Wicked Love

by Michelle Dare

  Kieran moaned and grasped for something to hold on to as his date unwrapped his cock from his jeans and promptly swallowed it. His hand made contact with something metal, just in time for him to keep his knees from buckling. “Fuck,” he whispered. His mouth watered. He forgot what he’d been so concerned about. “Yes. God.” It’s been too long, bro. Please don’t embarrass yourself.

  Get out of my head, Charlie.

  He bit down so hard on his tongue the taste of copper tickled his tastebuds. “I... you have to stop. I can’t hold it.”

  She didn’t stop. He gripped the metal tighter, almost piercing his palm as he struggled against losing his balance. A flash of white light filled the dark, musty room as he spilled in her mouth, pitching forward, nearly knocking them both against the track.

  His date pulled back, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand with a sly grin.

  The grin froze.

  Her eyes widened.

  Even in the darkness, Kieran could see the geyser of crimson spurts flowing from her throat.

  Behind her, the eyes. Though he’d never seen them, he knew without a doubt he’d felt them. First outside, then again in here.

  He was too stunned to move. A woman stood behind his dying date, rising up. Unfurling was more accurate, her own golden hair flowing like a cape as she towered over them both, casting a shadow that filled the empty room as it grew. She watched him, only for a moment, before dropping into a low crouch and lapping at the blood in the sickening slurps of a desperate animal.

  “Darcy,” he whispered, before he passed out.

  Yes, that was his date’s name.

  Was.

  2

  Elisabeth

  Merde.

  Merde, merde, merde, merde, merde!

  Elisabeth de Blanchefort ground her fist into the cool flesh of her bare thigh. Bright red spots floated before her eyes. Warning signs. There’d been warning signs before she stole the life from the college girl, too, but that was more like instinct. This... this was a stop sign crossing a highway where everyone was going over eighty. This was a signal that she approached the point where if she didn’t turn back, she’d lose the chance forever.

  The redhead in her trunk banged around, punching at the metal, the backs of the seats. For once she’d had some foresight, removing the dangling yellow trunk release. Had she not, all of St. Charles Avenue would have seen him signaling for help. In this modern day of everyone having a camera, no doubt the whole thing would be captured for posterity on every corner of the internet, shared and discussed for years as she languished the rest of her eternity away in Angola Prison.

  Le tues, Lilibet! Her grandfather, Victor’s, voice. Finish this! We do not leave messes!

  Well, the rest of the de Blancheforts did not. Elisabeth...

  A hundred and fifty years into her strange life as a dhampir, a vampire, and she still lacked the finesse to be any good at it. You think you’d learn by now, her grandfather would say. Don’t wait until you are weak. The bloodlust makes you careless. Reckless.

  This was true. Sometimes she ached for the thick, viscous crimson gold so much the longing was almost sexual. But to take the blood was to take life, and Elisabeth had never hardened herself to watching the light wane away in one’s eyes—a death caused by her own hand, her own need. With that dying light, their futures dwindled into the oblivion of the children they would never have, the kisses they’d never steal. She robbed them of not only their joys, but also their sorrows, and neither were hers to take. And she could not have their blood without killing them. There were rules. There were none more important than that one.

  Another was never hunt in the Garden District. Armstrong Park wasn’t the Garden District, or even the French Quarter. But a carnival drew all sorts, from all parts of town. For all she knew, the girl was a judge’s daughter from Prytania, or some old money debutante, like a LaViolette, or a Deschanel. Hindsight conjured images of her oversized Louis Vuitton bag and stilettoed Jimmy Choos. A girl who wore such things was the type someone would miss.

  And both she’d left swimming in the girl’s own blood, behind that misshapen teddy bear that glared its glassy-eyed judgment upon her as she backed away. Merde!

  Muffled screams sounded from the trunk as she approached a stoplight. Merde! Merde, merde, merde, merde, merde.

  She had to get out of the city.

  And fast.

  3

  Kieran

  It wasn’t even that the feral woman had killed Darcy.

  That alone was horrific, and Kieran suspected the shock of it all had kept him from processing his feelings on the matter. He’d hardly known her, but she was his age. A whole life ahead of her, snuffed out in an instant. It was a life he knew nothing about, but he’d thought maybe he might have the opportunity to learn. Only after she was dead did he even remember her name. He suspected she knew he’d forgotten it, too—died knowing that—and the sickening dread in his belly grew knottier and darker.

  He’d failed at being a good man. Failed to identify a threat that had taken someone’s life.

  Maybe the universe would straighten itself out when the psychopath killed him, too.

  But why hadn’t she? Why didn’t she just snap his neck and leave him with Darcy back in the funhouse of horror?

  Focus, Landry.

  No, it wasn’t that she’d killed Darcy, it was what she’d done after that had his head spinning like Regan from The Exorcist. He’d been too pinned in place by fear to do more than stare as she hungrily lapped the blood that had been traveling through Darcy’s body just moments earlier. It was not a show, or some strange fetish he wanted to know nothing about. His unique senses picked up powerful waves of salacious hunger. She’d been waiting a long time to drink. She’d killed Darcy for this.

