by Chanel Smith
When he went home, he hadn’t thought to seek medical help. He tended to his strange wounds himself. But by the next full moon, he knew something was wrong. The rabies mutated in his supernatural body and when he had shifted, he had found that he couldn’t shift back until after the entire passing of the moon. The next month, he was unable to shift back at all and had completely lost his mind. He was attacking hikers, wild animals and even other weres that he found in the forest.
It was the night that Veronica took him down that the Witch Bridget and the Samurai Takamori had been watching, perched high in a tree. They had been out hunting as well; seeking out the bear and deer they loved to feed on when they had caught her scent and followed her. They had watched as she cornered the rabid supe and brought him down; swiftly and painlessly.
“At least she is humane,” Takamori had commented quietly.
“Yet she killed her own kind. It is deplorable.”
“Not all of us deserve to live, Witch. As a Watcher, it may suit you to remember that always.”
“If you say so, Samurai,” she had replied with disdain.
Takamori had scoffed at her and then replied, “This one is the Huntress. She kills for good; not out of malice and hate. She kills to protect the innocent and to ensure the continued survival of our kind.”
“How do you determine that?”
“We still rely on our anonymity. We must remain cloaked in the shadows of darkness and the words within fairy tales if we are to continue to exist. She is doing what she can to ensure that no undue attention is brought to our existence. The were would have created unnecessary commotion.”
“Perhaps.”
For months after their encounter in the forest, the witch and the samurai followed Veronica. They gave regular reports of her whereabouts and her actions to Agrippina, who had become particularly interested in her. It was her thought that when she began to lose her older Watchers, as was soon bound to happen, she would need new vampires to take their place. Finding virtuous and talented candidates in advance would only make the transitional process for all involved a little bit easier.
The two watched in silence as she seemed to dedicate herself to ridding the California coast of all rogue, evil, inhumane and generally non-compliant vampires and other supernaturals. But Veronica did not limit her hunting to those of the preternatural persuasion. Humans were also in her sights as long as their behavior was less than desirable. The irony they found in her mission was that when she took issue with humans of this particular nature, she ‘donated’ them to the local bleeders.
“Waste not, want not!” Veronica had said after making another delivery. She always said that whenever she had the occasion to make a donation of that kind.
***
Rand smiled. His sexy, full lips seemed to play with it. They were sitting in the living room of the fabulous suite that Andrew, the purser, had placed them in.
"I don't know what to think. She wants me to stay away, never show my face again in L.A. Hell, probably the west coast. I agreed to it immediately, of course, but that’s when I thought I’d get a moment to think about the implications over the next couple of nights."
"Then she fucking dropped you off on a one way cruise to where-ever-the-hell! Don’t you give a shit about that? Don’t you care that you’ve essentially been exiled from your home?"
"I haven’t had the time to start to care yet. I only want to get in your pants at the moment," he said sincerely. "Somehow, it's all that matters to me, all that I can think about right now."
He picked up one of her hands and lightly kissed the palm, sending a bolt of lust up her arm. She gasped at the sensation.
"You’re quite the romantic, aren’t you?"
"Of course, I am. I'm very romantic."
“I’m not much for the romance, Rand. If you haven’t figured me by now, I really just want to fuck.”
“Well, Veronica,” he said smiling into her eyes, “I can’t help myself, but I’m enough of a gentleman to know when to quit it and oblige a lady.”
“I’m no lady, either,” she retorted.
He took one last sip of his whiskey and set the empty glass on the table. Carefully, he divested Veronica of her red-stained glass, placing it beside his. Rand’s hands went directly to her blouse, his lips to the cold flesh of her neck. A shiver ran down his spine and a groan escaped his throat. Unbuttoning her shirt, he kissed his way down each new area of skin that became exposed. His lips wandered back up her neck to her lips and she sighed openly when he nibbled on the lower one. A fang scraped his lip, and she tasted his blood on her tongue.
With a groan, she moved forward to sit on top of him and threw her leg over his to straddle his lap. The bulge in his jeans was insistent, encouraging. She grasped his head between both her hands and kissed him even more ferociously. Rand was panting when she broke away to speak to him.
“Strange,” she said huskily. “Usually you’re trying to stick it to my kind with a different kind of stake.”
They were on the luxurious couch in the living room of the suite and as insanely comfortable as it was, Rand could not stop picturing the California king-sized bed he had spied while briefly looking through the cabin when they first entered the suite. He sighed at the thought of the soft mattress covered in billows of a cloudy down comforter, but mostly, he sighed at the thought of spreading Veronica Melbourne out on it and pinning her down with his hard, fully aroused body. He cupped her ass with both of his big hands, pulled her firmly to his body and stood from the couch.
He made his way directly for the bedroom door, forgetting everything about the low coffee table. As he began to fall, he dexterously turned so he went down on the table and Veronica came down on him, splintering the piece of furniture. For a moment they stared at each other; him with his back flat on the floor, and her still with both her legs wrapped around his waist. They both burst out laughing.
