Marilee pulled away from the man’s vile touch, and cursed her rotten luck. She was getting out of town, with or without the money he still owed her. She had bigger problems than being strapped for cash, and those problems had fangs and killer blue eyes. “Fry in hell, Hank. I’m out of here.”
She rounded the bar and headed for the door, but didn’t make it far before Hank’s beefy hand clamped onto her upper arm and jerked her around.
“Maybe you didn’t understand.” He shoved her until her back hit the bar. “You’re earning the difference.”
Marilee ignored the pain in her lower back and quickly assessed the situation. She could smell whiskey on Hank’s breath, his eyes were a tinge glassy. The man was drunk. Drunk men could be dangerous. She knew from experience gained long before she’d ever set foot in a bar to work.
“Hank, let me go.” She’d stay calm. Calm would keep the situation from escalating.
“You’ll like it, girlie.” He accentuated his statement by unbuckling his belt.
How he could find it beneath his rotund belly, Marilee didn’t know, and she intended to stop him before he found the snap to his jeans, too.
“I don’t know about that, Hank. I’m not big on pork.” She kneed him in the groin and made a run for the door while he was bent over sucking in wind. Calm had flown out the window the moment his belt buckle came undone.
Something grabbed the back of her waistband and she found herself back against the bar, a red-faced, thoroughly pissed off Hank bent, but not broken, before her. “You fucking whore. You’ll pay for that.”
Marilee struggled against his hold on her arm, but couldn’t break free unless she snapped the bone. Though she’d broken bones before, she hesitated now. The jerk certainly deserved a maimed body part or two, but she couldn’t do it so coldly. Not to a human. “Hank, you’re drunk. Just let me go and we’ll forget about this.”
“Wrong, blondie.” He used his free hand to tug at the snap to her cutoffs. “You’ll never forget this.”
Marilee looked around the bar for a weapon, seeing no knives or sharp instruments. The sound of her zipper sliding down sent her heart racing into her throat, her mind reeling back to her childhood. Not again!
She kicked out, knocking Hank off balance enough for her to climb over the bar. He grabbed her by the waist and tugged her back down, but not before she snatched a bottle of whiskey from behind the bar.
“Come here, bitch.” Hank spun her around and his head met the bottom of the whiskey bottle. He groaned in pain, bending over as shards exploded against his skull, but he was quickly up again.
His arm whipped out and the back of his hand slapped hard against Marilee’s jaw. Stars flew out before her eyes as her head whipped to the side.
“Bitch!” He grabbed Marilee and slammed her onto the top of the bar. “Hit me again and I’ll break you into pieces.”
He climbed over the stools and onto the bar, straddling her legs tight to keep her from kneeing him again. She kept a knife in her ankle boot. If only she could get to it. Hank slapped her again, the hit leaving a burning path along her other cheek and she reflexively covered her face with her hands to ward off more blows.
Whiskey dripped off his head onto her hands and she choked back a scream as the sound of his zipper rustled. All of the sudden she was twelve years old and trapped under a man again. Then, suddenly, she was free.
She blinked as the weight of the large man disappeared, and lowered her hands to seek out the source of commotion she heard. Sitting up, slowly so she didn’t throw up from the nausea the movement caused, she gasped at the scene she witnessed.
The mysterious vampire growled in rage, his eyes glowing with power as he bashed Hank’s body repeatedly into the bar. The bar owner screamed in between sounds of agony.
“Stop! You’ll kill him!”
The vampire paused mid-body slam and stared at her in disbelief. “You would have a problem with that after what he was about to do to you?”
Marilee looked down to find her shorts around her knees. Heat flooding her face, she jerked them up to cover her teal and black striped bikini panties and slid off the bar. The vampire reached out with one hand to help her, Hank dangling like a limp ragdoll from the other.
“Don’t touch me.” Marilee sidestepped his hand, earning a look of contempt, and quickly zipped up her cutoffs. Her head spun and her lunch threatened to rise. She vaguely recalled her head slamming into the bar and figured she probably had a concussion. Great. Like she needed another problem added to the already too long list.
Hank made a gurgling sound and the vampire focused his attention back on him. “Shut up, you filthy swine.”
