CHAPTER 29: THE GRINDING HABIT

Shannon’s every inch felt like it was on fire. She felt everything. The touch of every fiber, every hair. The slightest brush of air against her skin. The difference in the heat of the body beneath her and the buckle of his belt, the buttons of his shirt, the coolness entering her lungs as she breathed. All of it was magnified. All of it was better. She gasped and twisted, reveling in the exquisite sensations against her skin. She needed more. She needed…something. Everything.

She tried again to bare his skin, so that their bodies could join in the ecstasy together, flesh-to-flesh. She wanted to feel that warmth, wanted to sink her fangs into it, draw it into herself…

Shannon groaned again, unable to understand why he wouldn’t let her move. “Pleaaase.” She tried again to twist her wrists free, but the arms continued to hold them to her side. Whimpering in frustration, she flexed and resumed rubbing, panting as she felt those excruciating tingles that were tracing through her veins, electrifying her blood, singing in her mind.

“I think she’s coming out of it,” a strange man’s voice said, just above her head.

“She better be,” Masaaki growled. “It’s been four hours.”

Coming out of it?

“Mmmm,” Shannon worked her legs against his, undulating her spine, enjoying the heat beneath her, the delicious hardness holding her in place, the delicate ridges and valleys of flesh tantalizingly close, the nice hard lump, just under her abdomen, the way her nipples brushed against the cloth.

“Yeah, well, once she does finally snap outta it, if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna need to go spend a few minutes alone. She’s had me hard as a fucking rock since she started and I’m developing a really bad case of blueballs.”

Blue…balls?

“I will take the daimyō off your hands when the time comes. Your restraint was…commendable…demonkin.”

“No shit. When she started grinding…” The voice above her head turned to face her and became more gentle. “You waking up there, stardust?”

Stardust? She hated ‘stardust.’ Only her dad called her ‘stardust.’ Who the hell did he think he was, calling her stardust? And who the hell did he think she was, that she’d let some stranger call her stardust? Some blonde bimbo who humped everything that moved?

Then, …grinding?

All of a sudden, Shannon realized that she was humping a stranger’s leg, flexing and undulating against his stomach like a stripper on a pole.

“Odin’s balls!” she screamed, trying to wrench herself away from him. His arms held her like iron bands, giving her absolutely no movement. He was strong. Way, way too strong. Like vampire strong.

“Yep, she’s up.” The stranger’s face was suddenly peering down at her, his pale green eyes focusing on her. “Feeling better?”

“Let go of me!” Shannon cried, struggling. “Masaaki, help!”

“Hold onto her for another couple minutes,” the yatagarasu said. “Make sure.”

Shannon froze, turning to scowl at the samurai. He was reclining on the bed, a martial arts manual in one hand, a dictionary in the other. He had a pillow tucked under his head and back, and looked entirely comfortable. He hadn’t even glanced up.

“Masaaki, what the hell?!” Shannon cried. She squirmed, trying to avoid the way her body was touching with the strange man’s… A vampire lord? She remembered him pricking her with his fangs, in the store, then Masaaki trying to kill him. From that starting point, she fast-forwarded until she remembered sipping that silver liquid from his palm.

“That was some rush, wasn’t it?” the vampire lord said, grinning. He gave her a knowing wink.

Blushing until her face was on fire, Shannon swallowed and did her best to pretend she wasn’t laying there atop a strange man, after having dry-humped him until the skin of her thighs was raw. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He rolled his pale green eyes. “Okay. Right.” He released her and sat up as Shannon scrambled away from him. “Now if you folks will excuse me, I have to go take care of some stuff.” He got up and strode to the hotel bathroom and thumped the door shut.

Eyes on the door where the stranger had disappeared, Shannon hurried over to get behind Masaaki, who turned to look up at her from his studies with a single raised brow. “Feeling more yourself, daimyō?”

Lowering her voice to a whisper, still watching the bathroom door, Shannon said, “What the hell did you let him do to me, Masaaki?”

