The Strigoi Chronicles Box Set

by Nya

  What I saw drove a lightning bolt of cold, icy fear into my gut. Gone was the youthful tease, the blonde giant with the comely grin and devilish eyes. In its place stood the power and majesty of death itself, washed in crimson evil, grinning in triumph.

  Fane growled, hackles raised on full alert, as he moved to stand between me and the assassin, bold and defiant and infinitely outmatched.

  Gripping the ruff on Fane’s neck, I tried to move him but he refused to be dislodged. He would go down fighting, for me. For us. He was alpha, We were pack. The alpha protected his pack, his mate.

  Fane made a choice. He chose me.

  Cocking his head, Jefrumael waited patiently for one of us, most likely me, to make a move. I would not give him that excuse. Michel du Velours would honor and overlook a righteous kill, an attack provoked. In this he’d have no choice. Even if he cared enough to harbor small regrets at my passing, he wouldn’t allow this event to override or threaten his position.

  As fascinating as he found me, as unique as I might seem, the truth was he could go back and fuck my mother for the balance of time itself and eventually another like me would pop out. After all, the one thing near immortals had in common was time. And with time, anything was possible.

  Fane seemed oblivious to all but his guard dog responsibilities and for that I was grateful. Too soon would he learn the mischief man and beast created in their endless pursuit of power and advantage. I’d given him his first taste of betrayal. It wouldn’t be his last.

  But … it would be the last from me.

  Keeping Fane under control was taking more strength than even I had, so I broke the stalemate, moving to Fane’s side and presenting the easy target.

  To my surprise, the demon spoke first.

  “Do you wish me to relay anything to your father, Sire?”

  Sire? My head spun. I was back to being his sire. Exactly how the hell did that work?

  With all the venom I could muster, I spit out, “Dire à mon père d'aller au diable,” wincing as my mother tongue emerged coarse and harsh from my lips.

  Jefrumael grinned, appreciating the insult and the irony of me telling my father to go to hell.

  I had no reason to care for the man in Armani, but as Jefrumael vanished, oozing through a spacial horizon invisible even to my demon half, I wondered exactly whose side the assassin was on. In whose service did he invest his future?

  Were he loyal to my father, could he serve the House of du Velours while courting the special favors of his lord and master’s offspring? That he might be addicted to my charms was a possibility, and one I wouldn’t discount. But was it going to be enough?

  And why reveal even a portion of the game he and Pops might be playing?

  Fane whined and shifted: a beauteous sight to behold and distracting enough to derail my thoughts on what had just happened.

  Moving in front of the fire, he stood with his back to me, shoulders hunched, the picture of confusion. I couldn’t blame him. He had little frame of reference for the Machiavellian forces at work with plots and counterplots occurring off stage right, just at the edge of consciousness. Like dewy fog, the threats niggled and spurned clarity and focus, content to lie in wait for the actors to forget their lines, for the director to miscue and reverse the import of the scene.

  Manipulation, misdirection, distrust. Welcome to my world, young master Fane. The Church had prepared me for evil. It had sketched it in broad outlines and it had armed me against it with faith and a belief in a hereafter in which I had no interest. It preached love and devotion and self-sacrifice, it demanded the prostration of self on the altar of martyrdom. Denial was at the core of its unceasing demands on the soul, the inner spirit, stripping it to its essence until nothing but emptiness and hollow promises remained.

  I hated that I loved Fane, I hated that the very core of me responded with wanton disregard to logic. I hated that I would grovel and debase myself in his service, that my loyalty was evermore to him and him alone. I despised the inner demon-me, the one reviling the Vampyr’s need to submit, to yield so completely that my future, my soul rested in someone else’s hands.

  I hated that my only pleasure must be bought with the currency of pain and humiliation.

  “Are you done?” Fane smiled and brushed the hair off my face. I marveled at his patience, allowing me to mentally flagellate my soul in endless destructive loops, with no beginning and no end.

