“Because it might not be as stupid as you think. Touch her arm. Do it as an experiment, if for no other reason.”
Puffing out a breath of exasperation, the two women moved close enough to touch. Nicola sniffed the air again and said, “Yes, her perfume, or pheromones, or whatever, smell nice though a bit strong. I don’t understand why that matters though.”
Nicola touched her forearm and rubbed from wrist to elbow. Her eyes widened slightly feeling the smooth, warm skin and something else that she couldn’t describe. “That’s... different.”
Nodding with a similar reaction, the werewolf noted the cool touch of the other woman’s hand and shivered. Her skin felt soothed beyond even what she had felt with Nick. While his touch eased her pain and made it go away, Nicola was like a cooling salve added to that rash.
Both women looked at him in confusion and Nicola was the first to ask, “What does this mean?”
As he shook his head, the man replied, “I’m not sure that it’s ever happened before. We’re the right combination of three supernatural creatures meeting that are all in synch, or something to that end. Whether we can end her condition together, I’m not sure.”
A moment passed and Nicola forgot her anger as she found her hand stroking the werewolf’s other arm just to see if the feeling continued. It was a pleasant sensation for her as well. A dangerous proposition came to mind, but Nick was unsure they should test any further. “I wonder what would happen if she took a bath washing off both now?”
Nicola shook her head reproachfully at the man. “You don’t have to do a full scale version of an experiment. Obviously your generation didn’t have schools for science, did it? She can wash off an arm and most likely discover what happens without putting the rest of her at risk.”
Looking almost as disapproving, Charlotte agreed with the blonde happily. The idea of the pain she had experienced earlier wasn’t something she hoped to do again, especially so soon.
They walked over to the sink. There was soap there, so the werewolf could fully remove the oils from her skin. As the warm water ran, she washed off her right arm. The soap worked quickly and Nick could see discomfort wrinkling her eyes to point that tears were beginning again.
“The rest of me is fine, but all it takes is this to create the pain on my arm.”
Nicola looked at him a moment as he held back watching the experiment. Sweat was starting on Charlotte’s forehead with the pain. She began to scratch with her left hand, but then she shook it out adding, “Damn it, my left hand is starting to hurt just as much. Without Nick’s oils the pain comes back right away.”
“And all he has to do is rub your skin?” the vampire nodded at him as if trying to tell him to do it. Though she urged him, the vampire didn’t test her touch either.
“Can you put up with it for a little longer to see what will happen?” he asked. Amazingly, her forearm was already starting to redden with the hives they had witnessed on Kate earlier in the day.
“It hurts, but the pain is localized to those places. How long do we wait? The hives are already there.”
Being merciful as they watched the intended limb continuing to darken, Nick held her left hand restoring his touch to the washed portion of her skin.
“Does just holding his hand change the feel?” Nicola questioned moving to her left side.
“Only on the hand,” Charlotte replied in short, tight breaths. Sweat was pouring from her brow as the pain continued to intensify.
The vampire placed her hand with theirs and the cooling touch made the werewolf shiver as intense pain tore at her right and strange bliss was localized on her left hand. More curiosity made Nick hope to end Charlotte’s pain as he said to Nicola, “Try doing that to her right arm now.”
“Since you haven’t touched it, you mean?”
He nodded and watched as the vampire switched sides and stroked the red, feverish skin. Charlotte hissed in pain and shook her head as she closed her eyes. “It’s like being burned with ice or maybe dry ice. Please stop,” the last words came out less coherently as if the woman was drunk or about to pass out.
Nick reached out and rubbed her forearm, but it was too late. Charlotte’s legs gave as she lost consciousness. Nicola caught her on the right and Nick held her from the left.
“That was a bit sadistic of you,” Nicola complained glaring daggers at him. “You pushed her too far.”
A sarcastic laugh came from the man as he pulled her into his arms and lifted her. Carrying Charlotte to the couch, he replied, “A few minutes ago you were about ready to kill her. Now you’re mad at me again.”
