Chapter 81: Lydia starts on Alex...

"Has she told you that she loves you?"

Alex kept his mouth shut. He stared at the ceiling. He only hated himself more for the way his body reacted to the lithe, sensuous woman laying atop him, speaking in such an adoring yet venomous voice. He wanted to look at Lorelei, yet the thought of meeting her gaze while he was so mortifyingly aroused by this woman was unbearable.

He was grateful they were both still dressed, and terrified at the thought that they probably wouldn't be so for much longer.

Lydia smiled, tracing her hands up and down his chest as she rocked back and forth on her knees, straddling his hips. Her green dress was hiked up just enough to allow her the room to do it. "I imagine she lets you feel like you're in charge... lets you feel like a big man. A big, strong, masterful man. That's what you've always wanted to be, isn't it?"

Alex remained silent. Lydia grabbed at his hair, turning him to one side to lick the side of his neck. The parallel between this and the way Rachel had greeted him just hours before was too obvious to ignore.

"Why won't you talk to me?" she cooed in his ear. "Don't you have anything to say at all?"

"Nothing you won't just use against me," he said firmly.

"Oh, sweet Alex," Lydia cooed, "I thought you'd be used to that already? You love being dominated by a succubus. Lorelei already has you wrapped around her finger. Don't you know that? Haven't you already seen? She plays you like an instrument, and you only want her to do it more and more." Her face loomed over his, split by an animalistic grin. "Doesn't it get you off? Knowing you have nothing to worry about? Knowing that you can just... lay there and let her take care of everything?"

Her hands slipped under his shirt. They were cool, tantalizing. His mind and body fought over whether her touch was exciting or if it made his skin crawl.

"You know I'm going to give you more than she has, right?" Lydia asked, still swaying against his body. "Lorelei's been holding back on you, Alex. I can tell. I won't hold back at all."

"You mean you're going to kill me."

"I mean I'm going to give you pleasures any man would die for," Lydia smiled. "Don't worry about Lorelei. She'll get to share. Believe me, I want her to feel every moment of you and I together, right to the very last. I'm nothing if not generous."

"You're a wretch."

Lydia let out a brief squeal of delight. "He fights! Oh, how he fights. So brave. I know you're afraid," she said, placing her hand on his chest. "It's nice to be called something other than a whore for once."

"I can at least respect whores."

The succubus laughed. She pushed herself up a bit, placing her full breasts against Alex's chin as she shifted. "Lorelei, you've taught him well," Lydia taunted. Then she looked back down at Alex, who would have bitten her just for the sake of inflicting some sort of pain if he wasn't sure it would just be another thing to mock him about. "Don't try to goad me into ending your life quickly, Alex," she said. "I won't have it. I want you to leave this world with my name falling gratefully from your lips."

She sounded so sure of it. He was chained here, and so was Lorelei. There was nothing either of them could do. She held all the cards and wouldn't let anything slip. Alex tried not to despair, but he knew she was right. He probably couldn't hold out against this. Revolted as he was by Lydia and the situation, chances were that she'd probably just drive him out of his mind before long. Maybe with drugs, maybe with sleep deprivation. As resolved as Alex was that he wouldn't give in to Lydia, he just couldn't see a way out, and he had a dismally good idea of how outmatched he truly was.

Her tongue curled around his ear. Alex turned his face away, roughly trying to bump her head aside in some small show of contempt and resistance, but Lydia just smiled at that, too.

She smiled at everything.

"Where's Rachel?" he finally asked in a hushed voice.

Lydia raised her head up again, looking down at him with an arched eyebrow. "Ah yes. Your foul-mouthed angel friend. She gave me quite the talking to," Lydia chuckled. "Almost had me crying and cowering in a corner."

Lydia looked here and there in the room, making a show of gazing over her shoulder. Then she laid back down against him. "Stefan told Warren that there was an angel summoned as well as Lorelei by their lost Brother," she whispered. "He thought I couldn't hear, and maybe thought I couldn't understand the language. I think he doesn't want any of the rest of us to know, because he wants to try all this for himself. Silly mortal. Anyway, don't worry about Rachel interrupting us, Alex," Lydia smiled. "She's already dead."

