by Eros, Marata
They drew close, Rachel's unique biological perfume proliferating everywhere he scented. Maybe they had bedded down somewhere that had another vampire contingent? That possibility snaked its way down a spine that was stiff with apprehension.
They moved as one toward a local bar, nearly to the Alaska/Canadian border, backtracking.
“Are we near?” Zach asked, eyes drowning pools of black ink. The light all around them bright, undimmed by the night, the moon full and luminously brilliant above them.
Cole nodded, not speaking. They were here to feed. They needed to be fully vested with blood if they were to engage Alexander and whatever contingent he had garnered on the three day journey since the women had been taken.
Zach and he moved to the back alley, where there were always the human dregs, scurrying about in the dark.
Like the rodents they were.
*
My tears had dried, my sobbing gone unheeded. The cloth pressed between my lips and that bound its way around my skull was pulled tight.
I rolled my eyes to where Holly was, hers wide with fright.
The women hung, suspended. Their toes barely grazed the concrete floor, shoulders numb.
Alexander smiled. Everything he had dreamed of possessing was here before him. He would have them both, he had decided. Who was to tell him differently? When he tired of them, and his blood lust was well sated, he would turn them over to whatever Reaper had sufficient ancestry to breed them out.
It was a perfect plan. Fool proof.
His eyes roamed the form of Rachel, ripe and curved, her blood a fragrant wine ready to be consumed. He moved forward, the muffled sounds of the other Druid, muted by the binding stuffed in her mouth.
I watched Alexander come closer, violence in motion and despaired, he would have me. Bleed me.
And judging by the way he looked, the other as well.
It was all because of my moment of curiosity at the door. I should've never opened it. It put myself and Holly at risk. Right now, I felt like a goddamned loser. I'd let Holly get taken. It was my fault. Whatever he did, I was determined to survive it.
For Cole.
I felt my guts clench at the first stroke of a finger along my jaw. I couldn't help the involuntary flinch for anything in the world.
Josiah looked at their supposed leader and felt disquiet enter him. Alexander had once been a great leader, meting out Druid fairly amongst the Druid vampire, Reapers especially.
How had the circumstances lent themselves to the debauchery at hand? He was unsure. But he could not abide two pure Druids, the kiss having gone so long without one of pure descent, to be treated in this despicable manner. And why would Alexander be tormenting the women as he was? He gave a hard gaze to the other Reapers, the few that had survived the massacre at the rogue's stronghold and they nodded back.
They were of one mind.
The three moved forward to overwhelm their leader.
Their leader who appeared to have gone mad.
Alexander felt the Reapers at his back before they were upon him.
I widened my eyes in the only warning I could give as the closest Reaper approached Alexander. A tremulous hope blossomed within my soul that there may yet be freedom as the first talon buried itself within Alexander's back.
Alexander felt the pierce of talon to flesh as he twisted around to meet the assault with one of his own. He buried his fingers, turned to sharpened claws, into the underside of the jaw of the one who attacked first. Another Reaper used the fighting as a distraction to take Alexander's head.
With a sweeping blow, he struck Alexander from behind, relieving him of his thought process forever. His head rolled away like a bowling ball on the concrete floor in a spray of blood and gore, the mess spreading as it flew.
The Reapers looked down at Josiah as he gasped for breath, his eyes trained on Andrew's face. He made a decision. Using a claw like a knife, he released the bound Druid who was closest. She fell into the arms of his brethren and he gave her a look. His eyes slid to the pile of ash which used to be Alexander. Their leader's custom made clothes lay atop his remains.
Andrew gave a grim smile and said to the Druid, “You will need to give this Reaper blood. Now.”
I sagged into the arms of the Reaper that held me in abject relief, watching the one that had decapitated Alexander. I was so grateful I could spit but of course there would be payment. I knew this.
I narrowed my eyes at his request.
Cole had told me that every drink of my pure Druid blood brought the vampire closer to walking in the light.
The sun would no longer be their enemy.
Fear seized my guts. It would not be just one sip. They'd bleed me dry.
I knew it.
I struggled uselessly, weakened by everything we'd been through, my arms swinging like loose noodles at my sides.
Andrew dragged her to Josiah, his neck a ruined disaster, his gasping breaths that rattled made her back up even as she was pulled forward.
Andrew placed her wrist at his mouth.
Josiah sucked in a huge breath and clamped down on the proffered wrist.
I couldn't help it, that much pain as the fangs sunk into my wrist was more than I could bear.
I wailed as they struck.
The one named Andrew was beside me instantly as I whimpered in pain. “We do not wish to hurt you purposefully. He dies. He will die without what you possess. If there were any other way, we would not force this.”
I nodded. What could I do? While he sucked at my wrist, mewling like a cat with cream as he lapped my blood, I closed my eyes. Shame, terror and something else warred together in a confusing wash of emotions. All this accomplished was buying myself some time.
