Some of the legends about his kind that the mortals spoke were true, and many held a kernel of truth. Many more were just plain wrong. The long fangs that grew and were used to tear out the throats of his victims were real. He could also use his fangs to infect a victim with the illness by carefully, gently, puncturing the skin to pierce the veins. He and his kind drank the blood of the living for nourishment. This much was true. Once drained of blood, the victims did not arise as the undead.
Different people in different places called McGill and his kind by various names. The most common, from Eastern Europe, was vampire. Here in Scotland, and Ireland, the Gaelic tongue simply called them the sooder folley. Literally, blood suckers.
Most of the legends held that the vampire could only go out at night and that the sun would kill them. McGill smiled as he passed through the bright rays of the afternoon sun streaming through the window. The position of the Aten had nothing to do with it.
No one knew if his kind were truly immortal. McGill was more than ten thousand years old. He knew of others nearly twice that age, dating back to the dawning of human civilization. The little white lie all vampires shared was that they couldn't die. It simply wasn't true.
The legends held that a wooden stake driven through the heart, or decapitation followed by burning the body, would kill him, but the legends also missed the mark.
Perhaps tied to another legend, the ingestion or introduction of silver into the body of the sooder folley would indeed kill them. This, along with the precognitive dreams, led some of his kind to believe it was the ability of the silver to kill the viruses that would cause death.
McGill knew that death would come for him one day, probably at the hands of his soon-to-be beloved wife.
As he approached the door to the Great Hall, he heard the peasant protesting his innocence to the guards.
Yes, he would feed today.
* * * *
"Ye're drunk, mad, or both.” Duncan tossed back the last of his ale and waved at the wench for more.
Gilroy shook his head. “Nay, she's sooder folley. Dinna ye feel it?"
"Nay. Even if there were such things, how would ye know? It's nay like ye're a famous churchman in town."
"I don't understand how I ken, but I do."
The wench brought two more mugs of ale. Duncan sipped to get the head down. “I still say ye're mad."
"Then how do ye explain those poor souls who hae gone missing around here? McGill is one of them too, and now she's here to spawn with the devil himself!"
"There are robbers and English about, that's all. These people who hae gone missing just ran afoul of them.” Duncan shrugged. “Maybe the children just became lost."
"And I say ye are not seeing it right."
As Duncan prepared to remand Gilroy again, one of the villagers rushed into the pub, sweat streaming down his face.
"We just found old MacRath dead!” The man collapsed into a chair, grabbed the nearest mug to his hand, and drank deeply. Ale ran down his chin and neck as he gulped for both beer and air.
The village didn't have a proper church, but it had a priest, as much of a priest as Brother Bryce could be between drunken stupors. If the villager had come in an hour later, the priest would have been unconscious.
Brother Bryce stumbled to the table and sat down hard across from the panting farmer. “Now, MacCallen, just calm down and tell us what ye ken about this."
The empty mug made a loud clack as MacCallen slammed it down on the table. “Brother, it's terrible! He's dead, old MacRath is, and some wild beast is to blame! His throat is torn out!"
The priest quickly made the sign of the cross and mumbled something in Latin that Duncan didn't understand. “May God rest his soul. Where is the body now? I'll be giving him the last rites."
"We left him where he was found, with four good men and torches to keep the other animals from...” MacCallen trailed off, his eyes going round. He snatched another half-full mug from the table and poured most of the ale on him instead of in him.
Because the priest looked just as shocked at the idea of MacRath being eaten as MacCallen, Duncan decided to step in. “That's good thinking. We should go fetch the poor wretch.” He hesitated, judging if MacCallen would be able to even show them the place. “Can you take us to him?"
"Aye, I think so.” The man shivered a little. “'Tis a horrid sight, though."
"I know. Come, let's go.” Duncan turned to speak to Gilroy, but he was nowhere to be seen.
* * * *
She had decided McGill would have to drag her to dinner by force. She wouldn't go on her own. Yet, Melissa now found herself following one of the servants to the dining hall.
After passing through a maze of halls and passageways, the servant stopped before a towering wooden door. Dark and foreboding, Melissa knew that nothing good would lie within. The man pulled the door open and bowed as she entered. The huge plank slammed solidly shut behind her.
In the flickering light of the torches held in stanchions around the walls of the large room, she made out a long table. At the near end was a single place setting. At the far end sat McGill, silently smiling at her.
He waved his arm at the empty chair near her. “Please, be seated."
The dancing shadows on the wall seemed to morph into gyrating forms locked in mortal combat. Her senses, heightened by her nervousness of being so close to McGill, amplified the effect, but she moved to the chair and sat down.
The man smiled. Melissa knew that smile hadn't changed a bit in three thousand years, but while it had looked so inviting and caring once, it now looked malevolent. The darting rays of the torches splashed over his face, and she could see millennia of death there. How many mortals had he killed over the long centuries?
But, she knew that she herself was no better. She too killed humans to feed, to live. And that was the way of all life. The strong fed on the weak. The mouse killed the bug. The hawk killed the mouse. The eagle killed the hawk. The leopard killed the eagle. Why should her kind be any different?
