                                                               
To you who will read these humble words, born of my own dark imaginings. Please remember that there is a thousand miles of hard road between thinking and doing.
Let imagination give succor to your blackest passions and let this dance begin.

                   Hunting Peragrine
A Tale Of Erotic Horror
And
The Chronicles of a Reluctant Monster


By Reynard K. Aardwulf


Book One

Nightmares and Truths
Chapter one
Hunting Ground

  "He was a man and a monstrosity, as fearful a thing of fear as ever gibbered
  in the visions of a maddened brain. And then, one night, he escaped."

                                                  Jack London, White Fang.

               "Bred of monsters, came I forth."
                                     Peragrine Harker



  TheWolf is on a fresh trail, his quivering nostrils distended, delicately sampling the thick layers of scent that blanket the club. A thousand perfumes, a hundred exotic designer drugs and designer drinks and thick throughout it all, the rich pheromone-laced sweat of youth and lust.

 Underlying it all is some other tracery smell, faint but delicious, the scent of fresh spilt fear and blood.

 Intriguing, it will have to be followed up if there’s time.

 All these things are distractions that of necessity he brushes aside, following that thin elusive spoor which has drawn him to the sub-bowels of the warehouse district. To this torturously loud nightclub with its pulsing lights and writhing herd of frantic, thrill pursuing meat. 

 His delicate ears, so sensitive that he can count the heartbeats of a litter of mouse-pups while they are still in their mother’s womb, are almost numb from the pounding base rhythms. The singer is some maudlin doomsayer for this current generation of jaded young.

 This is a fertile hunting ground, a feast in the making and his paws tingle and itch to reach out and pluck one of these ripe young lambs from their mindless, fashionable flock and carry it, boy or girl it matters not, off into the darkness and silence of the tomblike sewer system.

 TheWolf would gleefully have taught one of these sleek well-fed youngsters the truth of all the doom and gloom they espouse to feel so strongly.

 The child would likely curse its mother and its god, praying most fervently for death before he finally devours its pain soaked flesh, bones, teeth and all.

 This last thought draws a razor smile across his lips, revealing a narrow sliver of sharp white teeth. The carefully crafted mask of humanity almost slips, but he manages it back in place before anyone notices

 He fights this reddest of urges back down, reminding himself he is here on business. Besides, he isn't the only hunter on the premises and the quarry is in sight again..

"Look, Perry!” She always calls him Perry, she knows how much he hates it, his name is Peragrine. “Either shut the fuck up and follow us or get the fuck away and go do your own thing, I’ll just tell dad you took off on me. So just don't fucking bother me or get in our way or I'm gonna kick your narrow ass right here and leave you to find your own damn way back home.” She means it too, she’s abandoned him before.

 “I really don't care which. Got it?" Alison accompanies this little warning harangue with a great flipping of crackling neon red curls and clashing of holographic bangles. "Oh yeah, if I hear one bit of your paranoid bullshit or if you breath one word to Dad about anything about tonight, I'll murder you in your sleep. Are we crystal?"

 Her green eyes are snapping with self-righteous disgust at having to put up with the presence of such an awful creature as a younger brother.

  "Yeah, crystal clear." Peragrine says, staring at her with what he hopes is a sufficiently cowed expression, but failing that, only manages to look just as coldly offended as he feels. He is not paranoid!

 He knows that what he sees inside some people is real, he knows the monsters are there. He knows that some wolves are hairy on the inside. He doesn't know how he knows it, but he knows.

 It’s simply a fact of life that as full-blooded humans, mortals, he and his family figure pretty low on the food-chain.

 But for some reason it freaks his father out if he tries to explain that he can tell the difference when someone not human is around, someone not mundane. Sometimes the impression is vague and fuzzy, sometimes he can see them as clearly as he sees his own face in the mirror.

 He has found through trial and error and several really good whippings with his father’s razor strap, that it’s best to keep these things to himself. 

 Alison seems satisfied however and turns back to nattering on with her friends, the bunch of them ignoring him as completely as if he were invisible.

 There is just no need for her to keeping snipping at him in order to impress her companions, he is perfectly aware of what an inconvenience they all consider him. She is nineteen now and feels old as the hills compared to his mere seventeen.

 It isn't his fault that his father believes that having to keep an eye on him would mean that his sister would be staying out of trouble as well, just as well to ask the tides not to rise and fall.

  Point in fact, not a single one of the seven of them is supposed to be in this place, this isn't one of those homogenized, well-chaperoned 21 and under youth clubs, of whatever theme, that the ‘good kids’ flock to.

 After all, not one of them, not even Aleck is over nineteen. This is one of those clubs you hear about but never get to go to, it is the realm of the adults, territory normally forbidden to their ilk.

 Peragrine has heard of the Elysium society and their clubs. They are one of those private organizations of mostly non-human perverts and sadists. Demons of the pain and pleasure set, whose tastes generally run young and vulnerable.

 The society hits the news-feed every now and then for the seduction of children from the upper classes, rather than taking their toys strictly from the lowest social (mostly human) ranks. Those who enjoy almost no protection from predation.

 He just couldn’t believe his sister and her friends were really this stupid, and that they’d dragged him here as well, is his father really so naïve that he believes Alison when she says that they’re all going ice-skating?

 He is somehow unsurprised when the hulking ogre-mixed bouncer merely glances at the pathetic, obviously fake id's that Alison and her friends wave under his nose and passes them within.

 Thinking back on it he'd spent a lot more time sliding his muddy yellow eyes over the half clad forms of Peragrine’s sister and her girlfriends.

 He looked at Peragrine too, very directly and with a slight smirk, looking him up and down as if he almost knew him, nodding almost as if he is expected, then they are inside before Peragrine has had time to even really think about the strangeness of that nod.

 "Nice shirt." The bouncer grunted as he passed, again with that knowing one sided smirk.

 The place is strange, like two completely different clubs made semi-transparent and overlapped into one, and it’s huge, a vast cavern packed to the rafters with frantic partiers.

 To his even greater disappointment the tunes are all the typical galactic one hundred, the most popular misery to be found in any music shop. It’s the same crap they play at every one of the stupid places he gets dragged to, he’d thought that such a place as this would play something a little more exotic.

 But instead, it’s all the same 'he's mine, not yours', 'you broke my heart when you left me baby' and 'I hate my parents, life sucks' angst you could find in any typical youth club.

 Admittedly it’s laced through with the occasional song of a slightly keener social observation, but all in all, the same old crap, and Peragrine is instantly bored.

 A long evening of following his god-awful sister and her cohort of equally pathetic trend-hounds around, and not even any decent music to distract himself with.

  And it’s crawling with the same boringly cool, trendy kids, wearing their silly holographic bangles and sparkly neon hair gels. Posing on the dance floor and at the little black tables, in a desperate effort to look as world weary and jaded as they think they feel.

 Perhaps here their outfits are a bit more daring, a little more skin showing, a little more grinding when they dance and their laughter seems a little shriller as they smoke their little cigarettes and get giddily drunk on frothy cocktails. Still, much the same as always. 

Then there is the other layer to the club. The first thing is the location, he's never been to a place as isolated as this, a place where the wharves and the warehouse district run together, only a couple of stories separating them from the cold, black water below. Thirty street-levels of concrete and steel separating them from the open sky.

