Harnessed Angels: The Quickening Read online

  Free from his grasp, Sara scrambled on all fours to the center of the room. Although the light didn’t reach that high, she imagined she could see his face flushed a fluorescent red, the same subdued neon that congealed at his wrist. She blinked and realized it was real—she could see Colm, most of him a cool blue, but flushed red wherever his skin was exposed. Still ranting, he moved toward her and she reached into the hip pack and pulled out the first pick her hand closed around.

  Colm gave a low, guttural laugh. The sound reminded Sara of the hyenas that had flocked her father’s camp one fall when they had been on a dig in Africa.

  “You’re too weak to take me, Sara,” Colm said, his voice still buried low in his throat. “I’d love to show you just how weak…” he paused, raised his chin as if scenting the air for danger.

  Unconcerned with any threat Sara posed to him, Colm dropped the knife. Sara heard it clatter along the floor and tightened her grip on the pick’s handle.

  “But,” he continued. “I have class in half an hour and then a date with this little freshman hottie on the swim team.” Colm grabbed his cock and testicles through the fabric of his pants and squeezed. “She said she can hold her breath for a whole two minutes! Can you imagine what kind of head she gives?”

  Her body sinking to the floor, Sara watched Colm walk over to the basement’s exterior door. “Fucking bastard,” she hissed and tried to pull herself across the cold linoleum.

  Colm opened the door, the small amount of light filling the shadowed staircase sending pin pricks of pain through Sara’s fully dilated pupils. She pressed her forehead against the floor, heard the door swing shut behind him. Her body trembled and she closed her eyes, letting the merciful black of the room enfold her.

  Colm had said he wasn’t going to kill her, but she felt like she was dying. In the dark, she traced the contours of her face, ran her fingers along the sunken cheeks and hollow eyes. An image of her mother, small body wracked with cancer, both breasts mutilated in an attempt to save her life, flashed in Sara’s mind. Sara curled up on the floor, feebly grasped her knees and hugged them to her chest as the cold seeped into her bones, froze her cells, slowed her beating heart and air intake. Numb, she could no longer feel the floor beneath her and the terrifying thought that she had left her body gripped her, forced her to draw a sharp breath, provoked her heart into an outburst of a beat, slowly followed by a second.

  Strong arms dug beneath her legs and shoulder and scooped Sara up from the floor. Still, she held onto herself, afraid that she would float away if she did otherwise. An awkward shift and she found her face pressed against a flat chest. The soft caress of brushed linen touched her cheek and she breathed deeply, the scent of lotus oil lulling her into a more relaxed position. Her body descended onto a mattress and she allowed her legs to be pulled straight.

  Eyes still closed, she croaked one word. “Mathias?”

  “Soon, little one, I promise.” The voice was light, only mildly masculine, and wafted to her on the air like a desert breeze. “It will kill him if he sees you like this.”

  A splash of water sounded and a cool towel pressed against her eyelids and lips. Her head followed the towel, the pink tip of her tongue darting out in search of the liquid.

  “Water will only make you sick right now,” the man told her.

  “Thirsty,” Sara rasped. She struggled to open her eyes and put a face to the familiar voice.

  “I’ll give you something to drink soon enough,” he said.

  The wet towel moved over her throat. Her hands, still clenched, were lifted, separately, and cleaned. Slim fingers gently pulled their way through her hair, untangling the knots from her struggle with Colm. Sara felt the whisper of linen against her bare arm and slowly peeled her eyes open. In front of her, bare-chested, a razor nipping into his flesh near the center of his chest, was Ptah Ma’at, her Egyptian studies professor. She saw him for the first time as he really was. A vampire. A sheepish smile that begged forgiveness at his deceits hovered on his lips.

  “Soon enough, you won’t need the razor to feed,” he said and then pulled Sara to him, his hand cradling the back of her head.

  Her lips pressed against the wound and she let the blood flow down her throat. It was acid velvet, smooth and burning at the same time. Ptah poured into her, filled her with honeyed blood that carried its own memories, as ancient as the pyramids.

  Chapter Seven

  “Most do not choose, they are chosen,” Ptah said. Embracing Sara against his chest, he closed his eyes and remembered his re-birth.

