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SLASH FIC: Journey to Another Hell III [BtVS/Anita Blake]
Title: Journey to Another Hell III
Author: Feygan
Fandom: Buffy/Anita Blake
Pairing: Xander/Jean-Claude/Asher
Rated: NC-17
Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or Anita Blake Vampire Hunter.
LiveJournal: http://feygan.livejournal.com
Home: http://www.darkgesture.com/fanfiction.htm
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Xander crossed his arms and leaned against the wall behind Jean-Claude. He had honestly been expecting some kind of excitement coming here, but so far... nothing.
He was so tired of all the boring nicey-niceness of this world. What he needed was some action. Either that or some more sex.
"Let's go," he suggested quietly. "I needs me some Jean-Claude lovin'."
The older vampire snorted amusedly. "Be that as it may, mon amour, we shall wait until we are certain Anita has truly been set free before we indulge ourselves in our usual debauchery."
Xander sighed heavily. "But this is boring!" he whined.
"It will not be much longer," Jean-Claude said.
"It better not be," Xander said, low-voiced. "Or I'm going to have to find some way to amuse myself. And it won't be all fun and games for someone."
His demon was scratching at the walls of his mind, wanting to be let out to play. Since his Turning, he hadn't really had to practice any kind of self-control and he had become used to doing whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted with no concern for consequence or merely human sensibilities.
Forever seventeen and with no reason to practice any kind of self-restraint... it came with a definite sense of godliness, as though he could do whatever he wanted and there would never be any such thing as consequences.
"Man but this sucks," he muttered. "All this trouble just to save that dumb bitch who hates me."
"What did you call me?"
"And if it isn't herself, herself." He pasted on a patentedly false smile. "How you doin' Anita? Kill anymore children?"
"I don't know, have you?" Even standing between two cops, she still wore her usual attitude. And it was obvious she still hated him, which was always worth a giggle.
He sniffed the air loudly. "Yum, au de prison. It's a nice smell for you. You should totally get used to it."
He could practically feel the air vibrating with her rage, but she wasn't dumb enough to attack him in a room full of cops. That didn't mean she wasn't going to try and make him pay later, but that was half the fun of baiting her. And the other half was knowing that someday he would push her so far she really would attack him seriously and he would be allowed to beat her to the brink of death.
He knew he couldn't kill her because it would probably kill Jean-Claude too and he really didn't want that. But he figured he could weaken her enough that he would have time to cut off her arms and legs, lock her in a box with intravenous tubes to feed her, and basically keep her body alive forever, or until he figured out a way to release Jean-Claude from the yoke of her presence.
Sometimes he realized exactly how far behind he had left the merely human Alexander Harris. Then he would remember how much of a loser that boy had been and he would go back to enjoying the now.
He was a monster. He knew he was a monster. Soulless and unfettered from anything even resembling a conscience or concern. Which is why he could take things as they came and didn't even blink at the thought of killing anyone that crossed his path.
He had even sometimes dreamed of killing Willow. Slowly ripping her apart just to hear her scream, to see her writhe and watch her eyes fill with a surprised wondering, silently questioning "Why?" And all just so he could shrug and answer in all honesty, "Because I can."
Which was the reason he did any of the things he did.
He didn't have a soul and hadn't since the night he let go of his mortality for the last time.
Sometimes, when things were slow, he thought about the last moments of his mortal life.
Possessed by a mentally deteriorating hyena-spirit, he hadn't even known enough to be afraid. The last of his pack, he had been taken down by six minions so the Master could make him anew.
He could still hear the sounds of Willow and Tor's roaring screams as they watched him--their queen--being subdued.
Now he could laugh a little at the thought of himself being possessed by the only female hyena spirit, while Willow and the others held the consciousness of the lesser males. A matriarchy, and he was the queen. He could totally imagine fate laughing.
From demon-possessed teenager to teenaged vampire, it was a strange world after all. And now he was here, in another dimension where vampires had legal rights and "responsibilities" like getting jobs and paying taxes.
He could feel his mouth forming a shark-like grin and didn't even attempt to stop it.
"What are you grinning at?" a male voice demanded.
Xander's attention snapped to Storr's face. "Are you talking to me?" he asked, his voice deceptively mild. He could feel the sudden rush-rush of his fight-kill instinct--running away was for losers.
"I asked why you're standing there with that stupid grin on your face when a little girl is dead." Storr was a big strong man and was probably tough for a human. But to Xander the man was a joke, useless but for the hot blood in his veins.
