Chapter 5: Fire in the Rain

Without care to the agony felt, Logan forced the ball of his arm bone back into his shoulder socket with a sickening crackle of his wulvyn limbs reconnecting in place. His ribs and a bit of projected bone mended in moments. The armored truck met its end by a wild beast and a large, unmovable mass of wasteland rock. The big rig wasn't going anywhere now.

All of that reinforced steel; now a smoking mess where its engine resided, but that was the least of Logan's concerns as the red lights of Zamson's Pandemona waited nearby. The keepers observed the damage as they stood in strict silence near the parked car. They tended to go no further than a few paces from Pandemona, even as the sounds of trouble blossomed inside the cargo hold where Zamson was last seen.

The unnatural shriek perked Logan's ears in an instant, followed by the cargo doors blasting apart. A ferocious creature far from human emerged with Zamson in its clutches.

Naia’s leather-skinned wings clapped the air, a thick bang with each flap met. She was a terror that should have stayed at rest; Logan's wulvyn lips peeled back in a mad snarl as the scent of the irritable cat-fiend with devil wings set his fur on alert.

The cold chill hitting his spine told no lies as that winged, redheaded thing fighting Zamson in the air was no doubt a vampire of an era far gone.

Naia’s unique smell—and the growth of her long tail—gave it all away.

With anger boiling in his veins, Logan whipped his feral head to the other two vampires watching the dispute. The keepers did nothing to intervene. Was this some grand scheme? Logan may have played the thought. He had every right to be highly suspicious of them—vampires and werewolves usually fought to the death.

No amount of surpassing generations and shaky treaties among nightborne could ever dismiss Logan's critical notion of the vampires being peaceful. Including the current instance of Zamson's struggle against the ancient vampyrial encourages Logan's ill-tempered hatred even further.

He never attacked the fangs in suits: a wise choice if not a better strategy.

***

Claws deep in each other's flesh, Zamson and Naia exchanged heavy blows hard enough to knock mortals into a traumatic brain injury. Zamson's monstrous fists thrashed into the vampyrial's face. Naia yelled and gritted her fangs. Her nails sunk deeper into Zamson's muscle, tearing flesh, driving the werewolf to shake the air with a ferocious howl.

Naia’s bite to the neck was just as bad as her nails. Zamson howled pure death.

His deathly howl hit Logan's perked ears like a death wind carrying the soul of the deceased as the night sky began to cry. A slow, gentle rain sprinkled the earth. Noctavion’s advocates stilled in silence. Zamson's wail echoed beyond the wasteland, scaring away what nightly critters were touched by the wulvyn's scream.

Naia had her first feast this drizzling night. She sucked, and she slurped, and she groaned, sultry murmurs of thirst, hunger, and corrupted pleasure.

Her eyes went shut. High above. Where the clouds and moon dominated the dark. The beating of her wings were the sound of victory. She squeezed Zamson's weakening body. Devouring every bit of his hot, thick, red essence until the last drop dwindled.

It was at that instant that something unprecedented snapped within her. Her molten gold eyes flashed open, turning a pure white.

Memories flowed through Naia like a torrent of never-ending visions. The ancient fought for control, but the flow kept coming. Faster. Harder. Each thought not her own, but the werewolf caught between her fangs. She was taken. Seized still. His life force gushed into her.

Each drop seeped to the depths of her abyss, filling her with life, sparking her nerves on fire. Setting her off in ways her waking mind never once conceived until this fateful rainy night, hot waves of excitement running beneath her damp skin. Her ravenous grumble tamed into low, quiet purrs as a parade of sensual visions struck her like a mental orgy.

The visions persisted, dark hands strong as iron slipped up Naia’s thigh, up her hips, until they mounted the delicious plump of her swollen breasts. Her perk nipples muffled by the grip of these rough, strong hands that were not hers, but Zamson’s. Hands that knew their way around a machine. And a woman.

But the ancient caught in Zamson's crude grip was no woman, she became a tool to be used until completion like a machine designed for one purpose. He squeezed her breasts.

She called out his name.

He called out hers.

The shock of bliss threw Naia’s head backward, hungrily gasping in need from the sudden passionate suck of her thick nipple. As Naia stretched her whole back like a crescent moon, her soft rump nudged into Zamson's forceful lap, summoning his firm hips to shove between her thick thighs as he thrust deeper into her.

Deeper. And deeper. And deeper.

The more she feasted, the greater the visions. The dirtier the mind became. Each act and position indulged had aroused her to new heights, breaking limits as she was cast into the rapture—her insides going nuclear.

She exploded upon him, coating him in a sweet, sticky release. The wettest of dreams saturating her already chaotic mind. A delusional spasm that breached reality, itself, as they were no longer dreams—not exactly.

Well, at least not for Naia.

But then the magic was gone. Waves of pleasure receding into the abyss as the untamed wonders of bliss abandoned her. A different aspect of Zamson flooded her within now. Ravishing her mind in a thrash of rage, ambition, the need for speed, the male's fiery will to be the king of the streets, a legend among the street racers called outrunners.

Such measly goals didn’t matter to Naia, except Zamson’s blistering conviction was so compelling, so furious, that Naia’s wulvyn meal spiked in temperature. In a panic, she released the wulvyn, hissing from the burns steaming off of her hands.

Her golden glare widened as the descending wulvyn ignited into a flurry of unnatural flames.

Naia tilted her head.

In a concerned frenzy, Logan charged after Zamson. His friend struck the earth like an asteroid; the shockwaves sent Logan tumbling back. The advocates moved not an inch. Naia, struggling to make sense of it all, descended through the rain’s mist.

Waves of dust clouded her vision of the one who created such a crater until the powdery earth clouds faded, and there—defying the rain—a fiery beast of unending rage had risen.