 The Elysium Club has a theme, leather and captivity are the flavors on the menu and the decor reflects this with brutal economy. Everything, including the storm fencing that sections the huge dance floor into a shadowy labyrinth, is painted a uniform, light devouring, matt black.

 Randomly scattered cages dot the floor, walls and cavernous ceiling, the latter being hung from thick oily chains as they sway and jostle to the rhythm of the nearly nude dancers locked within.

 Chains hang everywhere, the ceiling is a swaying forest of them, steel chains crawl across the walls like ivy, they form the legs of chairs and tables in the seating area around the bar, and edge the deep leather sofas in the shadow-laced corners.

 Searchlights scan back and forth through the chain thickets, casting crazy shadows in crimson, violet and blue across the dancers and the music seems to boil up from every crevice and corner of the huge space, filling it completely.

 And everywhere he looks, predators roam freely, he can practically smell the hunger boiling off them.

 Predators with shaven skulls and features as deeply creased as the leather they are clad in, predators that stare from the hungry eyes of fourteen year old girls dressed in sleek rubber cat-suits, with thin cruel looking whips or blades hanging from their chain belts.  Predators, old and young, hollow eyed or well fleshed, there are an awful lot of them here.

Eaters of man-flesh, devourers of souls, feeders on pain and fear, they are all here, both human and inhuman. They crouch in the deepest shadows of the leather couches or prowl across the dance floor, wary eyed and watchful as they scan the nights pickings, hunting the herd of oblivious youth.

Vampires, cenobites, shape-shifters of every ilk, flesh and blood humans as well, all with the common thread between them that this is a mutual hunting ground for all to enjoy, and a legal hunting ground as well. As long as they take care to choose their prey well.

 Being a planet in a diabolic territory of the empire, every citizen has a contract on his life which has a set value at birth and gains or loses in value throughout his or her lifetime, the amount fluctuating with the person’s position in society or specialized abilities.

 Until the age of high-majority at twenty-seven, a child’s contract is the property of their parents, after that you inherit your contract and can keep or sell it if you choose. If you sell it, or gods-forbid, lose it, your life belongs to the contract’s holder, completely theirs to dispose of as they see fit.

 Of course the hypocrisy of the law lies in the fact that a child comes to his or her low-majority and can sign legally binding contracts of servitude or indenturement by the age of thirteen.

 As long as you can afford to pay the guardians or parents the value of the child’s contract, and can get a signature out of the youth, you can legally steal them from their parents. Sometimes it doesn’t even require the kid’s agreement, if you’re rich enough, or highly placed enough, you can just take what you want.

 Like a great pitcher-plant, this nightclub is the real thing, a place you can come to eat or be eaten, he sees it instantly, recognizing the place for the cobra-lily that it is. Peragrine can smell danger everywhere around him, and the really surprising part is that neither Alison nor any of her friends seemed to realize it.

 But they never really notice anything, do they? Or maybe they just don’t care, maybe the danger aspect is why the place is so damned crowded. All these kids testing their lives against the odds, figuring it will never be them who get swept away from the herd.

 As he looks across the cavernous room he notices a girl in the chain link maze who looks very much like Alison. She is laughing with a shaggy, hulking man in a baggy white shirt and leather jeans.

 He is leaning her against a chain link wall and toying with a glowing neon strand of her hair as he strokes her cheek and throat, whispering things that made her twist and giggle against him.

 As she laughs and tosses her curls he realizes with a surge of panic that she is exactly who she looks like. Alison, Kendra, Aleck and the rest, they all quietly walked off as he stood here scanning the room. They have left him alone with the monsters.

  The quarry is to be kept close and yet at a distance, observed and tested, but not actually interfered with, not yet. Luckily for The Wolf there is an easy avenue to getting near his subject. 

 The girl had been pathetically easy to separate from her friends, a few scattered compliments offered in an urbane and disinterested manner and the offer of a fizzy blue drink that was vastly more intoxicating than it tasted, and she was his.

 It doesn't hurt that she’s a well packaged little baggage, it’s a pleasant diversion to press her fragile little body back against the wire fence, letting the glove leather of his pelvis brush against the bare flesh of her stomach, stroking her throat and finding the rich little pulse there. Hmmm, delicious.

 He pretends solemn interest as she chatters on about all the inane and idiotic spites and concerns in which pubescent girls cocoon themselves, but his mind is barely with her. Instead, with little covert glances, he is keeping a close watch on the boy.

   Peragrine stands stricken at the top of the stairs that lead down onto the main dance floor, Alison is at least fifty yards away and he can't seem to spot any of the others at all. He isn't sure if he could find his way to her if he descends into the crowd and he doesn't want to just stand here all evening hoping that they will eventually regroup and come get him. It’s simply not going to happen.

 Taking a deep breath, heart pounding as if it might burst, he sighs and begins to descend the steps.

  The boy is far more striking than The Wolf has been led to believe. Silken silver-white hair flying and clinging about an angular face that seems carved from mellow ivory.  

 Huge expressive eyes that take in everything about him and give back almost nothing,  a ripe pink berry of a mouth, just made for kissing and biting.

 He has an imperious carriage, graceful and commanding, a physical attitude that completely belies the panicky nervousness that TheWolf can smell coming off him, even from here. He is probably a fine poker player.

  He seems slightly awkward in the too large club clothes that the girl and her friends must have dressed him in. Actually he looks rather fetching in those baggy black pants and the nearly transparent gray shirt with its holographic clouds sliding by. You can  just see the shadows of his navel and small pink nipples through the sheer fabric.

 With a surge of hungry lust, he breathes a small prayer that the order be given to end the boy. He would enjoy breaking down that cool outer reserve, he imagines the boy can howl like a rabbit in a trap if really  put to it.

 He would take his time and make it last, savor every cry and petty humiliation, till' the time comes for blood to flow and that he would carry out with such a luxurious patience and leisure as he has not heaped on a subject in ages. 

 The girl squeaks slightly as his grip on her shoulder momentarily tightens. He laughs softly and brushes his lips across hers, kissing away her little frown and making her laugh against his mouth, all forgiven. 
 
  Down into the writhing bowels of the club he goes, sliding quietly into the crowd. He wants to work his way around the edge of the space toward the bar but as soon as he enters the crowd he is lost.

 Young to begin with, he is also small for his age, petite almost to the point of delicacy. Almost everyone is taller than him and he is jostled unmercifully as he tries to work his way toward the wall.

 As he moves along he several times feels hands run across him, across his shoulders, across his back, the tweak of a buttock, fingers sliding across his crotch, there is simply no escaping them or even seeing who it is, the forest of dancers is just too thick. 

 The movements of the dancers and the constantly shifting colored lights make it almost impossible to focus on any one thing or person for long. It makes the crowd seem less a group of individuals and more as if it were one great rhythmically shifting beast in whose belly he is caught and must now be digested.

 He hates crowds with a passion, hates this feeling of being lost and out of control. And even more he dislikes being handled, even by his own family. The sensations are just too strong, too overwhelming when he is touched, even casually.

