Exposure: Bloodlust Series Book 1

by L. L. Ash

  Suddenly it slapped me in the face that Clarence hadn’t fought a wolf. No, he’d fought whatever this man-beast was and somehow lived to talk about it.

  Clarence growled harshly at the beast, probably exposing his fangs as I could only imagine since I was facing his back.

  The beast met my eyes around Clarence, but his head lowered and he whined, taking one step back. Clarence stood straighter, letting his arms drop and back straighten as the beast receded back into the woods. When it was gone, he stood there longer, as if waiting for the beast to return, but he didn’t. Finally he turned, his face the warm, welcoming face I’d grown accustomed to.

  “Are you ok, Addie?” he asked, taking a couple of steps forward to help me back to my feet.

  Once my legs quit shaking and I had my balance again, Clarence let go of my hand and took a step away from me, looking anxious and nervous.

  “It’s not smart to be walking around in these woods by yourself. You should know that by now...after last night.”

  “I don’t know what the hell I was thinking,” I admitted. “I was just trying to find you.”

  “These beasts are dangerous to you, Addie. If I hadn’t heard you, you’d be dead now.”

  His expression was so cold my heart sped again, this time in apprehension.

  “I’m sorry. Is it safe now?”

  Clarence sighed and rubbed his hand down his face.

  “You are with me. That was just a pup. He won’t come back, but another might. The stupid beasts don’t know how to leave well enough alone.”

  Clarence rolled his eyes and plopped down onto the log, waving for me to do the same.

  “Why are you looking for me, Addie? Obviously it was important enough to put yourself in imminent danger.”

  “I… I had to see you.”

  Clarence chewed on his lip and looked at the ground in front of him, looking like he was about to find out his loved one had a mortal disease.

  I knew that look. I wore it often these days.

  “You’ve made a decision then,” he didn’t ask, he stated.

  “I need to ask you a question before I can answer,” I told him, touching the spot on his forearm where the plaid was rolled up to the elbow.

  He looked up at me with the touch, his eyes wide with what almost looked like a spark of hope.

  “Anything.”

  “If… If I choose you. What happens?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean… are you planning on running away with me or…? You said soulmates. I don’t know what that means to you.”

  Clarence’s tongue flicked out and he wet his lips before answering.

  “Addie. If you decided you want nothing more to do with me, I would understand. Most people in the world want to go to bed knowing they are the only people sharing this planet with the animals of God’s creation. The idea of half dead monsters and half man-half beast would give them nightmares for the rest of their lives. I’m sorry that I can’t take that knowledge away from you, no matter what you feel or what you choose.”

  Another pause and lick of his lips.

  “All I ask from you is...you. You’ll finish going to high school, you’ll go to college, you’ll get a job if you want, you go where you want, you have friends… I’m not asking for your life, Addie. I’m just asking for your love, despite what I am.”

  My eyes watered with beads of tears and I sniffled. Sitting next to him again confirmed what I already knew. When I wasn’t with him it was easy to convince myself that there was nothing between us then simple, human lust and attraction. But as I sat within inches of him, I could feel it. The pull from deep in my stomach. The calmness of my mind, and the racing of my heart.

  “Do you feel that?” I asked him through my choked voice, taking his hand and pressing it over my heart. “I don’t know when it happened… but somehow it became yours. Does yours pound for me like mine does for you?”

  He took a deep breath, his eyelids fluttering closed for a moment before he met my eyes again.

  “If my heart beat,” he whispered, “Then it would beat only for you.”

  “I don’t know what the future holds for me, Clarence. I don’t know that I can promise forever to you, at least, MY forever… but now, in this moment, and the next, and with every other thump, thump of my heart, it will pump for you. But you have to be careful with me. Promise me you’ll be careful with me. My heart still beats and it can be broken. I don’t know your world, but it seems like I’ve been thrust into it whether I want it or not. I’ll never be able to look again in the shadows and not see something dark, something dangerous lurking there.”

