Eternal Bondage

by Vita Anne Hoffman

  "Pretty and witty,” he said in a poetic, modulated fashion before he added in far harsher tones, “make for a deadly combination, Miss Soulsmith. Those are sharp barbs. Careful that you don't get yourself a bad prick."

  His insinuation, his not-so-veiled and rather sexually-oriented threat, draped over me like a weighty substantial pall. I nearly cried uncle! But my vocal cords had glued together. I fought not to hyperventilate.

  Gerard, at his lawyerly best, intervened. He cleared his throat by way of preamble. “We will go to the police station right now.” He placed a hand to Ginny's back, readying to guide her from the room. “Once there has been proper identification, Tanya can be released into our custody. From there, we'll go straight to East Side General ... for the, uh, procedure. The Red Cross distributes blood components from that facility."

  Max had listened intently to this discussion, even having halted his pacing. “I am coming, too."

  "Of course.” This came from Ginny. She instinctively reached out to touch his arm, a gesture of comfort and compassion. Offered, no less, to a distraught vampire. I tried not to cringe, averting my eyes elsewhere.

  It was then, amid the movement and murmurs as the group began to break up and exit the confines of the blue room, that I noticed another bit of motion. Constantine's second groupie, the one who had remained in an immobilized state of bliss, came alert in one swift, savage instant. Hate contorted her face into something grotesque. Her lips twisted back in a cobra-like hiss. She had, indeed, become a venomous thing.

  I shouted a warning, just as she ripped an object from inside her blouse, striking with the speed of a viper.

  Constantine moved faster. Gone was his feigned indolence, the relaxed pose, the seeming laziness. In a blur of motion almost invisible to the human eye, he caught her wrist as she tried to plunge a silver tipped nail file into his heart. An ingenious weapon, that. Note-to-self: stock them at De Facto Self Defense.

  He roared an echoing awful bellow and rose to his feet, lifting the assassin up off the ground by her fragile wrist. I plainly heard a snap of bone. And, still, somehow, she dangled in his grasp, suspended well above the floor by the pulpy remains of her wrist. Constantine's beauty, the glossy black waves of hair, the perfect athletic body, the piercing bright ice-blue eyes, was not diminished by the sudden revelation of this monstrous physical power, but was rather, extraordinarily, enhanced by it. An inner fire, a white-hot inferno, suffused him, blazing from out of his very skin, creating a faint halo around him that coruscated against the blue of the walls. And, even though there was this sudden demonic cast to his features, they were still compelling, still stunning, still mesmerizing.

  I shuddered at admiring such unholy beauty.

  Then I saw him raise his other hand and read his intent. He meant to rip out her throat.

  "Don't!” The ragged croak tore from my throat. This was my second shouted warning to Constantine. He had acted on the first in less than a nano second, deflecting a blow delivered with silver that could have killed him. This time he hesitated, rather than immediately react.

  In a grotesque tableau, he continued to hold the woman off of the floor by the stretching skin and pulverized bone of her wrist and fore arm. From off to one side of me, I heard Ginny retch. My own gullet hitched in sympathy. Bile tried to rise in my throat. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ginny turn away and begin to heave. I fought not to be sick, too, because the only thing keeping Constantine from destroying the woman was me, the implied threat of my order for him to stop, and the intensity of my gaze staring him down.

  "She's human, isn't she? It's obvious she did not do this of her own volition.” I drew a deep breath and prepared to further defy him, although how I could back up such bravado was beyond me. I was unarmed, except for my silver-plated moon and star earrings. A fat lot of good they'd do me! It had just seemed impolite to bring a cross, holy water, and garlic into a night club full of, as Pater Traeger insisted, innocent law-abiding vampires. I marshaled the last ounce of my righteous indignation and confronted Constantine. Yet again. “I refuse to be a witness to murder. I can't let you take her life."

  My mouth went bone dry as I waited for an answer.

  Constantine, with a much-put-upon expression, let the woman fall to the floor. She curled in a fetal position, unmoving, not even aware of the mashed remains of her wrist. She was most definitely under a vampiric compulsion, a very strong one. She did not even know she was in this world. And, if one believed in this evil Rasputin, of whom I had never heard until this very night, he had sent this poor weak-willed soul as a weapon against a powerful adversary, another progenitor.

