The Strigoi Chronicles Box Set

  THE STRIGOI CHRONICLES

  By

  Nya Rawlyns

  PENANCE Digital ISBN: 978-1-936827-97-8

  FANE Digital ISBN: 978-1-936827-98-5

  MICHEL Digital ISBN: 978-0-9892496-2-1

  DREU Digital ISBN: 978-0-9892496-5-2

  Copyright ©2013 by Nya Rawlyns.

  First electronic editions published by PubRight

  Published in the United States of America with international distribution.

  Cover Designs by Sessha Batto

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication:

  For my loyal readers.

  Without you there would be no stories.

  CONTENTS

  THE STRIGOI CHRONICLES

  PENANCE

  FANE

  MICHEL

  DREU

  PENANCE

  PENANCE

  The Strigoi Chronicles

  By

  NYA RAWLYNS

  Theirs was an unholy union. He was the genetic mistake that the mother tried to protect.

  Cîteaux Abbey provided sanctuary, the Abbot provided tutoring, and the boy grew to manhood in the shelter of monastic order. For nine hundred years his needs, his excesses, his self-indulgences provided every reason to embrace the solitude of his calling.

  When fanatical weres seek to use his powers against his own kind, the Vampyr monk faces an unholy choice: sacrifice the one thing he has grown to care about or finally reveal to the world the secret he has hidden for centuries.

  Chapter One

  I sat staring at the piece of parchment.

  Rule One: There are no rules…

  Jacob would be down with that. Elliot, not so much. Alphas, especially pig-headed silvers, didn’t come with a sense of humor. So what did they come with? Scribbling with the squib, I continued…

  Honor.

  Devotion.

  Obeisance.

  With my right foot toe-tapping to some tune the pups had loaded on the widget with the earphones, I contemplated the list of pack attributes. Obeisance only fit the zeds, the bottom-of-the-barrels, the losers … the pity pups yanked off the mean streets and raised up to serve, leaving protect for the big guns: Elliot first and foremost, then Samuel and Jacob—good lieutenants and not ever likely to jockey for more than what they already had in terms of position and influence.

  I called them the Gay Blades … but not out loud. Never out loud.

  After a few centuries I’d learned the value of toadying up while keeping to my own agenda. I don’t think Elliot had caught on yet, he was still too testosterone fueled over nabbing a gen-u-ine one-of-a-kind weapon of mass destruction.

  I didn’t have the heart to disavow him of his misperceptions. After all, he’d freed me from the cargo hold of that stinking piece ‘o shit tramp steamer. The one with a few errant bits of uranium fuel and a very impressive selection of older, working Russian Kalashnikovs.

  Working being the operative term. If the West only knew how dicey the manufacturing standards from the Soviet era were, they’d have called off the cold war for lack of interest. But when those beauties worked, they were a thing of awesomeness.

  What tickled my hair shirt was the stash of RPG-29’s, the ‘Vampir’ model, tucked around and on top of my prone form. The brain trust that had raided my cave in the highlands above Yalta hadn’t looked to logistics when they were divvying up the largesse. Being a box short of a full shipment, my coffin was all that remained to stow the booty.

  Spinning the laptop so that I could see the screen better, I googled ‘caves above Yalta’. Bakhchisarai - the Khans palace, cave monastery and cave town popped up, complete with tour information. A hundred years ago the only tourists showing up were coming for absolution, not photo ops. It made me wonder which was the more authentic: bartering for salvation or trapping time in a virtual bottle for the purpose of bragging rights.

  The two activities seemed strangely alike.

  Damn, I missed that place. It wasn’t home in the traditional sense, but the climate had suited, the view was a killer and the peasant girls buxom and willing.

  My belly growled, loud enough to roust my jailer out of his afternoon snooze.

  “You okay in there, Father?” He had a confounding accent, on the guttural, thick side. Sometime during the day, they’d switched off, leaving me to a novitiate to the pack. If he was Serb or Albanian, it would explain the tone of concern and the subtext of respect.

  Those boys knew to pay homage to their betters. Me being one of them.

  “Sorry, my son. I didn’t mean to disturb.”

  “Uh, no prob, uh … sir.” He peered through the narrow opening in a wood door as thick as Italia and crisscrossed with an iron lattice.

  Fortunately the alpha, or whoever had been in charge of securing my prostrate form from the Somalian pirates, hadn’t done a lot of research. At least not enough to get past the obvious fang ’n bang Vampyr outward manifestations. If looks could be deceiving, mine were a currency worth the crown jewels.

  The boy stumbled over some Russian and then switched to Romanian, which did me little good since I spoke French like a native and Russian like a whore. The few Roma I’d snacked on hadn’t bequeathed me much in the way of their language skills.

  Muttering, “English, please?” we both sighed with relief as he nodded his head in agreement.

  Starting again, he asked, “Can I get you anything?”

  “Well…”

  “Are you hungry?”

  Aside from grazing on weak-livered AB negative—compliments of a grizzly of a man whose usefulness to the pack was on the far side of die already—my nutritional requirements remained unfulfilled.

