Author's Notes: Before you read, I must first point out that I don't own all the characters. I own Thorn, Zero, Dante, and in possible future chapters Darcie, Jerry, Dementia, and Sirus. Billy, Riley, Akai, Lilly, and Okami belong to my "twin" lycan2bite from Deviantart. This story has both yuri and yaoi. The yuri couples are Tiley (RileyxThorn), Okai (OkamixAkai), and Lenny (LennexLilly). The yaoi couple is Zilly (BillyxZero). And the straight couple is Dercy (DarciexJerry). This is a first chapter, and if I make a next chapter I think I'll just post it as a reply. There won't be very many steamy chapters yet, I'll save those for near the end. Also, I know I don't have the best writing, so please don't just yell at me for it.
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Paradise.
Must be a wonderful street, right? Not really. It was a street for hookers, drugs, gangs. Pick a felony, you bet it’s happened here. The only thing this street has yet to experience is parked on the avenue as of now. No one noticed, no one questioned. In the businesses here, you learned not to question too deep. But they should have. Of all of heaven and hell and anyplace else, they should have noticed death among them. People who use lives, apparently, never noticed their own death approaching. Not when they play with other lives without empathy.
One of these people is known among the streets as Dante. He was rightly named. He ran the main business of Paradise, the sluts. He trafficked them, he ran brothels, didn’t matter if the merchandise was male or female, he whored them by the thousand. So it was only fitting that he was scoping out his own territory unnoticed. Or at least, unnoticed by everyone else. Dante was fit, his hair an almost glowing white and his body tall and lean with muscles.
He was not a fighter, though. He was a businessman. A soulless businessman. A van rolled up, and Dante grinned. His contacts. He approached the van as the passenger window rolled down. “How are you?” he asked with a grin, his accent thick and sounding of a mixture of countless languages. “Just fine,” the girl smiled back, speaking in a British accent, her brown eyes looking kind. Her brown hair was in a punk like wave. “Shall we get this meeting over with? I am a busy man,” Dante insisted as the back door of the van slid open somewhat noisily.
“Right, well, please sit back and enjoy the ride,” the girl insisted as she moved to the drivers’ seat, Dante moving to the passenger side. The van started, before easing back into the streets. “I didn’t catch your name,” Dante said casually, leaning back in the seat in total relaxation. The girl was watching the road cautiously, but like any alert driver, “Oh, sorry, people call me Thorn,” she said with an apologetic glance at Dante.
Dante frowned a bit, “Are you new? I’ve never heard of you,” he asked unsurely. Thorn nodded, “Yea, I’m with a few newer people,” she gave a small laugh, “We all wanted a good buzz, but now we have more then enough for us.” Dante noticed the small punctures on Thorn’s arm, in the soft part of her inner elbow where the veins were. Dante grinned then, “Heroin?” he asked slowly. Thorn made a turn, “Smack runs hither, and also through mine veins,” Thorn joked, “My sister joined too, we picked it up from dear old mum.”
Dante nodded as he turned to look ahead, before frowning. “Wait, we don’t usually meet here,” he asked cautiously, sitting up more. They’d drove to a secluded area in the hills, and a warehouse was in front of them. Thorn shrugged, “Don’t shoot the messenger, I only got an address. C’mon, if they don’t see me, I don’t get paid,” Thorn shivered at that, and Dante slowly nodded. Both woman and man exited the van and approached the building. Thorn pushed open the doors to what looked like an old plane hangar.
“Hell-o!” Thorn shouted, giggling at the slight echo, “Damn, hang on man, I’ll text big Daddy and see what the hell’s going on,” she assured. Dante nodded, waiting a moment as Thorn pulled out a cell phone and began to punch in buttons. Without warning, Dante tried to scream as a cloth blocked his mouth and a pair of arms grabbed his waist from behind. Thorn looked up at Dante trying to scream at her for help, before Thorn grinned and proceeded to shut the hangar doors. She wiped off the make up on her arm that looked like puncture marks, slowly shedding her disguise.
