Amber
Chapter 10 - The Ties that Bind - Part 2
@copyright Jean G Hontz and Sharon Pickrel
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Warning: Explicit Sex ahead!
The gorilla shivered and then shifted and changed, stretching and coming
alive. He lifted his head, his nostrils flaring, pulling in air in great drafts,
analyzing, learning, noting. An old man in the kitchen and a baby upstairs. The
rest in the main room. He lengthened himself, moving towards the front door,
reaching beyond it with his mind to those waiting outside, merged with the
shadows of the park and waiting for his signal.
He ran his hands long the frame of the door, locating the alarms and disabling
them. Then he slid the bolts back, taking care to make it soundless. When they
were free he eased the door open to the night, standing in the opening, his eyes
glittering as the gorilla covering fell away and his own form emerged. Across
the street the shadows moved, flowing across the road towards him, like fog
rolling in. An oily charcoal mist that silenced the night noises and soaked up
light. He stood aside and let it enter the house, waiting while it separated
into parts, forming into ghostly beings of the same oily charcoal color, with
ovoid eyes and long, bony limbs. A sword appeared in his hand and he used it,
pointing towards the main room.
They flowed ahead of him, half solid, half mist, moving through the cracks in
the door, under the jamb. Damon, alerted perhaps by the shifts in the wards on
the house, saw them at the same time Fiona did. He plucked a sword out of the
air, yelling a warning to the others as he did. He slashed downward, aiming for
the shoulder of the one closest to him and stuck sparks off the blade that
blocked his stroke. He twisted his sword over and then around the blade parrying
his.
Around him, he was aware of Cayden and Declan fighting too, of Robyna coming
through the glass doors from the garden, shattering them inward as she tucked
and then rolled, then landing on her feet, her own sword in her hands. Ash was
by the fireplace, fangs extended, his nails lengthened into talons, his own
sword engaged, putting himself between Lynne and the attackers while she
shimmered and then zapped away. Then everything dropped away and he was fighting
like he'd rarely ever had to fight, holding his weapon in a two-handed grip, his
arms going numb from the force of the blows striking it and sending sparks
flying.
The Prince had a blade in one hand, a stiletto in another. The blade he'd taken
from a dead thing that lay at his feet. His lips were back, his fangs bared.
Fiona's sword had leapt to her hand as well, flashing through smoke and
amazingly cutting it, unlike their swords which had to find flesh to do much
good.
Buffy, Ash knew, would have headed straight to Anders room where, he was
certain, Lynne and Henry were as well. Lynne had promised to zap out with Anders
in the event of any attack on the house, so he prayed she'd followed the plan.
Sal, with only human speed, was a bit late for the beginning of hostilities. He
hesitated only a second then was fighting with fist and feet, in a deadly dance
learned in some dojo somewhere.
The beings were trying to make their way toward Fiona, Carmine realized, taking
a second to analyze the flow of the fighting. He moved to stand beside her and
was in place to meet and engage with one creature who seemed stronger and more
capable than the others. The thing snarled at Carmine, and Carmine snarled right
back, slamming his stiletto into the creature's chest. But the creature didn't
go down. Instead it opened its mouth emitting a cloud of something glittering
that when it struck Carmine's face made the prince scream in agony. He went
down.
Damon slashed at the creature with his sword slicing from breast to hip, biting
back a scream as the blood spray hit his flesh, searing and burning like acid.
He set his teeth and then focused, his hands, the sword still in one, tracing in
the air. Each line drawn by his hand and sword flashed, solidified and then
held, lining up with the ones that came before, shivering as they gathered the
power he called down from the moon and the stars for them. Then he sent them
spinning, like ninja throwing stars, flying razor sharp at the throats of the
creatures around him.
The first one struck dead center and the creature screamed in rage and shock,
his hands grasping the sigil-weapon and then screaming again as it sliced his
hands, severing his fingers. His blood dripped, black and foul smelling, onto
the hardwood floor, where it landed, hissing and spitting, smoke rising where it
landed as the wood began to smolder. The creature's fingers fell with his blood
and with a second, more hideous scream the creature dissolved into oily fog and
fled towards the shattered doors to the garden.
