They watched as the twins came around the house, followed closely by Bailey and Blaze. She was terrified she was going to lose them in the battle. She didn’t want them to fight, but knew she couldn’t take that away from them. First and foremost, they were hunters. They were proud of that and they were two of the best fighters they had.
All of the hunters were good, but the twins were among the best. They would need all of their fighters if they were going to stand a chance in hell of winning against Elderson larger clan. They seemed unconcerned about the coming fight as they played fetch with their dogs. The bloodhounds had shown an uncanny ability to track the boys. They could find the boys when the hunters and vampyres could not. They’d turned out to be good dogs. She hoped they didn’t lose their masters.
Keith’s death had been headline news. His body and possessions being stolen from the morgue hadn’t even been mentioned. Potter and Damon had retrieved them the night before. They’d buried him behind the house, under a big tree, with his sword thrust into the ground to serve as his headstone. She wondered how many swords would join his before this was over.
Chapter Twenty
One week to the day later, two hunters marched down the driveway with a human woman wearing a makeshift blindfold.
“What’s all this about?” Beck asked. “Who is this woman?”
Séamus said, “She says she has a message for Richard.”
“Okay. Why is she blindfolded?”
“She’s a familiar,” Christov said.
“And?” Beck questioned.
“And everything she hears, sees, or smells; her master does, too.”
“Oh.” Beck said, and then yelled, “Richard!”
He jumped over the house and landed beside her. “What’s up?” he asked, his eyes on the woman.
“We seem to have been granted a visit from Elderson’s familiar,” Séamus said.
“A familiar? I haven’t seen one of those in over 100 years,” Richard said, a little surprised.
Beck asked, “Should we talk to it?”
“I am not an ‘it’. My name is Pauline. Can I remove the blindfold now?”
“I don’t think so,” Richard answered.
Pauline said, “I have to deliver a message to Richard.”
“You don’t need to see me to do that.”
“You are not Richard. Richard is a vampyre. You are not.”
“She can sense vampyres?” Beck asked
“She can. She can hear, smell, sense, and see as well as a vampyre, but she doesn’t have the speed, strength, or life span. She is still human,” Richard explained to Beck.
“How do you become a familiar?”
“This nasty bitch drank his blood!” Christov spat in disgust.
“You actually did this?” Beck asked, repulsed.
“It’s only until I give Richard the message,” Pauline explained “Then he’s going to change me.”
“Why wait?” Richard asked.
“If I was a vampyre, then the vampyres here would’ve sensed me.”
“So? You were coming here to talk anyway. What difference would it have made if we sensed you coming?” Richard asked.
Beck could feel Pauline’s emotions churning with confusion.
“Can I please take the blindfold off?” Pauline begged, now scared.
“In a minute,” Richard told her. Then, he turned to the hunters. “Go get me Potter.”
The hunters left Pauline alone with her and Richard.
“What in the hell possessed you to drink that monster’s blood?” Beck asked Pauline.
“I want to live forever,” Pauline answered in a trembling voice.
Coming around the side of the house, Potter said, “Well, you’re not going to. Nobody lives forever, and that includes your master.”
“You can take the blindfold off now,” Richard told her.
She was a mousy, little woman. She was too skinny, with long, greasy, lackluster, brown hair. Her dull blue eyes were set too far apart on her face and teeth were too big for her mouth.
“I can’t believe he made himself a familiar,” Potter said in disbelief.
“He was too much of a coward to come on his own, and he didn’t want to waste any of his vampyres just to deliver a message,” Richard said plainly.
“My master is not a coward!”
She pulled the blindfold from her eyes and spun around, trying to look at everything at once.
“Go ahead, get a good look,” Potter said. “There’s nothing here for you to see that will help your master.”
She spun her head back around and stared at Richard in disbelief. “It is you! How is this possible?!” Pauline demanded.
“That’s of no concern of yours or your masters,” Richard answered.
Beck asked, “How does she know it’s really you?”
“She is connected to Elderson. He sees through her, so he can see me. He knows it’s me, so she does too. It’s a strange connection.”
Potter laughed. “I bet he’s pretty pissed right now.”
“Do not talk about my master!” Pauline snapped.
Potter grabbed her by the throat. “Shut up, you stupid little girl! Do you not understand that he sent you here to die? You are nothing to him but the latest sacrifice to his revenge! Surely your light bulb isn’t so dim that you can’t see that!”
She actually raised her chin in defiance. “My master will make you pay for touching me, hunter.”
“My mistake. Your light bulb has clearly blown out,” Potter said, shaking his head in disbelief.
Richard asked, “What is your message, familiar?”
“You have one week to turn yourself and your time traveling female over to my master,” Pauline stated boldly.
“And why would I do that?”
She continued undaunted. “Because if you don’t, he will unleash his clan on your family and kill them all.”
“Where would I turn myself over?”
“There will be two vampyres at the house where you killed the others, waiting to escort you to him.”
“I’ll have to give that some thought,” Richard replied.
