A Cat's Chance in Hell

by Sharon Hannaford

  In the moment of abrupt clarity, she could suddenly see that it was a Vampire on top of her. His fangs were more fully extended than she had ever seen before; his face was a mask of strain, the muscles along his jaw writhing like angry snakes. The red mist hazing her mind began to dissipate, and she found herself wondering what the hell was going on. She knew she was angry, she knew she wanted to cause harm; to rip, to tear, to break, but she had no idea why.

  “Gabrielle,” a deep, masculine voice called to her, it sounded strangely stressed. She wondered fleetingly why that struck her as odd. The voice continued, it was trying to be soothing, but she was in no mood to be soothed.

  “Gabrielle, I know you’re angry, but I need you to try and be calm for a few moments. No one wants to harm you,” the reasonable tone of the voice was grating on her nerves, “if you take a few deep breaths the mist will lift from your mind, and you’ll start to feel more yourself.”

  She tried once more to heave the Vampire off of herself, but even as she tried, she could feel the darkness evaporating and the rage begin to drain from her. As her other senses returned to her, she could smell blood, her own as well as another’s. She had never thought that blood smelt like anything but blood before, of course, she could distinguish between human and animal blood, but this blood had an entirely different accent to it. It smelled…enticing. Somehow delicious. She found her mouth aching with the need to taste it.

  “Ugh!” she moaned in disgust as her conscious mind processed that idea. She shook her head slightly, trying to clear the last of the fog. What was it with her and foggy vision lately?

  “Julius?” she asked cautiously, blinking as she focused on his tense face hovering above her.

  Julius released a relieved sigh and loosened his grip on her wrists a little, his body softening slightly from the rigid cage it had formed over her.

  She was suddenly extremely aware of the muscled length of his body nestled demandingly into the relative softness of hers.

  “Gabrielle,” he replied, looking down at her with a familiar tilt to his eyebrow.

  “What are you doing on top of me, why are you bleeding and why are your fangs so long?” she asked in a droll, husky voice.

  The tension seemed to drain from his face in an instant, and he lifted some of his body weight from her, allowing her to move under him, though not removing himself from his disturbing position over the length of her body.

  “My fangs are at full length, because you’re bleeding.” He said this as though it explained the situation completely and in his mind it probably did, but Gabi was simply more perplexed. “I am bleeding because you sliced my arm open with Nex while I was attempting to subdue you, and I am on top of you because that was the only way I could think of to subdue you without hurting you.”

  Gabi pulled her wrists free and brought them up to push at his chest, trying to move him further away, he winced slightly seeing the vicious red marks his fingers had imprinted on them. She stopped wriggling, looking bemusedly at her wrists and bleeding knuckles. As the haze continued to clear from her mind, a sharp ache began to pulse through her collarbone, and she stifled a groan.

  “I’m even more confused now,” she complained, starting to sound annoyed again. “What are you talking about ‘subdue me’?”

  “You probably want to try and stay calm right now. If you start getting angry again, I’ll be forced to ‘subdue’ you for even longer. Not that I’d mind,” he said with a devilish smirk on his diabolically handsome face.

  The innuendo in his velvet voice sent a blazing hot zing roaring through her body, her nipples tightened in response and a breath caught in her throat. His head suddenly dipped with the swiftness of a striking snake, and he ran his tongue across the cut on her face, lapping up the trail of blood as he went. A shiver ran right through him as he closed his eyes and savoured the taste.

  “You taste absolutely delectable,” he purred in a rough voice.

  She went dead still under him; he could taste her lust turn to uncertainty.

  “Don’t worry I won’t eat you,” he said dryly. “Not unless you want me to.” He left the sentence hanging, his expression turned to sinful, hopeful expectation.

  She snorted; annoyance replacing the anxiety.

  “You idea of bondage sex is a bit too full on for my liking,’ she responded, showing him her bruised wrists.

  “I apologize for that,” he said, instantly remorseful. “If I could have been more gentle I would have, but you were trying to kill me at the time,” he pointed out, lifting his arm to show her the already healing cut, revealed through the tatters of his shirt sleeve.

  In that moment her conscious mind was once again shoved into the back recesses of her brain. The sight and scent of Julius’s blood, still seeping from the deep gash, drew her like a moth to moonlight. She lifted her head and caught several of the blood drops on her tongue as they slid down his arm. She distantly heard him draw in a quick, surprised breath. The taste spread across her tongue, burning like a trickle of neat whiskey, warm and sharp like a strong red wine. She wanted more; she could feel an uncomfortable ache in her mouth, as though her canines were trying to push further out of her gums. She gasped as another drop landed on her lip and sucked it in greedily. Gabi opened her eyes to find him holding his arm near her mouth; she felt drugged, without a will of her own, but couldn’t bring herself to care.

  “Run your tongue over the wound, Gabrielle, it will help to stop the bleeding.” Julius breathed, his voice rough and unsteady, strangely accented by his extended fangs.

