sheet lay over the ridge of his erection. Four dark-haired courtesans smothered him with kisses—one hungrily mashed her lips to his, one licked circles around the root of his cock, a third leaned over his chest and suckled his nipples. The last flicked her tongue around the toes of Sebastien’s right foot.
Zayan smiled at his friend’s long, fierce moans. He saw Sebastien thrash in pleasure against the ropes binding him. Good. It was what Zayan needed tonight. It let him forget…
“Master?” The woman’s soft questioning voice floated to Zayan. She was tied up as Sebastien was, but her ropes held her up against a wall. Weights of beaten gold dangled from clamps at her nipples. He had hung small globes of black iron from hooks he threaded through piercings in her labia. She waited, submissively, for him to take her on the next step.
“I wish to learn, Master. I wish to be trained to serve ye.” Soft, throaty, hers was an exquisite voice marred only by her country accent.
She expected to be whipped, but he did not want to do that.
He had waited two thousand years for this night.
Slowly, everything in the brothel’s large salon—every being, living and undead—took on a red glow. The red shadow crept around them all, perfectly matching each form in the act of writhing, jiggling, and driving toward sexual ecstasy. No one else saw the caressing mantel of red. He did. Brilliant crimson, it was the exotic, vivid color of blood.
It began faintly at first, a light outline. On his courtesan, the glow traced the full curve of her bare breasts, the flare of her wide hips. It burned brighter at the points of her nipples, partly hidden by the metal clamps. It glowed fiercely at the junction of her thighs where the weights dragged at her nether lips.
Zayan dropped his head back and let his hands rest on his thighs, palms up. He lay on a mound of silk cushions, surrounded by courtesans waiting to attend him.
The spoils of war…
This had once been his life, two thousand years ago, when he had been a mortal man. To return from battle and be treated like a god. To feast on the most delectable treats—plump grapes, luscious figs, roast meats. And the orgies. Women to feed him succulent food, pour his wine, and pleasure him with their tongues and their scented bodies.
He closed his eyes.
Blood. In his mind, sightless eyes stared at him from pale faces surrounded by a halo of blood. He had seen thousands of blank, lifeless eyes. He had joined in the games his men played with skulls, artfully kicking them back and forth.
He had never thought he would see blind, unseeing eyes on the people he loved.
Do you remember their faces?
A woman’s voice. It came from the haze of red that now filled the room, and gave him the peace and serenity that other men sought from opiates.
This had been the voice that had sung to him as he had surveyed his battlefield and saw his army mowed down as though smote by the gods. Lush and alluring, it had called to him. It had promised him everything he needed to be victorious, and its price had not seemed like a price at the time….
His soul. Immortality. To become undead.
Do you remember the sound of their laughter? Do you even remember their smells as you held them close?
No. He fought every day to remember, but the faces of his children drifted farther away.
Embrace me and I can return them to you. Embrace me and I can give you what you truly need.
A woman waggled her bare bottom in his face. She had a thick ivory wand pushed up inside, and long, luxurious peacock feathers flowed from its base like an exotic tail. Another approached and presented her derriere to his view. She had two candles in her bottom, tied with a white satin ribbon. Another series of ribbons were wound around that one and affixed her candles to her thighs and her waist. The wicks were lit and the molten wax dripped. Some droplets hit her stockings and she squealed. The last courtesan whispered, “I have nothing inside, Master. Won’t you fill me?”
The woman with the peacock’s tail was toying with her own swollen clit, lazily teasing and playing, obviously highly aroused. But her strokes quickly became more deliberate.
“Patience,” he barked. “No climax yet.”
“I wish to be stuffed with your magnificent cock,” simpered the courtesan who had begged to be filled.
“No, slave. Candles for you.”
He grabbed one thick one and slathered it with molten oil. At his command, the other girls gently eased it into the moaning tart’s quim.
“Light her candle from yours, my sweet.”
And they amused him by trying to transfer the light from one of the two wicks to the long one on the thick white candle, without using their hands. They cheered their success, their faces flushed and strained from prolonging their arousal.
But he would not free them.
He needed them like this.
The red power fed on this heightened sexual need, and it gave him blissful freedom from the agony that now racked his body, the shrieking pain that ripped through his head. Opium hadn’t worked for him, but feeding this mystical power did.
“Pleasure me,” he commanded the bevy of women. Panting, they kneeled before him. The red mist swirled around him. But before the first prostitute could touch him, her irises turned red. Red fluid poured from her eye and she screamed in horror.
She clawed at her face. The others tried to pull her arms away. Zayan jolted up, grasped her wrists, and dragged her to him. He sent a rush of healing magic through her, but she still screamed and thrashed.
She slumped in his arms. Spittle bubbled at the corner of her mouth.
The red fluid no longer poured from her eyes, and it slowly vanished as though it had never existed.
By the gods, what had happened? He was supposed to take the power into him tonight. It had been promised. For two thousand years he had waited to take the full magnitude of the power the red mist could bestow.
Thank you, a voice mocked him from somewhere inside his mind, and blissfully, the pounding, searing pain lightened in his head.
He felt a sigh rush through his body. When the mist came, it seemed to possess him. It spoke inside him in the way he was able to do with mortals. Her soul is too scarred to satisfy me long.
The power had never taken a soul before, but it did not surprise him. He took the blood, and through him the red power consumed the victim’s life and soul.
But he felt an odd tightening of his heart as he laid the limp girl gently to the floor. The other courtesans were whimpering, and a crowd was beginning to surround them—other patrons and whores must have heard or sensed the disturbance and were coming to see.
“She just collapsed.”
A woman sobbed.
“Was she sick?”
Sebastien, obviously now freed from his bonds, pushed
