A/N Thank you for your supportive reviews and follows. I appreciate it all. I'm trying something a little different with the narration in this one as opposed to the first two novels, so I hope it works. As before, no copyright infringement is intended.
Chapter Two
The three materialized in Eric's office between the desk and the sofa. From Godric's perspective, the room continued to spin for nearly a minute as he regained his balance and his vertical orientation. It took another minute for his feet to regain sensation, and yet another before he had the confidence to move them.
Once Eric was certain that his maker knew up from down, he released Godric from the tight embrace in which he'd kept the three of them together through the maelstrom. Although Carly had brought them through the vortex, Eric's strength and resolve held them together. "Are you all right, my king?" Eric's voice was gentle, even though it betrayed a little anger, mostly directed at himself. He recriminated himself that Godric wasn't sufficiently prepared for the trial of that first journey.
"I will recover, my son," Godric replied, foregrounding their familial relationship over their political one. "How many times have you done this?"
"Perhaps five," Eric answered as he tried to remember. "But the first was very disorienting."
"I would like to save that method of transport only for emergencies," Godric said looking to Carly for acknowledgment.
"That's fine." Carly nodded and then wrapped her arms around herself. "That took a little bit out of me as well. My stomach hurts now." While Carly described the constricting and twisting within her as pain to Godric, she recognized it as hunger, a deep, clawing hunger that demanded the energy left behind as sentient beings died. In the past, she'd found this energy lingering around the living, in vacant lots by the side of the road where buildings had burned down, and in nursing home wards. She found herself licking her lips unconsciously as she imagined that at least one, if not more, of the malcontented fangbangers out in the club might have brought along the energy that lingered from their dear old mother or father. "Can we find out what Pam needs? I'm guessing she's out in the club."
Eric opened the door in answer to Carly's suggestion, but quickly turned to Godric. "Do you smell that?" Eric growled. "Edgington."
"No, Eric, but if you say that you do, I believe you." Godric looked to Carly before asking, "Have you acquired such an acute sense of smell?"
She shook her head no, still rubbing her stomach. "I'm sorry, but I'm going to need to feed."
Eric calmed slightly and stroked her head. "I know it isn't your preferred food, but I anticipate you'll feed from a dead werewolf soon enough." He paused, "I needn't remind either of you how dangerous these creatures are, especially if they're hungering for our blood."
Neither Godric, who had pulled a blood-lusting were-bitch off Eric once long ago in Germany, nor Carly, who faced off with two werewolves in the alley behind Fangtasia, needed to be reminded. But both of them remembered that they were in radically different circumstances. The thrum of loud guitar riffs and the high hum of the amplifier, as well as the chattering minds (and sweating bodies and beating hearts) of a hundred vampire groupies, suggested anything other than the privacy they'd had in those previous circumstances. While vampires were known, werewolves still lurked in the shadows, and their forced "outing" would do nothing for the vampire case for equality and tolerance.
When the three entered the club proper, they quickly spotted the five werewolves distributed around the crowd. Two women sat at the bar, tapping their hands laconically, missing the beat of the music, with their eyes trained on the throats of two younger vampires that danced in front of Pam. Carly recognized them as two of Edgar's cast off progeny, who had been made only for the purposes of harvesting "V." Once freed from Edgar's hold by that vampire's death, most of them had made their home in Louisiana. Eric—and Pam by extension—were their liberators and they wanted to be near their heroes.
These two were sweet, Carly thought, Emmie and Charlie. The two women had been turned when they were barely out of high school and had been discovered in Miami Beach. With Esther's help, both had found jobs working at all night dry cleaners and kept their baser instincts under control with their preoccupation with one another. They came into Fangtasia on their nights off. The couple had become two of Pam's greatest fans, and they wanted to be "just like her" when they grew up.
But like all of Edgar's progeny, they weren't particularly "good" vampires. They had little sense of or skills for self-preservation, didn't know how to glamour—although Pam was trying to teach them when no one might see her being kind—and didn't know much about the complexities of the supernatural world. In other words, they were the perfect prey for two were-bitches who wanted to capture vampires to milk to feed their drug habit.
The other three werewolves were dancing with far-gone human women. All of them looked, as far as Carly could tell, as if they'd been drugged. When she paused to enter their minds, she found nothing so much as a test pattern like the one you might find on late-night television long ago. They were only conscious in the sense that they retained some voluntary control of their limbs and their bowels.