  It had to end somewhere, sometime. Redemption only came with acceptance. So, to his question: are you done? There was only one answer to that.

  “Not with you.” Drawing his lips close, tasting his youth and his brashness, I moaned into his honeyed mouth, “Never with you.”

  He stuttered, “Fa— Dreu…” and my belly clenched at the tone, awash with distress and anxiety.

  It wasn’t necessary for him to explain, so instead I asked, “How much time do we have?”

  “Not much.” Fane moved to the window and scanned the bleak landscape, sky and snow merging into a single entity of frozen hopes. He turned and looked at me, the import of what Jefrumael had done finally dawning on both of us.

  I said, “We were set up.”

  “Yes.”

  “Choices?” I asked, but I didn’t expect an answer and I didn’t get one. Instead I suggested we run.

  Fane muttered, not bothering to hide the bitterness, “Run where? To the south the pack advances, stronger than before.” He ignored my raised eyebrows. Weres could not only scent, they could sense. He continued, pointing out the obvious, “Over this ridge there’s the Transylvanian Plateau.”

  He didn’t need to mention that he would not be welcome in the last stronghold of my people, even if we could find the isolated enclaves in that twisted, alien landscape of deep gorges and jagged ridges.

  I could neither scent nor sense. Had I been back in the luxury of my Black Sea cavern, I would have had access to maps and intelligence to help us make an informed decision.

  I must have mouthed the informed decision, making imaginary air quotes around it, because Fane asked, “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  The wolf stalked around the cabin, eyeing everything before picking up the reeking sheepskin rug and handing it to me.

  “We have no clothes to wear. You freeze if we do this.”

  Yes, yes I would. There was no poofing with this great escape. Just slogging through deep snow, being driven like deer in a hunt. Over hill and down dale, with no clue what lay to our north.

  I had to make the offer, even knowing what his answer would be. “I’ll stay.” He could shift and make a run for it. They wanted me more than they wanted my wolf, of that I was certain.

  “Nu, nu, nu! Together. We do this together.”

  “Then we’ll die together, my darling boy. Is that what you want?”

  He shrugged, making it clear the question and answer period was over. Stripping out of his clothes, he instructed me to put the lot on, rolling up sleeves and pant legs to get the oversized mass of fabric to fit.

  “Now there is two of you. Confuse scent.”

  I loved when his English faltered, but now wasn’t the time for amorous thoughts. Fingering the rug, I asked, “And exactly what do I do with this?”

  “You wear this, too.”

  “Fane, I can barely make it through the drifts as it is. How the hell am I supposed to manage wearing this?” I held it up with disgust. It really was vile.

  Stalking to the door, he yanked it open, allowing a blast of wintry cold to invade the warmth of the cabin. Instinctively I wrapped the sheepskin around my shoulders, reminding myself that demon-me might like breathing but it wasn’t absolutely necessary.

  Denial, it all came down to training and denial.

  Before shifting he said the last thing I ever expected, “You ride.”

  Chapter Nine

  The mountains ranged in saw-toothed splendor, stretching as far as the eye could see in front, and behind, us. Fane kept to the lower humps
straddling the tree line, opting for speed over concealment in the dense forest.

  We—or rather, he—encountered occasional heavy drifting, sending us either higher or lower as the terrain permitted. It would be hard going for man or beast. Fane carried a double burden: a looming execution by an alpha out for revenge … and me.

  The wolf was big, really big but he was no pack horse, and I was no lightweight despite my smaller size. The demon half imparted dense bone onto a diminutive package, leaving my lover to tote forty percent of his body weight in conditions that defied description.

  “You need to rest,” became my mantra, largely ignored. I repeated it hourly but still he plowed on, tongue hanging out, sides heaving with the effort. “You won’t do me any good dead,” merited a growl but he at least slowed back to a bone-jarring trot.

  My balls ached, my ass was rubbed raw. I had no idea if Romanians had chiropractors but the next village or settlement we found, that was the first thing I was inquiring after. Even ahead of a warm bath and a soft bed.