Dante had a blindfold put over his eyes, but by the jerky moves he could tell they were going down steps. Long steps. To a base below the hangar, possibly. He hadn’t been in the field for so long he’d forgotten some of the key skills that kept his street flunkies alive. Dante was able to spit out the cloth, and was cursing in several languages, before he knocked heads with his holder, and was able to shimmy the blindfold off. “You traitor, sonofabitch!” Dante snapped, knowing Thorn was behind it, or at least in on it.
The wind, and then some, was knocked out of him as he was slammed against a wall. He saw then, that it was a large base, but was empty of everything except for a table off to the side, a few tiny bottles on it. There was Thorn, or at least Dante thought it was Thorn. The girl had odd-colored eyes instead, one black and one blue, and her hair was in chestnut ringlets instead, though the clothes were the same. She was holding up a bottle, and a syringe with a syringe cap sideways in her teeth to hold it.
“Let go of me!” he snapped, kicking at the people who held his shoulders tight against the wall. One of them had blonde hair, a woman, a very strong woman. The other was a dark haired girl, a Latina, her nails cut half-circles into Dante’s arm. Dantes’ attention shifted to a male in front of him, “Are you all whores?! Is this your pimp?! Disgusting!” Dante shouted as he kicked, though the way he was being held made him kicks unable to land on either girl. The male laughed, stepping forward slowly but staying a good ways away.
He was somewhat tall, and his skin was deep in tone, but not African American. His eyes were black, as was his hair that was spiky, and grown down to his shoulders. He was in black leather pants, and black fishnets over his black half-shirt. He was grinning, his hands to his sides as his thick combat boots stepped forward. He glanced to Thorn, who barely nodded. “You are calling us disgusting, ya?” he asked slowly, his accent not easy to place. It wasn’t thick, but waning, so that made it even harder for Dante to report should he get away.
He chuckled as stepped closer, and Dante quit kicking since he knew it wouldn’t work. “You sell people for money, for profit,” he sneered, anger in his eyes now. Dante blinked, and he spotted a pink tattoo on the other males’ lower belly, and growled low. It was as bubbled letter, an N, with black wings on either side. It was a mark. Dante spat angrily in Egyptian, “Neko set you up to this?! You’re his little slut?!” The boy put a hand over the tattoo, and his jaw set as he approached quickly. Dante grunted as the others’ hand gripped his throat, right under Dante’s chin to prevent biting. “I belong to no one!” he hissed, banging Dantes’ head against the wall once.
Dante vaguely heard a shout, too dizzy to know who said it, and the hand was removed. He panted, watching the angry man. Dante spoke more frantically, in Egyptian still, “You speak the language? Tell them, then! Tell them to release me! I will repay you! I can give you Nekos’ head on a spike!” The boy snorted, still close to Dante. The boy countered in Egyptian now, “Pathetic swine! You sold me to Neko in the first place! You’ve sold too many, condemned too many!” He looked to Thorn, who was mixing syringes with god-knows-what. He looked back at Dante, “You speak which other languages?” he asked then.
“What?” Dante blinked, but protested when the boy moved for his throat, “Alright! Alright! French, Japanese, Swedish, Spanish, Albanian,” Dante panted as he listed them, eyes panicked. “Albanian?” the boy lifted a brow then, and Dante nodded. “Do you translate?” the boy asked, and Dante’s look got hard. He now knew what had gotten him mixed in this. These people were after his main business. Only his main flunkies spoke Albanian. “I will translate nothing!” Dante spat in the boy’s face. The boy growled, wiping off his face with a cloth as he stepped forward until their noses almost touched.
“You disgust me” the boy growled, before grabbing Dante’s neck and smashing their lips together harshly. Dante tore his mouth away, “You faggot freak!” Dante shouted, spitting loudly. The boy wiped his mouth his wrist, “Brush your goddamn teeth,” he sneered in Albanian, and Dante looked shocked. The boy grinned almost evilly, “You’ve been messing with the wrong people,” he chuckled darkly, “I steal languages,” he said bluntly. Dante gasped, “Demons!” he shouted, but grunted in pain when Thorn plunged a needle into his neck.
