[image id: drawing of two characters. The one on the left human with light skin and a dark brown ponytail that fades to blonde at the tip. They are wearing a loose white shirt, dark red pants, a brown shoulder strap bag and a light blue moon-shaped necklace. The one on the right is a light teal fishy humanoid with fins for ears and a shark tail, with bright red eyes. He is dressed as a pirate captain. end image id]
"The day the assassin came to Rylla's door, she sighed, rolled up her sleeves, and grabbed her healing kit."
Rylla Stirkiv likes her life. She likes her little house on the outskirts of a quiet village. She likes the magical forest where any herb she could want grows, and where magic from the Rend splitting her planet in two turns the leaves rainbow colors.
She does not like the hardened assassin that arrives bleeding on her doorstep.
Tarinne is the antithesis of Rylla. She's brash, headstrong, and abrasive. Her skin is marked with more scars than Rylla has ever seen in her life. What's more, she kills people, while Rylla is sworn to do the opposite. But as she nurses Tarinne back to health, the two women discover they have more in common than they thought, and that maybe, just maybe, Tarinne likes the slower life that Rylla leads.
Promotion length: Unknown
Markets available: Amazon
Link to book: https://www.amazon.com/This-Delicate-Flame-Romantasy-Rendworld-ebook/dp/B0DSQVHRGG
a new story! this one is a one-shot in an urban fantasy sort of setting
about the characters
The vampire stroked Beck’s hair, looking over his shoulder to meet Avery’s eyes.
“What were you saying, hunter?”
“Don’t you touch him,” Avery breathed. “If you think I’ve been after your kind so far, just see how I’ll be if you touch one hair on his head.”
“But he smells so good,” he answered, face turning into Beck’s neck so that he could smell along the skin, lips parted. The thrall held, and Beck just tilted his head to allow the vampire access.
“Don’t.”
“Just a taste.”
“Don’t you dare!”
Beck gave a soft cry, eyes slipping shut, as teeth broke the skin. He slumped back against the chest of the man supporting him while Avery slammed into the concrete and rebar of the collapsed wall that had separated them.
The vampire licked against the skin to collect drips as he pulled away and smiled up at Avery. Beck made a soft noise of discomfort, held up by the arms that had been restraining him.
“I’m going to enjoy taking him from you,” he answered. “After all those you’ve taken from us.”
Avery’s heart clenched at the soft slit of Beck’s eyes. “I’ll come after you. I’ll make you pay for this.”
“Wake up, little thrall. Say goodbye to your hunter.”
Beck’s lashes fluttered and Avery’s chest was hollowed out by the dull look of his eyes. “Avery?” he muttered.
“Hey, babe,” Avery said, voice cracking. “It’s going to be okay.”
“God, I’m tired,” he said, slumping a little. “What happened? Something’s wrong.”
“I know. I know it hurts,” he whispered. “I’m coming to get you.”
“Time’s up, deary,” the vampire said, and Beck collapsed, slung over the monster’s shoulder.
“Let him go. Please let him go.”
“Not a chance,” the vampire answered with a smile.
Avery’s fists pounded on the fallen rocks as Beck was hauled away from him.
He tracked the vampires to their den, heart feeling like it hadn’t beat since he’d seen Beck disappear. The space between losing his love and finding him on a creaky floor, bite marks speckling his skin, seemed eternal.
His staff clattered to the ground next to Beck’s body. “Beck,” he breathed, dropping down and feeling for a pulse. It was there, soft and quick under his fingers. “Oh, thank god.” He bent over him, forehead against Beck’s shoulder and tears stinging his eyes. “Beck.”
He lifted him up, cradling the sick body to his chest, and glanced deeper into the house. He wanted to storm in, to punish them for what they’d dared to do, but he had to get Beck out. Before anything else happened to him. Before he lost him again.
“Where are you going, hunter?”
The voice halted him before he’d even made it ten steps.
“Too rude to even come in to say hello?”
“Too stupid to not accept me sparing your life?” Avery snapped back. He fought to stay calm and took advantage of the moment to cautiously set Beck back on the ground.
