Fallen
A Northern Bites Novella
Formerly published as
an inclusion in the
Vampire Bites Boxed Set
November 2016
Copyright © Danielle Gavan
ISBN 978-1-927116-37-1
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For You.
You stood behind me, supporting and cheering me on through the entire process of writing this story. And because Your love of country music provided the soundtrack by which this book was written. Thank You, and i love You.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter One
Vampirism in the twenty first century sucked. Pun? Yeah, totally intended. I slapped a bag of O negative to my fangs and sat back, a cold can of Coors to wash it down in my left hand. Its five friends, the remainder of a six pack, chilled in a cooler on the floor beside me. Who was I kidding? Being a blood sucker hadn’t been a barrel of laughs since the moment the gods turned me two thousand years ago. I swung my feet up, the heels of my heavy boots thudding onto the wooden top of my cherry wood coffee table beside the large bacon, heavy cheese, and double garlic buttered crust waiting for me. The food wasn’t a necessity, unlike the blood, but hell would be let out for recess before I’d give it up.
O-neg coated my tongue and slid down my throat, pushing a shudder through me as I tried not to gag from the thick copper penny taste. I reminded myself that this was better than having to bite some poor schmuck I’d picked off the streets. The only thing I liked to drink straight from the tap came in a glass, a bottle or a can. Anything else came from a private supplier hired to keep the need at bay. I’d tried not feeding once. The results? Disastrous. For me. For the village I’d massacred. Men, women and children. None of them were safe from the bloodlust raging inside of me. I valued my humanity too much to risk it again. Yes, I saw the irony there.
The heavy plastic curled against my chin as the blood bag emptied of its lukewarm contents. A half-ounce remained in the bag, and it would stay there. Fully emptying the pouch meant listening to the nerve fraying ‘straw sucking at the bottom of an empty cup’ sound, and I avoided the torture of hearing it at all costs. I tossed the shriveled container, fist pumping the air as it caught the rim of the trash can across the room and plopped inside.
Garlic lifted his head from the cushion he occupied on the window seat, tail uncurled and thumping against the wall beneath. He gave me a bored blink, perking up as he spotted the pizza between us. His one-eyed stare focused with laser-like precision, and the pink tip of his sandpaper tongue flicked out to lick his jowls. Not one to be deceived by his faux-lazy demeanor, I set my beer aside and leaned forward to pick up the cardboard box.
“Not a chance, kitty cat.” Eyes narrowed at the wily feline, I settled the pizza in my lap and picked up a large piece of cheesy, garlic laced, bacon filled goodness. Garlic gave me a half-assed meow and settled back down on his cushion with the kitty version of a huff. Good boy. I made a note to bring home a snack for the old mouser after making my rounds.
Mouth filled with pizza, I chewed slowly, in no rush to hustle out the door and into the frigid night air. Early spring nights in Northern Ontario sucked. The weather, at best, could be described as schizophrenic. Mother Nature, the crazy bitch, needed another dose of her meds. I glanced out the sleet glazed bay window, the half-acre expanse of my backyard visible above the hump of Garlic’s scrawny back. Large swaths of green grass stretched between long bars of ice and snow. With any luck the temperature outside would be warm enough to prevent the sleet tapping against my windows from sticking and turning the roads into skating rinks. My truck was a 4 x 4 but black ice didn’t give two shits about that kind of thing.
The cushion beside me vibrated and I looked over at the cell phone resting on the black leather. I picked it up, tapping the text message icon with my thumb. A select few people knew my number. I could count them on one hand, all of them brethren vampires. I opened the text from Noah and scanned the message. Coming out? Tapping in the reply box, I responded with a sarcastic smiley face emoticon. In six hundred years of patrolling the area together, I’d missed one night and only because a bad bag of blood had laid me low with an unprecedented case of hugging the porcelain throne. My bathroom had looked like the scene of a massacre by the time I’d expelled every ounce of the tainted blood. The smartass wouldn’t let me forget it either. My phone vibrated again. See you in the trenches, asshole. I laughed and took another bite of gooey garlicky goodness as I rose from the couch. Someone had ants in his pants about getting the show on the road.
Garlic hopped down from the window, stalking me into the kitchen. I popped the leftover pizza in the fridge and shut the door, narrowly missing the pink tip of his greedy little nose. The cat gave me a growl mixed with a hiss as I walked away and ignored him. A full to the brim bowl of the best cat food money could buy sat across the kitchen. The pizza? Mine. We’d had this discussion before. I wasn’t budging on the subject.
***
Forty minutes later I spotted Noah leaning against the wall of our usual meeting spot, a ball cap pulled low over his brow. A smile quirked up the corners of my lips as I pulled the truck around a corner and parked against the curb. The guy was six foot four and built like an ox. A baseball cap wasn’t going to help him go incognito any more than a frilly dress would. People tended to notice guys our size. It was a fact of life for us.
