Those whom the gods love. Amir & Bronte & Imogene.

Amir takes control of the City. Forced to fill the role of Limmere and other cruel rulers, how can he rule in blood when he’s stricken and torn between what he knows is wrong and the love of a human woman?

Amir- IntroductionThey brought my cruel and beloved Fausille down like a rabid, crippled dog while I stood by like all of her other allies.

No expression on my dark, angular face as they ripped her apart, flinging her red and gory parts to the sky, baying like demons and chortling like triumphant angels.

No cringing or looking away as she finally screamed.

One

Final

Defiant

Scream

if I had a conscience, it would haunt me.

She’d instructed me to stand down, she’d known they were coming, she’d known … how did she know? Was it the ghosts that breathed the knowledge into her via cold, malignant night air?

Was it the Parisian singer’s thick whiskey voice that alerted her to the dubiousness of her trusted inner circle? I will never know. Perhaps she’d felt the tremors of her actions through the hot cement below her feet.

I stood there and watched as her enemies converged and noted how even those who were bludgeoned with their love for her simply…watched.

Blood splattered faces and empty useless hands.

Sheffian, who loved Fausille like no other man could ever boast. I hunted him down and pulled his head apart with my bare hands then buried his traitors heart deep in swampland mud.

Limmere who stared with dual colored eyes.

I devoured him.

Neve… I’m saving her for last; she’s still running for her life across white sand beaches and hiding haphazardly in gin soaked tropical nights.

Now this city is mine.

The seething blue black sky, the drugged minions, the adoration of the masses, the fear of the millions.

Mine.

A new generation of evil is what I like to tell myself I am.

But I know…

Beyond a shadow of a doubt…

That I am just a wicked, bloody, amplified image of Fausille’s own endless, roiling rage.

Amir, the dark god.

Amir, the wolf.

Amir, the monster.

Fausille may have taught you the art of vengance, but you’ve learned nothing yet of fear.

—–

Amir- from Fausille’s DiaryI’ve hidden away in dark rooms where people smoke clove cigarrettes and drink stale tasting burnt coffee in a diffrent city where no one knows me.

I pull off the dark glasses and rub the bridge of my nose rolling my tongue over my teeth in a vain attempt to distract the heat that’s growing in my veins.

I am weak at points like this. When my skin is too tender for idle hands and my heart too swift for illicit affairs.

On the stained knicked table before me is Fausille’s diary.

Her words written in her fine snobbish hand, her phrases so filled with vile dreaming and confused plotting that I can’t help but relate

at times like this

when there’s nothing holding me back from falling in love with the first

pair

of

eyes I see.

I flip it open to a random page

…he’s like a god sometimes

his blond hair with honey’d and umber lights

those lavender eyes with thier rings of sage

and a heart too fucked and feared to love openly

nickolaus

how can this be?

my adoration for you stems from my lust of Limmere

you are the perfect counterbalance of your brothers terror tactics

if he were you

and i were not indebted

i could love you both

like a woman

and not like a beast

nickolaus

his hands are narrow and fine

with shell shaped nails that appear like glass in the right light

his laugh makes demons wish for better things…

I didn’t realise that I was staring off into the nothing until a barista crossed my line of vision.

If… if Fausille felt like this about Nikki, then why did she kill him? If she adored his beauty and (if the stories are true) protected his intrepid innocence why did she … kill him?

I paid for my drink which I’d not tasted and left the pathetic cafe with Fausille’s words tucked under my arms and the night above my head like a beggars canopy.

—-

Amir- The Subway

With Fausille’s diary under one arm and my dark glasses back to being perched on the bridge of my nose I headed for the subway.

My long legs spanned the distance, weaving through the thin crowds on the sidewalks careful not to brush against the humans that were gleeful even in thier misery.

I was too jittery and highstrung for it, too nerved out and jumpy. I didn’t know if I was in the mood to hunt, fuck or feed. I just knew that I wanted to move.

I walked through the subway’s massive double doors, stained with fingerprints and graffiti here and there in shadowed acloves lounged the local preditors. Either gregarious or menacing they were low end hunters, the foot soldiers of the local militia that fed on the sickness and need of those who bought thier drugs, who purchased thier whores, who slowly annialted themselves for badly orchestrated pleasure and drained thier veins for chemical adoration.

I dug a dollar out of my pocket and the needed silver change and approched a battered looking token machine. Unlike my predicessors I didn’t believe in long, lowslung black cars with inky leather interiors. I didn’t move that way, I wanted the night air against my face and the city below my paws.

…my feet, the city below my feet.

I caught sight of her out of the corner of my eye. She was riding the escalators down and for the moment all I could see was her legs then her hips then her breasts, shoulders and head. It was like a curtain was being raised and she was suddenly center stage.

Her presence blew ahead of her, and it was her simple… complex… presence that caught and held my attention.

She was small and slightly round, her head bent and face hidden by the furred edge of her hood.

She walked towards me, towards the gate and I was left open mouthed with amusement. She was tiny, no more than five and a half feet but she walked like something growling and hungry.

