Vampire Romance: AMBER - The Grue Series (Vampire Romance, Paranormal, The Grue Series Book 1)

by Adams, Nancy

  Just feeling his heart pulse in my hand sent me back over the edge and I had a genuine orgasm, one that had been building up every time I had fed. I hadn’t quite managed to finish eating it before the light went out in his eyes, but I sat there holding what was left of his heart, sitting on what was left of his body, for more than a minute. I was still quivering from such incredibly intense sensations.

  When I finally regained my senses, I looked at Jordan’s body and thought about how to conceal it. Here in a park in the midst of the city, I was limited in options, and I wished I’d taken him somewhere else, but it was too late to cry over spilled milk—well, spilled blood, in this case. I decided to bury him under some big bushes I saw close by, and so I turned my attention to my hearing to be sure no one was approaching.

  A heart was beating, and someone was breathing, not even a dozen feet away, and I had been so absorbed in what I was doing to Jordan that I had failed to notice. I spun to see who it was, heartsick that I would have to kill another person that night, a person whose only crime might be that he happened to come upon me as I fed, and saw what I was. My eyes found him instantly, and my heart sank.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Nathan

  There are not words to describe the horror of what I saw when I went after Jordan Prentiss that night. I had lain in wait near his home, hoping to catch him as he parked his car, take just one shot and make it count. He had taken one of the most precious lives in the world; I thought it fitting that he pay for that crime with his own life.

  I knew that others might share that opinion, but I never would have guessed that Miss Amber would be one of them. When I saw Jordan pull into the park, I followed in the hope of getting that shot in a place where I might be able to escape undetected afterward. I saw where he parked, but I was too far away to risk a shot that would most likely miss, so I stalked him as he moved stealthily through the trees and brush.

  I didn’t see Miss Amber until she rushed him, and I didn’t recognize her even then. I thought my eyes were deceiving me, for I suddenly saw a nearly naked white girl run faster than possible and grab him, throw him against the tree he’d been hiding behind. I shook my head, but when I focused my eyes again, that girl was still there, and Jordan was struggling in her grasp.

  I moved closer, as silently as I could. For a moment I actually considered rescuing Jordan from whoever this girl was, so that I could have the pleasure of killing him myself, but then she began to speak.

  And I knew her voice. At that moment I saw her face in profile, and realized that it truly was our Miss Amber, that somehow she had overpowered this man and was holding his struggling, fighting form with only one hand. I was stunned, of course I was, but I could no more have turned away from what I was seeing than I could have flown up to the moon.

  “Jordan,” she said, “you solved my problem for me! I’m a monster who eats people, but I hate it when I eat someone who doesn’t deserve it, but now I know there are people like you who really do deserve me! So I’m going to just eat those people from now on, and then it won’t bother me at all!"

  That isn’t exactly what she said, but it’s close, and I thought for a second that Miss Amber had gone crazy. I was about to step up and tell her that I’d take it from there, and she could go home and let me deal with Jordan.

  And she bit him. I was close enough to see clearly as her teeth tore into his shoulder, cut through his muscle and bone and ripped a big chunk away. I could hear her teeth grinding through pieces of bone, and see right into his mangled joint, and I’m sure that I was in shock.

  She bit into him again, and I watched in shocked fascination as she chewed up the large piece of meat in her mouth and swallowed it, before going back for more. She bit again and again, and then she grabbed one arm and just tore it off! I watched as she ate the muscles off it, and then she grabbed his spurting shoulder and somehow smoke was everywhere, stinking smoke of burning flesh, and the bleeding slowed, almost stopped.

  Jordan was screaming the whole time, and I was standing there with my mouth hanging open. Why I wasn’t screaming, I don’t know, but as I watched her eat, I began to let her words replay through my mind.

  “—a monster—hate it when I kill innocent people—people who deserve me—won’t bother me at all!"

  Jordan fell then, fell onto his back at the base of that tree, and she sat down on him as she chewed another bite, but then she made a strange sound, almost a grunt of excitement, a feral sound, and I swear to God, she shoved her hand right into his chest and ripped out his heart. I was stunned as she grabbed his head, and pulled him up so that she could look into his eyes, and then—and then she ate his heart, took a huge bite out of it and chewed it up, ignored the dark heart-blood that sprayed all over her face as she bit into it.

  A moment later Jordan went completely limp, and I knew he was dead. Miss Amber just sat there, her eyes clenched shut, trembling, and I realized that she was having an orgasm. I stared, still in shock at what I had just witnessed, unable to move from where I stood.