"I'm grinning because I'm gonna have some fun later," Xander said. He knew Jean-Claude wanted him to play it cool and he really would try not to suddenly snap and kill everyone in the place.
"You should show more respect," Storr said.
"Dolph..." Anita actually sounded nervous. It made Xander smile brighter. She knew that if he was pushed he wouldn't even hesitate to kill the detective and anyone else that crossed his path.
"Aw, don't worry 'Nita, I can control myself," he said. "But if he really wants to start something..." He left it hanging.
"Are you threatening me?" Storr growled. "I can have your ass thrown behind bars for threatening a police officer."
"Now, now, detective, Alexander meant no such thing," Jean-Claude said in that rolling purr of his.
Xander smoothly slid next to Asher, leaning against the blond man's side and twining an arm around his waist. "He looks like a big juicy steak, doesn't he?" he murmured, making Asher twitch. "Don't you just wanna take a bite? Just suck him dry?"
"You're so vulgar," Asher said, but he sounded amused.
"It's the only way to be, Ashy. I'm not gonna lie and hide myself behind the mask of harmless lapdog."
"And is that what you think I do?" Asher turned to face him, frowning just a little.
Xander ignored Jean-Claude trying to soothe Detective Storr's ruffled feathers. "Aw, Asher, you're anything but a harmless lapdog. You're a giant bengal tiger, Sheer-Con for a modern age, beautiful and deadly and not to be toyed with by anyone."
Asher's lip quirked. "Sometimes I think that if you worked at it, you could be a subtle kind of dangerous."
Xander smirked. "Maybe I'm so subtle you don't even notice it."
Asher actually looked surprised for a moment, then smiled a little, those blue-blue eyes focused totally and completely on Xander. "If I am a tiger, you, my friend, are a poisonous snake carefully encircling your prey, ever tightening your hold before you strike."
Xander leaned close. "Jean-Claude is already being consumed. And you, you're next."
"Good."
*____________________*____________________*
Off to the side, Xander and Asher were bonding, which was a seriously weird thing.
Jason didn't know how he had ended up being the unwitting witness to all the weird stuff in peoples' lives, but he kinda wished it would just stop. He seriously thought that maybe he had been permanently traumatized by some of the stuff he had seen, and not just the blood and guts parts either.
He knew he was being seriously warped when he actually thought something Xander did was "cute" or "romantic."
When a guy that happily talked about ripping people apart became oddly endearing, well, Jason figured it was maybe time he took a little step back.
Xander was one scary motherfucker even when he was being all cheerful and pleasant. Maybe especially when he was being all cheerful and pleasant.
There was just something about Xander that could fool you into thinking he was just a normal guy. You started ignoring the air of aggression that hung around him like a dark cloud. You made excuses for some of the horrifying things he said. You allowed yourself to be drawn in by his charming smile, his sometimes goofy sense of humor, and the way he could look at you like you were the most important person in the world. Then all of a sudden he would be all "grr" and that monster face would make an appearance and he would be a lot less pretty or nice.
It was like there were two people in Xander, and one of them was a lot better at hiding the scary.
As the pomme de sang of Jean-Claude, Jason was actually kind of glad Jean-Claude didn't let Xander Feed on anyone. Those jagged teeth didn't look like they would feel good and the scars they left would probably be terrible.
Either Jean-Claude or Asher would Feed Xander from their own pearlescent flesh. Jason had been a witness to the happenings in the vampires' shared bed.
Lying sated and limp in the tangle of sheets, he had watched as first Jean-Claude, then Asher had Fed Xander. There had been something strangely erotic about the thought of the blood Jean-Claude had taken from him being Fed to Xander. But the scene he had watched take place...
Xander's face in that ridged and twisted monster mask, blood coating his lips and those jagged teeth. A look of unabashed ecstasy on Jean-Claude's face even as his mouth trembled slightly in unavoidable pain. That perfect line of throat looking gnawed upon and raw, a gaping maw lined with tendons and red-red flesh. Blood spattered and dripped everywhere, but none of the vampires cared and the monster in Jason's flesh was made hungry.
It kind of scared Jason a little that Jean-Claude didn't trust Xander enough to let him Feed directly from humans or lycanthropes. It made him wonder how shaky Xander's control really was and what would happen if he lost it. Only vampires were safe from his bite because if the worst happened they could fight him off.
Xander really was a scary guy. A self-proclaimed soulless vampire that seemed to not even have the most basic morals or sense of right and wrong. And he had Jean-Claude and Asher wrapped around his finger, which would have been bad enough, but they were the Master of the City and his Lieutenant, the most powerful vamps in the city.
