Havermouth, Present timeThe reception only just held them all, and the circle was a little malformed as a result of the shape of the room, everyone a little closer together than they were entirely comfortable with, considering a good number of them chose to go sky clad again. Sigrid and the mysterious vampire, Samuel, joined the circle, as did Leighton and his family, with Aislen and Bianca in the centre, sitting cross legged and knee to knee.“I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you kept your underwear on,” Aislen smirked. She was also grateful for Bianca’s wards, as otherwise she would not be able to concentrate. Bianca snickered. “For a bitch f-king four men, you’re so prudish.”“I truly, truly am,” Aislen agreed wholeheartedly. “In some circumstances. Like I fully believe that you should not know if your best friend has freckles on her labia from personal experience. That’s taking the best friend thing a little beyond comfortable for me."“Are we?” Bianca asked quietly, her
Havermouth, Present timeThey moved the cleaning of the gym to directly in front of the door, intending to delay the Van Helsings if they entered to give the gathering of pack members a chance to break up and look casual. Everyone’s wrists were bare, the cuffs stuffed into their pockets so as not to leave evidence of their escape plans lying around.“We can’t go home?” Alice Tamm looked up at her mate, her eyes filling with tears. “But Matt… My fish…”“I’m sure that we can pop home long enough to drop a holiday feeder into the tank, Allie,” Matt assured her.“It would not be wise,” Jules said firmly. Jules was the highest-ranking alpha there, Rhett realized, other than himself and Cameron, and it was as disconcerting to see Jules in a position of authority and leadership as it was arousing to see Cameron alpha-up. “Let’s get to safety, before we plan any trips home which might be risky. Which brings us back to Cam’s point. Where in Havermouth can we go?”“Family and friends?” Matt Tam
Etrait, Nine Hundred and Forty Years Before The beach showed little sign of the tragedy that had played out on its sand the day before, the tide having stolen away almost every stain of blood, the fine sand sticking to the surface of the rest. Seagulls and other predatory sea birds fluttered over the darker patches, attracted to the insects that buzzed, searching for the meat that accompanied the blood. Thaelen crossed the sand to the water gripping the little cloth bag containing herbs, oatmeal, and the crushed leaves of a local plant known as washweed that one of the village women had made for him. He stripped to his skin before wading out into the gentle waves, submerging before rising, water running down his chest from the end of his beard. He was beginning to look overgrown again, he thought ruefully as he used the bag to scrub over his skin and through his hair and beard, washing away the sweat and dirt from training. His eyes rested on the shadows of the mountain range, where
Etrait, Nine Hundred and Forty Years BeforeThaelen waited with the tent flap pulled just slightly open, watching whilst a soldier returned from his nightly pee. “Now,” he said softly and sent the next small group of women and children out into the night. In their small numbers, they were less likely to be noticed or suspected of being up to anything more exciting than escorting the boy into the trees for the same reason as the soldiers used them.They were the last group. Once they had passed beyond his vampiric vision, he turned and surveyed the interior of the tent. He had piled the possessions that they could not take with them around the central pole of the tent. His plan was to use the black powder and one of the oh-so-dangerous exploding hand-held devices to start a fire within, burning the possessions and the center pole and collapsing the tent into itself to be eaten by flame. Anyone within the tent would be thought to be dead, burnt to ashes.However, he also knew from havin
Etrait, Nine Hundred and Forty Years BeforeThe tunnels widened into an intersection. For a moment, Thaelen stood looking around him. He couldn’t have hoped for more or less, he admitted to himself. On one hand, there was a stack of barrels to one side that he was confident held the black powder, and the meeting point of tunnels was the perfect opportunity to detonate the explosives with the aim of collapsing the tunnels behind them.On the other hand, there were three tunnels before them, and he did not know which one to take. He could not afford to explode and collapse the meeting point of the tunnels without knowing that they’d taken the right one to safety, and if they chose the wrong tunnel without collapsing the way behind them, they might lose their head-start.It was possible that the human army would realize that someone had deliberately started the fires and the explosion, and followed them into the tunnels.He breathed in, trying to discern which tunnel smelled of fresh air
Concordia, Nine Hundred and Forty Years BeforeTheir travel to the nearest stronghold was slowed by the humans, however as much that Thaelen wished to rush ahead, he could not leave them with strange vampires after their bravery and trust in following him into what was, to them, enemy territory.He fretted about Johil. What would the human make of Thaelen’s escape? Would he realize that the explosion at the camp had been started by Thaelen? Would he think that Thaelen had burned to death the women and children that he had fought so hard to protect? No, Thaelen knew that he wouldn’t. There would be trouble for the village when word made it’s way back to Alden. Would the priests return to the homes of those boys and women and take younger siblings in their place, or would they let it go?“Hmm,” he acknowledged grimly that they would do far worse in order to make an example. They would destroy the village and kill everyone within it. He had to hope that in the disorder of the camp, the w