Her head came up and I looked into a pair of dark almost black eyes in a round, smooth face.

Not beautiful by a long shot, but there was something there hidden in the corners of her full heartshaped mouth that gave me reason to follow her through the gate, absent mindedly dropping my worn token into the slot and ripping my transfer from the still as I almost clumsily stuffed my slender wallet into an inner pocket of my heavy leather coat.

I followed getting lost among the stragglers that were heading down to the train platform. I watched her round thighs that lead up to an almost perfectly curved ass. Her slacks were brown on brown penstripes but her oversized winter coat hid the rest of her wardrobe. A sudden wind caught her hood as she started down the stairs and I caught sight of silver headphones half hidden in a nest of red brown braids before she snatched the hood back up and trotted down, out of sight.

…I wanted to feel the night against my face in magazineand the city below my paws.

I quickened my pace, pushing through the crowd and rushing down the stairs. She was walking down the platform away from me and I nearly dropped Fausille’s diary in my haste to catch up with her.

I couldn’t focus on anything but the black backpack as it bounced against her with everystep, I couldn’t hear anything but the sound of her heart and the music pulsing through the headphones.

I could hear it. Her heart, slow steady and … sure…

She came to a stop and I passed her catching a whiff of her scent on the cold air.

Hot. Immediate. Cloying. Like a warm plaything.

She looked up at me, just a glance and those lips curved at the edges before she looked away again. Those eyes, slanted like almonds and placed in a face the color of fresh baked bread. Golden, red and brown. She looked edible and oh so ready to destroy.

For the instant her eyes met mine there was something there, a spark of intrest as if she were acknowledging me.

And then she looked away. So simple.

She dissmissed me and I wanted to slam her agianst the brick wall behind her, to dangle her over the tracks… to demand that she look… at… me…

She turned her head away from me and the arch of her hood hid everything of her face save for those painted, plush lips. Another wicked breeze blew her scent into me, as well as the sound of the music that was shivering her eardrums.

I closed my eyes and bathed in it.

The music was taunting and violent, her scent was welcoming and delicious, but she was unapprochable.

I moved closer.

I stared and silently demanded her attention.

She stiffened then turned towards me, looking up at me with dark eyes that questioned then challanged and those lush lips tensed.

I could feel the airpressure around us change as the train entered the tunnel behind us. I smiled, just slightly and her heart beat leapt making her eyes widen just slightly in alarm.

I wet my lips and the rising air being pushed ahead of the train lifted my hair and caused the fur edging her hood to ruffle. Her glance dropped down to my lips and her own mouth opened slightly in responce.

The train snarled into the station, tossing us on the air making her lean ever so slightly towards me. I stole the moment and lowered my head towards hers, one hand coming up to cup the back of her head as I kissed her.

The rabbit soft fur trimming her hood tickled my cheeks and I smiled against her shocked unresponsive lips.

Through my lashes I could see that her dark eyes were open and they were ringed with white, furthering my amusement as my tongue slipped along the seam of her lips.

I pulled away as her body tightened and she pushed at my chest.

The train beside us slowed to a stop just as she raised her fist to punch me, her dark face suddenly pale with two roses of color at the apples of her round cheeks.

I caught her fist and brought her into me, causing her to drop her backpack, for a moment our faces were inches apart and I closed my eyes breathing in deep of her fresh, warm and oh so pliable scent.

She snarled something and I spun her body away from mine, shoving her as the trains doors slid open. She dissapeared for a moment, lost in the rush of those coming out and I picked up her backpack, hefting the weight of it in one hand.

The doorway cleared and she was standing there, her expression one of outrage and confusion. A beautiful mix. We stared at each other for a moment. Her dark lipstick smeared and her headphones slightly askew.

She shook her head at me, then slowly smiled and it was my turn to look confounded as she motioned to her backpack, her smile widening, exposing white teeth and making her sparkling, merry eyes virtually dissapear.

The bell signalling the closing of the doors sounded and I snapped out of my momentary stuper long enough to toss her backpack through to her. She caught it single handedly.

Then just before the doors closed fully she lifted the other hand, flashing a slender black wallet embossed with a pawprint at me.

I didn’t have to pat my pockets to know it was mine. Her laughter was drowned out by the sound of the train.

I watched the silver tube leave the station with my mouth slighly agape.

Sometimes even humans can startle a beast.

—-

Amir- the midnight scentWithout my wallet and slightly more humble I made my way back up the stairs and out of the subway.

I rubbed my chin, grinning just slightly as I flipped open my cell phone and dialed rapidly without looking.

Humbled, I got into my rented exotic car. The driver gave a glance to the subway then looked back at me, his blue eyes looking almost clear in the low light cast by streetlamps.

I shrugged and slid into the car, waited until he got behind the driver’s wheel and rattled off the address of Neve’s last known address.

He nodded and we drove.

I looked out the window and though of how Fausille would have romanticised this city with it’s glittering yellow lights and sky scrapers made of glossimer.

I shook my head and placed her book across my knees, I should be thinking of Neve, thinking about how much longer I’d let her run before I brought her down.

