Desire at Dawn

by Fiona Zedde

  “Kylie!”

  Her cunt clutched around Kylie’s fingers as she came again. Kylie’s knees slid in the wetness on the floor, but she didn’t stop. She kept eating and licking and sucking and fucking, following Olivia on her knees across the kitchen when she tried to escape the press of Kylie’s fingers, the lash of her tongue. Kylie wanted to give her more of that, let her know without a doubt that Kylie wasn’t going anywhere, and it was only if she pushed her away was she going to go and even then she would have a hard as fuck time getting rid of her.

  Olivia’s hips jerked again in orgasm, her knees completely giving out as she collapsed on Kylie’s face. Kylie caught her, gave her delicious pussy one last lick before she swept her up into her arms, and took her back to her bed.

  Olivia was delirious, her thighs painted wet with her cum, head hanging limply from her neck. Kylie let her slide from her arms into the sheets and started to move away. But Olivia gripped her with a surprisingly strong hand. “Don’t go.”

  “I…are you sure?” Kylie asked. Olivia had been so angry at her earlier.

  “I want you here.” Her voice was hoarse from her passionate screams.

  After a brief hesitation, Kylie shrugged out of her clothes and slid into the bed beside Olivia. Instead of falling immediately asleep, Olivia rolled over until she was lying on top of Kylie, heavy-lidded and satisfied.

  She lifted Kylie’s hand and put it to her breast. “Can you feel it?”

  “Your breast? Yes.” She gently squeezed the soft mound, the miraculous, feminine flesh.

  “No. The tumor.” Olivia curled her fingers around Kylie’s. “It’s going to kill me.”

  A flash of fear made Kylie twitch. “No. It won’t.”

  Olivia looked at her with serious, dark eyes. “Then what’s going to happen? Will you make me what you are?”

  Kylie couldn’t answer.

  “Unless you give me what I need, I will die.”

  “You won’t,” Kylie insisted.

  She grabbed Olivia’s waist and pulled her closer. If her will was all that kept Olivia from being cancer-free, she’d be cured. But it wasn’t, and Olivia was dying. Kylie squeezed her eyes shut and held on to her.

  Olivia didn’t want to be held; she wanted to be changed. And since Kylie couldn’t give her that, she left. She left the small apartment and slid from the balcony, intent on finding food and some way to bury her unease.

  Chapter Twenty

  Outside, she was vaguely aware of shapes around her, humans, who smelled faintly metallic. But they were humans, so she dismissed them almost immediately from her mind. Olivia was the only human she needed to concern herself with. Her pain. Her wish to be made into a monster.

  The sickness was slowly ravaging her body. Kylie could feel it and Olivia could too. And although she didn’t know anything about cancer and its various treatments, she had the sick feeling that Olivia was putting off any normal human medical treatment on the off chance that Kylie would exchange blood with her.

  But she couldn’t.

  Kylie wanted to save Olivia. She wanted her to live as long as possible so they could spend more time together. She wanted something like what her mother and Silvija had. But each time she even contemplated giving in to what Olivia asked for, she remembered the terror of her own change. She remembered how miserable her existence in the clan was. Before Olivia.

  She bit her lip, barely paying attention to where she was going. The smell of easy prey was to the west and she followed it, putting her body on automatic pilot as her thoughts spun around the problem, although each revolution brought her back to the inevitable conclusion. She had to give Olivia what she wanted. No, what she needed.

  As Kylie’s feet sank once more into the grass of the building’s front lawn, she heard a “click!” then felt a sudden sting in her shoulder, a shock, an electric pulse that dropped her to the ground, jerking uncontrollably. Grass at her back, her body seized tightly, going completely rigid. She felt nothing but pain.

  She screamed behind clenched teeth.

  The seven days Silvija had given her were up, she thought wildly.

  “It won’t last long! Go!”

