Blood Melody

by Val St. Crowe

  Also, it was the middle of the night. I didn’t want to bother anyone in the pack with this right now. I’d rather let them sleep.

  Finally, I called Sinead, who answered groggily, but seemed awake once she realized it was me. She had tons of questions for me, and I deflected them, promising to explain everything in the morning. I only wanted to know if she knew if there were any empty cabins with three bedrooms.

  She woke up Ewan.

  Ewan told me there was a cabin with five bedrooms, and it was structurally fine, but that the kitchen had been damaged during the raid. The bloods had pulled appliances out and thrown them at the walls, that sort of thing. So, we could sleep there, but we couldn’t cook there.

  Fine. I was sold on that.

  I went and told Landon and Desta that we were relocating.

  “Look,” said Landon, “I’m not staying in the village. I was just making sure that you were settled, and then I was going to head out.”

  “You’re staying,” I said. “I might need your help with Aston.”

  “Hey, Camber,” he said, “I don’t know if you got the memo, but you’re not my alpha, and you can’t tell me what to do.”

  “You’re staying,” I repeated. “Now, go and pick up Aston and take him with us. The place is furnished. There are beds and blankets and everything we’ll need. We’ll just have to go somewhere else to cook food.”

  “A bigger place?” said Desta, sounding a little too relieved. “Not that this place isn’t really… cozy, Camber.”

  “Just come on,” I said. “Both of you.”

  Landon pointed at me. “I’m helping you out, but you really have to stop ordering me around, okay?”

  “Fine,” I said. “Landon, will you please stay and help me with Aston Waterfield?”

  “Yes,” he muttered, and he headed back to the living room.

  I followed him.

  When we got there, Aston was awake. He was sitting up on the couch, rubbing the back of his head, and looking around, his brows knitted together. Then he saw us. He pointed. “You.”

  “Me?” I said.

  “Not you,” said Aston, getting to his feet. “You.” He was pointing at Landon. “You’re that bloodhound whose chip I took out for Desta.” He did a double take. “Desta!”

  I peered over my shoulder. Desta was in the doorway. “Hi, Aston,” she said.

  “What’s going on?” said Aston. “Where are we? The last thing that I knew, Viggo’s building was burning, and then someone clubbed me over the head and—”

  “That was me,” said Landon. “You’ve been kidnapped.”

  Aston’s eyes got like saucers. “Kidnapped?” he said in a tiny voice. “Really? Oh, no.” He sat down heavily on the couch, distraught. “I’m not equipped for high-stress situations like kidnapping. Troubleshooting in the lab, sure. I’m good with that. It’s a controlled environment. This? This… is… so rustic.” He narrowed his eyes. “Where am I?”

  “That’s not important,” I said. “What’s important is that you’re my prisoner, and if you don’t do as I say, you’re going to be very, very sorry.”

  “I’m in a werewolf pack village, aren’t I?” said Aston, hand to his forehead. “I heard they were like this. Like one of those lodges out in those awful tourist trap mountain getaways. Blood and fangs, the kitsch!”

  “It’s not kitschy!” I said, offended. “I decorated this place myself. Well, some of it. I mean, some of it was here, but it’s very understated, and I like it, and you—” I broke off. “The decor is not important.”

  “What do you want with me?” said Aston. “If you think the vampires are going to pay to get me back, you’re wrong. They couldn’t give a flying fang about me. But no,” and now he seemed to be talking to himself, “that can’t be it. Because you’re werewolves, and vampires don’t make deals with werewolves, and how would you even deliver the ransom note? So that can’t be it. You must want something else from me, but what?”

  “Look, we’ll talk about that later,” I said. “For now, we’re going across town to a bigger cabin. Since you’re awake, you can walk.”

  Aston got to his feet and rushed across the room at me.

  Landon growled, stepping into his path.

  Aston let out a high-pitched scream. “Don’t do that.”

  “Don’t try to attack her,” said Landon.