When I could think past the pain, my eyes met Holly's. Her's were wide with terror, mine with resolve.
CHAPTER 2
Cole and Zach circled the group that they had discovered.
Vampire.
They had been careless, running across their own kind, the wind blowing the wrong direction to alert them until they were upon them.
The male Cole took for the leader hissed at Cole, warning him off his prey.
As if Cole would consider it, he could smell the drug-addled blood from here. He was welcome to it.
“You are not of this region. You smell foreign. By what rights do you hunt here?” the leader asked, the blood from his victim making his mouth resemble that of a clown.
Zach and Cole gave each other a full glance. They were sorely outnumbered, five to two. He would play the civility hand and see where it got him.
“We are but passing through. Actually, we are in search of Druid.”
The leader's brows quirked. “You are Reapers?” His eyes slid to Zach.
“I am not. I am rogue,” Zach said.
They regarded one another for a moment then the leader said, “Yet... you hunt together. A Reaper and one of the rogue. In search of Druid flesh.” He chortled out loud. “That is the first I have ever heard of such a thing.”
Cole knew that he sought information but would not aide them. He moved to leave.
The leader of the four other vampires gave a subtle signal to his comrades in arms.
They surrounded Zach and Cole.
They moved closer to each other, back to back.
*
Josiah looked up with rapture as the Druid offered her life-saving blood to him. Albeit reluctantly. But who could blame the Druid women their wariness? Alexander had been cruel to this breeder, true. And the other, who he had not given so much as a glance to, would have been treated similarly. Why he had become a tyrant when he had once ruled with fairness, he did not know. When Josiah felt that he could breathe again, his ruined esophagus mending itself as he drank, he released the Druid's wrist.
But not before he lapped at the wound, the ragged edges an embarrassment. His usual finesse had been absent in the face of the scent of her blood and his death a near thing.
; The Reaper finally released my wrist after licking it for what seemed like forever. The saliva he'd used like a salve. It wasn't a burning mess anymore. I cradled my ragged wrist against my chest and gave accusing eyes to Andrew.
He shrugged his shoulders. “It was no small thing to kill Alexander. Our leader. Our leader for millennia.” His eyes never left mine.
I gulped and backed away.
Into Josiah. The one I'd just given blood to.
Wow, that was speedy.
I whirled around to defend myself against the impossible and he was smiling, revealing fangs. “I would no more hurt you than I would myself, breeder. We will not give you the end for which Alexander had planned.”
I didn't ask what that end would have been.
“But neither do we feel inclined to return you to our comrade, Cole.” Andrew elaborated.
I opened my mouth to protest but Holly threw herself in my arms just as I would have given old Andrew a piece of my mind. Where my bravery came from, I didn't know. But I sure as hell was tired of being passed around, pursued and now... caught.
I was on the bad side of pissed off at the vamp at my back. The one that met my eyes got it.
Holly pressed against me in near-hysteria and I stroked her hair as she cried.
“Cole has shared some of your history with me,” I said to Andrew and he crossed his arms, the ash of his leader as backdrop. I shivered, going on, “The rogue he travels with is a true mate to Holly.” My eyes shifted to the tiny girl I was holding. So miniature I felt like she was a doll in the circle of my arms.
“Nathan died to protect her, so she could be with Zach. It would seem to me that you vamps need to rein in your instinct to breed us long enough to think about what kind of parents we'd be to your offspring,” I paused, letting that soak in then continued, “if we're forced into relationships that go against your own rules.”
That had been quite a speech for me but I saw the wheels turning in Andrew's head as he began to pace back and forth in front of me. In profile, with his hair bound by a leather tie, he looked every bit the arrogant European, I thought randomly.
“Are you certain?” he asked me, turning those hawkish features to me.
I shrugged. “That's what Cole said.”
“What does the girl say? Does she acknowledge the tie?”
Holly pulled away, her face a tear stained mess and with a trembling lip, slowly nodded.
“This little slip of a girl?” he asked in a derisive tone, flipping his palm toward her dismissively. “How old are you girl?”
I could see what it took for Holly not to cower, her only sign that the crying jag was still within reach was a pouty lower lip that she clenched softly between her teeth. But when she spoke, her voice was clear, sniffles gone.
“I don't know what all this 'mating' stuff means. But what I felt for him, even knowing he's one of you guys... a vampire,” she looked at Andrew, and Josiah, who had made his way to stand beside the other vampire, “told me it's real.” She put her fist against her heart, her words only a little shaky.
Josiah and Andrew looked at each other and Andrew said, “You will eventually come to care for one of us. We cannot just allow you to be with a rogue. As it were, we cannot even be sure why a true mating would come about with one of them.” He shrugged.
I narrowed my eyes on them. “So what you've just told us, if I'm understanding your jerkness here, is that you'll be mating with us anyway. It doesn't matter that even as we speak, there may be two very pissed off vampires on your ass.”
