Lunacy Read online

  "You're going to frighten the entree, Jamison. When you do that, the adrenaline makes them taste bad. All stringy and gamey."

  "Whoawhoawhoa," I said, holding up my hands. "I never said I was on the menu."

  Zillah grinned at me with teeth like a piranha. "When was the last time you asked your hamburger if it wanted to be nommed on?"

  "Fair point," I grudgingly agreed. "So is that why you've kidnapped me, then? To drink the blood of a god and gain some sort of power?" I looked to Enoch and his blue eyes sparkled with mirth.

  "We have much bigger plans than that, Pet." Before I could bark a retort, he added, "Eat first, then I'll answer your questions."

  Not wanting to argue and waste more of my already depleted energy, I followed Enoch to a small table in the adjacent dining room and sat in the chair he'd pulled out for me.

  I rested my elbows on the table and leaned in closer to Enoch. "Mind explaining while I eat, rather than waiting and dragging this out longer than necessary?"

  He shrugged and the history lesson began. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth-"

  "We want to give her facts, not fairy tales, Enoch." Jamison cut him off, setting down a huge plate of food in front of me and another at the seat beside me. He turned the chair there backwards and straddled it.

  I was staring at the plate before me, suddenly feeling hungrier than I'd ever been in my life. Jamison watched me salivate, leaning in close with a chuckle and nudging me with his elbow. "Are you going to eat that food or fuck it, girl?"

  I narrowed my eyes and shook the fork at him menacingly. "Just savoring the aroma, here. Don't ruin this for me!"

  I dug in with gusto, listening as Jamison summed up the situation and ate his own plate of breakfast. "Do any internet search on Norse mythology, Skadhi, and Ragnarok -the doom of the gods- and you'll get half of what's going on. Every monster you thought might be under your bed or in your closet has some basis in fact. The same goes for 'mythological deities.' The Norse are some of the oldest, and most powerful.

  "Skadhi wasn't even a goddess. Not really. She was a jotunn, a giantess seeking revenge for the death of her father at the hands of the Aesir – the gods. She demanded recompense and ended up married to the god of the sea. Didn't work out, and apparently she hooked up with Odin and had a few babies. She was worshipped regardless, but her own powers are actually minimal.”

  I nodded, swallowing the large mouthful of syrup drenched pancakes I’d stuffed into my mouth. “If the things I can do are ‘minimal,’ then what the hell do you consider to be a big and scary super power?”

  Jamison smirked. “Moving mountains, literally. Raising armies of bodies from the grave to fight for you. Controlling someone’s mind from afar, or taking control of their body by shoving your soul into them and forcing theirs out.” He shrugged and the mere idea of being on the receiving end of any of those things chilled me to the bone. “There are many things worse than those. That’s just a sample for you to roll around in that pretty head of yours.

  “But here’s the kicker. I’m sure you’ve heard of Loki, supposed son of Odin but also of jotunn parentage?” Without waiting for a response, he charged onward. “He’s an integral part of their Ragnarok, their big apocalypse. Because of his involvement in the death of Baldr, the Aesir wanted him punished. They bound him to three large stones in a cave. Skadhi was the one to place a poisonous snake above him, and it drips its venom onto him constantly. When it does actually burn him, he convulses so violently that they very earth itself trembles.”

  I whistled lightly, trying to take it all in. “So she’s on the big bad mischief maker’s shit list, I take it.”

  “And therefore, so are you. You and Skadhi are essentially one and the same now.” Jamison said it with a sort of finality that stunned me for a second.

  “What part are you all playing in this? Are you kidnapping me to protect me from these Norse gods?” I’d just finished my meal and I suddenly felt sick inside, struggling to keep all that delicious food down.

  Enoch and Zillah shared a look, a dark secret passing between them filled with promises of things I didn’t want to dwell on. Jamison’s grey eyes looked almost apologetic as Enoch’s chair made a loud scraping noise on the floor in his haste to stand. Before I had time to react, he’d yanked me from my seat and held me firmly in place, his arms like chains of iron wrapped around my arms and waist. Zillah rose from her own seat, slow and stealthy like the predator she was. I lifted my feet from the ground and kicked over my chair in an effort to keep her away from me, the urge to survive conquering any fear I might have been feeling.

