by Eros, Marata
It was a call.
A summons.
She didn't know what the summons was for but it was slowly driving her crazy.
Aubree broke the heart with the small spoon they'd given her to stir with, never noticing the malevolent eyes that bored into her back. If she had she would have never left. She was complacent after a hundred times of leaving in the same way, at the same time.
Her fate had been sealed.
For Aubree had something that had attracted the attention from a local group, a specialized group.
The faction had caught her scent.
A Druid unaware of what she was.
She walked out into the night unguarded, undiscovered and alone.
But not for long.
Aubree hugged herself tighter against the chill, silently pissed that she hadn't worn something warmer. It was early fall and now she was paying. Indian summer had swooped in and fooled everyone with the false warmth of summer but nighttime had the bite of autumn. She looked up at the sliver of the sky that was revealed between the ceilings of tall buildings that lined one of the million alleyways that ran behind all the little pubs, restaurants and shops that were prolific along the Pike Place waterfront. A stray leaf from a city tree whistled its warning as it crossed her path and some internal alarm chimed inside Aubree at its passing.
Aubree glanced away from the tumbling leaf and found herself staring into eyes that were a startling crimson in a sea of pale skin.
Like blood.
Aubree didn't fuck around, the guy was huge, menacing and in her face. She pivoted in avoidance.
Being embarrassed at responding like he was a threat never entered her mind.
The intuitive alarm shrieked and reverberated in her bones. She didn't wonder.
Aubree knew.
His hand tore against her face like a soft caress of flesh and her head rocked back.
Aubree was trained in martial arts. She was a 6th degree black belt in judo and had never seen the move coming. She instinctively reacted through her dizziness, her knuckles seeking his tender esophagus and meeting... air.
He had vanished.
Aubree ran in a staggering jog, her head ringing from the blow.
And he appeared before her out of thin air.
Fuck this, Aubree thought. She sucked in a lungful and wailed into a night filled with traffic, people and the noises of a city that slept but briefly.
The male latched onto her throat and pressed his mouth against her ear and her bowels hiccuped with a fear so instant it came with her next breath.
Aubree clenched her eyes shut. This maniac was gonna bite her ear off.
What he said next snapped her eyes open.
“Breeder,” he breathed against the sensitive shell of her ear and she felt an exhaustive push of something trying to press its way inside her mind like a tide coming to shore and she did the first thing that came to mind.
Aubree kneed him in the crotch.
He laughed in her face and opened his mouth. When Aubree saw fangs she fought passing out, her eyes sweeping across a face that didn't look human. Alabaster skin shone under the pale light the moon gave the alley, hair that was probably blonde in daytime was bleached like decaying bones in the moonlight.
Hopelessness descended when Aubree saw two others like the one who was suffocating her with his hand approach and flank him.
“Hold her,” one of the other freaks said and Aubree was finally embarrassed when a whimper of fear escaped her. She'd put the move on this guy and he was like a ghost. He moved too fast to strike, he laughed when she'd nailed his gonads solidly.
How could you fight something that couldn't be hurt? That couldn't be touched?
And where, by fuck, where all the people? It's like Aubree was in a void, a well of stillness in the middle of a well-traveled alley. There should have been ten other people by now. It was if... as if there was a bubble around them that didn't allow anyone in.
To aid her.
She was going to be killed in a cold wet alley by a bunch of freaks of nature.
The one who held Aubree shoved her against the wall, his hand against her neck holding her still.
The other came against her with a boner that reached her stomach.
Holy fucking smokes, she was in real trouble here.
Aubree rolled her eyes up to his and he lifted a hand above himself, the hand a black silhouette in the dark alley, backlit by the moon. Talons slowly punched through his fingertips, revealing long claws.
Aubree felt her bladder burn with the need to release. She'd never understood how someone could piss themselves from fear.
She stood convinced.
“Where is the Queen?”
Aubree had expected something but not this.
Her mouth went utterly dry, she couldn't have responded if she'd wanted to. Aubree didn't have a clue about what they were asking.
She wasn't much of a bluffer either.
“Release her. She will need some persuasion.”
The one that had her throat in a death grip let go so suddenly she fell to the ground, slamming her knees painfully onto the unevenly made stones. The rain that had fallen immediately leeched through the denim of her jeans, soaking her.
The third freak jerked her head back by her hair until her scalp screamed like it was on fire and the one who had asked about some Queen used his claw to split her jeans down the seam. Aubree fought not to mewl for mercy, but she just wasn't made like that. When Seam Ripper moved his hand next to her face she clamped down on his hand with her teeth like a dog with a bone.
Blood filled her mouth and without wanting to she tasted it.
It didn't taste like blood... but like a fruity wine. He didn't react like she'd thought he would either.
Hair Grabber let go of her and pushed her back against the cold stones of the alley. He tore the fly of his pants open and ripped her resistant jeans the rest of the way off, flinging them into the darkness of the alley, her body jerking with the motion.
