Cronin's Key III (21 page)

He walked over to the table and
touched Jodis’ arm. She startled to life, taking in the frozen room
around her. She saw Cronin but looked back at Alec. “What’s
wrong?”

“
I stopped time,” he said. “Just for us.”

“
How?” she asked. “Can you control it better?”

Alec laughed
quietly. “I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t freeze who I want it to at
that time? I really don’t know. Jodis, right now it doesn’t matter
how my talents work. See this man here?” Alec nodded to Eiji, who
was standing frozen in time. His long black hair was pulled back, a
few wisps feathered down, and his eyes were fixed on where Jodis
had been. “He loves you more than I can explain. He needs you. I
know you’re busy, we all are, and I am eternally grateful for your
help and dedication. But he needs a few moments with you. Just
you.”

Jodis’ eyes welled with tears.
“Oh.”

Then Alec
put his hand on Eiji’s arm, breaking the hold time had on him. Eiji
spun, startled, and drew a wooden cross in each hand from his thigh
holsters. “Where…?” Then seeing they were alone and everyone else
was still frozen in time, he straightened. “What
happened?”

Jodis smiled at him. “Everything’s fine,” she said. She
took the wooden
crosses out
of his hands, and standing close against him, she slid them back
into his thigh holsters. Eiji’s pupils dilated, and she whispered
against his lips, “Alec has given us the gift of time. I suggest we
use it wisely.”

Eiji grinned, snatched up Jodis’ hand
, and led her toward their bedroom. He never
said a word, but the next sound Alec heard was their door closing
and Jodis’ laughter.

Cronin walked slowly over to Alec.
“You are a good man.”

In the blink
of an eye, Alec had Cronin on his back in the middle of their bed
and was firmly between his thighs. He ghosted a kiss over Cronin’s
mouth. “I’m not a man,” he said, flexing his vampire fangs. He
turned Cronin’s head, exposing his neck, and sank his teeth into
his flesh.

Cronin
bucked,
grinding his hips into Alec’s, and with both hands on Alec’s ass,
he pulled him closer. Alec moaned as the sweet taste of Cronin
filled his mouth and slid down his throat.

Oh Alec, I need you closer still. Your teeth… your skin…
your body… you inside me…
.
Cronin’s thoughts
were a jumbled mess, swirling with desire and need.

Alec fisted
Cronin’s shirt and ripped it open, exposing his chest. He pulled
back, only long enough to undo his jeans and pull them from his
body. He leaned down and planted a soft kiss to the scar on
Cronin’s chest, and Cronin roughly dragged Alec’s shirt over his
head. He growled in frustration. “Alec.”

Alec smiled victoriously. He loved it when Cronin was
desperate; the urgency, the pure need
—it rolled off him, fueling Alec’s desire. Resting back on
his haunches, he undid his button fly and released his hard cock
from the confines of the denim. Alec leapt the lube from the drawer
into his hand and smeared it over his shaft and cockhead, then
added more to Cronin’s ass.

Cronin snatched the lube from him and
tossed it to the floor. He gripped Alec around the neck and pulled
him over him. “I need you now.”

“
I don’t want to hurt
you.”

Cronin
answered by hitching his legs even higher and hooking his ankles
behind Alec’s back. He rolled his hips, desperate for Alec to fill
him.

Please.

Alec pushed
inside in
one hard thrust, taking any pain Cronin felt and replacing it with
pure ecstasy. Cronin’s eyes widened and his whole body convulsed
and writhed as Alec speared him with his cock.

Cronin’s
mind was blank, no coherent thoughts, only pleasure and bliss on
every synapse, every nerve. His hard cock pressed between them,
smearing precum on their stomachs. And when Alec thought it might
be too much for him, Cronin held him tighter, harder.

Fuck, fuck
, Cronin
murmured in his mind.

Cronin rarely cursed, mentally or
vocally, but Alec loved it when he rolled those words through his
mind, his Scottish accent lilting the sound perfectly.

