by K. L. Kreig
“I don’t understand. If it’s as simple as exchanging blood, wouldn’t vamps just take any human they wanted to mate with and force them to drink? Agreeable or not?”
Ren scowled. “You really don’t think much of us, do you? You do realize the female you’re talking about ‘marrying’ is vampire. A blood drinker. Not of the human species.” Each clipped word dripped with disdain.
For the first time—ever—Mike was ashamed at his closed mind. If he accepted Giselle, he had to accept all of her. Love all parts of who she was. Put his hatred for what she was away for good. He’d done that…he’d thought. But he realized he’d only done it for her and it needed to extend well beyond her if he was going to become part of her world.
“I’m sorry,” he said contritely.
Mike rose and walked to the bay of windows overlooking the winding blacktop driveway lined thickly with evergreens, trying to collect his thoughts into something that would make sense to this vamp. He’d carried this hatred around for so many years, it was more than just a growth. It was a veiny cancer twined throughout his body. He wanted Ren to understand why.
“The week after Jamie vanished, I marched into my advisor’s office and changed my major to criminal justice. I had planned to be an accountant if you can believe that. I became a detective because of what happened to Jamie. Because I naively thought I could make a difference. Maybe save others from her fate if only I had training, more experience. Six months after she went missing, two detectives showed up at her parents’ house and informed them they weren’t officially closing the case, but it had gone cold. She was gone. Vanished. It was as if she’d never existed at all.”
He paused wanting to make sure his voice didn’t crack. Even though Jamie was not really dead, as they’d thought for the last eleven years, she wasn’t the woman he once knew and was in love with. It was still hard to talk about. Think about. He would always feel as if he’d failed her. Was the cause of her years and years of torment and torture at that evil fuck’s merciless hands. If there was one thing he was really fucking good at, it was carrying around unfounded guilt.
“For two years, Glenn and Elisa Hallow stoically waited. Cried. Hoped. Bargained. Prayed that their oldest child would walk through their front door, alive and well. They truly believed she wasn’t dead. So even though there was no confirmed death, no body to identify, they bought a cemetery plot and erected a headstone so they’d have someplace to visit the memory of her. They left the deceased date blank. It was morbid, I thought at the time, the whole headstone thing, but now I think I understand.”
And he’d been secretly grateful. He’d visited Jamie’s memorial every year on the anniversary of her “death” with a fistful of marigolds before he got rip-roaring drunk and tried to drink himself into a death coma.
“Pissed me the fuck off that the cops just gave up. I swore I would never do that when I became a detective. I would hunt for the lost until they were found. I would fight for the stolen until I thieved them back. I would bring the broken home to their loved ones, even if it was in a pine box because everyone deserves to mourn their loved ones the right way. Then I would mow down the sadistic fucks who thought it was their God-given right to take others. I became an unfeeling terminator of injustice.”
The air was deathly still as if even it was waiting with bated breath for what he would say next. Mike had to assume Ren hadn’t left, so he continued. Even if he had left, he didn’t care. He needed to vomit this burden that he carried so long and so hard. He’d never spoken these words aloud to anyone, and for some strange reason, it felt right to tell them to the male closest to his love. The woman all this hatred and heartache had led to.
“The first time I learned vampires were not just something made up by Hollywood screenwriters was after I’d graduated academy and hired by the Milwaukee PD. I was on beat with my partner. Since I was a newbie, I was stuck with the night shift, of course. It was a fairly uneventful night. We’d had a handful of domestic disturbance calls and a couple of bar brawls. About six hours into our shift, we were called to this one shithole in particular. There was an incident or two there every single week. Their liquor license had been revoked twice already and nothing but losers, hookers, and degenerates hung out there. Anyway, we show up and stroll into the place.
“I don’t know how to explain what I felt walking through those doors. It was as if this vile evil hung in the air so thick you could taste it, feel it coating your skin. It took me weeks to wash it off. Sometimes, I feel like I still haven’t gotten rid of it all. Anyway, we walk in and broken glass littered the floors. Spilled alcohol ran free under our shoes. Chairs and tables were tossed and splintered like a fucking bomb had gone off. The place was a ghost town except for two assholes taunting a woman who looked worked over and scared as shit.”