I know Neve, she’d become cocky and the rush would go out of me because the hunt would fade and my burning desire for her would go cold.

Apparently when Fausille remade me into a monster of her own design some of her urges became mine. I was fixated with Neve’s silky dark hair and her sunburnt brown skin.

Even now I could smell her.

Something of citrus and darker more devious things. I would dream of her slender wrists and her thin fingers weaving images and stories in the air.

I would dream of her body under mine and wake up with my face flushed and my mouth dry.

I would hunt the streets of my dank city but I would only want the feel of her flesh between my animal jaws.

I could make music to the breaking of her bones.

I could sing songs of the honeyed desire I felt when I was with her.

More than sex is what I’d wanted with Neve, more than lust… something deeper and something that jerked on the round bells of my soul.

She’d betrayed more than her loyalty to Fausille. She’d betrayed me.

—-

Amir- Bronte’s ChambersNeve’s last known address was in a slightly less upscale part of town than she’d grown accustomed to and I wondered if her money was running low or if her benefactor was growing weary.

The driver, at my request, slowed to a stop outside of the red brick mini mansion and waited as I got out and walked to the front door.

Neve’s scent was there, hanging on the lintel like a ghost windswept and faint.. but there.

I walked back to the car after circling the structure on foot.

I could tell that no one had exited or entered the building for a while, all scents were cold and I was certain that if I were to visit later in the evening I would be undisturbed.

The ride back to my hotel was quicker than I expected, not fully realising how close I’d been to Neve’s last known home. The driver hid his reactions well, stopping to let me out in front of the hotel without a question though his scent was rife with confusion and slight worry. I told him not to get out just to open my door and sat there watching him for a moment.

“How long have you been a driver?” I asked the man, catching his eye in the rearview mirror. His eyes were a pale, chilly blue and they widened just a bit at the question.

“A few months, sir.” he told me and I nodded before getting out of the car, I walked to the front door of the car and leaned into his window. His expression was very well done, disinterested intrest. I passed him a heafty tip and chewed my lower lip as I took in the nuances of his manner. I wondered if he had a big apartment in the city, or if he had a life where tales of rich fucks and thier mannerisms caused round, fleshy faced friends to toss back thier heads and blast dullard laughter to the sky.

Suddenly, irrationally I hated him.

I nodded once and stepped back from his window, his relief was like a stale rancid scent. I resolved then and there to request a diffrent driver from his company.

—

Our hotel room was quiet and I knew Bronte was asleep long before I strode into the darkened inner room. Her scent was light, like she was made of glossimer and lighter things than human blood and mortal bones.

I padded into the bedroom, slipping off my shoes and walking across pale cream carpets in only my socks. The hotel room had the soulless scent of all hotel rooms, cold and unlived in but Bronte’s scent prevailed.

Her hair was like rubies in the sunlight, but right now it looked like dark blood spilled across the pillowcases. She slept on her side, making gentle mounds under the blankets that shifted only slightly when she breathed. I sat on the edge of the bed and pushed her hair out of her face. She frowned in her sleep and I grinned, foolishly in love with her angular face and freckled cheeks.

Bronte belived herself to be some devil of great cunning and cruelty. I would listen to her over candle lit dinners, her wide golden-red eyes pinned on my face with such focus that I wanted to laugh and sweep her across the table and into my lap to kiss that worry and torment out of her expression.

Bronte’s greatest evil was her wicked tongue and devious manners. She was an imp and a prankster with a difficult past, she wasn’t a hell bound killer of men. Like I.

Slowly her eyes opened and she grinned at me, the blue light turning her bronzed eyes black for a moment and deeper than the depths of heaven or hell.

“Hi,” she whispered and I kissed her warm cheeks in greeting.

“Hello.” I replied and she sat up the blankets falling away from her amusing sleeping gown patterned with pirate kittens.

I’d bought it for her before she became mine fully, back when I followed her through the night unseen and unknown.

Bronte now followed me as I roamed after killers of a differnt caliber. She had no idea that the man who shared her bed wasn’t human, she didn’t know that I spent hours plotting the murder of those who would die for revenge.

I think she thought I was a rather eccentric investment banker.

“Will you be coming tonight?” she asked running her hands through her hair and looking up at me with hopeful eyes. I followed her motion by stroking my own fingers through the cool silk curls and lifting one to my face, pressing it to my lips.

“No, not tonight.” I told her and she frowned slightly turning her head away and sighing. I grinned but the expression was hidden by her hair against my mouth.Using one finger I turned her face back to mine and brushed my thumb againt her lips.

“Bronte, I’ll be too busy.” I told her and she frowned harder, tossing her head and jerking her hair out of my hand. She tossed back the covers and did an angry scoot to the edge of the bed.

“You’re always too busy.” she told me pulling her hair back and away from her face, her face didn’t narrow with anger as Fausille’s had. Instead she appeared larger, more alive and full. “You’re TOO busy, Amir, you’re too fucking busy for me!” She let her hair go and it was watching dark fire engulf her face. “Why do you want me with you Amir? I-”

She didn’t finish, I was on my feet and on her, using one arm to pull her body into mine my other hand tangled in her hair and I trembled. A rough inelegant shudder that took my entire body and tightened it.