“He’s your consort,” Masaaki said. “He’ll feed you, now.”

“Uhhh,” Shannon said, remembering the way the big guy’s arms had clamped down and held her still like she were a skein of yarn, “I’m not so sure about that…” Masaaki, at least, didn’t feel like he could rip her head off if he got displeased with the whole situation. “He’s strong, Masaaki.”

Masaaki swiveled to glare up at her. “As are you.”

Shannon froze. Of course. She was the scary, uncontrolled vampire. They’d found an alternative. Now Masaaki didn’t feel obligated to let her attack him anymore, and she would never be able to walk in the sun again. “Oh,” she said, trying not to let him see how dejected she felt. “So he’ll be enough for me, then?”

Masaaki grunted. “He better be. Lords are very special in the Third Realm. They’re very good at feeding—it’s what they’re designed to do. Very fast, very clean, very controlled. A lord’s venom eases the siphoning of the energy from a victim, and each successive feeding makes it quicker and easier, with less waste and less trauma on the donor. And, if he’s consorted a queen, he can act as an almost unlimited storage reservoir and pass the energy along to her, as she needs it, and with no waste. The problem will be acquiring him volunteers.”

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“You,” Shannon said.

Though he didn’t try to sit up from his reclined position, Masaaki’s fingers hesitated on his books.

“You’ll drink his venom first, though, right?”

Masaaki continued to look down at the book. “If he immunizes me, it will reduce the effect.”

“Oh bullshit,” Shannon cried. “You’re gonna let him enthrall you?”

“It’s different than with a queen,” Masaaki muttered.

“How?” Shannon demanded.

Taking a deep breath, the samurai said, “The venom of a lord will enthrall in such a way that the enthralled desire to give him blood, because it produces a sort of ecstasy in them. A really good ‘trip,’ kind of like what you just experienced. His venom helps them to produce more of their life-force, at faster speed. Like fertilizing a plant with a dead fish. It’s a very good symbiosis.”

“Sounds good so far,” Shannon said reluctantly. “But I’m sensing a very big ‘but.’”

Masaaki shrugged. “Once poisoned, those he enthralls have to stay close to him because they can’t live long without his drinking of them. I mean, they can live, but for a few weeks after they stop feeding him, they’re going to go into a state of mindlessness, and be pretty much non-responsive to the world. And the lord pretty much has to die before they’ll face that kind of agony willingly. Even those who hate having him eat from them will return of their own power, so that he can sink his fangs into them again.”

“Like a drug addict going through withdrawal.”

He gave a brief nod. “With a queen, the poison has a different effect. It’s more of a surrender of the will, a need to obey. A compulsion. Your life is no longer your own.”

The green-eyed stranger stepped from the bathroom, wiping his face and hair down with a towel. Giving her a shy grin, he added, “It was actually originally a defense mechanism against bigger badder stuff like bunyips and barghests.” Then he snorted. “But of course, you can imagine how long that lasted.”

Shannon eyed his suspiciously, inching to the side to keep Masaaki between them. As he stood there, drying his hair, she got her first good look of the man who had tried twice to kill her. He was silver-skinned, like her, with almost an inner glow to it. He was about six feet tall, same as her father, wore jeans and a T-shirt, and while muscled, did not have the bulk she would have expected to be able to hold her down like that. His eyes were a pale green, though they had that bigger-than-average look to them that had made Shannon feel so awkward in school.

“Originally?”

The vampire lord tossed the towel back into the bathroom and took a deep breath, letting it out while fixing his gaze on her in consideration. “Your parents never taught you the history, did they?”

“No,” Masaaki said.

The vampire lord leaned against the wall and watched her over Masaaki’s head. “Many human winters ago, in the First Realm, your homerealm, little one, the Furies got into a war with themselves. All the guardians—the Furies, the typhons, the dragons—got drawn into the battle, and they were killing everything. A bunch of magi got together and fled the war in the First Realm, making the dubious choice of taking refuge in the Third Realm while they waited out the fighting. Right off, they realized that they needed to make some changes to themselves in order to survive. The barghests and bunyips could see in the dark, were unspeakably strong in comparison, and the humans’ blood lit up like torches in the night. Many magi were lost before they captured a barghest and used its blood to augment themselves. They took its vision and its strength for their own, working its powers into their bodies.”

