Heartbeat (Morta Fox Book 1)

by D. N. Hoxa

  “Let me go!” I said to Hammer, uncurling my fingers from his. At least he could make it. They were going to get both of us if he didn’t let go.

  “Run!” Hammer shouted, and he didn’t let go of my hand. Was he blind? He could see that I was stopping him! Why the hell was he still holding on?

  I didn’t know, but I knew that I didn’t want him to get eaten because of me. I grabbed his wrist with my other hand, and I squeezed until my fingers hurt.

  “Morta…” he warned me, but I heard his bone cracking from the intensity of my grip and his fingers gave in.

  I slid another two steps before I stopped completely. It was fine. He was going to make it, at least. I was going to die anyway. I still didn’t dare look up and see the vampires who were going to grab me any second now.

  “Fuck, Morta…” Hammer.

  Fucking Hammer.

  “What the hell are you doing? Run!” I shouted at him. But he was walking toward me. He was walking toward me and looking ahead at the vampires. “Hammer, please! Run!”

  He looked at me, shook his head, and the next second turned to a blur while he ran ahead, in time to send the first vampire flying. I couldn’t believe my fucking eyes.

  But only because I couldn’t see anything. He was fighting four vampires at the same time, and I stood there like a fucking idiot and watched. They were moving so fast that I felt dizzy. That, plus dust covered the whole scene from the fast movements. I needed to do something.

  I had nothing except my hands. No matter that the fear was making me sick, I ran forward and slammed against a vampire who wanted to go behind Hammer’s back. As I went down with him, and our bodies rolled a couple of feet, I thought, maybe I can help him. Since he was a fucking retard and stopped when I did and didn’t run like I told him to, maybe I could help him and he could remain alive.

  I never did realize how really stupid I was sometimes. Well, most of the time. I did see a reminder of it when I found myself on my knees with a thick, hairy arm around my throat preventing me from breathing. The vampire’s leg was above both of mine, and my hands were only trying to release my throat from his arm.

  “Stop!” Hammer’s voice made us both shake in our place. I was choking, and I kept slapping and grabbing at the vampire’s arm to get him to loosen up just a bit, just so I could hold on to life. My fucking life that wasn’t worth a penny.

  “Let her go,” Hammer said again. The dust settled and I saw one vampire on the ground, a knife buried in his chest directly above his heart. Another was standing, knife in hand, looking at Hammer, who had the third and oldest of the vampires by the throat, with another knife directed to his heart.

  “I said, let her go!” he shouted and brought the tip of his knife closer to the vampire’s chest.

  “Would you look at that?” the vampire that was holding me whispered. I could hear the sick smile in his voice. I wanted to kick him, but I was completely immobile. “Or what? What are you going to do, kill Checker?”

  “You know I will, Deed. Now let her go,” Hammer said, his eyes never blinking. I couldn’t believe him. Was he out of his mind?

  “I can hear her heartbeat. What does she taste like? Have you tried her?” the other vampire said, the one in the middle, waiting for the right second to jump Hammer. I tried to call his eyes with mine, to beg him to just let go and run like hell, far away from here.

  Please, I said to him in my mind. You can't die because of me.

  But he didn’t even look at me.

  “You really want to explain to Dublin why Checker is dead, Vin? I don’t think he’d be too happy,” Hammer said, but he never took his eyes off Deed, the vampire still holding me motionless.

  “Yeah, but he isn’t here. This time, he can’t protect you, Hammer,” Deed said, pleased and proud of himself. “I’m going to have fun burning you to ashes.”

  Bile rose to my throat, and I struggled against his arms and legs, but that only caused him to tighten his grip.

  “Sure. But let her go first. You have no business with her,” Hammer insisted again. My chest felt warm as I watched him, looking exactly like the beautiful beast he was, and I thought, Bugz was right. He must really care about me to do this.

  I couldn’t possibly understand it, but that didn’t mean I didn’t like it. And also, just because I knew it was wrong and I felt so goddamn guilty, it still didn’t mean I didn’t like it. I felt my teeth grow sharp at the thought that we were both probably going to die.

