Death, The Vamp and His Brother

by Lexxie Couper

  Fred’s whisper caressed the back of his neck and, before he could stop himself, he turned. He gazed down into her eyes, his throat so tight he could barely breathe, his thighs brushing hers, his chest rubbing against her nipples. “To do what then?” he repeated, voice strangled.

  She looked up at him, her heat folding around him, seeping into his body. Warming him from the icy embrace of the event’s haunting memory. “This.”

  And she went up on tiptoe and touched her lips to his.

  Chapter Seven

  Ven snarled, pushing through the crowded Kings Cross street. He’d never been so hungry. So pissed off.

  So desperate for a pair of bloody sunglasses.

  He glared at the hot morning sun hanging low above his head, drowning him in ultraviolet rays. He hadn’t needed a pair of sunglasses for over eighteen years. His old pair of Ray Bans were probably at home somewhere, maybe tucked in his underwear drawer along with the boxers he’d stopped wearing the night he’d become a vampire.

  At the thought of his transformation, his demon growled, making a push for release. His control was weakening, the hunger for blood gnawing at his core like an insane monster…which it was. An insane, ravenous monster cringing at the daylight.

  If he wasn’t so hungry, he’d stop and buy a cheap pair of sunnies from a street vendor. But he was hungry. Damn hungry.

  Shouldering his way through a gaggle of tourists snapping a multitude of photos of God knows what, he made his way for Amy’s apartment. She lived above a vegetarian café a few blocks away. If he pulled in a deep breath now, he could almost convince himself he could taste her scent on the air already.

  His stomach growled, almost as loudly as his demon.

  Fuck, he was hungry.

  Unbidden, an image of Death flashed through his head, a carnal reminder it wasn’t just blood he craved. He scowled, hissing at one tourist foolish enough to come too close. The man’s sweat threaded into Ven’s breath, sweet with salt and minerals. Hot saliva flooded his mouth.

  He swallowed, tongue pressed to his fangs. The desire to lunge at the man, sink his nails into his bony shoulders and throw him to the sidewalk surged through him. He could all but feel the warm coppery fluid of the man’s lifeblood trickle down his parched throat.

  The muscles in Ven’s face shifted. The light burned into his eyes. Sound amplified. He could hear the man’s heartbeat. Could hear the man’s blood flow through his thin, delicate veins, pulsing under his thin, vulnerable flesh. Waiting to be sucked from his neck in deep, long pulls. Waiting to be—

  Ven snapped his fists closed, sinking his nails, no, his claws, into his palms. The pain stabbed into his bloodlust and he bit back a growl. Fuck. He was close. Too close to becoming lost to his demon. He needed to get off the street immediately. He needed to lock himself away from the sun, away from the cattle around him until he could sate the thirst in his body with Amy’s blood.

  And after he’d fed, after he’d gorged his demon on the bright red fluid, he’d sate the other more carnal lust in his body.

  Again, an image of Death filled his head, pale limbs bare, eyes smoldering with pure white energy. The demon in her called his and a surge of wet electricity shot through him, making him growl once more.

  Louder. More bestial.

  A woman hurrying along the sidewalk gave him a startled look. She stumbled, her eyes bulging, and it was only then Ven realized he no longer wore his human façade. He was in vamp mode. The early stages, but vamp mode all the same.

  Fuck.

  He spun on the spot, taking in the gawking, gaping people around him in the blink of an eye. Their confused fear leeched from their pores in sweet, delicious waves. Their hearts leapt into deafening tattoos, pumping their blood around their bodies in delectable, irresistible rivers of—

  Get out of here, Steven. Now. Before you tear open someone’s neck and bathe yourself in what gushes from the wound.

  The thought made him giddy, and for a dangerous, terrible, wonderful moment, he languished in its evocative power. His stare locked on a tall, slim female dressed in running shorts and a sports bra to his immediate left, the thump thump of the pulse in her neck like a beacon to his hunger. Her skin was golden and warm. He could feel her heat radiating from her healthy perfection from where he stood. She favored a macrobiotic diet. She preferred to drink white wine, not red. The last meal she’d consumed that day had consisted of tofu, egg whites and tomatoes.

