Authors: SM Johnson
Reed couldn’t take a breath because DeVante’s presence sucked all the oxygen out of the room. He couldn’t answer because fear made his blood rush to his ears and the noise drowned out all coherent thought. And he couldn’t answer because he realized the thunderous voice was
a
whisper
.
He retreated until his back was plastered against the wall, as far from DeVante as he could possibly get, unable to speak a word.
Chapter 32
How to negotiate
Daniel woke with the wind rushing in his ears and DeVante’s strong arms holding him tight and safe. For a few seconds he tried to figure out what was happening… he remembered… oh shit… going to sleep on the floor of Reed’s office. He jerked in DeVante’s arms. “Reed!”
“He will be fine until I kill him. You little shit. What do you think you were doing, leaving yourself vulnerable to him?”
They were already arriving at the Oakland house, dropping in through the skylight—DeVante and his damn skylights—and the moment his feet touched the floor, Daniel abandoned the blankets that were wrapped around him. He backed away from DeVante, and immediately wished he were clothed. “I trust him. It was time. He needed to understand, and I thought it was the best way to start explaining.”
“You thought wrong. You do not need to explain anything to him. You cannot go around telling mortals what we are. Daniel! I told you to keep hunting and fucking separate.”
“It’s neither with Reed. I love him.”
DeVante laughed, a cold chuckle that gave Daniel a chill. “Love says the mortal in you, the boy in you… always love.” He reached toward Daniel and Daniel recoiled, hating himself as he did so. DeVante caught him and pulled him close. “You are using me, Daniel. You slept there, open, vulnerable, and I think you did it to raise my ire, to force me to change Reed so you can forever be his boy. Then you never have to be master to him. I will not be manipulated.” He tugged at the collar Reed had given Daniel, unbuckled it, and put it in his pocket.
Daniel felt the loss and scrabbled at DeVante’s clothes, more keenly naked without Reed’s collar. DeVante deftly pushed his hands aside. “It’s mine!” Daniel said, and felt tears well up. “It’s just now truly mine. I gave him everything of me to get it.”
“This is not something you should have accepted from Reed. Certainly not without discussing it with me. Now I need to discuss it with him.”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t know what the fuck was going on. You know everything.”
DeVante nodded. “Yes, I pay attention to those that are mine. I knew you were enamored. But I thought you would prove to be smarter than this. Stupid boy. Get some clothes on. Lily is here, stay with her.”
Daniel started to protest, but DeVante cut his words off. “This is not a request. You are under my protection and will do as I say. Stay here. Suffer your hunger. Wait for me.”
And DeVante was up and out the skylight. Daniel called after him, “Don’t kill him, DeVante, please!”
Daniel didn’t know what to do. He paced the room, stared up at the sky through the opening in the ceiling, and prayed to his vampire god.
Don’t kill him. No, no, no. He’s my heart.
DeVante’s response filled his head, settling him.
I shall leave him breathing, but recognize that this is bigger than you, Daniel, and as you submit to Reed’s will, you must now submit to mine.
***
Reed slumped against the wall in his home office wondering what the hell had just happened, and what would happen now. The office door hung from one hinge, and vaguely he realized he would have to fix it.
His whole body tensed when the bottom edge of the door pushed open from the other side and dragged heavily across the carpet.
DeVante came into the room.
If asked, Reed could not have said why he was afraid. He watched wordlessly as DeVante reached into his pocket, then dropped the thin leather collar at Reed’s feet.
“You have no right to keep him, enslave him,” DeVante said.
Reed looked up at DeVante, then down at the collar on the floor, picking it up, smoothing his fingers over the thin leather strap, remembering the moment he first fastened it around the boy’s throat. He felt a sadness to now be holding it in his hands. “He wanted me to. He offered himself.”
“You have enthralled him, and such is not his decision to make. He is a child, not wise, and does not know what is best for himself.”
“Not true,” Reed protested. “He is ‘old’ for his age. He knew.”