In one fell swoop, Xander had claimed the backing of the city's entire vampire population. And even with Anita flipping out completely, Richard, Rafael, and most of the other shifter leaders were holding to the alliance they had made with Jean-Claude, so no one sane would dare make a move against Xander.
And that thing with Narcissus... It was just weird, that's all Jason knew.
Ten minutes alone with Xander, and suddenly the entire werehyena population of St. Louis was in Xander's pocket and Narcissus was practically crawling on his belly in front of him. Xander refused to explain and Jean-Claude had ceased to ask, but Jason really had to wonder what had gone on and if everyone should worry.
There was just something about Xander, a sucking charm that no one could escape no matter how hard they tried.
Even with the voice in the back of his head telling him to run away just as fast as he could, Jason could feel himself being inexorably drawn into Xander's orbit. It made him think he would lose himself forever in those dark eyes, and maybe when it happened he wouldn't even have it in him to mind anymore. Xander would own him completely and it frightened him that the thought didn't scare him more.
Jason could only be relieved that he had never felt the full force of Xander's attention on him because he didn't know if he would be able to hold himself together.
The lack of control issue was one of the reasons so many people had turned their backs on Anita. Sure, she cleaned up good and lots of people would have happily done her of their own free will, but the aurdeur took that away. Being with Anita now was a little too much like rape, no control over the situation and no ability to say "No" until everything was all over and you were picking your soiled clothes up off the floor.
It had gotten to the point that a lot of the shifter pack leaders refused to be in the same room as Anita. They would send in their representatives or video conference, but they would not personally meet with her.
Anita Blake's complete lack of self-control was becoming a big part of her reputation. Either she was waving her gun around, or she was fucking anyone unlucky enough to get too close.
Jason remembered a time when all he had felt for her was respect. But that was before the night he had found himself being mindlessly fucked in every orifice in a mass orgy with a bunch of people he didn't know and even now couldn't name. Just this faceless mass of clawing, ripping and biting flesh.
He knew he wasn't the most moral of people, but he had woken up feeling dirty. Because the sex hadn't been his choice and he really hadn't wanted it. And really, he couldn't even remember most of what had happened except that he was coated in all kinds of bodily fluids and even with his lycanthrope healing, he ached.
Anita hadn't even apologized or even had it in her to be ashamed. Her lack of control over the aurdeur had basically led to the rape of everyone in that room, but since she got off she didn't even care.
Jason was just glad he hadn't been one of the previously normal humans in that room. Everyone had basically been contaminated by a variety of shifter types. And nobody had been wearing condoms, which had led to Cherry's brief pregnancy and her painful decision to have an abortion. She still wasn't completely over it either.
Even with how afraid he was of Xander, Jason would take him over Anita any day. At least he was honest in his complete lack of soul. Anita still believed that in the end she would somehow do the "right thing" and it would outweigh whatever terrible things she had to do to get there.
He remembered a time when he had heard Anita deriding Jean-Claude's Machiavellian ways. Yet here she was, basically living the ideal of "the end justifies the means."
Sometimes Jason wondered how Anita ever could have fallen so far. Then he had to wonder about himself.
*____________________*____________________*
Being rescued by Jean-Claude always made her feel as if she was going to owe him in the future... and he wouldn't hesitate to collect.
From the confines of a jail cell to the plush confines of Jean-Claude's personal limo; it was kind of a sensory shock. Though sitting across from Jean-Claude, Xander, and Asher made it a somewhat unpleasant shift.
Xander smugly sat between the two other vampires like the king of the mountain... or the queen on the throne.
Some treacherous part of her kept insisting that that was her spot. She should have been the one snugged between Jean-Claude and Asher. She shouldn't have the rank aroma of old sweat and human misery permeating through her clothes to her skin.
What happened to my life? she thought, but there were no sudden and miraculous answers forthcoming.
All she had wanted was to stop being such a sociopath, but somehow she had managed to make her life even more unhappy.
Looking back at her time with Jean-Claude and Asher, she honestly couldn't say she hadn't been happy. It was just that she had been raised to believe that what she was doing was wrong, and the fact that none of it really bothered her had made her take a step back and consider.
In recent years she had killed so many people she couldn't even count them anymore. Sure, most of them were trying to kill either her or someone under her protection, but still... they were still dead and she had been the one to pull the trigger or wield the knife.
She seriously had to wonder if she still had a soul. And she hated the relief she felt over the fact that Jean-Claude's Marks meant she probably wasn't going to die anytime soon... not naturally anyway. She was just relieved that she wouldn't be feeling the flames of hell for awhile yet to come.
