The Angel's Kiss (thus far)
23:48 Feb 04 2008
Times Read: 723
The Angel’s Kiss
By Ryan N. Stone
Chapter 1
The warm spring breeze that rolled over the grassy knoll where I was standing in my dark pinstripe suit with the wine red crushed velvet vest smelled sweet. The delicious scent of honeydew and apricot blossoms thick in the air was almost chokingly too sweet. Standing at the crest of the hill where the funeral was being held, just minutes from true sunset, one could get lost in the swirling fumes of nature and what could be described as a slice of heaven on earth’s green surface.
Those who had shown up for Mistress Morgan’s burial weren’t really paying attention to what the priest said about the only person whom I felt anything like what people call love toward. They were watching me, standing on the opposite side of them within arms reach of the rich mahogany coffin with the ornate gold filigree carving along the casket’s lid in elegant Celtic crosses and knots. I was just standing there in my suit, the only one I owned since I had began working at a factory in downtown Los Angeles as an assembly line worker.
My tears at the pain that was like a vice grip on my heart at the death of the person whom I had thought was my mother, breaking it like a crystal glass dropped on the ground stung my wind whipped cheeks like acid dripping down my skin. The night that she had died on, the night my soul died, she was trying to save some of the other orphans that were twelve or younger. All of the firefighters and some of the police only noticed her running into the burning building just before the main door’s frame collapsed around her.
The sky was a whirling torrent of reds, blues, purples, and even greens that made the heavens look as if they two were mourning the death of a woman who put her own life down to save two or three children that weren’t even old enough to go without diapers.
She truly was an angel sent down to watch over the future of the world, those who would grow up to be the future. My only wish had been that she would come back to me, back to life so that I had a mother to take care of me until I could take care of her. But I wasn’t in the orphanage for any reason other than what the Los Angeles Home for Orphans and Runaways was for; I was truly an orphan. I had always been told by Mistress Morgan that she was my mother and that we lived in the orphanage because it was her job and duty to look after all the other children.
Another warm zephyr blew across the knoll, carrying with it the thick scent of the blooming apricot trees and honeydew vines that infested the ancient yet attractive graveyard, but this one held a different scent just underneath. A sickly stench was nearly hidden by the beautiful smell of the freshly cut grass and greenery that was giving off bountiful amounts of pleasant and sweet scents that plagued the air. It was strong, overpowering, and smelled like…like cheap cologne.
Chapter 2
My eyes shot open as the sound of another one of the locks on my apartment door opened with a resounding and loud click. Instinctively my hand went to the underside of my hooded headboard where a holster held in place by Velcro homed a Glock 9mm. I pulled the gun out as quietly as I could, trying desperately not to make a sound as I crept out of bed despite my nakedness to stand at an angle to the door and taking to my knee to aim the semi-automatic pistol at the door.
As yet another lock clicked open and the handle turned to open the door a couple of inches before the security clasp caught, I called out to whomever, or whatever I should say, may be on the other side of my door.
“Hold it right there! Another move to open the door or enter and I’ll shoot. I will make sure that you end up with more holes than Swiss cheese!”
Silence and not a thing moved. My heart was beating fast, and if it didn’t sound so stupid, I would say it was beating at least a thousand times a minute and as loud as an African drum. Whoever was on the other side must have stopped moving, afraid that even the slightest breath would cause me to fire. As the tension was building up to an insufferable state, a familiar voice called out from behind the door.
“Whoa, down boy! It’s just me, Horus.”
The stress I had been feeling rushed out of me like air out of a balloon let go and I lowered my gun, feeling utter relief at it being my long term friend and Practioner resource who was behind the door. I shouted out to him to wait a moment before grabbing a sheet from the plain bedspread to cover myself with.
Wrapping the sheet around myself like a skirt, I opened the door to see the one person whom I considered to be my only true friend, and smiled at the thought that he hadn’t knocked like I had always told him to.
“You know I don’t like it when people just try to walk in to my apartment like that. I’ve always hated surprises, Horus,” I said to him.
“I know, I know, but you shouldn’t be sleeping in so late. Besides, I’ve got drinks, Nic, and you know how much you like those martinis of mine,” Horus replied with a smirk on his wide face. He looked like a boy, but he was damn near in his thirties.
Horus wasn’t what anyone would expect at first meet. He was barely five and a half feet tall with a dark tan like a surfer even though he didn’t know how to swim. With his white blond hair that came just past his widespread shoulders in his French braid, his bright blue eyes that were like pools of melted sapphire, and the loud Hawaiian shirts that he wore with his tattered blue jeans, people could mistake him for a teenager. Standing next to me, he would look like my little brother despite being older than me by three years.
I towered over him at six one, but I was all height and no meat like Horus who was stocky to be polite. I was only a hundred and seventy-six pounds and built like a marathon runner. One of the things Horus liked most about me was my waist-long, blood red hair that I kept tied in a braid with bangs that fell just above my eyes. My eyes were a dark gold that had a black ring around the outside of the iris. I had always wondered where I had gotten such an eye color, even when I was in the orphanage that I grew up in.
