A Brief Moment of Insanity Ch. 03

"Damn girl your ass is tight," I said and she just nodded her head.

I hammered her from behind and she just thanked me over and over again. Even though I had trained for the Fuck Off I was fighting my orgasm after only a few minutes. We found a perfect rhythm as I thrust forward and she shoved her hips back at me. I cursed when I crossed that point where my orgasm was only moments away. She could feel it swelling inside of her and she thrust faster now.

"Give it to me... I want to feel you shoot your cum in my dirty hole!"

We both cried out as I came and I was grateful this little scenario was over. I pulled out of her ass and she spun around, dropped down and licked me clean. I tucked myself in and zipped up even as she knelt there in the grass.

"Are you going to hurt me now," she asked shaking.

"No, I never wanted to hurt you. You are just a piece of ass to me. I am going to go now if I catch you on this path at night again you will wish I had hurt you."

"I hope this is enough," Caroline said weeping.

"What the hell did you do that was so fucking bad?"

"I killed someone," she blurted out.

"Who," I asked stunned beyond belief.

"My cousin Warren, he is so sweet and nice. I am responsible for his death."

"You better explain that statement girl. Did you shoot him or poison him?"

"No... I am responsible for him losing his soul. I prayed to the Dark One. I prayed that Warren would call off the sacrifice so that we could inherit. I prayed and he did call off things so his soul is forfeit."

That was all I could stand. I drug her to her feet and shook her. I told her she was an idiot and that there was no Devil that would claim a man's soul. She shook her head and was crying so hard her words were incoherent. I pulled her bra and shirt down to cover her and then I helped her pull her bike shorts up. I held her close until she quit crying. I walked her back to her house and the entire time she rested her head on my shoulder.

"Aren't you worried about getting arrested," she asked when she could see her house.

"Nah," I said and took off the mask. "I have friends in high places."

"You son of a bitch," she yelled when she saw who it was. "I..."

"Shut up Caroline," I interrupted her. "I forgive you."

"You do," she said in disbelief. "But I prayed and all that."

"Forget it," I said. "All is forgiven. Now get in your nice safe house and if I catch you jogging at night again I will spank you rotten."

"Promise," she asked with a twinkle in her eye.

I left her at her front door and walked back to my car. I took off the voice changer and slipped it and my mask into my jacket pocket. I think I needed to call a family meeting with the women in my life and set down some rules. This voodoo bullshit needs to stop and now.

'Sir,' the A.I. chimed in when I reached my car.

"Yes?"

'I think there is something you should know,' she said. 'I don't think you are going to like it.'

"Really, what else is new? Spit it out."

'Your family has successfully completed a series of rituals involving the head of the Family. These rituals are meant as an appeasement to the Dark One.'

"Are you fucking kidding me," I said furious. "What kind of rituals?"

'The rituals are as follows, the prisoner, the voyeur, the darkness and the fear and lastly the unwilling.'

"Those fucking bitches, I am going to do something to get their fucking attention once and for all. Cut off every ounce of income that comes from the Family accounts. I don't want to see them or hear from them in any way whatsoever! Let them stew over that!"

'Yes Sir, there accounts are frozen, will there be anything else?'

"No," I said as I slid behind the wheel and drove home.

The Storm Breaks:

I didn't have long to wait for the messages to arrive. There were several emails, a dozen or more phone messages and even a hand written letter delivered by hand via an interested third party. All of them went unanswered. I thought the anger would pass in a day but every time I thought about how I had been used it flared to white hot bile in my throat. They had to be taught a lesson.

When my grandmother called asking about what the hell I was doing to my immediate family I told her. I left nothing out and she received the full brunt of my anger over the phone. Instead of firing back the Old Vampire laughed. She laughed so hard she about fell off her chair. I was clenching the receiver of the phone so damn hard my knuckles turned white.

"They found a way around it seems," grandma said once she had recovered.

"Well, this end game of theirs is going to cost them," I snarled. "I will not be used like this! She's my mother for crying out loud. She should know better!"

"She does know better and she did it for your own good," grandma shot back.

"My own good, tell me you don't actually believe this whole Dark One crap grandma," I practically shouted.