  My steed slowed imperceptibly, sniffing, but not in the direction from which our pursuers were coming. Following his line of sight, I first caught the wisp of smoke swirling above the pines, then brief flashes of a light. We were too high for a town but a hunting or sheepherding cabin was a distinct possibility.

  Stroking his ear, I whispered, “I need to fe—” but gulped the words back, recognizing the rank stink of selfishness, and tried again with, “…you need to rest and we both need to eat and get warm.”

  Whining agreement he turned and slalomed down the steep hill, still angling north and west, keeping to the windward side of whatever was down there. Once ensconced in the dense growth, I slipped off and spent precious minutes waiting for feeling to return to my feet. I had no idea how Fane, even with that thick black fur coat, could bear up under the unrelenting cold. He shook vigorously, unmatting the hair where I’d straddled him with determination if not finesse.

  With the snow marginally thinner, we were able to creep up on the rustic structure. It was small, put together with logs and slabs of sheet metal, the single window a wavy double-pane glass with a greenish tint. The chimney was field stone and haphazardly put together, but it was functional and that was all that mattered.

  With my fangs in full extension in anticipation of a warm meal and a cuddle with my wolf, I lisped, “Thtay back. Let me do thisss.”

  This being a knock on the door and a careful step to the side to avoid the first shotgun blast. I didn’t think the resident would buy the pointy-toothed man and his dog wandering lost in the no-man’s-land between Hungary and Romania story. Especially not with me still wrapped in the disgusting sheepskin rug. For all I knew, our potential host would think I’d raped and pillaged his sheep herd, availing myself of a nice, warm, bloody pelt for shits and giggles.

  Fane, braced against the wall on the other side of the door, chuffed a wolfish grin in my direction. Almost as if he was reading my mind.

  I love it when I’m right.

  The door cracked a notch, enough for the barrel to glint in the weak light. I nodded to Fane who moved at the speed of wolf to take our host out at the knees while I plucked the weapon from his hands.

  Fane stood over the prone form, the prone naked form, of a kid, maybe eighteen years old, no more than that. Fresh-faced and scared shitless, starring up at a drooling mammoth creature of the night, probably muttering Our Fathers in his guttural dialect.

  It was too bad I’d lost my robes along the way because I might have consoled him rather than have him piddle on the floor in terror.

  “I’ll take care of this,” pointing to the quivering mass, “so why don’t you go find something to eat,” the kid whimpered, “while I see to the fire … and…”

  I knew when to shut up. The teen apparently understood at least some English and at the ‘something to eat’ his eyes rolled up in his head as he flirted with passing out.

  Now, I’m not a picky eater, but I do prefer my volunteers to be awake, with a healthy blood pressure and a boatload of fear to add a soupçon of spice to the bouquet. I needed to prop my meal onto the small bed, clean up the mess on the floor, and shoo Fane out the door before the sting of urine had him lifting his leg and marking territory.

  “Go,” I ordered, waving him out the door. “You’re letting the cold air in.”

  The wolf growled but complied, leaving me with some entertainment options while I awaited my lover’s return.

  The cabin was a clone of the one we’d fled earlier in the day: pint-sized, utilitarian and lacking amenities. I put the boy on the bed and idly scanned the area. Several Romanian porn magazines lay scattered about. Lube. A rag. A few joints. My young man had obviously been tripping the light fantastic just before we so rudely interrupted his fantasies.

  Under other circumstances, the young man’s generous endowments, even in their flaccid state, might have tempted me to misbehave, but for now I felt nothing but a gnawing hunger in the pit of my belly. Vampyr Dreu had come to visit and he needed a vein, stat.

  “Hey, kid. Wake up.” Nothing. “Bună. Tu. Treziți-vă!” Pronunciation and gender-specific pronouns aside, that pretty much exhausted my grasp of the language.

