deaths_head | Entries tagged with who: courtney marteniz

She had two days left--he, however, had none.

The pull he'd felt was fleeting, but the only confirmation he needed to realize his time was up. The little she-devil that had trussed up his nephew had the Vessel, and had it contained to deliver to her master. He'd underestimated the goblin halfbreed, and now he was out of time.

There was ever chance the Scourge could find him, and make him use that Vessel for more than just personal gain.

He didn't go to Dawn: she was protected. The King of Iron would have made sure of that, made sure even he couldn't hurt his own beloved.

No, when a thick cloud of heavy, impenetrable black mist appeared, then vanished to reveal the Shade in his divine form, it was on the street in broad daylight, in front of a small cluster of dance students...with Courtney at its center.

With a black scowl, the Shade stepped forward, caught her arm, and in another cloud of black mist they were gone.

When they reappeared, it was within her sanctuary. Symbols on its walls were smoldering, little more than streaks of ash and burned out after being brutalized by his entry.

Releasing Courtney, he turned away from her and raised a hand. The distant sound of thunder rolled, and another inky cloud appeared, then vanished. In its place there stood a stand bearing a casket made in pure ebony wood. It was done in an older style, tapered at the feet with a flat lid. Bright silver hinges and lock gleamed against the jet black wood, and in the lid deeply carved symbols could only just be made out, runic figures in an unfamiliar mystical alphabet.

The Shade finally turned back to her, his eyes glowing, white orbs in his head. He caught her hand this time, gentle but unyielding, and pushed up her sleeve. Fingers spread, he hovered his hand over her wrist and began a quiet chant in a strange tongue, each word blending into the other like water flowing, but harsh and rough at the same time. As his hand slowly began to move up her arm, tendrils of that black mist began to seep from beneath the sleeve of his long black coat and swirl up over her skin--then beneath it, hot but not painful as power seeped into her flesh. Under her skin, the black tendrils continued to move and swirl until the were forming images...

Images of skulls and demons, ones she would recognize, but far more delicate, interspersed with images of vines and flowers, lines more slender and colors brighter as the bloomed on her flesh.

The confirmation came when he finally let her go, the chant stopping and the light in his eyes dying. Reaching up, he tugged back his sleeve.

The tattoos on his arm stopped at his elbow, his forearm now completely naked--while the tattoos that had been there before were now on Courtney's skin, from wrist to mid bicep and glowing gently with a pale golden light for a few moments before they went dark, but remained no less beautiful.

"In a very short time," he began, finally speaking for the first time since he'd plucked her off the street, "your former lover will have a mystical talisman of incredible power, one that can unleash a weapon more terrible than any darkness the world has ever known. When that weapon is loosed, you will lock yourself within this casket and channel your personal power into it. You must remain there for two days you have left to live--the casket is enchanted, it will use your personal power to give life to a forest glen around it, but it will also hide you from any force that would try to seek you out. Then you need only invoke the power of shadow and twilight--the marks I've transferred to you will not only sustain the needs of your living body, they will banish the mark on your soul...and protect you from it from this day forward. You will be incapable of being killed by anyone."

His gloved hands protected him from her power. His heart did not beat, his soul was silent. Feeling was a memory...but so recent still, so strong, that still his gloved fingers found their way to her cheek, cradling her face as he looked into her eyes, pain lurking in steel grey depths.

"Even me...and make no mistake, I will likely come to kill you, little mage--because that weapon about to be loosed is me."

She had five days left, and one of those two lost evenings, she'd spent...sexting him.

The Shade wasn't sure if she was drunk or somehow looking to sweeten his disposition in a bid for more time. Greater beauties had tried and failed, and more powerful mages had reached for his power and suffered his wrath. She was resigned to her fate, content with his claim...and she was cute as all hell, if he was being honest, but he couldn't see it from more than an aesthetic sense.

Unless she was around. Had to be her power, but she reminded him far too much of his days as a living man...too much for comfort.

Which was why he pulled up to her dance studio on his bike, a convenience he kept for his longer stays in the land of the living. Killing the engine, he dismounted and ambled inside, where heavy music was pounding through a sound system and a trio of women in the middle of the floor were jerking and swaying with the beat...one of them being Courtney.

And, in spite of himself, the Shade would have lost his breath had he any to give up.

Watching her as the rhythm pulsed through her limbs and seemed to push and pull her across the floor, he was reminded of his fight with Heaven and Hell, and the archangels he saw in combat. Of God's legion, they were the most terrible of creatures: vengeful, dazzling, and perfect in their beauty. The divine rage of God's own army made them move much the same, wings spreading and sweeping as they cut through the air, sword arms thrusting and cleaving through his souls...power and poetry in motion, demanding attention even as they tried to decimate his ranks.

Courtney...she moved in the dance like an archangel in combat, and she did it with the purity and impish glee of an imp straight out of the badlands of Limbo.

And, until the music died, she had him completely transfixed as he watched her work.

"What can I get you?"

"Coffee, black."

The waitress took his order and headed away, leaving the massive biker to his thoughts as he sat in a little coffee shop just off the Strip. The neighborhood was a more or less suburban setting, and yet his motorcycle was still not altogether out of place where it was parked outside, his tattooed arms and black leather kutte earning him fewer stares than they probably should have.