“Because you were being mean to her. I’m the vampire, but you’re the one acting heartless,” she lectured angrily. “You hurt me too you know.”
“I know,” he admitted as he laid Charlotte on the couch. Wiping at her red, hive marked arm thoroughly, they watched as the arm began to heal before their eyes. “Try your touch now.”
The vampire rubbed the arm she had first touched and the skin returned to nearly normal even as the unconscious woman sighed.
Nick looked at Nicola and said, “I have deep feelings for you and some for her too. The werewolf has a crush on me and apparently all these feelings have joined us all together, but for what I have no idea. I wouldn’t hurt you by solving her problem the werewolf way, but I am afraid of what else might happen to her.”
Eyes narrowing dangerously, Nicola stated, “You can’t even say that you love me?”
Standing up, the voran moved closer to the pretty, blonde haired girl. A trained dancer in a former life, she held that grace and figure immortally. She was a vision as different from Charlotte as she could be and just as breath taking. His hands grabbed her by the waist with gentle strength and he pulled her close, “I can say I love you to you.”
Encircling her waist with his right arm, he tipped her chin upwards to kiss her cool lips.
Chapter 7- Encounters
Three figures darted across the roofs chasing a fourth. They had picked up his trail only a few blocks north of the Lair and it had become a chase that had already crossed a mile of city. Marek led Jake and Audrey and could have outdistanced the other two, but this stray was fast. If he was as powerful as he was fast, then having a team was wise. Even so, the vampire considered if he could engage their quarry, the other two could catch up to him as well.
Audrey suddenly sneezed from just behind him on his right. A normal enough action for a human; vampires almost never sneezed even in thick dust. It was a sudden concern as Marek recalled Nick’s warning that had involved cat hair that made Nicola sneeze. He tried to smell the air, even as the vampire ran.
The scent of a cat made the man sneeze and he warned the others, “Keep your eyes open. I smell those cats Nick warned us about.”
Jake asked as easily as his leader had, “Do we keep chasing this one?”
“Yeah, just watch out for a trap.”
Two roofs ahead of them, Marek watched as the rogue vampire stumbled. Before he could see much beyond a blur coming from their right, smoke exploded on the roof they were on blocking his view.
“Hold up and look out for an attack!” he warned pulling up short. Audrey slowed catching the smoke and the woman began to cough. Marek could sense something in the air and quickly tugged the red head back as he pulled away from the barrier walling them off from their target. “The smoke is laced with something,” their leader noticed as the air burned his lungs with each breath of the smoke. He and Jake were older and stronger than the woman that was his long lasting love making them more resistant to the smoke.
Protective of his people and Audrey in particular, Marek tried to sense where the attack had come from and noticed two figures on the opposite roof. Trying to decide if he dared test the ambushers, the vampire also wondered why they didn’t follow up and attack the trio. He had numbers, but the smoke and their scent gave them an advantage even so.
Judging the three vampires delayed enough, the two ran leap
ing across the gaps created by roads and alleys equally easily.
“Follow,” Marek said coughing slightly as were the others. They leaped across the gap between their roof and the opposite side. With nearly identical heights, the vampires were able to make the leaps easily even coughing from the smoke. When they landed on the opposite side, Audrey sneezed again and again.
Holding her hand, the vampire leader drew the others with him. The smoke was behind them now, but he could only see the three unknown felines. Smoke rose into the air from the roof he had seen the rogue on last.
“Be ready. They killed him already.”
Apparently the creatures had noticed them coming and having accomplished their mission, the three figures turned and ran. Marek and the others leaped back to the other side of the road onto the far roof, but as they leaped onto the next one where the rogue had been slain more smoke went off. They landed in the cloud and began coughing and had their eyes tear up as well their skin began to burn.
Unable to take whatever was in the smoke, the three had to jump off of the roof. Using their powers that verged on levitation of their bodies, the vampires slowed their descent to land four stories below on the sidewalk. Still coughing, they had to take a moment to recover.