"Don't blaspheme," she countered. "You owe everything you have and that of the Family holdings to him." A long pause ensued and then she continued. "You've been a busy boy. You managed to decipher the Codex without the Keystone, very impressive."

"Who says I don't have the Keystone? I am not going to play politics with you or the Family anymore. I have decoded the entire Codex and it was a waste of fucking time! This entire devil worship bullshit ends with me. My children will have nothing to do with it."

"If you say so sweetie," grandma said coolly. "But uh, how do you explain his mark on your backside? You had the Great Seal in your pocket when you were brought in as Head of the Family. The Dark One marked you. You don't just walk away from that kind of honor boyo. You can bitch and complain all you want but hear me on this. You belong to him body and soul." Click.

The Old Vampire did bring up the single flaw in my logic. I had been carrying the seal in my back pocket and now it was gone and I had a new birth mark in its place. I didn't believe in all this voodoo bullshit so I had to find out how it happened. I would go to the room where the Great Seal was located and end this once and for all. I would face this thing head on.

How did one go about facing ultimate evil? Did I need some sort of exorcist's bag of tricks? Now I was channeling all those bad horror flicks in my head. As I walked downstairs I tried to balance rationality with a handful of caution. This was the time to respect my family's beliefs and discover if what they have been praying to all these years is even real. One of my body guards was fixing some coffee as I passed the kitchen and he snapped to attention.

"I need a favor," I said.

"Just name it Sir," he replied with a kind of military flair.

"I don't want to be disturbed. I need the house locked down."

"Yes Sir," he said and grabbed the throat mike and informed the rest of the security detail on site to as he put it 'lock it down'.

While most of the house had been redone to get the Old Vampire's stench from the place there were rooms left untouched. The one I was heading to was one such room. While deep down I suspected there had been some theatrics involved in my installation ceremony there was a growing part of me that was unsure. My anger had embolden me to face this phantom, now that it had cooled, doubt grew. I opened the door that led to the Great Seal and stepped inside. The door closed behind me and I let out a long breath of relief.

"See no demons or devils here," I said to reassure myself.

"Oh really," a sultry voice answered.

I looked over and there she was standing in what had been empty space only seconds before. My first reaction was being startled but then I got a really good look at her. Damn, this gal was racked, stacked and smoking hot. I walked over to her and she met me half way. She was tall, nearly as tall as I was. I did what most guys do when they see a very pretty face, we categorize. I tried to place her nationality and failed. I guessed her tits and ass to be Latin or maybe Slavic but her face was definitely Asian or was it American Indian.

Her long hair stopped just above that impossibly round ass of hers and shimmered like she had just stepped out of the shower. It was her eyes that were amazing. They had that almond shape that at first glance I would have sworn was Japanese but then they were tilted at an angle that suggested Thai maybe Chinese. The left eye was the color of sapphires and the right was emerald green. Her gaze was mesmerizing there was no doubt about that. Even as I looked her over she was doing the same to me.

"Go ahead ask," she said after a long silence between us.

"How long does it take your hair to dry after a shower," I asked and she laughed.

"You got me, not many people catch me off guard, I chose well."

"About that," I said selecting my words very carefully just in case. "I am finding this whole devil thing difficult to believe."

"Good," she said and smiled. "If you had come in here on your knees and begging to see me I would have killed you on the spot."

"You don't look like Loki," I said. "But then again you don't look like any woman I've ever seen either."

"I have been called many things over the years. Some of them male and some female, for me gender is like which shoes to put on in the morning."

"Now that I do understand," I told her. "I can't imagine the devil being any one thing."

"Let's clear that shit up right now, I am NOT the devil. I hate that. I am me."

"Okay, I am fine tossing that label out early on," I said. "How would you define yourself?"

That caught her off guard. She looked very thoughtful as she pondered that question. She leaned close and whispered in my ear, 'how would you define yourself'. I paused and thought it over. I was the Head of the Family. No, that is my title. I am the son of, but stopped mid thought and again that wasn't who I was. I hit a wall of circular logic and stopped. I threw up my hands in surrender. Maybe there was a better question I could ask.

