by Aja James
Inanna berated herself for not grasping his financial straits fully. She should have prevented him from going to such extremes, but there was no turning back.
She had to help him.
Even at the risk of exposing her identity to the vampire Hordes. She had the deepest human cover, true, but if the fight clubs’ vampire sponsors ranked among the society’s elite, and it was almost certain that they did, Inanna would not be able to maintain her cover for long. The Chosen were well known among their Kind.
But she could not risk exposure right away. That might bring Gabriel more trouble than help. She had to somehow track him, infiltrate the club and ensure his protection from afar.
Inanna turned and started walking south, toward Penn Station, where Maximus and she were set to meet the representatives from the Dozen in one hour.
Perhaps the Pure Ones could assist in the infiltration. They were not well known in the City, after all. She’d be taking a chance in trusting them, but she had no choice.
She would risk all to ensure Gabriel and Benji’s safety.
*** *** *** ***
Directly beneath the main departures board at Penn Station, three Pure Ones tried to blend in with the crowd and not attract too much attention.
It was an effort in futility.
Victoria’s-Secret-super-model-Sports-Illustrated-Cover-Girl looks and stature aside, Aella’s waterfall of golden blonde hair was like a lighthouse beacon for ships stranded at sea. The throngs of travelers parted and swelled around her like schools of curious fish, awed and helplessly pulled to a mythical mermaid in their midst.
The golden goddess’s male companion was equally magnificent, his edgy, austere, Asian-style attire making him seem as if he’d just stepped off the set of a new Matrix sequel. If the masses paused to consider the other-worldliness of the pair, they might begin to raise some questions.
But the piercing aquamarine gaze of the male left their observers in a state of calmness and acceptance, as if it was an everyday occurrence to witness such striking, almost inhuman beauty.
Next to Aella and Cloud, Sophia felt disconcertingly like an ugly duckling (who was unfortunately not a long lost cygnet in disguise) stuck between two outrageously gorgeous swans.
Though she’d officially been the Pure Ones’ Queen for eleven years, she was still an awkward eighteen-year-old trying to make sense of the world around her. Thankfully, she did not have long to dwell on her insecurities and feelings of inadequacy, for their sometime vampire allies had arrived.
Without making contact or breaking stride, the leader of the Chosen made a subtle gesture to a nearby stairwell and led the way there with his partner. The three Pure Ones followed closely behind.
Through a “Staff Only” door they went, up a couple of flights of stairs, through another corridor and private door, finally to arrive in what looked to be an operations room. Once they were all inside, the Chosen’s Commander and his partner turned to the three Pure Ones and bowed formally in greeting.
Sophia and her Elite warriors bowed back and introductions were made. The Commander got straight to business.
“How much do you know about the fight clubs?” he asked without further preliminaries.
“Everything you have shared with Seth we know,” Aella answered, “as well as what we have learned from our own research into the matter.”
The female vampire named Nana Chastain tilted her head a bit in consideration. “What have you learned?”
Aella and Cloud shared a silent look before Aella addressed her question. “That the vampire sponsors behind all this reach into the Elites of your society, including perhaps one or more of Queen Jade’s inner circle.”
That the two vampires did not react by unsheathing their weapons in rage at what could be considered a condemning accusation meant that they had already come to the same conclusion.
Maximus confirmed by responding, “This is why we need your help. No one, including the Chosen and the Queen herself, should be above suspicion. If indeed one or more of the inner circle is the traitor, we cannot trust the investigation to our own, and we cannot send the Chosen to infiltrate the clubs as each of us are well known within our society.”
“In addition,” Inanna put in, “you are not restricted to the night as we are. It is a handicap we cannot afford to have in this mission.”
Aella nodded. “Agreed. We have already contacted our human networks in the area to begin gathering intel.”
“Let’s work together on the human side of the equation,” Inanna offered. “I have deep networks you can leverage as well.”