 His body feels strange, not his own when someone makes physical contact with him, makes him shiver with anticipation of some unknown dread. Some dark passion.

 Much better to stay in the world of books and learning, in the taut controllable world of the intellect.

 His blood is singing in his ears and he feels flushed and feverish, his breath coming in short explosive blasts, he can feel panic washing up his body like a drowning tide.

 He is struggling now, thrusting his slight form through every crevice that opens itself to him, and he plunges on heedless of where his path takes him and just as it is becoming  unbearable, just as he feels that he must explode, the wall of bodies opens.

 His momentum is such that he fairly flies from the crowd like the falcon he is named for, his eyes still dazzled by the shifting lights, the shadows he crashes into are a perfect darkness to him. He doesn't see the man until he has fairly smashed into him.
 
The boy was momentarily lost to sight in the crowd, but his distinctive scent tells the full story of his passage. He smells hunted and carries the panic smell of a deer run to ground by hounds and in the faintest thread below it all he has begun to smell angry.

 TheWolf follows his flight in the pictures these scents bring him and in the scents of those the boy passes. TheWolf is not the only hunter who likes and notices his prettiness, he has inspired much interest as he passes and he can smell him getting very close now.

 After a few minutes the boy comes visible again, not more than a dozen yards away. His face is paper-white in the bluish light that catches him, the whites of his great eyes rolling like a colt in a thunderstorm. Magnificent.

 The boy is running full out as he crashes into the chest of a large man in a form fitting bodysuit of leather straps and buckles, TheWolf gives a jealous shudder as he sees the man close his hands around the boy's shoulders.

 "Hello there." The huge man smiles faintly, catching him in his great hands. All Peragrine can see though, are the shadows and strength of the man's broad leather-bound chest. The accent is faintly Slavic, his voice deeply timbered and rich with nuance.

 He tries to push away from the stranger and finds that he is strengthless as a kitten in the man's powerful grip, his body still shaking with the after effects of his panicked flight. He feels himself turned around and gently propelled toward an empty couch a few feet away, the man’s strong hands guiding him along.

 "You must have been dancing pretty energetically to get yourself all out of breath like that." The man's voice is easily audible over the music, though he doesn't seem to be shouting, only speaking softly, intimately.

 The stranger’s slate eyed gaze is warm with appreciation and subtle concern, his mouth sensitive and wryly mobile with contained humor. He is immensely tall and built with a powerful economy of musculature, the visible portions of his skin pale and deeply scarified, white on white, with here and there a fresh seeming slash of deepest crimson.

 His black hair is shaved to a gleaming ravens-shadow down the curves of his naked skull and his body is clad entirely in a black bondage suit of supple leather, making his powerful frame just another shadow among the shadows. 

 "I, I wasn't dancing." Peragrine finally manages to gasp. "Just trying to get across the room. I'm not great with crowds."

 The laugh the large man favors him with is mirth filled and not cruel. "I know just what you mean my boy. It's always a little crazy on Wednesdays, what with half the high-schoolers in the city storming the gates." He chuckles again, deep in his chest, as he settles himself into the deep leather sofa, drawing the slight figure of the boy down by his side.

 "What's so special about Wednesdays?" Peragrine asks as he slides slightly away from the man's side, fetching up in the deep soft corner of the sofa and turning to face the man. 

 The stranger's touch is turning out to be strangely pleasant and it bothers him to have it so, he would rather pull away.

 "Wednesday is the night we bring in an outside DJ and let him play this trite crap all night. It certainly packs the kiddies in." The man offers with a slightly sardonic smile, his black eyes gleaming all the more warmly as he takes the boy in at leisure. “So who are you?"

 "Peragrine, Peragrine Harker." He’s used to people giving him that look, when that hungry gleam is aimed at him it always makes him feel slightly dizzy. His ivory cheeks blossom a delicate rose pink that is almost invisible in the pulsing gloom, but still  lost on neither man nor wolf. 

 "Harker, hmm? That sounds very familiar, who is your father, what does he do?" His black eyes are now keen as a hawks, sharp as diamonds in the darkness.

 Peragrine is suddenly very alert, sitting upright as he answers. "I'm sure you wouldn't know him Sir. He's an attaché to the Barony, the corporate division."

 Now the truth comes pouncing like a cat. "Your father is Gideon Harker, isn't he? I do believe he's in my division.. My God, are you alright?" His handsome face very suddenly alarmed.

 Peragrine feels immediately, horribly, sick. He can feel all the blood draining from his face. This man knows his father, he will tell him where he met his son, and Father will be furious. Peragrine probably wouldn't see the outside of his room until he’s thirty-five. 

 "I'm fine, fine, I just... It's kind of hot in here." Peragrine laughs weakly. His mind racing, trying to think how to convince this man not to tell his father about their encounter. Wanting to buy himself a little time, he asks. "Could I have something to drink, please? Just some water or something?"

 "My pleasure. Or-something coming up." The man's smile returns full force, though his eyes still hold a touch of concern. "I'll be back in just a moment. You watch my seat and don't you let anyone spirit you off while I'm gone." This last is said with mocking but not unserious gravity as he stands up.

 "And by the way, just in case you thought I was being rude, my name is Templeton." He slides his large hand into Peragrine's small one, clasping it firmly. His grip is warm and dry and full of well contained power.

 The man fairly oozes confidence and Peragrine finds it catching, he has a sudden notion that the man has no interest in getting him in trouble. As he watches Templeton walk away, the crowd of dancers parts before the man as if compelled magnetically. 

 Peragrine can still feel that strong hand engulfing his own and his palm fairly burns where Templeton's fingertips brushed its sensitive hollow. The feeling makes him shiver and he is suddenly taken with a nervous urge to slip away while he still has the chance.  

  But he knows it would do him no good to offend the man in that way and besides he dislikes to be rude, especially to someone who is being so solicitous of him. It’s nice to talk to someone who doesn't seem to dismiss him for his youth, and, he still has yet to convince him not to mention this meeting to his father.

 TheWolf has grown bored, the girl is beginning to seriously irritate him with her inane yapping. He is becoming tempted to snap her scrawny neck just to stop the silly chatter she keeps spewing in his ear.

 Digging deep into his font of masks, he finds one filled with both lust and regret.

 "Damn it, is that really the time, I've got a presentation in the morning.......Blah, blah, blah." All the petty vapid courtship gestures and apologies.

 A last passionate kiss, a polite but solid grope and he has secured her number, her permission to see her again and a promise that she will come back to the club as soon as possible. It might be useful to keep her close, it also might prove fun.

 He shuttles her to the bar, buys her another drink and slips away after one more boringly intense clasp, then he is finally free of the clingy little bitch. 

 The boy is alone again, a small white figure lost in the dark mass of the leather couch. He isn't sure where the man has got to, but he is surely nearby.

 The man is a fellow hunter, older than he looks with predatory competence writ in every line and scent of him. He isn't likely to give up such tasty quarry with good grace. 

 It would be a tempting prospect to test the hunter's mettle, but it might mean making direct contact with the boy and that has not yet been authorized. The matter will have to wait. 
 
  Templeton has not been gone two minutes when a pair of little blond ballerinas in black velvet tutu's plop down on the couch, smiling at Peragrine with bright blue eyes. 

