by L. C. Davis
“It might help if you stopped calling it ‘the whorehouse.’”
“He needs to get over his Puritanical obsession with sexual purity and accept what he is.”
“That’s a bit redundant, isn’t it?”
He rolled his eyes. “He could always take a page from your book. Between your unrequited pining for the werewolf, Dennis and what you and I have going on, you’d make a fine Whore.”
“Fuck off. What makes you think he’ll listen to me, anyway?”
“Because it’s his fault you’re dead and I’m going to milk that guilt-flavored gravy train for as long as I can.”
“Why do you want him there so bad, anyway? Are you trying to trap him in the attic or something?”
“No! What is it with you people and kidnapping?”
“Okay, calm down. I just don’t understand either of you.”
“You don’t understand anything that’s more complicated than Monday Night Football.”
I shrugged, turning out the lights and locking up. I knew he’d follow me and sure enough, when I came out into the main room of the clinic, Locke was waiting for me. “What’s wrong with you today? No deadpan retort to offer?”
“I’ve been up since three pumping a Shih Tzu’s stomach, I’m all out of pan. If you want anything more than dead, you’ll have to go find someone else.”
He followed me up the stairs and the moment his footsteps disappeared, I opened the door to my apartment to find him sitting on the back of my couch, his arms folded in indignation. Sometimes I felt like I was married, only without any of the benefits.
Okay, so sometimes we fucked, but I was pretty sure one of the benefits of actually being married was that you didn’t have to feel guilty the morning after. Or worry about being dissected in your sleep.
“You haven’t been eating.” It was an accusation, not a question.
“I haven’t felt like dealing with my dealer.”
“This isn’t an addiction you can just kick, Daniel, it’s a matter of life or death.”
“Didn’t that ship sail on the equinox?”
“I’m not talking about your life, I’m talking about the people you’re going to kill when you snap and go on a hunger-fueled rampage. How do you think Nick’s going to feel when he realizes you’re not even keeping the cravings under control?”
“I don’t think he loses any sleep worrying about what I’m doing.”
“No, but you live here. If you draw attention to yourself, that means you’ll draw attention to Holden. My ability to keep him on a leash is contingent upon working with his instinct to protect Holden, not against it.”
“You don’t want your pets killing each other, I got it,” I muttered.
“Then quit being so stubborn and eat,” he demanded, holding a party cup that hadn’t been in his hand a second ago. I grimaced, but the smell of it even from across the room was calling to me. I hated myself for it, for wanting something that should have repulsed me, but I knew I’d give in eventually. That was Locke’s gift, making you realize the futility of trying to be better, trying to resist your base instincts in hopes of clinging on to that last bit of humanity you had left.
In the end, I succumbed just like I always did. I threw the empty cup in the trash to hide the evidence, hoping I could put it out of my mind for at least another week. My chest was warm and tingly, but it didn’t spread out to my extremities the way it usually did. My hands still felt stiff, cold.
“Am I developing a tolerance or something?”
“You haven’t fed in weeks, you can’t expect to go back to feeling human right away. I’d get you more but the stuff has to come from somewhere.”
“It’s fine. I’ll deal with it,” I said, not wanting to tempt him into either digging up another grave or filling one. I still wasn’t sure how he got the brains, and part of me really didn’t want to know.
“There’s something else I can do to help,” he said in a knowing tone, suddenly standing in front of me. He ran a hand down my cheek and I shuddered. He left warmth and life wherever he touched, but it was gone as soon as the contact stopped.
I knew what he was offering. Another fix. It wouldn’t last, but it would make it easier to indulge the delusion that I was still myself. Still human. I nodded because I couldn’t bring myself to say the words out loud.
His face settled into a mask of passive satisfaction. He might have had to control Holden by appealing to his guilt and his decency, but I was easy. With me, it was just a matter of applying the right amount of pressure, and he knew it. “Go get cleaned up. I don’t like the taste of brain in my mouth and you still smell like that ambulance chaser.”