“We know your clan has nine vampyres, and I’ve seen your three hunters. Well, eight vampyres and four hunters now that you’ve found a way to change yourself, but it is of no matter. Our clan is large, and you do not have a chance of defeating us. Turn yourselves over or you will all die.”
“Do you know why he wants this so bad?” Richard asked. “Why he’s so bent on revenge?”
Pauline nodded. “Because you killed his brother.”
“Do you know why I killed his brother?”
“Because you’re an evil man.”
“I’m an evil man? No. I killed his brother because he was attacking a little girl in an alleyway.”
Beck added, “The same way your master murdered women on the streets of London in 1888, slashing their throats and cutting their organs from their bodies. Your ‘master’ was Jack the Ripper. Did he tell you that?”
“No, that’s not true,” Pauline said, turning a light shade of green.
“It is true. I saw it for myself. I stood on a rooftop and watched with my own eyes as your ‘master’ slaughtered Mary Nichols. That’s the kind of shit your ‘master’ likes to do in his spare time,” Potter said. “Your ‘master’ is sick as fuck, and you drank his blood. How do you feel about that now?”
Pauline leaned over and stuck her finger down her throat, spilling blood and vomit onto the ground. “It’s too late for that now. You made your choice when you swallowed his blood,” Richard told her.
Potter stepped forward and grabbed Pauline’s arm. “No! Let me go. You can’t kill me, hunter! I’m a human!” Pauline sobbed.
Potter shook his head. “Always with that misconception. I don’t know who told you that, but it’s not true. I can kill anyone I damn-well please.”
“I don’t want to die,” Pauline whined
“You should have thought of t
hat before,” Richard said.
“Wait. Is there any way that we can reverse what she has done? What if one of our vampyres was to bite her?” Beck asked. “Would that override what she’s done?”
She didn’t like what this woman had done anymore than they did, but she didn’t want to kill her if there was another option.
“It wouldn’t work. She’s a familiar now. She can only be turned by the toxin of her master,” Richard explained. “No other toxin would have an effect on her.”
Beck tried another approach. “Can she be turned into a hunter?”
“Only men can be hunters,” Potter said, shaking his head slightly at Beck. “Even if we could turn her into a hunter, all we would be doing is giving her the strength and speed that she doesn’t have now. It wouldn’t break the connection. As long as she’s alive, Elderson will see and hear everything she does.”
“How about if we plug her ears, blindfold her, and put her in a room under guard until all this is over?” Beck asked.
“There is a reason that wouldn’t work either, but I’ll tell you about it later,” Richard said in a tone that said to leave this alone for now.
Potter said, “There’s really nothing else we can do.”
“Alright then,” Beck conceded.
“Please, I’ll do anything,” Pauline begged. “Don’t kill me.”
“I’m sorry about this, darlin’, I truly am,” Potter said sincerely. He reached up and snapped Pauline’s neck. She was dead before she hit the ground. “What a waste.”
She understood what he meant. While she wasn’t particularly bothered by this woman’s death, she didn’t like that it had to be done.
“Séamus!” Richard called. Séamus stepped off the roof of the house. Beck hadn’t even known he’d been up there. “Did you get all of that?”
“Aye, I did,” Séamus said in a thick Irish brogue All of the hunters still had their accents. Potter’s was lighter but still prominent. She knew it was from very little contact with the outside world.
Richard told him, “Take this body away and tell the others what her message was.”
“Will do,” Séamus said as he picked up Pauline’s body and headed towards the path.
Beck turned to Potter. “Only men can be hunters?”
“I didn’t want Elderson to know about you and Bev. Plus, he doesn’t know what happened to Richard, and I want to keep it that way.”
“Why couldn’t we have kept Pauline hidden away?”
“It would have been a useless gesture. A familiar’s life is tied to the life of their master. If the master dies, so does the familiar,” Richard explained. “There was no point in trying to save her when we plan to kill Elderson. She would’ve died the moment he does.”
“We could have let her go back to him, but we know he would have killed her,” Potter added. “And judging by his past record, her death at his hand would have been cruel and much more painful than her death at mine.”
She knew he was right. Elderson would have carved Pauline up like a Thanksgiving turkey.
“So, what do we do now?” she asked.
“We wait. We have a week, more or less. He’s painted himself into a corner, and he knows it. He has to attack, or he’ll lose his power and control over the clan. When we killed the vampyres that he sent at us through the years, he was able to accept that as a loss.
“We killed one or two at a time, and only when they came at us. He was able to convince his clan that we were no real threat to them. We had never brought the fight to them,” Potter said. “That all changed when we rescued Crystal and killed seven of their clan.”
Beck was incredulous. “But they kidnapped Bev. They made us attack them.”
“It doesn’t matter why we attacked. We’re a threat now, and his whole clan knows it. Not to attack now would show weakness,” Richard said.
“If he’s sent so many vampyres after you over the years, how does he not have a better idea of how many of you there are?”
“We said he sent them. We never said that any of them made it back,” Richard said. “Everyone that he sent was destroyed.”
