by Mina Carter
Her full lips compressed, although that didn’t really give her the bad-ass expression she was unconsciously hoping for. At five foot nothing and weighing about as much as a wet kitten, Maria knew she was best described as ‘cute’.
Long hair, small face and big eyes gave her a doll-like appearance she tried to toughen up to be taken seriously. She blew out a breath, blowing her bangs out of her face. She’d missed the queue for ‘bad-ass’, especially in the looks department, despite the fact she was in head-to-toe black leather a la Kyn Warrior. In attitude though, she was streets ahead of ‘bad-ass’ and heading into ‘bitch’ territory.
Usually.
Right at this moment her knees were knocking so much she was amazed they weren’t transmitting her location to any Rogue that might be near.
Her hands closed tight on the daggers concealed within the deep pockets of the jacket. Bring it on. Bitterness flowed through her, thick and fast. One of those bastards had killed her baby sister.
Annabel had been just thirteen, out on a trip to the cinema when she was snatched. During a guardian’s momentary lapse of attention, two of the girls in the group had disappeared in the blink of an eye. They’d found them of course. Maria’s father and his knights had spent night after night tracking the Rogue, hunting them to retrieve the girls.
But they’d been too late.
Annabel’s friend, fully human, had been converted. She was beyond hope. The corruption of the Rogue blood in her veins had already tipped her into blood-madness. Maria’s father had been forced to order her execution; there was no way they could return a creature like that to a human family.
Annabel had been another story. She was half-Kyn, and it was well known that the Ravensford Lord had two Dhampir daughters. She’d been bled dry, reduced to a blood slave and her mind shattered.
Two weeks after she was brought home, she’d committed suicide. Two minutes after seeing her sister laid out, peaceful and serene in death, Maria had sworn revenge on the Rogue. As a whole, all of them. The entire race. Her breaking heart wanted to wipe them out for good.
So her plan was born.
It had taken a lot of planning to get here. She’d had to convince her father, who was already grieving for one daughter, that she wanted to try living in the human world. Get a job, support herself, that sort of thing.
A year later she’d finally bugged the crap out of him enough that he let her, swearing he was going to get no peace until she got her own way. Which was more or less the truth. Once Maria got a bee in her bonnet about something she just kept at it until people caved in. Or went insane.
So now she had a comfortable little apartment in one of the better areas of town. She suspected the rent was being subsidized by her father, and she was fairly certain one of her father’s Knights swung by her place at least once a night to check on her. But that was cool. She’d installed timers on her lights and had a top notch security system fitted, as well as paying for some heavy-duty magical protection from the local spell-warden. There was no way anyone was getting in to see whether she was there or not.
“Oh hello, what do we have here?” she murmured under her breath as she caught a glimmer of movement in her peripheral vision.
She was being stalked.
Adrenaline hit her system like a hyper-active kid’s sugar rush, and she gripped her blades with renewed purpose. Grim determination and death gave her strength. She carried on down the street, not changing her pace or giving any indication that she’d seen her little friend at all.
The black leather jacket swathed her slender figure, hiding the hardware she was carrying—blades in the deep pockets, ready in her small hands. Another set nestled in the sides of her high boots, and she was carrying more in back-sheaths. It was a good job she was half vampire, with the ability to cloud human minds. If the human cops lifted her like this, she really didn’t want to explain why she was dressed up like Bride of Blade.
As she walked she looked for somewhere quiet for this to go down, the automatic need to hide knowledge of the Kyn from humans strong in her. She knew this was what the Knights and the Warriors did: Hunted Rogue and covered their tracks so the humans didn’t start putting two and two together and actually make four. The last thing her race needed was humans starting to hunt them again. Not with the Rogue already on the case.
She headed for an alley a little further down the street, casting ahead with her senses. All her instincts were on alert. The Rogue might be flushing her towards more of its kind. But the alley came up clean, staying that way as Maria approached. The Rogue must be working alone. Not unusual, they were highly dangerous and unpredictable creatures. It wasn’t unknown for them to attack and kill each other. An all-out Rogue slaughter-fest.