Marilee took advantage of the vampire’s shift in attention and raised her foot so she could quickly extract the blade from the sheath hidden inside her boot. She’d paid a pretty penny for the custom dagger she’d designed herself, but it was worth it. The silver blade was sharp enough to slice through anything—she’d chopped off fingers, bones and all, with it—and had a handle made of hawthorn, a type of wood vampires couldn’t tolerate.
The vampire raised Hank in the air, his hand clamped tight around the creep’s throat, and directed his gaze back to Marilee. It quickly shifted to the dagger she held poised for attack. “You’d pull that on me, but not a man about to rape you?”
He made a sound of disgust in his throat, and Marilee felt a pang of… guilt? She shook her head, shaking the odd feeling away. The vampire protected her, but it didn’t change what he was.
“I believe there’s an issue of money.”
She blinked, wondered how the vampire knew so much. “He didn’t pay me the amount we agreed on for me working here.”
“Get what you’re owed, and let’s go.”
Marilee opened her mouth to tell the vampire she wasn’t going anywhere with him, but he turned his gaze on her again. His eyes glowed with a terrifying degree of power. “Get what you are owed. Now,” he added between clenched teeth and bared fangs.
Marilee looked at Hank’s mottled, blue-tinged face, and swallowed hard. A human man was about to die and the blood would be on her hands. Fighting back another wave of nausea, she bent down to retrieve the bills Hank had dropped during their altercation. Careful to avoid shards of glass littering the floor, she collected the money—some of it wet from spilled whiskey—and shoved it into her front pocket.
“Is that it, or does he owe you more?”
“That’s it.” It was probably a little bit more than the agreed upon amount, but hey, being sexually assaulted gave her the right to charge interest.
The vampire nodded, turned his head toward Hank and lowered the bar owner so they were face to face. “Thank God for second chances and pray for forgiveness,” he growled and effortlessly threw the man over the bar, sending his body crashing into the mirrored wall which shattered on impact.
She’d seen vampires in action before, but this one was different. He was far more powerful than those she’d fought, so powerful his energy sucked the air out of the room. And what was with the glowing eyes? She’d never seen that before.
When he returned his attention to her she looked into those dark blue eyes, full of simmering rage, saw herself being thrown across a room, and took off at a run right out the door. She was scared, beyond that, she was piss-in-her-pants terrified. It didn’t matter that she’d killed vampires before. Instinct told her this one wouldn’t go down easy.
She pushed away the nausea clawing at her belly and struggled to keep the world around her in focus as she ran down the street. It was late and all the bar’s patrons were long gone from the area. She had to run. She had to find a place to hide.
She had to throw up.
Diving into a narrow alley, she braced a hand against a brick wall and bent over. Her lunch threatened to rise again, but all she could produce was a strong set of dry heaves. It reminded her she needed to eat more.
“You really shouldn’t overexert yourself if you’re concus
sed.”
Marilee spun around and came face to face with the vampire. He’d snuck up on her without a sound.
“Stay away from me.” She held the dagger out, reminding him she was armed.
He frowned at the weapon. “It’s disturbing how ready you are to use that on me, but not the man who attacked you.”
Marilee recalled him saying something similar back at the bar and felt the twinge of guilt again. Why, she didn’t know. “What do you want from me?” To kill me, obviously. Duh.
He grinned, but his eyes didn’t show humor. “I’m not here to kill you, Marilee. If I was, why would I have bothered protecting you from that animal?”
Good point, unless he just enjoyed the thrill of the chase. And how did he know her name? “You never answered my earlier question.”
He cocked his head to the side, raised an eyebrow.
“How do you know my name?”
“I was sent here to retrieve you.”
Alarm bells rang out in Marilee’s mind. A vampire sent to retrieve her? No way was that good. Her hand reflexively wrapped around the cross she never removed from her neck. She knew it wouldn’t harm the vampire, but what it represented gave her courage. However, being courageous didn’t mean being stupid. The best thing she could do was escape or at the very least go somewhere with people. The vampire might not act with witnesses around.
She turned to run and saw a tall chain link fence blocking her exit. “Oh, that’s just classic stereotype. Dumb blonde goes down a dark alley while being pursued by the big, bad monster and meets a dead end.” She stomped her foot and turned around to face her enemy, no other option left. It appeared she’d been cast in a B movie without her knowledge. The mask of anger on the vampire’s face stole her breath.
