BloodStar

by Montoya, Cassidy

  There were two vampires in the room now, and the sire’s progeny latched on and drank with Dyson efficiency, sealed tighter than a submarine about to dive. Disgust and disorientation did nothing to abate the ravenous need they both felt.

  "Enough," said Anya, but Marley didn’t slow. "Enough!"

  Marley couldn’t stop. Something in her mind corrected this thought. It wasn’t that she couldn’t stop, but that she wouldn’t stop. This primordial brew was the most necessary-nasty she’d ever known. This was better than booze, more than booze. Marley had never needed Vodka the way she needed this. She knew this with her reptilian brain—drink or die. So she drank. And drank. And drank.

  Finally Anya palmed Marley's face, and heaved her across the room. It was the only way to break the fusion of her lips to Anya’s flesh. She landed in the corner opposite the bathroom, and curled up into the fetal position, a ball of feral energy.

  During that first hour, her decaying brain cells were kept busy with the fear of death, fear of Anya, fear for Sam, desire for Sabian, and processing all of this wasn’t a deliberate thing. It was hard to remain rational when you’d just chugged a forty of blood like it was a forty of Bud, but Marley did process pain. She felt her brain go cotton-mouth while her stomach rolled over on a violent sea of nausea. Her head pounded and her limbs filled with lead.

  And then the real torment began.

  She geared up to moan in agony, but nothing came out. She was no longer breathing, and had no air in her lungs to fuel the sound of her voice. Marley felt a wave of panic come over her, and she opened her eyes to find Anya staring at her with a bizarre expression on her face, a hybrid of satisfaction and revulsion.

  Marley filled her lungs and prepared to speak, but became lost in the sensation. She could taste the various properties of the air, and good lord, was it a breath full of foul, or what? There were smells she could easily identify that didn't exist just ten minutes prior when human blood fed her tissues. It was a mercy that she was too distracted to worry about the strongest odor—her own stench deposited on the mattress.

  Her tissue was dying, and vampire blood crept in slowly for now. The transformation would take some time because Marley would move little with the pain of death, and the blood that would animate her body could only be circulated by movement of the muscles, bones, all the intricate parts of her musculoskeletal system. These would be the longest hours of her life, never more than twelve, never less than four. There would be some decay in the time it took to bathe her tissue in the inky vampire blood, but that same blood had healing properties that would regenerate what was lost.

  In the meantime, Marley would have to drink. Even though she was on sensory overload and rational thought deprivation, Marley spent as much cognitive energy as she could spare on denying the instinct. The very notion of drinking blood (a frenzied realization that spun circles in her mind) disgusted her, and even though she could barely move, she prepared herself to rebel. She would take no part in this taboo.

  There was only one human she could think of in her diminishing world, and she would not violate Sam that way. Besides, the pain was fucking fantastic, almost absurd in its intensity, and Marley was sure she would die before it came to that.

  She huddled in the corner, not wanting to be seen. Every time she thought about Anya’s wrist to her mouth, she gagged and wretched. Too many nights had been spent cozied up to a toilet bowl, but those were the good old days when her body was trying to purge itself of liquor, hops and barley. This was another level. The poison her gut tried to deny would do a lot more than dehydrate her gray matter and leave her with a beer belly.

  The misery spread, almost a process of osmosis as her tissue slowly sucked the agony further along the canals being forged by black blood. It was a tribulation of suffering so wild Marley saw in polka dotted shades of grey within an hour of Anya’s onslaught.

  It was the headache of a thousand nights she ever spent partying; it was the migraine of a day’s worth of hard crying, when eyes swell up and stay that way overnight and into the next day. It was the flu of a lifetime with body racking chills that assaulted her head until she would have gladly severed it from her body just to make it stop.

  Her eyes suffered the most by leaps and bounds in the early hours, burning as though bathed in acid as the muscles there died, and then became reanimated. She closed them against the pain, but when they opened next, they would be the eyes of a killer.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  While Marley writhed with the pain of transformation, Sam, ignorant to all but his own self-loathing, sat his happy-ass on the covered bus bench, gaze fixed on the vacancy sign of his hotel prison. It lit up the dark pre-dawn like a beacon. Sam needed to get back to Marley, but couldn’t make his feet move.

