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The way I arrived, when they tried to follow me backwards to see where I came from, it would look as if I walked out of the woods on an adjacent road, and they wouldn’t see me at any time before, no matter how hard they looked, whether on visual or infrared, because I’d had my body at the air temperature until just before I stepped out of the woods once I was ready to be seen.
The eagle at the door saw me arriving, and I sensed he was telepathing. When I neared the door, Marco was there to greet me, and — after inquiring about my cellphone — he walked me into a large room with a small stage on one end and chairs set out for an audience. “You’re up on the stage with us,” he told me. “Etta should be out momentarily.”
A row of chairs lined the back of the stage, and I sat in the seat Marco pointed me to. A few moments later, Etta stepped out and sat beside me, so I found myself seated between her and Venom, looking out at the dozens and dozens of eagles, hawks, wolves, cats, and a few other animal varieties that made up the shifter portion of the coterie’s guard unit. The vampire guards would be stretched thin to patrol all properties, but I had no doubt they’d pull it off.
And then Evan came out, walking Largo down the aisle going through the middle of the audience. The prisoner was completely nude except for the cuffs holding his wrists behind his back, and I could sense the magic in them that kept him from changing. He’d recently fed, so they weren’t starving him, and I found that an interesting note.
Evan walked his former employee up the steps and looked towards Marco. “I assume we have all safeguards in place?”
“We do,” Marco answered.
I can usually feel an electromagnetic pulse, and I hadn’t, but they’d clearly done something so they were certain all electronics in the room would be dead. I could also hear a slight static noise, which I knew would thwart anyone trying to listen in from outside. My guess was they had other systems installed to be certain no one overheard the conversation we were about to have as well, and I made a note to ask Etta, on the off chance she’d tell me. Not yet, though.
Evan turned himself and Largo towards the audience and told the room, “I wanted to be the one to walk your former coworker out because I want it to be clear that I do not approve of the things some of you became accustomed to under our former King. Rape is wrong. Killing indiscriminately is wrong. Yes, we have to kill to keep our people safe sometimes, but doing so outside of necessity will not be tolerated. I am the daytime Security Chief, and that means your actions reflect upon my management skills. Honest mistakes, we’ll work to improve your competence level so they don’t continue to happen, but outright rape and murder, and I’ll turn you over to Etta in a heartbeat.”
Marco and Etta stood, and I noted they were holding hands. The two walked the ten steps to the two eagles, and Etta let go of Marco and put both hands on either side of Largo’s face. I could sense she was telepathing him, and I sensed his anxiety levels going down. He’d been obviously terrified, and she was soothing him. Seemed odd, for someone who feeds from fear.
“The buck stops with me,” Marco told the assembly. “You are all oathed to me, and I’m responsible for you. I brought you to town. Your actions are my actions. The homeless human woman Largo raped and killed has no family to miss her, so there’s no one for me to remunerate. The funds in his bank accounts will be donated to a women and children’s shelter the local bikers support, since I haven’t had time to research and find a community charity I’m comfortable throwing my full support behind yet. You’ll note we’ve invited the slayer, and many of you have noted the absence of Psycho, who raped a deer shifter. The slayer took care of our problem before I was aware of it. Psycho got off too easy, but Largo will not. Psycho’s bank accounts have been given to the deer shifter, and I’ve added two hundred and fifty thousand dollars of my money. The slayer will let me know if she has long-term issues that require a larger payment.”
He looked to Etta and back to the audience. “Etta is a close friend of old. She’s my sibling. My family. She’s approachable, if any of you need help and I’m not available. She’s my Secundo, and while I’m out of town, she’ll be acting in my stead. If you haven’t been doing evil things, you have no reason to fear her and in fact, she’ll use her gifts to protect you, if necessary. If you have been doing evil things, however, you have every reason for terror to take hold of your heart and never let go.”
He and Evan stepped away together, in lockstep, though Evan went to the side of the stage and stood, rather than taking a seat with us.