I felt like I could destroy her, like I could crush her to dust in my arms, take those finely crafted bones and decimate them. I’d learned fast that though she enjoyed pain that I couldn’t indulge myself. I pressed her body to mine and hid my face in the wealth of her hair. She was stiff for a moment before she hugged me back. Her arms around my neck and her body pressed into mine. She was on her toes and it felt like she was going to rush right through my body.

I shuddered again and the sensation was echoed by her. Her lips on my neck and I sighed pulling back to look down at her face. All anger was gone, in it’s place was resignation. I blinked slowly and shook my head slightly. Bronte smiled but it didn’t reach her eyes, there was still that dead, hopeless resignation.

“Bronte..” I said but nothing followed it. In the silence she lowered her head then raised it again, her smile was wider but no less a lie.

“Amir. Shut up, just… shut up.” she whispered and untwined her arms from around my neck her fingers deftly undoing the buttons of my shirt. I breathed in suddenly when her shell pink nails lightly clawed my undershirt. I caught her hair up in one hand and tilted her head back kissing her. I pressed my mouth to hers and feasted. She met me with equal hunger.

There are times like now when I want to tell Bronte, I want to reveal to her each and every one of my filthy secrets… but not just yet, not when her body is hot and writhing under mine, not when nothing matters but the scent of her voracious passion and the feel of her edacious hands.

“Bronte…” I heard my broken voice whisper into her hair, too shattered to tell her how I felt as my hips strained and my heart fought against my chest.

Her habitual whisper, below the level of human hearing broke my battling heart.

“…I love you…”

—-

Amir- Suffragette City (pt. 2)Something told me to get rid of it.

I stared at it through the bars and glass of it’s cage in fixated wonder. It looked human with it’s nubile femme form and long dark hair. It looked perfectly human and I wanted to taste the brown skin, bite gently at the junction of hip into side and feel it’s flesh give.

It moved like a human. As cumbersome yet agile as any human. Right now it stopped it’s pacing and crouched in a corner of it’s cage glaring up at me with defiant eyes.

“You’re serious?” asked Neve, she looked at me with startled eyes. “You’re going to keep her?” I nodded and when Neve started to protest I turned slowly and pinned her with my gaze. She whimpered and bowed her head, backing away but not without a nervous glance at the thing in the cage.

I refused to think of it as a “her” inasof yet. For now it was simply… it.

I looked back at the crouched form, it had never taken it’s eyes off me. Eyes that should have been warm and giving considering the deep, chocolate brown of them… instead they were… and it was at this point that my beast fully rose and ruffled through the room like chaos or a storm… in it’s eyes was death.

We stood there for long moments, staring at each other before it slowly stood and walked towards the bars of it’s cage. Between the bars and me was a ceiling to floor glass wall with holes drilled in every few feet. The glass was at least three inches thick which made me wonder what was this thing that made people so nervous.

It stopped with it’s hands on the bars and leaned into them, pressing it’s forhead to the cool metal. It took me a moment to realise that it was flaring it’s nostrils, trying to catch wind of me. I laughed, I couldn’t help myself.

“I am not human,” I told it walking closer to the glass.

“Nor am I.” it said in a voice that sounded like a queer mixture of grace and hell, like something you could die horrificly for willingly. Then the scent, it’s scent…her scent… hit me.

She smelled of burning, of death and fire. She smelled of killing things and my head was suddenly filled with the sound of flames, like rushing wings or crackling wind.

“Nor am I.” she repeated and turned away to again crouch in her corner, staring at me with those wide, murderous eyes.

—–

Amir- The Killing MachineI leaned back in my chair, smiling some at the scene.

Tae stood with her hip against the counter, a huge blade strapped to her back and her outfit shining with new leather and studs.

Around her throat was a spiked collar with rusted looking tips, blood I supposed.

Her head was lowered and she blew into the huge sky blue mug in her hands.

Her dyed black hair fell forward some, twin curtains that framed her face. She glanced up at me and again I was surprised at the grey contacts that changed her brown eyes souless and stormy.

She blew into the mug agian and sipped the steaming contents. I could smell hot chocolate and my grin turned into a laugh.

“Are you ready?” I asked standing up fully and streatching. I shook out my hair and rubbed the tip of my nose as I moved towards her. She speared me with those grey eyes again and I wondered who it was she was trying to imitate. She took another sip without answering me and I laughed harder. “Some killing machine.” I told her softly moving the mug aside gently. It wouldn’t do for her to see me as a threat, not yet. “You’re very intimidating with that… foam.. around you mouth.” I whispered looking at her mouth. Full rouged lips that were slightly pouty. I swallowed my sudden hunger and looked up at her false sea colored eyes. She gave me nothing, not even my own reflection.

I took this as a reason to advance.

Slowly I leaned into her and licked her upper lip and it’s crown of marshmallo foam.

It tasted warm and more than sweet, attacking my taste buds and coating them. I looked into her eyes again, there was still no reaction not even the tensing of the gentle flesh at the corners of her eyes to show her intentions.