McGill nodded to the wine goblet resting on the table before her. “Please, drink and relax."
She lifted the goblet and swirled it gently, the red fluid lapping at the sides of the vessel. Melissa looked up and found his gaze fixed on her. “And I suppose now you'll make a toast after the mortal custom."
"Yes, I shall.” He lifted his own goblet and tilted it toward her. “To you, Melissa.” A wry smile came to his lips. “Long life."
"Bastard.” She sipped at the wine.
The flavor filled her mouth like a crashing wave. The slight copper-like tinge made her shiver as the fluid slipped over her tongue and down her throat. She gulped the liquid as the change came over her. When she looked up, McGill was still at the end of the table smiling softly. Through the green tint of her killer vision, his form was glowing red and white from the heat of his body.
Forcing the goblet from her lips, she gasped. “Blood! Human blood!"
"Yes, my love.” He shrugged. “No one will miss just another peasant."
Anger replaced the satiation she felt only an instant before. “How dare you!"
She lunged from the chair, sailing over the table at him with her fangs exposed to rip at his flesh. As she flew, she saw McGill flash in an instant, the change taking his body faster than she thought possible. He easily caught her hands and flipped her through the intervening space, slamming her against the wall padded only by the thin tapestry.
Before she could move from her crumpled position on the floor, he was on her. He yanked her long hair and pulled her up to stand before him. McGill's lips peeled back to fully expose the two-inch fangs, which shimmered pearly white in the torchlight.
He growled again, and he grinned. “Why must we do this dance every time we meet?"
"You knew the blood would push me over!"
Throwing his head back to laugh, McGill exposed his throat to her, but his hands held her fast. She couldn't move to bite him any more
than she could resist the powers of the blood.
"My love, we always do this, as we have for three thousand years."
She sighed. "Quod me nutrit me destruit."
"Yes, and I, as well."
His steel eyes seemed to soften a bit, though they were still the deadly eyes of a ferocious killer. He pulled her face to his, his lips pressing to hers. Their fangs clicked together, and she felt the sharp points of his teeth pricking the skin of her lips and tongue. His grip lessened on her wrists, but despite her outward desire to harm—or if possible, to kill him—she wrapped her arms around his waist to pull herself closer to him. His mouth moved over her face, the tips of his fangs digging into the soft skin of her cheeks.
As she had done thousands of years ago, Melissa leaned her head back, her heart pounding like a drum and her breath pulsing quickly in and out of her body. Her throat was fully exposed to him, inviting the bite that would bring the immortal curse on her yet again.
She had spent the last three millennia looking for a cure from the illness or an absolution from the curse this man placed on her, but she would do it all again and without hesitation. Melissa wanted to believe it was the effect of the blood, the tangy nourishment that triggered these feelings in her. Perhaps some part of the evolution of this sickness or damnation pushed her to find one of her kind to mate.
But as he moved his hands over her breasts, squeezing firmly and yet with an odd tenderness for a predator, she knew that far more than a simple drive to procreate made her want McGill.
Just as she had on that night in the gardens of Ma'at, she loved him and wanted him. The last remaining rational bit of her mind knew she always would.
Because he stood only a little taller than her own petit frame, Melissa could feel McGill's hard cock pressed against her stomach. She longed to feel him fill her, as he had done so many times in the past.
He gripped the material of her blouse and ripped the cloth from her, leaving her breasts exposed. He leaned and sucked her nipple into his mouth, the pointy tips of his teeth poking into the skin sending chills through her. He moved his hand under her skirt and kirtle, and the nails lengthened to talons flicked over her clit, making her jump.
As his fingers pushed against her cunt, Melissa felt the odd combination of passions common to her kind wash over her. There was the passion of the sex pushing her mind further and further from what mortals call rational thought. Did the tiger or the lion or the leopard remain rational in the throes of sexual congress? What of the mortals themselves?
He straightened and flung her, without effort, onto the long table, the impact causing dishes and goblets to rattle. His face contorted into an expression that haunted the nightmares of mortals. McGill's fangs glistened wetly in the flickering light. His eyes held a cat-like shape, and his pupils glowed green set in the blood-red irises against the jet black of the eyeball itself. His face twisted into a grimace that few living mortals had ever seen, one to cause strong men to scream and cry.
Melissa knew she looked the same now as the second passion moved over her—the passion of the hunt and, eventually, the kill.
McGill ripped at his clothes as he growled. His rigid cock sprang from his kilt as he shredded the material with his claws, and as it always did, the sight made her yelp with the anticipation of what was to come.
She pulled at her tattered clothing, ripping the fragments away to leave her fully naked on the table. She shook with desire and passion, but some part of her knew that the love she had always felt for this man, this monster, raged within her as well.
He leaped through the air to land atop her. In a single firm stroke, his cock entered and filled her cunt completely. As she wrapped her legs around his hips, his thrusting became intense, causing the heavy oak table to slide with raking sounds on the worn stone floor.
They grunted and growled together, his lips finding hers and his tongue flickering deeply into her mouth. McGill gripped her hips with a frightful ferocity as he slammed his raging hardness into her again and again. The passion had come on him and the animal zeal had taken control.