“Hey, man.” He pushed off the wall as I drew close, falling into step with me. I lifted my chin in greeting and glanced at the hat covering his golden blond locks. Noah shrugged and jammed both hands in his jacket pockets, ignoring my unspoken criticism. “So, hunt or surveil tonight?”
I focused on our surroundings, senses opened to those brave enough to wander the streets at this hour. A couple fornicated in an alley a few streets over. Humans. I wrote them off as a hooker and her john. By the tone of her moaning, she was a seasoned pro at faking it ‘til he made it. Other than those two, Noah and myself
the streets echoed with a definitive absence of population—human, or otherwise. Odd. “Let’s play it by ear.”
Noah cast a glance my way, his right eyebrow raised. The silver sheen of his irises gleamed in the shadows beneath the ball cap brim. “You noticed it too, huh?” He resumed scanning the street, eyes trained to pick out even the most minute disturbance in the city’s energy. “It’s like a ghost town tonight, except without the ghosts.”
The night loomed around us, eerily quiet for a city the size of Sudbury on a Saturday night in April. Not a college or university student in sight. The usual gaggle of teenagers who hung out by the pizza shop? AWOL. Even the homeless were nowhere to be found. Oh yeah. Something was definitely fishy in Fishville.
“Keep your eyes peeled,” I instructed. He nodded and we continued down Elm Street toward Notre Dame. Street lights lined our path, spotlighting us like the rock stars every few feet. Thing was, I didn’t feel very rock star-ish. Tired? Yep. Bored? You bet. I’d been around for over two thousand years of the same old same old crap. Yes, I’d signed on for this gig. Stupid, naïve me eagerly volunteered to be a defender of mankind. I rolled my eyes and snorted. What a crock of shit.
Noah nudged me with his elbow and I cut a glance in his direction. He watched me from beneath the brim of his hat, eyes narrowed, scrutinizing. “You okay?”
I nodded, and jammed my hands into my jacket pockets. Not the best idea should the need to defend myself arise, but who was I kidding? There wasn’t anyone around to defend, or anything to fight. Not your typical night on the Fallen and Noah show. “Yeah,” I huffed. “Just bored as fuck. We haven’t seen anything in days. I’m getting antsy.”
“Maybe,” he hesitated and I tensed, aware of where Noah was going with the rest of his thought. I cut him off with a growl and he brought up his hands. “Hey, I’m just saying. It might be worth the trouble to, you know, bug the powers that be and see what’s up.”
His suggestion, while valid, was a path I refused to tread. The gods and I enjoyed a love-hate relationship. Mostly one sided. I loved to hate them. Issues? Nah, I had volumes. Two thousand years worth of them. The less contact between that gang of narcissists and myself, the better.
Less than a second after that thought cross my mind the energy current shifted around Noah and I. Our gazes collided, the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. I eased my hands free of my jacket pockets and gave my arms a slight shake to release the energy built up in them. My knuckles cracked from the tension as I flexed my fingers into loose fists and prepared to use the only superpower the gods had seen fit to gift me.
The night suddenly burst with sound and presence. People. Creatures. Everywhere.
Noah laid a hand on my forearm, and I halted the process of calling my sword. Brandishing a four-foot length of polished steel in a crowd this size would not bode well for either of us. A night in the City of Greater Sudbury’s jail was not on my bucket list.
“Shit,” Noah hissed from my left. He nudged my shoulder and I tossed him a glance. Chin lifted, his gaze flicked toward something in the distance on my right. “Things just got real.”
Following his line of site, I immediately picked out the two things that froze the blood in my veins. Her, and the minion advancing on her from across the street with its razor-sharp teeth bared, a thin line of venom dripping from an incisor. This was no cutesy, banana loving, Disney/Pixar creation. No. This was something much more sinister.
I kicked into motion, boots pounding pavement, even though I knew it was too late to stop the evil creature from reaching her. Super-speed was not something I possessed. I ran at a human pace. Granted, somewhat faster than most, but still a snail’s pace compared to that with which the minion was gaining on its target. I couldn’t stop it from reaching her, but I’d let myself be damned for another thousand years before I allowed any harm to come to her.
“Is that…?” Noah ran beside me, his strides matching mine as we tore up the sidewalk. He caught my eye and I gave a quick, curt nod. Yes, yes it was.
Her. Zoe. The woman who’d haunted my dreams every day for two thousand years. The woman for whom I’d given my life to the gods in exchange for hers. The woman those same gods brought back time and again to torment me with what I could no longer have—her love.
Chapter Two
Crisp spring air caressed my face as I stepped outside. A door closed behind me, shutting out the boisterous noise coming from my favorite café, Let’s Scrabbalatte. Saturday game nights were always a little more rambunctious than others.