Staring at one another, Horus in his lurid blue surfer shirt and me in my sheet, we couldn’t hold back the growing smiles that crept onto our faces with the laughter that burst from us as we cracked up. I opened the door wide enough for Horus to walk in with the brown paper bag that he was holding in his arm and went to grab some pants and a black tank to put on.
When I had dressed, the Glock 9mm at my hip in a side holster, I glanced at the clock on my bedside table to see it was three o’clock in the afternoon, and watched Horus empty his bag. He pulled out a bottle of Vermouth and gin, a ridiculously large bag of Twizlers, a jar of green olives, a couple of videotapes, and a couple of boxes of Thai food. He’d figured out that I don’t go grocery shopping much since I can’t really afford it on a P.I.’s paycheck. I usually don’t like it when he brings me food, but that doesn’t mean I’m not grateful.
“You know, Horus, you’re not supposed to be eating sweets. The doctor’s orders do last more than just the few minutes it takes to walk out his office.” Horus was a hopeless sugar fiend and notorious drinker as well. I had him go to a couple of AA meetings to see if I could at least get him to slow down, but he still insists on drinking at least once a day.
“I know, but I can’t help it, ya know?”
“Yeah, I do.”
Laughing as we both started to make a martini for each of us, Horus an extra dry and a sweet one for me, we started talking about what was new with each other. I hadn’t had a case in close to a month to which Horus said some advertising and purposefully offering my services and even working with the PD could help with. My reply to his statement was of my dislike for the extra attention and the distain the police showed towards private investigators like me.
A few years ago, vampires and other creatures once thought to be only legends and myths came out of hiding and introduced themselves to the world. The world’s reaction to the creatures that inhabited shadow and lore was unexpected; instead of fear and aversion, open arms and welcome parties was the worldwide greeting to the monsters and humanoid beings. Vampires were actually the most popular, shortly receiving rights as citizens in the United Kingdom, Japan, and even the U.S. as living people. They were given the right to work and even had their own amendment added to the Constitution declaring that they could not be killed unless in self-defense or by execution by licensed bounty hunters or executioners under the new laws seeing as they were full citizens. There was a bill floating in congress that would give them the vote, and another that would strip them of their rights, making it okay to kill them on sight again, just for being what they were. I was still in college at the time and decided to go for an executioner’s license and even took a couple of new classes that covered preternatural biology.
Since then, I became a P.I. and got my government license as an executioner so I could kill vampires, lycanthropes, and whatever else that caused a problem in the city or harmed a human being. The government definitely frowned on that and put out contracts for those who “surrendered their rights”. I hardly ever did that since they played by the rules so often, but my finger just itched to kill a few of the suck-heads; you could say I was prejudiced against them, since those who had burned down my teenage home and surrogate mother were gang members turned undead.
Since we had run out of things to talk about, Horus and I decided to sit down on my secondhand black leather couch and throw in one of the tapes he’d brought. What he had in the bag was Young Frankenstein, a couple of old silent films, and even a few new movies like Underworld and The Notebook. He was a diehard drama and film noir fan. I never understood where the entertainment was in silent movies; I was kind of a fan of comedy and horror movies like The Exorcist or The Nightmare before Christmas. Although, I was quite fond of movies like The Librarian movies and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
We decided on Young Frankenstein since it was one that I liked. We popped it in and about thirty minutes or so into the movie, my cell rang from my bedroom. Hating to be interrupted when having a drink and watching a movie, but in need of a case, which I assumed it was, I got up to get my phone. Walking back to the couch, I flipped it open to answer it.
“Moonlight Investigations, your problems are our--” I was cut off before I could finish my spiel.
“Hello! Is this Nicolai?” It was a woman who was on the other line, her voice rich and commanding at the same time despite the desperation in her tone. Her words we fast and she sounded on the brink of a panic.
“Yes, this is Nicolai Astärté. Who is this?” I asked. I wondered what might be going on. Is this woman in trouble? Does she need help? Why did she call me? So many questions ran through my head as I try to figure out why a woman with such an opulent voice would sound so panicked and would call me at the same time. I got my answer when she spoke again, this time a little calmer.
“Oh, thank the Gods! I was hoping that this would be you. I need your help.”
“May I ask who needs it?” I was beginning to feel suspicious of this woman for some reason. Intuition, perhaps?
“My name is Ilyena Rhavin. I am new to your city, but I have a few old problems. Um…is it possible to speak with you in person? I don’t know if it’s safe to talk over the phone.”
“Of course. What day do you want to meet? I’ll see if I’m free.” I was lying out of my ass. Of course I would be free.
“Now.”
Confused, I was about to ask what she meant by that comment when a resounding knock came from my door. I flipped my phone closed, motioned for Horus to turn everything off and hide, and pulled my gun again from the side holster I was wearing. I wasn’t going to take the chance that whoever was behind the door would be safe, at least, not safe for me. Well, time to find out.
Chapter 3
Taking a very cautious step toward the door, I took the risk of looking out my peephole. A beautiful woman dressed in a golden silk dress with hair like spun red gold and eyes the color of sinful chocolate was flanked by two men; one looked like he rode a hog, the other like he was straight out of a Bruce Lee movie. Before I could even shout through the door to find out who the fuck they were or why they were outside my door, the woman in the bullion outfit spoke first.
