by Lynne, Donya
Their love had been magical, despite the fact she couldn't have children. Not many female vampires were infertile, but she was. After his calling, when he checked her womb for life, nothing stirred within. They had both been devastated, because they'd been eager for a family, but Micah didn't let their inability to have children hold him down for long. He was grateful to have Katarina at all, and nothing would lessen his love for her.
Then she was killed in a raid. Not even two years after they had mated, she was gone.
Micah bit back the sting of tears as he remembered the day she had been taken from him. How he had held her in his arms as she breathed her last breath. How he had begged her not to go, not to leave him. How he had professed his undying love for her as she slipped away.
"Please don't leave me," he had said. He could remember it like it was yesterday. "I love you. You can't die, Kat. I waited so long for you. I came back for you. For you." Tears streamed his dirty, blood-covered cheeks. "Please." He scrunched his eyes closed, forcing his unshed tears to fall so he could see her clearly, not through the gauzy vision impaired by his tears.
"Micah…" She could barely speak, barely move, but managed to lift her hand to his face. "Be…strong." She blinked heavily. "Survive."
"No. Not without you." He clutched her close, rocked her, tried to breathe life into her, but it was too late. He had seen enough death and battle wounds to know Kat wouldn't survive hers. He had only seconds left with her.
"Micah. Promise me." She fought for breath. "You promise me now…that you will survive. Don't…" She began to fade in and out. "Don't…let me die…without your promise. Honor me…by living."
What could he do? This was his love, his life, his precious mate. And she wanted him to promise her he would live even though she—his reason for living—was about to die?
"Pro…mise…me." Her hold on his hand weakened.
Cursing God, Micah bowed his head and fought back a sob. If this was what she needed to die peacefully, he would give it to her. He would give anything to Katarina, even his life if God had been merciful enough to take him instead.
"I promise," he said. "I promise you. For you, I'll do anything, my love." He kissed her forehead, her nose, her lips.
A faint smile touched her mouth. "I…love…you…Micah."
"I love you." He tipped his forehead to hers and held her fading gaze. "I will always love you. Forever."
A few seconds later, the life had left her, and the light that had been Katarina vanished from Micah's life in a blink, without fanfare, and for eternity. A casualty of the ongoing war with the drecks, she had joined half of Micah's village in death.
Micah blinked against Chicago's lights. Why couldn't he have died, too? Life had been so perfect with her. With Katarina, he had been a true male, whole and complete. Not even her inability to have young had dampened his power and sense of worth. But now, all that was gone.
Micah bowed his head, and his long, black hair lifted on the stinging December wind that blew off Lake Michigan. He slowly wiped the pad of his thumb under one eye, then the other, brushing away his bitter tears.
After Kat's death, he had fallen. To shame. To disgrace. Into the depths of hell. The levels of his degradation had known no bounds.
In the moment of her death, he had vowed retribution, but first came the suffering of loss. The need to hurt himself, and the desire to die. Without Kat, his soul fractured. Not even Malek, who had been his best friend at the time—so close they were more like brothers—could get through to him.
Only by force of will and his promise to Kat did he survive months of suffering, but that didn't mean he became his old self again when the suffering ended. On the contrary, he was a hollowed shell, flesh and bone without a soul, the worst version of himself. That's when he hunted down the drecks who had killed her and murdered every last one. The hunt lasted for over a century and earned him a reputation with both drecks and vampires as being the most ruthless, deadliest warrior in the king's army. Except Micah had left the king's army to fulfill his personal vendetta. What he had done, he did outside the realm of the king's command.
Then the women came. And the men.
He didn't think of himself as bisexual, which was a label for humans. That meant nothing to him. Many vampires who had lived without a mate for as long as he had often scratched their curious itch when it came to same-sex relationships. And for vampires as old as he was, lying with a male was as normal as lying with a female, although Micah preferred the latter. Back then, when he had been strangled by misery's hand, he hadn't been choosy. He had simply needed companionship. A warm body to press against in the night. A tender expanse of skin to sink his fangs into and feed from as he had once fed from his beloved Katarina.