DeVante shook his head. “It is of little consequence. He belongs first to Me, first to our family, which is part of something much bigger than just Roderick and I. Daniel does not have permission to give himself away.” His voice was tight and furious. “I trusted him to know better than to pull a stupid trick like leaving himself completely vulnerable while he sleeps. I trusted him to maintain common sense, but perhaps it is too much to expect from one so young.”
Reed couldn’t stop himself from asking, “What’s wrong with him? Is he okay? Is he ill?”
A low laugh rumbled from DeVante’s chest. “No. Just impulsive and young.”
“I don’t understand anything,” Reed complained, mystified by Daniel’s strange day of sleep.
“You will,” DeVante said. “Stand up. Stand before me as an equal, for perhaps one day you will be a Master such as I.”
“Ever the cryptic,” Reed commented, a repeat of something Daniel had once said. He found himself standing, almost accidentally.
“You have no idea,” DeVante said, and he smiled, and the menace behind his countenance made Reed want to step back, get away.
“It says much about you that you do not cower, nor flee, despite your screaming nervous system.”
Reed shrugged, surprised, but then again not, that he was transparent to this man.
DeVante’s eyes locked to Reed’s, and Reed flinched because he felt an almost physical snap of connection between them. And then a sensation in his head as if DeVante were crawling through it, literally picking at his brain, like tiny claws scrabbling for purchase. He tried to turn his head, to escape the hold, but there was nowhere to go, and DeVante said in a very soft voice, “Do not fight this, Reed. If you want to live to see Daniel again, you must avail yourself to me.”
Reed forced himself to relax, tried to roll his shoulders to ease the tension in them, and realized the relaxing was only a mental exercise, that his physical body was paralyzed. He experienced a moment of panic, and with their eyes locked, he knew DeVante could see it, feel it… and after a few moments a warm calm flooded into him, more effective than a Xanax.
He could still feel DeVante crawling through his brain, but instead of fighting he was surrendering, and it was comfortably tense, like being buckled to the gallows to accept his beating—and he knew letting DeVante in was imperative to his well-being… and somehow he also knew he was safe—that while DeVante might frighten him, he would not drop him into the abyss of his emotions and leave him suffering there. That while this man might masterfully dangle him above the chasm, he would also bring him back.
Good man
, DeVante said. Reed wasn’t entirely sure the words were voiced—it was more like he heard them from inside his head, and the whole everything was suddenly so strange that Reed could do nothing but shudder and give in. “Please,” he managed to whisper. “Please…” but didn’t even know what he was asking for.
“Yes,” DeVante’s voice was liquid caramel, and he stepped in close to Reed, reaching out for him.
Reed felt as if he were watching from somewhere outside himself; DeVante’s eyes burning into him, hands tilting his head up and to the side, mouth coming closer, closer. So close that eye-contact was broken but Reed was still helpless in DeVante’s grasp, trembling when DeVante’s lips touched his throat.
When the kiss turned into a bite, Reed cried out but was unable to pull back. Who’s enthralled now, he wondered momentarily, before he was lost in a fog of emotions that didn’t even feel like his own. Love for Daniel, dread, grief for some loss yet to be named… trepidation and fear, and self-loathing for those feelings of trepidation and fear.
Reed realized it was DeVante’s emotions that were pouring through him, firm control slipping in this moment, and that he was being offered a sneak peak into the workings of this man for whom Daniel held such fearful respect.
He wondered if he would die from this, if the only reason he was allowed this glimpse was because he would not be allowed to keep it.
Reed started to swoon, lost in a swirl of emotion and color. DeVante released him and helped him gently to the floor, his voice pulling Reed back to here and now as he said, “You have lost a child,” and Reed realized whatever he had just learned about DeVante, DeVante had learned tenfold about him.
He let his chin rest on his chest. “A long time ago.”
“Perhaps that is some of Daniel’s appeal to you—he could be the son you were not allowed to keep.”
“I doubt it,” Reed said, finally looking up. “I laid my grief to rest long before I ever saw Daniel.”