“Please, I have to speak with you,” she yelled through the door.
Freaked out and at a loss for words, I opened the door without thinking and looked through the crack of the opening.
“Wh-who are you?” I asked.
“I’m Ilyena. You just spoke with me!” shouted the woman.
Disbelief swam over me as I tried to wrap my frozen mind around the thought that this was the same woman. She must have sensed my confusion and doubt, so she pushed my door hard, forcing me back as she rushed forward. The biker she had with her closed the door after looking up and down the hall as if looking for followers and took out a deep blue crystal and traced the edges of my door frame with it, muttering what sounded like Romanian to me.
“What the hell is he doing?” I asked about the big guy who was now drawing in the air with a green crystal now just an inch from my door. From the corner of my eye I saw that the Bruce Lee guy was more or less praying while standing by my only window near the TV.
“They’re sealing the room. I can’t afford for anyone to hear--” The woman in the gold dress stopped abruptly as her eyes fell upon Horus with a half gone martini in one hand, the TV remote in the other, and a Twirler sticking out of his mouth.
It was quite a startling sight to see Horus in such a way for the woman here to all of sudden stop talking so quickly. I, myself, actually let out a small bark of a laugh when I saw him, even though I knew it wasn’t a time to find humor in something so flippant.
“--t-to, to hear us,” continued the woman. She obviously still hadn’t full recovered from the sight of Horus. “Um, does he have to be here?” The tone of voice she used as she said that implied that she felt perturbed and disgusted by the way how Horus looked and stood in place. I could tell that she expected to see me alone, and upon noticing my company, she figured she’d be quiet about what she was planning on saying.
“And that would mean what, exactly?” I wasn’t going to deal with some bitch insulting me by insulting my friends for just being present.
“Must we speak in such…company? I understand he is a friend, but--”
“But what? Look, if you have something to say, say it. Otherwise get out of my home.” I made sure that my voice conveyed my sudden dislike of her and unwillingness to listen. If she didn’t want to say anything in front of someone who was obviously a well-trusted friend after barging into my home without being let in, then she could just as easily walk her sassy ass right back out.
Looking very flustered and somewhat disappointed, she said to her companions, now finished with whatever they were doing, in Russian. Give it to him! Luck would have it that I could actually understand.
I tensed as her Asian companion, Su-Yi as she called him, reached behind him. My tension didn’t leave me as he threw a manila folder down on my coffee table with a slap as it hit the glass. Upon seeing my apparently curious expression, Ilyena turned on her heel and her biker companion opened the door, but not before saying a quick line of Romanian under his breath to her, believing me not to understand.
“Pentru ce noi pleca?” Why are we leaving?
“Because I said,” I answered to him. My Romanian was rusty, but I was annoyed, and I didn’t want these people in my own home anymore. “Goodbai, Ilyena. Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out,” I said scathingly to her as both of her escorts accompanied her out my door to let it shut with a click. I was actually glad to see my door close behind them, but I could have sworn that Ilyena had looked back at me with a smile that reached the cat green eyes she had instead of the incredibly dark brown ones I saw earlier. It must have been my imagination.
“So…are you going to look in this file or can I?”
Horus was always curious before cautious. I could tell that he was just dieing to find out what was in the file that was thrown on my table.
“Put the movie back on. I’m going to grab a Pabst from the fridge and put the other stuff away. You want one?”
Horus merely made a grunting sound in response to me as the TV blared to life with the movie coming back on. I grabbed two beers and a box of the Thai food that had sat on the bar since Horus had come over.
On my way back to the couch where Horus was sitting, I noticed that he had the file open on his lap and his empty glass and Twizlers bag on the cluttered coffee table. He apparently had found something interesting in the file because he didn’t even react to the sound of the bottles being opened or my attempts to pass one off to him. Since he didn’t acknowledge my efforts to give him his beer I set it on the table and proceeded to eat my food and watch the rest of Young Frankenstein.
About three-quarters of the way through the movie, and halfway through my third beer, Horus finally looked up at me with an expression on his face that made me feel both worried for him and a little disturbed. He had a blank face with only a slight look of confusion that was scary in the fact that he seemed brainwashed, an empty shell awaiting commandments. I thought he was like a zombie, thoughtless, emotionless, and half-conscious.
“Horus? You alright, man?” I asked, snapping my fingers in front of his face.
He blinked, slowly, as if in a dream or someone had pushed the slow-motion button on life. And then worry and helplessness flooded across his face like the Hoover Dam had just collapsed. His face contorted into pure disbelief as he turned back to the file he still held in his hands.
“What? What is it, Horus?”
I was beginning to get a little uncomfortable and maybe a little worried. He looked back up at me with an expression full of fright.
“Nic, man,” he said, before passing the file off to me, “they were following you for months before she died.”
“What? Who?” What did he mean by that, I wondered, but my question was answered the second I looked down at the file and saw what had enraptured Horus for so long.
Dozens of papers, news clippings, and notes filled with tiny cramped writing was littered throughout the file. Pictures of me that looked like they were mostly taken at night were here and there in between the papers. The dates on the pictures and some of the papers that looked like reports went back as far as December of 2002; today was the 14th of May, 2007. I was trying to figure out who Horus meant by “they” and who died, but I knew who the deceased was the second I read the name on one of the reports: Irina Kovalcik.
