The Vampires Of Livix Twin Pack (Volumes #2 & #3)

by Smith, J Gordon

  She rolled toward him and loosened his trousers. Slipping her hand coarsely behind the lashings she grappled firmly along his excitement. He remembered how her touch raised and encouraged his composure in a counter attack of his fingers approaching her aroused and supple velvety heat.

  She bucked in ecstasy and drew him to her and he equally drew her to him. They rolled and cried out as they pressed together. One rhythm coursing into a second.

  He grasped one of her wrists and kissed the inside edges carefully and then nicked a fang across a vein. She shrieked from pleasure as he pressed his fangs into her now sticky flesh. She reached for the arm supporting him and he fell to the grass. She nicked his wrist. The mix of pain and pleasure intensified from their venom building and coursing through both of them. Their muscular hips moved constantly against each other. Quickly they graduated from wrists to inner elbows and then fangs sliced and gouged into each other’s necks.

  The waves of sensation pounded them like glistening waves against the gritty sand with a voraciously frightful undertow sucking them out to sea in time for another uncontrollably crashing wave. They fought and loved in the surf against the hammering waves under the moonlight. The violence and love abated. They lay with moonbeams circling around them through the branches and windy clouds of the night. The rain passed overhead without ever falling.

  Then a sound of breaking twigs and Viking war hounds fractured the tranquility.

  -:- -:- -:-

  “If we had been vampires for even a decade I would still have you Ora. Too young and foolish – we still thought like humans.” The chain remained sheared and the deep gouge across the pendant flashed in the light as he spun it between his finger and thumb. Others that heard the story and saw the piece over the following centuries urged him to fix the jewelry – easy for any competent jeweler later than the seventeenth century to do an imperceptible repair. “It might do you good,” they said. But he left the damage in the jewelry like the rent in his heart. His True Love died when they severed this piece of jewelry.

  -:- -:- -:-

  The barbarian king with his dogs and his men chased us over the forested hills driving us forward into an ambush. It did not matter how fast we as vampires could run – we only came to the trap that much more rapidly. As if their army inflicted staggering wounds upon the Roman Legions driving them to disruption, they fought us viciously in the wood. Flaming catapults, dogs, swords, battle armor, pikes over trenches and earthen works, and too many men in wild berserk frenzy. Modern men rely on guns that ineffectively pepper a vampire body with tiny holes from what they think is a safe distance. These old men fought daily wielding a sword with the same ease as the flippant gun toting modern men flawlessly order cappuccino at a fancy coffee shop. They knew from birth how to hold and fight with four feet of sharp steel expertly thrown around by arms as thick and knotted as tree limbs. They fearlessly pressed this weapon upon their enemy as close and as personal as smelling the other’s bad garlic breath. Breath so foul a vampire sometimes chose to avoid them.

  Even though we killed much that morning, they wounded us and overwhelmed our ability to heal. Eventually we became too weak and they captured us. They knew vampires. Someone had taught them. Taught them how dangerous we can be – and how weak. The stinking unwashed men. They tortured our bodies repeatedly never letting us heal – working in shifts for days! My lovely Ora continuously cut in so many ways I could not recognize her except for her voice and I am sure she could not recognize me through the ripped and torn body that remained of myself. Only because her beauty was so profound could I still remember what she looked like over the mutilated visage they thrust upon her.

  These men knew more of being a vampire than I, being so newly made. They sought to neuter us. Their wizard and strong men brought us before their king and they held my head while using hot tongs to pull my first fang. The fire. The pain. The pain of that tooth greater than any of the prior injuries they inflicted combined. Like it pulled through my skull by way of my cranium to wrench free its grip on my spine! They reached for the second tooth. Using strength I carefully conserved by feigning weakness for days before did I manage to trick them. A day or two of more captivity and I might have recovered the strength I needed to save us both, but my vampire body knew without that last tooth I could not survive. Instinct took over stronger than any will of my own. I struck and freed myself of them! When I spun around instantly flinging the torturers’ dead bodies loose from me I saw Ora knocked to the ground with two barbarians swinging their sharp swords quick and clean. Could I reach her in time? Swords and spears filled the gap between us. I leaped to save her.

  I feared I had no way to reach her or them – even if I had full vampire strength. I have since paced out the distance in my mind and practiced re-creating the scene with logs and rocks in the quiet wood hundreds of times over long centuries since and I had been too far away and they too well prepared.

  Yet I still blamed myself – how could I not?

  They struck my True Love with sword strokes that separated Ora’s beautiful head from her body. They even kicked her head at me, in a fear-filled insult as they scattered before my attack, this necklace as severed and gouged as her neck and hooked in her ragged vertebrae as I caught it. How could I let her head bound away like a meaningless soccer ball at the end of a game?

  He spun the jewelry in the light.

  They could have captured me if I stayed, I am still certain of that, so I ran. I got strong again and then I returned. Night after night I bled them a few at a time at their camp’s fringe while they huddled in their great hall sending out their strongest heroes to stop me. Their boldness and trickery continued but I gripped revenge as my sharpest weapon and their efforts only quickened my learning and education as a true vampire. They showed me the power of the undead unleashed.

