Exsanguinate

by Killion Slade

  “Hey, Khaldon come in here. Take a look at these. They’re…”

  Khaldon walked in with a bottle of bloodwine. “Ah, my favorite.” He took a long hard chug on the bloodwine as my mouth fell to the floor.

  “What the hell is that?” I demanded. “What are you drinking?” I grabbed the bottle away from him, spilling the wine over his chin and onto his shirt.

  “Crap, Cheyenne, this was one of my favorite shirts.” He gestured to his chest as he tried to wipe the blood off with his sleeve. Using the back of his hand to wipe at his chin, he stopped in mid-swipe to read my face.

  “Did you … just now, get this out of Roxas’ refrigerator?” My thoughts processed faster than a multi-core processor. I held the bottle out for him to look at. “Why would Roxas have a cold bottle of bloodwine in his refrigerator? Or any bottle of bloodwine for that matter?” Khaldon pursed his lips. I didn’t let him answer. “Don’t only vampires know about this stuff? Isn’t it specially ordered from those vineyards Stovall talked about?”

  “You mean the blood orchards?” Khaldon’s eyes grew wide.

  “Whatever the hell you call them. Yes, those.” I sat the bottle on the office table next to the computer and sat in Roxas’ office chair behind his computer. “I don’t understand. How could I have missed this? Roxas either is or associates with vampires?” I said aloud to myself. “How is this possible? Why would he not have told me?”

  Khaldon glanced up me with that confused look on his face again. “Maybe he is vampire and knew you were a human. Maybe that’s why he couldn’t meet you in real life.”

  My eyes lit up. “Khaldon, I could kiss you.” My face lit up. I jumped up and took a sip of the wine. “That makes perfect sense. Of course – so it wasn’t me all this time. Oh, thank the Goddess. It was his issue of us not meeting for so long. We have to find him. He has to know what has happened to me.”

  In my jubilation I accidentally bumped the mouse next to the keyboard on his computer when I put the bottle back down. I saw an opened email on the monitor as the screen woke up from its hibernation. I leaned down to read it.

  Khaldon quickly jumped over in front of the monitor. “We shouldn’t be reading the guy’s stuff, now should we?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t seem to have any trouble making yourself at home by raiding his fridge now did you?”

  Khaldon grimaced. “You have a point.”

  “Maybe it’s a clue as to where he is.” I turned back to the email and read a note from what looked like a friend.

  See you at three, lover. I’ll be at our corner booth at Club Mordez-Moi!

  We’ll discuss what to do with the sisters then.

  Forever Yours ~Darkrose

  My face went numb. I dropped the little bronze statue I had been holding and it made a loud thunk onto the floor, right beside my heart. Khaldon had moved behind me and I supposed had read the email over my shoulder. He cleared his throat and reached out to touch my shoulder. I turned around in the chair and looked up at him – madness hazed my vision.

  Khaldon forced me to look into his eyes again. This time, his waves of interference forced me to relax. “Breathe, Cheyenne. Things aren’t always as they seem.” His voice soothed me as my heart felt like it shattered into a million pieces.

  The air grew heavy and I recognized the change in energy between us. Khaldon was in control, suppressing my emotions. Blood pooled in my eyes. Tears expressed from utter joy just moments earlier, had in an infinitesimal moment turned to frigid tears of hated betrayal.

  I sucked in my lower lip, trying to maintain any modicum of self-control. “Have I been so blind?” I whispered through clenched teeth. “Is Roxas involved with my sisters kidnapping? No wonder he had to be gone so much while I was in the hospital. Look at this email. It says – sisters.” I looked away from Khaldon’s gaze as he relinquished whatever force field he had over me. “Did you read that? It’s from some chick named Darkrose. Roxas and I made a promise to each other not to date anyone else.”

  I stood and squared my shoulders toward Khaldon. “So where is this Club Mordez-Moi? What the hell does that mean anyway? I need to confront this sonofabitch.”