"Why are you so quiet? What, you don't want to talk about your time in the poke?" Xander laughed softly. "Did you at least get any good prison sex? Were you the butch... or the bitch?"
She glared at Xander, snuggling there against Jean-Claude's side, practically rubbing her face in what she had so impulsively given up.
It was funny. Just a few years before she had wanted more than anything for Jean-Claude to turn his attentions to someone else and leave her alone. And now that he had... some part of her still couldn't believe it.
Jean-Claude had wormed his way under her skin to the point where she had become certain that no matter what she did, he would always be there. Only now he wasn't, and there was no one to blame but herself.
Even with all of his power and strength, the fact that he had wanted her enough to completely rearrange his whole lie and to give up some of his dignity meant that she had lost some of her respect for him. She had actually begun to look down on him a bit because he would take so much of her shit and not raise a single objection.
If anyone had treated her the way she had Jean-Claude... she would have been more than pissed. But he had just kept taking it, shrugging off her rudeness as inconsequential, and not letting any of the hurtful things she called him breach his skin.
The excuse she had given for the way she treated him was that he was a monster. She had told herself he didn't feel things as deeply as a normal man.
So why did she want to scream when he found someone else to be with?
She could remember the pain in his eyes when she broke up with him and it was honest and real.
Maybe that was what bothered her so much, that in the act of throwing him away she saw the humanity he had tried so hard to hide. Whatever it was, he had moved on and she hated it.
The fact that Xander was so different from her--and not just in his maleness--upset her too. Jean-Claude hadn't tried to find someone like her in appearance or personality. He had found someone so completely new that she didn't even have the chance to fool herself into believing his feelings for Xander were just transference of his feelings for her.
Jean-Claude had moved on... and he'd taken Asher with him.
"Ah, Anita, what are we to do with you?"
Looking at her former lover, she felt a little lost without the murmur of his emotions at the back of her mind. He had completely closed her out and he wasn't letting her back in.
Even though she had been the one to end things between them, she still felt a painful ache in the vicinity of her heart whenever she looked into Jean-Claude's too-beautiful face.
It was pretty much a given that whenever a relationship ended, there was always someone left feeling regretful. It just so happened that this time the one left feeling at a loss was her.
"So what happened?" Xander asked, a smirk tugging at his lips. "Why'd you kill that kid--did she look at you in a threatening way?"
"I didn't kill that girl!" Anita yelled, feeling her blood-pressure sky-rocked upward. "Whatever I shot, it wasn't that girl. So I don't know how she ended up lying on the ground full of holes."
"You hallucinating, 'Nita? Were you chasing the White Rabbit?"
"No, I was not doing drugs," Anita snapped. "Whatever it was I fired at... it wasn't that girl."
"Then what could it have been, Anita? You murdered an innocent child. Your bullets were found in her body. It was only because of your close association with the police that and the tenseness of the situation that they let you out of jail. But if they decide you are guilty..." Jean-Claude shrugged, "you could be sent to prison for a very long time."
"Maybe it was a demon."
Anita turned to look at Xander. "It couldn't have been a demon. I didn't feel that overwhelming sense of evil. Besides, they need to be summoned, and that takes quite a bit of power. Power I haven't felt in the last few days."
"There are other kinds of demons," Xander said. "They can summon themselves and pretty much do whatever they want. And flimsy prayers... they make them giggle."
"What do you think you know?" she demanded.
Xander's expression went flat and there was a frightening blankness to his eyes. "I've seen things you can't even imagine. Creatures that make even me seem less bloodthirsty. And they do whatever they want whenever they want and mortals are their playthings."
Anita wanted to laugh at him, to loudly scoff at his words. But the look in his eyes... it sent a chill through her.
"How come I've never heard of these creatures?" Anita asked.
One side of Xander's mouth quirked upward in a definite not-smile. "You don't know everything, Anita. There are still so many things you have never seen before. So many horrors you have yet to experience. You think you're tough... but it's a never ending tide of evil, Anita, and it will roll right over you. Just grind you into dust and keep on going to devour the world."
"Who were you before you were turned?" Anita asked. "What kind of man were you?"
"I wasn't a man," Xander said, and a mad fire seemed to light in his eyes. "I was just a boy. And when the Master rose to claim his place in the world... he saw me and even before we met I was his. And my sisters--my Willow--were his too because I was not strong enough to hold them from him. But in the end..." His smile was an evil thing. She could almost feel worms crawling across her skin. "We showed him that we were not pets to be leashed. We were wild and untamed and I think even he began to fear us."
