by Nora Ash
Thanks to my lack of wallet, I had to walk all the way home on already tired and sore feet. It was dark, and it was freezing cold. I was in no mood for bullshit, and so more than an hour’s walking later, when I’d made it out of the busy center and into the blessedly quiet park running along a small river not too far from my home—I called Warin.
Because apparently, a certain vampire had been absent from health class the day they went over the female body and its grosser functions, and he was about to get schooled. Thankfully for both os us, only the raven lazily circling above my head would get to overhear me explaining basic female biology.
Warin picked up on the first ring.
“Liv, are you in trouble?” he greeted me.
Okay, so it was the first time I’d called him, but his assumption that I had to be stuck in another damsel-in-distress situation didn’t do much to ease my irritation.
“No, I’m not in trouble,” I snapped. “And just for the record, I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself, thanks. I was just calling to see if the fact that I’m a woman means you’re now too freaked out to see me again.”
“Oh.”
Fabulous response.
“Because I can’t exactly help that, you know,” I continued, letting my irritation have free rein. “I had no idea it would be such a huge deal—I’m not exactly down with how human-vampire friendships are supposed to be handled around that time of the month, but I would have thought you would. I mean, I can’t be the first human female you’ve been around since you got your fangs.”
His sighed deeply into the phone, and I could practically hear him pinching the bridge of his nose. “Yes, I should have been prepared, and I apologi—"
His voice died when a coyote howled in the bushes not too far off the dirt path I was walking along.
“You’re outside? After dark?”
The urgency in his tone made me frown.
“Yes, I’m walking. My car broke down and I didn’t have money on me for the bus. Now, could we get back to why you’ve been avoiding me, please?”
“This is not the time!” he snapped. “You need to listen to me—" His voice died as another coyote howled, this time much closer.
“Liv, run!”
I blinked. “What?”
“You’re being stalked—I need you to get to the nearest house now.” I could hear from the background noises on his end that he was moving now. Fast.
My steps faltered as I looked around the dark woodland, trying to spot what the hell had him so worked up. The path was quiet, save the rustling from the bushes where the coyotes were hanging out. Even the raven was nowhere to be seen.
“There’s no one here but me and some coyotes. Warin, what—?”
“They’re not coyotes! Run!” His voice was a growl this time, and it made my heart race with fear and my feet pick up speed even if I didn’t know what I was supposedly running from.
“What do you mean ‘not coyotes’?” I insisted as I jogged along the path.
A crash of snapping branches only a few yards away made me jerk my head around, even as I continued running. Bright yellow eyes emerged from the bushes, but they were much too high up to belong to a coyote.
Wolf.
A growl rumbled from the creature, a threatening sound that made every hair on my body stand on end. It was answered with a howl from the other side of the path—from the bushes right by my side.
I squeaked as pure terror finally set in—and I sprinted as fast as I could down the path.
More growls sounded from behind me, as well as breaking foliage, but I didn’t stop to look this time. I ran as fast as I could toward the exit of the park, but even as I did, I knew it was too far away.
And suddenly, two huge wolves with bright yellow eyes broke out from the underbrush ahead of me, blocking the path. Heads lowered and canines exposed, they snarled.
I halted as my terror pounded in my veins, and lifted the phone I still clung on to like a lifeline to my ear. “W-Warin…”
“I’m coming.”
Something large and heavy hit me full-force in the back, and I fell forward with a grunt as the air got knocked out of my lungs. I hit the ground with a smack, sending my phone clattering out of reach.
Strong jaws locked around my arms, my hair, and the back of my coat, pulling at me so hard the pain lanced through my body. I wheezed and fought for breath, kicking uselessly at my furry attackers while they dragged me off the path and into the bushes.
Fractured twigs and branches tore at my clothes and face, brambles ripping at my skin, but the wolves paid no attention to my cries of pain. My scalp burned from where one of them had dragged me by the hair, and I was pretty sure the one pulling me by my right arm had punctured the skin.
Once we were deep in the bushes, they finally released me.
I scrambled to get up, but didn’t make it further than my knees before a hard push at my back sent me back down on all fours. They clearly didn’t want me standing.
I cowered on the ground as I stared wildly at my attackers.
There were five of them, the biggest wolves I’d ever seen, more the size of ponies than canines.
I’m going to get savaged to death by mutant wolves. What an undignified end for a city girl.
Cracking sounded behind me, but not like branches. It was deeper, louder, and followed by the sound of something tearing. I spun around, still huddled on the ground—and nearly threw up at the sight that met me.
One of the wolves was… was breaking in front of me. It was the only word I could think of to describe what was happening to the creature. Its muzzle was peeling back, skin splitting apart to reveal raw flesh and carnivore teeth. It howled as its body split, contorting beyond its original scope. The flesh along its sides was tearing, too, reshaping itself around broken bones that seemed to fuse again in a new order. Fresh skin spread over bare muscle, until finally, a naked man crouched next to the remaining wolves, his sides heaving.
“A-are you… okay?”