"Why am I envisioning us as looking like a picture you’d be likely to find in the pages of the Kama Sutra?" she managed to get out between fits of giggles.
That set him off.
"I could show you a few more of those,” he said, bellowing with laughter.
"I knew you'd sweet talk me into sex sooner or later anyway," she got out before the smiles dissolved and a sultry look returned to her eyes.
Without releasing her stare, he picked her up and carried her into the bedroom, kicking the door closed behind him. Veronica's laughter faded as she caught sight of the decadent bed. Normally she slept face down on a cramped twin-sized bed, but the field of cotton and down that she was about to be spread out on was something from a magazine.
"Hope you don't mind the muchness," she said, all of a sudden overcome with guilt. “I just told the purser to give me a really nice suite. I didn’t expect him to put us in a wing at Buckingham Palace.”
His laughter boomed.
"Take a good look, cause none of that matters. We'll be tearing it up in a matter of moments.”
Releasing her legs, he lowered her to her feet and sat on the edge of the bed looking up at her. "I’ve never had sex with a vampire. Never wanted to, either. What is it about you, Veronica?”
Curious and wary, she responded, "Perhaps we’re just the same person in different packages. You love yourself, don’t you?"
"Yeah, I do.”
She relaxed and grinned. "Then why wouldn’t you want to have sex with someone who reminds you of yourself?”
He kicked off his boots, and pushed himself all the way up to the headboard propped up by the mountains of pillows piled behind his back. He sat, looking at her with an expectant, eager look on his face.
Veronica didn’t need a cue card.
She raised both her arms straight up in the air, pointing at the ceiling and looked at him. She smiled and began her little tease by performing slow Egyptian figure eights with her hips while lowering her hands to undo a button on her shirt. Swaying from side to side to music only she could hear, she could f
eel the cool air hit the uncovered skin. Leisurely, she unbuttoned the next one, then swayed again for him and undid the last one. Holding his gaze as long as she could, she turned and leaned backwards until her fingertips touched the ground and then she shimmied her shoulders and the shirt slid right off her arms.
Rand hadn't moved; he just kept both eyes trained on her. Occasionally, his hand went to the front of his pants, seemingly making adjustments for his comfort. She grinned to herself and continued.
Unzipping her leather pants in one deliberate movement, she turned in a slow circle; first baring her belly button, then her thong, and finally her long bare legs. Standing in only her bra and the thong, she stepped toward the bed and crawled up onto it, shedding the thong as she went. Kneeling beside him, she pulled his hand toward her, tucking it between her spread legs. Then she suggestively rotated on it, flinging her head back with pure sensuality. As she allowed the tips of Rand’s fingers to explore her moistened valley, she unhooked the bra. When he looked up at her, both hands held the bra in place as if she were too shy to display herself. Rand restlessly stretched his legs out, and she couldn't help but notice his enormous bulge.
It was all he could stand. With a muffled shout, he rocketed off the bed, grabbed her and threw her down. To her delight, she became aware that he was damn near out of control. Reaching up, she ran her fingers through the warm silk of his short-cut hair. Deep in his throat, he made a purring noise as he pressed his hardness against her belly.
Nearly delirious with need, she writhed against him. With one shaking hand, she followed the thin line of hair down his muscular belly until she found him and he pushed into her hand with a groan. Judging from the size of him, Veronica was never so glad to be a vampire. His fingers caressed her briefly before he inserted a finger inside her and found that special spot and she abruptly exploded. Everything went white as Rand moved up to kiss her, inserting himself with one hand. Oh, it almost hurt, but she was more than ready, and he slowly and gently filled her. He shivered and moaned at the same time. When he was finally all the way in, they remained locked together for a moment; she opened her eyes to find his dark ones boring intensely into hers.
When he was as deeply inside her as possible, something passed between the two of them. And when it happened, she couldn't move from the shock. For a heartbeat, she could feel what Rand felt; to be deep within her, hard as a rock, surrounded by her strange coldness. How her hands rustled through his hair, her tongue twined around his. She knew that he had never felt anything like what he was feeling and it was driving him crazy with lust. She wondered if he was having the same telepathic experience she was, and her answer came immediately.
“I feel you,” Rand breathed into her neck as he started to move inside her, “in my head.” He whimpered with every tiny move. “I hear your thoughts too, Veronica Melbourne.”
It was an awesome, humbling event.
Exploding with questions, she opened her mouth, but Rand covered her lips with his and began to move inside her with purpose. She was lit aflame. Her long legs wrapped around his waist and drew him in even further. He roared and plunged deeper, meeting her repeatedly in every thrust of her hips. Heat poured over them like the air from a sauna. Helplessly she clawed his shoulders with her nails, raked his neck with her fangs and fed tenderly but voraciously from her lover. Rand gripped her closer and she began to shriek at each thrust. There was a pounding on the wall, but neither of them heard it.
He thrust up into her once, twice, and then exploded, groaning loudly and throbbing deep within her. Her own orgasm was continuous, and she was shaking through it. Finally, she collapsed on the bed, sweating blood. The force within her dissipated a bit, and she realized it was with him too, linking them solidly.