“Hunters kill vampyres. Elderson knows that. It probably shocked him that there were even three here, four including Richard. There’s no way he would guess, or even believe, that there are twenty-two hunters here ready to defend our vampyres,” Potter smiled.
Richard smiled too. “And he thinks that there are only eight vampyres here. He won’t be expecting sixteen of them. All in all, I’d have to say we’re good.”
“It’s still forty-five against thirty-eight.”
“Yes, but we’re better,” Richard smiled again. “You made sure of that.”
“Will Elderson even show up for the fight?”
Potter nodded. “He’ll have to. He can’t send his whole clan into battle and stay behind. They would know him for the coward he is and wouldn’t fight for him.”
“So, what do we do for the next week?”
“The same thing we’ve been doing; we live our lives. We’ve always known this was coming. The only thing that has changed is that we now know when,” Richard said.
She wanted to tell them that at least some of their people were going to die, but they knew that. They all knew that. She intended to spend the next week getting to know everyone a little better. If she might lose them, then she wanted to make sure she could truly remember them.
***
“Are you scared?” Richard asked her later that night as they relaxed on their cliff.
“Only about the possibility of losing the people I love.”
“I’m only worried about losing you.”
He couldn’t stop thinking about it. What if he couldn’t save her? What if, after all the years of moving from place to place, of gathering hunters and vampyres to help them was for nothing? What if he failed and she died anyway? The thought even tortured him in his dreams.
“Are you going to ask me not to fight?”
“No,” he said. “As much as I want to put you on a plane to some far distant country, I know you wouldn’t go. I also understand that this is your fight as much as it is ours. I just have to keep reminding myself that you are just as strong and skilled as we are.”
He didn’t like it though. It killed him to think about her being in the thick of the coming battle…to know that she would be out there defending her life and theirs. She could conceivably lose her life in the battle that was being fought to save it.
“We need to do something with Bev, though. I know she is as strong and fast as us, but she doesn’t have the fighting skills I would like her to have.”
“Leso already thought of that,” he smiled. “I think they agreed that she will stay in the basement of the house until the battle is over.”
Worried, she said, “But, what if they win? They’ll find her.”
“They’re not going to win, so there’s nothing to worry about.”
He was rubbing his fingertips up and down her back, distracting her from the issue at hand. He leaned her back into the grass and started nibbling her neck.
“That’s not helping us think,” she said, moaning.
He kissed his way down her collar bone. “I don’t know about that. It’s got me thinking.”
He unbuttoned her shirt and kissed his way down her chest to the waistband of her shorts, only pausing long enough to dip his tongue into her navel. He slid her shorts down her body and removed his own. He knelt on his knees between her open thighs and rubbed his thumb across the nub at the apex of her thighs until he could see the wetness of her glistening in the moonlight and slipped his fingers inside of her.
He moved slowly at first until she started arching against his hand. He moved his fingers faster and harder until she cried out. He moved his hand and thrust himself into her. She was wet and tight around him. He could feel the pulsing heat of her orgasm as her muscles pulsed around him. He pushed deep into her, pulling her against him. Their sweaty bodies slid agains
t each other. With his orgasm crashing over him like waves, he collapsed on top of her.
“I love you.”
“Say it again.”
“I love you,” she repeated.
“I love you too, Little One…forever.”
He wondered briefly how long of a forever they would be allowed to have.
***
“So, how did the two of you meet?” she asked Gavin and Isiah the next day while they were sitting on the porch.
“We met in Rome in 1863. Gavin was visiting the Coliseum, and I worked in the Vatican.”
She looked closely at them, trying to burn their faces into her memory. Isiah was a short man with medium length, dark hair. Gavin was much taller, very slender, with stick straight, black hair.
“What did you do at the Vatican?”
“I was a priest,” he said.
Shocked, she responded, “No!”
“I was,” he smiled.
“A vampyre priest. I never would have guessed that,” she said, astounded.
“I wasn’t a vampyre yet.”
“I was only there to take in the sites of Rome,” Gavin said. “I fancied myself a historian. My parents were wealthy, so I had the means to travel whenever I wished. I was in the Coliseum when I saw Isiah. When he looked over at me, something just clicked for both of us.”
“Had you always known you were gay?”
Isiah shook his head. “That’s the thing. I wasn’t gay; neither of us were. But when we saw each other, it didn’t matter. It was love at first sight. We talked for a while, and then left the Coliseum together. I never returned to the Vatican.”
“So, Gavin changed you into a vampyre?”
“No,” Gavin said. “I wasn’t a vampyre yet, either. We were walking through the dark streets one night. We thought no one was watching, and we kissed. Suddenly, there was a beautiful woman standing in front of us. She said that she was deeply moved to see two people so obviously in love, and that she wanted to give us a gift.
“She led us to a room and told us that she’d been in love once, but that death had taken him away from her. She said that she couldn’t bear the thought of that happening to us, and then she bit us. When we woke up, she told us what she was, and what we now were.”
The Undead Heart (#1 in the Blood Thirst Series) Page 42