  It made me, as they say in the American Deep South, a mite peckish.

  I watch too much television. But then, there’s not a lot to do other than avail myself of satellite-beamed infomercials and sitcom reruns. And the largesse of major networks rebroadcasting shows via websites.

  Gods, I loved this century.

  My little friend still beamed a hopeful eye in my direction. He at least had listened to rumors, of the lascivious kind, the kind where I suck his balls and give him head and fang in nether regions so sensitive he’d damn near die of euphoria.

  Huh, actually, that wasn’t a bad idea. The sucking balls part. Not his, though. My belly wasn’t the only thing in need of nourishing.

  Nodding, I flashed a bit of fang and beckoned him to enter. I would have compelled him if I could but that wasn’t one of my skill sets. Instead my rugged features and piercing glacier blue eyes did the talking for me.

  Reading romance novels is also a guilty pleasure, in the shits and giggles category. I am nothing if not a creature of the renaissance, eclectic and catholic in my tastes. Small ‘c’. There’s a difference. I was going to write about that on my little sprig of parchment, but then I got distracted with these other possibilities.

  My wolfie new BFF unlocked and manhandled the door open—it swung inward, a fact I’d noted for future activities when I tired of this charade and decided to leave for more interesting climes, though I couldn’t fault the countryside from the little I could see fr
om the arrow-slit gracing the higher reaches of the dungeon. When the weather co-operated, there were the occasional glimpses of granite cliffs tumbling in abstract patterns to a sea glimmering in angry grey-green, the scent wafting into my cell on soft breezes.

  That possibly put me on the Adriatic, amongst the friendly neighborhoods of one or another Balkan state, most likely on a trade route for arms, drugs, white slavers and weaponized young men with anger management issues.

  One of whom entered my domain cautiously but with hope, desire and plain old lust bleeding out of every pore.

  We considered each other over an expanse of uneven stone flooring. That he left the door open—and the key ring dangling loosely in thick, gnarled fingers—spoke volumes about his IQ; but his solid build, imposing height, and very impressive assets made concerns about après fuck small talk a moot point.

  In a word, he was hot.

  Mesmerized by the straining denim across a very pronounced erection, it took a few moments to see the manacles attached to his belt. If I’d had a functioning heart, it would have stopped. Like a combatant watching an opponent’s eyes for a telltale sign for when he’d lob a strike, I waited for my new toy to spy the rings set halfway up the wall. They were high enough to be ridiculously uncomfortable for someone like me, born in the eleventh century when a tall man might reach five-nine, if that. For him, towering over me by a generous five or six inches, it was going to be just an inconvenience.

  My imagination kicked into overdrive, anticipating the little grunts of dismay, the huffs of distress as he swiveled and pulled against the restraints, metal clinking against cold, hard stone while I peeled that offending fabric down tree trunk thighs.

  The wolf would object, strenuously. Their breed didn’t take kindly to being leashed and the risk that he’d shift made what I planned deliciously dangerous.

  He smiled slyly and asked, “Would you like to eat first, Father?”

  First, oh dear boy… I love when predator and prey are on the same page. I nodded to the wall behind me and stepped away, leaving a path for him amidst the clutter in the cell. He pressed against the door, grunting lightly at having to force the weight against rusty hinges. Wolves were very strong, but that door would stop a tank. Again, he impressed me.

  But then, maybe I was just really, really hungry.

  With a wave of my hand, I indicated he should stand under the rings, but to be polite, I asked, “Do you mind?”

  “N-n-not at all, Father,” stuttering a little as the beast suggested that it was a bad idea. It wasn’t that I could read his mind or anything like that; but it didn’t take an advanced degree in lycanthropy to read eyes flashing yellowish green and skin literally crawling with anxiety, the muscles twitching just under the surface.

  Oh, and what skin.

  My tall friend had won the genetic lottery with a dusky olive complexion, pin straight, über-black hair falling to his shoulders, a stern brow ridge that would do a Neanderthal proud and designer stubble barely concealing a lickable chin cleft. Plus, he had meat on his bones.

  I’m really not fond of the Ralph Lauren skinny minnies with monogram shirts and high cheekbones. Give me something in two hundred to two-twenty pounds, built square and hard-muscled, then top it with a face that’s got flat Slavic planes, shadowed, tortured eyes and full lips. Add a prominent nose that’s been broken, props if more than once, and my engine starts revving.

  My preferences were one reason I’d relocated to the Black Sea area. Ultimately, I’d been disappointed in the quality of the gene pool but I stayed on for the ambiance, making do with my other acquired taste: nubile, virginal young things whose mothers benefitted from my bestowing indulgences.

  Bartering one’s daughter’s virginity for past, current or future forgiveness of sins seemed to be a regional interpretation of the myths built up around an ancient theological practice, one that greatly benefitted every order I’d adopted over the early medieval period and beyond. It added to the cloister’s coffers and afforded the small luxuries that made life in a monastery tolerable.