  The woman clucked her tongue reproachfully after dodging the chair, coming to stand so close to me that I couldn’t even get enough space between us to try and fight her off. My legs barely budged, feeling like I was slamming them off concrete. For being so petite, she felt like she was made of stone. “Silly girl. Vampires, or Methuselahs in our case, are survivalists. We do what we must to continue to see the centuries come and go. If we can ensure that this Norse apocalypse can never come to pass, why wouldn’t we do so to carry on indefinitely?”

  This close, I noticed that she was the main source of the blood smell I’d picked up before. Her teeth were all the fangs of a carnivore once more, and I couldn’t fight the slight thread of horror that crept into my voice as I spit in her face. “Your breath reeks of blood, you bitch.” My false bravado wasn't very convincing, even to me.

  She wiped the spittle from her cheek and grinned, her smile seeming wider than it should have, like her jaw would open unnaturally far. “What you think of me matters not, girl. You and the unfortunate giantess inside of you die here.”

  Enoch’s arms tightened, making it hard for me to even draw a breath. “The first taste is yours, Zillah,” his voice was slightly deeper and I didn’t want to know what they were thinking, but I knew it didn’t all involve my blood. I watched her drag the tip of her tongue across her pouty lips before she stepped in too close for me to see her face. A gasp was dragged from me as she gripped a fistful of my hair and yanked my head to the side, baring my neck.

  No other words were needed, and the vampiress struck. I felt her teeth sink into my throat like a thousand needles, and everything around me was drowned out by the grotesque slurping noises as she drank heavily of my blood. Enoch’s fingers tangled in my hair in a much more gentle way and Zillah released her hold, stepping forward so our bodies were flush against each other. Her hands slid to rest on my hips and an involuntary whimper escaped me. Even the parts of her body where a woman was supposed to be soft felt like marble.

  Enoch hushed me, pressing lingering kisses to the other side of my throat, dragging his tongue up my pulse as he pulled my head backward. His fangs sank into my flesh and a deep, throaty noise almost like a purr filled the air. My brain was getting foggy, and it took me a few seconds to realize the sound had come from me. Something about his bite was both numbing and exciting, all at once. His grip on me shifted slightly, his hand roughly gripping my breast and pulling me more fully against the front of his body. Judging from the solid curve pressed into my lower back, the heat of my blood sliding down his gullet was making him very happy indeed.

  Tears slid unbidden down my cheeks at the thought of what they might do to my body once they'd finished feeding. I slightly assuaged my own fears as I realized that it wouldn't matter, because I'd be dead and not trapped in this mortal shell anymore.

  My limbs were getting tingly, and I could feel the beating of my heart slowing. Dark spots were filling the edges of my vision and I did nothing. I willed my body to move, do something, try and at least do some damage before the end, but it refused and started going limp in the solid, crushing arms of the vampires.

  Zillah was sated first, making a show of obscenely licking any traces of my blood from her lips. I heard a strange grating, rattling noise that seemed far away to me. It was the sound of me still attempting to breathe, dragging ragged snatches of air
into lungs that were quickly failing me.

  It could have been a few minutes, or a few hours, I really don’t know how much longer Enoch pulled the blood from my veins with his insistent lips and tongue. Eventually, he’d had his fill and simply let go of me, discarding me like the wrapper from a quarter pounder with cheese. My body slumped in a boneless heap to the floor, my eyes staring helplessly, lacking in the strength to even close my eyelids. All sound around me was muffled and my vision shifted slightly as one of them nudged me with their foot.

  I heard someone speaking, as if they were mumbling in another room a great distance away. My view of everything changed once more as Jamison lifted me in his arms, my body having the rigidity of a ragdoll. “I’ll take care of it,” was all he said.

  A last desperate breath rattled from my lips and everything around me became quiet, peaceful. Darkness swallowed me, and the last thing I felt was my soul –or was it Skadhi’s?-- slipping away from me. Then there was nothing, just an abyss of eternal night as empty as my veins.

