by Aliya DalRae
He needed fresh air and space, and he needed it now.
He slipped on a pair of sneakers and went out into the night. Toward the side of the manse he found a path into the woods, one he favored when he was feeling confined. He needed that space now more than ever, and as he headed into the trees the peace of nature surrounded him.
Merlin walked for a while, tracking neither time nor distance. When he heard the Soldiers, his feet stopped of their own accord, one of their voices so familiar to him it could have been his own.
He stepped off the path, just as Oz and his pal, Kyte, walked by, Martin bringing up the rear. They looked a little battered, but nothing that wouldn’t heal, and Merlin was glad to see it. However, they were having a heated conversation, one that seemed to be two against one, with Martin being the odd man out.
They were discussing Viper, and whether or not they should tell him “the rest,” whatever that meant.
“Just leave it, Martin,” Oz said as they rounded the bend. Martin’s body language spoke loudly that whatever “it” was, he had no intention of leaving it.
Gods, he looked good. Compared to the other two, Martin looked as though he’d made it through the attack unscathed. In fact, he looked better than ever. He was so drawn to him, it made it a challenge, choosing to turn and take the path back the way he’d come. Curiosity made him want to follow the boys, see what they were up to, but confronting Martin, especially with witnesses? Not a good idea, especially given how relieved he was that the Soldier was okay. He’d probably end up taking him in his arms and never letting go.
He passed the fork in the path that lead to the Soldiers barracks and continued to the back of the manse. As he reached the edge of the woods, he felt someone approaching. Still tense from the earlier fight with the KS, he shifted, spun, and grabbed the person creeping up on him by the arm, flipping him head over heels to land on the ground at his feet.
He didn’t realize he’d thrown the punch until he heard the gasp, that split second all the time he needed to stop his fist an inch from Martin’s face.
“I guess that answers that question,” Martin said, peridot light swirling in his eyes.
Merlin stood, backed away giving the Soldier room to stand. “What question?”
“About whether or not you can fight.”
“You shouldn’t sneak up on people,” Merlin said.
Martin got up, rubbing his back. “Point taken,” he said. “What are you doing out here?”
“I needed some air. What are you and the others doing?”
Martin shifted on his feet, looked over his shoulder before he spoke. “I don’t know. We were in town and some shit happened. Viper’s on it, but I’m sure you’ll get the memo. We think it was the KS. Anyway, it was weird. One of them fought off the other two before they could kill us. Oz and Kyte went down and I managed to avoid them long enough to get the others in the car and drive off. Anyway, Viper was right. If these are the folks out to kill us, we’re all gonna die.”
Merlin looked past Martin into the woods, following the Soldier’s repeated glances in that direction. The others must have moved on, as Merlin couldn’t sense them anywhere near.
Apparently thinking along the same lines, Martin took a step toward him, then another. Frozen by that grey green stare, Merlin stood his ground.
When he was but a step away, Martin leaned into him and whispered, “I’ve missed you.” Hot breath tickled Merlin’s ear, and a swarm of hornets kicked up a whirlwind in his belly, but he shook his head and took the step back he should have taken the moment Martin moved.
“Don’t go there, Soldier. Just don’t.”
Martin’s face twisted, frustration seeping from his very pores, but Merlin took another step toward the manse.
“You know where I stand. Go back, join your friends. Pretend you never saw me here tonight. Okay?”
Martin shook his head. “No,” he said. “It’s not okay.” But he executed a perfect about face and headed back down the path toward the others.
Merlin blinked away the moisture gathering in the corner of his eye and turned toward the manse. The walk he thought he’d needed turned out to be yet another bad decision this night.
Chapter Thirty-Four
M artin caught up with Oz and Kyte about a quarter mile into the woods.
“Who was it?” Oz asked. Through a barrage of tests, Allon verified that, though Oz had suffered several broken ribs, it only felt like his lung had been punctured. After calling on a volunteer to give him blood, the doc released him to his own devices. He was advised to go home and rest, but the Soldier often had problems with following orders.
“Nobody,” Martin said. “Must have been the wind.”
“Yeah, right.” Kyte’s eyes darted around the forest, his paranoia on orange alert after their run in with the KS.
“I said it was nothing,” Martin repeated. “Now which way?”
Oz and Kyte exchanged a look before Kyte scrunched his face in a nervous smile. “After you,” he said, motioning for Oz to lead the way and they followed him down a path that branched off from the main one.
They ended up at a dilapidated old shed, on the large side, but nothing Martin would consider safe or sterile enough to produce any kind of consumable. Anyone wandering off the main path wouldn’t give the place a second look. Only the high-end lock on the rickety-looking door gave the place away as something more than it seemed.
Oz keyed the lock and motioned them inside.
The first thing that hit Martin was the smell, a revolting combination of sour alcohol and stinky feet. When his head cleared of the odor and he got a good look at the place, he froze. It was unbelievable the racket his fellow Soldier had going on here. Shelves lined the back wall, all filled three deep with canning jars of clear liquid, each labeled with a batch number and date.
The still itself was a collection of pots and tubes, coils and buckets, and one very questionable stone furnace. “Are you sure it’s safe to do this indoors?” Martin asked as Oz picked up a bucket from beneath the tap spout and sniffed it.