Carly felt another twist of her stomach and felt herself weakening. Scanning the crowd, she spotted a faint shudder of energy rising from a young man on the other side of the bar. Before she transported herself there involuntarily, she rushed through the pack of dancers and grasped his hand. Startled, the young man looked up and asked, "Who are you?"
"Just a friend. You looked sad." As the energy coursed into her, she knew that he was, in fact, grieving the death of a close friend who'd died that morning. The two were in a car accident together the night before, but his friend, who had been laying across the back seat, wasn't restrained. After refusing medical care, the friend—John, Carly sensed from the energy pumping through her and becoming transformed into the energy that powered the universe—returned with Andy to his apartment. They'd sat on the couch, watching movies and drinking beer, toasting their good luck. When Andy woke up beside his friend this morning, John was dead. John's aorta had been torn slightly in the accident and he bled into his belly slowly without realizing he was even dying.
"I am." Andy wiped away a tear. "My best friend's dead, and it's my fault."
Although Carly wanted to return her attention to the werewolves, she knew that Andy needed her affirmation. "Why do you think it's your fault?"
"I should have made him go to the hospital after the accident."
Carly caressed John's cheek softly and smiled, "You can only second guess your own decisions, not someone else's. Did you encourage him to go to the hospital?"
"Yeah! He wasn't wearing a seat belt. I told him that something could be wrong inside, but he didn't listen." Andy paused for a moment and added, "But he never listened, ever, to anybody."
"Then you did what he let you and anything else is his responsibility." Carly smiled sweetly at the young man. "Now go home—in a cab—and get some rest."
"Yeah. I should." Andy smiled back at her. "I didn't know vampires could be psychic."
There it was again. Another person mistook her for a vampire. Instead of protesting, Carly just rolled with the misidentification, realizing it would be her only path, eventually. "Vampires are just like everybody else, but only at night."
Andy chuckled. "And you're funny too."
With a final compassionate shove, Carly sent Andy toward the front door. If she could get some of the people out of the club, Eric and Godric could probably glamour anyone who witnessed the violence into remembering something more ordinary—a simple bar-room brawl rather than a vampires vs. werewolves rumble.
Carly felt the energy churn through her, but felt no immediate need to release it back into the world. Holding onto it feeling re-energized, she turned back to the matter at hand. While Carly had been preoccupied, Eric moved into his usual position on the stage, with Godric on one side and Pam on the other.
With her strength restored, Carly mustered up the focus to send a message to all three of her friends on the dais about the werewolves. The wolves at the bar have Charlie and Emmie in their sights. And the girls the others are dancing with are nearly unconscious.
Eric gestured to Carly that she should join the trio of vampires on the stage. When she reached the footlights, Eric pulled her up and gathered her into his lap. He whispered, "I anticipate they plan on some sort of orgiastic scene. Some wolves like to rape victims they then consume."
Carly nearly lost her cool and, had her stomach been full of food, she would have lost its contents. Leaning her head against Eric's shoulder for reassurance, she peered into the male wolves' minds. Their thoughts jumped back and forth from image to image, so she had difficulty focusing on them. Finally, she was able to slow down a stream of their thoughts so that she could process them. Eric was right, unfortunately. One, the tallest and apparent ringleader, had made such behavior a habit. All five were going through horrific withdrawal, since Russell provided them with substantial access to his own blood and to that of other vampires he chained in the basement of his estate. With Russell gone, they fled the compound once they spotted vehicles from the Authority. She decided that Eric and Godric needed to know this information.
The Authority has raided Russell's plantation. These five fled and decided to visit us.
Eric stroked Carly's arm as he watched the crowd and listened to her message. Then it is time for us to put my grandfather's advice to the test, my love.
With a faint movement of his head, Eric directed Pam down from the stage and into the crowd below. Charlie and Emmie rushed toward her, and Pam whispered something to them both. Carly found no need to eavesdrop, because she was too filled with fear at what her beloved vampire had said. He was going to summon magic, going to try to control these wolves who'd consumed Russell Edgington's blood. Eric planned to tap into a long-unknown part of himself, to exploit the shape-shifting nature that he inherited from his father and grandfather, and he was going to do it in a fairly busy nightclub in downtown Shreveport, Louisiana.
