Nightshade Ch 01

Hello -- I am the author behind the Nightshade series. I started this story on a site I own, and posted it here at literotica because I enjoy all the stories I've read so far, and wanted to see how mine held up. I started posting this in the literotica forums, then decided to submit my work for the random site readers to enjoy. I have been writing a long time now (this is 1st time at literotica though). Please be patient as the story unfolds. I'm always open to suggestions and comments, and am welcome to new ideas.

-Chao-

Bell_ Da_La_Muertos

Welcome to the town of Nightshade!

*

Arrive human . . .you may leave as something else entirely . . .

It never ceased to amaze her. The way the crowd seemed to open up and part just like the red sea whenever she walked into a room. For others, it seemed, the people merely went about as they pleased -jostling, and bumping into one another to move around, while the music played. But for her, for her they parted. It filled her with a sense of confidence, perhaps even a little smugness in knowing that she could control the crowd when others could not. They bowed over her hand when she greeted them, kissing her knuckles like they would royalty.

It didn't matter that the club belonged to what her family referred to as the New Age crowd, the Goths, the punks, the rebels and the deviants of society's misunderstood youth. To her, they were friends she could count on in a moment's notice. A single word from her lips and they throw them selves at her feet to be her stepping stool or, should she command it, to do anything at her whim. In their minds, she was supreme, ruler in a land of states united with no royalty in control. She was their goddess, their priestess, the only thing standing between them and eternal damnation in the afterlife. She was death incarnate - Dama Oscura.

From her position in the balcony of the old plantation house, Bella Reece sighed and rolled her eyes at the woman entering the room below. She never made it easy, this one. True her family had protected De La Muertos (The Dead People) for over nine hundred years each descendant of De La Muertos was protected by a descendant of the Reece family. As was her blood right, she had sworn to protect this woman above all others at all costs. Again, Bella rolled her eyes. The current lady in charge was going to be the death of her yet. Sighing as the cries and murmurs of adoration poured from the revved up crowd, she lifted a hand and pushed back a curly lock and eyed the room a third time.

~Sage you in position?~ She asked her sister along their familiar mental connection, glancing around the room for her twin. Just when she started to feel panic, she spotted the woman in the rafters, her dark red hair piled messily atop her head.

~Check that, sis. Got the room in my scope.~ She answered back, the clicking sound of her camera faint due to the noise from the crowd below.

Bella smiled, shaking her head ruefully as she noted Sage's outfit matched her own. Sage LOVED playing the part of a twin. Even down to the matching clothes, jewelry, and hairstyles. Sometimes their own parents had trouble telling them apart. Despite the childhood habit of simplifying their wardrobe by dressing alike, tonight they each had minute differences. Whereas Bella was comfortable in a black ribbed tank-top, jeans and boots -- Sage preferred a spaghetti strap top, leather pants, and boots with narrow stiletto like heels. Similar, yet different.

Different . . . but three times as deadly.

~Dylan?~ She sent along to her second in command.

~Cool as a cucumber, Red. All the others are in place.~ The man answered back, his dark brown eyes glanced up at the 2nd floor balcony from his position beside the throne platform, looking for all the world like he half expected the crowd to break into frenzy at any time. At a movement near the ground floor patio doors, he reached for the gun holstered at his hip even as he screamed "GUN! GET DOWN!"

"DYLAN!" Bella screamed, a split second after the bullet struck her in the shoulder, her body sliding over the railing even as she spotted Dylan on his back beside the dais. The last thing she saw was the beautiful dark stained hardwood floors rushing up to meet her.

* *

4 Days Later.......

"Goddamnedmotherfuckinshit." She muttered as her eyes opened, the pain shooting through her like a whiplash of lightening.

"You kiss your mother with that mouth?" A deep voice asked moments before it's owner entered the room. Dante Savage smirked smugly as he set the tray of medical supplies on the nightstand, his teeth white against his sun kissed tan. His long black hair was pulled to the nape of his neck with a strand of leather, the ends weighted down by a single silver bead.

"Hers is worse than mine. She dated sailors in her youth." Bella laughed, immediately wincing against the follow-up of pain.

"Yeah I know. I used to be one of them, remember?" Giving her his typical bad boy grin, Dante sat on the edge of the bed and, lifting a pair of shiny surgical scissors, removed the gauze covering her shoulder wound. He sighed when her body stiffened and shifted from his hand when it moved to cover the bullet hole.

"You know it's the only way, Bella."

"I'll be fine." She winced and found herself pushed back against the pillows when she tried to lift herself.

"Bull shit." He said, pinning her with her forearm against her throat as his free hand hovered over the bullet wound. The air in the empty space between hand and body seemed to vibrate like heat rising off hot asphalt as Bella screamed, a thin trail of blood washing down her arm.