Mike looked over his shoulder to see if Ren was still there. He was, watching him raptly. Once again, his face was blank, unreadable. He went back to staring out the window.
That night haunted him. Still to this day. What those animals did to that young girl was unspeakable and what’s worse…he let them. He had to sit there and watch them tear her apart like two hungry lions going at a gazelle.
When he finished telling the rest of his story, he was sucked back in time, watching it all unfold again in live stream.
* * *
“Well, well, well, what have we here?” A broad giant of about six eight taunted. Grabbing the screaming girl by the throat, he spun her around and held her tight to his chest. Her clothes were ripped and smattered with blood that had clearly come from where they were using her face as a punching bag. With the other hand, tall and lethal ripped the low halter she wore and fondled her bare tit like he was in some fucking snuff film performing for the cameras. He had the most wicked, evil grin smearing his face that Mike had ever seen.
Deadly power radiated from these two like a nuclear power plant. He knew— knew—these were no ordinary men. His instincts were on red fucking alert. His heart was doing a five-minute mile and he was about to piss his pants right there. He was scared shitless.
The girl’s petrified, watery eyes bugged and her fingernails scratched and mauled at the hand that held her, desperate for freedom. Her mouth opened and closed in what Mike could only deduce was a scream, a plea for help, but nothing came out because her vocal cords were being crushed as this sick fuck got off on manhandling what wasn’t his. Her face was turning progressively darker shades of red with every passing second. If she didn’t get air soon she’d pass out.
Dick one, the monster holding her, licked the side of her face, his unusual eyes never wavering from Mike’s. “That’s it, sweetheart. Fight,” he whispered, but not soft enough they couldn’t hear his threats. “You’ll taste all the sweeter and your scratches get me hard as fuck.”
Mike drew his gun, as did his partner. “Get your fucking hands off her,” Mike growled. The men never even glanced at the life-taking barrels pointed right between their eyes.
He soon found out why.
“Looks like a couple human pigs to me. Wanna see how the better half lives, humans?”
Humans?
“Franco, no.” The taller one holding the cowering girl commanded. “We were supposed to get the female, that’s all. We’re not killing cops. Master would have our heads for that.”
Master? The fuck? Were these guys in some perverse cult?
“We can’t take her back like that. We’ll be castrated before we’re decapitated,” Dick two whined nodding at the shape the woman was in. It’s clear they’d been playing with her, like a spanking new toy. She was in bad shape. Almost in shock already. Dick one loosened his hold and the girl started gasping brokenly for life.
The man holding the girl was the obvious one in charge. The asshole stood silent for a few seconds, rolling around his options, staring at Mike as if he was trying to work out a puzzle and Mike held the clues. Mike put the slightest amount of pressure on the trigger. A move that did no
t go unnoticed.
The fucker smiled. It was ugly. Vile. Beastly.
Time felt suspended. He knew something life changing was about to go down. There was a very real possibility he may not survive this night.
“How about we give them a little show and a nice good scrub?” Dick two proposed.
Scrub? What the hell were these lunatics going on about? Humans? Master? Scrubbing?
“You haven’t even perfected that yet. They could end up vegetables.”
“At least, they won’t be dead.”
Dick one scrunched up his face and shrugged one shoulder. “I guess you’re right.”
It was the look that did it.
Smug. Menacing.
Bad. Fucking. News.
Mike broke protocol then. These two assholes didn’t have weapons showing, and he had no cause to fire but his gut screamed if he didn’t shoot now, he’d be a dead man. So he squeezed the trigger.
The deafening boom of his weapon discharging in such a small space was nothing compared to the feeling of being tossed through the air like a rag doll. He landed with a sick thud against the concrete wall. His brains were rattling so hard he thought he might have a concussion.
