“Me, too,” she said. “I have plans for tonight.”
“Ready? We’re going to run for it.”
Another human shadow, this time in the trees to his far left, seemed to stagger unnaturally. So there were at least two. No, a third joined the second…whatever they were.
Cursing, he dropped the basket, and supporting Judith around the waist—she weighed next to nothing—took off at preternatural speed toward the stone house. He turned them once to check again behind: three human figures were pursuing them at a swift pace. When he turned forward again, a bloated, hollow-eyed man was upon him.
The man dove forward, hands and mouth reaching for flesh. Calvin had him by the front of his shirt as Judith struck out with her heel. The blow glanced off his forehead as the man leaned in to bite Calvin’s arm. The teeth broke skin—a dull burn, soon to heal—as another human, this one stinking so bad that Judith wretched into the grass, was upon them.
The dead, he realized. The Watkins witch had possessed the dead.
Calvin threw off his two attackers, shredding much of the neck tissue of one—it stumbled into a tree before collapsing—and kicking the belly of another. The stone house was just ahead, so he lifted Judith roughly into his arms and used his shoulder to bulldoze through three more oncoming attackers. They reached the wrought iron fence that surrounded the small picturesque lawn and he deposited Judith on the other side as pain sizzled at his neck—the burn of another bite.
“Zombies?” Judith shouted.
“Watkins,” he yelled back over the thunder. “All of them are the witch.”
The death magic had to have come at considerable cost—pain and blood. It would mean that Watkins’ body had started dying, too. But with time expiring on her curse, maybe she thought she had little to lose. As he impaled one stinking body on a spike from the fence, he knew that she would feel the stab and rip as if it were going through her own belly. The dead man’s legs twitched and then went limp, Watkins releasing her hold on him.
The witch had managed to possess no less than a dozen corpses—a feat worthy of respect—and they converged en masse at the fence in order to reach Judith.
“Stay back!” he shouted to her. Into the stink, he plunged—they scraped and bit at him—and he added three more bodies to the iron stakes in front of the house. The blood of the dead blacked his hands and arms, but it took only disgusted irritation and dirty work to pin them all.
When he was done, Judith stood safely, waiting. The only thing amiss was her bare feet.
Really, the Watkins witch would have done better to try to control the lightning.
“Is it over?” Judith sounded as if she didn’t quite believe what she’d just seen.
Victory was theirs, but he was angry.
He should’ve just killed the witch when he’d had the chance. She’d sustained far more agony and degradation by possessing the dead than the split second of pain he would’ve inflicted by breaking her neck. This was ugliness and waste.
“Let me check the house first.” He climbed the fence easily, foot-hand-foot-hand, like a four-legged spider, and noticed how Judith kept her distance.
Afraid of him already?
“You’d better strip down out here,” she said.
Oh. That made sense. He was covered in slippery muck and viscera, which meant he had to smell just as fetid as Watkins’ emissaries did.
He looked at his filthy hands. “Why did she do this?”
Judith turned her back to him as if to give him privacy. “That wasn’t what you expected? Seemed damn scary to me.”
“But you are unharmed.” He started with his suit jacket, his tie, and then ripped off—buttons flying—the wet shirt underneath. Disgusting—the dead on his fence and him.
“Maybe she didn’t know you had a fence to, uh, pin them on,” Judith said. “It would’ve been different if they’d all reached us out there on the grass.”
He kicked his shoes away and peeled off his pants and socks, but there were still smears of blood on his legs. Judith didn’t need to see all this. Dumb violence is what it was.
“So did we win?” she asked.
He rescued his wallet and keys before dropping his pants into the pile. “If Elizabeth Watkins has any more magic in her this night, I would be very surprised.” He looked at the bodies speared on his fence, shadow shapes from the dark ages. “For the dead to congregate here, at this moment, she had to have divined our destination, located viable corpses, and animated them—all while we drove from her apartment in Boston and spoke with Lady Fane. To do all that and not even scratch you? It seems like a reckless waste of power.”