Fiona stood amidst the chaos eyes closed concentrating. Cayden could feel the
power she was raising, making his hair stand on end, the creatures still
attacking hesitated. Then at some sort of signal they tried to flee, but
whatever power she'd raised hit then and the creatures began lifting off the
ground and as they did so they burst into flames, screaming as they burned and
died.
Whatever oily fog was left was rushing toward the exits.
Ash dropped to his knees beside Carmine. The Prince was unconscious, sweating
blood, his face and chest a mass of burns. The kind of burns only silver could
produce. Blood was rushing from his nose, the corners of his mouth and sides of
his eyes, mingling with the grotesque parody of sweat that beaded over all of
his exposed skin. He felt hands moving him aside, registered Lynne kneeling next
him. He shifted for her, even though he was already convinced there was nothing
even she could do.
****************
Sybilla had watched him walk away, holding herself straight by force of will
alone. When he'd disappeared from sight she sketched a pattern in the air and as
it faded into the night so did she. She dissolved into the night, becoming a
trail of mist, discrete molecules flowing on the currents of the air, riding the
updraft, letting herself drift away into the wisps of clouds that were all that
obscured the stars.
She felt old, older than she'd ever felt before, even when she'd been aging
remorselessly, fading into nothing but a disembodied voice caged in an alabaster
jar and doomed to speak prophecy until she took her last breath. She'd survived
that. She'd paid a price, an agonizing price, but she'd survived. She'd refused
to prophecy ever again, refused to utter aloud the things she saw in her mind.
She'd swallowed them, ingesting them like the soul eater with whom she'd
bartered for a life outside the jar had ingested her.
But he'd spit her out again, without a soul, masticated, all of her in pieces
like worms that had crept towards each other, writhing together like a mass of
night crawlers in a bucket of mud and water waiting, ignorant and unaware of the
hook that awaited them. She'd had no such ignorance. She'd had only
determination and the willingness to bear the pain no matter what. That had been
her bargain. To bear it, without a sound, without a protest or any effort to do
anything other than feel every iota of it, her agony swelling her soul, so the
soul eater could feed on its sweetness. She'd made the bargain and she'd kept
it.
And the worms had writhed and crawled and eaten each other, while she felt every
bite, every press and dig of needle sharp teeth into flesh, her flesh and she
made no sound, allowed herself no flinch or wince, fighting every instinct until
she'd won. She'd survived because she'd been willing to pay any price to live.
She was a Sibyl, the Cumaean Sibyl. Prophetess, seer, more powerful than even
her Delphic sister. She walked both the earth and the underworld. She could
enter Hades and find her way out again. And now she was one with the elements,
able to take any form, assume any shape, see the future and unravel the past.
She was all those things and more, powerful beyond mortal understanding and
called Diaphobe; child of the gods, and now feared by them. They hated her but
couldn't touch her. She held her finger on the woof and warp of the fabric of
time, of history past and history in the making and she could wreak havoc on
everything, sending it all into nothingness and worse than nothingness. She
could make it so that nothing ever existed, even what had already gone before.
Powerful, knowledgeable, even sometimes wise. She'd shaped her own destiny in
defiance of the gods, spitting in the face of Apollo and then his sister Athena.
She'd done that and lived. But she wasn't sure she'd survive the events of this
night or the touch of a man whose unearthly beauty took her breath and whose
hidden pain was worse than the needle sharp teeth of her rebirthing.
What had possessed her to bind them together? She, who'd never pitied any
mortal, human or not. She didn't know. That act, that irrevocable thing, the
binding with blood, had had no part in the vision she'd seen. A vision she'd no
choice to answer, unlike all the others in the last two millenia. But as great
as the compulsion to do what she'd done, deliberately place herself in his path
and force herself onto his awareness, the compulsion she'd felt to bind them
together had been even greater. And it couldn't be undone, not in this life or
any other; not by the simple death nor by the endless death. They were bound,
for all eternity, even if they never met or spoke or whispered mind to mind
again. Bound.
She studied the stars, searching for an answer and found none. Nor was there one
in the moon. Demeter had fallen silent and the Fates had never been willing to
speak directly to her.
She drew the shape of mist more tightly together and let it shift, becoming an
owl, her wings flowing up and down, stroking the air with effortless power as
she drifted downward, settling in the thick canopy of pines high above the city.
She shifted, folding her wings against her body, blending with the night and
closed her eyes remembering his kiss, reliving it over and over again.
