Eternal Betrayal
By
Vita Anne Hoffman
(c) copyright by Vita Anne Hoffman, September 2008
Cover art by Eliza Black, September 2008
Published by New Concepts Publishing
Smashwords Edition
ISBN 978-1-60394-227-0
New Concepts Publishing
Lake Park, GA 31636
www.newconceptspublishing.com
This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.
A Strange Kind Of Sustenance
For the past five days, Constantine had survived on little more than fantasies, sexual fantasies, of her, of a mortal woman, of Avna Marie Soulsmith. And he was at it again, seated, more accurately handcuffed, at ankles and wrists to a metal chair which, in turn, was bolted to the floor; naked, his sculpted body covered with nothing save a few smears of his own days-old-dried blood and semen, welts from garlic which had been smeared over his stomach, thighs, and shins, and a horrible mass of cross-shaped burns on his chest, legs, arms ... and even his cock; and, finally, starved, having refused the cold dead rodents he had twice been offered. Thus, over the course of his agonizing captivity, Constantine had instead voraciously indulged his sexual appetite, doing so for a strange kind of sustenance, for a counterfeit solace, for a false connection to Avna when the real one seemed to have been cut. Owing to his shackled imprisonment, there was no way he could slake his real hunger, the one for blood.
Not that Avna would give him the time of day much less supply him with a meal. Theirs had been an embattled truce ever since she had awakened from a four-month-long semi-comatose-sleep imposed by him while he had recovered from an enemy’s fiery Molotov Cocktail. He, Constantine, The Great, an ancient, powerful vampire progenitor, had been lured into a mindless, unguarded moment and set ablaze as fire was anathema to most of his kind. His own individual preternatural power, augmented by his magic talisman, his gold burnished signet ring, had shielded him, spared him, had saved him, while hers, Avna’s, a contrary, irresistible mortal female, had regenerated him. With blood, special blood, rich and sweet and healing, full of life and vigor and ‘goodness’, that of a Soulsmith. She was the last of her family line, totally bereft of her mystical lineage, totally in denial of her unique gifts. And, four centuries ago in the gloomy Balkans, she had been foretold to him by the gypsy Zemaralda Draconetti. Avna had been fated to be his, to be his love, to forge him a new soul.
Unfortunately, Avna hadn’t cooperated with fate. Truth be told, she was a bit of a Vampyraphobe, made so because of a failed attack by a nasty little Snitch--the exact same vampire flunky who had set Constantine ablaze at the behest of his master, the now deceased progenitor, maniacal Rasputin.
Fortunately, Avna had cooperated with her hormones, eventually succumbing to his innate sexual magnetism. At least, she had all but succumbed. They had engaged in a night of heavy foreplay and oral sex. Once ... with her consent, but many, many more times with only her implied consent because those four recent months in his thrall had been extremely active, if somewhat limited since he had had to abide by her demand that they ‘technically’ not engage in sex. He had gained entrance into her home, and, also, into her body, on that binding agreement. There had been no true penetration. Ever.
But it was only a matter of time. And Constantine, for all his discomforts and hungers and powerlessness, smiled at that particular inevitability. He did so dazzlingly, teeth fully elongated, up into the remote camera trained upon him. And he prepared to give his captors another peep show, knowing that sooner-than-later one of his several tormenters would enter and interrupt him as they now always did. With a cattle prod. They had long since scraped up and collected enough samples of his semen and siphoned enough of his blood and cut enough tissue to satisfy any mad scientist. However, since they were not only testing his body’s regenerative powers but also administering some kind of drug, they cruelly, methodically persisted. Frankenstein-like. They, the lab-coated technicians, thought him driven insane. But five days of privation had not unhinged him ... yet, and there was a method to his seeming madness. Once again he immersed himself in that sexual insanity.
He conjured up his thousandth vivid image of Avna, and, as always, nothing, save for the sting of that electrified prod, could impinge upon his erotic waking dream. Here, in this moment, inside this makeshift prison of a large, cool, echoing, aluminum box, the cargo trailer of a big rig truck underneath the watchful camera eye, Constantine could control Avna, his proud Soulsmith, as he could not, in actual fact, do at all ... not to his total satisfaction. In sexual matters, she was naïve, inexperienced, virginal. But, as he knew all too well, when given the right stimulus, Avna was, also, sensual, abandoned, wanton. So exactly how, he licentiously mulled, should he make her impiously worship him, with dainty quick fingers, or agile velvety mouth, or tight slick pussy? Or with all three?
As he considered between these lewd choices for his stubborn, beautiful Avna, Constantine began to grow rigid. He slumped as far as his metal bonds would allow, and he rounded his spine so that he could look down over the sharp cut ridges of his abdomen to admire the passionate surge of his cock draped on his inner thigh, from pre-sex soft to cunt-ramming hard. Fully aroused from simple anticipation, his thickened, hefty shaft bobbed nearly to his belly, pulsed with want, demanded attention. And, mercifully, his overpowering excitement for Avna, so total, so consuming, had lengthened and filled his raw, silver-cross-burned shaft until he felt nothing of pain, only mindless joy.
In his cinematic mind’s eye, she slowly crawled towards him, equally naked--a small inhibition of hers that now, in fantasy, he could remove, just as easily as he had slipped off her panties from underneath an oversized nightshirt on their first night together. This Avna, in keeping with the real one, took her sweet time in coming to him, so that he watched with intense glittery-eyed fascination. To hurry her, to entice her, he slanted his groin forward to display his rampantness, his twitching blood-infused rod. It would be almost too much a fistful for Avna but, he harshly grinned his approval, she’d give it, as always, her best effort! For him, unaccountably, unbelievably, she was perfection, even when compared to the countless women he had encountered over the centuries. But how could one woman, pretty but not incomparable, antagonistic and insolent, be his ideal?
He didn’t waste more than an instant pondering such inconsequentials, particularly such as whether or not, as Avna had argued, he craved her simply because of the gypsy’s prophecy. All he was willing to admit was that he desired her. Wasn’t his erection, swelled hot and hard, jutted up from its nest of coarse black hair, moistened with pre-cum at the head, proof enough?
He willed her closer. In the dim interior, every inch of her fair, unclothed skin glowed. She had ordinary green eyes that she kept downcast, except for the occasional, willful glance up at him. That defiant look made him want to reach out and grab at her thick mass of short-cropped unruly blonde hair, to pull her onto his lap and jam forcefully into her, but all he managed was to fight ineffectually against his cuffed wrists, further chafing the deep rawness there upon his hands and arms.
