Bears of Burden: HUTCH

by Candace Ayers

  “Val, dear,” he replied, “I think you passed reasonable about three exits back.” She growled furiously, spitting like a panther.

  “Well?” urged Sasha in my direction.

  “Tomorrow!” I yelled. The wind was howling through the broken window and whipping my hair into my face. “Tomorrow, please!”

  He grabbed my wrist, in a grip tight enough to hurt, and jumped. He leaped backward, out of the window he’d recently crashed through, this time taking me with him. I felt a searing pain in my shoulder as we dove out of the building, and wondered how I was going to see the next few minutes, much less tomorrow.

  The wind screamed past my ears, until I realized it was me screaming.

  I had time to get a decent view of the lower building where we were headed, a hardware store, before he pulled me close to him. He hugged me tightly as we fell and, in spite of the cold air rushing by us, I smelled the scent of fresh apple and blackberry, with a touch of cinnamon, and I was oddly comforted.

  I closed my eyes and, a microsecond later, we landed, Sasha going back-first through the flimsy rooftop, down through a shelf of sinks and kitchen cabinets, to make a pretty big crater in the concrete floor. It knocked the wind out of me but, otherwise, I seemed to be injury-free. My shoulder hurt a little.

  “Oh my God!” I cried. “Are you alright? What the hell was that? What just happened?”

  “I’m fine,” he groaned, pulling himself up. “Come on, she could be right on our tail.”

  He scooped me up like a new bride and, before I had any time to protest, we found the fire exit. A quick kick broke the lock and we were outside. Waiting for us was a blood red Harley Davidson. It had fat tires, high handlebars, and was dripping in chrome.

  “Get on,” he instructed me.

  “Fucking wait,” I ordered. He froze.

  “What?”

  “What do you mean ‘what?’?” I asked, trying to remain calm. “I just had a sex dream about you, was attacked by someone who I can only hope was your sister, was pulled me out of a sixth floor window, fell through a Home Depot, and now you’re asking me to ride off on a motorcycle with a throbbing, dislocated shoulder? Is there any part of that I shouldn’t be questioning?”

  He considered this for a moment. “Give me your arm,” he said. I did. “Sorry, this is going to hurt a little.” He pulled and I cried out. Just like that, he’d successfully reset my shoulder.

  “Umm, thanks,” was all I could think of to say.

  “Anything else before you get on?” He asked.

  I just shook my head.

  He swung a leg over his bike, fired up the engine and I noticed something. It was ballsier, brassier, and bassier than any other motorcycle I’ve heard. “By the way,” he shouted over the noise of the bike, “that was a Lowes we fell through, not a Home Depot.”

  As we roared off, Sasha shouted that we needed a safe place to go. I offered my apartment, which he overruled. Somewhere with a lot of exposed iron would be ideal. I directed him to the gallery. It would be closed and empty all day, and the postmodern design of the building meant a lot of the structural girders and ironworks were on display. It was way downtown from the Medical District but his Harley was incredible and we flew there in minutes.

  I didn’t have my keys. Hell, I was still in a hospital gown; I didn’t even have my underwear. But, when I took him to the small staff entrance, it took him seconds to deftly pick the lock and open the door for me. I hurried inside to disable the alarm, before wandering into my office and collapsing on the big black leather chair behind my desk.

  Sasha sidled around my doorway, allowing himself to just barely enter the room, and casually leaned against the wall.

  “April,” he said, tentatively, “you must have…”

  “What?” I snapped at him. “Sasha, is it? What must I have Sasha?” I suddenly felt exhausted. More exhausted than I’d ever felt before. And cranky, no, pissed. “I don’t think you have any clue what I think, feel, or need right now.” I was raising my voice with every word. “I must have questions? Damn right! I must have no idea what’s happening? Fuck no! But right now, I need a minute. Please, just… just… get the hell out of my office.”

  For a second he looked incensed, he ground his jaw and narrowed his eyes. Then, just as quickly, his expression softened and his big, beautiful steel-gray eyes held a touch of regret. He nodded his understanding and left, quietly closing the door behind him.

