61Full Summary:
Drunk sex leads Atticus down a path he never could have imagined. He awakes to find a man tangled in his sheets, which is nothing new. Atticus is a demon, which means he loves blood, sex, and fear. Men of nearly every race revolve in and out of his bed. The strange thing about the silver-haired fellow lingering in his bed sheets is that he's a wood elf, named Calix. In the law of wood elves, once defiled, the elf is bound to his defiler. Whether in love or hatred, marriage or slavery, Calix belongs to Atticus, forever.
I know what you're thinking..."Another 'effing story! Finish one of the others first, for Christ's sake!" The thing is, I had an idea and I really like it! I hope you guys do too, and that it's believable for a supernatural world of magical creatures. :P This is my first time going all-out vampires, werewolves, demons, etc. So keep me in line! I'm not savvy on the terminology, and a lot of it I have made up on my own (like Shadows and owl shifters). Let me know if you dig the story, if you're following it OK, you know the drill.
Love!
-Britt
Calix in Chains
ONE:
Bound
I know that, the second my cheeks touch the surface of the toilet seat, I will experience cold like I've never known before. Still, I yank down my blue jeans and sit, the chilled porcelain stabbing at my fleshy buttocks like icy swords. What's worse, I ate three bean burritos last night and I can tell that it will be a long while. I sit in absolute anguish, hoping for the moment when my body heat warms the seat enough for my bathroom experience to be a pleasant one.
Louise comes in and strips off her clothes, the same ones she was wearing last night.
"You smell like shit," she says tonelessly, as she bends forward and turns on the shower. I get a nice, disgusting view of her butt.
"Can't you wait to take a shower until I'm done dropping the kids off at the pool?" I ask in annoyance, as she steps into the shower and closes the curtain. She cackles.
"I smell like vomit. Who puked on me last night? Asshole."
"Um, you did," I snort. "You were on the sofa making out with Henry when you pitched forward and emptied your stomach contents all over your lacy blue high heels."
"I wish you'd empty the contents of your stomach and get out so I can shower in peace."
"If you masturbate in there while I am taking a shit, I will kill you."
She laughs for a second, then starts panting and moaning. It sounds real and I am seriously creeped out. "Stop it, Louise, you perve."
"You're the perve," she shoots back. "I saw you staring at my butt just now."
"You shoved it in my face, dipshit."
"Asswipe."
"Cumstain."
"Dickbreath."
"Dickbreath?" I blurt out, guffawing. Louise laughs, too, as I finish up and flush the toilet. She howls when the water runs suddenly scalding hot and, on my way out of the bathroom, I flick off the light and shut the door. Shrouded in darkness, she shrieks at me furiously. I meander down the hall, grinning ear to ear.
-/-/-/-/
"I want to read every book that was ever written, EVER."
Sash is peering down at his book with wide, manic eyes. I am passing by, chugging down my daily dose of Louse's orange juice before she gets out of the shower and kicks my ass. My other roommate Sash is a bookworm, yes, but he is also a genius with the mental capacity that astounds me and an emotional capacity that saddens me. He has no idea how to show affection, how to be polite in delicate situations, how to sensor his wildly random thoughts before they become wildly random words.
"Take a break, pal. You'll bust another blood vessel in your eye if you keep that up." It's true. He's actually hurt himself reading. In addition to his blood filled eye, Sash has tiny band aids all over his fingers, covering up the surprisingly deep paper cuts he has sustained.
"Atticus!" Louise stomps from the bathroom, is barely concealing her wet, naked body beneath the bright yellow towel held to her chest. Louise is larger than human women, and most human males. Each one of her breasts is the size of my head, and she stands at 6'3". Her hair is naturally blonde, and falls all the way to her ass. She has wide hazel eyes and long lashes, with the round features of a baby doll. Except Louise is not a baby doll. She is a witch.