  She heard the words, heard the humans, but could only lie there staring at the night sky unable to do more than twitch. Another stinging shock and another. Then male figures shadowed by the clouds obscuring the moon. One man. Then three. A woman. They swarmed over her, rolled her down the slight hill. The world spun and wet grass clung to her jacket and jeans, swiping across her face. Then she stopped with a jolt. A van door slid open. Then she was abruptly lifted and thrown into the van on the floor. She jolted from the impact, head slamming against the metal floor, teeth snapping together.

  “Go! Go!”

  It was only one voice that had spoken. Everyone else was quiet, moving in a way she could only describe as efficient as she shuddered on the floor from what she realized then was the effect of an extraordinarily powerful Taser.

  “Knock it out. I don’t want it getting ideas about where we’re going.”

  The words were barely gone from the speaker’s lips before she felt a hard blow at the base of her skull. A sharp pain that made her want to rip someone’s head off. Then darkness.

  *

  She emerged from the darkness minutes or seconds later, uncertain about how much time had passed.

  Kylie blinked but could not penetrate the darkness. She closed her eyes again, this time tightly, then she realized they had blindfolded her. They had chained her. Humans. The pain was gone, but she was shackled tight, her ankles and wrists bound together. A piece of thick tape trapped her mouth shut. Whoever it was had taped an opaque cloth bag around her head to keep her from seeing her surroundings.

  What the fuck?

  “You have no idea who you’re fucking with!” she growled from behind the tape.

  But whatever it was they were up to, they had done their research or at least prepared to bring down a lion. Or a small vampire. Chains clanged when she tried to move her arms from behind her back. They were on loosely, but not so loose that she could maneuver very well in them. The chains were hard. Damn near unbreakable. What kind of material were they made of?

  “She’s trying to break the chains.” A new voice attached to a body that smelled of chemical enhancements, steroids.

  “Good. I was hoping she’d do something stupid like that.”

  Kylie heard a slight pop. Then something sharp pricked her arm. A needle. She hissed as something medicinal, something unusually strong, rushed into her body from the needle. What were they trying to do? Before she could think through whatever it was that was happening to her, darkness reached up and dragged her down once again.

  *

  She woke up in a cage. She lay in the dark provided by her own closed eyes, trying to get her bearings. Her body felt weak, arms lying heavily at her sides, the blood moving sluggishly through her, telling her it was almost time for her to feed again. Kylie lay still, listening to the sounds around her, the ticks, hum, and pulsing of a vast place. Electricity humming through lines. Water rushing through pipes. Refrigerators. Humans.

  Kylie heard their voices, their breaths, conversation that seemed to be about nothing. Some sort of game. A winning side. The loser that was about to be obliterated off the field. She counted. Twenty-three of them. Maybe twenty-four. Most of them scattered throughout the complex, at least eight gathered at a point nearly thirty feet away. The ticks and hums were concentrated there. Some sort of monitoring station probably watching her while she twitched and woke from her artificial sleep.

  She’d been captured. Drugged.

  Fear began to pulse to life deep in her chest. But Kylie fought for calm. Fought and lost. This was too much like the night she had been taken and turned. The terror of that night in Jamaica still burned at the back of her throat even after all these years.

  The memory of those terrified mornings, of that night her life had ended, shot her upright on the cold and unfo
rgiving floor. Her eyes snapped open and chains rattled. Her hands and feet were still imprisoned, and this time the chains were attached to a thick pylon that ran from the ceiling to the cement floor of her cell. She was naked. Her jacket, her jeans, her tennis shoes, her cell phone were all gone. A harsh, bright light flooded down at her from the ceiling.

  In a panic, she swore she heard her long forgotten heartbeat, the sound of blood pounding in her ears. Her calm dropped away from her.

  “Where the fuck am I?” she shouted, rattling the chains.

  Across from her was a row of cages, all empty but with signs of recent occupation. Bloody handprints on the bars. Clothes strewn on the hay-lined floor. Hay?

  She shouted again and again. But no one came. The floors in front of the cages were cement, leading away from her in both directions. She struggled to her knees and crawled as close to the bars as she could while her chains rattled. There was no one in sight. No humans and certainly no vampires. The smell of gun oil, old blood, metal, and pain assaulted her.