The body went limp, and the two girls let it fall to the ground. Thorn glanced at the boy, “Zero, a little rough?” she asked. Zero huffed, “He sold me, whored me out, I think that gives me a right,” he snapped, before turning. Thorn rolled her eyes then, turning, “Ok, Lilly, Okami, what you got?” she asked the two girls as they searched Dante’s body. Lilly sniffed as she brushed her long blonde hair from her blue eyes, “Nothing of interest, but his mind told a different story,” she tapped his skull. “He was thinking of his contacts that we want, they’re in a place called Tropoj or something,” she told Thorn as she stood and brushed off her clothes. Okami had a hand on Dante’s jacket, “This jacket belonged to one of them,” she said distantly, eyes eerily only all white, not having a pupil or cornea.
“Marko Valtera, got this jacket in high school, wore it on his dates and on gang meetings. He also wore it when he transported them to Tropoj,” Okami announced. She let go, and her eyes reappeared completely normal, her voice returning to normal. Thorn turned to Lilly, “Can you dig through his mind now?” she asked, glad that the drugs were slow and would not kill the brain for an hour at best. Lilly nodded, and her eyes focused on Dante’s head intently, “Nope, that’s not it, ew not that!” Lilly was muttering under her breath. “Found it! Transported to and from Tropoj, now located in Misty Hollow, Tennessee!” Thorn grinned at Zero, “Guess we won’t need the translations,” she joked; Zero cringed and wiped his mouth again. Lilly took in a breath as she looked at Thorn then, “Their memories were erased. They may not even know what they are.” That made them all tense up.
“No memories? At all?” Okami said slowly, eyes widening. Lilly shook her head, looking like she was trying to keep from crying. Thorn took in a breath, “My Riley doesn’t…Wouldn’t…” she put a hand on her mouth, a tear rolling down her cheek. Zero blinked, before gritting his teeth and suddenly getting a death grip on Lilly’s shirt collar, “Nothing?! Nada?! You mean to tell me that my mate, the only thing that kept me alive in that whorehouse, doesn’t know who I am?!” Zero shook Lilly. Okami had to pry Zero off of her as he slapped Lilly in a blind fury. “Get a hold of yourself, man!” Okami shouted, pushing Zero harshly as the Egyptian stumbled back.
“We are hundreds of years old, been through wars and bloodshed, and you choose now to break down like a child?!” Okami chastised angrily, upset herself. Zero sniffed, rubbing an eye as he turned his back to them, huffing now as his shoulders shuddered. “Everyone, just calm down,” Thorn said to get their attention. “Did you forget? They have these,” Thorn held out her golden locket, “They will always have them. If we show them these, they should remember.” Lilly sighed, rubbing a golden ring around her finger, “Mating symbols can only get us so far, Thorn,” she said, unsure. Okami, playing with her own long golden earring, looked at them, “Then we have to find a way to take it farther,” she threw in, “Remind them with who we are.”
Thorn got an idea, “Zero, can you get us into the school there?” she asked as she turned to the boy. Zero looked up from playing with one of his many bangles, the only golden one with a few jewels encrusted in it. Zero steadily nodded, “I can get us in, sure,” he agreed. Thorn sighed, “Then we better get on the move, if we want to get there,” she said then. She looked around, “Okami, please clear the place, Lilly, clear out the van of things we’re gonna need, Zero go see if you can’t hotwire that old car around back. Let’s move!” Thorn ordered. The group split up, and Thorn wandered back up into the hangar where she was alone in the dark. “Damn it,” she hissed, tears falling now.
She’d felt the pain of her lose of her first love, Jason. She’d dealt with Riley’s stubborn ex-lover. She’d dealt with the human wars. She’d helped her friends escape the human hunts. She’d conquered a hidden land for their kind with her mate Riley. She’d rescued Zero from Neko’s prostitute trafficking. She’d located their mates. All of these, she’d done without a single tear from her eyes, but now, knowing that the focus and reason for all of that had no inkling of her, of their race, of anything she should have, it made Thorn physically ill and cry like a baby.