  Anya had fed when she returned, taking him while Marley was still in the shower, but not before ordering him to hang a blanket over the window for extra insurance against the gathering daylight. There was at least an hour before dawn came on proper, but leeches never fuck around with that shit.

  The vampire was gentle at his neck and took only a taste, unusual for Anya. She'd even given Sam the extra consolation of her hand down the front of his pants. Sam was no stranger to disgust and disorientation, but like Marley, he was helpless against the sensation Anya wielded like a weapon. It was so fucking amazing and more and more his thoughts strayed to those fangs sliding along each side of his cock as he slid it through the gap and down the vampire's throat. He had been repulsed the whole time she stroked and sucked, even as he orgasmed all over her hand and his trousers, but his cock would have gladly taken seconds, with a please and thank you to boot.

  Sam needed to head back, make sure nothing happened without him so he could maintain the pace (and change his fucking pants, weak loser that he was). That was the best he could hope for. There was no getting ahead of the game with leeches, but you could at least try to keep up.

  Perhaps you could indulge yourself, fetch coffee or a meal, Anya had said. But be back quickly, pet. He didn’t need her talents to know she wanted him gone for a reason. But whatever. As long as the BloodStar hadn’t shown, there was nothing he would miss that mattered. He was sure Anya would wait for Sabian before the next exciting episode of Human-Torture-Theater aired.

  He took his time walking back to the motel, glad he’d invested in climate-appropriate outerwear back in Fort Collins when he’d first started his new guerilla tactics. It had been an hour, and now Sam stood at the door, hand extended, but he couldn’t make himself grab the knob. Was there anything left of the man he’d been? He remembered willing the strength to enter a vamp lair dozens of times when Franky flanked him. When Franky respected him.

  Loved him?

  When he walked back into this room, Sam knew what would happen. He would fight yet another battle, the man he’d become over the last month against the man he’d been; the man who wanted to defend Marley versus the Hunter who wanted to slaughter the BloodStar.

  The lie he told Marley echoed in his mind. She would have approved if it meant I got the kill. That was the biggest line of bullshit he'd ever dished. Franky had made him swear he’d never join league with vamps, not even to make a kill. And he swore it, you betcha. This promise was always made with only slightly less passion than the one where he pledged he could never—would never feel about this mysterious soul-mate the way he felt for her. That promise Franky hadn't had to solicit, didn't even want, as a matter of fact.

  Would Franky want him to give up the BloodStar? Leave Anya to her own psychosis and take off with Marley, maybe salvage some kind of life? He thought yes, Franky would want that. She would have drawn her thumbs across his eyebrows while cradling his face in her hands, and told him to go and be free, be loved.

  And would Marley go with him?

  Sam stood there, staring at the doorknob, paralyzed not by indecision, but too many choices. He knew he was going inside. And what then?

  Fuck that. He knew who he was, and he als
o knew he’d never give up the BloodStar. Never. Only one thing could make him walk away, and that was the one thing he couldn’t get back. Dead was dead, and Solis was right, he needed to leave Franky that way, but Solis had the reasons all wrong. There was no life for Sam, no healing, no moving on. There was only more death, and the BloodStar was front and center in the queue.

  Sam reached for the knob, psyched himself up for whatever order of operations death had in mind, and turned. Sam stepped through the threshold, and took a moment to process what he was seeing. Marley was coiled into attack position, and Jesus Christ, her eyes were shining that fucking dying flashlight glow.

  "Oh, fuck me."

  Marley launched at him and tore into his throat, a wild animal all snarls and teeth. She latched on and took from him in ways Anya never dared, and that was saying something. Even as she pulled a shop-vac on his veins, Sam had to force himself to believe what his anatomy understood at the most basic level.

  Marley was a…

  Behind the terror, disappointment, and general what-the-fuck, was full-body-bliss, complete with Sam’s cock jerking a hi, how are ya to Marley and her godforsaken fangs.