Before he knew it, before he could even catch a stray thought, Johnny and he were each tied to a chair and set in the middle of the room. They had bar towels stuffed in their mouths so they couldn’t talk or call for help. Their pieces were mocking them from the bar top, but it was the bloodcurdling scream of the girl that now had his full attention.
Totally, utterly helpless for the next hour they had to watch this innocent girl be destroyed. Reduced to nothing. And when her body was broken and her soul was shattered, they finished her off. They both callously unleashed the stuff that made up nightmares. Their eyes changed, their teeth sharpened, and they sank them into her flesh, draining her dry. Then they turned their blood-red eyes on him and his partner. This was it. The end of the line.
* * *
“Dick two started with Johnny,” Mike said quietly. “He grabbed his head between his palms and I thought for sure he was going to rip it clean off. For a few seconds, Johnny cried out, like he was in unbearable agony. Then he went utterly still. His face was completely blank, devoid of any emotion as if we hadn’t just witnessed the horrific destruction and murder of a young girl by a pair of real-life monsters.
“Dick one then asked Johnny what happened tonight and Johnny said ‘nothing.’ His voice was wooden. He wasn’t fighting against his restraints anymore. He was in some sort of daze as if he’d been drugged. Dick two smirked and then he was in front of me, his hands at my head, squeezing ever so slightly.” Mike paused and huffed a sardonic laugh. “I remember that part the clearest. I wondered to myself, where’s the agonizing pain my partner just felt? Why aren’t I screaming? What’s supposed to be happening? I felt nothing, except a slight pressure in my head, similar to a headache coming on but even that was nothing compared to the pure, raw hatred I felt for these two…things. But when Dick two frowned, I knew I was in trouble. I knew I would be drained dry just like the girl if he wasn’t successful. A sad casualty of some fucking war I couldn’t wrap my head around. So when he tried again…”
Mike turned now to face Ren. The vampire was brimming with rage, but there was something else simmering below the surface. If he didn’t know better, it was confusion. “I faked it. I screamed bloody fucking murder and then acted just like Johnny. He saved my life that night, Johnny did. Had they started with me, I’ve no doubt I’d be pushing up daisies under the old oak tree somewhere.”
Ren nodded in agreement. “And so would your partner.”
Mike stared at him, blinking slowly. He’d often thought that, but it still didn’t quell the guilt he felt. When he probed Johnny about that night a couple days later, he didn’t remember a thing. Swore up and down it was a nightmare Mike had, wasn’t real. He eventually let it go, but Mike had been exposed to the underbelly of evil and he never forgot. It never quite wiped off him.
“I don’t understand why they couldn’t scrub me the way they did Johnny,” he said absently. It was something he never got. He’d always been immune to the mind tricks of bloodsuckers.
Ren’s mouth turned up slightly. “Because you’re fated to a vampire, that’s why. And all Fateds have some sort of special skill. Unless a human finds and bonds with their vampire mate, they never really understand why they’re different from other humans. They just go through life confused. Maybe alienated.”
Mike took his time digesting that information, trying to make sense of it.
“So, how did you come to the conclusion that vampires were responsible for Jamie’s kidnapping? Because humans can be monsters as well.”
Fair question.
“You’re right. We can. But it was what they said afterward when they were ‘cleaning up.’ They were chatting lightly like they’d just slipped in there after a hard day at the fucking office for a pint of Guinness. They mentioned they’d have to find another girl to replace this one to take back to someone they called Master. Then they started talking about heading over to Marquette. How those college girls were easy prey after they’d been drinking all night, stumbling home from a party. One of them said they shouldn’t go back because two girls had already been taken from there in the past year and a half and they didn’t want to raise suspicions. The other said it had been long enough since the last one, that it would be safe and they should try it.”
“And Jamie disappeared from Marquette I take it?”
He nodded once.
“Along with another co-ed a little over a year later.”
After a few beats, Ren said, “Not all vampires are monsters, Mike.”
Mike. He almost laughed. That plain name sounded so foreign coming from this hulky, imposing vampire’s mouth. “I know that now, Ren.”