“So we stay vigilant,” Judith said from behind him.
Lightning lit the stone house once more.
“Yes.” He unlocked the door. “Come inside. It should only take me a few seconds to check the place.”
Chapter 4
The stench. Dear God, the stench might kill her. Breathing through her mouth only made her taste it, not stop smelling it. The left side of her pants was slimed, and she thought she’d gotten a little something in her hair, too.
Death by paper cut would’ve been bad. Death by noxious odor was pure evil.
At Calvin’s all-clear, Judith stepped deeper into what could be called a cottage as he closed himself behind a door. She heard a shower almost immediately begin running. She was never more grateful for modern plumbing. Except she wished he’d left the door open, just in case something else happened and she needed to hide in the shower with him.
To combat her terror, she assessed his place. The main space was small but open, the stone walls exposed. The kitchen was to her immediate left, sink clear, but the counters and stove were hidden under his considerable collection of books, which were haphazardly piled. She’d bet ten bucks the cupboards were full of the same. Blood might keep him alive, but it seemed books were his food.
Could be a quiet guy by nature, she thought. Introverted, like Meg. Or maybe he was lonely.
Random clutter—newspapers, an iron with the cord dangling, a stack of mail, and a…microscope?—covered what was probably supposed to be a dining table. To the right, a worn leather sofa set faced the TV, which was mounted over a fireplace. There were two closed doors off the sitting area. Calvin was showering behind one. Was there a coffin behind the other? What exactly happened to a vampire when the sun came up?
Interesting question.
So this was where Calvin Blake lived. He’d said he had money, but it looked like he only surrounded himself with what he needed.
The rushing sound of the shower grew louder, and she startled to realize that it was pouring outside. Buckets and buckets of rain, all at once. She shuddered to think of the dead bodies hanging off his fence.
The bathroom door cracked, and Calvin emerged, a towel wrapped around his waist. He didn’t look as he had earlier that evening. The lines of his face were cut sharper, meaner. Those sad poet eyes of his seemed set deeper, too. The tortured artist now—hungry, driven.
She had to swallow to wet her dry throat.
His very nice bare chest was muscled and taut, not an ounce of excess on him. His pecs were cut, and he had that lust-inspiring diagonal V few men achieved without devotion to the gym. A smattering of light-brown body hair made him all the more…touchable.
In spite of the danger of the night, or maybe because of it, the tightness of desire curled in her belly.
He gave her a strained smile and lifted what seemed to be the bathroom rug all rolled up. He took a breath before he spoke. “I’m just going to put this outside.”
“You okay?” She had a funny feeling that he wasn’t doing as well as he had been when they’d first met. He wasn’t a spider, but he’d changed.
“Angry,” he said. “Not at you, though. I want too much. I’ve always wanted too much. Anyway…”
His bitterness surprised her.
He strode past her and opened the door—a rush of misty, humid air mixed with a se
wer smell billowed inside, and then he closed it again.
She gestured toward the bathroom. “May I?”
“Yes, but keep the door unlocked. I’ll put a clean towel on the edge of the sink.”
“Do you have a spare set of sweats?” She glanced toward the front door. “My pants belong outside, too.”
His gaze darkened, angrier. “Of course.”
She tried to joke with him. “Or naked is an option.”
His expression smoothed a bit, a faint smile tugging at his mouth, but his eyes remained haunted. “Even better.”
The shower was glorious, the steam wrapping around her like a hot hug. She washed her hair three times. Calvin entered briefly. She peeked at the edge of the curtain and found he’d left clothes on the counter anyway. She stood under the stream, refusing to think or feel until the heat gave way to lukewarm, then outright cold water—a shock to bring her back to reality. Her new, very strange reality—a life-or-death curse, corpses in the rain, and a vampire in a bad mood.
