Bryce, p.1
Bryce, page 1
Bryce
Angelic Blood Chronicles
Book 2
by Zavian Glory
© 2024 Zavian Glory
All Rights Reserved
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except in quoted segments for review purposes, without written permission from the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover art by Deranged Doctor Design
Content Warnings: kidnapping, confinement, references to non-consensual sexual activities (none that take place), explicit sexual content, polyamory, worldbuilding based off Christian mythology that some might find offensive or potentially triggering of religious trauma
Chapter One
Bryce
The club was quiet. Only four humans were present, sitting at a table in the corner and talking about how awful the crying one's fiancé was for leaving her three days before her wedding. Bryce probably wouldn't have much luck with them, at least not until they had consumed several more drinks. But he wasn't here to indulge, especially not with a partner.
Even the music was on a lower volume, barely making the air vibrate against his skin. In a few hours, though, it would be turned up as the crowds arrived. Then things in the club, aptly named Succubus, would truly change.
Not too many crowds would come, of course. It was only a Tuesday. But city nights were vibrant regardless of the night of week.
His attention was on the bartender, the bouncer, and the club's owner. They were talking at the bar and seemed to be ignoring him, though he knew they sensed him. The owner and the bartender were the same as he was, after all. They were his siblings. The owner was close to him in age and he'd recognized her energy over the centuries. The bouncer, as was often the case, was a hellhound. One that would do whatever his mistress, in all definitions of the word, demanded.
As he watched them from his secluded table, the owner finally turned to regard him for a moment. She was beautiful as they all were. But the smile she gave him was repulsive. She approached his table and sat down across from him.
"To what do I owe the pleasure of your presence?" Natalia questioned, drumming her fake red nails on the tabletop.
"I was curious why you came here," he replied casually. "Last I knew, you had made London your playground."
And now she was in his territory without his agreement.
She smiled. "You know much about playgrounds. Is that why you persist with the French accent?"
He shrugged. "I like a shiny palace."
"And that's why you have only sought to seduce royalty and nobility since the day you followed Emile out of Eden."
"He taught me well."
"Why are you here?"
He shrugged again. "I thought it was time for a change."
She gave him a doubtful look. "You gave up fucking your way through what's left of Europe's monarchies to start a nightclub in this muck of a city in a country with no monarchy, for a change."
"I thought I might find playing with politicians just as fun. I'm starting small, though. The demons already have their claws in the big guys."
"I don't believe that for a moment. Except the demons. I know that's true."
He chuckled. "You caught me. I have two younger brothers in my tutelage. I thought the nightclub lifestyle would suit them better. They haven't developed enough finesse for riskier challenges."
It was only true of one of them, but no matter. She wouldn't remember Aiden being with him for two centuries.
She smiled and her tension eased. "I came for the same reason. I bought this club two months ago and decided to revamp it for our sisters. We just opened for business, but there is still some work to do. I'm not really here trying to compete with you. I'm sure you can see how we might have different clientele."
He nodded, relieved. "Of course. The more the merrier for our kind."
Also not entirely true, but he doubted she would be convinced to leave his established territory anytime soon. He'd have to form an alliance with her to keep the peace.
She leaned over the table to whisper excitedly. "It has a basement we're turning into a sex dungeon. Want to see?"
He grinned. "Show me the way."
He followed her to a shadowy corner near the bar, where she opened a narrow door that led to an equally narrow set of brick stairs. As he descended he noticed how musty and cold the air felt. Cobwebs were thick along the ceiling, which was little more than the rafters holding up the upstairs floor. The floor of the basement was uneven and mostly dirt, much to his surprise. He wondered how old this building had to be. There seemed to be no electricity, but being an concubus meant he had excellent night vision. It was meant for allowing them to carry on sexual interactions in the dark of night, but it had plenty of other uses. Like walking through a dark basement without tripping over all the boxes of things she apparently planned to set up in her dungeon.
"Don't worry about the floor," she told him. "We pulled up the brick so we could replace it and make it level. These rafters are going to be perfect for what we want to do down here, as soon as we reinforce them."
At the back of the basement was a huge metal door that stood open, running nearly from floor to ceiling. They stopped beside it and she smiled mischievously.
"Check it out," she told him, motioning inside. "This building used to be a bank. I think this safe is going to come in really handy."
As soon as he stepped over the threshold a heavy body slammed into him and shoved him face-first into the cold metal wall. He could sense it was another hellhound, one whose energy had been masked by the presence of the one upstairs. While he stood no chance of fighting off a muscled hellhound, he knew if he could meet his eyes or speak he could at least charm himself free. Of course, full seduction would never be possible with a succubus nearby to counter every move he attempted to make on her minion.