“Riley, I swear by the skin on my bones, I will get you back,” she whispered, hand clutching her locket. Their kind exchanged enchanted objects of love to signify mating. It was like a human wedding ring, but connected them far deeper. It was not needed, but merely a sort of transmitter. Getting rid of the object did not make the mating void. It could be from a shoe to a hairpin to a tooth, and their kind could see the aura change when one was mated. But their kind only lived in the land Thorn and her friends had fought for, a small island in the center of the Bermuda Triangle. It created the Bermuda Triangle as a protective barrier, and no human could ever hope to find it unless one of their kind lead them there.
Their kind were called Nightmares, and while they mainly held a human form, they were far from it. Each had their own power, and were not recognized by the humans as existing. Of their people, Thorn and Riley were rulers. Thorn’s friends and their mates had been nobles, except for Zero’s mate Billy, who was Riley’s brother and in turn a royal as well. It was common for their race to marry the same gender, and unlike humans they saw no folly in the action, and as well even same gender coupled Nightmares could spawn a child together. Thorn touched her belly distantly, the lean muscle still normal as ever. They’d wanted a baby, before Riley had been taken.
In thought now, it might have been a good thing Thorn hadn’t gotten pregnant. It had been a few years since they’d been taken, and Thorn didn’t want any child of theirs to grow up without Riley. Thorn shook her head harshly. She needed to go for a run. She closed her eyes a moment, before she opened them again to be in a completely different form. Her form was now a doggish looking wolf, her fur a dark brown and her ears partially floppy. A Nightmare could take on whichever form they so chose, as long as it was a living creature, but commonly took on a form embodying themselves.
Thorn was a dog like wolf. Riley was as wolf as it got. Thorn snorted, easily shaking her clothes off her canine body, though the locket was still dangling from her neck. She would return to them, so she didn’t strap them to her body like they usually did. Thorn did a few laps around the hangar, though was panting heavily soon enough from sprinting so hard. She didn’t stop, not even when Lilly stepped into the hangar. “Thorn!” Lilly got her attention, and Thorn slowed down and faced the blonde, panting with her tongue out as her legs shook, though she would regain energy soon.
“Thorn, there’s nothing we need in the van,” Lilly reported, and Zero returned as well, “No dice. Car’s fried,” he shrugged. Okami came jogging up the steps, “No evidence left,” she said. Thorn shifted back to human, not caring that she was bare. The friends were close enough to where it didn’t phase any of them. “Could we travel in forms?” Thorn asked, “the people in town know what we look like, it might be better.” The three nodded, and Thorn smiled just the slightest bit. Her friends let her lead, but she knew that one of them could do so much better. Thorn didn’t bother collecting her clothes. Clothes were easy enough to steal, and they could go faster as animals then in a car as humans.
Within a few moments, they all had shuck their clothes, and had already taken on their animal forms. Thorn howled once, before a human like grin pulled at her maw. Lilly was also a canine, a full sized poodle with a coat as blonde as her hair. Thorn growled a bit in question, and Lilly gave a hyena like laugh. She changed the form up every once in a while, depending. Sometimes it fitted Lilly, sometimes not. Okami was a dark snow leopard, sleek with a fierce beauty like always. Zero was a cheetah, something not unseen with him, but he was usually a gazelle or even rabbit. They could understand each other, and could understand animals in these forms too. With another howl, the group of animals was off into the hills.
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The car they’d found was a nice blue-green suburban that fit them all comfortably. It was directly from the dealership, and they hadn’t even needed Zero to hotwire it. The owner had been “influenced” by Lilly to let them take it, like she’d done to the clothes shop owner. They had gotten a little over half way there, and their paws had all begun to hurt and they were quite winded. Thorn drove, and Lilly had fallen asleep almost instantly, but they didn’t blame her. Changing people’s thoughts was a new power for Lilly, and tired her out. Every once in a while, a new skill would pop up in one of them. It took a while for it to be less of a strain on them. Zero was in shotgun, mostly because he was avoiding Lilly since his little episode at the hangar.