  Chapter 18

  The screech of my alarm clock made my eyes snap open and I instantly regretted it. I closed them again and curled up into a ball under the covers, a pulsing migraine making me feel like I had the worst hangover ever. I whimpered and opened my eyes in the muted darkness, feeling the throb abate enough for me to not want to shoot myself to take away the pain. A glutton for punishment, I slowly peeked over the edge of the comforter, satisfied when I wasn’t rewarded with a lance of agony through my eyeballs like I was expecting from the light of the rising sun creeping through my curtains.

  I dragged myself from bed with a reluctant sigh, grabbing the clothes I’d laid out the night before and shuffling my feet across the floor to my bathroom. For some reason, I had a feeling this Wednesday was going to be rotten like a Monday. I didn’t even bother with my happy wake up music, merely standing under the fall of water in the shower and soaking up the serenity.

  I wasn’t looking forward to the lessons Jynxx and I were undergoing after school with his pack and Elomina. All the politics and courtly posturing bullshit was tedious, and I hated formalities. It was part of the reason I’d fought so hard to keep my parents from putting me into Savage Academy. Judging from my headache, it was all more taxing than I’d originally thought it would be. It was making homework a total chore. However, I was grateful that today wasn’t a day where I had gym class. Always looking on the bright side of things, that’s me!

  I shut off the water and got dressed, putting my hair into a loose braid and not bothering with any makeup. Today, I was just not about looking flawless.

  Bag over my shoulder, I kissed Mom and Dad goodbye and plodded outside to wait for Jynxx to roll up. We’d decided to switch days driving, since we ended up at the same place after school anyway. With the exorbitant price of gasoline, it was the smartest thing to do.

  Less than a minute of me walking down our huge driveway later, Jynxx pulled in with his little gunmetal grey Nissan 300ZX, a cute car that nearly put my Stratus to shame. I climbed in and he turned the car around, sparing a second to give me a worried glance. “You okay, Kitten? You look tired.”

  I nodded, settling back into the seat with a soft sigh. “I guess I just slept like hell last night. Woke up with a migraine bad enough to almost knock me back out this morning.”

  “Ouch,” he sympathized, shifting the car smoothly into drive. Manual transmissions were so much sexier. “We’ll make sure to grab you something for breakfast once we get to school, then. Knowing you, you probably popped a few of those migraine meds on an empty stomach.”

  Blushing a little, I purposely turned my gaze out the window. “Perhaps,” I muttered. “When did you become the expert on me, anyway?”

  He smirked, looking at me from the corner of his eye for a second. “We’ve been in classes together since grade school, Kaysh. You think I’ve never paid attention to you before? The smart and too proud to try to hide it rich girl with a loud mouth… Do you really think I never noticed you?” I frowned a bit at the loud mouthed comment, and he went on. “Now, did I ever think I had a chance before? Not so much.”

  I laughed, unable to stay in a totally downtrodden mood in the light of his good humor this morning. “What makes you think you have one now, peasant?”

  Jynxx snorted at that and we pulled out onto the long strip of back road that was Maple Lane. “I know I have a chance now,” he began, the timbre of his voice sending a shiver up my spine. “It’s just a matter of waiting until the right moment to take it.” He rapidly double shifted with the skill of a NASCAR driver, going from fifteen to about seventy in seconds. The transition was totally smooth and it pressed the back of his hand firmly against my thigh; the heat, even through my jeans, warmed me all the way down to my toes. My heart was racing faster than the pistons in the engine, and it took everything I had in me not to sigh aloud at his touch.

  Oh, yeah… He definitely had a chance.

  Jynxx down-shifted at the end of the road and we slowed back down to normal New York speed: fifty-five. Energy thrummed in the air between us, but the inside of the car didn’t light up like the Fourth of July this time around. We’d been fighting hard to maintain that sort of control the last few days. We couldn’t have our eyes going all super nova in the middle of class, or in front of anyone not part of the Clan. There were enough issues between the two of us without having to worry about becoming government lab rats.