  I leaned back in my chair, swiveling around to look at the Monet print on the wall behind me. The lights in the gallery were still off, but there was just enough dawn streaming through the office window to throw a light silver hue over the room.

  What kind of world had I just discovered? Guys projecting themselves into my dreams to feel me up, an S&M dominatrix attacking me, moving faster than any known creature, jumping out of a sixth-floor window without a scratch? And, the most horrifying of all, human bodies literally ripped to pieces after threatening me? I was certain now that it was Sasha’s motorcycle that arrived before I blacked out last night, which meant it must have been Sasha that saved me from Rectum and Darla. And, if that were true, who the hell was he? What the hell was he, and just how dangerous could whatever he was be?

  Chapter 5

  I dug out my spare clothes- jeans and an old Mötley Crüe t-shirt. I’d kept a change of clothes in the bottom drawer of my desk ever since I’d ruined a nice pantsuit by having to do some unpleasant physical labor at the gallery a few months back. Too bad I didn’t have the foresight to keep a spare bra and panties in my office, but who knew I’d be in here changing out of a hospital gown. I guess the shirt was tight enough to mostly keep my breasts under control and the jeans without panty lines made my butt look good. I sat in my desk chair to slide on my socks and tennis shoes.

  Now that I was a little calmer, I regretted yelling at Sasha. The man had saved my life twice, and in return I screamed in his face. Nice. He was hot, too, and unless I concentrated on stopping it, my mind kept wandering back to that dream. Standing naked in a snowy field, my skin shivering with desire under his soft caresses. Sasha was exceptionally handsome by any standards, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t attracted to him. Any red-blooded female would be drooling over his toned, heavily muscled body and dark, dangerous good looks. I couldn’t help but wish my dreams would have played out a little longer. Just a little, just long enough for me to… well, dreamland and reality were different worlds entirely. Actually, right now the only similarity was that they were both crazy and both implausible.

  I walked back out into the gallery’s main space intending to try to make things right with Sasha. He deserved an apology. The early morning light made it easy to navigate the gallery and I quickly found him in the far northeast corner of the building. I didn’t creep up on him, but I hadn’t called out to him either. I just watched him. He appeared to be in some sort of trance, his arms spread out to his sides like he was praying.

  A moment passed and his arms dropped. I was leaning against one of the exhibit walls observing.

  “It’s an old trick I picked up from a shaman in Namibia,” he said, without turning around. I didn’t realize he knew I was there. “I’ve warded the gallery to conceal us. The shaman are able to do it to hills and mountains with a high ferrous metal content when they needed to create a private and secluded sanctuary. Which is why I was hoping to find a location with ironworks.”

  “Seriously,” I smiled at him, “You were doing magic?” I rolled my head back and let out a loud laugh. I hadn’t meant it to sound quite so harsh, but my fatigue was taking its toll on me.

  He turned to face me, only he wasn’t smiling. Clearly but quietly he spoke, “After everything you’ve seen, in this and the dream world, you still deny that there’s more going on than your previous view of reality allowed?”

  “I didn’t say that,” I told him, “And, about the dreams. Who gave you permission to invade my head and feel me up?” It wasn’t that I’d minded
the feeling up or anything, but I didn’t like the patronizing way I felt he was talking to me now.

  “Always the spitfire,” He grinned, showing perfect white teeth. “You did.”

  “I did?”

  “It was a dream, your dream. You had total control over it. Anything that happened in your dream, you wanted to happen. Are you complaining?” he stalked slowly towards me, his body moving with a surprising grace for a man so muscular. His smile was captivating and his fierce, hooded eyes moved up and down my body lasciviously. The way he looked at me, I may as well have been standing naked. The raw hunger in his eyes felt like a heated, deliciously wicked, and arousing assault. “Let me show you something.”

  He clasped my arm and without breaking his stride, ushered me to the other side of the exhibit. There hung the Dobronravov I had procured last week, the one that led my boss Owen to offer me a promotion. It was a nude, a sexy, curvy, dark-haired woman was looking just away from the viewer, standing slightly bent forward, brushing her hair. She’d turned from a mirror and was laughing with carefree abandon.

