Desire at Dawn

by Fiona Zedde

  Her brother stabbed a finger in front of her nose. “How many times do we have to tell you? No dykes allowed. And definitely no dykes with vampire pets.”

  Kylie flinched. Vampire pets? Anger began to simmer along her nerve endings, replacing the fear and disorientation. She felt almost hot with it.

  “You’re deluded if you think none of the women who fight for Bertram don’t love pussy as much as I do.” She made a noise, like he was a fool she was trying to educate.

  “As long as they fuck me or some other guy’s real dick, they’re not dykes, and that’s all I care about.”

  “Oh, okay,” Olivia muttered. “That makes so much sense.”

  They snapped at each other like true siblings, growling and spitting at each other like the human children Kylie had grown up with when they were fighting over marbles.

  “Don’t give me any shit!” Max shouted. “Or I’ll make you wish you were the one behind these bars.” He jerked his head toward the cage.

  A growl rose up in Kylie’s throat. This human didn’t get to talk to Olivia like that. When Kylie got out of this prison, she would kill Olivia, make her regret with her screams every betrayal she’d ever served up on her luscious body, on that lying tongue.

  She wanted to growl and scream and yank the chains from her wrists, break everything in the place, anger like boiling lava bubbling inside her until she felt choked, humiliated by her helplessness.

  Never again, she promised herself. Never.

  Kylie made the vow to herself as she stared at Olivia. The power of her stare forced Olivia to turn around. Their eyes met, and Kylie growled louder, the frustration like thunder in her throat. Olivia took a jerking step back even though she was on the other side of the bars.

  “Afraid of your little fuck toy?” Max mocked her. “You should be. Bertram told you not to do whatever stupid thing you were thinking of.” His gaze found Kylie. “What you tried to do was beyond stupid.”

  Olivia turned away. “I don’t want to talk about that here.” Her voice shook.

  “Does it matter? These freaks can hear us from all the way above ground if they want.”

  So they were underground. The logical part of Kylie, the part that wasn’t snapping and furious like a wild dog, processed and tucked away that piece of information.

  “It doesn’t matter what she can hear. I’d rather talk about this someplace else.” She shot a look at Kylie. One full of apology and something else Kylie didn’t want to see. Every muscle in her body twitched with anger.

  “Fuck you.” She aimed the words directly at Olivia.

  Olivia jerked her gaze away. “Let’s go, Max.”

  “You don’t fucking tell me what to do,” he said. But he walked away from Kylie’s cell, following Olivia’s swift and purposeful steps.

  The sight of them together, walking and talking like companions, like the siblings they were, made Kylie snap her teeth. She followed the sound of their footsteps, counted them to ten before she started plucking at her chains behind her back, trying to hook her fingers in the rings of the chain to snap them apart.

  She heard the sound of a sharp zap! Then felt pain. A burning current through her fingers and the manacles on her wrists. She screamed in agony, then rage.

  “You bitch!” she screamed. “You fucking bitch! I’ll rip your heart out for this! I won’t stop until I have your guts hanging from the rafters like confetti.”

  She fell over. Her head thudding against the floor. For wild seconds, she saw stars behind her tightly clenched eyelids. Her stomach heaved. Then the stars cleared and she was only captive again, not flung adrift in a bright and alien universe. Still twitching. Humiliated.

  “I’m going to kill you,” she whimpered with her cheek pressed into the hard and gritty floor. “You’re already dead. You just don’t know it.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  It felt like an eternity before Olivia came back. Lying on the floor with grit and old bloodstains under her naked body, Kylie heard every footstep, nearly every breath as Olivia approached.

  The fury caught fire inside her again, and she wanted to fly up and fling herself against the bars of her prison. Show Olivia the full force of her anger. Olivia stood in front of her cell. She looked small and helpless in her loose jeans and a large gray hoodie with University of Georgia scrawled across the chest. She must have gotten cold and borrowed the sweatshirt from one of the men. It looked too big to be hers.

