Sapphire’s Delaney Dilemma

Chapter 1

Sapphire sat in the very back of the theatre and was glad it was dark. She had a pounding headache. The kind to make her want to go home and hide in the cold dark basement and drink insane amounts of her mother’s remedies designed to cure her pain and dull her senses.

The night before she’d been attacked as she’d gone for a walk after work to clear her head from the murderous thought she’d had toward her employer. Bill Wilkins was become tiresome with his constant need to berate her. Wilkins was making it his life’s ambition to make hers miserable. It was working and so she’d told her family she’d needed space to clear her mind.

She’d gone for a walk and as she’d walked for so long it had grown dark. She had lost track of time and two men of the Guild had caught her unaware in a populated suburb where children played. Not wanting to cause a huge scene in the middle of the street, she’d let them lead her to their car and she’d gotten in the passenger seat while one took the back behind her.

She’d allowed them to believe their combined spells of control over her had been effective. She had kept silent and still as they’d driven for a long time out of the city, towards a wooded area. Then she simply countered their spell with one of her own, releasing her from their binds.

She killed the first solider effortlessly, simply by turning around and facing him in the back. She’d seen instantly his weakness was for flesh and so she’d ripped the bodice of her dress to her belly and asked him if he liked what he saw.

The driver had told her to shut up and to turn around, but she had refused him and told the man in the back maybe before they killed her, she could give him a little taste of her. She’d watched as he tried vigilantly to fight the allure she now exuded in sweltering doses in his direction. Her ability to douse her surrounding her pheromones was useful. She removed her tinted glasses and had batted her eyelashes and her silver eyes had penetrated his eager ones.

Her perfect petulant lips had pouted she didn’t want to die sexually frustrated and the man’s erection in his pants hadn’t been hard to miss. Sorcerers were typically well-endowed, and she had winked knowingly at him. She squeezed her own breasts, letting her long fingernail trail up to her mouth and the man had almost popped out of his trousers. Using her power, which of course the pair, like the Guild itself had misjudged, she simply had all the blood in his body rush to his just below his belt. All of it.

She turned back to the man beside her and smiled just before the sound of the man’s strangled scream of agony as his pants soaked with blood and he died from blood loss. It had pleased her to be able to defend herself. She had waved her hand in front of her and clutched her shirt closed and it returned to its pre-torn condition and turned to eye the driver smiling happily at him as if they’d been friends for eons. “And now for you. How will I kill you?”

“I will kill you first witch,” he spoke coldly.

“A warlock like you, calling me a witch?” She laughed, her voice twinkling like bells in the car which now smelled of death and blood. “Tell me soldier, did they tell you your death would be horrific if you should fail in killing me today?”

“Yes, but I have no intention of dying today.” The man was handsome and strong, and she watched his biceps bunch as he handled the steering wheel with finesse, almost uncaring his counterpart was drained in the back seat. She had the strangest desire to ruffle his blond locks with her fingers. Just like all her emotions, even desire was extreme.

“Well, it would seem we are at an impasse as I too have no desire to die today.” She tapped her long fingernails on the dash in an annoying display she knew irritated him by the tiny tick at his jaw. “Have we met before?”

 His words were sharp. “You killed my brother.”

“Ah, that’s why you look familiar. He was the one with the big,” she held her hand in front of her middle, “sword.” She remembered him well. She’d stripped him naked with his own sword and then had cut him to pieces. Her sister Diamond had been present that day. Diamond had dispatched of two men in the time it had taken for her to finish playing with the one.

“Don’t be cute. It would be better suited if you took this seriously.”

“Now it would be impossible not to, considering the dire circumstances of our meeting today, considering you hate me and want me to die.” She flicked her hair over her shoulder. “I don’t want to die.”

“It is not personal Sapphire. It is for the best of all our people if there is no union of the bloodlines.”

“Right,” she drummed her fingers to a rhythm of her own making. “So, you think I will choose unwisely, and we’ll be plunged into darkness for all of eternity. You have no faith in me.”

“It simply would be better for all of us not to allow the choice to even occur.” He kept his gaze fixed to the road ahead. He had his destination in mind.

She looked over her shoulder to the corpse in the back. “Not for him.” She laughed merrily as she saw the driver’s lips twitch. He had a sense of humour as dark as hers. In another lifetime they may have been friends, or even lovers.

“No, you are correct. My partner would regrets not paying more attention during the lessons on controlling our libido around you. You are a temptress.”

“I am.” She agreed with a gentle shrug of her shoulders. “I cannot help who I am. I like s*x. Is it my fault I was born just to have s*x?”

No, it is not your fault.” He agreed.

“It’s too bad for your friend in the back we hadn’t met in different circumstances. I’d have rocked his world.” The words seemed odd coming from her considering the way she was dressed and her physical appearance.