Okami was looking sleepy, but of course refused to sleep. Lilly had found out a few other details about their mates. It was found that their memories had been replaced. Zero had done some hacking into government files, and their mates were registered as teens, and placed as adopted children with parents. That sort of made them all scoff. Their mates? With parents? Knowing their mates real ages made that seem almost as if a human’s grandma had been given new parents. It was just plain ridiculous. Well, they sure didn’t look their ages that was for sure. They aged, just much slower then humans. For every year they age physically, many human years had already passed.
Of course, this didn’t start to happen until they were teenaged. Which was why Thorn and her friends looked like mid-to-late teens. According to the human government, none of them actually had ever been born. They’d all been around long before America, they were as old as the ancient gods themselves. Well, not Thorn and her friends, but their kind. Thorn and her friends had, however, been around since B.C. Their mates were about as old, though were living as human teens. Thorn shifted in her seat, shaking her head now. She was getting tired herself. Zero eyed her, still not saying a word since they left the warehouse. “I’ll switch you,” Zero offered suddenly, and Thorn sighed before nodding with a yawn.
“Just, don’t run us into a ravine,” Thorn poked a bit of fun as she pulled to the side of the road to switch seats with Zero. They’d traveled all night on foot, and Thorn had been driving since dawn. It was about noon, and Thorn was really tired and becoming glad she’d let Zero drive now. She shifted a moment, before yawning widely. She dozed off then, unable to stay awake. It had been wearing them all down since their mate’s disappearance, and now it was starting to become an almost impossible thing. But they refused to stop now when they were so close. Zero sighed, eyeing the rear view mirror briefly. Great. Everyone was sleeping now, except him. It gave him a chance to think.
That was one reason he was so quiet. He didn’t speak too much because a lot of the time he was thinking. But that was one reason he had chosen Billy. The blonde boy let Zero talk more then the Egyptian usually did, and Zero appreciated that. He didn’t know how much until Billy had been taken away. He sighed and sank a little lower in his seat as he watched the road, a free hand going over his tattoo on his belly. God, he hated the mark. But every time he looked at the brand, not only was he reminded of being tied down, drugged up, and forced into sex, but he was also reminded of how every night, the only thing keeping him sane and alive was the thought of getting out and needing to find Billy.
He supposed that because of that line of thinking, as also possibly connected to the drugs still working out of his system, had caused him to attack Lilly like he did. He was supposed to be the calm one, and very rarely had he ever gotten upset to that point. Or at least it had been rare before he’d fallen into Neko’s keeping. He was tame at heart, and rather neutral, but his high-end emotions were making him act odd. He noticed Lilly waking up, and shifted uncomfortably. He was sorry about what he’d done. He truly was. “I know you are, it’s ok,” Lilly piped up, still sounding drowsy. Zero looked back in a bit of surprise. How long had she been reading his thoughts? “Um, ah, I’m still sorry,” he mustered, eyes locking on the road.
Lilly nodded, “It’s ok, I know you had it rough. And, I’ve heard enough of your thoughts to know what happened. I don’t blame you for your outburst, seeing what you’ve been through for years until recently,” Lilly responded, seeming really wise. When she wasn’t a ditz, mostly when she was tired a little, her wiser side did emerge. She had one, she just ignored it a lot of the time. Zero sighed, “That’s not an excuse,” he muttered, before his eyes caught a sign. “We’re getting close, should we wake them up?” he asked. Lilly shrugged, “Maybe we should just park in town and sleep for the night,” she yawned widely, eyeing the setting sun. Zero blinked, when had it gotten that late?
