First Blood

by Susan Sizemore

  “Excuse me, but would you mind stopping—?”

  “How do you manage to stay sane when you’re in season?” he wondered.

  She didn’t know if he was using magic, or if she answered because she couldn’t help but respond to his genuine curiosity. “A vibrator and a lot of chocolate.”

  He nodded. “That’s better than most men at any time. But enough girl talk . . .”

  He said a word that sent sharp pain through her head and left Tess’s ears ringing. But she knew he’d released her from the enchantment that had left her in human form.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “I don’t want you to feel under any compulsions when you answer my questions.”

  Where are they?

  His telepathy did not help her headache, but she opened her mind to him. I don’t know. I’m here to find out.

  He probed and he prowled inside her. He hurt her. She didn’t try to fight him. Eventually Conover let her mind go free. Something of his dominance remained inside her though. It was a male to female sort of dominance every member of her kind sought. Damn Conover and his Hunter-self to hell!

  It was only then that she noticed how close he held her naked body.

  Then the nausea hit and all that mattered was throwing up.

  EIGHT

  DAN SNATCHED UP THE RETCHING WEREWOLF AND carried her into the bathroom. He wasn’t in the habit of abusing the females of any species, but he was in too much of a hurry to find the pups to question her gently. He was gentle now, knowing that she’d done them no harm. She still held information he intended to find out, but for now he saw to her needs.

  He held her head so that she could barf into the toilet bowl and wiped her face with a wet towel when she was done. While she lay collapsed like a sweaty wet noodle on the floor, he adjusted the controls in the shower until the temperature was just right. He lifted her again and eased her under the warm spray.

  While waiting for the water to revive her, Dan went in search of clothes to replace the ones he’d ripped and shredded between climbing the walls and turning into a Hunter. Some things it was just better to do naked.

  He found a closet full of expensive black clothing in the bedroom occupied by Valentine’s apprentice, Geoff. He shook his head at the sight. Why was it vampires wore so much black? Especially the younger ones. The color had never appealed to him. For one thing it showed every speck and fiber. His pets shed a great deal, and not all hellhounds were black.

  He found a shirt and slacks that fit well enough to replace his jeans and plaid shirt, then went back to see how the girl was doing.

  By the time he returned, she’d dried off and wrapped herself in a white robe. Her wet hair was pulled severely back from her angular face. He stopped in the doorway, stunned and staring. Pain and longing shot through him. He shouldn’t be so attracted to a creature so absolutely different from his own kind—but his body didn’t seem to be aware that lust between their species didn’t happen.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you?” she demanded.

  They’d already established that she was a descendent of Syrilla’s, but . . .

  “Are you sure werewolves aren’t immortal?” he asked.

  “We could be,” she said. “If we used the same sort of dark magic your kind is addicted to.”

  Her comment reminded him of other things she’d said, and bits of knowledge he’d picked up inside her mind. The problem with telepathy wasn’t in picking up thoughts, but in putting them into context. He’d dug out the specific items he’d been looking for—she hadn’t taken the pups, she’d never killed a hellhound, she was looking for them herself, and like him sensed that Valentine was somehow involved. She was, in fact, as much a guardian of the animals as he was. He didn’t know why. He didn’t know how.

  He took her hand, meaning to pull her back into the living room, but he dropped it as soon as their skin touched and an electric charge of attraction passed between them.

  “Stop that!” she demanded.

  “I’m not doing it on purpose!”

  “You were earlier.”

  “That was only to distract you so I could get into your head.”

  “Sex as a weapon? That is just so—strigoi.”

  “It is, isn’t it?”

  “You don’t have to sound so pleased about it.”

  “Don’t whine when you’re not in wolf form,” he told her, and enjoyed the energy rush as temper flared in her eyes and through all her senses. He turned and walked toward the living room, wondering if she’d jump him from behind. Instead she followed him. He was almost disappointed at her ability to control her wild nature.

  “Why do you think Valentine is involved?” he asked after they’d settled on opposite ends of the couch.

  “Would you believe me if I told you I sensed her shadow in a dream?”

  “I’ve been known to believe odder things,” he answered. “Someone used ancient magic in an ancient language to distract me. Valentine is one of the few who know the old tongues and the most powerful spells.”

  “You’re Nabatean, from the Roman-era city of Petra, now in Jordan,” she said. “Your native language evolved into modern Arabic.”

  “The written form did, not the spoken. And I didn’t say what ancient language was used in the spell.”

  “Oh, please. Don’t go all mysterious. Could anything else have trapped you?”

  Dan shrugged and shook his head. “I don’t suppose you speak Nabatean?”

  “No. My turn to ask a question. Why would Valentine help a demon steal the puppies?”

  “She wouldn’t.” Dan stood. “What demon? Strigoi don’t deal with demons. Valentine certainly wouldn’t. If she’s in her right mind at the moment,” he added in a low mutter.

  She smiled at his reaction. “I know that vampires and demons have a formal treaty never to interfere with each other, but do you really think you can trust demons?”

