The Knight of Disks (Villainess Book 4) Read online

  We haven’t got all night, I observed. You were the one who wanted to do this.

  Give me ten more minutes, she insisted. Although I’m nearly full. I may not need the other one.

  I sighed as I watched Greg-or-Jeff squirm on the couch. His thoughts filled with fear, anger, and determined hope were interesting. At this point, I’d usually started having my fun. The longer he stewed, the more his hope grew and his fear receded. If it made him quiet, I didn’t want to disabuse him of the notion he may survive.

  A knock at the door startled us both. I looked to him, hissing through my teeth, “Are you expecting anyone?” Jeff-or-Greg shook his head hurriedly in response. I pondered. The knock came again and I moved to the door, putting my sword behind my back to conceal it. “Who is it?” I asked.

  “Mike,” came the reply.

  Surprised, I unlocked and opened the door. Sure enough, Michael stood there, his large frame filling the doorway. He wore black jeans today with a leather belt and his ever present beat up leather vest. He left his chest bare to show off his impossibly perfect body and pleasantly smooth brown skin, as he always did, but his mohawk was dyed green today, looking dark and murky as his natural dark hair color didn’t soak up the dye well. I wondered briefly if he even felt the cold of the winter air in the hallway.

  “This is a surprise,” I said as I relaxed and stepped aside to let him enter.

  “Hey, babe,” he said, shuffling one foot forward so it touched the threshold. He’d been looking down at the floor and when he turned his face towards me, I saw something like regret in his broad, ugly face. “I’m sorry ‘bout this,” he said. “I really am.”

  Warning bells went off in my head. As he started to step over the threshold, I peeked at his threads using my telepathy. Regret, anger, and guilt fought for top dog. He was angry at Nosferatu for… for….

  It flicked to life in my head and I pushed on the door, but it was already too late. He’d crossed into the apartment and given control to the vampiric spirit which resided in him. While Greg-or-Jeff began shouting, “Jesus, man, you have to help me! She’s crazy! She’s going to kill me!”, Michael’s skin color drained away from his lovely mocha brown to bone white in a matter of seconds. His eyes flared red. He shadowstepped once he was inside, turning into a dark vapor which dissipated, only to reform behind me. Danger loomed large in my mental sight: anger, bloodlust, repulsion, and just the tiniest bit of jealousy showed in Nosferatu’s threads, making a deadly cocktail. All of that was directed towards me, which gave me a shock. I hadn’t seen the vampire in weeks, but I didn’t think he was pissed at me. He had no reason to be!

  I shoved my elbow back, hitting him in the side as I tried to turn around. He shoved me forward with one hand and slammed the door shut with the other, coordinating it so the side of my face collided with the wood. I slammed the heel of my stiletto down on his foot. It didn’t pierce the boot he wore, but it had to hurt like hell. He didn’t flinch. My sword useless in my hand since I couldn’t get a bead on him from this angle, I inserted a barrier between us with my telekinesis. Flinging him backwards, I didn’t hear him hit the wall as I spun around. He’d misted, becoming insubstantial though I sensed his thoughts around.

  “What in the fuck?” I snarled as I raised my o-wakizashi up in a defensive position. “What in the hell, Nos?”

  The vampire reappeared right in front of me. I heard Greg-or-Jeff’s struggles as he tried to get out of the cuffs, begging Nosferatu to let him loose, that he’d give him anything, anything he wanted if he would just free him. I held the blade between us, but Nosferatu didn’t care. He stepped into it as if embracing a lover. My sharp sword sliced through his flesh easily as he walked his way into my personal space, each step thundering with malevolence.

  If I wasn’t who I was, I probably would have been scared. As his dark red eyes bored into my blue ones, I didn’t feel fear. I should have, but I didn’t. Instead, desire swum through me. To be so bold… so aggressive… so open to pain and blood letting… it made me want him, badly. This whole last month or so I’d been struggling with my feelings for him, not for Michael the host body, but Nosferatu, the vampiric spirit inside. I knew my heart pounded faster as he loomed over me. He pinned himself with the sword, then reached down and wrapped one of his cold dead hands over mine to shove it it all the way to the hilt. A moan escaped my lips. How I wanted to tear him open! A dark lover who couldn’t be killed… it was a dream, a dream come true for me. Here he stood, a perfect lunatic match to my demented lust.