They discussed detailed logistics of the partnership, immediate actions, roles and responsibilities. Inanna shared the information she’d recently acquired about a fighter named Gabriel, and Aella agreed to pull on one of the Chevaliers to infiltrate the club once they learned of the time and location of the next event. Aella and Cloud going in directly would be too risky, for strong vampires could sense Pure Ones, especially those with a Gift, by their aura. They would smell a trap a mile away.
Finally, Maximus asked aloud what Sophia had been thinking all this while, “Why do you trust us, Pure Ones? Why do you help us?”
Cloud, who had been mostly silent up to this point, responded quietly, “We do not trust you. Nor would we expect you to trust us. As you said, no one is above suspicion. We have a common enemy and a shared goal: maintain order in the human world as well as the secrecy of our Race.”
The two Chosen warriors nodded their alignment.
Thus they went their separate ways, the Chosen disappearing almost immediately into the crowded terminals, while Sophia and company exited on Thirty-Fourth Street.
As they headed North, Sophia turned back and scanned the crowds that had already enveloped the vampires and a slight frown creased her brow.
“What is it?” Cloud asked, noticing her hesitation.
Sophia worried her bottom lip with her teeth and turned back around. “It’s so strange, but for a second I thought I sensed a Pure soul in the Angel.”
Aella glanced at the young Queen briefly but kept silent while filing away this tidbit.
Sophia shook her head in confusion. “I must be wrong. My Gift still eludes me sometimes. It’s like trying to catch smoke tendrils—it just slips through my fingers. Of course she couldn’t have a Pure soul. She’s a vampire after all. If she once was a Pure One who turned to the Dark side, she would have sacrificed her Pure soul. It’s either one or the other, isn’t it?”
Both Pure warriors knew that the question was rhetorical, but both instinctively also knew that the answer wasn’t that simple.
*** *** *** ***
Having left a happily exhausted Benji with Mrs. Sergeyev, Gabriel made his way to the fight club’s new location, sent to him by a shred of note slipped under his studio door, a few minutes before midnight.
Hands in his hoodie pockets, pace brisk, expression grim, he didn’t bother to side-step puddles that had collected in the numerous ruts in the cracked pavement of the junk yard as he headed toward a windowless warehouse that seemed abandoned.
But knowing what lay within, he could hear, just barely, muffled shouts and echoing clangs. This time, when he stepped up to the heavy iron door, the guard immediately let him in without a word or question.
As he followed the hulk through a trap door in the floorboards down a short flight of stairs and through a dark, wet, putrid sewer tunnel, Gabriel filed away the twists and turns they took in his head. By his calculation based on the study of the city maps he made earlier this evening, the way he entered was not the only way out. He had two other exits should he need them, one that took him close to the river and another, longer route, that took him through a manhole in the center of Chinatown.
He could not afford to lose tonight, but would they really let him walk away if he won? He doubted it.
He’d already made preparations with Mrs. Sergeyev for Benji. She was to contact Nana Chastain as soon as he left
the studio. Ms. Chastain had assured him that though the card she gave him was her business contact, she could always be reached at that number and address. If he didn’t return before dawn, he’d left instructions for her to take Benji and keep him safe.
Gabriel knew that he would not return by the designated hour.
Doing so would put his son in danger, and he’d already made that mistake once. Whether the mafia let him live to fight another day or whether he escaped the club, he could not reunite with Benji in the near future. They would try to use his son as leverage to make him do their bidding. He had to protect Benji at all cost. He was trusting Nana Chastain to keep Benji safe.
Strangely, though he barely knew her, he was certain that she’d move heaven and earth for his boy.
“You’re up next,” the hulking guard said as they reached the makeshift locker rooms behind the fight club arena. “Lose the clothes and put that on.”
Gabriel glanced at the loose black trousers with a drawstring waistband draped haphazardly on a beat` up bench.
“And those,” the guard indicated with a jerk of his chin at a set of hand wraps, a bucket of thick glue and a large lidded vase beside it on another bench.
