76Warning: This chapter contains graphic sexual references
Chapter 2
Pan tried to rest longer, God knew he was still tired enough to sleep for a week, but his restlessness wouldn't allow it. From the twitching muscles in his legs and fingers, to his eyes which continued to dart back and forth behind his closed lids, he was as relaxed as an anyone would be plugged into a live electrical socket.
For the past week he'd been on a hair trigger of emotional turmoil. Newly developed testosterone hormones combined with the guilt of his past decisions and a burning hatred for the one who he'd spent so many years protecting. A hatred so palpable it was like a disease in his blood, it consumed his every thought and desire.
The emotional turmoil was nothing new to him, but the hormones were taking a bit of adjustment.
When you're one hundred and sixty six years old, but you've spent one hundred and fifty three of those years in the body of a thirteen year old boy, hence the nickname Pan, going through puberty overnight was a hell of a shock to the system. Now, the old Pan was gone and he was just plain old Philippe, a one hundred and sixty six year old Vampire in the body of a twenty-something year old man. And boy did it feel great to finally be an adult inside an adult's body for a change. At least, he assumed it would once he adapted to his new size and shape properly.
Which of course was why he was so exhausted. He'd spent the last week learning how to use his new body, pushing the boundaries of his limitations and his strengths. He trained day and night with anyone in the house who could spare the time.
How and why it was that he came to upgrade his outer casing after one hundred and fifty three years, you might ask? That's not a simple question to answer but the short version is:–
How? That was thanks to his new sire, Narayan. As the Guardian of the Cup, also known as the Holy Grail, he was the only person with the power to make it happen. Sure, it was a gamble, Narayan had never tried to make a Vampire mortal again, then turn him back into a Vampire before his body aged, shriveled up and died at an alarmingly accelerated rate. But hey, it worked and here he was, an adult at last. A new and very much improved version of the Vampire he used to be thanks to the combined blood of not only the original Vampire, Alaric, but also the Elder Angel, Ariel's blood which he inherited through Narayan's vein.
Why? Because of his older brother, Nicholas. His psychopathic, serial killer brother. Many years ago Philippe had learned of Nicholas' predilection for killing young women. Unfortunately so had an even more sadistic Vampire who called himself, The Master. In recent times they had also come to know the evil son-of-a-bitch by another name, Scorpion. It was a fitting name, he was silent and very deadly. A formidable foe you never see coming, always hidden in shadow and always ready to strike.
Nicholas, having been made a Vampire by Scorpion, left Philippe's options to contain his brother's proclivities drastically reduced. He could kill him, but he didn't know how to kill a Vampire, nor did he have the heart to do so. So, instead he begged Nicholas to make him a Vampire too. Of course he had refused. Who wanted to go through eternity with their kid brother tagging along? But Philippe had always been resourceful and he outsmarted his brother.
Having found his brother's trophy collection of jewelry and body parts he had taken from his victims, Philippe blackmailed Nicholas into turning him. However, for all his intelligence, Philippe had still been very young and naïve. He had believed that if he stuck close to his brother day and night he would never harm another woman again.
How wrong he was.
Decade after long decade, Philippe stuck to his brother like glue. Everywhere Nicholas went, Philippe was there, watching him like a hawk. Not once did he see his brother stray towards his previous obsession. Philippe thought he had changed, that Nicholas' killing spree had only been a morbid phase of his youth and he'd turned a new leaf. So, he kept his brother's secret past just that, a secret. Considering their current employers, Saladin and Dray had hunted rogue Vampires in the not too distant past, Philippe had thought it prudent. That was yet another mistake.
As it turned out, Nicholas had only been waiting for an opportunity to re-offend. Almost as soon as Philippe loosened the leash, his brother quickly fell back into his old habits. Only now, reunited with his sadistic sire, Nicholas' taste for the macabre seemed to have magnified,…and so had his hatred toward Philippe.
Philippe's biggest mistake however, after he had suspected his brother maybe responsible for the latest spree of killings around London, was not taking sufficient steps to ensure he was blocked from having access to Nadia. Sure, he hadn't known the depth of the rabbit hole Nicholas had tumbled down, but ignorance was no excuse.
Philippe's oversight meant that Nicholas had casually waltzed into the Manor and coerced Nadia into reading that damned grimoire, knowing all too well that it would harm her in doing so. Believing Nicholas' lie, she trusted him that the potion he had her make was to save Philippe from certain death.