“Come to me, Avna.” His husky voice mingled with the metal jangles of his manacles. Perversely, her advance on all fours remained slow and provocative, as if he, within his own fantasy as well as in real fact, had no control over her. He calmed himself somewhat. With fangs gritted and fists clenched, he enjoyed the supple advance of her athletic but shapely body, especially the perfect-although-not-overly-generous-handful of breasts, hourglass waist, and very nicely rounded hips. Constantine glimpsed the brown curls nestled at her beautiful crotch, and his eager cock jerked. Suddenly, his eyelids grew very heavy with the weight of his desire, hooding his bright blue irises. He almost imagined a pounding in his chest, more ardent than ever when he lived, yet he, in truth, had no heart beat, no pulse, no breath. Avna made him react as if he had all these, and they were frenzied and horny. He savored the sensation, fully giving over to the throbbing of his massive hard-on. The need to masturbate made him crazy.
He yanked like a madman on his cuffs. If only he could free his hands! He wanted to fondle and stroke himself for the self-pleasure but, also, to tease her, to tantalize her with the erotic sight of his expert grip beating up and down in varying speeds. Slowly to pull and expose and extend himself for her prurient view. Speedily to mimic and offer and prepare her for sex.
“Shit,” he cursed at the lava-like urge, fiery and forceful, that further engorged his big lusty dick. This time, this hallucination, should be prolonged, languid, healing. Not a fast, furious fuck! He was in control, not Avna. He was the fever in her blood, not the other way around! The skin of his prick tightened and burned with sexual craving. His balls, drawn up close to his body, were like concrete, desperate, explosive, ready to burst with release.
He groaned, clenching every muscle, trying not to ejaculate. “Avna, oh, my Avna ....” Constantine couldn’t disguise the pleading edge to his voice. He wanted to feel her hot, moist mouth close around him, to suck him gently at first, then with enough pressure to make him come. He wanted her so keenly that the thought of her tongue touching his head made him explode. His semen spewed in an oddly iridescent arc. His entire frame strained mightily against his metal restraints. His rutting pelvis pumped harder and harder, strove to empty every drop of his seed into Avna ... and he realized at the last that she was nowhere near him.
He tried impotently, as with every instance since his capture, to psychically reach out and feel her presence. He was still within the verge of Charleston, his home these past four years ever since he had grudgingly, at first, followed the path of Zemaralda Draconetti’s prophecy and had made Avna’s state, West Virginia, his own. So, where was she? He could not find her out in that dark almost wintry night. He could not sense her, this loss due no doubt to the drugs he had been given.
“It was the injections,” he gritted hoarsely. He refused to contemplate their last encounter. “The drugs are to blame ....” The blasted drugs and nothing else!
Futilely, he also tried to contact his ‘closest’ family, but, even under the best of circumstances, he had no true, long-distance telepathic bond with them ... with Marc and Max, the twins, Gerard Lamphere, his legal advisor and right-hand-vampire, or Haley Davis, his own private Florence Nightengale. Nor could Constantine feel Thomas, who was not of his making but had been recently, reluctantly adopted into Constantine‘s clan, being a curiously strong vampire born of malevolent Donata, a bitch from hell. Constantine only partially trusted Thomas, although the other had saved Avna from Rasputin. But Thomas’ motives and loyalty had everything to do with Avna and nothing to do with Constantine. Jealously, deep and consuming, colored his view of Thomas.
For days, Constantine’s loss of his link to Avna had hurt him. Terribly. Even more than anything he had so far had to endure as a medical guinea pig. Again, he pushed away all thoughts of the convoluted betrayal that had led him here.
Because he feared for her. After all, without him, Avna was at the mercy of Hetti Chambogo, the Voodoo Princess whom Avna had helped to send to prison on a life sentence for murder. But Hetti had escaped and she was looking for revenge. She had, in fact, already begun to exact it in several terrible, perverse ways.
“Avna!” Her name was a shout torn from his rusty, dry throat. The sound reverberated cruelly, as did the clanging of the big doors to his metallic prison. A slight, cross-eyed man in a lab coat rushed forward and shocked Constantine with the requisite voltage. A stunning bolt to his testicles. The pain mixed with his rage and vulnerability. He collapsed back against the cold metal chair, his limbs slack in their bonds. The lack of food, combined with the terrible double shocks of emotion and electricity, dazed him.
But, for one instant, he roused long enough to look at the cross-eyed gaunt-faced man, revealing a flash of white fangs and a pair of glazed, maddened, icy blue eyes. “When I get free, Bates, my vile little friend, I am going to rip your head off.” The idleness of this threat received a nasal laugh. After all, the manacles binding the ages-old progenitor had held up more than adequately to his superior physical strength for nearly a week. Constantine ignored the mocking laughter and mentally drifted back into the recent past in search of Avna, the warm, living presence that he craved as deeply as any nourishment he had ever taken even when she refused to obey him. And that was just about always.
But there were dangers for him in the past, because his contrary Avna had seemed to rule much of it ....
Chapter One
I awoke to music. It was a piano, soft and melodic and nearby. I came to myself, unlike the last time, with no disorientation or grogginess, knowing exactly where I was-- inside Constantine’s flamboyant, double-sized, pristine white coffin atop its high ziggurat-styled platform on the thirteenth penthouse floor of the Constantinople. Constantine was unconventional in more ways than one. He ‘lived’ not in relative safety from the sun underground but on the top floor of his five star hotel. Admittedly, he probably was the exception to this rule espoused by the Von Heslings, the reigning international vampire experts, that the undead always sought out subterranean lairs. He, also, had a secret reason for doing so. And I had discovered that reason.
Constantine was slightly claustrophobic, a terrible thing to be if one had to regularly curl up inside the closed confines of a coffin.
My first clue into his phobia had been the outsized coffin, which I had mistakenly put down to Constantine being an oversexed pervert, requiring extra room for a partner. Never in my wildest dreams had it occurred to me that I, conservative, straight-laced little ol‘ Avna Marie Soulsmith, would wind up sharing it, albeit unwillingly, with him. And it had been most unwilling. Constantine had been doused with a gasoline fueled Molotov Cocktail and lit like a tiki torch by Snitch, the self-same nasty little creep who had unsuccessfully attacked me a decade ago on the SCWV campus.
