Bozena and Sveta (Neuripra) (20 page)

Leaving my lids heavy and hooded, tilting my head so my hair cascades forward and veils my shoulders, I narrow my gaze and saunter with the looping drumbeat, taking slow and deliberate strides to the lip of the dance-floor.

Stepping into the paddock with the wild palomino, I crush the floor with a merciless boot, circling my quarry while loosening my arms, limbering them with an imagined lasso.

When I catch him he's going to struggle and fight, buck and charge, he's big and strong, wild and defiant, every step I make must be sure and resolute.

Show no fear.

No sudden moves.

This must be slow, gradual, cautious. The untamed bolt when cornered; I must lure him in with patience and innocuous temptation.

I love the games we play, they distract me from my woes.

Flicking my hair in time to the snaring guitar, I let metal hiss do the stalking for me. The potent musical drug sedates me, working my spine into a slow rotation with my hips.

Ignoring the supernatural sweetheart in the arena, I step round in an arc, feeling the art of the maestro, moving only my outside leg and keeping the left planted in the epicenter of my circle.

Moving with slinking slow hip sways, I start a solitary rendition of a romantic zouk dance. Shoulders back, I melt my body into an endless undulation, like kelp caught in the crest of a wave.

Staring at the floor, I flay my long hair in time to the beat, letting the rock-narcotic of the savage guitar siphon out my hidden flamenco dancer.

Only I exist in this gloomy haze, my vision obscured with heavy mist which has reawakened in a resurgence of powdery white zeal.

It's medieval, primal, surrounded with billowing dragon's breath while the melody pours down to entomb me in an endless whorl.

Flicking my head back, I let it drop so my hair hangs down my spine, worshipping the music with my entire body, releasing its heat to snake up my spine to blush my cheeks and chase the chills away.

Electric guitar skates a catharsis through me, freeing inhibitions. Untethered I let the muse use me. Now a puppet guided with the swells of chords and whispers of octave secrets, I unravel, drifting mindlessly away to where music induces virile images of naked skin, nipples chaffed with impatient mouths, and strangers free-fall into each others eyes.

My chest is lifting with exaggerated breath when the music fades out, pulling me back into the moment. Hot, I yank off my sweater, throwing it to the steps. A veined arm reaches out of the mist and snares it in a hand.

That hand tightens into a fist and I watch the biker use my jumper to wipe his face dry as he steps into my vision through the cloud blustering across the dance floor. He breathes in my perfume, then tosses it behind him in a flourish of movement to stare at me with eyes as dark and dangerous as Perdition's oldest alleyway.

The same song starts playing again and he glides through the haze like a stingray circling through murky water. The smoke machine has created so much mist I can't see his legs or feet. It's as if we're standing on a cloud halfway between heaven and hell.

The hidden angel doesn't have a harp, he's a metal god who probably works for Thor conspiring with the warriors tearing up the sky outdoors.

Drawn back to Sveta, I watch him taunt my senses by circling a wide crescent behind me. I refuse to give him the satisfaction of turning around, but I tense regardless.

More mist billows out, submersing me in fine powder, leaving me blind to his movement. I'm stuck in limbo with a sneering guitar which is almost gleeful when it slides back into chaffing slings of whining metal strings.

Clenching my hands, his appearance directly in front of me catches me by surprise. Looking up at him looking down, my heart screams with the music, electricity fires up my blood and my pulse spikes with the six-stringed frenzy.

He hasn't said a word to me, but he doesn't have to.

A commanding hand presses against the base of my back, sticking me to his body like a siamese twin, and he starts to move me. Sveta gives me the penetrating, soul searching, high octane stare that ignites my soul. It's a slow burn like a peat fire, and I rest against him to hide from his intrusive eyes.

I'm a willing marionette in a shrouded cloud of lust and classic rock, breathing in his hot skin now directly beneath my cheek. Closing my eyes, I let him unwind my body in seductive rotations and gyrations. This is my haven, the cave where I hide, the place where I fear no harm or lash-back.

Holding tight, resting my forehead in the curve of his chest, I nest inside him while we bond skin to skin, breath to breath, heartbeat to heartbeat, taunted with mesmerizing movements which hint at the next phase of this dance.

