BloodStar

by Montoya, Cassidy

  "Oh my," she said. She reached out and slid her index finger along his arm, careful to keep it at an angle so her one inch black nails, filed to a point for the festivities, wouldn’t impede the progress of her sensation. "I have long suffered your denial, but I knew when you were just a fledgling how special you are. We marveled when you rebuked the sire with whom you so desperately seek reunion, and look at you now. Still unwilling to accept what you are even as your true nature shines through. Sabian, do you hear what I’m saying? Literally shines." She cocked her head at an angle toward his forearm and motioned with her eyes to look.

  This was new, something he’d never seen in himself before. How long had this been happening? Was he oblivious to his own blood, so luminescent with power that it lit the geography of his body? Or had it just started, needing a catalyst so powerful, a state of such sublime desperation to activate the latent ability? He hadn’t stopped to think about what happened outside with Cranium the Thrall-Boy. He gave only a moment’s attention to the memory of blood trickling down the young one’s face from his ears, gathering into great, black droplets at his jaw and then sliding to the cement. He’d never done anything like that before.

  "I do like this new look on you, Sabian. You know, there are other offices here, less hospitable but more private."

  "Jesus, Simone. I just need to see Roman."

  She moved behind him, and pushed her breasts against his back, hand snaking around the front to the flat planes of his abdomen. "'Today we love what tomorrow we hate; today we seek what tomorrow we shun; today we desire what tomorrow we fear.'" Her hand dipped again to his cock, and this time he did not push her away. "I'm not just quoting literature, am I? I can feel desire…right…here." She cupped what his jeans allowed her to, and gave a gentle squeeze.

  "Simone, you fucking French virago, step aside." He threw her hand from him in disgust, and started up the stairs.

  Simone smiled. "Sabian, honestly, as if I could stop you." He didn’t turn back, but heard her velvet French accent reach him at the top, even though the music raged at deafening decibels. "Fuck you later, BloodStar."

  Lightening repartee, a bit vulgar, though. He smiled even through his ire. The vulgarity had always been part of her charm.

  With Anya out terrorizing the Montana populace, Marley and Sam were left alone to regard each other in silence. Marley pined for absolution, and Sam pined for Marley, his anatomy all but shouting at her for attention. She had more than a few ideas for his impressive arousal that couldn’t just hold still in his lap.

  Jesus, she wanted him. She could just throw down a take-two, entrance him if she had to and climb in his lap, but then Anya came through the door.

  "I must have missed something very special." Anya seated herself at the tiny table, looking from Sam to Marley.

  "When is he coming?" This from Sam who had wedged himself in the small space between the bed and the wall that separated the living quarters from the tiled cold of the bathroom.

  "Soon. Do you two need some privacy before he arrives? I think you have time." She raised her eyebrows in a suggestive smile.

  This was her sire? Anya the incessant mind fucker? It was the first time the thought occurred to Marley, and the ramifications were paramount. Marley was already gifted as a human at ignoring social norms and moral conventions. With Anya as her teacher, she had all the makings of sociopathy in her new Kindred skin.

  "He’s not coming," Marley said, and she believed it. Why would it have taken him this long? And quite honestly, who cared? Fuck Sabian. She’d moved on to the Hunter in the corner.

  "Uh oh, someone's given up hope. Look Samuel, she's let go of the hero worship already."

  Sam rolled his eyes and made damn sure they didn't come to rest locked on Marley's. For her contribution, Marley did what she could with no training to avoid entrancing him. If Anya hadn't walked in, things might have been different, but she and her Hunter didn't need an audience for what she had in mind.

  "He'll find us, pet, don't worry. My blood calls him home…to me. And when he comes, so shall his blood sing for me." It almost sounded like a biblical passage, the Gospel of Anya. No one in the room finished the statement with the obvious question—where the hell was he, then?

  "Jesus Anya, you are one dramatic bitch," said Marley. She just couldn't help herself.

  "Oh, I can give you dramatics, just you wait. You think Sam loves it when I take his vein? Wait until it's Sabian's blood on my tongue."

