Number’s Up

Though the winter was far behind, there was still a nip on the 3AM air. Sylvianna tugged her tailored wool-blend jacket closer around her as she reached for the keys to her garage.

She’d dressed accordingly to both the job and the weather, with heavy combat trousers and a long-sleeved shirt over a silk camisole with lace lining — the latter being a small indulgence.

The only reason she’d allowed herself to leave the house looking so… unbecoming, was because the job required no interaction.

There were no £600 heels. No suit costing into the thousands.

Her platinum hair was slicked back and tied in a messy bun, and the gold studs in her ears were… boring. She’d indulged in a light dusting of makeup across her eyes and bold, winged liner. It served to highlight the startling silver-grey of her eyes, not that anyone would see.

The scent of cold… cold and… wrong. Something wrong.

Something other. Someone who didn’t belong.

Someones.

Sylvianna stopped walking, ears twitching. She sniffed the air silently, eyes frantically scanning the area.

No silhouettes on rooftops. A faint smell. They hadn’t been here long enough to leave much of an impression.

But they’d still left an impression.

She turned, still trying to see if she was being watched.

She wasn’t. Another lick of wind carried clean, untainted air.

Perhaps it’d been a stray group of beasts. Perhaps it’d been a few members of Melantia stopping by for whatever reason when she’d been away. She’d bring it up, just in case.

She settled a knife in her palm all the same. She wasn’t carrying firearms tonight. There were a pair in her car, behind the locked doors she activated with a switch of a button.

As they rolled open, out came the acrid, glacial stink.

It looked as though no one was in there. She knew better.

Giving no response, she turned on her heel and began walking back to the front door as though she’d forgotten something. She had. Her firearms. Whatever was in her garage couldn’t be anything good.

The key pushed into the lock as the gravel behind her crunched under several pairs of feet. With a brief glance over her shoulder just to see how many of them there were — four — she twisted the key and rushed inside, throwing the door closed behind her.

It didn’t slam. The heavy footsteps fell in behind her.

They were faster than her. By the look of them, they’d have been stronger than her, too, even if they didn’t have vampirism running through their veins.

Reaching the kitchen, Sylvianna pulled open the drawer that had her loaded Nelson & Barr in it. When her hand shot forward to grab it, the drawer slammed closed on her fingers and she screamed.

The hand gripping the knife slashed out. Blood tainted the air with the tang of iron as it splattered away from her, the man she’d wounded staggering back with a grunt, hands covering his face.

She’d missed his eyes.

Shit.

“Stop fighting, Sylvi. It’s not gonna work.”

She knew that voice. The distinct Highland Scots accent. His name was Magnus.

She stilled and turned to look at him. Fear was replaced by anger. “What the fuck are you doing, McNeill?”

He held up his hands, as though the idiotic gesture would placate her. His hair — brown, but dark as midnight in the unlit kitchen — was mostly tied back in a bun, with a stray few strands falling over his roguish face. “Your number’s up. You’ve been seen doing some very naughty things.”

“Doing my job, you imbecile.” She would’ve continued but the man stood next to him swept out with a backhand. It took a second to recover, her hand caressing the sting. “And it’s nice to see you, too, Anand.”

The man with dusky-brown skin that was tainted by an unhealthy pallor gave her a cheerless grin. She turned next to Laurent, his auburn hair unbound, the red in it vivid, even in the darkness. He’d been the one whose face she’d slashed. She felt no remorse — they knew who she was and they’d tried to frighten her.

Besides, the wound had already healed.

Without a word, she turned at last to the man she’d wanted to see the least. The blond who was hanging back, his thick arms folded over a broad chest. A chest that was all muscle. Sylvianna knew. She’d slept on it more than once.

“You too, Aron?” She backed herself against the breakfast bar, hand still tight on her knife, and let out a dissatisfied huff. “Shit. So why didn’t you just slug me through a window? What’s with sneaking into my garage?” She paused, then growled. “Shit, how did you even get in without setting off the alarms?”

She realised she had the answer to that before she even finished asking. They worked for the same agency. They were more than capable.

Magnus stepped forward and reached out to tuck her hair behind her ear. “Do you really want to have this boring conversation?” He petted her cheek.

She didn’t swipe him, but she threw her knee towards his groin.

He caught it before she even got close. Damned man was fast. He followed it up with a hammer-fisted blow to her cheekbone.

