by Poppet
Maybe I should take the bullet and be done with it. It's mercy.
“I've got it.” Another deep voice croons into the room, but I'm too shattered to look. Too afraid.
“Ryan leave. I'll take care of Božena,” the new voice insists.
“The way you did this morning? I won't have rape under my roof, do you hear me boy?”
“Fuck you! Call me boy again and I'll tear your fucking heart out.”
The deafening boom in close quarters bursts sweat from every pore, my ears sing, and I'm whimpering so loud in my own head I curl in on myself against the wall.
Jesus! Help!
The hand on my shoulder bullets me off the bed.
Skittish, I dive for the opposite wall, snapping back to face them, waiting for the next bang to plant metal between my eyes.
My legs are caving, I need to pee so bad, but then I notice that mysterious man from my dream holding his shoulder where crimson seeps over his fingers. The black haired psycho keeps advancing and I cave to my instincts, releasing a scream of desperation.
Hysterical, I launch into attack, knowing I have to fight to the death - because I'm dead either way.
*
Zaria:
Just my rotten luck. Dammit!
His home is gorgeous except for the fact that it's a bunker like Venix's house. No windows has become a dead giveaway. How many supernatural families remain out of sight below ground and we don't even know it?
The walls are the lemon and lime shades of serpentinite stone which means we are cut off from calling for help mentally. They'd have to be psychic to find us now.
And what did he mean blood?
I look across to my companions. Aisyx and Phoebe have hit it off. I can't believe how freaking calm this woman is in a crisis. She's made for emergencies.
“So you're mortal, and he is too?” Aisyx interrogates with flirtatious fascination.
“I wonder if that would work on you?” she says, tilting her head and surveying him.
“Ask a woman to forgive me? I don't think so Phoebe. If neuri are anything, we're proud. We tend to curl up and die, or lick our wounds in private, rather than ask for help,” Aisyx says to her, all pally pally.
God! Get me the fuck out of here! Zauran and Jo are in danger and these two are carrying on like they're having afternoon tea.
I lose their conversation from my end of the lounge when Ryan walks in through the spacious opening to the next room, which leads to the next, and the next, like an opulent maze of indulgence.
He looks my way, unbuttoning the shirt which made him look so yummy earlier.
“I won't be a minute, Zaria. I just need a new shirt.”
And while I'm watching, he stalks to the end of the deep room where a wide black desk waits.
Yanking the shirt off, he reaches into a drawer, pulling a white cloth out and wiping his face of... oh cripes! That's blood!
Bolting out of my chair, I walk fast over to him, trying to circumvent Phoebe's watchful eye.
“Are you okay?” I whisper when I reach him, doing a brilliant job of not staring at the most sculpted chest and abs I've ever seen.
“I'm fine,” he says, dropping the blood speckled cotton onto the desk and opening a concealed door.
Withdrawing a new black shirt, he shrugs it on and starts buttoning it up. He's definitely the formal one out of the three brothers. It suits him. It gives him an authoritative and cultured edge.
“Zaria, need I remind you I can hear your thoughts.” He drops his voice, leaning his fists on the desk to stare me in the eye, “And I love that you harbor such appreciative musings about me.”
“Oh fuck off.” Snapping my focus to the desk, the closet, the walls, the expensive furnishings, I change the subject, “Why do you have blood on your face? Are you the one hiding Zauran?”
“I shot Sveta.”
He says it as if mentioning it's breezy outdoors.
“What?!” I gasp, trying to keep my voice low.
“When my brethren challenge me I put them in their place.”
He sits down in the tall backed black chair behind the desk to penetrate me with his cryptic eyes. I still can't get over his voice. It's angelic. It's deep, smooth, and fractured so it strums every single nerve ending in my body.
God!
Annoyed with my thoughts, I sit moodily in the chair opposite his. “What do we do now, Ryan? How do we get Zauran back?”
