by Eros, Marata
After all, Zach was rogue. He felt his hands clench and Josiah met his eyes with impunity. “I meant nothing, I am restating the facts, Zachary.”
Zach tried to clamp down on the buried prejudice between the two groups. They were considered mongrels by the Reapers. But not all rogue were governed similarly. Zach thought they had moved beyond it all.
Perhaps not.
Holly extracted herself and came to stand in front of him, her head not even brushing the underneath of his chin.
She tilted her face to his and said, “Don't, Zach. Listen to what he has to say. It's obvious now that this coven... is blended.”
Contemporary term, that, Zach thought uncharitably.
He folded his arms across his muscular chest and decided to listen. But delivery was everything and by whatever was holy, it better be done with deference.
Josiah began again, “We have been scouting and came across a Druid.”
Zach's interest was piqued. It was good that the trio of Reapers could scent the Druid blood so well. It was a gift that was desperately needed if their coven would grow. The Druid Queen was not here by happenstance.
“Excellent. When do you foresee an acquisition?”
Josiah shifted his weight. “There is a complication.”
“What?” Zach said in a terse voice and Holly laid her small hand on his muscled forearm and he relaxed slightly under her touch.
“What?” he repeated in a milder tone.
“Currently, she is housed in the police station, under guard.”
“Why?”
“There was an attempted rape...”
Zach's eyebrows rose, his expression hard.
Josiah held up a palm and tore it through his hair. “Our source there says three, creatures...” he let that word lengthen significantly and suddenly Zach knew.
Rogue vampire. But not like him. The splinter rogue that took the female Druids without consequence, accountability.
“Are you sure?” Zach asked. Because if it were who he thought it might be, a battle was a certainty.
A battle of epic proportions, their new Queen the certain target. Hell, they may as well paint a bull's-eye on Holly right now.
Josiah nodded. “It is the faction.”
“Fuck,” Zach said.
“Yes, my rogue friend,” Josiah said, subtly upholding the inherent differences between the vampire hierarchy.
Their gazes locked. “Do you not see why it matters not that you are also rogue?” Josiah asked.
Zach saw that clearly. These vampire called themselves rogue but they were so far splintered from what he hailed as his people the two groups were not comparable.
The faction were rogue, but intrinsically not. It was a superficial similarity at best.
Holly stepped back from Zach and asked the question he saw burning on her tongue, “Who are these guys?”
He smiled at her wording. So young. So human.
So vulnerable.
“Our enemies, my Queen,” Zach said, pressing a kiss against her smooth forehead.
Holly looked into eyes she'd seen above her as he moved within her body, smiling at her when they spoke to each other, caressing her face with tenderness.
And lust.
And lately, Holly was certain she'd seen more. She was young but she wasn't stupid. As she gazed up at Zach she didn't like what she read there. It was fear. Not for himself, because she knew the vampire didn't get scared easy. No, but fear for her and Rachel. Maybe more Druids, like this one that was at the police station.
Andrew came in, his eyes sweeping the dimly lit room. “Did you tell him?” His eyes searched Josiah's and he shook his head. “Not yet.”
“There's more?” Zach asked, his eyes moving from one male to the other.
“Tell us, I can't stand the not knowing,” Holly said in exasperation, her hands going to her hips.
Andrew let his eyes linger on their young Queen and gave a hard swallow. Being close to a pure Druid like her... well, it made his balls seize up.
Not in pain either. He saw Zach notice his struggle and schooled his expression into neutrality. The sooner they acquired more Druid flesh, the fucking better. Living with two Druids as pure as Holly and Rachel was giving the Reapers a case of blue balls the size of watermelons. That made his lips quirk then he became serious once again. The news sure called for it.
Josiah nodded, taking the conversational reins, “The Druid girl claims to have been rescued by a vampire.”
“No,” Zach scoffed immediately. She would have been taken if that were the case.