  While their brave king remained first upon the battlefield against me, I avoided him. I let him live until the end. Where I captured him and his queen as the ragged tailings of his people fled scattering into the wood. I forced them to watch their servants die and their children die. I cut him slowly every day and let him bleed upon the ground strapped to this chair while I tied his queen across this table still filled with the broken arrow points from their warriors and drank her slowly over days. I took her on the race of death and then gave her pleasure. How she climaxed repeatedly from my venomous bites, more than her king must have ever given her in their bed, but I eventually took her last dripping drop, licking the blood from the marrow of her bones that I cracked and wrenched from her flesh in front of him. I let him dwell on the grisly scene for two days. Then I killed the king with the same two swords that ended Ora’s reign.

  I buried her head carefully in a dry cave. They had already burned her body during my attacks in a frightened attempt to incense me to error. I wept for months with a heavy hart. I hid this furniture in that cave too and often sat in this chair without moving for weeks at a time. Then for centuries, I roamed Europe. My own dark ages that I barely remember except for furious snatches of black blood filled shadowy nights until the Renaissance awakened me with the rest of Europe. I still have not found another to replace Ora and in my saddest moments I fear I never will. But I am a vampire and I can live forever – I will find another True Love. Until then I sustain my sanity with my little projects; and protect our food source.

  -:- Five -:-

  I yawned uncontrollably and rubbed my eyes. Branoc watched me from the rear view mirror. He asked, “When did you sleep last Anna?”

  “Hmm?” I managed. I tried wiggling in my seat. That usually freshened my attention. “I’m not sure.”

  “You need some sleep.”

  “No, I’m ok.”

  Garin said to Branoc, “I can’t take her to my house or her apartment. Too dangerous.”

  “She won’t get any sleep in here.”

  I mumbled, “I’m sure I can get some sleep here. I’ll lie out.” I clicked out of my seat belt, lay across th
e seat and stretched my legs.

  Branoc said, “I should see if I can find any clues to what they are planning.”

  “A motel will flag any payments and transactions and locate her and us.”

  “I know,” said Branoc. “How about camping?”

  “Camping?”

  “I carry a pop-up tent in the trunk gear.” He started the car and eased it back onto the road. I sat up and pulled my seatbelt back on.

  “But you’re a vampire and don’t need to sleep. Why carry a tent?”

  “Sometimes it’s good to have a disguise. If I worked purely in a big city, it would never be useful. But here at the edge of suburbia and the outlying farms and forests and campgrounds I’ve used it for camouflage or to keep the rain off when the car wouldn’t do. It’s only a little larger than a kid play tent so don’t think it’s more than it seems.”

  “What other stuff do you carry in that trunk?”

  “Too much. But that’s why we have the big engine in this thing.”

  They turned at the light onto another road that slipped them further into farmland and against a small park donated to the state a handful of decades ago. It still looked largely like a farm but volunteers had planted the place with fir and a mix of hickory and birch and maple trees.

  “I heard a lot of turkeys are running around now.”

  “Reintroduced, and with the coyote population controlled as it is, they are bouncing back across the state. Some people are getting worried about highway collisions now. A twenty-five pound turkey striking a vehicle moving at seventy miles an hour is quite a projectile.”

  “That could be bad.”

  “So the insurance companies are lobbying for larger population controls on them.”

  “Funding the hunting organizations.”

  “Right. Like deer.”

  “A few more predators could thin the flock.”

  “You’re mixing dangerously close to Aravant’s discussion.”

  “Maybe,” I seemed to float and darkness faded as my eyelids shuttered.

  Garin woke me when he lifted me from the seat of the car and slid me through a chilly nylon and net screen. My fingers touched the wall as he laid me on a soft sleeping bag and zipped it around me. Instantly I warmed and fell into sleep hearing far off and receding Branoc saying to Garin, “Keep the battery out of your phone but call me at noon from a different location …” But I could not keep awake and listen any more.

  Somewhere I heard the gobbling chirp of turkeys. What are turkeys doing here? I rolled over and pushed the blanket higher over my eyes to make it comfortably dark. Other bird sounds flitted through my hearing. I wondered what the neighbors could be doing and reached for my bedside clock to figure out the time. My fingers touched thin nylon sheeting that hung damp with moisture. Another turkey gobble. I sat up and hit my head on the top of the tent. Moisture drops splashed on my face like rain and smacked me fully awake. I remembered now. I pushed the water from my face with my hands and unzipped the sleeping bag. Seeing my little socks on my feet made me wonder about my shoes. I unzipped the tent flap finding my shoes to put on and climbed out of the tent. Garin crouched next to a ring of rocks and a smoldering pit. Little smoke streamers wafted up from the dancing flames and dispersed into nothingness several feet off the ground.

  “Are you hungry?”

  The pit of my stomach screamed at me. “Yes. But how far to a store?”

  “Nature is around us,” he held his arms out, “and provides the original supermarket.”

  “Garin, it’s a park. We shouldn’t be foraging.”

  My head added a hurt to the stomach pains.

  “I didn’t think you’d want roasted squirrel or woodchuck.”

  “That’s a good guess. No.”