TBC...
Author: Feygan
Fandom: Buffy/Anita Blake
Pairing: Xander/Jean-Claude/Asher
Rated: NC-17
Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or Anita Blake Vampire Hunter.
LiveJournal: http://feygan.livejournal.com
Home: http://www.darkgesture.com/fanfiction.htm
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Xander crossed his arms and leaned against the wall behind Jean-Claude. He had honestly been expecting some kind of excitement coming here, but so far... nothing.
He was so tired of all the boring nicey-niceness of this world. What he needed was some action. Either that or some more sex.
"Let's go," he suggested quietly. "I needs me some Jean-Claude lovin'."
The older vampire snorted amusedly. "Be that as it may, mon amour, we shall wait until we are certain Anita has truly been set free before we indulge ourselves in our usual debauchery."
Xander sighed heavily. "But this is boring!" he whined.
"It will not be much longer," Jean-Claude said.
"It better not be," Xander said, low-voiced. "Or I'm going to have to find some way to amuse myself. And it won't be all fun and games for someone."
His demon was scratching at the walls of his mind, wanting to be let out to play. Since his Turning, he hadn't really had to practice any kind of self-control and he had become used to doing whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted with no concern for consequence or merely human sensibilities.
Forever seventeen and with no reason to practice any kind of self-restraint... it came with a definite sense of godliness, as though he could do whatever he wanted and there would never be any such thing as consequences.
"Man but this sucks," he muttered. "All this trouble just to save that dumb bitch who hates me."
"What did you call me?"
"And if it isn't herself, herself." He pasted on a patentedly false smile. "How you doin' Anita? Kill anymore children?"
"I don't know, have you?" Even standing between two cops, she still wore her usual attitude. And it was obvious she still hated him, which was always worth a giggle.
He sniffed the air loudly. "Yum, au de prison. It's a nice smell for you. You should totally get used to it."
He could practically feel the air vibrating with her rage, but she wasn't dumb enough to attack him in a room full of cops. That didn't mean she wasn't going to try and make him pay later, but that was half the fun of baiting her. And the other half was knowing that someday he would push her so far she really would attack him seriously and he would be allowed to beat her to the brink of death.
He knew he couldn't kill her because it would probably kill Jean-Claude too and he really didn't want that. But he figured he could weaken her enough that he would have time to cut off her arms and legs, lock her in a box with intravenous tubes to feed her, and basically keep her body alive forever, or until he figured out a way to release Jean-Claude from the yoke of her presence.
Sometimes he realized exactly how far behind he had left the merely human Alexander Harris. Then he would remember how much of a loser that boy had been and he would go back to enjoying the now.
He was a monster. He knew he was a monster. Soulless and unfettered from anything even resembling a conscience or concern. Which is why he could take things as they came and didn't even blink at the thought of killing anyone that crossed his path.
He had even sometimes dreamed of killing Willow. Slowly ripping her apart just to hear her scream, to see her writhe and watch her eyes fill with a surprised wondering, silently questioning "Why?" And all just so he could shrug and answer in all honesty, "Because I can."
Which was the reason he did any of the things he did.
He didn't have a soul and hadn't since the night he let go of his mortality for the last time.
Sometimes, when things were slow, he thought about the last moments of his mortal life.
Possessed by a mentally deteriorating hyena-spirit, he hadn't even known enough to be afraid. The last of his pack, he had been taken down by six minions so the Master could make him anew.
He could still hear the sounds of Willow and Tor's roaring screams as they watched him--their queen--being subdued.
Now he could laugh a little at the thought of himself being possessed by the only female hyena spirit, while Willow and the others held the consciousness of the lesser males. A matriarchy, and he was the queen. He could totally imagine fate laughing.
From demon-possessed teenager to teenaged vampire, it was a strange world after all. And now he was here, in another dimension where vampires had legal rights and "responsibilities" like getting jobs and paying taxes.
He could feel his mouth forming a shark-like grin and didn't even attempt to stop it.
"What are you grinning at?" a male voice demanded.
Xander's attention snapped to Storr's face. "Are you talking to me?" he asked, his voice deceptively mild. He could feel the sudden rush-rush of his fight-kill instinct--running away was for losers.
"I asked why you're standing there with that stupid grin on your face when a little girl is dead." Storr was a big strong man and was probably tough for a human. But to Xander the man was a joke, useless but for the hot blood in his veins.
"I'm grinning because I'm gonna have some fun later," Xander said. He knew Jean-Claude wanted him to play it cool and he really would try not to suddenly snap and kill everyone in the place.