“Yes,” Andrew glared at Zach, “and listen to this: she was gravely injured and he healed her through blood share and sex,” Andrew stated significantly.
“Fuck,” Zach said.
“You keep saying that! What's going on?” Holly looked at the Reapers silently, gauging their grim expressions and had an epiphany. “Wait,” she began quietly, “are these... are we,” she looked at Zach, “are Rachel and I in trouble here?” She pointed her finger at Zach, “Don't protect me by lying, Zach. It's bigger than me.”
“Nothing is bigger than you, Holly,” Zach clarified quietly.
Cole stood just outside the door. “I know what type of vampire would heal through sex and blood.”
Zach turned to Cole and nodded as they simultaneously said, “Druid.”
Holly gasped. “A dude?”
Zach suddenly grinned. “Yes, a male.”
Rachel came through the door, where she had heard the tail end of the conversation as she stood against the threshold and took Holly's hand. “What does this mean for us?”
“A Druid male... that is also vampire?” Josiah shrugged, barking out a laugh. “They capture him and he will be a stud for their female vampire, a rapist of the Druid females they kidnap.”
“So you kill him?” Rachel asked, confused, looking at Cole for details.
Cole shook his head. “No, we get to him first. Protect him like the females. He would be a powerful addition to the right coven.”
“And to the wrong one, Cole?” Rachel pressed.
“Disastrous.”
Holly opened her mouth and Zach pressed a finger to her lips and replied for all the vampire in the room, “He has twice the strength of one of us...”
“Speak for yourself, rogue,” Elias hissed and Zach moved toward him before he was conscious of doing so.
“Stop!” Cole roared and the females jumped at the low command of his voice. “We do not have time for this.” He looked at everyone in the room. “He will be that much stronger, faster, all his senses more acute. And,” Cole let the pause lengthen, swelling with portent before he spoke next, “he can walk in the day.” He spread his hands away from his body, indicating the superiority of it all.
Elias laughed and Holly wondered what could possibly be funny about a raging super-Druid vampire on the rampage. Oh yeah, so funny.
“The female has given an account of what has happened and it has caused me to speculate the male does not know what he is. That the battle lust caused his vampire nature to burst onto the scene at just the right moment.”
“And he bred the Druid in the back alley?” Zach asked incredulously.
Cole nodded. “It would have been an instinctive act.”
Josiah agreed, “She was dying from her wounds. He just reacted.”
Elias put broad hands on his hips. “Okay... where is he now?”
Andrew shrugged. “No one knows.”
“We need to acquire that female,” Josiah said thoughtfully.
“Good luck with that, the human police are crawling all over the top of her. And she's a bred Druid. She'll be giving off her scent like a bitch in heat.”
Rachel huffed at that and Cole smirked. “Too true.”
“Nice boys, classy,” Rachel said and Holly glared at the group.
“Don't shoot the messengers, girls,” Andrew said, the only one of the vampires that spoke with any semblance of modern dic
tion.
“What about the girl...?” Holly asked. “I mean, this super-vampire...”
“Druid vampire,” Zach corrected and she nodded.
“He's already had sex with her? What does that make them?”
Cole and Zach exchanged a swollen look. Finally, Cole said the one word that landed in the room like a leaden weight:
“Bonded.”
“Fuck,” Zach said for the third time in the space of thirty minutes.
Nobody disagreed.
Cole looked at the three Reapers and said, “You know what you have to do. Get that female before the Druid vampire acquires her.”
“So Mega-vamp's going to nail her again?” Rachel asked, not even making a slight attempt to soften her sarcasm.
Cole shot her a look, which she ignored as she slid an arm around his waist and batted her eyelashes at him. His expression softened and she gave a small smile.
Holly grinned, mega-vamp. She liked it.
“Yes,” Zach growled. “He will not stop until he is with her again. And we Cannot. Let. The. Faction take hold of a bonded pair.”
“Let me guess? Disastrous?” Rachel snarked.
