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eBook Category: Dark Fantasy/Fantasy
eBook Description: "Color, Complexity and Blazing Life!" That's how Lyn McConchie, co-author with Andre Norton of Ciara's Song and Key of the Keplian, describes the work of Janrae Frank. Now in the Dark Brothers of the Light, Janrae Frank has produced a profound, chilling, thought-provoking one-of-a-kind dark fantasy that begs comparison with Anne Bishop's Dark Jewels Trilogy, Lynn Flewelling's Bone Doll's Twin, and George R. R. Martin's masterful Swords of Ice and Fire. Taken as a blood-slave by Anksha the Beast, Isranon, a young necromancer descended of Isranon Dawnhand must choose between his dead father's teachings of pacifism and his lycan mentor's warrior beliefs in order to survive. Anksha is a demon-eater, who dines on flesh, blood, lives and magic, binding her slaves to her through a dominance-link set into every fiber of their beings. In a brutal world of vampires, blood-drinking sa'necari necromancers, and demons, Isranon must find the key to Anksha's inner nature, while escaping the snares set for him by both vampires and his own kind. Together with his lycan mentor, Nevin, he reaches out for allies and answers in a world growing steadily more hostile toward him for reasons he does not fully comprehend. The vampire lord, who is Anksha's master, is creating a monstrous undead creature such as has not been seen in more than 50,000 years to take the world from the gods who rule it. What can one young slave do to stop them in the face of such terrifying odds? Janrae Frank's fantasies are "groundbreaking ... works of genius," writes Jessica Amanda Salmonson. Find out why in Blood Rites the first volume of her epic new trilogy.

eBook Publisher: Renaissance E Books/PageTurner, Published: 2005
Fictionwise Release Date: March 2005

This eBook is part of the following series:

• Janrae Frank's Dark Brothers of the Light Series

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [200 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [217 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [165 KB] , Portable Document Format (PDF) [1.0 MB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [186 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [193 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [217 KB] , hiebook (KML) [446 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [287 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [153 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [191 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [249 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [245 KB]
Words: 56280
Reading time: 160-225 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Portable Document Format (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

The house stood in the tradesmyn's quarter, a large stone box, three stories high with a basement. Lord Hoon, demon-vampire of many names and guises, regarded the pattern of the blue rough-hewn stone shot through with grey, the stark white painted frames of the windows and the heavy white doors, considering whether to knock. Anksha the Beast stood beside him. Hoon's divinator and his officers had told him the exiled necromantic Prince Mephistis of Waejontor had acquired a handful of followers from the lower classes as well as his seven sa'necari soon after moving into this house.

Sa'necari, necromancers, were the only serious rivals within the ranks of darkness that the vampires like Lord Hoon had. They had stolen all of the powers and abilities of the undead that they could take or control, assuming them through their rites, mastering and perfecting them in addition to their native arcane talents. This had been gained at a price, for they also had the needs and cravings of the undead, the unnatural appetites for blood. After generations of sa'necari being created in the rites, their very genes had altered until more and more of their descendants began to be born sa'necari with those appetites and powers manifesting in puberty. their rites of blood, rape, and death had become merely the means for increasing their powers through the shattering of souls.

Hoon moved with a polished elegance and spoke with an old-fashioned precision as crisp as if it had come from the pages of a book. His shoulders were broad and his hips narrow. The glow from the street lamps glinted on his black hair, grazed the points of his ears and gilded his olive skin with golden highlights. A dangerous sensuality lay in the depths of his large eyes, exposed itself on the chiseled planes of his cheekbones with their hollows, and settled on his full lips. A sword hung from his hip in a black and silver scabbard. "What do you think, Anksha? Can we do this ourselves? Teach him a lesson?"

Her eyes narrowed in a sleepy feline expression, broken by a faint showing of her fangs. "He's taken the bit in his teeth and thinks he's free."

Hoon laughed softly. "Next time he should wear a check rein, perhaps?"

"Let's knock on the door."

Hoon smiled and did so.

A servant answered. "Lord Darmungaard!"

Hoon inclined his head at his alias. "I must see Prince Mephistis immediately."

The servant showed them into a parlor, indicating that they should sit. "The prince is engaged in a magical working at the moment."

"Mortgiefan?" Lord Hoon inquired, watching the servant flinch from the word. "I know what he is and what his proclivities are. We are old friends, are we not, Anksha?"

