by C. L. Quinn
He came over and straddled a footstool in front of her. Her eyes met his as she took a sip of the tea.
“No. But I will. You need to eat, and I’m your only choice.” She stared at him quietly, her eyes hooked his and they just looked at each other. Then she asked, “How are you tonight?”
“Um…” He looked away, scanned the small yard as if he were searching for something. “I really don’t know. I’ve dreamed since I woke up here a few months ago. Less so recently. Until tonight. And nothing like the content. Tonight, I slept through a horror film, a nightmare. Torture, pain, humiliation. I…” He stopped and scanned the yard again. Then he spoke so quietly, she had to lean in to hear him. “I think it was me. Uh…I think the man being tortured was me.”
He stared into her soul and it broke her heart. Cherise unfurled her legs and slid off the chair onto the ground. Seated on the footstool, he wasn’t far off the ground himself, so, when she knelt in front of him and put her arms around his neck, they were able to get in close. She put her lips against his cheek and kissed it softly. He could feel the moisture against his skin and pulled back. Her eyes were wet.
“It was. Your past…it is very bad, vampire.” This time, instead of using the word vampire like an insult, she said it with gentleness. “I don’t know if I can help you…but I will try with my last breath. It will be very painful, for both of us, but it must be done if you are ever to heal. You cannot live this broken life.”
He drew in her scent deeply, then buried his head against her throat, grazed it with his fangs, then kissed the same spot. He didn’t know if he had ever been in love, but he thought it might feel very much like this…what he felt when he was with this remarkable woman. His body reacted immediately to her, his respiration fired up, his heart beat stronger, his cock stiffened. He didn’t think he just wanted her, he thought he needed her. And he thought that was probably not a good thing for her. He was bad news. Just the fact that she just told him that she would go through a great deal of pain to help him. And that she was willing to do so. He wouldn’t let her, not to help the likes of him. Kav had wondered if perhaps the reason that he’d forgotten who he was, was that he wasn’t a good man.
She pulled away, and held his face in her hands. “You must be starving. Let me feed you now.”
She got up and headed into the house to her bedroom, flipped on the overhead light, then got on the bed. She noticed he was paused in the doorway.
“We might as well be comfortable as we do this.”
He still didn’t enter. “Don’t you think that’s a bad idea?”
“Do you think you cannot control yourself?”
After a deep breath, he answered. “Well…”
“I can stop you, vampire, if you can’t. Please, I have had a very bad headache all day. Don’t make this more difficult.”
Kav came into the room as if he’d crossed a major threshold…as if the air were different, his breath came harder. He could feel his body stiffen, every part, in expectation. Oh, this was a bad idea. But she was doing him the favor, so he tried to behave and came toward the bed. She lay there clothed in light pajamas and a robe, up on one elbow…his mind took a leap and he saw her naked, opening her legs to him. He shook his head and came down on the bed. She dropped back on the pillow and pulled the robe down.
“Try not to spill much. Blood is hard to clean.”
Then she turned her head away and he stared at her smooth, pale skin, waiting for him. The tiny puncture he had made earlier was already closing. He wanted her, desperately, but he was hungry. So he struck, fast, efficiently, and began to drink. This was second only to burying himself in her, and if he could do both…paradise. But he held his libido in check and just drew blood. He could do nothing about the fully engorged penis pressing against her side. It wasn’t going away anytime soon as long as he lay beside her, pulling her sweet blood into his mouth. He let himself sneak a hand around her waist, slid it down dangerously close to where her legs met, but he didn’t want to find out what she meant by “I can stop you, vampire.”
He drew on her until he thought he had enough, but didn’t weaken her too much. A vampire had to be careful of the blood meal donor. It was too easy to take too much and harm them. He’d already been terrified of hurting her, and now, with the revelation of how truly messed up he might be, he believed it more than ever. And he’d let himself die before he risked hurting her. Which is why he’d made a decision laying there beside her. She was definitely better off if he was gone. So, after he left her tonight, he would pack up the few things he had, and go. Where, he had no idea. Didn’t matter. Just anywhere that would keep her safe from him.
He lifted up after closing her wounds, and brushed her hair away from her face.
“I thank you again for your sacrifice. You are a generous and lovely woman.” He looked at every detail of her face to memorize it since he knew he would not see it again. “I’m sorry I destroyed your date. I had no right.” He ran his fingers along her cheek…he wanted to touch her one last time.
She shook her head and leaned into his hand without meaning to. “It’s okay. It was never going to work out. I just wanted…” She paused, then said, “I just wanted to have sex with him so I would stop wanting you.”
He shot out of the bed. “You can’t say that to me while I’m lying next to you in your bed, trying desperately not to strip you and bury myself up to the hilt in you.”
Cherise got up on the other side of the bed. “I know. I’m sorry. A moment of weakness…I wanted to tell you the truth.”
He walked away quickly, his hard-on apparent, and went out the front door. She followed him, stepping barefoot onto the dew covered grass.
“I’m sorry, Kav. I didn’t mean to make this harder.” Her eyes dropped and she realized the double entendre.