"Be calm, my beloved Carly," Eric whispered to her as he wrapped his hands around the bracelet on her wrist. "We drew the last of Edgington's blood and now we will master his beasts."
"You will," Carly answered. "I think I just get to wear it the bracelet."
"No." Eric shook his head. "I can feel it. It's your magic that makes this happen." Eric pushed her from his lap and dropped down to the floor of the club, grasping her by the waist and swinging her around as if she were Ginger Rogers and he Fred Astaire.
Without any warning, Carly's vision shifted along with her consciousness. She looked at the world through a parabolic lens, with vision so perfect she could see the grain of the leather jackets the werewolves wore, the grime that encircled their beefy necks, and the erratic pulses throbbing in the drugged women's throats. She also felt a change in her consciousness, a fracturing, much like that she experienced in her dreams, a realization that she observed her own mind and that of another from the outside. As some writer had once written—she'd forgotten who—she finally believed in her consciousness because she observed it dispassionately, as she would at the moment of her own extinction.
But she didn't feel as if she were going to die. In fact, she felt so full of life, and love, and rage, and fear, that she felt as if she were a being greater than she'd ever imagined one could be. Carly struggled to feel her body, to pay attention to the temperature of the club, or the smell of the liquor, and that's when the true realization hit. She could feel a breeze from the fan that kept the bar's air from becoming stagnant, but she felt it on her own neck and along Eric's arm. Eric's body and her body were one, as if she'd fused into him, aware of her own consciousness and a new one that had arisen from their union.
Do you feel this, Eric?
Yes, but we are so much more now than we were alone.
Carly felt a rush of excitement, a thrill of power, before a crushing sense of responsibility suppressed the feeling of onmipotence—a conscience weightier than any she'd ever felt.
And a will so strong, so unrelenting, she could see its tendrils as they curved out of the body they'd become. Like serpents, they snaked through the crowd and curled around the bodies of the werewolves.
The three men continued to dance, but their motions became jerky, spasmodic, as the tentacles of the combined will of vampire and valkyrie, of the Wolfmaster, encircled them. One of them laughed at the tallest, who seemed to struggle slightly more than his buddies, and yelled, "No more beer for you, Lister."
In unison, the werewolves all pushed the drugged women aside, and Pam, Charlie, and Emmie rushed in to catch them before they hit the floor. The three victims could no longer stand up straight, and Pam directed her helpers toward the back office.
Pam, call the rescue squad. Those girls need help.
Pam looked over her shoulder and nodded to Carly, who caught the gesture in the periphery of her wide-angle vision.
"What the fuck, man?" The shortest of the three werewolves, a blond who wore a short-sleeved plaid shirt. "Did you fucking dose us too, Lister?"
"No, man, I just gave it to the girls, and it's just a knock-out pill, not strychnine." Lister nearly convulsed as he began walking toward the back hall, the tentacle around him engorging itself with rage, as Carly remembered their intentions toward the women.
Calm yourself, Carly. We cannot throttle them in front of this many witnesses.
The python of will encircling Lister loosened its grip. As if one creature, the two turned toward the basement door and propelled the werewolves toward it. At the edge of their vision, Eric spotted the two were-wolves backing away toward the door, visibly anxious to get out without drawing attention to themselves. Angry vines shot forth from Carly and Eric and wrapped around the were-bitches' wrists and dragged them alongside their companions.
When all five were in sight of the basement door, another tendril of will, luminous in Carly's vision, and with as much of a sense of touch as Carly's own fingers, wrapped around the latch to the basement, unlocking it and pulling it open for the crowd to proceed down the stairs.
Godric stepped calmly from the stage as if nothing were happening, as if seven people were simply moving toward the bar for a refill. The music continued to play and the fangbangers continued to dance, although a few took notice of the procession of spasming and convulsing men, now joined by the two women from the bar. Although a couple of fangbangers pointed and laughed, no one intervened, and no one linked their transit to the vampire and his companion who followed slowly and deliberately as graceful as a many-limbed gazelle.
Carly watched the five werewolves disappear into the back hallway and followed their minds as they proceeded down the stairs, feeling her hold—Eric's hold—the Wolfmaster's hold—tightening around them as they reached the basement floor. Godric reached the basement door first, but gestured gallantly for Eric and Carly to precede him.