There was a slight redness on their skin as if they had been burned by the smoke and it told him that the enemy must have used some form of silver in their construction. The belief that holy water burned had never been proven on him, but he knew that silver burned and could kill a weaker vampire even in small amounts.
Audrey was still coughing and her eyes were tearing and red also. Jake and Marek recovered first. His second in command wasn’t quite as old, but the vampire was over a century in age. The older a vampire was able to live, the stronger their power became. Compared to some of the ones they had fought in Cyrus’s army, they were still pretty young; but more than a century was still significant.
“What was that stuff in the smoke?” Jake asked rhetorically as he could probably guess.
“Silver nitrate maybe,” Marek answered as he checked on Audrey who had finally stopped coughing.
Their leader looked up at the building beside them and said, “We need to see what they left us.”
Audrey shook her head and asked, “If they can drive us back with these weapons and make us sick from the smoke, why haven’t they come to finish us off like the one on the roof?”
It was Jake who decided, “There are three of us. We won’t be as easily dealt with as a single rogue.”
Marek wasn’t sure, but looked to the roof and stated, “We need to go back up and see if we can find them.”
Leaping from his standing position, the vampire leader made it halfway up the building to catch a handhold on the window there. With his foot on the ledge, he put out his hand. Jake leaped for him taking the hand. Thrown with great force to continue his second’s momentum, Marek propelled the lieutenant to the roof in a single bound.
He looked to Audrey, who was already in the air. The woman landed on the ledge for a moment placing a hand under his neck playfully. With a light slap to the red head’s rear and a smile, Marek propelled her up the last two stories with a powerful throw.
Joining them on the roof, he looked for Jake who stood gazing to the north where they had last seen the three attackers.
“Gone,” the dark haired lieutenant stated. As he turned to look at Marek, the leader noticed the other man’s eyes had gone white trying to pierce the night with the full vision of a true vampire.
Audrey was already squatting beside the burned out corpse of the rogue vampire they had been pursuing. Her blade was drawn as she pushed at the strange dead thing. Where the blade pierced the charred flesh, it turned to ash to be carried away by the light breeze.
Not blaming the woman for her caution, Marek stood close enough to be able to sniff at the burned body. He had witnessed many vampire deaths and seen many bodies, but this was new. A vampire usually faded to dust quickly, whether it burned from a silver sword, had its heart ripped out or one of several other possible deaths; but never had he seen the remnants look like a burned human after a fire. It was solid. A boot to a leg proved as much, but the silver of Audrey’s sword was enough to return what it touched to dust quickly.
A further search of the roof proved to yield a few more of the feline hairs, which made Audrey in particular sneeze. As long as he wasn’t too close to the fibers as he breathed, Marek would only feel a slight tingling. He dared pick one up and rolled it between his fingers experimenting with the touch. An unpleasant tingling came from the touch as if a single hair could cause an allergic reaction.
With Audrey’s stronger reaction to the hair dander on the air, he wouldn’t have asked her to test the hair; but she was daring, a true red head. Her strong will wouldn’t let him dare what she wouldn’t, but picking up the hair caused her to wince immediately.
“That is unpleasant,” she stated quickly and placed the sample into a plastic bag in Marek’s other hand.
Where it had touched her skin, it was already red with a reaction to the hair. When Marek replaced the fiber he had been testing, he noted less of a skin reaction to it than Audrey’s; but it was working on his skin similarly.
“Their hair might weaken or even harm some vampires,” he stated with a thoughtful frown. “We seem to be looking at a predator of vampires. They bring the tools to fight us and drive us away when they don’t wish to fight. If their hair isn’t treated with something like silver, then they are natural enemies to us.”
Nodding, Audrey added, “It seems that way. I actually like cats, so I shouldn’t be allergic. Like you said, if they don’t use something to make the hair harmful to us, then this must be a natural predator.”