He stared at her wordlessly, letting himself memorize her image, as lovely a natural beauty as could exist in this world…her dark curly hair blowing around her head in the wind that had picked up, her toes seeking warmth against the other foot, her nipples raised in the cool night air to press against the satin pajama top. He knew no matter whatever happened in his future, he would never forget this moment… this woman who he would always want, and never could have. The pain in his mind for the torture he must have endured was a tickle compared to the pain in his heart knowing he would never see her again.
He came forward and bent over to kiss each of her palms, then each cheek in the way of the French.
“You are glorious. I hope your dreams come true. J’aime ce que nous aurions ete.”
He turned and walked away quickly. He didn’t look back. For a man who had all the time in the world, he felt like his life had just ended.
Cherise couldn’t move. Well, now he’d done it. He’d broken her heart before she even had a chance to give it to him. His murmured phrase, in her native tongue…he’d said, “I love what we might have been.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Kav lay still in the middle of the field across from the house he would abandon the next night. It had a sheltered windbreak on a little hill that rose above the ground level and gave him a perfect view of the black velvet star-splattered sky. He’d removed his clothes because they…well…everything…felt so restrictive…like he couldn’t breathe, so much was pressing him down. If he closed his eyes, images (memories?) came hard like someone shot them at his mind. Pain, relentless, like nothing he could ever have imagined…purposeful torture…he thought he remembered trying to kill himself…
It was muddled. But he knew now why his body looked like it did. He ran his fingers down his chest. Rough patterns, scars, almost everywhere he touched. They covered his legs, too. He had lived years of torture. He still could not recall details of his own self, but memories of the torture hovered in front of his eyes. He didn’t want to remember. He wanted those days lost forever because he knew he’d already blanked them out once for survival. He wasn’t strong enough to live through it again. No one was.
Crisp breezes caressed him, let him know he’d failed at the suicide attempt from before he got here. He was alive, warm and breathing, felt everything too deeply, as vampires often did. He was falling in love, and losing her all at once. It seemed pain found him where ever and whoever he was.
He couldn’t stay. A single satchel was packed with his few clothes and personal items. When he awoke the next night, he’d be gone, and at least her life would get back to normal.
Watching the slow spin of the sky overhead, he had a sudden intense memory of doing the same thing long ago…only the sky was brilliant with the northern lights. Writhing twirls of green and lavender in a pitch dark sky with no artificial lights anywhere at all. Sitting up suddenly, he stared out and remembered. Something personal…he was from the north…vivid memories of many nights beneath the stunning colors of the aurora borealis. Pleasure, intense appreciation of his life…torn from him… He’d been abducted and kept for years… decades…tortured to death and then, as vampire, he healed to live again. And then repeated endlessly.
Cherise’s bond must have opened the gate… allowed his mind to accept the memories…slowly… incomplete…but they were seeping back. He felt more than knew how bad they would be. Maybe when he left they would fade away and he would be left empty, but for the peace of the ignorant. He hoped he never recovered them.
Kav lifted his body easily…he felt physically well again. Cherise’s blood was magical. If he could not find someone else who was “other,” he might not survive anyway. He thought that might be okay, too. Everything has an end…even vampires, and this might be his. Snagging his clothes in his right hand, he strolled off the mound and back to his home, where he’d finish off the last of a large pizza. Then he would sleep until it was time to go.
Watching from the road, Cherise felt everything that went through Kav’s mind. Even the insanity attached to the pain his mind could not process. And she knew he was leaving.
She wanted to let him. But would never do so. Because the bond was started and she had no choice but to help him try to be well and whole again. He was such a powerful man, and to watch him cowered and broken was more than she could bear. She slid down in her seat and covered her eyes, hoping to forget how magnificent his nude body looked in the moonlight. She’d watched him run his hand down his chest and her own body responded. He was big in all the right places, and while she always said she had no interest in vampires, this one…oh, hell! If he did leave, would she ever stop wanting him? Maybe the mistake was not to give in and fuck him until neither one of them could think anymore. Maybe that was all either of them really needed.
He crossed the street right in front of her, but didn’t notice her since she hid her car up under a row of bushes that lined the field. And he was distracted, his hand moving against his penis. Well, she had told him to take care of himself. All she could think was that she wanted to be between his hand and what he was stroking. She had her hand on the door handle and warred with herself whether to open it or not. If she did, there would be no going back. It was too big of a decision to let her sexual need for him make the choice.
Anyway, he’d already reached the house and closed the door behind him. It was wise to go home. She’d driven out here originally to make sure he was okay after her talent had opened a portal to his past. To make sure those memories hadn’t come back so quickly, they overwhelmed him and shut him down. But he’d seemed fine. So, it was time to go. She lingered another ten minutes, her mind taking awful flights of fantasy after seeing his incredible body completely unclothed and desperately wanting a closer look. She started the engine and turned back toward her cabin. Good luck, she told herself, on trying to get sleep tonight.