  Kylie still couldn’t get past the clothes, Olivia wearing pants. That small thing felt like another betrayal. Was anything Kylie had seen of her real?

  “I’m sorry about this, Kylie.” Olivia drew a deep breath that smelled of a recent meal. Miso soup and kale.

  Kylie lifted her head. “I don’t give a shit about your sorry. That won’t get me out of here.”

  Was it her imagination or did Olivia flinch from her words? Not that it mattered. Olivia had gotten her into this. There was no going back from a betrayal like this. No. Fucking. Way.

  “I know it’s useless for me to say this now, but I want you to know I never thought the plan would end up like this. I didn’t know you’d be the one to come.” She clenched and unclenched her fingers, shoving them in the pockets of her jeans then pulling them out again.

  Kylie had no idea what she was talking about and didn’t give a damn enough to ask.

  “I’ll do whatever I can to get you out of this,” Olivia said. “I promise.”

  “You can shove your promises the same place as your sorrys, human. I was so damn stupid to trust you.”

  Another flinch crossed Olivia’s face. She licked her lips and took a step back, then another. Then she was walking away from the cell and down the hall where a hint of darkness waited to embrace her. Kylie watched her leave, biting her lip at the regret burning in her belly.

  And don’t come back!

  She wanted to shout the words, but they wouldn’t leave her lips. She groaned softly, turned her head, and pressed her forehead into the gritty floor.

  It scalded her to think that she had been played for a fool. Even now, she wanted to call out to Olivia and ask her if it had all been an act. Had there been any time at all during their days together that her feelings for Kylie had been genuine?

  Fuck.

  “She’s such a bitch, isn’t she?”

  She’d heard the man approach but paid him little attention. Kylie didn’t bother looking up at him.

  “Olivia is such a self-righteous little bitch.” Max’s boots sounded against the floor as he came closer. “She’s been part of this family from birth. She knew what we’ve been doing and have done for generations. We kill vampires, not fuck them. Just because she never got into the family business doesn’t mean she gets to spread her legs for any of you leeches.”

  Kylie heard him put his hands around the iron bars, felt him lean closer. “I’m not gonna lie. I’ve been tempted to see what it’s like. That cold skin. The way you heal up real nice from a knife cut.” He bared his teeth at her. “Is your pussy cold too?”

  She felt his eyes on her, examining her naked body as if eager to violate and hurt her. She shuddered with revulsion. “One of the last vamps we had in here said you get warm when you fuck. Would you get warm for me if I stick my dick in your ass?”

  Kylie’s hands clenched into fists behind her back, but she said nothing.

  He laughed then and leaned in to press his forehead against the bars. “Maybe one day I’ll find out and make Olivia watch.”

  “Fuck you.”

  He chuckled again. The sound of his laughter merry and amused. “No, honey. Fuck you. And when I do, I’m going to enjoy every second of it. Cold pussy or not.” His hands flexed around the bars of the cell. “I’m sure I’ll figure out a way to warm you up.”

  Kylie’s teeth flashed out, sharp and long, eager to taste his blood. “I’d rather die than let you touch me.”

  “Really? You want to throw down that challenge?” He grinned. “I don’
t think you know who you’re fucking with. When I play chicken, guess who blinks first?” He looked over her body with an insolent stare that made her feel immediately unclean. “When I’m done fucking your cold little cunt and ass, you’ll be begging me to kill you.”

  “You’ll be the one begging before I’m done with you.” She stared at him, unblinking, her teeth elongated and dripping with saliva.

  Kylie felt humiliated and helpless. But even with no power over her situation, speaking the fearless words gave her some spark of rebellion, something to get her through until a plan for escape came to her.

  “Just you watch me, bitch.” He nodded once in her direction then shoved away from the bars. The human walked down the hallway without a second glance.

  Kylie pushed herself to her knees after he left, straightening her body the best she could while the chains clanged and pressed cold and hard into her skin. The manacles scraped her wrists bloody.