  It was an exquisite work. Somehow, Dobronravov had been able to inject such joy and passion into the woman’s face. It looked almost as though a photo, a snapshot of the woman, had been taken at the moment her lover had said something that made her laugh deeply and genuinely, and with great affection.

  I loved this picture, which was why I’d put several years into getting the original here. I loved her for the happiness she projected; I loved the painter for capturing it for the world. Every time I looked at it, I felt at peace, content. This picture, of all that I’ve studied and worked with, elicited more powerful emotions from me than any other.

  “Do you remember that I told you that you love me already?” He was standing behind me, his hands on my shoulders, his head bent next to mine whispering softly into my ear. I could feel his solid chest at my back. My heart raced, blood suddenly rushing through my veins. He’d said it in my dream. My mouth was too dry to speak, so I simply nodded. “It is the truth. You do know me. Sasha is short for Aleksander. My name is Aleksander Dobronravov. I painted this picture.”

  “That… that’s … not possible,” I stuttered, looking back at him in shock, “Aleksander Dobronravov painted this picture nearly 300 years ago…”

  “Yes, I did,” he replied calmly. “I was alive 300 years ago. 400 years ago, in fact. I am an immortal. A vampire.”

  I shuddered in horror. Fear coursed through me. I followed my gut reaction, my fight-or-flight response, and pushed him away.

  “Get the fuck outta here!” I screamed, backing up against the wall. “That’s bullshit! Impossible! You’re a psycho!”

  He remained still, his hands raised in a plea for calm. “I’m sorry, April. I didn’t mean to frighten you, and I would never hurt you. Consider everything that’s happened this evening. Please. Valentina, the fall from the window. Does my confession at the very least make some sense out of these events?”

  Angry and weirded out as I felt, he had a point. I slid down the wall to sit on the floor and tried to control my breathing. I was light-headed, but I’d be damned if I was going to pass out in the same room as a vampire.

  “Valentina?” I managed to utter.

  “She’s also a vampire,” his face held a pained expression. “Valentina is… Valentina is a long story, but I owe you some sort of explanation, so I’ll make it brief. I was second in the coven in San Antonio. My ‘father’, for want of a better term, Bernhard, is the head of the coven. There had been a great rift between ours and another coven, and to try and mend fences, he arranged for Valentina, the ‘daughter’ of the head of the Austin coven, and me to marry. It’s a lot of political maneuvering, but I agreed because Bernhard has always been good to me. Okay?”

  I nodded. “You said ‘was’ second?”

  “Yes. That’s where things go sideways,” he tried a faint smile. “I quit. I left. Ran. Call it what you want, but I now have both covens and a really pissed Valentina after me. She’s always been a bit unstable, but until very recently, I hadn’t fully realized the extent of her insanity. She certainly doesn’t handle rejection well.”

  “Why did you leave?” I asked. My fear and anger had retreated as I got caught up in his tale, and I had a feeling that deep-down I already knew the answer to my question.

  Sasha didn’t respond right away. He seemed to be weighing his answer. He scanned the room, then closed his eyes. “I left because I finally found you, April.” My heart sped up again. “I told you I’d been waiting for you for centuries. I have. I’ve been in love with you for hundreds of years. I’d almost given up hope, but miraculously, I found you again. When I did, I refused to lose you because of some arranged marriage, however obligated I had been when the arrangement was made. Selfish, I suppose.”

  “Found me again?” I repeated, making it a question.

  He moved so fast I couldn’t see his motions until he’d lifted me off the floor and held me in front of the Dobronravov painting. The movement made me a little dizzy, but his touch was careful and he hadn’t hurt me.

  “Look at her, April,” he said, determination in his voice. “Really look. Don’t you see it? Don’t you recognize her?”

  I looked. I looked as hard as I could until, gradually, it came to me. The body, the hair, the face, it really was almost like a photograph.

  “It’s… that’s… me…?” I whispered.

  His hand on my wrist stretched my arm out towards the painting. My fingers brushed across the surface of the paint and the world dissolved away.

  Chapter 6

  Smells of good food cooking and rich wood wafted through the air along with the sounds of children laughing and playing. They were my children. Sunlight streamed in through the open window warming my bare skin, and I felt joyously happy. I was head over heels in love.

