Scarlet Vamporium: Vamporium #2 (18 page)

*

Douglas:

A strange compulsion propels ma feet forward, a longing from ma ancestors rising up from the buried past tae call me intae the blinding fey haze. Peering intae the fluctuating glare I step intae the shroud, encapsulated by the reddest rainbow.

Shimmers glisten over her face and she stares forward in rapturous expectation, her eyes bright with inner radiance.

She's so beautiful when her eyes glow. She's pretty when they're blue, but when she lights up it's as if God blew the kindling of her soul back tae life tae flare her inner candle outward, illuminating her path by using her spirit as a compass.

I cannae put ma finger on it, but ah just know there isnae an evil bone in her body. Whenever she looks at me, ma heart pounds, ma breath shakes, and I get a wee bit high. It's like being drunk on kisses and proximity. She fills ma stomach with helium and sets me floating the way she does when she walks.

She's made me daft. I'm walking underground intae the strangest specter, and yet I'm excited by it.

Stepping through the cloud the glow waterfalls like dry ice, skimming the ground, hiding our footsteps as we carefully traverse the long tunnel. It's gloomy and dark, but there at the end is a quasar flickering as if it's skipping from side tae side.

The embers ahead are childlike in their exuberance, alive with inner music which stretches from our hearts tae the outskirts of the galaxy. They dance tae the song sung by kingdoms fallen and ceilidh's still thumping through the underworld where our fallen rejoice.

Triumphant they pound their feet in time to the pulse quickening the land of the Picts. They keep Cailleach's legacy alive and call those of us still with breath tae remember the brave, tae remember the mythical icon of our home.

I believe it now. Efter this night I'll never doubt it again. Our national animal is the unicorn, and I half expected tae see one taenight walking intae this weird alternate universe with Ellie.

The deeper we tread, the louder the heartbeat becomes, vibrating the walls and shaking up through our feet, the forgotten melody of life long after death where only the free frolic.

It gets under yer skin like contraband, breathing invincibility intae my heid, enticing me intae believin' anything is possible now. Anything at all.

Chapter 20

Ellindt:

As the bleeding haze dissipates, what awaits is a regular Vamporium. I didn't know what to expect and relief floods me at the sight of recessed lounges, games boards painted onto the floor, and a small area for the few who wish to dance.

It's youthful and chillaxed, and I look up at my companion with a heartfelt grin. “This is normal. I was kinda nervous, but this is a regular Vamporium.”

“Normal? There isnae anythin' normal about it.”

Energy emanates out of him like he's tapped into the live-wire of the universe and I tilt my head to examine his eyes. They're free. It's the first time I've seen his soul portals without worry or mental pressure. He's liberated in here, deep in the hollows of the holy network.

Stepping closer, pressing against him, I stare up at his defiant chin, smiling at the guy who's made my life not just bearable, but given it a purpose.

His smirk widens, cuteing me out with the dimple at the corner of his crescent lips.

“What?” he murmurs, holding my gaze.

“You.”

“What about me?”

On the spot, I don't want to say too much and chuck my pride to the curb, but I'm smitten by his courage and charm, and am sorely tempted to grab his head, trip him into falling to my height, and kiss him within an inch of his life.

“What are you drinking?” interrupts the intimate moment.

Turning to look at the guy staring at us with hot eyes of swirling alloy, I arch an eyebrow, “What do you have?”

“How old are you?” he demands, staring down from his superior vampyre height.

“Seventeen.”

“You can have the Starsprite. It's all we have on offer for underagelings.”

“I'm hardly underage,” I begin to argue, but he cuts me short by producing two tumblers of opaque liquid alive with squiggling neutrinos of light. Intrigued, I remove them from his tray, mumbling, “Thanks.”

“You're welcome. If you need a refill the keg's on the bar at the back.” He vanishes, leaving a cool breeze where he stood a moment ago.

I offer Doug his tumbler and he plucks it cautiously from my hand, giving the brew a suspicious sniff.

Clinking our chalices, I smile, “To us.”

“Tae us.”

Sipping the Starsprite, it detonates rainbows across my taste-buds, injecting ecstasy up my nose to ignite my eyes.

