Shackled to the Night, page 8
As she panted, he took his mouth away from her heat, but gently moved his fingers in and out of her. Soon, she was gyrating against his hand, moaning again.
“I need…” she gasped.
“What do you need, Emily?” He spoke directly into her center, his deep voice reverberating through her entire body.
She felt another lick, another plunge of his fingers. He took her clitoris in his mouth and gently sucked. She felt another orgasm building in her belly, getting ready to explode through her body.
Her eyes snapped open. “I need you inside me,” she said with determination.
She heard a hiss, and then a growl. The animalist sounds made her even more aroused, if that was possible. Thaddeus quickly came up her body, and as he kissed her, she could taste her own essence on him. Her hand reached between their bodies, and grabbed his hard shaft.
She guided him to her heat, and his body surged into her. He filled her up, stretching and elongating her, a complete invasion that she relished. She gasped, and he stopped.
“Are you okay, Emily?” he whispered.
“Oh, yes,” she breathed. She was more than okay. She was lost in the pleasure of their bodies, the musky smell of him, the feel of his skin under her hands. He consumed her, and made her forget about everything in her life except the beauty of their bodies coming together.
And he began to pump into her, slowly at first, long strokes in and out. As she got used to his size, she undulated her hips, and met him surge for surge. He kissed her gently, his tongue playing along the outline of her lips, gently nipping at her.
Emily sighed, feeling his tongue on her neck. As his hips grinded into hers, she felt him grow thicker and harder, and she began to undulate under him, meeting him again stroke for stroke.
“More,” she hissed into his ear.
Chapter 11
Emily woke to feel big, strong arms around her, a large, hard chest at her back. She lay there, still, and thought about the hours they had spent.
After the sex, scratch that, the absolutely mind-blowing sex, Thaddeus had gone to the kitchen and prepared food. It was a mishmash of crackers, cheese, and some turkey slices. He had also brought in a bottle of white wine with two glasses. They lay in bed, drank wine, ate and talked.
She told him about Brandon. He was a good kid with a few close friends, but everyone liked him. It seemed she was dropping him off at a birthday party every weekend. She told him about how well he did in school, and how he wanted to play football, but she was scared he would get hurt. Thaddeus had laughed when she told him that Brandon excelled in bowling on the Wii, and just about every other game as well. Thaddeus said he wanted to meet the boy and have a challenge to see who would be dubbed Master of the Wii, because he was pretty certain he would reign supreme.
She told him about Brandon’s abduction, how the boy had been on his way home from a neighbor’s house at dusk and had simply disappeared. She told him about the police, and how it seemed as though they weren’t doing much, hence her foray into finding him herself.
Emily liked talking about Brandon with Thaddeus. It helped to talk about the good times before he disappeared. She had been so focused on him being gone, it lightened her heart a little to talk about the time before that. Thaddeus was truly interested in the boy, and she believed him when Thaddeus said he hoped to meet Brandon one day very soon.
They had found out that they both like Mexican food, but Chinese food didn’t do much for either of them. They both enjoyed Stephen King. They discussed movies and other places they had lived. They both enjoyed soft jazz, and the haunting, soothing sounds of the band Iron and Wine.
She told him about her childhood, and how her parents had died in a car wreck when she was thirteen. Then she went to live with her uncle and aunt, who were kind and got her through adolescence without too many bumps in the road. Thaddeus didn’t say much about his childhood, except that he didn’t want to talk about it. And they didn’t. She found herself doing most of the talking.
They discussed places they had traveled to, and what their favorite vacation destinations were. He liked Ireland and New Zealand. She had never left the United States, but loved Disney Land.
Emily smiled as she remembered the look on his face after when he asked her what the tattoo of the heart with the date in on her breast signified. It was Brandon’s birthday. Thaddeus had looked surprised, then awed. At that point he had gazed at her as if she were the most precious, beautiful creature on Earth.
They had talked for hours, until they both yawned at the same time. Thaddeus gathered her in his arms and kissed her gently. The kiss had sent an electrical current down her spine, straight into the center of her belly, creating a sweet ache of want and need. She felt the heat spread, and Thaddeus had as well. They had slow, lazy sex, each exploring the other with curious and gentle caresses.
After two more orgasms, Emily was sated and so tired she could barely keep her eyes open. Thaddeus pulled her close to him, and she had fallen into a peaceful, blissful deep sleep.
She felt the steady rise and fall of his chest against her back, the way his arms encircled her, and for the first time in weeks, she felt safe. A wave of guilt washed over her. Here she was feeling safe, and who knew what her son was feeling. Okay. Back to Real Life. She had a wonderful, absolutely glorious, much need break from the bastard, but it was time to get back to finding her son. She felt her determination rise within her, and as if he had sensed the change in her, Thaddeus pulled her tighter to his chest.
“Let me up,” she whispered.
“No,” he mumbled, burying his face in the hair at the nape of her neck.
She laughed softly and began to extract herself from his arms, which only made him hold on tighter.
“Thaddeus,” she said, laughing, “Let me up!”