CHAPTER SIX
Movement was brisk this afternoon at the large old warehouse located outside Paris. The building looked long abandoned, and in disrepair. But it wasn’t. At least twenty people were coming and going as they prepared to send a team to America as second shift to Project V. First shift was due to come home. Long field assignments were hard on family life, and the committee was conscious of that fact. After all, they weren’t monsters.
But the project was over thirty years in the making, and they would continue until all desired data was collected and properly analyzed. The subject was now beginning the final phase…full recovery if possible. He had been put into position next to the female empath to see if she was able to repair the damage of the past three decades. Project director, Armel Joubert had been there from the beginning. He had personally supervised every phase of the project.
It was widely known that he hated vampires, hated the subject most of all, since he had to watch himself grow older and the subject remain young all those thirty years.
Everyone knew he was especially hard on him for that reason. While some of the committee had thought to take a more humane direction with Project V, Joubert had refused. He’d reasoned that the mental anguish had to be part of it. Was an essential detail that would culminate in viable intel.
The committee had been entrusted, over fifty years ago, to try to find out exactly how the vampire virus worked, what its limitations were, if there was any chance at all that it was reversible…and how to most efficiently kill them. Killing them…that was what they discovered at first. Decapitation, or burnt beyond regeneration. That part had been easiest.
This vampire, subject V1, had been brutally taken to the point of death, and then beyond death, so many times over the past three decades. Joubert said it was necessary, that he was a thing… Others in the group knew the vampire was still human, too. But any sympathy met with severe retribution.
Armel stood on a catwalk above watching the hustle of activity as the next team finished prep. They were flying out at sunset, not because daylight posed a problem…they were all human, but because that was the most convenient time. He was grateful the vampire virus was intolerant of sunlight…there should be something they couldn’t do better. It offended him that they were stronger, faster, eternally youthful…practically immortal. No one should be…the balance was unnatural…and that was his mission. To keep the balance as much as possible.
He hated the vampire race. The purity of human blood was sacred…and they were abominations. That was why he’d truly embraced Project V. And he couldn’t admit this to anyone in the program, but…he enjoyed the torture element of the research more than any other element. Yes, the results were important, the very raison d’etre of the actions of every member of the team…but…causing years of pain to the man who had so thought himself superior to mere humans…tortured and ultimately destroyed by those “mere” creatures he’d scoffed…perfect justice.
Eventually, he himself would be the one to end the life of their subject. They all agreed…David Patric would need to be euthanized. They knew he was probably incapable of behaving normally again…decades of incessant torture and pain would do that to you… plus…no one in the project would be safe again if he ever found out who did this to him. So, yeah, as soon as the final test results were concluded, Armel had claimed he wanted to “humanely” end the vampire. Hell to the fucking no!
Armel planned that Patric would die begging for death. It had been a long time coming for his own satisfaction of watching the vampire beg for mercy that would never come. He turned away and checked his own weapon, a semi-automatic 45 caliber Glock. Need some serious holes to stop a vampire, even temporarily. Long enough to contain or kill the motherfuckers. He drew a deep breath and wandered down the metal stairs, avoiding the row of mirrors along the back wall. He avoided mirrors wherever he went. After fifty years, nearly sixty…mirrors were not your friend.
He flipped open the file on Project V, the photo of their second subject on top. He stared and said nothing. There was nothing to say. She was perfect…beautiful, smart, talented. But not human…not completely. It put her squarely in enemy camp. Not that the man who funded this project would agree. He was not vampire but he was not human either, not comple
tely. Like her.
Didn’t stop Armel’s body from reacting almost instantly when he imagined the lovely smile on her lips wrapped around him. Or what waited beneath the tight jeans for him to plunder and show her he was man enough for her. Not that he would ever get the chance. Because she was a subject. It had been hard to watch the distant surveillance and see the beautiful brunette lie with the damaged vampire. It was what had been expected, but…he really did want to ride in there on a white horse and carry her away.
Arvel grinned. Like she would have him. That was the real problem…he’d tried…and she wouldn’t. So he hated her almost as much as the vampire. It would all end soon, and he would find himself a nice simple little human girl and maybe plant a child in her. It wasn’t too late for men, even at his age. Once this was done. Once he had bested his enemy. His intention, at the end of the project, had been to force her to accept him as a male who could satisfy her. But the man who funded the entire mission was family…in fact, her own brother, so he knew it would not be allowed. Well…
When he reached the main floor, he went to a tall woman with garish blonde hair near the entrance of the huge old almost empty warehouse.
“Items packed, secured for the flight?” he asked in French. She looked up, and when she saw who it was, he saw her purse her lips. Yeah, she couldn’t stand him. It was okay, he returned the sentiment…threefold. Her face reminded him of a thoroughbred, and, while it was quite striking on a horse, it was much less so on the aggressive oversized woman. As a whole, physically, she was a live version of Olive Oyl from the old Popeye cartoon. He much preferred his women small and delicate like Cherise Devereaux.
“Lauren, there is a small window here to finish and be off. You need to keep your foot down on these workers.”