  “I wasn’t trying to attack her,” said Aston. He peered around Landon at me. “I was going to get down on my knees and kiss your knuckles and beg you to let me go. You don’t want me. I’m a worthless hostage, and I’m ever so particular about decorations, and I eat a lot. Which maybe doesn’t matter if you were planning to kill me? Please don’t kill me. I’m too young and too pretty to die.”

  I turned to Desta. “You didn’t tell me he was like this.”

  “Like what?” said Desta.

  I sighed. “Listen, we’re not going to kill you.”

  “No?” Aston clasped his hands over his heart in relief.

  “As long as you help us, that is.”

  “Help you? How can I possibly help you? What could I do that would be at all meaningful to werewolves?” He turned to Desta. “Actually, I’m not really clear on what you’re doing here. Is this you and the bloodhound running away together or something?”

  “No,” said Landon.

  “No,” said Desta at the same time.

  “It’s kind of a long story,” I said to Aston. “I’ll tell you while we walk.”

  Aston looked back and forth between Landon and me. “I guess I don’t have a lot of choice in the matter, right?”

  “Right,” I said.

  “Okay,” Aston said in a small voice. “Let’s go.”

  We set out from the cabin.

  After walking for three seconds, Aston spoke up. “You said you’d explain on the way. You’re not explaining.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Patience is a virtue.”

  “No, it’s not,” said Aston. “It absolutely is not. Patient people get nothing except disappointment. Eager people get ahead. I’m eager. So, come on, tell me what’s going on. As long as you’re not going to change your mind and kill me. Or if you were lying about that. Please, please, don’t lie about that. I would really rather know it was coming, you know. I mean, I’d rather not die at all, so if I could talk you out of killing me—”

  “I’m not planning to kill you,” I said. “But you kind of talk a lot.”

  “Yeah,” said Aston. “Yeah, people tell me that.”

  “Look,” I said, “I made a deal with the bloodhounds in the area. I said I’d get you to remove their chips. In return, they don’t attack our pack.”

  “Ohhh,” said Aston. “Smart.”

  I smiled. “Yeah, I thought so.”

  “But I can’t do it,” said Aston.

  I stopped walking. “What?”

  “I, um, I can’t remove their chips,” Aston squeaked. “Oh, blood and fangs, does this mean you’re going to kill me now? Don’t kill me!”

  “You removed Landon’s chip,” I said.

  “Well, yeah, but that was back in the city in my lab. I need my equipment to do that. I need a general anesthetic to perform the procedure. It’s basically surgery, you get that? I don’t even have a sterile environment here. We’re in the middle of the woods.”

  “I’ll get you all those things,” I said. I wasn’t sure how exactly yet, but I was going to figure it out. I hadn’t come this far to let logistics get in the way of success.

  “You will?” said Aston.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And if I do that, remove all the chips, you won’t kill me?”

  “No,” I said.

  Aston considered this. “Okay, sounds like a great deal. I’ll be happy to help. Sure thing.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “You got him?” Ewan was saying. “You really got him?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Aston is locked up in that bedroom right there. He said he’d help u
s. We just have to get him all the equipment he’ll need to do the procedure.”

  “This is excellent,” said Ewan, who had come with Sinead bright and early that morning, bringing breakfast.

  We were in the living room, and the living room was pretty sizable in this cabin. It had high ceilings and exposed rough-hewn beams. On the far wall, there was a stone fireplace.

  Landon was already awake, but Desta wasn’t. She wasn’t used to being awake during the day. She would tend to stay away from sunlight most of the time, after all. I expected her to sleep through the day, and then we were going to have to figure out what to do about blood. She could feed on me for the time being. It was the easiest solution.

  “Oh,” I said, rushing over to Sinead. “You brought coffee.”

  “But of course,” she said, grinning at me. “You know, you have to stop running off on your own like this. The pack gets worried.”

  “They get annoyed too,” said Ewan. “Judah was pretty pissed off. If he’d come after you, he would have been able to stop you. You couldn’t have used your alpha woo-woo on him.”