Without a word, I trudged into the bathroom to brush my teeth and shower. I felt like I was whoring myself out, but deep down, I knew the arrangement between us wasn’t anywhere near that dignified. My hair was still dripping as I stepped into the bedroom. I had a towel around my waist and didn’t see the point in bothering to get dressed when I knew my clothes were just going to end up on the floor anyway. His were still on, a reminder of the imbalance between us. Even though Locke liked me to be the one on top, he was always the one in control and he never let me forget it.
“Don’t look so pathetic,” he pouted, moving to the edge of the bed. His hands ran down my chest, his long fingers carving lines of sensation into my flesh. He pressed his lips to the spot above my heart and worked his way down, loosing the towel around my waist. It pooled at my feet and I dug my hand into his sleek white hair, moaning as he took me into his mouth. He always knew exactly what it took to turn me on, to generate the sexual energy he fed off of. He was my dealer, but I was just one of the endless men he could take what he needed from.
Why he wanted me at all, I didn’t know. None of my ex-lovers had ever complained about my performance in bed, but I didn’t have any tricks up my sleeve that would impress a sex demon and I was only slightly above average in the looks department. And I was dead. I still didn’t know a lot about the other supernaturals that existed beyond werewolves and demons, but I had a feeling zombies weren’t considered sexy by any stretch of the imagination.
Locke’s tongue circled the tip of my crown, lapping up the precum leaking from the slit before he pulled away, looking up at me with hooded eyes full of lust. I knew what he wanted and I hated myself for wanting to give it to him. He laid back against the pillows and I settled my weight on top of him. I’d always been a bit husky, but he was smooth and lean and every inch of him was beautiful. When I kissed him, I felt like I was kissing a marble statue, carved and brought to life by its own perfection. I slipped my hand into his open shirt and peeled it off, caressing him until he writhed beneath me.
“Enough of that,” he scolded, gripping a fistful of my hair. “I’m not your boyfriend. Fuck me like you hate me as much as I know you do.”
So that was it. That was why he bothered with me when he could have had anyone. He liked it rough, and I was the very definition of uncouth, something he couldn’t get from the pretty boys I knew he preferred because he had no qualms about telling me he did. Part of me had been hoping to forget what I was for a little while, but if a monster was what he wanted, a monster was what he’d get. I pinned his hands behind his head and forced his legs open. His green eyes filled with lust and he bucked his hips in anticipation.
I kept his wrists pinned with one hand and used the other to tear off his jeans. He made a fuss whenever I tore his clothes, but I was beginning to realize that was just part of the game for him. Part of the role he wanted me to play. I was already rock hard and I knew he didn’t appreciate foreplay that didn’t involve cutting sarcasm or bondage, so I positioned myself at his entrance and rammed him until I was buried to the hilt. He was so smooth and warm and real, and the cry that escaped his full lips muffled so beautifully when I pressed mine to them. His nails dragged across my skin, tearing me like paper, and my blood mingled with his as he arched beneath me, taunting me to fuck him harder. Our tongues tangle
d as our bodies ground against each other, hard and rough, like we were trying to rub off the lines between us.
“Harder,” Locke seethed, his voice a serpentine hiss. I pinned his hands again because if I didn’t, my back was going to end up in strips. The last time, it looked like I’d gone a few dozen rounds with a cat o’ nine tails and lost.
“You’re all kinds of fucked up, you know that?” I bit into his neck, relishing the taste of his blood. Locke didn’t mind if I broke skin, but the urge to devour him got harder to resist each time I did. Something told me he’d be into that, too.
He was gasping too desperately to retort now that I’d gotten just the right angle to hit his spot with each violent thrust. He shuddered and clenched around me, pulling me in deeper. His eyes were glazed with pain and lust and I wondered if he was even capable of feeling the one without the other. His dick was grinding against my stomach with each thrust, slick and hard, and his body trembled in response to my every move. When I closed my eyes and put the distinctive scent of his blood out of my mind, it was so easy to pretend he was someone else. I never let myself go there with my mind’s adaptation of Nick, but sometimes I let myself pretend it was Dennis even though our limited sexual encounters had always been gentle. Romantic, even.
