Paranormal Magic (Shades of Prey Book 1)

by Margo Bond Collins

  At least he could thank his lucky stars that all this had happened on a gloomy December day in the middle of winter. There was no sunlight to speak of, and the thick cloud cover above was comforting. Being as old as he was, he could stand some sunlight but not for prolonged periods of time, and not without suffering serious consequences. Thankfully, that was not going to be a problem today. What he did need to consider was his blood loss problem because the more blood he lost, the more of a risk he would be to Lainey’s safety. Unfortunately, there was no easy way of solving that problem. Sure…he could stop the car in the next village and feed but with a body full of holes, he was going to create quite a stir. If things got too bad, he supposed he could pass over the car keys and let Lainey continue without him. He didn’t like the idea much because Lainey would have no idea where she was going and besides, she was used to driving on the other side of the road. In addition, if the minions caught up with her, she’d have no protection. It wasn’t a great plan in the grand scheme of things.

  Stirring beside him, Lainey opened her eyes and sleepily stretched out. Her pulse, which had quietened to a soft thud during her rest, was now a pounding roar in his ears.

  “Did you sleep well?” Turning towards her with a tight smile, he tried to ignore the powerful call of pumping blood.

  “Yes.” Stretching out again, and yawning, she regarded him warily and then her jaw dropped in horror. “You’re bleeding,” she whispered.

  He was disgusted with himself for thinking that even her yawns were pretty. What was wrong with him? “I believe I have been for a few hours now, Miss Observant One.”

  “Oh my God, are you okay?”

  Mercer turned around to examine his car seat. As suspected, the grey cloth was now turning a brilliant shade of dark crimson. Maybe he should have kept the BMW after all. Leather seats would have disguised the blood better.

  “I’ve been better.” He pressed his foot a little harder on the accelerator, but the Mégane wasn’t really built for speed.

  “How many times were you shot?” Her eyes were big and round as she began to process his injuries. At this moment in time, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to feed from her or take her to bed.

  “I didn’t really have the chance to count, sweetheart. Let’s just say it was quite a few times.” He wondered if he had enough energy left to put her to sleep for another couple of hours. The stupid questions were going to start to annoy him soon.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “No, it feels rather pleasant to have half the blood in my body leaking out down my back. Is there a brain inside your head, woman?” He rolled his eyes at her and bared his fangs for good measure. “If you’re not careful, your blood pressure is shortly going to plummet.”

  Swinging his head back towards the road, he pushed his foot down flat on the accelerator this time, but the results were not particularly impressive.

  “I’m sorry. I’m just trying to make conversation,” she said miserably.

  Her hands began to tremble once more and he immediately regretted his spiteful comment. Realising that she probably wasn’t having an awful lot of fun on this expedition either, he tried to soften the blow. “I’ll be okay. We’re heading to a safe house I know near Verdun. It’s a French chateau in the middle of nowhere. The guy that owns it is a friend of mine. We can hole up there for a few hours while we recuperate. After all, we have lots of things to talk about.”

  Lainey bit her lip and gave him a sideways glance. He knew she was remembering their last interrogation session. Mercer almost wanted to smile, but moving any part of his body was rather painful right now.

  “Don’t worry I’ll be back to normal in no time. You might even get an orgasm out of the next round of questioning. Well, after three or four hours, if you prove co-operative.” A white van chose just then to cut across two lanes causing him to slam on the brakes, and stretch himself painfully in the process. His leg was now rattling against the accelerator and the shaking was becoming uncontrollable. He was going to need to be up front with her. There was a very real chance that he wasn’t going to make it too much further.

  “Lainey, you need to listen to me.” His voice was mesmerizingly soft and it immediately caught her attention. “I’ve lost a lot of blood. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to make it to our destination without feeding. There is a point of no return for vampires. I’ll be putting you in danger just by being near you, if that point is crossed. Do you understand what I’m saying? If I give you directions, do you think you could continue to Verdun on your own?”

  Looking at her through eyes, which now only saw in hues of blood red, he watched as she slowly shook her head. What the hell?

  “I don’t think you understand me, Lainey. If you’re near me when I go into hypovolemic shock, I will suck you dry. I will kill you, and I won’t be able to do a thing to stop it. For safety’s sake, I should probably get out at the next town and meet you at the chateau in a couple of hours.”

  She shook her head again and he wanted to punch something. He was in no mood for games. Exasperation didn’t even begin to describe his emotional state. Injecting more than a little venom into his voice, he tried to continue. “Do you have such little respect for your life that…”

  “I can’t drive a stick shift.” It was a tiny whisper of a sound, but he heard her loud and clear.

  “Shit.” That is definitely going to prove a major problem.

  “Maybe you could just leave me somewhere while you feed, and then we could carry on?”