  What the fuck?

  She yanked at her chains again, but they were stronger than any she’d encountered as a vampire. Meant to hold someone like her prisoner. A deeper alarm stabbed at her. She twisted her neck to see more of her prison. Her captors had planned well. She saw nothing that gave her hope for escape, only signs of her absolute imprisonment. Other cages. The hard cement floor that looked like it had been recently hosed down, flickering shadows of the humans who were close but did not come toward her. Anger and dread burned in Kylie’s chest.

  “Fuck you!” she screamed.

  The shadows beyond her cell moved. She heard the sound of footsteps, calm breathing, smelled a male scent.

  “No, fuck you, little bitch.”

  A tall human stood in front of her cage. He looked down at her with cold indifference, although it seemed that a deep anger burned in him. He wore fatigues and combat boots, like he was in the middle of a war. He had khaki skin, pale blue eyes, and a muscled body under the long-sleeved shirt and pants. There was a patch over his right breast pocket, a bright yellow sun with arrows flying from it. Something about him tugged at her memory.

  “What am I doing here?” she growled.

  “You’re here to suffer and die.” He said the words almost tenderly as he put his hands in his pants pockets. “But I’ll give you the courtesy you never gave to your victims. You won’t have to scream as we drain the life out of you and we won’t toy with you. Much. We want to give you vampires a taste of your own bitter medicine.” His eyes narrowed with malice, the mask of indifference falling away. “You’ll see how it feels to be hunted and exterminated.” He grinned now, his hatred completely out in the open. “I have some toys especially made in the lab for you leeches. You won’t enjoy them, but I know I will.”

  Despite the fear rising up to choke her, Kylie snapped at him in anger. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Don’t bother with the innocent act, leech. It’s much too late for that.” He smiled again, baring teeth that were almost too sharp and white to be human.

  “I’m not acting, blood bag!” A growl rumbled in her chest. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Shit. What the hell had she gotten herself into? She suddenly longed for home with an intensity that made tears burn the backs of her eyes. Fuck! If only she’d stayed there and not wandered back to Georgia like Silvija had warned her. She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again. But it was too late now for that.

  The man grinned again. With his hands still shoved in his pockets, he walked away. She yanked at her chains, trying to get free. But her body felt sluggish and heavy, almost human in its limitations. Kylie sagged in her bonds, sinking to the floor in a defeated crouch.

  Time passed, but she didn’t know exactly how much. No one else came to bother her, but she heard their sounds in the rest of the vast complex, their obviously coded language, people arguing, others laughing. Then a familiar smell jerked her from her stupor. A woman. She twitched in her chains, looked around in confusion.

  “No!” the woman shouted. “Why are you doing this to her?”

  “Get in there and shut up.” The sounds of a struggle, hands on flesh, feet dragging across the floor. “If it wasn’t for you, the leech wouldn’t even be here.”

  Kylie stared at the empty place in front of her cell in disbelief. The woman appeared seconds later.

  Olivia.

  She gasped when she saw Kylie, her face a mask of horror and guilt. Only hours before, Kylie had left her in bed, naked and melancholy, her body lushly scented from their sex. Now Olivia was wearing sneakers, jeans, and a long-sleeved black shirt. Kylie had never seen her in anything but long dresses or skirts.

  The man had his hand clenched around her lower arm. He bared his teeth at Kylie, a triumphant smile.

  “Do you know what I’m talking about now?” he asked.

  She breathed Olivia’s name. “What the fuck is going on?”

  But even as she asked the question, she felt there was some connection between Olivia and the man. She knew this was no coincidence. There was something planned about this.

  Olivia stared at Kylie in the cell, looking everywhere but in her face. The concrete floor. The chains around Kylie’s wrists and ankles. Her naked body. Then she looked back at the man with his hand gripped around her arm. “Let her go.”

  The man shook his head, like a dog suddenly finding himself in water. “You know I can’t do that.”

  “I told you to leave things alone, Max!” Olivia yanked her arm from the man’s and crossed both arms over her chest. “I made my choices and you did too.”

