“Hold
it right there warrior.” Her voice toneless, probably due to the noise
cancelling headphones she was wearing.
Nate
held his arms high, palms facing upwards, watching the new player stroll across
the room as if she owned it. She looked capable and deadly, well except
for the headphones and the rather raw looking bite marks on the side of her
throat. Nice to know that Destiny and her gang had been eating 'in' the
last few nights, rather than roaming the countryside.
Nate
was surprised when the newcomer came to a halt almost directly between himself
and Cyd. It didn’t make sense to him that she was prepared to put her
back to one of them… unless. He didn’t have time to react as the woman
pivoted and leapt, swinging her leg out wide, smashing her boot against his
gut, he took a small step back. If she’d just stopped there it would have been
fine, but the woman kept spinning, this time bringing her other leg around,
giving him a hard booted shove to the sternum.
“No.”
It was Charisse who’d figured it out. Bringing her cross bolt up, firing
on reflex as one of Nate’s arms pin-wheeled back, Destiny waiting for just this
opportunity snatched it lightning fast, hauling Nate across the threshold into
her arms just as one of Charisse’s cross-bolts struck her high in the shoulder,
a matching book end for the arrow still stuck in her ribcage.
Within
the next blink of an eye Destiny was gone, taking Nate with her.
It
had all happened in a matter of seconds.
Still operating on instinct, Charisse dropped to the ground, flinching
as the minion’s gun went off, the bullet’s trajectory well over her head.
She had one cross-bolt left to fire, aiming for the woman’s torso, the biggest
target, she couldn’t afford to miss. Except she did, as the woman
likewise ducked and rolled away to come up her on knees, the gun once more
pointed business end in her direction.
They
both froze for a split second, taking stock of each other. Thank the
Goddess for the almost full moon, without the light it cast Charisse may never
have noticed that in the struggle the minion’s headphones had been knocked ever
so slightly askew.
The
note burst forth from her lips like she was firing a weapon and she supposed
she was, as hardly more than a second later the minion slumped to the floor
unconscious.
Ignoring the sprawled
figure, Charisse stumbled outside. Where in the name of the Goddess would
Destiny take Nate?
She
studied the splatter of black blood on the ground. She’d hit Destiny
twice now. Even with her royal strength, how far could Vamperella have
gotten with her injuries, carrying a warrior of Nate’s size?
Absently
she slapped a hand to her side; Bettina was upset about something and fussing
down their bond. Now is not the time… unless, her head snapped around.
Oh no, that bitch Queen wouldn’t. Even as she
had the thought her sandshoes were hitting the ground hard as she ran for the
cliffs. Goddess help her, Corkscrew Point her destination.
Chapter
Eighteen
Nate
hated flying, but he quickly discovered he hated falling even more.
Especially with Destiny’s grating laughter as an accompanying soundtrack to the
wind rushing past his ears. He hit hard, flat on his back. Winded
and disorientated.
His
hands automatically fisting into the ground beneath him, noting the sand that
had helped cushion his fall, covering what felt like rock underneath it.
He had a pretty damn good idea of where he’d ended up, no surprise really,
given his size and refusal to stay compliant whilst Destiny flew them away from
the Folly. Vampira only had a limited number of nearby isolated
destinations open to her.
It was hardly
a shocker they’d ended up on Bettina.
The
air escaped from his lungs with a low groan for the second time in as many
seconds as Destiny chose to land with one knee planted firmly in the middle of
his chest.
Crouching
over him she arched her back, and laughed again. “I believe I could watch
you do that all day Lover? How’s the back?” She shifted position,
deliberately settling more of her weight on him.
“Fine.”
He was pretty sure he hadn’t broken anything, but the idea of moving was a
foreign concept to the numb muscles in his lower body. So maybe he’d just
lay there for a bit longer, let the vamp Queen get her monologue on whilst he
gathered his strength. Time for a distraction. “Cyd’s a
surprisingly good shot.”
Destiny
frowned down at her injuries and pouted. Two small beads of black blood
appearing on her lower lip as her fangs dug in deep. “Another outfit
ruined.” Reaching over she yanked out the cross-bolt embedded in her
shoulder, casually licking the blood off the end of the bolt like a
lollipop. “Want some?” She offered Nate with an evil smile.
“I’ll
pass thanks, trying to cut back.”
She
frowned down at the bolt, only trace amounts of her blood evident. “Hmmm,
and I’m still hungry… what’s a girl to do?” The smile was back on her
face as she gleefully rammed the bolt into Nate’s thigh, yanking it out and
popping the bloody end of the bolt into her mouth, sucking on it loudly.
Nate
winced, not exactly the distraction he’d been hoping for. And now the
woman had quite possibly ruined all porn for him… was there no end to her
evil?