“Step away from him,” the vampire instructed. “We’re not finished playing yet.”
Even with the layers of wards and enchantments he wore to prevent succumbing to a thrall, Avery felt compelled to obey. The vampire must be ancient.
“Not going to happen,” Avery growled.
“My, my, aren’t you the mighty hunter.” The vampire took a languid step forward, and cleared his throat. “Wake up, little one. Come here.”
Avery jolted when Beck stirred, despite the toll this place had taken. Despite the aching slowness of a body too damaged to be functioning right, he started to pick himself up off the ground.
“I won’t let you have him,” Avery growled, stepping between them with his staff clenched in his hand.
“Your devotion to the little human is really very sweet. You would be better served forgetting him.”
“Never.”
“Beckett, dear, grab your hunter for me, would you?”
Avery startled when Beck’s hands closed around his arms. His fingers were weak, and the restraint felt more like he was clinging for support. He tried to pull free, and Beck fell against him.
With Beck weakly holding his arms, there was no way to fight. Torn between two impossible options. He didn’t want to hurt him--was pretty sure he’d die if he hurt him--but he also couldn’t let him be taken. He pushed back, shoving Beck so that he went sprawling on the floor, and dove for the vampire, whipping his wooden staff around to ram the pointed end through his heart.
It didn’t make it that far. Instead, he found himself slammed into the ground, vampires crawling from the wood works. He shouted for Beck to go, to run, begging the part of him that was still there to get away.
Instead, Beck, who had shakily gotten back to his feet, stood and waited for them to gather around him, stroking his hair and fixing their attention on his neck.
“Get away!”
“His blood is sweeter knowing he’s yours, hunter.”
“You’ll kill him,” Avery shouted. “He’ll die if you take any more, and then what?”
“Would you let us drink from you instead?”
Avery froze. This was a dangerous path to go down.
“Remove your wards and let us bite you and we’ll leave him alone.”
What good would he be then? Once they had his blood, he would have nothing left to defend himself with. But Beck was going to die. He could see it in the pallor of his skin and the sway of his posture. He couldn’t afford to lose another drop.
“I can’t let you do that,” Avery whispered.
“Then we’re going to have to ask you to leave.”
Avery shouted as he was dragged up from the ground, thrashing against the restraining hands. He’d worked too hard to find Beck. He couldn’t be set back to ground zero.
There was a pounding on his door, just before dawn, the tips of pink light already spreading in the sky.
Avery dragged himself to his feet, bound leg protesting and bandages pulling against his side. He’d fought his way free, but only just. Whoever needed his help would have to go somewhere else. They were just lucky he couldn’t sleep.
The pounding grew louder in the time it took him to haul his aching body across the house. “I’m coming, I’m coming!”
He tugged the door open and stared when he saw Beck standing on the other side, panicking but whole.
“Beck!” he reached for him, only to have him flinch back.
“Please. Please, Avery. You have to invite me in.”
Avery's stomach dropped, his heart pounding. No. They couldn't.
“Please.”
His eyes shot to the first rays of the sun on the horizon. “Come in, hurry,” he said, stepping aside and reaching for Beck, who flinched from his touch.
The door closed behind him, and Beck started shaking, hand pressed over his nose and mouth like he was holding in a sob. He backed away from Avery in the tight space of the hall.
“Beck, it's okay.”
“It's really, really not.”
“Come here,” Avery said gently. He had to put away his own fury and help Beck.
Beck shook his head sharply. “No, I can't. They haven't fed me in days. I--"
Avery saw it so clearly then, what could have happened, what they'd planned to happen. Either Beck would die in front of him, caught in the sun, or he'd invite him in and get drained by the young, starving vampire. Beck was clearly barely holding on. Only just restraining himself from attacking Avery.
Well, fuck them.
He went to Beck without a second thought, already dropping his wards and rolling up his sleeve to expose his wrist. “It's okay, take what you need.”
Beck stared at him, wide eyed. “No, you can't mean--”
“Beck, it's okay. I won't let you take too much.” He held out his hand, wrist up.