What had been the aftermath of that unprecedented assault upon me? Well, Snitch had lost one of his eyes because I had instinctively stabbed him with a silver-plated ink pen, while I had lost my scholarship because of my vocal and impolitic demands for a thorough investigation. The college had supported me to the bitter end but the private non-profit sponsoring organization, the Congregation for Integrity and Morality in Education, had rescinded my funding on the grounds that I failed to maintain my grades, integrity, and moral rectitude. In their eyes and, to a lesser degree, in mine, as well, my unprecedented attack by a vampire, a reanimate, an undead ungodly creature, made me somehow unwholesome, too. Snitch had been blinded for his pains, and I, impoverished, orphaned, and for all intents-and-purposes without kith or kin, had been robbed of an education. Of a degree in English, in point of fact.
So, to earn a living, I had started my own business, De Facto Self Defense, an Army-Navy surplus for the paranormal, a shop that armed living people against dead things. Okay, admittedly, that makes me a bit of a Vampyraphobe, even though a new acquaintance of mine, sexy Josh Warner, a hunky dimpled bartender at Constantine’s Bete Noir Night Club, had assured me that they don’t bite ... without asking first. I’m still not convinced. I had become entangled with vampire progenitor Constantine, The Great, and his people, when the authorities, more specifically, Detective Ian Traeger, had sent me, a so-called paranormal expert--a title I unequivocally refute--into the Bete Noir Night Club to check on a rumored vampire turf war.
The rumor had been true. The first victim, Tanya, had turned out to be an unregistered vampire fledgling, sired by Max, one of the twin brothers of Constantine’s clan. The eventual, bloody trail of bodies had led to Rasputin, a hideous seven footer with a decaying, splotched visage as ugly as Constantine was beautiful. They both had used their considerable powers to try and ensnare me, both aiming to gain control of a so-called ‘Soulsmith’. Which was ridiculous. I had not one iota of knowledge about my supposed family lineage, nor had I any paranormal abilities. No hocus pocus, nor abracadabra. Zip. Zilch. Zero. I had absolutely none, contrary to Constantine’s assertion that I was the equivalent of a capacitor for supernatural energy.
In the end, Rasputin had been done in. By me. And a freight train. Oh, and, to be honest, a small assist from a mysterious vampire by the name of Thomas. But, prior to his death, Rasputin had arranged, had in fact accomplished Constantine’s ghastly immolation. However, the gorgeous, coal black-haired bloodsucker hadn’t been utterly consumed, say, into a pile of dust as would have most vampires. Instead of him being fatally deep fried, the flames had flared and died quickly, leaving him largely unscathed save for his charred arms and hands and the blistered left side of his face. Constantine had had enough force within him to regenerate, if given the right blood type--mine--in sufficient quantities. There by the railroad tracks Constantine, his hands blackened and crisped, minor patches of his belly, chest, and thighs red and peeling, had latched onto me and siphoned almost down to the last literally unconscious drop. After which, disoriented and amnesiac, I had awakened to find myself clad in next-to-nothing within his penthouse lair, in his bed, and obviously in his clutches. He had almost instantly forced me back to sleep! The crud.
Just as on that previous occasion, I had now, this very moment, come wide awake within the same coffin, his coffin. During that earlier awakening, he had been at my side, and I had been terrified that I was with a roasted version of the formerly beautiful progenitor.
But he had been wholly restored. Thanks to yours truly. And, like I already said, the bastard had immediately entranced me, putting me back to sleep.
Only I wasn’t sleepy anymore. And there was the music. I shuddered with a rush of déjà vu.
Languidly, I sat up, since the custom-made gull-winged coffin stood open, and the last time it hadn’t been and I had cracked my head upon it. Very hard. I gingerly probed for a plump knot. There wasn’t one? But there should have been ... unless it had been many, many days ago when I had banged my head? Frustrated, I ran my fingers down the back of my scalp and found more proof that I had been ‘asleep’ for a good long while. My hair, usually cut bowl-shaped short, clung thickly to my shoulders.
The implications of what that meant froze the breath in my throat. I nearly strangled on anger. Constantine had been leeching blood from me for weeks, if not months! During that one short instance of my waking, he had claimed that Haley Davis, an ex-surgical nurse, had taken it from me with transfusions. But why should I believe him? There was no particular reason whatsoever. In point of fact, I didn’t. He had used his natural vampire hypnotics, his extraordinary magnetism, to make me sexually addicted to him. And now, after having consumed god-only-knew-how much of my blood, he probably had an even deeper hold on me.
I suddenly recalled that night when he had bitten me in order to restore, to regenerate, his once physically perfect existence. Constantine had grabbed me from behind, enveloping me in the awful stench of charred flesh and the lesser scent of singed hair, sounding like pork cracklings as his hands grasped with desperation, tearing at the side of my throat with his teeth, pumping me dry in seconds. At the memory, I grew nauseated. I put my head between my legs. At least today, as opposed to the previous time when I had awakened in a see-through linen garment without benefit of underclothes, I was dressed with some decency in a long-skirted denim dress.
My heart rate eventually slowed. The black spots left my vision. I drew myself upward and quietly got out of the cocoon of Constantine’s stylish, plush-lined vampire bed. Barefooted, I came down the steep stairs of the platform, following the music. Constantine’s lair was enormous, a white-pillared sanctuary on the entire thirteenth floor of his prestigious hotel. Thick charcoal carpet cushioned my steps. And, I knew, from my first ever visit, that his baby grand piano, the glorious instrument that even now called to me, had a finish of glossy white. I advanced, soundlessly, clearing one of the tree-like pillars, until it ... and he ... came into view.
The progenitor’s well tailored, black-jacketed back was to me. He bent over the ivory keys with total concentration, his arrogant features obscured by the forward falling waves of his coal black hair. As his hands traced out a seductive melody, I glimpsed, as ever, there upon the middle finger of his right hand the burnished gold signet ring embossed with his initial. The sight triggered a kaleidoscopic rush of memories. Each had to do with his numerous attempts to dominate me. I blushed as the fragmented memories coalesced into one, that of our first night spent together when I had invited him into my apartment ... and the naughty, incredible things which that beringed hand had done to me.