At least until he started pretending like they’d never happened.
I didn’t feel bad for pretending, because I knew Locke was doing the same damn thing. He’d started it by calling out Adam’s name the first time we’d slept together, and that wasn’t the last time. For a supposed angel, Adam must have been pretty wild in bed.
I felt Locke pulling the energy from me as I fucked him, and I made no attempt to stop it. It felt weird, but the more he took, the more human I became. At first, being rough was the only way I could feel anything through the numbness, but once he was crying out in bliss and I was close to the edge myself, every brush of his skin, every moan he gave sent vibrations rippling through me. I could see him, feel him, smell him, taste him, lose myself in him entirely.
But it always came to an end. He spent his load on my stomach as I arched my last into him, gripping his hips to keep him where I wanted him while he bucked and writhed in the throes of his orgasm. One final surge of energy passed between us as I came inside of him and collapsed. I’d lost track of whose blood it was on my fingers and the scent of sex made it impossible to tell, but it didn’t matter. Unlike Dennis, Locke always let me hold him afterward, for a little while. He played with my hair while we both caught our breath and I felt like a prized pet basking in the tacit praise of his master.
I hated myself for fucking Locke. I hated myself even more for liking it, but most of all, I hated myself for wanting to please him. Maybe it was the fact that my soul was his by virtue of the fact that it belonged to Holden and Holden belonged to Locke, but I wanted to make him happy. I would put up a fight about it from time to time, when I had the energy to give him the snark he seemed to enjoy, but it had become nothing more than a ritual. An act. In the end, it didn’t matter if he wanted me to use my influence to convince Holden to move, to debase myself by eating human flesh, to make him scream another man’s name in bed. Whatever it was, I would do it, not because I loved him the way I still loved Dennis, the way I couldn’t stop loving Nick, but because he was my master and my creator, the twisted god of an even more twisted creation.
To the rest of the world, and to myself, I was an abomination. To Locke, I was useful. As long as it stayed that way, as long as he wanted me, I was his.
Four
HOLDEN
People were staring at me again. I had begun to take my nobody status for granted since a family I knew to be vampires only because Nick told me they were had moved to town last month and Todd, the oldest son, was attractive enough that he was the new fodder for the town gossips. It wasn’t a mistake I would make again if my anonymity ever returned, but now that word had spread of my relationship with Nick, I doubted that would be happening anytime soon. Maybe if the vampires ate someone...
I was halfway to the market when I heard Daniel call my name from across the street. He had more color in his face than he had the last few times I’d seen him, which I knew meant he’d fed recently. I tried not to think about it too much as I made my way over to the table he was sitting at outside the bistro. I’d never taken him for the type to dine outdoors, since he spent most of his time avoiding people. Me, especially.
“Hey,” I said, leaning in to give him a hug. He smelled like Locke’s cologne. At least, I assumed it was cologne. Locke didn’t keep any in the apartment, as far as I could tell, and he kind of smelled the same way when he came out of the shower, but people weren’t supposed to smell that good on their own. “It’s been a while.”
“It has,” he said, motioning for me to sit down. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you, actually. Do you have a minute?”
“Sure.” My guard went up immediately. I had tried my best to give Daniel space since I could tell Nick’s distance had taken a toll on him and I knew I was at least part of the reason the bromance of the ages was on rocky ground. Ever since we’d made our peace, Daniel had been kind but distant and I couldn’t blame him. If I’d been stuck with me for a solid week, I’d want to avoid me, too. Short of forcing he and Nick to kiss and make up, I didn’t know how to fix things between them, so I settled for trying not to make them worse. “How are you doing?”
“I’m okay, actually. Better than I have been, at least.”