Suddenly paler than should have been possible, Beck backed away down the hall, shaking his head and refusing to breathe.
“My heart, you won't hurt me.”
“I can't. I can't drink from you.”
“You need to. You'll hurt someone if you don't.”
“So you want me to hurt you instead?” He was verging on hysterical
“First of all, that's my job. Second, I already told you you won't. I'll stop you before you can.”
“Please, no,” Beck breathed, words choking out of him. “I don't want to know what you taste like.”
Avery stepped forward calmly, catching his hands, his skin cold beneath Avery’s, and lifting them to his chest. “I’m not abandoning you. I’m not killing you, and I’m not going to just let you die. I planned to share my life with you, and that’s just… a little more literal now.”
Beck choked on a sob that might have been intended to be a laugh. “I’d really rather you let me go.”
His grip tightened. “Not going to happen.” He held onto him for a moment longer and then turned Beck’s hands over, placing his own in them, pulse point beating just under the surface.
It hurt, of course it did, when Beck’s teeth pierced his skin, but he’d had worse injuries in his time as a hunter--hell, he’d had this injury a fair number of times before he learned how to protect himself. The relief sagging Beck’s shoulders was worth a little twinge.
Before he could begin to feel more than a little light headed, he rested a hand on the back of Beck’s neck. “That’s enough.”
Beck practically leaped away from him, scrambling back until he was pressed against the far wall. “Fuck, no, I’m sorry.”
“Shh, no, Beck, I was just stopping you before it went too far. I’m fine.” He stepped carefully towards him.
Beck pressed a hand over his mouth and slid down the wall. “Like I don’t know how it feels.”
Avery’s stomach clenched. Beck had been bitten. Over and over, without time to heal, he was bitten and drained, a drop at a time until he died. “You didn’t hurt me,” he repeated, crouching in front of him. “I’ve been bitten before. I’m okay.”
“Never again.”
“Yes, again. Tomorrow.”
Beck shook his head sharply.
“You need to feed often or you could hurt someone. If they’ve been starving you, it’s going to take a few days before you can go between meals.”
“You are not a meal!”
Avery smiled softly and pressed a kiss to Beck’s forehead. “I love you, Beck. You’re going to be okay.”
Beck shook his head, eyes watering. “I can’t hurt you, Avery. Please don’t make me hurt you.”
“If the price I pay for having you back is a couple of bite marks, I will jump at the chance,” Avery said firmly.
Beck shook his head against him. “I don’t want to be like this.”
Avery shuddered. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”
“It’s not your fault,” Beck’s voice, usually so firm and brash, shook on the words. “I--I remember what happened to me under the thrall.”
Avery stiffened, breath sucked out of him.
“You came for me. You tried so hard to save me. I don’t blame you for any of this.”
“They did this to get to me, They would never have touched you if you weren’t mine.” Avery rested their foreheads together and held Beck’s hands to his chest. “I’d give anything to keep you safe.”
“And I wouldn’t trade my life with you for all the safety in the world.”
The shock from being forced to shift and shift and shift had worn off, and now he was planning his retribution. The only thing tempering his rage was the growing hunger.
“Are you ready to try a few easy experiments?”
Beck’s head snapped up. He had no intention of trying shit, but the man was laying out those damn gas-filled spheres on a tray and bringing them over along with the plugs for the air holes.
Beck narrowed his eyes and set his jaw. “The fuck are you trying to do?”
“Well, I want to see how far I can push you.”
He could certainly try.
The man was about to learn why every authority figure in Beck’s life had cursed his name and why even his friends despaired of ever getting him to do something he hadn’t always intended to do anyway.
“Shift your tattoos away.”
This was going to suck.
“Go fuck yourself,” he answered, tipping his chin up defiantly.
The man frowned. “Now, there’s no call for that,” he chided, reaching for the tray.
Beck braced himself. He didn’t know what he would be forced to become, but he knew he would not participate in his own destruction. He had just enough time to be seized with the sudden fear of being aquatic, of drowning on dry land, before whatever was in the sphere reacted with the air around him and filled the case with gas.
With a painful squeeze, his body crumpled in on itself.