Ignoring my question, he speaks into my head to keep the conversation private. Zaria, you are not entirely human.
Excuse me? I frown, sure I'm not hearing him right.
Do you know what a Slakax is?
No, I've never heard of it. What is he talking about?
There were others, long ago. At the very dawn of the species planted here for humanity, for ourselves too, but right at the beginning were Slakax, he purrs through my skin, mind, spine.
What is a Slakax? I say telepathically.
Light. They are made of light, and slowly they became solid, over hundreds of years, thousands probably. One day they appeared at the annual meeting, solid. They are glorious, beautiful, graceful... mes-mer-iz-ing.
He stops speaking, staring through me with his eyes misting heavily in the shades of crocus flowers.
Pinching the top of his nose with long strong fingers, he continues, They are the angels on earth. There are no other species made like them. They love completely, they smell like galactic orgasms, they are so blatantly sexy and irresistible that all other supernaturals are drawn to them. When the Slakax became solid they were hunted because of this. Everyone who was anyone wanted to own, bed, or wed, the Slakax.
I have a knot growing in my solar plexus. Ryan, why are you telling me this?
Because you are part Slakax. It's improbable, but it's true.
Rubbish! I'm human through and through. My parents were both human and both died horribly human deaths!
Tapping his fingertips together, he mildly says, I think Jowendrhan knew, and that's why he chose Zena to turn into a vampyre to have children with him–
Jo made her pregnant? But that was last night... and she's already showing.
His eyes clear back to black, dewy and gentle, soft and velvet, two perfect pools of deep tranquility. Yes Zaria, he's a fucking idiot who hasn't a clue what he's doing. He obviously knows a whole lot of nothing about the Slakax.
And you do? I say, arching my eyebrows.
Yes. I'm part Slakax too.
“You are?” I'm so shocked I speak aloud.
Before you get excited, let me inform you that my mother is not Zauran's mother. I'm old, Zaria. Very very old. He sighs heavily, reverting to the habit of rolling the cuffs on his shirt up to the elbow, slowly, as if buying time. That's why my voice is different. You love it, it turns you inside out because you have Slakax pumping in your veins. I sound like the first Casting. Movies call the first Originals. They are not originals, they are Casting.
Why Casting? I frown, finally drawing blood from my lip where I've been biting.
“They are cast, and they cast. Light casts into darkness to rescue the lost. Casting, it is what it is. What is cast cannot be changed, it cannot be undone. Zaria, that book you read... It's called the Book of Light. It's a Slakax book handed down by my father to the oldest son, which is me. We may be neuri, but we're the alpha family because we have Slakax blood. It's in me, and it makes me the most powerful neuri on earth.”
Finally looking up and meeting my gaze, he says, “Zauran, Sveta, and myself, share the same father. It's exceptionally rare for a man to have a Slakax male child. I'm rarer than manna. It's usually passed on to the daughters. Slakax are ruled by women, they are the keepers of true spiritual light. Neuri are the opposite, being only male. It seems before Venix left he gave Zauran a letter. A letter Zauran could barely read because the language was so ancient.”
Rubbing at his eyes, he finally links his fingers and thumps his hands heavily on the desk, “I only read Ven
ix's letter today, after you left with Jo because of Sveta. I had to warn Zauran. Jowendrhan was asked to investigate you and Phoebe, to find out why you look identical when you come from different places and are born in different years from different mothers. The reason is because you have the same father.”
Jowendrhan knew! The bastard knew about me and that means he guessed about Božena. How could he know and not tell me?
He holds up his hand, knowing I'm about to burst with objection. Fire is roaring in my veins at the accusation.
“Zaria, I will compel you if you start to get argumentative with me.” He gives me the warning look of a father, of a husband... god!
“Stop it!” I hiss under my breath. Stop giving me this familiar lover vibe.
Ignoring me again, he says, “You and Božena smell identical, you look identical, and that can only happen if you have the same father - because we know your mothers are different. It's a common trait among the Slakax.”