It seemed however, Nicholas' goal wasn't only to dupe Nadia. His black heart had far darker ambitions. Before he left the Manor he drank that potion Nadia made for Philippe, making himself stronger than he ever had been before. But that wasn't the only thing he did. As they had discovered later, Nicholas had taken one of the sacred artefacts they had been charged to find. The Ring of Gyges, an invisibility ring. His brother's treachery didn't end there though, he had also passed along the formula for that potion to his sire, Scorpion, who as it turned out was also one of the leaders of their enemy, The Guild of Ascension.
By the time they learned the truth it was too late.
Guilt weighed heavily on Philippe's shoulders. His false belief that he could control his brother by sheer will alone, that he could change Nicholas' very nature, had not only put the world's fate in peril, it had directly contributed to Nadia suffering intolerable pain for days before her death. The fact that her sister Paige had been able give her a second chance at life was irrelevant. Nicholas deliberately harmed Nadia, and for that alone his brother had to die.
Since he was the cause of all this anarchy, it was also his responsibility to fix things, Philippe thought sullenly. He longed for the day when he ripped open Nicholas' ribs and tore his heart from his chest. That day was coming. And he was going to take pleasure in watching the fucker die.
Giving up on his attempt at sleep, Philippe sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, but that was as far as he got.
The idea of going upstairs and facing his family, was as appealing as sticking his hand in a blender. Of course no one blamed him for what happened, he did that all on his own. In fact, they all thought the opposite of him. In their eyes he was the proverbial rock. Level headed, smart, even tempered and totally reliable.
But inside he felt as stable as a hydrogen atom in a nuclear bomb. Unfamiliar emotions and thoughts had recently become his constant companions, bombarding and overriding his usual commonsense. He had to admit, but only to himself though, that he had no wish to alter his current internal dialogue. Nicholas may hate him, but it wasn't half as much as he hated Nicholas, of that Philippe was certain.
If he got his way, Nicholas' death was going to be slow and painful, with the same amount of cold, emotionless control and skill that he'd shown his victims.
But staying in bed and fantasizing about his brother's demise was a fruitless exercise, it gained nothing except to make him more agitated.
Pushing himself to his feet, the cold slate tile on the floor beneath helped to connect him with reality again, but only just. His thoughts were still as scattered as snow flakes in a blizzard.
Wearing only the track pants he'd fallen asleep in, he plodded from his room, along the long corridor toward the staircase which led directly into Alaric's study through a hidden entry beneath the enormous fireplace. It didn't occur to him to put on a shirt before he left his room, or even run his fingers through the shaggy, short locks of his blonde hair. There was only two thoughts his brain had room for, revenge and coffee.
x-x-x-x-x
"The kids call it yelling when I raise my voice, but I prefer to call it motivational speaking. It's the only way to get through that selective deafness they seem to suffer." Cassie told Mrs Philpot. Their aging housekeeper's infectious laugh took the heat out of Cassie's frustration, who had just finished telling her daughter Grace, for what seemed like the tenth time that week, that donuts did not pass as breakfast food.
"I hear you love." She agreed, as she upended a basket of freshly washed and dried clothes onto the bench in search of a missing butt plug, which she suspected Alex had accidentally gotten mixed up with his jocks and socks. Alex was very fond of his sex toys and apparently, particularly his black silicone swirling bum bliss,…or something to that effect. He'd been very distressed when he discovered it missing and insisted everyone in the house search for it. Of course no one did, especially since they knew where it had last been stored. Ew! Well, no one except for Mrs. P.
"Some days Grace makes me feel so old. It doesn't seem that long ago that I would've been the one trying to sneak junk food for breakfast." Cassie grumbled. "Truth be told, I wouldn't mind a donut for breakfast sometimes too but what sort of example would I be setting then?"
Mrs Philpot smiled and nodded as she continued to sift through the warm, fluffed-up pile of clothes. Lifting Riley's Thomas the Tank T-shirt up to her face she rubbed it against her cheek reflectively. It hadn't seemed too long ago when her own children were wearing clothes this small. Now even her grandchildren were fully grown.
"Damn. It looks like Paige is going shopping again." Cassie pointed out, looking at the T-shirt Mrs P. was holding up, which had clearly shrunk in the dryer.
"I would love to put myself in that dryer for ten minutes and come out wrinkle free and three times smaller," Mrs P. chuckled. "I'll be a century old on my next birthday, that's a lot of wrinkles to smooth out." She said wistfully, almost as though she was talking to herself.
