Born to Bite Bundle

by Hannah Howell

  He was the one who must spill her blood. He and no one else.

  Don’t come out, he repeated.

  The door to the inn opened, and Alder froze in his pacing as his savior, his nemesis, his destiny, stepped into the dangerous crowd of folk.

  “What is the meaning of this?” the witch demanded, and Alder felt his pupils dilate as they took in the whole of the last living Levenach, his senses screaming out from the very power of her, even at the distance he kept in the sheltering tree line. His breaths shortened to stuttering pants, the hair on his back bristled.

  The damnable sunlight, weak and ruddy though it was, threw back sparks from her fiery hair and the whoremonger’s words whispered in Alder’s ear: as red as the Devil hisself. She was as tall as half the menfolk gathered around her, and her arms, cocked on her hips defiantly, appeared long and slim in their rough garments. With each swish of her plain skirt, Alder thought he could see silvery washes of tracing light.

  And he knew a shiver of fear for his soul.

  He was shaken from his stupor as the mob leader again took up his grievances.

  “And yet another, Levenach!” the man shouted and gestured impatiently for the pair of folk bearing the long-wrapped burden to come forth. Several women lingered on the fringes of the crowd, and their wailings pierced the air around the man’s accusations. “You canna explain this away inna longer! Your blood-thirst has drunk of its last victim!”

  “Who?” Alder heard her shocked whisper clearly.

  “My boy!” a woman screamed and fought her way toward the inn. She was seized by a pair of folk before she could reach the Levenach woman. “My Tom! Only ten and six—not yet a man and yet you had to have him, did ye nae? Ye monstrous whore! Evil! Evil!”

  “Nae,” the witch whispered, and Alder thought he could hear physical anguish in the word. “Nae Tom!”

  “Aye!” the mob leader shouted, shaking a torch at the Levenach. “Ye’ve lied to us, fed off’n us long enough, Beatrix Levenach. And now we will put an end to it!”

  “Dunstan, surely you doona think that I—”

  “What else are we to think, I ask ye?” the thick man—Dunstan—charged. “And unmarried woman, carrying on as if she were a man of business, a chief even—”

  “But my betrothed—”

  “He doesna exist!” Dunstan sneered. “For years we swallowed yer lies and those of yer father. The old tales are just that—stories. You nae more protect the Leamhnaigh than does the Devil hisself.”

  Alder shuddered at the words, a sharp, frozen fingernail between his shoulder blades.

  “And now you’ll pay for the lives you’ve taken. I know how to put an end to a witch,” Dunstan threatened, shaking his torch at her again. He looked over his shoulder at the group of forest men gathered behind him, their own torches growing progressively and ominously brighter as the sun sank slowly, too slowly. “Take her, and light the inn!”

  The crowd shouted encouragement as the Levenach was taken roughly in hand. Alder saw her lips move, whispering words too low for even his sensitive ears to hear. A spell of some sort, perhaps, but if it was, it had no effect on her captors. Alder looked to the glowing treetops again.

  Three more minutes. Two, mayhap…

  “Light it!” Dunstan insisted again while the folk who held her dragged the Levenach to a gnarled old elm spread wide in the clearing before the inn. As they drew closer to his hiding place, Alder could feel the power of the Levenach throbbing in rhythm to his own shuddering heartbeat.

  The folk charged with destroying the inn stood before it without action, as if hesitant to approach the humble building. But the inn’s fate was of no concern to Alder—he knew the Levenach’s moments on earth could be counted on one hand.

  He looked to the glowing treetops again. A feral whine escaped his throat.

  “Doona do this, I beg of you!” the Levenach screamed. “Dunstan, I am the Levenach! You are sworn to—”

  “Doona threaten me with yer curses, witch!” the mob’s leader growled. He jerked her by her fiery hair. “The Leamhnaigh will be free from yer evil when we toss yer wicked corpse upon the burning coals of the White Wolf.”

  A pained yip escaped Alder’s throat.

  “Nay!” the Levenach shrieked and thrashed her willowy body side to side as a length of rough rope was produced and a crude noose was wrenched over her head. Alder felt his own throat constrict, his scar burn.

  He could not wait a moment longer, sunlight or nay.