Smiling widely I watch him react like he's remembered something truly funny, giving me a dashing smile which reaches his eyes and somehow has a direct line to my navel. My solar plexus tightens and anticipation ratchets up a notch.

The music threads a drowsy cyclone around us, magnetism subconsciously pulling us closer until my feet meet his. Face to face we finish our refreshment while being bound to the spell whirlpooling mystery into the grotto.

The other patrons are just as enchanted, the music owning us with a strange occult power. Swaying closer, unsteadily we hold to each other, his hands knotting fingers at the base of my spine, mine mirroring the motion in his nape.

Locked in each others eyes, I feel like I'm staring into an infinite cosmos which endlessly births stars, exploding light in his depths, the tranquility of outer dimensions filtering through, sucking me into his gravity.

Suave lips smile while chiseled muscles puppet my body into complying to their pressured guidance.

It's vacuous, a dream of floating as one, into a realm where we're the only two who exist, dancing soul to soul.

Drooping my head against his chest, I listen to the heartbeat echoing the ruby bliss, lulling me into attraction's safety net, held cloistered in his sublime strength.

Vermillion vapor mummies us into privacy, caressing our spirits into quantum entanglement, sinking us into the psychic jasper light throbbing around us in explosions of intangible desire.

The need to kiss him becomes feverish. Shifting, pulling his head closer, his breath gusts at me with strange zeal. Closing my eyes to the noir subterranean chamber, I press against soft warm lips. He kisses me back so hard he has to hold me to him to support the pressure.

It's desperate, shaky, clouding my mind with intoxication. Holding tighter I kiss him back just as hard, mashing our lips, butting our teeth, gasping for air when his tongue slips slowly across my bottom lip, diving deep to caress my own in a tantalizing stroke.

Debilitating weakness ripples through my body in seismic shudders. It's such innocuous stimulus, so warm, so right... I can't think when he traces my jaw with his tongue to slip it behind my ear and down my carotid artery.

“I want it,” whispers hoarsely into my ear.

Wobbly and unsteady, I lean heavily against him, absently stroking my palms up and down either side of his spine. “Want what?” I manage to gasp, my voice strained and serrated.

“You know...”

Dragging my thoughts into a semblance of coherent, I try to fathom what he's insinuating. My mind automatically goes to the obvious, but the tension in his heartbeat makes me think he's referring to something else.

What exactly, I have no clue.

Lifting my head off his chest I look into his face haloed with spinel plasma, making him look angelic. Angelic with a capital Apocalypse. It tingles my nerves to see him looking so serene and yet so utterly threatening.

Nimble fingers softly trace my cheek and he gives me the gunpowder smile. Just one spark and we're going to go BOOM.

“What if I don't know. What if I need you to spell it out for me?” I murmur, oddly breathless, pressure spiking through the veins in my temples.

“Aren't you hungry?” he purrs so low it vibrates my skin with the bass of his baritone.

I feel like I'm standing in a shark cage and someone just popped the door open while twenty-three great whites circle too close.

“Hungry?” I stammer.

I know I'm coming across as intellectually challenged, but I'm honestly not sure what he's referring to. He's not exuding pheromones that I'd expect from this line of questioning. Instead I'm sensing adrenaline and cortisol with a large splash of norepinephrine. And it is making me a tad wanton to be inhaling the hormones that vampyres like most in blood.

Clenching my jaw, forcing myself into shallow breathing, keeping a check on the light flare in my eyes, I grit my teeth to hold the reaction in check. He's been through enough, he doesn't have to see me with my vipers out too.

“Aye, hungry.” Leaning down, he whispers, “I'm feelin' a little reckless.”

“Are you saying what I think you're saying?”

He gives me a shy nod, never taking his focus off me, sharply watching me to see how I'm going to react.

Blood thrums my internal organs into heightened awareness and my inhalations become labored. “I can't, not here.”

“Why no' here?”

“Because...” I drop my voice to a phantom breath, “We are surrounded by my kind in here, and they aren't shy - or polite.”

Hooded eyes smolder sexiness into my cortex and he smiles in a predatory manner, “Then take me home.”