  Unable to stand the smug smirk on his face after a few moments of silence, I finally found my voice again. “If I didn’t have a test today—“

  Jynxx’s large hand settled on top of my thigh, his skin hot enough to scald, and my words died on my lips. “Don’t worry, brainiac. I’ll make sure you get to class on time.”

  Beyond flustered, I crossed my arms over my chest and let the color flooding my face speak for me. I felt like a total fool for saying anything at all. Now he'd never take me seriously...

  "Jynxx... Pull the car over." My voice didn't really sound like me. It was distant, deeper than it should have been. Darker in a way that I could see affected him.

  He let out a nervous chuckle. "We'll be at school in about fifteen minutes, Kaysh. Are you sure you want me to do that?" I had to hand it to him, he was giving me every opportunity to chicken out, and he was being a perfect gentleman about the whole ordeal.

  After what seemed to be an eternity, as his car gobbled up the road between indecision and finality, I spoke one word. "Yes."

  He glanced around to see where we were, making sure no cars were coming in either direction, and headed off onto a little back dirt road, finally parking well out of sight of any passersby. He turned to look at me and I met his gaze steadily. "So, what exactly is on your agenda today, kitten?"

  "Mainly for you to stop talking," I said with a smirk of my own, leaning in close to the lips I'd been wanting to taste for years. His breath was warm, and he waited, like he needed to be absolutely certain that this was what I wanted. So close, but still I hesitated. What if I sucked at kissing? What if my breath was bad, or I was too aggressive? Too submissive?

  Jynxx cupped my face in his hand, sliding his thumb across my lower lip and resting his forehead to mine. "Your control is slipping, Kaysh. You're projecting. Hard." His words were soft, but they totally threw me and I tried to back away, my bravado fading like a campfire during a rainstorm.

  His grip tightened ever so slightly, not enough to hurt me, but enough so I couldn't pull away from him. "Please," he breathed. "Don't take this away from me, now." I could almost feel him tremble, and I knew then that I couldn't let this moment slip away from either of us.

  I closed my eyes and sealed the deal, pressing my slightly parted lips to his in the first kiss that had ever really meant anything to me. His mouth was soft, warm, and tentative in his exploration as he deepened the kiss. A soft moan rose from my lips and was drowned out by a deeper growl from his, the energy rising between us covering my flesh in goose bumps. The fee
l of his tongue wrapping around mine sped my pulse and tightened muscles low in my abdomen. I had the undeniable urge to touch him, to feel his flesh bare beneath my fingers.

  His hand slid down the curve of my neck, traveling across my shoulder and down my arm, covering my hand with his and twining our fingers together. My heart skipped a beat at the tender gesture, but there'd be time for that later. I leaned in closer to him, reaching across his lap to the other side of his seat, my fingers finally closing around the lever to drop his seat back. It did so with a lurch that startled him slightly, but I was on top of him before he had time to protest, claiming his mouth with a fervor that surprised us both. My hands slid over the hard planes of his chest and abdomen, my fingertips committing every piece of him to memory in case I never got another chance to hold on to such perfection.

  He groaned into my lips and I could tell from where I was seated that he was happy to have me right where I was. I slid my fingers up under his shirt, toying with his belt buckle, wanting him to be totally exposed to me. His big hands closed around mine, stopping my exploration. A small sound of frustration crawled from me and he pushed me back enough to look up into my eyes. His irises were drowned in amber, but my own glow hadn't risen to meet his.

  "Kacea..." His breathing was quick, but mine was absolutely ragged, so I sat back, his eyelids fluttering for a moment as our hips were fully pressed together. I was silent, waiting for him to say something profound and Earth shattering. Instead, his lips twisted into a smirk and he said, "I told you I had a chance."

  My eye twitched and I punched him right in the navel. "You're a dick, Jynxx!"

  He laughed at that, and ran his fingers through my hair, hooking it back behind my ear. His face and voice softened a bit and the usual black of his eyes bled back into his irises. "Seriously though, kitten... You don't want your first time to be in a car."