Read Christopher: Blood Brotherhood – Erotic Paranormal Dark Fantasy Romance Online
Authors: Kathi S. Barton
Christopher: Blood Brotherhood – Erotic Paranormal Dark Fantasy Romance
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
World Castle Publishing, LLC
Pensacola, Florida
Copyright © Kathi S. Barton 2016
Hardback ISBN: 9781629893730
Paperback ISBN: 9781629893747
eBook ISBN: 9781629893754
First Edition World Castle Publishing, LLC, January 25, 2016
http://www.worldcastlepublishing.com
Licensing Notes
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews.
Cover: Karen Fuller
Editor: Eric Johnston
Editor: Maxine Bringenberg
Table of Contents
Christopher sat on the cold concrete and leaned his back against the hard wall behind him. His body temperature had finally leveled out, but not enough that he could go without some sort of fan or other form of cooling agent to keep himself from roasting all the time. He looked over at the woman who sat next to him. She was covered in as much blood and gore as he was. The battle, like most of them, had not been a pretty thing. And they seemed to be getting worse all the time.
Usually he would simply do his job and then go back to his room. He was spending a great deal more time out and about with the rest of the people in the house, but for the most part, he loved being alone. But Chris really enjoyed talking to Vicki…he thought she was a hoot.
“The next time the alarm goes off, I’m going to hunt it down and tear it apart.” Chris said nothing as Vicki sat there with her eyes closed and continued. “I swear to you, as soon as this crap is done, I’m out of here and finding a nice warm beach to lay on for about ten years. I’m going to eat ice cream for every meal, and wear a dress with high heels when I fucking want to. Which I might add, I have never wanted to before now; but that’s not the point, is it?”
“Do you think it will?” She asked him what he meant without looking in his direction. “End. Do you think this will ever end? Because I have to tell you, it doesn’t feel like it on most days.”
Of late he’d been feeling like it was the same shit every day. Get up, fight, shower, eat, and then go to bed, only to have to do it all over again the next day. He knew that there were fewer and fewer of the monsters, but they were no less vicious in their pursuit of trying to kill more people. And that was another thing. There were fewer and fewer humans around as well.
“Hector wants us to find some newbies if we can.” Chris looked up at Skylar when she spoke, and wondered not for the first time if any part of her body wasn’t tatted up. He was pretty inked up himself, but most of his had been there before any of this had gone down. Skylar even had them on her face and neck. But for some reason, he still thought she was beautiful. “There is a new project going on across the way. Who wants to go with me?”
“I will.” Chris stood and helped Vicki up as he turned to Skylar to ask her how they were going. Her wings spread out and he backed from her. “I’d rather take a car if it’s all the same to you. Nothing against your flying ability, but I would rather just drive.”
“And how would that be fun for me?” He nodded and found himself wrapped up in her arms and soaring dizzily into the deep blue of the sky. “Are you getting along any better, Chris? You seem to be less inclined to stay in your room. I’m glad for that. It’s fun having you around more.”
He wanted to ask her why she cared, but they were currently several hundred feet in the air if he were to piss her off. Which, he supposed, he’d managed to do more often than he liked to think about. But right now, she would more than likely drop him on his head.
“I don’t really mind being here. But....” He couldn’t put into words how much he hated what he was doing. He was pretty sure that she got it, but he didn’t know how to convey it to her. “I was famous once. An entertainer, as you know. Women would throw themselves at me. Panties, bras, sometimes even money. Men too, but that wasn’t going to happen. And now look. Not only am I pretty much just a normal person, no one cares much that I was once considered the most sought after male in the world.”
“Whine much?” He only winced at her words, still not comfortable enough with the rest of them to be his usual self. His old self would have flashed her his smile, winked at her, and told her that was what made him so irresistible. “Nate and I had a conversation about you the other day. He thinks you’re a blowhard. Whatever did you do to him to make him hate you so much?”
“Breathed? I don’t know. Now there is a whiny person. He’s not coming out of his room for anything, is he?”