"I burned my asscrack," she snarls at me, baring her perfect white teeth. Her towel slips and I grimace when I catch a glimpse of nipple. Sash is still reading silently on his beanbag, less than two feet from a naked woman and he doesn't even know it. Sash is a savant of supernatural proportions. He never forgets anything, is constantly thinking and creating, and belongs to a rare race of creatures known as the Brains, on the streets. Sages, in the lecture hall. He has the abnormally large eyes of his race (his are brown) and the signature birthmark that all sages have, in differing locations and shapes. Unfortunately, Sash's mark is on his face, right below his left eye. It is a shimmery purple color, faint but still noticeable, and it is sort of shaped like a crescent moon. That is where he earned his name Sashi, meaning moon. Sash is his nickname, what I call him.
Sashi is twenty-eight years old, but he looks about fourteen. His entire race ages very slowly. After listening to Louise and I argue for a long while, Sash finally looks up from the pages of his enormous book.
I watch the panic spread across his youthful face in the form of red cheeks and wide eyes. Muttering to himself about indecency, he clutches his book to his chest and scurries to his room. Louise is still griping at me, but I'm not really listening.
"It's just like a demon, to switch off his ears and withdraw into himself so easily!" I can tell, because of the way Louise is drifting into Old Speech, that she is conjuring the spirits of darkness. I sigh.
"Don't be such a drama queen, Louise. I'm making eggs. Are you hungry?"
She blinks, the fog clearing from her hazel eyes. "Sure. Thanks, dickbreath."
"No problem, cumstain."
She shuffles away to get dressed and, smirking, I take out a thawed steak from the bottom shelf of the refrigerator, as well as a carton of eggs. It takes a lot to satiate Louise, and I crack eight eggs into a pan for her, two for me. I extract a plate from the cabinet, spoon out her portion and douse it with hot sauce. I slap the raw steak onto my plate, as well as my eggs. Add salt and it is perfect.
Louise grimaces, when she returns and finds me biting into the steak. Blood drips from my mouth and I grin wickedly at her, my teeth red. She takes the barstool beside me and scoops her eggs into her mouth like a beast. See, witches derive their magical energy from their physical strength. As far as witches go, Louise is among the strongest in her age bracket.
That's why we are drawn to one another – Sash, Louise, and me. We are all incredibly strong, incredibly dangerous individuals. Energy like that seeks out similar energies.
"I'm off to work," she sighs, dumping her plate in the sink. She's wearing a skin-tight black dress that hugs every voluptuous curve, a pointy witch hat, fish-net stockings and black heels. She's playing up the witch persona. I roll my eyes at her as she grabs a broomstick by the door. "Happy New Year, Atticus," she bids, waving and leaving our humble abode. I finish my steak and saunter back to my room.
My room is the only one on the second floor. Heat rises, and I am cold-natured, thanks to my demon genes. I enjoy the warmth as much as a lizard adores his sun rock, because the blood pumping through my veins is cold as ice. On my way up the stairs, I hear Sash reading aloud to himself from the confines of his book-cluttered room.
My walls are covered with photographs. I consider myself a photographer, although amateur, and I have littered my living space with evidence of it. I like to photograph people the most, especially when they're in pain. I don't know why, it's just hilarious to me. Most of the photos on the wall are of Louise or Sash, glaring or grimacing in pain. I like to stomp on their toes and quickly snap a picture. Art.
My bed is flat on the ground, because I like it that way. Bed rails just break apart during my night terrors, when I thrash and roll like a maniac. The only time I don't sleep fitfully is when I'm exhausted. When I was a child, my parents actually restrained me while I slept so I couldn't keep tearing apart my bed frame.
My reminiscing is cut short when I see a lump on my bed, beneath my black blanket. Suddenly, I recall that I brought someone home from the New Year's party. And he's still asleep in my bed.
The details of the night are foggy, but I at least remember fucking without holding back, and for a brief moment I question if he's dead. Then he stirs beneath the sheets and I sigh in relief. Not that his death would affect me, really, except I could be thrown in prison.