Then that evocative mental picture, too, was replaced by another even more recent memory, one that was relived more so than remembered. One that was suspiciously familiar, as if played out many, many times in only slight variations? And it was definitely way beyond R-Rated.
From within my imposed slumber, Constantine had melodically called me, commanded me to a strange concert, meant for one, meant for seduction. But the resonant piano stopped when I neared. He swiveled upon the piano bench and sat there, staring hungrily. The sheer linen of my dress offered up my body to his icy blue gaze, and I had known what he wanted. And, since I was under his thrall, it was permissible that I, Avna Soulsmith, ached for the same thing. With his flawless grace, he rose, held out a hand, the golden ring flashing like a beacon, and beckoned me to him. I had no power to resist. His desires were mine.
Like a sleepwalker, I drifted to him. His strong arms instantly embraced me about the waist, pulling me snugly to himself. He dropped a kiss just below my ear then nuzzled down the side of my throat. I shared his fleeting wish to take a sip, to feast upon me in every possible manner, but he overcame the urge with a small shudder.
“Kiss me, Avna.” It was an order, tinged with a plea. Constantine, in fact, had to orchestrate his little rendezvous. When it came to independent action, I simply couldn’t take any, or, at least, very little. I did as he bid me, lying to myself by denying that compliance offered any pleasure. I tiptoed upward to meet him, our lips joining with fierce passion, tongues twisting, coiling, mating. His hands, at first holding my waist, roved, massaging at my backside, suggestively raising me against his erection. When he teasingly lowered me away, I wrapped one leg up high over his hip, locking us together, then pumped and slid intimately against him, his hard extraordinary length. I humped him with gusto. It made me sleepy and full.
Constantine laughed deep in the back of his throat. The vibrations transmitted through our unbroken kiss. In answer, I smiled against his sensuous lips. “You are so eager, my little Soulsmith. But are you, as I suspect, already wet for me?” He gripped my leg to brace me in place even tighter, while he investigated my state of arousal. He ran his fingers between my wide-open thighs. He gently raked the thin soft linen of my dress against my outer, then my inner, lips, smearing his fingers thoroughly with my womanly lubrication. “Ex-cell-ent.” Those three slurred syllables, softly spoken and very-much-satisfied, revealed the barest hint of semi-extruded fangs. This sign of his arousal overwhelmed me.
My body nearly buckled with weakness, so that Constantine supported my entire weight. “Let me make you more comfortable.” And, with his hands at my hips, he perched me atop the baby grand. He nestled in between my dangling legs.
“Better?” He asked, watching as I mutely, exaggeratedly nodded. “Good.” He purred, leaning forward to claim with his hot, moist mouth a soft-coral-colored nipple through the of my dress. I helpfully arched toward him. My fingers reflexively curled into his coal black waves of hair, urging him on. He suckled rather noisily, then began to run his tongue roughly around the areola, then stroked only the pointed nipple.
He kept up his maddening attentions by tonguing and teething and titillating that swollen breast so that the throbbing between my legs increased, painfully. I knew that he wanted me to beg. The humiliating thing was how hard I tried to do just that. “I ... I need ... ohh, Constantine ....” Yet, even while being so dazed, so fogged, so numbed, a tiny part of me--a vestige of Constantine’s own deeply implanted suggestion that helped keep me from blaspheming during sex--realized the safety of remaining mindless and inarticulate. If I uttered one prurient word, if I begged, asked or entreated him to have sex then I would be lost to him forever. So, instead, I moaned for more. But I dared not cry out to or for him.
Finally, smugly he pushed me back upon the top of the piano. I lay spread-eagled before him, my lower body nearly quivering, my chest shuddering with sexual strain. With one hand he palmed my neglected breast, rolling it in gentle circles, while his other hand, his beringed right hand, snaked up and under my thin barely-there dress, uncannily trailing up my inner leg. All the while, he never took his avid gaze off my face. Instead, he watched the effect as his long, knowledgeable fingers entered me and tested the sensitivity of my wet folds with a vigorous caress that plumped me further.
At that first perfect stroke, I clamped my teeth over my bottom lip to keep from crying out for him to take me. At that gesture, Constantine scowled in irritation. He always got off on driving me crazy, on seeing and hearing and tasting the proof of my ardor. However, whenever I resisted, he often retaliated. Such as now. “Do you want ... me? My touch?” He brushed pleasant, addictive circles inside me, then began to withdraw his fingers with punishing intent. “Or the purple dildo?”
“You, you, you,” I gasped, shaking my head back and forth with each outcry, dimly fearing the possible consequence of pleading for him.
He gave an egotistical but relieved sigh. “All I aim is to satisfy you.” And Constantine did, indeed, commence to pleasure me. He stroked heavily at my slick flesh but only infrequently touched my clitoris, then, when my groans of appreciation merited a reward, he inserted two fingers into my pulsing vagina. He slowly drew them out and equally slowly frictioned them back in, an inciting but sluggish rhythm. I shuddered with ecstasy. But soon my greedy body wanted more than his painstaking ravishment. My legs drew up of their own accord so that my feet now had purchase against the piano. Forcefully, I thrust against his hand. He began to move faster, harder. He swirled his thumb against the pulsing bud of my clit. A joyful electric charge jolted from the spot. I whimpered. The tension built inside of me as I continued to ride his hand. The pulsing grew hotter, the need to orgasm spiked higher.
“You’re almost there,” Constantine’s lovely face contorted. His fangs glinted for one tormented second. “You’re gripping and spasming so damnably tight. Tighten more. That’s it. That’s perfect. Let me feel you. Come, come, come, Avna, love.” And he thoroughly jerked and swiped and fucked me with his fingers.
My eyes nearly rolled back in my head. I grunted, garbled out some dirty words, and shuddered with a frightening climax. All of me, save for my thrashing head, clenched, shoulders, eyes, stomach, even as amazing contractions wracked my pussy. Blissfully, thankfully, I screamed Constantine’s name. And he obligingly used his powers to keep me cresting, surely longer than any mortal had ever been privileged.
So powerful had been that encounter that the remembrance of it nearly made me climax again. I clamped a hand over my mouth to keep from uttering any cries. I didn’t want to warn the bastard of my presence as I flew at him to slam the piano cover down over the keys and his still playing fingers.
But, of course, the cover made no contact. I hadn’t smashed off a single digit. “You filthy, dirty swine! Lecher!”