Jake snorted, “I don’t know about natural, but they’re dangerous. My only question is if they are our enemies, then why do they keep giving our clan a pass? We may have even numbers, but they had Nicola outnumbered last night and didn’t take her out.”
“They may have seen Nick and not known what he was?” Audrey questioned backing away from the corpse. The smell was beginning to upset her stomach along with the smell of the cat hairs. “Ugh, can we send this poor soul off and get out of here? I think I am done with patrolling for tonight.”
Using his sword, Marek broke the corpse into dust to be dispersed with the wind and turned to look at the woman. She was actually more pale than normal for a vampire, and he asked worriedly, “Are you sick?”
Waving off his concern, she replied, “I’ll be all right once we get away from these smells. If I had to fight, I could; but at the moment I just want to get away from this roof.”
The trio ditched the roof and returned to the car, which wasn’t very far from the Lair anyway. They could send out another patrol once he was sure that Audrey would be ok.
“Well, this looks like a Kodak moment, at least for you old timers,” a woman’s voice laughed sarcastically as Nick heard heels clicking on the wood floor. Two sets of heels, he clarified as he looked up to see the blond haired Lenora and red headed Vicki entering the room with drinks in their hands. The two women were dressed to host or just party the night away. Being young vampires and club girls, they probably preferred the latter.
He could feel Nicola beginning to bristle. The blonde haired Lenora seemed to enjoy trying to test the older vampire regularly. Even on their dates, she couldn’t help but complain about the younger woman. Physically Nicola had actually locked into a younger age than the twenty-three year old, but they looked comparable. Nicola perhaps looked slightly younger as her years as a ballerina had helped keep her looking young for her age, while Lenora had the look of a sorority girl who had just graduated, which was the case. She had been grabbed because of her looks like Vicki. They were beautiful women on the outside, and had been used to lure potential vampires and human meals alike for Cyrus. The elder vampire had maintained a close link on his scouts and Nick wondered how much of his evil had simply rubbed off on his m
inions.
Nicola had draped her legs over his crossing them as they talked. The girl knew how to cuddle and was very affectionate, a personality that would have been rare for a vampire without using voran blood. While the new girls were on a diet of his blood as well letting them eat normally aside from the few drops they needed from him; their personalities were still colder. Whether Lenora in particular would ever soften, he didn’t know. Like any vampire, the voran would keep tabs on her and the rest. If they failed to become what he felt they should be; either he or Marek would remove the threat.
“I am not in the mood for you, Lenora,” Nicola said after a moment as the two women walked into the room.
Unlike Lenora, Vicki was a bit quieter. She was pretty, but liked comfort as well. The red head had kicked off her shoes as she quietly settled into a plush chair with her legs pulled up under her. She was watching Lenora and Nicola equally as if judging whose side she should join. The young woman was more of a follower than a leader.
Lenora, on the other hand, wanted to be the leader in a house with six vampires who easily ranked above her in power and age. Unlike Nicola and the elder vampires, she seemed to be of the opinion that she was owed what they already had. It was a point that had made Nicola ready to end her new rival on multiple occasions and such a fight would be quick. Nicola knew how to fight, even if she was typically a gentle soul who preferred nonviolence. She was stronger with almost eighty years of being a vampire to separate them as well. While relatively young in vampire years as their altercation with Cyrus and his lieutenants had revealed; she was well beyond Lenora’s ability to defend if she attacked.
“What?” the blond asked drawing out the word and placing her hand flat across her upper chest as if she were offended. “You three just look so cute together, especially you and Nicky.”
The nickname used on him by only Nicola and Geni normally, made the vampire tense so Nick placed his hand on her bare knee rubbing her cool skin softly. Even his attention wasn’t enough to end her tension, but the woman managed to ask politely, “Shouldn’t you be out on the dance floor enjoying yourself, maybe finding a date?”
Standing Before Monsters (Vorans and Vampires) Page 9