I love this guessing game. Who is he? What species is he? I tend to bring home vampires, just because I love to watch the surprise etch across their faces when I bite them. Yes, demons can drink blood too. It gives us great sustenance, actually. It's why raw steak is just so damn tasty to me.
Occasionally, I bring home another demon. But being such a domineering race, two demons usually clash. Sexually, that can be exciting, but sometimes it just ends in bloodshed. Besides vampires, shape shifters are a personal favorite, especially the birds. Owls are especially cool-natured and flat. It's fun to watch their faces contort out of that bored expression.
The guy sits up, while I'm imagining his race, and our eyes meet. He seems confused, and silvery strands of blonde hair falls in his eyes. His hair is long, spilling over his shoulders, and he is slender in build. His eyes are sky blue and so intense, I'm drawn in immediately. My eyes dart over him, searching. Is he a sage? With eyes that big, and such a youthful appearance, it'd be no surprise, but I see no shimmering birthmark. He's not a vampire. I feel the hatred rolling off vampires. From this guy, I sense only confusion.
Is he a demon? Most demons have green, yellow, black, or red eyes (mine are yellow), but I've met a few with blue eyes. Most demons have pitch black hair that hides their horns, but I've met a few blondes, too. I'm perplexed.
"Shapeshifter?" I inquire. He cocks his head, squints his eyes at me. His perfect pink lips turn downward, into a frown.
"Are you?" he shoots back.
"Demon," I reply with a feral grin. And damn proud of it, too.
He looks appalled, horrified. Yeah, he's definitely a shape shifter. I inhale and smell the forest. "So, spill. What are you, a deer? A gazelle, maybe?" I chuckle, thinking how fitting it would be if he was a gazelle. His long body is slim and graceful.
A blush colors his cheeks and he bows his head. Silvery hair falls, shimmering, over his shoulder as his head tilts, revealing his ear. His pointy ear.
My body tenses, my pupils dilate. "You're an elf."
"A wood elf," he asserts, eyes suddenly proud.
"Fuck," I hiss. At least if he was a sea elf, I could hope he was a corrupt one. But a corrupted wood elf? Oxymoron.
"Don't curse," he snaps at me, primly folding his hands in his lap. "It's unclean."
"Oh, excuse me, Mr. Fucking Clean. My dirty ass is going to take a shower. Be gone when I get back." I have my own personal bathroom, and I shudder as I walk toward it. I hear him shuffling around behind me and, despite how curious I am about what a wood elf looks like naked, I don't look back.
The water must be scalding hot, in order for me to enjoy it, and once I step beneath the stream the tension melts from me. So what if I fucked an elf? That makes one of every species, except for a werewolf. I even shagged a Shadow once, somehow, even though he was more mist and darkness than flesh and bone. He is just another notch in my bedpost, but he'll be shunned among his people for having sex with a demon.
Just as I'm becoming OK with this ordeal, the shower curtain slides back and instincts take over. I whirl around and slam the intruder into the cool tile wall, my fist clamped firmly around his neck. I don't slacken my grip when I see that it's the wood elf.
"What are you doing?" I snarl, only sparing one quick glance at his nude form. Damn.
His eyes burn and seethe right before my eyes. I literally watch the colors shift and churn like a tumultuous summer sky before a storm. He wraps his delicate white fingers around the wrist of the hand that holds his neck to the wall and, softly, kisses my knuckles. I'm stunned, and my hand falls away from his throat.
This elf is lanky, mostly legs. He is just an inch shorter than me, maybe less. I don't usually go for tall guys, but watching the elf shift his feet in discomfort under the intensity of my gaze is making me hard. His body is the most perfect, the most exquisite thing I've ever laid my yellow demon eyes on.
"I can't leave," he whispers, barely audible over the thrum of the water striking the wall and my back. "Among my people, once an elf has been made unclean, he is bound."
"Bound to what?" I snap, disgust washing away my arousal.
"Well, in my case…" His cheeks flush and his eyes flash in anger. "You."
Well?