  Oh no she didn't. Fucking whore. Marley took no time to meditate on her impulse. She moved to stake her claim quick and clean. She was shutting this Russian bitch down. There was only one woman in Sabian’s life now, and goddamn it, Sam was her toy, her human.

  Oblivious to everything but the need to protect what was hers, Marley folded herself into a spring about to be released while her throat vibrated with violence. Never mind thirty seconds prior she had essentially thrown the BloodStar aside, and who cared about how crazy her objectification of Sam had suddenly become.

  A nanosecond before Marley cut her spring loose and attacked, Anya smiled and shook her head side to side. "No no no, childe of mine."

  A puppeteer had pulled strings attached to Marley’s back taut and fixed them that way. She rose, and assumed her position of subservience. What the hell? She didn’t understand how she wound up ready to attack in the first place, and she sure as hell didn't get the remote control action. Marley's was a feisty nature, and she’d had her share of catfights over the years, but she had never been ready to brawl in such quick measure.

  Especially over a man.

  "Territorial, aren’t you? I can’t wait until you see him with your new eyes. You’ll really want to defend your property then." Anya’s voice softened, sweet like a grandmother on Christmas Eve. "Why did I make you, childe?"

  "What?" asked Marley. That was the thing about Anya. She was as crazy as a shithouse loon, but from the outside looking in, she seemed as benign and demure as could be—until you spent more than thirty seconds with her.

  Anya laughed. It was a quiet, impassive sound. "Well, you don't like the idea of Sabian feeding me, and whether you know it or not, you seriously hate the fact that he and I share a bond—a blood bond—that now you and he never will."

  Holy shit, the bitch was right. Just hearing that boiled her blood and gave her crimson visions of dismemberment.

  "And the same bond he and I have, now you and I have. I am your sire, you my childe, and as such, I have certain rights and influence over you. If I say yes, it shall be yes. If I say go, you will go." The quality of her voice now morphed into pinched acrimony. "Now, why did I make you?"

  Just before Anya walked through the door, Marley wanted more than anything for Sam to bend her over and work her out Hunter-style, and a few minutes later, she was helpless to control her immature jealousy over Sabian. Now, with zero effort, Anya had turned Marley from a would-be assassin into an obedience-training superstar.

  She was one hundred percent subject to Anya's will. So why did she change Marley?

  The answer was blatant, wasn’t it? Anya was the puppeteer extraordinaire, and she had the perfect demonic marionette. Anya could do anything she wanted to or with Marley. Marley knew she’d been taken to lure Sabian. Some things were just obvious, but now she truly understood.

  There was nothing Anya couldn’t make her do. There was no one in Marley’s world Anya would spare. Sabian would suffer, Sam would suffer, and it was Marley who would inflict the torment. This wasn’t as simple as a murderous plot of revenge. This could go on forever.

  They were all fucked.

  Chapter Thirty

  The loft above the main floor of the warehouse was smoky with atmosphere and approaching sauna humidity. Body heat from the rave below drifted upward, blanketing the VIP room with the stench of indulgence.

  Sabian was starving.

  There were no more than twenty bodies in the VIP loft, just enough vampires sprinkled with a few key humans
(naught more than appetizers) to make the room seem cramped.

  These very important people weren’t your average suckers and fuckers, or they’d be downstairs. These were vamps out in their Sunday best, the humans classy yet provocative, and of course, Roman garnished the rear wall like a king on his throne.

  Sabian looked past one elder whose tender suckling at the wrist of an adolescent boy had him on the obvious verge of climax. He looked past the vampire in the corner bracing his arms against the two adjacent walls with a human woman on her knees before him. There was an element of privacy with the vamp’s back to the crowd Sabian guessed, but there was no mistaking what was happening.

  None of this was of concern, and none was out of bounds on Halloween. Ever with Kindred, for that matter.