  She hissed with pain and sighed as the hurt disappeared almost instantly, the cuts healing on her skin even though she didn’t have to look to know it was happening. She looked around her, noticing again the small but chilling details of where she was being kept. The tiny cameras high on the ceiling outside her cage, the small, quarter-sized holes in the stone walls of her cell, eight of them at shoulder height if she had been able to stand. She had no idea what they were for, but she didn’t want to find out.

  The floor was concrete, cold and unyielding under her naked body while the ceiling soared at least twenty feet over her head. They had covered every possible base, it seemed, having learned, she guessed from trial and error, what would keep a vampire captive in a cell for as long as they wished.

  She heard the continuous chatter of the humans down the bright hallway, beyond her sight. But they only spoke in that coded language of theirs, in metaphors, with no specifics she could use to fight her way out of her cell. She snapped her teeth, pissed at herself again for being caught so easily.

  She rattled the chain around her wrists, yanked at it. The metal didn’t even strain under her efforts.

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  Kylie sank back to her haunches and deliberately slammed her head against the steel pylon at her back. A brief pain, then nothing. She wanted to bang her head against the pylon hard and harder until someone came, until something happened. But the rational part of her, tiny as it was, warned her that any efforts in that direction would be completely useless. She would just hurt herself, heal, and be in the exact same position as before only with her blood splattered everywhere.

  At the thought of blood, her teeth ached with hunger. The light inside her cage and out in the hallway was unrelenting. It hadn’t dimmed at all since she’d been captive so she had no idea how long it had been since she was taken. But her body sensed the coming of the sun. It squirmed with discomfort. With hunger and a longing for home.

  She closed her eyes, giving in to her body’s exhaustion, relaxing into the cold pylon. She wished it were another body. Violet. Rufus. Even Julia. She wanted the comfort of another. Ached for it. Prickles of need rushed over her skin. Her fingers twitched to twine around an arm, touch a hip, anything.

  The last time she had slept with her kind, it had been with Violet. The presence of Violet’s flesh pressed to hers had been a narcotic, pulling her down into a day’s rest. But even with Violet near, it had been Olivia she wanted. It was Olivia she dreamed about pulling down into simple cotton sheets with her, kissing her, stroking her lean body, pushing open her thighs to press against her wetness, sigh into her mouth as they shared good morning kisses and the desire that flowed like thick honey between them. Olivia would be wet against her thigh, then on her fingers, on her tongue, her cunt fisting under Kylie’s mouth in orgasm.

  Kylie swooned into sleep with the thought of fucking Olivia, then shuddered seconds later when she woke again. Her lashes fluttered as she stared up into the bright light of the cell.

  It happened to her again and again and again. So many times that she lost count. Her body grew more and more distressed, her nerves jangling with need each time she jolted awake.

  Fuck this shit.

  She wanted to stay awake and fight the desire that always led to the disappointment of sleep interrupted. But she couldn’t stop that cycle any more than she could stop wanting blood. Or stop being Belle’s daughter. She opened her eyes again to the harsh lights and sounds of footsteps coming down the hall toward her. Two people and someone being dragged. Kylie smelled death.

  She heavily lifted her head in time to see two men in fatigues. Max and another human with long dreadlocks, someone she remembered seeing near Olivia’s apartment. They carried a naked body between them, its feet dragging on the floor. The body didn’t have a head. Congealed blood had dried in streaks down the ragged, meaty stump of a neck, down its bare, male chest. The fading scent of eucalyptus clung to the dead vampire.

  “Hey, leech.” Max grinned at her. “We notice you’re having some trouble sleeping. This might help you out.” His teeth flashed sharp and wicked in his pale face. He turned to nod at someone beyond Kylie’s sight. There was the sound of an electronic click then the doors of the cell slid open.

  “Enjoy.”

  They threw the body into the cell with her. It landed against her thighs with a wet thud. She flinched back in revulsion. The smell of death and accelerated decay exploded against her face.

  “Why don’t you cuddle up with that?” Max snorted as he laughed. “Sweet dreams.”

