Lair rising, p.1
Lair Rising, page 1
© 2024 David Sullivan
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without express written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations for reviews.
This publication is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the author’s imagination.
ISBN for ebook: 979-8-9866781-2-2
ISBN for paperback: 979-8-9866781-4-6
For readers 18+. Contains brief descriptions of domestic violence.
Cover design by Kostis Pavlou.
Transmarinia Press
2709 N Hayden Island Dr
STE 330550
Portland, OR 97217
To the person in you
who decided
to rise up
C O N T E N T S
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
A SNEAK PEEK OF LAIR RECKONING
ONE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ONE
I prop myself up on the sunbed and fling my head back, drinking in the warmth of Southern France.
Fuck me, life is good.
It seems only yesterday that I was back in rainy Oregon, splitting my days between wrestling yearlings on the farm and pouring shots at the local bar. That couldn’t be more removed from this glamorous lifestyle of cruising sun-kissed seas and lazing on far-flung beaches. A dizzying gratitude brims up in me, and I lift the coconut shell out of the baking sand by my side and take a sip of my piña colada. Who says dreams never come true?
Every dream has its price, though.
I finger my cocktail straw and look about. The crowds have changed only marginally, if at all. I’d never before heard of Club 55, but apparently you have to book months in advance, if you can even afford it in the first place. It’s cute, with its quaint white chairs and blue table linens fluttering under the palm trees.
It also happens to be a favorite hotspot for the world’s rich and famous.
They cover Pampelonne Beach in an oily glistening of skin. Over here sculpted movie stars canoodling with pop singers. Over there hairy-shouldered business magnates turned crimson with sunburn, their physical decline not stopping impossibly beautiful, leggy girls from draping themselves over them. My insides constrict in disgust. How artificial can you get?
I don’t let this spoil my mood, though. It’s hard not to soak in all this perfect summer glitz and glamour. The water sparkles, young flesh gleams, guests are ferried to and fro from the restaurant’s private jetty to the fleet of megayachts waiting offshore.
In fact, one arrives as I watch.
I pull my sunglasses down my nose and squint. A distinguished man in his fifties, in a billowy cream shirt and close-cropped silver hair, departing from a yacht with Wet Dream emblazoned on its transom. I compare him to the photo on my phone, and it’s an exact match.
Bingo.
My hands are shaking as I gather my hair up in a ponytail and tug at the strings of my bikini top, making sure my breasts are front-and-center attention grabbers. Will it be enough? As I strut across the coal-hot sands, I pass a pair of supermodels in colorful wraps prowling for their millionaires and they give me a cold once-over, lips pursed in jealousy and scorn.
That would be a yes, then. They know competition when they see it, after all.
May the best bitch win.
I never let the new arrival stray from my sight, and so I find him before any of the other girls have time to descend upon him. He’s staked out a sunbed beneath a striped parasol, and already a waiter has scurried out from the restaurant with a kitschy umbrella cocktail; he’s a regular. Also, alone. Perhaps he left the wife behind for this little trip.
He takes his cocktail, sips it, and tosses it into the sand, his imprecations sending the waiter scurrying back for a replacement.
Ah, yes. Remember what else you were told about him?
(History of violence: assault and battery. Be careful.)
All right, Aurora. Showtime.
As I approach, he lifts his shirt over his head in preparation for a swim. He has a tight swell of belly, the body of a man who was once muscular but whose ambitions have usurped all other interests in life. A hard mouth that speaks to harder appetites.
It’s even easier than I thought it would be. When I saunter by him with hips swaying, I make sure to stumble and let him catch me, letting out a mortified little gasp. “Oh my God,” I gush. “I’m so sorry.”
We both snort a sociable, declarative and slightly apologetic laugh, the kind that communicates a great many things.
From there, the conversation leads itself.
“You all right?”
“Yeah. Wow, I’m not usually this awkward . . .”
“That’s all right. Usually women lose their balance after I smile at them.”
And he is smiling, waiting for my surprised and delighted laugh. His cool, appraising look— somehow more considerate and intimate than any that might pass between a married couple— gives me a chill.
And then the inevitable question: “Are you alone?”
Night has fallen by the time we stagger through ochre-colored streets to the port of St. Tropez.
Ahead, the sleek silhouettes of yachts loom tall. Ahead, dark and waiting, the Lair.
I’ve learned a great deal about my companion by now. He’s in the arms business, and he likes to own things. His name (which he never tells me) is listed on the registers for some of the most expensive possessions in the world, and so I’ve taken to calling him Grubby Hands in my head.
He is that, too. He’s frat boy drunk (I am tipsy but feigning drunkenness), and he won’t stop grabbing at my ass as we lurch up the passerelle. I suppress a shiver of revulsion and swat his hand away, jaw hanging in girlish shock. “Bad boy!”
He leers. “Isn’t that how you like ‘em?”
God, this whole performance of mine is abhorrent. I detest it.
But I’m almost there.