  “The family would never abandon you to some bloodsucker, Olivia. We’d rather kill her first.” He matched her stance, arms crossed, legs planted wide. “Or you.”

  Kylie jerked in her chains.

  Family?

  She stared between the man—Max—who held her captive and the woman she had been growing to love. He was pale and she was dark. But looking beyond that, Kylie could easily see the similarities. The shape of the eyes. The sharp cheekbones. There was even an identical curve to their lips. Then she remembered his face from Olivia’s photo album. And from the street in front of the apartment.

  What the fuck?

  Olivia glanced at Kylie and flinched. “I need to talk with her, Max.”

  He tightened his arms crossed over his burly chest. “Go ahead.”

  “Alone. I want to see her alone.”

  For a moment, Max looked like he would refuse, his jaw bunching and releasing as he stared at Olivia. Then he shrugged. “Fine. But don’t do anything stupid.” After a cold look at Kylie, he walked away and left them together.

  Kylie shifted against the cement floor, the chains around her wrists and ankles rattling as she tried to find a comfortable position. The metal pylon was hard and cool against her back. “What’s going on, Olivia?” A tremor ran through her body, anticipation of news she didn’t want to hear. “What are you doing here?”

  Olivia hesitated. “You’ve been taken.”

  “No shit. Tell me something I don’t know.” She swallowed to stop herself from shouting. “What’s this place? Who are these people? What are you to them?”

  The questions tumbled from her one after the other, unstoppable. Any firm foundation she thought she had before just crumbled to the ground. Humans had aggressively and successfully taken her. Olivia was among them. Kylie couldn’t break free.

  “I’m sorry, Kylie. I really am.” Olivia hugged herself as if she were cold. A frown marred her normally smooth forehead, and her mouth was pinched with tension. “I never thought they would do this.”

  “Who is they?”

  “My brother, Max. The rest of my family.”

  The family that had abandoned her for being gay and still not come around even after her cancer diagnosis?

  “You’re joking.”

  But Olivia wasn’t laughing.

  �
�So what the hell are they? Why do they have me here? Is fucking you punishable by death?”

  Olivia drew a deep breath. “They’re vampire hunters.”

  Kylie wasn’t sure she’d heard right. “What?”

  “They hunt vampires,” she said quietly.

  Kylie shrank back against the pole in disbelief, feeling her foundations crash down even more. The trembling in her body grew worse. She felt encased in ice. “And you…you’re one of them?”

  “No. No, I’m not.” Olivia gripped the bars of Kylie’s cell. “I promise you.”

  “I don’t think I’m up to believing your promises right now.” She jerked her wrists in the chains. “Get me out of here, Olivia.” She heard sounds from down the hall, the brother returning.

  “I’m working on it.”

  “Then work harder!” Kylie still couldn’t believe what was going on.

  Olivia looked like a stranger standing on the other side of the cage with guilt riding her face, her body covered in clothes that belonged on another person. Kylie squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again.

  “I think your alone time is up.” Max ambled in front of Kylie’s cell like he was out for a stroll through the park. His eyes narrowed as he dissected Olivia and Kylie. “Did you get in a quick fuck while I was gone?”

  “Don’t try to play me, Max. I know there’re cameras everywhere.” Olivia dropped her hands away from the bars of Kylie’s cell. “Nothing happens in this place without you knowing. Don’t forget I know this place.”

  “If you’re so damn knowledgeable, then you know I’m not going to let this little bloodsucker go.” He lanced Kylie with his gaze. “I’ll kill you first.” He looked completely serious.

  But Olivia was unfazed. “Don’t threaten me, Max. Bertram won’t like it.”

  “Bertram?” he sneered. “Either you have the family’s protection and live by its rules or you do what you want. You can’t have it both ways.”

  Olivia’s lips thinned. “I wasn’t the one who started this.” Her face was cold. Colder than Kylie had ever seen it. Unreadable and detached, as if the person she had known over the last few days had gone, leaving a stranger behind.