“Kneel,” Etta told Largo, and the eagle shifter dropped to his knees like a stone. I hadn’t heard power in her voice, so maybe she was in his head — or perhaps he was just that terrified.
It seemed she’d calmed him only so she could terrify him from scratch, and the scent of his fear intensified until calling it terror was a gross understatement.
And as I watched, he desiccated before my eyes, as if he was being mummified. His skin dried out. His eyeballs sank into his head. When he tried to scream, his tongue was all wrong, and the sound that came out of his mouth wasn’t even close to human.
Etta’s eyes went completely black, at first, but soon began to glow with an eerie red light. It was as if she had so much power, it was leaking out.
Seven or eight minutes in, he fell on his side, and she stood over him and continued to drain the life force from him.
I didn’t understand the mechanics of it, why his life force equaled moisture. Perhaps whatever Etta was lacking, she took from him? Maybe she’d been a little dehydrated? She didn’t seem plumper or rounder, though.
When I sensed Largo was nearly dead, she took her attention off the man at her feet and looked to the audience. “As our Master said, a quick death would be too kind for someone who’s raped and killed as many times as this piece of garbage at my feet. Master Marco has gifted the eagle to me, and he will become my slave. How long will I keep him before I allow him to die? A year? Ten years?” She shrugged. “A month? Fifty years? Time will tell, but he’ll never be free again.”
She grew a claw on her right pointer finger, poked a hole in her left forearm, retracted the claw, touched her pointer finger to the blood, and squatted near the eagle who was breathing with a clear death rattle. It’s hard to kill shifters, and this one wasn’t terribly close to dying, though he likely felt as if he was right on death’s door. If she didn’t put energy into him, he’d eventually die, but it would take a while, and he’d feel every second of it.
She touched her blood to his eyelids, his ears, his nose, his lips, and finally his dick and both balls. I could sense some telepathy happening, and then she finally began trickling some of his life force back, but it seemed even more painful than when she’d drained him. It took me a few moments to understand she’d mixed his energy with hers, so it wasn’t his own energy he was receiving. It’s possible I wouldn’t have grasped this if I hadn’t understood how she’d saved the kids in New York.
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a visceral vampire feed from an emotion, but I’d never seen someone drained like this. Never in my life had I seen someone undergo this kind of torture, and I thought I’d seen the very worst. Hell, I thought I’d inflicted the worst that could be done.
And yet, I wasn’t repulsed. I could sense fear and even terror from those in the audience, and I made a mental note to follow up on two in particular, based on their reactions.
If this was what it took to convince the other eagles not to rape helpless females, then I was in favor of the example Etta was making of Largo.
As for her feeding off his energy, I’d be a huge hypocrite if I looked down at her for it.
This was one of the reasons I’d started second-guessing the things my parents’ sect of Slayers preached — because Slayers have to kill to remain long-lived. We drink in the energy of those we kill in order to keep from aging. We aren’t human, either.
Thirteen kills a year, one per moon cycle, will keep us from aging — and yes, I’m aware of the parallels that has with what it takes for the Celrau to live. I take supernaturals still alive to Ruth and Pat, retired slayers who kind of adopted me as part of their family, as do other slayers who want to make sure those two stay with us as long as possible. I’m contractually obligated to provide twenty-four per year to our intelligence department, so the analysts, hackers, and researchers who help us behind the scenes don’t age.
If you’re keeping count, you know I must kill three supernaturals per month no matter what, and more is better if I want to help my friends. It usually isn’t an issue, but there are months I take on an extra job or two in order to reach the minimum. Other months, I kill a dozen without having to look hard. Thankfully, those I give our intelligence department can be banked, so if I hand over twelve people, I’m good for six months.
Once Largo looked mostly normal, Etta slammed energy into him all at once. It seemed quite painful, but he rose to his knees the instant she ordered him to despite his obvious distress.
“Who am I, slave?” Etta asked Largo. Her eyes no longer glowed red, but they were all black.