"You should show more respect," Storr said.
"Dolph..." Anita actually sounded nervous. It made Xander smile brighter. She knew that if he was pushed he wouldn't even hesitate to kill the detective and anyone else that crossed his path.
"Aw, don't worry 'Nita, I can control myself," he said. "But if he really wants to start something..." He left it hanging.
"Are you threatening me?" Storr growled. "I can have your ass thrown behind bars for threatening a police officer."
"Now, now, detective, Alexander meant no such thing," Jean-Claude said in that rolling purr of his.
Xander smoothly slid next to Asher, leaning against the blond man's side and twining an arm around his waist. "He looks like a big juicy steak, doesn't he?" he murmured, making Asher twitch. "Don't you just wanna take a bite? Just suck him dry?"
"You're so vulgar," Asher said, but he sounded amused.
"It's the only way to be, Ashy. I'm not gonna lie and hide myself behind the mask of harmless lapdog."
"And is that what you think I do?" Asher turned to face him, frowning just a little.
Xander ignored Jean-Claude trying to soothe Detective Storr's ruffled feathers. "Aw, Asher, you're anything but a harmless lapdog. You're a giant bengal tiger, Sheer-Con for a modern age, beautiful and deadly and not to be toyed with by anyone."
Asher's lip quirked. "Sometimes I think that if you worked at it, you could be a subtle kind of dangerous."
Xander smirked. "Maybe I'm so subtle you don't even notice it."
Asher actually looked surprised for a moment, then smiled a little, those blue-blue eyes focused totally and completely on Xander. "If I am a tiger, you, my friend, are a poisonous snake carefully encircling your prey, ever tightening your hold before you strike."
Xander leaned close. "Jean-Claude is already being consumed. And you, you're next."
"Good."
*____________________*____________________*
Off to the side, Xander and Asher were bonding, which was a seriously weird thing.
Jason didn't know how he had ended up being the unwitting witness to all the weird stuff in peoples' lives, but he kinda wished it would just stop. He seriously thought that maybe he had been permanently traumatized by some of the stuff he had seen, and not just the blood and guts parts either.
He knew he was being seriously warped when he actually thought something Xander did was "cute" or "romantic."
When a guy that happily talked about ripping people apart became oddly endearing, well, Jason figured it was maybe time he took a little step back.
Xander was one scary motherfucker even when he was being all cheerful and pleasant. Maybe especially when he was being all cheerful and pleasant.
There was just something about Xander that could fool you into thinking he was just a normal guy. You started ignoring the air of aggression that hung around him like a dark cloud. You made excuses for some of the horrifying things he said. You allowed yourself to be drawn in by his charming smile, his sometimes goofy sense of humor, and the way he could look at you like you were the most important person in the world. Then all of a sudden he would be all "grr" and that monster face would make an appearance and he would be a lot less pretty or nice.
It was like there were two people in Xander, and one of them was a lot better at hiding the scary.
As the pomme de sang of Jean-Claude, Jason was actually kind of glad Jean-Claude didn't let Xander Feed on anyone. Those jagged teeth didn't look like they would feel good and the scars they left would probably be terrible.
Either Jean-Claude or Asher would Feed Xander from their own pearlescent flesh. Jason had been a witness to the happenings in the vampires' shared bed.
Lying sated and limp in the tangle of sheets, he had watched as first Jean-Claude, then Asher had Fed Xander. There had been something strangely erotic about the thought of the blood Jean-Claude had taken from him being Fed to Xander. But the scene he had watched take place...
Xander's face in that ridged and twisted monster mask, blood coating his lips and those jagged teeth. A look of unabashed ecstasy on Jean-Claude's face even as his mouth trembled slightly in unavoidable pain. That perfect line of throat looking gnawed upon and raw, a gaping maw lined with tendons and red-red flesh. Blood spattered and dripped everywhere, but none of the vampires cared and the monster in Jason's flesh was made hungry.
It kind of scared Jason a little that Jean-Claude didn't trust Xander enough to let him Feed directly from humans or lycanthropes. It made him wonder how shaky Xander's control really was and what would happen if he lost it. Only vampires were safe from his bite because if the worst happened they could fight him off.
Xander really was a scary guy. A self-proclaimed soulless vampire that seemed to not even have the most basic morals or sense of right and wrong. And he had Jean-Claude and Asher wrapped around his finger, which would have been bad enough, but they were the Master of the City and his Lieutenant, the most powerful vamps in the city.
