Between the Marshal & the Vampire

by Tricia Owens

  "I'm guessing three," he said as he set the knife aside and settled back on his heels.

  She pouted. "How'd you guess that?"

  "Heard your shots. Tell me about the last one."

  "I got it with one shot!" Proudly, she whipped her arm from behind her back and held up the three small creatures. "This looks like stew tonight, if you ask me."

  "I think you're—"

  Clay broke off when he heard a sound. He rose to his feet and turned. Shadows moved at the edge of camp. He took a step toward them. "Vellum?"

  Familiar dark-hair caught the moonlight, but the vampire was hunched over, his face hidden so Clay couldn’t tell if Vellum was hurt, though that seemed to be the case. Clay ran over and hesitated before touching the other male's shoulder. Was that blood he smelled?

  "Vellum, are you—"

  Vellum suddenly straightened, only he wasn't the vampire that Clay and Mariel had fallen in love with. This was someone new. Clay had time to open his mouth to shout a warning to Mariel but was given no time to utter a sound. A punch to the head sent him flying through the air and into abyssal darkness.

  ~~~~~

  The crawlups that Mariel had been so proud of hunting fell from her nerveless fingers as she watched Clay hit the ground and lay there, unmoving. Before she could make a move toward him, the vampire turned to face her across the fire.

  It wasn't Vellum. Only the dark hair was similar, but even that was only a passing resemblance because this vampire's hair was stringy and dull. It looked unhealthy. But then, everything about him did.

  He remained slightly hunched over, as though curled around an injury, or he was infirm. Telling his age was impossible, but he looked haggard in Mariel's opinion. He was the ragged remains of someone who had been living hard for a long, long time. His eyes burned with mania.

  "He thought I would be weak," the vampire rasped in a voice that sounded stripped and scraped of all emotion. All humanity. "He should have known better. The sire will always be stronger than the child. As am I."

  "Where is he?" Mariel choked out. "Where's Vellum?"

  "Bled out. Food for carrion crows and crawlups." The vampire ran a pale yellow tongue across cracked lips. "I knew he couldn't have made it this far on rock goats. I knew he'd have brought cattle with him. And here you are."

  The look he turned on Clay's limp form was lit by a ravenous hunger. Mariel would go so far as to say this vampire was nearly mad with hunger. How long had he lived in these mountains, sustained on only animal blood? Clearly it had been too long. This vampire had reverted to the creature that all men feared.

  "Leave him alone," she said shakily as the vampire began shuffling toward Clay's body.

  The creature gave her only the briefest of dismissive glances, his attention fixed on Clay. Remembering the solid weight tucked into the waistband of her trousers, Mariel fumbled for the gun Clay had given her. She lifted it with a trembling hand and pointed it at the vampire.

  "I said get away from him," she gritted out.

  He paused only after she'd cocked the weapon.

  "Should I drain you first, then?" he asked. He grinned a monster's smile, all yellowed fangs and slavering tongue. "Female blood is sweeter. Thicker. I'd meant to save you for dessert, but you've tempted me to change my mind." He crept forward.

  "Stop," she ordered. She was surprised when he did, hovering just at the edge of firelight. "What did you do to Vellum?" she asked, trying to buy time for Clay to recover. "I don't believe you that he's dead. He wouldn't have lost to you."

  "No? I ripped his guts out just like I tore out the throats of his family. All weak. All full of fight but lacking in power. Nothing but pitiful vermin."

  On the ground, Clay curled his fingers into a loose fist. Mariel's heart sped up. She needed to keep the vampire distracted.

  "Then why did you turn him into one of your kind if he was so weak?" she asked.

  The vampire chuckled. "Because I was bored. Because I wanted to watch him tear apart a woman while he was mindless with the transformation. The mess he made was…invigorating. The anguish of the Marshals and that little boy when they found her…sublime."

  Mariel gasped and nearly dropped the gun. Was he referring to Clay's Janie? It couldn't be a coincidence.

  And yet…it hadn't been this murderous vampire who'd killed her. According to him, Vellum had committed the crime. She looked to Clay again to see if he'd heard. His hand had flattened on the ground again. She feared what that might mean.

  "You're vile," she spat at the vampire. "Life means nothing to you."

  "You're wrong. My life means everything. That's why you're going to help me maintain it."

  He launched himself across the fire at her.

  He didn't make it as far as the flames. A second dark figure leaped out of the shadows, tackling him to the ground. The two bodies rolled across the ground, snarling and snapping at each other like wild animals. Streaks of fresh blood darkened the ground, turning the dirt to mud.

  Mariel followed their struggling forms with the gun, terror making the barrel shake. She was sure the second vampire was Vellum. She glimpsed his face every so often as the two of them fought, but he looked different to her—savage and hurting, alien and bearing little resemblance to the vampire she and Clay had partnered with.

  He was also weaker than she expected, and she wondered if the blood loss on display was to blame. The straggly vampire whom Vellum had come to fight was currently winning and that made no sense unless Vellum was injured. How long could he hold out?

  She watched as Vellum was thrown to his back, the other vampire climbing over him. Clawed fingers slashed. Fangs flashed, sharp with firelight. A gasp of pain. A snarl. Vellum coughed up blood.

  Mariel look from the fight to the gun she held. One bullet. She had one shot left. She could end this fight or at least even out the odds. She'd killed three crawlups, the last with a single shot. Surely she could hit a larger target?

  Oh, please, let me do this. Let me help him.

  She took a deep breath, steadied her aim.

  She fired…

  …and watched the dirt kick up beside Vellum's shoulder.

  She had missed.