The blue mug smashed into the side of my head and scalding liquid blinded me. I backed up suddenly shaking my head and hissing in pain. Tae’s voice was soft and lulling, “Never without my permission.” she qouted and I couldn’t but laugh.

—-

Amir- Bronte’s Chambers pt. 2/ Suffergette City pt. 1Afterwards lying spent upon the bed, listening to the sound of the shower and to Bronte’s echoing song-voice, I grinned, staring up at the pale cieling.

Her tiny rages were what caught and kept me. How much she fought to not show me her outrage and fury. Those lying smiles.

Lies with nothing behind them other than a wish to not let me know how much my inattention hurt her.

There was a tiny tinny ring from the vacinity of where my pants were flung and I sought it out. My cell phone, when uncovered, demanded and beeped.

I didn’t recognise the number but answered anyway as I slowly walked towards the door that seperated the bathroom from the bedroom.

“Amir, Amir…it’s me, it’s Neve.”

——-

I made my excuses to Bronte, jumping in the shower with her to scrub off the scent of her body, which was an experiment in failure seeing as how we both ended up in bed together again. Tangled in each other, our wet bodies ruining the sheets.

Though I’d told Neve I’d meet her within the hour it was nearly 2am before I made it to the warehouses near the pier.

Fog was rolling in though the slender thumbnail of a moon was high in a clear starless sky. I’d driven myself this time, not ready to deal with drivers or my own sudden aversions.

Neve was going to barter for her life, or so she said. I got out of my car slowly, scanning the shadows with more than just my eyes. I sent my beast out like a rush, a flood, and filled up the night with the memory of howling.

I am not like the creatures of Fausille’s island, or even the lycans of this land. My innerbeast is both a part of me and seperate… there are times when it leaves me and I feel cold and stranded, like a child abandoned in a circus surrounded by slathering clowns and rabid sideshows.

Then there are times when it fills me to the point of bursting, when there’s nothing I can do but obey it’s carnal desires.

I feel possessed by it. As if instead of being a man with a monster… it is a monster with a man. I am an owned, partial life. No matter that it was Fausille that gave the monster myth and voice, this demon was mine long before I’d ever met that raven haired harlot.

However, I digress… there were no assassins hidden in the shifting, fog filled shadows. Just Neve slinking towards me like a whipped puppy… and …something… pacing in the warehouse directly ahead of me.

I stood there, with the door open, the car’s domelight making Neve’s approch towards me somehow unsettling.

I remember Neve as being haughty and snide with sly turns of phrases and darting cruel eyes. Not so this creature that limped towards me. Her once svete body was now pared down from hunger her lanky hair stank of cigarettes and stale sex and her clothing was stained and tattered at the sleeves.

She stopped once she was level with the bumper and jumped when I slammed the car door. Neither one of us spoke I simply stared down at her and she, with hunched shoulders and averted eyes, stood there trembling.

I began to smile, and frighteningly that smile was more knifelike and curving that enven Fausille’s most deadly smile could be.

“Neve,” I whispered, sending the word onto the night air like a curse and she flinched away from me. “How the mighty have fallen, I would not have even recognised you should we had passed on the street. If I’d've known you’d become nothing more than a cheap whore I would have allowed you to keep running. Sooner or later you would have found yourself in an alley with your filthy white throat slit.”

I stalked towards her, fury like an elixer rushing through my veins. That demonic inner beast crawling over my skin and washing down my arms to my hands… reshaping them into claws. It swept up my neck to my face and I could feel my face elongating. There were several wet, muffled pops as bones broke and reknit. I could feel my fangs as they outgrew the boundries of my mouth and I liked my lips with a tongue that was suddenly too long and tasted blood.

Neve looked up and the expression of horror on her face was a delight to the senses. She shook her head and backed away a step before falling to her knees, hands up over her bowed head. “Please!” she screamed, voice harsh with terror.

I caught her up by her wrists, my claws gouging out flesh and jerked her to her feet. “Please?” I repeated, the word hard on my tongue.

Why talk? the inner voice asked why talk when all you want is her flesh, all you desire is her blood all you crave are white bones exposed to the moonlight?

I beat the voice back and shook Neve like a ragdoll. “Please?” I asked again. “You betrayed me.” I told her pushing my face close to hers. So close that her wide eyes crossed a moment and the funk of her unwashed body clotted the air between us. “I should offer you no mercy, Nevelin.”

“I know, I know!” she said, speaking so fast that she bit her own tongue. My beast was flooding through her, scouring her like shards of broken glass pushed by the tide. I was forcing her to slowly shift, as she spoke I could see her teeth elongating, ripping her tongue and causing her to drool blood. “But I found her, the…the girl that Fausille was searching for. The killing machine, you’ve got to believe me, Amir!” she squeeled when my fist tightened on her wrists.

The Killing Machine.

The Fire Starter.

The Ultimate Weapon.

Intrest pushed my beast back and as I felt it retreat I released Neve and stepped towards the warehouse where I’d felt the …thing…

Fausille had been searching out several beasts and creatures that were reported to live in her City.