"What is your connection to the Akhkharu," I asked instead.

"Ooh, that is a great question," she replied. "You are full of surprises. Do you want the long answer or the short one?"

"What's the difference?"

"About two weeks," she said and smiled. "Short it is. I'll start with a little warning. The world is a lot bigger and stranger world than you know. First of all, the Family, as you understand it doesn't run the entire planet. Sure it manages a very large chunk of it but there are other beings out there that manipulate things to a larger extent. That said, the Family is in fact directly linked to the Akhkharu. I can see that you don't know who or more importantly what they are."

She stopped and thought about how to word what came next.

"To put things simply, they are vampires. No they aren't like anything you've seen in the movies. They are a higher order of beings that feed off the blood of lesser entities like yourself. They are born just like humans and only rarely do humans become infected from a bite. You owe everything you have to the Akhkharu. They were the great city builders six thousand years ago. They taught humanity all the fine arts and things they needed to survive. In return for those things they asked for a small measure of humans as cattle. The Family springs from those that embraced and served the Akhkharu."

I sat down at that point and let the implications of her words sink in. We came from the first humans that allied themselves with as she put it, a higher order of beings. It sounded like evolution had favored these Akhkharu a great deal more than it had us.

"So what is your connection to these Akhkharu," I asked and watched her reaction.

"Why I was responsible for their creation," she said smiling.

"I don't understand, why would you create such things," I asked and her eyes narrowed. "They offered you something didn't they?"

"Very astute, I rarely do anything without some sort of reward. There were twelve of them at first, six men and six women. Each of them was a very powerful mage in their own right. They shared one thing in common they were afraid of dying. So I granted their request and in time I received what I wanted."

"So what do you expect from me," I asked and she smiled again.

"Only that which is owed to me," she replied.

I was about to ask what she meant by that but she was gone. I looked around but there was nowhere for her to hide or disappear to. I tapped the watch and woke up the A.I. and she giggled as she answered my summons.

'You could just call my name Master,' she purred in that sensual voice of hers. 'Or rub my lamp...'

"I need you to access any machinery hidden in the walls of this room." I asked.

'I can't,' she said pouting. 'There are no mechanisms obvious or hidden. There isn't even a light switch.'

"Then she was real," I said feeling the impact of the moment.

'Quite real Master, I took the opportunity to scan her vital signs as well as acquire more personal information. Shall I inform you once I have finished compiling the data?'

"Yeah, you do that, I will be busy getting shit faced," I said as I left the room.

I headed for the converted study that my grandmother had designed for her own uses and I had redecorated. A key part of that project was a secret door that led directly to the formidable wine cellar. I opened the door to the study and shivered, as I always did, when I passed the floating crystal skull in its silver and glass cage. It was one of the few things that I kept mainly because it was conversation piece. People came in and they immediately asked whether or not it was real. It is quite real.

"Hello Hans," I said greeting the skull. "How's it hanging?"

"Fuck you Nancy boy," the skull replied. "...And my name isn't Hans."

"I can't pronounce your name it's like thirty fucking syllables," I fired back as I hit the switch to open the secret door.

"Thirty two to be precise and oh my, are we having a bad night? You don't drink on a week day unless it's been stressful."

I ignored him/it and walked down the lighted stairs to the climate controlled vault below. I headed straight for the whiskey section. I picked up two bottles; one was nearly finished while the other was unopened. I felt like it was going to be a blind drunk sort of night. I returned to my desk, took down my favorite tumbler from its spot on the shelf above my head. I took the tumbler to the well concealed icemaker and put just the right amount of ice in it. I poured a healthy amount of Nun's Island in and sat down. I took a sip and enjoyed the slow burn as the Irish Whiskey hit a nearly empty stomach.

Sophia Delamore stood in the open doorway. She crossed her arms under her ample bosom and frowned. I saluted her with the tumbler and took another healthy swig. She smiled and walked over to the corner of the desk. She placed her hands there and leaned over to see what I was drinking and giving me a clear view of her erection inspiring cleavage. Without even asking she grabbed the matching tumbler and went to the freezer and removed one of the spherical ice molds. She placed the ball of ice into her glass and poured herself the last of the Nun's Island over the sphere.