He loosened his grip and she freed herself from him. She looked around to see if it was still daylight or not, and there wasn’t a window in the room. Strange, she thought, but then she realized she hadn’t seen a window throughout the whole house. Whatever. If the guy didn’t like windows, that was his business. Besides, she had more important things to worry about than his architectural choices.
She got out of bed, and began crossing the room to the bathroom. She felt Thaddeus’s gaze on her, and she glanced back. He had rolled on his back and propped himself up on his elbows. She stopped and just stared at him. In the candlelight, his tousled blonde hair had hints of red, his blue eyes glowing, boring into her. She dropped her gaze from his face and let her eyes wander downward. The muscles across his chest and stomach strained, and the silky white sheet rested lightly on his hips. Even from where she stood, she could see the outline of his arousal, and it was long and thick, and ready for her again. She felt her core warm, and she licked her lips.
“Come back here, beautiful,” he growled, a devious smile playing on his lips as his eyes wandered over her naked body. He held out his hand, an invitation. She wanted to, Jesus, did she want to. She wanted to get under those sheets, back into his arms. She wanted to feel him all over her, inside her. She wanted to be overwhelmed by him, his touch and his scent. She wanted to be lost to him again. She wanted to be warm and safe in the cocoon that was Thaddeus, but she couldn’t. She had to find her son. Her desperation to find Brandon overrode her desire for the breath-taking man on the bed.
“I need to find Brandon,” she said softly.
The smile faded, and Thaddeus nodded once in agreement, all business. “Go get showered, Emily. Let’s go find your son.”
Chapter 12
Vladislav, full-bred vampire, and one of the members of The Council, was doing business as Victor Marano in the human world. Sure, he knew he was supposed to be a good full-bred vampire and stay up in that God-forsaken cave in Ecuador he had spent hundreds of years in. And yes, he was aware that he had agreed to put himself into stasis so that the race of half-breed vampires he and the other members of The Council had created would flourish on Earth. But frankly, he didn’t care one iota on what he had done in the past. For him, it was all about the present, and what he intended to do with his remaining days on Earth.
He looked around the warehouse in Verdi, Nevada, a small town just outside Reno up Highway 80. There were approximately twenty boys lined up, ages ten to seventeen, all of them his sons. He watched them go through their nightly rituals of exercises, led by a male vampire he had recruited to help train the boys, as well as look after them. He marveled at the boys’ beauty, their youth and their strength. What he wouldn’t give to have a little of it for himself, and hopefully in the next few days he would have some.
His thoughts took him back twenty years, to the cave, and his idea that had bloomed, and then festered in his mind until it became an itch that needed scratching. He had needed to act on it, and so he had.
He remembered lying in stasis in that cave on a hard slab of stone. He had felt the breakdown of his body happening slowly. He felt his bones going soft, his joints aching, and his heart pumping with a little less enthusiasm than it had shown in the past. Most vampires kicked it around one-thousand years of age, give or take a couple of centuries, and he was getting close, although he had pretty much quit counting after seven hundred.
He had often thought that The Council should have just killed themselves after they got their half-breed race up and running. It would have solved so many issues, mainly being that the members of The Council couldn’t be seen by humans. As full-bred vampires, they had the ability to present themselves to humans, to look like humans. However, as full-bred vampires, they were also unpredictable, and they didn’t trust themselves to keep cloaked. After all, one of the greatest joys of a full-bred vampire was the hunt and the kill, and the terror that kill inspired in the victims. There really wasn’t anything more terrifying for a human than a full-bred vampire draining the life out of them.
The Council had decided that they would allow themselves one luxury while waiting to die in that cave. They would allow their spirits to roam the Earth. It was really a perfect compromise. The Council would get out of the cave, and humans would not see any of them because as their spirits soared, it looked like nothing but a black shadow passing by, and The Council could not harm humans in their spirit form. As they aged, the time they could remain in spirit form became shorter and shorter. While in the spirit form, they would check up on their race. Based on their findings, they would then decree what the next steps for the vampire race would be, and pass those decrees down to their sons and daughters. Rusulka’s boys, the Dark Forces, would then enforce those laws, killing those in the vampire race who disagreed.
Twenty years ago, as his spirit wandered, it occurred to Victor how The Council had fucked everything up for the vampire race. In essence, the race was dying out. The Behavior Doctrine of The Council—the humans were to be revered and humans could not know of vampires—had painted their race into a corner that they simply could not get out of. How was The Council to know that female vampires would cease to exist? No one was quite certain on the exact number of female vampires left on Earth, but everyone agreed in was getting closer to zero every day.
Most of the female vampires had seen the writing on the wall, considering the history of the race. When the race had been slaughtered to only a few, which eventually became The Council, the males had raped countless human women to get the race’s numbers up. Good times, Victor thought. Good times. But those female vampires took a look at that happy little piece of history and could easily see themselves becoming forced baby-making machines, which was what Victor wanted. He thought it was a good idea to round up all the female vampires and have the strongest of the race start rutting them and make some damn babes, for shit’s sake. But of course, the pansies who served with him on The Council had thought this too cruel and shot down the idea. By that time though, most of the female vampires had gone into hiding, immersing themselves so totally in the human world, making it impossible to locate them.