The Shade was used to sticking out like a sore thumb, hence his chosen human guise...and yet it was the kind of ill fitting image that had its place--especially in a town like Las Vegas.

It was a town he always enjoyed returning to, when there were souls to be collected there. Elements of the city reminded him a bit of his day and age, a rebel outlier carving itself a memorable and powerful swath in the middle of the desert. Even now, in this modern age, it had the same frontier spirit as the people he'd been raised with out in Silverstone as a boy.

The souls he brought to the Vale from this place were always some of his favorite.

Eventually, his coffee came, and the Shade wasted no time in taking a long, scalding swallow with a grateful sigh. There were precious few things he truly missed about being among the living, but one of them was a good cup of strong, black coffee. What little he let himself remember of his human life often came back to these simplest of pleasures he was unable to let go of: a cup of strong coffee, a Sunday dinner of fried chicken and vegetables from Mamma's garden, even his motorcycle was reminiscent of the ornery stallion he'd gotten for a song from a breeder back in Santa Fe, an ornery old horse that refused to be broken--he never had been able to put tack on that beast, bless his heart.

The Shade was distracted from his thoughts by an arrival at the door of the coffee shop, a lone girl of seventeen or eighteen. She was tiny as he was massive, a blinding light of pure, living energy with dark hair and dimples--and when she looked in his direction, bore the mark of death in her eyes.

Struck him as mighty ironic that a life mage was destined to die--he recognized the power, and he wasn't happy with the notion...but at least he could give her some warning, and a second chance after the end.

So it was that, when her head spun in his direction, the teenage girl saw not a biker, but a vision of the past, wide brimmed hat sitting on the table respectfully as blood red hair spilled across his shoulders. What little was visible of his tattoos beneath his black leather longcoat glowed with an aura of purple light, and instead of steel grey eyes, sightless orbs of white watched her, sparking with the light of pure lightning.

And there was no question about it: the death god that no one else seemed to be able to see was watching her, and her alone.

(takes place about two months after Cole Marteniz is born.)

If someone had told The Shade one year ago that he'd be in love with a living woman, have a foothold in the land of the living, and raising a son of his own, he'd never have believed it. Hell, he might have laughed in someone's face, or worse.

Then again, if someone had told Josiah Cole, when he was a mere boy of twenty seven, that one day he'd be a lord of the dead, owner of a living soul, and glorying in the dark pleasures of dominating the sweet body of the one who belonged to him, of being overtaken in much the same way...well, he'd have blushed beet red and been unable to speak for a month of Sundays in pure embarrassment.

Still, for every time he took his beloved to bed and made slow, gentle love to her, he was twice over turning her over his knee and spanking her until she came, or pleasuring her until she lost all touch with reality and every stroke of his fingers was a hairsbreadth from truly painful, or in rare moments when he felt secure enough, allowing her to bind his hands and do whatever she wanted to him...even if that meant, on occasion, abandoning him in favor of pleasuring herself until just the sight of her, lost in her own satisfaction, was nearly enough to trigger his own release.

The more they flirted with the darker side of their love life, the more The Shade suffered from the darker hungers that lurked in his true nature. In life, he had been a good man accustomed to the atrocities of death, even accepting of them...and in death, he was a creature who thrived on those same atrocities. Inflicting pain, drawing blood, seizing absolute power, total dominion over all he surveyed. From his realm, he demanded absolute control, and from his souls, he stood for no less than absolute surrender.

In life, he was a troubled man, but a good one. In death...he was no longer a good man. And, now that his son had been born, and thriving despite the fact that he was undead, The Shade was looking to a future he wasn't sure he could truly have.

Not as long as they kept flirting with his dark side.

When he explained, in highly censored terms, what he was planning, Jean Summers agreed to watch Cole for the night. So, while Courtney took a brief respite in the human world to reunite with her family and see a living doctor for one final checkup, The Shade brought Jean over and settled her with Cole in the sanctuary that hid his true home. He worked carefully to plan their evening, and by nightfall, when Courtney returned to the house, she found it dark the moment she entered, the only visible light a soft glow at the top of the stairs. The glow came from their bedroom, with the door standing just ajar enough to see that candlelight was responsible for the glow.

When she did open the door, she saw several candles had been lit around the room, offering just enough light to see by. The bed had been turned down, and the entire scene was very sensual, even romantic...except for the fact that two pairs of handcuffs were latched to the headboard, each free shackle waiting for a wrist to clamp around.

And then there was The Shade, who was leaning in the corner of the room, nearly lost in shadow but clearly toying with a long length of black silk...and looking as severe as she'd ever seen him.

For a long while there was silence until...

"Take off your shirt." No greeting, no movement. The words were quiet, even, but firm and clearly brooked no argument. He wanted to stop flirting and see how far he could go before she turned back, wanted to see how far this envelope could be pushed.

He wanted Courtney for the night, on his terms, wanted to know if she could handle the worst of his needs...and he wanted to see the worst of hers. He wanted to know everything that made her happy, kept her sated, made her wet, even if it pushed his own limitations.

The Shade wanted, needed to know if they could accept each other completely, in the most intimate way possible, before he could even consider giving her his mother's engagement ring.