It's an addictive narcotic divorcing me from reality. Hands glide, slide, exploring ribs, muscles, spines, necks, until we're snared with our lips locked together, our legs moving as one, our hips melded, and I succumb to the pressure, opening my mouth and letting him in.

Letting him win.

Relishing his kiss, the biting of his fingers surprises me when he violently pulls away from me, still clamping my head in his hands.

His swallow is so thick it looks painful, and my heart stalls at the rage pouring from his eyes in an endless orange veil. He twists my head, exposing my neck, and stares at the puncture wounds.

I should have left the scarf on.

“What the fuck happened?”

His hands drop, betrayal stark on his face, looking wrong, like graffiti on an estate wall.

“Sveta wait–”

“
Do you know–” he chokes, swallows, and tries again. “...Do you have any idea what I went through today, for you? And you... you... you were with
him
!”

“
It's not what you think–”

My stomach is bottoming out and the old fear bangs the bars back in place. Cruelly letting me taste freedom only to snatch it from me.

“Yes, she was with me.”

Dizziness flays me at the sound of Jowendrhan's voice. Oh god!

“I marked my woman the way you did, but I couldn't stoop to hurting her so much I would leave bruises on her. Unlike you, I can't bring myself to hurt the woman I love!”

But you are! Right now!

Two man-shapes step out of the mist shrouding us, and I know it's over. My peace has just been blown up by the hatred of the vampyre against the neuri.

I can feel Sveta's pain as if I am physically inside his heart.

Needing to hold onto something, vertigo slams me sideways, my world pivoting with the dramatic destruction of my angel looking like a monster.

Oh my god!

He looks enormous.

I'm going to be sick.

The mist closes and I lose him,
them
... alone... again.

Chapter 23

Sveta:

I don't fucking believe this shit! His voice is all over her head, mocking me with an endless loop of sweet fuck me's.

You are the one who abandoned me, asking Venix to change you back to a mortal, aborting our children without thinking twice, without asking for my side of the story, without asking me how your actions would affect me.

You judged me unfairly without even giving me the benefit of the doubt. You ripped my heart out and stomped all over it, but still I'm here, needing you, craving you.

I need you. The babies need you,

I can't discuss this with you fucking me psychically.

I wanted to taste you, to share the moment with you. I miss you.

It's not hard to understand Zena. I. Love. You.

How can I be happy when I know one day Trixie and Rion are going to ask me where Mama is?

Instinct shuts me down, my afternoon playing over in my head, the broken bones, the pain, the ethereal annihilation... for this? I'm torn between wanting to stalk out and cut my losses while I still have an ounce of pride... and diving across the fogged floor to battle that bastard into the afterlife.

I can smell his brother Darise in here, so he didn't come alone. A fair fight as usual. I would expect nothing less from a vampyre.

“Jesus, Zena. How could you do this to me?” I look at her, demanding an answer, my voice gruff and distorting with emotion.

Why? Tell me why!

But she's not even lucid. It cracks my heart wider to see the paralyzing fear on her face, needing to staunch it, but not wanting to be vulnerable with her when she's only going to screw Jo the second I turn my back.

I'm not doing this. You don't fight for women. It proves nothing other than you're a cocksucking dickhead. Fighting doesn't win hearts, it breaks them.

I'm staying in neuri form though, they'll fuck me up, but it'll take them a lot longer to do it. I will not hit him, I'll just block, duck, and make him look like a fucking amateur.

I will block every way I know how, and my reflexes are so sharp from earlier that I would bet my last million that he won't land a punch on me for at least an hour.

He gives me a lethal smile, bloodthirsty fangs elongated, eyes glowing with homicidal silver, his hair white.

I'm glad I've got no shirt on, he's got nothing to hold onto. And thanks to
Božena craving a man with short hair I cut mine to a military buzz, so he can't grip that either.

“
Jowendrhan, don't do this. To her,” I point at Zena.

“
You bruised and battered the mother of my children and expect that to go unpunished?” he sneers, swaggering closer, rotating his shoulders and neck like a fucking hero.

“
Battered?”

My throat goes dry and I flick her a glance, but she's still not with the program. She's not even hearing this, she's receded back into her private hell where everything that matters is destroyed and desecrated.