"We know a secret." They chime in happy singsong, their speech a perfect unison, both cherry red mouths wearing identical little-cat smiles.

 They are twin girls a little younger than himself, sleek as glass, ice-blond and almost spectrally thin. Their eyes are a rich gas-flame blue, large and luminous as his own. In fact they are the first people, male or female that he has met who share so closely his own coloring and because of it they intrigue him greatly.

 "A secret?" He asks, his feathery pale brows lifting slightly. "Which one, I've got so many." he smiles, willing to indulge these strange creatures for a moment, though he hopes Templeton will be back soon.

  "We know why a raven is like a writing desk, but we'll never tell." He recognizes the reference from ‘Alice in Wonderland’, the unsolvable riddle asked by the mad-hatter. 

 There is a disturbing humor sparkling and dancing in their bright blue eyes, a sort of jack-o-lantern flicker that strikes him as not quite sane and he begins to wonder if they might not suddenly drive for his throat with their little white teeth. 

 "Deirdre! Arriana! Come away from that boy at once." The terrible mad glitter of their eyes snaps out at once, their expressions suddenly blank and smooth as the faces of two porcelain dolls.

 Without a single parting glance they scurry away to sink like unstrung marionettes to the floor beside the columnar calves of the beast who has summoned them. Their thin arms twined about each others waists, their faces utterly empty now, even of grief or fear.

 The voice that commanded them is a gravelly basso profundo, fully devoid of any pretence at human warmth or pity. It is a voice of hidden graves and forgotten tombs,  of shattered marrow bones grinding together and yet it is nothing to the physical form of its owner.

 He is fully the largest and most frightening man Peragrine has ever seen or even imagined in all his darkest dreams. Just a shadow past seven feet tall and fully as broad as two strong men, but without a trace of soft flesh anywhere about him.

 His features are broad and deeply sensualistic, coarse as unfinished stone, like a thing left half-finished. The skin of his face, a network of fine wrinkles and wrinkle-like scars, laid layer over layer and leaving his age indeterminate, just horribly old and horribly strong.  

 The eyes, small and pale, muddy blue-yellow like those of a corpse. A snipers gaze, eyes that miss nothing, dismiss nothing. Strangler's hands, thick with tendons, scarred knuckles flexing rhythmically, unconsciously grasping and never resting, the rest of him still as stone.

 His body is like that of some great beast, something like a hybrid of bull and bear. All power and destructive potential, barely restrained in a moleskin suit of deepest crimson. A snowy band collar encasing a massive bull’s-neck and tall boots gleaming like black glass. His silver-white hair clipped so brutally short it is a mere rime of frost across a great blocky skull.

 "I hope that you will accept my apology, young sir." The monster slowly grates, turning the full force of its gaze upon him. "I'm afraid the little minxes slipped their lead, I do hope that they did not trouble you overmuch."

 Peragrine opens his mouth to speak but finds that he can't make a sound, for a moment he can't even seem to draw breath. He is utterly frozen beneath that cold lamplight gaze and the thick stench of utter evil that hangs like a miasmic cloak about the monster's shoulders. Here before him stands a personification of slow madness and certain death.

  It takes everything TheWolf has in him not to intervene when the Devourer swoops in on the subject. He hadn’t even smelt the old one’s presence until it chose to real itself, the master will want to know that the Devourer is here, it might change everything.

 He is only supposed to study the boy, there is no order for his protection and if he is killed before the study is complete and a decision rendered, that is simply par for the course.

 But he is desperately hoping to save that pleasant task for himself and it would be a bitter disappointment to see him simply swallowed whole by the hulking thing before him. 

 When the warm hand closes on Peragrine’s shoulder, the teenager’s tautly held breath explodes from him in a small scream and he twitches violently away from its grasp. It’s Templeton, two drinks balanced in one hand.

 "Slow there Peragrine, it's only me." His voice is low and calm, warmly assuring, protective. He presses one of the glasses into the boy's hand.

 "Drink this, it's alright, your safe." Peragrine's hand closes convulsively about the offered glass and he drinks it down without thought, impelled by the gentle command in Templeton's voice. It was cold and tart and good, but he could not have told what it was as he never once took his gaze from the Monster's.

 "Hello there, Piper. You seem to have made quite an impression on poor Peragrine here, you old hobgoblin." The muddy lamp-lit gaze swivels to encompass Templeton, a grim smile twisting the beast’s cold features. As soon as the weight of it leaves him, the boy finds that he can at last breath again

 "Lo there, Temples my pet." Piper’s eyes return to their study of the small figure. “Peragrine you say?"  

 "How rude I'm being." Templeton’s voice is all pleasure and mirth, he is taking more than a little pleasure from the boy's helpless discomfiture. "Peragrine Harker, it is my great pleasure to present you to Lord Piper de Rais. He's something of a fixture around here. I admit he's a bit of a bugbear, but you couldn't have a better man behind you in a back-alley fight."

 At this, both men give a small laugh that implies more than one shared battle and chills Peragrine with its deadly inference. The beast looms forward, offering a massive slab-like hand. “An honor, young Peragrine, and a great pleasure.”

 Peragrine, trying to hide again behind his customary mask of calm, slips his small hand into the massive paw, his eyes growing very wide as the enormous creature bends to press the dry coldness of his lips to the tender warmth of his slender hand. 

 "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance as well, Lord de Rais. And no, your daughters were no trouble to me at all." Despite the mad racing of his heart, his voice sounds surprisingly steady to his own ears.

 "Daughters!" Piper's face breaks like a merry thunderstorm, a gravelly laugh booming up from the cavern of his chest.

 "Daughters he says." He snorts. "Huh, huh, huh, very good." He swoops suddenly, pressing the boy's still captive hand to his lips again. "My charming and most delectable young man, the day I start fathering daughters will be the day that the moons bleed and the skies grow black as sackcloth, these little sluts are very certainly not any get of mine."

 "Templeton." The monster stands straight again, releasing Peragrine's hand, remarkably un-bitten. "Can you honestly imagine the sort of daughters I should breed." Again that gravelly hollow laugh is joined by Templeton's far richer one, again that sense of terrible secrets shared.

 My gods, Peragrine thinks to himself, what the hell kind of rabbit hole have I fallen down?

 The huge hand descends again, closing like a gentle vise on the under-curve of Peragrine's smooth jaw, the fingers clenching slightly, forcing his teeth and lips to part. 

 He tenses but does not struggle, his whole body taught as a bowstring, utterly frozen by Piper's draconic gaze.

 The monster looms closer, obscuring his view of anything else. All he can see now is the scarlet landscape of the man’s vastly muscular body and the ancient terror of its cruelly written face.

 Piper’s mouth twists faintly, a small shifting of expression that is the closest thing to pleasure that his face seems capable of, his yellow-blue eyes narrowing slightly as he watches the boy’s battle to remain still, to keep from shrinking away in terror at his touch.

 The boy has the clear nature of a magnificent slave. So hungry to be used, and yet how terrified of the violence of his own hungers.

 Piper was almost startled when he first caught sight of the lad from his upper tier box, high above the crowds. He’d spotted the man-child struggling his way across the crowded dance floor and was immediately struck by his almost unearthly beauty.