  Kylie stared down at the dead beast. It wasn’t anyone she knew. This one was pale, the color of over-cooked rice, his penis uncircumcised and stubby between his legs. It was just his sprawled body, his arms flopped out at his sides, palms up, as if in supplication. But it was too late for anyone or anything to help him.

  The other man walked away after a quick, almost shamed, look at Kylie’s nude body. But Max stayed to watch her, his eyes moving with relish between her and the dead vampire. “He lost the game,” Max said, then turned and walked away.

  Kylie was disgusted. Not by the body, since she had seen death before and had been the cause of it on many occasions. She was disgusted by her response to the body. The instant pulse of need inside her. She slid to the ground, burrowing against the cold flesh to find warmth that she knew was long gone.

  The stench was overwhelming. Old blood. Quickly putrefying flesh. The dead vampire’s natural eucalyptus scent that was fading fast. She fought back a spasm of nausea, her body simultaneously moving into and away from the dead creature, seeking rest but also aware of and repulsed by its permanent death.

  She pushed into its chest and sighed. The dead vampire was sticky with old blood. She bathed herself in the wasted nourishment, staining her skin, her face. She felt like an animal. But she needed the comfort. Her cheek touched the body’s cold chest. Cold on cold. The vampire had been dead for at least a full night. There wasn’t much warmth to find in it. And all the blood was gone. Spoiled. But her flesh needed what it needed, and in seconds, she was asleep.

  “You see what a fucking disgusting animal it is?” She heard the question from far off, but did not wake. Did nothing to acknowledge it even though she knew the voice, knew it was Max, and knew he was talking to Olivia.

  She shut out the noise and remained beneath the soothing balm of sleep, only vaguely aware of her twitching limbs, the smell of the dead body, and her own desperation.

  “Get it the fuck out of the cage. I’m not providing a tuck-in service here.”

  Olivia’s scent retreated.

  Kylie’s lashes fluttered as the warmth she had found in sleep slipped away from her, the balm she clung to abruptly yanked from her grasp.

  “I’m not here to do you any favors, bloodsucker.”

  Her eyes flew open and she snarled, rushing up from her sleep in a snap of teeth and clinking chains for the blood-rich throats she smelled nearby. Max and another man.

  “Christ! That bitch is fast!” The dreadlocked man s
kittered back and away from her, his hazel eyes wide. He nearly dropped the legs of the dead vampire he stole from Kylie. His pulse thudded hard in his neck, the adrenaline and fear creating an intoxicating cocktail of scent in the air.

  The chains yanked Kylie back before she could get very far. She tumbled to the floor in a crash of limbs, her back smashing into the steel pylon hard enough to make her feel it. Her eyes felt gritty, her body sluggish from its need for blood.

  She registered the man’s heady scent, imagined biting into his neck and spilling all that blood down her throat. Kylie swallowed with hunger, even as she knew it couldn’t have been true hunger. It hadn’t been that long since she fed.

  Normally, she could go at least three days without drinking before she started to lose it. And she knew that only because she had tried in the very beginning of her vampiric existence to not be what they had made her. Now, she embraced her need and fed as often as she liked.

  “Yeah, she’s fast but not faster than those chains,” Max said. He kicked the dead vampire’s arms all the way outside Kylie’s cell.

  But she heard the tremor in his voice, had heard the abrupt slide of his boots across the floor. “Door!” The echoes of his shout barely died away before the electronic doors slammed shut.

  Kylie stared at them, her throat vibrating with her anger. With her hunger. Her body trembled. She must not have been asleep for very long before they pulled the body out of the cage. It wouldn’t do to provide her any kind of comfort, would it? She sank back onto her haunches, leaned into the steel at her back, and tried to stay awake.

  *

  She lost track of the hours. Or had it been days? It was constant wakefulness and bared teeth and aching fangs and the cramp of hunger in her belly that started to move through the rest of her body. Her veins felt as if they were drawing tight, drying up. Her limbs twitched without pause, her mouth too dry for her to call out for help or even scream in anger. But who would even hear her? Who would help?