She cursed him in Romanian, French, Italian, Spanish, German, and half a dozen ancient languages she'd been taught since a child. Her screams turned to a deep moan of pain, Dante's face harsh with concentration as he focused on his task. Then, with a wet pop like a cork from a bottle, the bullet burst from her shoulder and into the palm of his hand. He was grateful a split second later when she passed out.

"How is she?"

Dante glanced over his shoulder at Bella's twin, like always finding the little differences that always told him in the past which twin he was dealing with. He would know Sage among a million identical women, her scent of apple blossom perfume alone making his glands do a funny flip flop that he'd never looked at too closely till now. Angered at his line of thoughts, he lashed out, blaming her and her ability to seduce any man - living, dead, or undead - with thoughts of paradise.

"Why weren't you scanning the area?" He snapped, his temper and tone unknowingly driving pain through her heart like a knife.

"I had, I did, I was.... I mean... I never even saw it coming." For her the admission was telling, her precognitive skills were among the most valued assets of the De La Muertos team. "I didn't intend on her getting shot, Dante. You know that."

"She doesn't know Dylan is dead, Sage. And I, for one, am grateful the De La Muertos has called a council meeting and requires my presence." He finished taping off the gauze on Bella's shoulder, silently packing up his supplies and steeling himself. Like always whenever he saw her, Sage's beauty struck him somewhere below the belt and hummed to life. Five hundred years of intense meditation and training prevented any outward signs of his distress, physical or otherwise. His eyes took in her pale creamy skin and waist length dark red curls, her emerald eyes reminding him of the Irish hillsides his mother often talked about.

"Why do you hate me, Dante?" Sage asked weakly, her spirit broken by the death of their brother and her sister's near death. Their parents had only been gone two years ago this may, and Dante was nearly the only family they had left. It scraped her raw to think that she and she alone would be the cause of the slow demise of their family. In more ways than one.

"You're my friend, my brother, what did I ever do to make you hate me?"

She followed him into the bathroom adjoining his bedroom, leaning against the hallway doorframe with her arms wrapped tight around her waist. She knew when he was angry like this he required space and solitude. But she persisted, needing to know, craving to know the reason he despised her so. If she could fix it by leaving, she would pack her bags. If it was her attitude, she would become the moderate citizen. If it were....

"I am NOT your brother, Sage. I'm more than six times your age and a vampire on top of it. Don't make me remind you of your promise to Dominique." Dante snapped, tossing in her mother's name as a shield, watching out of the corner of his eye as she leaned against the doorjamb, wondering if her close proximity was a deliberate attempt to annoy him. Once the supplies were returned to the medicine cabinet, he shut the door, half expecting her to have left. He was startled to realize she moved to stand right behind him, a stormy if-looks-could-kill-you'd-be-ash-by-now crossing her face.

"You arrogant bastard. Don't you DARE bring up my mother's name! YOU were the reason she was where she was when she died. She was leaving my father for you, and when the Laroux family couldn't stand to have their precious Dominique fall for one of the undead.... you took it into your own hands and started a feud."

Sage gasped, her hands wrapping around the wrist of the hand threatening to crush her windpipe as Dante's hand slammed her body into the bathroom door. Her head smacked almost violently against the door and her hair fell from its already loose pins, the dark red mass falling over his arm like a cascade of silk. Bright blue eyes the color of ice replaced the dark pools of midnight blue that were his norm. Her heels kicked against the door as her toes dragged the tile floor. Her eyes widened in fear as Dante leaned in close, the warmth of his breath hitting her face in hot bursts as his chest heaved in anger.

"You stupid brat! It wasn't your mother we were fighting over... it was YOU!" He spat, seconds before his mouth ground down on hers and his body surrounded her. He expected fear, he expected temper, he expected hate, he expected her to fight. And she did.

Sage feared she would never get enough, after that first taste of Dante's lips on hers. Her temper flashed, angry that in all these years she had known him he had never, not once, even hinted at his feelings for her. She hated her parents for making them both suffer, for pushing a stupid death-bed-promise onto her NEVER to be in a room alone with him. She felt need to give in and instead fought it with every fiber of her being. She was tired of being the reclusive passive one, despite her wild child reputation.

Dante barely managed to suppress a moan as her hands fisted in his hair, dislodging the leather tie so the strands caressed her hands. Her legs wrapped around his waist and he nearly collapsed at the erotic feel of her body so perfectly matched to his. Growling as if it were he, not she, who were Laroux, he deepened the kiss and wrapped his arms around her waist, carrying her into the bedroom.

"Well. Well. Well. Wouldn't the Council just LOVE to see this little party?" Spoke an ominous voice from the doorway.

TO BE CONTINUED . . .