  “Sorry about that, Ewan,” I said. “But it turned out I wasn’t alone. Landon came along with me.”

  “Yeah, I see that,” said Ewan, giving Landon a hard look.

  Sinead gave me a hopeful smile. “How are things?”

  “Fine,” I said. I mouthed, Later, to her. We’d have some things to catch up on. I turned to Landon. “Hey, you want some coffee?”

  Landon eyed Ewan warily, but when he looked at Sinead, she was smiling widely. It seemed her smile was contagious. He smiled back. He made his way over to us.

  I poured some coffee into cups for all of us.

  “I’m so excited to finally meet you,” said Sinead. “Camber never shuts up about you.”

  I glared at her. “Sinead, that is not true.”

  “I have that affect on her,” Landon acknowledged, winking at me.

  “This is my former best friend, Sinead,” I told Landon. “And her mate, Ewan.”

  Sinead offered Landon her hand.

  Landon seemed surprised by this. “It’s been a long time since I’ve shaken hands with someone,” he said, but he did it, putting his furred hand in Sinead’s.

  Not to be outdone, Ewan came over to shake Landon’s hand too. “Look, I’m not trying to be a dick,” said Ewan, “it’s only that whatever is going on with you and our alpha, it kind of freaks us out.”

  “Nothing’s going on,” said Landon, giving me a sideways glance.

  “Nope, nothing at all,” I agreed. “Let’s eat breakfast, huh?”

  We were interrupted by a pounding on one of the doors. A voice from within called. “Let me out or I’m going to piss all over the door.”

  I made a face. “That’ll be Aston. He’s awake. Joy.”

  * * *

  For days, we were at the beck and call of Aston, going wherever it was that he thought we should go to get supplies. Mostly, we climbed the fence at night and stole from doctor’s offices and clinics in human towns. We weren’t about to go back into the capital city yet.

  Word had spread about what had happened there, and Ondine and her supporters had been successful in taking over the city. They had managed to get most of the vampires on their side, and they were assuring the general populace that nothing would change.

  But Viggo?

  He’d escaped, and no one knew where he was.

  I had hoped he’d burned up in his apartment, and I was a little disappointed to discover he was on the loose. Heck, he could be roaming around in our woods. He could be anywhere.

  While we were raiding human villages, we brought back blood bags for Desta. In any given town, there were always bags of blood ready to be shipped out from human donations, so we skimmed some off the top here and there.

  In the evenings, I tried to keep peace between Desta and Landon, both of whom seemed increasingly uncomfortable with the pack. I liked having them close to me, but I worried that neither of them was happy.

  To be fair, Landon was probably reacting to the fact that the pack wasn’t treating him well. They thought of him as a threat to me, and they wanted him gone.

  They weren’t particularly fond of Desta either, but they trusted she wouldn’t hurt me, as my sister, and they rarely saw her, because she stayed indoors during the day.

  We were working on making a sterile room in the main lodge for Aston to work on the bloodhounds. Aston himself was demanding, and he seemed to enjoy ordering everyone around.

  When it came to any sort of vaguely threatening behavior, though, he was a complete coward who would agree to anything to save his skin. He didn’t seem the least bit upset about not being in the vampire city anymore. In fact, he made lots of disparaging comments about the vampires from time to time.

  Of course, I didn’t know what to make of that. I wasn’t sure if he wasn’t putting on an act to lull us all into a false sense of security. He might be planning to weaponize the supplies we were getting for him and hurt us all. So, no matter how helpless he appeared, I made sure that he was always locked in and always guarded by several strong wolves (or Landon if I could spare him and he was willing).

  I wasn’t taking any chances when it came to Aston.

  Within a week, we had the room set up fairly well, and Aston was wandering around in it, touching everything, making little hmms and ahhs and muttering to himself.

  I was annoyed. I folded my arms over my chest, standing in the doorway. “Well?”