  He was in his workshop, carefully cooling a clay plate when four priests came from the temple to commission a special prayer tablet. The queen was sick, they explained, and Ptah, with his exquisite work, must prepare the tablet for a healing ceremony to be performed the next evening. As payment, the younger priests carried baskets of exotic fruits and fine linen. The oldest priest held papyrus sheaths with carefully drawn hieroglyphs that Ptah must replicate on the tablet.

  Ptah took the baskets and papyrus and sent the priests away, bidding them return in the morning. He took his finest clay, nearly white in color, and mixed in water. With a flat roller, he worked the clay into an even surface and then marked off the edges of a rectangle. Choosing a wide trowel blade, he cut the edges away and erased the cut marks with a stiff-bristled brush. Outside his workshop, he carefully sorted wood from the meager supply he had available. Despite the cool evening air, he was beginning to sweat. Many of his creations were kept at court and in the temple. His work was appreciated there and the queen, if the gods restored her health, likely would reward Ptah beyond the linen and fruit. If she died, however, the Pharaoh would have his head after torturing Ptah to the point of death.

  With the oven heating, he unrolled the sheaths of papyrus and started the painstaking process of duplicating the glyphs. Once finished with the glyphs, he placed the tablet inside the oven and anxiously watched the fire through small holes in the side. When the oven’s heat became too intense and threatened to crack the tablet, Ptah opened a release door below the baking level and blew into the oven through a reed tube. After the firing process was complete, he removed the baked tablet from the oven and set it on racks to cool. While it was still warm to the touch, he coated it with lotus oil and rubbed it to a hard shine. Exhausted and satisfied with his work, he placed a wooden cover over the tablet and fell asleep on the small pallet he kept in his shop.

  The next morning, shortly after sunrise, the four priests returned to his workshop and woke him. They poured over the glyphs he had imprinted, meticulously compared the tablet to the papyrus sheaths they had given him. At last, the old priest straightened and nodded at Ptah. “Excellent. The ceremony can be performed tonight.”

  Ptah packed the tablet in the same wooden box he had used as a cover the night before. The old priest took it and bowed. “You will come with us.”

  Ptah’s throat clamped shut and he took a step backward. Two of the younger priests moved quickly to grab him by the arms and he struggled against them. He had hoped to find a spy in the court to monitor the queen’s progress and give him warning if her health further deteriorated. “Why?” he asked.

  “You will present the offering, Ptah Ma’at,” the old priest answered. “It is a great honor the Queen bestows upon you.”

  Ptah’s knees buckled at the meaning behind the old man’s words but the two priests held him standing between their thick bodies. “She cannot,” Ptah yelled at last. “I am guilty of no crime.”

  The old man’s eyes were impassive and his hooded stare allowed no argument. “The Queen commands it—to refuse is a crime.”

  At the snap of the man’s fingers, the fourth priest threw a white hood over Ptah’s head and tied it at the neck. The other two priests forced Ptah’s arms behind his back and bound his hands together. His legs trailed along the ground as they dragged him from the workshop to the temple.

  At the temple, the hood was removed and thick, spiced honey
mead was forced down his throat, the sedative effects hitting his body and coating his limbs, with a warm punch to his stomach. One of the priests, his face a blur, untied the ropes around Ptah’s arms and, with expert flicks of his wrist, cut Ptah’s clothes away with a thin-bladed knife.

  Drugged, limbs pliant, Ptah was dragged over to a copper tub filled with hot water that pinked his flesh as he was lowered into it. Soft, strong hands rubbed water and oil over Ptah’s skin, the motion slowly reawakening his senses. He tried to move his arms but the effort was too much and he melted under the other man’s stroking. More honey mead was given to him. He closed his eyes, let the liquid slip down his throat. Someone lifted him from the tub and soft cloths dried him, explored every inch of his body. Lotus oil was rubbed over his skin until he was as slippery as a newborn fresh from its mother’s womb. More cloth pressed against Ptah as the priests dressed him in a loose linen robe and carried him from the room.