Eric's mind reached out to Godric, and Carly could feel the sensation of the two communicating, like a hum of particles vibrating at the same frequency. With a rush brought on by the insight, Carly realized that the blood was the same blood, part of the same "colony" or "hive" as she'd seen that night in the vortex as she'd committed herself to the mystery. That same blood traveled through her body, and she called to it, called it to awareness of Godric and Eric and Pam.
...happening to us?
Eric, this is magic like none I have seen before...no ritual, no rite, no spell...just the touch of the two of you. Before you had called forth the light to protect you, but this is something else entirely, as if a third being has come into existence.
It has, Godric.
Godric looked to Carly suddenly, and she could feel Eric straining to turn his head to her, but the "third term" wouldn't allow it. Their vision stayed locked on Godric.
Unlike anything I have seen, my son. But these recent days have shown me there is much still to learn of our universe.
Indeed, my king.
Their bodies moved in unison down the stairs and took in the sight of the werewolves, tied in the bonds of their will. Glowing chains, apparently invisible to the werewolves, or to Godric, held them fast as they knelt on the floor.
Godric spoke to the wolves. "Why have you beasts come to my state? I will not tolerate werewolves hunting vampires in my territory."
"Please, man, I don't know what you think we've done." Lister blubbered, now genuinely fearing for his safety. "We just came out here to party. Our boss hasn't been around in a couple of days, and the heat came down on us, so we headed here."
Godric scoffed and spat, "Liar." Like a lion, Godric circled the wolves, silently contemplating what needed to happen, what the wolves presence signified. "Why did you choose this bar?"
"We heard it was a great place to have a good time," Lister answered as a tentacle fattened and began to choke him.
"But your idea of having a good time includes draining vampires of their blood and kidnapping young women to rape and eat." Godric betrayed no judgment. He was simply describing facts. "Five werewolves, stinking of Russell Edgington's blood, come into my state, into my progeny's bar, threaten the safety of my subjects and the humans I have chosen to protect, and I will not let such behavior stand without demanding satisfaction."
Lister began to strangle. In her consciousness, Carly begged for it to stop, but she seemed to have no effect on the tentacles as they smothered the man.
Eric, please, stop. Why is he dying?
Because he deserves to die, Carly. I see all that he has done and all he wished to do. Don't you?
In another flash, Carly saw him raping a woman—not one of those he targeted in the bar—and watched as he transformed into a wolf, who violated her again, tearing at her neck with his jaws.
With a final croak, Lister collapsed and the tentacles withdrew from his dead body.
His female companions began to scream. "How the fuck are you doing that, man? Please, please..." they cried and begged for their lives. "Lister's a twisted fuck. We just wanted some V, please, don't kill us...
The remaining four rose from their kneeling position and slammed against a back wall. Manacles hung from the ceiling and additional tendrils clasped them shut around their hands.
"That will not hold werewolves, Eric. You must immobilize them completely." Godric looked at the composite being who detained the captives.
Carly felt vines extend from their backs and run along the cold cement floor to a chest. Like skilled fingers, the tendrils opened a combination lock and extracted four silver spikes from the trunk, and then drove the spikes at high speed into the werewolves' hips, between the ball and the joint.
Now no threat to them, the werewolves slumped against the wall, twisting in agony, as Eric released Carly's wrist and the charm that unified them evaporated. Once again, they were separate beings. While relieved, Carly also felt an intense longing to return to their previous state.
Without hesitation, Eric and Carly embraced. The tall vampire touched Carly's face gently, tracing along her brow, then her cheekbone, and finally across her chin. "It's good to see you."
Carly sobbed. "Good to see you too, Eric."
"I wasn't expecting something like that." His voice betrayed guilt, but also awe.
"No one could expect that."
As they parted, Carly saw the dead werewolf on the floor, and reached out toward him to harvest the energy. Unlike those times before when she'd consumed werewolf energy, Carly felt as if the field parted before it entered her. A light, electrical tingling, just like that she felt when harvesting the energy left behind by humans, caressed up her arm and warmed her, while another, oily, viscous field that glowed red remained and lingered around the body.
And like any good scientist, she decided it prudent to poke it with a stick and see what happened.
Carly moved toward the body and stirred the energy with her hand. "I wonder if this is what stinks so badly."
"What?" Eric asked.
"This oily stuff."
Eric and Godric traded glances as the werewolves attached to the wall continued to moan. Eric reminded her, "We can't see the same things, Carly."