Disgraced and disgusted with himself, he had roamed and wandered like a gypsy for centuries, lost to all he had once known, as likely to kill as he was to save. For a while, his discretion severely lacked, and he wasn't proud of some of the things he had done during that tumultuous time in his life.
Slowly, he began to find himself again, and wound his way back to the King's Guard. Tristan and Malek greeted him warmly enough, but in their eyes Micah saw the realization that he had changed. They were hesitant to embrace him as they once had, and he couldn't blame them. He was no longer the male he once was, but at least he was alive. At least he had kept his promise to Kat and lived.
Silent and brooding more often than not, he found that much had changed. Bain the First had been assassinated, and Bain the Second had risen to power. Many things had stayed the same, though. Vampires were still at war with the drecks, and the fighting saved Micah from delirium.
In battle, he was a force of nature. Fierce, relentless, almost savage, and always heartless. Micah fought with no regard for his own life, as if every battle would be his last, and he had vowed to take as many as he could with him before he died. He reasoned that if he died in battle, he wouldn't really be breaking his promise to Kat, but somehow he always managed to survive. Over time, his reputation for being the most ruthless warrior in the King's Guard intensified. He became the most feared of all King Bain's warriors. And when King Bain created All the King's Men, Micah's reputation followed him. He was the one enforcer no dreck wanted to come up against, because he pushed the boundaries of the truce to their limits, and maybe even crossed them once or twice. He was an unleashed rabid dog.
Unfortunately, not even his reputation and his dominant demeanor could pull him from the devil's grasp. He had never recovered from Kat's death, and his suffering followed him everywhere.
However, in 1975, he discovered bondage. He found he liked the power exchange between a Dom and sub, as well as the trust between partners and—for a little while at least—BDSM became a means to channel his pain and to feel a sense of worth again. His submissives cut through to engage that inner part of him that desperately wanted to care for another the way he had Katarina, and within months, he was fully immersed in the leather lifestyle.
Bondage play, S&M, and other aspects of BDSM gave him focus, and he studied with the best Doms, both human and vampire alike, to master every aspect of the trade. His teammates at AKM didn't understand his immersion into leather, but for him, taking a sub to the very limits, shattering her—or him—then bringing her back from the brink into wholeness became therapeutic. He relished the after care, where he held his sub, soothed her, tended to any wounds he inflicted, and escaped into his own endorphin high.
But as with everything else in his life, bondage and S&M began to lose its appeal in the mid-90s after he caused tremendous mental and physical trauma to a relatively new sub during fire play. Through all their communication up front about what was and wasn't acceptable, the sub had never told him fire play was a hard limit or that his sister had died in a house fire when they were kids. Even though Micah could dip inside people's minds at will without even trying—another piece of evidence to how much of a freak he was—he hadn't seen the memory of the sub's sist
er in his thoughts until the moment he lit his cheesecloth-tipped wand. The sub freaked and thrashed, and suddenly Micah's mind was filled with the sub's terror. By then, it was too late. The sub's arms had been bound, but not his legs, and he ended up knocking the jar of alcohol over, getting some on him, and into an open flame. The sub's leg lit up like a torch. Micah could still hear his terrified, tortured screams.
Fortunately, Micah always kept emergency supplies nearby, and he doused the fire within seconds, but not before the alcohol vapor burned off and the sub's skin was burned badly enough to blister.
After that, Micah lost his love of BDSM. Well, more like he lost trust in himself to perform without hurting anyone, despite twenty solid years as a much sought after Master-turned-Lord. He had remained out of the lifestyle ever since.
Then Micah met Jackson right after Easter eight months ago, and not only did his retired Dom side raise its head in interest, but the memories of Katarina resurfaced, along with all the old feelings of both.
