by M. L. Briers
“I’m not hungry,” she announced it with a lofty rise to her chin and a stubborn look in her eyes.
“Well, I am, so excuse me if I take a bite,” I could have kicked myself when her eyes flashed with fear and she almost stumbled over her own jaw. “Not for blood.”
“That’s what you eat,” she shot back, an accusing tone to her voice as well as in her eyes.
“A man can’t live by blood alone,” I decided to go with the creepy vampire voice and she scowled back at me, but didn’t run off screaming.
“That’s… disgusting.” She folded her arms across her chest and the stake in her hand protested, but she stubbornly refused to let it go.
“Don’t knock what you haven’t tried,” I went for sarcasm and got another darker look than what I’d anticipated. “You humans and your prejudices.” I went all in. Thankfully she just tossed me the evil eye, but with no magic to back it up- I was safe for now.
“I’m leaving,” she announced, dropping her arms, and turning back towards the door. I was in front of her in a heartbeat, making her jump with surprise, and she stumbled backwards a few steps before she caught herself.
“You’re eating,” I informed her, wanting to kick myself once more for frightening her.
CHAPTER TEN
~
That was the damn trouble with not being around humans much anymore, well, not in any real purposeful sense of the word. It was kind of hard to remember the etiquette of a human vampire relationship.
“You know what?” From the look in her eye I had a fair idea, “you can take that plate and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.”
“Scotland?” I offered back in my best smartass tone.
“Get out of my way.” She tried to side step me. She had about as much hope of doing that as I had of becoming human again.
“Stop trying to get away and I won’t be in your way,” I tossed back at her with a slight air of frustration. Her eyes locked on mine and they narrowed.
“I’m getting to you, aren’t I?” She looked a little satisfied at the thought of it.
“Not at all,” I lied. She was one of the most stubborn women that I had ever encountered, and being two hundred years old, I’d met a fair few.
“Just a wee bit?” She lifted the hand without the stake in it and motioned an inch with her finger and thumb.
I sighed inwardly. Then I reached for her finger and thumb and pried them open wide.
“Maybe that much,” I offered, giving her the satisfaction that she wanted and seeing it fill her eyes.
“Good.” She nodded in the affirmative. “Imagine what a lifetime of me would be like.” She looked more than self-satisfied.
“You’re entirely right. I should kill you now and be done with it.” I tossed back and watched her mouth fall open as her eyes widened in shock. She gave a small squeak. Then I reached up and touched my finger to her chin, pushing gently until she snapped her jaws closed, and snapped out of it, scowling back at me hard.
“You’re a real jerk,” she sneered.
At least she hadn’t taken it to heart. I should be grateful for little mercies as I hadn’t thought my threat through. She could have been screaming like a banshee and heading for the door…
“It takes one to know one, I guess.”
I shrugged my shoulders and noted the way her hand tightened around that stake. I tensed a little, waited, but nothing happened. She eyed me like a rattlesnake that was about to strike, and I eyed her with all the suspicion of a lion approaching a lioness with cubs.
“You two seem to be getting on…err, better?” Shamus gave a low, deep chuckle from the doorway and broke the spell between us.
I turned my eyes to give him a glare, but he was already gone. His intervention had been well timed, but I wouldn’t thank him for it.
“Stay away from me,” Maggie bit out.
“Kind of hard as we’re in the same house,” I shot back on a frown.
“You are delusional if you think I want anything to do with you,” she hissed like a damn rattlesnake too.
“Good to know!” I bit out, turning on my heels and retreating before she could take a bite. The woman was a nightmare of epic proportions, and that was putting it mildly.
~
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~
“Tell me again how she’s my mate and I’ll feel badly if I kill her,” I spouted my annoyance to Shamus as I stalked outside the house and eyed the landscape around us. I heard Shamus chuckle and it did little to dampen my mood.
I was kind of hoping that Bruce made another sudden appearance so I could get a few more hits in. My equilibrium was off and punching someone over and over in the face would have felt real good at this moment in time.
“It’ll be fine,” Shamus assured me in his traditional laid back way.
“Stop with the over encouragement, it’s too much,” I groaned. “That woman is…” I paused to try to figure out just the right word for her, but Shamus dived in.
“Scared, off balance, feeling the mating pull towards you, and out of her natural element.”
“Yeah, make me feel like shit, why don’t ya?” I grumbled back.
“She’ll get to where you need her to be,” he eyed me with a slow to boil grin, “or you’ll die trying.”
“That’s… comforting.” I bit back.
“Man up, Scotsman. It’s taken you a couple of hundred years to find a mate, no point in rushing to brew now.”
“You say the sweetest things,” I muttered before he started to move away from me.
“Go do what you do with Maggie to sweet talk her-”
“Charm the viper,” I muttered and heard his chuckle once more.
“And I’m going to run the perimeter of the property.” And with that Shamus was gone; leaving me standing there with the unenviable task of trying to win over my mate.