DeVante countered Reed’s logic. “Do we ever lay our grief to rest?”
Reed had no answer to that. He shrugged. “I don’t think of Aidan when I think of Daniel. I don’t make comparisons. How could I? Aidan died when he was five. He’ll be a little boy in my mind forever.”
DeVante surprised Reed by answering.
“Yes, it is that way for parents who have lost children. I do not know what happens after death, only about rebirth after almost-death. The rest is just as much a mystery to myself and others like me as it is to you. Dead is dead. No amount of grief or prayer or want changes it. We must let the dead go.”
It was the same truth Reed had discovered, but he couldn’t help playing advocate to see how long the conversation would continue. If DeVante was talking, then Reed was breathing. “There are a lot of religious people who would argue that.”
“True.” DeVante walked over to the cockeyed door, studied it. “I wonder how they can claim to know anything. The only ones who know what comes after death are the dead. And they do not speak to the living.”
“There are those who would argue with that as well.”
DeVante fiddled with the door, swinging it gently open and shut, still off one hinge. “Shysters. Shams. Actors and actresses, every one. The so-called psychics, that is. The religions, well, many of them merely feed on the wallets of those afraid of death. And it is pointless for mortals to fear death because it cannot be avoided. As for the cult-types, they are all about power. Power to rule how people live, power to take sex without recrimination, have multiple wives, twenty-five children, whatever. Arrogance. Are you so arrogant, Reed, that you believe you can distract me for long with talk of theology?”
Reed shrugged. “Are you going to kill me?”
DeVante turned to look at him with piercing eyes. “I do not believe so. Should I?”
“Of course not!”
“Then no. Unless you give me reason.”
“Like what?”
Self-preservation
, Reed thought,
find out the rules before breaking them
.
“Try to hurt me or any of mine. Try to capture any of us and turn us over to science.”
Reed snorted. “I don’t have such delusions of grandeur. I can just see it, I call the police to report the city has a vampire problem… and I’d be the one who gets locked up.”
“So long as we understand each other. And so long as Daniel loves you.”
Chapter 33
How to take revenge
The next night Callum was already at the club when Roderick and Tony arrived, and Tony was not at all prepared to be recognized immediately. But Callum walked right up to him, and when he spoke, he was still so evil that Tony froze.
“I know your face, sissy boy,” Callum said with a cruel smile. “Back for more, huh? Just can’t get enough of my cock. Funny, I thought perhaps I’d killed you.”
Tony couldn’t move—the memory of the indescribable pain he’d suffered at the mercy of this man crashed over him, stunning him immobile. He could do no more than stare at the man and knew his mouth was hanging open stupidly, completely unable in this moment to stand up to him. He wanted to bolt like a scared rabbit.
So much for his dreams of revenge.
Roderick stepped between them, his body mercifully shielding Tony from Callum’s eyes and vice-versa, and Tony was finally able to take a deep breath.
Roderick, without fear, was capable of so much more than Tony.
“You like hurting boys?” Roderick asked, and the timbre of his voice was low and angry, and it was the first time Tony had ever heard Roderick sound vicious.
And it was like Roderick’s challenge energized Callum, and his mouth twisted into a mean smile when he responded. “What, you got something to say about my behavior, twat? You want to piss and moan about how I hurt your little girlie-boy? He’s not so keen on letting you fuck his ass lately? You ought to just be glad he’s alive—I meant to kill him, the little sissy faggot.”
Tony shrunk at the cruel words, literally until he was crouched on the floor, crawling beneath a table to curl up there in a tight little ball. He watched Roderick’s feet and realized with utter humiliation that he was hiding.
He was such a fucking coward—he’d dragged Roderick here with all his dreams and schemes of avenging himself, and here he sat, cringing under a table.
Well fuck that.
He crawled out from under the table just as Callum hissed at Roderick. “You puny little shit—what are you going to do about it, hurt me somehow? I’d like to see you try,” and he laughed uproariously, spittle flying into Roderick’s face, confident of his power to demean, belittle, to win.