  Muttering, “Shit,” I knelt and tapped without much enthusiasm at the kid’s neck. It was scrawny and uninviting, not at all like the gloriously muscled, ridged veiny lusciousness that was my darling wolf. Eyeing the spread thighs with hope, I had to mentally gird myself away from the slim, hairless tawny flesh veeing into a valley of promise.

  “Damn.” If I thought celibacy sucked, monogamy was going to be an even bigger challenge. I wondered, not for the first time, if I was cut out for the mating gig. All debating aside, of one thing I was certain: my heart and soul belonged to my wolf.

  My cock and my mouth were still undecided.

  The whine at the door saved me from making yet another bad decision. I let Fane in, ignoring the bloody mess in his massive jaws, and bolted us in for the night.

  “I’ll get the fire going.” I made good on that while he chowed down on the remains of his dinner. Leaving the question in the don’t ask, don’t tell category, I let the warm scent of coppery iron flood my mouth with anticipation.

  The boy was awake, eyes-on-stalks, clutching the family jewels, glancing from me to the wolf and back again.

  Murmuring, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” I bent over his neck and sighed with resignation. Fane belched loudly as I sank my fangs into soft flesh, the rush of adrenalin and weed making up for the weak nectar.

  At least I’d get a buzz out of it.

  I left the body straddling the uncomfortable bed, the heartbeat thready, irregular. I’m not a monster, I don’t enjoy killing my food, but sometimes the donation takes more out of the host than they can afford. It’s not something I can predict.

  The kid was skinny, whacked out on cocaine and weed and who knew what else, jerking off in a shack in the middle of nowhere, with little but empty bottles of vodka and wrappers of junk food to show for his existence.

  Whether I did him in, or the pack following on our heels, mattered little. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. If he lived, so be it. I’d let him go. He wasn’t going to talk, who’d believe a junkie anyway?

  Besides, we didn’t plan on staying around long enough for it to be an issue.

  Spreading my makeshift coat on the floor, I settled next to Fane, curling into the cradle of his belly. He smelled woodsy and doggy and musky, with a faint undercurrent of venison and liver.

  I asked, “Do you want your clothes back?” in essence asking if he planned to shift to human form. He whined in reply and I took that for a no.

  While I stroked his fur, we watched the flames crackle and spit until the wolf’s eyes closed and he drifted into sleep. For once, I would assume sentry duties, allowing myself only that half-waking state as I mused over how my life, and his, had changed in such a short period of time.

  Setting aside Jefrumael a
nd whatever twisted chess game he and my father were playing, it was easier to think on young Stefan and how we came to this point, this perfect nexus of lust and love and longing. We had nothing in common: not language, or intellectual pursuits, not culture or history, definitely not species.

  We were as unsuited as two creatures could be, stuttering along with fractured English, barely understanding each other except for those times when our bodies removed the need for speech, leaving us both quivering, sated masses of jelly.

  Mind-blowing sex aside, the fact remained that Fane deserved more than me. He needed a pack, one where he was the steadfast leader, true to his course, the protector and example for his kind.

  What my wolf didn’t need was an aging horny Vampyr demon mutt with lust for brains and a dubious talent for getting into trouble, of the lascivious, carnal variety. A man who’d, when given the choice, had decided in favor of false testament and the safety of sequestering himself within religious walls, burying himself in manuscripts and maps and the detritus of monastic life. And not because I had a higher purpose, never that.

  The ugly truth was: I was a coward. It was easier to take the high road of devotion rather than accept my fate and my heritage.

  My stint with Michel du Velours had done little to change that low opinion I held of myself. Even after that accidental eruption that leveled an entire dimension, killing and maiming creatures for whom I had little sympathy and even less understanding, I could not bring myself to acknowledge that power, much less use it in the service of saving the one I loved.

  There were risks, and there were unacceptable risks. Until I learned to control my baser self, until I finally tapped into the demon that hid behind petty justifications and clever phrases, the real Dreu would never surface.

  If there even was a real Dreu. This night, clasping the precious bundle of warm fur in my arms, I felt more false than ever: inauthentic, a joke, a monumental genetic mistake.