She saw stars, then she felt that same hand gripping her throat.

She fought, but one of the others pried the knife from her hand. She heard it clatter away. Another hand took her other wrist.

“Fuck’s sake, Sylvi. Stop.”

She spat in Magnus’s face.

“She hisses and she spits, yet still we don’t get to see that pretty kitty. What’s the point in being a tiger if you never let us see her, huh?”

“Will you go to hell?” Her voice rasped. The grip tightened.

“Fuck it.”

She was turned rapidly, then, Magnus’s grip of her throat turning to a grip on her neck as he forced her down, bent over the breakfast bar. She felt his erection against the subtle curve of her arse, tried to pull back and fight, but the hands on her wrists had dragged her arms forward. Kicking did nothing. While she might’ve been a shifter, the four men in her own damn kitchen were vampires.

Old vampires.

“Do you remember her being so fuckin’ flat?” This from Laurent.

“Thirty-four double-A,” Aron responded, his voice deep and husky. He appeared to her left, reaching across to take her hair out of her bun.

She didn’t bother wondering why this was happening. Didn’t try to ask. Her guess satisfied her enough and if she was wrong, she didn’t want to know.

She knew these men, what they were like. She was outraged, but she wasn’t surprised. Not even when Aron pulled off her jacket and tossed it aside.

Magnus shifted his hips away only enough to pull back her trousers, taking her underwear with it in a single tug.

There was no ceremony. No warning, no preparation. He spat on her dry cunt and drove his thick cock inside her to the hilt.

Her snarl of pain and fury drowned out any groan of pleasure from the man behind her. Her fingers flexed. No matter how hard she tugged, her hands weren’t getting free. Not even when they switched grip once Magnus had begun fucking her in earnest.

“We’re really not going to get to see your kitty before you die, huh?” he asked, shoving hard and bottoming out inside her again.

Her eyes watered and the pain enticed another snarl, but she said nothing.

Strong, cold hands gripped her hips as he began thrusting harder. She hated the way her body responded to the stimulation. The way she slickened around his dick until he slid seamlessly in and out, filling the kitchen with the wet sounds of arousal.

“Fuck her, she’s wet!”

Slap!

She hadn’t seen Aron lift his hand to strike her, at the same moment Magnus had brought down his hand to slap her arse. He went back to gripping her hips, pulling her back onto him every time he shoved into her.

“There I was, thinking we had something special,” Aron spoke, resting on his elbows his face was close to hers. His eyes wandered down to her arse and stayed there. “But it turns out you’ll just get wet for anybody.”

He gave a humourless laugh, tinged with spite, but when Magnus laughed from behind her, his was entirely filled with pleasure and… a lick of something darker. Malice.

This was going to get far worse.

“No, Aron,” she tried pleading, though she didn’t know exactly why.

Perhaps it was because he, evidently, wasn’t wrong.

“Who’s next?” Magnus asked, ripping violently out of her, filling her cunt instead with three fingers.

He pumped at her until Laurent straightened from gripping her hands, stretching lithely like a cat before swiftly pulling his cock from his trousers. She could already tell he was slimmer than Magnus, but the length…

“Fuck,” he snarled, his cock driving into and painfully bumping against her cervix, “she’s too shallow.” And instead of an angry or frustrated growl, he laughed.

He kept pushing at her.

The pain speared through her. She cried out, eyes watering, her wrists pulling until, with a fierce tug from Anand, she fell flat against the worktop once more. Laurent kicked her ankles, spreading her legs farther apart. The humiliation heightened as she was further exposed.

She was used to being exposed, but this? This was worse. So much worse.

The hands on her hips pulled harder. She cried out again, louder this time, but it was met with another dizzying blow to her face.

So, Anand liked to beat a girl senseless?

She was going to die anyway. What did it matter?

“Will someone gag her already?” Magnus appeared around her front, cock in hand. It was humiliating to see how he glistened.

It was Aron who pulled something from his pocket. A roll of duct tape. First, he put it over her mouth and then with help, they pulled her arms behind her back and taped off her wrists.

“Better.”

There was a round of agreement. Laurent didn’t break pace.