Micah hadn't been looking for a mate when he found Jackson, not that that's how mating worked between members of their race. Vampires didn't just pick and choose who they wanted to mate with. Mother Nature did that for them. She decided when a mating link fired up and when it didn't, and one fired inside Micah for Jackson that night, even though Jack didn't experience the same response.
Micah still didn't understand why this had happened. Half-mating rarely occurred. In fact, Micah had only heard of it happening in rare cases involving mixed-bloods, not full-bloods, but he and Jackson were both one hundred percent vampire. Again, it just proved how different Micah was from everyone else. That he was an aberration. A weirdo anomaly.
A monster.
At first, Jackson had been ecstatic that Micah had bonded to him. He had heard about Micah in the circles he ran in…how Micah was revered by vampires and feared by drecks, and how he used to be a leather Lord who took his subs to unbelievable heights. For Jack, being seen with Micah was a major notch in his belt and a huge turn-on, but as the year now wound to a close, it was clear that Jack had merely used Micah for bragging rights.
Micah closed his eyes, sorrow ranging through him. Was he forever destined to be refuse? Nothing more than a token of misery? Had Katarina been the best part of him, and now he was nothing—less than nothing—without her? He could see the end coming with Jackson. He saw the thoughts that echoed from Jackson's mind. Now that the thrill was gone, and his itch had been scratched, Jackson was ready to move on to the next great conquest. He was a manipulator. Nothing more than a user. Lying through his mouth while his thoughts revealed the truth. Always in search of greener grass instead of cultivating what stood right in front of him.
Not even the realization that Jackson was a major asshole not worthy to be shit on would stop the suffering from taking hold when the time came for Jackson to leave. He had awakened Micah's urge to mate, and in doing so had opened up a door to Micah's past with Katarina. It was clear that when Jackson left—and he would leave, of that much Micah was certain—not only would Micah fall into suffering from the loss, but he would re-live the suffering he had experienced after Kat died.
Great. A fucking one-two punch. How would he survive this time? Would he even want to?
A chill ran down Micah's spine, more from the fear of what was to come than the cold, and he blinked his eyes open and surveyed the cityscape.
"Life goes on," he whispered sadly. "But not for me." This wasn't self-pity, but a weary ache of longing for the pain and suffering to end. For so long, he felt that all he had done was claw his way from one inner battle to the next only to get up night after night simply to exist. Yes, he was alive, but was he really living? Was he really keeping his promise to Katarina?
He sighed, so damn tired…ready to leave this life and enter the next. All around him, humanity stirred to a new day as the first hint of light crept up against the eastern horizon. Humans rose to get ready for work while vampires settled within the safety of their darkened confines to sleep away the sunlight. And drecks. Micah could smell their stench. They rotted the life from whatever and whomever they touched.
Right now, though, drecks were the least of his worries. Let them spread their repugnant stench in every alley and crevice of Chicago. He was checked out.
As if beckoned by Micah's taunts, movement caught his eye, and he rose to his feet as a Chicago police cruiser pulled to the curb in the distance. With his keen vision and sense of smell, Micah watched as a dreck disguised as a Chicago police officer stepped out of his patrol car.
John Apostle. That bastard.
The most nefarious drecks, Apostle included, posed as human law enforcement. The position gave them power they didn't inherently have and allowed them into places they otherwise wouldn't be able to go. Not to mention, posing as police officers put weapons in their hands, tapped them into the heartbeat and up-to-the-minute information of the city, which included activities vampires would rather keep secret, and put them within reach of criminals they could use for their connections, as well as for their own personal gain.
John Apostle had been on AKM's radar for years, but he proved a worthy adversary. They knew Apostle was up to no good and had ties to Royce, but they could never pin anything on him. The guy was cunning and covered his tracks better than Sasquatch.