Aubree heard them land with a soft thump behind her. She let go of the hand she'd bitten and watched as her teethmarks filled in, the small crescents fading before her eyes.
That's when she knew.
It didn't matter that her mind had rejected the idea. These guys were not human.
They were other. And Aubree was thinking she knew what it was. But for the moment, Vampire Rapists would suffice.
The male's erection sprung out of the prison of the leathers he wore and Aubree's eyes widened.
“Tell us where the Queen is and we will not hurt you.”
Right.
Aubree found her voice, it was low when it sounded but not quaking like she felt, “I don't know who you're talking about.”
He bent down, his cock swinging like a stiff pendulum between thighs corded by muscle, so thick they rivaled her waist. She so didn't want to have that thing ripping into her, total horse cock.
“I smell your fear, breeder,” he said, his pupils dilating as his hand reached out and caressed the top of her panties, the tip of the claw running the edge of the lace.
“I'm not a... breeder,” she said, a fine tremble running through her voice. Aubree just couldn't keep the fear in check, it was leaking out of her pores.
He tilted his head back and barked a laugh into the night. It made gooseflesh rise on her skin.
“You are and you will be bred this night.”
They held her down and her voice rose in the suddenly silent night in a scream heard by no one. He sliced her panties off and while the other two held her arms he planted his huge palm on one of her legs and said, “Be still or this will hurt.”
He inserted one of the tips of the talons into the entrance of her pussy and she screamed, her hips frozen to the spot while he finger-raped her with his claw.
“Stop playing with her, Issac. Stab her with your flesh, spill your seed and be done. We do have a mission. She obviously does not know what she is. But let this be a message to the Queen w
hen they do become acquainted: that we are looking.”
Aubree gazed up at him and his face was upside down as he looked down at her, finishing his threat as his friend pushed the talon in and out of her channel, the scrape of it not drawing blood, but pulling the cunt honey out against Aubree's will. Her body slid back and forth with the motion and she moaned.
At the pleasure... at the violation, mixed in a tantalizing combination of abject fear and fundamental thrill.
Hot tears poured down her face as that one talon slid out and she felt the stab of a talonless hand as three fingers were fucking her where the claw had been, the speed of it in and out of her body was breathtaking.
“She is ready,” he said from above her, his breathing ragged, his cock replacing the fingers at her entrance. Aubree had never felt so confused in her life. Her fear was there, she knew that he was going to force his cock inside of her, that he wasn't human... but she was wet for it.
None of it made sense, her mind felt wrapped in a cotton soaked fog of confusion.
Why wasn't she screaming for help, fighting her would-be rapist?
Then all hell broke loose and the spell broke. She screamed as a fist slammed into the temple of the one whose cock had been moments from fucking her into the cold ground on which she lay.
CHAPTER 3
Beau moved with a speed he didn't know he possessed, every synapse in his brain firing at once, the pale girl who lay beneath... a creature. She was clearly at his mercy was all Beau saw.
All his focus was on saving her. Some girl he didn't know, against impossible odds.
A stranger.
But she wasn't. A vital part of Beau's being knitted to hers in the few seconds of his approach. He felt it like an integral piece of a puzzle falling into place that had been missing from a life that was a blank.
But no more. This went through Beau's mind in seconds, even as his fist punched out into the temple of the creature poised above her naked lower body, ready to stab his cock into her like a weapon.
Time slowed. Beau saw two of the attackers lunge for him but it was like their bodies moved through water, coming toward him slowly. Beau easily avoided them, even as instant pain flared through his mouth and he could no longer close it properly.
He ignored the mouth problem and caught the fist that came for him as he kicked the one he had smashed in the temple with his boot and sent him flying into the unforgiving brick of the narrow building that rose to the skyline of black dotted with stars.
The other attacker rose behind Beau and grabbed him around the neck with a forearm that felt like a block of ice around his throat. He slammed his head back into the skull of his assailant as the other surged forward, jabbing him with herculean force in his bread basket, the breath in his body- gone. The fist pulled away as Beau did something he'd never done before:
He bit someone. Not to distract, but with maiming force.
Beau clamped down with a new mouth, a mouth full of teeth sharpened for tearing.
For death.
The arm came away with a wet sliding pop when Beau bit down and jerked his face with a hard twist. He was released from behind and faced the two, one who was now armless (that worked out goddamned great), a sea of blood cascading out of his arm like a geyser brought to life.
“Reaper...” the one with both arms breathed in a hiss.
What? Beau thought and looked for the girl.
Shouldn't have taken his eyes off the two for a second. And apparently, the swinging dick on the ground wasn't done either.
Fuck me, he thought as they roared to the defense.
The fog receded immediately. Once that contact was broken by the stranger who stopped the rape in its tracks, Aubree could think. And she was a fast thinker.
She didn't say thanks, she didn't pass go or collect two hundred bucks. This was not Monopoly, this was high-ass stakes and she scuttled, naked, to where her ripped jeans were... the panties long gone. She shoved her body into them, fairly leaping from a standing position and noticed with relief they were only ripped on the top half.