She dressed in a pair of his sweats and T-shirt. Both had to be rolled or knotted so they wouldn’t fall off her. He’d already removed the bundle she’d created of her dirty clothes. With a towel wrapped around her hair, she finally emerged.
He’d dressed and was standing in front of the fireplace watching the news on TV, a flashy piece about a famous Bloodkin named Warrick Voclain and his new girlfriend, Samantha somebody.
“You follow everything Bloodkin?” she asked.
“Voclain is one of the Triad, so he’s a good gauge for how the rest of the Bloodkin world is faring.” He raised a remote and turned off the television. “You feeling better?”
“Yes. But tired, or rather, more like weary. I don’t think I’ve ever been weary before now.” She moved a little closer to him. “What’s that on your neck?”
He put a hand to a red mark, where she bet he’d been scratched or bitten. “I’m not healing as quickly as I would like.”
While she was in the shower, she’d been thinking about the attack. “I have a theory about why she sent those zombies.”
Disguised by the stinking muck and blood of the zombies that had covered him, his precious dragon blood had been spilling out of him. It would explain the change in his appearance.
His gaze got darker. “I do, too.”
“They went after you,” she said. “Not me…not really.”
He put a hand over his eyes and bowed his head, as if gripping his skull.
“She wanted to bleed the dragon out of you,” Judith went on. Make him the monster everyone had warned her about. “Am I right?”
He dropped his hand and nodded. “I think so. I think that I am her master plan.”
“That is so freaking twisted,” Judith said. “I want to kill her myself—paper cut-style. Who the hell does she think she is?”
“The new witch on Witching Wild.”
Judith shook her head. No way. “Over my dead body.”
“Precisely,” he said. “Look, it’s going to be a long night. I’d get you back to the main house, but Lady Fane would only laugh at our situation. It’s too far or too dangerous to attempt traveling anywhere else, but I’d understand if you wanted to take your chances out there. I can get you a car.”
Go out into the rainy night with the zombies prowling around?
“I think I’m good here, if you’re still okay with it.”
“I might get thirsty.”
Might? Funny.
“Are you okay right now?” she asked.
Could she somehow help him take the edge off with a little of her blood, or would that just whet his appetite even more? She wasn’t even going to ask.
“I’ll warn you if I feel my control slipping,” he said. “Right now, I’m still just angry.”
Because he wanted so much, Judith remembered. She wanted so much, too. And she wasn’t about to let Watkins take anything from her.
He turned toward her. “I get just about every channel. We could marathon a series or rent movies to pass the time.”
“Is there a bed in that other room?”
He looked at her, his expression composed, but he couldn’t disguise his heartbreaking eyes. She’d been searching for answers for so long; she just hadn’t known to look for a vampire. Now that she had him, she wasn’t giving an inch—not for curses or zombies or anything.
“Sex is good for stress,” she said. “If you’re up for it.”
“I don’t need a bed,” he said.
She tried not to be disappointed, but she understood. “Right. Of course not.”
Looked like they’d be watching television.
“For sex, I mean,” he said.
“Oh.” She raised her eyebrows. “I’m intrigued.”
When he didn’t take the three steps necessary to cross the room to her, she figured she’d have to make the first move. Her heart was pounding, but she wanted to laugh at the craziness of the moment. She had to admit, she kind of liked him looking at her all hungry like that.
She approached, but he was motionless as he watched her.
“What just changed?” she asked.
He took a breath. “Oh… My heart stopped.”
“I’m guessing you don’t mean that in the romantic sense of the phrase.”
“There’s some romance to it.”
She frowned and then figured it out. Whatever blood he had in his system had…redirected. She glanced down. Yeah, the proof was right there.
It made sense, considering. His heart had stopped beating, and he was giving her the space and a reason to change her mind. Very gallant, but she’d already decided.
“Well all right, then.” She took another step forward to stand right in front of him, and she glided her hands up over his shoulders and neck—stupid zombie bite—to thread her fingers in his hair. She rose onto her tiptoes to kiss him.
