Characters and Alternative Reality belong to Kim Harrison. I am not Kim Harrison. Daydreams and future perversion belong to me.
Warning Future: explicit sex scenes, some dubious consent, sex with father figure, Ral, Trench, orgy, seduction, humiliation etc. This may overly upset you, reader discretion advised.
Dark brown eyes scrutinized me as I shifted uncomfortably on Ivy's comfortable conference chair. I wasn't the one being interviewed. Why was I the one wringing my hands? The vampire across from me was not menacing, but it was always unhealthy to catch too much of an undead's attention. Ivy walked in – no that's not right. Ivy wasn't walking in, she was promenading in. Her movements embodying grace, sex, and sleek elegance told me my roommate was starting to loose herself. I didn't blame her. Nina was still struggling to pick up the pieces of her life the man had carelessly shattered. He had awoken instinctual hungers she had not the power, practice, or strength of will to control, and then he had been more of an encumbrance than help. Ivy was working with her; teaching her control. If anyone could help her it would be Ivy.
Our guest shouldn't have been able to step foot in our sanctuary, had he the courtesy of showing up in his own damned body. Raphael, his host's name and the one the dead man was going by now, had a dark mahogany pebbly skin and a wrinkled bold head on top of a round almost flabby body that could probably bench press three times my body weight. And he was still alive, for now. Something about him made me think civil servant, but I had not had a chance to meet the man. Raphael had shown up at our doorstep during my morning coffee and rung our doorbell already occupied. Raphael, not our doorbell.
"I'm sorry but I don't understand why you need my help. Black witches, even a coven of them, should be fairly easy for the IS to bring in. Why are you coming to me?" Raphael smirked, his leers much more masculinity insulting than they had been on Nina's sweet face.
"I have mentioned before, Ms. Morgan, how regrettable it is that we let you slip through our fingers. -Come back to us. We'll take good care of you, give you the respect you deserve*.- We want you back, and surely, at this point you realize how…precarious your situation is. Your coffers must be pinching what with your FIB friend handing in the red slip and all the media coverage concerning your…ethnicity. Let us help you to help yourself." He smiled at me with a look that might have been coy had it been on more appropriately dainty features. I stiffened as he breathed in deeply, shifting his shoulders back as he tasted my unease, something that had not sat quite right on Nina.
I put my feet square on the floor and tried to look as relaxed as possible – but I wasn't. God, I hated dealing with the old ones.
"If I remember correctly, the last time I worked for you not only was I kidnaped and experimented on, but you also threatened to frame me if I didn't solve the crime for you." I was likely shortening my lifespan by saying no to the IS, but all Raphael did was smile. He tilted his head, dangerously suave he eyed me from under thick eyelashes.
"Come now, Ms. Morgan, surely you won't be holding that simple misunderstanding against us."
"Simple misunderstanding," I said outraged. "Because you were so stupidly overconfident of your abilities, not only was a suspect killed and the raid bugled, but I ended up kidnapped when I had to fight off their rescue party alone!
"You suspected me at every crime scene and even after the fiasco at the first take, you still insisted in actively participating in the second take.
"You used Nina, you used her and just dismissed the consequences. You make bad decisions that get people killed and I have no wish to put myself in the same position." Dark pupils dilated at the adrenaline pouring off me.
"In the end, you will end up helping us anyway," the Vampire riding Raphael warned. Then he smiled, "why not take advantage of the benefits?"
"I'm not going to work for you," I said and stood. "Now, if you don't mind, Jenks and I have an appointment we need to keep." Rapheal stood, slowly lifting the last finger off the file as he rose.
"I'll leave this here with you. Be reasonable, Ms. Morgan, I'm sure we can come to a beneficial conclusion for both our parties." "Why don't you sleep on it? In the mean time I'll commission some of those scattershot locator amulets from you. There is a sample of the missing witch's hair in the file." He stretched languorously, the motion looking peculiar with the civil servants husky pot belly.
"Remember, we did promise to hold you accountable if you didn't help us catch the murderers."
"That's not fair! Trent and I caught them!"
"Yes and handed them over to an organization that doesn't exist." I gawped in protest, pacing away with my fists clenched.
"It's not my fault you guys are so incompetent the humans could show you up any day of the week!" Stupid idea. Stupid witch to taunt the undead vampire, I thought as I went flying across the sanctuary and sliding through the hallway towards the kitchen and back living room.
He was on me before my breath even had a chance to fully vacate my lungs. Catching me around the waste and ending my glide towards the back door. His breath igniting the vampire pheromones hidden under my neonatal flawless skin. I shivered in what I wish had been fear.
"That's the problem with dealing with vampires," I said angry. "Say anything they don't like and they resort to evolutionary handicaps. If You guys were so strong you wouldn't need the damn pheromones to get things done."
He chuckled and pulled my hips closer. Making my breath catch at the hint of teeth he let show.