When
she was finished Destiny tossed the bolt hard over her shoulder, catapulting it
out into the inky black sea. “What, you thought I’d leave potential
weapons just lying around out here?”
Well,
he had kind of been counting on it. Wincing despite himself as Destiny
tugged once, twice… three times on the arrow stuck in her side before it
finally came free, arcing black blood out across the sand covered rock.
Under his bare arms Nate sensed Bettina shudder in
distaste as the vampire Queen’s blood came to rest. “I know exactly how
you feel,” he muttered under his breath.
He’d
never taken the opportunity to touch the rock on any of his previous
visits. Had he always been able to sense Bettina or had something changed
because of his developing relationship with Cyd? Either way it was kind
of unsettling for him to have evidence that the ground beneath him had
feelings.
“Really?”
Destiny, always thinking the world revolved around her, responded. “And
just how am I feeling Lover?” She enquired, throwing the arrow casually
over her shoulder, on the same trajectory path as the cross-bolt before leaning
over so her face was mere inches away from his.
Nate
tried not to tense. The vamp could just as easily be going to kiss him as
bite his lips right off.
The smartest
plan was to keep her talking whilst the feeling continued to return to his
lower body. “That the time for game playing between us is over.”
Destiny’s
silver, cat-like eyes stared at him unblinking. “Do tell Lover.”
Nate
moved one of his hands slowly over to rest on her leg, forcing himself to give
her bony thigh a slight squeeze instead of crushing it. Come on lower
body, he commanded silently, get your act together. The fact that he
could now feel the throbbing in his thigh from where Destiny had stabbed him
with the cross-bolt was a good sign but he still had a ways to go before he
could flip Destiny off. “Hasn’t my job application been successful?”
“Job
application?” Destiny frowned.
“How
many more minions do I have to kill before you’ll consider me for the
position?”
“You
want a job? Working for me?” Destiny reared back from him in
genuine surprise.
“Well
not so much for you, as with you.” Nate let his eyes travel slowly down
her pale throat to rest for a moment on the vast amount of pale flesh she’d
left exposed thanks to the low zipper on her leather suit.
“You
want to be an assassin for hire?” Destiny looked more than a little
dubious.
“Not
particularly. But our current occupations aren’t exactly compatible, are
they? Let alone conducive to us actively spending any time together.”
“You
expect me to believe you’d give up being a Maat warrior and come and work for
me?”
“With
you.” Nate corrected.
“And
where would bikini-bombshell Cyd fit into this little equation of yours,
Lover?”
“Well,
if you’d bought your A-game to this little dance Destiny, then there wouldn’t
be a Cyd question still in play. I was beginning to think you didn’t
care.”
“You’ve
been using Cyd to make me jealous?”
“Think
of it as retaliation. Why? Did you expect me to be okay with you
shacking up with a multitude of vamps that live for nothing but to do your
bidding and please you?”
Destiny
re-settled herself on his chest, bringing the stiletto heel of her right boot
down to rest again one of his favourite body parts. “You seriously expect
me to believe that you don’t find Cyd attractive?”
“I’m
not saying she’s not a beautiful woman; she had to be in order for you to
consider her competition. But aside from the face and the body, there’s
not much more to her.” Surprisingly, Nate noted that beneath him Bettina
took umbrage at his words on Cyd’s behalf. What a strange twisted
relationship the two had, it seems Bettina actually cared about Cyd…
interesting. “She’s too soft, doesn’t have the stomach for bloodshed, for
what it means to be with a warrior.”
Destiny
leaned down once more, her breath smelling faintly of blood. “All the
right words and yet… you haven’t told me how you really feel about me yet
Lover.”
Nate
wasn’t sure if Destiny was genuinely falling for his shtick or whether she was
playing with him… either way thankfully the clock was ticking and he could now
flex his knees. He just needed his leaden feet to join the party and he’d
be good to annihilate the vamp Queen. “I felt the connection the moment
our eyes met. You can’t deny you felt it too. And when we fought in
the lab, the way you moved. I was the one who volunteered to put the
tracker on you, and I could have accomplished that in any number of ways, I
didn’t have to kiss you.”
“Mmm,
the first moment I tasted your blood. Good times.”
“You’re
so resilient… strong, a leader. You know what you want and you go after
it. I found it hard to believe at first, that you would want me so
badly.”
“Is
that why you have been acting so coy?” Destiny queried.
“I
like to think of it as playing hard to get. You wouldn’t want someone who
fell too readily into your lap, would you? You’re like me. You need the
chase… the challenge.”
Destiny
tossed her head. “For a warrior, you do like to run your mouth a lot.”
“Some
would say that’s part of my charm.”
“So
you’re telling me, you want me?”