  She found herself complying as though compelled, but not feeling any power flowing from him. She wondered, in a small, back corner of her mind, where the compulsion was coming from. As she licked the length of the angry wound, removing all traces of remaining blood, she realised that the cut was no longer oozing blood, she ran her tongue over it again, feeling almost disappointed that it was closing in front of her eyes.

  “Thank you,” he said in a deeply sensual voice, “now let me heal yours.” He bent his head to her cheek where the cut was still seeping blood.

  She willingly turned her head for him. She gasped as his tongue gently lapped at the gash, carefully layering saliva over the area. The intense, burning pain of the wound immediately lessened into a warm, dull throb, and she sighed in relief. Even the escalating pain in her shoulder and ribs was subsiding, as though she had just been given a shot of morphine.

  Next, he slowly, languorously brought her hands up to his mouth one at a time and cleaned the blood from her knuckles and a few smaller slices on the backs of her hands. When he raised his face to look at her again, his irises had bled to deep midnight blue, and his breathing was hoarse. She could feel his body hardening where it still lay close against hers, her body tightened in response, a blazing need igniting deep in her core.

  It was evidence of their total distraction that neither of them heard or sensed the Vampires in the doorway until someone cleared their throat. They both froze instantly.

  “We, uh, came to make sure that you hadn’t killed each other,” a male voice said, sounding more than a little amused. “Apparently, you have it all under control though. Glad to see you’re both alive.”

  “Yes, Kyle,” Julius ground out from between his teeth, “as you can see we are both fine. We will be downstairs as soon as Gabi is feeling more herself.” He moved slightly away from her to look at the new arrivals, but held her in place with one hand.

  She could feel her cheeks turn a bright flaming red as she caught a glimpse of Marcello, Charlie and Fergus peering around the doorway, surveying the mess with appraising eyes and sending furtive glances at the two of them lying on the floor. They were all trying unsuccessfully to conceal grins. Gabi simply closed her eyes and prayed for the carpet to open up and swallow her.

  “I distinctly remember telling the rest of you to stay away from here,” Julius’s voice had become hard and unfriendly. “I’m sure I can find some work for you if you
find yourselves at a loose end.”

  The rest of the Vampires very quickly seemed to remember something pressing they had to do and vanished, though the sense of their merriment lingered in the air. Kyle gave them a quick amused salute and left too, sauntering back out the door, neatly avoiding a broken chair with an assortment of knives and short swords embedded in the head rest.

  Gabi watched as Julius rolled off of her completely, rose lithely to his feet and adjusted his pants slightly, she assumed to accommodate his raging erection. By the heat of his glare at the now empty doorway, his guard were going to find themselves with the most gruelling training he could come up with over the next several days.

  “I just remembered why I was so annoyed,” Gabi muttered darkly.

  Julius tensed immediately, as though he expected her to lunge for Nex, but she had no desire to even move, she just tracked him with her eyes.

  “So, I’m not going to apologise for your office,” she said defiantly, “but I am sorry for cutting you. I don’t know what came over me. I have a nasty temper at times, but I’ve never lost control like that before.”

  Julius bent down to her. “Come on, let me help you up, I want to see what other damage you’ve done to yourself, there’s a lot of glass lying around. How about I send for someone to the coffee shop, and then I’ll try to explain what happened.” He deftly lifted her into his arms and began negotiating his way out of the room.

  Gabi couldn’t even raise the energy to argue with him about carrying her. She felt exhausted, languid and more than mildly frustrated, but also strangely vital, as though she had just had a two week holiday at a health spa. And her shoulder and ribs felt like there was nothing wrong with them. Weird.

  “Are you talking about the temper tantrum, or what happened afterwards,” she asked.

  Julius snorted wryly. “Both, I guess. It’s going to be a long night.”

  Julius took her downstairs back to the large room with the bar and deposited her on one of the couches. She’d felt a brush of his power as they swooped down the staircase, and she assumed he was ‘ordering’ coffee.

  “Sit still,” he said as he went over to the bar counter and came back with a small glass bowl.

  She looked at the empty bowl in confusion, but he just smiled a tiny lift of his lips, and told her to lean her head back towards him. She gave him a dubious look but shifted so her head was closer to him. Realisation dawned when she felt his deft fingers in her hair and heard the plink of glass shards falling into the bowl. He continued running his fingers through her hair long after the sound of glass dropping into the bowl had stopped. Gabi found the feel of his fingers running through the strands of her curls so calming, so mesmerising and so sensual that she just couldn’t bring herself to tell him to stop. It just felt too damn good. Now she knew exactly why cats loved to be stroked over and over again, and why they purred, she felt like purring herself.

  They were interrupted by a timid knock at the door. Julius flinched slightly as though he too had been on another plane of existence and had been brought back to reality with a thump.

  “Come in, Claudia,” he said, his tone slightly husky, and got up to take the tray from her. “Is Kyle still here?” he asked her. When she nodded silently he asked her to send him to join them. As he turned to take the coffee to Gabi he found her sitting up flexing her shoulder experimentally. His eyebrows knitted into a small frown.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know I wasn’t particularly careful of your other injuries earlier. The surprise of seeing you in the Rage drove everything else from my mind.”

