Light on logic or not, it was all I had.
Fane hissed, “Poof us?” At least, by asking, it halted the transition. I needed my boy in human form because I had no clue if what I was requesting Jefrumael to do was even possible for a non-demon.
Hell, I didn’t know if it would work for a half-breed like me. Even having spent a considerable amount of time in Demon Central as guest of my newfound Pater Familias, transport had been by more normal means: Dad’s Porsche for everyday runs to meet with his extensive stable of capos, or when he really needed to make a statement, he’d fire up his classic 1970 Torino Cobra.
And, no, he never let me drive, which brought me back to how a lot of this started: me in the junker up on the mountain, flummoxed and impaled on the steering wheel with my vamphood in full, permanent salute. Then Jeffy and Dad’s head honcho, Rafe, did the surprise fog thing. Appearing out of nowhere: apparating in, apparating out. Flash, boom, gone. Rafe, anyway. Jef stayed behind for dinner and a ’gasm.
That Dad’s head enforcer had never indicated he’d gotten anything other than the most pleasant of shaftings gave me a little ego boost and the sensation that I was on the right track. Jef might be my acolyte, my bitch, but he was also Michel du Velour’s man. He was going to protect me come Hel or high water.
Fane was not part of the bargain but there was no way, whatever the assassin planned to do, that it wouldn’t also include my estranged lover. If Fane went down, I went down with him. A lover’s pact, if you please. After nine hundred years and change being a loner, stuck in dark holes with nothing more than sacrifice and austerity to show for my existence, I was holding onto the only bit of hope, the only ray of light, I’d ever discovered.
Whether or not my wolf ever touched me again didn’t matter a whit. My heaven, my Hel, my soul were wrapped up in my feelings for the pup. There was no future for me without him. I would haunt him to the end of days, winning him back, if only in my dreams.
Meanwhile, Jef considered my question. It bothered me, a great deal actually, that he didn’t have an ah-ha look on his handsome face. Fane had come up to us, once more forming the corners of a triangle: me with my back to the door feeling the approaching slobber and ill-will of the pack, Jef near the bed, pondering, and Fane by the dresser, slowly sinking into a virtual vat of slimy gel.
All movements were obscene, slo-mo’d down to micro-bursts of sluggishness, mouths gawping open and shut in a parody of speech. I felt rather than heard sound, reverbing in my cranium like an annoying protracted snore, choppy and ear-splitting.
Jef had the ability to slow time within a narrow spacial radius. He’d done that in the cabin whilst we’d indulged our mutual passions, keying into hormones that even I didn’t know I had and putting paid to that urban legend about expanded big ‘O’s’. The heady mix of his testosterone, dopamine and oxytocin flooding my core had been more than enough to trigger that holy grail. For both of us.
Mouthing not me, Jef flicked a glance at Fane who looked angry and clueless.
If it wasn’t Jef, and clearly it couldn’t be Fane, that left … me. Demon-me. The creature without the spec sheet, forever randomly pressing buttons to see what happened. Up until now that amounted to nothing much. And without a handy set of written instructions, the odds of me remembering any specific sequence went from zero to you’re screwed. I needed to back up, and fast.
There was an overlay of get-on-with-it behind Jef’s frozen countenance. The skritching of talons at the door did the trick. Time snapped, faster than a blink, leaving a residue behind the eyelids and a gut full of maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.
“Can you?” That spewed out of my mouth like some outlier, having bounced around the cosmos before settling down again.
Please, pretty please, with chocolate-coated edible lube…
“It doesn’t work that way.”
Fane choked out, “What are you talking about? Wha—?”
Ignoring the pup, I pressed Jef for an answer. “But you can do it.”
“Yeah.”
I gave a sigh of relief until I realized that wasn’t an invitation to a group hug and a walk on the wild side of dimension hopping. That yeah was for me, and me alone.
All sound stopped on the other side of the door, the wolves’ enhanced hearing focused on every syllable. They hadn’t expected to encounter three of us. They might be dumb as a box of rocks but at least one of them could add. The faint scrabbling on the steps told me that one of the wolves was scurrying back to the alpha for instructions. That bought us a couple of minutes, tops.
Way more than enough time to continue the debate.
