I don’t gag, I don’t cough, and I don’t react. I simply stare through blurry red eyes into his, doing as commanded, watching his face contort as he bucks his hips. My mind drifts off—as it often does when Barnabac Craxon takes what he wants from me. The vexing rustling and creaking of his armor signals me back to the present.
“You gifted me a silver sword after years of absence. Did you forget I use anaxe?” At the word “axe,” he slams his cock deep into my gullet and I finally let out a cough as he fills me. “Or was the sword meant as a purposeful insult, hmm?”
He laughs at my despair and the sound ripped from the bowels of my lungs. His thick hand releases my beard so he can hold my head at both sides and violate me more efficiently. My chair begins to creak in rhythm with his armor.
Grunting, Master Barnabac releases himself down my throat, less than five minutes after beginning. His green veins protrude along his neck and temple. He pulls back, his essence dripping from my mouth, and stuffs himself away with a sigh.
“Swallow, boy,” he demands, and I do. Then he frowns and takes a seat across from me again, flapping an annoyed hand. “There was a time you were much more fervent when I took you.”
“I don’t remember such a time, sire.” My voice is thick now, the salty scent and taste of him lingering on my tongue like an illness I can’t wash off. I’ve managed to keep my rage down, but only just.
There’s no point summoning my anger in my master’s presence. I could do nothing with it against Master Barnabac, and he knows that.
The overlord leans back in his chair with another heavy sigh, shaking his head as he stares at me. There’s a note of pity in his eyes now, the suspicious bent to his gaze vanishing as he reads my stoicism. “No, I don’t suppose you do remember, my son. It’s why I’ve always enjoyed you.”
One reason of many,I think.
“You will keep me apprised of Overlady Mortis’ plans involving this Sephania Lock, this Hellwhore.”
When he calls my silverblood that ugly title, it takes everything not to betray a hint of rage, the pulsing vein near my forehead. I can’t let him know how much she truly means to me or he will deign to take her from me. And if that were to happen, I would not know what to do with myself.Perhaps I would march into the sunlight.
“Do you understand?” he growls, flaring his nostrils. “You will come to me on a weekly basis. Satisfy me. And when I’ve whipped you into shape, you will fight by my side if it comes to that.”
“You plan to battle Overlady Mortis, my lord?”
He waves a hand. “My plans are of no concern to you.”
“Yes, Master.” I stand. I can still taste him but I try not to think of it. “Am I dismissed, my lord?”
“For now.”
I leave the room feeling disgusted, used, and weak. One bright spot: I was not forced to tell him of Skar’s planned “meeting” between him and Sephania. The phantom meeting in two weeks’ time . . . that will never happen.
I may be a traitor to my allies, but I don’t have to answer questions Master Barnabac doesn’t ask.
After descending the narrow, spiraling stairs to the courtyard, I walk out into the muddy bailey and eye the trio of vampire brothers smacking their swords around.
The three spawn of Barnabac turn to me as one, feeling my eyes when I stop ten feet from them. They advance, one of them growling, “What are you looking at, swamp-spawn? Come to dine on Master’s cum and leave with your tail between your legs, you big brute?”
Big brute,I think.One of Sephania’s pet names for me. An endearing title . . . before it was spoken by this creature.
I tilt my head, staying silent. The man is tall, like all of Barnabac’s Red Spawn, men and women alike. Barnabac has a type. This one is lankier than me, chiseled with decades of muscular upkeep.
The vampire next to him, a bearded brother of mine, crows with a laugh. “Silent as ever, the fucking dunce.”
The first vampire turns to his brother and smiles deviously, opening his jaw—
For my fist to crash into a split second later. My bloodrage bubbles with a swiftness I’m unused to, my anger at what was just done to me itching through my veins.
My meaty first shatters bones and sends teeth flying from my brother’s face, yet he’s a strong-born vampire and only staggers.
His two brethren lunge at me fast as he stumbles to the side. The first man on my left grabs my arm before I can lower it. The man on the right snags my other bicep and holds me back.
I careen forward, headbutting the man on the left, flexing and breaking out of the hold of the rightmost vampire, and send a knee into his balls.
Vampire or human, all men have a similar weakness to be exploited. He doubles over, face sinking. Blood spurts from the man’s nose on the left. The one whose teeth I just showered across the mud comes at me, drawing his sword.
I sidestep, too slow, and he pierces through my tunic, into my gut. Growling, I step forward into the blade, letting two inches of it sink deeper inside me—getting close enough so I can wrap my hand around the muscled column of his neck.