  Sabian’s crosshairs were locked on Roman. It was impossible to say when the old vampire had been embraced, but the change happened later in his mortal life. Roman never admitted such personal details to his Kindred, not any more, not in these days of electronic records and social security numbers. He had a shock of wild, white hair, not unlike Doc Brown from Back to the Future. Narrow nose, piercing blue eyes, clad in vintage vagabond, Roman looked exactly the part of any nondescript bogeyman hunting the darkness of night, ever the walking millennial cliché

  There was something else, something more pronounced since Sabian last saw Roman. An eerie glow piggybacked his already distinctive pallor. Many vampires, especially Elders and Ancients, seemed to take on a clear, almost ethereal blue hue, and despite many attempts at understanding the physiology of this phenomenon, Sabian was never able to get an older vampire to explain. Upon their last meeting more than a hundred years before, only the faintest hint of the wraithlike luminance was beginning to show, but now Roman actually seemed to glow when compared with the younger vamps in the room.

  Part of Sabian’s shame in his sire (and yes, he’d been ashamed of every vampire he’d ever met in one way or another, including himself) was Roman’s slavery to the inconsequential and trifling (if not almost painful) vampire social network.

  Occasionally Roman fasted—not from blood, of course. Never from blood. When Roman denied himself, it was the fruits of Kindred company that became taboo, and the elder vampire sermonized to anyone who would listen that denying themselves their blood-communities added spice and flavor to their meals, allowing one to savor what seems so easy to procure and mundane after too much time hunting in packs.

  Even Kindred who walked alone by nature found their way back to the same fanged faces to commune; it was almost a desperate need, and denying that need made existence more exciting. Or at least more interesting if you asked Roman.

  Sabian had never subscribed. He’d never been desperate to commune with his brothers and sisters. He was only crippled by the absence of one specific entity—his soul-mate.

  Roman floated to Sabian, champagne glass in hand. He stood before his progeny with a satisfied smile on his blood-tinted lips. "By all the gods, I never thought I’d see the day." He looked past Sabian, and announced, "A BloodStar in the midst, and at the premier event of the social calendar." He turned his attention back to his childe and begged Sabian to share a secret. "What has gotten into you, son?"

  Sabian couldn’t help the smile that crept across his face. "Shouldn’t you be in the mountains of Eastern Europe terrorizing the locals?"

  "This little soiree may just drive me to it, to be honest." Roman swirled his champagne flute, holding it up in front of his eyes while the scarlet legs sluice down the sides. He looked through the glass at Sabian, locking eyes before moving it to his nose. Roman inhaled the bouquet, and sighed.

  "Virgin blood," he said. "How long since I’ve bedded a virgin? Since before we last met, I’d wager. Perhaps you’re right; maybe it’s time to walk the mountains of my homeland for a bit. I’ve lost touch with how special humans can be, how much they have to offer beyond the blood." He looked around the room, and said with a sneer, "Too much time with bloodsuckers."

  Roman tipped his glass back and downed his portion in one gulp. When his hand strayed to Sabian's cheek, Sabian forced himself to allow his sire the caress, wanting his elder to embrace the false sense of intimacy the virgin blood induced.

  "What brings you out in public," Roam finally asked. "This is the absolute last place I would ever have expected to see you. Shouldn’t you be off hunting that soul-mate of yours from the shadows?" He asked the question with obvious amusement in his voice.

  "If only I had the discipline to keep to the shadows."

  Roman dropped the sarcasm. "What is it, my son?"

  Days of being wound tighter than a hound-dog on a scent had taken their toll on Sabian. Was Roman actually about to play the concerned parent?

  "How easily the word son slips through your lips, as if you didn’t just mock my love for her. Is your support too much to ask, sire?"

  Sabian resisted the urge to spit in Roman’s rosy-cheeked face. The vampire was here, safe and comfortable, gorging on blood out of crystal flutes while Sabian, the only of his childer he professed to love, received nothing but mean-spirited ridicule. Sabian felt old grudges bubbling up from God only knew where he’d been caging them. He struggled to get himself under control, to remember why he was here.