  “You…” he whispered as he cocked his head to the side. “You… harlot….”

  I blinked at him. Of all the things he could have said, that was probably among the very last one I expected. The way he said it and the way his eyes drank in the sight of me, from my eyes to my lips, down to my neck where they lingered….

  Crap, my neck. As his cold blood spilled sluggishly over my hands, I cast my mind forward, touching his. Layers upon layers of age hung over him. Unfathomable layers for an unthinkable amount of time swum around me and the cold… it was so cold. I was hot in his grasp, hot and wild and wanton and dangerous… he knew it and he approved of it, lusted after the danger nearly as much as the warmth. But he thought he was in control and he wasn’t.

  I waded through the layers of age, knowing his mind better than he thought I did. I saw his brightly colored threads of emotion buried underneath the barriers of age and time. One in particular stood out to me, a sort of a kelly green ribbon which writhed and bucked. When I touched it, I knew why he was angry in an instant and I laughed aloud.

  “That’s why you’re mad? You’re butthurt another vampire bit me?” I laughed even harder when he grabbed my throat and swung me around away from the door. The vampire bent me over backwards painfully, but I kept laughing at him. “You’re jealous.”

  I knew that color of that thread so well since I had its matching partner. I’d been infested with jealousy since who knew when, but my recent trip to Axis Earth had brought it out to the forefront after tasting his counterpart’s sweet blood. The vampire blood affected me, causing me to feel more intensely for him… his counterpart, at least, which to me was the same but not. Needless to say, it had been confusing me for some time. My psychopathic brain had no idea how to handle emotions other than dark, primal ones such as rage, want, lust, and frustration. I had no fear in me, nor any compassion. Yet now, in his harsh embrace, these foreign invaders flared into life. My want of him, my need to take him… they were echoed in the vampire. So too was the jealousy. Mine had additional components his didn’t, though, and it was those which vexed me to no end.

  “You are… Nosssferatu’sss,” he whispered, then groaned in pleasure as I twisted my blade in his gut. “Mine….”

  “I belong to myself,” I whispered back. I did want to be his, desperately. He wasn’t a mind reader, but his vampire senses picked up on my desire, my burning need for his cold.

  “Jesus, you two are crazy as fuck,” Jeff-or-Greg muttered, watching us dance our bloody waltz with horror. He’d ceased trying to get away and watched us in macabre fascination.

  “Quiet,” I muttered to him. Nosferatu bent my head to the side, exposing my scarred neck. I hadn’t gotten rid of the scars from when my Nosferatu had bit me… and the Axis Nosferatu had bit over it. He opened his mouth to expose the mouthful of yellowed jagged teeth in it. I knew what he was going to do and I submitted.

  I wanted it. I needed it. In his grasp, now, I couldn’t avoid my desires. If it had been Michael, I would have, though probably with some difficulty. But Nosferatu? My dark lover? Never. The practical part of me used a sliver of my concentration to imagine a knife poised at his back, ready to pierce his heart. The rest of me pressed closer against him. He allowed me to straighten so I felt his cold, hard body against my warm one. Shivers raced down my spine.

  When he laid his teeth on top of the scars, I moaned. Greg-or-Jeff whimpered again with the crunch of his teeth slicing into my neck. As
much as I thought the vampire might have ripped out my throat, surprise hit me when he kept it soft, more or less. He bit me and drank, but not deeply at all. The slivers of pain sent pleasure straight to my head and my groin. My need for him intensified. My nipples became painfully hard as they rubbed against his smooth, cool chest. The vampire kneed my legs apart and sat me down on the arm of the couch. He stepped into me. I felt his hardness through the jeans.

  In answer, I twisted my sword again, then began jerking it back and forth, side to side, widening the wound. Nosferatu growled into my neck, thrusting his body along the blade. I’d never met anyone like me before, not this extreme. He was the One. He would allow me anything, deny me nothing. Our insanities melded together perfectly into a sadistic, masochistic circle of pain and pleasure so intense, I felt ready to come just from the foreplay alone. Nothing else satisfied me like blood, and that he would give me, over and over again. We would bathe the world in blood, just to try to fill this bottomless pit of hunger in the both of us.

