The Font (14 page)

Instead, he simply
swept aside the curtain hanging over the doorway.
  It
ripped despite his restraint, falling to the floor.  T
he smell within the trailer rushed out at him as if it had been waiting to escape.  That sweet scent of carrion,
spilled
blood
,
and meat left
to rot
made his mouth water
.  The unseasonably warm weather
had given the old man’s corpse a chance to ripen.

Heriolf stepped inside
, his concerns that he couldn’t enter without invitation gone with the old man’s life.
  He faced the
swamp dweller
slumped in his stained and broken-down chair.  Or would have faced him, had the part-elf anything left of a face to stare at.  The sawed
-
off shotgun leaning against the swamp rat’s stained crotch told the story.  The weak glow of the lamp turned the splatters of blood on the chair and the wall behind it chocolate brown.

Heriolf sneered at the corpse.  “Coward.  You knew I’d come for you.”

He inhaled deeply.  Beyond the
reek of
blood, rot, urine
,
and shit was the real story.  He caught Naya’s sweet scent as well as that of two male vampires.  He growled deep in his throat.

The old man must have told them everything.  Naya would now be aware Heriolf had killed her parents.  It was the one thing that would turn her against him and have her throw her lot in with his enemies.

But why were they allowing Naya to live?  It was obvious to Heriolf.  The vampire who’d taken her was planning to take his place as ruler of coastal Georgia.

Heriolf leaned over the dead human-elf hybrid and licked a bit of the sticky blood off his ruined face.  The taste was still agreeable despite its coolness, and he lapped what he could gather, spitting out fragments of bone as he soothed himself like a child with a lollipop.   Unfortunately, the small bit of elf blood that had flowed in the old man’s veins was too diluted by the human part, and there was no power to be had from this meal.

Lyndon’s cry from outside diverted him from his snack.  “My lord!  My lord!  We’ve caught a spy!”

             
Heriolf wheeled around and came through the door with so much speed that
he struck the frame on the way out and it splintered.  He ignored
it
as he hurtled down the steps to his waiting retinue.

Two of his guards held a vampire of African descent. 
He strained against the gloved hands holding his shoulders and his face was rigid with pain against the thin silver chains pinning his arms to his waist. 
Heriolf could smell the silver burning into the vampire’s flesh.

             
A third guard standing behind the captured vampire kicked the back of one of the prisoner’s knees, forcing him down.  “Kneel before your lord!”

             
“Not my lord,” the vampire growled despite the ribbon of fear Heriolf felt trickle from his mind.  He bared his fangs at them all.  A kick to the stomach made him offer a semblance of a bow.

             
Lyndon
and the other two guards
executed proper bow
s
before Heriolf.  “We caught this one was skulking around, spying on us.”

Heriolf stepped forward and grabbed a handful of the vampire’s dreadlocks in his fist.  He yanked the spy’s head back, forcing him to look him in the eyes.  “Your name.”

The vampire pressed his lips together in grim refusal, but his mind spoke loud and clear. 

Heriolf snorted.  “So Malachi, where is my Naya?”

Between clenched teeth, Malachi ground out, “I don’t know.”

It was true, Heriolf heard from the vampire’s mind. 
The worthless refuse had no idea where Naya had been taken. 
He rifled through the thoughts of the prisoner as easily as one might flip through pages of a book.  “But you’re trying to find her?  To kill her?  Why is she not dead already?”

Fury and terror ran through the vampire in equal measures.  “Because Elisha is weak.  He
refuses
to kill innocents, even though it endangers us.”  He stopped muttering to scream in Heriolf’s face.  “No more Heriolfs!  No more madmen who will expose us to the world!”

Heriolf snorted and dragged the vampire to his feet by the thick ropes of hair.  “The names of all the conspirators.  Tell them to me.”

Malachi pressed his lips together again, but he was of a weak mind, one that spewed information with such volume that Heriolf’s ebbing power was hardly noticed. 

“Elisha.  Sebastian.  Mariel.  These are the most important ones, I see.”  There were more names, and Heriolf noted them all.  “Very well.  I think your use to me is done.”

With that he ripped open Malachi’s shirt, baring a thin chest.  Heriolf clawed it open to reveal the still heart within.  It no longer beat, but removing the organ still brought a vampire to his final death. 

Heriolf did just that with bite after bite, chewing and swallowing before the screaming, helpless vampire with great pleasure while his guards and Lyndon laughed.  Vomiting up the solid meat later would be worth it to see such agony.

Heriolf made the horrid death last as long as he could
.  I
t was a delightful half hour before Malachi’s screams finally ended
.  H
is body began the withering that would render it to dust within a few minutes.  The guards dropped the crumbling debris to the ground and waited for Heriolf’s next order.

The man had offered useful knowledge, and Heriolf was now convinced this Elisha was indeed planning to take his place as ruler.  That meant Naya would be kept alive and Heriolf could reclaim her.  Even better, the conspirators were now fighting amongst themselves, rendering them broken and easy to defeat. 

That Naya’s kidnapper might be so sentimental with kindness as Malachi had claimed
,
that he was sparing Naya because she was too innocent to kill
,
made no sense to Heriolf.  Only power mattered, and any vampire knew that.  Kill or be killed.  S
how mercy to
only those who could further your own desires.  It was that simple.

“Let’s go,” he told his underlings.  He
riolf
took to the air, scenting his font and following her.