Fuck, why
is
he doing this to her? Can't he see what it does? I just pulled her out of that crypt and he's just gone and shoved her back in.

“
Did you tell Jo I beat you?” I ask her, trying to engage her, to bring her back to the land of the living.

“
She didn't have to. You bit her black and defaced her body with bruises. Your hand is bruised into her leg. I know she likes it rough, but not that rough.”

I flick my gaze up and down her, keeping one vigilant eye on Jo as I do. She's wearing jeans, and was when I left her earlier too. That means he's seen her without those trousers on today.

Well then, I guess I know exactly where I stand.

I shake my head, shrugging at him, “I'm not fighting you. If it's you she wants, I sure as hell am not gonna stand in her way. Whatever makes her happy, dude. That's the bottom line.” Even if it hurts like Hiroshima.

To make my point I sweep an arm gesture straight from her to him.

“
Coward. I'm going to deliver to you the discipline you gave her. You call yourselves men of honor? Defenders of the innocent against tyranny? You're a fucking hypocrite!”

I shrug again. Whatever dude. Let's just get this done so I can go home and drown my broken heart.

“If I fight you I'm only going to humiliate you again,” I laugh at Jowendrhan, I can't help it, the bastard goads me.

And I am fully aware that Darise is trying to sneak up behind me. He's probably got a fucking tranquilizer dart on him.

Stepping into the middle of the smoggy dance floor, I give her one more stare, still finding it hard to believe that she'd do this to me after the night we had. After the months I've been there for her and he hasn't.

Wow.

I don't care if he fucks me up. Nothing will hurt me more than the scars scoring through my plyx this very second by her betrayal.

I love you. Remember that
, I think to her.

It's all I have, and it's not enough.

The bastard gene kicks in and I look back at her,
Enjoy the show. I'm only letting your boyfriend fuck me up once. He ever touches me again, I'll kill him. I'm doing this for you. He gets to finish the job for you. I'm doing a Zena, needing the bruises on the inside to show on the outside. Enjoy blowing his ego for him Angel, because with a cocksucker like Jo it will never end.

Clenching my jaw so tight my incisors squeak, I face my rival, swallowing back the tears.

Let's do this.

*

Božena:

I can't breathe. I feel like he punched me.

Nothing lasts. I am so fucking cursed. Life is good a day, if I'm lucky, and then it all turns to sewerage.

The urge to cut is so overwhelming I can't think. I hurt so much inside I just want it to stop. I'd do anything to make it stop.

The white powder shielding the dance floor is disorienting, it makes me edgy and paranoid. Flicking back, twisting round and round, turning circles in the same place, I can't see anything.

They've vanished.

Did he just leave me here?

How can he not know when I'm telling the truth? How can he believe Jo?

Retreating, curling into myself, I ball tightly, cradling my legs and sitting on the floor, staring into the mist, waiting.

I've never felt so alone. I've known alone intimately, and this hurts worse than all those times put together. I feel like someone trapped me in a snow-globe and shook it up. I'm in a white smoke blizzard with voices from a nightmare.

Grunts, snuffles, the squeal of rubber on floor like basketball trainers on a court, whooshing sounds like raptors circling in the mist, closing in to bite.

I can't do this.

Crawling over the floor, I scramble to the steps, fumbling my way up, retracing the way over the floor by memory.

Sobbing, the gloom dims and blurs.

I love you, you stupid motherfucker! Cracking, sanity slipping with the intensity of my grief, I cling to the bottom of the bar and scream one long frustrated bellow.

No words will ever express what I'm going through. My heart laid bare, truth, honesty, even mind reading isn't enough to show I meant it!
I meant it!

Screeaaaaaaaaam!

So hysterical I can't breathe, hyperventilation constricts my ability to inhale, but I relish the burn, the agony, the hope I'll suffocate and never regain consciousness.

Standing, unable to think coherently, I run, bolting for the dark passage, snatching a bottle off the bar and sprinting with my veins bursting.

Swiping the door open, screwing the tears out of my left eye with the heel of my hand, I launch the bottle at the mirror, shattering it, fracturing my image like my soul is currently fragmenting into that many millions of brittle segments.