I don’t know why I asked him that—maybe my freaked-out mind thought he’d been inside the wolf, like goddamn Little Red Riding Hood. Maybe it was just relief over seeing another human being, hope that there would be a way out of this madness. But when he lifted his head, those same yellow eyes stared back at me, and I realized with a sick sense of dread that he wasn’t going to help me.
No one was.
“Deadwhore,” he snarled.
“Really? You’re… you’re what, some sort of a werewolf, and you’re still a goddamn evangelical fanatic?” It wasn’t that I wasn’t still about to wet my pants from fear, but the unexpected insult from something that was clearly not even entirely human surprised me enough that a small measure of indignity rose in my gut amidst all the terror. I clung on to it with both hands.
“You are accused of conspiring with vampires against your brothers and sisters. How do you plead?”
I blinked. “Uh… what? Is this… is this a fucking trial? You’ve got to be kidding me!”
He lowered his head, his lips peeling back in a warning snarl. Despite his human mouth, his canines were still eerily elongated. “How do you plead?”
“Not guilty!” I snapped.
“Liar,” he hissed. “We’ve seen you with the dead thing. We saw you at the slaughterhouse. You are a betrayer. And we sentence you to death.”
My eyes widened at his last word, my precarious grasp on my indignation slipping as pure terror took hold once more.
Death.
They were truly going to kill me.
The wolves behind me howled and snarled, and I spun around to face them. Not that it mattered. They all leapt as one, heavy bodies knocking me down as jaws filled with sharp teeth snapped and tore. I fell to the ground, instinctively curling in on myself to protect my throat. Not that they needed to pierce my throat to kill me.
They ripped into my limbs, pulling at me from all sides.
They’re going to tear me to pieces.
It wouldn’t be an easy death—it wouldn’t be quick.
Out of nowhere, anger welled up from somewhere so deep I’d never known it existed. These strangers, these monsters, would rip me to shreds without a second’s hesitation because I’d befriended the wrong man. Like the fanatics who’d kidnapped me had tossed me into Warin’s cage for reading the wrong book.
Like my family had torn me apart since I was a kid for simply being wrong.
The injustice of it all, the absolute fury, burned through my veins. My life—they were trying to take my life, and here I was, curled into a ball, sobbing and pleading for mercy.
No more!
That simple thought flamed deep in my mind—and it was as if it lit a fuse.
Fire exploded behind my eyes, raw energy crackling down my arms and out.
Bright green light burst out of my palms, sending a shockwave through the small clearing. The wolves flew backward several feet, landing on the ground with pained yips.
My breath came in short heaves as I stared at my outstretched hands until I thought my eyes were going to fall out. My palms still tingled, as if I’d held onto an electric fence.
What…?
I didn’t have time to wonder what the hell had just happened any further. Furious snarls rippled all around me as the wolves got to their feet once more. And then they pounced.
Teeth snapped shut around my shoulder, buried into my side through my coat, and I had enough presence of mind to know that this was it when a thud sounded next to me—and suddenly there was no longer a wolf biting into my shoulder.
A pained yip, and the jaws locked on my side and limbs released as well. Growls, snarls, the crunching of bones and tearing of flesh filled the clearing, followed by more pained yips and howls.
Still very much in fight-or-flight mode, I kicked against the ground, forcing my aching body up. That was when I saw him.
Warin was in the clearing with me, fangs bared and blood dripping from his lips. By his feet, two broken bodies lay crumpled. It took me a little while to realize that their heads were no longer attached to their bodies.
The three remaining wolves were spread out, crouched and ready to pounce on the lone vampire, but he didn’t give them the chance.
Moving swifter than I could follow, he tore through the clearing. The wolves spun, but it was too late. One of them fell to the ground, followed by a wet clonk as his now human head landed nearby. His vertebrae was sticking out of where his head had been attached only moments prior, shining white against the dark blood.
It took less than half a minute before the two remaining wolves lay motionless as well.
An eerie silence fell over the clearing as Warin stared down at me, eyes wild and fangs gleaming in the faint moonlight that made it through to the forest floor.
It lasted for maybe three long seconds—until I lost the final shred of control over my convulsing stomach and had to roll onto my knees to throw up.
“Liv?”
The soothing voice was accompanied by a cool hand stroking gently against the small of my back. It was only when I felt his touch on my skin I realized my coat and top had been torn so badly they no longer covered me.
“Liv, I need you to breathe for me.” Warin rubbed his hand soothingly against my skin, avoiding the many scrapes and cuts. “I need to you calm down so I can feed you my blood.”
I shook my head vigorously in between sobbing and retching up bile. I knew he was trying to help, but just the thought of ingesting blood while still being surrounded by broken and bleeding body parts was more than I could stomach.
“No blood,” I managed in between dry heaves.
Warin didn’t respond, but he moved his hand from my back to my forehead, and I pressed gratefully against it, relishing in his cool touch. Slowly, my breathing became less labored, and my stomach’s convulsions eased.
Once I was breathing normally again, Warin scooped me up into his arms and cradled me against his chest.
Safe.
“I need to heal you,” my savior said, voice gentle but firm.
I looked up into his face, touched by the obvious concern I saw there. He’d retracted his fangs while I’d been vomiting, leaving only a faint blood smear as evidence of the monster he’d unleashed to save me.