  “Apparently you don’t have too much to apologise for,” she said, continuing to rotate her arm. “My collarbone feels like there’s nothing wrong with it, and the ache is even gone from my ribs.” There was a look of wonder and confusion on her face now. “Look,” she gasped, showing him her wrists and hands. “The bruising is gone and my knuckles are almost healed.”

  It was true; there were only faint greenish yellow remnants of bruising where the vivid red and blue imprints of his hands had been and only pale pink marks where her knuckles had been split, grazed and bleeding. She looked up at him in amazement.

  He put a steaming coffee cup and a donut into her outstretched hands and smiled at her astonishment.

  “I told you that Vampire blood heals,” he said wryly, careful to keep any condescension out of his tone. They didn’t need a repeat of the Rage, best to keep her calm and not push any of her buttons right now.

  “Hmmmm,” she snorted, burying her nose in the warm steam rising from the coffee. “Maybe I should have listened. Then you and my traitor of a best friend wouldn’t have felt that you needed to leave me behind tonight,” she said grouchily as Kyle loped into the room. He was carrying Nex and her leather jacket which, miraculously, seemed to have survived unscathed.

  “Whoa,” Kyle said in mock astonishment. “Did she just say she should have listened to somebody?” When Gabi just glared balefully at him he turned dramatically overacted awestruck eyes on Julius. “Man, I never thought I would hear those words come out of that mouth.”

  Julius saw the irritation flash across her face. “Gabrielle, keep calm, he’s just teasing. Kyle,” Julius said in a warning tone, “getting her angry right now is not a good idea. Grab yourself a beer and I’ll explain why.”

  Gabi and Kyle devoured the box of donuts while they listened to Julius.

  “What you just experienced is known in the Vampire community as Red Rage. It is fairly common in recently turned Vampires. It is usually triggered by anger or irritation, occasionally even by fear or a shock, but the root cause is usually a lack of blood. It sometimes takes a young one a few months to figure out exactly how often they need to feed, those who have been underfeeding are more susceptible. The Rage initially builds slowly until the physical need to release the rage is so great that they have to act on the impulse or feel they will explode. Unfortunately, the physical release does little to calm the rage, and far more to incite it. In this state, nothing and no one near them is safe. The only way to halt the progress of the Rage is to physically restrain them until they’ve calmed down enough for the Red Rage to dissipate. Feeding helps, but that usually isn’t a good idea for the donor. It sometimes requires at least three or four Vampires to restrain one in this state, depending on the strength and skill of the young Vampire. The term Red Rage originated from the fact that when a Vampire is in the grip of this rage their eyes turn blood red.”

  Gabi caught Kyle glancing surreptitiously at her eyes which were now only slightly blood-shot. Both of them were so utterly engrossed in the explanation that they didn’t even notice Alexander enter the room until he spoke from his position leaning against the door frame.

  “So she was in full blown Red Rage?” he asked, sounding surprised.

  Gabi actually jumped.

  “Shit,” she swore almost spilling her coffee. “Damn freaky Vampire. Breath next time so we know you’re there,” she scowled at Alexander.

  He walked forward to join them, amusement twinkling evilly in his cornflower blue eyes.

  “Alexander,” Julius said warningly.

  “Yes, yes, I know,” he said, “no pissing her off if we don’t want another demonstration of her destructive capabilities.” He folded himself into the couch next to Julius, looking thoughtful. “What do you think this means?” “I’m not sure,” Julius said slowly, but it was clear that he had some idea.

  “Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking,” Alexander asked him with barely disguised excitement.

  “Will you two stop talking like telepathic twins and just spit it out?” Gabi ground out tiredly.

  The two Vampires looked at each other and with a kind of awed reverence and said, “Dhampir,” at the same time.

  Chapter 16

  “What?” Gabi and Kyle asked in synchronic confusion.

  “A Dhampir,” Julius repeated slowly.

  “What is a Dhampir?” she asked, carefu
lly enunciating the unfamiliar word.

  “It’s a creature from Vampire legend. A bit like the Vampire equivalent of the Yeti.” Julius suddenly broke off when he saw the disbelieving outrage on Gabi’s face and rushed on to explain. “Er, that came out wrong, I don’t mean in appearance or behaviour. I mean that there are stories of them in Vampire folklore throughout the ages; theories on exactly what they are and how they came to be, descriptions in old books, but no one has ever been able to definitively prove their existence. The young ones dismiss the reports as pure fantasy, but many of the old ones believe there is a thread of truth to the stories.”

  “What exactly are they supposed to be, and why would you link the word to Gabi?” Kyle asked with a large dose of suspicion in his tone.

  “Legend says they are the offspring of a Vampire and human union.” Julius could see Gabi’s indignation rising again. He held up a placating hand. “Just let me finish, let me explain the myths and legends and then I’ll go on to the few facts that we know and the theories Alexander and I have worked on for the past few decades.”

  “Fine, go on,” Gabi subsided with a slightly disgruntled snort and set to devouring a chocolate covered donut.