Daniel said “actually” a lot when something was wrong, I’d come to realize. When he was putting on an attempt to be social but dying on the inside. Usually Carla was the recipient of his actually’s, but it looked like I was the lucky winner today. “That’s great. You look good.”
“Yeah,” he said, looking away. “I’ve uh, been following the prescribed diet pretty closely.”
“Good,” I said, a bit less convincingly than I wanted to. “That’s...probably for the best.”
He gave a smile so stiff I could almost hear it crack. “So, how’s Nick?”
“He’s good. His family knows now about, you know, us.” I was two seconds away from stepping past the town line and letting Michael smite me.
“Yeah, I’ve heard. That’s great.”
I realized we could either keep going with the torturous smalltalk or one of us had to rip the bandage off, and it was becoming increasingly obvious that it wasn’t going to be him. “Locke put you up to this, didn’t he?”
His face fell. “Am I that obvious?”
“Let’s just say I think even the Stillwater Players would turn you down if you auditioned.”
He sighed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have --”
“It’s okay,” I insisted. “Really. I know how he can be. Let me guess, he’s using your ‘diet’ to rope you into doing favors for him?”
He hung his head in shame. “No. No, I really do owe him one, but that’s not your problem.”
“Whatever it is, just tell me. I feel bad enough that you have to deal with him at all,” I admitted.
“It’s the house thing. For some reason, he thinks I can convince you to move in with him.”
I blinked. “How did I not see that one coming?”
“Forget it. Seriously, don’t do anything because of me, I can deal with Locke.”
“No,” I murmured, leaning on the table. “It’s not a big deal. Honestly, I’m not even sure why I’m fighting it so hard. Force of habit, I guess.”
He snorted out a laugh. “Yeah, I get that. With some people, you have to pick your battles. With Locke, you have to start them and hope it wears him out.”
“Pretty much.” I watched him for a second, trying to sort out what it was that seemed so different about him. It wasn’t just the color in his face, it was something else I couldn’t quite place. My chest clenched and tingled as it always did when the borrowed soul inside of it was within close proximity to its owner. Sometimes I wondered if Daniel could feel it, too, but I was alway
s too afraid to ask. “Are you sure you’re okay? I know you’re not okay-okay, but…”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” He grimaced. “No, I’m not. I feel like shit.”
“Daniel, it’s fine,” I promised, reaching across the table to squeeze his hand. It was almost a normal temperature today. “You don’t have anything to feel bad about. I’m the one who got you into this mess, remember?”
“Not about Locke,” he said, running his other hand through his hair. “It’s about Dennis.”
“Oh.” I pulled my hands into my lap and tried to prepare myself for the conversation to take an even more awkward turn, if possible. “If this is about what happened between you guys the other night, like I told Locke, it’s none of my business.”
“He told you?”
“He implied that you uh, reconciled.”
“I wouldn’t go that far. More like I got hammered, made an idiot out of myself and…” he trailed off, frowning. “This is gonna sound weird and I mean really weird, but there’s something I have to ask you.”
“I’m the Whore of Babylon and you’re undead. Is anything about this situation not weird?”
“I’m a zombie. You can say it, you know,” he said, the corner of his lip twitching a little. I wouldn’t quite call it a smile. “I’m pretty sure I’m the only one around, so if it’s not PC, I won’t be offended.”
I sighed. “I’m sorry. Go ahead and ask, I don’t mind.”
“You’ve been dating him for a while--Dennis, I mean. Did he ever...bite you?”
“Bite me?”
“I told you it was weird.”
“You mean like...sexually?”
“Yeah. Or not. Just biting in general.”
“I don’t think so. I mean, we haven’t really done much more than make out. Virgin sacrifice and all that.”
“Right,” he said, blowing out a puff of air. “Let’s just forget I asked.”
“Are you saying you think Dennis is a vampire?”
“I don’t know what I think he is. I just know he bit me and he probably would have died if Locke hadn’t come to the rescue.”