Kindred Souls: Entire Series Books 1 - 5

by Bree Branigan

  He had to stop her. Pause for a moment, pulling on her hair to make her sit on him, her hips shifting to accommodate him tentatively at first, then beginning to move hard and fast – her hand over his mouth, trying to keep him quiet as she gave him the fuck of his life. She couldn’t be the killer, could she?

  She obviously could, but there was a part of him, the part of him that had never been with a woman like her and probably never would again, that wanted to forgive her all her sins. He wanted to ignore all her potential victims and whatever other evidence there was that would indicate she was cruel, sadistic or murderous- just because she was capable of making him feel this way. And maybe all he needed was to be turned, to be like her and understand what it was that drove her to drink blood and, if she had murdered all those people, what it was that made it okay. It was insane, trying to make sense out of something that was so obviously against his nature.

  It didn’t matter though. As she fucked him, he began to lose hold of himself. Began to forget all the things he loved about being young and having a bright future ahead of him; about how hard he had worked to make sure that he would have options, and how much he wanted to make a life in football. There had never been anything more important to him. It was hard to think that this, that she, could make everything that had ever mattered to him take a second place to the way her tits bounced as she rocked her hips back and forth. Harder each time, bringing him closer and closer to the edge. His name repeated over and over again as he shoved her up against the wall and began to fuck her from behind.

  Each thrust took him closer to climax, her pussy wet as she moaned his name without reservations.

  If they were discovered maybe he wouldn’t have anything to explain. Maybe she’d have some news for him, something that absolved her completely. Something that made this, the desperation with which he thrust into her, something other than a betrayal of every teammate, housemate and fellow student murdered so far.

  He was close when she started hitting him on the shoulder, repeating his name over and over again until her voice was distorted enough for him to realize he was caught in a dream. The kind of dream you didn’t want your roommate waking you up from.

  “Fletch? Fletch? Are you okay?” Jason shook him hard. The room was completely dark and still except for the blinking red light of the alarm clock that told them it was three in the morning, and Nora had never been there.

  “Jason?” Fletcher sat up, pulling a pillow onto his lap to hide the furious erection he could feel lifting the sheets. “What happened?”

  “I think you were having a bad dream,” Jason said, moving to slip back into his own bed. “You scared the shit out of me.”

  “Yeah,” Fletcher said, his heart beating madly in his chest as he lowered himself back onto the pillow, turning his body towards the wall, away from Jason. He had to wait for a few minutes until he could hear Jason snoring again. Until he knew he had the privacy necessary to sneak out of the room and finish himself off in the bathroom down the hall.

  “Who is Nora?” Jason asked sleepily from his spot in the darkness, startling Fletcher a little as he was about to leave his bed.

  “Nora?” Fletch asked, turning to look back over his shoulder at Jason, who was barely awake and shifting lightly to adjust himself to a more comfortable position on a bed that seemed entirely too small for him.

  “Yeah, you kept saying her name. I thought maybe it was one of those girls…” He yawned, the conversation over as far as he was concerned. Content with having rescued his friend from a dream no one needed rescuing from, he went back to sleep.

  “She’s no one,” Fletcher said quietly. The silence that followed was a liberating indication that Jason was lost once more and he likely wouldn’t remember any of this in the morning. It was mortifying to think that he could have interpreted the whole thing differently if Fletcher had been lying on his back instead of on his side with his back turned, his erection hidden by the rest of his body.

  When he heard Fletcher snoring again, he escaped to the bathroom. He was being paranoid, he realized, but who could blame him, really? He’d been with a vampire and less than twenty-four hours later four kids had been found with their heads almost chewed clear off their bodies. It wasn’t that he wanted to take it personally. It was just that he was finding it really difficult to chalk it up to sheer coincidence.

  After all, Nora had been very clear about how important it was for him to be discreet about this and not tell anyone if they were ever going to make this work. This, whatever this was.

  Fletcher wanted to trust her. He wanted to believe that she meant it when she said there was something about the way he made her feel that she had never experienced before. He wanted to believe that what they had shared was special enough to hold onto, and that the “this” they had briefly discussed could actually become something worthwhile. He chose to trust her in spite of how obvious it was that he shouldn’t, and he chose to hold on to hope until there was no more hope left to hold onto. He would lie to Jason until the evidence against her was so overwhelming he no longer could hold out hope.

  The memory of her; her smell, her touch, her voice … was enough to get him off in that dark bathroom. Call him old-fashioned, but he had always thought that masturbating had to be a private thing. That a man needed his space to beat it comfortably, taking his time and not having to worry about the inexplicable sounds emerging from his throat. He thought of that dream, and how realistic it had all been.

