The II AM Trilogy Collection Read online

  The II AM TRILOGY

  By Christopher Buecheler

  Featuring

  Book 1 • The Blood That Bonds • October 2009

  Book 2 • Blood Hunt • September 2011

  Book 3 • The Children of the Sun • November 2012

  The II AM Trilogy

  by Christopher Buecheler

  Copyright © 2013 Christopher Buecheler.

  All rights reserved.

  http://iiamtrilogy.com/

  http://writing.cwbuecheler.com/

  The II AM Trilogy is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  First Edition: February 2013

  ISBN: 978-0-9884708-1-1

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to IIAMTrilogy.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  The Blood That Bonds Cover Art by Adrian Dadich

  Blood Hunt & The Children of the Sun Cover Art by Karla Ortiz

  Ashayt Illustration by Karla Ortiz

  Tori Illustration by Christine MacTernan

  Cover Design by Christopher Buecheler

  Acknowledgements

  The creation of this trilogy of novels has been difficult, frustrating, wonderful, and tremendously rewarding. I have realized a lifelong dream in becoming a successful author, have sold tens of thousands of copies of my work, have been privileged to interact with fans across the globe, and have grown as an author and a person. I could not have made this journey without the following people.

   My wife, Charlotte, without whose love and support and belief, none of this would have happened.

   My editor Lauren Vogelbaum, who’s been with me for the entire trip. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: any errors that remain are surely my fault, and not hers.

   My illustrators Karla, Adrian, and Christine. It’s been an inexpressible privilege to see my characters brought to life by such talent.

   My advance readers: Nora, Joost, Caryn, Charles, Gabe, Brett, Trevor, Tracy, Diana, Kim, Sheri, and Jennifer. Your thoughts, opinions, feedback, and ideas have improved these books immeasurably.

   My parents, Bill and Leslie, who never wavered in their belief in me, even when I gave them reasons to.

   My fans on Facebook, Twitter, and across the internet. Your support and enthusiasm never ceases to amaze me!

  Book 1 • The Blood That Bonds

  Dedication

  Pour ma belle épouse Charlotte.

  Chapter 1

  Darkness and Despair

  Vermont Street. October.

  Her name was Two, and she sometimes thought she could smell her death, blowing in from the cemetery that lay south of her building in East New York. Sometimes she even hoped for it. Stinking, muttering, moldering death. Cold and dark. On these occasions, she felt as if even the dirty embrace of the grave would be better for her than the squalor she lived in now. She thought, maybe, she might find some sort of peace that had been missing all her life.

  Darren owned her building, like he owned the girls who occupied it. Three stories tall, four rooms to a floor. They lived two to a room, two bathrooms per floor, two kitchens in the building. Just over twenty girls, every single one of them selling her body each night at his command. In return for the money they brought him, he gave them food. He gave them shelter. He gave them drugs, and the drugs gave them escape.

  Two was not supposed to be here. She reflected on that often, and if she'd ever believed in a God, she'd have cursed him now. Fickle, twisted fate had delivered her into Darren's arms. Promises of salvation, undercurrents of doubt, desire, desperation. The cold prick of a needle.

  She tried not to think about it.

  Darren held the plastic bag filled with heroin above her now, like a treat for a dog. Little better than a dog she was, really, down on her knees, eyes wet with tears ready to spill over. Angry, vengeful Darren, so filled with hate. Hate for his parents, who'd given him his cream-and-coffee skin and gorgeous features, then abandoned him on the street. Hate for his ex-wife, who'd left him immediately upon discovering the nature of his business, but still found fit to take half of what it had earned him. Hate for the girls he had made his slaves, and who had made him rich. Hate for the very money they handed over to him every night.

  Darren didn't know of his own hate, but it burned in him so brightly it scarred his features. Twisted, cruel lips. Pinched brow. Two might have understood this hate, seen reflected in it her own self-loathing, but Two spent most of her time thinking about the heroin now. She had no sympathy for Darren, or his girls, no sympathy for herself. Lucid existence was the time between sleep and drug, drug and sex, sex and sleep. Short bursts of clarity, ever more painful, amid an otherwise blurred, waking dream.

  “Beg for it, Two,” Darren snarled, and Two's mouth formed words of penitence against her will, pleading through tears without even realizing she'd meant to do it. She begged apology for some imagined slight, some invented twist in her voice that had caused this punishment.

  “Darren, I'm sorry! I'm so sorry for what I said!” But what had she said? She'd only asked for her daily ration of the drug, in the same manner she had for the past four months. If Darren had detected any real change of inflection, it hadn't been intended. But here she was, on the floor, begging and pleading for something she didn't even want. Begging and pleading and dreaming of death.

  * * *

  Born Two Ashley Majors, her initials – substituting the number for her first name – worked out to the approximate time she had been conceived. Her parents had thought this terribly clever. Two would have gladly held it up as evidence before God that, whatever mistakes she had made in her life, never appreciating her parents was not one of them.

  For her first fourteen years, she was Ashley, and no one was allowed to call her otherwise. Maturity had lent a different outlook, and she had begun to see the name as a sign of what was becoming a fierce individuality. She would never like it, perhaps, but she was most definitely not an Ashley.