What she saw when she looked up at the fight that ensued stole her breath and caused her hands to quake as she backed up until her butt hit the opposite building from where the small battle played out.
The man who had been her savior was now outnumbered three to one.
Well... that wasn't entirely true, one of the freaks had lost an arm somewhere in the melee and was staggering around swiping one-handed at the aggressor. No wonder she'd not had a chance. She stood with her mouth open, watching the one that had rescued her fight creatures that moved to fast to track and hit like battle hammers.
She looked at the man come for the vampires, his fists were blurred tools of destruction. Aubree didn't see them land, but she saw the flesh of the vampire bodies split like spoiled fruit.
Aubree's extremities felt numb, her lips and nose turning cold, her fear a living breathing thing.
The rescuer was the same as the attackers. She saw him look for her and her seawater eyes met his glacial ones, silvered by the moonlight, for one fleeting heartbeat before they surged toward him.
For the one moment Aubree felt a charged hungering, a longing need standing just out of reach.
The summons was answered and closed like a noose around her body in a physical cinch, brought on by a blind moment of surreal violence in an alleyway. Her very being called out to go to him but she had felt that pull, the resonating of flesh with the one that had just about raped her. Was this any different?
No... she wasn't going to stick around for this noise. Get the hell outta Dodge and count her damn blessings when she was back in her shared apartment with the eighteen stuffed animals on the bed.
Yeah.
Aubree backed up, using her palm to slide along the wall and holding her jeans up to her hips with the other. Not conspicuous. No, not at all. Girl exiting an alley with torn clothes and busted up face. Huh.
And a tingle in her womb for the stranger turned avenger. A need to consummate whatever she was feeling. She trembled even as her resolve solidified.
Time. To. Go.
Beau felt something tear out of his fingertips and didn't have time to analyze the facts at hand.
That his body was becoming.
Like theirs. He was becoming what he was fighting. When he looked at the enemy he saw a mirror of who he was:
Pale skin, ravenous face with spiking fangs and taloned hands made for piercing and rendering flesh.
But Beau was a survivor, a life that he couldn't remember taught him that. His body remembered. It remembered how to fight for him.
To survive.
But the girl he'd saved distracted him with some small noise of warning at a critical moment and he was cut down like a mighty tree felled, his back slamming against the bricks that lined the alley, cold lumps gouged him with bruising force.
They loomed above him, the one falling to his knees from blood loss, the swipe they'd given him on his inner thigh having severed something critical, life-giving.
Aubree couldn't do it. She couldn't watch this guy that had risked himself against three vampires take the fall, literally... for her.
She rushed forward when all her instincts told her to flee.
Aubree couldn't leave him, his lifeblood pumping out of his femoral artery as she raced forward, her rapists in the cross-hairs, he was fighting his own wounds, the vampire primed to deliver the killing blow that would finish him.
Aubree scraped together everything she had, everything she was and with a springing leap she knew would do nothing but give him several distracting seconds she leaped, flinging herself at the one who had his clawed hand raised to strike her rescuer.
Beau sensed the girl coming in a blind rush and willed himself to move forward. He couldn't let her get hurt.
Even as he lay bleeding out on the wet street his soul beat the rhythm of protection for her. He'd never felt anything like it. It was a survival instinct that went beyo
nd anything he'd ever known. Like breathing.
Aubree landed against the vamp as his claws were descending and at the same moment that Beau leaped to a unsteady crouch, his own talons standing spikes at the end of his fingers. For a lingering moment she was held between the two in an embrace of violence when the vampire hit her with the other hand. She felt a meaty pull at her side and couldn't breathe. It was like being punched with knives.
She slid down to the ground, grabbing along whatever he was wearing in an effort to stay standing.
“The Druid will die because of you,” it hissed at Beau and Beau punched the vampire in his throat, the knives of his fingers piercing the neck entirely as Beau instinctively twisted them in a deliberate scramble that took the head of the one that had stabbed the girl.
He fell onto the other, his body morphing into ash as Beau watched, the pieces floating away like dirty snowflakes along the breeze of the night.
Beau squared off with the vampire who still stood, every fiber in his being crying out to go to the girl who surely lay dying at his feet. It made Beau's body surge in a lurching adrenaline rush that caused him to move before he'd willed it.
The two met in a sickening kiss of flesh that echoed in the still alley, that encapsulating bubble throwing the sound of their fists back to them. Beau had obviously been in fights before as he moved in on the coward who had beaten the girl and would have done far worse had he not stumbled along.
And Beau had turned into one of them himself. Better not to reflect on that.
The vampire swiped a perfect branding of claws down Beau's shirtless chest and Beau used his momentum to sever the vampire's neck with one talon as if he had done it before.
Beau hadn't but it was effective. A second mouth of white bloomed like an oyster shell pried, revealing a pulse of pink flesh, the guts rendered open by his razor sharp claw.
When the blood came and the vampire fell, Beau smashed his fist through its head and the skull burst like a grotesque melon, the brains slipping out in a wash of filthy gray sludge.