  Come for salvation. Stay for the perks.

  Some of us had put a different spin on that ‘come’ with penance for extra-curricular activities honored more in the breach than the observance.

  The wiggly pup before me obligingly held out the manacles, and then divested his broad torso of the black tee-shirt. Taking a moment, I drank in the sight of dark hair furred over massive man boobs that tapered and ridged over moguls of taut flesh, the thick vee of invitation diving inside a pewter belt buckle and disappearing from view. I licked my lips, deliberately nicking my tongue on a fang, the drizzle of syrupy rich goodness snaring his attention.

  Between ragged breaths, he fumbled with the belt but I stayed his hands, instead urging them upwards and carefully latching the worn leather to thick wrists.

  If my boy toy had been a horse, I’d have said something along the lines of him having good bone.

  Eyebrows raised as I chuckled at my own joke, he complied, the anticipation almost more than he could bear. At the loud snick when the latch engaged, he bucked away, yanking down, testing his strength against the anchors in the stone. The rings would hold; the latch would not. It was new wave bondage lite with quick release snaps. All my darling needed was a safe word and all would be well.

  Except for one little thing.

  I didn’t do safe words.

  Chapter Two

  1113 anno domini

  “Dreu, don’t be tiresome. I refuse to have this discussion again.”

  The boy fisted his hands, talons branding the corded muscles across scarred palms. Ignoring the steady splick splick of thick red droplets oozing between rigid fingers, he advanced on the small woman but she gave no quarter. He’d tried reasoning with her, pointing out all the justifications for why she needed his very special skills: to protect their home, to serve her, to serve her master. That hadn’t worked so he’d resorted to whining and begging. Mewling had fallen on deaf ears and had left him tangled in knots, teetering on the edge of adulthood, yet clinging with tenacity to the safety of the womb and the woman’s undying devotion.

  Except it was never devotion for him. He was the afterthought, the penance, the reminder of better days and deliciously corrupt nights.

  The last thing he wanted was to hurt her, but he was rapidly running out of options. Aiming for the low blow he growled, “If you hadn’t spread for every demon that knocked on the door…”

  The slap that followed was no surprise. Rubbing at the stinging flesh on his cheek, he pressed his advantage. She didn’t like to be reminded of her singular tastes and sometimes unfortunate choices. Not that one though, the one spitted outside their door, the original transgressor. The example to all others. His alleged father. The one who’d whetted her appetites for the exotic and forbidden.

  That very public execution hadn’t worked; the fair Aveline had still drawn the hordes, exchanging her favors for protections and sustenance. She, and they, pretended the Demon Liege’s sufferance of her activities as implied consent.

  And why not … the creature had availed himself of her charms often enough during random acts of pillage in the surrounds of Cîteaux. Some said that the Abbey, founded by their own Alberic and Robert of Molesme, was created in response to intense criticism that men of faith had failed in their charge to see to their flocks.

  Now his Maman intended for him to join that vaulted circle of asceticism and self-sufficiency, to toil endlessly in gardens of despair, tucked away, out of sight and out of mind.

  To save you, my dearest Dreu, to protect you from him.

  Gathering her skirts, she spun away, presenting an enticing target—a pale expanse of pearly skin framed by tendrils of loose flaxen curls. He should have flushed with embarrassment at the lengthening fangs, the unnatural pull her blood had: the scent of lavender interspersed with a bouquet of spice and haughty defiance. He fought back the need to suckle at her breast once more, to inhale that substitute for
love and motherly adoration.

  His mouth went dry, refusing to understand why he was the one to make the sacrifice.

  “I’m not going.” Crossing his arms over a too thin chest, he set his mouth in a hard line, driving the points deep into sensitive flesh until his mouth filled with metallic heat. He hated the taste of his own blood. Acrid, it mixed with bile and the secretions of lymph sacs buried deep in pouches that released when his emotions ran rampant. The effects multiplied, driving him into a frantic denial of his own strangeness—the unnaturalness, the impossibility of his being.

  As if Aveline, a Vampirene of Languedoc—like him born, not made—was anything more than an abomination, a curse of the night. At least she’d been pure, her bloodlines unsullied. Dirty and pure … the temptress and the child. He hated her. Hated her titles, her choices, her freedom.

  “You will leave at dusk. A cart and pony has been dispatched, along with an escort, to see to your safe arrival.” The tone was one of finality, a proclamation of doom, a condemnation and disavowal of him as a living, breathing being. And he would go alone into the night, never to return.

  She continued staring into the dying embers of the fire, her fingers splayed as if absorbing the heat and warming her bones. He knew if he touched her, she would be cool and unyielding, like the statues in the church. Forever trapped in stone. Forever lost to him.

  Turning away, he shuffled, dejected, to a footstool and sank onto the tapestried cushion. The room was small, nearly airless, the windows boarded shut to keep the sun’s killing rays at bay. This was their safe room, their retreat for when the sleep of peace took them to a level of hell reserved for their kind.