The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

In The Angel's Kiss, Nicolai Astärté, a Los Angeles private

investigator, is visited by a shapeshifter who is seeking his help.

Reluctant and suspicious, Nicolai agrees to help after strange things have

happened to him, as well as a dark and troubled problem from the past arises

with rumors of his late college sweetheart walking the streets as a creature

of darkness hunting the nightmares that haunt humankind. Confused and

worried, Nicolai wonders if he will be able to save the City of Angels from

the monsters that inhabit the streets, and save an old love from eternal

damnation.

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 7



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 headboard. 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 gold sheets, pulling at my hand when I hesitated. It was a dazzling color and 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 is what she desired. 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 wolves, the hyenas, and all the others. I saw the beast in her, what made her and all her kind what they were. She was a werecat, first and foremost; no rules would bind her, and 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. I smelled forest, a forest so old it made my bones ache with age, and scents that hadn’t drifted on the winds for a very long time.

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. 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 me 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 eyes 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 cat’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 screams, knowing it was Ilyena, and I, as we got lost in the beating, swirling heat. Her screams kept me in my body, kept me from floating out and away. They reminded me 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 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 I was 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 1



The warm spring breeze that rolled over the grassy knoll, rolling over the place 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. 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 too 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. Mistress Morgan had always told me 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 five 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 ninety-six pounds at twenty-three and built like a lightweight boxer. 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. I had never before had the dream I had of the day Mistress Morgan died, and I wondered why. But then, maybe I didn’t want to know.