Image used with permission of Cara Thereon
**This story is a continuation of my vampire series, part one of which you can find here. Bloodbath is a wordy piece and a violently bloody, cruelly stabby one, too, so be sure you wanna read it before diving in…**
“Tell me why we’re here again?”
Eamon’s weary eyes meet mine in the light of the tiny flame that appears a few feet from my face. One deep breath fills my lungs with damp air, the next leaves a tang of sulphur dioxide in the back of my throat. I watch a small orange ball crackle, flare, then settle into a warm glow as smoke coils in front of my old friend’s wizened face.
He doesn’t press for an answer to his question because he doesn’t need one. I made the necessity of venturing into this part of the city distinctly clear on the way here. No, what he wants from me is reassurance. He wants to know that when, if, we walk out of this hellmouth of a place we’ll be in the same condition we’re in now, however doubtful that condition may be. As much as I’d like to offer that reassurance, I can’t, Fuck knows what state we’ll be in after our audience with Aziz.
Shit, I can’t believe I’m actually going ahead with this. Visiting this weird fucker all because of what may or may not have been a slip of the tongue. Joshua Katz’s curly-haired pet had been ice cool when I’d approached her in Black’s club, but after a leaning on her a bit she’d become flustered. It was just two stammered words, one soft gasp followed by an attempted backtrack that led me here. Because everyone, even fledgelings like Eamon, understands the terror in a donor’s eyes when they whisper the words, the Mansion.
Apprehension strokes its icy finger down my spine and, try as I might, I can’t stop myself from shivering. Eamon picks up on my misgivings straight away. The pungent stink of worry rolls off him in waves as he shifts his weight from foot to foot.
“Will they even grant us entry?”
Again, no answer is needed. Of course they’ll let us in. The guy may be what a good psychologist pal of mine once labelled as ‘batshit fucking crazy’, but Aziz and I go way back. Unfortunately.
Eamon crushes his cigarette butt into the gravel beneath our feet and stuffs his hands into his pockets. His head comes down, his shoulders go up and he stares despairingly at the well-lit building at the end of the drive. Dammit, they’ll smell his fear from here! I step a little closer, letting him feel me, letting my breath blow over his face until his panic calms and his body loosens. The weak but grateful smile he offers me makes me feel like a shit. I’ve done the guy no favours taking away his fear. In fact, just bringing him here in the first place is a disservice he’s done nothing to deserve.
As we approach the white-fronted building I eye the dark windows. I can’t see anyone, but I can feel them. Dozens of eyes are watching us crunch up the driveway, past the fountain, up the wide stone steps. In the middle of the door, a large brass ring dangles from between the jaws of a pissed off looking lion. I curl my fingers around it and snigger. I’ve never felt such kinship with a fucking doorknocker before.
But before I even get a chance to lift it I hear the sound of metal scraping against metal. A few clicks, a soft rattle, and the door slowly swings open. Eamon’s sucked in gasp almost makes me chuckle. He’s seen some sights since that night in the dingy room where I brought him into my world, but all of the brothels, blood-clubs, and crime scenes I’ve towed him to are gonna seem like pre-watershed viewing in comparison to the shit that goes down inside the Mansion.
We follow the young blonde who let us in through a marbled reception area that’s dripping with crystal, straight to a sprawling staircase. As we ascend, Eamon’s eyes are all over the buff guy’s thighs and ass. I can feel his arousal stirring, but my attention is elsewhere. Sure, I’ve had a look at the peach bobbing a few feet from my nose, but just long enough to see that the kid’s ass is busy chewing on a golden g-string. After spotting that – and ignoring a mental flash of me extracting it with my tongue – I let my watchful eyes scan the balconies either side of me.
Whenever I’ve been here in the past I’ve always been taken to one of the downstairs parlours. That suited me fine, cos shit rarely happens in those easily accessible rooms. But when Aziz draws his guests to the upper floors… that’s when they know they’re fucked. I mean, I know that I’ll be fine, but Eamon? He’s most likely fucked, and it’s my damned fault.
We walk along the balcony to the right, and when we turn a corner the tapping of our shoes is instantly absorbed by lush carpets. My ensuing eyeroll is so hard I give myself a headache. Cream carpets in a house of blood. What fucking arrogance. I hate it here.
The room we’ve been brought to is as glittery as our guide’s micro knickers. Unlike the rest of what we’ve seen so far, it’s lit by candles and torches rather than electric lights. The constantly shifting flames make the walls look like they’re made of molten gold, they bubble and warp as I walk further into the room, dizzying me.