She reached the entry to the alley, and the light tingle at the back of her neck intensified. A roar behind her signalled the Rogue’s attack.
Maria was already moving, a year of intensive martial arts and other combat training taking over as she moved with the speed of the Kyn deeper into the alley.
The Rogue overshot and hit the wall, turning to glare at her. His red eyes burned with rage and feral interest.
“Well, well, what do we have here? You ain’t human, little pretty,” he snarled, unable to speak properly for the fangs that filled his mouth, elongated and ready for feeding. Ready to rip her throat out.
“Bright, aren’t you?” Maria replied with a nonchalance she didn’t feel as she stood in the middle of the alley. Her stance was text-book, ready for any attack the Rogue might make. One hand had already swept down the front of her jacket, the edges of the leather hanging open to give her easy access to the rest of her weapons if she lost her primary ones.
The Rogue paced, eyeing her up.
“You smell human,” he growled, obviously a little confused with that fact and the speed Maria had just displayed.
“Yeah? And you smell like a day old corpse.”
She turned her nose up at the odor. Her voice was calm, but inside she was screaming for him to get on with it. She didn’t want conversation with the Rogue, she wanted to kill it. Cutting its black heart out was enough interaction. Period.
“Listen, I’m on a schedule here, so can we cut the deep and meaningful and just skip ahead to the part where I kill you?” she asked, a bored edge in her voice.
Surprisingly, to Maria at least, her nerves seemed to have completely disappeared, leaving just emptiness. And focus. She slid her hands out of her pockets and cocked a small eyebrow at the Rogue. It looked stunned for a moment, as though the fact she wasn’t screaming and trying to get away didn’t compute. Then it roared and charged.
Chapter Three
The woman was dead. Deader than a dodo. Or maybe a lemming, since they were more given to suicide. Because for a human, facing off against a Rogue, even a newly converted one like this, was total suicide.
Marak sighed. Time to play Good Samaritan. He looked up and whistled to get Kalen’s attention. The other Warrior was crouched on a roof a couple of buildings away, watching the street below. When he looked up, Marak cocked his head at the alley and leapt down, the three storey drop nothing as he landed as light as a cat.
Kalen reached Marak’s side, only to stand just as dumbstruck as his friend, watching the little scene in the alley. The human female, the one Marak had expected to have to rescue from the deadly embrace of the Rogue, was busily slugging it out with the damn thing.
“Huh… Warriors come in pint-size now and nobody told me?”
Marak didn’t answer, shaking his head in disbelief as he watched. He’d expected the woman to be on her back in the filth, her vein opened as the Rogue drank her dry. That was the normal way of things. Only it wasn’t happening. The tiny woman was kicking ass and taking names.
For a human she was fast as hell, dancing around the Rogue and delivering punishing blows that would have incapacitated a mortal easily. The Rogue was newly turned. Still had shakes from conversion sickness, so he was having to
suck up the damage.
It wouldn’t last long though. Marak had fought more than enough Rogues to know that, once the creature was steady on his feet, the woman was toast.
“Cute though, nice ass.” Kalen folded his arms and leant against the wall, his eyes on the fight.
A surge of jealousy ripped through Marak, the snarl rising from the middle of his broad chest, his gaze still locked on the petite woman. She was his, and he’d rip the arms off any male that touched her.
Whoa! Where had that come from?
Marak blinked in surprise. He didn’t do jealous. His sexual encounters were brief and to the point. One-off’s. With women who had no idea who he was, just thinking that he was a Warrior.
He tensed, about to wade into the fight when it happened. The Rogue moved, a flash of movement with all the speed of the Kyn race. There was no way the girl was going to avoid it.
“Fuck!”
Both men realised the danger in the same instant and reacted like lightning. Even as they were drawing weapons, the Rogue was closing in; faster and nearer to his target.
They weren’t going to make it in time.