He acted unperturbed at my outburst. Casually, he pushed the cover back up, as if preparing to play once more, ignoring my interruption. Instead, he cocked his head toward me. “By any chance, have you come for a repeat performance of the other day?” Constantine ran his hot gaze up and down the length of my body. He liked to push my buttons. Hard.
I responded instinctively. I slapped him. Just as hard. The blow jerked his head back. It left a print upon his arrogantly chiseled cheekbone. But I didn’t have time to admire my handiwork, for Constantine, with incredible speed, rose from the piano bench. Before I could react, he advanced on me, physically ... and psychically. His whole aura menaced me. He was infuriated, enraged. Seldom was he, Constantine, The Great, a centuries old progenitor, ever denied or defied or contradicted. But, of course, since knowing him, I had made a perpetual habit of doing just that. And Constantine, I had experienced firsthand, did not know his own telepathic strength. Previously, during one of our initial confrontations, he had lashed out with careless ease, giving me a migraine just one step removed from a brain aneurysm. And now, his dark emotions triggered a psychic explosion that buffeted me against the piano, then kept me there. Forcibly. An invisible hand, and an accompanying weight, gripped my throat. My hips crashed discordantly against the keyboard. The sound seemed to hang over us, an audible jangle that matched our anger.
Constantine’s blue eyes flared like brilliant stars. The phantasmal grip he had on my throat did not lessen. He leaned nearer, whispered into my ear. “If you were anyone else, I would snap your neck.”
“Don’t do me any favors.” But I was beginning to choke. My windpipe felt swollen. Maybe I had gone too far? What imbecile slaps a progenitor in his own home?
Then, suddenly, the blue heat shining from his eyes dimmed. His terrible anger ebbed. He dropped his hold, almost unaware that he had even had one upon me.
I slumped, rubbing at my poor neck, sliding my rump further down the piano. It clanged out yet again. I tried not to cough, but my throat burned.
Constantine stood and stared, noting the ugly marks he had unconsciously made upon me. “I’m sorry, Avna.” His voice sounded of grief. He reached out for me, but I dodged away. In truth, I had already forgiven his ‘mental’ tantrum. How could I not? When it came to self-control, he was simply immature for his age.
No, I feared something else, altogether--hearing my Christian name upon his pagan lips. It was an intimacy that I had purposely denied him until, in an unguarded moment when I had awoken that first time in his coffin to find him whole and handsome rather than burned and maimed--I had given him permission to use it. First names were powerful, one more weapon a strong vampire could use to sway a human. And I had given Constantine, a progenitor, mine. Swell, just swell.
“Don’t you dare touch me, in any manner, you son-of-a-bitch.”
“I apologize for giving any pain. I allowed anger to unleash my power.” He glanced at me strangely. “My abilities are rarely channeled with violence, but rather more with passion. Or need I demonstrate again how unnecessary it is for me to touch you to pleasure you?”
The bastard was reminding me of an unwanted interlude in one of the Constantinople’s shiny chrome elevators when he had performed some stimulating maneuvers on me without actually touching me. That encounter had been part of his plan to addict me to him sexually. My fingers curled into my palms, ached to slap his smug face, again! But I wanted to hurt him much more than that. I needed a weapon, but I hadn’t any. There was simply me, Constantine, the piano ... and the white-finished piano bench! Without pause, I kicked it over. Somehow, with strength drawn from who-knows-where, I wrenched off one of the slender, tapered legs and I had a stake. Sort of.
Now, I could most definitely put a hurtin’ on him.
Constantine held his ground for about a second, until I used my entire weight to throw us both down. He was on his back. I was atop him. The stake lay between us. It didn’t even phase him.
“If you like it on top, all you had to do was say so.”
I aimed for his black heart. He easily fended off the make-shift stake.
“Is this some sort of foreplay, Avna?”
“Damn. Damn. Damn.” I put every ounce of strength behind my efforts to slay him. I straddled Constantine, striving to drive the piano leg into him, leaning over his perfect body, bearing down with all my might, refusing to give up. The stake never got close.
“Do you really wish to impale me?” He paused, measuring the merest slackening of my hold on the piano leg. But then he leered into my face which was barely inches from his and added, “Or is it the other way round? That you want me to impale you?”
I leapt back from him like a scalded cat, flinging the ineffectual weapon from me. I had had enough of his innuendos. There was no way to fight him, no way to win. Except by leaving. So, that’s what I intended.
“Stop.” The word, spoken with Constantine’s vampiric hypnotics, was elongated, a forceful command that would have halted most humans. I kept on moving, the long-skirted denim dress swirling around my legs.
“Avna ... Stop.” This time, when he used my name, my steps slowed, but not of my own volition.
Nearby, from a spot just over my shoulder, I heard his voice. He was following me. And, because his hypnotic snares had failed, Constantine began to use reason. “You can’t go outside barefoot.”
“Watch me.”
But his next words struck like bombshells. “It’s nearly winter. And Hetti Chambogo has escaped from prison. You cannot go.”
I did stop in my tracks and turned to face him. I ignored how sexy he was in his close-fitting black slacks, matching jacket, and crimson shirt. His wavy hair, reminiscent of a thick shiny seam of coal, just brushed the top of his collar. “I had already figured out that you’ve kept me here for a while.” I unconsciously tugged at my own overgrown locks. “But for how long ... exactly?”
“Almost four months. It’s mid October.”
“Four months.” I nearly got sick. I’d lain side-by-side with this inhuman thing for months. And, during that time, he had used me as much more than a blood donor. Besides which, he had healed long since. I had wakened that once--many weeks ago, I was now positive--to find him whole. He had made me go back to sleep so that he could continue to use me as he pleased. “Nothing excuses what you did to me. Nothing.”
Lines were etched beside Constantine’s mouth. “I wanted to keep you with me. To protect you.”
“But mostly to fuck me.” I didn’t scream that accusation, but it ripped through the room like a storm wind, seeming to ruffle Constantine's glossy black hair. He scowled at the profanity, which I normally did not use. In fact, the word, seemingly fueled within me by something deep-seated and alien, tasted bitter, like bile, like something forced up out of me against my own wishes. It almost seemed like someone else had spoken. Anger will do that to you.