Andrew smiled, then it faded as he thought of Cole. That one bore concern. The rogue was without concern. Except... if the mating was a true fact, that the rogue was indeed the true mate of the young Druid.
He would stop at nothing to regain her.
Nothing.
Andrew frowned. “Let us leave this place. We will take of your blood and you will submit. This will allow daylight travel.”
He, Josiah and the three others walked toward us.
Holly did cower then.
I was resolute. They could take all they want. At the first opportunity, I would escape.
After all, they killed Alexander to free us from his plans, only to put their designs on us without our consent.
More of the same, I was thinking.
Their huge bodies drew closer as my heart sped at their proximity.
*
Cole and Zach unsheathed their talons, the claws bursting their houses of flesh instantly, a punching sounded as their fingertips released their charge.
The leader circled, his talons at the ready. “We do not have to war with you and the rogue. Tell us where the Druids are and we will give chase. Our numbers are greater, concede our advantage. We will not harm the breeders.” He smiled and continued, “But we will breed them,” he said definitively, spreading his palms away from his body.
Cole would not stop his pursuit of Rachel until the breath left his body. He did not need to confer with Zach, a true mate to a Druid was formidable. Cole was not yet mated to Rachel and now lamented his decision to wait until they were settled. He was sure that Zach echoed his thoughts.
“I see that your decision has been made,” the leader said in a low voice, attacking as the last word was uttered.
Zach was rogue and did not know the meaning of fair fighting. He slung his bladed hands low, taking the testicles of the advancing vampire right at the root. With a shrieking wail, he fell where he stood, blood spraying out between fingers that held his nethermost regions in a stranglehold. Zach had crippled him, stunning his advance in its tracks.
Let him grow a pair, Zach thought without humor, his thoughts already trained on Holly. He would do whatever needed to be done to get to her.
No tactic was beneath his notice.
Cole would have laughed at Zach's cunning if he was not instantly engaged with the leader and who looked to be his first. Cole smashed his talons in the face of his first even as his downward stroke cut deeply into Cole's shoulder where he had just laid the strike. His arm was useless, falling numb under the assault and he took the enemy down with a skull scramble. Cole used his shitkicker to roundhouse kick the leader as he let his body fall backward to avoid a well-placed swipe at where his head had been moments before.
Two others came from behind as Cole was falling. They tried to catch him but Cole was accustomed to practiced falls of avoidance and as his toe made purchase with the leader's jaw, crushing it on impact like so much glass, he used his good hand to balance his fall and both of his legs came above his head and twined around the head of one of the other's.
Cole twisted his legs, his palm flat on the abandoned alley pavement, the cold leeching into his arm and shoulder as the strain of holding up two hundred and thirty pounds of tense muscle was executed on a dime of motion.
He broke the neck of the one as the leader fell to the floor, unable to scream from a mouth that could not longer form words.
The rogue came for the last. The enemy saw his problem and the vampire came at Zach, odds as they were, and with practiced jabs was overtaking him. But Zach had one more thing up his sleeve, allowing his upper shoulder to be hooked by talons that went through his body and perforated his back with a grunt, he head-butted the vampire, stunning him. Zach smashed the Reaper's skull with the nubs of his partially extended talons.
Like brass knuckles.
The brains of the vampire slid out his ears, the Reaper's talons retracting automatically upon his death and slicing through the meat of Zach's shoulder with an agonizing jerk.
Cole lay on the ground. His shoulder was a numb disaster, his bell certainly rung and looked at Zach as he advanced on the injured enemy ranks.
Seconds later, the Reapers were dead, three heads leveled against the frozen road. Zach held out a hand to Cole.
He took it.
They turned together, the soles of their boots becoming dirty with snow and ash.
Scenting the air for prey, they did not
have far to go.
They fell on the group of drug addicts. Weak from fighting, the finickiness of before gone, the need for food forgotten in the face of their need.
Zach and Cole drank.
Adding the bodies of their prey to the ashen snow which lay like storm clouds on the ground.
CHAPTER 3
I was laying in a languid stupor. One of Alexander's wonderful Reaper spawn cradled me against his chest, too weak to move. They'd had their pound of flesh.
Or in this case, a pound of blood.
They'd had just enough so that I was still conscious. Holly continued whimpering beside me.
Apparently, when you were a true mate, having another vampire take blood was extra painful.
Swell.
The males had felt bad about taking from her. But not bad enough to stop.
The Reapers surrounded an old warehouse, the wind and snow howling around where they stood. I had my eyelids at half-mast, every fiber of energy going to keeping myself awake when Andrew spoke. “Josiah, Elias... get the women in there for the night to bed down. They are too weak by far to withstand the storm. My brothers...” The group looked at Andrew expectantly and what he said next made me want to punch him square in the face, “because of the richness of our meal, we will be able to travel with the sun one day hence.”
There was muted cheers but the wind sucked away the sound of them.