She kept on reliving it as the night flowed around her and the moon rose higher,
the pathway into his mind like a silver trail stretching before her. She could
follow it, enter his mind, exist there like a shadow, a whisper he'd never know
was there. But she never would. He could travel it at will; she'd erected no
barriers, between them, put no limitations in place. And she never would, just
as she'd never travel that path to him without his knowledge and consent.
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The acid, some sort of silver nitrate perhaps, was eating away at Carmine as he
lay there, his eyes dissolving, even as Lynne watched, horrified. She summoned
up a substance and began bathing his face with it, to remove every drop she
could, to stop the worsening of the situation, the agony he must be enduring.
For he wasn't unconscious, as much better as that would have been to spare him
some of the agony.
Lynne shared a look with Ash and then winked out with Carmine, taking him to the
Refuge in the hope that with their healers they could somehow save him.
Fiona stood frozen, horrified at what she'd seen. Then, when Lynne and Carmine
winked out she turned on her heel and headed toward the door.
Cayden caught her arm, stopping her. He stared into her eyes for a moment and
then without a word he pulled her hard against him, enfolding her against him.
He felt her shudder and start to fight him as he reached for her mind, his touch
as gentle as he could make it, offering her reassurance and absolution, refusing
to let her run.
At first Fiona resisted him, steel and anger in her, and then she began sobbing
into his arm. "I can't do this," she gasped out between sobs. "I can't."
He pulled her closer, lifting her in his arms, cradling her to his chest and
headed for the stairs. He kicked the door to her room closed behind them,
lighting the candles there with just a thought while he settled in the armchair
by the window. All the while he murmured soothing nothings, his lips moving on
her hair, letting her cry, absorbing the shuddering sobs that racked her body.
Downstairs Sal looked up the stairs where Cayden had taken Fiona, then back as
Buffy came into the room, Henry, with Anders in his arms right behind her.
"The toy,"Buffy said to Ash. "Somehow it was the toy. A shape shifter of a sort
I've never heard of who could avoid detection by any of us. I'm sorry, boss. I
screwed up."
"Crap, Elizabeth. Don't even go there." He looked around the wreck of his
drawing room. Then he took his son from Henry. "I assume Lynne has taken Carmine
to the Refuge. We need to let his people know."
"I'll call Vitorio," Buffy said as she hurried out of the room.
"I'm sorry," Sal said. "I should go home. Doesn't seem to be much I can do right
now."
Robyna looked up as he spoke, her eyes searching his face. There was blood on
his clothes, his shirt slashed across the back, the wound under it oozing. His
hands were curled, but she could see the abrasions on knuckles, the defensive
wounds on his forearms. "But you're hurt," she said, taking his hands in hers.
"Yeah. Nothing major though," he replied.
She touched his back gently, examining the slash. "You're not going anywhere
until it's taken care of." She took his arm, forestalling argument. "Come on."
Sal let her lead him off without protest. She seated him on her bed and went
into the bathroom to get what she needed, returning with towels, a basin of
water, and a first aid kit. She took a pair of scissors to his shirt, cutting it
off of him. Then she began to carefully clean the slash on his back. "It's not
too deep," she said thankfully.
"This isn't like, uhm, difficult for you, is it? I mean, Fi told me you're uhm.
Sorry. I don't know anything about them. Well, other than stupid movies and
books, you know?"
"Difficult?" She took a minute to puzzle out what he meant. "Oh, the blood.
because I'm a vampire. No, not at all. It would only be a problem if I were
starving and I'm not." She wet a fresh towel, taking the moment to study his
expression. "Does it bother you? That I'm a vampire?"
"I just helped fight off oily smoke, so no, not really. I'm getting used to the
idea that there's a lot out there I know nothing about. Fi started me on that
path, and I stuck around after I realized how weird she is. So, no, not really."
She grinned at him. "She's not really all that weird. More like a bit unusual."
She finished with the slash on his back and moved on to the cuts on his chest
and forearms. "You don't obey very well," she said, keeping her eyes on his
chest. It was a much better than average chest, too. Hard muscles, the rippling
six pack. Soft, silky hair curling over it. His skin was warm, alive under her
fingers. Definitely a much better than average chest.
"What do you mean, I don't obey very well?" he asked, puzzled.
