The Friday Five: Favorite Mencheres Scenes

 My guest blogger this week is my lovely friend and writing partner, @Bontempscutie.  I know this was a touch assignment for her. We both love Mencheres and I know I couldn't pick just five scenes! So let's see what btc picked this week!

Happy Friday Night Huntress Fans! It’s time for the next installment of the Friday Five! This week belongs to Mencheres.

I first fell hard for the gorgeous Mega Master Egyptian Vampire way back in One Foot In The Grave. I've always been a fan of historical fiction and I was immediately intrigued by the powerful and mysterious Mencheres who just happens to be based on a Pharaoh from the 4th Dynasty.

From the moment we meet him in the steam tunnels in OFITG you know he’s going to be something special:

Mencheres looked no older than thirty. He had long black hair, charcoal-colored eyes, and a hawkishness to his nose that, combined with his finely tinted skin, suggested Middle Eastern ethnicity. But it was his power level that flabbergasted me. His crackling aura was like nothing I'd ever felt before. No wonder Bones had said Ian wouldn't want Mencheres as his enemy. Feeling the power surging off him, neither did I.

Without further ado, and in the order they appear in the series, here are my Top 5.

In At Grave’s End we begin to understand some of Mencheres powers. It is revealed that he has visions, can read human and half-breed minds, is extremely strong, a deadly fighter, and can fly among other things. In this scene we learn he has powers beyond just the physical. He has just imploded the bones of the 23 brave souls who fought and died when Patra sent the grave after Cat and Co.:

Without raising his head, Mencheres pulled a knife from his lap. Then he stabbed it straight into his heart.
Dark blood poured from the wound, flowing as steadily as if his heart still beat. It covered the knife, his hands, and his clothes with a murky crimson liquid. Soon I wasn't even staring at that, however. I was staring with growing incomprehension as the red-smeared powdery substance that was the bones of the men who'd died began to separate, expand...and then form into figures.
Before my gaze, it looked like ghosts formed, shrouding Mencheres. He was muttering something in a language I couldn't even begin to recognize, and those hazy forms kept increasing. They grew until they looked like shadows come to life, because I could still see through them, but they were three-dimensional, all right.
Only when all twenty-three people who'd been killed the night before stood around him did Mencheres pull the knife out and speak.
"These are not our friends. They don't recognize any of you, and they have no memory of their former lives. They are the mindless rage that lingers in the remains of all murdered people, and I have yanked that rage from their bones and given it form. They will be drawn to their murderer with the single-minded purpose of revenge. All we have to do once I release them...is follow them. They will lead us right to Patra no matter where she hides."
Mencheres then lifted everyone else into the air and flew them to Patra's undisclosed location.

We learn so much more about him and the depths of what he knows about black magic in the Eternal Kiss of Darkness. This book is a feast for Mencheres’ fans. In Kira, Jeaniene has built the perfect partner and lover for Mencheres. Even if he finds it hard to believe at first.

I really enjoyed the scene in EKOD where Kira learned about Mencheres being a vampire. His internal dialogue was hysterical:

“Ah.” She smiled then, the first one he’d seen that didn’t look forced. “So, Mencheres the Egyptian vampire, are you really old, or are you as young as you look?”
He gave her a sideways look as he began walking back toward the house, feeling the oddest pang as he contemplated their age difference. “I’m older than dirt,” he answered dryly.
“A vampire with a sense of humor. I really didn’t know that existed,” she quipped with equal dryness. Mencheres didn’t answer. First, he was telling her things he had no reason to reveal, now he was joking about his age. How strange. He’d thought his sense of humor had expired a long time ago.
“I suppose putting that room back together will give me something to do for the next few hours,” Kira noted with a sigh.
“That is not necessary, you’ll . . . stay in another room.”
Mencheres almost tripped as he bit back the words that had so nearly crossed his lips: You’ll stay in my room. What possessed him even to think such a thing? He hadn’t found his sense of humor—he’d lost his mind.
Undead senility. There weren’t very many vampires left who were older than he was. Maybe it was an actual condition after all.

I have to admit I thought it was totally hot in EKOD when Mencheres arrives at the club to save Kira from Flare and co.:

Kira opened her eye in time to see the two doors across the room explode outward, ripped off the hinges by some invisible force. They crashed onto the floor with a thud that seemed to reverberate around the room. Flare, Baldy, and Dreadlocks jumped, backing away.
Then a tall cloaked figure swept into the room, long dark hair swinging with his rapid stride, charcoal-colored gaze turned to blazing green.
Kira’s heart felt like it skipped a beat. Mencheres.
His eyes seemed to meet hers without pausing over anyone else in the room. Then Mencheres stopped, his features hardening like sand turned to glass. The fury that emanated from him was palpable, making her heart skip a beat again.

