Loving the Vampire
Marie Treanor
All rights reserved.
Copyright ©2007 Marie Treanor
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ISBN: 978-1-59596-608-7
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Editor: Crystal Esau
Cover Artist: Karen Fox
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Chapter One
In the midst of a fight, a non-combatant is a rarity. In this particular battle, he was inexplicable.
He stood at ease, high up on the ruined church roof, leaning his shoulder against the broken spire, a black, still silhouette against the eternal dusk of the sky. Only his coat seemed to move in the breeze. April’s first thought was that he was one of the hunters, a sniper awaiting his moment. And the hunters had guns. Several wounded lupi would testify to that, including the one who lay writhing in agony at her feet while she staunched his bleeding.
Fortunately, the hunters were all disarmed now, dispersed or taken. Apart from the one on the church roof. Having lost the battle, his intent must surely be assassination. Will.
Tugging the makeshift bandage tight, April swung round to shout a warning. At the same time, she drew the sling from her pocket and fitted her last hand-picked stone into it. It was a long shot, and a difficult angle, but she thought she could do it.
As she took careful aim, his head moved in her direction. However, fortune smiled, because he clearly despised her skill, not even troubling to crouch down. April swung the sling around her head, three times, and released the missile.
It flew true -- high, fast and accurate. She thought at first she’d hit him. His body seemed to sway backwards, but beyond that he didn’t stir. He certainly didn’t fall.
Hastily, she looked around her for cover. Lara and Craig were carrying the wounded lupi back inside the old school that had become their den. Although the fighting had stopped, the battle zone heaved with organized chaos as the victorious lupi celebrated in raucous song and laughter. Some marched their prisoners toward the school. Wounded hunters and lupi were carted off and in among it, the odd scavenger poked around for food, or for something to sell. Inevitable squabbles broke out over the spoils.
Will was nowhere to be seen. April knew him well enough to realize he wasn’t off celebrating his victory. He could re-emerge any time and probably would, if only to put an end to the scavenging, and then the sniper would…
The sniper, however, did not appear to be armed. Which made him not much of a sniper.
Frowning, April stared up at him. She couldn’t tell the direction of his gaze, but he didn’t seem to be an immediate threat. Certainly, he made no retaliation against her… So what the hell was he doing there? A rogue lupi, waiting to see which way the wind would blow? Someone from the city just out to watch the spectacle?
The ordinary city dwellers had stayed away. They had been notable by their absence on either side. Jack had thought they might join the hunters, though April could have told him otherwise. They were far too afraid of the lupi for that. Jack’s hunters had been largely strangers and incomers like himself, plus the odd crusading nutter from the city. They didn’t understand the people of this city any more than they did the creatures they tried to kill.
As the thoughts swept through April’s brain, she was already running toward the church. She paused only long enough to grab a few more stones from the ground, and sped the rest of the way with the sling grasped ready in one hand. In the other she held the knife she always carried. She hadn’t used it today. She preferred to bring down her opponents at a distance with the sling. Besides, she couldn’t help feeling it wasn’t truly her fight. It was Will’s, and to a lesser extent her father’s. On the other hand, she did care about her friends, particularly Will, which was why she chose now to deal with the watching stranger herself. That, and sheer curiosity.
If her quarry saw her coming, he made no move either to hide or to meet her. The last she saw of him before making her way inside the church, he still stood in the same place, his coat billowing around his knees.
The inside of the church was gutted. At the front, a door had been ripped off its hinges, providing April with a glimpse into a small, wrecked, slightly charred office. She could see it in the pale, flickering glow of several candles and a burning torch spread around the church. Someone was living here.
At the back, where April entered, the spiral stairs leading up to the bell tower were almost completely rotted. The wood left couldn’t bear much weight.
Clearly, discretion here was the better part of valor. Placing one wary foot on the first step, April called out, “Hey, you up there! Come down!” Let him break his legs instead.
Not surprisingly, nothing happened. It seemed the idiot must have broken all the stairs getting up there, and was now stuck. April aimed her sling at the circle of grey gloom above her head.
“Did you hear me, Shit-for-Brains? I said, get down here! Slowly, or I’ll knock your head off.”
“I am down here,” said a cool, soft voice behind her, causing her to whirl around and lose her footing on the rickety step. Instinctively, she grabbed at the wall for support and dropped her sling.
Oh bugger! But there’s still the knife…
The man stood quite still, only a few feet away. His coat was made of black leather, long and luxuriant. His gaze followed the bouncing sling, then rose slowly up to hers. Something jerked in the region of her stomach -- something like fear, or perhaps recognition, though of what or whom she couldn’t begin to work out.