************

"Ah ain't fuckin' torturin' nobody," Wade said firmly.

"Then how do we get this guy to talk?" Taylor asked, waving at the vampire still pinned under her car.

"You don't," Lucien grunted. He tried again to position his legs where they could gain some leverage. Again, Drew kicked the legs out from under him. Lucien growled in pain as the car settled down on his back again. "You just die in agony. Your families die in agony. You all spend your last moments on this Earth begging for your own deaths!"

"Bitch please, you gonna spend your last moments on this Earth with that mouth duct taped shut if you don't close it on your own," Drew warned him.

"Look, television an' the wet dreams of chairborne rangers aside, torture don't work," Wade scowled. "All you get is whatever sort'a confession's gonna stop the pain. Maybe y'all get the guy to talk, but that don't make what he says accurate."

Lucien let out a bitter laugh. His eyes darted between the group. The only one of them who was not part of the conversation was Jason, who was busily looking through the SUV that Lucien and Natalia had brought to the gas station. Off to the side was the gas station attendant, sitting on the curb in front of the mini-mart bound with duct tape. Drew and Jason had less sympathy for the guy when they found out he hadn't been calling 911.

"I don't suppose your people in that mansion up the road would be open to a prisoner swap instead?" Taylor asked. "You for Alex and Lorelei?"

"They might," Lucien ventured after a moment. "If you were to move quickly."

"Well, there's that, at least," Taylor said, looking back to Wade. "I mean obviously they'd just try to kill all of us rather than doing a prisoner swap, so we'd be stupid to try. But that at least confirms they've got Alex and Lorelei."

"The Lady will be good to her word!" Lucien snapped. "She is always good to her word! Approach under a flag of truce and it will be honored. Offer an exchange and she will... make arrangements."

Jason came back holding a large sub-machinegun, pointedly not by its handle. It was the kind with all sorts of accessories, from a flash suppressor to a folding stock. "They've got a couple other guns back there, too," Jason noted as he offered the weapon to Wade, who took it with interest.

"Yeah, prisoner swap ain't happenin'," Wade decided without much consideration. "Your people likely t' jus' figure they're all way too tricksy for us simple mortal folk, so they'll jus' do somethin' shady t' screw us." He pulled the magazine out of the weapon with some familiarity. He wasn't an expert, but he at least knew what he was handling. The odd red rings around the tips of the bullets made his eyebrows rise. "What's up with these bullets?" Wade asked.

Lucien only scowled.

"Oh, right, y'all ain't gonna talk." Wade reloaded the weapon, slung it over his shoulder and then went to his pick-up truck. He pulled the spare gas canister out of the back and walked in the direction of the gas pumps.

"Do you think this bit of theater frightens me?" Lucien snapped. "I was torturing warriors twice your size when this land bore only savages! I've seen all these games before! You don't have it in you, and neither do your friends!"

The young veteran said to the vampire without even looking over as he passed by. "Yeah? So after all that experience, tell me this: How long y' reckon it takes f'r a guy to learn that some folks just need killin'?"

Lucien's aggressive demeanor lessened as Wade kept moving. For the first moment in all of this, the vampire seemed a touch unnerved.

"Man, we can't just light him on fire," Drew protested.

"You better start talking," Jason told the vampire in what was half a warning and half a plea.

Taylor just looked on, crossing her arms uncomfortably across her chest as she saw Wade activate a pump and start filling the container.

"Wade," Drew said, "you serious about this?"

"Folks, what we got here's a guy runnin' around armed and dangerous, answerin' to no law or authority we know. Ah bet y'all ain't even an American citizen, am I right?" Wade asked, looking at Lucien pointedly as he brought the gas canister over. "Yeah, figured as much. So he's answerin' to some boss who ain't even a legitimate legal power, runnin' around in mah country with illegal military weapons, kidnappin' and assaultin' mah fellow citizens... y'all get what ah'm sayin' here? Ah'm good an' pissed 'bout Alex an' Lorelei, but it ain't just mah friends involved here."