  ~~~~~

  Vellum was dying and it infuriated him.

  His entire life had come down to this moment of revenge, yet he was failing. Vengeance for his family burned hot, but his body grew icy. He thought of the humanity he had lost, hoping rage would revive him, but it couldn't lift the deathly exhaustion that weighed him down.

  He had been cocky and had been ambushed on the trail. His sire had been waiting for him, maybe for years, knowing this reckoning was due.

  Vellum had paid the price for overconfidence. His abdomen was slashed open, leaking blood he couldn't afford to lose. He fought now not for himself, for the end was too near, but for Mariel and Clay. This vampire would rip them apart and drain them dry unless Vellum could stop him. But as his life rapidly ebbed from him, he couldn’t envision a scenario in which he triumphed.

  Mariel screamed a strange, tribal cry of anger. Vellum thought of her torn apart and an anguished sob ripped from his lips. He loved her. He knew that now. He loved them both. But they would never know it, and he was the fool for leading them both to their deaths.

  "Die," his sire hissed above him. The madness in his eyes told Vellum what he'd suspected all along: the older vampire had never been sane. The initial transition that all vampires had to endure had warped his brain and he'd never fully recovered from it.

  Vellum had fallen victim to a madman. He had been robbed of his humanity not because of sexual desire or his sire's need for companionship, but for pettiness. For amusement.

  Sharp fingernails dug into the tender skin of Vellum's neck. Whatever entertainment he had provided the other vampire had waned. His sire seemed intent on tearing Vellum's throat out just as he'd attempted to tear out his guts. And he would succeed, because Vellum's strength was draining as rapidly as his hope…
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  He reared back as the blade of a knife burst through the front of his sire's throat, spraying Vellum's face with hot blood. Behind, Mariel staggered back, her face deathly pale with shock at what she'd done. Vellum didn't second-guess it. As the older vampire gurgled around the bubbling blood, Vellum seized his chance. He grabbed the jutting handle of the blade and finished what Mariel had begun.

  Seconds later, the older vampire's head hit the ground and rolled toward the fire.

  Vellum collapsed to his back on the ground and watched the stars grow fainter.

  "How did you know…that's one of the ways to…kill a vampire?" he panted.

  Mariel burst out with a hysterical laugh. "I was aiming for his heart!" Dirt kicked over his arm as she skidded to her knees by his side. "Oh, Vellum, you're dying," she cried, horror filling her voice.

