Such a shame he couldn’t go to work on Caldwell properly. Take it over not just from the great Blind King and the Brotherhood, but the Homo sapiens, too.
His scythe was ready; that was for certain. She all but tingled on his back, begging to be used in that voice that was sexier than anything his ears had actually heard from a female.
Throe emerged from the shop and came into the alley. Immediately, Xcor’s fangs elongated, his cock getting hard not because he was interested in sex, but because that was just what his body did.
“Zypher’s finishing up with them right now,” his lieutenant said.
“Good.”
As a metal door opened down the way, both of them ducked their hands into their leather dusters and gripped guns. But it was just Zypher… with a triumvirate of ladies, all of whom were about as attractive as garbage next to a dinner plate.
Beggars, choosers and all that, however. Besides, each had the foremost requirement: a neck.
On the approach, Zypher was grinning, but being careful not to flash his fangs. In his accent, he drawled, “This is Carla, Beth, and Linda—”
“Lindsay,” the one on the far end called out.
“Lindsay,” he corrected, reaching over and pulling her in closer. “Girls, you met my friend—and this is my boss.”
The soldier didn’t bother with names—why waste the breath? Yet regardless of the improper introduction, they seemed excited: Carla, Beth, and Lin-whatever-the-fuck smiled at Throe, all green-light in the eye… until they looked at Xcor
Even though he was mostly in the shadows, a security light had been motion-activated above the door they’d come out of, and clearly they didn’t like what they saw. Two of them dropped their eyes to the ground. The other just got busy fiddling with Zypher’s leather jacket.
The intrinsic rejection was not an unheard-of reaction. In fact, no female had ever looked upon him with approval or attraction.
Fortunately, he couldn’t care less.
Before the silence could get awkward, Zypher said, “Anyhow, these lovely ladies are about to go to work—”
“At the Iron Mask,” Lin-whatever spoke up.
“—but they’ve agreed to meet us out here at three o’clock.”
“When we get off,” one of them tacked on.
As the trio fell into a set of annoying, naughty giggles, Xcor was no more interested in them than they were in him. Indeed, his ambitions were far loftier than the likes of Zypher’s. Sex, like taking blood, was an inconvenient biological function, and he was far too smart to ever fall for that romance bullshit.
If one was determined to go that route, castration was easier, less painful, and just as permanent.
“So, do we have a date?” Zypher said to the woman.
The one who’d all but crawled into his clothes whispered something that brought his head down. As his brows tightened, it wasn’t hard to figure out what the gist was, and the woman didn’t look too unhappy about his answer.
She purred.
Then again, that was what unspayed alley cats did, Xcor supposed.
“It’s a date,” the vampire said, glancing at Throe. “I have promised that we shall take care of these three very nicely.”
“I’ve got what we need.”
“Fine. Good.” He swatted the ass of one, then another. The third, the woman trying to get into his coat, he tilted back and kissed hard.
More giggling. More coy looks that were not entirely about the fact that these were prostitutes on the way to getting paid.
Just as they were leaving, each one of the women looked back at Xcor, their expressions suggesting he was like a disease they were soon to be exposed to. He wondered who was going to get the short end of the stick when they all reconvened—because sure as the day was long and the nights always too short, he was going to have one of them.
It simply cost extra in these kinds of situations.
“Fine specimens of virtue,” Xcor said dryly when he was alone with his soldiers.
Zypher shrugged. “They are what they are. And they’ll be good enough.”
“I am endeavoring to find us proper females,” Throe said. “It is not easy, however.”
“Mayhap you need to work harder.” Xcor looked up to the sky. “Now let us get to work. Time is wasting.”
THIRTEEN
Whore? Whore?
As No’One cast herself unto the Other Side and reentered the Sanctuary she had spent centuries in, she could get neither that word nor her anger out of her head.
Down below, in the training center, clean laundry had never been folded so viciously, and when she had finished her duties, staying in the mansion for the daylight hours had not been possible.
This was her only other destination.
And it was about time to come here to refresh herself anyway.
Standing in the field of colorful flowers, she took deep breaths… and prayed that she would be left alone. The Chosen were a kindly lot of sacred females and they deserved better than what she had to offer even a casual passerby—fortunately, they were mostly over on the Far Side now with the Primale.
Hitching up her robing, she started to walk, marching through the perpetually blooming tulips with their fat hats in vibrant, jewel-like hues. She kept going until her bad leg started to protest. And then still she continued to promenade.
The Scribe Virgin’s precious territory was bound on all four sides by a thick forest, and peppered with classically styled buildings and temples. No’One knew every roof, every wall, every path, every pool—and now in her fury, she made a broad circle about it all.
Anger animated her, driving her forward toward… nothing and nobody. And yet nonetheless she surged on.
How could he who had seen her suffer ever call her that? She had been a virgin violently robbed of the gift she had intended to give whomever she would have mated.
Whore!
Indeed, Tohrment was not the male she had once known—and as the thought occurred, she reflected that in this they were the same. She, too, had shed an earlier incarnation of herself, but unlike him, her current persona was an improvement.
After a while, her leg ached so much she had to slow down… and then stop. The pain was a great clarifier, making the environment she was actually in supersede the one she had left down below but kept with her.
She was standing afore the Temple of the Sequestered Scribes.
It was unoccupied. As had all the other buildings been.
As she looked around, the true depth of the quiet sank in. The landscape was utterly unoccupied. It was as if, in a rake of irony, the vibrant color that had finally come hereto had not just replaced the pervasive white, but chased away all the life.
Recalling the past, when there had been so much to tend to, she realized that in truth, she had gone to the Other Side not just to seek her daughter, but to find another place where she could busy herself to exhaustion so that she did not think overly much.
Here she had nothing to do.
Dearest Virgin Scribe, she was going to go mad.
Abruptly, an image of Tohrment, son of Hharm’s naked shoulders filled her mind until she was blinded by it.
WELLESANDRA
The name was carved on the breadth of his musculature in the Old Language, the marking of a true union of bodies and souls.
After having something like that ripped away by fate, he was no doubt as ruined as she herself was. And she had been angry at first, too. When she had arrived here after her death and was shown her duties by the Directrix, her numbness had melted away, revealing a fire of rage. There had been nothing to lash out at except for herself, however—and she had done that for decades.