  The thought was a good one, but he didn’t like it for several reasons. Leaving Lainey sitting in a hunk of metal was not a great safety precaution and as it was clear she was somehow calling the minions towards her, it seemed a bloody huge risk to take. There was a very real possibility that he could come back to find her gone or worse, dead. If he fucked up his assignment with HQ to that degree then his life, such as it was, would go from unbearable to unendurable. Either way he looked at it, there was no sensible answer. If they’d been in the UK, he would have had friends nearby he could have dumped her on but that wasn’t an option where they were now. France was a lot bigger than the UK, and his contacts here were spread far, and wide. It looked like he was just going to have to drive as fast as he was able and hope to hell that Guillaume could tear her out of the car fast enough when they arrived.

  Pulling over quickly into a layby, he hobbled over to the passenger door and dragged Lainey out of the car.

  “What are you doing?” Fear filled her eyes once more and right now, that was a good thing.

  “You need to get in the boot. Your scent, the sound of your pulse—everything—is just too strong for me right now and if you’re inside the car, it will be too easy for me to just lose it and bite you. In the trunk, you stand a chance and I will do my best to ensure you make it through today. So, you need to move. The more time we waste, the more likely it is that today will end badly.”

  She gave no further protest and meekly trotted around to the rear of the car. She hopped up into the carpeted well, and folded her legs up so she could fit her body inside. He gave her a wry smile and slammed the lid shut. Then he was on his way again and he drove to the limits of the car’s capabilities.

  Lainey made no sound. He wondered if he’d hear sobbing or screaming, but it appeared she trusted him more than he thought for she remained quiet, and he detected nothing more than a slightly elevated heart rate, and the soft sounds of her breathing. Mercer was grateful for small blessings. He drove the next hour in relative ease, and whilst his body was breaking down piece by piece, his faculties remained alert and intact. He could do this. There was nothing more than the slight scent of cinnamon in the air, and the steady metronome of a pulse almost obscured by the traffic noise. Concentrate. Focus. Those were the words he kept forefront in his mind as the car ate up the road.

  Mercer rang Guillaume to give him an approximate time of their arrival and apprised him of the likely situation. He also gave him i
nstructions on what to have handy, should the worst happen. His friend sensibly told him to stop everything he was doing, feed, and forget about the girl. Explaining the importance of his assignment ate up another half-hour of the drive and when he ended the call, Guillaume had not been happy. He couldn’t say he blamed him. There weren’t many people who’d be overly enthusiastic about dealing with a rampaging bloodthirsty vamp, who would shortly be approaching critical mass. At least he’d have the necessary tools at hand, and if anyone could deal with it, Guillaume could. He’d certainly been around long enough.

  As the blood-haze began to settle down around him, Mercer relaxed his body and kept his back glued to the seatback. He needed to keep as still as possible to contain the damage he’d sustained, and the less energy he expended, the longer he’d last. Trying to keep his mind occupied by singing along to the radio, the insistent call of the pulse in the trunk was getting louder with each minute that passed, and it was becoming quite insufferable. Sinking his fangs into a warm, pulsing neck was all he could focus on right now, and it was going to get worse—a whole lot worse.

  Looking at the dashboard clock, he saw that he had just over an hour more to go. He’d passed Reims, the champagne-making capitol of France, some time ago, and found himself wishing he could have had the time to stop and buy a few bottles. He grinned slightly thinking about how many people didn’t know that it was illegal to label any product champagne unless it came from the Champagne region of France, and produced under the strict rules of appellation.

  “Keep thinking champagne,” he muttered. All distractions were most welcome if they kept him from considering the warm blood-filled human in the boot. The shades of red were getting darker and darker.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t want to think about champagne, second fermentations, Pinot noir or Pinot Meunier grapes. Even though he, as a Roman, had been one of the first to plant the vineyards in this area, the memories were not clear or tight enough to hold his concentration. It was a time long, long ago in a world far removed from today. Life had been much simpler then. There had been no CCTV, no police force, no media to speak of, and vampires back then were looked upon as gods. If the public discovered the presence of vampires in the twenty-first century there would be widespread pandemonium and a witch-hunt. That was pretty much the reason they stayed out of the limelight. The last witch-hunt in the eighteenth century hadn’t ended well, and there had been an estimated one hundred thousand deaths resulting from that catastrophe. Mercer would have put the figures as much higher, but humans had very short memories.

  Hitting some nasty traffic on the A4, a few kilometres outside of the city, Mercer nearly went into panic mode. Straining his head around to find the source of the delay proved inconclusive, and the feeling of being trapped inside a small metal can with thumping, beating hearts all around him was intolerable. He was about to go pop in the worst way. His eyes were bugging out, his body was breaking down internally, and there was nothing but feral instinct where reasoning had once been. If the motorists weren’t lucky, there was about to be some colossal carnage among the streets, the likes of which hadn’t been seen for centuries.

  He didn’t dare step out of the car. That had long ago ceased to be an option. As soon as he was out, he would be on the rampage, and no one would be safe. He just had to keep it together for a little while longer. Worse things had happened, he supposed—in World War II perhaps.

  When the traffic began moving about ten minutes later, Mercer sent prayers up to any god that would listen. The hold-up had been due to temporary road works, but he had lived several lifetimes in those few minutes. Pressing the gas pedal to the max, he wished to hell that he still had the BMW. He’d have happily broken every speed limit in the world had the option been available to him. As it was, he was taxing the poor little Mégane to the limit. It began whining in pain, but Mercer didn’t hear it. The only thing in his head was the thumping, pounding beauty of Lainey’s heartbeat. He was going to rip her neck out.