  Sabian needed Roman’s help. Roman, who swayed before him, drunk from decadence. Roman, who left him to die three-hundred years before. Roman, who somehow remained relevant to the Kindred community, a vamp who managed to be deplorable yet loveable to the masses, much like an immortal Kardashian.

  "Support?" asked Roman, shock apparent in his millennial-cataracts. "Don’t I broadcast your status to anyone who will listen?"

  Sabian threw his hands up in a this-again?

  "Don’t tell me you still haven’t accepted what you are?"

  "That seems to be the question of the evening, Roman, and I couldn’t care less. Fucking Simone is quoting prose for God’s sake." Of course he’d recognized the passage. What the hell did he have to do to pass the long years besides read and feed, although Defoe was not his favorite.

  "Simone du Lieu, yes, ever the scholar." Roman grinned like the rascal he was. "Does she still want to bend you six ways to Sunday?"

  "I care as much about Simone du Lieu and her depravity as ever."

  "Childe, you do know this is a party. Why are you here? To brood and ruin my good time? It’s been a hundred years since you’ve allowed me my due time with my prodigy. Tell me you're not here to punish me…again."

  "Punish you? You’re beyond punishment. Everyone knows that. You don’t know me at all, do you?"

  "Whose fault is that?"

  Sabian reached deep within for calm. He looked away from his sire, and willed the cascade of blood, continually recycling it’s path through the novelty fountain, to hypnotize him into a feeling of balance. It only made him think of the verbal diarrhea that spewed from his sire’s mouth every time they met, quite opposite the effect he'd hoped for.

  Roman stepped closer to Sabian, and lowered his voice. Sabian could have heard his sire whisper even if they were standing directly in front of the speakers downstairs, but Roman wanted intimacy.

  "Son, let me help you. You’ve never needed me, and of all my childer, you’re the only one I do." Roman swept his hand through the air. "We are helpless around you, don’t you see? Look around the room, even now."

  Sabian looked at the VIP room, and found that everyone had turned their attention to him, and from a vampire perspective on elapsed time (which would have made Einstein proud with its simple demonstration of relativity), even the most furtive glances felt like an eternity. Only Kindred could mark the passage of decades as a blink of an eye, yet have the capacity for such rapid movement that events lasting only fractions of seconds were on a molasses timeline.

  "Even the oldest of us all, hell, even the Ancients, I suspect, if they ever had a mind to slither out of whatever cave they’ve been hiding in all this time, have no immunity to your draw. Your blood si
ngs to us. Let me help. Accept what you are, and let me help."

  If Roman wanted to toss the old subject around, it was what Roman would get by hook or crook, wily old bastard. When Roman offered his help, what he was truly offering was a sparring match, sire vs. childe in a three hundred year old debate.

  Sabian sucked in the steamy air, and heaved it out in a half sigh, half sob. Roman stepped back, and gave him some room. Sabian would just admit defeat to get past this. His sire would know there was no truth behind the concession; maybe Roman would leave it alone.

  Never in all his centuries had Sabian entertained the thought of placating Roman with verses of love and acceptance of the BloodStar title, but maybe this was the time. He could do it; he could say please, call Roman father, give up a fraction of his notorious independence. Marley was worth it.

  But when he spoke, the tranquility he’d summoned was missing, and so were the words he needed to say to move forward.

  "I accept nothing. I know who I am; it’s the rest of you who don’t. What you call helpless, I call lazy. Vampires are as senseless as humans, wanting to be told who to admire, how to vote, which products will best clear their skin. Only with us, it’s which BloodStar to back for unification of the covens, how to best balance living in secret and having a public persona, the best methods to season the blood when the world has gone gray. Kindred have become tedious, Roman, you don’t see that?"

  "Sabian, I see a would be king. You’re the one who cannot see."

  "Christ, Roman, Kindred want their next messiah, someone to tell them what to do. And I don’t exactly see the BloodStar lining up for the job."

  "The other BloodStar are the giant oaks of the vampire world—stodgy old buggers rooted in their ignorance, unyielding and unable to progress."

  "Lord, you are so full of it. Have you ever met a BloodStar? Even seen one?"