 What a prize to be plucked, and what a great relief when he saw Templeton move in to catch him as he broke from the herd. Piper and his much younger friend have been hunting partners for a number of years, ever since the young man broke from the ranks of Piper’s mostly unfortunate stable of play-toys. Rising to take his rightful place as one of Piper’s finest students and a great hunter in his own right, a corporate raider of the most mercenary and successful sort.

 Peragrine’s skin flushes pink, eyes growing suddenly glassy, bright electric blue. His whole soul and every burning nerve becoming concentrated on those few square inches of skin in the monster's grasp. His vision swimming, filled with nothing but the creature’s icily burning gaze.

 The thick thumb slips upward, following the hollow of his tender, fever warm cheek and sliding like a snake’s head, between his parted lips.

 The taste of it on Peragrine’s tongue is electric, like burnt ozone and blood, salt and metal and something more elusive. It wakes something in him, something in his cells, and to his horror he finds he wants more of this elusive taste.

 The club is gone for him, the music faded to distant thunder, his whole reality is concentrated on this moment of growing passion, this elusive memory-taste that wakes such an awesome tide of hunger in him. Concentrated on the hand that grips his jaw and the draconic beast that holds him captive.

 Both men exchange surprised looks as the boy's eyes roll shut and he moans softly, teeth closing to scrape gently against the rough fleshed digit. The boy's pink tongue pushes upward, forcing the thumb to press into the softness of his palate. 

 Peragrine's hands lie limp in his lap, palms upward, fingers lightly curled. His breath is a ragged tattoo of soft panting. His entire figure utterly transformed from the frightened lamb to that of a creature devoured by its own unexplored lusts.

 Piper's face becomes a study in tigerish curiosity as he slides his thumb deeper into the boy's soft mouth, the calloused tip scraping the back of the boy’s tender glottis.

 Back and forth he slides his thumb, in and out of the trembling mouth. A low growl rumbling out of the monster's massive frame as his thumb is bitten and suckled, over and over.

 The boy reminds him of the girls he brought to the club with him, his darling, whorish, Darklands nieces, he certainly shares their icy coloring. He wonders if this pale lad can take as much pain as they can, and he is rapidly growing curious to find out.

 The monster lifts his other hand to run his fingers through the lad’s silver-white locks, his expression coldly meditative, the boy’s fine silken curls clinging to his fingertips like cobwebs.

 The feeling of the boy’s moan transmits itself like an electrical pulse, through his thumb, up his arm and straight into his groin, and Piper suddenly wonders what the lad would be like under the lash.

 How it would feel to whip him bloody and then to take him slowly, fucking him and drinking his cries of pain and need. Oh, the many addictive agonies he could introduce this shining naïf to.

 "What the fuck!! Oh! My! Gawd! You little slut!" Peragrine's eyes fly open like window shades, his whole body arching away from the great hands as if struck. His dark blue eyes electric with terror and confusion. What the hell was I just doing?

 Alison charges forward, brushing past Piper without a glance and yanks Peragrine to his feet by his shirtfront.

 "Fuck, I can't take you anywhere, can I?" Each word is punctuated by a sharp little shake, Peragrine only staring at her furious face as if he didn't know her at all, his expression crumbling as if he is going to burst into tears at any moment.

 "Oh you little shit, you just wait until I tell dad about this. He won't even bother to ground you. He's gonna throw away the key for this!" She sounds so viciously gleeful it makes Peragrine blink rapidly, then the tears finally do come. He drops forward against her, sobbing helplessly, suddenly seeming half his age, clinging to her like a child and muttering wordless pleas for understanding against her breasts.

 For Peragrine there is nothing in all the world, so fundamentally awful, as losing control of himself. Tears are the worst, robbing him of every shred of dignity.

 Especially this helpless, unstoppable sobbing, with tears and snot running down his face in streams. It’s made a thousand times worse by the confusion, he just couldn't grasp what it was he was thinking.

 His whole body flushes crimson with humiliation at his staggering boldness and loss of inhibition. He can't begin to understand why he had behaved so, why he is so unhappy that Alison made it stop. This is intolerable, it’s as if all his very worst fears are coming true at once.

 If their father learns of this, well he has no idea what the man will do. He knows that his father loves him, that had always been made clear, the same had been true of his mother as well. Her loss still hurts, even after all these years. He knows that his father loves him, but he also knows that his father does not trust him. 

 Since the time when he was very small, his father has watched him with some dim worry lighting his tired dark eyes. As if at any moment he expects his beautiful solemn son to suddenly transform into something monstrous. As if he is only waiting to see it happen.

 Peragrine’s throat is too achingly taut to emit more than a faint creaking as he tries to beg her not to involve their father in this, not to tell anyone. Please, please tell no one. 

 For her part, Alison is very much in her element. Her face has adopted an expression of patient disgust, one she is used to using when she is in a position of power over her younger brother. "Gawd, you are such a baby." She sighs, rolling her eyes heavenward.

 "Let's head home, we'll talk about it in the cab, maybe we can work som...." She is just turning to lead him away when she is intercepted.

 "Excuse me, I hate to interrupt you, but..." Templeton's smooth voice interjects.
 
Alison turns with an ugly snarl. "Beat it Perv! You had your fun, get lost!"

 Her plump, heart-shaped face falls in shock when she looks into Templeton’s blandly amused face, her eyes going perfectly round, the blood draining from her features. "M, Mr. Mannish?" She has brought papers to her fathers office several times and has met the president of Father’s division on more than one occasion. 

 Those times however, he had always appeared in a slate gray cut-silk suit of flawless tailoring. Shoes polished to dark mirrors. Impeccably dressed and perfectly correct in every detail of his grooming and deportment. The absolute model of Baronial lieutenancy, the perfect corporate figure. Never, had she pictured him as she sees him now.

 The tight leather suit molds itself to his muscled frame like a second skin, his expression unreadable as she studies the broad stripes of flesh where the leather had been stripped back along his ribs, revealing the white traceries of ancient whipping scars, some overlaid by far fresher ones.

 He looks utterly the gentleman savage as he perches on the edge of the dark leather sofa, the darkly patinaed brass-buckles of his leathers winking in the shadowy gloom.

 "Yes, little Alison, Mr. Mannish. How do you do my dear?" His tone deadly in its sheer blandness. "And how is your dear papa, well I hope?" His brow lifts in a mockery of concern, placing long emphasis on the word, papa, making it sound like pah-pah.

 Before she can reply he turns away to address the stone faced gargoyle, who has moved just behind her. "Piper, do you think that perhaps you could have your girls take Peragrine to the restroom lounge, so he could run some cold water on his face. I think it would do the lad a world of good."

 "Not a problem, Templeton." Alison swivels around quick as a wink at the sound of Piper's sepulchral voice and where her face had formerly been merely pale, it now turns an ashen sickly gray. Releasing her grip on Peragrine, she backs swiftly away until her calves fetches up against the sofa cushion and falls into the seat.

 Peragrine, for his part, is thankful to be dismissed for the moment. It’s a good chance to catch his breath, re-group his thoughts.