I love fucking you
,
Alec whispered into his mind.

Cronin gasped.

I love being inside you.
Can you feel how good it feels for me?
Alec asked. Then using his empathic abilities,
he flooded Cronin with every sensation, every emotion he felt when
they made love.

Cronin
gasped loudly and arched his back as he came. He went rigid, his
head thrown back, his mouth open, as his cock spilled between
them.

Alec thrust harder, wringing out every ounce of pleasure
from Cronin’s orgasm until Cronin was a shaking, trembling mess.
His body was boneless, pliable
, and spent, so Alec kissed him until he moaned. Then he
kissed him some more, filling his mouth with his tongue, thrusting
into him as he did.

Cronin put his hands to Alec’s face,
cradling him as their tongues twirled and tasted. But then Cronin
pulled Alec’s mouth away and turned his face so he could sink his
teeth into Alec’s neck.

As soon as C
ronin’s
teeth pierced Alec’s skin, he came. Pleasure barreled through him
as he released deep inside Cronin.

And as Cronin’s mind began to come
back together, the fractured remnants of pleasure still scattering
coherent thought, there was one word that sounded in his
mind.

How he felt when they made love, how it felt when Alec came
inside him, was
home
.

Resting on his elbows, Alec put his
hands to Cronin’s face. “You are home to me as well.”

Cronin closed his eyes, as if Alec’s words were
s
unlight and he was bathing
in the warmth. When he opened his eyes again, he asked, “Is the
world still stopped out there?”

“
Yes,” Alec said. “Except for Eiji and
Jodis
—Oh God,” he cringed,
“I’m gonna need brain bleach after seeing that.”

Cronin burst out laughing and rolled
them both over so he was on top. “Sorry for making you think of
them.”

Alec grinned at him. “Normally I can
block that out, but you’ve riddled my brain with pheromones. I’m
not thinking clearly.”

“
I
riddled your brain
with pheromones?” Cronin asked. “What on earth did
you
do to
me
? I couldn’t even
speak!”

Alec laughed at that. “You weren’t
complaining.”

“
Oh, I’m not complaining,”
he replied. Then he sighed and his smile slid away. “Any sign of
the Zoan?”

Alec shook
his head. “No. They’re still there, though. They’re just…
busy.”

“
Busy doing
what?”

“
I don’t know,” Alec replied. “I can’t see exactly… getting
ready for us?”

Cronin got up and held his hand out to Alec, helping him
off the bed. “We best not keep them waiting.”
They cleaned up a little, then Cronin walked
into the closet to get new, not-ripped-to-shreds clothes, and Alec
redid the buttons on his jeans. Cronin came back out to the bed and
threw a shirt to Alec, which Alec pulled on over his head, and
Cronin smiled at him. He gently put his hand to Alec’s face. “Thank
you, m’cridhe. For giving us this time, for knowing what I needed.
And for giving Eiji and Jodis some time also.”

“
It was the least I could do for them,” Alec said. “After
all they do for us, for me.”
And right on cue, Eiji laughed from the room up the hall.
It made Alec smile. “And that is a sound I’ll never get tired of
hearing.”

Cronin kissed him softly. “
Tha gaol agam ort
.”

Alec hummed as Cronin’s words settled in his heart. “I love
you, too.”
Then he smiled.
“Eiji, coming through that door in three, two, one….”

The door opened and Eiji walked in
like the room was his. Without stopping, he grabbed Alec by the
face and kissed both his cheeks. “God bless you,” he said, then
simply walked out without another word.

Jodis stood
in the doorway. “Thank you, Alec.”

“
You’re most welcome,” he replied. He led Cronin by the hand
and made sure everyone was in the exact positions they were in
before, and with a calming breath and burst of his mental powers,
the room sprang into action and noise.

“
We all ready?” Alec
said.

“
Am now,” Eiji replied
with a wink. Jodis giggled, earning a strange look from
Viviana.