  Constantine contemptuously stared at his would-be assassin. Then he shifted his gaze to me, flicking that same disdainful regard up and down my entire blue and silver clad length. He looked towards Gerard. “Don't call an ambulance. That would be far too disruptive. Have a bouncer deliver her to the hospital.” He next turned his attention on the brown haired slut who cowered next to the floorboards of the wall, trying to shrink into nothingness. She had crammed a fist into her mouth, choking off the screams and sobs that made her body spasm. I did not have an ounce of sympathy for Ms. Hot-to-Trot.

  "This one I intend to question.” Constantine glanced at me. He arched one brow questioningly, mockingly.

  "Knock yourself out.” I passed a saucer-eyed Ginny as I bee-lined for the door. Gerard, however, kept a poker face. Assassinations and pulverized body parts, I assumed, must be commonplace for a lawyer, especially one representing a progenitor.

  Behind me, as I purposefully strode toward the beaded curtain, scooping up my small purse without breaking my stride, I heard two intermixed sounds—Constantine's soft amused laughter and the little slut's whimpers. I finally did feel a fleeting moment of pity for her but not enough to intervene. Not even when Constantine called after me.

  "Why not stay, Miss Soulsmith? And join me ... in the interrogation?” His pleasured thrill at such a notion, of us two engaged in some doubtlessly raunchy form of torture, tried to infect me! It streaked down my retreating back with almost a tangible force.

  I shook off the tiny compulsion and kept right on trucking. I began to push through the curtain of blue plastic beads. Their loud clacking signaled that I had nearly made a clean getaway. I had stood toe-to-toe with a vampire progenitor and faced him down! However, one thing marred my exuberance. I hadn't gotten in the last word. So, as I passed through the jangling strands of the beaded curtain, I muttered a final jibe just under my breath, a sassy smart mouth comment too low for anyone to hear but me.

  "Torture's not my thing. So I'll pass. You'll have to get your jollies without me.” Even as those barely-spoken, entirely ill-advised words left my mouth, I could've kicked myself. He, ancient powerful vampire progenitor, HAD heard them with his damn bionic hearing! Nor was he going to ignore them. Constantine's indignant fury, like amplified sound waves, spewed out and about me.

  Frightened, I rushed into the night club proper and watched as bodies, the dancers, the partiers, the club-habitués, seemed to cluster nearer to hem me in from an easy escape, while Constantine, his aura hot as a blast furnace, now loomed at my back. I, a barely closeted Vampyraphobe, shuddered from our nearness, but it wasn't from disgust! Or fear. It was a jolt of attraction.

  He gripped tight to my right arm and leant—full-length—against my shoulder, side, and hip. The fabric of his immaculate steel gray suit slicked suggestively against my body when he pushed even harder into me. The fringe of his coal colored waves brushed my neck. The sharp edge of his partially extended fangs glinted, just barely visible in my peripheral vision. He spoke with an intense whisper that couldn't be misheard even by my frail human ears.

  "How extremely remiss of me to allow a guest to depart without a small sampling of what the Bete Noir—and I—can offer.” He scanned the writhing ill-lit crowd, quickly considered several from amongst it, as quickly rejected them, then finally selected two from within that frantic dancin
g mass. He squeezed my arm and very threateningly returned his full attention to me.

  "Come, accompany me Miss Soulsmith, delay a little while and we'll get our jollies together. I promise."

  A protest stuck in my throat like a thick, dry bread crust. I cringed as he stared back into that crowd. His bright sky blue gaze again lit upon, actually beckoned a particular man, handsome, lean-bodied, dark-haired, and then Constantine's eyes shifted to the opposite side of the revelers to snare the chosen woman, pretty, medium-statured, a dirty-headed blonde. Just like me! The pair, vaguely, faintly, but unmistakably, resembled us!

  Under Constantine's steady, mesmeric gaze, they moved toward us, slowed by the push-and-pull of those around them, but they did not appear to come at all unwillingly, as I had done earlier under a similar spell of summoning. No, their expressions were almost eager, bemused but smiling. And, as they wound in and around the crowd, advancing toward us, they began to undress. The man started unbuttoning the nickel-plated studs of his olive drab shirt. The woman shrugged out of a tight denim jacket which she dropped and abandoned to the floor. And, still smiling, still working at their clothes, the two approached us.