“I’m… I’m not that badly hurt. You came in time.” It was the truth. I was covered in what felt like a hundred scrapes and bruises, and my shoulder and side hurt from where the wolves had clamped down, but it could have been so much worse. Certainly nothing that required ingesting vampire blood. “And… and if you try to make me drink blood, I think I’ll throw up again,” I said, my stomach twinging in warning just at the thought.
The vampire frowned, letting his eyes roam over my face and body as if to confirm my claim. Lips pinched, he nodded once. “As you wish. I will attend to your wounds later.”
Without losing his grip on me, he fished out his phone from his pocket, pressed a couple of buttons and raised it to his ear. “Carina? Send a cleanup crew to McMahon Woods. Bring iron. Five skinwalkers—one’s still alive.” He hung up without saying goodbye.
One is still alive? I was hesitant to look back at the carnage, but his words made me overcome my queasiness.
Sure enough, one of the last two men was faintly twitching on the ground. His body was badly broken, far beyond what any normal human could have hoped to survive, but when Warin walked around the front of him, I saw his eyes were half-open.
Warin turned halfway to let me slide to the floor, ensuring I could stand before he released his grip on me. “Stay behind me,” he murmured.
I was only too happy to obey. The wolf might be on the ground, but I didn’t know how long he’d stay there.
Warin put his foot on the man’s—the skinwalker’s—broken neck. The skinwalker gurgled in pain, but snapped his eyes open to look up. The moment he did, Warin asked, “Why did you attack the human?”
“Deadwhore,” he groaned. “Traitor.”
“Who sent you?”
The skinwalker groaned unintelligibly.
“Who?” Warin snapped, and even from my spot behind him, I could sense the darkness welling up around him, demanding obedience. He was Compelling him, I realized.
The skinwalker only gargled in response.
“Maybe you need to give him air,” I suggested, casting a worried look at Warin’s shoe planted firmly against the other man’s windpipe.
Warin growled, but eased his weight off the skinwalker’s throat just a bit. “Tell. Me. Who!” The air of command around him was so strong, it seemed to wrap around every part of the small clearing, making even my knees buckle from the raw power of his Compulsion.
The skinwalker gaped, but still no words came up. Then he convulsed once, twice—and fell limply back down, staring blindly up into the night. Blood trickled in a fine stream from both his nostrils.
Warin stepped off his neck and turned to me, a dark look on his face.
“W-what the hell just happened?” I stuttered. “Did you… did you kill him with your… mind?”
“No. He was either bewitched not to speak of who sent him, or…” His face darkened further.
“Or?” I prompted.
“Or he was Compelled by another vampire.”
12
“Another vampire?” I asked, not entirely sure I was following. “I don’t understand. First it was witches, then these… these skinwalkers, and now you’re saying it might be another vampire? Is this still related to the slaughterhouse and the blood contamination? Why would another vampire wish to harm your kind? Or attack me, for that matter?”
Warin shook his head. “I don’t know. But I’ve never seen a spell like that before. It looked… too much vampire Compulsion.” Then he looked at me, his expression softening. “We need to get you home, Liv.”
I nodded, too wobbly to argue. As much as I wanted to make sense of what’d just happened to me, what I needed most right about then was to get away from the
stench of dead in the small clearing where I’d nearly lost my life. I took Warin’s offered hand and clutched his neck when he lifted me into his arms once more.
The trees and bushes blurred past us, only to be replaced with roads and houses, and soon he stopped in front of my apartment block.
That was when I realized I’d dropped my keys, along with my bag, during the attack.
“Oh, shit. Warin, we’ve got to go back—I don’t have my keys, or—“ I quieted when he pulled a key out of his pocket, shoved it into the lock, and let us into the stairway.
“I picked your key up from the clearing,” he said easily as he swooshed us up the stairs and let us into my condo.
“Oh. Thank you,” I said, wishing he’d also picked up my beloved leather bag, but not being enough of an ungrateful brat to mention it.
He didn’t answer as he carried me to the couch and gently lowered me onto the soft cushions. Then he fished out his phone from his pocket and typed on the keypad so quickly my eyes could hardly follow the movements of his fingers. Finally, he returned his attention to me. His gaze swept over my disheveled figure, the same worried frown he’d looked at me with in the clearing marring his pale features. “Will you still not accept my blood? It would heal your injuries.”
I grimaced. “I know. And thanks for offering, but…” An unpleasant flash of the vertebrae sticking out of the neck hole of one of the wolf-men made my stomach threaten to roil again. “I think I’m on iodine and Band-Aids today. Would you mind getting the First Aid kit, please? It’s in the bathroom cupboard above the sink.”
He shook his head and sat down next to me. “That won’t be necessary. Take off your top.”
I hesitated for a second, my general anxiety over nearly getting eaten alive soothed enough by his presence and the comfort of my own home that modesty managed to rear its head. But it was ridiculous, of course—my clothes were already shredded so badly I was flashing all kinds of skin, and it wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen plenty more of me the time he saved me from the creepy basement.