Shit, calm down, Eamon! He’s staring at the sunken bath in the middle of the room like a dreaming man who’s staring into his own grave. None of the men kneeling around the edges of the room will respond to his rekindled fear because they’re all human, but the fanged guy sitting buck naked in the half-empty, red watered bath might.
Aziz holds my gaze as I let myself suffer the indignity of being stripped of my clothes. The guy undressing me is too fucking close. I feel his little bullet nipples brush my arm. I bite the inside of my cheek when his golden pouch taps off my hip. Aziz looks amused, but I’m just irritated. Huh, I’m bugged by a hot twenty-something rubbing his dick against me. Man, I feel old.
I take the steps into the bath slowly, followed so closely by Eamon I feel his dick prodding me when we reach the bottom. Knowing he’s hard makes me hard, and that annoys me further. I’m not here for this, I’m here to ask one simple fucking question. All this rigmarole for an answer Aziz could have given me over the phone if he wasn’t such a massive cunt.
His familiar laugh echoes in the metal-lined room. It’s been so long since I was last around someone my age I’ve forgotten that they have similar abilities to me. Some of those abilities suck when the shoe is on the other foot. Like mind reading, for instance. That one sucks hard.
“I know why you’re here, Vincent.”
I lower myself onto one of the marble ledges near the edge of the bath and raise an eyebrow. He moved to this country before it even was a country, but his accent hasn’t been bastardised in the slightest. Fucker still sounds as exotic – and as hot – as he did when we first met.
“Yes, I know what you want, but you don’t begrudge indulging me a little first, surely?”
A few hundred years ago I’d have indulged him so hard he’d have wondered if I’d turned him human again, but not now. Now I’ll indulge him with so little enthusiasm he’s gonna wonder if I’m dead.
Shit, that laugh does uncomfortable things to my balls! “Get out of my head, Aziz,” I sigh. Snooping motherfucker.
He inclines his head in what I guess is a nod, but I don’t believe him. He’s a liar, plain and simple. And I fucked his mother. I eye him and wait, expecting a tantrum that doesn’t happen. Huh, he must be telling the truth for once. He’s definitely not the type to let a comment like that go no matter whose head he heard it in.
In the silence that follows I mull over what he’s gonna have me do. Will it be underwater cock sucking? Or is this like the bath on the other side of the staircase that has sharpened marble phalluses embedded in its bottom? Does he really have the stones to bleed his humans like that in front of a cop? Who am I kidding, of course he does.
With a click of Aziz’s fingers, it begins.
Two dozen human men get to their feet. Behind each of them, leaning against the wall, is a long golden box which they pick up and bring to the edge of the bath. Damn, the way they move! It’s almost with military precision, every footstep, every breath, every blink all in sync. Once they reach the edge of the bath they squat, toes curled over the rim, and open their boxes.
Shit! I knew Aziz would have something this fucking barbaric planned. I try not to look at the faces of the doomed, who are happily screwing thick, two-foot long spikes of gold into small holes around the bath, but I can’t help it. They look so peaceful, so at ease. The worst thing about it is they know that they’re preparing their own murder weapons, but they’re so devoted to Aziz they just don’t care.
I feel like puking. Conflict takes hold of my guts and twists, and a disgusted grimace scrunches up my face even as I lick my lips. It’s my job to stop this kinda thing from happening, but at the same time, it’s my nature to want to let it. To facilitate it. To roar and tear and feed as lives blink out around me. I’ve fought that nature for centuries and Aziz knows it. He hates it. And now he’s going to punish me for it.
My cock throbs beneath the already bloodied water. I sit on my hands, bite my lip as I watch Aziz move around the bath from man to man. Just before pushing his face between the cheeks of every single one of them he looks at me, daring me to stop him. I don’t. I just sit idly and tighten my thighs every time his tongue flicks out to wet the tight holes of his…our…victims.
Fuck, listen to them! Their already ecstatic moans rip my fangs from my gums. Fully extended they cut into my bottom lip, so I’m sat here lubricating my throat with my own blood while Aziz strokes cocks to attention and makes asses ready.
When he floats past me a wave of water rocks up my body. The warmth touches my nipples, making me shudder, free a hand, palm my cock. I wonder for the first time whose blood it is that I’m wallowing in. This new feeling that’s eating a hole in my chest is despair because I’ve just realised that I really don’t care.
A pained gasp catches my attention and my eyes flick to the guy directly opposite me. It’s the one who let us in. Jesus Christ! His eyes are all white, his jaw is slack, and his blood is tricking down the golden spike as he lowers himself down a few more inches.