  Dan wasn’t sure that demons really were demons, not in the way mortals defined them. Of course, mortals had the information about every supernatural species mixed up, if not outright wrong. The strigoi’s knowledge of demonkind wasn’t much better, even after thousands of years of co-existence with the strange creatures.

  “It’s not my job to trust demons,” he told the werewolf. “My duty is to make sure that the Law against interfering with them is enforced. And I don’t believe Valentine would break the—”

  “Valentine doesn’t give a damn about the Laws of the Blood, remember? She’s never acknowledged your Strigoi Council and there’s not a single Enforcer who could stop her from doing anything she wants. She’s the loose cannon, the wild card, and the mother of all Enforcers. You look shocked, Hunter. Didn’t you know about Valentine’s brood?”

  Valentine—Valentia back then—had made him into a vampire, but—

  “She didn’t make me what I am.”

  “I know. The way it works is that vampires turn their mortal companions into vampires. Only members of the Hunter bloodline can turn vampires into Hunters. It was a Hunter named Olympias who turned you into a monster that preys on vampires. But the Hunter line started somewhere, and Valentine is the first of your line, the beginning. She keeps the knowledge of what she is and how she came to be secret, but my pack of werewolf witches—”

  “Know more about the strigoi than we know about ourselves,” he finished for her.

  “We make it our business to find out all we can about every type of supernatural being. Syrilla’s pack protects werewolves the way you Hunters protect strigoi. My assignment is to make sure the hellhounds don’t fall into the wrong hands. Demon hands are the wrong hands, and demons have been trying to get hold of Syrilla’s pups since the beginning.”

  “I was there at the beginning,” he reminded her. “No demons tried to harm the first pups. But a great many of your kind died in the attempt to destroy them.”

  “A great many werewolves did die at your hands,” she acknowledged. “That’s w
hy the werewolf community eventually came to the conclusion that my pack would be totally responsible for dealing with the hellhound problem. Not that we ever mentioned this to you strigoi.”

  “Vampires can be negotiated with, you know. Werewolves are too damn secretive.”

  She shrugged. “It’s a fault, I admit. Probably even a genetic one.”

  “But you are going to work past this fault and tell me everything now, aren’t you?”

  “Maybe if we’d simply put you on your guard about why demons created the hellhounds, me and my ancestors wouldn’t have had to live in your shadow all these generations.”

  He’d always known they were out there, waiting to strike. Or so he’d thought. He shook his head. “I’ve guarded against your kind because of a promise I made to one of your pack, when your pack could have been helping me care for their cousins?”

  Tess winced. “Please! Hellhounds aren’t sentient. They are no more kin to us than arctic wolves, or Great Danes.”

  It pleased him that werewolves still underestimated the hellhounds’ capacity even after all this time. “They’re smart,” he said.

  “For dogs, maybe.”

  “Hellhounds,” he corrected.

  She sprang to her feet. “Exactly! They are straight from hell. Really. That’s the whole point and always has been.”

  He stared at her for a long time. Finally, he said, “I take it there was something Syrilla didn’t tell me.”

  Tess shook her head. “She didn’t know. The poor bitch was under a spell when she mated with your war dog, otherwise she never would have done”—she grimaced—“the dirty deed with a dumb mutt.”

  “Hardly a mutt. I paid a fortune for the animal because of his pure lineage. His ancestry was far more grand than mine.”

  “But he was still a dog! No werewolf in her right mind could possibly . . . do that . . . with one of those . . .” She shuddered. “It makes me sick to think about it and it’s been two thousand years. It’s a wonder my whole pack wasn’t wiped out to erase the shame of it. It’s bad enough we’ve been tied to the hellhounds’ fate ever since.”

  “You were explaining about spells and demons,” Dan reminded.

  “Hellhounds were created through demon magic,” she answered. “They were brought into the world to eat souls and build power to be used in demonic ceremonies.”

  He didn’t disregard this information out of hand. It was clear the werewolf witch believed it. “What sort of ceremonies?”

  “How would I know? The demons have never gotten a chance to get their claws on a hellhound. You’ve protected them. My pack’s guarded them.”

  “I don’t always protect them. I train them and make sure they go to good homes.”

  “That’s just it—we think it’s the pups the demons want. We think that they can’t use hellhound magic once you’ve tamed them and trained them to obey strigoi. The demons need to train the pups themselves for whatever it is they want. They’ve never gotten the chance—until now.”

  He was on his feet. “Your pack might have told me all this at some point over the centuries!”

  Her eyes blazed with anger and she opened her mouth a few times as if to protest before saying, “Yeah. That probably would have been a good idea.”

  Dan was glad that at least this pack member was able to look past the centuries of mayhem vampires and werewolves had committed on each other over the hellhounds.

  “I can forgive and forget if you can. And even work with you if necessary.”

  She balked at this. “If? What do you mean ‘if necessary’? Who got you out of the trap earlier? Who—?”

  He’d grabbed the furious woman’s shoulders. “No offense intended,” he said.

  Then the robe slipped off her shoulders and his hands were touching warm, soft flesh and Dan forgot what he’d meant to say next. Two thousand years were gone in an instant. The hot mouth he pressed against his was the same. The wild intensity that flared between them was the same. The small, high breasts he cupped responded the same.