  “Whoa now, filly, hold on a minute. Club Mordez-Moi means quite literally, Club Bite Me. It’s a pretty nasty vampire hangout. Not a place for noobie vampires.”

  I could have staked him with my eyes.

  “Look, we have less than a couple hours to get you back and ready to receive that call from Ludovic. Are you gonna compromise getting instructions of how to find your sisters by going after this guy?”

  “What choice is there? It’s the only lead, unless I try to come back here again later in the morning. I have no idea how long Ludovic is gonna make me play inside the game.”

  “I’m not keen on this, Chey. It’s not a good idea. Bite Me isn’t exactly a place that serves high tea and chocolates.” Khaldon reached around the back of his head and pulled the silken knot out of his hair. It fell all around his shoulders. “What happens if you find him there? What are you gonna do? Shoot him in the corner all gangsta style?” Khaldon held out his hands to form mock guns shooting from the hips. “You can’t possibly understand what kind of hell you might be getting yourself into.”

  I swallowed hard, trying to take in his logic. My mind tried to counter with objections, but his argument was sound. I sat back down in the chair and hit the print screen key.

  “Why don’t we do this – I take you back to your apartment and you wait for Ludovic. I’ll go to Mordez Moi and stake it out. I’ll see what I can uncover for you. I’ll casually run into Amicula and see what’s hanging.”

  “What?” I turned to face him. “Amicula? Darkrose is Amicula?”

  “Yes, her formal name is Amicula Darkrose. She has gone by that name since, I dunno, forever.”

  I stood there blinking at him.

  My Roxas is dating Amicula?!

  “Things are not always how they seem. Look, it’s almost one-thirty, so we’ll have just enough time to get you back home and me in position at the club. It’s the best plan and you know it. You can’t afford to miss Ludovic.”

  I opened my mouth in protest, but I stopped myself. He was right. That kind of gamble wasn’t worth hurting Dakota and Sheridan. “Okay, but for the record – I don’t like it. I want to know for sure if Roxas is a vampire or not. If he or Amicula are behind my sister’s kidnapping, I’ll kill them both. I swear it.”

  Khaldon crouched down on one knee in front of me and reached out with his golden skinned hand. He held his mouth in a half smile, as he held my chin up to his face once again. “Look, you won’t have to kill Roxas.”

  I returned his gaze questioning his statement. He took a deep breath and changed the tempo, pitch, and dialect of his voice. In a clear distinct British dialect Khaldon said, “You’re gonna think this is crackers, m’lady, but I’ve been here all along.”

  If my heart weren’t already dead, it would have been from his words.

  Scooting my chair backwards out of his hand, I gaped at him. For the second time that night, I stood frozen, rooted in my socks, unable to comprehend the enormity of the bomb just dropped on me. I shook my head to try and clear the ridiculous hallucinations. My mind galloped with a thousand thoughts at once, none of them making an ounce of rational thought – except one.

  With my heart on fire from the betrayal, the hatred, and the fear that I would never see my sisters again – furious anguish dashed my hands around Khaldon’s throat choking the ever-living life out of him.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Roxas Morgwain’s House

  “What the hell have you done with him? I’m going to kill you … you sick, sadistic bastard! I should’ve known it all along. Where is he? I swear to the Mother Holy Goddess Herself if you have harmed him in any way, I will personally kill you!”

  Both of us breathed hard, Khaldon held my arms as I attacked his face time and time again. I relentlessly kicked trying to hurt him in
any way I could. His eyes wild at my explosion.

  Khaldon threw me up against the wall and shouted in my face, “Just bloody hell calm down will ya! You’ve got to believe me – I am Roxas!” His green eyes squinted in anguish. Those gorgeous malachite eyes welled up with emotion. Something so familiar about those eyes ...

  “Like hell you are. I can’t trust anyone and now this?” I thrashed out at him again. “I can’t feckin believe it. I gave you the security pass codes to access the databases. How very clever of you. You must have accessed our chat logs. How could you possibly tell me anything to prove to me who you are?”

