The Ing's Consort

~Two years later~

The pain was unbearable.

Caitlin screamed and thrashed against the sheets, her body revolting against each wave of contractions that built to a crescendo, forcing all logic from her mind. Althea and her staff were there, along with a fretting Janice, a supportive Amandine, a shell-shocked Mia, and even a pleasantly surprised Marianne, who’d come by to visit and decided to stay through the ordeal.

Caitlin sweat bullets as she huffed through the contraction. It slowly eased its grip on her body and she could breathe again, but it would only be for a short time.

Kalen’s hand slipped into hers, squeezing gently. “You’re almost there, Caitlin.” His voice was calm, too calm for such a situation. She might have felt better if he’d been disheveled, as she’d heard fathers often were in these situations.

“Ten centimeters,” Althea said, putting a gloved hand near her throbbing womanhood. She hardly felt the doctor’s touch as she was prodded.

A wave of dizziness consumed her, and she couldn’t focus. Kalen’s hand squeezed tighter. “Don’t give up on us, Caitlin. You need to push with the next contraction. I can already see our son’s head. His hair is your color,” he said as if to distract her. “Just hold on for me.”

His hand stroked back her sweaty locks from her face. She’d woken that morning to feel her body rioting against itself, and screamed for help. Nearly twelve hours later, she’d lost a lot of blood, and quite a bit of her sanity with each contraction.

Several times, she’d screamed at her mother to leave her alone. Janice, stone-faced and stubborn, surprisingly did, but she never left the room.

The birth had garnered all too much attention, and she just wanted to be alone. Or, as alone as she could be, in this situation. In the background, that impassive part of her mind knew she was dying. But that was expected, wasn’t it?

It didn’t mean she was ready to die.

Althea had continued to administer blood transfusions, but as quickly as they came, she bled them out, too. On Kalen’s order, she added another bag to the IV stand.

The doctor kept her legs steady and leaned over. “Good job, momma. Another big push, now.”

Caitlin shook her head, her face hot with her efforts. “I- can’t!”

“Yes, you can.” A cool touch on her left felt like Kalen, another on her right, Amandine. Together, their presence allowed her shattered nerves to settle, but only slightly. She closed her eyes and pushed, just as the doctor said, feeling her body riot against her.

“He’s coming!”

Caitlin grit her teeth and screamed with her last efforts, feeling that pressure that had so built up in her release all at once, and she felt a throbbing emptiness settle in. She threw her head back with a weep and closed her eyes, feeling her life’s energy spill from her body.

But she wasn’t afraid.

She knew Kalen, who looked so incredibly worried over her, would not let her fall into the velvety void of death. Not tonight.

A squalling broke through her exhaustive haze, and a parcel was placed in her arms. Kalen held her steady as the package squirmed, little limbs pushing against the bundled blankets. He, their only child, was covered in her blood, his little cherubic features twisted from the trauma of being born. She marveled at his little fingers through her waning attention, seeing those little gums, entirely free of teeth, and a tongue that shuddered with the power of his cry.

Tears fell as Kalen knelt at her side, cradling the swaddled newborn with her. “Shh, it’s alright, little prince. The world isn’t so bad now that you’re here.”

Caitlin opened her mouth to say something, but found that she could not form the words. She looked to Kalen, whose features seemed soft, as he watched their son take his first few breaths.

Someone removed the child, and Caitlin’s vision swam. “No,” she said faintly. “Give him back to me...”

A hand held her down as her vision faded.

“She’s going to code-” someone said.

“I know. Everyone who isn’t my staff needs to get out.”

“But, she’s my-”

“

Everyone

.”

Even Kalen’s hand was gone as she groped in the darkness, not feeling anyone or anything nearby. The gentle bleating of her son, too, was gone, replaced by frantic beeps of a machine she was hooked up to.

Then, a presence bored down on her, a familiar energy she wouldn’t mistake for anyone else: Kalen. “You’ve come a long way. So much you’ve sacrificed.” His voice was cool compared to the swell of heat flooding out of her. “I have to ask you, once last time, for your sacrifice.” A hand caught the back of her neck and lips brushed her collar bone.

Still breathing hard from the birth, and gasping for air from the blood loss, she only nodded her consent. “Will you- stay with me?”