All his muscles shrank, contracting sharply around bones that couldn’t quite keep up. Fur split his skin and a tail pushed free below his spine.
His strangled cry of pain came out a squeak, and, when the fog of it lifted, he was a rat in a glass case, staring up at an infinitely huge testing room.
The man tapped a pattern on the front of the glass, which glowed slightly at his touch, mimicking a keypad. It hummed a soft vibration that he could feel through his whiskers, and the top came free.
He ran.
There wasn’t anywhere to go, but adrenaline coursed through his body, spurred by the hands reaching for him. His best efforts to evade or sink his teeth into the the grip were pointless, though, and he was yanked to a stop by his tail and dangled in the air.
The room swayed, tilting around him while he tried to pull himself up, to bite or free himself or at least right the twisting world.
“We could have tested this a much less painful way,” the man tutted.
Beck’s heart pounded in his tiny chest.
His struggles, swinging freely at the end of the muscular tail, took on an edge of desperation when he saw surgical scissors in the man’s hand. If he’d had the voice to do it, he would have shouted or threatened, but there was nothing he could do to stop him from sliding his grip down the tail and cutting off the last half inch of muscle and bone.
His reality collapsed into that one point of pain.
The shrieking sounds that rat lungs could make were humiliating and inadequate in response to the white-hot, electric pain. It felt like losing part of a limb. It was losing part of a limb. He was dropped back into the case, blood spattered, streaking the floor around him with each distressed movement, and he shook, unable to shift back, unable to do anything while he waited for the time to be up.
He pressed into the corner of the cage.
The lid closed.
He was still gasping in pained cries when he shifted back.
It hurt.
Even human again, it hurt, sharp pain radiating from the curve of his tailbone. There wasn’t all that much blood spattered on the glass, but it felt like he’d lost a lot more.
“Why would--” Beck shuddered, swallowing down the desire to puke or sob. He wouldn’t give him that. “What the fuck was that for?”
“Can you still feel it?”
Beck breathed deeply, desperately working to get a hold of himself, and didn’t answer.
“I can try again,” the man offered.
“Yes,” he snapped. “Yes, I can feel it.”
“Shift back to a rat.”
“Go to hell.”
He sighed, like the whole process was putting him out, and selected another of the drugs.
Beck gritted his teeth and steeled himself.
The glass bead cracked and the transformation took him again. The shifting of his muscles, the shrinking of his bones--all that discomfort paled in comparison to the splitting shock of growing back a cut tail.
His tail: back, in all its disfigured glory.
Blood spilled freely again, and all of his instincts were screaming to run and hide and bite. He hauled his mind back from the brink of falling totally into animalistic terror and focused instead on shifting back. The faster he overcame the gas, the faster he stopped bleeding.
Time dragged torturously, seconds ticking out with the course of blood from his tail.
The man cleared his throat as they approached the minute mark. “Make it easy on yourself and shift to a mouse next.”
A moment later Beck knelt in front of him, human, hissing breaths through clenched teeth. “I have never once in my life gone easy on myself, and I’m not starting now.”
The man picked up the next dose, and Beck braced himself.
This time, he shrank even further, a mouse with soft white fur and a whole, if throbbing, fuzz covered tail. He trembled with relief to see the undamaged tip of the tail, even while the man hummed curiously and scratched out notes.
Rat wasn’t a form he defaulted to. It had never been a favorite.
He could lose a bit of tail there if nothing else changed.
The pain was there and the horror, the blood loss, but he wasn’t irrevocably damaged. Not in every shape. Not even in any shapes he liked.
He was still shaking with pain and relief when he shed the mouse, telling himself that he could keep defying the man and doing a decent job at believing it.
“Now, can we try that with markings or are you going to make me keep cutting off pieces of you?”
***
The noise of someone cursing and struggling with the display case woke Beck where he was sleeping, curled up as an arctic fox in the scraps of his clothing, his tail over his nose to keep out the cold. He squinted up at the familiar face.
Avery.
He jolted up, snapping into his human form, and pressed his hands to the glass. “Avery!”
