"Do not believe that you haven't incurred my wrath. I am patient, and will release my frustration in due time. However, the only reason you are still whole is that my other entities are nearly ruined, and it will take me days to go level by level to sort out the destruction ... my werewolves are still stuck together and cannot disengage. My serpents hopelessly entangled, and my phantoms are a shrieking mess - insane and unguided. My dear Harpies may even be beyond repair, as they've clawed each other nearly to extinction trying to grab hold of any body part to mate with that they could while whirling in a funnel." A deep sigh echoed off the walls. "Lilith, have you any idea how hard I truly work to keep all this going for us, my dear? You are such a high-maintenance bitch, I swear!"
* * *
"this is very disappointing, Yolando," Fallon Nuit crooned, walking around Yonnie as he lay shuddering and aging on the marble Vampire Council Chamber floor. The veins in the marble pulsed with blood that fed the table and Yonnie pressed his lips to the floor trying to siphon any nourishment he could, but his brittle fang broke off at his withered gum line. Too weak to fight, he dropped against unforgiving floor, scrabbling at it to no avail, his nails peeling away from his bony fingers like paper.
"You heard the Dark Lord," Sebastian said, growing weary of Fallon's unnecessary display of power. "Feed the poor bastard. We cannot waste any more resources."
"I will decide when he eats," Nuit said with a hiss, stooping down to snatch Yonnie's head back.
"Careful, Fallon," Lilith crooned. "He's brittle and has already lost a fang. Pull back too hard and you'll be on my husband's torture chamber floor again. I don't think Lu would be too thrilled to find out we've lost another valuable resource, do you, darling?"
Nuit stood, letting Yonnie's head hit the floor with a groan. "He's betrayed us, remember!
I want him to feel what it's like when the wrath of this council has risen. The Dark Lord's call for one of ours is a travesty, that a master vampire heeds not a councilman? Sacrilege
... treason - under any other circumstances, he would have been put to a slow and agonizing end in the Sea of Perpetual Agony!"
"True," Lilith said, studying her nails. "But so would you." She looked up at Fallon coolly.
"The bastard did no more than you or Sebastian - he hedged his bets. He sided with thenCouncilman Rivera, which was a pretty safe bet, a wise one I respected, until the ass**le went into the Light." She looked down at Yonnie and clucked her tongue. "I would have run, too." Her gaze suddenly narrowed on Nuit. "Make him handsome again. That bag of bones and dust is a crime - a real waste of male vampire resources, if ever I saw one." When Nuit backed away from Yonnie and sneered, Lilith flung a goblet of blood from the table to land and splash Yonnie's face. All pride gone, he licked the floor, gaining strength with each swallow. The next goblet she hurled at Yonnie, he weakly caught, sloshing it as he brought it to his mouth to greedily consume. Blood ran from the corners of Yonnie's mouth, over his chin, his hands, and down his chest. Fallon Nuit spat on the floor and stalked back to his throne, and as Yonnie brought the goblet away from his mouth, he hissed at Nuit. Sunken skull, red glowing eyes studied Nuit. Skeletal hands covered in rotting flesh clutched the golden goblet. Tattered fabric that once belonged to bur ial clothes hung from Yonnie's gaunt, starved frame, but defiance wafted off him in roiling waves no less lingering than his putrid, dead-flesh stench.
"You should leave him in this condition, Lilith. Once a slave, always a slave," Nuit said through his teeth with bourgeois, antebellum entitlement. "His kind worked my planta
tions for years, and even now, after you've fed him from the floor, he dares hiss at us." Lilith eyed Nuit, then tossed Yonnie another goblet, and watched Yonnie greedily consume its contents. "You did override Rivera's bite, oui?" she asked, teasing Nuit.
"Of course I did!" Nuit railed, pointing at Yonnie as he be gan to slowly regenerate. "The ungrateful sonofabitch owes me."
Lilith tilted her head to the side watching new muscle, flesh, and skin begin to overtake Yonnie's weathered skele ton. His hunched spine elongated and straightened as his sunken cheeks, chest, and stomach filled out - new sinew giving his chest and shoulders definition and strength. Gnarled fingers and claws became graceful, long hands. Spindly legs and hooked feet suddenly metamorphosed into athletically honed muscles, strong thighs and well-shaped feet covered in glistening, brand-new, dark walnut skin. Yon nie arched and cried out as his old fangs fell away and new ones split through his gums, while old, brittle hair broke off like dead pine needles off a dry tree and new, vibrant, flexi ble kinky dark hair sprouted from his new scalp.
A youthful, handsome face now replaced the garish nightmare that had been before them. Red glowing eyes normalized into intense, dark brown irises that surveyed everything and trusted nothing. The only evidence of Yonnie's recent torture was that he was na**d on the floor and breathing hard from the transformation process.