“Forever,” he murmured, his lips finding that hollow of her neck, the sharpness of his teeth brushing against her tender skin. “Forever and forever, my Queen. I promise, it will not take long.” His teeth slid in, making her eyes open involuntarily. She saw the coffered ceiling swirl as the last of her energy was released to Kalen.

Her body reacted to his draw, pressing herself against him as her mind slipped free of its cage. All orientation was lost, swept up in a turbulent nothingness that imprisoned her very mind. It was no sleep she had ever experienced, for this, in itself, was a hell she would not have wished on anyone.

Then, she began to feel a familiar sensation.

That of the void.

Its tendrils curled around her, or through her, for she had no form here. But it still struck with needling precision, bringing horrible clarity to her predicament. The birth may have been difficult, but this was unreal in its agony.

She did not know she could experience such, trapped eternally in its darkness.

And she knew, without any doubt, that Kalen had lied.

He’d only wanted the child, just as Gabriel had warned her. Just as Janice suspected. There was nothing on this side of death but pain and eternal suffering. If she saw a demon, she could understand where the pain originated and blame it, instead. But here, there was no jailor, no warden or torturer to accuse. Nothing, but the impassive, cold burn of a purgatory she’d not been prepared for.

With that thought, the pain intensified.

There was nothing like it, no form to keep her mind occupied, nothing. Only this for a thousand, thousand years, would she be subject to eternal damnation, so much worse than even her mother’s bible had notated in its revelations.

And, as quickly as the void swallowed her up, it released her.

She took in a gasping breath with lungs she didn’t know she possessed. Colors formed in this hell, and clarity gradually returned.

Above her, she felt the press of darkness, a multi-faceted blackness that fractaled the air around the figure. And there he was, looking down on her with the gentlest expression. “Caitlin?”

Her eyes flashed around the room, its features made too bright by the sliver of light coming through a crack in the door. She shielded them with a heavy arm, then glanced up to Kalen anew. She’d never seen him quite this way before. Where she’d memorized his face, handsome and soft, the slight marring of sun-damage along his cheekbone, she now saw a radiant figure. She could

feel

him with a level of detail she’d never known before, her eyes roving over the magnificent planes of his face, marveling again at his beauty. It was as if, without raising a hand, she could touch him from a distance.

And he seemed to respond. “That is your shadow energy, Caitlin,” he said, his eyes dark. “You were only gone about a minute. How do you feel?”

The question intrigued her. Without moving, she scanned her own body, feeling a cool clarity flowing through her limbs and down to her toes. Her belly, which had grown large over the last three years, had miraculously shrunk back to its pre-pregnant dip. Her stomach was slightly concave, but a fire began to grow inside of it. One she could only imagine was hunger.

Pain pierced her gums, and she felt her teeth, her

new

teeth.

Caitlin moved to sit up, finding herself already vertical. Her mind swam with the change in position, but quickly righted itself.

Kalen didn’t touch her, but she

sensed

him intimately. His energy spread from his body, stretching and flaring out wide, then closing in around the two of them. She felt an overwhelming draw from him, as if, without lifting a finger, he urged her closer.

She obliged, the smallest trace of shadow within her leaping feverishly in her chest. His final gift to her: an immortal life. Caitlin’s hands caught his collar on their own, the weak fabric ripping in her grip. He chuckled, then his arm swept out and caught her around the waist. Kalen still hadn’t said anything, but she could feel his burning need for her.

Her lips crushed to his on instinct, and she tasted a sharp palate of flavors, her own blood among them. But she didn’t mind, savoring this kiss as if it were the last. Or the first.

Where he’d been gentle before, he was not now, rasping his tongue against hers, his teeth growing long.

Caitlin closed her eyes, the whole world a carnal swirl of stimuli. Safely wrapped in his shadow energies, her mind did not stray to the sounds outside of their bedroom, though one sound in particular tore her lips from his teeth. Her words came, slow and harsh. “My... son?”

He allowed her to pull away and planted a kiss on her forehead, a singularly exhilarating sensation that made her body ache. “He’s safe.” Kalen ran a hand through her hair, exciting her sensitive scalp. She’d never seen his eyes go quite so soft as he looked at her, watching her features with a trace of concern. “Would you like to see him?”