Concordia, Nine Hundred and Forty Years BeforeSigrid and Meguitte were in the entry hall of the stronghold, removing their cloaks and handing them to the attendants there, and turned as he descended the stairs. Meguitte’s face immediately crumpled and she ran to throw her hands around him, weeping hysterically against his chest. He embraced her tightly, touched by her distress.Perhaps due to the fact that she had been a woman grown, or because of her reservation with men in general, since he had turned her, Meguitte had spent much of her time deep within the forest, coming to the city and his stronghold only rarely. Sigrid had visited her frequently, and so Thaelen, busy with ruling, organizing raids, and distracted by Gera, had been content to leave the two women to their own devices.Thaelen had not thought that there was any sentiment beyond her gratitude to him for saving her life and a general friendship between them, and her emotional display moved him.“It is alright, Meguitt
Concordia, Nine Hundred and Forty Years BeforeThaelen stood by the window and watched the sun rise. He had been restless through the night, despite being physically and emotionally drained. When he had drifted to sleep, his dreams had been broken and uneasy, frequented by ghosts. He had had dreamt conversations with both his parents, which had seemed intense and important in sleep, but the content of which had vanished upon rising, and had swum with Gera in the bay of the past, only to lose him in the water, waking gasping into the darkness, sucking in the air that his lungs had been denied in nightmare.It was only natural that his mind would be on the past and his many losses, he told himself as he squinted against the glare of the bright sun as it speared over the ocean with sharp flares. He was grateful to have spent the night in Gunnar’s stronghold rather than making the journey back to his own. Sleeping in his bed without Gera would have been harder.He had ruled for one and a
Havermouth, Present Time Heath woke into darkness. His werewolf sight could not even determine a pinprick of light. The darkness was heavy, smothering. “Talen?” He asked. His voice sounded muted, as if he were in a closed, tight space. He reached out and felt nothing however… And that was terrifying. There was no floor, no walls. He did not understand how it was that he was not falling… or perhaps he was. His breathing was rasped through lungs constricted by panic. “Shh,” a woman murmured. “Hush now, do not fear. Nothing will harm you here. Indeed,” there was amusement to her voice. “There is nothing here to harm you.” “Who are you?” He demanded, fear turning into anger. “Some Van Helsing trick?” “Hmhmhm,” she chuckled softly. “No, white wolf.” “Where is Talen?” He sat up slowly, relying on his stomach muscles as there wasn’t a floor to brace his hands against. “Where are we? Why… isn’t there a floor?” “So many questions. We are in the beginning, the aether, the place where we
Havermouth, Present TimeCameron and Rhett stood by the front window of Mr Claymont’s house with the lace curtains pushed back, looking out at the street as the crowd began to clear. A riot had broken out in response to the explosion of the school and had blocked the Van Helsings’ efforts to reach their destroyed base. The Havermouth rioters had destroyed several of the Van Helsings’ vehicles until guns had been drawn and bullets had been fired.Just as things had been on the verge of turning into a massacre, the fire had begun to spread out from the school, and Havermouth’s residents had rushed to help the homeowners save their property whilst others had dragged those injured by the Van Helsings retaliation into nearby houses.Into the chaos and mania of it all, the fleeing werewolves had just been another strangeness of the day, with people shrieking and screaming as their fur brushed against them, but otherwise taking no action against them, too occupied with the fire and gunmen, a
Havermouth, Present TimeThe f-ker!Aislen woke angry and sore. Her whole body ached, but her head and throat most of all. She was f-king going to kill that arsehole of a torturer, she thought.She was lying on her back on a bed, but not somewhere private. Around her she could hear the murmur of voices, groans and moans, the rattle of metal against metal, and crying. It stank. Layers of sweat, urine, faeces and… rotten meat.She opened her eyes and looked through a mesh of metal bars at the pressed tin tile design within the coffered ceiling high above her and the elaborate chandelier that dangled from it. Not what she’d expected having smelled the room, she thought, sitting up.It was a large long room, with a heavy velvet curtained stage set on one end and a wall of double doors at the other. In between the two ends, rows of cages had been set, each one only long enough to fit a trundle bed and twice as wide. Many of the cages were empty, like the one directly next to Aislen’s bed,