  But then his training kicked in, and Sam began folding in on himself in denial of the mindfuck. He’d be damned if he let this leech attack his pleasure centers, brain or body. If he could tame the demands of his baby-maker (and oh God, he was ready to go, right now), he might have a chance.

  Marley, human Marley, was totally unaware she had Sam jammed up against her mouth, blood smeared across her lips and chin like barbeque sauce. She had become something else, at least for now, and her conscience, never the most driving force behind her actions to begin with, wasn’t welcome here.

  Gone was the resolve that she’d rather die than taste human blood, and it hadn’t taken long for her palate to reconsider. The idea of human blood stopped being disgusting right about the time her eyes felt like they’d been ripped free and welded back into place. Yep, that was just about when human blood started sounding like a viable option. It was instinct; more a function of Marley’s body than mind, and her body had become quite articulate, eloquent even.

  So she’d waited, body tightening in the decades of silence as she watched the door for Sam’s return.

  When finally the knob twisted, Marley was upright on her haunches, chuffing like a woman in labor, Lamaze her only comfort as her alien body drew on basic instincts of pain relief and endurance.

  She had to have him. Good God, she wanted to suck and fuck until he dried up like jerky. Sam Halac’s blood on her tongue would be Marley’s introduction into the world of super sensation.

  When Marley bit into his frigid Hunter-skin, the floor fell out from under her feet and she soared into another dimension. The experience was nothing short of fantastic, as in the stuff fantasies were made of. If she thought there was something special about this when she was human, oh partner, she knew better now.

  More than once or twice in her years as a hard drinker, she’d felt the nag of withdrawal. She’d get it in her head that she was hitting the bottle too hard, too often, for all the wrong reasons, and would resolve to quit. An hour of feeling like shit, and it was a twist of the cap and a tip of the wrist to full pain relief.

  With this, there were no wrong reasons to drink. This was mother-fucking Alpha and Omega. This was all the happy endings Disney got right, and retribution for every evil stepmother that never got her comeuppance. Addiction and its minion withdrawal had nothing on this. Withdrawal wasn’t about the shakes or the sweats, body aches or crippling cravings. Withdrawal was death. She would never suffer that, hell-to-the-mother-fucking-no. And thanks to whatever was happening to her body, she was equipped to guarantee that right to the bank.

  Marley was so jacked up on euphoria, her suck-and-swallow could have earned a triple-X rating. Sam’s pathetic reserve of self-defenses, something he was so confident in and proud of, were eclipsed by Marley’s strength and reflexive entrancement.

  It was Anya who saved Sam Halac’s life in that dark motel room perfumed with Marley’s final farewell to digestion as she had always known it. The entire episode, from Sam opening the motel room door to Anya pulling Marley off him, lasted only fifteen seconds, just long enough to change everything. Marley had been so concerned about trusting Sam. It was too late for her to catalogue the reality, but in the end, she was the true X-factor.

  Anya threw Marley to the bed so hard the frame broke. Sam collapsed to the floor. He tried to catch his breath and regain his footing, but he was too dizzy. Instead, he scooted to the wall and leaned against it, working hard to keep the fledgling (Marley, her name is Marley) in his sights.

  "Jesus, what did you do?" he hissed.

  "Took out a life insurance policy," said Anya.

  Marley started back toward Sam, eyes desperate with thirst, and he knew he was too weak to defend himself. She was wild, ready to gut and disembowel if necessary, pure leech-purpose. Sam knew that Marley’s vampire self could care less if he died right then and there, as long as she could wring his last few drops before she ushered him to the great beyond. Every step Anya allowed produced another with greater authority.

  Marley was almost across the room when Sam heard Anya’s voice.

  "Stop." The imperative was simple, just one word, and spoken softly, a whisper on the wind.

  And Marley did. While her eyes remained faithful to her prey, Marley turned her body sideways in the direction of Anya’s voice.

  "Enough." Anya remained calm and disinterested, and Sam saw the eye of the tiger drain from Marley’s expression.