She had been dressed for work when they’d found her, still in her frumpy clothes with frizzy hair, thick, oversized glasses. Her minimal make-up was completely wrong for her complexion and the oddly placed freckles didn’t belong on her skin. She let out a long breath and ran her fingers in her hair, releasing another does of pheromones into the tight confines of the car, masking the smell of decay.

“I’m sure you would have.” He took a long breath and looked out the side window to his left. Just the scent of her was intoxicating and he took a moment to roll the window down. It was his fatal mistake. She reached up with her hand in the split second and used her long fingernails to slice his throat. As he struggled against her, she climbed atop him and kissed his mouth, the poison she drew from deep in her belly breathed through his lips to permeate his lungs. He struggled for breath clasping his throat while he bled.

“You chose foolishly soldier.” She whispered over his dying body. “I don’t like being attacked. I hope Bartholomew knows I am not going to go so easily.”

Then as the car came to a rolling stop in the middle of the wooded area where she’d allowed him to drive, she pulled the cigarette lighter from the panel and some papers from the dash. She stood on the opposite side of the dirt road and watched the car burn to cinders. The flame had been amazing in the night of the sky, and she’d watched it impressed. It would be impossible for the authorities to find any evidence of bodies in the wreckage as the bodies and bones of their kind disintegrated to dust once the blood ran and the fire consumed.

She had sat there for a long time watching it with a sad twist of her lips until her eldest brother Quartz had arrived to take her home. He’d ensured both bodies in the vehicle were in fact gone before he’d driven in the opposite direction of where he’d come making sure there were no tracks to link them to the blazing inferno.

 For the rest of the night, she’d been bombarded by her family with affection and questions until she’d fallen asleep standing upright in the middle of the salon. She did not know how or when she’d gotten to bed or who had undressed her. She had awakened to the sun shining on her and a glorious headache and sexually frustrated as hell. Her dreams had been wrought with wild unimaginable s*x with both men in the car as in her dreams she had seduced them rather than killed them. She’d made them her prisoners, taking great pleasure in using them for her own delightful needs. It was horrible being at such opposites all the time. How could one hate and love so fiercely and so equally?

Now, this morning, she was listening to Delaney drone on and on about the economy and its impact on the business and how they had been preparing for this for some time and they were in good solid shape, and they expected no loss of jobs and no pay cuts.

“I am sure you are all aware of the tight reins have been held on the spending in our company. This will continue for the next few years. We will survive the economic downturn and although many of you gripe and grumble about not having a pay increase this year, be grateful you still have a job. I can guarantee each of you in this room will know of one person who will have lost their job due to the economic times.”

“Blah, blah, blah,” she mumbled to herself and pretended to take notes for Mr. Wilkins but instead she was drawing the rotund man and his plastic doll of a wife in bed. She waved her hand over the page and erased it. Even Wilkins was having s*x and thanks to her brother Mica’s constant reminder of such a thing she was even jealous of them now. She was going to have to find a human boy to play with temporarily. It was times like this she considered saying she was ready to begin her interview process for her husband. The thought of having someone as sexually needy as she was at her beck and call was beginning to sound good, even if she didn’t want the rest of the hassle that went with it.

Her head thundered and she closed her eyes and pressed her palms under her glasses to try to relieve some of the pressure there. She kept her face averted and her head away from the rest of the room, who seemed enthralled with the monotonous speech from the enigmatic man presiding over them. She put her glasses on her lap and covered her face and took slow breaths.

She could smell the aftershave of one of the men sitting in the row ahead of her. It was a Calvin Klein variety and it contained jasmine which was one of her favourite scents on the planet. She pushed her glasses back to her face and looked to see if she could decipher which of the men was wearing it. She grimaced when she realized it was the blonde man from the advertising department who was always boasting about how hot his wife was in the bedroom. She wrinkled her nose and looked away disgustedly, slipping her glasses back on. If she wanted to keep her private affairs private, he was not the one to indulge with.

If anyone in this building had seen her in her true appearance, her hair done appropriately, her make-up flawless, her clothing fitted and her eyes shining, they would not know who she was. To them she was simply Rose Browning from accounting. She was boring and bland and the butt of several jokes she pretended not to hear.

“Are there any questions?” Drake Delaney’s voice carried without the use of a microphone simply because nobody dared speak when he did.

“When can we leave?” She mouthed the words to herself but didn’t speak to them aloud.

She considered hexing a redhead in the front row who instantly posed a question about their medical benefits and Sapphire sunk lower into her seat and wondered what would happen if she put the entire audience to sleep to go get a coffee and come back later. She allowed herself to smile at the silly thought. She looked up to see in the moment she had grinned, Delaney had looked in her direction. She instantly drew her lips straight at his furrowed brow.

            He ignored the question of the woman in the front row and pointed to Sapphire. “You there, in the back row, what are you doing?”