Before he could even open his mouth to speak his jaw was yanked down and a gag stuffed in his mouth. He tried to spit it out but couldn't manage it. Someone grabbed his hair and bent his neck back to tie a blindfold over his eyes. Touch was the only power left to him, but even that was rendered impossible when he was spun around and efficiently bound to the wall, hands over his head and legs apart. To add to the disgrace, his clothes were ripped from his body.
What stunned him was how quickly it had happened. She had been planning this. She'd known she would trap him. But why?
He sensed her draw close before she wrapped a hand around his throat, nails prickling his skin.
"I know why you're here, in this vile land and this vile city," she told him. "You knew there was someone here more valuable than your royals and your nobles. You found a little nephilim and thought you'd acquire some new angelic power. But you won't. He belongs to Leviathan, just like all his ancestors before him. And I am of the army that will clear the way for Leviathan to return, and in return this city will be mine. No more rules. No more bowing to the control of mortal society. Concubi will at last dominate as we should have been doing for ages. You will not hinder it."
He wanted to deny her, but he had found the idea of a nephilim lover too seductive to pass up. Especially one who hadn't even known he was a nephilim, or that Bryce was an incubus. He was quite fond of the little nephilim, whose angelic blood called to Bryce's own angelic blood. Of course, he hadn't considered the consequences, but there shouldn't be any. A nephilim who hadn't come of age couldn't share their powers with a lover. Then again, he didn't know why Leviathan would care about an oblivious little nephilim like Rowan Courier unless there was something very different about him. Or why he himself was such a threat that Leviathan would promise Natalia control of the city just to get him out of the way.
If she trained their sisters right, and tempted their brothers into joining them, there was no telling how quickly they could subvert all human laws and exert their own control over the city. If she truly meant to throw off all the rules, it might be mere months before the entire city population would be submitting to the control of the concubi in their midst. He had a horrifying realization that she meant for her dungeon to be less of place for consensual fun and more of a literal dungeon.
She released his throat and ran her nails over his cheek. "I don't think killing you here and now would be very fun for me. I'm going to enjoy letting you wither away in here, though. You're going to feel all the energy when this place really picks up, and you're going to have no means of release. You know what people get up to in shadowy corners of clubs, on the dance floor, and in those sticky bathrooms. Not to mention how energetic this basement is going to get. The walls of this room might be sound-proof, but you're going to feel the energy right to your core."
She removed the gag and blindfold. The hellhound – or hellhounds, most likely – were gone. As a succubus she was immune to his powers, rendering her perfectly safe under his gaze. He watched her step to the heavy door of the safe, spinning the blindfold around one finger as she did so. At the door she paused to look back at him, smiling playfully.
"You're going to starve, my brother. I'll be back for your bones in a year or so."
Then she stepped out the door and it swung closed behind her with a booming sense of finality.
✽✽✽
Two weeks later, Bryce felt no weaker physically, but he was quite annoyed. He could feel t
Nine months to die with nourishment all around him yet out of reach was perhaps one of the worst ways he could leave the Earth after over seven centuries. He'd at least hoped that his death would come with something exciting, like a guillotine or an asteroid strike. Instead, he was going to wither away in an old vault beside his sister's sex dungeon while she worked to control the city through seduction and sex.
Wonderful.
He was considering this when he was struck by a strange, unexpected sensation in his chest. It was like a warm, comforting feeling he was completely unused to, and it brought to mind one name.
Rowan.
Maybe Natalia had known something about the nephilim after all.
He laughed, and if it was a bit manic... well, no one could hear him.
Chapter Two
Ro
"This feels more surreal than anything else we've learned so far," Ro muttered.
He sat in the living room of the house he had grown up in and had officially inherited a week before, tightly gripping the hand of his boyfriend, who he had grown up with. The last week had been intense for both of them. They'd moved home to the houses their mothers had left them after their deaths ten years before, only to learn that everything they had thought they had known about their lives had been wrong. They were nephilim, descendants of archangels, something their mothers had never had the chance to explain to them before they had been killed by a demon. That demon had been attempting to gain favor with an even more powerful demon that Ro's family line – and his boyfriend Shale's – had been created to fight against. Much of the why of everything still wasn't completely clear to him, but what was now uncomfortably clear was that he and Shale had been sent to college on opposite sides of the country so they would have relationships with other people and pass on some of their angelic power to those partners, with the end goal being to build a demon-fighting army.
Something Ro and Shale had been completely ignorant of until now, years after they had chosen have an open relationship while still dating long-distance. There was a sense of guilt that went with finding all this out, especially knowing that demons were going to be targeting their partners in order to keep them from forming their army. None of their partners had consented to taking on this power or to becoming part of an army to fight a demon as powerful as Leviathan was supposed to be.