  “I heard…” Adira said from behind Nosferatu. She let the words trail off and gasped when she realized who it was that embraced me. “Master!”

  At that, Nosferatu ripped his mouth from my neck and whipped his head over to look at Adira. Naked and beautiful, her skin glowed with honey light tinged with sunrise pink from being so well fed, so full of blood. Her mouth still had some red wetness there, looking as if she had just risen from feeding which I supposed she had.

  Adira knelt and bowed her head. Her long dark hair fell forward like a veil. Nosferatu released me, which caused me to nearly topple backwards from the unexpected freedom, and my sword ripped free from his stomach, leaving behind a long bloody gash. In a flash, he stood in front of her, his red eyes fixed upon the top of her head and the back of her neck as she knelt before him. I caught a flash of cold anger from him, so cold it burned. Nosferatu reached for his sword strapped to his back and I knew he was going to kill her.

  “Nos, wait!” I cried.

  He didn’t pause for a second at my shout. In a smooth motion, he scraped his sword from the sheath and swung it down in a vicious arc towards Adira’s unprotected neck. I grabbed him telekinetically, freezing his arm in mid-swing. Thwarted and burning with cold rage, he whipped his head around to me, promising me pain with his eyes. He wasn’t going to stop. A quick look at Adira told me she would let him.

  I wasn’t about to let him kill someone who’d been there for me, who had my back. I might have desired Nosferatu and was jealous of anyone with him… hell, I might have even cared about him, but I wasn’t about to let him kill an ally, and a strong one at that. I plunged into both of their minds and bridged the invisible gap between them. His colors, dark, twisted, and cold soaked into me. Hers were warmer, filled with admiration and loyalty. If her Master wanted her dead, then she’d be dead.

  He’s not your master, Adira, I told her, while I sent a similar thought to the other vampire, She’s not your enemy, Nos.

  He hissed and bared his misshapen teeth at me, but didn’t struggle in my telekinetic grasp. No articulate thought came from him, but I sensed his deep mistrust of other vampires. When I nudged, thoughts of his flowed into me, sent on a wave of anger. His progeny, without exception, turned on him eventually, thinking they could take him out. Countering that was the thrill of battle and blood, of sex and loyalty from Adira. The Axis version of Nosferatu was so different, changed in just a few decades, a short time by his reckoning. I worked a bridge between them, letting their thoughts intertwine. Images and emotions overlapped, incongruent and painful. The opposition of such experiences made me wince, especially with the intensity with which they both felt. Somewhere in there I saw Nosferatu’s memory of being approached by the Reich… and laughing at them, ripping their envoys apart. That was the decision which had made Axis, and the thought of it staggered me. One person, one decision made such a huge difference in the fate of an entire world, if it was the right person at the right time.

  Nosferatu shadowstepped and the answer to my long standing question of ‘did he become insubstantial or was it just a trick of the light’ was answered: the vampire slipped my telekinetic bonds, though not my telepathic ones. I could have forced him to stop, to stand still, but it would break my rule of no mind control. No slipping around that one here.

  He reappeared behind Adira, his hand locked around her throat. Roughly, he jerked her to her feet. Waves of ecstatic bliss came from her at his touch, which I made sure he felt. “Not… mine…” he hissed in her ear, his dark red eyes locked on me as if challenging me to make him change his mind.

  “I know,” she breathed as her body quivered. “But mine is gone and I offer myself to you, Master, if you would have a faithful partner or servant.”

  The hate and the love--for what else was it but love?--swum around each other. They were open to each other as I could make them… and it must have been working. Nosferatu held his brutal sword at the ready, but didn’t bring it down. His thoughts picked around the edges of hers, looking, searching for any form of duplicity. Sifting through her memories, he denied it was he… but at the same time, it wasn’t. The old vampire wasn’t as set in his ways as he thought he was at times and the memory of that decision stayed with him. He had thought it over with great care before the carnage for what the Reich had offered him was power and blood beyond reckoning. He’d refused because he was no man’s servant. He wouldn’t even play the role of it to further his own ambitions.