"Oh, yes," Anksha said, swishing her robes with her hands in a seductive little turn. He had dressed her for an outing at the theater, like a fine lady in silk and satin, fit to accompany a high lord, and it brought out her beauty. The tiniest bit of fur, so sleek as to be indistinguishable from the skin of her face, throat, and hands, showed beneath the edge of her neckline. A small, tightly curled tail poked from the back of her skirts. Except for that it was easy for her to pass for human.

Through countless centuries she had been known as 'the Beast' because no one knew exactly what she was, not even Anksha herself. She proclaimed herself by her deeds, 'troll-tamer', and 'demon-eater.' Lord Hoon had found her as a toddler in a forest and raised her as his pet. Anksha had the instincts of a cat that liked to play with its food and steal nestlings out of trees as well as claws, fangs, and a taste for blood and flesh-especially the blood of the powerful.

"Please," the servant gestured at the couch again. "They will finish presently."

Hoon wagged a finger at the servant with a feral smile. "No. You will take us to them now. Otherwise I will return with my people and be even more insistent."

"My Lord Darmungaard, please..."

Everyone here respected or feared Hoon-or more often both. "Now."

The servant walked away without a word. Hoon and Anksha followed. The servant made a tiny gesture at a door and kept going. Hoon grinned at Anksha. The vampire put his ear to the door and heard chanting. He turned to Anksha, his grin spreading wider. Very, very carefully he opened the door and they crept down.

Mortgiefan indeed.

Three bleeding tables stood in the center with victims bound spread-eagle to their surfaces while three sa'necari busily sated their appetites upon them and four more watched hungrily. The middle one was Mephistis, cursing and moaning, gripped by the ecstasy of mortgiefan, matching the movement of his cock in the dying woman's body with each thrust of the blade into her flesh. "Anksha. Anksha. Die you stupid Beast!"

Anksha's lips writhed back from her fangs at his words and she licked them as she slipped up behind him without anyone noticing her presence: they were all too caught up in the rites. Hoon drew his sword and came to stand behind the watchers.

"Wishing she were me, O randy prince?"

Mephistis shrieked, climbing the corpse beneath him and rolling over, nearly sliding off. "Anksha!"

She smiled at him with honeyed poison and he edged away with his hands on the altar. Anksha studied the dead woman, brushed back a string of blond hair matted with blood. "Pretty. Send the body to my sanguiner to be properly drained for my bottles."

"Is this the creature?" A sa'necari cried, raising power to strike at Anksha.

"I wouldn't," Hoon said, prodding him with the point of his blade and making his presence known. He extended his free hand, letting his secondary nails emerge from beneath his primaries like claws, dripping Lemyari venom. The watchers whirled, noticing the vampire lord for the first time.

Anksha did a turn on the balls of her feet, making her skirts swirl and triggered her primal scent glands. She hit the one who had suggested attacking her in the face with the full force of her pheromones.

He dropped to his knees sobbing and writhing, "Bite me! Bite me."

"Not yet." Anksha bent and stroked his face. "Soon. What is your name?"

"Gareth." He opened his tunic, offering his neck, his expression full of longing.

Mephistis watched her, his eyes wide with terror. She was tearing apart his little coven and there was nothing he could do to stop her. Her nearness had set off the Presence Pain and he hurt throughout his being, his nerve endings, his muscles, his neural and mage nets-all of him hurt, burned and ached. He released the altar and eased off it, doubling over as his souring stomach felt ready to spew its contents on the floor.

"Kill one for me, Mephistis," Anksha said, her casual tone belying the savagery with which she snapped the dominance-link awake in his mind and body. The dominance-link, which she had placed within every fiber of his being with her first bite months past, blazed like fire in his veins, his neutral and mage nets. She could bring him to heel, break him entirely, or persuade him to acts he normally found unthinkable.

Mephistis' eyes glazed, and his lips parted, allowing a trickle of stolen blood to run from the corner of his mouth. He seized the nearest sa'necari before the mon could move, dragging him close. The prince's fangs extended and he sank them into the hapless sa'necari's throat, sucking the blood, life, and stolen souls out of him. His victim convulsed in his grip, and then stilled. Mephistis let the corpse fall against the table and slip to the floor while he eyed the others, ready to turn on them also should Anksha command it.