He was tall, lean and pale even by the city’s standards. Oddly translucent skin stretched tautly over fine, high cheekbones, a straight, arrogant nose and strong, slightly pointed chin. On his broad forehead was a faint discoloration, like a fading bruise -- the only blemish she could find. His lips, which began to smile faintly, were thin, yet looked almost sculpted into a perfect shape. And his eyes -- his eyes were dark brown, the kind that are meant to be soft and warm, like a dog’s or a seal’s. They weren’t.
April shivered.
He said, “Although I hesitate to answer to -- er -- Shit-for-Brains.”
“Well, what do you expect to be called when you stand on top of a rotting roof in the middle of a fight? Who are you and what are you doing here?”
“I’d like to ask you the same questions.”
“Yes? But I’m the one with the knife.”
“Good point,” he acknowledged, watching April stroke the weapon with one loving finger. “Concisely made.”
April didn’t take her eyes off him. He was too still, too poised, and though she couldn’t smell him, every other sense shrieked danger.
He stirred, though only to lean his shoulder casually against the wall. The flickering torchlight shadowed his face, emphasizing the unspoken threat. He kept his gaze on her too. Cold, hard eyes, and yet April was sure she could read mocking amusement there. Perhaps she was meant to. But worse than that there was a weird, devastating
attraction to his person. To put it bluntly, he was sexy as hell. Even his voice…
“My name is Max and I was watching the -- er -- fight.”
“Why?”
His arched eyebrows lifted slightly. “I wanted to see who would win.”
“And were you pleased by the outcome?”
He laughed, a faint hissing sound against his gleaming white teeth. “No.”
“Then you are a hunter?”
“You could call me that. But then we’re all hunters in this city, aren’t we?”
“One way or another,” April allowed, “but we don’t all hunt lupi with the sole purpose of extermination.”
“Yes, that is ungentlemanly.”
Stung by his levity, April snapped, “If you’re not one of Jack’s boys, what are you doing here? Do you want the lupi dead too? And another thing, how did you get down from the tower so fast?”
He smiled slightly but didn’t answer. His eyes left hers, dropping to her lips, her throat and the rest of her body in a way that made her wish she was better covered. Body-hugging stretch jeans and a vest might have been all right in the heat of battle, but now that she was alone with a large, insolent stranger, they no longer seemed terribly suitable. Annoyingly, her body heated under his gaze, and yet her nipples hardened against the fabric of her top as if she were cold.
“I’m waiting!” she snapped.
His gaze came unhurriedly back to hers. She had no way of knowing if he liked what he saw. Again he smiled. “Little wolf,” he said softly, “I don’t need to answer your questions.”
He spoke the insult like a caress, inflaming her twice over. She took an angry step closer, brandishing the knife. “What the hell makes you think that?”
Ignoring the weapon’s threat, he leaned forward against it until she almost felt his breath tickling her cheek. Every tiny hair stood up on the back of her neck. She inhaled his scent and again got -- nothing. Yet her other senses went into overdrive. Her breath caught in fear and a sudden rush of unwelcome, overwhelming desire.
He said, “I’m bigger than you are.” And straightening, he turned on his heel and walked out of the church.
Totally enraged by this blatant disrespect, she launched herself after him, cannoning into his legs in a flying tackle that brought them both to the ground. Fortunately, April landed on top and surprise kept him immobile long enough for her to twist his arm up his back and lay her knife lovingly along the side of his throat.
“But I’m tougher,” she said, “and less stupid.”
* * *
Meanly, April wanted to push him inside the lupi den, so that he fell and provided her with an entrance. She wanted to punish him for something. For having such a tall, straight back and a loose, graceful stride so enticingly controlled, like a cat’s…
Watching him from behind during the short walk from the ruined church, she had found herself wondering what was beneath the long, leather coat he wore. Surely a good, tight arse, muscled and…
“Hey, April, what have you got there?”
It was Will, coming quickly toward them with his arm loosely around Lara. With relief, April lowered her knife and stowed it in her jeans pocket.
“Don’t know. Calls himself Max. Found him spying from the roof across the road. He isn’t armed.” But he’d watched her mockingly as she’d checked and only smiled when she discovered the semi-hardness between his legs. April had pretended not to notice either of those reactions, merely signaling for him to move forward. But once behind him, she knew her face flamed. His hardness turned her on, because it could only be for her.
Will paused before the stranger. Two tall men sizing each other up. Unexpectedly, Will said, “Nice coat.”
The stranger smiled. “Thanks. Finest wolf hide.”
April’s breath caught. A sudden silence fell in the bustling room. All the lupi looked up from whatever they were doing and then an angry mutter began to ripple toward her prisoner.
But Will only smiled back at him. “Liar. Don’t I know you?”
“No, but I know you.” Max glanced about him. Calmed by Will’s response, the lupi all returned to the tasks in hand -- cooking, eating, sorting weapons, tending wounded, standing watch by the broken windows. The stranger brought his gaze back to Will’s. “Leader of the pack,” he mocked. “Again. But will they still need you now the battle is over?”