“I didn’t engage in anything other than what you had already allowed me, Avna. We had oral sex.” He didn’t brag about how often. He didn’t have to. “There wasn’t any penetration, in the traditional sense. You set that boundary. I can’t cross it until you say so. I have never taken more than offered, nor used any force. Your subconscious would not allow it.”
I put my hands over my ears to block him out. “No more bullshit, Constantine. You ... used me. You’re a predatory monster. Thank God, I’m not in your thrall anymore.”
Constantine flinched from the naming of The Deity. “Curb your tongue, Avna.”
“Don’t sweat it. I was just on my way out. Remember?”
“There is still the matter of Hetti Chambogo. She is out there. Somewhere. Full of hatred for you.’’
Once more, I turned my back on him and walked away. “Better her than you.”
This time Constantine did not follow. Tired and shaken and very skeptical that he was allowing me to leave, I crossed the deep charcoal carpeting, passing the only bits of furniture in the huge lair, a three-piece grouping of sectional couches covered in velvety pewter. I had nearly rounded the set before I became aware that someone, very male in a tight toffee-colored shirt that molded to his pecs, matched with equally tight chocolate brown slacks and accessorized with deep-green, short-heeled alligator boots, his trademark unruly cowlick dropping onto his wide forehead, was lounging on the softness of one of the couches. He was arresting more-so than attractive.
His name hissed from out my lips, like air squeezing from out a balloon. “Thomas.” It was a triple shock to find him here since Constantine had once admitted to me that no humans, and few of his own kind outside of his clan, had ever been allowed to enter this sanctuary. Thomas was far from the closest of Constantine’s clan, yet here he was. There seemed only one logical reason for him to be here, and I voiced it. “I suppose when Constantine became a crispy critter, he had no choice but to let some of his people attend him here. Still, he should have been way more discriminating. You’re the spawn of that bitch Donata. That alone makes you less than trustworthy.”
The vampire, whom I now hated only second to Constantine, sprawled there very comfortably with his head pillowed upon the cushy backrest, totally unaffected by my insult. For all the indolence of his pose, I felt his keen awareness trained upon me. His India ink eyes, avid and intense, slowly tracked over me from head-to-toe. I shivered. He was the one looking very fine, indeed. Gone was his heroine chic thinness, replaced by sinuous, fleshed out muscle. His coloring, although still pale against his glossy hair and inky black eyes, thrummed and glowed with a healthy tinge, the pink hue of someone else’s lifeblood, taken regularly and taken in quantity. His features, like some otherworldly model, were angular, with carved cheeks, a long chin, and full lips.
His own open inspection of me ended somewhere in the vicinity of my chest.
“You are looking tasty as ever, my sweet tartlet.” He punctuated his words with a seductive lowering of his eyelids. “None the worse for wear.”
My stomach clenched. Thomas knew and so, too, would all of Constantine’s people just how intimate I had been with the progenitor. And Thomas, who, in-point-of-fact, owed me his so-called sorry-assed life since it had been my plea to Constantine that the twins, Marc and Max, not be allowed to hunt him down and kill him after he had resurrected from a near beheading, dared to taunt me. But there was even more between us. Thomas had been at the railroad tracks the night that I had managed to throw Rasputin under the freight train. In that moment of triumph and relief, Thomas had stood by and watched, pityingly, it is true, while fire-riddled Constantine had torn into me.
“I’d stop to spit on you but you’re not worth the bother.” My heart pounded erratically. Thomas’ betrayal had hurt me far deeper than simply putting me into Constantine’s clutches. There had been some sort of immediate bond, some profound connection between us, almost from the minute we had first sparred at Rasputin’s lair in the Tattoo Emporium. Thomas had, actually, been a member of the evil progenitor’s clan, made so by an alliance between Rasputin and Thomas’ mistress, Donata, the vampiress from hell. Yet, he had done the impossible on that evening when he had pledged allegiance to me over that of his own true maker. To do so had demonstrated his innate strength. But, when all was said and done, in the end, he had handed me over to Constantine on a silver platter, where I had remained for the past four months. In a semi-coma. At the disposal of Constantine’s every lascivious whim.
For one heartbeat, a profound silence crushed the huge room. I continued forward, heading for the elevator at the far end of the penthouse.
Thomas’ voice halted me. “I didn’t have a choice. Constantine was too strong.” He offered an apology of sorts.
My steps faltered. “How so, Thomas?” My voice cracked with emotion. “He was very diminished from sustaining himself through that fire. Never mind that you aren’t such a weakling yourself. I’ve seen you resurrect. That’s not too shabby. Most vampires can’t pull that off.”
Thomas now sat on the edge of the couch. His fisted hands rested on the tops of his legs. “There is more than just physical strength, as well you know, Soulsmith.”
“Don’t you start with that supernatural crap, too. I’m just average, ordinary Avna, not some mystical force ....”
He flashed a gleaming tipped smile. “Never average, nor ordinary.” Thomas paused for effect. “Avna.” He had claimed the right to use my name, allowed so by my awkward phrasing. Always before, he had given me ridiculous nicknames, such as scrumptious, cupcake, tartlet, anything that implied eating on a rather decadent, sensual level. The way in which he had just spoken my Christian name for the first time came out similarly, as if I were some sort of dessert. And what are desserts for except to be devoured?
Nervously, I wet my lips, which had suddenly become parched. “I don’t forgive you.”
Thomas shrugged his wide shoulders, accentuating the snug fit of his shiny toffee-colored shirt over his well-chiseled chest. “As if I care, sweetmeat. But I do want to know if you’ve forgiven him, Constantine. For one such as he, he has been relatively monogamous for the past few months.” His ink black eyes nailed me to the spot. My answer seemed of extreme importance to him, much as he denied caring about forgiveness. Because, logically, how could I forgive Constantine and not forgive Thomas?
“Wasn’t I on my way out when you detained me?” I refused to take the bait about Constantine’s so-called efforts at monogamy. Like I gave a crap about with whom and how often he dined. Yeah, right.
“Yes.” He sighed, once more reclining on the pewter couch. “Most ill advised, given the circumstances.”
“You mean Hetti Chambogo?” I tried for nonchalance. But it was hard. Hetti, a transplanted New Yorker, was a true voodoo princess, with curses and clairvoyance and chicken feet. She was way out of my league. Our paths had crossed when her lover, Salvatore Lantaglia, a low-level mobster, had come to De Facto Self Defense needing counter spells to protect him from Hetti, whom he had turned states evidence against in a murder trial in exchange for immunity.