* * * *

             
Elisha carried Naya through the night, putting distance between themselves and the clearing in the woods.  He landed here and there to confuse pursuers, heading north for half an hour, east for twenty minutes, north again for five minutes, then turning south for awhile.  At last he went in a northwest direction, flying as fast as he could.

             
They came to a stop at last, near the overgrown remains of a farm.  The large house that had stood proudly in the middle of its twenty-two acres was a crumbling ruin with a pine tree now sprouting through a huge hole in the roof.  The once blindingly white paint had peeled away, leaving age-silvered wooden boards.

             
The barn, its roof carried off in a storm, was even worse off.  The back half of it had collapsed, and what was left leaned perilously to one side, looking as if only a soft breath would finally knock it completely down.  The fence that had once corralled cattle in the pasture was long gone, only a post here and there showing it had ever stood at all. 

             
And in the distance, a wrought iron fence encircled the small enclosure where four headstones glimmered like waiting ghosts in the light of the finally risen moon. 
The homestead was horribly depressing.  Elisha rarely came here anymore, this place that had seen such great joy and crushing sorrows.

Naya peered around.  Elisha wondered how much her non-vampire eyesight picked up.  At last she asked, “Where are we?”

“This was once my home.  When I was a living man.”

He saw how her curiosity sharpened at his words, and she stared at their surroundings harder than ever.  She stepped carefully through the knee-deep grass to get a better look at the house.  Elisha followed close behind, on the lookout for tripping hazards. 

He had so much to protect her from, and not just the perils of his once-home. 
There was danger everywhere, especially from Heriolf and Elisha’s own co-conspirators.  Could he really
shield
Naya
from all the threats that surrounded her?

Naya stopped, her gaze finally lighting on the tiny graveyard that lay beyond the house and barn.  Elisha steeled himself for her question, which came a moment later.  “Is that your family?”

“My wife and children.  I lost them
all to consumption.  T
uberculosis
,” he corrected himself.

It had been
centurie
s since the last of his children had succumbed, and yet the old grief filled his belly, grinding at him with dull blades.  Within a
space of six
month
s
he had lost them all, watching helplessly as they
died
one by one.  And he? 
Elisha
had never fallen ill.  They had left him to mourn them, to castigate himself with survivor’s guilt, to drink himself stupid until his vampire maker had found him lying drunk and semi-c
onscious in the loft of the now
almost demolished barn.

Naya’s gentle caress on his cheek startled him.  “I’m sorry Elisha.  Does it ever get better?  The grief?”

She was crying, silent tears pouring down her face, and he was reminded she’d learned the truth of her parents’ deaths only the night before.  He pulled her close, held her slight frame tight to his body.  “It doesn’t get better.  Just more … manageable.”

He’d lost so much.  So had she.  They clung together, him stroking her long, soft hair and she rubbing her hands up and down his back.  At some point during their shared misery, their lips met.  Their breath mingled.  And more than anything, he wanted her warmth, the feeling of someone else touching him, the fantasy that he was again loved and belonged to another.

The grass he laid her down on smelled sweet, though not as sweet as her flesh.  He pushed her skirt up and found she was already sticky-wet with honey.  For once it wasn’t the flavor of her blood that tempted him; he wanted to taste her other juices now.

* * * *

             
When Elisha’s mouth closed on her womanhood, Naya jerked with a cry.  Feeling his lips and tongue upon her
there
was a revelation.  Soft and wet and warm.  Kissing gently one moment, sucking hard the next, flicking eagerly now, lapping with slow sensuality to make her softest parts ignite, nipping to send shivery darts of intensity throughout her belly.

             
Naya groaned and wriggled uncontrollably beneath the erotic assault.  Elisha wrapped his arms around her upper thighs, pinning them to his shoulders and holding her still so she couldn’t escape the sweet torment he
assault
ed her with.

             
He fed on her sex, and she trembled to hear him swallow hard, consuming her juices.  His tongue pressed in and out of her, its silken roughness a delightful invasion.  Naya buried her hands in his soft hair, grabbing hold to press him closer one moment, pulling him back the next when sensation threatened to overwhelm her.  Elisha’s chuckle filled her ears.

             
“I’m enjoying introducing you to such pleasures, Naya.”

             
“You’re cruel,” she gasped.  “Terribly, terribly cruel.”

             
“No, my sweetling.  I haven’t yet begun to be cruel.”

             
With that, his mouth closed over her clitoris.  He sucked it deep into his mouth, and his teeth gently trapped its shaft.  Elisha’s tongue whipped over and over the engorged nub, and Naya thought her guts might flip inside out from the thunderbolt of agonized bliss that seized her.

             
“Elisha!” she strangle-screamed, her back bowing off the thick cushion of grass.  She was suddenly on the verge of cataclysm, her body straining for completion.  Elisha released her.

             
“Oh,” Naya wailed, equal measures of disappointment and relief filling her as the excruciating pleasure receded.  “Why are you doing this to me?”

             
“Because you need a man who will make love to you properly,” he growled.  He sounded almost feral as he spoke.  “You deserve someone who will see to your needs and fulfill your desires, one who cares as much for your pleasure
as his own
,
if not more.”

             
Elisha bent once more to her aching sex, visiting more delicious torture on her clit with lips, tongue, and teeth, making her insides seize right to the verge of losing
all restraint
.  Just as her control frayed, threatening to spill wondrous orgasm through her body, he stopped again.