  I looked at the front door. He followed my eyes as I bolted toward it. Faster than me, he slammed the door shut after I just got it opened.

  “Wait! Cheyenne, just listen to me.”

  I stood there with my hands on hips looking around for anything wooden or silver to stake this a-hole with.

  “M’lady, I ... I love you … I mean Lady Caz... and I’m just as shocked about this as you are. I couldn’t ever trust myself enough to meet you because I am Vampyre. I was born this way. I knew I would never be able to meet my Lady. But fate tipped the scales in our favor. I was assigned to Lord Stovall’s task force after the attack, but I didn’t know you were involved until after your father called me.

  “When I saw you on the boat, I knew it was only going to be a matter of time before I had to reveal myself to you. Didn’t you see the shocked look on my face when I picked you up at the door to take you to dinner?”

  Khaldon continued to barrage me with a thousand questions that I didn’t listen to, even though admittedly he was beginning to make sense. I had a thousand scenarios of images, chats, visuals, pose balls floating through my relationship with Roxas.

  “I don’t believe this.” I slammed my fist hard against his jaw and wrenched open the door once again.

  “Blimey, Chey, I know this is hard to understand, but there’s a reason you haven’t heard from Roxas. It’s because I was called by Stovall to watch over you for the past two days.” I stopped two steps outside the door and looked into his eyes.

  “Why don’t you look like Roxas then? The Roxas I know has dark copper hair and a beard.” I pointed to the picture on the wall. “He looks like that. That is who came to see me in the hospital.”

  Tears welled up in my eyes just thinking this creep had taken over Roxas’ life and was now trying to impersonate him. I turned to leave and felt that energy shift around me once again. In my frenzied manner, I looked back and watched how the man who stood two feet in front of me morphed into another human being.

  Instinctively I stepped toward him, but stopped knowing this was just some kind of vampire illusionist trick I hadn’t learned. I couldn’t take my eyes off the exact replica of the man I met in the hospital a week ago.

  “Cheyenne, you asked me what size I wore so you could send me that 3D holographic rendering suit. Do you remember? We were talking over Skype. I told you 34 waist and I was 5’10”. I also suggested you to send it to my post office box if it helped you feel better about the anonymity thing right? Remember?”

  I looked at him and everything around me.

  “I helped you pick out the name for Beano. We talked over your cell phone when you were at the breeder’s house. You aren’t going to find that information anywhere, in any database. Remember how you wanted the female, but her underbite was too big?”

  “This is your place?” Remarkably, this man knew specifics that no one else could possibly know and hadn’t been recorded in any database.

  He nodded and held is hands out to me.

  “Why do you live this double life?” I walked back in to his house and looked at him closer.

  “My true name is Khaldon Seters.” His shoulders dropped. “ I have kept my anonymity for hundreds of years, because my lineage is at war with dragons. I am a direct descendant from Sekhmet, the Egyptian Warrior Goddess. To keep things amicable now, I go by Roxas Morgwain.”

  I closed the door behind me and sat on the leather sofa.

  “M’lady I can’t express to you how I have wanted to tell you. I knew one day it would come out, but I didn’t expect you to be so protective of me … of Roxas. I shouldn’t have brought you here.” Khaldon kneeled in front of me. “I was so afraid of hurting you, possibly even killing you since you were human. I never wanted to take that chance.”

  “Then why did you agree to meet me at the theme park?” Tears broke over the brink, a single drop cascaded down my cheek as I watched his frustration. The more I listened, the more I realized he was right. Undeniably, Khaldon Seters was Roxas Morgwain. I turned to look at him for the first time in a completely different light.

  “I didn’t really have a choice now did I? Everybody set us up. If I had backed out, it would have crushed you. I had to take the chance and find a way to make it work.” He stood up and grabbed the bottle of bloodwine I had set on the table. “Bollocks, look at the mess this has become.”

  He left the room for a moment as I contemplated what to do next. Not sure if I had been zapped with some kind of vampire hypnotic voodoo or this was the real deal, I threw my head back against the couch in exasperation. A few minutes later, he came out of his bedroom with a clean shirt on looking like Khaldon once again. I stood up to stand face to face with him. He handed me a tissue, my face bloodied and smeared.