Neither I nor my black magic consultant, Ondine Du Paix, had, in the end, been able to help him. Salvatore had wound up ground up and spread over his own apple orchard. His spirit had revealed to me the location and the killer of the body. I had, in fact, been designated a U.S. Court appointed medium in order to channel his ghost into the judge’s chambers to testify. The victim’s testimony, made possible by moi, had put Hetti behind bars for life. Only she wasn’t behind bars anymore.
“Okay, so, she scares me. But there are other things that scare me more.” And I couldn’t help but look back in the general direction of the baby grand piano, hidden behind one of the white-washed pillars. Then, from behind me, in the opposite direction, I heard the elevator’s high ding that signaled its timely arrival. Constantine was letting me leave. And I meant to make good my escape. “I need to reclaim my life, Thomas. What there is left of it. And that doesn’t include vampires.”
But that declaration lost all authority with the arrival of the most intimate of Constantine’s clan. I felt swallowed in their midst when they loosely circled me. Marc and Max, dressed casually in faded jeans and thick aqua sweaters, their platinum blonde hair gelled and spiked identically, each wore sober expressions totally out-of-character for fun-loving Marcus, but less so for the temperamental Maxamillian. Next, slightly apart from the twins, stood petite Haley Davis. As usual, her nut-brown hair swung in a perky pony-tail which suited her youthful, bright-red corduroy coveralls. She, too, seemed very subdued at this meeting, perhaps because she had been a caretaker for me during my ‘convalescence’. I had vague, dreamlike memories of having been fed and dressed by her. What can I say? I had been a near zombie.
Then came Gerard Lamphere, the ex District Attorney with the penchant for khaki. And, at his side stood copper-haired Ginny Bahr, my best friend, and my CPA. Our friendship had begun when I had exorcised, not once but twice, a recalcitrant demonic spirit from her Tudor house. As a consequence of my recent and unwelcome supernatural connections, she was a newly affianced woman. She was engaged to Gerard Lamphere, he of the living dead. Joy-oh-joy.
The silence, as they say, was deafening. I broke it. “Don’t let me ruin your party. I was just leaving.” I expected an opening in their ranks to let me pass. No one moved.
Ginny spoke for them. “It’s best you stay here, Avna. For your own good.”
For emphasis, Haley Davis named the threat to my life. “Surely, Constantine told you about Hetti Chambogo?”
“Yeah, I’ve been duly warned. So, you can let me pass with a clear conscience, because I‘m not staying here a minute longer than I have to.” I sent one scalding glance across them all. “I’m not feeling particularly charitable. Best get out of my way. Now.” The power behind that word was akin to that of what Constantine did. Indeed, it seemed to make them waver. A gap appeared between the twins. It was all the opening I needed.
I took one single stride and hit the floor. Something invisible, intangible, and inescapable had just struck me like a ton of bricks.
Chapter Two
Just An Unwanted Link to A Vampire Progenitor
Something, some force, had sandbagged me. As fast as I dropped, the others reacted equally, inhumanly quickly. Max was the first at my side, lifting my torso off the floor, cradling my shuddering body in his arms. Hot-on-his-brother’s heels came Marc, who knelt next to us, while the others gathered around closely. Thomas also scrambled there in a fraction of a second. Nothing of their concern, however, penetrated. I was barely aware of any of them, for I was in too much pain.
The soles of my feet felt like red-hot super-heated pins were being driven into them.
“Christ, it hurts!” The vampires gathered about me flinched--religious references, especially when issued with conviction, tended to impact them rather negatively.
Max kept his hold on me, although his grip convulsively tightened.
The hot pins sunk inches deeper into me. Into my toes. The balls of my feet. The arches. My heels. Tears squeezed out of my shuttered eyes. I whimpered. At first, I had suspected Constantine to be behind this assault, but he wouldn’t torture me. This was excruciating. As I tucked in upon the pain, I dimly, distantly followed their conversation.
Max, wrapping me tighter in his arms, looked at Marc. “It’s her, the voodoo woman. Can you feel her, too? She‘s totally enveloping Avna.”
Marc agreed. “The emanations are strong. I think we can all feel it ...?” But the first one he glanced toward was Haley Davis, who confirmed his words with a curt nod that jounced her ponytail.
“Where’s Constantine?” Ginny demanded, her frail humanity palpably exposed. She leaned against Gerard Lamphere as if she could not stand without aid. Even through the fog of my pain, I heard the panic in her voice.
“I am here.” Constantine swept amongst his people, aiming to claim me from out of Max’s embrace. Max infinitesimally, defiantly clasped me tighter, almost refusing for a millisecond, a span too short for a human to note, to relinquish his hold. However, all the vampires had felt that instant of defiance, even as Max passed me into Constantine’s arms.
As for me, I was just plain out of it. Great tremors wracked my body. The sharp pins had progressed up my legs. I convulsed against Constantine, not knowing who held me. He carried me to one of the pewter couches. Blood dripped, sieve-like, in thin scarlet trails from the pinpricks. The others, like a phalanx of soldiers, assembled about us. Max leaned over the back of the couch. His fists gripped into the cushioned upholstery. Thomas, no less concerned, ranged himself farther down the couch, a physical separation that mirrored his status as an outsider. Marc and Haley stood at Constantine’s back, while Ginny and Gerard stayed back some little distance. Ginny continued to weakly lean against him, her tear streaked face pressed to his green polo shirt-front, her sobs muffled by his chest.
“Avna,” Constantine clasped my hand, trying to break into my dazed consciousness, “listen to me. You are equally as strong as the Voodoo Woman. Turn the power back upon her. Focus. Do as I say.”
Immediately upon his words, the menacing spirit redoubled. The already low lights, kept at Constantine’s whim like some perpetual twilight, flickered. The puncturing wounds multiplied, deepened, sizzled. I begged for some relief, again crying out to the Almighty for mercy.
Constantine stiffened but was otherwise unaffected by my ill-advised shout. He swiped a heavy hank of hair from off my face, shaking me, trying to rouse me. “Partake of my power, of my force. Use it against her. Turn it upon her. Amongst us, you are strong. Show her.” He laid his forearm up-and-down the length of my torso with his open-fingered palm resting on my chest. His gold signet ring seemed to pulse in time with my heartbeats. “Fight back, my little Soulsmith.”