“Yes, exactly that,” Elias said without a trace of humor.
Rachel rolled her eyes, vampires. And people thought women were full of drama. If they only knew.
“Come on Holly, let's leave the boys to their nefarious plans,” Rachel said and Cole pinched her in the ass.
“I'll take care of you later,” he growled at her and her honeypot moistened at the thought. “I'm holding you to it,” Rachel said, walking off with a deliberate sway to her hips.
Cole watched until she was out of sight, shaking his head and with it, as much of the lust for that hot Druid female that he could. Rachel drove him mad with it.
Maybe she'd need a little discipline tonight. She liked her sex a little rough. She was a fragile creature but conversely, Rachel enjoyed pushing those boundaries with him. And he liked pushing back.
Cole smiled.
“Snap out of it, Cole. Not all of us are mated, brother,” Josiah said, his eyes dark with contained lust. Lust by proximity, by need... by biology.
Of course, Cole thought. That was thoughtless of him.
They got out of their heads, he and Zach, just long enough to come up with a plan that would free the Druid, and possibly bait the Druid male who walked in the day.
The lucky bastard.
CHAPTER 7
Aubree
Aubree's eyes felt hot... grainy, she was so tired she felt like she was sleeping with her eyes open. The stupid cops wanted a recounting of the events.
Again.
Maybe Aubree wasn't willing to give it. What would this make it? The third time? Fourth? It was inconceivable that they'd be treating her as the criminal when clearly those vampires had been the perpetrators. Of course, without the evidence of their bodies to solidify what she had said, she looked suspect.
Especially after the rape kit came back positive. Beau's semen was now held deep within her body. Unprotected sex with a stranger in a back alley. Better than death, Aubree thought with grim justification.
Her wounds were but smooth scars, looking weeks old instead of hours. Because Beau had healed her. And she had sent him away. She'd been goddamned convincing too.
Too convincing. Aubree swallowed past the lump in her throat, past the wrongness of her actions, the guilt. She saw the memory of his face, the shock and hurt of her feigned rejection. Aubree hoped that she'd saved him. If Beau had stayed, she knew deep within the fabric of her being that he would've tried to defend her and been shot down. Especially by this group of cops, who were steadily seeming less like police and more like the vampires she escaped from.
Of course, her story kept looking weirder and weirder, the police shifting from disbelief right into suspicion.
The lead cop leaned down into her face, all traces of sympathy gone. “Listen, Miss...” he looked down at the notepad held in his hand then met her eyes, “Williams. It sounds to me what we really have here is an old-fashioned case of regret.”
What? Aubree thought, stunned by his callous disregard of her.
He straightened, putting his hands on his hips and that's when she saw it, her eyes flicking up to his then back down to his cock.
It made a tent in the constrained recesses of his police uniform. Aubree stood so quickly the chair tipped over and clattered on the peeling linoleum floor of the interrogation room, echoing hollowly in the confined space.
Time. To. Go.
Her palms started sweating and she swiftly looked at his partner.
Raging hard-on with him too.
Well... wasn't this just fucking great. Cops turned criminals.
Aubree tried one more time, the tables turned dangerously against her, “I'm the victim here!” she hollered, backing toward the door. But the other cop, his name tag read, Hazzard, kept coming.
Perfect, Aubree thought illogically as he slammed his palm on the flat of the door behind her, shoving the bolt into place. He turned and jerked the wire out of the video monitor stationed in the corner of the room.
Put there for accountability.
When he turned and faced her she could tell the cops were out of their fucking minds, their pupils were dilated and they stalked after her like a couple of mindless zombies with intent, with livid purpose standing in their expression. Their humanity had left them and something else had replaced it.
Aubree wasn't going to stick around and find out what.
Hazzard didn't even make a pretense of the cop he'd been moments before. He raised his fist and Aubree's training came online instantly, slipping out automatically from her tired body, her desire to survive superseding everything: her fear, her tiredness, her shock over the cops' change of heart.