Ren smirked. “Dev, Damian, Rom, the rest of us…we fight evil like Xavier every fucking day. One bad apple doesn’t really taint the whole bunch, but it’s the perception, right?”
“Touché.”
They stared at each other for a long while. He’d never intended to take a jarring trip down memory lane, but now that he had, he couldn’t help the sense some bridge had been gapped between the two men in this room. But now, Mike wanted to get back on track, get back to the discussion of Giselle. To what he really cared about. “So…about this bonding?”
The question hung until Ren finally started evenly, “About this bonding.” He pushed himself off the stool and headed toward Mike. “Vampires can only bond with their Moiras, so even if they exchanged blood with another human, they wouldn’t forge that mating bond.”
“Moiras?”
“A fated mate. For us, there is only one true human Fate pairs us with. Some of us may wait hundreds of years to find our Fated’s. Some of us never do.”
Mike knew Ren didn’t have a woman. He searched Ren’s voice for melancholy but found none. “And you think I’m her fated mate then?”
“I do.” His answer was clipped but not heated.
“And how do you know?”
“Worried?”
“Not in the slightest. I know I am, I just want to know how you know.” Had she talked to Ren about them?
Ren sighed heavily, looking away briefly. “I’ve known Giselle a very long time, Detective. Well over a hundred years. She’s a stone-cold bitch.” Mike bristled and stood tall before Ren added, “Calm your shit down. Just hear me out.”
With his jaw ticking and his temper flaring, he reluctantly eased back against the windowsill. Facing him, Ren leaned against the solid oak table, crossing his arms and feet, mirroring his position.
“Let’s just say she had less than a stellar childhood. She’s wound this fortified fortress around the very soul of who she is in an attempt not to get hurt by anyone again. She doesn’t do friends or relationships and she sure as hell doesn’t fall in love.
“I know you two are destined, Detective, because you’ve changed her
. She cares. You’ve unearthed emotions I’ve never seen in her before. She’s…mellowed since you two met and I know that may be hard to comprehend because soft on Giselle doesn’t look anything like soft on someone else, but that fortress she’s resurrected has big fucking fractures in the walls now. And it’s crumbling the fuck down around her. Thanks to you.” He nodded in Mike’s direction.
“It sounds almost as if you’re accepting of this lowly human detective,” Mike mocked.
The corners of Ren’s lips turned up. “You make her happy. What makes her happy makes me happy.”
He thought on that a minute, his respect for Ren growing. “What’s this life-tying thing you mentioned?”
“You really going to do this, human?” Ren asked with a little surprise.
He stood up straight. “You’d better fucking believe I am, vampire. I love her. I’ll only ever love her.”
“I don’t know how she’s going to handle this new version of her. She’ll be raw for a while, like fresh skin after a wound,” Ren warned.
Didn’t he know it? “I’m helping her adjust.” But he hadn’t pushed her to talk about her past and he needed to. They both needed to clear the air so they could take their steps forward in peace.
“Why aren’t you asking her this?”
“Because I…I want to do this my way and I want to be sure I’m getting all the facts so I don’t fuck it up. And you know how Giselle is.”
“Okay then. Here’s everything you need to know.” In a look Mike could only label as impressed, Ren began describing everything a vampire mating meant in vivid detail.
A while later, Giselle popped back in and stole Ren for the meeting with the all-powerful Vampire Lords, leaving Mike alone to digest everything. But not before he had a chance to ask Ren for one more favor.
12
Ren
“You ever hear of a vamp with mind-scrubbing skills?” Ren asked Dev as they entered his office. Damian and Geoffrey tagged behind. Rom was absent—after the strategy-planning meeting he had gone to make amends with Sarah for pissing her off, which he seemed to do a lot. Ren didn’t have a mate yet, but even he knew better than to make his female mad. Vampires may be a stronger, superior species, but it wasn’t any different for vampire males than it was for human males. The woman held the keys to the kingdom. Every fucking one of them.