"I told you to stay there, in the gazebo."
"Oh right. I was generally in trouble in the Army too, because I didn't listen
much."
"You're proud of it?" She put antibiotic ointment on his wounds, feeling him
react to her fingers, his muscles clench. "The ointment will help with the
pain," she said.
"I don't feel a thing. Well, no pain, anyway," he replied his eyes on her hand
where it rubbed his chest.
Comprehension bloomed slowly, stilling her fingers as his muscles clenched
again, rippling with tension and then relaxing. She lifted her eyes to his, hers
wide, dark pools, asking him a question she couldn't put to words.
He lifted his hand to her face, tracing her chin with his thumb. "You're
beautiful, deadly, what, you think you aren't sexy as hell?"
She shook her head dumbly. She really didn't. She never had. She knew she wasn't
beautiful and she certainly wasn't sexy. She never had been, not even before
she'd been turned.
His hand moved to the back of her neck, pulling her head down so their lips
could meet.
He smelled like the night after it rained, clean and somehow tangy, an evocative
scent, elementally male. She breathed him in, tasting him on the air before she
opened her mouth to him. Tasting the same elemental maleness, spicy, heady, his
lips hard and hot under hers. She leaned into the kiss, suddenly glad she didn't
need air, that she could keep kissing him and not have to worry about breathing.
He lay back onto the bed pulling her down with him, his hands exploring her
curves, tracing her, learning her. He felt light-headed, almost dizzy. He
wondered, somewhere in his mind, if that was the effect of vampire, or just
Robyna.
Her hands were trapped between them, her fingers pressing into the muscles she'd
been admiring, tangled into the dark hair. His skin was so hot, and her hands
itched to explore it. She flexed her fingers, feeling the resilience of him, the
hardness that had no give to it and she reveled in it.
She wriggled closer to him, moaning softly as he deepened the kiss, making it an
explicit invitation to eroticism, an irresistible temptation to join him in
desire. His tongue stroked along hers and she gave herself to it, dueling with
him, as he cindered every connection she had to reality, to rational thought and
replaced it with sensation. He did it with a kiss, just a kiss, and the skim of
his hands along her side, down over her hip and then up her back. Just a kiss
and exploratory caress.
He sensed her realization and began undoing buttons, snaps. He freed her breasts
and massaged them. He broke the kiss because he, at least, needed to breathe.
Her mouth freed, she put it to use, giving into to her curiosity, nibbling along
his jaw, teasing bites she soothed with a swirl of her tongue, tracing her way
downward to his throat and the pulse that beat there. She laved it, feeling it
pound and then skitter in response while she pulled her hands free from between
them.
Then, with a sigh of satisfaction, of delight, she pressed her palms to his
skin, molding it, outlining the muscle bands, and following her hands with her
mouth. She couldn't decide which she liked the most, which she found the
headiest...his scent or his taste. Both were spicy, both so male they made her
stomach contract, but so different. She flattened her tongue against his skin,
feeling the rasp of his hair, savoring him. She rubbed her thumb over his
nipples, pebbling them and then flicked one with her tongue, curling it around
the point, nipping it, delighting in the way he hissed in air as she did it.
She laughed, low in her throat, a husky sound she almost didn't recognize and
did it again.
"I like the sound of that," Sal murmured, before he went back to the task of
teasing her nipples and feeling the softness and coolness of her breasts. Then
his hands drifted southward as he looked to remove more clothes.
She lifted her head, looking at him and laughed again. "You do?" she asked him,
her breath cool on his body as she drank him in. She shimmied, moving so she had
wider vistas to explore. As she bent her mouth to his belly, her eyes following
the tapering line of dark hairs as they disappeared into his jeans, she slowed
long enough to say, "Then maybe you'll like this too." She breathed the last
word into his navel, probing it with her tongue, while she worked his jeans
loose, pushing them down over his hips.
"Not fair," he complained. "You're way down there." He groaned when she neared
his erection.
She drew a finger tip along the length of him, feeling the heated satin of his
skin. "Well, if you'd rather, I can reverse direction." She turned guileless
eyes on him. "Up to you."
"Wicked woman," he muttered, falling back down onto the bed with a groan.