And it was a debate. The assassin offered me a ride, a one-way ticket back to Dad’s lair, leaving Fane to face an outraged pack. History was bound to repeat. When the wolves had incarcerated and threatened to torture Fane to make me behave, they’d had clear motivation: get me to place the nuke inside the compound and make it go boom. Now the damn device was missing and I looked to be their last great hope for a weapon-of-mass-destruction.
Elliot would hold Fane hostage until I came around and agreed to terms. Whatever they might be. When I failed to materialize—and my father would make sure I stayed out of harm’s way—the pack would savage my lover mercilessly, drawing it out, making it last.
Omegas were the lowest of the low. Fane’s status wouldn’t even come close to that. It would be better to just kill him now than to leave him to that fate.
With the pack growling and snarling and spewing venom behind me, and Fane threatening to succumb to a panic attack to my left, I needed answers … now.
“Shit or get off the pot, Jefrumael. He’s coming with, whether you like it or not. Take us to Hel or whatever dimension you like, but get us out of here, dammit.”
“I said … it doesn’t work that way. If it was just you and me, no problem.” He nodded in Fane’s direction, causing the pup to hiss a breath and step back.
“He’s coming with,” I snarled, then grabbed Fane’s arm and yanked him close, “so you deal with it and make it happen.” I glanced at Fane, wishing I didn’t have to play my trump card, then turned again to the assassin and asked, “You remember that blow job?”
Jef hissed, his eyes literally crossing in phantom ecstasy.
“If you want more of that…”
It was getting hard to hear over the din outside the door. The spit-pfft of a fifty caliber hollow point blasting through the ancient oak had all of us diving for cover toward the heavy dresser. Fane and Jef oomphed the monster piece of furniture in front of the door, then backed away.
Both of them looked pissed.
I needed a change of shorts.
“Alright, here’s the deal.” Jef spoke quickly while Sniper Dan unloaded his clip into the wood. It shouldn’t take long for them to figure out that spraying the outer wall would also work equally well.
I remained unimpressed at their efforts to keep me unspoiled as Saruman might put it. They obviously assumed I was the instant self-healing Vampyr of myth and legend.
They would be wrong.
Jef jostled me out of my reverie. “I can’t take him there.”
There being Hel. I got that. But there could be an unspecified somewhere. That’s all I wanted.
Even I could discriminate spent casings pinging off the floorboards with the gut-wrenching sound of wood being splintered into toothpicks and rough plaster spraying the room into shades of taupe and rose. The dust motes spun in dazzling arcs. It wouldn’t be long before bits of metal or wood, or who knew what, would impale our flesh and render us road kill.
“I don’t give a flying fu—
Shit!” Red blossomed on Fane’s upper arm, a flesh wound. I growled, “Do it. I don’t care where. Just get us out of here.”
Fane and Jef made a Vampyr sandwich, crushing me between two hard bodies that under other circumstances would have sent me into spasms of joy.
The last thing I heard was Jef saying, “Crap. Don’t let him vomit on my shoes.”
Fane didn’t.
I did.
Chapter Seven
“Oh, that’s just nasty…”
I couldn’t agree more. Dad’s nice designer trousers were a total loss, the residue seeping through the weave onto my shins, leaving me with a ‘gah!’ and another round of dry heaves. Fane did a hasty two-step, unceremoniously dumping me on the ground.
Hard, cold ground. Littered with leaves and dried up kindling.
You’d think, after a lifetime or ten, toiling in the Cloister’s gardens or enjoying the dank recesses of cozy caves, that I’d be acclimated to the elements.
I wasn’t.
I hated nature, with a vengeance.
While Jef scooped a handful of leaves and scrubbed with no small amount of disgust at his combat boots, Fane’s aura shimmered and wavered. He was on the verge of shifting, his face elongated, black fur coating his arms though the fingers were still discernible through the thick mat of hair.
Jef muttered something about looking for shelter. With good reason. While hard and cold, the ground, if not my shins, were dry. But not for long. A few icy flakes wafted past my nose, and the chill penetrated my bones, threatening to turn me into a vampsicle.
That’s the problem—well, not the only problem—with being only half a loaf: you never got the full monty of what your lineage promised. My list of begats was filled with the thrill of bragging rights: dukes and hoity-toity Chevalier errants, even the occasional petty Marquis. Maman’s family tree was distinguished, enough so that popping out Dreu the bâtard was a scandal of no small import.