  The single bread crust in my throat had become a whole loaf! I tried to speak, twice, before my rough voice managed a rasp. “Constantine, don't do this.” I turned my head to meet his gaze, to plead with him.

  "But, my dear Miss Soulsmith, I don't plan to do anything.” The progenitor's eyes narrowed to slits, flashed down to my cleavage, then looked lower still. “Unless, of course, you ask me nicely."

  The pair of unfortunates drew abreast of us and, at an elegant gesture from Constantine, kept moving to an oddly shaped doorway, a strange inverted U-shaped slit reminiscent of those on a submarine, next to that of the Blue Room. The couple preceded us. Both entered in various stages of undress. He was bare-chested, and fast on his way to shucking his pants. She was down to her pink silk shell top and white thong panties.

  "Right this way, Miss Soulsmith.” Constantine, his fang tips flashing through a tight predatory smile, spoke with gentlemanly pleasance while his unbreakable grip propelled me toward that unknown place and his equally unknown purpose. Whatever he had planned would not, I suspected, be your average fun-n-games.

  Cripes! Why had I made that snotty remark? Why hadn't I kept my big mouth shut? Why couldn't I ever leave well enough alone? And, more importantly, why couldn't Constantine?

  That question burst from me. I suspected the answer, but needed to hear it from him. “Why, Constantine? Why are you doing this?"

  In a perfect deadpan, he replied. “Maybe I'm smitten. And I cannot bear to part with you.” His oh-so serious tone had to be mocking me. Didn't it?

  "Yeah, right, and I'm the Queen of.... “I wrestled for something equally outrageous. “...of ... of the Damned."

  He paused for the span of one of my heartbeats, pressed my arm within his strong fingers, and offered a sardonic one word answer that nearly made my hair stand on end.

  "Potentially.” And, dumbstruck as I was, he very easily manhandled me toward that strangely crafted doorway. Oh, goody.

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  Chapter Four

  The Rendezvous Room

  I balked upon the threshold of that narrow, inverted U, that peculiar slit-for-a-door. Constantine momentarily indulged this final mutinous hesitation, although his hold on me remained firm, dominant, unwavering. In his estimation, I had obviously courted this reprisal with my disdain and my insults. Perhaps I had, but more so for my pride in thinking that I had bested a vampire progenitor in any way, shape, or form. Talk about delusional.

  I froze there, wide-eyed, sweaty-palmed, erratically-pulsed, and wondered what awaited me.

  Constantine ended my suspense with an imperious shove to the small of my back. “Enter, Miss Soulsmith. Into the Rendezvous Room. Our entertainment,” his vampiric emphasis of that word elicited a dirty thrill in me, “awaits.” He forced me inside, then stepped in behind me to bar the freakish entrance, now exit, with his gorgeous self.

  With a gasp of shocked naiveté, I surveyed the appropriately named Rendezvous Room, its squared interior seemingly cut from live rock, painted in a glistening enamel red, with four small spot lights, one in each corner, focused on the center of that obscenely titillating place. The axis of the room was a rather low Formica table made with rounded rather than straight, sharp edged sides in the same gleaming, bright red as the wet-looking floor and walls. Its height and width and construction was suited to various activities, and styles, and positions ... of intercourse.

  Ashamed of such thoughts, I glanced up and away from that disturbing sight—and the naked man and barely clothed woman before it. I then noticed that each of the three walls offered either a pair of handcuffs, a silk-tasseled flogger, or a strap-on dildo, held on pegs attached to the cool, rock surface. This discovery brought another strangled noise of shock from me.

  "A rather exotic design, no? It is newly built, a paradise waiting to be discovered by a select few. Perhaps I shall keep its exclusive use. For myself.” Constantine, still at my back, blocking that small exit, brushed my backside with his front.