Chapter 4
Irina was a freelance private investigator like me, except the fact that she did a lot of work where her services were employed by vampires and other creatures that were known to, but never convicted of, harming humans and monsters alike. She had been killed while on a case, mine apparently, that was supposedly given to her by Adan Darkheim, a notorious vampire who boasted about his history in the Tower of London as a torturer. He was suspect number one in the investigation of Irina’s death, but the police never found any evidence that he was a part of it. I knew they wouldn’t. They ended up arresting one of his former employees at the strip bar that he owned and ended up getting a signed confession out of him.
Adan was able to cover his tracks in such a way that I almost lost the trail that led back to him, but I was convinced it was him, even before he had confessed to my face just before he stabbed me in the side with a shard of glass that he had broken off a smashed window pane. The bus that had hit him had certainly given me the upper hand in the short fight we had been having since I had found evidence that proved he was the one who had killed her. I found some of his hair on Irina‘s casual suit along with a small bite mark that would have most likely matched his bite radius. After getting me in the side with that cheap shot, I actually still had enough energy to push him off to the side and got a single round from the Glock that I had with me.
That was four years ago, and Adan was legally executed in February of 2004 for Irina’s murder in front of twenty witnesses. I just so happened to be one of them, but I was the only one smiling when he was staked, beheaded, and burned; his ashes were to be scattered across running water the next day. The police kept a close eye on me since then, especially the chief, for bringing him in through the doors of the precinct, the both of us looking battered, bruised and bleeding.
Chief Conner O’Reilly had one daughter who was a vampire and a son-in-law who was a wizard, and he was still able to find a reason to think that I was guilty of something. Maybe he was just prejudice against me for some reason, always looking at me from across interrogation room tables for hunting vampires that his daughter knew, hoping to pin me with attempted murder of his daughter since she was, although dead by medical standards, legally alive. She had planned on being turned shortly before her eighteenth birthday, getting two of three bites needed to turn her a couple of days before getting the last one the night of her birthday.
Knowing that Adan’s band of vamps had been following me for months before killing Irina hit home pretty bad. It meant that Irina betrayed the goals and dreams that we had shared while we were both in college together.
We actually were in the same preternatural biology class and had studied together a couple of times before going out. We weren’t really a couple, just really close friends with a few pluses. Both of us were sophomores when we met, but she was twenty and I was eighteen, so some aspects of college relationships were a little sketchy with her, but that didn't stop us after a while. All of her friends kept criticizing her for going out with me, mostly because she was from one of those upper class families with tons of money and I was from a recently destroyed orphanage located in the projects of L.A. with a job at a factory, making some small pocket money doing skateboarding demos at the local skate parks. I myself was a little confused and nervous to merely talk about some things with Irina unlike she was with me, but everyone other than her former friends saw us as the perfect couple, and I think she did, too.
The thought of her willingly taking the job that so obviously went against our agreement not to ever consort with monsters was just too much for me. I slammed the file shut and threw it back down onto the table, walking to my bedroom. Horus called out to me, but I didn’t hear him. I was focused in, deaf to the world and everything else except what I was going after.
I knelt when I got to the far side of my bed from the door, and pulled a thin black briefcase with a silver cuneiform symbol embossed on the cover; it was the second of five symbols in a series. Irina had the fifth, but I knew she never opened it other than the one time she had to place something in it. I had to get it, especially if Adan’s group had it.
After putting the case on my bed and popping the two locks open, Horus walked in as I opened the briefcase. I knew my face looked grim when I heard a shuffling of feet. Looking up, I saw Horus standing in the door
“Nicolai, what are you doing?” He knew what the case contained.
“You know what I’m doing, Horus.” I looked down into the contents of the case. In it was a dual shoulder holster and two Styron-T MP’s, one black and one white. Their nicknames were Ebony and Ivory, and they were enchanted in such a way that they never missed their targets; they were what had killed a vampire couple that had slaughtered a club bouncer and numerous other people along the way from Las Vegas to LA, before killing a local vampire sadist and fetish club owner. His body was the worst I had ever seen, blood and body parts littering the entire bar room. Everything smelled like hamburger meat, and it took a lot to reduce a body to small enough pieces to cover a room that large and smell like that only hours before the police and I showed up. I was sure I had killed the two vampires who had done so much damage, but I was told by the police that they didn’t find the bodies where I had left them.
I took one of the pistols out with a twenty round clip loaded with silver slugs that had blessed wood dust packed into the hollow points, slammed it into the gun, and looked up at Horus with a look of pure hatred on my face.
“Um, Nic? What are you going to do?” Horus looked genuinely worried and afraid. He, at least, had some clue of what I was planning.
“I’m going to find out why this Ilyena gave me this file, and what she wants me to do. And after that, I’m going to get the case Irina had before she died.”
“Nic, that case is in the Los Angeles Police Department evidence room. It’s locked up. No one, not even Soran could get in there without being noticed,” said Horus. “We’re lucky that the cops weren’t able to get into that case. They’ve tried torches, plasma cutters, even saws. Nothing worked, thanks to my spells on the damned cases, but keep in mind that it’s still deep inside that building. You can’t get it to, short of busting in with a task force.”