“I have two sides rigged so I can prop them up on stilts. That gives the place plenty of ventilation.” Sure enough, there were hinges about halfway up two of the walls and slide locks on either side to keep things together when Oz wasn’t cooking Vampahol. He nodded toward a refrigerator in the corner and said, “Power comes from the generator out back. There’s beer if you want it, but I don’t know why you would with a roomful of my magic elixir at your fingertips.” He grabbed several empty canning jars and poured the contents of the bucket into them.
Kyte snatched one up, wrapped both hands around it and held it to his chest like a security blanket. “After tonight, I think I could drink a gallon of this stuff.”
Oz didn’t laugh, though. “That would kill you, and you know it. Just because we’re Vampires doesn’t mean this isn’t dangerous. With Vampahol, alcohol poisoning could become a new disease for Allon to treat. I’d just as soon none of us were his first patients.”
He picked up a glass jar and swirled it around, took a sip. “I think this is even better than the last batch,” he said, then handed it to Martin.
Martin hesitated. He’d sworn off the stuff, for real. That’s why he hadn’t been drinking tonight when the KS attacked, but now? After that little encounter with Merlin?
He grabbed the jar and took a large gulp and then another. He had every intention of draining the thing, but Oz grabbed it from his hand with a snarl.
“Did you not just hear me saying this stuff can kill you?”
Martin growled back, his fangs extending as his eyes sparked and lit the shed with a lighter shade of green.
Oz took a step back, his own eyes sparking, but when Martin held his hand out, he put the half-empty jar in the other Soldier’s fist.
“Whatever,” he said. “It’s your funeral.”
Martin took another drink and gasped as the liquid burned like fire down his esophagus and into his
belly. Damn right, it was his funeral. Every day without Merlin was like a living death, and he wanted… no, he needed… to put an end to it once and for all. He swirled the liquid around, hypnotized by the little eddy that formed inside the jar, a miniature version of the tornado that twisted his innards a little bit tighter every time Merlin pushed him away.
“Fuck it.” He drank what was left and his arm fell loosely to his side. The jar slipped from his fingers, landing with a soft thunk on the dirt floor. That last bit of Vampahol did the trick. He closed his eyes to shut out the rest of the world while his mind drifted away on a cloud of blessed oblivion.
Chapter Thirty-Five
W hen he reached his suite, Merlin couldn’t fight the restlessness battling inside him. Once again, he considered going to Mason, but what would he say? Hey, Warlord. I went into town to see how I’d do on patrol, and guess what? The Kurai Senshi showed up and attacked a couple of our guys. I’m sure you already know about that from Viper, but no worries. I beat the crap out of them and now you can bet your sweet ass they know where I am.
Yep. That would go over just swell.
He kicked off his sneakers at the door and a chunk of forest debris from his treads landed in the corner near the foyer table. Generally, he’d have cleaned it up right away, but in that moment it barely registered.
Seeing Martin in the woods was the last thing he needed. With the Shade riding so close to the surface, he needed calm, not the heat that scorched through his veins every time he saw the male. The cuffs did their job, though, warning him with their warmth that the Shade was upon him, giving him the chance to run as far and as fast as he could from the Soldier.
He walked into the meditation room again, knelt on the cushion in front of the shrine and closed his eyes. He needed to think, and he needed to not think. He needed his control back, for his life to return to how it had been before a certain Soldier arrived and managed to tear down every brick in the wall he’d spent a millennium constructing. He needed to forget.
~~~~~
Kioshi took to the Kurai Senshi instantly.
Thanks to Katsuro’s perpetual punishment and Kioshi’s status as newest Dark Warrior, they were positioned next to one another during exercises, and so were paired up when sessions turned to sparring. As the days progressed, they became inseparable. They trained together, ate together, and spent their spare time together, what little there was.
With regular meals and a desire to push himself even more than Katsuro did, Kioshi soon regained his health, his body filling out with lean muscles and hard lines. Yet none of that did anything to quell the young male’s love of life. As hard as he trained, as lethal as he became, there was always a gentleness to him that drew Katsuro in.
Their friendship blossomed early on, and with the way the rest of the Dark Warriors treated him, Katsuro valued that friendship more than his own life. Kioshi was a special kind of Warrior. The kind that valued life, even as he worked tirelessly to learn how to destroy it.
But as time went on, Katsuro’s feelings for Kioshi began to change. They were becoming men, and while the other Senshi sought out female companionship, Katsuro only wanted to be with Kioshi. They were eighteen and five years together with the Kurai Senshi when their true feelings for one another revealed themselves.
Unfortunately, Takeshi’s disdain for Katsuro had rubbed off on Kioshi by association. On the night in question, their punishment was to gather berries in the woods—female work.
Kioshi was in a particularly good mood that day, in direct contrast to Katsuro’s foul disposition. For whatever reason, he decided to run ahead, and soon disappeared from Katsuro’s sight.