“See, these other cunts were worried about you shifting,” Aron all but purred into her ear. “But I said I was with you for three years and I never saw your cat once. I said it wasn’t a problem, that you were probably lying about your heritage just to try scare us. But…” He reached into his jacket, pulling out a sleek, silver revolver with a short barrel. “I packed some Dimeritium just in case. If you shift, one’s going in your head and all our fun has to end early. So to prevent that…” He pulled back the hammer and shot her in the side of the thigh.

She screeched, as much as she could screech with duct tape covering her mouth. Already balancing on her toes, she lost the ability to hold her weight. The pain was an explosive force through her, shooting up her spine, arching it as Laurent continued pounding her stretched cunt. It jerked her hips back onto him, and the pain of his cock hitting her already bruised cervix made her cry out again. She closed her eyes tears spilling over her cheeks and dripping to the black granite under her.

“Now, you’re going to hope that didn’t blow all the way through, otherwise you’re getting another in a far less ideal place.”

Of course it’d fucking blown through. He’d shot her point-blank with a gods-be-damned revolver.

When his hand slid around her thigh, however, she could tell there was no exit wound, no rush of pain as his fingers ran over broken flesh. In her relief, she groaned out, almost forgiving the fact he’d just put a bullet in her body.

“There’s a good girl. You were scared, weren’t you?” Aron put the gun back on the work surface, purposefully in her line of sight. “I knew you would be. It’s just an air pistol, you stupid cunt. That means I can fill you with these pellets all night long and you won’t bleed out.”

He spun it idly, finger dangerously close to the trigger. Her breathing hitched until she was close to hyperventilation.

“I could even do this.” The gun came back up again and he shoved it against her sealed lips. “Rip the tape off and shove it in your mouth when it’s my time to fuck you. I don’t think I want your cunt, Sylvi. I think I want what you never gave to me, but gave to that rat-dragon Khalek.”

She’d trusted him with that information. Had told him in confidence.

She’d trusted him, and now this…

The gun went down and he brushed her cheek with the palm of his hand. Then he applied pressure, shoving her face against the cool surface. “That’s right, little kitty-cat. I’m gonna sodomise you until you bleed.”

The hand trailed over her still-clothed back, over the bareness of her arse until his index finger found her tiny, unused hole. Her pushed and she moaned in protest. He kept pushing. Harder, harder, until suddenly, it gave.

He pulled back out of her before she could start to imagine the things she was going to do in her revenge.

She knew it wasn’t going to get to that. She wasn’t walking out of this.

Still. Revenge was a pleasant idea.

“Fucking shut up, Aron. You’re killing my boner.”

The blond straightened, a sickening smile on his face as he faced down Anand. “I think someone’s getting jealous he hasn’t got to put something in her yet.”

With a final thrust, Laurent let out a staggering groan and collapsed on top of her. “Ugh. Fuck. The stink of her blood’s doing things to me.” He paused. “That… wasn’t supposed to happen so fast.”

He pulled his cock out of her, leaving a wet trail over the back of her thigh. He went to his knees, lips sealing over the entry wound left by the Dimeritium pellet. It was all she could do to tune out his haunting moans of pleasure.

Anand filled her with a single thrust, his groan punching out of him in a gust. “You fuckers. You’ve gone and made her all loose.” With a dark laugh, he gripped her hips and began pounding her with the least gentility so far.

“Maybe you just have a tiny cock, Kapil,” Aron laughed.

She looked up as the blond lowered himself beside her again, a hand going around her throat. His thumb gently stroked over her windpipe. “I’m going to have this hole, too. But not until we’ve made sure those teeth won’t get in the way.”

Magnus spoke up next. “Ah, fuck it. We should move her downstairs before we lose track of time and the sun has its fun.”

Sylvianna began kicking again. If they had to move her… she’d have another chance to fight.

She wasn’t going to be some vampire’s fucktoy. Not now. Not ever.

Something stabbed against the side of her neck. When she turned her head to look, Aron stood with a needle slowly compressing.

With each millimetre pushing into her neck, the world turned fuzzier and fuzzier. Her skin tingled with a conflict of numbness and hypersensitivity as though she was drunk.

Bastards.

Fucking bastards!

Her legs couldn’t take her weight. Her eyelids drooped.

 

*

 

By the time her began burning off whatever drug had been injected into her, they’d taken her into her wine cellar, past the rows of bottles into the far back. They’d pulled her boots and trousers off, but her top half still remained clothed.

“She’s got fucking cells down here.” An impressed whistle. “Looks like someone keeps hostages from time to time! And what’s this?”