  The room they carried Ptah to was small but plushly furnished with pillows. Linen, laced with gold, covered the walls and floor. Rows of candles burned along one wall, their smoke mixing with incense. Two priests laid Ptah on a mattress of four pillows. The collar of his robe was parted, his neck exposed. His hands, they positioned over his stomach, the prayer tablet he had worked through the night to create held in his loose grip. Next to him, they placed an empty golden cup and then they left.

  Ptah drifted in and out of consciousness. A flush of blood would warm his skin as he contemplated his fate. Rage at the queen’s arrogance, her willingness to prolong her indulgent, extravagant existence at the cost of another, made the veins at the side of his neck and along his temples throb. His eyes fluttered open at the sensation of a long, cool finger tracing those veins.

  Liquid black eyes stared from a face framed in silver hair. The skin, but for the lips, was a pale white, opalescent in the flickering candlelight. The finger that caressed Ptah’s neck was tipped in a long nail that shimmered with its own iridescence.

  “I am Atome.” The voice was light, musical, and contained no hint of gender. The lips, flushed with a blue tinge, curved into a smile as Atome’s hand traveled down the robe to the prayer tablet. “Long have I admired your work, Ptah Ma’at.”

  At the light touch of Atome’s hands on his body, the effects of the honey mead evaporated. His cock pulsed to life as the pale hand slipped between the robe’s folds to caress Ptah’s balls. “You have a choice, dear one,” Atome said and the silver chimes sent hard chills racing through Ptah’s body. “Join me tonight, forever, or die.”

  Three drops of liquid pearl beaded the tip of Ptah’s cock as Atome’s fingers curled around it. Firm lips nuzzled his throat and he arched his back in ecstasy. The pearl beads coated Atome’s slim hand, lubricated it as it delivered pulsing strokes along the length of Ptah’s shaft. Ptah raised his arm, still heavy from the drugged mead, and wound his fingers through the silver hair, urging Atome’s mouth to find the throbbing neck vein where his life ran red hot. The teeth, exquisitely sharp, pierced his skin, producing an explosion of blood and semen.

  Chapter Eight

  Sara stared at the ceiling and picked out patterns in the stucco to distract her from the blood-filled vibrations that shook her body. Tumescent in every sense of the word, her skin ached. Her clit, engorged, pulsated with the remembered sensation of Atome’s hand rhythmically clenching Ptah’s cock. The lips of her cunt quivered, contracted, as she replayed Atome’s lips, now wearing a thin coat of blood, traveling to the swollen, semen-slick penis.

  She knew that Ptah, still milling around the room, could sense her excitement and the knowledge sent twin arcs of anger and need through her. She did not desire him, wanted, desperately at the moment, another. But her stomach and cunt cramped in painful protest. “Leave me,” she said. Her palms, pressed flat against the mattress, curled to grip the sheets, to keep from reaching out, as he walked from the room.

  Hearing the door close, her hands unclenched the fabric, one racing to cover her face, the other trailing over her body in hot need. Sara moaned. The velvet folds of her cunt grew wetter until a dark circle of desire dampened the olive-green shorts she had donned that morning. One hand slipped beneath the elastic waistband of her shorts and underwear, while, with the other, she twisted one tender, straining, nipple. The first brush of her finger against her clit sent her body into a wave of spasms that she rode, seeking release, a triangle of fingers slipping into her wet pussy while the heel of her palm danced forcefully against her clit.

  Her moans growing louder, Sara rolled over on the mattress and buried her face in the pillow to keep from screaming. Her ass rose, remained elevated in the air as she pumped her hips furiously, her body still locked in its search for climax. She couldn’t stop, even when her shorts were suddenly pulled down by another. A rush of cold air snaked against the entrance to her vagina. At the same time, a large hand slid under her, pressed itself flat against her stomach and pulled her back. Her shorts, tangled around her thighs, were pushed down to her knees as she struggled against the embrace.

  “No!” Sara’s protest was half regretful moan, half threatening snarl.

  “Sara, please.” The deep, needful, rumble of Mathias’s voice sent a shock wave through her and the walls of her cunt instantly dilated to receive him. She tried to scoot backwards, to find contact with his body but he stopped her. A hand on each side of her hips, he urged her forward until her stomach was pressed against the mattress and only her ass remained hovering in the air. “Just let me look at you first, taste you,” Mathias said and pulled the shorts and underwear from her legs. “I’ve been waiting so long for you.”