  And suddenly she spun her head around and looked into my eyes, and I knew I was about to die.

  It didn’t occur to me to try to fight her. I was standing there with an old Colt .45 in my hand, but I didn’t raise it. Somehow I knew that doing so would be useless, so I didn’t bother. My only hope, I felt, was to make myself her ally, and after what I had heard, I thought there was one small chance that I could do so.

  Amber

  Oh, my God, it was Nathan! I stared at him, knowing that there was no way I could kill this man I already liked so much, and I wondered whether I should just run, or if I should try to keep him quiet until I could tell Horace and the vampires what I’d done. I was afraid, for in my mind I was sure that Horace would kill me for this, for destroying their new lives even before they’d had a chance to settle into them.

  Nathan was looking past me, at what was left of Jordan, and I saw that he had a gun in his hand. Instantly I understood—Faith had surely known where Jordan lived, and she’d told him, so Nathan had come to avenge his grandson. When he got there, and saw Jordan’s car cruise into the park, he’d followed it with the intent of catching Jordan and killing him—but what he’d seen was me, wreaking revenge on Jordan’s life in my own macabre way.

  As I thought all of this through, Nathan raised his eyes from the corpse to me, and I saw that he was thinking, too.

  “You don’t have to kill me,” he said, and I felt a sob escape me, heartbroken that he would think I was going to. “Miss Amber, I won’t tell a soul about you, I swear—but did you mean what you said to him?”

  I was so shaken at seeing him and worrying about what to do, that I didn’t catch his meaning at first.

  “What I said...?”

  “You told him that you’ve been troubled about what you are, and that from now on you plan to hunt and eat the most evil men you can find. Did you mean that?” His eyes were boring into mine as he talked, and I found it hard to meet them.

  I realized that I still had the last piece of Jordan’s heart in my hand, and I let it drop to the ground; it was of no value to me by then, just a dead piece of flesh. I looked down at it for a moment, then made myself look Nathan in the eye.

  “I meant it,” I said. “Every word of it.”

  He took a step toward me, and I thought for a second that he was going to shoot me, but he only put the gun into the waistband of his pants. His eyes were big and round, and he kept them focused intently on mine.

  “Miss Amber, if you will spare me, I will pledge myself your most loyal servant for as long as I live. If you want to find evil men, I can show you where to look, men far more evil than this piece of shit ever dreamed of being. I will help you to do what you want to do, and I can even show you safer ways to deal with some things.” He took a deep breath, and I could tell he still thought I was going to kill him. “Miss Amber, please—I can show you some things that will make what you do much easier, and I can always be your alibi
if you ever need one. Please do not kill me. Let me help you to make this world a better place for my grandchildren and great-grandchildren.”

  I shook my head. “I won’t hurt you, Nathan. I couldn’t, you’re too good, and I like you too much. I didn’t want you to ever know about this, I didn’t want any of your family to know...”

  He came several steps closer, and though he must have been terrified, his hands were low at his sides. “They need not know, Miss Amber, not ever! I will tell no one, and what we two discuss will always be between us, I swear! Please, please, let me help you!"

  I pointed down at the corpse at my feet, and that’s when I recalled that I was standing there in just my bra and panties, and coated in blood and gore. Nathan’s eyes followed mine, and I saw that he looked at my not-quite-nakedness, but then he raised his eyes back to my face.

  “Nathan,” I said, still trying to hold back tears. “This is what I do. I’m what’s called a grue, a monster that eats living people—and that’s what I was telling him, that I hated myself for what I was, that I was always looking for a way to come to grips with it—but I didn’t know how, ‘til now.”

  He was nodding. “I understand, Miss Amber, I get it! And I meant what I said; if you’ll allow me, I will help you to do what you do. I will show you how to find the most evil men there are, and I can even show you how you can avoid scenes like this, where you have to feed in a rush and then deal with the aftermath. If you do as you have said, Miss Amber, then the world will be a better place for the good folk in it, for every one of these that you eat will mean a dozen more will live a better or longer life. Some of those are pure innocents, and some are not, but by removing monsters like Jordan from the world, you can give more people the chance to become good and decent human beings.”

  He pointed at Jordan’s body again. “Miss Amber, you called yourself a monster; I disagree. I think that you can be an avenging angel for those who suffer at the hands of the real monsters, such as the one you’re standing over right now, but we must move quickly, now; he was loud, and someone will have heard him screaming. We have to get rid of that. If you will agree, I will go and get his car, over there, and we can load his body into it, and then I’ll drive it to a place where it will disappear. You can clean yourself up, then, and go home, and I will come to you there.”