  Alder crouched low, his white muzzle nearly touching the dirt. A squealing growl came from him as he shuddered, shuddered, then sprang from the tree line.

  Chapter Four

  I’m going to die, Beatrix said to herself in disbelief as the noose fell over her collarbone and then scratched itself tight around her throat. Someone behind her—it wasn’t Dunstan, as he still stood before her, glaring triumphantly—tied her wrists together.

  Nothing had worked. The warding spell, the escape spell, the discernment spell—it was as if she sang a pretty lullaby to a group of savage sheep. Her father, the legends and prophesies—the well itself—had all been wrong.

  She was going to be burned to death. And then the Leamhnaigh and all the highlands would fall to Laszlo and his vampires.

  Tom’s mother fought her way to the fore of the crowd, and even in her own mortal fear, Beatrix’s heart wrenched for the poor woman, and for her sweet son, dead by the fang.

  “Look, look!” The woman tore at the rough covering that shrouded her boy until Tom’s face, gaunt and white and shriveled, was revealed. His brown eyes, forever holding their fear wide, gaped at Beatrix. A strangled cry wheezed from her throat at the sight of the two black puncture marks on the young man’s neck. Whoever had fed upon the boy had drained him like a piece of winter fruit.

  “His should be the last face your damned evil eyes look upon before you burn in hell, witch,” the woman gasped, and then spat in Beatrix’s face before collapsing in a half faint in the arms of one of her neighbors.

  “I didna,” Beatrix whispered the plea to the crowd. “I swear it!”

  “Would you light the fucking place?” Dunstan shouted, and the rope began to tighten around Beatrix’s neck. She rose onto her toes as her breath was cut off.

  Help me, Da, Beatrix said in her mind as her eyes closed.

  A low, wet snarl whispered in Beatrix’s ear the instant before the commanding shout of “Release her!” seemed to echo from the very heart of the forest.

  Beatrix’s eyes opened, and a reedy stream of sparkling air slithered into her straining lungs. For a moment, Beatrix thought that she had already died, and that now she looked upon the angel that would bear her to her ancestors.

  He…glowed as he emerged from the blackening forest, walking with a purposeful but rolling gait that emphasized his lanky grace, lean muscles crowded beneath his alabaster skin. His hair was so blond as to be nearly white, long and straight as it flowed back from his high forehead and disappeared down his back. He carried no pack, no obvious weapon—the stranger simply stepped into the forest clearing that was more than two days’ travel from anywhere as if he’d just come from his own house.

  His command had been for the Leamhnaigh, but his eyes, the irises as black as the Levenach well itself, were for Beatrix alone. He strode toward the crowd as if he would bowl them all over.

  “I said, release…my betrothed.” Around Beatrix, the Leamhnaigh gasped.

  And then he was before her, his sinewy hands pulling the noose from her neck effortlessly as the crowd backed away. His scent enveloped her, like the perfume of a garden of night flowers, and the smell of a half-burnt piece of firewood, smoky and exotic. He spun Beatrix around to address the ties at her wrists and she could not help but gasp when his fingers found her own tender skin, like rogue sparks.

  Beatrix heard Dunstan challenge the stranger. “Your betrothed, you say?” The suspicion in his voice was unmistakable.

  “Aye, Beatrix Levenach
is to be mine.” She felt his cool breath at her ear. “My name is Alder,” he hissed.

  “Alder!” Beatrix stuttered as the ropes fell away from her hands and she turned to face him once more. “Why did you not send word?”

  “I was…” the man paused, his eyes flicking over the crowd with a sneer. “Unexpectedly detained. Forgive me. Had I known that you were to be set upon by such savages I would have hastened to your side without concern for other business.”

  “Now just one bleedin’ moment.” Dunstan stepped toward the white man. “We doona know you from Jake, bloke, an’ yer interference with the witch here is unwelcome. She’s a killer, stalking good and innocent folk when they trusted her, murderin’ ’em in their very homes!”

  The man calling himself Alder whipped around and the queer sound of a hollow roar echoed in Beatrix’s ear at the swift movement. It was little more than a blur.

  “My name is neither bloke nor Jake, and if you should take one step closer to Beatrix Levenach, I will rip both your arms from your torso and beat you to death with them.”