With the first tentative brush of her lips on his, he was in motion. His hands went to her hips and he lifted her, while he subsumed her sweet kiss into his darker, harder one.
He was dangerous—to her body and her heart—but all her life she’d wanted to know this world, and he was the embodiment of it. The kiss didn’t just press, it stroked. He opened her mouth with the nudge of his thumb to her chin and dove inside to consume her. The crush of wet heat and the bite of fire sizzled along her nerves, and she gave herself up to it—awake and alive at last. She tightened her grip on him with a fierceness she hadn’t known she possessed.
Belatedly, as stars punctured the darkness behind her lids, she realized he wasn’t going to break away to breathe—he didn’t need oxygen. All the rhythms she’d learned in the human world were off.
She arched to gulp some air—still humid and shower-sweet in the small house. His mouth went to her neck, and he scraped his teeth along her skin. She laughed because she had no fear with him there, not of his bite. She laughed because he’d turned her world upside down.
“Where…?” Casting her gaze upward, she found not the ceiling but a cockeyed view of a wall and the floor. Her mind struggled through the haze of her desire, trying to make sense of their orientation. They’d been down there before, but somehow, during that no-breath kiss, he’d managed to climb them up on a wall, where he now had her pinned as he ripped the T-shirt off her body with his teeth.
The fight had shown her just how strong he was, but this was all spider.
“The laws of nature don’t apply to me,” he said against her belly. “Every one of them was broken when I was changed.”
She didn’t dare struggle for fear of falling. Better to hold on to him and ride it out.
She was naked and sideways on the wall, his knee and arm there to break her fall if needed. His weight on her was like a magnet, as if they were two forces brought together with an ecstatic snap of connection. He entered her with force, and she could feel magic singing in her blood. Every time he pulled out, her core ached to couple again and again.
Digging into his scalp
with her nails, she brought him down for another soul-scorching kiss. The storm rattled the windows, lightning making the back of her eyelids glow red. And when she arched against him in release, she wasn’t sure what he’d done to her, but she knew that she was changed. That she could never go back to the human world. That she belonged to one ruled by blood.
The power was out, but Calvin’s phone said they had hours left before dawn.
He prowled the kitchen, opening drawers and cupboards, tossing books on the floor. He’d never bothered to stock the place for things he didn’t need. He hadn’t considered that he might bring a woman back here—certainly not one the likes of Judith. His occasional liaisons took place in a hotel in the city. This was entirely different.
“I’m really not hungry.” She peered at him over the back of the sofa. Her eyes were somnolent and dreamy, which gave him no small satisfaction. He liked her fresh-faced, the curl just coming back into her hair. If he ever did anything good, he wished it would be to see her through this night. She might trust him, but he didn’t trust himself. His throat was parched, guts going dry and still inside him, skin getting tighter.
“I’m not looking for food.” Yet.
Why he checked in the freezer, he had no idea. There was a tray of ice cubes, probably decades old.
His gaze fell on the table. There, by the mail, was a letter opener. He took it to the fireplace, where he stroked each side of the blade upon the stone mantle until it was as sharp as a knife. Enough to do the job.
He put the blade on the coffee table across from her and then skittered back into a shadow-blackened corner of the room to crouch. He took a breath so he could speak. It no longer came naturally to him. “Just in case. It’s to stab me through the heart.”
She sighed and sat up. “I take it you’re not feeling well.”
“The blood within me diminishes over time. I’m fine now, but I don’t know if I can last until dawn.”
She lifted one eyebrow. “I don’t need a stake?”
He choked on a laugh. “Any long, pointed weapon will do as long as the heart is shredded.”
Taming the Vampire: Over 25 All New Paranormal Alpha Male Tales of Contemporary, Military, Shifters, Billionaires, Werewolves, Magic, Fae, Witches, Dragons, Demons & More Page 7