  "Doesn't matter," he whispered, and he wished he believed that. It might make the pain of losing her and Clay hurt less. But perhaps he deserved this. He was a monster, after all. He'd heard what his sire had told her. Vellum had been the one to slaughter Clay's friend. It didn't matter that he didn't recall doing it. He was a murderer.

  "It does matter, you jerk!"

  He grunted when Mariel punched him in the chest. She immediately gasped and apologized. Vellum had to smile.

  "Take good care of Clay," he said. He closed his eyes and stopped fighting the cold fingers of death that crawled across his skin. This would be a slow and painful death, but he would try his best not to let Mariel know that.

  "Stop talking like we're going to let you die, dammit!" she yelled.

  "Don't curse, Mariel," murmured a pained voice from Vellum's right.

  Vellum grimaced as he listened to Clay slide closer. He didn't want to, but he opened his eyes to look up at the former Marshal.

  "It seems I owe you a blood debt," Vellum whispered, holding Clay's gaze. "I took your friend's life." The words burned like bile in his throat.

  "Did you intend to?"

  "I don't remember anything of that time. I was…transitioning." Transitioning into the horror that he was now. He was sickened by himself. His eyes burned in a way they hadn't in decades. "I never wanted to be a monster," he choked out, his voice thinning as the last of his blood fled his body. "I never wanted this. Never…"

  Clay shut his eyes. "Damn fool vampire." He twisted around and snatched something from the ground. Vellum's heart gave a weak throb when he saw the knife that he'd used to behead his sire.

  "Do it quickly if you can spare me any mercy," Vellum whispered raggedly.

  Clay went pale and Mariel looked ready to faint. Clay growled, "It's not for you, idiot!"

  He slashed the flat of the blade across the thigh of his trouser, wiping it clean. Before Vellum could stop him, Clay yanked the blade's edge across his own forearm where the sun had turned it golden brown. The smell of fresh human blood flared Vellum's nostrils.

  "If you die, I will kill you," Clay muttered angrily before bringing his slashed arm to Vellum's lips.

  There was no heroic denial. Vellum couldn't have resisted the blood had it been force fed to him by his sire—as it once had been. But this was Clay, and his blood tasted sweet for being a willing sacrifice. It dripped over Vellum's fangs and down his tongue and the moan that rolled up his throat could have been mistaken for one made during sex. It felt that good.

  Only a trickle had made it down his throat before he was surging up, clutching Clay's arm to his mouth and piercing the man's skin with his fangs. Clay gasped and swayed, but Vellum couldn’t bring himself to stop. He did, however, make certain to press the special glands in his soft palate with his tongue. They released the aphrodisiac into Clay's veins that would instantly quell the pain and replace it with pleasure.

  Vellum's cock lifted up high and firm, flush with blood and need, when he heard Clay's breath shudder with desire. He slid his hand to Clay's hip and between his legs, where he found the other male's cock. Vellum greedily cupped it.

  "Vell—" Clay began, but couldn't do much more than moan as Vellum worked his hand over his stiff flesh. The thrill of dominance, of conquering this strong male, made Vellum growl. He crawled over Clay, caging him in muscle and bone. The former Marshal clutched at Vellum's sides with an iron, desperate grip. Vellum drank and he drank, throat moving greedily, but all too soon he could tell it would be too much for Clay to endure on his own. Vellum had suffered catastrophic blood loss. One human wouldn't be enough to fully revive him.

  When he reached out blindly and stroked his fingers questioningly over Mariel's trouser-clad knee, she immediately said, "Yes."

  Vellum withdrew his fangs from Clay and gently laid the nearly unconscious man on the ground to recover. Then he turned to Mariel, whose cheeks were flushed, and bore her down onto her back. He sank his fangs into her throat as painlessly as he could, and rode the undulation of her body as he injected pleasure into her.

  While he appreciated the tight fit of her trousers, at the moment he wished for the easier access of skirts. She struggled to help him. Though it wasn't soon enough for either of them, she eventually ended up open and spread beneath him.