  “I will protect you,” he said earnestly, clasping my hand in both of his in my lap.

  “Do you promise?” I felt overwhelmed, but I felt happier than I ever had before.

  “You can’t promise forever, Addie, but I can,” he told me, pressing my hand wrapping in his to his lips for a moment. “And if you’ll let me, I’ll be there for every second of it. You’re young and you don’t quite know what you want right now. I understand that. God, I was 17 once too, a long, long time ago.”

  A charming smile lit his face as if he’d just made a joke. Maybe he had?

  “Ask anything of me and I will move heaven and earth just to make it happen. To hear you say you feel it too… it gives me hope Addie, when in my life there is so little.”

  Clarence’s thumb brushed across my cheek, but he still held my hand tightly in his.

  “So what, we just promise ourselves to each other and I don’t even get a kiss?” I joked through my choked tears.

  Clarence laughed and put my palm to his cheek before leaning forward and meeting my lips. On and on it went, the moment stretching into hours, but it was still only moments.

  “You need to tell me, though,” I sighed, my head light from his kisses. “What the hell was that thing? Half man, half beast?”

  Clarence stole another kiss, then another before taking some distance and answering my question.

  “It’s a werewolf,” he said with a straight face.

  “Werewolves too?” I deadpanned. “Is there anything I need to know about Santa and fairies?”

  Clarence laughed, and it was a beautiful, beautiful thing after the last 24 hours.

  “No St. Nick. And definitely no fairies. Those belong in fairy tales. There are vampires and werewolves, both mutants from the human genus.”

  “Werewolves?” I asked again, my brain trying to wrap around the thought. “Why are they coming after me then? I talked to Genie and she said nobody’s seen wolves out here in...ever. And I’m the only one hearing their howling at night.”

  “I’m afraid that is because of me,” he sighed, taking my hand again. “Mason is working on...sensitive science and others have found out about it, thanks to a former friend with a big mouth. Some other vampires have hired some thug werewolves to hunt us down. Mason and I have been hunting them, but more keep arriving as we kill them off.”

  There was so much wrong with those couple sentences.

  “Why are they after me though? If they’re here for you two...”

  “Because I’ve taken a liking to you,” was his short answer. “They figure they can get to you first, then that will lead to getting to me, and finally they can use me to get to Mason.”

  I blew out a breath in disbelief.

  “So they always look like that? It’s not night, or even a full moon… how...”

  “They change whenever they wish,” Clarence shrugged. “Not unlike us.”

  “So they have a human form?”

  “Yes. They tend to be big and usually hairy for a human, but they can blend in fairly well. They choose to stick in packs though. They hunt, eat, and sleep that way.”

  I shook my head.

  “They’re disgusting. And scarey.”

  “If they ever get to you again, Addie, call for me, call for Mason. We have exceptional hearing and speed. If we don’t show up, aim for thei
r eyes or their throat.”

  “How do you have exceptional speed and hearing?”

  Funny how selectional my listening can be at this point when we’re talking about getting attacked by werewolves.

  “It’s part of the curse,” he said. “We are strong, which makes us fast. We can jump high and move quickly. That’s where the myths of bats came into play. A vampire can jump into the air and land so far away they couldn’t find them in the older days. So the people decided that we must disappear or turn into a flying beast to have escaped them.”

  “What is real and what’s fake,” I asked him now, feeling like I wanted to know literally everything about him, about his kind.

  “Well,” he leaned back as if in thought. “Garlic is fine. Won’t keep out the bloodsuckers. Though it does taint the blood and makes it not so sweet and pleasant. A desperate vampire will eat anything though.”

  I shuddered.

  “We… don’t sleep in coffins, though a lightless box is prefered to gain energy and strength after being in the sun all day. Personally I prefer something cold, but that’s not always available.”

  “Why cold?”