  He didn’t wait for me to answer. He stepped past me, knelt and went through Jordan’s pockets for his keys, then hurried off to the Caddy. He pulled it up as close to the tree as he could get, and hurriedly looked into the trunk. He found a blanket, and I wrapped the body in it (and remembered to grab the arm and the piece of his heart that I’d cast aside), then laid it in the back seat. Nathan stood and watched me as I did so, then said, “You seem very strong; I’d suggest you do something about all that blood, if you can, and quickly. Then, there’s a duck pond over to the east a little ways, where you might get a little cleaner. Go home, and I’ll come to your room when I get there. All right?”

  I stood there, bloody and worried, but I only nodded. I knew it was possible, even likely, that he was going to go to the police and show them what I’d done, but I could not have taken any action against him; he was Nathan, and I thought he was wonderful. He got into the car and drove away, and I used my hands to rip up the ground under the tree and bury the blood and gore the best I could.

  My hands were fairly clean after that, so I grabbed my clothes from where I’d hidden them under the bush and went to find the pond Nathan had mentioned. Sure enough, it was only a couple of hundred yards away, and I could smell the water with no trouble. I listened to be sure no one else was around, then just dived in and scrubbed myself as well as I could. Most of the blood came out of my underclothes, and they dried quickly when I applied the heat, so I threw my other clothes on over them.

  Damn it, I’d forgotten my shampoo and soap, this time! Maybe I really did need someone to help me be a grue!

  I jogged back to where I’d parked the T-bird, drying myself thoroughly on the way. Even my hair was dry by the time I got there, because I’d been moving at a pretty good clip and the air had done a good job on it. I fished out my keys and drove home.

  I was back in my room by midnight, and it surprised me that more than four hours had passed since I’d told the vampires what had happened and gone out to hunt Jordan. I took a shower to get the rest of the residue of him off me, and slipped into a comfortable granny-style nightgown while I waited. I didn’t know if Nathan would really show up alone, or if I would be shortly surrounded by a SWAT team, but I figured to try to look as normal and unthreatening as possible, either way. I found my most recent book and began reading, but I had trouble concentrating, so I gave it up and turned on the TV instead. I found some old Star Trek episode and let myself vegetate while it played.

  I couldn’t help wondering about the things Nathan had said, about helping me to put my new plans into action. He was such a gentleman, it was hard for me to believe that he even knew much about the evils in the world, but he had spoken with such confidence that I wanted to accept it. If he were telling the truth, it would mean no more of the self recriminations, no more blaming myself and hating myself as I thought about those whose lives I may have destroyed, simply by doing what now came naturally to me.

  I was a monster. There was no way to escape that fact, and yet, I was also still Amber, the girl who was known back home for a good heart that loved everyone. Something about the change that had overtaken me kept me from feeling direct guilt over the people I killed and ate, thinking of them as no more than a meal, but ever since I had met the wife and children of one of my victims, I had been terrified that my actions, my nature, might have destroyed their lives and others.

  Sam had helped, because he had welcomed death, but some part of me wondered if there were truly so many such men that I could feed without guilt more than occasionally. Jordan, on the other hand, was one of countless numbers of people who were evil enough that their removal from the world could only be good for the others around them. There was no doubt in my mind that, sooner or later, Faith and little Martin would have suffered at his hand. Eating him had been the best thing I have done since I had changed.

  The decision I had made on the spur of the moment, while looking into Jordan’s eyes, was the right one for me, and I knew it. If such a creature as me was going to exist in the world, that I felt that I had a responsibility to use my strength and powers to make the world a better place, and this was undoubtedly the best way for me to accomplish that goal.

  So, that’s who I will be, now. I’ll be the one who brings death and justice to some of the most truly evil people in the world. They know who they are, and with Nathan’s help, I’ll find them. If you’re not one of them, then there’s not much to worry about, but if you are, then I’ll be coming for you, one day soon. And if you’re not sure, then just ask yourself one question.

  Do you deserve me?

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  NANCY ADAMS is an Amazon bestselling author of contemporary romance. She's currently single and dreams of one day meeting her prince charming and starting a family. She loves people and loves life. A real "people-person" who sometimes can't stand the noise. During those times, she curls up, shuts the door, and drifts into beautiful fantasy and welcomes all along for the ride. She expresses how she feels and what she wants to feel through her writing, and she doesn't know what she'd do without it. The mere fact that she is able to share her gift with the rest of the world is simply a bonus, and one that brings her nothing but pure joy!