Seth ran to the building, absolutely sure Anri was here. He could feel Anri’s fear as if it were his own, a solid ball of tension like lead in his stomach. He had no plan. There was no time for a plan. Anri needed him, and he needed him right now.
It was getting dark quickly as the sun disappeared below the industrial horizon. The temperature plummeted as the sun disappeared, but he didn’t feel it even though his breath fogged around his face as he ran.
“Seth, over here!” Simone called. He bolted to her.
“How are you not out of breath?” she panted, holding her side.
“I’m a runner. We need a plan.”
“That’s what I was trying to tell you!” she exclaimed, pinching the bridge of her nose. They stood before a set of dilapidated concrete steps leading up to a small side door, which was rusted out and open just a crack. Simone looked around, then leaned over to him and whispered, “Are you sure he’s in there?”
He nodded to her. He could feel Anri, they were so close.
She seemed satisfied with his answer. “I want a plan, too, but how are we supposed to plan for a million unknowns? The plan is that we creep in and scope the place out, then make a new plan.”
He considered for a moment, but he didn’t have any better ideas. “Alright. I’ll go first. Stay close. Let’s not split up, that’s like rule number one of bad horror movies.”
“Seth, no offense,” she said placatingly, “you’re not, ah…well, I’m vampire. Maybe I should go first. You know, healing and faster and all that…”
He scowled and almost argued with her. Realizing he was wasting time, and that she was right, he swallowed his pride and tempered his overwhelming need to rush in. He bit his lip ring, worrying it between his teeth as he nodded his assent.
She nodded back, stepping around him. The relief in her eyes as she lay a comforting hand on his arm told him she had been worried that he would argue with her. The scream of grinding metal announced their entry, echoing through the cavernous factory. She cringed and the tense and uncomfortable look they shared would have been comical in another setting. When nothing else made a sound, Simone shrugged and stepped into the dark. Seth followed on her heels.
Drafty voices echoed through the room like ghosts. There was no way their entry had gone undetected, he realized, his stomach dropping. A light flickered, so distant that it seemed miles away as opposed to just on the other side of the factory floor. He looked at Simone, barely able to make out her silhouette in the near darkness. She nodded for him to follow her, then headed towards the light. They crept slowly, backs against the wall until they were positioned in a place where he hoped that the people in the room would not be able to see them as they moved across the open factory floor.
The light intensified as a door opened and a dark clad figure walked out. “Who’s there!?” the figure demanded in an exaggerated masculine voice.
Seth recognized the voice immediately as the guy with the crossbow from the alley. The same one who shot Anri. He and Simone both crouched against the wall, fully exposed if he looked in their direction. Seth hoped he was nightblind from the light in the room, and that nothing they were wearing was reflective.
Luck was on their side as the man looked around but didn’t seem to spot them. Simone placed a hand on his shoulder and nodded, but he had no idea what she was trying to tell him.
The hatred that voice incited in him was so strong it staggered him, sending his adrenaline surging. He had never felt hatred this intense. The guy took a hesitant step towards the door that Seth and Simone had snuck in just a few minutes earlier.
And then Simone was gone. One breath she was there with him, crouched against the wall, the next she was running across the floor with inhuman speed. He was both impressed and scared at the way she jumped on the guy’s back, wrapping her arms over his face. There was a muffled cry and then they both collapsed to the ground in a shadowy heap of scrambling limbs.
He made a split decision. She was vampire, she could handle herself, and Anri needed him now. He didn’t stick around to watch, instead he sprinted across the floor faster than he had ever run before. One glance over his shoulder as he ducked into the room showed him nothing, Simone and the man from the alley were gone from his sight. He couldn’t see them, but he smelled blood. He wished her luck, hoping the blood wasn’t hers, and grabbed the doorknob.
He hesitated for just a moment, wondering if he should go and try to help Simone, but intense waves of pain, terror, and nausea washed through him. Anri’s emotions, bringing him back to the moment. He couldn’t wait, he just had to hope Simone was okay. He crept inside the door.
The room was lit by an oil lantern on the floor, the same kind his family used when they used to go camping. His eyes locked onto Anri, strapped upside down to some type of gurney, black tubes duct taped to his wrists which ran to the floor. Thick leather belts secured him to the table at his wrists, ankles and forehead. Rage grew, a deep well of hatred and anger. It was too much, what they were doing to his vampire. To his Anri.
He followed the tubing with his eyes, watching as it drained Anri’s blood into a weird pattern carved into the floor. The blood filled the pattern and was somehow boiling from the symbol into a red fog. He blinked twice, trying to comprehend what he saw.