I looked up at him and just stared. He dropped his eyes to the floor; his hands were jammed deep in his pockets and he sighed in a resigned sort of way. Seeing him that way, I realized that Horus was truly, genuinely worried about my well-being. And barging into a police station with the way how the cops felt towards me already probably meant suicide for me in his mind.
I put the gun back in the case and put that back under my bed, looking at Horus and saying, “I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to worry.”
“Yeah?” he said disbelievingly, utter contempt in his voice; I saw in his words that he hated what I did for a living, if you could call it a living.
I had never known until that moment that Horus saw me as something much like a younger brother, wanting my safety and for me to make the right choices. He wanted the best for me, and that I could understand, but I would be walking a different road that would be paved with his good intentions if I quit my day job. I enjoyed what I did, but yeah, sometimes I wish I hadn’t gotten into it. But I had, and I wouldn’t just stop, because I didn’t know where someone like me could find a job that I could do, or even like.
I sighed. “Alright, Horus. Tell you what, tomorrow, I’ll call Ilyena, and then I’ll figure out a way how to get that case. Okay?”
Horus just nodded, and walked back out to the living room. One last look at the hiding spot where the case rested and I was out the door to my room, out to the living room where Horus was finally drinking his beer and watching the movie again, but a lot more serious than he ever was.
I sighed again, and he turned to look at me over the back of the couch. His face told me what he was feeling. It said he was disappointed, worried, and sad; he was sad that I hadn’t found what I needed to have a normal life. He wished that I would just live like everyone else, like a white picket fence life for me and some old college girlfriend or something. That kind of life wasn’t for me, it wasn’t me. I could never have that life, and like it; at least, that’s what I thought.
“Look, Horus”
“Don’t even worry ‘bout it mate,” he interjected. “Tell you what; keep the movies for a couple of days. Relax. Ya know, take up a hobby, like model building or somethin’. It’s wrong for you to just work a case or stay inside. Get some fresh air, go clubbing, or even head out to Vegas for a vacation.” I smiled. I couldn’t help it; it was Horus who had put that smile on my face. It was just him being him that made me smile, and that, in turn, made him smile.
Horus grabbed another beer and finished the movie with me before opening my door to leave with a box of the Thai that he had brought with him. He gave me a little more advice, mostly involving going out to the clubs and having a one night stand or finding someone who I could take out. I told him I would think about it and said goodbye as he turned and started walking down my short hallway to the stairs.
After Horus left, I went to the fridge to get another Pabst and watched another of the movies that Horus had brought over. I fell asleep sometime during the movie on the couch. When I woke up, the movie was over; I couldn’t even remember what movie I had put in.
I turned the TV off and threw out what trash there was before I went to the bedroom, got undressed again and put the Glock back into its Velcro holster on the underside of the hood of the headboard before I crawled beneath the covers in the pitch blackness of my apartment. When you live in LA as close to Strip as I did, and your windows face East and West, good curtains were a must for it to be as dark as it was at seven thirty in the afternoon.
As sleep began to envelope me in its warm, comforting blanket, I started to slip into a swirling mist of golden light. A delicate brush of fur and feathers that seemed to warmly tickle and fill every inch of me from the inside gave me a feeling of wild ecstasy and restfulness, and I found myself in that golden light with someone I had only met earlier on in the day.
Chapter 5
I found myself in room of gold and shining light. Everything in the room was some type of gold or bronze color. Friezes with real gold frames littered the soft white walls, shocking white doorframes outlined the rich mahogany doors, and in the middle of the huge room was an enormous four poster bed covered in different shades of gold silk. A mountain of silk throw pillows was piled high against the dark antique rosewood head board. And sitting upon the bed was a woman whom held my attention, reaching for me as she gazed deeply into my eyes, both of us hypnotized by the other’s stare.
The woman was Ilyena, and she stood, taking my hand and walking backwards, back towards the elegant bed. It was bigger than a king, and I could only describe its size properly as orgy¬-size. She drew me down onto the dark gold silk of the bed’s sheets, pulling at my hand when I hesitated. It was a dazzling colorgold silkand a soft caress to the little skin that I had exposed. It was like water woven into cloth, flowing under the touch of my hands.
A fine shiver ran down my back as I slid across the material, the soft mound of pillows ahead of me. Ilyena tossed back the shimmering curtain of her hair with a flick of her head and glided on top of the silk as if she were floating. I found it odd for a lycan to be able to in such a way on the fabric. She must have had a great deal of practice sliding on and off of those sheets. It was obvious I had not had as much practice.
With a hand on my face, she gazed into my golden eyes with her chocolate-brown ones. A soft glimmer shone in them, like a ripple in a pond, and they changed to a green any cat would be proud to have. A low purr broke through her lips and her face was etched with desire. Not lust or anything of the sort, but a desire for flesh; to take and share flesh, to feel it writhe and ride against yours, to feel it caress and knead. She wanted something too primal for words; something that was as old as life itself, maybe older.