  “Cold keeps flesh from decay,” he shrugged. “It’s as simple as a coroner using refrigerators to keep a body fresh. Being in a constant state of death with no heartbeat and airless lungs, we decay on a constant basis. It gives our bodies a chance to rest from regeneration. It keeps our strength up.”

  “And a wood stake?”

  “A stake, be it wood or otherwise, will incapacitate. It won’t kill, but it will leave us in a state of limbo with no bodily control until the stake is taken out.”

  “So if I’m mad at you, I just have to stake you in the heart?” I joked and he gave me a mock irritated expression.

  “I trust you not to use this information against me, my darling. What I’m telling you, few humans have the benefit of knowing.”

  It sank heavy on my shoulders just then. He essentially trusted me with his life. He trusted me with Mason’s life, too.

  “Wait… you said you were...over 300 years old.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you said Mason is over 4oo. How are you brothers?”

  “We’re not brothers in the familial fashion, but we are blood brothers still the same. Mason found me shortly after I was turned. He was the one who taught me to sustain myself on animals in the forest and how to live with the people instead of as an outsider. He took me in, taught me what I was and how to control my bloodlust. He taught me how to use my newly acquired strength and charms and...”

  “Charms?”

  Clarence honest-to-God blushed.

  “It’s… It’s like hypnotizing someone,” he said carefully. “We can...charm a human into doing as we wish, and keep them from remembering it afterwards.”

  “So like, you could charm them into giving you their blood, and then make them forget afterwards.”

  “Some use it for such,” he admitted. “Some use it for carnal pleasure, and some of us don’t use it at all.”

  “Have you used it on me?” I asked, now almost worried.

  “No!” he insisted forcefully. “I would never force you to do something you didn’t want to do, and I would never take away your memory from something unless it was truly horrific.”

  “Such a gentleman,” I rolled my eyes, teasing him.

  He just shook his head and kissed me again.

  “May I meet him? Your brother?”

  Clarence bit his lip, but nodded eventually.

  “There has been some squabbling over you, to be honest,” he told me as he stood. “Mason does not agree with my decision to get involved with a human, as his experience thus has been nothing but negative. But he doesn’t make my decision for me, and if I had to choose one or the other, I would follow you. However it pains me to leave him, you own my heart now.”

  “I don’t imagine I could ever ask you to choose,” I said in horror.

  The thought itself disturbed me. I was new to this whole relationship thing, but I knew for a fact that I wasn’t a high maintenance girl.

  “I only tell you this because he may be less than welcoming, especially today as one of his experiments have failed. It was what had me in such a low mood when you called me.”

  “If you think today is a bad day, I’ll wait.”

  “I don’t know if any day will be better. Mason has been bitter as of late and I don’t see that changing from today to tomorrow.”

  “Then let’s go,” I stood with him, taking his hand, ready to walk to his home.

  “To come to my home,” he told me gently, putting his arms around my waist, “You have to travel like a vampire.”

  “I don’t...”

  “Do you trust me?” he asked, pulling me tighter to his chest.

  “I guess I do.”

  He rolled his eyes.

  “Your faith in me is enchanting.”

  “C’mon. You asked for my heart, not my faith.”

  Clarence laughed and held me tighter until I could hardly breath.

  “Step on my feet,” he told me and moved my arms to circle around his neck.

  I wrapped myself up in him, stepping the toes of my shoes onto his black leather boots as he instructed.

  “Hold on,” he whispered in my ear before I felt him crouch and then we were flying.

  Air whooshed by me so fast everything was a blur. We jarred back onto his feet on the ground, then we were up again in the air. The treetops brushed past us as he navigated, then we landed next to an old cabin in the thickest part of the woods, likely inside of the preserved forest.

  Clarence’s grip loosened on me and we untangled before he took my hand and led me to the door of the cabin. Inside were two large desks, face to face in the main room. An old stove sat in the corner, and two refrigerators lay on their sides on the other side of the room.

  “Our beds,” Clarence said as he caught me looking at them strangely.