She laughed. "That's right." She smiled at Eric and said, "Although you got a taste of how things are for me when we were..."
"Yes," Eric cut her off before she sought a word to describe their state. "I don't envy you what you have to see."
"You know," she continued to muse, "when I had to collect all that..."
"Carly," Godric interrupted her. "I think it might be prudent for you to hold back your observations right now. We still have not decided what is to be done with our captives."
"Oh, yeah." Carly drew up the remaining energy from the werewolf and turned to gauge Eric's reaction. When his nose twitched, she had her confirmation. "I'm going to go get rid of this before it gets to be too stinky."
Carly moved to the landing of the stairway, where the wolves couldn't see her, and transported herself away from Fangtasia.
When she came apart, turned into vapor, or teleported—whatever it was she did—she had no specific destination in mind, so she circled the outside of the bar, like a thin cloud of smoke that followed the line of fangbangers as they gathered along the exterior wall of the club.
In this state where she had no clear "mind," just sensation, just a sense of desire, she lingered, until realizing that it probably would be best to return a werewolf's energy to the right source. In the past, she'd sent the energy into an animal, which seemed to work without problem. The rabbits and rodents survived their initial "transfusion" and hopped away alive. But now she wondered where this energy really belonged, whether it was from this world or another.
Carly condensed into herself again beside the cauldron. Somewhere in her travels she'd mislaid her clothing, so she stood beside her ancestors naked, catching a glimpse of herself and her even longer hair in the water that trailed down the walls of the cave.
"Hope this isn't a bad time." Carly announced herself when she saw the crones jump slightly at her appearance.
"Time," the scaliest one laughed, "can be bent, but not broken. The only bad time is that which has broken."
"I hope I haven't done that." Carly smiled at all of them and peered into the cauldron.
"No, child, you have not, but you play dangerous games with your vampire." The man stirring the cauldron beat on its surface after speaking.
"So is the bracelet dangerous?" Carly grasped her wrist and took comfort that it too was bare. "I still don't really understand what's going on with it."
"Blood magic," they all repeated, over and over, until she interrupted them.
"Yes," Carly raised her voice. "Yes, I get that. Is it dangerous to us?"
"The danger will be for those who stand against it." The same echoing voices offered the cryptic answer.
"It? The bracelet made us into something else, didn't it. I don't know if we were really in control."
"Two minds are never alike when they make a third." Another woman spoke philosophically as she ran her hand along the wall. "The memories of two, and the visions of two, when joined, make something new, with a will of its own."
Carly shrugged. "Tell me something I don't know."
"What did you come for, child?" Friagabi, the crone she recognized as her grandmother, asked.
"Two things, if you'll answer."
"We will always answer, but you may not understand," the valkyrie said.
"First, the energy from werewolves, it seems different, oily, soapy, and it stinks to Eric. Is it different, the same way that the Fairy energy is different?"
"Yes," they answered and repeated.
Carly waited for elaboration and received none. "Okay, I'll skip to the second question. A being, not one of you—at least I don't think it's one of you—visited me in a dream."
"Valkyries do not dream, dreams are lies. You never truly dreamt, my child."
Frustrated, Carly started again. "When I lost consciousness after getting the bracelet, I met a man—Eric thinks its Odin because he says he's the lord of his own realm and wears gray hood."
"There are many names," the man stirring the cauldron spoke again.
"He seems to have something to do with the wolves." Carly's frustration grew even greater and her hands began to glow. "What do I need to do with the werewolf energy? Does it belong on earth, or should I put it somewhere else?"
"Burn it, bury it in a creature, send it to him, send it to the realm of the shapeshifters," Friagabi shook her hand toward the cauldron. "It's dense with life, but there is little of it. Their breed dies, twists, distorts. Some creatures die, others live. It's the balance that must endure."
"Okay," Carly grew excited and flames started to grow from her hands, "so he wants this energy for himself? Is that what he wants from me?"
The ancestors laughed, "No, he just wants to play."
With the valkyrie equivalent of a tantrum—she may have stomped her foot but she thought it more likely (in retrospect) that she burst into flames and vaporized—Carly returned to Fangtasia's basement, to the same spot on the stairs from which departed. To her relief, she found herself back in her clothes with the bracelet encircling her wrist.