"I could bleed you right here, right now. I could make you beg for it. You would do anything, anyone, just for the chance that I might take you." Heat pooled in my groin, and I had to actively focus to keep from grinding against him. The calloused hand around my neck slipped down around my shoulders to support my weight. The arms around my waist slipped away, replaced by a horny fist kneading between my thighs.
Enflamed and irritated I pushed against his shoulders and twisted in his arms, struggling to free myself.
"Hands off Ms. Morgan," a tiny alarmed six year old pointed a sword at the vamp's eyelid aggressively. A contingent of Jenks older kids pointed drawn bows at our visitor. Jenks kids may have looked like innocent cherubs, but they were vicious predators ready and willing to kill to protect their clan. I was honored that they considered me family.
"That's the problem with vampires. Live a century or two and think they own the world. Stupid, foolish upstart children." A cultured voice declaimed from the direction of the back door. Raphael dropped me, and I did the bridge with my neck to see the upside down countenance of a demon in pressed green velvet and smoked glasses. What the hell was Al doing here? Oh, right it was Friday, and at midnight my twenty-four hours in the everafter would begin. Though I should have had six hours until I needed to leave. Al was early.
He misted to the very edge of the sanctified ground. Which, coincidentally happened to be right where my head was.
"I have lived, will live millennia beyond your pallid existence." My hands grabbed at his wrist as he pulled me half off my knees by my hair. I shivered as my vulnerable throat was exposed to the vampire halfway across the sanctuary. There was something sardonic about a vampire hiding from a demon on sacred ground.
"This little Witchling will live millennia beyond you. And she won't have to relinquish her soul to do it." The undead's gaze peering out of Rapheal's fully dilated pupils filled with a kind of lustful hunger twisted with a lick of hate.
"Oh yes," Al baited, breathing the words into my ear as he enjoyed the undead-vampire's seething frustration. "And of course there is that irksome little problem you have with degeneration. Up until you succumb to your human mortality of course. Pitiable Temporals. Having to buy stunted, runt, witch spells to hide repugnant lines and wrinkles, how unequivocally mortifying. For you, of course – my itchy witch here need not worry her pretty little head over such triviality." Al was brimming with malevolent mirth. Aging was a tender issue for Vampires. Most undead indulged in youth/vanity spells – generally having exceeded the age they would have preferred to spend forever in before their first death.
"Al knock it off," I pulled away from him. "What are you doing here anyway. Pickup's not until midnight. I have another six hours of work planned out." I sounded petulant, but Al was more inclined to indulge me when I acted childish than when I tried the mine's-bigger-than-yours approach.
"Protecting my investment," was his non-answer. "Collecting yet another nasty little man are we? You really must stop this. It's getting to be an embarrassingly bad habit."
He inquisitively poked his head into my bathroom. I gave him a yank when he moved on to peer into my bedroom.
"Al this is undead John Doe, currently inhabiting a Mr. Raphael Doe. Ralph," apparently Mr. walkie-talkie man didn't like his new nickname. "meet Al, my demon…ah...my demon."
"Curious. So the vampires still retain the ability to possess a living body." Al studied Raphael as if he were a museum display behind glass. "Only Newt remembers how to do that.
"They were created by us, you know. After the weres of course. But then, the weres had been for fun. The parasitic mosquitoes were a failed experiment to return to reality. Sure, they became as immortal as us after death, and naturally vacated living bodies were hard to come by those days. But, they still have human blood, no way around it. The spell just doesn't catch on anything stronger. Even the witch runts could throw it off." I thought of the pulsating vampire pheromones in my neck and disagreed.
"That's what you were going to be used for. Did you know? As soon as Newt had decided what soul would make the best obedient little broodmare for her, she was going to use our little student fetching agreement to have me snatch you up and refill you. Might want to keep that in mind the next time your piddling elfling offers you a little disembodiment spell."
Ralph – walkie-talkie man – did seem to know how to take being so outright discounted. "Perhaps we should continue our discussion another time then." He suggested, trying to nonchalantly disregard the demon the way Al was utterly ignoring his existence. Damn, you'd think there was nothing more frightening than the old undead until a demon showed up and made the ruling terrors of the underland look like children playing dress up.
"No. I'm not going to work for you and that's final. I have nothing else to say to you." His eyes narrowed on me, and I took a step back further towards the safer, unsanctified grounds. Funny that.
"Mmmmmm it has been so long since I have been in a sanctified church. The taste is far more electric, it is quite pleasing." Raphael gave me an indolent smile. Pointing out that he was on sanctified ground, were as my demon mentor was not. Pissing contest between the immortally damned, if only Al had not declined to notice.
"I believe I will have to stop by more often," he threatened. "I look forward to seeing you again, Ms. Morgan. Being near you is always quite the escapade." I didn't even see him make his way to the door before I heard the soft swish of its closing. Coward. Or was it just smart. Running from a demon, yeah, that did sound smart.