Satan himself couldn’t have thought of anything eviller than this. Or hotter. I know my black eyes are turning scarlet. I know Eamon’s cock is already spitting its first orgasm of the night into the water. But I don’t care. I’m at the feet of the man opposite me, dipping my tongue into the stream of blood that runs down a channel set into the floor at the base of the spike. Tasting him, drinking in his life and his fast approaching death, swirling it around my mouth like a fine wine before swallowing.
Fucking fool! He should be begging for mercy, pleading for me to save him, but he isn’t. He’s caressing my hair as if I were his lover, encouraging me to rise, drawing my mouth, my fang-filled, dangerous mouth, to his swollen cock. That first taste of salty skin turns my moan into a reluctant snarl. I don’t want to do this, I shouldn’t do this, I do it.
I hear the soft pop of my fangs puncturing his skin. Feel them sink into the spongy mass of erectile tissue, snarl again as hot blood explodes over my tongue. I bite and suck, bite and suck, squeezing my throat around his head, using my tongue to force the blood to flow faster from his shaft. A forceful jet spills in my mouth and for a moment his hand tightens in my hair as his body quivers. I savour the chemical tang, suck harder to pull as much of it into me as I can.
His grip on my hair lightens. His hand bounces off my shoulder, drags down my arm, flops by his side. Fuck, his heart has stopped! I realise that I’m the only reason he’s not on his knees, my feeding held him up while his body bled out. Lift him up! Lay him out on the floor, let the poor fucker have at least some dignity!
I don’t see his knees smack into the floor, but I hear it. And I hear the sound of the spike breaking through his back, too. It should horrify me enough to snap me out of this violent haze, but it doesn’t. I just move on to the next one, and the next, pulling them onto their spikes, sucking their cocks, biting their sacks and taking their come straight from their balls. Ripping, tearing, growling…killing. Aziz has woken the monster in me and let God help this world because it feels so fucking good to let it out of its cage.
I don’t know how long it takes before the only moving things in the room are three sated vampires and a rippling pool of blood. It feels like hours, but in reality, it was likely only minutes.
Eamon is staring at his hands as if he’s never seen them before. I don’t need to read his mind to know what he’s thinking. What have I done? That’s what he’s thinking, and I’m thinking it, too. Aziz? He’s looking at me through long eyelashes and smiling like, well, like the vampire who got the blood.
I can’t look at them. The corpses. I see their masses out of the corner of my eye, I smell the stench that goes hand in hand with the fresh end of a life. But I don’t look. I won’t.
“Tell me,” I say quietly. “Tell me what I came to hear so we can leave.”
Aziz picks a flap of skin from between his teeth. “I said I knew what you’d come here for, Vincent,” he replies. “I never said that I could give you the information you seek.”
Rage. Rage colours my vision, contorts my face, pulls my hands into painfully tight claws. Seconds before I would have launched myself at him, bubbles burst on the surface of the water. Aziz smiles at me, clicking his tongue and tick-tocking his finger at me like I’m a naughty child.
“Patience, friend. I said I couldn’t give you the information you seek, not that you weren’t going to get it.”
Ah, what fresh hell is this? The water is roiling. Something has been lying at the bottom all this time and now it’s rising. I exchange an uneasy glance with Eamon. Aziz looks too gleeful for this to be anything good.
A taut, round ass breaks the surface of the water. Gorgeous, dark skin slicked with streaks of blood. I follow the arch of a spine, the span of strong, slender shoulders. The woman’s arms are pressed to the platform, obscuring her face. All the same, I know her. Dread sends my heart plummeting to my toes. I take in her powerful body as she pulls herself up, sits back on her heels. Gems spark around her nipples and belly button, chains glitter at her wrists and ankles.
Let me go! Fuck, just let me be anywhere but here. Her head is turning, and I don’t want it to. I don’t want her to look my way. But she does, and when her eyes regain their focus and she finally sees me, she smiles. If I could I’d wipe my own lips off my face. Smiling back at her like she’s my fucking friend. Like she didn’t destroy my life all those lifetimes ago when the world was still new.
Bitch! Shitting, lying, vindictive, beautiful bitch! Fuck her for being here. Fuck Aziz for digging her up. And fuck my dick for reaching greedily for the first cunt it ever knew.
Ryia lifts her arm to her lips and laps at a rivulet of blood. I will get the intel I want on Joshua Katz tonight, but first I’ll have to face my maker.
**To continue reading this series click here**