Leaning back in his chair, he swivels it slightly, “And that is why you are adored by my kind, and the vampyre. That is why you are drawn to both species.”
“But I don't feel like I'm light, or fantastic. I have problems just like everyone else...” For some reason I can't speak. My voice chokes in my throat and I stare at his hands where they now rest across his black shirt on a hard stomach.
“Zaria, listen to me,” he says softly, sitting forward and reaching across the desk to catch my hand in his, looking at me with sincerity. “I'm not cruel, or a monster. I'm the lead alpha because I honor and respect love and light. That's why I put the book of light between you and Zauran. When he covered you in his light, which is a gift of being raised with Slakax teachings, he was withdrawing your light to bond you together in the first language. The first language was light. We didn't have speech back then, we didn't need it. I protected you Zaria, because you are special. I could feel it, sense it, smell it, it's all over you like rare perfume.”
I snatch my hand out of his to scowl at him, huddling into my chair.
He smiles, slowly. It's lazy and predatory, “Zaria, you will recall the way Zauran reacted to you? He couldn't leave you alone and the second he got you isolated he went straight for the sugar.”
“How the hell would you know?” I'm damn positive Zauran wouldn't divulge that information, not to anyone.
I investigated your mind, remember? He laughs softly, giving me a wink. “Sweetheart, Zauran and Sveta speak light, they use it to compel, love, seduce. I have done nothing but protect you since the moment we met. Stop treating me like a traitor.”
“Then stop making idle chitchat! I'm pregnant with your brother's babies and he's out there bleeding somewhere!”
“He didn't give you a choice, Zaria. He broke the law. The babies will be taken away, as will Božena's babies. They both broke the law by impregnating Slakax without permission. We can't save them because the only creatures who could get the jump on Jowendrhan and Zauran, who are two of the most powerful supernatural men on this entire planet, well the only ones who can get that right are either angels, or demons. We can't save them Zaria. Now my only priority is saving you and Zena from the suffering of children.”
Suffering of children? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?
He gets up, moving around the desk to perch against it in front of me, leaning forward to hold the arms of my chair, cornering me into intimacy.
“Zaria, Božena is suffering. You surely noticed? The pregnancy is poisoning her body and if she doesn't get help she's going to die.” Magnificent black eyes zero in on me with such focus it squeezes my heart, “Do you want to go through it too Zaria? Do you really want Zauran's babies so much you're willing to die for them?”
No.
I can't even say it. But it hurts. It hurts my soul to say no. And that makes no sense. Why would Venix give Zauran a letter with that kind of information?
“Because this is Zauran's territory and he's the one responsible for the spiritual guardianship of everyone living here. Venix was leaving, he gave the information to the one now responsible, the one he left in command, the one he led you to for safekeeping. It's what any good leader would have done.”
“We have to save Zena,” I say, distracted, trying to get up out of my chair but can't with him all over me like a cobra hood.
“We can't. Only her maker can heal her now, or his elder, and Jo no longer has an elder on earth.” And Jo himself is missing.
Now what do we do? We have to do something.
“Ryan, am I going to die?” I whisper shakily, strength fleeing my body as the significance of this pregnancy hits me.
Dark eyes fill with indigo swirls and a large hand reaches up to capture my chin. His voice is celestial when he says, “I am Zauran's elder. I can heal you.”
When he leans closer the purple mist touches my skin, caressing my cheek in ribbon cascades, But you have to trust me Zaria. You have to let me in.
Chapter 18
Zauran:
Every neuron is on fire, air is acid, living is agony, but I fight through it, clenching my fists so tight my skin feels like it's grated off muscle. My bones scrape together and jagged fingernails pierce more pain into my flesh.
Her skin, her hair, her beautiful eyes.
Clinging to her image, forcing myself to breathe in the scent of fragile flowers from memory instead of the blood and sulfur, the sweat and metal, the chaffing burn of devil-rope and the stings left embedded in my back... flowers.