  He thought of her mouth, swallowing his cock until he felt her throat constricting and he pressed on, hoping for a gag that happened only because it was a fantasy of his own design. He thought of her hair in his hand, tangled between his fingers, gripped tightly in his palm – holding her in place, pushing her down. He thought of her deliciously pink cunt and how ready she always was for him, his fingers slick with her, making him want her more than he thought possible. He came hard, his groan echoing through the tiles of the empty bathroom to temporarily overpower the dripping tap clicking a rhythmic clink that echoed like ripples on water.

  He was still thinking of her when he returned to bed. Still felt a twitch in his cock when he thought about how vivid it all had been. How realistic her moans, kisses, and each thrust of her hips had felt. He was going insane and there was no way he could reach her. He had no way of getting in contact with her and no way of finding out if she was involved in the killings. Instead, he was left with his fantasies. His fantasies and his hope that she was who he thought she was, against all odds. He still hoped that she would be back for him. And somehow he felt sure that she would protect him from whatever it was that was killing off athletes.

  He climbed back into bed feeling uneasy. It was a Saturday and he would later spend a few hours volunteering at the help center. Anything to keep him busy and take his mind off of her.

  Time, he told himself. It was all a matter of time.

  Chapter 12

  There was an excitement; a buzz throughout the manor. Three elders had arrived sometime during the night, slipping quietly in, unannounced.

  Now Antoni and Elise hurried down the hallway to the library. “They are all in there?” Antoni asked, trying hard to contain the excitement in his voice.

  “They are,” Elise nodded, the same sort of anticipation reflected on her face. “Octavia, Lena and Athos have been talking since early this evening. Athos was up even before the sun was completely down from what Nora told me.”

  “I can’t believe we are going to speak to all three of them.”

  “This can’t be good though, can it? I mean, I can understand why you are excited. I am too. But isn’t this what we have been dreading always? Needing the three of them to determine the best course of action to protect the safety of our clan?” Elise stopped speaking for a moment. Their steps resonated on the marble floors and echoed through to the high ceilings. “I feel like their being here can only mean bad things and it really scares me.”

  “At least thing
s will get resolved now,” Antoni pointed out as they reached the door.

  She nodded, her eyes wide.

  The door opened before Antoni could strike it with his closed fist. They found Nora standing there. She stepped aside to let them by. “Come in,” she said softly She directed them both to a long table where they were instructed to have a seat. Nora sat quietly down beside them. Octavia, Athos and Lena sat opposite, their expressions solemn as everyone took a seat and settled down.

  Marcel stood nearby. “Athos, Lena, Octavia, these are Antoni and Elise,” he said, almost apologetically. “They are all mine as you know, all approved by you and nurtured by you.”

  “Do they know?” Lena asked, her voice soft and sweet, unlike her face which was tough and strong.

  “About Ben? No, not yet. I thought it would probably be best to wait until you, Octavia and Athos were here.”

  “It seems like the time has come,” Octavia interjected. Her voice sounded old and melodic; contrasting with her youthful face and soft features.

  Elise, Nora and Antoni exchanged looks, and then turned their attention to Marcel. Antoni had been his first, with Elise and Nora following shortly after. Marcel had been one of the handful of vampires tasked with recruiting a whole new generation that could be educated in the ways of their clan.

  “Who is Ben?” Antoni asked, feeling anger and jealousy rushing to his face as if he was actually capable of blushing. Like he could feel this Ben, whomever he was, taking over his rightful place as Marcel’s first childe.

  “Ben is responsible for everything that has been going on,” Marcel said with a sigh, his eyes moving to meet Nora’s, dreading whatever he would find there. “And he is also mine,” he said, clearing his throat.

  “Wait, what?” Nora interrupted.

  “It was a while ago. Before we established the rules we follow so religiously now. Before something happened that made us decide on those rules, making sure that everybody followed them. That something that happened was Ben. I met the boy when he was only seventeen, but there was already something about him; a restlessness that I thought he’d get rid of during hunts. He had no family, nothing to live for, and I thought he was a perfect candidate for us…”

  “What happened?” Elise asked, too impatient to deal with the long pause Marcel took.

  “What we suspected would happen as soon as he was turned,” Octavia sharply interrupted Marcel to answer the question. She gave him an austere look. Obviously he had not followed her advice at the time. “He was reckless and careless. He constantly endangered our choice to remain in hiding, so we gave him an ultimatum.”

  “He didn’t like that, did he?” Nora asked.

  “No,” Marcel replied. “So he burned the house we were living in down, watched from a distance as new and old vampires ran around in flames. Benjamin never understood the point of hiding what we were. He has always believed we should run around freely, killing all our victims and moving on to the next place, never settling or obeying rules, and never paying for the consequences. We tried to lock him up, but it didn’t work. He just ran and ran until we had no way of tracking him down and then he disappeared with a long trail of blood behind him.”