  There was just twenty minutes to go before he could feed. He no longer had any idea about why he had to reach the chateau first, those small important facts had been lost for a while but some undeniable reasoning told him that he must wait so he would. In his thoughts, Lainey’s blood was already running across his tongue, coating his fangs and dripping down his throat. It no longer mattered that she had another vampire’s blood inside her, due to his extreme starvation, he would barely register the taste, and sating himself fully by sinking his fangs into her jugular and watching the life drain out of her would be fucking incredible. It aroused him as he imagined her body climaxing in the throes of multiple orgasms, looking into those dazzling blue eyes as they filled with pleasure and fear, unable to escape the death-grip that his body would provide. His thoughts now focused solely on Lainey, and no other would do. Her face was swimming in his head, twisting in and out of the dark red waves consuming him and never had he seen anyone more beautiful. The thought of taking her life had him salivating. Some kind of irrefutable bond had formed between them, and he was anxious to break it before she could get deeper under his skin. The woman was trouble…beautiful, glorious, enticing, exciting trouble but there was something about her, which sent warning signals to all four corners of his brain. Now that the beast was at the forefront, it wanted to kill and absolutely nothing could stop him. When he put her ten feet under the ground, she would cease to be a problem and things could go back to normal.

  Turning off the motorway, he had no idea how he resisted the urge to pull the car over and finish her there, and then, but he managed. Lainey’s heartbeat was the only sound in his head, and it punched a tormenting hole in his empty chest with each fluid pulse. His eyes were now so dry that every time he blinked it was as if someone had rubbed a sheet of sandpaper across them. His body was failing on every level, and it had gone from being painful to downright excruciating. It hurt to grip the wheel, it hurt to keep his eyes on the road, it hurt to put his foot down on the accelerator, and just about anything else in between yet he continued on.

  Following the river Meuse, he drove past kilometres upon kilometres of beautiful French countryside and whilst the fields were bare, and the trees had lost their leaves there was a charm that was wonderfully unique to France. Ornate ironwork, carved wooden signs, clay pottery, painted window boxes and pretty, white shutters adorned the homes along the country roads. On an ordinary day, it would have been breath taking but alas, this was no ordinary day. As soon as the gates of the exquisite nineteenth century chateau came into view, he roared out his hunger. Not long now, he thought triumphantly, and then there were tears of blood, which he could not afford to lose, pouring down his face.

  The chateau, built in 1857, rested in the midst of thirty-five acres of perfectly manicured grounds. In summer, the combination of scarlet roses, salvia and geraniums set amidst a backdrop of cone shaped conifer trees made for a truly stunning entrance. On happier days, he had explored the private beach and wonderfully maintained Gothic chapel that was just a short walk away.

  Today, as his tires squealed past the gates and on to the gravelled drive, he had no time to admire the remarkable neo-gothic architecture, the magnificent white stone or the fluted pillars which sprung up in regular intervals in tall, imposing lines. The pretty turrets with their blue, cone-shaped hats received no more than a passing glance from him. There was only one thing on his mind. Destruction. He was going to take a life, and he was going to be brutal. The beast needed feeding.

  Staggering out of the car door, his head reeled with fatigue, and each forced step forward carried painful intent. The pounding in his head had become so loud, it felt like someone was crashing a pair of symbols together in there but the noise would be gone soon. Reaching the back of the car, his hand grasped the trunk and though the co-ordination was not there to undo the catch, he managed to wrench it up with a last burst of adrenaline. He knew sustenance was a mere hairbreadth away, and his fangs were exploding out of his jaw in respon
se.

  Mercer raised the trunk lid against the darkening skyline, and through the shades of red hues colouring his sight, he thought it looked rather pretty. It was, however, nowhere near as attractive as the delicate little human curled up in the boot asleep. With a heavy cry of hunger, both of his arms snaked inside and coiled around her body, dragging her out. Wasting no more time, he wrenched a handful of her thick blonde waves away from her head and sunk his straining fangs deep into her neck.

  Desperate

  The first mouthful was like a breath of fresh air to a drowning man. It was pure, sweet, delicious, and utterly intoxicating. Mercer sucked so hard upon her neck that he must have pulled a good pint into him before he even noticed she was now awake and screaming in horror.

  Lainey wriggled and squirmed in his iron grip but her ineffectual, flailing limbs barely registered as an annoyance. The scale of what she was trying to fight was impossible. It was like a mouse going into a death battle with a tiger. She didn’t stand a chance against him. Tightening his grip, he allowed his glowing amber eyes to settle on hers, and he deepened the bite.

  Her body went into spasms as his feeding thrust her forcefully into an intense orgasm and though her struggling didn’t cease, it lessened in intensity. It was hard to fight when her body was lost in pleasure and for some reason that thought pleased him. Running the calloused pad of his thumb across her lip, he heard her whimper then watched the beautiful glazed look appear in her eyes as her head lolled back, lost in desire.