The Rogue bore down on the tiny woman, knocking her block aside and lashing out with its deadly claws. Her scream echoed in the narrow alley as the claws tore through the soft skin of her throat, a terrible sound that trailed off into a gurgling. Spinning from the impact, her hands flew to her throat, pressing against the terrible wound as she staggered away.
The Rogue went to follow her, instinct driving it to finish the kill, but it registered the two Warriors, turning and roaring at them. Its blood red eyes glowed in the darkness of the alley as it tracked the two big males, turning to try and keep both in sight as they circled it.
“C’mon, handsome, how about you take on someone your own size?” Kalen’s blades spun in his hands, lazy circles of deadly steel.
The creature hissed, its eyes darting from one to the other and then past Marak to the woman slumped against the wall. The source of the tantalising scent lingering in the air.
“Mine!” it snarled and launched itself at Marak.
The Kyn moved without warning. One moment he stood unflinching in the face of the Rogue’s charge, and the next his blade flashed through the air in a glittering arc.
Surprise crossed the Rogue’s face as a second grin opened along its throat. Marak kicked the dying creature aside as lines of ashy corruption spread outwards from the wound, rapidly spreading across and consuming the Rogue’s skin. There was no blood even when the head fell away from the body, a body which was dust before it hit the ground.
“Shit.”
Marak slid the katana away in a practised movement and knelt by the fallen woman. She was tiny, a crumpled figure against the wall, her skin pale in contrast to the darkness of the brick.
Rich chocolate eyes locked onto him as he approached, still tracking movement despite the thick blood oozing sluggishly from her ruined throat. Her heart beat stuttered, loud to Marak’s enhanced hearing, struggling to pump blood which no longer filled her veins.
Guilt hit him like a speeding truck.
This was his fault. He should have been quicker, nailed the damn Rogue as soon as he’d seen it. Not idled about and watched her fight it. Fighting Rogue vampires was a Warrior’s job, not one for a cute little human female. He cursed under his breath, feeling helpless as the light in those beautiful eyes began to dim.
“She’s not gonna make it, man. Want me to call in Feral and Vix for a cleanup?”
Kalen’s voice was nonchalant behind him. Just another body to clean up, business as usual. Marak frowned, something inside him unable to leave it like this. She’d been beautiful, unafraid as she’d battled the Rogue. He ignored Kalen, hauling the woman’s body into his arms. She wasn’t gone yet, she couldn’t be. This was his fault and he would put it right. He had to put it right.
“Marak, what you doin’, man?”
He ignored Kalen’s alarmed query as he tore his wrist open with his teeth. His ancient and powerful blood ran from the wound as he held it against her mouth. In the same second, his extended claws tore her clothing from her shoulder and he struck, driving his fangs deep into her soft flesh to drain whatever blood was left in her.
“Holy crap! Man, you really don’t wanna be doing this! Shit, the Council’s gonna have fucking kittens.”
Marak closed his eyes, feeling the surge as her blood hit the back of his throat, and ignoring Kalen’s panicked voice as the Warrior paced, pulling a cell from his pocket and dialling rapidly.
“Feral, pick up. C’mon you ugly bastard, pick up. Feral? It’s K. Listen, man, we got one hell of a situation going on. I need you and Vix here stat.”
Marak was lost to the world, his fangs buried deep in the female’s throat, his own working powerfully as he drained the last of her blood.
The instant it touched his lips he was in heaven. Hitting his body like a shot of vodka-laced Type A, sheer pleasure coursed through him. Moaning, he pulled her limp body closer, terrified she was slipping away from him.
Come on, he urged, don’t give up on me now.
Then, slowly, she started to respond, her lips moving against the open wound on his wrist. Marak let go a sigh of relief. She was feeding, slowly, but getting stronger. It wasn’t long before she clamped on, survival instinct from the few swallows of his powerful blood driving her.
He withdrew his fangs, sliding them from her neck, and gently closed the pinpricks with a stroke of his tongue. He sat back as her small hands held his wrist to her lips and she drank deeply. The feel of her little teeth in his flesh sent shivers of pleasure along his spine. He tightened his arms around her, keeping her in his dark embrace as she drank from him, blood that would save her life.