With the happy thought that there weren’t any babes being born, well, babes that would survive anyway, and as the numbers in the race dwindled; it would only be a matter of centuries before vampires were extinct.
That was when Victor had taken it upon himself to make sure this didn’t happen. He forced himself awake from his stasis. He opened his eyes and felt his bones creak as he stretched. As he sat up, his stomach rolled. He had three objectives: First, he needed to find a worthless human and get some nourishment. Second, he needed to find a way to stop the march that time was doing on his body, and third, he would make sure his race survived in the purest form if it fucking killed him.
And he knew how to do all three. As he emerged from his cave, it felt good to be out in the dark night, even if it was a little chilly. As his eyes scanned the darkness, he noticed that there were far fewer trees down the mountain slope than when he and the rest of The Council had gone into stasis, and many more villages had been erected. This was good. He didn’t have far to get the nourishment he desperately needed.
As he walked down the hill, he didn’t bother to conceal himself in a cloak that would be more appealing to the human population. He was too fucking tired. He left his fangs hanging over his lips, his large dark voided eyes and his claws on display. It had been a long time since he had the opportunity to scare the living hell out of humans, and frankly, he missed the horror on their faces when they saw him coming, and the sheer terror as they watched him drain the life out of them. He chuckled to himself, seeing a man walking across a field carrying some sort of weapon. Ahh…the hors d’oeuvres for the evening.
He inhaled deeply and ran after the man. Even in his older, more decrepit state, Victor was faster than any human could track, and the poor guy with the weapon had no idea what hit him until Victor was on top him. The night shattered with an ear-piercing scream.
Victor still marveled at how easy it had all been. After making his way down that mountain and then on to America, he had chosen places where humans tended to stay for long periods of time. He didn’t want to infiltrate any vagrant towns because he needed to keep track of the women he impregnated. He had chosen Reno, Nevada for this very purpose. Yes, there was some tourist industry with Tahoe being within a stone’s throw, but the people who lived there tended to stay for long periods of time. A lot of them were born and raised there, and maybe left for college for a few years, but always came back. This was the type of community he liked.
He chose the mother of his children very carefully. They had to be young, healthy, intelligent and beautiful. He certainly wasn’t above fucking ugly women, but if his seed was going to create a life, it had to be mixed with the crème of the crème.
As he went from state to state, taking up residence where he liked, he seduced hundreds of women. Always cloaking himself in the form he was in now, Victor Marano, he would watch the women, learn their habits, their routines. His senses weren’t so debilitated that he could not smell the scent of ovulation. He would then wait until he could smell it, and then he would insert himself in their lives and seduce them.
He would, of course, keep tabs on the women and note which joining’s had resulted in pregnancy. There was nothing that could be done if the babes were born with more vampire DNA than human DNA. They died. But he kept track of the ones born with more human DNA, waiting until his plans were laid and his strategy was ready to be set in motion.
Approximately ten years ago, he had found a vampire male working the night shift at a pharmaceutical company in the Research and Development department. Thankfully, the male was a disgruntled employee, and was happy to have a private employer. When Victor had explained to the male that he was looking to activate the vampire DNA of human boys, the male had been all over the challenge. The male had come up with a series of four shots that brought the vampire DNA front and center, in essence, making the receiver a vampire.
Coming back to the present, watching his progeny, Victor had just recently begun to collect the boys he sired. As soon as they were in his care, he immediately had their vampire DNA activated. He loved how the boys relished in their new-found strength and speed. Some of them had some trouble with the blood as nourishment, but eventually their thirst won out, and they fed, as vampires should.
The twenty vampire boys also happened to be his fountain of youth. The scientists he had recruited and muzzled with large sums of money were almost finished with a device that would extract the hormones from the boys that made them youthful, and they would then prepare the solution to shoot into him. Victor relished the day he could move about as he did when he was younger.
The boys in front of him were to be the leaders in creating the next generation of the race. These boys would be the fathers of those to come. And these boys would be the next generation of rulers. That was, of course, after Victor decided to check out. Until then, with the hormones of youth flowing through him, with the power surging him forward, he would rule. He would no longer bow down to The Council and their race-killing rules. He would build his army of bloodthirsty vampires, track down the female members of the race, however few there may be left, and he would rebuild the race to its prior domination. Nothing would stop him or his new warriors. He took the meaning of his vampire name, Vladislav, very seriously. Vladislav translated into “to rule with glory,” and that was exactly what he intended to do.
As he watched the boys, something seemed off. He counted quickly, and then counted again. Someone was missing. He scanned the boys, mentally noting each one’s name.
Of course. Brandon was gone.
Brandon. He had had high hopes for the boy. His mother had been exquisite. Smart, and very pretty, if he remembered correctly from the file. The boy was not like the others. The other boys, once their vampire DNA had been activated, seemed to relish in the power and the speed that their other side offered them, and the hunt, especially the older ones. Brandon didn’t partake in the shredding of the humans that Victor had provided as nourishment for the boys. In fact, he had seemed disgusted by the whole thing. No, the boy had too much of his mother in him. He remembered her being kind, generous and loving. She had been beautiful, yes, but all of that goodness that oozed out of her made him grind his teeth.