I crawled as carefully as I could on the silk sheets, trying hard not to slip, as I slowly made my way to lay by her side, propping myself up on an elbow. I looked into her eyes, into her soul, and saw what made her what she was: her beast. The beast that every one of the wereanimals held deep within themselves; the werewolves, the werehyenas, and all the others. I saw the beast in her, what made her and all her kind what they were. She was a werepanther, first and foremost; no rules would bind her, no one person could rule her.
Her beast radiated out, through her skin, the air, and pulsed against me, and against the shields that I had spent years building up with Horus. I feared lowering them for the sake of my well-being. She pleaded to me through her beast, until, finally, I consented in an otherworldly way I did not fully understand, with much hesitation and confusion. She understood, and waited as I hesitantly lowered my barriers, peeling back the numerous layers of protection that clung to me like a second skin. It had taken years to finally perfect them, and now I was destroying them for the sake of a woman’s will.
I shed my mountains of protection and felt the power of her beast head on, beating my skin like an ethereal tidal wave of energy. It held everything in it, her thoughts, her emotions; everything of her was contained in it. The tingling sensation of her beast rolling across my skin, pulsing within my mind, filled me with a sense of bliss, eagerness, and wondrous ecstasy.
My eyes opened to her staring at me with her cat green ones, a small smile playing on her full red lips, most likely at what she saw in my face. She had hiked up the length of her skirt, the pulled back folds of the flowing skirt flashing the tops of her black thigh-highs. I drew a shuddering breath as she moved in a way that flashed matching black garters and a pair of black silk panties.
She noticed where my gaze was drawn and spread her legs apart, sitting up as she did so that I got a closer look without wanting to. I tried to turn away in embarrassment and habit so that I could think clearly, but her hands cupped my face and trapped my head, turning me back to her. Pulling my closer, she kissed me, her tongue a probing eel in my mouth. Feeling awkward, I began to pull away, but she grasped my hair tightly, breaking the braided cord that held my hair back, a sound of pain escaping from me. A wave of blood red hair spilled around our faces, a crimson curtain of silk. I tried again to pull away, to stop the kiss, but to my surprise, I didn’t. Instead, I kissed back, hesitant at first, then harder. I began to probe her mouth as she had mine. Feeling me react the way she must have wanted, Ilyena released my hair, leaving her hands free to explore my chest and back through my shirt.
We were kissing so hard that we had started biting at one another’s tongue and lips with our teeth. I wasn’t careful about my fangs, or even thought of being careful; I just kissed and nibbled at her lips, feeling the smooth warm skin of her against me, the slight pain from her full set of fangs biting at my mouth. She drew back from the kiss, moving to my ear. The tip of her tongue slid across my earlobe and made its way to the inside. I shuddered from the sudden moistness and warmth and gasped from the feel of it. Ilyena bit my ear, hard enough to make me wince in pain, but it was all pleasure.
Her lips moved down my cheek to my neck and collarbone. Ilyena’s hands found the buttons on my shirt and began undoing them, although with difficulty since she couldn’t see them. She kept kissing and biting the skin on my neck, drawing her tongue up and down the hollow. Upon getting the last button, she slid my shirt off, pulling back from my neck. Ilyena looked bashfully up at me, as if asking permission for something that she found embarrassing. I leaned back with a genuine smile on my face, and she smiled back as she slid her tongue across my chest, down the middle of my torso to the thick leather belt I wore. Her tongue played from hip to hip and slid beneath the belt, making me shudder again. She raised her eyes up to look into my face as she crawled up my chest, still licking my skin with her slightly rough tongue that was like a wet, warm, softly muscle sheet of sandpaper.
She made her way to my right nipple and tickled it with her tongue. Her hands closed around the skin, drawing it up into a small mound of flesh so she could get a full mouth of it. She kneaded the skin with her teeth, her warm breath rolling over the pale flesh like some warm, moist wind that promised rain. After she was satisfied with how the flesh had tensed, Ilyena drew her tongue across my chest to the other side and did the same until was like the other.
Looking into my lasciviously, she slid back down to my belt and undid the silver-plated buckle with shaky hands. She pulled it out of the loops and tossed it aside. Ilyena unbuttoned my pants and came back up to kiss me, her nails digging into my chest, opening my mouth wider. Going back to the tops of my pants, she drew the zipper down with her teeth. No one can get out of leather pants gracefully, so she ripped the soft leather from my legs before I could help.
Her hands went up and down my legs, her astonishment at the smoothness of them plain on her face. My lack of body hair must have excited her from her reaction. When Ilyena looked up to see that I wasn’t wearing any underwear, her eyes widened and her lips parted in a silent gasp. To be frank, I’m not a very large man, but not exactly average either.
Her hands massaged my groin, fingers shivering at the feel of the velvety skin beneath them, pinching the skin softly. A quivering sigh came out of her lips and she pressed her nails into the tender flesh. My back arched and my hips rose, a gasp of pain and pleasure coming through my lips. Before I could react any further to her touch she drew me into her mouth, using tooth and tongue to tease the soft flesh. She sucked me deep into her mouth, pulling me deeper into her as if she were trying to swallow me whole. The muscled velvet she held in her maw began to grow and harden as she sucked harder and harder until I was erect and quivering in her mouth. Her tongue caressed the shaft of me from end to end.