  But Tess wasn’t Syrilla.

  For one thing, he was far more attracted to this werewolf female than he’d ever been to her ancestor when he was a mortal man—and that was saying quite a lot.

  For another, he liked Tess far better than he had Syrilla—and that was also saying quite a lot.

  “I can’t,” she said breathlessly after they’d fallen together onto the couch.

  He had her naked beneath him once again. Her thighs were wrapped around his hips. He held her ass cupped in one hand. She had a wonderful little ass.

  “I made vows—and you’re—strigoi and—oh, Goddess!”

  She bit his shoulder in response to an intimate caress. It was a love bite, not an objection to anything he was doing.

  He laughed in her ear, and bit back.

  The taste of her blood was wholly different from any human he’d ever tasted. It was like being introduced to hot peppers and fresh ginger after a lifetime of bland, invalid fare. Everything that was lust and life came to him through her. He’d never tasted anyone like her and he had no intention of stopping.

  He wasn’t going to drain her dry. But he was going to fuck her brains out.

  Dan picked Tess up and carried her to the bedroom.

  NINE

  WHAT WAS SO GREAT ABOUT BEING A VIRGIN ANYWAY?

  This fire burning between them was the real magic. This was life. This was real. This was important.

  Tess threw her head back and draped her arms around Conover’s neck, vaguely aware he was carrying her and not caring where they were going.

  He put her down on a wide expanse that was silky soft and cool. She stretched out on the luxurious bed and would have purred if she wasn’t a werewolf. The room was dark but werewolf eyes and vampire eyes met and they saw each other clearly. The recognition of like to like that passed between them shook her to the core, but not at the wrongness of their two species blending both body and soul. It was the rightness that shattered but didn’t break her.

  She cupped his face in her hands and drew his mouth down to hers. She’d never shared a kiss so intense, so intimate.

  She’d never shared a proper kiss at all, she realized. At least she’d never initiated one.

  This is so going to get me in trouble, she thought.

  Me, too, he answered.

  There was no repentance in either of their minds, and no hesitation.

  This is a first, he thought, a vampire mating with a werewolf.

  “Well—” Tess began, then decided to let it go. They were in Valentine’s bed, but this wasn’t the time for conversation about the Ancient Mother. “This is about Tess and Dan,” she said.

  “It’s about who, not what, we are,” he agreed.

  She ran her hands over the thick, hard muscles of his back and cupped his rounded buttocks. Her foot stroked up the length of his calf. “Let’s make it about sex,” she told him.

  Her fingers reached around to curl around his cock. She groaned as she stroked his penis and testicles, but he soon positioned himself between her thighs.

  When he entered her the thrust was so hard she couldn’t stop the scream.

  “Hey! I’m new to this!” she reminded him.

  “Sorry!”

  He made up for it by settling into a slow, gentle rhythm that sent amazing bursts of pleasure through her and made time and place disappear.

  Tess eventually came down from the series of steadily building orgasms. She tossed her head from side to side and tried to catch her breath. She tried to focus. It would be so easy to stay inside the shared ecstasy forever.

  She moaned and grabbed the vampire’s hair. “Come!” she begged him. “Now! You’ve only got until dawn you know.”

  Dan laughed, flashing fang. And his mouth came down on her breast. There was a quick sharp pain that took her back into the ecstasy that she rode down into the dark.

  TEN

  HE WAS CLOSER TO THE OLD BITCH NOW. KRAAS knew the tim
e would soon be ripe to confront her. Did Valentine suspect an evil presence just beyond her reach? Had fear invaded her dreams yet? Did the shadow of ripping fangs make her throat ache? He held his master’s enemy’s true death in his arms and stroked the velvety head while the pup whimpered. The energy released when a demon creature killed Valentine would increase his master’s power a thousandfold. Kraas’s reward would be equally immense.

  “You’re hungry, I know. You’re getting heavy from all your kills, you know.” He rubbed the fat little puppy belly. “You’re growing into such a big, fine boy.”

  He continued to murmur to the pup as he moved silently through the backyards of the sleeping neighborhood. He listened all the while for heartbeats.

  The houses were large but most of them held no more than two or three people. The pup needed more than that to eat his fill.

  “You’re a growing boy. I miss the days when families slept six to a bed with servants huddling around besides. I’m almost ashamed to bring my master into this world. He’ll whip the mortals into shape with you and me at his side to share the kills. Ah,” Kraas said as they stopped behind the center house of a cul-de-sac. He closed his eyes and listened carefully, counting as he discerned individual heartbeats within the dark house. Eight, he decided. Eight mortals sleeping peacefully. A good night’s feast for the youngster.

  Kraas remembered to check around the outside of the building for any of the alarm systems mortalkind thought protected them. The house proved to be free of any warning device, and, of course, no spells warded the place from magical entry.

  He returned to the back and used a diamond-sharp claw to scrape a hole at the handle of a sliding glass door. Once he had the door a little way open, he let the hellhound pup down inside the house’s kitchen.

  “Run free,” he urged. The pup was already determinedly crossing the room, already on the scent. “Find your prey,” Kraas said. “Feast.”