Zero sighed, feeling the exhaustion like his friends. He found an alleyway where they wouldn’t be bothered, and pulled in there. The dark paint of the car combined with the tight dark shadows let them stay hidden. Zero stretched out with a sigh, leaning back tiredly. “You going to be able to sleep?” he asked Lilly as he relaxed against the car seat. Lilly nodded, “I’ll manage,” she responded easily. It took a short few minutes for Zero to fall asleep, arms crossed and leaning against the window.
Lilly sighed, able to hear her friends’ scattered sleepy thoughts. It didn’t surprise her that the thoughts were about their mates. She blocked them out easily, already mastering how to block out thoughts and let them in when she wanted. She hadn’t really blamed Zero for his outburst, but it had made her a little more weary. Only Thorn knew Zero long enough to have seen him like that before, so it was a shocker to Lilly. She’d joined with the friends after Zero, and Okami had been after her. They were only separated by a couple hundred years though.
Lilly wasn’t positive how old Thorn was, as the girl herself didn’t seem so sure, but Thorn was indisputably older then them all. Lilly did know, though, that Zero was younger then Thorn, if only that the boy had spoken of Alexander The Great. Okami now, again Lilly wasn’t positive, and had only the idea that Okami had been around in the Victorian era like Lilly-or was Okami from the Elizabethan era? Lilly sighed. That was how she spent a lot of her time since her mate Lenne had been taken. Lenne had given her focus on something other then every one else’s thoughts. That’s all Lilly did, since she could hear what people thought. She got into everyone else’s mind and business, because that was what she knew.
Lenne had taught her to focus on herself more, and that had really turned Lilly’s life around. Lilly was like a child, even she knew that. Lilly was childish, and Lenne was her control. That was why Lilly needed Lenne. Her mate was her life, was the glue for Lilly to know herself. Not only that, but Lilly let Lenne have fun and stay loose. It was a shared thing, and Lilly worried for her mate. Not only for her own sake, but for Lenne’s too. Lenne was such a parent, that the girl had few street smarts. That concerned Lilly, not to be able to watch out for Lenne, and vice versa. It really did hurt her heart to be without both giving to Lenne, and getting from Lenne. But mostly, she just wanted Lenne herself back.
Lilly closed her eyes as the moon began to rise. Nightmares were mostly awake at dawn and dusk, because they could draw power from the moon if they needed, but allowed them to have daytime hours too. It was their nature, but a lot of the time they chose night or day to stay awake, and it seemed to work. The groups sleeping patterns were shifting all the time, which wasn’t helping them too much. They had either, and they had both, depending, and it was almost becoming too straining. Okami sighed. She’d been awake for a little while now, and it was getting a little hard for her to sleep again.
Everyone was having problems with the thoughts of their mates not knowing them. Okami understood that. She understood why Zero got that upset at Lilly, and why Thorn suddenly had gone quiet with the orders. She understood the changes in her friends, and also knew it was the reason she felt a mixture of anger and helplessness. She wanted her mate in a helpless way, but she also wanted to use her rage in killing the men who put Akai there. She hated to think how long it’d taken them to find their mates. To them, human years usually didn’t seem that long since they lived as long as they did, but since Akai had left, each minute felt like a million years.
It hurt her even more to think that once they arrived, she wouldn’t be able to embrace Akai and kiss her mate. None of them could do that. Not right away, anyway. They would have to work to get their mates to have their memories back. Okami still wasn’t sure if that was even possible. Sometimes, she knew, the memories just didn’t come back. She sighed heavily, sinking down in the seat as far as she could comfortably go. She didn’t want to sit her and wait. She would have gotten out, but that mind-reading Lilly would know the moment she did, even if the blonde was sleeping now. She would, as much as she didn’t want to, have to sleep and wait. She wondered if this car had any sleeping pills.


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does anyone even actually read this??
Nah, I get it, my writing just sucks...But, if it means anything, I wrote a lemon scene for the yaoi couple, Zilly (BillyxZero), called
For some reason, I can't muster enough creativity to finish this. Sorry to anyone who actually reads this. But don't worry. I may switch the characters to a different storyline, though, to refresh my mind some. Who knows? I might be able to continue this a little later.