“Five minutes,” the hulk warned as he trudged to a corner and folded his thick hairy arms over his barrel-like chest, watching Gabriel’s every move with hostile wariness.
Gabriel lifted the lid of the vase and peered in.
Crushed glass. The spectator’s choice of weapon for the fight this night.
“Dark Ones hold themselves superior to all other beings. True Bloods, the noblest of us all, are born to rule the land. Their blood contains the history of our race, the wisdom of the ages, the ingredients of our Destiny. As such, the purity of Dark Blood must be preserved at all cost.”
—Excerpt from the Ecliptic Scrolls.
Chapter Six
“Right! Right! Eye socket! Eye socket!”
“Get’im! Get in there!”
“Oh my god! Is that blood that just shot in my mouth?”
“Pin him down! Come on! Arrggghhh!”
Five rounds of brutal dog fight later, Gabriel had completely tuned out the shouting, cursing, hysterical laughter and jeering.
He wasn’t going to last many more rounds.
These fighters were nothing like the ones he confronted before: they knew what they were doing and they fought to kill. Two broken ribs, a blown-out ear drum and countless bleeding gashes from the swipes of his opponents’ glass-shards-wrapped-fists later, he could feel his strength rapidly seeping out with copious amounts of his sweat, blood and spit.
His left arm was starting to get numb, having taken one too many twists and punches. Vision was impaired by a haze of red in his right eye, and he knew that before long, the lid would completely swell shut. It was time to get out of this hell hole.
Landing a forceful and precise roundhouse kick to his opponent’s jugular, he didn’t wait for the knockout to be pronounced before banging on the steel barb-wired door to be released.
The hulk leered menacingly back at him from the other side. “You’ll get out of here when I say you can. Get back in there and fight.”
Gabriel’s upper lip peeled back in a ferocious snarl, but before he could bang the gate again, his new opponent’s fist swiped three knuckles-worth of six inch gashes diagonally across his back, leaving a bloody, fiery trail of agony.
Gabriel pivoted with a spinning back kick and landed on all fours from the cracking impact. As he caught his breath, he forcibly blocked out the searing pain from his new wounds and refocused on his opponent.
From his first match, he hadn’t bothered to play to the crowd like before. His sole purpose was to buy enough time to ensure Benji’s safety. The thugs who threatened him earlier at the ice rink had been tailing and watching his every move. Their job was to make sure he showed for tonight’s fight. If he resisted, they would have dragged him here, likely using Benji as incentive for his cooperation.
Gabriel methodically closed in on his giant of an opponent who was at least a foot taller at over seven and a half feet and built like a mountain. Using his peripheral vision he took in the ten-foot barbed-wire fence that enclosed from four sides about three hundred square feet of floor area. There was one entrance and exit through the locked steel door the hulk was guarding.
Except for the open ceiling.
Gabriel knew this was his best chance.
The giant was a human battering ram but a slow-moving one. Gabriel crouched low and suddenly sprinted straight on for the fighter who also hunched his shoulders in anticipation. At the last possible second, Gabriel leapt sideways, hitting the wall closest to the giant with one foot, then the other. Using his body’s velocity and torque, he pushed off the wall and landed one foot across the right eye of the giant, followed close by the other foot which stomped out the vein in the giant’s temple.
As his opponent teetered sideways like a tree about to be felled, Gabriel kicked out one more time to the back of his head and gained enough momentum to leap another three feet in the air, elongating his body to reach as far as he could. Having gained the top of the wall, he flipped backwards off of it into the roaring crowds on the other side.
Gabriel zeroed in on the exit to the West and easily shoved his way through the stunned audience who posed no real barrier, some even cheering him on, others shouting for him to get back in the fight. Several yards away, the hulk and a half dozen guards rallied to action, but made slow progress as the frenzied crowds swarmed around them.