At his touch, electric surged through me, only slightly more pleasant than the needles progressing up my calves. Constantine aimed to force-feed me his strength. My lungs expelled a great breath, and I arched my body like a bent bowstring. The pain only marginally receded. I lay blind while the attack continued. Nor was I more than dimly aware of Constantine reaching with his free hand to clasp Haley Davis’. But, as if I had been plugged into an outlet, the surge of energy inside and about me amped up accordingly. The circuit widened when she touched then gripped Marc’s hand.
The circle needed to progress no farther. My eyes flew wide, and Hetti Chambogo’s force fled, flickering the lights one final time and laughing with soft sadistic satisfaction.
“She’s gone.” Haley Davis said, then, remembering whose hand she held, she shook loose of Marc, the flirt she had once vowed to never date even if he were the last vampire on earth. It took me slightly longer to recover and realize whose hand still molded to my chest, had actually migrated to my left breast, cupping it--Constantine’s. I sat bolt upright so that his possessive hold fell away. His mouth was curved smugly. Mine was set angrily. So what if he had saved me ...? I was about to rip his head off.
Haley intervened by putting on her professional exterior and examining my feet and legs. Hunkering down beside the couch, her nut-brown ponytail swinging forward over her shoulder, she raised one of my feet and gently ran the pad of her thumb over the sole. She continued up the ankle and, cursorily, over the calf.
“There’s scarcely a mark on her.” Disbelief clearly sounded in Haley’s voice.
Thomas, casually propped against the couch cool as a cucumber, offered his own explanation. “In a manner of speaking, it wasn’t a real attack. It was voodoo. Done in effigy.”
“Yeah, it was so ‘unreal’,” I answered, “that it didn’t hurt me a bit. And, I suppose, if she had driven one of those needles straight through my heart, it wouldn’t have been fatal?”
“That remains to be seen.” He seemed intrigued by the possibility, and he, not so furtively, cast an assessing gaze over my face, down my hunched frame all the way to my tingling toes. “Avna, being a Soulsmith, with a progenitor for a protector, might not be quite as susceptible as most mortals. She might survive such a voodoo casting.”
Ginny shot forward, her green eyes bright from her recent tears, made more so by her anger with Thomas. “Try to be a little more reassuring, why don’t you? Instead of sounding disappointed that your theory wasn’t put to the test.”
Thomas shrugged. “I am no expert in this type of the occult.”
That remark brought all eyes back to me, the ostensible expert in the paranormal, a title I refused. “It’s not my forte, either. Except,” I swallowed hard, “this type of voodoo has been documented in several cases of manslaughter.” Hetti Chambogo, a voodoo princess, was a very strong practitioner as, indeed, she had just ably demonstrated. Thomas might not be convinced that she could kill me long-distance, but I was. If she had struck me in a vital organ, I would now be stone cold dead. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.
Haley scowled and a furrow of concentration demarcated her shapely brows. She posed a question at large. “Doesn’t the Voodoo Woman have to have some personal object of the victim to work her magic?”
“Yes.” Marc took the opportunity to strategically sidle nearer to the ex-surgical nurse, whose bright red corduroy coveralls accentuated her petite but womanly frame. “That’s commonly known.” Haley frowned at his obvious attempt to invade her personal space. She retreated a step away from him.
But their snatch of conversation had triggered a weird sense of déjà vu in me, of another time, at the Tattoo Emporium, when I had also been barefoot, injured, and ringed by vampires. Against that strong disturbing remembrance, I tucked my knees closer to my chest and tented the voluminous denim skirt tightly about my legs and feet. “What could she have of mine? All my personal effects surely must have burned up in the fire at De Facto Self Defense.” But I questioningly turned to Ginny, hoping-against-hope that some of my few possessions had been salvaged.
“Everything burned, Avna. Your car, included. The building had to be razed. Even the bakery next door.”
My eyes glazed over with the intensity of my total loss in the aftermath of that unrestricted blaze. I tried to fend off the quagmire of emotions associated with that horrific night ... when Constantine had been lured to my business, to my home, to De Facto Self Defense, a store that specialized in a hodge podge of paranormal paraphernalia, and he had been set afire by Snitch. When monstrous Rasputin had nearly forced me to exchange ‘I do’s’. When I had become the personal Red Cross blood donor for a seductive, ice-blue-eyed progenitor.
Panic surged from my chest into my throat. De Facto Self Defense had literally been my whole life. I had no family since the deaths of my mother in a car wreck when I was fifteen and my grandmother to a stroke five years later. All that I knew of my father was that he had been a rover, like some gypsy king who had abandoned his family from the get-go. I had been alone, euphemistically orphaned, since the age of nineteen. Ten lonely, hardship-filled years had come and gone. I was close on to thirty. With no home. No business. No prospects.
Just an unwanted link to a vampire progenitor. I fought and lost the urge to glance at Constantine. He yet knelt, one arm dangled over a well-muscled thigh, next to the couch at close to eye level with me, perfect to study the coal black waves of his hair which framed arrogantly-handsome, perfectly-sculpted features, planed cheekbones, aristocratic nose, sensual lips. His body, too, was perfection, broad at the shoulders and narrow at the hips, muscular and male. And very well endowed. A twinge of sexual desire sizzled in my loins, shaming me. Hadn’t I just escaped from death’s door? Again! How could I be feeling horny?!
Because, I rationalized, of a sexual addiction to him. For that reason alone I had to leave his penthouse lair. To save my soul. “It’s been four months since the fire, Ginny. I know I don’t have the right to expect Mr. Vestopolous to have rebuilt, but I still do. It’s my home, my business. I want to get back to it.”
Gerard Lamphere, Constantine’s legal advisor, moved closer, positioning himself behind Ginny. He rested his hands atop her shoulders then he spoke. He was bolstering her, or so it appeared to me, before revealing something unpleasant. “It has been rebuilt. By the new owner.”
I suddenly felt like a wild animal caught in a trap. “New owner?” I echoed him, trying to keep the quiver from out of my voice.
“Vestopolous was underinsured. Therefore, when Constantine made him a generous offer, he sold the property.”
Constantine flashed his pearly whites, with the extra-long, extra-sharp tips extended. He was having a nasty laugh at my expense. “I’m your new landlord, Avna. I hold the five year lease.”