So he was aware that the hunters’ threat had given Will his chance to reclaim leadership of the lupi. Why did that make her even more uneasy?
Will said, “It wasn’t really a battle. More of a…” He smiled, his gaze flickering to Lara. “… police exercise.” His nostrils twitched once.
The stranger’s thin lips curled. “Getting my scent, wolf?”
Will’s breath caught. “No. April, move away from him. Craig, I need rope.”
“Surely not to tie me up?” mocked the stranger.
“I apologize if it breaks the rules of hospitality you’re used to. But I’m afraid I don’t trust vampires.”
Vampires?
April’s mouth fell open. No scent. She’d got no scent from him at all, and she should have, even unchanged like this. There was latent threat in every movement he made -- and didn’t make. And yet…
The stranger’s eyes flickered once to her and she closed her mouth with a snap. Will had hooked an old chair with his foot and dragged it to Max. Obligingly, the “vampire” sat in it, saying conversationally, “Is that not an unfair prejudice in someone expecting equal rights for lupi?”
Whatever he was, he seemed to know all about Will.
Will shrugged. “I’m willing to be proved wrong. But I’ve never yet met a vampire with any moral values whatsoever. You count no one a friend and see no one that is not a meal. I’m not saying it’s your fault, but when you have to kill to survive it makes other species suspicious.”
“Moral values? In this city? My dear Will, why single out vampires? Even you are hardly above criticism. When I last saw you, you were mating with the little wolf here. And yet here you are now, smelling of this -- woman.” His eyes fell thoughtfully on Lara, who merely raised her eyebrows at him and sneered as only Lara could.
Max laughed.
Unable to keep silent, April blurted, “But he can’t be a vampire!”
“Why can’t he?” asked Lara, the newcomer to the city. “If you guys can be werewolves, I see no problem whatsoever with vampires, zombies, killer squids, creatures from the black lagoon…”
“He isn’t strong enough,” April interrupted. “I know I took him by surprise, but he couldn’t put up much of a fight. And he didn’t even try to feed from me. Vampires are supposed to be five times as strong as men -- at least twice as strong as lupi.”
She didn’t look at the stranger as she spoke. His aura was all strength and arrogance and, stupidly, it seemed almost like betrayal to reveal the truth. Lupi were far stronger than ordinary humans, and April had long ago learned how to look after herself. But taking Max had been too easy.
Will said quietly, “He doesn’t have the strength because he hasn’t fed recently. Look at him -- even for his kind he’s skin and bone. Which makes him all the more dangerous if you get close enough. He must not be untied tonight while we sleep, do you understand?”
“Damn,” said the vampire. “And here was I hoping for a banquet. You couldn’t just pass me a wounded hunter?”
“Christ,” said April, understanding at last. “That’s what you were waiting there for. To feed on the blood of the dying…”
The vampire laughed.
* * *
April was impatient to be gone, but since she had promised to meet her father here, she felt obliged to hang around. She rarely stayed long with the pack -- they thought it was denial, a refusal to accept what she was. But actually, what April refused to accept was that she had to be like anyone else at all.
So she was lupi, a “werewolf” created by some freak of radiation poisoning that occurred during or after the w
ar. That didn’t mean she had to live herded in a shed like cattle.
There was some affinity with the others, a recognition, but even more than Will himself, April was a loner. She lived with her family because she loved them -- but also because she had her own room there, and privacy. She wandered occasionally, especially when the call was strong -- she had even wandered from the city once and traveled south in search of a different, more acceptable life. But all she had found was that a different city didn’t make a different person. And home was still with her human family, not her species.
Now she wanted to be gone because of the vampire. Disgust with what he was -- surely the vilest of all the city’s mutant species, a creature who drained the blood of others to live -- warred with shame because her body had certainly warmed to his.
Even when her father came, she couldn’t leave immediately, for he brought some other people, men and women from the Council he was forming, and there was a big conference between them that included Will and Lara and herself. The other lupi listened in, mostly quiet, though occasionally one would ask a question that Will either answered or passed to one of the humans.
The humans, apart from her father, were wary of being here. Clearly relieved by Will’s veneer of civilization, they nevertheless looked as if they expected their hosts to transform into wolves at any moment. In fact, only Will, the strongest of them, could do so by choice. It was one of the things that had scared them into rejecting Will last year. The other lupi, including herself, were compelled by what they believed were the phases of the moon, although since the war had permanently darkened the skies, no one could prove it.
The humans were particularly interested in Will’s plans to make the lupi enforcers of law and order, although one woman did point out that this would be hard for most people to accept.
Lara said, “To be honest, a little fear can only help us at this stage. The lupi are extremely disciplined when they choose. I have experience of law enforcement in the Dome City and I’m more than happy to advise all I can.”
Loving the Vampire Page 1