Hands wrapped around a paper cup, I let the heat from the liquid inside warm my chilled fingers. The delicious aromas of toffee and whipped cream tickled my nose and I brought my Zombie Crunch Latte to take a sip of the decadent treat. Heated milk, just a touch below scalding, coated the interior of my mouth and filled my senses with the taste of toffee, whipped cream and chocolate cookie powder. I turned toward home, opting to walk back and catch up on the work I’d fallen behind on instead of participating in game night as I usually did on Saturdays. An early spring cold had knocked me flat earlier in the week, and now I was paying the price with a weekend spent indoors in front of my computer.
Paying just enough attention to avoid walking into anyone, I didn’t notice anything amiss until the sound of boots pounding pavement and my name being called pulled me from my musings. I stopped and scanned the surrounding area, freezing like a deer caught in the headlights of a tractor trailer when I spotted the creature. Skin the color of ripe blueberries, sharp teeth dripping what I could only assume was some sort of venom, and eerie, glowing white eyes devoid of a pupil or iris.
I made a mental note to stop watching paranormal movies before bed, and squeezed my eyes shut, hoping that when I opened them again the creature would be gone—a figment of my overstimulated imagination. But, when I cracked the lid of my right eye open it was still there. Closer and just as creepy as before. The primitive part of my brain, the one in charge of making life or death decisions, urged me to choose: fight or flight.
“Zoe,” a male voice called. “Move. Run.”
The words registered, but I stood there, incapable of moving as my muscles twitched with indecision. My latte crashed to the pavement, splattering hot milk all over my feet and soaking through the mesh tops of my running shoes.
A fleeting thought about how hard it would be to get the milk out later crossed my mind in the same moment the creature reached out a large, claw tipped hand toward me. It gripped my throat, squeezed, and cut off the scream I’d built up. My feet lifted from the sidewalk, my body dangling from the creature’s grip as it pulled me closer. Empty white eyes captivated my attention, drawing me in and rendering me docile. Every instinct urged me to fight, kick, scream, claw, anything to save myself.
“The gods won’t sssssave you now, pretty.” The creature slurred, spittle dotting my face. With my body paralyzed shuddering was impossible, but the mental squick-fest it caused? Epic. It licked up my left cheek from chin to temple, leaving a slimy trail in the wake of its sandpaper tongue. The clomp of heavy boots grew closer. Pinpricks of pain stabbed into my neck, and I sent up a silent prayer that whoever it was arrived sooner rather than later.
Warmth trickled down my skin, tickling along my collarbones before it dipped into the valley of my cleavage. Of course, I thought as the creature swiped its feline tongue through the trail of blood. The one night I decide to wear white Nightcrawler’s evil cousin turns me into a midnight snack. Perfect.
“Damn it, Zoe!” The voice, the same masculine rumble from before, grew closer. My vision fogged, darkness tinging the edges of reality. “Fight the minion, woman. You can’t die. Not now.” Die? Minon? I frowned, the only muscle control I seemed capable of achieving, and wondered why the stranger cared. His voice? Oh so familiar. I’d heard it before, but the how and where escaped me. It was a warm rumble of it, each word a caress across my skin. And the creature death-gripping my throat was so not a minion. No, those were ador
able little yellow pill-shaped animated characters. Minions did not exist!
I gave a mental shake, cursing myself for behaving like one of the too-stupid-to-live heroines in so many of the romance novels I’d read. Death was, quite literally, staring me in the face and my concern was about why my would-be rescuer sounded familiar, or the existence of actual minions? Yikes.
A fresh wave of pain swept through me, burning a path from the punctures at my throat and down into my spine. Darkness encroached further into my field of vision. The chill nipping at my fingers as I’d stepped out of the café laced its way through my paralyzed muscles. I silently cursed the addiction to Zombie Crunch lattés that had brought me out into the streets, and ultimately, to my own death.
The minion, so glad I had a name for it now, pulled me close—its face a hairsbreadth away from mine. I had a moment to register the flash of a sword, and the man standing behind my attacker, before mind-numbing pain slammed into me and the encroaching darkness sucked me under. “Goodbye, Princess.”
Princess? What?
***
Warm lips pressed to mine. Fingertips brushed across the line of my jaw, tilting my head up, and I relaxed. I remembered this dream.; it was one of my favorites. In a moment, my lover’s tongue would sweep inside, his tongue dancing with mine as he crushed our bodies together. Mmmm, yes… I definitely liked this dream.
Air blasted into my lungs, filling them to capacity, and my eyes flew open as I spluttered my way to consciousness. “What in…,” I rasped, but stopped cold as beautiful amber eyes came into focus above me. Familiar eyes—ones I’d only ever seen in my dreams. “Helloooo, sexy.”
Clearly, I was dreaming and let myself relax back into the fantasy. “God, I love this dream. Where were we?”
Fallen (Northern Bites Book 1) Page 1