Before he could ask her what the two of them had talked about—or actually argued about—they were landing. Chris looked at the malefactors and wondered why someone would do this to humans. He’d heard the stories, but he knew that there had to be something more than that. When they entered the building where a small group of them were, Chris thought that they’d made a mistake about them being here. But then he saw the groups as they walked around like.... Chris turned to Skylar when it occurred to him what he was seeing.
“Have you ever played one of those first person shooter games?” Skylar said that she had played on her phone a few times, but not lately. “Yeah, no cell service. But when you’re playing and have to leave the game—I don’t know, to take a piss or something—when you return, your guy will be walking straight into a wall, his feet still moving as the monsters or whatever are clawing at him or blowing him to bits with their guns. That’s what they look like, a game version of sleep walking.”
They stood watching the dozen or so of the monsters do just that…walk into a wall and continue moving their feet toward some unknown place, but staying where they were. One of the men, walking around rather into things, had a large gash in his head where his head kept hitting the fire alarm signage just where his head was. Over and over the guy would do this until he was dead, Chris supposed.
Chris moved toward them just as a creature moved from between two of the pillars holding up the other floors. Neither he nor Skylar moved as the thing, just as clumsy and stupid as the malefactors, moved about the room. Chris thought he might have been an adherent at one time, but now he’d lost some of his color and he was no longer in charge. As he knocked a desk over and then tripped several times when he tried to stand and keep moving, neither Chris nor Skylar moved to help him. As soon as he got to whatever he’d been working his way toward, he stopped and turned, almost as if he were a solider on a march and he was at the end of his area.
“Why didn’t he trip into the desk before? I mean, it’s obvious that he’s been doing this same thing for a while. Why hadn’t he tripped up before?”
Chris started to tell Skylar that he didn’t know when it occurred to him. “He’s making a circle. See? Judging by the footsteps that he’s made in the dirt on the floor, the circle’s getting smaller with each of his trips around the room. It looks like he started out on the perimeter, then tightened his circle an inch or so with each pass—or I guess square, because of the room—more each time.” They both watched him and the people in the room as a second thing occurred to Chris. “Do you hear that? That small hum, like there is power somewhere?”
As they spread out, looking for the power grid like those they’d been destroying every time they heard one, Chris moved to the second floor and paused. He’d learned a great deal over the last couple of weeks working with these people, and one of the things was always to be thinking outside the box. But the one in front of him, as big as a nice sized SUV, had him pausing and wondering what sort of shit was about to go down now. The box was addressed to him and Skylar.
Skylar came up behind him and asked him what he was doing. “I don’t have a clue, but all I can think about is that movie that had the big lamp leg in it. Remember that movie?”
“Yeah. Christ, I love that movie. We should see if we can find it somewhere while we’re out. I bet Remy hasn’t ever seen it.” Chris said nothing. Remy was one scary mother fucker, and the man seemed to exude strength all over his body. To think of him watching that movie, eating his beloved popcorn, was just too weird. “What should we do?”
The handwriting was old world, the script on it something that he’d seen Remy use when he had to make notes on something. The man would take an hour to write out something that Chris would have just scribbled on a piece of paper. Remy told him that to do something right was to take your time with it. You never knew who was going to look at it. Chris supposed Remy was right, but there were times when he just wanted to take the paper from him and write the note himself. This looked like it might be from Bob, another old world guy.
“You think this is part of the gifts that Bob said would come to us when we needed them?” Again, Chris had no answers and said that to Skylar. “Well, do we open it? Leave it for another day or what? I’m not all that keen on getting my ass kicked by whatever is in that thing, are you?”
The big dragon had left them a letter a while back. Well, not them, but Leo and Jamey. It had said that when they needed it, something would appear. But this thing wasn’t addressed to his workmates, but to him and Skylar. He glanced at Skylar when she asked him again if they should open it.
“I don’t fucking know. You’re in charge.” That got him a hard knock to his head that hurt like hell. “I’m all for having enough shit going on. If we open that, and I’m not saying that we should, what’s to say that it’s not filled with some more of these things that plan to eat our faces off?”