A lycan who shared her body with a demon-cat beast.

A woman who could see the future and this one… the one Neve claimed to have found… a woman who could strike flames with a thought.

After a moment Neve bounded behind me her sudden eagerness born out of terror of my discontent.

I shifted back knowing there was blood on my shirt from where my fangs had cut through my lips but I didn’t notice as Neve told me of the thing… a woman she called “Tae” who was being kept in a cage. I looked down at Neve and she stopped walking, frozen by my expression.

“How did you capture her?” I asked softly.

“I…I lied.” she answered. “I told her that you’d killed her mother and she followed me here.”

I stared at Neve for a long time before reaching out with the speed of a striking snake and gripping her by her throat. “Betray me tonight, Neve,” I whispered despite the fact that the sound of her choking drowned me out “and I’ll choke you with your own heart.” I dropped her and she backed away suddenly hands to her neck, her wrists bloody from where I’d gripped her earlier and she nodded, expression horror striken.

—–

Amir- Letter to Bronte-2I know you despise Fausille, just from the stories I tell of her unending cruelty and her creative, bloody, lies… and I can feel your jealousy every time I speak her name.

But I must avenge her, Bronte.

I must bring her killers to justice before I can assume the right to rule her City, before I can make it my own.

You are not alone in finding this unending urge idiotic, darling. It is a crippling fault and more than likely I will find myself dead at the hands of those who conspired against not only Fausille but Limmere as well.

However I have no choice.

Unlike those who ruled the City before me I have no warriors to back me, no army of soulless wolfkind to drift through shadows and devour those who do not believe that I alone should be master of this tiny inner world.

The war destroyed them all.

“Gang warfare” is what they called the battles that tore the City into 4 unequal parts. Never revealing to the mass public that the battles were being raged against the 4 main lycan clans that resided in too close quarters.

It was that bamned infighting between those who supported Limmere and those who supported Fausille that ended in total decimation of each and every clan.

Leaving nothing and no one but myself and a few stragglers to pick up the pieces while the heads of those 4 houses fled to hidden corners of the globe.

Bronte, I must find them.

For if they find and destroy me first, all that I have fought for insofar will have been lost.

You don’t realise how weak you make me, woman. How breached my defenses are where you are concerned, nor do I think you care. In your own way you are as challenging and selfcentered as Fausille, only you are more docile about your cunning.

Bronte, I can only ask that you do not come find me.

The world as you know it is about to change and I will be the driving force behind it. I muyst get this City under control, under my control before the next full moon reveals a new cast of beasts and men.

We are the killing kind Bronte, not creatures of lore and romance. We are dedicated murderers and hunters of small, trembling, innocent things. We enjoy this, Bronte. We enjoy it.

I must go Bronte.

In a diffrent world I would have said “I love you”, and wished you well… I don’t. I wish you hardship and strife and every curse known to your mankind, especially if it means you will not be driven to find me.

Not in this life or the next.

-Amir

—–

Amir-the Momus kindI looked over my gathered crew.

Tae with her killing instincts and her lust of fire.

Bronte with her misplaced love for me.

Myself and the beast that shared my soul, my spirit, my body.

And Felis, the daughter of Momus, the woman with the chilling gift.

Felis looked back at me, her expression on of mocking hatred.

I knew it wasn’t hatred of me, per se, but of whatever she could see with her inner eye, what ever blessed curse played for her and her alone.

She could see the future but seemed confused as to why she was stranded in the past. As I continued to stare at her she slowly surfaced and focused on me.

“They’ll be here within the hour.”

and I nodded to show her I’d heard.

“Bronte,” I barked making her jump and her wide eyes flew to my face. “You’r job…” I gave her directions in a low growl, all the while aware of Tae’s smug contempt. She thought Bronte was simply a reflection of my own egotisical powertrips.

Bronte’s expression, though, hit the delimma home.

She looked caught up between horror and fixation at the plans that were about to unravel before her stunned almost unwilling eyes.

I crouched before her chair and I could almost smell her fight against recoiling from me. “Do you understand me, Bronte?” I asked, looking up at her with my heart in my eyes. I needed her to be able to do this for me. I needed her to be able to move, run, shoot and yes… to kill for me tonight.

Bronte nodded and swallowed, her face was pale under it’s caked makeup. I moved back so that she could stand.

“Failure isn’t an option on this night.” Tae said, her voice mocking and low. I turned to her, teeth bared and a sharp word of warning on the tip of my tongue when I caught the expression on Felis’ face.

Grief as she watched Bronte scurry from the room, fear like a cape spread out behind her.

“You will miss her, Amir, and your woe will be something to drown in. You will fill the City with your weeping and rage.” She said, her voice was thrumming yet drifting with dreams.

My skin went cold and I stood slowly, wetting my lips.

Again it was Tae who saved the moment from gaining too much meaning with a quick maddening comment.

“Well, all hail the brooding hero.” She said, pushing off from her leaning position by the kitchen door. “I’m ready, let us go.”