  She’d left her father at the age of sixteen, her mother long in the grave. Alcohol, and the overwhelming desire to fill the void Two’s mother had left, had brought rage and lust into him when before he’d felt only apathy for the girl. He’d never touched her, either in punishment or in passion, but the tension and the fighting, starting around her twelfth birthday, had over the course of years grown unbearable. At times Two found herself wishing he would simply rape her, so she could have him arrested. She wondered if that was a healthy line of thought, and decided it likely was not.

  She took with her very little when she finally left. She had very little to take. Trinkets, clothes, shoes … these things meant nothing to her, as during life her mother could never be bothered to pass down any of the traditional, societal definitions of womanhood. Could never be bothered with her daughter at all, really, nor with her husband. Two had learned by herself about womanhood, in back alleys and cheap motels, years after her mother had died. Her education handed down by what men told her to be, what they told her to do. Promises of love, drops of blood on the sheets.

  When that didn’t work, when she realized she could be more than this, it came as an epiphany. A rare glimpse of sunlight in an otherwise dark life. She’d left her father, apoplectic with desire and dismay and alcohol-fueled rage. She’d left behind their hole of an apart
ment. She could do better on her own.

  And she had, for a time.

  Pool was easy, the angles naturally making sense to her. Slipping into a bar even easier. New York City cops had far better things to worry about. Bouncers knew it, owners knew it, and a patron was a patron. Particularly short, pretty blondes with good legs and a cute face. The type of girl who could entice an entire crowd of rowdy young men to stick around for more drinks, dropping dollar after dollar into pool tournaments that, invariably, they lost.

  She didn’t go home with these men, though many had asked, and in the end this factored into her undoing. Descent and rebirth, and descent and rebirth again. These men could not understand her, or why she spurned them. She’d leave them with a knowing smile, standing dismayed in the street. Sometimes she kissed them lightly, thanked them for their interest, but always with that mischievous gleam in her eyes, that sardonic grin on her face. The look that proved that, regardless of pretty words, she took vicious pleasure in walking away.

  It was power, and Two reveled in it. The ability to make men throw their money, their bodies, their hearts at her. Lots of men. Lots of bars. She walked away from every one … walked away grinning her savage grin. For eight months Two lived, celibate as a nun, feeding on the hearts of men.

  Eventually they tired of it. Patrons began complaining. Bouncers began carding. Bets around the pool table, even when Two could manage to enter the bar in the first place, dried up. People had heard of her. Two was forced to give up the pool earnings, and her tiny studio apartment with the mattress on the floor, the only piece of furniture she owned.

  One bar remained, the only one at which she’d allowed herself to develop friends. The owner, Sid. The bouncer, Rhes. She didn’t play her game here. She didn’t taunt the men, break their hearts. It was here she went when she wanted a glass of beer and a conversation. It was here she turned now, desperate for somewhere to stay. Rhes offered the use of his apartment. Two didn’t decline the offer.

  Her relationship with Rhes was entirely platonic. This surprised her; surprised both of them. Two was attractive, young, charming. Rhes was in his mid-twenties, with a powerful build and a handsome face. Two would have broken her celibacy for him, if he’d asked. Sometimes she wished he would. Rhes never did, and Two came to realize that he could not. He knew her age. He knew her past. It would have felt like taking advantage of her, regardless of her own willingness.

  After nearly eighteen months of living with Two, Rhes had been forced to turn her out. He was in a new relationship with a young woman named Sarah, a blind girl he had met with her seeing-eye dog at a jazz club, and this new girlfriend worried about him sharing a studio apartment with a teenage runaway. Eventually Sarah warmed to Two, and would likely have accepted her as a roommate in a new, larger apartment, but by then it was too late. By then Darren, and the needle, had hold of Two. For better or for worse, it would change her life forever.

  * * *

  “Please, Darren …” Two whimpered.

  Darren, towering above her, the bag still in his hand, the sneer on his face half grin, half expression of disgust. She could see this excited him, plain as day. To her own surprise, she found that she couldn’t blame him for it. Two knew the aphrodisiac of power. Hadn’t she played with it for years before, outside of those dimly lit bars that lined the city streets?

  “You were a bad girl,” Darren growled. Two repeated his words, agreed with him, petulant, her breath hitching. But now the tears were drying. She thought she knew how best to resolve this. Was her lower limp trembling just a bit more than necessary? Were her eyes just a bit bigger?

  “I was a bad girl,” Two said again, and arched her back, drawing out the words like warm honey on her tongue.

  Pain flashed across her face, sudden, explosive, unexpected. Two recoiled from the blow. Darren’s expert delivery rarely left marks, but it hurt no less than any other slap.

  “Don’t play that shit with me, girl.”

  Two looked up at him, sniffling. The slap had brought fresh tears to her eyes, and she blinked them away.

  “Say you’re sorry, and mean it.” Darren looked down at her like a dark king, and Two realized that this had been just another in a long series of lessons. Darren was in control. Darren was the boss. Darren was God, dispensing pleasure and pain at his whim.