It didn’t matter what was happening there, he had to help Anri, had to get him away. He ran towards Anri, mindless with need. He was flying through the air in the next second, confused and surprised as his back slammed into a wall. The impact painfully knocked the air out of his lungs.
As he lay on the ground attempting to remind his body to breathe again, Angelina click-clacked over in a pair of ridiculous black stilettos. He recognized her instantly from the memory he had shared with Anri. Her cold doll face scowled down at him.
“Who the hell are you?” Her voice was cold. Without waiting for an answer she kicked him with her sharp toed shoes, hitting him in what felt like his kidney. Any breath he had managed to recapture fled his lungs and he closed his eyes against the pain, curling up around his stomach, gasping pathetically.
“Stay here!” she hissed at him. The words felt physically heavy and he wondered if she was using magic on him. There was power in her words, but it seemed to slide around him without contact, like rain on a window. Eyes closed, he waited for her to kick him again, but she didn’t. Another second passed and she clicked away from him, apparently satisfied he posed no further threat.
She circled back around to Anri, her back to him. The blood on the floor boiled, fizzing and popping, as impossible as it seemed. As it boiled, it evaporated into a bloody mist which was coagulating in the air, clumping together into larger and larger droplets while he watched.
As the droplets of Anri’s blood collected together, the air in the room grew heavy and charged, as if he was standing too close to a high tension powerline. On an instinctive level he knew that something big was coming. He finally caught his breath, still panting with exertion, but the heavy air in the room made it difficult to breathe.
Angelina clamped off the tubing and roughly yanked it out of Anri’s arms. “Can’t have you bleeding to death, no, that wouldn’t do,” she said to him, but mostly to herself. Anri whimpered. Seth’s need to go to him burned through his system, but he forced himself to wait.
The droplets collected together into a fluid ball of blood, more solid than the mist had been. It floated inches above the floor above the center of the symbol, growing larger and more solid as more of Anri’s blood continued to boil up from the floor.
“Justin!” Angelina barked. She looked around for someone, and he assumed she was looking for the guy who shot Anri. “Jason!” she tried next. When nobody responded she yelled out, “Whatever your name is, get in here!”
Still no one came. Maybe Simone had incapacitated him. God, he hoped Simone was okay.
“I’m gonna sacrifice him next. Je-sus H. Christ,” she huffed to herself, brushing her hands over her smart looking slacks.
She pulled a lever on one side of the gurney, then walked around the to the other side, giving a wide berth to both the floating blood ball and to Anri’s face.
Anri’s eyes were closed tightly, his face lined with pain. Seth could still feel it, but it was dulled down to a narrow slit. More than that, he could feel Anri’s bloodlust. Despite never having experienced it before, he instantly recognized Anri’s hunger as a tangible thing in his own stomach. It was like a living creature inside him, clawing his insides trying to find a way out. He forced himself to look at Anri, to think of a way to save him, to do anything else other than think of this sudden desire for blood. He would lick Anri’s blood from the floor if it would stop the crawling need in his belly. How did Anri live with this?
Angelina clicked a lever on the other side of the gurney, swinging it up so that Anri was laying on his back now, face up to the ceiling. Anri’s eyes flew open and his nostrils flared as he scented Seth. He knew Anri could smell him, knew that was why he began struggling against his bonds.
There were only a few inches between Anri’s boiling blood on the floor and his face. Heat pushed against his face and he forced himself to back away from the symbol, from the blood. He hadn’t realized that he had been crawling towards it while feeling Anri’s deep hunger. The hunger, Anri’s lust, burned deep inside him, scratching and clawing. This blood, he knew it, recognized it. Anri’s blood would help, would ease his pain. It would take the pain away. It was so close now, he could almost reach it…
The hunger was gone with a severe, stunning force, as if a door had been slammed hard in his chest. It was immediately accompanied by a unique, heavy emptiness the like of which he had never experienced before. The thin and fragile connection they shared, somehow Anri had been able to slam it shut, and his whole body ached with the sudden emptiness that consumed him. Anri’s blood no longer looked appealing. Now it looked like lava or molten iron and glowed with heat and magic, dangerous and deadly.
He swayed, dizzy with emptiness and relief. Shivering, he realized how close he had been to touching that molten, magic-heavy blood. He could still feel it, his tongue stretched out towards the crimson fluid, the heat of the boiling blood a solid pressure against his face.