I’d had enough by that time, Tae’s mouth was cutting and her manner was more dominant that I was willing to put up with. However I allowed her to leave the room unmolested. I kept my eyes on her back, watching her swaying walk and her long gait.

Tonight was a full moon I could feel it just under the horizon like a rising boil, straining at the skin of the world and seething below the gauze of the sky.

Who is to say I would need her beyond tonight? Who is to say that anyone would be able to find a diffrence between her corpse and the corpses of those we were impatiently waiting for?

Her blazing screams would fill the night with steam.

I almost missed Felis’ soft voice.

“Your plots will end in tears, Amir, fight her in valor or leave her to rule.”

I caught myself before I struck the Momus, frustrations leading me towards acting rash. I lovered my hand, mere inches from her face. She’s not flinched while my hand was cutting through the air towards her.

As if she knew…

of course she knew…

—

Amir- The Letter to BronteThis story was supposed to be about revenge. Yet it has evolved in it’s telling. I’m stumbling backwards and forwards in relating this tale of intrigue and of the deadly legacy of a beastwoman, it’s become a story of my love for you and how I’d give this city away… all of it’s devils and angels, all of its singers and sinners… away I’d give it away for you. If I could. This is my destiny and my throne, Bronte and you have no place in my world without a fight, and fight you must.

Bronte, I want you to know before you search for me. I want you to know what you’re searching for. I am not some reluctant hero in an emotive tale of love lost and gods gained. I am not a charming monster, Bronte I am merely a villian and a cheat who wears a stolen, bloody crown.

I can see you now, sitting back with one hand elevated, your slightly chubby fingers curled around the narrow stem of a champange flute, your dazzling eyes narrowed as they slide across this slanted page of writing.

Possibly you are biting your lower lip? Turning the plump member red and even more swollen in apperance?

Or not. It could be that you’re sitting hunched at that scarred writing desk, your russet hair in tufts from pulling at it and your large eyes glassy from tears. Perhaps you are even now casting this letter down and screaming at me to get on with it, explain my reasoning for writing you.

So be it, Bronte.

So be it.

—–

Immogene

ImogeneSo at long last the reign of Amir, the kind-hearted is at end.

Though, Amir was neither kind nor did he have a heart.

The throne of this City remains empty for now, even though I have defeated the one that caught Amir unawares. Bronte. Who is it that actually expects ones adoration to become blood thirsty and ambitious?

I have quite the legacy to look back upon. Limmere, with his sly business manner and his cutthroat guerilla tactics. Fausille who spread her particular brand of insanity like the plague. And Amir who attempted toleration, love and acceptance during his rule.

However, this City will not be managed,it will not be upstaged and it will not be accepting. Each monarch met with a fitting end the most notorious? Fausille. I can still see her standing there, circled by slowly shifting rivals who snapped and cursed at her in voices too ragged to be human and too eloquent to be beast. She didn’t slip her skin, our Fausille, instead she unleashed her greedily hoarded power and it ate us, it clawed at skin until it snagged the bone and it jerked us from our passions and made us realize who was Master here.

It didn’t matter. It was Limmere we feared, not Fausille. Or should I say, our fear of Fausille we thought could be ended with her demise. She, that too real boogeyman, had to be destroyed.

Just that simple. Or so we thought at the time.

We, who devoured her, didn’t know she’d live on through us. Like a parasite eating at our nervous system, causing us to become erratic and even more conniving.

It was her spectral influence that urged me to attain the throne.

Bronte was no easy match. She’d learned the lessons that Amir couldn’t seem to grasp. This City wouldn’t bend to his ‘gentler’ rule. We are the children of a carnivorous god. Feed or be fed upon is it’s mantra, there is no love in the killing game.

I stare down at the twilight city, my hands on the smoked glass windows. I am too close to see my own reflection. Which may be a blessing. I’d reveled in Bronte’s murder, feasted with glee and greed. The room behind me was smeared with blood and bits of heavier things. Overturned furniture and shatter glass. Bronte (and here I smiled, but it felt alien on my face, as if my lips were possessed) had fought me with everything she had. She’d seen something in my face and known… she’d known I’d come for her heart.

I shuddered and rested my forehead against the glass. Resisting the urge to lick my fingers instead I forced myself to look down again at the spread of lights below me. There’s been rumor of rivals moving in on the City, drawn by the tales of the uproar. Three rulers in less than 10 years? Apparently they believed this City was ripe for dominating.

Something inside me unfurled at the thought of the challenges to come and I shuddered with almost orgasmic glee, my fingers drumming the glass with the force of it.

I saw myself, in my minds eye, girded for war of almost biblical proportions and laughed.

Not my laugh. No. The smoky dark laughter that spiraled out into the darkness was all too reminiscent of Fausille’s. As was the voice that slipped through my mind like oil on velvet.

“Come, we have work to do.”

I must remember, we are the children of an unjust, traitorous and carnivorous god. There is no haven here.