  A shocked look of disgust came over Dunstan’s ruddy face.

  “My name,” the man continued, now addressing the entire stunned crowd, “is Alder…de White. Beatrix Levenach was promised to me these many…”

  “Six,” Beatrix chirped.

  “Six years past,” Alder picked up. “By her father—”

  “Aye, me da, Gerald.”

  The white man sent her a warning look. Enough. “Gerald Levenach promised his daughter to me six years ago. I have been delayed in claiming her due to…matters of my estate in England. A plague on you who would seek to do harm to the head of your clan family. What would Gerald say?”

  Tom’s mother staggered forward. “She’s nae our clan head—she’s a witch! She’s killed my Tom!”

  Alder looked to the corpse and then back to the woman, his voice growing low and thoughtful. “My dear woman, pray tell, do you think it reasonable that even a woman of the Levenach’s stature could overtake a boy of Tom’s size?” Beatrix had the strange feeling that she could fall right into Alder de White’s voice and be lost forever. She found herself leaning toward him.

  “Aye, he was strapping,” Tom’s mother admitted, standing a mite taller in her grief. “But she is a powerful evil, that one, and Tom trusted her. We all did!”

  One eyebrow rose. “Yes, I could see her evil power evidenced by the easy way in which she escaped her own imminent death. Did anyone witness the attack?” Alder continued, looking around the crowd. Beatrix noticed that many of the folk were also leaning toward the white stranger, their gazes thoughtful, rather detached.

  No one answered.

  Alder swung around to face Dunstan, who was one of the few not mesmerized by Alder’s presence. “Is this your quest to settle a personal vendetta, mayhap?”

  “What?” Dunstan shouted, his eyes widening.

  “Mayhap you propositioned my betrothed and she refused you. Is it your pride that wishes to see her destroyed? Shall I challenge you for the Levenach’s honor?”

  “I’m a married man!” Dunstan cried. “This is about murder, stranger! A concern of folk of which you are nae kin to, so—”

  Before Dunstan could gather up the broken pieces of his speech, Alder addressed the crowd once more, taking Beatrix by her elbow.

  “The inn will not trade this night, to give you good folk time to cool your tempers and see reason. My lady has had a trying evening at your very hands and I’m certain she wishes to rest.”

  Beatrix opened her mouth, to say what, she didn’t know, but Alder frowned at her and she clearly heard the words “Say nothing,” in her mind.

  “Any matter,” he continued, “I have a great desire to speak privately with my betrothed.” He began pulling Beatrix toward the inn. “Perhaps we will meet on the morrow under happier circumstances. In the meantime…”

  Their backs were at the inn’s door now and he made a low bow to the crowd. “Will you not invite me in,” he growled, the exasperated question meant for Beatrix alone.

  She started, as if from sleep. “Won’t you come in, Alder?” she said brightly, loudly.

  “Thank you, my lady, I think I shall.” Alder looked to the stunned and gaping crowd a final time. “We bid you good night.”

  Then he was bustling her inside the inn and barring the door behind them, leaving them both in the dark quiet of the common room.

  Alder collapsed in a hard wooden chair as soon as the door was shut and locked, his mind’s eye full of the near escape both he and the Levenach had had. All those sharpened staves…

  The Levenach woman still stood perhaps five paces from him, where Alder had left her. Her mouth was slightly agape and there was a delicate frown laid across her rust-colored eyebrows.

  “You’re welcome,” Alder prompted.

  “You came,” Beatrix Levenach said. “You actually came. The white wolf,” she said in wonder.

  Alder froze. Did she know of his true nature? If she was as powerful of a witch as had been rumored—and Alder suspected she was—who was sworn to rid the highlands of vampires, Alder could have very well just locked himself inside with his greatest enemy.

  A gorgeous enemy, for certain, but one that would leave him just as destroyed.

  “Aye,” he said slowly. “Some do call me that.”

  “You are the only one who can help me.”

  “Didn’t I just?”

  “You’re a killer of beasts,” she continued, as if he’d not spoken. “Of…of”—she lowered her voice to a whisper—“vampires.”

  Alder nodded and then gestured to Beatrix with a wave of his hand. “As are you, so I hear tell.”