Long black hair softer than clouds...
Lips juicier than melon...
Laughter that makes me high, giddy, delirious...
I taste blood.
Scars split open to weep for me.
Zaria...
I want to die...
Let me... please.
*
Sveta:
Ryan just goes swanning out of the room after shooting me in the shoulder, and after overpowering Božena's mind so she loses the hysterics and reverts to catatonic.
This is bullshit!
Covering the wound and staunching blood - I focus, forcing the metal through muscle, grimacing with the effort, grunting through the burn as muscles tear and separate.
Sweat sticks the hair to my forehead while I watch Zena with my eyes wild with neuri fire.
Tensing, doubling over, I force the bullet through bone, slimy blood, cartilage, to finally birth through the skin over my shoulder blade.
Motherfucking bastard.
Catching the pellet slick with my bloody stain, I pocket it. I'm going to make Ryan swallow it later. I've had about all I'm going to take from the alpha egos in my family.
Crouching, internally focussing my attention, I knit muscle and bone back together.
I'm going to have a scar from this.
When I know I'm healed I draw myself up to stand, testing my weight, testing my balance. Sure I won't keel over unexpectedly, I return to the maiden in her own personal torment.
Smoothing skin off her neck I stare at my tangerine mark left in her skin.
You can't die, Zena. I won't let you.
Lifting her, sitting myself down and draping her across my legs, I cradle her to my chest, resting her head in the hollow of my shoulder.
I can't offer much, but I won't abandon you the way Jowendrhan did. As long as my heart beats I will stay to comfort you, to hold you safe so you know you have a witness.
You have a rock.
I will not let you suffer alone, in isolation.
Jowendrhan needs to pay for this.
And he will!
*
Darise:
This isn't like her. Out of my mind with worry I give in, picking up the phone to call Seithe. He's a hacker and it's about to come in handy.
Dialing, I wait for the long distance call to go through and start ringing. Every second is an eternity when my instincts are bellowing at me that something is horribly amiss.
“Seithe, it's Darise.”
&
nbsp; “'Sup?” he drawls lazily.
“Have you heard from Zaria?”
“Jeez dude, I'm living on the other side of the planet and you phone me looking for your girlfriend?”
“I have a bad feeling bro. A really fucking bad feeling.”
“Actually, I saw her this morning. She and Phoebe met at Nikola Pašić Square for coffee.”
I scowl at the old vaulted ceiling of the lounge. “Wait. My girlfriend and your wife met for coffee, here?”
“Yup.”
The black hole in my gut grows exponentially. The last time those two got together behind my back, the world changed.
“She hid it from me. She was supposed to drop off a bunch of stock for the Pravus shop but she never showed, and she's not answering her phone,” I say to Seithe.
“Dude, chill. She's not chained to you, sometimes girls just have to do whatever the hell it is they do.”
Sitting down, squeezing my knee with two fingers to watch the veins in my arm pop out, I speak to the floor, “I need you to find her phone. Tell me where she is.”
Seithe is silent for a moment too long, before saying, “Come clean. What the fuck have you done now?”
“I may have been caught sucking Božena's sweet smile.”
“When?” he demands, all business.
“Last night. I forgot she was meant to drop the stuff off last night, the odds are Zaria saw me and I didn't see her.”
The bastard starts laughing at me.
“Darise! It sucks being mortal doesn't it? It's like walking around with a permanent blindfold.”
“No kidding,” I grumble.
It's true. I can no longer find her psychically, can't sense her nearness, can't smell her walk through a room, can't hear her thoughts, fucking nothing!
“Okay, hang on, I'm walking to my office.”
“Thanks bro,” I say, relaxing enough to slump into the comfort of the couch.
“Right, so you want to know where her phone is because she's not answering? Correct?”
“Yes,” I nod, shoving the fringe off my forehead and holding it down with my hand on my head.