Micah returned to his haunches as if Apostle would think to look to the top of The Sentinel and see him. What was Apostle doing in this part of town at this hour? This wasn't his normal beat. Micah would know. He had memorized the schedule of every dreck who worked on the police force, and he kept good tabs on them. Well, most of the time he did. Lately, with his Jackson troubles, he was slipping on his duties.
Two more drecks stepped from the shadows as Apostle approached. Even from here, he could tell they were drecks, even though they looked human.
Instinct and training took over, and Micah was about to mist himself closer to see if he could finally get something on that asshole when his skin prickled. He turned and found that the sun was beginning to crest the horizon.
Shit! Had almost an hour passed already?
Turning back toward Apostle, he frowned. He didn't have time to investigate and kick Apostle's ass into next season, which was unfortunate. He could use the exertion, but the sun demanded his return to his apartment. With one final glance at the drecks on the street, he projected himself inside.
Alone.
* * *
Apostle glanced left and right along the sidewalk. It was early morning. Too early for humans to be out in filthy droves, but late enough for the workaholics to already be in their offices. This meant that the streets weren't completely void of life, but at least the vampires were down for the day.
Normally, he wouldn't venture this far north in the city, but he had a debt to collect. He brought his gaze back around to two of his dealers, Ovid and Regis.
"Apostle?" Ovid said cautiously.
"Ovid. Regis." He nodded to each in turn. "Let's go inside." Going indoors would get him out of the irritating, ass-frigid cold, but would also keep the rest of what was about to go down out of the public eye.
Ovid and Regis exchanged glances but turned and led him back inside the club they owned, which provided a nice front for cobalt distribution.
"What's up? What brings you around?" Regis said, but he spoke with the caution of someone who already knew why Apostle was there.
Apostle stepped around the bar and poured himself a beer, making himself at home. After all, Ovid and Regis only owned this bar by Apostle's good graces. He could do whatever the fuck he wanted, and if they had a problem with that…well, they wouldn't have a problem with that. Enough said. "How's business?" he said without answering Regis's question.
Restlessness worried Regis's body language, but Ovid tried to force a disarming smile.
Waste of time. Smiles didn't do much for Apostle. Cobalt sales, income to stuff in Premier Royce's coffers, and the weakening of the vampire race. That w
as what yanked Apostle's chain and gave him a mental hard-on. But a pansy-assed smile. Was Ovid serious?
"Business is good," Ovid said. "Better than ever."
Apostle took a drink of his beer as he came back around the counter and leaned against the bar. "Are you sure?"
"Oh yeah, yeah," Ovid said, flustered.
He calmly set down his mug. "Well now, that's interesting."
Ovid frowned, and Regis gulped uncomfortably. "Oh? Why?"
Apostle sighed. "You really think I'm stupid, don't you?"
Every once in a while, one of his teams of dealers got greedy, skimmed off the top, dipped their fingers too deeply into the profits that were supposed to go to Royce, and Apostle had to pay them a little visit and remind them who was in charge. Sure, a little skimming was natural. Cobalt dealers were greedy beings by nature, so he expected some five fingering. He even padded the percentages to compensate for it. As it was, Ovid and Regis had been diving in a little too deeply. For months, the amount of cobalt they pushed into the hands of vampires didn't mesh with the dollars and cents being turned in, and every week saw a little bit more of a discrepancy, to the tune that O and R were in the hole about one hundred thousand dollars. It was time for a come-to-Jesus meeting.
"No, Apostle. Absolutely not," Ovid said.
Apostle pulled out his nightstick and slammed it into Ovid's gut before snaring his throat in his fist and shoving him against the wall. "You two owe me one hundred big ones. Did you really think I wouldn't notice? Did you really think I would just let that go?" He shifted to blue, and his eyes flashed red with a burst of anger. His long, blue-black hair hung well past his shoulders, and his fingers grew about an inch longer, his face hollowing out and growing gaunt.
Ovid struggled to speak against the hold Apostle had on his neck.
Regis sputtered from behind him, trying to find his voice, before spitting out, "We were going to pay it back. I swear."