  Listen to yourself, you sound like Kelley!

  Kelley had never stopped believing. He pretended he had, but Kieran and Dillon possessed that triplet intuition and knew damn well Kelley was still chasing vampires long after they’d stopped doing it as a trio.

  Liga Vanatorilor de Vampiri had been Kieran’s idea initially. He’d read Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire and was struck with how real they seemed, even in the mystique of their immortality. How human, flaws and all, beauty and all. Even in their depravity, they were relatable. More, that because of these things, they could live in a society with men, blending in, consuming art, exploring nature. They could have homes, desires, families. These vampires were a far cry from Dracula holing himself up in a Transylvanian castle.

  It hadn’t taken much convincing with Kelley and Dillon. They were always up for an adventure, and when Aunt Mary offered use of the janitor’s closet at her pub in Carrollton, Dillon had tacked up that old, wrinkled Nosferatu poster with pride. Kieran began assigning them dollar comics and penny dreadfuls as “research.” Even Dillon read them, and he’d never finished a book a teacher didn’t assign him.

  Then they’d grown up. By the time they were off to college, their memories of the old cramped, sweaty room with the dangling bulb that only sometimes worked were something they laughed about when they were all home for family dinner.

  Because vampires weren’t real.

  They’d never been real, no matter how convincing Anne Rice’s novels had been.

  Then what would you call that crazy blood-drinking bitch back there?

  Kieran funneled his rage into rabbit kicks against the back of the taillights. The psycho may have cut the trunk release, but he’d seen enough movies to know that wasn’t the only way out of a trunk.

  They didn’t budge an inch. He screamed his frustration into the dark, musty space.

  He tried to remember the crap Kelley used to spew about those crime dramas he loved so much. Whenever they were all home, he aimed these facts on their mother, who was the only woman in the family, and, according to Kelley, still at risk from being nabbed by a serial killer even in her middle age. Never get in the car. Never let him take you to
a second location.

  Kieran almost laughed. He didn’t fit the demographic Kelley was so certain about, but he’d undoubtedly been taken by a serial killer. And here she was, taking him to a second location. Although he couldn’t see anything from the dark trunk, he felt the familiar ride of I-10. His pride in recognizing where he was immediately replaced itself with the realization that she was taking him out of town.

  Away from the bustle of New Orleans, and people who might hear him screaming from the trunk.

  4

  Elisabeth

  The de Blancheforts were land barons. Had been long before they came to Louisiana, from Saint-Domingue, Hispaniola, in what was now called Haiti. Her great-grandfather, Etienne, brought them here, on the eve of the slave revolt that would see the power dynamic shift upon that isle forever. For the better, Elisabeth thought, though it was a tenuous topic in a family that still owned slaves until the government forced them to free them.

  Some still owned slaves of another kind. Blood slaves. Lazy, greedy vampires who wanted an endless font of human blood in their own cellar. It was the only way around the rule about killing your prey, so it was enticing to some. Revolting to Elizabeth. She wished she could say she’d never participated.

  Their land here, as it had been in the West Indies, was built upon the backs of slave labor. All their great plantations along River Road, like Coquillage, so striking people slowed their cars when they drove past, either not knowing or caring how that beauty was made. Elisabeth cared. Too much, her grandfather said. And not just about this.

  She’d never been okay with the killing part. Her grandfather and the others said it was for their own safety and survival, but that seemed a strange argument to be made when it was safety and survival they were stealing from others. Who was entitled to it more? They didn’t need blood the way vampires in the books did. It strengthened them. Emboldened them. If they were fortunate enough to take blood from a magic dealer, it transferred those abilities, albeit temporary, but sometimes in the most unusual and fascinating ways. Drinking blood from a seer sometimes left the dhampir seeing thousands of years ahead. Her brother once brought a man back to life after drinking his healer blood. Whatever made their victim great made the dhampir greater, for a while.

  But though they didn’t need blood, too long without it and they felt somehow less than... less than their best, than themselves. Diminished was the word her grandfather used. And he was right… she often did wait until she was already diminished before drinking, and that made her sloppy. It caused her to choose victims poorly and kill them ineptly. It left witnesses.

  The man in her trunk continued his orchestra of panic against the back lights of her car. She wasn’t as worried about that now. They were out of New Orleans, past Kenner, and heading toward the bayou, where she could sort this problem properly.

  Her grandfather had emphasized her whole life, both before and after she became a blood drinker, that there were more of “them” than vampires. Dhampir were not like the vampires of myth. They were an ancient race, their life gifted from the font of the Master’s Tree. It was there that dhampir were born, and died. Those two things worked in tandem, as new dhampir could not be created without the end of another. None knew why the Master, whoever he was, kept their numbers finite. Her grandfather seemed to think it was a limit to the magic that made them what they were; that to spread it further would be to dilute it into nothing. But it was only a guess. There were no answers. Only rules.

  Too many times she’d threatened to find her own replacement and deliver them to the Master’s Tree, swapping her gift for eternal rest. Each time, her grandfather mistakenly mistook this desperation for loneliness, renewing his search for a husband she could bring into her immortality, unlike her first one.