 At a glance from their master, the two little ballerinas come to sudden animated life. They rise, twittering little rhymes and bits of silly nonsense. Drawing Peragrine gently away, cooing and clucking gently over his reddened eyes and upset.

  Alison, left alone, gains now the full concentration of both men. Piper says nothing, only watching, as with perfect attention she listens and nods as Templeton lays out in no uncertain terms the fact that it would be very much in her own best interests as well as in the best interests of her father's future career that she keep her sweet little yap shut.

 He explains that she and her brother will be returning to the club on a regular basis and in fact they will even be provided with special passes that will allow them entry on any night of the week.

  Explaining that she will be free to socialize and form whatever assignations she likes and that she will interfere with nothing that her brother chooses to do. Separating herself from him immediately upon entering the club and leaving him to pursue his own interests until they are both ready to leave, at which time a car will be provided to see them home.

 "Think of it this way sweetheart, you've just landed in the big leagues." He offers in closing. Raising his hand, he summons a handsome young man in the club's leathers  

 "Now, you go with Dimitri, he’ll show you back to your friends. Peragrine will join you in a few moments after he has washed his face. I'm sure that you will want to be going home now and think about the gulf of new possibilities that has just yawned open at your feet." With that she is dismissed, scampering away fast as can be the moment she is given leave.
  
 Test number one is already completed and The Wolf had had nothing to do, except to watch it unfold on its own.

 The boy clearly carries all the sensual characteristics of his coloring, all the daughter's are born whores. It’s bred into them like their cobweb pale hair and changeable blue-violet eyes.

 He is male however and so the question still remains, what other things has he inherited. Is he dangerous to the Master?

 Peragrine is brought to the side of his sister within twenty minutes, his eyes still glassy and confused. He is however all cleaned up, hair combed, face washed, he looks calm, almost sleepy.

 Alison's friends hardly glance at him as they pile into a waiting taxi, being carried swiftly upward to the surface-street level and on through the darkness of shadowy warehouses. Speeding to the residential neighborhoods where each is deposited upon his or her doorstep, Alison and Peragrine last of all.

 The others paid no attention to the sibling's individual silences, Alison lost in thought over what she had seen and must not speak of and Peragrine simply lost to the sleep in which he sank the moment he settled into the seat beside her.

 He doesn’t even really wake when they arrive home, only stumbles along as she drags him to his room, wherein he simply collapses still clothed onto his bed, not to rise again until it is time to ready himself for school. He doesn’t remember dreaming at all.

 The Wolf is already in place when the children come home, he’s chosen an ancient Jacaranda tree to nest in as he watches the boy and his sister and for the next week he follows them about the city, watching them go through the mundane course of their lives.

 In school they are both good students, in sports, he fences and is apparently an excellent gymnast and they both ride with great competence at the over-priced private stables.

 As for social activities, she belongs to many school sponsored clubs, he seems to prefer the solitude of his room or the vast echoing library near his home. 

 Security is tight at the expensive private school and in the gated community that contains the gracious bulk of their home, the magical wards and security systems of these places far too strong for him to do anything but observe and wait.

The shadowed streets of the neighborhood are heavy with oak trees and the sort of well groomed gardens that are often seen in the glossy pages of magazines. House after house with stunningly furnished parlors that no one ever uses, only gazed upon and admired as they go to socialize in their designer kitchens. It’s a grotesque parody of living. 

 Take a dozen of the cunt-fuck, anorexic trophy wives who dwell in them and strip them naked, leave the bitches to starve awhile in a room with only a knife between them and death, it would only be one in ten thousand that comes out well fed. They are soft and weak, pallid, flavorless meat. Disgusting. The boy is different, he is something very special just waiting to happen.

  The morning after his adventure, except for a slight expression of sleeplessness, the subject had seemed to have recovered his normal composure. Dressed in his school's gray and burgundy uniform, he had seemed utterly unremarkable. Granted, more pretty than  average, but still boringly mundane, his scent flat and thought filled.

 For two and a half weeks now, Peragrine has gone through the motions of his life in a fog. Schoolwork had never been much of an effort for him, it’s good to lose yourself in the solid laws of mathematics and the principles of the hard sciences, even the magic studies take almost no thought at all. 

 The teachers rarely seem to notice him so long as his work is done well, and as he has never been very receptive to the friendly overtures of his peers, he is left pretty much to himself. A state which he prefers over any other.

 The events of that wild evening have resolved themselves into a shadowy jumble of images, most of which still bring hot blood rushing to stain his pale cheeks.

 He watched father closely for several days and has seen no sign that he knows anything, and that at least is a great burden lifted. Father is a mirthless man who loves his children dearly, but haunted by the loss of his wife seven years ago and a past so burdened with secrets that he never speaks of it. He buries himself in his work, leaving the raising of his children pretty much to themselves at this point.

 With more than a week passed and nothing brought up, and even Alison strangely silent on the matter, he’s resolved to dismiss it from his mind as much as possible. He’s already different enough from his peerage without the help of any added burdens. But then, just as his life seems almost normal again, the packages arrive.

 There are more than a dozen boxes and one black vellum envelope, embossed in crackled silver leaf with the emblem of the club, the boxes come from one of the most exclusive fetish shops in the city.

 Two of the packages contain high collared, ankle length trench coats of the softest black leather, the shade so deep that even the shadows seemed obscured. They fit the children perfectly and feel soft as glove leather. They are an immense hit with both.

 The rest of the packages disclose a dazzling array of articles ranging from the daring to the bizarre and even beyond.

 Silk, leather, rubber and woven water, buckles, straps, grommets and chains, red, black silver and slate, from transparent to utterly opaque. It’s a king's ransom in kinky clothing. Peragrine having examined it all, announces flatly that he was not going, not wearing these 'things', having none of it, period.

 This is the spark that sets off the most vicious explosion Alison has ever shown. A bully by nature she is used to using her temper to best advantage, but this is plain fury.

 She slaps him open-palmed, three times across the face, quick as a viper striking, grabbing his shoulders and shaking him like a doll, shrieking like a harpy that all of this is his fault. That she can't go without him and that she can't not go, so he is going too, God-Dammit! And that is final!

 Dry-eyed and more coldly infuriated with her than he has ever felt before, Peragrine retired to his room, arms loaded down with those boxes which had clearly been meant for him. 
  
  On the seventeenth day, when the father, that treacherous thief and traitor, is to be gone for several days. It seems to have been arranged by the younger devourer, the Mannish, that he should be sent to the Ducal house on business, two things happen.

 The first was the afternoon arrival of a black and chrome delivery van which brought several shiny purple packages, it seemed like pricey stuff, the second is a slate colored hover-sedan that comes to collect them from home as soon as the sun sets. It bears Elysium Club plates.

 The boy, his expression thunderous, flat and withdrawn . The girl determined to show no fear, her face plastered with whore's blossoms of color. Both their forms fully covered by long leather coats as they enter the car that whisks them away into the sky.

 Now the boy's smell is electric, fear, expectation and fury warring for dominance in him. And something else, is it anticipation?

 They ride silent through the gathering shadows of evening. Peragrine ramrod straight, staring into the night, Alison, red-eyed, quietly biting her nails to shreds.