  We just stood there looking at each other. Really looking at each other for the first time – completely revealed as our true selves. No avatars, no secrets – just vampire to vampire – man to woman.

  Knowing and remembering all of the late night conversations until five in the morning I’d had with this guy, he knew me better than I knew myself. I remembered all of the hidden shared dreams and emotions we revealed from deep buried depths. Those truth-or-dare erotic phone calls in the middle of the night, drunk off my ass. So many things about our relationship clicked. Why we hadn’t met. Why we decided early on never to video chat or send pictures of each other. Why we both worked professionally under pseudonyms to protect our identities. Why we both promised to not search for each other on the Internet. It was all making sense. He was a vampire. Tumblers fell into place on the rock hard, rebar-cemented safe guarding my heart.

  Was the conversation between him and Harris at the hospital real? It wasn’t about the game?

  Khaldon reached out for me. My eyes blurred as emotion overcame the reality of the situation. He caressed my cheek as another tear slid down his thumb. Finally I had the nerve to stare into those brilliant green eyes once again. I saw the truth. He had been the man of my dreams for over two years and he knew things about me that I wasn’t even willing to admit to myself.

  I reached up and held my hand to his face, feeling the warmth of his skin next to mine. Was I dreaming? Had the shock of the kidnapper’s call been so much for me that this was my defense mechanism?

  He pulled me close and hard as if our bodies would never have another moment to touch and he kissed me with all the life left in him. As if this would be the very first and last kiss he would ever have, his hands folded into my hair and held my jaw close to his face, unrelenting, as he kissed me with a fury of a thousand soldiers returned home from war. I gave way and struggled to get as close to him as possible. My breasts inflamed with the touch of his chest and the anticipation of his mouth biting at me.

  “Roxas, is this for real?” I questioned his eyes as I tore myself away from his mouth for just a moment. He stopped and slid his strong arms down to hold my hands. “I really have no idea what this is, or why the Norns have given us this second chance, but together I know what we have. What we have experienced in the past, and how much I knew Roxas was in love with Lady. We will find our way with these two real humanoid vampire bodies, just as we fell in love with one another as avatars online.”

  Khaldon’s eyes were now the ones flowing with tears of joy and I cradled him in my arms. I never knew a man to weep before, but I sure felt the power behind it. His abili
ty to show emotion in that way sealed any doubts I had anywhere. I knew this man loved me ... and everything about me. My avatar, my person, my vampire! No one knew more about me than this creature I was holding in my arms.

  “I can’t tell you how I have prayed to the gods to allow me to have you.” His eyes glowed crimson under the green.

  I began to feel my inner core heat up in a way I hadn’t experienced before. A primal surge swelled inside me. The relief became a voracious hunger and I wanted him. I wanted to drink him, to consume him, to have him inside me – flowing through me. I wanted to be filled to the brim with ecstasy as we feasted on the pleasures of the flesh. Desire pushed me forward as he kissed me holding me so tight in his hands. I reached to touch at his chest, maybe dare to unbutton his shirt.

  My cell phone went off. I didn’t want to look at the damn thing, I only wanted to ravage on this man. The caller ID showed it was from Ludovic.

  Shite!

  “Khaldon, it’s Ludovic – Dakota’s boyfriend – he’s calling back.” I showed him the phone.

  “Can you put it on speaker?”

  I nodded and opened the phone. “Hello?”

  “So I see you aren’t at home. You have been naughty, Cheyenne. Who are you with, my dear?”

  “I just went out for some fresh air. I needed to focus and to think. To get ready for your game. I went to get some bloodwine, that’s all.”

  Ludovic was silent over the line.

  “Are you still there, Ludovic?” I swallowed hard and looked at Khaldon. “Do you need me to go home now?”

  “I think I’m going to give you a pop quiz, since you left the house. Are you ready for your first clue, Cheyenne?”