I snicker and screw a finger through the air at him. “You’re a little spoiled, aren’t you?”
“Who doesn’t like being spoiled?” he smirks and effects a sloppy salute for the silver-haired man waiting on the aft main deck. The man is tall, broad-shouldered for his age, in a white polo with the anchor and four gold stripe epaulettes of a captain. Arnold Redfearn and I lock eyes, and he scans the empty waterfront before pressing a button. There’s a whir and the passerelle lifts, begins to sheathe into itself and retract away from the dock. Grubby Hands looks back at this, frowning with great concentration . . . and sniggers like a schoolboy. “You don’t want me leaving, do you?”
“That’s right,” I say, and tug him by his shirt inside the Lair.
He keeps bumping into the walls as we tiptoe through the dark yacht, and I shush him. We’ve taken to giggling like teenagers sneaking into a parents’ house. He lifts his brows when we pass through red-stained double doors into the master suite, taking in the soaring walls with their crimson canvases and light-absorbing panels. “Your boyfriend has quite the boat . . .”
“Yes. He does.”
“And you’re sure he won’t be back tonight?”
I cock my head and narrow my eyes, giving him a slow, sexy smile as I pull him toward the enormous bed. “Don’t tell me you haven’t broken any rules before . . .”
He grins as I push him down. “Maybe.”
“Maybe,” I repeat, and cock a hip. “Uh-huh.”
He shrugs. “If you’re rich, you can get away with anything.”
I arch a brow and touch a corner of my mouth with my tongue. “Like?”
He laces his hands behind his head and blinks up at me as if from a great distance. “You’re a dark one, aren’t you?”
I crawl onto the bed and over him, offering him a front-row view of my assets, and say the word as if tasting a strawberry: “Yes.”
His teeth show in a vicious grin, excitement glowing like a fever in his eyes. He lunges up to kiss me, but I stop him with the tips of two fingers over his mouth. “Talk first. It turns me on to hear all the horrible things you bad boys do.
He lofts a brow. “You are a dark one.”
“Talk,” I command, and push him down.
He chuckles from behind clenched teeth and fists his hands into the sheets as he stares up at the ceiling, writhing, khaki shorts straining over his arousal. I obediently pluck at his belt buckle.
“Well,” he explains when he’s regained some measure of control. “If you’re a yacht owner, responsibility is optional. The rules don’t apply to you. So if my crew pisses me off I can just confiscate th eir passports and withhold their wages.”
My hands pause at his belt. “That’s it?” I scoff. “I thought you’d be badder than that . . .”
His eyes narrow, anger mixing with a deep, dangerous lust at this challenge. “All right. Say you have a deckhand who’s exhausted after working back-to-back shifts. He’s cleaning the yacht at night, and the dumb shit falls and cracks his head, drowns in the harbor?” He shrugs. “You can just lift anchor and leave, pay to have some other boat hire divers to search for the kid’s body and deal with the police. We had to go pick up a porn star that day anyway.”
My hands are trembling as I snick out his belt. “Must be a thrill to know the authorities can’t touch you.”
He nods, counting the freckles in my cleavage. “But I can touch anyone I want. So if I like the look of a stewardess, well . . .” And his tongue runs along the tops of his teeth as he looks in my eyes.
There’s a plummeting in my gut, an immense settling.
I suck in a shivery breath. “So,” I say, hovering over him, letting my parted lips graze close, and begin to cuff his wrists over his head with the belt. “You like hurting women, do you?”
He nods, delirious, eyes glazed with desire. “Yes.”
“Good,” I whisper, knotting the belt tail tight around a bedpost, and smile a dazzling smile. “Because I like hurting men who hurt women.” His face, for the first time, tightens in confusion. “What?”
A tension gathers in the air. I’m off the bed now, backing away. My heart is hammering, my nerves buzzing in my skin, but I can set this aside—because the decision has been made. Gradually, I begin to feel more at peace with what’s about to happen.
I place my hands on my hips and eye him askance. “You didn’t really think there was no one like me out there, did you? If you’re going to abuse that many women, the least you can do is have the courtesy to assume that, one day, one of them was going to abuse you right back.”
He colors, almost too astounded to be offended. “What did you say?”
“Oh, and I may have told you a teensy little lie or two,” I say, lifting a finger. “You see, he’s here, actually. On the boat.” The corners of my mouth widen: eek. “Sorry.”
The man is yanking on the belt when he hears this. He stills. “Who’s here?” Then his head jerks as he senses something in the gloom. The pitch of his voice rises. “W-who’s there?”
“He’s not very good at being patient,” I confess and cock my head, studying the man as if he were an insect pinned wriggling to a wall. “Especially when he’s hungry.”
It’s in this moment that Adrian Voper appears at my side, gliding out of the shadows along the walls.
The man tied to the bed goes rigid, the breath panting in and out of him, too stricken to move. “What the—what is—” He swallows, blinking through a thick haze of alcohol, and spreads the fingers of his bound hands. “Look, man, I didn’t know she was your—”
“Yes, you did,” I say.