During her absence, Eric and Godric had interrogated the remaining four werewolves, demanding more information about their departure from Russell's compound, about the total number of his werewolf dependents, and the Authority's raid. As Carly walked down the remaining stairs, she heard one of the women blubbering in a confessional voice.
"...and when Cooter didn't come back, we knew something happened. But Russell and his boyfriend disappeared so soon after that, we didn't know what was going on."
Godric demanded, "And how many from your pack remain in Mississippi, Meg?"
"I don't know," she wept. "There were about sixty of us total. Probably about forty-five." The two vampires must have learned their names during her absence.
"Did all the wolves in the state have his blood?" Eric's voice scraped against the lower edge of its range.
One of the men answered. "No, he could never bring the Long Tooth Pack under his control. We took some of their bitches, but there are still about two dozen of them across the northern part of the state."
"That's good to hear, Jake. I know a few of them," Eric informed Godric. "I hold a marker for the former pack leader. I would be disappointed to hear that I'd helped one of Russell's dogs."
Godric glowered at his progeny before censuring him. "Loan sharking? Gambling? I will not tolerate vampires conducting illegal enterprises in my state. It ends."
Stiffening in defiance, Eric offered a justification. "The man is one of the only werewolves I know involved in a reputable business, a construction company that he and his son would lose without my assistance. Two dominant male werewolves—who can do my bidding in the daytime—were valuable to me. If another 'loan-shark', as you disreputably put it, had provided the money, Jackson Herveaux would be dead now. Instead, they owe me a favor in addition to the money—for ending the gambling. Unfortunately, I hear he's taken to drink instead."
"This is not usual practice, then?" Godric demanded.
"No." Eric took one step toward his maker and looked down at him. "You are my king and my maker, and I will follow every edict, order, and command you issue, but you should know the importance of my reputation. I am not some common criminal."
The two of them continued to stare at each other until Carly stomped loudly down the final steps into the basement. She cleared her throat and began walking toward the two vampires without peering into their minds.
"You do not need to be so circumspect, Carly," Godric assured her. "We have come to terms after a brief misunderstanding."
"Indeed," Eric agreed. "Now, we need to assess the threat from these pathetic addicts."
The smallest of the men trembled and said, "We got no beef with you man. We made a mistake, please, just let us go."
"I fear that is not an option," Godric replied. "The only question, now, is the length of your captivity. You have no employment, no network outside your pack to turn to, and you are addicted to vampire blood. Until such time as we can be sure you pose no threat to vampires—or humans—you must be detained. Until I can arrange appropriate accommodations, you will remain here."
"Pam will be ecstatic," Eric said flatly.
Godric shook his head and began walking toward the stairs. "No, you will remain here with your bonded and your progeny and resume your duties as sheriff. If more wolves leave Jackson, they could come through Shreveport." Godric turned his gaze to Carly. "May I offer Sookie your regrets, Carly?"
"Sure. Thanks. I'm glad not to make the trip again tonight." Carly observed how coolly Eric and Godric observed each other, the emotional distance between them, and couldn't resist Godric's thoughts any longer.
...an asset to the regime...but what risk to him? My connection to him dampened so profoundly, it was as if he were on the other side of the planet. Images flashed through Godric's mind so rapidly, Carly felt herself stumble with the force of them. Eric rising his first night. Eric feeding languidly on a naked woman. Eric entwined with Carly, encircled by their protective light. All of the images were suffused with a love, so erotic, but as unconditional as child for their parent, that Carly finally let out a small gasp.
With a faint smile, Godric tilted his head. "Carly, you have nothing to fear from me. I do worry for my progeny and for you, but we shall discuss that more when we have privacy."
In a flash, Godric left the basement, and Carly and Eric were left behind with the werewolves, who continued to groan quietly.
"What are you going to do with them?" Carly asked. "You're going to keep them here?"
"Not alone." Eric walked back to the chest and took out a pair of leather gloves before grasping a pair of shears.
Seeing the glint of silver blades, Meg started panting. The other woman seemed catatonic. "What are you going to do? Please, no. Isn't the spike enough? We can't shift."
"Shut up."
Carly found Eric's calm disconcerting. In a single movement, Eric sliced her jeans up the side, gently lifted the fabric off the silver spike embedded in her leg, and then sliced down the other side.
He proceeded to the other woman and repeated the procedure. All had begun to shiver, but Jake and the other male werewolf began to pull against their bonds. "What the fuck are you gonna do, vampire?"