Dropping to my knees I crawl to the glass, picking up a piece and stabbing my arm, then my leg, howling, sobbing,
screaming
!

No more. No fucking more!

I am not doing this again.

It ends now. Right fucking now.

Slicing my palm, I change hands, using my thigh like a pincushion, stabbing the shards in, slipping in my blood, until I'm trembling violently, choking my guts out on sobs.

Sagging back, I press my cheek into the specks of glinting mirror, head butting it again and again until my nose throbs with agony.

Fuck you all!

*

Sveta:

I can feel it. In my plyx.

Her agony is searing through me with such fury I can't concentrate on the fuckers trying to nail my ass to the floor.

“
Cut the crap, Jo. Something's wrong! Zena needs help!”

“
Nice try pretty boy. Misdirection won't fly. Nothing is going to save your ass from us.”

“
Jesus Christ, Jowendrhan. Use your mojo abilities and just listen to the ether. Can't you hear that? Fuck, I feel like she's cutting my heart into crudites.”

This distraction was all they needed and now I have taser prongs stuck in my chest, in my thigh, and in my neck, twitching like I'm having seizures. Maybe I am.

Wriggling, trying to get closer to her, volts sizzle through me and the shock is asphyxiating.

Zena! ZENA! Hold on baby! I'm coming!

Knuckles connect with my eye socket, someone holding my hands and zipping up the plastic tie strap, pointed metal swiftly kicking, but all I can hear are her screams.

Oh god. The killer could be in here. Right now.

Closing my eyes, doing my best to ignore the bastards using me as their football, I send a pulse of plyx out, using it to do the reconnaissance for me.

She's alone, in the ladies powder room, her vitals dropping, her pulse spiking erratically.

Fuck.

“
Zena!
” I bellow, needing her to hear me.

Fuck!

Helpless, electricity pumping into me, the toxicity reaches lethal levels when the misfiring of my own heart oxidizes my blood.

We're not human, we never will be.

Straining against the plastic binding my wrists behind my back, holding my ankles together, roaring, I try to snap the fuckers, but it's industrial strength, my veins are scorching with effort, my head pounding, my sight blinded by the furious light blasting at me from the vampyres.

Cold sweat slicks my spine, running down my forehead into my eye, burning, acting as a flame accelerant for the web of volts dancing over my skin in a static frenzy.

Kicked, butted, punched, zapped, the assault is endless.

“
Zenaaaaaaaa!
”

My nose shatters, blasting my cranium with searing throbs, my elbow pops when my arms are yanked forcefully the wrong way, dislocating my shoulder, something stabs through my hand, severing tendons from bone, a barrel placed against my chest, the shotgun report detonates my ability to focus, the metal spiraling through me is flogging my flesh with incineration.

Jesus, that hurt like a motherfucker, and not in a good way.

Panting, my last coherent thought as the mist turns orange, plyx bleeding out of me with rapid ascent... I must have a sign stuck on my back today, saying 'kick my ass'.

*

Zarak:

Another meeting. These folks sure love their meetings.

I look at Arsay, pausing outside Pravus and sweeping the night once more, knowing the stalker was here, but he shields his spore so well I still can't identify him.

“He was here,” I state, looking at the First.

Arsay scratches his stubble, “Yup. He was.”

Akae rounds the corner, projecting his voice, “Whose inside?”

“
Božena and Sveta. That's his Ghost,” I say, indicating the Harley.

“
Do you feel the vibe like someone was here watching?” he says, catching up with us.

I nod to Akae, gesturing that we'd better get inside for the precious meeting.

Arsay pauses when he opens the door, holding his hand up, indicating stealth.
I smell blood.

I recognize the scent, nodding agreement to his observation, “It's Božena!”

He halts me with a titanium hand on my chest, “Electricity, there are more.” With eyes imploding and fire igniting in their depths, he rounds on me, “I'll take care of Božena, you two do damage control with the rest of them.”

He moves so fast I have to leap to catch the door, sneaking into the white mist, using demonic supra-sense to trace the scents.

“Darise and Jowendrhan,” I say to Akae, surprised.

“
Sveta's almost dead. Move it!”