  I was fine with death. Hell, it was written in my name. But I didn’t want Hammer to die. Not because of me, and not ever. If I could only save him…

  “What’s it to you if I drink her dry this second?” Deed said, trying to sound curious. Vin smiled a sick smile, and once they showed themselves, his teeth started to turn sharp.

  Hammer smiled, too, his teeth already pointy and glowing under the moonlight. “You know you don’t want to do that. You don’t even feel the need to bite her, am I right?”

  “Yeah, maybe. I don’t feel the need, but I feel the want. I’ll drink her anyway, because I can see it’d bug you,” Deed said.

  “No, you won't. Huh, Checker, what do you think? Will he drink her?” Hammer said and looked down at the face of the vampire under him. Hammer loosened his fingers from under his chin and let his head raise a bit, but never removed the knife from the vamp’s chest.

  “Just…fucking let her go!” Checker barely said. Hammer’s hand under his chin pulled up again, and he lost the ability to speak.

  “I’ll give you three seconds,” Hammer said, dead serious. He grabbed the hilt of the knife a little tighter, and Vin took a step closer to him.

  “One…” Hammer started to count, but Deed didn’t let me go. Instead, he removed my hair from my neck with his face. He was going to bite me.

  “Two…” The tip of Hammer’s knife pierced the skin of the vampire, and he whimpered. Deed didn’t care. He was going to really bite me.

  Shit, I was going to die. For the first time in my life, I didn’t want to. It just wasn’t the right moment. I didn’t want Hammer to die with me.

  Hammer’s eyes traveled from Deed’s face to mine. I saw the amber in them, though they’d turned almost completely dark. I read the disappointment in his eyes, and I never did like to be a disappointment. All the more when I knew I was disappointing him.

  I was going to be bitten the very next second by a vampire. But I was one, too. I had my own set of sharp teeth. And I had his forearm in front of my mouth, so I figured I didn’t want to go down without at least trying to fight. A bite for a bite.

  “Three…” Hammer said, but I didn’t really register the word. I just knew that at the sound of his voice, I was toast. Dead. Bitten. Sucked dry. So I closed my jaw as hard as I could on the piece of dead forearm meat in front of my mouth.

  The vampire holding me let out an agonizing scream. I kept my jaw closed and prepared for the second I’d feel sharp teeth tearing my skin for the second time in my life.

  The pain never came.

  “Deed?” a shaky voice called, but there was no answer. I waited another second before I opened my eyes.

  There they were, still. Hammer and Vin standing, looking at me, Checker in Hammer’s hands, his face turned upward so he couldn’t see me or speak.

  And Deed…on the ground behind my back, his arm still in my mouth.

  “What the…what the hell? Deed?” Vin said and started to cautiously step closer to me. I opened my jaw, and the arm fell on my lap. I looked back and saw Deed’s face. His eyes and mouth were open, and he wasn’t moving, not even a little. He looked…dead.

  “What the hell did you do?” Vin shouted, his voice breaking. I looked up at Hammer in horror.

  I bit him. I just bit him.

  “Morta, come here,” Hammer said, his voice as calm and as cold as always. But I couldn’t move. Vin was above his friend’s body, shaking him, asking him to wake up.

  “What the hell have you done!” Vin cr
ied. “Deed, man, come on, man. Are you playing?”

  “Morta, now,” Hammer said again, but I couldn’t get up. I just dragged my knees to him. I sat right next to Checker, but Hammer never let go of him, though he struggled. “What did you do?” he whispered to me.

  I looked up at him, completely terrified.

  “I…I…I bit his arm.” I didn’t understand. What was the big deal? I remembered that Hammer said that vampires couldn't die from bites. I remembered it clearly.

  “Are you sure that’s the only thing you did?” Hammer asked again.

  “Yes! Of course I’m sure. I just bit him. You said that…” But Vin’s cry stopped me.

  “Fucking hell!” he shouted and stood up, running backwards away from Deed.