"What are we drinking to," she asked her in sensuous alto.

"Seeing god," I said staring off into open space.

"I don't understand Warren. What the hell does that even mean?"

"I don't recognize my life anymore," I told her. "It doesn't seem like that long ago my biggest concern in life was paying for college. Now, I make decisions that will impact the future of nations. Tonight I spoke with an immortal. I am not sure if she was a goddess or not but I felt like a bug staring at a speeding windshield."

"So getting drunk is the solution?" Sophia purred.

"Yep, I am glad you're here. You are so much better than Xim over there." I said pointing at the floating skull.

"Xim? I thought you didn't know his name," Sophia replied sipping her own drink now.

"I am right here people." Xim said.

"I never told you the story of Xim the Lich." I said and Sophia shook her head.

"I am not a fucking lich you son of a bitch," Xim snarled.

"What is a lich?"

"It is an evil sorcerer that prolongs their lives with necromancy, dark magic." I explained.

"How do you know these things," Sophia asked.

"I fought one once," I said and there was silence. "I had a fifteenth level monk and my friends and I ran up against one in these old ruins."

"This isn't role playing Warren," Xim growled. "A lich is a far cry from some fantasy game."

"I take it you've seen one," I said as I opened the second bottle of Nun's Island.

"Once, but it was centuries ago," Xim said. "I saw it when I was in India shortly before my death. Never was there a fouler creature that ever existed. They discovered true immortality at a price of their very souls. If they are slain they are reborn in the form of a rat. The rat then seeks out and slays a hound. The lich's spirit takes over the hound. The hound then kills a leopard. If the leopard can kill a man the lich is reborn at its full power once more."

"That is all kinds of messed up," I said feeling the impact of the whiskey. "But a great story, that is why I keep him around. Xim is a great story teller. Here's to Xim!"

I raised my glass to Xim and Sophia touched her glass to mine. She began to tell me about the meetings I had the next day and I held up my hand. She fell silent and I looked at her with a very thoughtful expression. I reached down and stroked my watch. The A.I. hovered in the air above the face of the device. I had her display my appointments for the next day. I looked them over and asked which ones were critical and all of them went dark. I smiled and glanced at Sophia.

"Jeanie, I think Sophia needs a promotion. What kind of title can I give her to handle the day to day operations that don't need my attention?"

"There is one title that an individual that is not a member of the Family can hold, Castellan. It would fulfill the obligations you have described. So my name is Jeanie now?"

"Yeah, so do you accept the promotion?" I asked and she smiled.

"I take it a pay raise comes along with increased responsibility." Sophia asked.

"I'll double it, how is that?" I said throwing out a number and she agreed. I took the drink from her hand and she kissed my cheek and went off to bed.

"So you saw a goddess tonight," Xim asked. "No one has seen Her in generations. I may have to reevaluate my opinion of you."

"Thanks Xim," I said as I poured the contents from Sophia's glass into my own. "I saw a fucking goddess... what the hell man! How the hell do I even process that?"

The Next Morning: 10:00 A.M.

The softest of caresses brought me around. I opened my eyes and looked up at Sophia. She was smiling as she sat up to begin her first day as my castellan. I managed to sit up and not hurl. That was quite the achievement considering how much I drank last night. I watched Sophia get dressed and despite the hammering in my brain I could appreciate her beauty. It was like a strip tease in reverse. The longer I watched the more of her body that was covered by barbaric clothing. She saw my frown and giggled.

"Sign the papers next to you so I can get started," she whispered.

I looked over and there was a clipboard with the papers she had mentioned. I picked up the pen and the clipboard and looked them over carefully. When my eyes refused to focus Jeannie intervened and told me that she had drafted the papers and printed them off. Knowing that, I signed without hesitation and set them back on the end table. The door opened and Darlene, the day shift maid, arrived with my hangover cure. It was three juices mixed with a combination of herbs from my great uncle's garden. It actually tasted good as it went down. The mixture settled my stomach, dulled my headache and eased the body aches.