  "Well, then," said Anya, sounding like an activities director on a cruise ship, "There's still an hour before sunup. I think I’ll not waste it."

  Sam about shit his pants, and the look on his face pretty much said so.

  "What?" Anya asked, all innocence and confusion.

  "Are you fucking kidding me?"

  "I’ll be back."

  "Yeah, and I’ll be dead."

  "So dramatic, Samuel. She’ll not touch you. I guarantee it."

  There was nothing to say. Anya gathered a few things, remembering the van keys like the responsible kidnapper she was, and walked out the door into the dark. Sam knew he had to get out of that room. Problem was if he did, he was just as dead as if he stayed. Even if he moved fast and found a place to hole up, Anya would track him. The impending daylight meant nothing. Eventually, Anya would find him.

  Marley stared at Sam. That birthing-room-breathing thing started up again. When he couldn’t take the hairy-eye anymore, he said, "Marley, you don’t have to do this."

  Nothing, just the blank stare.

  "You can feed from me, I won’t struggle, but you need to calm down. Be patient or I won’t make it."

  Nothing.

  Forty-five minutes later, Anya returned and allowed Marley to feed again. She supervised from her post as far from the window as she could get, and even though it was repulsive to him, knowing Anya watched as his cock swelled when Marley took him made it even hotter. It was the same as before. Marley jacked open new wounds and left Sam swooning in blood loss, all Scarlett-O’Hara-do-declaring.

  The sun had already done its let-there-be-light thing when Solis and Teichmann left the terminal that morning, and now, coming up on three in the afternoon, they ran full speed toward gate seventeen-A. It stretched away from them no mater how fast they booked it, Poltergeist-hallway style. They made it just as their plane taxied down the runway for takeoff, rolling away from them outside the big wall of windows. It was bound for the east coast where Halloween was already in full swing, and there was nothing they could do about it.

  "Fuck," growled Solis, not a hint of discretion. A few people sitting near the gate looked at him, surprised. He’d wanted a motel room, wanted a drink even more, but not nearly as much as he wanted to catch the BloodStar. Fucking Teichmann and his handle of booze. Captain Morgan and Diet Dr. Pepper solved the world’s problems at six in the morning, b
ut with their mission upon them, it wasn’t worth the piss in his bladder.

  Solis knew better, though. This wasn’t his partner’s fault. Teichmann only poured the first drink. The next three (five?) were all Solis, and so was the missed one o’clock wake up call.

  "So what now?" asked Teichmann. "Do we stop the flight?"

  "Fuck no. Are you really that big of a moron?"

  "Hey, don't take this out on me. You missed the wakeup call, not me," said Teichmann. "They're going to shut down travel any minute now. So decide, stop this one or take our chances on another flight, because the BloodStar's a ghost, man."

  "We can't stop the flight. The real FBI, not to mention Homeland Security, will be on our asses faster than you can shake your dick after a piss.

  Marley was still fully enveloped in the change. The worst of the transformation would come just before the end, when Anya’s blood finally reached Marley’s extremities. The headache would be excruciating and go the distance, the decay of the sensitive tissue in her eyes would be even worse, but when vampire blood finally reached her hands and feet, the searing pain in her finger and toe nails would be the white hot scorching of a thousand burning suns. Mafia and military henchman worldwide had it right; go for the fingernails.

  But for now, it was manageable…with Sam’s blood to dull the edge.

  Marley was so tired of being sequestered in that orange room with its orange curtains and her orange mood that she was Manson-style insane and ready to prison-break her ass out of there, whatever the risk.

  Her guilt was a more ruthless captor than Anya had been so far, though. She was far enough along that she could process rational thought again, which was why she couldn’t ignore the fact that Sam was in his own, personal orange Gitmo, dry-rotting in one corner or another.

  Fuck, he hated her. His silence was a bullhorn in her face. She felt his fear, she felt his stifling immobility, but she felt something else, too. He wanted her. He wanted her so bad she could almost see all the ways he would have her. And the fucking would absolutely be punctuated by the hating.