  Only he wasn’t Deed anymore. He was a corpse. Blue, rotten skin covered his bones. He looked like the corpse of a man who had died a long time ago, completely wasted away.

  “What did you do? You bitch, what did you do?” Vin cried, shaking his head and stepping away from us. Hammer finally let go of Checker, who flew away from him in a second.

  “I didn’t do anything, I swear!” I cried, tears blurring my vision. “I just bit him…”

  “You bitch! A bite doesn’t do that!” Checker said next. He was two feet away from Deed, looking at his body like it was the most horrible thing he’d ever seen. Hammer grabbed my shoulders and stood me up. I couldn’t look away from the body.

  Did I really do that? How could I have possibly done that? I just bit him!

  “Run with me,” Hammer whispered against my hair. I didn’t have to be told twice. I was going out of my mind, and I needed to move. His hand wrapped around mine, and he pulled me. I ran and I didn’t look back.

  ***

  My chin kept shaking, even after we stopped, miles away from where it happened. We only stopped after Hammer was a hundred percent sure we weren't being followed, and nobody was around us, at least for more than five miles on all sides. He took us inside a building, and he pulled me up too many stairs, but I was far from arguing. Deed’s body was all I could see.

  When he finally sat me down somewhere, and put the rim of his vodka bottle to my mouth to make me drink, I saw him. His eyes were wide with concern and suspicion, but he held my chin high with one hand and the bottle with the other until I drank enough for my stomach to burn. I watched him as I swallowed, and I could still hear him as if I was turned back in time. The way he’d stopped for me. The way he’d fought for me.

  I didn’t know how to handle that. Nobody ever did anything for me except for him. And he did, over and over again for the past month, and I still couldn’t get used to it. I wanted to tell him, to put my thoughts into words, but they were lost to me. And when he asked me if I was okay in that cold but sweet, low voice, I broke.

  I’m not proud of the scream I let out, or how I pulled his arm until I rested under his chin, crying. I hid my face under his neck and I cried. He sat on the ground and put his arms around me, and he whispered that I was fine, that I was safe, that everything was going to be all right.

  He saw me. He saw what I did to that vampire, and he was still there, holding me in his arms and caressing me. There was no thought in my head and no word in my vocabulary that could explain the way I felt.

  XVII

  After a long time of me crying against his shoulder, he laid down on the dirty carpet of the building we were in and took me with him. He put my head on his chest and wrapped his arm around my shoulders. He took my hand that was resting on his stomach, and he played with my fingers. His holding me like that was the only thing that stopped my tears.

  “What am I?” I whispered against his chest.

  “A vampire,” he said.

  “Vampires don’t do that to other vampires with a bite,” I said and regretted it the second the words made Deed’s body appear in my mind’s eye again.

  “That they don’t,” he confirmed with a sigh.

  “So, what am I?” I whispered again.

  “I don’t know,” he said and intertwined his fingers with mine.

  “I didn’t mean to.” The tears began to gather in my eyes again.

  “I know.”

  “I swear, I didn’t intend to kill him. I just…” I started to cry.

  “Hey, I know. I know, Morta. Don’t cry,” he said and wrapped his arm around me tightly.

  “What the hell is wrong with me?” I cried against his neck. I was aware how pathetic I looked, crying like a little girl, but it was too much. It became too much, and everything just took its toll on me, and I couldn’t stop it anymore.

  “There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re fine.”

  “I’m not fine. I never was.” He pulled my chin up and made me look at him.

  “There’s nothing wrong with you, Morta. You’re just special.” He even sounded like he meant it.

  “Is that why you stopped? Is that why you fought for me? Because I’m special?”

  I meant to tease him, to tell him that I wasn’t buying it, but it came out as a pathetic whisper instead.

  “No.”

  “Then, why?” I asked, because I wanted to know. I needed to know his answer.

  What did he feel about me? What did he think when he looked at me? Did he miss fighting with me the way I did?

  But he didn’t answer. He held my eyes for a few more seconds, and then he put his head down again.

  By the time I felt the first sunray, I was still wrapped up in his arms, lying on his chest. He didn’t move and neither did I.