Eric took one step further forward, crowding the nameless werewolf against the wall and staring into his face. "Do you think I should maim you?" He snipped the shears next to the werewolf's ear. "If you were in my position, with silver-plated shears in your hand, would you torture me? Perhaps cut off my ear." Eric snipped the shears again. "Or, perhaps," Eric lowered his hand to crotch-height. Another snipping sound accompanied Eric's threatening voice as he asked, "Or would you castrate me?"
Jake stopped pulling against the manacles, but started to shake frantically. "No, man, no. I wouldn't do that."
"But you'd drink my blood if you could, wouldn't you?"
The nameless male werewolf spoke. "No. Not anymore. I'm never touching another vampire, or a vampire's blood again."
"Perhaps," Eric turned toward Carly before cutting away the final pair of jeans, "I should have just let them soil their clothes." He returned his attention to the werewolves. "My associate, Thalia, will look after you, ensuring you don't starve or die of dehydration. I'm certain she will want to hose you down before approaching. She has a sensitive nose."
"She's agreed?" Carly asked.
Eric nodded. "You were gone much longer than I expected, Carly, so we made a great deal of progress during your absence."
His smile suggested tremendous mischief, so Carly couldn't help but smile in response. "Really?"
"Oh, yes." Eric held out his hand to her. "I suggest we discuss it in my office. But let me turn up the heat for them. It would do no one any good for them to die of hypothermia."
After Eric turned on a corner heater, the two of them walked upstairs and back to the office. Once inside, Eric immediately found the bathroom, where he washed his hands and forearms. Carly sat down gently on the sofa and closed her eyes.
"Seeking sleep, my love?" Eric's voice resonated from the bathroom back into the office.
"According to the crones in the cave, valkyries don't sleep, or dream." She stood and placed her hand on Eric's back. "Can I wash my face?"
They switched spots, and Eric massaged Carly's shoulders while she washed her face and splashed it with cool water. As she dried her face, Eric wrapped his arms around her waist and then drew her back to the sofa to sit on his lap.
As Eric caressed her hair and throat, Carly sighed against his neck. "Where do we even start?"
"Perhaps with what we can explain?"
Kissing along his jaw, Carly rose so that she could look him in the eye. She shifted her leg to straddle him. "And what is that?"
"The werewolves..."
"They lost their owner and went on the prowl?"
"It appears so," Eric answered. "In addition, they believe that we five vampires detained them in the basement and that I killed the ring-leader after he attacked me."
Relieved that the werewolves would have no memory of being held captive by an invisible force, Carly began to grow anxious.
"That leaves us, my love," Eric continued, "with what we cannot explain."
"Yes," Carly agreed, kissing him softly on the forehead. "I went to the-" Carly paused. She had no idea how to explain her visions to him. "I wish I could show them to you, or share them with you somehow."
"You traveled to your ancestors?" Eric winced. "You went there awake? I thought you went there in your dreams.
Carly chuckled softly. "They said valkyries don't dream—that I'd never dreamt—so perhaps I've always traveled to them, somehow. I don't know."
"What did they say?"
Carly breathed deeply before answering. "I don't know how to explain what they said. Supposedly, when we joined, we became something else, something with a mind and a will of its own."
He nodded in agreement. "Yes, I felt that way—felt—and saw—its will reaching out and grasping them, smothering Lister, driving the spikes into them."
"But did you intend to do that?"
Eric shook his head, brushing up against her cheek with his lips softly. "No, but the only way to keep a creature like that from shifting into its animal form is to spike it with silver. You'll notice, once you learn to recognize them, that shifters never wear earrings. They can't change their form around the jewelry."
"Good to know."
With kisses as gentle as a child's, Eric began to kiss along her jaw, lingering just beneath her ear, then licking along the muscles of her neck. "I always wish I could be so close to you, although I prefer to be able to touch you."
"Me too," Carly agreed, then took his head between her hands. "And I like seeing you."
The two kissed each other hungrily, nipping their lips gently, slowly escalating in intensity. After a few minutes, Carly broke away from Eric and looked longingly at him. "They told me something else."
"Is it worth interruption?" Eric asked, kissing her again more forcefully.
Carly didn't resist, but instead started moving against him, rubbing her breasts against his chest until he lifted off her shirt and cast aside her bra. In one swift movement, he reversed their positions, pinning her against the sofa and pulling at her remaining clothing. He rose back up to regard her nakedness and stripped himself. She started to giggle at the theatrics of his motions.