In one fell swoop, Xander had claimed the backing of the city's entire vampire population. And even with Anita flipping out completely, Richard, Rafael, and most of the other shifter leaders were holding to the alliance they had made with Jean-Claude, so no one sane would dare make a move against Xander.
And that thing with Narcissus... It was just weird, that's all Jason knew.
Ten minutes alone with Xander, and suddenly the entire werehyena population of St. Louis was in Xander's pocket and Narcissus was practically crawling on his belly in front of him. Xander refused to explain and Jean-Claude had ceased to ask, but Jason really had to wonder what had gone on and if everyone should worry.
There was just something about Xander, a sucking charm that no one could escape no matter how hard they tried.
Even with the voice in the back of his head telling him to run away just as fast as he could, Jason could feel himself being inexorably drawn into Xander's orbit. It made him think he would lose himself forever in those dark eyes, and maybe when it happened he wouldn't even have it in him to mind anymore. Xander would own him completely and it frightened him that the thought didn't scare him more.
Jason could only be relieved that he had never felt the full force of Xander's attention on him because he didn't know if he would be able to hold himself together.
The lack of control issue was one of the reasons so many people had turned their backs on Anita. Sure, she cleaned up good and lots of people would have happily done her of their own free will, but the aurdeur took that away. Being with Anita now was a little too much like rape, no control over the situation and no ability to say "No" until everything was all over and you were picking your soiled clothes up off the floor.
It had gotten to the point that a lot of the shifter pack leaders refused to be in the same room as Anita. They would send in their representatives or video conference, but they would not personally meet with her.
Anita Blake's complete lack of self-control was becoming a big part of her reputation. Either she was waving her gun around, or she was fucking anyone unlucky enough to get too close.
Jason remembered a time when all he had felt for her was respect. But that was before the night he had found himself being mindlessly fucked in every orifice in a mass orgy with a bunch of people he didn't know and even now couldn't name. Just this faceless mass of clawing, ripping and biting flesh.
He knew he wasn't the most moral of people, but he had woken up feeling dirty. Because the sex hadn't been his choice and he really hadn't wanted it. And really, he couldn't even remember most of what had happened except that he was coated in all kinds of bodily fluids and even with his lycanthrope healing, he ached.
Anita hadn't even apologized or even had it in her to be ashamed. Her lack of control over the aurdeur had basically led to the rape of everyone in that room, but since she got off she didn't even care.
Jason was just glad he hadn't been one of the previously normal humans in that room. Everyone had basically been contaminated by a variety of shifter types. And nobody had been wearing condoms, which had led to Cherry's brief pregnancy and her painful decision to have an abortion. She still wasn't completely over it either.
Even with how afraid he was of Xander, Jason would take him over Anita any day. At least he was honest in his complete lack of soul. Anita still believed that in the end she would somehow do the "right thing" and it would outweigh whatever terrible things she had to do to get there.
He remembered a time when he had heard Anita deriding Jean-Claude's Machiavellian ways. Yet here she was, basically living the ideal of "the end justifies the means."
Sometimes Jason wondered how Anita ever could have fallen so far. Then he had to wonder about himself.
*____________________*____________________*
Being rescued by Jean-Claude always made her feel as if she was going to owe him in the future... and he wouldn't hesitate to collect.
From the confines of a jail cell to the plush confines of Jean-Claude's personal limo; it was kind of a sensory shock. Though sitting across from Jean-Claude, Xander, and Asher made it a somewhat unpleasant shift.
Xander smugly sat between the two other vampires like the king of the mountain... or the queen on the throne.
Some treacherous part of her kept insisting that that was her spot. She should have been the one snugged between Jean-Claude and Asher. She shouldn't have the rank aroma of old sweat and human misery permeating through her clothes to her skin.
What happened to my life? she thought, but there were no sudden and miraculous answers forthcoming.
All she had wanted was to stop being such a sociopath, but somehow she had managed to make her life even more unhappy.
Looking back at her time with Jean-Claude and Asher, she honestly couldn't say she hadn't been happy. It was just that she had been raised to believe that what she was doing was wrong, and the fact that none of it really bothered her had made her take a step back and consider.
In recent years she had killed so many people she couldn't even count them anymore. Sure, most of them were trying to kill either her or someone under her protection, but still... they were still dead and she had been the one to pull the trigger or wield the knife.
She seriously had to wonder if she still had a soul. And she hated the relief she felt over the fact that Jean-Claude's Marks meant she probably wasn't going to die anytime soon... not naturally anyway. She was just relieved that she wouldn't be feeling the flames of hell for awhile yet to come.