I was a Scotsman and a Highlander- I should have been used to climbing mountains, but the summit on this one seemed a long damn way away.
~
~
~
“Stop lurking like some aberration.”
It was true, I had become a lurker, but that was more to do with the fact that I hoped that connection between us would strengthen without too much work on my part. I wanted her to trust me- but she didn’t seem the trusting kind, and I couldn’t blame her.
I’d abducted her- Shamus had controlled her mind- there was a vampire intent on killing her if I didn’t turn her, or maybe even if I did, and as the big Irishman had said, she was well out of her element.
Then there was the whole- you’re my mate- thing, which I could have handled better, and I can’t say I’ll know better next time, because this is it- my one true mate, my one true chance to get it right, and in less than two days.
I was going to be busy, keeping an eye out for Bruce and wooing her- if wooing her was the right word. Right now, I just seemed to repel her at every damn turn.
“I wouldn’t want to get ripped apart on the sharpness of your tongue,” I offered back, probably not the best volley I could have lobbed in her direction, I noted, as her shoulders tensed and her back straightened.
“Says Mr Sarcasm,” she muttered loud enough for me to catch it.
“You didn’t eat,” I brushed over the whole sarcasm thing.
“Told you I wasn’t hungry.”
I started a slow walk towards her and her eyes snapped in my direction, cautious, suspicious, and mistrusting as they watched me like a hawk. I had to wonder who the predator was here.
“I have to wonder if you’re ever going to put that stake down.” That didn’t work, if anything, it reminded her that it was in her hand and she tightened her grip on it as if it was a lifeline.
“I have to wonder if I’m ever going to see home again,” Maggie shot back and that stopped me in my tracks.
“You still believe that I’m going to kill you?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
She had a fair point, I
suppose. A vampire probably wouldn’t be the first choice of suitors for most women. And I guess in the grand scheme of things, she was right- I was planning on killing her, but only to make her mine forever. Still, I made a point of sighing, and she made a point of narrowing her eyes on me.
“What can I do to ease your mind?” I saw a flash of hope in her eyes and doused it, “apart from returning you home.”
“Nothing.”
It was blunt and to the point, and she even gave a small shrug that made her look helpless.
“Nothing- That I can do, at all?” I offered back to her.
“This whole mate thing…” she started and I felt a flash of hope. Curiosity was a wonderful thing, it showed interest, and it showed me that she’d been thinking about it. “How does that work?”
“You’ve never heard the story of the birds and the bees?” Her cheeks coloured and I felt like a smartass, but it had gotten a rise out of her.
“If you’re not going to be sensible.” She turned to walk away from me and that seemed like a loss to my senses.
“Fine,” I announced. Not wanting to just appear in front of her and scare the bejesus out of her again. She stopped and shot me a look over one shoulder. “Can we at least sit?”
It wasn’t that I was tired, but she was. I could see it in her eyes, noted it in her stance.
“As long as you don’t sit next to me,” she offered back.
“Now who sounds like a smartass?” I bit out, but motioned for her to pick any seat that she liked. She opted for the single seat of the comfortable armchair- why was I not surprised?
“I guess you’re rubbing off on me.”
I had forty eight hours to make her mine and while I didn’t want to scare the hell out of her again- I did need for her to understand what was at stake- but how did you tell a human that she needed to die to be able to live?
“I’m trying my best.” I offered, taking a seat opposite her so I could better judge her emotions and reactions to what I needed to tell her, to what she wanted to know.
“So?” She asked, expectantly, and it took me a moment or two to back up over our conversation to what she truly wanted to know.
“Making you my mate is exactly what it sounds like, we’d, mate,” I offered- so not wanting for my mind to run riot the way that it was, but that was a hopeless and useless wish.
“As in…?” her eyebrows pushed up on her forehead, her chin went down towards her chest, and she eyed me from underneath long eyelashes.
“Sex,” I mocked her and watched her cheeks fill with a bright red that reminded me of her blood and how good it was going to taste on my tongue.
“Right, got it.” She looked anywhere but at me then, and I felt the loss of those eyes.
“Good, so this is acceptable to you?” That got those eyes back on mine.
“No!” She spat out.
“Had a feeling it wasn’t going to be that easy,” I teased her again.
“Easy, I’m not,” she snapped back.
“You don’t have to tell me that, lass, I already know it,” I offered back and watched that fire spark to life within her again.
“You really are-”
“Your mate? Yes,” I seemed to be batting her emotions in all different directions, keeping her off guard, and I didn’t know if that was a good thing or not, but it was certainly fun.
“So, why act like an arse?” She snapped back. She had me there.
“This is my natural state of being,” I offered back, and in truth, it was. I’d spent years using sarcasm to deflect any real emotion within me, and it would probably take me another few lifetimes to drill it back out again, if that was what she wanted.
“Lucky me,” she mumbled and placed the stake down on her lap.