“I’ll kill them. Whoever did this, I’m going to kill them,” he snarled. “Fuck, how do I get this open?”
Beck shook his head. “Some kind of touchpad. I don’t know how it works. God, Avery, how’d you find me?”
“I tracked your phone to a dumpster.” He slammed his hands against the glass. “Fuck!”
“Shh, don’t--”
“I see we have a rat out of the cage,” a voice commented idly from the doorway.
Beck stiffened. “Avery, run,” he breathed. “Don’t fight. Run.”
Avery tossed a disbelieving look over his shoulder at Beck, already shifting into place between the man and Beck’s cage. “Open it.”
“How did you even get in here?” the man said curiously, stepping towards them into the room.
He was too calm. Beck was beginning to panic.
“Don’t hurt him.” The words spilled out of Beck.
Avery reached for his sidearm, hand brushing the grip, but didn’t get it drawn before he fell with electric prods in his chest and current spasming his muscles.
“No!” Beck slammed against the glass. “Don’t hurt him, fuck, please. He doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
The man stepped casually over until he was standing over Avery. He looked between him and Beck, head cocking curiously to the side. “Inter-species copulation is generally frowned upon.”
“Fuck you.”
He tutted and leaned down, sliding a needling into Avery’s arm while he was still groaning his way back to consciousness. “Well, a complication, certainly. But I’m sure we’ll figure something out.”
“Don’t,” Beck breathed, but Avery’s eyes were sliding closed again before they’d even really opened.
“Waste not, want not.”
He hadn’t fought against his containment so hard in days, but nothing seemed to matter. His nails scraped uselessly on the glass, his hands and feet slammed into the sides without leaving a crack, and outside, Avery was dragged away.
Adopted out of a very intense tabletop rpg and given several thousands of pages of fiction, these two have had their serial numbers lightly filed off and a new life in every writing project I’ve had since. They tick every one of my favorite character boxes, so I’ve decided to keep them.
For personality and aesthetic purposes, here’s a board of them -- https://www.pinterest.com/operacricket/piece-of-me/
Assume all stories take place in separate AUs unless otherwise noted. They always follow a similar backstory and maintain their same characterization, so here’s that (keeping in mind that their original setting was cyberpunk noir):
Beckett O’Hare
Grew up with just his sister after having been orphaned at a young age. A series of losses (stand in parents and romantic alike) led to self-destructive behavior and abandonment issues, which he channeled into forming a criminal empire while he and his delinquent friends were still very young. Reckless, mean, and head-over-heels devoted to Avery.
Sometimes has magic, always verbal based.
Avery Carter
After becoming a mercenary and assassin in his early twenties to pay for his sister’s medical treatment, he spent a decade getting colder and more ruthless, despite his gut instincts being to protect people. When, in the course of a job, he came face to face with a child (not a child) running a crime ring and not trying very hard to stay alive, he became slightly obsessed with keeping Beck safe. After no small amount of angsting over the age gap, they became dedicated partners and eventually husbands, the crime lord and his loyal guard.
Sometimes has technology powers or skin-to-skin telepathy.
Stories Masterlist
Collateral - Beckett is used as collateral to push Avery into acting as a mercenary.
Shifter Series (Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5) - Beckett, a shapeshifter, is captured and used for a series of experiments.
The openness in her face thrummed an unfamiliar, painful emotion through Rylla’s chest. Vulnerability. The trust of letting someone see the hidden parts, and hoping they won’t destroy it. Rylla rarely felt that herself. The forest was her barrier, her isolation from the rest of the world. A wall, secreting her away so she was safe from harm, from pain. But then, Tarinne with starlight hair and willowbark eyes, growing over Rylla’s life like ivy. She was vulnerable now, and had to trust that Rylla would do the same.
South Korea
Age 29
Avery Carter is an independent LGBTQIA+ science fiction and fantasy writer, and author of The Moon Trilogy. Their greatest accomplishment (aside from publishing a few good books) is winning a city-wide compliment duel, or teaching one of their dogs the command “Excuse Me”. They proudly proclaim that they are the coolest person you know before quickly disproving it by talking…