Her own zeal and passion assaulted Melissa. Her hips thrust back against his as he pounded against her. She longed for just a fraction more of his hardness to enter her with each push. The tingle of his claws digging into the skin of her hips drove her to want even more. Her own claws ripped at the skin of his back, leaving wounds that would infect and kill a mortal man. McGill would heal in a matter of minutes.
Despite the cause of her curse or illness, Melissa had been a mortal woman in the distant past, and passions and desires still lived in her. The pure pleasure of his hard cock sliding in and out of her wet cunt, filling her to near bursting, gave her a satisfaction she had never known.
Her body shivered, and the waves of her orgasm crashed down upon her. Voicing a growl able to make mortal men faint away, she dug her claws deeply into McGill's back until she felt them scraping bone. She bucked and flailed under him as the tempo of his thrusts increased.
Suddenly, he slammed against her and roared like a lion. His hot seed erupted into her like the flowing lava she'd seen on the islands of the seas in the Far East. He collapsed, becoming deadweight on top of her.
After a few moments, McGill managed to lift himself onto one arm and looked down into her face. The change had receded with the tide of their passion, and his face held that old, gentle smile she knew so well from the many centuries they had known each other.
"Why could we not just have done that without the preliminary hostilities?"
"Bastard."
* * * *
The scene of MacRath's death was just as MacCallen had described it: Horrid.
The constable was away and wouldn't be back for several weeks, but Duncan didn't think that mattered much. The man was dead, his throat ripped out by some animal or another. Nothing more and nothing less.
The pale form of MacRath rested face-up on a stony outcropping, his eyes wide open and an expression of terror on his countenance. Duncan did wonder about a few things, though.
What animal could have done this? He'd seen men mauled by bears before, and they hadn't looked like this. Other than the left side of his neck ripped open, there wasn't another mark on the body that Duncan could see. A cat would have left scratches.
He could see no places on the body where an animal had chewed it. The animal hadn't eaten MacRath, simply killed him. Unlike men, animals didn't kill for sport or the joy of the kill. Animals killed to eat.
It didn't look like a wound from any weapon he knew of, either.
There was no blood on the ground around MacRath, either. When he was a child, a man his father had hired to help with the harvest one year had been using a scythe to cut the grain. Somehow, the blade had come loose from the handle and had swung around, hitting the man's neck and nearly cutting his head off. Blood, lots of blood, went everywhere until the man died. And yet here, Duncan saw only a few small drops of red on the rocks.
While puzzling this, Duncan knew his place. His place wasn't to worry about such things. That was for educated men.
He listened as Bother Bryce said the last rites. Then, he gathered limbs and the men made a stretcher. They carried MacRath home to his wife so she could bury him.
* * * *
The wedding ceremony was as much of a farce as the marriage itself. Some nasty priest who reeked of ale said a few words she didn't listen to, and that was that.
Melissa avoided McGill as much a she could. She both hated and loved him. The hatred was easy to understand. He'd damned her to immortality and feeding on living things. Not cattle or chickens, but thinking beings. The love side was harder. Even after three thousand years, she didn't understand the intense attraction she had for him. The reaction of her body—the moist flow from her cunt, the warmth spreading over her breasts—that was even stranger.
So she avoided him. In the week since they were married, she'd seen him twice. That was two times too many.
Today
she decided to go out and survey her lands. As a child, she had learned to ride a horse and to handle a chariot. Now, she rode the horse McGill had provided to her. A large white mare with fire and spirit, the horse proved surefooted and steady under the reins.
She managed to convince the guards to stay behind, and she rode the countryside alone. Not that anything or anyone could have been an actual threat to her. Not even the wildcats or rabbit-headed cats offered a danger.
As she rounded a curve in the road, she saw a man working in a field. Stopping the horse, Melissa realized she was looking at the same field where she had seen the two men upon her arrival to this forsaken land. Her senses picked up the smell of the man, and she smiled a little as she recognized his scent.
She rode on toward him.
He watched her as the horse clattered over the stone road until she reached the point nearest to him.
"Ho, farmer! Come to me!” The coat of arms on the saddle blanket clearly showed, and she saw his eyes flicker to it for a moment.
As he walked through the poor soil, the muscles in his legs, arms, and neck flexed and bunched like small boulders under his tan skin. Melissa swallowed to clear the freely running saliva in her mouth.
He reached the fence and leaned his hoe against it. “My lady.” He bowed, but only slightly.
"Are you the tenant of my husband for this land?"
"I am. Congratulations on your wedding.” His smile faltered a little as his gaze drifted down her chest, over her hips, and settled for a second on the exposed skin of her leg resting against the horse's flank. “I'm Duncan Campbell."
She pulled her gaze away from his hazel eyes and looked at the field. “I'd like to better see your workings of my husband's fields. Come help me down."
Campbell smiled a little, and he hopped over the low fence. When she turned in the saddle, he put his hands on her waist and lifted her without effort. The strength and heat in his touch made her shiver a little. Without pause, he turned and lowered her gently to the ground on the other side of the fence before hopping back over again to stand beside her.
Ruins of a Past Day: Bloodlust 1 Page 3