  I showed him his counterpart’s thoughts from when I had searched Nazferatu’s memories: that he would bide his time, then make the Reich fall to him. Men died. He didn’t. The dark look in his eye turned thoughtful, but he didn’t lower his sword, not yet. I sssee… he rasped to me mentally. Yes, that would be a decision he’d make. He just hadn’t in this reality, for some reason.

  His thoughts turned solely to Adira now. As he moved through her emotions, the vampire bent and licked her neck. At his touch, she shuddered, adoration for him overcoming her host’s protests. As I’d thought before, never before had he seen such devotion, such loyalty, though he didn’t trust it. It could all be a lie. It could all be to trap him. Michael stirred beneath his surface thoughts, pushing forward to comment, Not everyone’s out to get you, dumb ass.

  I had to smile at that. A whimper ripped me away from the vampires and I looked to Greg-or-Jeff. His eyes were wide as saucers, locked onto the two beasts in human skin. A wave of lust spiked through me then, nearly bringing me to my knees. When I turned back to the vampires, Nosferatu savaged her neck from behind, his long, ragged teeth sinking into her skin. The look on her face was one of ecstatic submission. This was what she wanted, what she craved. When he released her, he spun her around and they stared at each other. A maelstrom of emotion whirled between them, but it came down to one thing: blood. For them, it always would come down to blood.

  Nosferatu pushed her, then slammed his blade into the floor. The metal quivered where it stood and he fell upon her, his talons raking her skin. It had gone from violence to sex in a heartbeat. Jealousy, hot and thick rose up in me. I withdrew from their minds lest I spill over into them and sour whatever moment it was they had. It wasn’t just one way savagery though. Adira’s fangs came out. In this clear light, I saw her canines were extended the most, but all of them were pointed, if slightly. Yet another indicator of age. Her talons sank into his skin as she urged him on, wanting… needing him. It wasn’t flesh she craved, but blood. His blood.

  He bit a chunk out of his wrist as he laid her on the floor. When he held it up, I saw it was an actual chunk, not a neat little bite like in the movies. The blood ran freely and Adira strove to catch it. Another kind of jealousy rose in me at the sight and my breath came faster. That blood had been like liquid pleasure, nothing like I’d ever tasted before. I hadn’t realized until right this second how much I wanted to taste him again.

  The crimson liquid spilled over her chin and mouth as she drank and laughed, luxuriating in the
bloody play. It dripped down the sides of her face and her savaged neck, which was already healing. As he fed her, he unzipped his jeans and brought out his length. At this point, Greg-or-Jeff began dry heaving. When I glanced at him, he’d turned away, his face ashen. Turning back, Nosferatu rammed his length into Adira. I felt the mental cry from Huraiva, her host, at the feel of a man in her and then turned away myself.

  Jealousy squirmed in me and for the first time, I felt uncomfortable around them. I never had before. I squeezed my shields as tight as they could, but some part of me kept picking up on the bloodlust. I wanted to join in. I wanted to kill Adira… or Nos… or both of them. Doing the best I could to smother the jealousy under the blanket of not-feeling-much, I stood there and waited for the vampires to be done fucking. A few peeks over my shoulder told me they continued to bite and drink from each other, their debauched desires increasing second by second. They rolled around in blood, smothered each other in it. I stood there, my back to them as I heard the wet sounds of flesh slapping together, jealousy burning me where I stood. It took all of my willpower to just stand there. I would have left, but we had other business tonight.

  When the wet slurping sounds came to a close, I chanced another look. Adira fed from him, her golden skin glowing with power. She shone like the sun. Her lips remained locked to his neck as she drank him down greedily until she couldn’t take anymore. “I can’t,” she breathed as she pushed away. “I can take no more.”

  He was still in her, on top of her, fucking her slowly. Covered with half a dozen bites, Nosferatu looked beautiful and bloody and sated, yet hungry still. I knew my vampire. His hunger might have been dented, but it would never cease. The vampire pulled out of his partner after a final hard thrust, his dark red eyes glowing ever so softly.

  “I cannot,” Adira murmured as she sat up, repeating herself in a daze. “I cannot drink another drop.” Her eyes followed Nosferatu as he stood, licking his lips of the blood they’d spilled between them.