Her mouth, moist from their kiss, dried up as her teeth receded, leaving only her human ones. She nodded cautiously, frightened that the new strength flooding through her limbs might hurt the newborn.

“Amandine has him now. We’ll see him soon. But first, we must take care of something.” Kalen stood, sweeping into a standing position gracefully and bringing her with him.

This new speed, so smooth and yet so blindingly fast, forced her to take in a breath, though it didn’t seem necessary.

He laughed at her reaction, his arm still wrapped tightly around her waist as he lowered his head to nuzzle her neck. “It’s alright, Caitlin. You’ll get used to it.”

Caitlin found his chest, feeling over the hardness of his body and up, to the lines of his handsome face. She stroked the sun scar, as well as the unbroken flesh of his other cheek, electric sparks exciting her fingertips. His hands caught hers, and a wave of frisson flared over her skin. How could she live like this, so utterly stimulated by every motion, every breath?

His hazel eyes -- though, with her improved vision, she realized they were not hazel, but every hue flecked together -- roved over her face with a silent question.

She did not hear the question, but she knew the answer. “I’m okay, Kalen.”

When his hands stroked down her frame, she nearly buckled with the pleasure of it. “But if you need a moment, don’t hesitate to ask. You’re a newborn vampire, after all.”

Caitlin blinked, a delicious sensation welled up in her eyes, and she saw dark traces of the world, facets she didn’t know existed. She gasped and looked around, still feeling Kalen’s stabilizing hands on her. Pockets of darkness and gray fog swirled in her vision, opening and closing like doors to strange places. “What is this?”

“

That,

Caitlin, is the veil.” He blinked, and his eyes were dark as midnight. Kalen pulled her closer, then reached for a patch of blackness that floated by. And suddenly, they were on top of a building in the dead of night. Stars hung like so many little lights above them, more than she’d ever seen in her life. Caitlin awed at the sight, hardly concerned of her whereabouts. In this --

strange

-- new existence, she could only deal with the ‘now’. Everything else could wait. Maybe later, she’d grow used to being stimulated by the very air that caressed at her face and teased her clothes.

The chatter of the city below gave her reason to listen. Even as her fading human memory recognized the sounds of many lives below, she marveled at them as she might a new and brilliant work of art. As if she’d never heard their kind before. She looked up to Kalen, whose black eyes panned the horizon with the slow acquiesce of a monarch.

The wind whipped past them, attempting to steal the heat of their bodies. It only served to excite her skin as she pulled into Kalen’s form, tasting his sweet musk on her tongue, so much more powerful to her new senses. She wished to never leave this moment, this first, most untainted sliver of her new existence. But something tugged on her mind, a squalling bundle they’d left behind. “We should go back,” she said quietly, her voice loud in her own head.

It was one of many things she’d need to get used to.

“In a moment.” He cupped her face as she nestled into his shirt, wrapping his dark energies around her as if to protect her from the elements, though it wasn’t necessary. “We’ve not talked about a name for our son.”

She remained quiet. In her previous life, it would have been a paramount decision. But now, she could hardly steal her mind free of these distracting sensations. Caitlin had filled several sheaves with names, never falling on one she liked.

“He should not be a third of his name. It would be an unfortunate thing to call him ‘junior’.”

Her laugh surprised her. It was smooth and gentle, a sound that resonated deep in the back of her throat, the breathy purr of a femme fatal. “No. Not ‘Kalen’, then.”

They stared out at the same, indigo horizon, the stars above pressing the darkness down, and them with it. But Caitlin found she liked the subtle struggle. It reminded her exactly what she’d become. “What about Mikael?”

Kalen’s gentle caress of his thumb stopped as he considered. “After Micah, I assume?”

“It’s close,” she said in that same, sultry voice that wasn’t quite hers, “but not exact. And it speaks to loyalty, at least for me.” She glanced up at him. “Prince Mikael. What do you say, my King?”

He glanced down at her, his eyes shining in the starlight. “I think it is perfectly fitting.”

*

The drop was effortless.

A hundred stories down and she landed lightly on the balls of her feet, as if merely walking down from a high step. Kalen had not left her side, landing next to her with the ease of a predator.

And they were behind the city’s main strip, sounds and smells flooding her senses.

She could hardly think to focus on this task he’d given her, overwhelmed by the aching pulse of the city. So taken she was by it that she didn’t notice her feet move all on their own, stepping out onto the falsely illuminated street.