“Okay, whatever. I can give you—I have so much money—”
“We don’t want your money,” I say, and look over at Adrian as he flows closer. “Money isn’t red . . .”
That’s when Grubby Hands takes in the corpse-white pallor of Adrian’s skin, and his teeth, and the cold hunger in his eyes, and an ancient fear brushes against his heart. “Please,” he whispers, throat bobbing. “Please don’t . . .”
I turn away as the screaming begins.
Later, as I face the wall trembling and arms crossed, we talk. Adrian is splashed red, shoulders hunched in shame and contrition.
“You okay?” he ventures.
I clear my throat. “Yeah. It’s just . . . getting harder.”
He sighs. “Babe, you don’t have to do this. We can find another way—”
“Can we?” I shake my head. “I don’t want you hunting women anymore, and right now you’re too weak to go after men on your own. So whether we like it or not, this is our only option.”
“You seducing criminals?” he growls. “Yeah, can’t say I’m a big fan of that part, either.”
I rub my forehead. “Don’t worry about it. I’m fine.
I can feel his eyes on me, sensing I need reassurance. “He was a criminal, Aurora,” he reminds me. “A rapist. The courts couldn’t touch him. You did the world a service.” His voice is low, soothing, tinged with fear. “I’ll have my strength back after this, and I’ll be able to hunt on my own again.” He sits back against the bed and places his elbows on his knees, swipes a wet trickle from the corner of his mouth and looks at the blood dripping from his long, tapered hands. His feeding over the past couple of weeks has begun to fill him out, upgraded him from the emaciated corpse look he’s been rocking since he tried starving himself for me, but he is still jarringly thin compared to the old Adrian.
What he says next, I know, is as much for himself as it is for me. “We just need to do this for a little longer. After Volok is gone, we’ll be free of this. Forever.”
I turn to look at him then, the disgust on his face, and something in me crumples. I kneel beside him and hug him hard about the neck as he sits there, eyes shut.
“We’ll get through this. We will. I promise.”
He nods, jaw muscles dancing. Nods again.
“I’ll never leave your side, do you understand?” I whisper it fiercely, a brutal promise. “I love you, Adrian.”
I sense his body relax against mine. “I love you, too.” Then, his voice hoarse, “I can’t say how grateful I am that you’re doing this for me.”
Emotion swells my throat shut. I pull back, dashing a wrist over my eyes, and stare at the bloodless corpse on the bed. I blurt it out before I’m even aware of what I’m saying. “We need to change the crew.”
He turns to me. “What?”
“Strip the Lair down to a skeleton crew. This is no longer a pleasure boat, is it?”
Adrian swallows. “No.”
“We can’t be like them.” I gesture at the bed. “We can’t treat our crew like they treat theirs. And if it ever gets dangerous, going after Volok, they need to be kept out of it. Agreed?”
He looks at me, a wisp of an admiring smile about his lips. “Agreed.”
“Good.” I stand and offer a hand. After a moment, he places his sticky one in mine, and allows me to pull him to his feet. “So,” I say when he’s wavering before me, and shake my hair out of my face. “Who’s going to tell Mrs. Colding?”
TWO
Mrs. Colding clasps her hands before her and peers out the sloping windows of the wheelhouse with narrowed eyes.
Captain Redfearn, arms crossed over his epauletted polo, leans against the glowing nav consoles and eyes the chief stewardess with the respectful air of a man who knows not to poke a bear. Beside me, Adrian watches her. I watch her. All around us, the Mediterranean night presses close in blocks of darkness, as if it too were waiting on her words.
When they come they are as dry as toast. “So you’re going to hunt down and destroy your maker, who also happens to be the head of your coven and the most powerful vampire in the world.”
Adrian nods. “Yes.”
“So you can turn back into a human.”
“Yes.”
“Even if it takes picking off a swath of undead to do it.” Adrian gulps. “Yes.”
And Mrs. Colding takes us in, the faintest trace of a smile twitching her mouth. “Well, it’s about bloody time.”
Adrian deflates in relief, shaking his head. I find I’m grinning ear to ear.
“Before we go any further,” Mrs. Colding cautions, drawing herself up, “we need to be clear with each other. This’ll be no walk in the park. We will be hunting down creatures that have crawled out of legend. Even if we see it through, we will be different people afterward. So I want to hear it from all of you. After this there’s no turning back.”
“Of course,” Adrian agrees.
“I think you know where I stand,” I say.
“Captain?” Mrs. Colding turns to Redfearn.
The grizzled skipper shrugs his broad shoulders. “Sure beats retirement.”
The four of us stand there, grinning like idiots.
“So,” I say at last, rubbing my hands together. “Where do we start?”
All heads turn to Adrian, who slowly smiles. “By having an old friend over for a chat.”
It’s sunrise as I watch the Vespertine’s limo tender glide toward the Lair.