"It is important to know that Leviathan only has a small number of minions," Calhoun, the angel tasked with looking after multiple generations of Ro and Shale's families, informed them. Perhaps she was trying to be reassuring. "All your partners – your family – cannot be targeted at once, even if their locations were known to Leviathan already. Once the minions are vanquished, it will take time for them to regain their strength to leave Hell. They will be minimally powerful demons, so this will likely mean weeks to months between each minion's attacks. However, it is likely most minions will not merely attack, but will attempt to also lay further groundwork for Leviathan's domination of Earth. Hunting your family will only be a part of their tasks."
"What do you mean?" Shale asked.
"They may be attempting even now to manipulate non-demon beings into becoming allies in exchange for certain benefits," Calhoun explained. "Dunamis told me of the demon you vanquished who killed your mothers in order to be granted the right to the territory where it made its den. Others who are not demons may be given the same deals. Vampires who wish to kill humans instead of merely feeding, which is prohibited by the larger vampire society. Concubi who wish to create brothels that hold mortals in sexual slavery. Hellhounds who wish to create violent and territorial packs in the employ of the demons, vampires, or concubi who need their muscle. Fallen angels still bitter about the Fall and the loss of their own godhoods in ages long past. Humans permitted to thrive in their corruption for the benefit of Leviathan. The demon gets its strength from chaos and suffering, after all."
"And we're expected to prevent all of this from happening?" Ro questioned, fighting a wave of horror and helplessness.
"Of course not," Calhoun assured him. "There are plenty of others who will respond to the threat throughout the world. You are merely the first line of defense, as there are lines descended from other archangels to fight the other dread demons."
"There are more?" Ro asked, feeling a little breathless.
"If Leviathan were the only true threat to the mortal world, all archangels would have fathered lines to fight it. There are six other dread demons bound through vengeance to the other seven archangels who you are not connected to. These nephilim lines exist to allow the other angels to continue helping the world without having to be so alert for the return of these most powerful demons. If you and your family were to fail to vanquish Leviathan upon its return, the others would complete the task in time. Metatron and Raphael, your distant grandfathers, would sense your defeat first and alert others."
"But they wouldn't come help us?" Shale asked exactly what Ro was thinking.
"They care little for the mortal world, including their nephilim. They do not wish to return to Earth to fight Leviathan at all, which is why they created your lines."
Ro sighed. "There isn't much going for us, is there?"
"You will have your family," Calhoun reminded him. "It takes Leviathan one hundred and twenty-five years to regain its strength. Once Leviathan is defeated you will be free to do whatever you wish, and your family will as well. Aside from finding mothers for your daughters, there will be no other expectations of you."
"Oh, just that?" Ro replied sarcastically. He supposed he should have expected that to come up.
Calhoun waved a hand. "It doesn't need to be immediately. Nephilim have long lives and most of your ancestors did not reproduce until they were past forty years of age. And yes, you may explain the angelic power to them beforehand if you so choose. Your grandmothers were told and were happy with your grandfathers and their partners. Now, do you want me to continue the recording your mothers left you?"
Ro glanced at Shale, who squeezed his hand and nodded. He nodded to Calhoun.
"So, we hope you had at least a few partners while you were away," Ro's mother, Rachel, told them from the TV screen where she was holding the hand of Shale's mother in the same living room they currently sat in. "But hopefully not so many that the houses are too small for them all. They were expanded in your grandfathers' time, but I'm sure Calhoun can arrange more space if you need it. Now, don't worry about unknowingly giving your partners angelic power. It's what needed to be done to save the world."
Meredith, Shale's mom, laughed. "A little dramatic. There's always a backup plan in place. But anyway, there's one other thing to share with you. I'm sure you realize the willow tree in the back yard is special, and not just because it's where you thought you were hiding to fool around as teenagers."
Despite everything, Ro couldn't resist smiling at Shale, thinking of those memories.
"Calhoun has a gift for you," Meredith continued. "Wear what she gives you and go to the willow after dark. If you touch the trunk it will open a doorway to a very special place. Spend the night there, and in the morning you will wake up once again under the tree. You will see that it has been good to all of us."
"Now," Rachel said, her voice filled with emotion. "I hope we covered everything. If not, Calhoun will fill in anything we missed. She's always been wonderfully helpful. Take care of each other, okay? I love you, Ro, and I hope whatever anger you feel towards me for keeping this from you for your whole life doesn't last forever. I was trying to do the best I could."
Ro swallowed past the lump in his throat. He definitely wasn't happy to learn how much had been a lie by omission, but he wasn't sure what he would have done differently if he had been in her position.