"Is it a vampire thing, sex like that?" he finally had to ask, enjoying the soreness that came from being well loved.
"It's never been like that with anyone else before.”
"That was the weirdest, and at the same time the best, sex I've ever had!”
She reached down and kissed those lips of his; for a split second, the telepathic link returned, and in that instant she knew the feeling of her own lips touching his, and her tongue darting out to lick his lower lip.
"Oh, goddess," she said, delighted. "It just happened again."
Rand held Veronica close to his chest and they said nothing more to each other, allowing the new silence of the room to engulf them and ease them into a deep sleep.
Chapter Five
Set pulled his car into the gas station. The gauge was low, so it was time to fill up. At the same time, he could feel his insides vibrating. He was hungry. He hoped that someone, anyone, would make themselves vulnerable to him that night.
When he got out of the car, he felt his wings bang up against the door. He so badly wanted to stretch them out, give them some much needed freedom. But he had to hunt quietly for now. Exposing himself would limit his options greatly.
As he purchased thirty dollars’ worth of gas and roamed around the store, pretending to be interested in their wide variety of food items, Set was happy to spot a young girl drifting around the parking lot of the gas station. Her skin was pale but was just beginning to catch a light tan from the early summer sun and her long brown hair had been hastily tied back in a knot. She had a large backpack over her shoulders. Runaway hitchhiker. That was just the way he loved them.
She kept moving from person to person, car to car that was pulled up in the parking lot. It was quite obvious that she was looking for someone to give her a ride. But everyone had told her no. Recent changes in Louisiana legislation meant more stringent charges for human trafficking; no one was willing to take the chance on a young girl trying to hitchhike her way out of town. This was good.
College students who were traveling the country on vacation, hitchhikers and even tourists, were Set’s favorite types of meal. They were the ones that people already knew were gone. They wouldn’t be looked for until they had already fallen victim to him and he was long gone. That made them special, it also made them taste even better; it was the adrenaline probably.
Set licked his lips and finished filling up the car. His eyes followed the girl as she walked into the nearby diner. As the door swung shut behind her, he put the nozzle back in its cradle and went to park his car. When he got out, he headed over to the diner. Inside, he saw the usual suspects; an old cop, two people who looked a lot like they were married, the waitress who was clearly not enjoying the attention she was getting from the cop, and his little runaway girl. Set made sure to take up a seat near the door; that would allow him to have a good vantage point of the entire diner, as well as keep an eye on anyone coming in or leaving.
“Anything I can get you, hon?” The waitress asked him.
Set looked up at her. She was young and pale. Very pretty. She’d make a good meal. The only problems were the fact that she worked here, and the cop. She simply wasn’t worth the trouble.
“Just coffee,” he said.
He hated the stuff, but he knew that’s what people drank when sitting at a diner alone.
She scribbled that down on her notepad and then looked up and asked, “No food or nothing?”
Set smiled at her.
“Not hungry.”
“Fair enough. I’ll be right back!”
She scampered off and left Set to watch his prey. She was nursing her own cup of coffee and a slice of pie. She didn’t seem to be interested in talking to anyone seated near her at the counter, but Set imagined it wouldn’t be long until the cop turned his attention to her.
Sure enough, almost right after the waitress delivered his cup of coffee, the cop slid over a few stools and started chatting up the young traveler. Set watched as she squirmed uncomfortably and smiled politely. This only made her seem more delicious. He only hoped that the police officer wouldn’t try and follow her out once she left the diner. He could take the cop easily, but Set didn’t need the extra mess.
He
watched them carefully, occasionally sipping the drink to make it look like he ordered it for a reason.
“Never seen your type around here,” the waitress said as she refilled his cup. That act alone made him want to kill her. But he resisted and engaged in her conversation. At least this would help pass the time.
“What type is that?” he asked.
“Handsome,” she said, with a wink.
Set forced a smile and quickly glanced over at the police officer. He was still trying to chat up the girl. She looked more and more disinterested the longer the conversation seemed to get.
“What brings you through Louisiana?” the waitress asked.
Set looked back up at her.
“The food,” he said, with a toothy smile.
She waved her one free hand in the air with excitement.
“Oh boy, are you in for a treat!”
“I certainly hope so,” Set said, letting his big smile drop from his face suddenly.
The waitress stood stunned, looking at the strange expression that was on his face. Finally, she shook her head vigorously, turned on her heel and left and Set saw the girl packing up her things. The cop looked disappointed, but thankfully he didn’t follow her out. The waitress returned to the counter and the cop turned his attention back to her.
Set waited patiently, watching intently. The girl had gone down the front steps to the diner and turned down the road. Since no one had agreed to give her a ride she had simply decided to continue walking down the road until maybe someone did decide to stop and give her a lift. He waited until he could no longer see her from the window, then he placed a few bills on the table and headed straight for his car. He started the engine and backed out onto the road. He hoped that no one had picked her up as yet. There hadn’t been many cars heading in her direction, but there was the possibility she was so desperate that she’d even take a ride from someone who was headed the other way.