And convert her to Kyn.
He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall, chuckling to himself. Oh Lord, he’d gone and screwed the pooch completely on this one, hadn’t he? The evening had started off with the Council telling him he should get married and was ending with him converting a human, after he’d joked about taking the first woman he saw as a mate. And he couldn’t even claim ignorance. He’d known the petite woman resting in his arms could be converted. He’d seen it in those beautiful eyes as they’d started to dim, and he’d done it anyway.
“That’s enough, little one,” he murmured softly, prising her from his wrist.
She mewed in protest, trying to hold onto the source of life-giving fluid. Her grip was surprisingly strong for the newly converted, and she nipped him in the process. He caught his breath at the tiny bite, her teeth sharper than he expected.
His cock twitched and surged to life between them. He bit out a curse, suddenly extremely uncomfortable, as much at the lack of control as at the erection. Hell, she’d been bleeding out on him a few minutes ago, and now all he wanted to do was the horizontal tango. You are a sick man, Marak, get it together, he told himself in disgust.
Finally he managed to prise her from his wrist, easily overpowering her weak efforts to recapture it, and sealed the wound with a quick lick of his tongue.
“Hush, sleep now, more later, I promise,” he told her, using a compulsion to nudge her into sleep, her mind open and responsive to his thanks to their blood exchange.
Gathering her into his arms, he stood. Too much blood on a first feeding wasn’t good for her. All she needed at the moment was enough to kick-start the conversion process and sleep for her body to repair itself, sloughing away her humanity even as it healed the grievous wound the Rogue had inflicted.
She murmured something. Not a protest, more a sound of contentment as he shifted her closer. The breathy little sound and the way she nestled against him, snuggling trustingly into his arms, chipped away at the wall of loneliness around his heart. He looked up, finding not only Kalen looking at him like he’d grown another head, but Feral and Vixen as well.
“Want me to take her? You look like you could do with some of the red stuff.” Kale
n stepped forwards with his arms outstretched to take the unconscious woman from Marak.
A snarl reverberated around the alley, rumbling from deep within Marak’s chest, his eyes flashing dangerously.
“Mine,” he growled, the sound low, almost animalistic. To a man—or woman, in Vix’s case—the patrol stepped back. Most people stepped lightly around Vix when she was mad, but that was standard stuff. If she hadn’t threatened to rip someone’s balls off at least once a week she was sickening for something. But Marak was a different matter. The big Warrior King was even-tempered, his emotions usually held in rigid check, so the sheer rage in his eyes at Kalen’s suggestion had them all backing off. Fast.
“Leave him be, K,” Vix said, laying a warning hand on Kalen’s arm, a surprise in itself. Vixen rarely touched anyone. Not voluntarily. “I’m sure a big strapping lad like him can carry a little thing like that without needing help. Besides, he’s already got blood on him, and I don’t wanna listen to you whine about your cleaning bill all the way back to the compound.”
* * *
They were watching him.
The trip back to the compound was mercifully short. The three other Kyn watched Marak out of the corners of their eyes as he cradled the woman’s petite form to his chest. His large hand smoothed over her hair soothingly, murmuring soft nothings in High Kyn, the ancient language of their demon-ancestors. He avoided their eyes, looking out the window of the SUV until they pulled through the ornate gateway, the heavy steel gates closing automatically behind them.
“Up to the main house, Feral,” Marak ordered, pulling the catch on the door almost before the heavy vehicle had crunched to a halt on the gravel outside the main doors.
He climbed from the vehicle, careful of his burden, and headed up the steps. The stone arch over the doorway was more suited to the elegantly dressed nobility of a bygone era than a Kyn Warrior carrying the bloodstained form of an unconscious woman cradled in his arms, but he didn’t care. He’d been born in the century it had been built and was used to the trappings of his position. They’d ceased to impress him years ago.