“You are no longer allowed to come with me on these things. You are one freaked out cat.” He felt the cat stir along his skin and Skylar smiled at him. “What if there is a gorgeous young woman in there that will satisfy your every desire and then some?”
Chris felt his heart twist up. He wasn’t going to find his other half. He’d done that already, and she was now dead. Thanks to him. But before he said something that would get him knocked on his ass this time, he moved toward the huge crate. Whatever was in that thing couldn’t be as bad as losing your mate.
There was a note attached to the top of it, and he knew immediately that it was indeed from Bob the dragon. The handwriting couldn’t have been from anyone but him. Not that he could read the script there, but he knew it was from him. Pulling one of the bright orange straps off the top of the box, he handed the note to Skylar and put his sword back on his body.
Things had gotten shit weird when he’d gotten here. He’d had tats before, but nothing like he’d gotten the day after arriving. He and Remy had been in the sublevels of the compound, sparring. And when Remy had—he wanted to think it was innocent on his part, but he wasn’t sure—but when Remy had put out his hand to help him stand up after being knocked on his ass, the most incredible pain had taken him to the floor again. That was when he discovered the sword at his back and the guns, big ones, on different parts of his body.
The lid, like the crate, was made of wood. And when it slid off the opening, he moved back while the dust settled around them. It occurred to him, too late, he realized now, that he more than likely should have thought this through a little better.
“Nothing?” He wasn’t sure and told Skylar to stay back while he checked. “In the event you didn’t notice, I’m as strong as you are. And I can fly out of the way if the thing really does try and eat our faces off.”
“Yeah, I noticed all that. But if this shit is going to kill one of us, I’d rather it was me so you can go back and warn the others. I really don’t care to have to explain to Remy that I let you fucking get your ass handed to you.” She took a step back and told him she was sorry. Chris turned to look at the crate again, thinking he needed to get a grip on his temper. “So am I. But please, just stay back out of the way in case there is something in here that has bloodletting on his mind.”
Moving closer to the crate, he looked inside. It was dark, which he supposed he should have counted on. But that was all he could see. Just an inky blackness that suddenly made him think of his heart. As he peered harder inside, his cat, never very friendly to him anyway, snarled at him.
“Do you suppose he knows something that you don’t?” Very possible, and he told Skylar that. “I see. And do you normally ignore him when he might be trying to tell you something? Or do you feel, like most men, that you know more than your counterpart?”
It was right on the tip of his tongue to tell her to fuck off. He knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, that not only would it piss her off more than she seemed to be right now, but that it would also get him in trouble with Remy. The man was very protective of his mate. Just as he was thinking fuck it and started to tell her off, a sound...a low keening sound…came from the depths of the darkness of the crate.
~~~
Kate watched the couple as they stood by the crate. It had arrived...well, arrived might have been the wrong term for how it had gotten there, but it had appeared sometime in the last twenty minutes. The thing, like the people downstairs, had just sort of come into the building like it had every right to be there.
She’d been hanging out, sort of living here, for a month now when she couldn’t get back to her place before it was too dark out. It was quiet, and the things on the lower levels never ventured up here when they came around. But today this crate had arrived, and then the creatures below, almost at the same time.
The sound that had emitted from the box had been there before too. Kate had even gone close enough to the crate to see if someone, a person, was inside, but all she heard was rumblings and an occasional bump on the wall. She had wondered what it was, but not enough to open it and see. The man opening the box made her want to hide deeper in the shadows, just on the off chance that it wasn’t going to be a nice wedding gift for the two of them, and instead something that would most assuredly kill all of them. Kate moved back further when she saw the man stiffen. Then the sides of the crate fell away.
“What the fuck?” Kate moved out of the shadows again—not close enough that she thought they could see her just yet, but she, too, was curious about the contents of the box—when the woman yelled and stepped back. What she wasn’t prepared for was the man shifting into a big black cat.