  Saliva oozed from the glands in his mouth and he touched the tip of his tongue to his fangs. It would be the last meal she ever ate. When he was through with her, she would be nothing but a drained shell, an empty sack of bones and—

  Fear and disgust smashed into him and he froze. Jesus. What had he just been about to do?

  Feed.

  Staring into the woman’s shocked eyes, struggling to shut out the delicious taste of her scent in his nose and on his tongue, he dropped down into a crouch. He needed to get away. Before he could no longer deny the monster within and fed on the blood pumping through the veins of those around him.

  He leapt upward, launching himself directly to the sky. He didn’t care if the humans saw him. Really, who would believe them anyway? A pale-skinned bloke with fangs and yellow eyes, dressed in jeans, biker boots and a white polo shirt defying gravity in the centre of Kings Cross in the middle of the morning?

  Pushing through the humid morning air, he drew an image of Amy’s small apartment into his whirling, screaming mind and folded space.

  Warm, summer wind streamed over his face and bare arms as he moved through the empty space above Kings Cross. He knew he was not man, nor bird, nor beast, but something else. Something like the very wind lashing at him. A black and blonde blur of substance slicing through the sky, indefinable and unfathomable, even to himself, let alone the humans he’d left on the ground.

  The feeling of freedom was immense—exhilarating—as was the inexplicable, inherent knowledge he could travel this way for miles if he needed to. This was more than folding space. This was defying physics. Defying existence.

  He surged forward, smoke on the air and, seconds later, stood at Amy’s door. Hungry. Really hungry.

  Dragging in a long, steadying breath, Ven forced his muscles to relax. He needed to reel in his demon. He’d come so very close to doing the one thing he swore never to do after his transformation—feed from an unwilling human. It was the second time in less than sixty minutes that he’d almost done so. First his brother, then the unknown female on the sidewalk. Self-disgust rolled through him and he sank his nails into his palms again. He’d always prided himself on not being the monster fate had delivered him to be. He’d suppressed the urge to tear open the neck of any human nearby and gorge himself on their blood. Shit, since becoming a vamp he’d never attacked or drained anyone, although he had come perilously close to the latter the first time he’d fed from Amy. His grueling control over the seductive pull of his demon was, in his mind, what kept him human. If he didn’t behave like a monster, he wasn’t one.

  Yet even now, standing at Amy’s door, his tongue still tingled, his stomach still growled with the imagined intoxicating taste of Patrick’s blood. The frustrated, infuriated impatience he felt over his brother’s stubborn refusal of the situation made it all too easy for his demon to rise to the surface. Couple that with the ravenous ache in his stomach—damn, he’d never been so hungry—and he was a walking paranormal time bomb.

  A time bomb quite capable of tearing a bloody great big hole in his only brother’s neck.

  Another wave of self-disgust crashed through Ven and he ground his teeth. He was a monster. A creature of base, carnal needs. It didn’t matter how hard he fought with himself, how hard he tried to convince himself otherwise, the long and short of it was, he was a fucking vampire and less than an hour ago he would have quite willingly drained his only brother of every last drop of blood.

  Contempt reached into his chest and squeezed his lifeless heart in a tight fis
t. Just what the hell was he? Man? Brother?

  Killer.

  The mental whisper sent a dark ripple down his spine. His canines began to elongate, his muscles to burn. Eager to strike.

  “No.” His growl sliced into the silent hallway and he punched the edge of his fist against his forehead. He wasn’t going to succumb. No matter how pissed off with Patrick he was.

  Why not? You’ve spent a lifetime looking out for Patrick. Shit, you’ve spent your death looking out for him too, and to what end? He doesn’t appreciate it. He doesn’t deserve it. Think about what it would mean to succumb to what you really are. You’ve seen the demon in Death. It calls to you just as surely as your demon calls to her. Think about what you could have, what you could do, what you could be if you stop thinking about your brother and thought about yourself instead. Think about who you could be with…

  An image of Death exploded in Ven’s head and he slammed his hands to his face, squeezing his eyes shut. No!

  Blood roaring in his ears, teeth ground together, demon screaming for release, he turned from Amy’s door. He couldn’t be here. Not now. He didn’t know what he would do if he—

  “Ven?”