  The Levenach nodded. “My life, the lives of the Leamhnaigh, are in grave danger. The vampires are multiplying.”

  “You know the one who stalks you?” Alder prompted, wanting yet dreading her to speak the name.

  “He is called Laszlo,” Beatrix whispered. “The king of the vampires. He is verra old. Ancient. Dangerous.”

  “As am I too all of those things,” Alder said, wondering at the warning he was giving her. “Although perhaps not as ancient as he.”

  “Of course you’re nae.” A faint smile tilted her full lips for an instant and then was gone. “Why have you sought me?”

  “It’s Laszlo I seek. He stole something from me, many years ago. I’ve come to get it back, and destroy him. Though for both those tasks, you, Beatrix Levenach, are the only one who can help me.” She gave him no comment, and so Alder continued. “You reside here alone?”

  “Aye. My father died three months ago.”

  Alder let his own smile curve his lips. “Gerald?”

  Her teeth flashed. “Aye. A fine ruse we’ve concocted, the two of us.”

  “There is no betrothed, then, is there? I’d not be set upon by an irate suitor as well as Laszlo and his fiends.”

  “Nay, nae suitor. ’Twas but a buy for time with the folk until you came. My father told me you would.”

  “Did he?”

  “Aye.”

  Alder did not question her further on the matter. “You hunt at night?”

  The Levenach nodded. “After the inn has closed, past midnight. I sleep during the day and then open the inn for trade at dusk.”

  Alder’s heart pounded. It was almost too perfect. “Then we shall both hunt at night.”

  Beatrix’s eyes raked him from head to toe, and Alder felt himself stiffen in his breeches. “Where are your stakes?”

  “Ah…I don’t carry any at the moment.”

  “You can borrow one of mine. They are old—well used, and very effective.”

  He gave her a seated bow, although he thought to himself that he would rather peel his own skin from his flesh than touch one of those ancient weapons.

  After a long moment of each studying the other, Beatrix asked, “Are we to play at being betrothed, then?”

  “I think it best under the circumstances, don’t you
agree?”

  “I do. But what of after? When we’ve killed Laszlo and the rest? What shall I tell the folk?”

  Alder found himself staring at the pale curve of her neck, just under her crimson hair, where he could see her pulse leaping. Her blood was calling to him already, and he wanted to grab her now, throw her onto her back on one of the inn’s rough tables, drive himself into her while he drank his fill, mortal and undead passions united, slaked.

  He shrugged. “Perhaps you will not have to tell them anything at all.”

  She nodded as if this was a perfectly acceptable answer. “Well, then. I’ll show you to a room. The hunt should be an easy one tonight—the moon is waning now, and the beasts are not as heated.” She started for the narrow staircase.

  Alder followed her with his eyes for several moments, his nostrils flaring with her scent, before rising from the chair and stalking the Levenach into the dark upper level of the inn.

  Waning moon or nay, Alder’s own fire blazed.

  Chapter Five

  In the bowels of the snaking, subterranean network of caves that was his palace, Laszlo le Morte slumped in his favorite chair. It was a throne of sorts, fashioned painstakingly from the bones of his most treasured victims, bleached and macabre and cold—like Laszlo himself. And while the chair perhaps didn’t lend itself to a cushioned and pampered backside, it did give Laszlo a sense of lazy, privileged power, and he slouched regally in it whenever he could.

  But this early evening, not even his regal throne could bring a cold smile to Laszlo’s long and pointed face beneath his short beard. The king of the Leamhan Vampires was troubled.

  Alder the White had returned. And he had set up house with the Levenach. Perhaps the white bloodsucker had only entered into the witch’s abode to kill her in a spot of privacy, in which case, Laszlo would be pleased—after taking her blood, Alder would be mortal again and vulnerable to Laszlo’s attack.

  What gave Laszlo concern was the fact that Alder the White had returned at all. Laszlo had taken the ambitious human’s blood—and his soul—personally. One hundred years ago, the Levenach witches had enchanted the forest, to prevent Laszlo and his unnatural and deadly children from capturing the magical well at its center. And so Laszlo had lured a mortal into the highlands with promises of vast tracts of land, choosing the young, power-hungry Alder de White for his fiery ambition, which had blinded him to the danger of Laszlo and his true vampire nature.