So, you can’t talk about EKOD and not discuss the amazing sex scenes lol. But one of my faves, was the sex scene that wasn’t. The whole bathtub scene was hot! Here are bits and pieces of it. JF did an amazing job describing it. You can just picture him, water dripping down his body...:

Mencheres slid through the water toward her, drawn by the same inexorable compulsion that led moths to dance with flames.
Kira’s eyes darkened to a richer shade of green as he approached. He set his hands on either side of her, bracing against the ledge of the tub as he rose to his knees. Her legs brushed his chest, the water running down him soaking the ends of her dress, but she didn’t draw away. Instead, her scent flared with desire as she slowly perused his body.
“I can almost feel your gaze on me,” he murmured, heat winding into his loins as he sent his bath-warmed blood there at last.
“If you expected me not to look, Mencheres, you underestimate yourself.”
Her voice was husky, lingering over the syllables in his name like she was caressing them. He moved closer, pressing his body against her knees until she either had to edge away from him or open them.
Kira parted her legs, careless of the water that soaked her as he brought his body flush against hers, savoring her moan as their skins met. She slipped her arms around his neck, her fingers separating his hair into several thick strands while she stared into his eyes.

They chat, she finds out it's been a while since he had sex... and then the scene continues:

He laughed, pulling her down into the tub with him. “No. I’m warning you that I will show you no mercy.”
He kissed her with all of the pent-up hunger that had been raging in him for the better part of a millennium. Kira’s arms tightened around him, the taste of her mouth intoxicating, the caress of her tongue a sensual extravagance. Water sloshed from the tub as he pulled her dress off and flung it aside. Her bra and underwear were likewise discarded, until nothing interrupted the sleek smoothness of her flesh along his.

The scene comes to an abrupt end and once again we are reminded that Mencheres is a bad ass territorial vampire. Again, remember, water is dripping down his large, hard body...:

Mencheres shot from the tub with a snarl, only their centuries-long friendship stopping him from striking out with lethal force at the vampire who intruded. Gorgon stood in the bathroom doorway, his expression grim.

I could go on an on about various scenes from EKOD but you should just go ahead and read the book if you haven’t already. It really is an amazing story and we get to know so much more about Mencheres then we ever could have in the Night Huntress stories.

My last fave scene for the purposes of this post, is from This Side of the Grave. I loved that a huge chunk of the book found the unlikely trio of Cat, Vlad and Mencheres hanging out.  

I love the scene in TSOTG where Vlad thinks he has pulled one over on his dear old friend Mencheres. He wants to test Cat’s new found power before they go into battle:

“Now, let’s get in the graveyard and get started. Before Mencheres calls and then lectures us into an early grave about how imprudent this idea is.”

After Cat figures out the key to using her new power, she and Vlad head home:

“You two are back early,” a dry voice stated.
I glanced up to see Mencheres framed in the doorway of the town house. Vlad got out, shut his door a little harder than was necessary, and threw the Egyptian vampire a jaded look.
“Car trouble,” he said, in a voice that dared Mencheres to inquire further.
“You’re back a bit early yourself. Did you find anything interesting?” I asked, trying to divert his attention from the obvious fact that I was splattered in blood while the car looked and sounded fine.
“Nothing Dave had not already confirmed,” Mencheres replied, with a slight shrug.
“Don’t be disappointed, Cat. I didn’t expect to find anything. That’s not why I went,” Mencheres said, opening the front door for us.
My brows rose, but I went inside, figuring this conversation was best held somewhere other than on the small lawn. Vlad glanced at Mencheres with equal curiosity but also followed me inside. Once the door was shut, I gave a longing glance at the couch but stayed standing.
“Are you going to tell us why you went, then?” I asked.
“Because even if I didn’t expect to find anything new, it would be foolish not to make certain,” Mencheres said. He leaned against the door frame, the picture of nonchalance. “Besides, if I hadn’t left, then you wouldn’t have attempted to exercise your new powers, would you?” he added.
“You knew?” I blurted, not sure which stunned me more; the fact that Mencheres was obviously aware that I had the ability, or that he’d let me try using it without telling Bones on me. “Did you, um, know because you saw it?” It would be great if his visions were back up to full strength again . . .
The look Mencheres gave me—and Vlad, too, I noticed—was pointed. “No. But I, too, heard you this morning, so I didn’t need a vision to predict what Vlad would do if the two of you were left alone long enough. People’s natures can be far more telling than even visions at times.”
Vlad let out a chuckle. “You sly dog, you set me up! Here I thought I was pulling one over on you, but in reality, you were playing me like a chess piece.”
Mencheres flashed him a grin that was full of mischief. I stared, never having seen the normally reserved mega-Master vampire with such a wicked, teasing expression.
“You forget, Vlad, I’m the one who trained you in deviousness. Maybe in a few more centuries, you’ll be able to outwit me, but not yet.”

TSOTG is another fabulous installment in the Night Huntress series and is FILLED with Mencheres goodness. If you haven’t read the series yet it’s not too late - there’s still plenty of time before the latest book comes out at the end of this month.

Thanks Mare for giving me this delicious assignment! I had a great time hunting through the books to find the passages for all of my fave Mencheres scenes. But it also made me realize a full NH reread is in order!

And for those of you that have read the NH books, please be sure to tell me which Mencheres scenes were your faves! I had to cut 3 scenes just to finish this post, and yes, they were all from EKOD lol. Thanks for reading!
~btc