  Amy’s voice, brittle with shocked confusion, sounded behind him.

  He froze.

  And then the sweet, sweet scent of her body slipped into his nose, delicate, salty and honeyed at once and his tenuous hold on his starving demon shattered.

  He spun, locking his stare on her stunned eyes as he whipped out his arm and curled his fingers around her neck. “I’m hungry,” he whispered, and drove her back into her apartment, kicking the door shut behind him as he did so.

  He forced her across the small living room, mindless of her stumbling feet. Her back slammed against the far wall, rattling the small photo frames hanging on it hard enough for one—an image of Amy and her parents—to jump from its nail and fall to the floor.

  The glass shattered with a crack, spitting razor-edged shards at Ven’s leg, but he didn’t care. He had the potent scent of Amy’s blood in his nose. Nothing mattered except quenching his thirst and sating his hunger.

  He rammed her harder to the wall, his fingers gripping her neck enough to keep her in his grasp, not enough to restrict her breathing. She stared at him, eyes wide and shining with shock. Her flesh felt warm under his palm, the beat of her pulse a wild hammer against his lifeline.

  “Ven?” she whispered, voice hoarse. “The sun’s up. How can you…”

  Smacking the inside of his booted foot against the inside of her naked one, he spread her legs apart and smashed his groin to her sex, bringing his face so close to hers he could feel the air displaced by her eyelashes. “It’s a brand new world, love,” he growled against her cheek. “And I’m a whole new vampire.” He pushed his thick erection to the dome of her pussy, covered only by a thin pair of white cotton knickers. “Can’t you feel it?”

  She whimpered, pulse quickening into a rapid cadence. The bloodlust roared through Ven’s veins at the submissive sound, stoking the burning hunger in his gut and core. The smell of her life force tainted the air with its delicious aroma and he drew it greedily into his being with long, deliberate breaths. It almost drove him insane, it was so tantalizing. His fangs grew longer—longer than they’d ever been while he still wore his human face—and the demon within him snarled. Impatient, furious and aroused.

  He thrust his cock to Amy’s cunt and bared his teeth, letting her see what was about to pierce her delicate, salty flesh.

  Her eyes widened more, fear flashing in their chocolate-brown depths.

  A rush of dark jubilation licked through him. She was petrified. He could smell it, not only in the blood in her veins, but in the sweat on her skin. It leeched from her the same way it had leeched from the cattle back on the street—thick and sweet and oh, so delectable.

  Ven sank his fingers harder into her neck, taking more of her fear in through his nose. Fuck, it was delicious.

  “Ven?”

  Amy’s voice trembled in his ear, sending another wave of bloodlust straight to his groin. He pulled in a deeper breath, savoring the stench of her fear. Now he understood the appeal of hunted prey. What must the knowledge they were being stalked do to the adrenaline levels in their blood? Why hadn’t he realized what he was missing sooner? An angry groan rumbled in his chest and he felt the muscles in his face shift slightly, puckering his forehead into a less-than-human frown. All those years feeding from the willing…Christ! What a waste.

  “Ven…” Amy squirmed against him, her nails digging into his wrist. Her thighs pressed his, rubbing and sliding over his legs as she struggled to move beneath his pinning weight. The sound of her cotton-covered arse sliding against the drywall behind her heated Ven’s blood even more, the feel of her long nails driving into his flesh making his demon purr with rapture.

  “Oh, lord, Ven…” she moaned, “…yes.”

  The words punched into Ven’s chest like a fist of ice and he pulled back, staring into her eyes.

  Yes?

  Imprisoning her against the wall with his hips and hand, his palm pressed to her frenzied pulse, he drew in a longer, deeper breath.

  Fear laced her scent, like aniseed through vanilla, but there was something else. Saliva flooded his mouth and his demon roared. His hunger spiked to a greater, darker level. Amy was scared, petrified in fact, and at the same time more turned on than he’d ever found her before.

  The conflicting combination was intoxicating.

  Addictive.

  Fresh bloodlust swept through him and he narrowed his eyes, not releasing his grip on her neck. Incapable of doing so even if he wanted to. His demon controlled him now. Ravenous and licentious.