“The big, bad monster is the man who beat you, tried to rape you. Why do you insist on giving me that title instead of him?” He turned and took a step as if he were about to storm off, but quickly turned back around, closing the distance between them. “Maybe I had it wrong. Maybe you enjoyed it, craved his touch.”
She slapped the vampire’s face, heedless of repercussion. “You bastard! How dare you think I’d like such a thing!” Years of repressed rage rose inside her and she raised the dagger to strike.
One hand rubbing his jaw, the vampire raised his free arm and the dagger flew into his open palm. He winced as the hawthorn handle touched his skin and dropped the weapon.
Blinking, her mind unable to believe what she’d just seen, Marilee backed away, but the vampire snaked an arm around her waist and pulled her closer. “I’m sorry, Marilee. That was a cruel thing to say.” He raised his hand and she flinched, but after a brief pause, he merely wiped away tears she hadn’t been aware of shedding. “I do not like being looked upon as a monster when compared to that type of man.”
“Who the hell are you?” She reached out with her mind, trying to pull information but as was the case with most vampires, she couldn’t get anything. She no longer felt the panic-fueled need to run from him, though.
“Have you paused to think that maybe the danger you’ve felt all day was due to the man who tried to rape you?”
Irritated with his intrusion into her thoughts, Marilee released a frustrated sigh. “No. The hint of danger still lingers, and it’s lingering around you. Who are you? Why can you hear my thoughts?”
“I have the same psychic abilities you have,” he explained, stepping away and turning. “Come now.”
“I don’t come on command.” She stood with feet firmly planted, arms crossed before her chest.
The vampire turned his head toward her and grinned impishly. Her face heated. “You know what I mean.”
“It’s late, Marilee, and we have much to discuss. I’d rather not have that discussion in an alley in the dead of night.” He glanced around. “I may have been followed.”
Fear clawed at her insides, but still Marilee did not move. “You’ll have to give me more than that to make me follow you off to who knows where, vampire. What happened to Brenda?”
“She made me a very generous offer of her body, to which I politely declined.” He stuffed his hands into his pockets. “After implying I was homosexual she left with two men in an old, rusted pick-up truck. I imagine she’s sandwiched between them as we speak.”
Marilee’s lip curled up at that image she so didn’t want in her head and reached out with her senses. She couldn’t read the vampire’s mind but she could feel the truth in his words. Still… “Why won’t you tell me who you are?”
“My name is Khiderian,” he answered, his tone implying his frustration. “I’m a very old vampire with very little patience. Now, move.”
Marilee just looked at him, bristling at his tone.
“I can make you come.” His gaze held a hint of mischief, lending to the double entendre.
“Not in this lifetime, buddy.” Bending down, Marilee scooped up the dagger and slid it into her ankle boot. The sense of danger swirled around the vampire, but the little voice inside her that forewarned her of things to come told her he wouldn’t directly harm her. “I’ve killed vampires before,” she warned, just in case. “Don’t mess with me.”
“I understand how little you value my race.” He turned to lead the way to the mouth of the alley. “However, I was ordered to retrieve you and so I am. You should thank me for my help tonight, but I imagine it’ll be a cold day in Hades before you admit a vampire was more honorable than a human.”
“I could have taken care of that jerk by myself.”
“Not if you weren’t willing to kill or maim him because he was human.” He glared at her as they walked. “Some human life isn’t worth preserving. It amazes me that you would even consider sparing his but would kill a vampire simply because of his or her existence.”
“Vampires killed my grandparents.”
He stepped in front of her, halting her, as they faced each other. “And another vampire saved your life in that little town.”
Marilee gasped, remembering the vampire-witch who’d healed the damage to her throat after she’d been attacked by another vampire while helping Jake Porter fight a trio of the bloodsuckers who’d taken over her hometown. “How do you know that?”
“I was given your bio before I was sent to retrieve you.”
“My bio? What the hell are you talking about? Who sent you, and for what?”
“The Dream Teller,” he answered. “The witch who watches over all vampires. Jacob Porter has been captured, and you are the person who’s going to save him.”
SIREN’S SNARE and the first three other Blood Revelation books are available now.
Moonlit Majesty Page 15