  I nearly lost this, he thought as he dragged his fingers slowly through her hot, damp folds. Beneath him she was fever bright with passion and unashamed to touch him everywhere she could reach. Vellum couldn't remember when he'd last felt so connected to a woman. Or to a man, for that matter. The decades stretched back in his memory, but still, his life as a human was little more than a haze speckled with images that failed to stir his emotions. No, his true life was here, with these two.

  He pushed into her with ease for she was more than ready for him. Her hands were demanding as he moved upon her and inside her. Her teeth bit playfully at his ear, making him growl. Her precious life blood continued to slip down his throat, granting him life, healing his wound. As the seconds passed, he recognized the softening of her body as she succumbed for the warning that it was.

  "Thank you, Mariel," he whispered after he had withdrawn his fangs.

  She smiled dazedly at him. He kissed her lips, and then he concentrated on driving her to orgasm.

  It didn't take long. Within a minute, her cry of completion rang sweetly in his ears. She slumped, weakened and overcome, unable to keep her eyes open a moment longer. Vellum took care in redressing her. He set up a bedroll from their supplies and arranged Clay and Mariel to lie side by side atop it.

  I could leave now, he thought as he stood looking down at them. Clay might track him for a while, but without knowing Vellum's ultimate destination the vampire was confident he could outwit them and lose them.

  Instead, he buried his sire's body and burned the head, then cleaned up the evidence of their struggle. Only then did Vellum sit on the bedroll beside his two lovers and watch over them as they recovered their strength.

  It was Clay who woke first. One moment the man lay sprawled, the next he was tensed and aware.

  "It's safe," Vellum told him quietly so as not to wake Mariel. "My sire is gone."

  "Your sire," Clay repeated, testing the word. He rose up onto his elbows and searched the camp before settling his gaze on Vellum. His expression was difficult for Vellum to read, but he could guess what thoughts swirled through the man's head.

  "You heard him correctly," Vellum said before Clay could ask. "Apparently it was I who murdered Janie."

  "Janie…"

  Despite all the blood he'd just consumed, Vellum felt lightheaded. "I'm aware that it will provide little comfort, but…I'm sorry for what I did, Clay. You have no idea how sorry." Enough that I would behead myself right now if you asked for it.

  Clay had two choices, and Vellum wouldn't fight either of them. But when Clay said, "I forgive you," Vellum was left reeling as emotions bombarded him.

  "I didn't ask for that," Vellum said, unable to hide the tremor in his voice or in his hands.

  "You're getting it anyway. Lord knows I've had enough of bloodshed." Clay let his head fall back. He
stared up at the stars. "What now? Are you going to abandon us again for another excuse to be alone?"

  Vellum had to close his eyes to gather a strength he had never lacked until this moment. He opened his eyes and then said softly, "I…had thought we might purchase an airship together."

  Clay's head jerked up. He stared at Vellum as though he'd gone mad. "An airship…"

  Vellum twisted his hands together. "You and Mariel could pilot it."

  "Or only I would," she murmured. She opened her eyes and looked at each of them in turn. Her smile was full of mischief. "Clay would be better at providing security."

  "Security for what?" Clay looked flummoxed.

  Vellum latched onto the look in Mariel's eyes as though it would save him. It very well could. "I might be aware of an underserved market," he said. "Vampires looking to safely transport goods as well as themselves between territories. I've heard that it's currently a rather dangerous journey."

  "Trains are unreliable," Mariel murmured, grinning widely now. "I should know."

  "I suppose they are subject to attack by bandits." Clay rubbed his chin. "Sounds like quite a commitment, though, this transportation idea of yours."

  "Would require a considerable commitment," Vellum agreed, feeling a pressure in his chest that he hadn't felt in years. "I'd wager it would require…decades of commitment."

  "Decades," Mariel whispered. She sat up and threaded her fingers through Vellum's. She did the same with Clay's, and then brought both sets of hands to her lips where she gently kissed them. "Sounds like we're in business."

  Vellum stared at their twined grips and questioned the strangeness that he felt.

  No, he realized. It wasn't strangeness. He felt human. Just like his lovers.

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