The air crackled and the symbol shifted, drawing his attention back to the present. Blueish grey sparks of electricity arced randomly across.the blood still in the symbol on the floor. Still the blood boiled and the ball grew larger. Something primal inside him demanded him to flee, told him he wanted to be as far away from this place as possible. He scrambled across the floor towards Anri, sure he didn’t want to be close when the spell was finished.
The bloody ball began to rotate, slowly at first, and then faster and faster. It spun dizzyingly, then began to undulate wildly until it twisted into the shape of a blood red bird. The air felt supercharged, as if he was in the center of a thunderstorm, lightning striking around him. The smell of ozone suddenly filled the room, accompanied by the sound of crackling. The empty space around him thickened like syrup.
The ball was no longer just the shape of a bird, it was a bird, its feathers red and slick with blood. It had become a grotesque amalgamation of a German shepard sized crow.
“Yes!” Angelina squealed, clapping like a child at Christmas. “It’s almost done! He’s coming!” She ripped the tape from Anri’s mouth without remorse. “Your dinner is nearly here, Anri dear,” she giggled gleefully.
Pure hatred for her fueled Seth, breaking him from his disorientation. All of his muscles demanded that he pounce on her and rip out her throat. Instead, he backed away from the portal, his fear of what was coming through it outweighing his immediate desire to punish Angelina.
Angelina took a large knife and sliced the leather straps holding Anri’s head down, then moved down to the ones at his feet. She sliced at these as well, and Anri’s body went taut, but he still didn’t move. Ignoring him, she returned her attention to the bloody crow.
A strange wind began to blow. Seth scooted along the wall, trying to get closer to Anri while also trying to get away from the symbol. Maybe he could sneak up and free Anri while Angelina was distracted with whatever was coming through the portal. It was a plan, it was something, so he embraced it. What happened after that, he had no idea how, but he’d deal with it. Air swirled around them all, and then…it stopped. Everything seemed too still.
Before he could even move the wind ripped open again, as if he were in the eye of a tornado, the wind and pressure sucking everything forward with incredible force. It swirled violently, then slowly died down. Seth noticed the pressure and electricity in the air were gone, making the room feel way too normal.
The bloody bird was a solid thing now, a black crow dripping with Anri’s blood. The sound of blood hitting the floor was too loud, echoing around the room. Anri’s blood still boiled, a red glow beneath the strange, levitating bird. It cocked its head to the side as it appraised the situation with uncanny intelligence.
Seth moved again, slowly edging closer to Anri, trying not to draw anyone’s attention. The crow remained motionless, but watched him with its intelligent eyes.
Angelina spoke in unintelligible words that made Seth’s head feel fuzzy. He couldn’t quite understand the sounds she made, but he could feel them take form. They swirled and twisted from her mouth into greenish-yellow cord, reminding Seth of spider’s webbing. She moved her hands as if she was taking the swirling webbing and wrapping it, and the hazy, floating webbing followed her movements, wrapping around the summoned crow. The webbing orbited around the crow three times, each strand coating it with a yellowish glow. Angelina stopped speaking, now focused on the movements with her hands.
Seth thought the crow looked amused, a very human look on its avian face until it squawked in pain. It struggled around its constraints, trying to flap its wings, thrashing against the magical bonds. Struggling seemed to only tighten the webbing as it appeared to soak into the bird’s ebony feathers. Once the webbing completely surrounding the bird, she pulled her hands apart and the material seemed to squeeze together, forcing a very human-sounding scream from the creature.
The webbing twisted violently, and the bird fell apart. Feathers flew into the air as flesh bulged and boiled under the webbing. In just a few seconds it completely covered the remaining glossy black feathers in a yellowish-white glow. The feathers that did fall caught fire and were ash before they hit the ground.
Seth recognized the feel of Anri’s eyes on him. He looked up, meeting Anri’s ruby eyes, lost to bloodlust. They burned like embers, trained on Seth with no look of recognition, only of hunger and pain.
A part of him wondered why he wasn’t afraid. He knew what Anri was capable of doing when he was overcome with bloodlust. The desire to save Anri drove him closer, despite the knowledge that he might be drained. Anri needed him. He crept closer, glancing over at Angelina, trying not to draw her attention.
She was still working with her hands. The webbing was now completely wrapped around the bird like a giant ball of glistening, sickly yellowish-white yarn. She moved her hands down and began to lower the ball to the floor, all of her concentration on her hands and the cocooned creature.