"Why are you so quiet? What, you don't want to talk about your time in the poke?" Xander laughed softly. "Did you at least get any good prison sex? Were you the butch... or the bitch?"
She glared at Xander, snuggling there against Jean-Claude's side, practically rubbing her face in what she had so impulsively given up.
It was funny. Just a few years before she had wanted more than anything for Jean-Claude to turn his attentions to someone else and leave her alone. And now that he had... some part of her still couldn't believe it.
Jean-Claude had wormed his way under her skin to the point where she had become certain that no matter what she did, he would always be there. Only now he wasn't, and there was no one to blame but herself.
Even with all of his power and strength, the fact that he had wanted her enough to completely rearrange his whole lie and to give up some of his dignity meant that she had lost some of her respect for him. She had actually begun to look down on him a bit because he would take so much of her shit and not raise a single objection.
If anyone had treated her the way she had Jean-Claude... she would have been more than pissed. But he had just kept taking it, shrugging off her rudeness as inconsequential, and not letting any of the hurtful things she called him breach his skin.
The excuse she had given for the way she treated him was that he was a monster. She had told herself he didn't feel things as deeply as a normal man.
So why did she want to scream when he found someone else to be with?
She could remember the pain in his eyes when she broke up with him and it was honest and real.
Maybe that was what bothered her so much, that in the act of throwing him away she saw the humanity he had tried so hard to hide. Whatever it was, he had moved on and she hated it.
The fact that Xander was so different from her--and not just in his maleness--upset her too. Jean-Claude hadn't tried to find someone like her in appearance or personality. He had found someone so completely new that she didn't even have the chance to fool herself into believing his feelings for Xander were just transference of his feelings for her.
Jean-Claude had moved on... and he'd taken Asher with him.
"Ah, Anita, what are we to do with you?"
Looking at her former lover, she felt a little lost without the murmur of his emotions at the back of her mind. He had completely closed her out and he wasn't letting her back in.
Even though she had been the one to end things between them, she still felt a painful ache in the vicinity of her heart whenever she looked into Jean-Claude's too-beautiful face.
It was pretty much a given that whenever a relationship ended, there was always someone left feeling regretful. It just so happened that this time the one left feeling at a loss was her.
"So what happened?" Xander asked, a smirk tugging at his lips. "Why'd you kill that kid--did she look at you in a threatening way?"
"I didn't kill that girl!" Anita yelled, feeling her blood-pressure sky-rocked upward. "Whatever I shot, it wasn't that girl. So I don't know how she ended up lying on the ground full of holes."
"You hallucinating, 'Nita? Were you chasing the White Rabbit?"
"No, I was not doing drugs," Anita snapped. "Whatever it was I fired at... it wasn't that girl."
"Then what could it have been, Anita? You murdered an innocent child. Your bullets were found in her body. It was only because of your close association with the police that and the tenseness of the situation that they let you out of jail. But if they decide you are guilty..." Jean-Claude shrugged, "you could be sent to prison for a very long time."
"Maybe it was a demon."
Anita turned to look at Xander. "It couldn't have been a demon. I didn't feel that overwhelming sense of evil. Besides, they need to be summoned, and that takes quite a bit of power. Power I haven't felt in the last few days."
"There are other kinds of demons," Xander said. "They can summon themselves and pretty much do whatever they want. And flimsy prayers... they make them giggle."
"What do you think you know?" she demanded.
Xander's expression went flat and there was a frightening blankness to his eyes. "I've seen things you can't even imagine. Creatures that make even me seem less bloodthirsty. And they do whatever they want whenever they want and mortals are their playthings."
Anita wanted to laugh at him, to loudly scoff at his words. But the look in his eyes... it sent a chill through her.
"How come I've never heard of these creatures?" Anita asked.
One side of Xander's mouth quirked upward in a definite not-smile. "You don't know everything, Anita. There are still so many things you have never seen before. So many horrors you have yet to experience. You think you're tough... but it's a never ending tide of evil, Anita, and it will roll right over you. Just grind you into dust and keep on going to devour the world."
"Who were you before you were turned?" Anita asked. "What kind of man were you?"
"I wasn't a man," Xander said, and a mad fire seemed to light in his eyes. "I was just a boy. And when the Master rose to claim his place in the world... he saw me and even before we met I was his. And my sisters--my Willow--were his too because I was not strong enough to hold them from him. But in the end..." His smile was an evil thing. She could almost feel worms crawling across her skin. "We showed him that we were not pets to be leashed. We were wild and untamed and I think even he began to fear us."
TBC...