Relishing in the feel of the touch and her motions, I kept still, nervous, yet sure I could continue until she had satisfied herself. She continued to suck and lick her way around the base of my groin, moaning softly at the feel of the hairlessness of my skin. Ilyena’s hands found their way around to my backside where she cupped my buttocks, her nails scratching the skin. They dug deep into the flesh and I knew that I’d be marked pretty badly the next day.
With one final tug, she rose up and gazed into my eyes, our faces only inches apart. She opened her mouth, then closed it, and opened it again, as if she wanted to say something but couldn’t find her voice. I saved her the trouble of speaking and just held her close in a warm embrace and kissed her as I laid all the way back, moving her hips and leg over me, slowly lowering her onto me. Her hands lay lightly on my chest, knees near my elbows. With head thrown back, she steadily rotated her hips at her own pace, using her legs to keep her up. As she worked her hips in a circular motion, I laid my hands on her waist, feeling her gyrating motions beneath my fingertips.
Ilyena’s warm fingers caressed my chest, a light touch to keep her balance. I lowered my hands to her hips, helping her to move up and down at a wonderfully slow pace. She had stopped using her hips and began using her legs to raise up to where I was barely inside of her before pounding her hips downward, slamming my tingling member deep into her. Soft, wordless sounds freed themselves from her perfect cupid bow lips, and soon, mine. Groans, primal sounds, like those of a large animal were bellowing from our mouths. Her hips slamming down onto mine, the sound of skin slapping skin, barely audible over our moaning, came from our sweat drenched bodies.
A sharp series of pain erupted from my chest and I looked down to see her talon-like pearl nails deep in my skin, blood welling out like small spider webs of red fluid. I looked back up into Ilyena’s snarling face to her fangs long like a lion’s. I gave a snarl of my own and an accompanying hiss as I grasped her chin and pulled her face down into a hard kiss. She lay down on my chest, using her hips again to move. The extreme angle and the way she ground her hips against me caused a slight pain, but the pleasure that exploded from it drowned it out. She bit my neck hard, but not so much that the skin broke.
A shimmer ran through her skin, like something moved just under it, rippling it like the water in a pond. My own skin was shining, like white silk draped over a dark light, or moonlight through a filter. A tightness grew and a warm tingling sensation built up low in my body. Ilyena gripped my shoulders, using them to go faster and harder.
Past the noises coming from our mouths, she managed to say, “Bite me. Bite me, now, before it comes.” I knew what she wanted, and despite my unwillingness to do so, I did.
Just as that warm tingling that had built up to an unbearable pressure, an inch away from spilling over the edge, I bit down on her neck, finding her carotid artery. Blood poured into my mouth, its mild salty taste filling my taste buds, sliding down my throat with a warm, metallic flow. It tasted so good, so warm. A sense of power and ecstasy erupted inside me, of my being, and a flood of warmth and pleasure destroyed all thought. A torrent of feelings and bliss sent my body into a convulsive state of rapture as the orgasm took us down a swirling flood of unbelievable pleasure. The multitude of orgasms was agonizing, and I heard a scream, knowing it was Ilyena, and I, as we got lost in the beating, swirling heat. Her screams kept me in my body, kept me floating out and away. They reminded my that I was flesh and bone and sinew; that I had a body.
We lay like that, breathing into one another’s necks, breathless and sleepy in the tingling warmth that enwrapped us. As the waves subsided, I felt a new warmth flowing across my chest and shoulders. Her blood still spurted from the puncture wounds from my bite. It poured, though not as much as when I had bit her, and slid down past her…
I woke up, shaking and covered in cold sweat, the taste of copper in my watering mouth. My throat was hoarse and I found my covers on the floor where I had thrown them. The clock on my nightstand said one o‘ six. It was still night. I was shaking, not from fear of my dream, but from how much I had enjoyed it. I liked it so much that I would do anything for the blood and not be able to control myself, not want to control myself. But what was I afraid of, what frightened me more than anything I had come to know, was that I was willing to kill for it, for the blood and the sex, and would enjoy every deadly second. And then there was the fact that my chest had ten little half moon cuts across it…
Chapter 6
I couldn’t go back to sleep. My dream had scared me so much that I was afraid to go back to sleep, afraid that if I did, I would have it again, except it wouldn’t stop with me waking up in my room; I was afraid if I went back to sleep, I’d wake up somewhere other than my apartment with some dead woman in my arms, her blood completely drained. No, I was so not going back to sleep.
Instead, I got up, threw on an old pair of night pants that I never wore, and made a fresh pot of coffee. Most people will say the best coffee they’ve had comes from a coffee shop. I said, in order to have a decent cup of coffee, you’ve got to freeze whole beans, and grind up a pot's worth just before you brew a pot. Now that is the best you-bet-your-ass-it’s-good cup of coffee; at least, in my opinion.
While I waited for the coffee to finish brewing, I turned the TV on and watched the rest of the Futurama cartoon, seeing as it was the first thing on TV. Despite trying to focus on mind numbing cartoons while waiting for a cup of coffee, I couldn’t help but think about my dream. How could I dream up a room that seemed to match and be worthy of Ilyena? It wasn’t like I had visited her, much less gotten a description of such a room. There were some things in that room that I had never even thought could exist. Then there was the fact that I had felt that she was lycan in the dream, like I sensed it, or could smell what animal she was. What was happening in my life, what the fuck was going to happen?