  “Well, you’ve done everything I asked,” said Aston, turning to me and grinning. “So, if I told you that what I really needed to continue this job was some porn, what would you say?”

  I glared at him.

  “Gay porn, if that’s not obvious,” he said. “I mean, when I was designing the bloods, they kept telling me to go more menacing with them, but I really wanted something that was aesthetically pleasing, you know? I wanted to make a monument to the male form, really go for it in terms of strength and masculinity. Give them a bestial grace.” He sighed, his eyes going unfocused as if he was picturing the bloodhounds in his minds’ eye.

  “You ruined people’s lives,” I said. “You turned them into monsters. Into slaves.”

  “Me?” He touched his chest with both hands. “I didn’t do anything. I was just a tool used by the vampires. I had to do as they said or they would have killed me.”

  “Well, you said you found a way to make them less menacing looking,” I said, although I thought the bloods looked plenty menacing. The fact that I also found Landon attractive, well… what was the point in thinking too hard about that? “You could have found a way out of some of the other, more devastating aspects of the bloods.”

  “Like what?” he said. “I did do a prototype where they weren’t covered in fur, but then the werewolf DNA was less prominent, and they were too vulnerable to sunlight.”

  “Like the rage mode, for instance,” I said. “That’s disgusting.”

  He considered. “Mmm. Well, that prototype didn’t fly either. The rage mode was one of the vampires’ requirements.”

  “Why did it have to be linked to arousal?”

  “Because I had to use excess testosterone to fuel it, and I needed to find some way to get the body to release it,” he said. Then he cocked his head to one side. “Wait a minute. It’s you and Landon, not your sister.”

  Okay, we were not having this conversation. “Does the room live up to your specifications or not?”

  “I mad something at one point,” said Aston. “An injection that would suppress the rage mode.”

  “You did?” I said, and my heart started to pick up speed. “But why?”

  “Oh, purely out of… a personal desire to, um, get closer to one of the bloods.”

  I glowered at him. “You wanted to have sex with your creation. You’re like… some kind of amoral mad scientist aren’t you?”

  He shrugged. “Well, I’m not mad.” He grinned at me. “I bet yo
u want that injection.”

  My jaw twitched. “We could bring the bloodhounds in here now? You could remove the chips?”

  “The injection is only a temporary thing,” said Aston. “It would last maybe an hour, maybe two. It wouldn’t be a complete fix or anything.”

  My mouth was dry. “If you have everything you need, we’ll bring in the bloods tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “Well,” said Sinead, “what does he need in order to make you the injection?” She was sitting in the ruined kitchen in the big cabin where everyone was staying. We’d gone there to talk because no one ever came in that room. It was still a mess. The fridge was overturned and the stove had been thrown into the dishwasher. The table and chairs were all right, though. We were sitting there.

  “I didn’t actually ask him that,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “I… couldn’t bear needing something from him,” I said. “All this time, I’ve had the upper hand. If he knows he has something I need—”

  “Well, that’s the way the relationship has gone thus far. You need his expertise and in return, you aren’t killing him.”

  “True,” I said.

  We were quiet.

  “You know what I think?” said Sinead. “I think you’re afraid to get your hopes up again. You had that whole idea with the silver chains, and it didn’t work out, and you’ve been trying to banish Landon from your head and your heart ever since. This injection, it could mean that you and Landon could mate. That everything could work out and you could have everything you want. You’re terrified of that.”

  I took a deep breath. “Oh, blood and fangs, you’re right. That’s exactly why I’m holding back on this.”

  “It’s understandable,” she said.

  “What if Aston’s just making it up?” I said. “What if the injection isn’t real?”

  “That’s a risk you’d be taking,” she said.

  “I get the impression he’s never tested it on anyone,” I said. “It could be that it’s all theory, and it won’t work in reality.”

  “Could be,” said Sinead.

  I chewed on my lip.

  She reached across the table and covered my hand with her own. “Hey. I like Landon.”