  He lifted the top of one and I saw a couple pillows inside and a light blanket lying in the empty cavity. It chilled me as I stood above it.

  “Not quite the comfortable accommodations we’ve had before, but Mason needed peace and quiet out of the big city to work on his experiment so we came here. We’re off the grid, running the power with fuel and generators.”

  “Wow,” I murmured as I looked around the small room again.

  A small, old couch stood near the unused stove and a large flat screen TV was on the wall opposite it.

  “Satellite,” Clarence bounced his eyebrows at me.

  I laughed.

  “Please sit, I’ll get you some water,” Clarence said and went to the faucet. “It’s hooked up to a well out here. This cabin used to be used for outlaws, but the vampires acquired it a few decades ago and have been using it for a getaway ever since. We recently bought it out for Mason’s research...”

  Clarence’s speech was cut short by the door opening then slamming shut.

  “Fucking bloody werewolves don’t know attall who they’re dealing with. I’m 400 years old and they think they can best me in a chase? Bloody h-...”

  The strangely accented rant was stopped mid-word when Mason looked up to see me sitting on his couch.

  The cache of rabbits in his hands dropped to the floor and Clarence hurried from the sink with my water and an outstretched hand, begging Mason to calm down.

  “Clee...what is… Miss Harper doing in our cabin?” Mason asked his brother, his body shaking with the effort to control himself.

  It was in that moment that I recognized full and unabashed fear as it filled my body.

  “This is Addie. It’s ok, I brought her here. She knows… She knows everything.”

  Mason’s mask of control slipped and his expression showed deep anger.

  “What the fuck are you bringing a HUMAN into our home? She is NOT welcome here!”

  “It is my home too,” Clarence kept a cool head in the midst of Mason’s storm.

&n
bsp; “It’s her bloody kind that KILLS ours!”

  “She is not like them.”

  “She’s a fucking human whore like all the rest of them!”

  Clarence took a step forward and stood nose to nose with Mason, whose expression faltered for just a moment.

  “She is not like the rest of them, Brother,” Clarence growled. “And if you call her a whore again, you will rue the day.”

  Mason took a step back and his eyes glanced over Clarence’s shoulder. At me.

  “So she’s yours now, is she?” Mason’s hot demeanor cooled remarkably and Clarence’s shoulders relaxed a little.

  “Addie is her own woman, but she has agreed to see me.”

  “Bloody hell, Clee. Courting a human?”

  Mason scoffed and picked up the rabbits taking them to the kitchen to...prepare.

  He kept looking over at me as he snapped each poor creature's neck, then promptly slit their throats and hung them upside down over a dish, staring into my eyes as if his unsavory task would scare me off.

  “Will I have trouble with you, Mase?” Clarence asked as he stood next to me as I continued to sit on the couch.

  “Trouble with me?” he shrugged. “I’m not the one who’s going to be giving you trouble, Clee. That little vixen there is going to give you more than your share. I’ll leave it all up to her to punish you.”

  “You’ll leave her alone then?” Clarence specified. “You’ll defend her if the moment demands?”

  “I’d do anything for you, Brother, even defend the babe at your side. I’ll do it, but I don’t have to like it.”

  Clarence nodded then turned to me.

  “I think it was probably a bad idea to come today. I’ll take you home.”

  I nodded and stood, but took a moment to turn back to Mason.

  “For having the wisdom of 400 years behind you, you’re awful unfamiliar to the nature of humans.”

  Mason looked up slowly from his task and met my eyes, his thinning to slits at he took me in with barely veiled distaste.

  “Once you’ve been betrayed by your kind, Sweet Pea, you can lecture me on humans and their civility.”

  “I wouldn’t bother wasting my breath on a lecture to one as supreme as yourself,” I dripped sarcasm but kept my tone even. “But if I’d been with someone, a friend, or a brother as long as you have, I certainly wouldn’t begrudge their happiness.”