  And when the sun set and took all its fiery bastards with it, I opened my eyes and found myself in the same position, my cheek pressed against Hammer’s chest, his arms wrapped around me.

  I looked up to see if he was awake, and I found him looking down at me. When he saw my eyes, he gave me a lazy smile. A smile I returned.

  “Morning,” he mumbled, though it was completely dark.

  “Didn’t you sleep?” I left him awake and found him the same.

  “Yeah, I did. I woke up just when the sun was about to set.” He didn’t loosen his arm around me.

  “I can't keep my eyes open as soon as the first ray hits the surface,” I said and scratched my cheek against his chest.

  “You’ll get the hang of it after a few years. I can stand for another fifteen minutes after the sun rises and wake up almost half an hour before it sets,” he explained. I’d have loved to have those extra minutes, but I was never going to have those few years. I wanted to say so, but I figured I didn’t want to ruin the mood just yet.

  I put my hand on his chest and pushed myself up. He still smiled at me. I took a long sip from his vodka before I handed the bottle over to him.

  “Did that really happen last night?” I asked as he drank his favorite poison.

  “It did.”

  “Not only am I a monster, but I’m a monster who kills other monsters with a bite, too.”

  It was meant as a joke, but it came out sadder than expected.

  “Okay, first of all, you’re not a monster. Second of all, it could’ve been something else that killed him. Not your bite,” he said, but I knew he was just trying to cheer me up. And he did make me smile a little. I was more ready to say thank you now than I’d ever been before.

  “Hammer, I wanted to—”

  “Wait…” he whispered with his finger in front of my lips and looked around the room. Panic spread through me immediately. They had found us.

  Hammer stood and I followed. He waved for the stairs before he turned into a blur, and I ran right after him. We’d been on the fifth floor of the building, which I could see still had almost all of its furniture undamaged, covered in a thick layer of grey dust. He stopped by the entrance door that was hidden behind a short, narrow corridor.

  I tried my best to avoid the mirror on the wall, but I caught a glimpse of myself, still. My hair looked even whiter than the last time I checked and my eyes darker. I looked pale as a sheet and older. Much, much
older. But most importantly, the sadness in my colorless eyes was almost heartbreaking. Almost.

  Hammer opened the door.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I hissed at him but followed when he stepped outside. He stopped just three feet away from the door and stood there, looking around, listening. I stayed by the threshold and concentrated.

  I heard. I heard them clearly. I could make out ten sets of steps, and as my fingertips started to shake, my throat went dry as if to not let me speak and tell Hammer to just get inside.

  But then it was too late. Ten vampires surrounded us, and it looked like they appeared all at the same time. They looked at Hammer and then me and then Hammer again. The one in the middle, right across from Hammer, took a step forward, but the others stood still.

  “Hammer,” the vampire said with a curt nod.

  “Dublin.” Hammer did the same.

  So this was the famous Dublin. There was something off about him. Something I’d never seen in a vampire, though I didn’t know that many of them. He was calm. Too calm and not at all crazy and high on superiority like the others. Almost like Hammer.

  He had a wide forehead and light brown, thick hair, combed to the back of his head with insane accuracy. Not a hair looked out of place.

  “Mind telling me what’s going on?” Dublin said, waving at the others around him. I turned to look at them, one at a time, and immediately found Checker, Vin, and the other guy who’d been on the ground with a knife in his heart. They all looked at me with pure ire, their eyes filled with madness. I wanted to fucking piss my pants but Hammer wasn’t running, so I trusted we were safe for now.

  “Why don’t you ask Checker there? Maybe even Vin and Zig?” Hammer answered, completely at ease.

  “I did ask them. I just didn’t like what they told me,” Dublin said, the coldness of his voice the same as Hammer’s.

  “Did you know that they wanted to kill me? They even told me that they’d have fun with me a little, since you weren't there to protect me.” Hammer laughed dryly. “I thought you were a tougher bone, Dublin,” he said, but his tease seemed fake, as if it was forced.