Nate
nodded, giving her solemn serious eyes.
“Prove
it.” Destiny yanked down the zipper of her catsuit.
Nate
forced an easy smile as a wave of revulsion threatened to make him sick.
Thank Maat the leather of Destiny’s suit was so tightly fitted, even with the
zipper pulled down to just below her naval the material hardly moved.
“Well?”
Destiny released a small gasp as Nate grabbed her by the upper body and rolled
them, bringing his weight to rest on her. They’d barely come to a stop
when Destiny laughed and rolled them again, once more placing herself in the
dominant position, double damn the slow recovery of his lower legs.
Destiny picked up Nate’s left hand, placing
his palm on the cool pale skin between her small breasts. “I hope you
like it rough Lover?” She leaned over, nipping at his lips. “Remember I
bite.” And just to prove her point, she sunk her fangs into his lower
lip.
The
pain was negligible for Nate, what weirded him out more was the thrill of
excitement that shot through Bettina beneath him. A voyeur rock… who knew.
“Well…”
Charisse cleared her throat. “Don’t I suddenly just feel like the third
wheel.”
Ah
Cyd was here, that explained why Bettina was suddenly so thrilled.
Destiny
retracted her teeth, glancing up, her lips curving into a rather unnerving
smile, a smear of Nate’s blood across her chin. “Oh I don’t know about
that pretty one… I often get the munchies after sex and you might just fit the
bill.”
Charisse
reached back to wring out her pony-tail before doing the same to her sopping
wet t-shirt, trying to act cool and collected. She’d thought jumping off
Corkscrew Point in the dark and plummeting into the unknown below would be the
freakiest thing she’d have to deal with tonight. That was until she’d
come across the sight of Nate feeling up a half-naked psycho vampire
Queen. Assuming they survived this, she was thinking it would prove to be
perfect blackmail material for the next decade or so.
“Yap,
yap, yap. You do love the sound of your own voice, don’t you
Destiny? Tell the truth, your minions ripped out their own eardrums in
self-defence so they would no longer have to listen to your constant yammering
didn’t they?”
Nate
grabbed Destiny by the arm before she could move in Charisse’s direction and
strike out. “She’s just baiting you Love.”
Destiny
blinked and looked down at Nate, the smug smile once more back on her
features. “Lover here.” She tossed her head back to eye Charisse
once more. “Was just telling me how he’s been using you to make me jealous.”
“Is
that right Nate?” Charisse kept her tone even, edging it with just the
slightest tinge of pain. Easy done since Bettina chose that moment to dig
her claws into their bond, sending a multitude of emotions surging across it;
murderous rage, revulsion, outrage and surprising of all a small measure of
sympathy. Sympathy? For who? She pushed back on the bond, now
was not the time for drama diva Bettina to be the focus of her attention.
She had a vamp Queen to outwit so that she could ease Nate out from under her
clutches.
Destiny
reached down grabbing Nate by the face with one hand, digging her nails into
his skin absently as she turned his face towards Charisse. “Tell her
Lover. Tell her what you told me. Then we can play and I can…
feed.”
Nate
reached up to pull Destiny’s hand away carefully, not wanting to rip off half
his face in the process. His left foot twitched, it was good sign but
still he needed to buy just a little more time. “You didn’t actually
believe all those compliments did you Cyd?” He forced an amused
condescending chuckle.
Charisse
wrapped her arms around her upper body. Nate had given her so few
compliments since they’d met but each one meant more to her than the truckload
of baloney she heard from her Siren lured admirers. It was going to hurt
to hear him tear them apart. “You… you didn’t mean it when you said…”
“The
freshly cut grass? The milk thing? Just how vain would you have to
be to believe that a man like me would say stuff like that an actually mean
it?”
Charisse
dug her nails into her arms so she wouldn’t laugh. Trust Nate to bring up
that particular incident, he’d been more horrified than her, at the drunken
admirer slurring those compliments. “You’re seriously trying
to tell me you prefer that flat-chested bag of bones with the bad dental work
to me?” Charisse thrust her chest out, wet t-shirt and all and cocked a
hip. “So all you wanted from me was sex? And now that you’ve had
it, you’re moving on. Careful there Vamperella, who’s to say he won’t
love and leave you next.”
“There’s
only one way men leave me Cyd.” Destiny trailed sharp nails down over
Nate’s chest. Leaning over she pressed her lips against Nate’s, her other
hand moving to undo his belt buckle.
Charisse
huffed out a laugh. “You seriously think I’m just going to stand here and watch
you two go at it?” She knew they were stringing Destiny along, but that
seemed to be taking things to the extreme.
Nate
pushed gently but firmly against Destiny, until their lips parted. “She’s
right Destiny, I don’t work in front of an audience.”