Anksha smiled. She strolled past the rest, regarding them, wafting her Circean fragrance across them as she passed. The littlest one collapsed, whimpering like an abused puppy before her conquering sensuality. This would not be a gradual game. There would be no more talk of rebellion. She sniffed them, nostrils flaring, smelling their power. When she had determined which of them was nearest to Mephistis in strength, she rubbed against him smiling. He shivered, his body reacting to her power.

"What is your name?" she asked, her eyes meeting his. Her breasts tilted invitingly, the nipples hard and erect against the silk. She enjoyed the way he had to fight his impulse to reach for them.

"Bodramet," the sa'necari answered, breathing hard, his thick member shoving against his pants.

"That is a nice name," Anksha purred, pressing herself against him, rubbing his hardness with her thigh. "Would you like to walk with me tomorrow?"

Bodramet trembled, his eyes growing large with lust and need. "Yes. Yes, I would like that."

"Come for me at Lord Darmungaard's at noon. Do not be late." Anksha smiled like a cat with a small bird between its paws. She would have her fangs into him and the dominance-link set before sunset tomorrow.

"I won't be."

"Wear something without a collar," Anksha told him, stroking her finger along his neck. "I want your neck to present nicely."

"I will. I promise."

Hoon smiled at the rest of the sa'necaris, "Please continue. I would not wish you to suffer from an unfinished rite."

The others began to work themselves up again. Two climbed nervously onto their victims, and Hoon laughed.

Anksha returned to Mephistis. "We need to talk." She crooked her finger at him and they left the basement. "Show me your rooms."

Mephistis led her upstairs to his suite on the second floor, opened the door, and stepped aside. "You're going to take them all, aren't you?" Mephistis's voice shook.

"Yes," Anksha replied, stalking past on the balls of her feet. "One at a time they will all beg me to bite them and I will. One is missing. Where is the one you call Isranon?"

"He's gone to the theater with friends."

"Then I will get to him later."

"Not Isranon. Please not Isranon." Mephistis caught at her arm, an edge of desperation cracking his voice. "Please, not Isranon."

Anksha cocked her head at him, her eyes filling with an odd mix of curiosity and anger. "Because you love him?"

"Yes. I love him. He's my only friend."

Anksha growled. "Don't beg. It's too late to beg. I should take him now, simply because you love him. I should make you watch while I tear him apart. Do not anger me and I will leave him for last. Because he is the weakest in magic. I did not like what I found you doing."

Mephistis knew that other sa'necari noticed Isranon, just as Anksha did, the burnished shine of his skin and the heavy curling black hair that the youth caught casually at his neck. It was impossible not to. The sa'necari were an arrogant lot, but there was no arrogance to Isranon, just a simple stubborn pride. He held to himself, spoke to none, and went about his business, yet he stole the notice from the others. Those were some of the reasons that Mephistis loved him.

Mephistis trembled violently, knowing what was coming. She might take blood or sex or both. His body was not his own. She could separate his mind from the rest of him so that he became a disembodied cock and no matter how terrified he became his erection would not fail. He was no longer a mon, but a toy, a plaything, something she would destroy when she tired of it. It was that way with all of her blood-slaves.

His loins came to attention even as fear shivered through the rest of him and his stomach soured. Anksha had him perfectly conditioned to her will. A table and chairs stood to one side, boasting a bottle of fine wine and three glasses. The broad bed, with its slightly rumpled red and green covers, lay under the window as if daring someone to see what the occupants were doing from the street.

Anksha smiled approvingly as Mephistis disrobed without being asked and stretched out in the middle of the bed to await her pleasure. She poured herself a glass of wine, tasted it, and, deciding the vintage was acceptable, drank it down. Then she rummaged through his dresser and found a silk sash to stuff in his mouth. No need to terrify the others with his screams since she planned to take them all in a few days.

The Beast climbed onto the bed and straddled him, shifting him around inside her until she hit the nub of pleasure just right. She had heard the Sharani built toys that worked as well and did not get tired. She would ask Hoon to buy her one. She had also heard that some Sharani had a power over the male body with which they could force the toy to stay up until they had ridden it to their satisfaction. Anksha wished there were some way to steal that power, it would make life much more pleasant.

He started to weep as soon as he came. Anksha shoved a corner of the sash into his mouth. "Oh troublesome prince, if I had not caught you killing a mon in my name, wishing she were me, I would not be nearly as rough with you now."

She flexed her claws and let her large, tearing fangs slide from their sheathes.