  My eyes began to make out shapes but a haze covered my vision and everything was moving slowly. I could see my own form reflecting back at me from a large wood-framed mirror. My hair was different, a little darker, and I was naked, as though I had just bathed. Thick wooden beams supported the plastered walls. Leaning my head back to brush my long dark hair, I saw similar beams forming rafters in the roof. It didn’t take an architect to figure out this was a very old house.

  “Do you have it yet?” I heard a voice say, then realized the voice was mine.

  “A moment more, dear one,” it was Sasha’s voice I heard replying. “I swear to you, if Almighty God and his angels were to gaze down upon your beauty at this very moment, they would weep tears enough to require a thousand more Noahs to build a thousand more Arks.”

  My heart skipped a beat. I paused, my hairbrush frozen in midstroke, and turned. Sasha’s hair was longer and bound back with a black ribbon. He was naked from the waist up, and wore breeches and square-toed shoes, He was smiling, relaxed, with a sketch pad on his knee and a quill in his hand.

  “That’s blasphemy, you realize?” I smiled at him. The more I watched him, the more enraptured I felt. My skin prickled at remembrances of his tender touches, my breath quickened as I re-imagined his passionate kisses, and an aching throbbed at my core as I recalled the thousand ecstasies I’d relished, each time he’d burst his seed inside me.

  “Then let me be struck down rather than hold my tongue and fail to tell you how radiant a creature you are,” he laughed. I laughed too, knowing the deep and genuinely passionate union of pure love we shared with one another. That, it occurred to me, was the moment that he’d painted. Everything he’d said was true. We had enjoyed the deepest love centuries ago.

  I dragged the brush from my hair and took a step towards him, but the room started spinning again. I lost the hazy shapes altogether, the children’s laughter grew quieter and more distant until the lights dimmed and I was back in the grey gallery, staring at a Dobronravov portrait… of myself.

  Tears streaked my cheeks. Tears for the lost joy of a life I could feel but not remember. I turned to look a
t him. His beautiful, intensely loving face was almost exactly as it had been in the vision. He placed a hand on my cheek, softly brushing away a tear. I shivered at the touch of his fingers against my flesh.

  “I’ve been in love with you every day since the day we met, almost three centuries ago,” he whispered, his mouth suddenly only a hair’s width from my lips. “I’ve been waiting since your death to see you again, hold you again.” His lips grazed mine, agonizingly softly. I remembered the feeling of loving him. I realized now why I couldn’t connect with people my own age, and why no man ever seemed to hold my interest for very long. My soul, or something, still belonged to him, still ached for him and, now, so did my body.

  His kiss intensified, the touch of his soft, full lips on mine made my knees tremble. His strong arms wrapped around me in a fierce but tender embrace. A sizzling heat coursed through me. My body reacted to this man as though it had found its missing limb and would not accept separation from him again. My hands reached up to his neck, and then my fingers buried themselves in his thick, dark hair. I pulled his mouth harder onto mine. I needed him. I was feeding a deep longing passion; devouring his mouth with an intensity I’d never known before, until we had to break apart to breathe.

  His hand grasped the side of my t-shirt and Sasha tore the material clean off me, as easily as though he were ripping a page from a book. My heart was overtaken by the onslaught of physical desire. My breasts tumbled loose and with my hands still tangled in his hair, I pulled his face forward into my exposed chest. I threw my head back as his lips found the delicate skin under my breasts, his tongue stroked my areola, and his teeth gently attacked my pebbled nipples.

  Each touch, each nibble, and each caress forced me to lean into him farther, the sensations travelling a searing path to my center. My pussy throbbed, its juices overflowing in a desperate cry for its mate. My hands left his hair and fumbled their way to his jeans. I stroked across the front of him feeling his huge, hard bulging desire for me. As I rolled my fingers across his trapped erection, he hissed sucking in air and his member twitched under my touch. I managed, with quivering fingers to unfasten his jeans and release his thick, lengthy erection. It sprang out, stiff and eager. I wrapped my hand around it, and as I gripped him, his face rose from my cleavage.