Seth kneeled by Anri’s left hand, fumbling with the leather belt tying it down. His hands were shaking. Anri was so still, but his was gaze a palpable thing. It seemed to take forever for him to loosen the belt with his hand shaking as much as they were. There were still shreds of duct tape hanging on Anri’s wrist where the needle had been held in place, yet there were no wounds indicating where the needle had been.
Seth pulled the leather strap free and released Anri’s wrist. There was a deep purple-red bruise, which pissed him off. How dare she do these things to Anri. She would pay.
Anri lay there, panting, his eyes locked on Seth, but still he didn’t move. Was it too late to save Anri? Did Angelina do something else to him, too, some sort of spell to immobilize him? He slowly stood up, trying not to gain unwanted attention as he leaned over Anri’s prone form to reach his other wrist. He snuck a look at Angelina, hoping she was still too busy to catch him, then began to work on the second strap with his nervous, clumsy hands.
There was no time to react as Anri moved with viper quickness, his left hand wrapping around Seth’s neck and pulling him down harshly. He bit down viciously on Seth’s shoulder, his movements a blur. His teeth clamped down on Seth’s coat. He pulled his head back viciously, tearing a large rip at the shoulder seam of the coat. Anri struggled to move freely but he was still restrained by one arm. Snarling angrily, he snapped at Seth’s coat again, another fruitless attempt for the blood he so needed.
Anri’s left hand was a vice on Seth’s neck. Feeling calmer than he had in hours, Seth shifted, twisting so his butt was seated on the gurney. Anri snapped at his hand as he threaded it into Anri’s hair. He hadn’t noticed before, but Anri’s canines were longer than normal, looking like true fangs. They must be retractable. The scientist in him tucked that little fact away for later rumination. With his other hand, he pulled back his ruined coat and shirt, leaning forward to offer himself to Anri.
Anri moaned softly, and in a fluid motion, latched onto Seth’s neck, his teeth piercing deep into muscle. His connection to Anri reopened in a flood, and Seth knew that Anri had somehow been holding it closed. He knew panic then, knowing Anri’s control was lost to desire.
Just as quickly as the panic crescendoed, it died down, numbed. He relaxed into Anri as they both enjoyed the growing gratification of bloodlust sation. Anri’s throat swallowed quickly. It would have ben erotic in a different situation.
The last time Seth had done this with Anri, he had felt more and more exhausted as he was drained. This time he felt energized, almost giddy. Anri moaned again softly, though this time it was more a moan of pleasure than a moan of pain. Seth shook himself out of his lull, remembering Anri’s other arm restraint. Struggling to releasing Anri’s other arm one-handed was harder than he thought it should be, but his other hand was pinned down under Anri’s head. Anri drank, eyes closed, content and oblivious to his surroundings.
Angelina glanced over at them, possibly distracted by Anri’s moans. She looked away, then she did a double take, a dumbstruck look on her face.
“How?! I bound you! Damn it all!”
She ran over to them and tried to pull him off of Anri. Anri’s grip tightened on Seth’s neck painfully as he was pulled in two separate directions at once. “Get off him! Why are you doing this? You’re going to ruin everything and I don’t even know who you are!”
She beat at Seth frantically, slapping him ineffectively. When that failed to dislodge Anri’s grip, she bodychecked him surprisingly hard. The force of it shoved him from Anri’s grasp, his teeth ripping from his neck audibly. He felt skin and muscle tear, watching, stunned as his blood sprayed out, coating Angelina’s face in scarlet droplets.
Seth’s hands went to his throat instinctively. His blood pulsed out with each heartbeat. He held his hands over the lacerations as blood seeped through his fingers and down his neck. It was almost worth it to see the look of indignant disbelief on Angelina’s stunned face as his blood trailed like tears over her cheeks.
Anri screamed wordlessly, pulling his right hand violently against the leather binding. The belt Seth had been working on came unbound and the whole gurney flipped sideways, spilling Anri to the floor, It clattered loudly in the otherwise quiet room as it settled, landing on its side between them and Angelina. The gurney had stopped but he found himself rolling in Anri’s arms, then Anri’s mouth was over the pulsing blood font in his neck. Angelina kicked the back side of the gurney and it skidded forwards over the tile floor. Anri’s left arm locked around his torso, holding him tight as he drank.
The only sounds in the room were Angelina’s heavy breathing and Anri’s swallowing. Seth and Angelina both looked over as the sound of ripping of cloth filled the room. Anri ignored it, though he did switch over from sucking Seth’s neck to licking his wounds in long, hard strokes without breaking suction. Seth relaxed as he felt Anri slowly coming back to himself.
Dreadfully Erotic 