"Are you serious? But your birthday is only a couple of weeks away."
"You remember my birthday?"
"I always remember the important things." Cassie told her proudly. "Although I didn't know exactly how old you are. Now that I do, don't think we're going to let this one slide by without some sort of celebration."
"Oh no love. I've never had a party in my life and I sure as heck don't plan on starting now. Parties are for the young and energetic, not for the old and withered."
"Rubbish. We're having a party. End of discussion."
Before Mrs P. could argue her case against Cassie's decision, Philippe shuffled into the kitchen looking more like something the cat dragged in than a living member of the household.
Both Cassie and Mrs Philpot stopped their conversation and turned to greet the owner of the bare feet plodding toward them. However, their friendly smiles slid when they saw the state of the man who entered.
Their eyes skimmed down his body from his blonde, scruffed up hair in the fashion of unkempt bed-head, over his bare broad shoulders and hairless, heavily muscled chest, then down further to his washboard abs and his…..The two women swallowed in unison.
"Morning Philippe, how are you feeling?" Cassie asked, the humour in her voice slipped Philippe's notice but induced Mrs P. to purse her lips tightly to contain her untimely smirk.
"Wonderful. Where's the coffee?" he grumbled.
"Where it usually is." Cassie pointed distractedly, her eyes still watching Philippe curiously. "Um, just a tip Philippe. Don't go wandering around the house like that, you'll either scare the kids or they'll start asking questions I really don't want to be answering at their age."
"What the hell are you talking about?" he grumped, his brow scrunched together irritably.
Both Cassie and Mrs P. scanned their eyes down his body until they reached his track pants and stopped. Curiously, Philippe looked down the length of his torso until he reached…..
"Fuck a duck. I've got an erection?" At first he just stared down at the bulge in his pants, his hands lifting up and away from himself as though he was afraid to touch it, like he'd suddenly discovered an alien growth on his body. It was indeed something foreign. Having been made a Vampire before he went through puberty, he had never experienced an erection. Ever!
"But I wasn't thinking about sex, I swear I wasn't." His voice rose an octave, his eyes wide, remained glued to the flag pole projecting outward from inside his pants.
Mrs Philpot laughed. "I believe love, that you'd call that your Morning Glory. You've been asleep, it happens sometimes." All he could do was nod. He knew all about how the body worked, it had just never worked for him before.
Tentatively, he reached for the elastic waistband of his track pants and pulled them open and stared in awe. Slowly, his look of shock shifted as a small smile appeared at the corner of his lips, broadening into a elated smile.
"I have an erection!" he laughed.
Philippe's thoughts of coffee evaporated in an instant, so did his fatigue.
The only thought in his mind now was getting back to his room to test out his body's latest piece of upgraded equipment.
"Gotta go," was all he said.
Mrs Philpot tilted her head to one side in thought as she watched Philippe disappear out of the kitchen at a much faster rate than he'd entered.
"You know love, it looks to me like that's a decent sized plunger he's sporting in those pants of his. He's going to make the girls very happy with that piece of plumbing," she said.
Cassie turned and stared, her jaw hanging open on its hinges, unable to believe what she'd just heard.
"What? I'm old, not dead." She quipped waggling her eyebrows suggestively and burst into a hearty laugh. "Ah, found it!" she exclaimed victoriously, pulling the butt plug free of the folds of a towel, crackling with static electricity as it clung to the oddly shaped sex toy. With the missing item in hand, Mrs P. turned and headed towards the same doorway which Philippe had just disappeared through only a moment before.
"Uh ha, you've just proven you're still young at heart. You are sooo getting a birthday party now." Cassie called out smugly at their housekeeper's retreating back.
Shifting her eyes to the pile of laundry in front of her, she screwed up her nose and let out a nauseated sigh of disgust. Ughh, maybe she should put the entire load through another cycle in the washing machine,…considering what was just pulled from its midst.
x-x-x-x-x
Philippe almost slammed his bedroom door off its hinges in his haste to relieve his erection of their baggy confines and explore its contours with his hand.
This new development was a welcome distraction from his usual thoughts and feelings. His pulse raced as a mixture of relief and excitement washed through him. For one hundred and fifty years he never believed this day would ever come. He'd had not even a sliver of hope for it. Even when Narayan made him this, an adult, he still reserved his hope to only a quiet whisper in the back of his mind but never truly believed it was possible.
And now here he was, his cock fully engorged and begging for relief. An endeavour Philippe was more than happy to provide.
If he could just work out how.