"Too true," she agreed and set out to prove it using her mouth and tongue and
teeth in tandem with her hands and fingers. She loved the way he tasted, the
salt-bitterness of him. In minutes he was thrusting helplessly into her mouth as
she suckled hard in time to the stroking pressure of her tongue. She cupped him
in her hand, squeezing carefully, while she scraped her teeth along the his
erection, blowing cool air on the head. Then she suctioned him back inside her
mouth, swallowing him, using the ripples of her throat to massage him as he slid
deep. She worked her mouth on him, humming low in the back of her throat, the
sound vibrating against him and when his hips bucked in response she wanted to
laugh again.
"Jesus, Robyna," Sal gasped. "Give a guy a break."
She lifted her head slowly, letting her lips keep contact with him as long as
she could. "What would you prefer?" she asked, her voice as husky as the laugh
he liked. She scraped her nails up his abdomen and over his chest as she asked,
then drew them down again, raking his thighs.
He reached down and pulled her up to him where he could taste her breasts and
work his kisses down her flat stomach, toward the dark triangle that called to
him, his hands exploring ahead of his lips.
"I'm out of practice, but I'm a quick learner," he commented with a grin.
Vampire or not, she lacked the breath to agree. He was driving her insane, his
tongue a deadly weapon, stabbing inside of her and then curling fire over every
fold of skin before he he reached her clit. He lapped at it, making her writhe,
her hips lifting in a helpless, wordless plea. When he scraped his teeth over
her then suckled her, she nearly screamed, biting her palm to stop herself. He
took her to the edge, holding her there, again and again, until she was
mindless, needing him inside of her, needing him to fill her, to ease the
burning emptiness he'd created. "Sal, please," she pleaded, her voice keening in
desperation.
He answered her by thrusting a finger deep, stroking it in and then out...once,
twice, and then a third time before he joined a second finger to the first. She
rode his hand, thrashing under the arm pinning her to the bed, holding her
helpless and open to him. "Please," she begged again, wanting, needing more.
"Sal, please."
He moved upward then positioning himself above her, using a hand to brush the
hair away from her face. He held her eyes and slipped inside of her. She gasped
as he did so, and clutched at him as he began to move, gently at first, looking
for a rhythm with her, then faster as their movements began to mesh.
He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and steadying himself and her as he
thrust, his eyes on her face watching her as she climaxed, a smile on his face.
She focused on his smile as she contracted around him, letting go completely,
trusting him in that moment in a way she never trusted anyone. Then she lifted
her legs higher, wrapping them around his waist, angling her hips so that he
could go deeper, opening herself to him as wide as she could, urging him to take
what he wanted, what he needed, what she wanted to give him.
He accepted what she offered him and began thrusting harder, concentrating on
his own satisfaction now as she encouraged him. His eyes glazed over as his body
drove him onward, mind set aside now, all instinct and desire.
He grunted as he began to climax and her whispered 'yes' a reassurance for him
to let himself go. He shuddered as she tightened her muscles pulling him into
her tightening on his erection demanding he release there, now.
He stopped moving as the final shuddering began, his eyes closed, his head up,
his hands now gripping hers.
She freed a hand as he began to ease, lifting it to the back of his neck to pull
his mouth to hers. She kissed him, gently, the taste of her still there in his
mouth, a faint overlay to the spicy flavor of him. She savored his mouth,
cherishing it and him, closing her eyes tight against the sudden burning of
tears that she had no explanation for.
He moved then to lay beside her on the bed. She knew he was studying her face.
"Are you sorry we.. I..."
Her eyes flew open, horrified he'd think that. "No. NO!"
"It's okay," he soothed. "I... Just lie still. I want to feel you next to me."
She relaxed, molding her body to his, each point of contact somehow necessary.
"I never got the bandages on," she said, her hand careful on his back.
"I never noticed, but your sheets might be a mess. Sorry," he said, as he
stroked her hair gently.
"That's why God made bleach." She snuggled closer, pressing her lips to his
shoulder.
He grinned. "Thanks for all the ministering." He sobered for a moment then
added, "For all wounds."
She let her lips drift over his skin, loving the feel of him all warmth and hard
resilience. "All the wounds?"
"Yeah. Nothing to worry about. I'm doing fine now. Better than fine. So, I think
I'm getting a flight assignment this weekend. Wanna come?"
She smiled against his shoulder, tickling him with her lashes. He made her want
to purr with content. "Absolutely."
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