"You're saying he's a terrorist?" Taylor blinked.

"Maybe not by definition, but it's the same sorta problem," Wade nodded. "We're lookin' at a dude who makes war on our country without bein' part o' any nation. He ain't gonna accept nothin' short o' total dominance, an' he'll obviously kill anyone who gets in his way. He ain't gonna back down. An' we can't put him on trial." Wade put the gas canister down on the ground next to him. He threw the safety on the sub-machinegun.

Growling at himself, Lucien finally said, "It won't matter if you kill me. You still won't be able to get into that mansion and save your friends. No mere mortal can cross that threshold tonight."

Wade cocked his head curiously. "Now, why's that?"

Lucien's eyes narrowed. "The home is mystically warded. As I say, no mortal can cross the threshold uninvited – or any of its other portals. Unless you've some way of walking through walls, you'd best reconsider a prisoner exchange."

"How do we know that the people we want are still alive?" Taylor asked.

"They were both to be kept alive for... for the purposes of other bargains," Lucien admitted.

"Not as party favors for you to much on?" Drew pressed.

"No. Certainly not the demon. Your friend is being kept away from the party itself in part to prevent just such an occurrence. He is in the basement, safe from accidental harm."

"Good to know," Wade nodded. With that, he put a three-round burst from the sub-machinegun into Lucien's head. The gun wasn't completely silenced, but it was certainly less loud than any of them had expected.

"What the fuck?!" Drew burst.

"Woah!" Jason protested. Taylor simply looked on in shock. Lucien's head immediately crumbled to ash, as did the rest of his body. All that was left under Taylor's car were clothes and ashes.

"Yup. 's what ah figured," Wade said. "Some sorta anti-vampire bullets."

"We didn't agree to killin' him!" Drew shouted, shoving Wade back.

"Ah know," Wade nodded. He put the gun on the ground and held his arms out wide where his hands could be seen. "Ah know we didn't wanna just kill 'im. Ah'm not big on that sorta shit mahself, an' ah never let it happen like that in th' Army. But ah ain't in th' Army now, Drew. We ain't got no back-up, an' we got no place to put a captured vampire who just said two minutes ago he was gonna kill all of us an' all our families. You think he didn't mean that?"

Taylor just stared at the remains. "I feel like I'm supposed to be sick," she thought aloud.

"You prob'ly would be, if'n y'all were lookin' at a real dead body. But that ain't. That's some monster should'a been killed a long time ago."

"In cold blood?" Jason shot back. "While he's helpless?"

"Ah know," Wade admitted. "Ah know that. But ah didn't see no other option. If'n' y'all never talk t' me again, ah'm gonna be sad, but ah un'erstand. But right now we ain't got no other options. They got our friends an' they're gonna come after us unless we do somethin' about it."

"Well, what the fuck do you suggest now?" Drew snapped. "Our only source of information's dead now! An' we don't even know if what he said is true!"

"We don't, but we gotta go with it," Wade shrugged. "Ah got an idea. Need y'all to help, though. Ah'm sorry, Drew. Ah'm sorry for all of this. Ah'm prob'ly gonna be sorry for th' rest o' mah life, an' if ah saw another option, ah'd have taken it. But our boy's in trouble an' we're his only shot right now. Alright? Y'all wanna whup mah ass, you're the guy t' do it, an' it ain't like I don't have it comin' for this. But let's go get our friends first, alright?"

Drew looked at him for a long, hard moment. "You got a plan?"

"Ah got half a plan," Wade nodded. "Th' rest we gotta make up as we go. An' ah gotta say, we're prob'ly just all gonna get killed."

"He already took a bullet for me," Taylor said simply. "I'm not going to just let him go."

After a long moment, Jason mumbled, "I was gonna bomb my mid-terms anyway."