My heart leapt at the sight of it there. That was the first time that she’d willingly let go of it since I’d given it to her. Then she folded her arms and eyed me with annoyance, and that sight didn’t detract one little bit from the stake being set aside.
“Lucky me, to have found you.” I offered back with all the charm that I could rally, even against my instinct to go with another smartass comment that I had to batter down.
“That’s…” she took a breath, then shook off her shock. “Charming me won’t work.” She was determined not to like me.
“I wasn’t trying, but I’ll take it on board.”
“You…” she was stumped again. I guess I was scoring points on this whole charm offensive thing that Shamus was going on about. “Sod off!”
Maybe not.
“Want to tell me what I did wrong now?” I offered back, looking as helpless as I could.
“You’re telling me what you think I want to hear-”
“Not at all-”
“And I don’t, want to hear it. I want to know about this mate thing,” she bit out.
“We mate, you become mine, I become yours, and we live happily ever after.”
“For how long?” And there it was, the question that I’d wanted to sidestep, put on the backburner, but knew that it would come back to bite me in the ass.
“Forever,” I muttered.
“Excuse me?” She tilted her head and raised her hand to one ear, cupping it, like an elderly woman.
“Forever,” I offered back. There, I’d said it. It was out in the open, and now she knew.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
~
“So, you do want to kill me,” Maggie levelled that accusation at me.
She was a lot less emotional about it than I’d expected her to be. There might have been a slight quiver to her top lip, her breathing might have become a little more uneven, and there was a slight look of fear in her eyes, but she was still sitting there and the stake was still on her lap.
“More than you know,” I muttered, unsure if she’d caught that or not from the way that she eyed me. “Vampire’s live a long time, as a mate, ergo, so would you, no?”
“No,” she hissed back at me.
“Well…” I left that hanging in the air between us. Now she really didn’t trust me, and I couldn’t say I blamed her. Not with everything that I was thinking- how I needed to turn her to save her…
“I do not want to be like you,” she offered back.
“Live long and prosper doesn’t do it for you?” I teased- wondering if she even knew what Star Trek was.
“Hardly, Spock.” She sneered.
“How about, good health and happiness?” I tossed back. She snorted. “Then we have a problem, because Bruce knows that you’re my mate.”
That caused the kind of deafly silence in the room that was always awkward. I was waiting for her to fully take that in- She seemed to be waiting for me to say or do something… very awkward.
“So,” she started, then stopped. “Die,” she started again, and stopped once more. “Or, die.” She didn’t seem to be running scared- no screaming at any rate… “Screw you!”
That went well.
~
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~
I had pretty much left her to her pouting and death glares, and from what I could tell- she had hardly moved a muscle since. I kept my distance, letting her digest what I’d told her, finding no good reason to escalate the conversation into world war three until she had a time to simmer in her own juices and wrap her head around the fact that- one way or the other- she really had no chance of getting out of this alive.
Humanity didn’t really apply to my kind, at least not the older vampires, the ones who had been around the block a few times. We’d forgotten what it felt like to be human- we didn’t long for it- we didn’t wish to test our mortality once more- who would change being a super species to go back to the risk of dying in some freak accident?
We may, on some level, have wished for different aspects of humanity, but the risks outweighed the certainty of living forever- unless taken out by another of our kind. No life is perfect, not even ours. There were always risks involved with what we were, but it was a damn
sight better than waiting for the end of your life- or wondering how it might come- as many humans did and then at the end they’d actually forgotten to live.
“Don’t try to be stealthy, Shamus, I can scent you coming,” I whispered, so as not to drag Maggie’s attention towards me as I stood just to the side of the doorway to the living room and watched her.
“Did you have your talk?” He asked.
“Not eavesdropping like an old woman this time?”
“No,” he admitted with a small chuckle.
“Yes,” I shot him a look over my shoulder and he had a stupid grin on his face- amusement and expectation, and I so damn well wanted to replace it with my fist.
“And?”
“And… she’s thinking about it,” I offered back, motioning towards where she sat like a zombie staring straight ahead of her.
“You sure she’s not asleep with her eyes open?” he chuckled again and I rolled my head on my neck as the tension clawed at me.
“At this point, I’m not sure about anything,” I admitted.
“Want me to talk to her?” He had the good grace not to chuckle this time, and yet I heard the amusement in his voice.
“Want to be lying boots up, six foot under the earth in a sleep you aren’t going to wake up from this time?” I shot back.
“I guess that’s a no then,” Shamus gave a laugh that sounded like Mutley the dog from those old children’s cartoons, and how I wanted to silence it.
“What gave it away?”
“You know the clocks ticking?” Shamus reminded me.
“They do that,” I didn’t need him to tell me- it already felt as if I had an internal doomsday clock that was counting down.
“Then shouldn’t you go and see how the land lies with her?”
“I’m- waiting-”
“For?”
“I have no idea,” and I didn’t. This was unchartered territory for me. A mate to consider, someone other than myself after all of these years. I thanked my lucky stars that vampires couldn’t have children, because then I’d be really screwed.