  “I’m sorry, Darren.” Two meant it. No tears, now. No hysterics. Just rapid breathing, clenched teeth. The need was a tight ball in her stomach. She tried not to look at the heroin. She tried to look at the windows, the clock on the desk, anything else. Again and again her eyes returned to the bag.

  “Take it and get out.” Darren tossed the bag into a corner, and turned to his ledgers. Two scrambled after it on all fours, like the dog Darren had trained her to be. By the time she was out the door, shouting some hurried, half-meant words of appreciation after her, Darren had forgotten entirely about her.

  Her roommate’s name was Molly. The girl had been in the business for fourteen months, a fact that repulsed Two whenever she gave it even a moment’s thought. Molly was a sweet, honest, quiet girl. She had become wrapped up with the wrong people. These people had led her to heroin, and heroin had led her to Darren. Darren had led her to the clients, of which there were many. Molly was an absolute premium, the Rolls Royce of Darren’s line of whores. Even after fourteen months, she was still the youngest girl in his service; only twelve. Her work earned more in a weekend than most earned in a month.

  Two believed she didn’t think about this, but looking at the bags under Molly’s eyes on a Sunday morning when the little girl returned, tired and often bruised, to shoot up and go to sleep, was like a physical force hammering on her. They’d shared a sister-like relationship at first, but Two had been forced to establish some distance after a nightmarish group-job they’d been ordered to perform. This had happened occasionally since, and perhaps the most horrifying thing about the events was the way in which Two had become inured to them.

  She and Molly were popular, as individuals and as a group. Two, with her large eyes, upturned nose, and small breasts, could pass for much younger than she really was. She received the clients who wanted to fuck a twelve-year-old, but who still retained some sort of conscience, some semblance of a soul. Molly’s clients, as far as Two could gather, had no soul at all.

  Sweet lips, big blue eyes, long brown hair tucked back in a ponytail, Molly was swinging her legs over the edge of her bed, watching Two. Her client had backed out tonight, but as he’d pre-paid, Darren had treated Molly to a night off. She had absolutely nothing to do and this, compared to her normal nights, was bliss.

  Two cooked the heroin, pulled down her pants, and pushed away her underwear, exposing the joint between thigh and pelvis. She still shot up here, a remnant of the days when she’d hoped to escape, the days when she was still concerned about needle tracks. She had no qualms about exposing herself in front of Molly. How could she? Molly, in turn, registered no expression of disturbance or concern as Two slid the needle into her skin, pressed the plunger, set the syringe on the dresser.

  The effect of the fix was near-instantaneous, as always. First the burst of pleasure, warm and pulsing like an orgasm. Vision blurred, muscles relaxing, Two seemed to float off into a cloud of euphoria. She lay back on the bed, hands crossed behind her head, and heard Molly speak as if from the end of a long tunnel.

  “I saw the baggie in the trash. Did you steal Cindy’s shit again?”

  Stupid bitch leaves it out, what does she expect? Two thought. She didn’t need to answer Molly. The question was rhetorical.

  “You’re going to hurt yourself.” The concern in Molly’s voice was lovely in its innocence. Two drew in a shuddery breath, happy to let the drugs do their work. Caring was pain. Apathy was bliss.

  “No one gonna miss me when I’m gone,” she told Molly, still looking up at the ceiling.

  “I’ll miss you.”

  Two smiled. Of course Molly would miss her … until the drugs
and the pain and the sheer horror of their life took her, too. Assuming Molly outlived her in the first place.

  Two dozed.

  * * *

  Descent and rebirth. In April of the previous year, Two had decided to take a walk, an innocent enough beginning to this disgusting end. She was not a foolish girl. She knew better than to wander down the wrong streets at the wrong hour. Broad daylight and known streets seemed safe enough.

  She had spent the last few months in a homeless shelter, unsure of what to do next. Slowly, though, she was learning new ways of making a living. She was not always proud of herself; there was no glory in shoplifting, no beauty in fishing wallets from people’s pockets, no redemption in breaking into apartments. But she survived, and as her skills in these areas grew, so did the sum of money Rhes held for her; deposit for a new apartment. He didn’t know where she obtained it, never asked, probably tried not to think about it. Two never volunteered the information. She was ashamed, though she had no real idea what shame was at the time. Real shame would come later.

  Walking in the city, watching the men in the ethnic groceries unload their trucks, the women chattering in their exotic languages, children playing hopscotch in the street. The sights, smells and sounds of New York were all about her, and Two enjoyed them as she always had. She felt no fear of the city, nor any of the constricting claustrophobia it inspired in so many others. Two loved New York, because it was like her. It made no excuses for itself, hid nothing of its nature. New York was the sum of its many, many components, and yet so much more.

  A common, garden-variety mugging was all it had taken to send her spiraling down into a life of alternating horror and numbness. A grab from an alleyway, the click of a gun, a grunted threat. Two would have given them money, if she had money to give. Would have given it happily. She knew now she could live without it. She had no illusions of bravery. When someone pointed a gun at your head and demanded your money, you gave it to him.