Havermouth, One Week BeforeTony had the police officer tied by his wrists and dangling over an open oubliette in the barn when Talen arrived, and looked up from a toolbox which was set on the pushed back stone lid. “Alex, this is Talen. Talen, meet Alexander Grennith.”“F-k you,” the werewolf was in the policeman’s eyes, but with his weight on his shoulders, and his wrists tied, he could not shift without risking tearing his arms from the joint, an injury that would be both intensely painful and potentially life-alteringly disabling.“No thank you,” Talen replied as he rolled up his sleeves. “Did you have any trouble?” He asked Tony.“No,” Tony was amused. “I took Sigrid with me, and she distracted him at the front door whilst I took him from behind. He did not know what happened. We bundled him into his own car, and I wore his jacket and hat. Anyone who saw me would have thought he was going on a date. I dropped Sigrid at the Ute and she drove it home for me.”“I didn’t know that Si
Havermouth, Two Weeks BeforeCameron creeping out of the bed and around the room getting dressed woke Heath. He was pressed tightly to Talen’s back, half drowning in the vampire’s blonde hair, with his arm over Talen’s waist and he was disinclined to move from the position. Used to Cameron’s early mornings, once he’d registered what the movement was about, he closed his eyes and tried to go back to sleep only for Aislen to mutter a complaint as Rhett wriggled out from under her.“I have a client coming at nine,” Rhett explained his movement. “I have to go set up.”“Too early,” Aislen grumbled.“I know, but they work afternoons, and it will take a good three hours,” Rhett yawned widely as he slid out of the bed.Talen shifted in order to pull Aislen back against him, snuggling her into the spoon of his body. “Sleep some more, Morgana,” he murmured. “You need to rest in order to heal.”Rhett cursed as he stumbled and Cameron smothered his laughter. “Careful. F-k man, you’re not a good m
Havermouth, Two Weeks Before“I could do with a cigarette too,” Aislen announced. “And a glass of wine.”“It’s not even midday,” Heath protested immediately.Aislen’s eyeroll said it all. “I wasn’t asking for permission. I’ve had a pretty shitty couple of days, and I want to f-king have a cigarette and a glass of wine on the porch of my house and so that’s precisely what I am going to do,” she began to get dressed. “If you’re all going to be bitches you can leave.”Heath spotted her underwear tangled at the foot of the bed and retrieved them, untangling them as he handed them to her. “I’ll go open a bottle.” He stepped out into the hallway and closed the door before leaning against the wall and heaving out a sigh.Rhett and Cameron now knew about the miscarriage, but he felt as if the Triquetra had narrowly avoided disaster with the discussion that had followed, and the adrenaline spike had left him shaky with his heart racing against his ribs. The conversation had also shaken free a
Havermouth, Two Weeks BeforeRhett laughed. F-k this was going to be fun, he thought lifting up onto his elbows in order to improve his view.“Oh.” Aislen had realized that the double-sided dildo was for her.Talen’s shoulder shook with his silent laughter as he helped her into the harness and eased her end of the dildo into her.“F-k that’s hot,” Rhett groaned as Talen tightened the harness around her waist. There was something so naughty about Aislen with a c-k, and the leather straps compressing her soft skin, the contrast of white to black and soft to hard… “F-k,” he groaned, and Heath compliantly gripped his c-ck, stroking from base to tip so that he sighed out his pleasure.“Very nice,” Talen approved leaning back to inspect his workmanship. “Who would you like to f-k, little demon?”“Choices, choices,” Aislen’s response was pure devilry.“Me,” Rhett gasped out rolling up to sitting. “I want to try that.”“Why not?” Aislen was amused by his eagerness and by her new accessory, re
Havermouth, Two Weeks BeforeRhett used the trolley to herd Tabitha and her cameraman away from Cameron and Aislen so that they could make their escape, his vindicative ramming of the reporter’s heels fuelled by the nasty volley of questions she had just thrown at Aislen.“This is assault, Rhett Salem!” Tabitha snarled at him.“Oh, f-k off Tabitha,” he replied. “For a f-king desperate ambulance chasing vulture you are pretty righteous. F-king chasing down a woman who was just shot, and shouting out her personal business… You are slime. The worst type of slime. Just own it and shut the f-k up.”He abandoned the trolley inside the doors of the hospital and trotted across the carpark to where Heath was picking up shards of broken vase and ignoring Tabitha’s attempts to engage him into an interview. Heath surprised Tabitha by passing her the broken pieces. “Throw these away for me, please, like a good girl,” he told her.“Ah, shit, Heath, don’t call her a good girl,” Rhett laughed as he h
Havermouth, Two Weeks BeforeCameron almost stopped dead. From the corner of his eye, he saw Rhett fumble a vase of flowers that he was loading into his car, the vase shattering with a loud crash as it hit the ground and distracting the reporter and her cameraman.Miscarriage? What miscarriage? And… if Aislen couldn’t have a child… what did that mean for their Triquetra?“I don’t hit women,” Heath growled down at Tabitha. “But you are testing my resolve. Get the f-k away from us, and stay away.”Cameron pulled himself together and crossed the last distance to the Ute, easing Aislen into the passenger seat, and closing the door before turning back to help his Triquetra drive off the reporter and her cameraman. Rhett drove the now empty trolley directly at Tabitha and the cameraman, forcing them backwards, and used it to herd them towards the hospital and away from the Ute.“What the f-k?” Cameron asked Heath in shock. “What the f-k was that?”“Take her to her house, Cam, I’ll meet you