The coffee pot beeped, sounding out that it had finished brewing. I got up and grabbed a mug from the dishwasher and poured a cup, walking back to the couch as another cartoon, Family Guy, was going through its opening credits without adding any sweetener to the coffee like I usually did. With the dream I had just had not that long ago, I needed it black like how I used to have it when I was in college when I was waiting for class to start.
I wasn't paying attention to the cartoon; I was thinking about the file Ilyena had given me, about the day Irina had been tortured and beaten to death just minutes before I arrived to find her skin ashen from the blood loss. As my thoughts wandered back to that night, I began to think of how I could retrieve the case Irina had had from wherever it was in the Police Department. I knew which one it would be, but the trouble was getting to the case, and then getting out with it. Houdini anyone?
Chapter 7
Around eight thirty or so in the morning, my lack of sleep was starting to get to me. I was finding it hard to keep my eyes open for fear of falling back into the dream I had had earlier that night. To once again be put back into such a dream would probably be too much to the point where I would go to a shrink and ask what the hell was going on with me and why was I having dreams like this. But then again, they would probably spit out some sinuous line of medical terms that would make my head spin to say, their meaning saying I was stressed out or insane in some way. No way would I go to some crack pot who could say I needed help based on their opinions and have me carted off to a hospital. To be locked up in a hospital wouldn't even be the last thing I wanted.
After getting a second pot of coffee brewing, I started to feel a little more alert, albeit a caffeine high. Even though the coffee was the reason I was still moving around, I still felt tired despite twitching occasionally from the ridiculous amount of caffeine in me. I couldn't think with the caffeine obliterating my senses and seeing the dream every time I closed my eyes. Even though I knew I needed to sleep, I couldn't; I felt as if sleep were something that would destroy what sense I had left. While attempting desperately to think of some way I get some sleep without having to worry about whether I would dream, my cell began ringing from the bedroom.
After retrieving it and seeing Horus' number on the caller id, I almost didn't answer. Horus had a strange way of knowing when something was wrong, and a stranger, even creepy, way of knowing exactly what it was.
Horus would know what was wrong and he would try his hardest to convince me to have him come over and do some weird magical crap that despite meaning to help me would end up backfiring and fuck my life up more than it was at the moment. I still answered it though.
"Hey, Horus. What's up?" I asked, trying my hardest to not let anything related to last night or the dream. I still knew he would find out what was up, but it didn't hurt to try.
"So how are you today, Nic? Good, I hope."
I sighed, knowing what was coming.
"Look, Nic, this happens to everyone. Everyone has—"
"No, Horus, not everyone has a fucking dream like this. This one was real. I know it," I said, looking down at my chest where the marks had been. They were gone now, but they did seep a little blood when I had woken up with them. "I just know that it was real. I don't know how I know, but I-I just know it, y'know?"
Silence spoke to me through the phone. Horus had stopped talking; he never stopped talking when it came to this stuff. Whenever something metaphysical or something happened he would just talk on and on about what it could be and what books he needed to check out or something like that. But this time, he was quiet for little more than a minute before he spoke, and when he finally did, he calm, reserved; he was very unlike himself. He even used my full name in lieu of "Nic", like he usually called me.
"Nicolai, call this Mistress Ilyena, or go see her, or meet her somewhere, but bring Ebony and Ivory. I would trust this woman as much as I trust a trigger happy enemy if I were you. The fact that she brought a file about you, even if it wasn't Irina who had gathered it all up, means that they know a good amount about you." He paused for a handful of moments before continuing. "I'll look through the library and try to find out if something like this has every happened before, and I'll also get on the computer and try to find out as much as I can about these people. Keep your phone on you, I'll call you later." When Horus didn't say anything else, I verbalized my feelings toward his actions.
"Thanks, Horus. I don't know what I'd do without you."
"No worries, mate. Just don't go an' get yerself killed, now, y'hear?"
"Yeah, I know. Talk to ya."
After hanging up with Horus, I went into my bathroom to take a ridiculously hot shower, glancing at the clock to see it was already going on nine thirty.
Before the water even touched my skin, I was already thinking of how I was going to get Ilyena to meet me at one of my old college haunts where Irina and I had gone to while we unofficially dated. By the time I finished with my shower fifteen minutes after getting in, I had already figured out exactly what I was going to do when I called Ilyena at half past ten. My only hope was that she would come alone. If she didn't, my plans for getting answers could be shattered like a crystal cocktail glass hitting the ground after a five story fall.
As I punched the numbers to the phone she had called me with the day before, I crossed the fingers of my other hand, silently hoping that she would be up for what seemed to be a night of potential fun and trading of personal information between a potential businessman and his clientele. When she picked up, her sweet cyanide-laced honey voice answering with what sounded like genuine glee at who had called her, my careful plans flew out of my mind and all I heard was a staticky buzzing noise in my mind, just barely audible underneath Ilyena's voice. By the gods, how was she able to do that? If any gods existed, I prayed to them right then and there for their help; I was going to need it.
Chapter 8
"Hello?"
I couldn't speak right away; my throat had closed up momentarily when I heard her voice.
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