  Mathias slid down the length of the bed until his head was at the back of her pussy. He stroked the inside of her thighs with his tongue and she dug her fingers into the edge of the bed to find some measure of control. Mathias sucked at the folds of her lips, his tongue plunging past the spongy entrance to her vagina to lave the inside walls of her sex as Sara rocked in slow waves against his firm probing.

  Mathias withdrew his tongue, cupped her pubic mound with both hands, his thumbs sliding into her, stroking her, while his index fingers teased her clit. He moaned her name and the first tremors of orgasm rippled through her flesh. She contracted around his thumbs, clamped his hands between her thighs as a second shudder thundered through her, coating the entrance to her slit in a milky syrup.

  “Let me in, Sara.” Mathias pried her legs open, massaged the creamy fluid that dripped from her still contracting cunt. Holding the crimson hole open, he slid the tip of his cock into her, teased her with its swollen bulb.

  Sara moaned an urgent demand for more, raised her hips and thrust against him until the length of his shaft was buried inside the silken membrane of her vagina. She squeezed her thigh and ass muscles, milked his cock in a slow swell of ecstasy. He lifted her from the mattress, further embedded his cock inside her. His hands found her breast and clit, teased the nipple and small nub until she lost the last of her control. Flinging her head back, Sara wrapped her arms around his neck, pulled him to her as she bounced mindlessly, crying his name, begging him not to stop. His own orgasm building, Mathias pressed his lips to the back of her shoulder.

  “Yes, Mathias,” she screamed and pressed the back of his head until she could feel the sharp protrusion of his canines breaking the surface of her skin. Her own gums swelled until she could feel her teeth extending to slash at her bottom lip. “Taste me… drink me… but don’t stop fucking me.”

  Mathias groaned and bit down. As her blood flowed into him, she could sense her body as he did. The tight greedy fit of her pussy, her muscles swallowing his cock, milking it, the channel growing tighter, tighter as his rod swelled in near climax. And then he came. His semen flooded into her, his fingers feverishly working her clit, pulling, pinching, grinding the swollen tip into submission. She called his name, his mouth still fastened to her shoulder as she jerked against him in her own climax. After the last wave of her orgasm
rocked her, he slowly withdrew, eased her onto the bed, his hands massaging away the tremors that continued to shake her body. Sara started to cry and he wrapped his arms around her, his still-hard cock nestled in the hollow of her ass.

  “Shhh, everything will be okay,” he assured her and kissed the blood from her shoulder. “We’re together now.”

  Chapter Nine

  Sara woke nestled in Mathias’s arms. In his sleep, he had draped one leg across her thighs. His body was surprisingly warm, with a hint of vanilla scenting his skin. Shifting so that they were chest-to-chest, she surveyed him through the fringes of her eyelashes. His face, asleep, was strong, sensual and still bore traces of the fierce intensity she had witnessed during their earlier meetings. The ebony hair was thick, stopped cleanly at collar-length, with a light wave to it. Her gaze traveled to his neck, knotted with muscles and enclosed by a too-delicate silver chain that was nearly lost against the light caramel skin. Curious, she slipped a finger under the chain and pulled it toward her, a small silver locket lifting from the mattress as she did so.

  My locket! Sara curled her fingers around it, resisting the urge to pull it from his neck.

  Mathias shifted in his sleep. His arms and leg contracted to embrace her closer to his body. The worried sigh of her name played on his tongue and in his mind. His eyes fluttered open, a satisfied, erotic smile on his lips that quickly compressed into a thin line when he saw her hard gaze fixed on him. “Sara, what’s wrong?”

  Her jaw, like the hand around the locket, was clenched. Her mind was an angry jumble of questions that had been pushed aside in her sexual need for Mathias. She opened her mouth, closed it while she tried to decide where to begin. With the locket that had been missing since the same year her father had discovered the tablet fragment in the Yucatan? Colm’s possession—no, the trio’s possession—of the missing half? The ongoing game in which she appeared to be a pawn? Colm’s vicious attack and Mathias’s absence? The complete lack of choice she had been given in the entire matter?