Everything was bright and warm and throbbing with impatient life. Several humans passed, entirely oblivious to her and her new, overwhelming urges. Her eyes trained on two women walking together. One seemed to notice and shot her a grimace, while the other, who looked distracted by Kalen’s presence, pulled her friend forward by the elbow, and picked up the pace.

For only a second, Caitlin’s body tensed as if to attack. They’d shown all the signs of prey, and were even fleeing, urging her basest nature to give chase. But a hand caressed her shoulder, barely a breath of a touch, and it made her freeze. “No, Caitlin. Not them.”

Caitlin took a steadying breath and righted herself, realizing just how tense she’d become. Was she so monstrous as to pluck two innocent young women off the street? It seemed so. She looked to Kalen, then leaned against him, basking in that familiar darkness she craved so much. “Who?” was all she asked, looking up into his eyes.

His thumb touched the center of her chin and he smiled. Then it faded to something serious. “Follow me.”

Together, they strode effortlessly through the heavily-traversed back alleys, meandering past many, many lives that smelled of misery and misfortune. If her hunger had not crawled up from her stomach and dried the back of her throat, she might have had pity on their unfortunate circumstances. As she was, she did all she could not to end their lives prematurely.

They did not want her attention, tonight.

She didn’t know where they were going until they had arrived.

The building was low, connected to a larger, brighter building that had floodlights basking an open courtyard, empty now, though the pungent scent of sweat lingered in the air.

Kalen, in a loud motion -- at least to her new senses -- removed a phone from his pocket and dialed. Before the man on the other end could answer, Kalen spoke. “We are ready for another, if you would be so kind. We’re out behind bay three, this time. No need to deliver.”

There was silence, for a moment, then the warden responded. “

Yes, your majesty.

“

Kalen turned off the phone and looked to her with a hint of a smile.

She swallowed back the hunger as her mouth watered with the oncoming meal. If her prior sensibilities had remained with her, she might not have been so eager. But eagerness was all she could feel; that, and the tension that came before a strike. Caitlin was just glad he was here to make the first feeding a merciful one. Or, as merciful as one could be, under the circumstances.

Her human self would have been relieved.

Before the sound even echoed across the cement, she heard a metal shutter open, a hissing slide, then the metal closed again. The sliding continued until something landed on the cement with a thud. Another body bag.

Her first victim.

This one, however, didn’t struggle with such violence quite as the ‘fixer’ had. Before they even had a chance to free themselves, Kalen had already swept up the bag, removed the squirming, confused human, and offered him to her by the neck.

A man of medium height, barrel chested with a crooked nose, glanced at her with fearful brown eyes and tried to loosen Kalen’s grip. “What the hell is this-”

Caitlin took a step forward, her body lithe and graceful, free from the burden of carrying a child, moved easily to him, entrapping him with only her eyes. She could smell his cruel actions,

see

the darkness accumulated within his very bones, and thirsted for his rushing blood.

Kalen let go as the human quit struggling.

The prisoner was enthralled, his eyes widening with awe. “Is it my birthday, or something?”

“Or something,” she said, smiling as she stepped into his space. She felt Kalen watching her intently, as if he was ready to tear them apart at a moment’s notice. Was that

envy

she saw in his eyes? It made her smile wider as she pinned the human with only her gaze.

He reached for the seam of his prisoner’s outfit, garish and orange in the harsh fluorescents. She caught his hands gently, stopping them from exposing himself. His hands, strong by human standards, were as fresh fruit in hers. She could feel the bones, ready to snap if she bothered to squeeze. But she didn’t, bringing them out, on a strange whim, to rest on her hips.

The less he understood, the better.

Her arms looped around the stranger’s neck, and his eyes flitted with a passion that would remain unrequited. As he exhaled, she caught his tangle of dirty blond hair and yanked his neck to one side, finding a soft opening for the teeth that were growing long in her mouth.

Kalen stood behind the prisoner, watching her as she teased her first victim. He blinked in admission, observing their encounter without interrupting.

With his permission, she pressed her body to the human’s and buried her face in his neck, finding his flesh yielding and as soft as she imagined. The man’s hands squeezed as he mistook their exchange for a forceful kiss, moaning as her teeth struck home.