 The envelope contained a pair of temporary door passes and a thick sheaf of coupons for free drinks, there was also something that identified itself as a balcony and parlor-pass, admit-one, it was in Peragrine's name alone.

 All too soon, the vehicle slides into its cradle on the club's roof. There must be five or six acres of rooftop parking, half of it already taken up by a shining array of sky-limos and flying sports cars, with more arriving every minute.

 A squadron of fresh scrubbed and handsome young parking valets waits to offer their services, all of them wearing an identical uniform of black slubbed-silk, button-down shirt and pants with shiny patent leather shoes peeping out.

 Passing into the interior is a steadily arriving stream of glitteratti, including some of the most powerful faces in the Barony. Noble, political and entertainment sectors all well represented.

 Most come with one or two beautiful teenagers or young adults being drawn along under the restraint of collar and leash, all are accompanied by bodyguards of varying exotic descriptions but fiercely the same in there expressions of determination as they lope along like the great guardian hounds that they are, their restless eyes everywhere at once, their weapons ever close to hand.

 There is a large security presence on the club roof, both blatant and subtle. Heavily armed guards prowl the perimeter of the crenellated roofline and cluster around the entry and landing pads. All wear the heavy tak armor and weaponry arsenals favored by traffic cops and terrorist incursion teams, their sensory goggled helmets making them look like huge menacing insects.

 There are also a number of stonework structures scattered about that look suspiciously like concealed gun emplacements. Peragrine wonders what kind of enemies these people could have to need such heavily fortified security measures.

 The children are approached by a stone-faced, helmet-less security man of about fifty with a thinning black brush cut surrounding the various chromed jacks and plug-ins that stud his skull. He has a brutal face, pitted with chemical scars, probably ex-cop or maybe military, his hard hawk-brown eyes raking across them as he asks them to show their passes. 

 He studies very closely and then confiscates the little plastic cards, instructing Peragrine and Alison to accompany him to a small gleaming security office done in steel and smoked glass.

 They are stood before a black glass desk alive with inset computer monitors and informed that they are to be photographed, geno-typed, fingerprinted, their measurements taken and their identities checked and cross-checked against school and Barony records before permanent passes are to be issued and the two of them allowed entry, now would they please hand his assistant their coats and sit down.

 Alison pales and nods unhappily, saying nothing as she slips the soft clinging leather garment from her shoulders, blushing visibly as his unselfconscious eyes slowly take in the tiny red rubber dress that hugs and molds her small breasts and hips and the matching spiked heels that she perches upon. With an appreciative twitch of one brow he instructs her to be seated and turns to Peragrine.

 "Now yours boy." All business that tone, used to giving orders and used to being obeyed. 

 "No." The reply stated flat and calm, Peragrine unblinking as he says it, eyes luminous violet.

 Two blinks, then three, the man stares hard. "I'd advise you not to play games with me son, I really would." Voice low now, full with promised menace.

 Peragrine is studying the drift of crow’s-feet at the corners of the man’s eyes, the small wedge of yellow in one of the man's brown iris’s, then suddenly direct, his violet-blue eyes filling those of the man. "I said no. I don't like this game and I don't want to play it." His voice is soft, almost inaudible, almost pleading.

 A strange expression passes like scudding clouds across the security man's face, something unfamiliar to it, something akin to pity. But it passes by and then it’s gone. His gaze does not leave the boy's as he speaks.

 "McKettrick, would you mind processing the young lady for me, you can do it in room four." His tone is clipped, military, expression glittering bright.

 "Yes Sir, not a problem Sir. Should I have Vostock take the desk?" All business was this one.

 "No, use Danielson, send Mr. Vostock to join me in #9. I have a feeling this one might be looking for trouble." His eyes were lions eyes now, all full with yellow light and hunger.

 An armor gloved hand shoots forward to seize Peragrine by the arm, lifting him nearly from his feet, making him gasp and his eyes water at the cruel strength of it.

 He darts a quick imploring glance at Alison, but there is no help to be had there, she is busy chewing her scarlet nails to the quick and studying the carpet nap. She looks small and young and determined not to hear, not to see. It suddenly occurs to Peragrine that she has betrayed him, abandoned him in her heart.

 "P, please Sir, please. I won't be any trouble, please, I promise." He is twisting and struggling now, trying to escape the iron grip of the man and only succeeds in getting himself shaken until his teeth rattle. After that he quiets.

 Peragrine is half carried, half dragged down a side corridor and into a small examining room, very similar to a doctor's office.

 As the door is closed, the hand holding his arm is exchanged for one gripping him by the hair at the back of his scalp, the man fully behind him now, saying nothing, using his free hand to strip Peragrine of the leather coat, flinging it to the side.

 Beneath it, the boy wears a simple gray tee-shirt and jeans over black tennis shoes.

 "Hmm, failure to honor club dress code, that's gotta be good for a few demerits." The laugh that accompanied this is low, obscene with innuendo.

 "Now were gonna get a couple of things out of the way before the lieutenant joins us. I'm gonna talk and your gonna listen and nod in all the right places, okay?" A quick sharp shake, making him hiss with pain, it feels as though his scalp will pull loose any moment. "Okay?"

 "Yes, please, yes okay!" Peragrine's voice hoarse and breathy as he twists against the pain of his scalp. "Anything you want, please!"

 "Alright. Now that's a little more like it." Breath, burning hot and humid across his ear, along the side of his throat, lips not half an inch from his skin, the voice a throaty growl. 

 Peragrine can feel the man's hard edged armor digging into his spine through his clothing, hear the creak of rubber joints as he shifts, grinding the steel plate of his cod-piece against Peragrine's buttocks.

 He slowly walks the boy forward until the front of his hips are pressed hard against the examining table. "I'm gonna put this to you in the simplest of all possible terms. You and your sister's contracts have been co-opted by the club, that means that you are now the exclusive property of this facility. Your father will likely be receiving notification as soon as he returns from his little business trip. He'll probably file a protest, but unless he's got some major pull that we don't know about, he will lose."

 Peragrine feels as if he is falling, down and down a very deep hole, the light of hope and freedom growing ever more distant, he can only moan softly as the man's words continued to seal his doom.

 "So when I, or any member of Elysium, tell you to do something, you will do it without hesitation or protest." The tongue travels, a wet trail in its wake, from the hollow of his throat to the crest of his small ear, a slow lick, tasting, testing. “You will be obedient or you will pay a toll in blood and pain." The teeth close on his earlobe, gentle at first, then harder, closing vice-like until the skin breaks, a thick hot trickle running down his throat and into his collar and he's spinning out of reality again.

 The man knows that he’s going beyond the bounds of what he’s supposed to be doing, the kid is already claimed by two of the most powerful members of the society.

 All he’s really supposed to be doing is putting a scare into either of the kids if they get out of line or break any of the rules. Sort of a starter lesson in the fact that they are now claimed property, but at the moment he really can’t make himself care about whose toes he’s potentially stepping on.

 There something about the boy that’s makes him want to eat him alive, something about his smell, he smells like rose petals and honeydew, or is it musk and lilies? He can’t be sure, the scent keeps changing before he can quite put a finger on it.