  The other de Blancheforts treated marriage in different ways. Some found mates worthy of the gift, others went through a long line of partners throughout the years. But Elisabeth desired neither. She was horrified at even the thought of bringing another innocent person into the family. For once they were given the secret, they had either the choice of becoming one of them, or death. Which was no choice at all.

  At some point, they would run out of dhampir ready and willing to surrender their gift, and there’d be blood wars between them all as they fought for who was worthy to retain the gift, and who should step aside for the new. Victor insisted they were yet far from this happening, but time was a funny thing when you were immortal.

  She didn’t want a mate.

  What she did want was a replacement.

  And as her grandfather loved to remind her, you have but two choices when a man has seen you for what you are.

  Turn him.

  Kill him.

  She was surprised her navigation skills had held so well over the years. A hundred years had passed since her grandfather had taken her here to hunt the infamous Rougarou, the fearsome beast of French Louisianan legend, with the head of a wolf and body of a man. Victor said for a hundred and one days the beast was under sway of the spell forcing him into such an unnatural state, and during that time would kill indiscriminately. Man, woman, child. Tales of infants carried off from cradles were rampant in these parts. Dogs, goats, sometimes even cows, missing from farms or yards. When the spell ended, he retreated to a deep slumber until the curse awakened him once more.

  The Rougarou was one of the only natural threats to a dhampir.

  But in all the years Victor de Blanchefort had been taking his granddaughter to the small, lean-to cabin deep in the St. Charles Parish bayou, they’d had only one sighting of the foul beast. One and only one.

  She parked her car between the two familiar old cypress trees. Back when Victor first took her here, it was a carriage he’d slide into this spot, leaving the horses untethered in case the beast did show. He thought they might be able to outrun it, and deserved that chance, he said. He had more compassion for horses than men.

  They’d have to take a boat the rest of the way. Frowning into the gloaming darkness, Elisabeth prayed she still remembered this part, or they’d find themselves victims of an unforgiving midnight swamp. For one unfamiliar with their path, it was a one-way trip.

  With a sigh as old as she was, Elisabeth exited the car. The man in the trunk went silent. Listening.

  She stepped around to the back of the car and popped the trunk.

  5

  Kieran

  Kieran threw his hands over his face, bracing for the final moments of his life.

  When she made no immediate move to sever his carotid and feast upon the results, he very warily uncovered one eye to look up at the woman—the creature—who would soon deliver his death…

  … and was surprised to find she was exceptionally beautiful. Her light hair, like cornsilk, cascaded in soft, inviting waves, as if she had not just devoured the life from his date. Her cobalt blue eyes regarded him, not with hunger, but curiosity. Frustration knitted into the line of her brows, and he wondered what caused it, then realized it was better not to know. It didn’t matter anyway. This luscious beauty was a stone-cold killer. She was not his friend. Not a fantasy. This was not going to end like it did in the films in Dillon’s secret stash.

  “Are you going to kill me?” he asked.

  “Get out,” the vampire demanded. “And when you do, remember how quickly I could end your life.”

  “I haven’t forgotten,” Kieran mumbled, pushing memories of Darcy’s lifeless eyes from his mind before they could take over.

  The vampire stepped back to allow him to exit. He wiggled around, searching for purchase, wishing she’d untie his hands. She watched in growing impatience as he finally angled his legs over the side and then practically fell onto the patch of mossy grass.

  “You can walk? Didn’t break your feet on the taillights?”

  “I can walk.” He shuffled ahead. “Where are we going?”

  “The boat,” the vampire replied. “See it ahead?”

  “I see it.”


  “That’s where we’re going.”

  Not just a second location, but a third. I’m so fucked.

  And yet, she could’ve killed him at the funhouse.

  She panicked is all. Didn’t want to get caught.

  “Kieran,” she said, more forcefully. “Go.”

  “How do you know my name?”

  The vampire watched him, as if debating the honesty in her answer. “I pulled it from the girl’s head as I drank from her.”

  “Jesus. Okay.” Kieran turned away to hide his horror. Kelley had also said a victim shouldn’t let their assailant read their fear. He’d said a lot of things that Kieran was only now remembering, when he was living it.

  “Boat, Kieran.”

  Kieran stepped carefully over the cypress knees, considering his options. He’d been a distance runner in high school, something he’d continued only half-heartedly into his college years. But he wasn’t confident that if he took off, she couldn’t outrun him, especially with his hands tied behind his back. She might be one of those vampires who could break the sound barrier, for all he knew.

  Although he and his brothers had spent their formative years studying vampires, none of it was helpful to him now. They’d believed, but that belief had the air of youth, where reality was a hazy future yet to happen. Where it didn’t even have to match with reality at all. They’d studied the fiction of myths. Maybe there was truth there, and maybe not, but every choice from here until the end could determine whether he lived or died.

  Kieran drew closer to the boat. He felt her several paces behind. His shoulders were a block of ice as he waited for her to spring forward and overtake him. Perhaps that was why she’d brought him all the way out here. The bayou was a natural body disposal service. What went in seldom came out.