"That is definitely Rivera's handiwork," Lilith said with appreciation, her gaze raking Yonnie to settle on his groin. "And has a bit of the old attitude still resonating within him too ... good." She blew Yonnie a kiss from her throne. "Don't ever trade that in, lover. I don't care who you become beholden to."
"If she wanted a pet we could have gotten her a puppy to play with in council," Nuit muttered to Sebastian, who subtly nodded.
'True," Lilith said, tearing her gaze from Yonnie and paralyzing Nuit with it. "Or I could just dog you." She stood and walked over to Yonnie but kept her withering gaze on Nuit.
"Do not ever forget who I am, no matter what you may think of how I got the position. I'll crush you, Fallon, if you cross me."
Lilith held out her hand to Yonnie and chuckled when he declined it and stood on his own. She let her gaze rake him and spoke to his groin as she leaned in and whispered into his ear so softly that the others couldn't hear. "I'm not sure, but you might have been made a councilman hi absentia. Was it Fallon's premature bite, never rescinded because Cain was injured and too preoccupied to do so, or were you made by Rivera's elevation bite ... and are you now a lost rogue because your maker didn't formally get extinguished with his essence still in our realms? Without a title transfer to the next councilman in power that would have taken Rivera's place, no one would own you, per se. So, is that it? Are you a floater, Yonnie... a vampire without a maker hi Hell?" She brushed his unyielding mouth with a kiss. "That would make you a free-floating radical. A variable. Something new that even I have never seen. But something dangerous."
She flounced away from Yonnie with a smug smile when he didn't answer. "You don't know yourself, do you?" Ignoring the curious glances from Nuit and Sebas tian, Lilith crooked her finger at Yonnie. "You've never actually experienced a throne, have you?" Yonnie looked away, a hundred emotions competing for dominance in his mind as he stared at a vacant seat. After what he'd just gone through, one thing was clear- something Carlos always told him - he couldn't be down in the bowels without owning a position of leverage. Knowl edge was power. If Lilith didn't know for sure who'd made him, and obviously couldn't read his mind because something even he couldn't comprehend was blocking that... then he needed to play along, pretend that Nuit still held check.
"No," Yonnie finally said. "He just bit me in the casino."
"Aha!" Nuit said, standing and pointing at Yonnie, vindi cated, as he looked at Lilith. He turned and narrowed his gaze on Yonnie. "I ought to make you get down on your knees and suck my dick for the offense of hissing at your maker." Yonnie battle bulked, allowing his fangs to drop nine inches. "Open your fly and you'll draw back a nub."
"Imposter!" Nuit sat with flourish, gathering his robes about him.
"He allowed my mate to go into the Light! He let Rivera betray me and give her body to a f**king Guardian team!" Yonnie shouted, using all the game he had in him to twist the facts. "He let them bury her on consecrated ground, in a f**king church - and on the battlefield in Morales, Mexico, he allows my second mate, Gabrielle, to be blown away by her own sister. They used hallowed-earth shells," Yonnie railed, walking up to the pentagram-shaped table to pound on it, but the frustration rang true. The heartbreak was no act as tears began to flow from outrage.
"They beheaded Gabrielle on the field, prayed over her, and sent her soul into the Light, before I could grasp it." Yonnie's voice broke as he sputtered his complaint to Lilith, pointing at Nuit. "That lowlife, double-dealing, bargain-breaking, motherfucker! I might have to do what he says, but it's gonna take the Dark Lord on Level Seven and me puking my guts before I come to him, unless he addresses the shit he did!"
Lilith looked at Nuit as he turned away. "The man has brought a valid series of complaints to chambers, Fallon. You elevated him to councilman status ... I don't believe Cain ever followed through on rescinding your offer, given his state when you brought Yolando here. And, as a council man, he has, indeed, experienced a number of offenses that by rights could make him not feel whole - as none of what you bargained with him was ever delivered." She sighed and stared at Yonnie hard with an unreadable smile.
"He never answered my calls!" Nuit challenged.
"You ain't call me, bitch, except when the Dark Lord came into chambers to drag your ass to prison - so like I'm supposed to show up and do what? Go down witchu when you ain't never have my back? Aw hell no. Po-po was on your ass, not mine, so hey. Read the clause, get the old blood contracts out - if your maker offends the Dark Lord, you do not have to be canon fodder." Yonnie leered at Nuit. "And you know why? Because the Dark Lord ain't stupid - why would he want a bunch of motherfuckers fighting against him and burning up his energy and resources to protect one of his own that offended him? That's the first order of business. So, no, while you was down there screaming for help, I didn't have to answer shit." Yonnie mimed turning an imaginary switch off at his ear. "Click, bitch ... I switched the channel."