 A thick moan spills out of the boy's throat, catching the man by surprise, his body arches, hips grinding back against the armored groin. With slow, surprising strength, the boy twists his head free of the grasping hand and biting teeth. The earlobe rips a little before it is  loose, fresh blood running free, scarlet on shivering golden ivory.

 The small head turns and then his trembling lips are on the man's hard mouth, tasting his own blood, copper-sweet on the firm lips, small sharp tongue darting, finding access, moaning into the man's mouth like a whore.

 Peragrine’s half closed eyes are gold-sparked violet, as his hands work franticly to rip away the clinging collar of his tee-shirt, his body feeling on fire wherever his clothing touches him.

  The man's eyes are caught in the violet-black depths of the boy's, his mind is full of those spinning golden motes deep within. All of his nerves seem concentrated around that hot little tongue darting in his mouth, somehow the boy has turned around, slender hands finding the hidden clasps of his armor and it begins to fall away, crashing to the floor like cold iron rain.

 The guard’s large calloused hands are tearing away the kid’s tee-shirt and jeans in small shreds and large chunks. ‘God his body is beautiful, white flame.’ The man thinks. ‘This shouldn't be happening, aaah God, I can't stop myself!’

 He knows that he isn’t supposed to fuck the kid, only rough him up a little, scare him if he misbehaves. The boy is supposed to be a frightened naïf, inexperienced in these matters, not some hungry young incubus.

 He is only supposed to impress on him the need for obedience and good behavior, prepare him for Mr. Mannish who is waiting in a private party room with a few of his friends. But somehow his body has forsaken his control, acting upon its own animal lust, he can’t seem to stop.

 Peragrine pulls the man's hands onto his naked hips, bidding them twist and bruise the tender flesh they find there, still panting and moaning into the man’s hard mouth, grinding against the thick shaft that now only a thin undergarment contains.

 Something is tearing inside of his mind, giving birth, to what? His fingers are ripping at the man's chest, scratching his nipples bloody, digging into the iron muscles, plucking and playing as if at the strings of a violin.

 The man is moaning back now, near wordless obscenities that he devours like food, he can feel the hard cock, free now, the mushroom head of it naked and skinned looking, pushing into his belly, its small mouth trailing silver slime across his shallow navel.

 Reality is still spinning out, he hears instructions in his mind, like a voice from a thousand years away. Telling him how to place his hands, how to move his hips, expect the pain, accept the pain, drink it down.

 It is a woman's voice, muddy, indistinct, he’s heard her in dreams all his life, and he feels as if he has become an empty vessel, full only with the hollow whispering voice and the man's violent passions.

 Something else is happening in the room, a thin glowing mist filling the air like a silver-blue fog, a sharp series of bright flashes, it’s the light bulbs bursting in their fixtures, one after another. The room plunged into blackness except for the seething blue-violet ectoplasm that fogs the air about them, corpselight on twisting flesh.

 Peragrine is vaguely aware of voices outside the room, voices raised in alarm, fists pounding the door in angry thunder. The face of the man who holds him is twisted in panic and lust, fear and helpless need warring for control of him.

 He can’t seem to grasp what it is that the man is afraid of, for the first time in his young life Peragrine feels as if he has lost all of his fear, he is confused by what’s happening, but he feels wonderful nonetheless. He feels as if he is at the brink of some great realization, some new dawning awareness of his own nature.

 Fully naked now, Peragrine's hips balance on the padded edge of the table, he is ready, the blunt head of the cock poised to enter, calloused thumbs digging into the tender flesh of his anus, dragging him open.

 The man is howling and shaking his head in agonized terror, the glowing fog gone scarlet and gold as it fills the man’s nostrils and mouth, sinking into his pores and sliding through his veins, feasting on his flesh as it goes.

 Peragrine gasps aloud as the cock begins to slowly stretch him open, watching in distant fascination as the man who holds him seems to begin to crumble from within, too soon the hands going soft, he feels the death as it happens, the soul flickering out into the stars.

 The thick head of the man’s cock falls away from him as the glowing fog breaks out of every pore of his skin, glowing brighter and brighter as it devours cell after cell. Peragrine watches as the man is devoured from within until only the brilliant scarlet-gold fog remains. He knows that he should be afraid and in some dull and distant fashion he is, but it seems to have no real bearing on the here and now.

 Peragrine watches quietly as the fog thickens and coalesces at the center of the small room becoming, a large glowing ball of scarlet gold-light some four feet in diameter and somehow he knows that it means him no harm. That in some way it is here to protect him.

 The pounding at the door has grown loud and real now, he can hear the doorframe beginning to crack under repeated blows, light flooding the chamber as the door finally gives way and half a dozen heavily armed men rush into the room, weapons at the ready. They never have a chance.

 The response from the ball of light at this sudden intrusion is fast and cruelly decisive, tendrils of eldritch light whipping outward to coil about the men like hungrily glowing eels, tearing and slashing at the exposed skin of their faces with vicious intensity. Driving into them through their eyes and ears, nostrils and mouths, filling them as it had filled the first guard. Then the air is full of their agonized shrieks as they too are devoured from within.

 The few who had not entered in the first rush quickly withdraw, judging the situation more than they can handle. The boy watches in fascinated horror as the men in the room suffer the same terrible end as the first of their unlucky comrades, their weapons and armor falling empty upon the floor. The ball of foggy light glowing mid-air like a small scarlet sun, twisting and roiling with its frantic internal energies.

 His eyes catch a movement in the doorframe, a small, thin man with burning eyes and a swirling robe of gray silk stitched with many symbols and glyphs enters the room, the light striking like a viper at this new intruder, slashing at his face with deadly viciousness. It slams into the man with terrible force causing him to rock back on his heels, his eyes widening in surprise at the intensity of it.

 The man opens his mouth as if to cry out and the spectral fog flows into him like a spring torrent rushing down a dry gully, fast and furious, unstoppable in its deadly hunger. It seems however, to cause the man no fright, indeed he seems almost eager to take it into him.

 The air is cut by a shrill keening sound as the ectoplasmic force realizes its mistake and desperately attempts to halt its progress down the wizard’s gullet. But it is too late, the man has caught the taste of it and he will not let it go, the protective curse which has lain dormant in the boy’s blood all these long years is devoured in a series of swift gulps, the wizard’s body digesting its malignant energies along with the essence of all those whom it had absorbed in the last few minutes.

 In just a few moments it’s over, the last of the glowing ectoplasm slipping down his throat with a soft sound like a lover’s disappointed sigh. The man sways for a moment, unsteady on his feet, eyes glazed and unfocused as he concentrates on subduing that which he has swallowed.

 With the greatest of care Peragrine begins to slowly slip around the perimeter of the room, hoping to edge past the wizard before he is noticed. It is pointless of course, the moment he makes the slightest movement, the wizard’s eyes snap back into sharp focus. A muttered word sends the boy flying across the room, smacking into the wall with a meaty thud. Another word causes him to be enveloped in blue fire, filling his nerves with a weird sort of painless agony and plunging him rapidly into unconsciousness.

End chapter 1
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 Hope you liked this first installment.

 If you did or if you didn't, let me know 
 Comments and intelligent criticism will be replied to, all flames ignored as too dull to acknowledge.