Sure, he'd seen men masturbate many times so he knew the actions involved. In fact, Nicholas used to delight in doing it in front of him at every opportunity. It was supposed to be a form of torment for Philippe, but what his brother failed to realize was, that since he'd never experienced sexual urges, watching the act of sex or masturbation was no different to him than watching a documentary on animals mating habits.
Not today.
Today his body hummed with sexual tension, all the way from his toes to his fangs. Every muscle twitched, every vein pulsed and his skin tingled with the need to relieve the pressure that was present within his balls.
Not wasting time to remove his pants completely, he pushed the waistband below his hips, his hard cock springing free to jut rigidly between his legs. Its colour had ripened to a deep red, the head of his cock another shade darker again as the thick veins along its length pulsed, feeding it with more blood. Philippe sucked in a strained breath between clenched teeth at the feel of the fabric brushing over the sensitive head, sending a shock of sensation up his spine.
Philippe had spent so many years imaging what this moment might be like, he couldn't help feeling nervous. What if it wasn't what he expected? What if he can't achieve an orgasm?
Whatever the outcome, he was eager to try.
Settling himself down into the padded cushions of the arm chair in the corner of the room, Philippe wrapped his fist around that thick length. It was big, bigger than his brother's. The mental comparison may have been petty but it sent a rush of satisfaction to bolster Philippe's ego. His large hand wrapped around the girth at its base, leaving more than another hand's width above untouched. A slow slide up its length had his muscles bunching in his abdomen as he stroked himself. Once. Twice. A low moan dredged up from his throat. Oh, that felt so good, he thought.
Sliding down into the chair further he spread his legs wider, planting his feet far apart and pumped his shaft nice and slow.
With a rough swallow, Philippe increased the pace a little, moving his hand in a twisting motion, testing what movements felt good and which ones felt incredible. Up and down along his shaft, around the mushroomed head, over and over until he found a rhythm.
His blood rushed through his body pooling in his groin, his breath stalled as the tingling sensations pulsed through him. Sweaty palms made the pumping action easier. Closing his eyes Philippe bit down on his bottom lip. He was too far gone in the experience to notice his fangs had fully descended and had punctured through his bottom lip.
Philippe increased his pace, his head dropping back as he sucked in ragged breaths through clenched teeth, a moan building in his chest. Anxiously he muttered words of encouragement to himself.
His neck corded as the sensation built, his toes curled into the plush rug beneath his feet, and his hips flexed involuntarily as sharper jolts speared through him. He watched with increasing excitement as a drop of moisture beaded the tip of his cock and he felt his testicles swell and retreat up into his groin.
Oh, he was getting close, he could feel it and that knowledge spurred him on with greater enthusiasm.
His heart raced and his skin seemed to burn with anticipation.
Fisting the thick stalk, he tugged and stroked and massaged every sensitive nerve he discovered, awakening an intoxicating desire he was sure he would never recover from.
Philippe felt lightheaded as he hurtled toward his climax.
"Yes. Yes. Oh, God, please yes!" he cried as he felt the unfamiliar orgasm coiled in his balls, detonate with the explosion of a nuclear bomb. The pulsing waves shook his whole body as spurts of his seed jetted onto his taught belly.
A distant, unfocused grin was followed by a deeply gratifying sigh and an immediate yearning to do it again.
And he did.
Twice.
He would have gone for yet another round, God only knew he had enough Testosterone stored up for the job, but it seemed it would have to wait for another time as he heard a rap on the door.
"Alex, what do you want, I'm kinda busy here." Philippe told him, self consciously trying to cover his perpetual erection with his track pants once more.
Alex grinned but said nothing, amazingly.
"Narayan's looking for you. Something about a driving lesson?"
Philippe looked across at the beside clock, it's illuminated red numerals showing he'd managed to fill in three hours of time with his self exploration.
"Shit. Okay, tell him I'll be there in five." Philippe griped. Running his fingers through his scruffy hair in frustration turned into a curse as he realized he'd just recreated a scene from the movie, 'Something about Mary', smearing a glob of semen through his blonde mess. "Crap."
A quick shower later and a change of clothes, he headed upstairs once again. However, the hard rod of flesh in his pants unfortunately remained. Philippe was quickly discovering that not all his bodily functions were within his control. His body was strong, his mind equally so and both responded dutifully upon command. But his hormones were an anomaly which defied his strict discipline. Fortunately his jeans contained the majority of the bulge from obvious notice.
At least he hoped so.