For a split second I panic, thinking because I said no, he's leaving, but the way his hands stroke up either side of my neck to clench into tight fists which press knuckles into my skin, I take comfort from it, reading that he wants
us
to go home.

“But we just got here. I was looking forward to dancing with you all night without the nutcases interfering.”

“Ellie, I can take care of mysel'. I want tae know how it feels.”

He steps so close a cobweb couldn't come between us and my heart starts pounding in erratic palpitations, need rising in me so fast I'm afraid I'll lose control.

Swallowing thickly, I nod my forehead into the muscle tight up against it. Closing my eyes, my hands subconsciously biting into him... thinking of my room at home... we vanish from the cardinal red Vamporium - into the manor.

He doesn't hesitate, immediately going on the offensive, tilting my head back with impatient thumbs pressed against my cheeks, his tongue slashing across mine in frenzied communion.

Exhilarated, I run my hands into his long hair, curling it around my fists, tugging the column of his throat back, yanking his mouth off mine. My temperature soars at the throb in the thick vein running up to his brain.

The serum of his kiss is still hot in my mouth and the bonfire of attraction lit in my stomach whooshes up to sanctify my soul with diabolical heat.

Shoving, I unbalance him into falling back onto my bed, and I pounce, my vipers springing free from my palate and my eyes blasting angelfire.

On his hips with all my weight, I look down at the prey who is so quick to offer his life to something he doesn't comprehend. He's just damn lucky I'm not a red eye or he'd already be dead.

He's unleashed the storm I keep restrained within and the wild tornado curls out of the fissure he's widening with his frenzied pulse and shocked deep inhalations.

Kneading my hands into his abdomen, I force myself to slow down, reigning in my volatile nature.

Swallowing, the enameled vipers hard up against my bottom lip, I look at the way my eyes cast ambiance across his neck, highlighting the V of his clinging shirt and the two buttons standing between me and his chest.

The material is so flimsy I could tear it like tissue paper, but I can just as easily will it off his body, and I do, because I'm selfish that way.

Drinking in skin mildly sheened with body heat, I stare at the network of muscle beneath my fingers, my hands trembling, my breath tremulous, my need shaking greed into my marrow.

“We never bite necks,” I say, and he closes his eyes, his hands grinding around my wrists with rigid strength.

Pressing into the soft bedding, he arches as if I just poured hot wine across his torso.

I'm too hyped up to hear his thoughts and I desperately need to be inside his head right now.

Is he in pain?

His Adam's apple pendulums up and down, and he gasps in a dry growl, “Where dae ye bite?”

He's kept his eyes closed and his tone is thick with lust. Not pain then. This is good. Very good.

“Uhm, usually the thigh, but I think if you lose your jeans in this room Venix and Selene will never let me see daylight again, never mind let me near another human.”

Lifting his head up as if it's painful, tortured eyes open to engage mine, his pupils dilated and his irises almost charcoal with passion, “Just ... Bite ... Me.”

No.

Sitting back, taking deep calming breaths, I demand, “Why?”

“If ye keep using that sex kitten voice I'm going tae bite you.”

Oh mama!

The threat presses my detonate button and I search his body for a puncture point that won't be obvious if anyone sees him without his shirt.

Nothing presents itself as an obvious location.

Desperate now, I flip through my options, needing to keep him under, needing to keep him
mine
.

Diving off the bed, I skid to my knees, shoving up the bottom of his jeans on his right leg. I know it's too tight around his knee, but we don't have time to remove boots or cut open the bottom of his trouser leg.

Using my natural strength I lift both feet, hop my hands to his thighs, and flip him onto his stomach, immediately sinking my vipers into the vein behind his knee.

Crimson gloss spurts across my tongue and I bite in deeper to prevent spillage. There must be no obvious spatter on the cotton of his jeans when he leaves this house, or Selene will finally let Zarak take me away.

The salve stills my thoughts, lifting my consciousness away, into the ether of his aura which pulsates with the blue in the eye of a peacock feather. It's vivid and mesmerising.

Staring at his inner light, his lactating vein blasts ecstasy into me, my skin tensing with sandpapered chills, my heart slowing down so much I should be dead.