  “So that’s who has been killing all the students? Just one vampire?” Antoni asked incredulously.

  “He met a group of nomad vampires somewhere along the way; vicious psychopaths only concerned with a death toll. Each of them wanting to see how many deaths they can claim for themselves. We don’t know for sure, but we have a list of the people he could be traveling with and, while none of them are looking to kill me or anyone else for personal reasons, they will kill for sport. Which makes them all incredibly dangerous.”

  “So what do we do?” Nora asked.

  “We start going out patrolling the streets and see what we can find. We need to make this place safe for students again if we want our home to be our home for years to come--” Marcel’s voice trailed off as his eyes took an a far-away look.

  “What does he want?” Nora interrupted him, “Does he want revenge? To kill you?”

  “He wants to kill me, but first he wants to destroy what we’ve built here. He wants to run us out of town and probably burn our manor to the ground as soon as he is through with us. He’ll make sure we can’t come back, and that we have nothing to come back to.”

  “He will keep doing it, too,” said Athos, speaking for the first time, his voice full and rich. “If we run, if we let him have this town, he will chase us out of the next. He’ll expose all of us, and we’ll have more than his lunacy to deal with. We need to face him, and we need to be well prepared. We need to find him and his friends with a solid plan on how to contain them.”

  “But first we need to start making this place safe again. At least safe enough for the students to have their games and social agendas back. We need to hunt. We can’t face Ben’s group with our clan half-starved and waiting for instructions. We need to send everyone out to feed every day, and we need to tell them what is going on, who we are dealing with.” Olivia spoke with authority, looking each person in the eyes all around the table.

  “We can’t underestimate Ben. He’s smart and he knows us better than we know any of his companions, or him, for that matter. We are going to need all the brainpower we can get. All the force, too.” Lena said.

  “You will each take a group of five vampires out per night to hunt and patrol. You will supervise each and every one, making sure they don’t overdo it, kill anyone or get in trouble. We are bound to either find what is killing all these students or at least protect them before it reaches them.” Athos wasn’t asking. All of these were simple orders he expected to see executed by the end of the night, before it was time to hide from the sun. It was the direction they had been begging for while they were waiting for Marcel to return, and it was finally here.

  The three elders stood up, nodding their heads and exited the room.

  “So that is why we are so fucking difficult about making new vampires…” Elise said thoughtfully, her hands in her pockets as she walked back down the hall towards the staircase leading to each of their bedrooms. “I always thought our founding vampire was just a little on the crazy side, a little obsessive-compulsive, you know? Turns out, it was all Marcel’s fault.”

  “You didn’t think he was perfect, did you?” Antoni nudged her.

  “As a matter of fact, I did. I still kinda do,” Nora said.

  “Eleonora?” The voice froze the three of them in their tracks.

  Nora glanced back, finding Marcel standing there, his hands clasped before him. He wore a suit, and had the impeccable look he took particular pride in.

  “Can I please have a moment with you?” he asked, holding a hand out and waiting for her to join him.

  Hesitantly, she looked from Elise to Anton and then back to Marcel. It was only a moment of doubt, really. A moment she slipped right out of as she took his hand. Holding hands was something she hadn’t done in a very long time, but she kept her hands tightly in Marcel’s as she was directed back to the library.

  “What do you think he wants to talk to her about?” Elise asked Antoni as they stood there, side by said, watching Marcel and Nora walk away. “Do you think Nora is in trouble for some reason? Do you think it’s the blood-bags?”

  “No, he would have come to me with that. He knows I was involved. I don’t think we need to worry about Nora. Not right now.”

  “Let’s go find our vamp group and take them out hunting. I’m starving and refuse to drink from another blood bag. Those things are foul. I can’t believe I was ever on board with that idea.” Elise made a gagging face, looking saucily up at Antoni.

  “It was the best idea,” Antoni nodded, draping an arm over Elise’s shoulders as they kept walking in the general direction of the living room. “It got us through what we needed to get through, and now that they are all here we can go back out and hunt. Hunt carefully, of course. But at least we won’t be drinking dead blood.”


  “Which is all that really matters to me right now, I just want to feel a heartbeat pouring blood into my mouth. I want that minute before we let go of them, help them to safety and make sure they don’t remember much.”

  “Spoken like a true poet,” Antoni teased.

  “I still want to know what Marcel has to talk to Nora about that he couldn’t say with us around. Do you think she’s somehow involved?”

  “She’s been with us all along,” Antoni said, genuinely surprising Elise by sticking up for Nora. “I don’t think she has anything to do with the killings or the people responsible for them. Nora is a good egg, no matter how much she annoys me sometimes.”