Alec
put his hand to
Jodis’ arm.
I’m transferring
to you the power to leap. If anything happens, you get everyone out
of here, okay?

She replied with no more than a smile and
nod
. Alec turned to everyone
else: Cronin, Eiji, Kennard, Jacques, and Benito.
“Ready?”

And they were gone.

* * * *

The
warehouse where the meeting was held was the same warehouse a very
human Alec had come to with Cronin eighteen months ago when they
had held a coven meeting in regards to information on the key. It
was big enough to house the Eastern coven, some four hundred
vampires that called the Eastern Seaboard area home.

When they arrived, a silence fell across the warehouse,
though Alec was hit with a wave of four
hundred mental voices. It took him a moment to
compartmentalize the sounds and images and shut them down. “Welcome
and thank you for being here,” Alec said in greeting. He waved his
hand at the two non-American-known vampires in his company,
introducing them to everyone present. “This is Kennard, London
elder, and Benito, Roman elder. They have joined me in this latest
quest, which is why I’ve asked you all to come tonight.”

“
The gargoyles in Paris,”
one vampire prompted.

Alec nodded. “Yes
.
Also known as Zoan, they are lycan-type creatures—” A hiss went
through the warehouse. “—who were turned to stone gargoyles. But
it’s the ones that aren’t stone, the living Zoan, that brings me
here tonight.

“
If you’ll allow me to show you,” Alec said warily. “I can
project the images of these Zoan into your minds so you can see
what they look like.”

“
It will look like a memory,” Cronin told them. “In your
mind’s eye.”

“
Don’t be alarmed,” Alec added, then with a deep breath he
centered himself
. Using all
the mental strength he could muster, he pushed out his vivid recall
of the lycan creatures, half-wolf, half-dragon into the four
hundred minds in front of him.

Someone gasped. “So it is true? They
breathe fire?”

Alec pulled back the mental image and
felt it snap like a rubber band in his mind. He shook his head, a
small detail Cronin didn’t miss. He looked immediately concerned.
“Are you well, Alec?”

Alec nodded. “Yeah. Just took more out of me than I
realized.”
I’ve never done
that to this many people, that’s all. I’m fine.

Eiji took over, and gave a very short
version of what they knew. “They somehow use ancient pits as a
gateway to get here. Whether that’s a portal to another dimension
or to another time, we don’t know. But there is an energy within
these circular sites, similar to how Alec was changed, that opens
to allow them through.”

“
We think it has to do
with planetary alignment,” Benito added. “We’re working on that
now.”

“
We’ve been to London, France, Italy,” Cronin said. “The
stone Zoan gargoyles in Paris were active when Alec was near but
nowhere else.”

“
How come?” one vampire
asked.

Alec
explained, “Some gargoyles are simply stone statues, man-made.
Some, however, were Zoan that have been turned to stone. It is
these creatures that are our concern.”

“
What does it have to do
with us?” someone asked.

A few vampires didn’t take kindly to that, Cronin included,
but Alec was quick to answer. He put his hand up, making the
warehouse quiet. “It’s a fair question,” he replied. “Technically
speaking, it has nothing to do with you. Yet, somehow it has
everything to do with you. These Zoan creatures will kill any
vampire they come across. They have threatened me personally but
have also shown me their intent to slaughter the human population
of New York. So if you wish to be oblivious and unprepared, then
feel free to leave now. I will not blame you, nor ask questions.
But if you
do
leave, the blame for your families’
death by the hand of Zoan will rest on no one’s shoulders but your
own.”

The warehouse was still and quiet. No one left.
Cronin smiled.

Alec took charge of the room, having
the undivided attention of everyone there. He pulled out a wooden
cross from the back of his jeans and held it up so everyone could
see it. “A living Zoan can only be killed by one of these.” A few
vampires laughed and Alec smiled. He held the cross by the short
top, like a small sword. “No normal wooden stake will kill them,
but a wooden cross to the chest will. It is how the French killed
them in the Revolution.”