With barely a pause, Gabriel kicked down the flimsy wood door that barred the exit and increased his speed as he entered the sewer tunnels, lit dimly by a few scattered safety lamps secured to the walls and low ceiling.
At his current speed, he could reach the manhole exit to Chinatown within three minutes.
The chaos behind him grew more distant as he sprinted through the winding tunnel. Even if his pursuers managed to catch up with him, they would only be able to come at him one or two at a time in the narrow passage, lending him enough advantage to take them out despite his injuries. Once he reached the manhole and escaped into Chinatown, he could easily lose them in the meandering alleyways. Another few strides and he would be there.
And then everything plunged into pitch blackness.
Gabriel stopped immediately to take stock. Slowing his breathing and calming his thundering heart to listen, he could hear only the slow drip of water from a short distance away. He must be close to the manhole.
“Leaving so soon?” a faint echoing whisper sifted through the dank air of the tunnel, so faint he would have thought he imagined it but for the dark feminine laughter that followed.
Hackles raised, muscles tensed, Gabriel stood silent, barely breathing, awaiting for the unseen opponent’s next move.
Suddenly, something slashed across his right thigh, and almost instantly he went down on one knee, his entire leg losing feeling. A beat later he was down on both knees, his head lolling back as if too heavy for his neck.
Before he toppled completely to the dirt ground, however, an unseen force wrapped around his jugular and pulled him bodily up against the tunnel wall until his feet barely touched the ground.
As he struggled to breathe around the vise of a fist, a face pressed close to his in the darkness.
“Mmm. You smell so good,” his captor hissed in his ear, and he felt a wet tongue lick a long path up the side of his face, taking in the trail of blood that was seeping from his eye wound.
“I have watched you fight,” the demon continued to rasp, now nuzzling the crook of his neck and collarbone.
“Magnificent,” it said on a drawn out hiss, mingled with delighted laughter.
The hand that was not holding him suspended roved down his chest and stomach to his groin and wrapped around him greedily, squeezing and kneading.
“You make it so hard to choose,” his tormentor continued, now licking around his mouth, making Gabriel want to gag, but
concentrating on drawing breath was all he could do.
“On the one hand I want to save you for another fight. You are such a sight to behold. Such power, such precision, such deadly skill.”
The wandering hand now moved back up his bare torso, dragging sharp nails across his skin, leaving long bloody scratches in their wake.
“On the other hand, watching you arouses me to a feverish pitch, makes me want to devour you whole, preferably after a good long fuck.”
Revulsion jerked through Gabriel’s body like an electric shock though he remained damnably paralyzed from head to toe.
Who was she?
If indeed it was a she.
His opponent was definitely shorter than him and slighter of build from what he could make out in the darkness. Yet she held him with one arm fully stretched taut, dangling two hundred pounds of flesh and bone from her fist as if he were as harmless and light as a kitten. Though the lack of oxygen must have impaired his judgement, he knew the situation to be impossible.
No human woman could be so strong.
“Alas,” she sighed long and forlornly, “I have neither the patience nor the desire to resist such a tantalizing morsel such as you. A quick meal it would have to be.”
She struck hard and fast before her words fully registered, sinking two sharp daggers into his neck.
No… not daggers. Her teeth?
Now immobilized not only by whatever drug she’d used on him, Gabriel was frozen by disbelief. And yet…
Suck, suck, suck. Swallow. Suck, suck, suck. Swallow.
There was no denying it. Even as he felt the blood drain rapidly from the vein she had punctured, a trickle leaking down his neck and onto his chest, he realized she was taking it all within herself.
She was drinking his blood!
But then there was no time to think.
He could barely even feel as a bone-deep exhaustion took over and he lost his last tenuous hold on consciousness.
Through the throbbing pain of his wounds, the agony of the creature’s feeding at his throat, Gabriel entered a dark tumultuous world of hallucinations and dreams, so vivid they seemed like long buried memories released from an ancient prison.