  I jerked away from him and stumbled sideways. Not only did those few steps reposition me to more fully view the show of the lewd couple, so like us in their physicality, who were even now beginning to get thoroughly acquainted, but it perfectly aligned me to rake an angry glance across Constantine. He remained on the verge of entering, his scrumptious body lounging, leaning against the strange, tight entry. And his wicked features, especially the tilt of his head, the sudden calculating shift of his eyes about that small, gleaming, red vault carved from living rock, gave me a sick epiphany about the construction of this room. It was like a woman's body, tight, slick, glistening, with an intriguing slit for an entrance, and once penetrated offered pleasure beyond measure. And Constantine, damn him, had thrust me inside its sexually charged interior!

  The master vampire's lips quirked as if he had read my mind. “Do you like it? Are you impressed? It even has special lighting and music effects.” Constantine swept a hand across an electronic panel beside the door and for one disorienting moment the four spot lights pulsed to heavy thrumming porn music until, at another quick touch of his hand, Constantine switched back to silence and simple lighting. “Tell me, is it all that you expected of the Bete Noir?"

  "Yes, and I detest it. Everything about it. It's degenerate and depraved. Just like its owner.” My words lashed towards him, but my gaze went to the couple, pulled to them by appalled curiosity, by shameful awareness, by voyeuristic need. While I had been focused on Constantine, the sounds of their advancing intimacy—ragged rough breathing, small sighs, murmured profanities—had subtly enticed me. Almost against my will, I watched them with lurid fascination, spellbound.

  He, a mortal male of similar height and coloring to Constantine, was entirely naked, revealing well-toned muscles, a perfectly carved but overly hairy chest, a long vine-and-rose tattoo across the top of his back, an exceptional ass ... and an enormous erection that he clasped in both hands as he rocked teasingly toward the attractive blonde woman, who still, amazingly wore her thong and sexy spaghetti-strapped shell top which showed the sharp prominent nubs of her nipples.

  With each flex of his hard-muscled ass, he tapped the bulbous, purplish head of his big cock against her shaven pubic mound, and she, proving herself an equally perverse hedonist, widened her legs and shimmied loose of her thong. She then licked her fingers, used them to splay open her shaved lips, and quickly rubbed her own folds, once, twice, before again lewdly exposing her moistened, puffed up sex to her rapt partner. Her vaginal flesh was a shade of berry, like a fleshy, juicy piece of fruit. The man continued to grip his shaft, pre-cum gleaming on the head, pointing it at her, offering it to her.

  From directly behind the pair, still within the doorway, Constantine's voice, low and husky, all but inaudible, issued a command to the ash-blonde who appeared so simila
r to me. “Kiss him ... there."

  Immediately, eagerly, she bent down to the man and kissed his hot, blood engorged penis. Her lips rubbed over his sensitive head several times, and I clearly saw his shudder down the back of his neck to the ridges of his spine and onward to his clenching toes. Without any such further order, she swallowed his fat crown until she bumped his knuckles where he repeatedly squeezed his shaft. He grunted. She hummed. I nearly suffocated! It was hard to breathe. She pulled back and began to rapidly lick and tongue the end of his dick, perhaps in preparation for fully engaging in fellatio.

  Again Constantine gave a smoldering command, this time to the man. “Finish undressing her.” Disturbingly, his tone, his suggestion, or perhaps the deed he demanded, rippled through me. This perverse exhibition was totally beyond my prudish experience. I shouldn't have watched. I shouldn't have reacted. I shouldn't have anticipated! Even so I continued to stare in fascination, and I embarrassingly did much more, like breathing with aroused irregularity, trembling with suppressed excitement, dampening and plumping way down low.

  The man, Constantine's amorous stand-in, speedily raised the hem of her thin, pink shell top, slid it up and over her head, and tossed it away like a useless trifle. Her nakedness was exquisite, and, for me, broke the illusion of our hazy resemblance. Never would my skin be so perfect or unblemished, nor would my breasts be that heavy or large. The man laughed, salaciously.

  While I gawked, ashamed but unable to look away, he greedily grasped each creamy vanilla, cherry topped mound. He played with them roughly, their overabundance, their excited areola, then suckled between them with an animalistic tenacity. The woman, blonde like me, big chested unlike me, rubbed at the back of his long, oily black hair, pressing him firmly into her fleshy bosom. Her eyes fluttered in ecstasy, her pelvis twitched, her full breasts jiggled.