—-

Imogene Second Instance

It was one of those memories where all you can recall is your head tossed back and laughter rolling thick from you. The sound your soul would make if it didn’t have wings. I looked away from him and broke the contact. Refuting the truth of the matter and instead I attacked him as if he were this enemy under my skin.”Shut the fuck up, Teek.” I snarled in a voice so unlike my own that I flinched. He blinked and swallowed, looking down for a moment then back up at me. “Im-” I made a rough cutting motion with my hand. No. I shook my head. “This has nothing to do with you.” I said, looking up at him through my hair, my bangs were like long grasses, swaying in time to my heartbeat and my rapid breathing. “You just stay the fuck away from me, stay the fuck out of this.”I threw down the law. Don’t come near me.He sputtered attepting to speak instead nothing came out but jostled words and the shark funk of sudden fear. I could smell it on him and it was like a tiny death to me. He wasn’t afraid of me, he was afraid for me. For some reason that made anger simmer up through my belly and out my mouth. It fell in heavy chunks and acid spills. “Fuck you.” I growled again and tossed the last of my few possessions into my duffel bag. All the while I listened to Fausille berate, conjole, and torment me. She hated my fashion sense, my rabald tongue, and my friend. She wanted to taste his tongue in our mouth, she wanted his body bucking in either passion or death throes. I refused and fought these… impulses that dared pose as instinct. She mocked me and made something… crawl up my body like a cramp. Something that made my toes curl and my eyes roll back in my head. My vision blurred and my tongue unclenched. Suddenly I had a name for it. Lust.I rocked forward and placed my hands on the bed, curling my fingers into the tattered coverlet and groaning. Teek’s heavy hand was an unwelcome comfort on my shoulder. “Imogene… Imma? Is… are you in trouble? is… is it drugs?”For a moment it was hilarious and my laughter not only insulted him but made that tangy copper smell of fear even darker and more cutting. It was like a smear of red paint on an orange canvas. Dripping and thick that red. Blood is simply nothing nearly as attractive as fear. I stopped laughing and he finally withdrew his hand. I turned slowly, pulling my duffle onto my shoulder. “I wish it were, Teek” I told him in all honesty as Fausille drew on memories of how his body tasted. I looked away from him and then slowly, unable to resist the pull, I looked back at him. Fausille used my eyes as scrying glasses and saw him as I did. He was tall and well built, more like a footballer than a longdistance runner. His black hair was razor cut into the most idiotic style I’d ever seen, but it did nothing to detract from his perfectly heartshaped face. Wide at the cheek it thinned down to a pointed, dimpled chin that seemed too constraining for his generous mouth. Right now his thick brows were drawn down over his sand colored eyes. So strange those eyes. I used to tell him that his momma was really a burlap bag to get eyes the color of good khaki.He used to smirk at me and nudge me “You’re supposed to ask how many people I killed to get eyes like these.” he’d quipp. I’d snort and toss some explicitive his way. Right now though it was Fausille who wondered after those earnest shorefront eyes. It was her commentary in my head about the line of his body from shoulder to thigh. I clenched my fist as she wondered if his thighs under those jeans were as hard as they looked. “Imma… talk to me…” I gave him a scathing glare and pushed past him, what use was talking? Teek who’d lived a quiet, boring life up on the shelf of corporate america, wrapped in his weekends playin sports or gaming, so comfortable with me… his ex-girlfriend that he was hopeless for. A no account nothing from a trailerpark his father’d owned. We’d met in highschool. He was everyone’s adoration teachers loved his brains and girls loved him for the same reason coaches did. He was strong, fast, capable. I averted my eyes as Fausille picked through those memories. Agast at the images of the trailer I’d lived in with my mother until I moved in with Teek. She was revulsed and mortified, part of me was gleeful but a larger part of me had fed too deeply on self loathing to find anything funny in the dead woman’s mental retching.I almost stumbled down the stairs but caught myself just in time with a hand on the bannister. I took a moment to take a few deep breaths, Teek had moved behind me on the stairs and I could feel his eyes on me. Filled with worry and dispair. I could smell our dog, DeeOhGee, as it cowered under the kitchen table. All 110 lbs of Swiss Mountain Dog whimpering and terrorstruck at just the smell of me. It had taken him a while to get used to me when I’d first been… changed… but it just took a few struggles for dominance (most of it was me actually getting pissed enough to tackle him to the ground with my teeth clamped to his throat… all while Teek wasn’t home, of course. He’d never be able to find where to put the “my ex girlfriend is a fucking werewolf” file, anyway) before he was his usual self. However, tonight, he’d come running up to me only to suddenly slam on the breaks squeeling like a much smaller animal before he’d turned tail and bolted from the room. Teek came down the first few stairs spurring me to move. I took the stairs three at a time bounding to the landing and almost running through the livingroom. Fausille’d gone quiet but I could feel her as I jerked open the front door. It was if her hand was over mind, as if she was super imposed over my skin… as if I was nothing more than hollow bones for her ghost. I … we… turned as he finally reached the last stair. I opened my mouth but it wasn’t my words that spilled from my lips. It was barely even my voice. “Don’t worry, Lawrence.” she said through me, her inflection was menacing. Promising and coy yet I could see his face tighten as if he was bracing for a blow. ——-