“Really? Tassos of the Water Cleave? That father will make me pay?” Everyone in the large room laughed. “Who do you think told us to torture you more than the whelp still clinging to life in the other room? Your clan’s lieutenant, Tassos, has washed his hands of you, fledgling. You will live or die, and life will go on. Are you strong enough to survive? I fear your kin is not. And we have no patience for frailty.”
After losing his teeth, including his fangs, and having his fingers broken one at a time, Orion was tossed into a cramped, dark room that smelled of death and rotting magir. Moans and pleas for mercy meant nothing to him, but the dim rattle of Spiro’s heart he recognized.
He crawled over the broken and the lost, spearing his leg on a sharp rib bone, and found his best friend. “Spiro?”
Spiro tried to talk but had to spit out mouthfuls of bloode. “G-good r-run.”
Not familiar with the panic crawling over him with the tread of a thousand prickly legs, Orion did his best to be strong, though the pain of his regrowing fangs and claws stung. “Take my bloode. We need to escape.”
“C-can’t.” Spiro’s organs had spilled over the floor, his body dark with bloode and other black stains Orion couldn’t identify. Runes had been carved into the bits of flesh left on his body, though the eyelid over his left eye had been torn out along with the orb. Like Orion, he had lost his nails and teeth. But Spiro was also missing his limbs.
Orion just stared, wondering how long he’d been out that they’d had the time to carve into his kin this way. He frowned then wished he hadn’t, his mouth on fire. His gums throbbed as his new teeth cut through healing flesh, the pain nearly taking him under until he shook it off. “Come. We have to escape if only to go back and beat my father.”
It was an unwritten rule that prisoners in vampire clashes remain sequestered, beaten but able to fight when the clan came to their rescue. At any given time, the Water Cleave clan had a good dozen prisoners in holding cells awaiting their kin to get them. Then the clans would battle, good training for them all, and go their separate ways. Why had Tassos left him and Spiro to fend for themselves? His father had always been a cold but just bastard. Orion respected him a hell of a lot more than their weak patriarch. Or at least, he had.
“Take my bloode to heal,” Spiro offered, his voice faint. “I see darkness gathering close.” His voice grew clearer and softer at the same time. “Death comes for me, brother. I seek its embrace.”
Before Orion could try to force his bloode into his kin, or even turn to fight the near-dead and battered group of lamia and lone medusa, a tall man with dark hair approached, glowing in the darkness. He wore a toga that clung to one shoulder and exposed a broad chest corded with muscle. His dark eyes and aura stank of power, and he had the handsome good looks of a hero or god. Orion watched him with a wary readiness.
“That had to hurt.” The male nodded at Spiro, now fading to dust.
“It did.”
“What about that?” The male pointed to a spot over Orion’s shoulder, and Orion half turned to keep the male in sight while staring at the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, no longer buried in the dark but illuminated by an artificial light.
She wasn’t wearing any clothing, and Orion watched himself, his own head buried between her legs on a kitchen counter, of all places, sucking her into an orgasm that had him hard in a heartbeat, the pain from his earlier beating no longer present. The female had an aura of neon blue around her, and they laughed and dove into the floor, which turned from tiles to water, dark yet clear, filled with magic and lust and love.
“Now that looks painful,” the male with him said, both of them floating, their hair waving around in the water, while they watched Orion and the woman—Kaia—swimming together.
Orion knew this for a memory, one of many coming back to him.
“Painful?”
“To be such a jackass to the woman who made you smile like that.” The male pointed at the image of Orion and Kaia having so much fun together. Orion had no idea he could feel so free or laugh so much.
Then he saw her crying, and his heart felt torn from his body. She looked awful in her grief, beautiful and terrible, like a piece of life too early snuffed out.
“Who the fuck are you?” Orion growled at the male now standing with him on dry land, staring at the back of Kaia’s house in Lake City.
“Really, the lack of education in you people is horrendous. I’ll be talking to your mistress about this, don’t think I won’t.” The male sniffed and brushed back his long black hair. “I’m Morpheus, Orion, son of Tassos. You can call me Mr. Morpheus.” He grinned. “The way that lovely female calls your sexy magician Mr. Mormo.”
Orion blinked. “You mean Bella and Mormo? Wait, you think Mormo is sexy?”
“He’s running scared, but never fear, I’ll tag that sexy bastard if it’s the last thing I do.”
“Good luck.” Orion sobered as he stared at the back of Kaia’s house. “Why are we here?”
“We’re studying truths, of course. Let’s go take a look.” Morpheus changed into normal clothes but looked as powerful as he had before, his eyes no longer human, gold light pouring from his eye sockets. “Follow me, vryko.”
He reluctantly followed the male through a richly appointed domicile, up to a third floor where he heard familiar sounds and a breathy moan that put his back up.
Morpheus wiggled his brows. “Sounds like someone is having fun. Let’s take a look, shall we?” He pushed open the door, and there lay Kaia, fornicating with a being full of darkness and power.
Orion would have stopped the obscenity because Kaia looked to be in real pain.
“No, wait.”
He was forced to watch as Kaia, looking old and with white, not black hair, rode her lover, facing away from him, straddling his waist while the male splayed his legs wide on the bed. He had ink-black skin and leathery wings that fluttered as he pumped into Kaia. His face remained hidden behind her though his arms kept her in place, his hands huge, talon-like, as he scored into her flesh and dragged handfuls of her blood to his mouth.
The licking and sucking sounds added to her misery, until Orion was frothing at the mouth to help her and destroy the abomination she mated with.
“Wait and look,” Morpheus ordered, holding Orion back with just one hand, his strength ridiculously impressive.
Kaia lifted herself from what could only be a demon, and as she lay back on the bed next to him, offering herself, he saw her face subtly shift, becoming that of the bitch who’d caught him in the first place—Sabine, Kaia’s mother.
Relieved, he couldn’t help grimacing at the full sight of the demon. As much as he looked human with a handsome face and muscular body, his wings and claws said demon. Not to mention the serpentine dick that was about three feet long and barbed had to be painful in the extreme. Dear Night, what had Sabine been doing with this creature?
“You mean, demon, not creature. That’s P-A-Z-U-Z-U,” Morpheus spelled out. “We try not to say his name too often in dreams.”
But the demon looked up at them anyway and smiled. “Ah, Morpheus. I have missed you.”
“Sorry, it’s not mutual. Can’t you put that thing away?” Morpheus pointed to the snaking phallus slithering in the air. It caressed Sabine as if it had a will of its own.