  “So I made you a few hard cooked eggs.”

  I lifted my chin peering over the edge of the rocks as I approached the little fire, “I don’t see a pan in the pit.”

  “There’s not. I used the coals.” He flicked a stick he held like a paddle and a pair of large eggs rolled out of the coals. He flipped them onto the cool grass where they steamed against the wet dew. “Give them a minute.”

  I looked at them curiously, much larger than a chicken egg, brownish and lightly mottled where the ash didn’t cover them. “What kind of eggs?”

  “Turkey eggs.” Garin said. An indignant gobble rooted out of the underbrush. “They had a bunch and these seemed pretty fresh. I didn’t know when you ate last but suspected a long time ago.” He didn’t need to explain how I had a lot of blood drained and the running and the fear and the stress and … and too much to think about. I turned the eggs to a new spot in the dew with a quick touch but found them cooling already. I kept rolling them into new grass washing the ashes off. I picked one up in my hand and went near the fire lightly cracking the shell against a rock. I rolled it back and forth in my hands and the shell released from the egg inside. I pealed the shell in one long sheet. The sharp whiteness of the egg pretty with a sharp odor of sulfur mingled with smoke from the fire. I bit into it. It tasted real and wholesome. In between bites I said, “I haven’t had a hard cooked egg since some deviled eggs last Christmas.”

  Garin watched me intently. As intently as I focused on eating the egg. The second egg already had a bite out of it before I realized I had gone through the preparation steps so rapidly. I ran the memory reel and yes, I cracked and peeled the eggs.

  “Those were good.”

  “I thought you’d like them. And you needed them.” His eyes watched me. Hungry eyes and not about eggs.

  “You’re leering.”

  “Sorry.” He glanced at a clump of fir trees huddled around a pink granite boulder.

  “Thanks for the eggs. But I believe my sister warned against involvement with vampires.”

  “Maybe only specific vampires. If not involved as you are, could blissful unawareness of the danger serve you better? Wishing for disbelief doesn’t make it any less desperate.”

  “What drives the need to force this grand plan? I can guess it improves the lot of vampires but humans get damaged, again.”

  “You can only be damaged as much as your spirit allows.”

  “What kind of crap is that? Flowery prose to weaken my knees?”

  “Maybe. But truth in controlling your reaction to destiny. And that reaction can change your future destiny.”

  “Put a smile on it and trick your mind into bliss?”

  “Something like that. Project hate and the world will hate you back –”

  “– or send out love so you get love back?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m in danger for my life and you think I should be happy about it?”

  “I … shouldn’t have said that I guess.”

  “But you did say it.” I stood up and paced.

  “You don’t need to fear so.”

  “Why? You’ll protect me?”

  “– Too obviously, I’ve been spotty on that record.”

  “Yes.”

  Garin walked behind the tent and picked something off the ground, “Here, I have this rose for you.”

  “What?”

  “I picked it from vines I found as I circled the tent to protect you last night. A wild rose.”

  “I –,” the rose glittered with dew along the edges of the tightly curled petals. His beautiful face softening in care for me. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small little airline sized sparkling wine bottle. “I didn’t have a chance to get more. Happy Birthday.”

  “I forgot about my birthday with this other stuff.”

  “But I didn’t forget.”

  “Because you waited –” I gulped. “– For me.”

  “You’re the drinking age now – officially.”

  “Yea for me …”

  “It also means you can be turned into a vampire. It’s the drinking age for vampires. I became a vampire in my twenty-first year.”

  My hand withered back from the sparkli
ng wine bottle.

  Garin let his hand and the bottle fall slowly to his side.

  “I don’t want that now. I’m not sure I’ll ever want that.”

  “You’ll need to think it over.”

  “Yes. A lot of thinking. Not that I have nothing else to think about.” I turned like a leaf in the wind, indecisive. “I need to sit.” I walked to the pink granite rock and sat on it with my feet flat against its ragged surface and my knees drawn up to my body under my chin.

  To die and become a vampire repulsed me on so many levels. I might be safer in this world of vampires but I knew from them that even vampires had fear. Brett was real. Garin was undead and dangerous. Though if I become a vampire then I would be as dangerous in time. A predatory killer that lives forever. Forever an undead monster stalking the night.

  A shadow between life and true death.

  -:- Six -:-

  I sat on the rock and later when the rock became too hard to sit on I walked around under the quiet copse of pine trees growing among the birch and maples not far from the tent. Their soft needles silent under the tread of my shoes. I knew I didn’t have to make any decision about the vampire life today. But I needed to face it eventually.

  My time with Brett showed me how much I really liked him. Attractive and while he downplayed his education I learned from his actions like the gun fight at my sister’s house how capable, strong, and courageous he could be. Is it braver to face such situations with human weakness or the strength of a vampire? I knew Brett worked hard even before our involvement seeing how he kept the coffee shop running and cared for its customers. If I wanted a normal life then Brett could be that with me. Normal. Outside of vampires where I could put the danger away.

  Garin materialized like a ghost, “It’s time for me to check with Branoc. I’m going over to the ridge there,” he pointed between a gap in the trees. “So if the signal is triangulated they won’t find us here.”