Irritated by yet another undeserved punishment, Katsuro made no attempt to keep up. Distracted by his dark thoughts, he wasn’t prepared when Kioshi leapt from behind a thick tree and grabbed his arm. He flipped Katsuro into the air, and the disgruntled Senshi landed on his back, the air forced from his lungs. Kioshi then jumped atop him, straddled his hips and threw a face punch, which he pulled at the very last second.
The young Warrior’s laughter echoed in the woods around them, but Katsuro found their position anything but funny. The feel of the male’s legs hugging his hips and the throaty sound of his masculine laugh gripped Katsuro deep in his belly. His reaction was beyond his control.
As his sex thickened, his eyes darkened, and without consideration for what it could do to their friendship, he raised his hips to rub his erection against Kioshi’s groin.
Kioshi’s eyes widened in surprise, but it was only a moment before they turned smoky and his head fell forward. He pressed his hips down, meeting Katsuro’s erection with one of his own. The feel of it nearly stopped Katsuro’s heart.
With a quick reversal move, Kioshi was on the ground, and Katsuro laid on top of him, stretched out to where he could slowly grind his sex up the length of Kioshi’s, and down again. The friction between them built to a feverish pace, their chests heaving as they clung to one another. As Katsuro felt his groin tighten, Kioshi reached up and pulled their faces together, planting soft, hungry kisses on his lips, delving into his mouth with an eager tongue.
Katsuro was undone. He groaned Kioshi’s name as the orgasm burst from him, his best friend beneath him finding a release of his own.
They lay in the clearing much longer than they should have, kissing, touching, rediscovering each other in a new and exciting way.
“I’ve wanted you like this for an eternity,” Katsuro whispered as they lay in each other’s arms, slowly exploring one another, taking their time to learn and discover. “I was afraid…”
“As was I,” Kioshi said. “You are everything to me, and I’ll never regret today. But still, it frightens me.”
Katsuro nodded. He was right to be frightened. They both should be, but he refused to think about the ramifications of their actions. For now, in this one moment, life was perfect.
“Kioshi, aishiteru.”
~~~~~
A loud crash in the hall pulled Merlin from his reverie, the noise directly followed by a sharp knock at his door. Concerned for his neighbors, for Rachel and the twins, he ran to the foyer and swung things open without checking the peephole.
Martin leaned against the jamb, the shock of longer hair that normally fell over his forehead a tangled mess, his eyes glazed. And he smelled of lighter fluid, or something equally combustible.
Merlin half-closed the door, not wanting Martin to misunderstand all that wide open as an invitation, and glared at the Soldier.
“Why are you here?” he asked, doing his best to sound like a Warrior and not a frustrated lover. With the memory of Kioshi fresh in his mind, Martin’s next words struck like a bolt of lightning, sending electrical charges straight to Merlin’s groin. And to his heart.
He said, “I came for you.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
“K atsuro is here.”
The words lit a fire in Takeshi’s belly like nothing he’d ever experienced. Finally, he was close. So very close.
“Do you have him?”
Yuuma sighed, his frustration palpable even through the phone. “Unfortunately, he got away. Stephen and Timothy located three Legion males for you to interrogate. Two were down and they were moving in on the third when a Dark Warrior appeared out of nowhere. This was no Chosen, Takeshi Senshi. His skills suggested he’d been trained by a master.”
“You’re certain he was Kurai Senshi?”
“He took out my Senshi in under three minutes, both of them with the Shade on their side.”
“Dead?”
“No. He left them in an alley, unconscious but breathing.”
“Katsuro. That male was always weak.”
“Yeah, well, based on the condition of my Warriors, that’s not the word I’d use. He chose to leave them alive.”
“And what would you have done had the situation been reversed?”
Takeshi could feel the male thinking through the pause. “I take your point, bu
t it would do you well not to confuse strategy with weakness. If he wanted them dead, we’d be having a different conversation. I’m simply suggesting you not underestimate this male.”
Not prepared to concede a view he’d held for centuries, Takeshi changed the subject. “Did they see where he went?”
“No. As I said, they were unconscious. Stephen called me when he woke up, so now I’m taking them to a hotel in Moraine to heal up some before they show their faces back at camp.”
“So, we’re no closer to capturing Katsuro than we were before.” Takeshi paced the width of his room, his hand shaking in frustration.
“I wouldn’t say that,” Yuuma said. “Joseph was on lookout. When the Legion males drove off, he made the command decision to follow them. If they were important enough for Katsuro to come to their rescue, chances are he’s been holed up with this Legion branch for years.”
Takeshi froze, this new bit of information encouraging. “What do you suggest?”
“We watch the Shade. We’ve had pings in Fallen Cross for the last few months. The Soldiers disappeared down a lane protected with some kind of concealment magic. There’s an abandoned property not too far from there where our cadre can keep watch, investigate a bit. I have a team positioned there now. If the Shade is drawn in that area again, we will be able to confirm Katsuro’s location.”
“Right, then. Keep me posted.”
“Of course. Now I must go and take care of those two idiots.”
Yuuma disconnected, leaving Takeshi abuzz with excitement. His search was nearly over. Katsuro made a grave error in connecting with the Shade again, daring to show himself to other Dark Warriors. The next time he opened himself to the darkness, the traitor would be his.