After being dropped onto her knees, held mostly upright by Anand’s grip on her throat, she watched Magnus inspect the dust sheets she’d thrown over her expensive oak. He ripped it off the first item and barking laughter echoed off the cool stone walls. “Aron, you dated her for three years and you still didn’t tell us she was a little bondage whore?”

“What? No. What the shit is that?”

He continued unveiling the furniture and walked back to her, ripping the tape away from her mouth. “You’ve got some impressive scaffold designs here. So you like to be bent over and tied down, do you?”

He gripped her jaw in a pincered hold, almost to the point of pain.

She snarled through the discomfort, her voice marred when she spat, “It isn’t for me. S’why’s it down here, unused.”

“Now that is interesting.” Magnus turned back to Aron. “Something you’re not telling us, kid?”

With a snort, Aron looked up from sifting through the ropes she’d stored with the furniture and growled, “Fuck yourself, McNeill.”

Magnus gave a belly-laugh. “No need, no need.”

“Look at this shit.” Laurent turned, holding a ball-gag he’d pulled from the set of drawers she’d also had stored away. “We’re taking all this shit back with us to Warehouse.”

“And I think we’ll be taking her, too,” Anand said, tightening the grip on her throat. His thumb reached up and hooked inside her mouth. “May as well get some more use out of her before we have to get rid of her.”

There was another round of agreement.

Her teeth sank into the digit in her mouth.

Anand yelled out, shoving her away from him with such force, she fell flat on her front and smacked her head against the stone floor. “Bitch! See if she’s got a ring gag! I’m fucking her throat for that.”

He lifted her up and threw her down on one of the tables, her legs hanging over the edge. He shoved into her cunt while Laurent located the right gag and set it in her mouth. The steel tasted bitter, cold against her tongue, but with her wrists still tied and Anand between her legs, she could do nothing. It was strapped around the back of her head, forcing her mouth to stay open.

“Lift her up,” Magnus then said. “I’m getting under her. Aron, you can fuck her arse while I’m in her cunt.”

Once the Scot had positioned himself under her, knees either side of his torso, they tucked her legs under her and used a length of rope to tie her ankles to the tops of her thighs. The vulnerability was a whiplash of fear striking through her. She could no longer kick. Couldn’t swipe, couldn’t even bite. With Magnus holding her butt and Laurent’s hand on the back of her head, she could barely even move.

Her mind still felt fuzzy. She closed her eyes, as though if she couldn’t see the horror, it wouldn’t feel as bad. She didn’t understand what she was tasting until she opened them again and saw the triangle of black hair against dusky skin in front of her. Anand was rubbing the head of his cock over her exposed tongue.

When she tried to bite, she was met with the resistance of steel. She choked a sob, Anand pushing harder against her, teasing the soft, sensitive back of her mouth until she gagged.

A cock pushed up into her cunt. Beneath her, Magnus groaned, his hands firm on her hips as he plunged into her once more.

That was when she felt the familiar nudge of Aron’s finger pushing against her tight, unused hole. She tried to plea, beg that he didn’t fuck her there, but Anand kept pushing at the back of her mouth, slowly, torturously gaining access to her throat. His hands bunched her hair and held her head up, giving him clear passage into her.

Her sobs turned to retches. Her fingers curled into tight fists.

She couldn’t move. Couldn’t scream. Magnus pounded harder and harder while Aron’s finger loosened up her tight arse.

He slipped in a second finger and she choked again. Anand pulled out an inch, replacing it with two more. Her body convulsed and by some miracle she managed to keep from retching. She still gagged, growling moans slipping out of her in weak, almost laughable protest. Laurent menacingly pumped his cock in front of her face. She could already tell what was about to happen.

A third finger…

It was so much. All so much.

And it was real. It was happening.

They were going to use her, again and again until she had to die.

She had to get them to kill her sooner. Had to make them bored of her.

So she knelt there, allowed them to hold her, move her, use her.

Aron spat on her gaping hole… and he drove into her, hands gripping her hips so tight, she felt his claws gauge into her flesh. “Oh, fuck. I should’ve done this so much sooner. Fuck!”

The three of them held her with iron grips, Anand’s hands wrapping around her throat almost as though to throttle her as his cock slipped deeper into her throat. His thrusts picked up in pace, pushing deeper with each turn.