The vampire lord grinned. “Barghests and bunyips were still stronger, though. Much stronger. Magi continued to be eaten, the jötnar refused to lend assistance to things that could not save themselves, and it looked like all the refugees were going to die.”

Gesturing at the room, the vampire said, “So our intrepid ancestors, the smart devils that they were, used their newfound strength to raid a seductor lair. In case you don’t know, they’re a type of blood-magus. Rather nasty, but also somewhat stupid, because there’s so many of them, and all one of the soldiers has to do is sink its fangs into its victim once and they will always come back for more. There are males and females. Males feed the females from creatures they have thralled. Females control armies of drones. With me so far?”

Shannon nodded.

“Okay.” The vampire lord pushed the fangs through his wrist and showed her the glowing silver etched into the ivory. “They wanted a seductor because it gave them the ability to fully embrace the blood magics, which rule the Third Lands. They originally took only the female seductor’s venom, as a defense mechanism when attacked by bunyip or barghest—Bunyip attacks, stab the bunyip, have a nice new bunyip pet to protect you. But in the magi’s kids, the magics kind of changed. It no longer became an idle decision of whether or not to harness energy to work blood magic…the kids needed to feed. They needed to feed, or they would die. And the boys lost the ability to defend themselves against bunyip. Instead, they picked up the odd knack to make other creatures come slinking back to them time and time again to harvest their blood.”

Then the vampire lord grinned at her. “Oh, and the magi’s children discovered that, once they awakened those latent magics, they often experienced a seductor’s insane urge to procreate when stimulated.”

Shannon blushed crimson. She cleared her throat and looked at her hands. So embarrassed she wanted to sink into the floor, she said, “Sorry.”

He waved her off. “You can’t help it.”

“Yet,” Masaaki said.

“Yet,” the lord agreed. At Shannon’s frown, he said, “You’re working off of a seductor’s urges, girl. It’s deep, but it’s not you. Vampires are kind of mongrels, but your base is human.”

“I never liked history,” Shannon muttered. She had never considered herself anything other than human.

“See, in the Third Realm, the seductor is a lot like a First Lander wasp. When it’s time to reproduce, the female basically starts a big orgy in the nest. Then she uses her fangs to deposit eggs into her living victims in her frenzy, most of whom are male drones of its own species. And the males love it. To the death.” He winked at her.

“Ummm,” Shannon said. “So she kills them? Like a black widow?”

The vampire laughed. “Oh yeah. Nothing but husks, once the eggs hatch. The larvae develop inside, eating away, until they kill the host. But don’t worry about that. The poison sacs bred true, but not the egg-pods.”

Shannon swallowed, hard, and looked away.

“So yeah.” The vampire lord gestured dismissively. “By the time the guardian-wars in the First Realm were over, the magi had taken too much of the Third Lands into themselves, and could not leave. So our ancestors did what they could to fit in. We’ve been toe-to-toe with the jötnar ever since. They don’t really like us, much. Still consider us the outsiders, even though we’ve been there for hundreds of thousands of years, now.” He grinned, and he had, Shannon noticed, longer canines, like her. “Okay. History lesson over.”

“Masaaki, I think we should go.”

Masaaki grunted. “Soon, daimyō. I’ll need to speak with the lord in private for a few minutes, then we can go. We need to set up another meeting with the slavers. Take the lord back with us to get the fey twins. Hopefully, we can convince them to go along with it.”

“Um, Masaaki?” Shannon asked softly, still keeping his body between herself and the stranger. “I meant we should leave him here and go. You don’t want to be enthralled, right? We can find another way.”

“This is the best way, daimyō.”