  Jesus, Steven…what kind of monster are you?

  “Fuck me, Ven,” Amy murmured, gazing up at him with abject terror and desire shining in her eyes. “Fuck me and bite me. I’m yours to use and devour.”

  His demon growled and Ven felt his entire human facade shift. “You’re playing with fire, little girl.”

  Amy gasped, recoiling from him as far as the wall would let her, which was not at all. She whimpered again, eyes bulging…and then wrapped her right leg around the back of his thighs to force her cunt closer to his cock. “I know.”

  Flashing her a cold grin, Ven forced his demon back down and thrust his straining erection harder to Amy’s sex. She moaned, eyes closing, lips parted. “Oh, God, Ven…”

  Lifting her feet from the floor, he shoved her legs further apart with his knees and jabbed his cock—still restrained by the denim of his jeans—to the musk-drenched crotch of her cotton panties. “You want me to fuck you, don’t you? Just as much as you want me to sink my teeth into your neck and feed on your blood.”

  Eyes fluttering open, Amy nodded. She squirmed in his hold, rolling her sex over the bulging shape of his erection even as her pulse leapt into frantic flight at his course statement.

  His grin stretched wider and he leant into her more, letting her feel not only the undeniable strength of his rigid shaft, but the inescapable steel in his body as well. “Which will it be first, then? Fuck or feed?”

  Amy swallowed, her throat working against his grip on her neck. “Feed.”

  Her whisper sent a prickling ripple over Ven’s cool flesh. He studied her, noting the desperation and euphoric terror in her eyes.

  “Fuck, then,” he growled.

  “No.”

  Her cry of dismay made him chuckle. And mad. The human in him knew she’d been his willing “donor” for three years because she longed for the rapture of the feed. The vampire in him despised the idea she used him for her own pleasure. Tightening his grip on her neck, he snaked his free hand down her waist to the band of her knickers, hooked his thumb past the elastic and jerked his arm outward.

  The soft cotton tore to shreds, stripping Amy’s sex of any protection the underpants provided from his appetite. She squealed, bucking against the wall, her fingers scrambling at his wrist, her
nipples turning into rock-hard points of flesh against his chest.

  The subtle scent of her juices flooded his nose. He plunged his hand into the junction of her thighs, parting her sodden folds with two fingers before impaling her on them.

  She squealed again, her hips driving into his brutal invasion, her pulse pounding, her eyes alight with excited fear. The sight stung Ven with contemptuous disgust, but he ignored it, stabbing deeper into her tight, dripping sex until the base knuckles of his fingers ground against the tiny nub of her clit.

  “Lord, yes!” Amy cried, writhing against him.

  “The Lord has nothing to do with this, little girl,” Ven growled, wriggling his fingers in her cunt. The walls of her pussy gripped and squeezed each digit. He could feel the warmth of her pleasure oozing over his hand. He pulled in a breath, tasting her desire on the air as surely as he tasted her fear.

  She didn’t know what he was going to do next. He could see that plainly in her eyes. She didn’t know when he was going to stop his assault, and neither did he.

  “Yes,” she moaned, closing her eyes to the sight of him.

  He stabbed his fingers harder into her cunt. “Look at me, little girl.”

  His order snapped her eyes open and she quivered, though from terror or pleasure he could not tell and didn’t care.

  “That’s better. You wanted this, Amy Elizabeth Mathieson. To be fucked and fed on by a monster and I will give it to you.”

  She shuddered, an abrupt orgasm rocking through her. She cried out, her pussy constricting around his fingers, her nails gouging at his wrist.

  Ven chuckled, fully aware he was losing himself to his demon and relishing in the release and freedom. This is what it was to be a vampire. This overwhelming sense of power. Of dominance.

  Fangs elongating further still, hot saliva coating his tongue and the back of his throat, he yanked his fingers from her cunt, lifted her higher from the floor and spun about. Her sofa sat behind them, covered in large cushions of all manner of fabric. They had made love on that sofa more than once over the last three years. He’d fed from her neck, her inner thigh, the undercurve of her breast many, many times there. But this morning, on the dawn of his new existence, he was going to treat her the way a true vampire treated his food source. The way she wanted to be treated. The way she feared being treated.