"So you laugh at me, little valkyrie?"
"No," Carly responded. "You're magnificent, you know that?"
Eric posed cheekily and then lay down on top of her, pressing her breath out of her. "Yes, of course, but you laughed. Perhaps I should make you laugh a little harder?"
With that, he began tickling her, using all of his speed to set her body on fire. She squirmed to get away, but to no avail, so she started to scream, "Eric! Please, stop!"
"Why should I when the squirming is so arousing?" He pinned her hands above her head, grasping the bracelet firmly. "Perhaps if we face each other, it will be different." At the same time, he plunged into her, bringing out another scream.
He shifted his hands, so that only one held her wrists tightly, and then pulled her knee high with the other so that they rubbed against each other, so hard, and so deep inside her it felt he could crawl inside.
Carly's arousal from the tickling and the intensity of his penetration brought her to a swift, fiery orgasm that shortened her spine and threw her head back. Tears ran down her cheeks with its ferocity.
Lifting her up to pin her against the back of the sofa, Eric brought his hand to her throat, the other still holding tight to the bracelet. Carly couldn't focus on anything, she was so swamped with sensation, as if his one free hand moved so quickly from her throat to her breast to her hip that a fire would start along its path. Her eyes closed just as she heard Eric's fangs reveal themselves.
"I can't wait, beloved," Eric whispered before biting into her neck.
And with that, she felt the two of them enveloped with fire, felt the whole of their bodies as one body, enjoyed the tightening, pumping sensation as he released his own orgasm into her, as his blood filled her as she bit his arm and drank. Every inch of skin that pressed together, that pressed against the smooth leather of the sofa, or felt the cool breeze from the air conditioning vent, vibrated through her mind in one electric ecstasy.
When Pam's "What the fuck?" finally interrupted them, and the well-coiffed vampire was flung against the back wall of the office, it took a few moments for their minds to sort themselves into Carly and Eric, they'd grown so accustomed to what they'd become, reveled in the union so much, that they grieved separating from one another.
As Eric released his hold on the bracelet, they relaxed, and Pam slid onto the floor where she sat, arms crossed in expectation.
Eric stood and moved slowly to the bathroom, where he got a wet towel to clean them off. He rubbed away the evidence of their lovemaking from Carly's body.
"What do you want, Pam?" Eric spoke slowly while he dressed. Carly still lay on the sofa in a fetal position, trying to regain her orientation to the world outside their union, to the mundane office in the back of a vampire club.
"Thalia and I have been waiting out there for you two for over an hour." Pam still crossed her arms petulantly.
"And?" Eric turned to regard his progeny before taking Carly up into his arms and helping her dress.
Pam finally stood and thrust her hip out to one side. "Look, it was quiet, so I thought you'd snuck off somewhere. I wasn't expecting to walk into some kind of," she shook her hand at Carly, "what the fuck?"
Eric growled at a low frequency, so low that Carly barely heard it, but Pam clearly did, since she stiffened visibly. "You will be respectful."
"Hey, you know I like Carly just about as well as I like anybody other than you. Don't give me that shit. But, damn it, Eric, it was like 'Encounters of the Third Kind' in here."
Once Carly was dressed, Eric picked her up and placed her in his lap. "What did you see?"
"You're telling me you don't know?" Pam's face wrinkled up as she said it. For the first time in quite some time, she was worried about her maker's safety.
"No."
"Well," Pam started to worry her hands together. "I couldn't see you. It was like there was a fiery blue egg sitting on the couch with lights flashing, and these fucking..."
"Yes?"
"Fuck, Eric, they looked like fucking animals jumping around in the flames, rampaging around and then blinking out. I am not happy about this-"
Eric smiled at her blandly and said, "I can tell, Pam." After kissing Carly on the brow, he asked, "Are you hurt?"
"No." Adjusting her skirt before walking forward, Pam demanded, "So Thalia wants to know how long she has to sleep down in the filth with the wolves."
"Until she is no longer needed." Eric felt Carly stir against him.
"I'm sorry, Pam," Carly squeaked quietly. "This is something new, and we're not really sure what's happening."
"Well, put a tie on the door-knob or something, will you?" Pam stalked out of the room and left the two lovers alone to cope with the new development in their lives together.