To rapists.
*
The three Reapers made their way by scent alone, knowing the end of their destination made it all the easier. What waited for them there was the difficulty. Speed was of the essence. It was well-known that the Druid female would be in a vulnerable place. Human males were known to try to force-breed a Druid that carried the scent of vampires. Some low and primitive need urged them to attempt to mark the female off the Reaper's list. A primal directive from ancient times.
Basically, they'd fuck the Druid to death if the Reapers didn't reach her first. Already, after so many hours in their care, with her unique biological scent subtly infiltrating their senses, they would reach a critical mass of pheromone input and the scales would tip. Moral men would become criminal.
Anything to fuck the Druid.
They ran, the night a cloak of cover, the moonlight showing the gaps of their progress when they came away from the concrete jungle that housed the Druid.
They hadn't been far off the mark when they came upon the pandemonium of the police station
Not a moment too fucking soon, Josiah thought, rushing into the building as the scent of the Druid permeated the pores of his skin, washing over him and through him like water from a shower head.
Elias felt like he'd been kicked in the teeth with it. And he thought Holly and Rachel potent?
Andrew looked at Elias, both blown away with her scent. They stood dazed for a moment then Josiah yelled, “Come on! This way!”
They slipped through the doors and entered into an orgy in progress. Stunning, even by vampires standards. Her scent had caused a sexual energy to descend on the entire precinct in the dead of night.
Holy fuck, Andrew thought, surveying the humans writhing around the floor, humping each other.
*
A human male... now that Aubree could deal with. She did. Aubree came low and swept her leg into the vulnerable side of Hazzard's knee as the other cop came from behind her, latching onto her torso.
Gauging his height, Aubree swung her arms behind her, bent at the elbow while his engorged cock pressed up against her ass and shoved her thumbs in his eyes as dickhead Hazzard fell to the
ground, holding his disabled knee.
But he was a tough fucker, he used his good knee and propped himself up, scooting toward her, down but not beaten.
Aubree's heart was trying to escape her chest; she could take them.
That's when old Blind One grabbed her hair that had come undone from her messy bun and wrenched her backwards.
She couldn't help it, Aubree screamed, her tortured scalp felt like it was on fire. Instinctively she let her body weight drop and old demented wasn't prepared and she fell like a hot rock. Aubree sprung to her feet and threw herself at the locked door, Hazzard tearing at her pant leg. Staggering, she flipped the bolt and slammed the door behind her. She grabbed the chair to the left of the door and rammed the thing underneath the knob.
Then Aubree saw the people screwing in the halls and became lightheaded. What the fuck was going on? She slid along the wall, trying to be invisible as buttocks clenched and pricks plundered. Every female was on her back as the cops, their uniform pants around their ankles rammed their pussies into the floor of the hallway.
But as she passed, their rutting above the women slowed and the men who had their swollen cocks in the women's willing holes paused in their thrusting.
Their eyes fell on Aubree with tangible weight and Aubree gave a hard swallow.
She was not a weak girl but the look they gave caused her to sprint for the door and a very girl-like yelp ripped out of her as a large cop blocked her way, his cock standing at rigid attention, his pants long gone.
Oh no, Aubree thought coming on the offensive and giving him a throat jab that should have sent him stumbling off, hands like a ring around his neck and no breath in his body. Instead, she found herself outmanned, he had training and a hundred pounds on her, easily two-twenty. Aubree knew she was terrific at fighting, but when two opponents were evenly matched in skill and one outweighed and outmuscled the other by that level of disparity, the smaller fighter was fucked.
Like now.
He landed a powerful kick at Aubree's hipbone that spun her around and only her arm saved her from crushing her head against the wall. The brunt of the impact reverberated up her arm, numbing it from elbow to shoulder. The breath whooshed out of her body as he slammed into her, his hand cupping her mound, his mouth crushing her lips.