The Vampire's Wolf

by Jenna Kernan

  When he turned, it was to find Bri still in her wet clothing, clutching the ones he’d given her and staring at him.

  “That bad?” he asked, wiping the sweat from his brow with the soft flannel of his sleeve.

  “No, no. You look fine. I’m just not used to seeing you in real clothes.”

  Mac wasn’t either, but he supposed he’d have to get used to it.

  “How are the bullet wounds?” asked Mac.

  Bri lifted her pale arm and touched the flawless skin at her forearm and then bicep. “Perfect,” she said, the astonishment evident in her voice. “You’d never even know.”

  “Fast healer.”

  She lowered her arm. “What about you?”

  He lifted the shirts to show her his back, which looked perfect, though the ache was still there from the bruising underneath.

  Her smile was weak, pained.

  He motioned a finger at her clothing. “Get out of those.”

  She quickly stripped out of her sodden surgeon’s outfit.

  Mac felt his skin flush at the sight of her, but Bri was quick to drag on a pair of jeans that swam on her and a woman’s purple turtleneck that was wet in only a few places.

  “I wish I’d taken socks.”

  He glanced down at her dirty bare feet and set both pots under the stream of water running from the holes in the roof, determined to offer her hot water. Outside the rain poured down in gray sheets.

  Soon he had the water heating, and Brianna was no longer shivering.

  Bri dipped a finger in the water and grinned. “Warm enough for a bath. How long do you think Johnny will be gone?”

  Long enough, thought Mac.

  Chapter 19

  “I was so frightened,” Bri said, sinking easily into his arms.

  He gathered her up, comforted by the floral fragrance of her skin and her small body, molded perfectly to his. He wanted this, wanted her, but not just for an hour or a night. No, that would not be enough. Would a lifetime be enough?

  He didn’t think so.

  Bri drew away and dragged off the turtleneck. Mac tore a patch from the hem of his stolen T-shirt and dipped it into the warm water. He used the wet cloth to bathe her stomach and chest. Driving off the chill and washing her clean of the mud that splattered her arms and face. As the water ran in rivulets down her pale skin, she dropped her jeans. He knelt at her feet, bathing first one slim leg and then the next. She sat on the comforter as he washed her feet, admiring the perfect toes and fit of her foot in his large hand. Her skin was no longer unnaturally white. Now they glowed pink with good health and warmth.

  “They’re still tingling,” she said.

  He wanted her entire body to tingle. He offered the flannel, and Bri dried what the fire’s heat had not. Then she stretched out on the comforter and waited for him to come to her.

  “We don’t have a condom,” she said.

  “I can work around that.”

  She grinned as he started at her toes, nibbling and licking up her calves to her knees. She made a sound of satisfaction and settled back as he stroked her inner thigh with feathery caresses. Her hips were satin smooth as he slid his hands up to the soft skin of her belly, his hand the scouts for his mouth. He dipped his tongue into her navel, and she writhed beneath him. He cupped her breasts, stroking the soft mounds as he dropped kisses straight up the center of her body then veered along the fragrant ridge of her collarbone. The yielding tissue was trapped between his mouth and the bone beneath. At her throat he felt the bob of her Adam’s apple as she swallowed and then the purr as she gave her approval of his caresses. The outer shell of her ear tasted sweet as nectar. Mac reached between her legs to stroke her there and found her body already wet with need. She wrapped her hands around his neck and pulled. He allowed her to bring his mouth to hers. He wasn’t sorry, for she gave him a kiss of fire and promise that stiffened his already hard body.

  She moved her hands over his chest with quick, needy strokes that trailed down his torso and to the skin of his abdomen, which twitched at her caress. Finally she grasped the root of his need. Her eager fingers wrapped about him and she tugged, allowing her fingers to slide over him with just the right amount of friction.

  He was so grateful to have her safe and here in his arms, so grateful for the rain that sheltered them and to Johnny, who gave them these few stolen moments of privacy. He drew her hands away and sunk between her legs, grasping the two round cheeks of her pear-shaped bottom and lowering his mouth to her clitoris.

  Bri moaned and writhed. He sucked as she lifted to meet his mouth and he licked her as she bucked against him. Her breathing grew erratic. Small needy mewling sounds came from her throat as he increased the speed of his kisses. The now familiar shimmer of gold rose from her skin and became a brilliant aurora of light. She placed her feet solidly on the ground and lifted to meet his ministrations. Her stomach tightened and he recognized the sounds she made. She was close, so close. The urge to thrust into her welcoming body roared like a living thing, but he pushed it back. There was no protection, and Bri did not want a baby.

  A baby... He had once wanted to fill a house with kids and dogs and rabbits and any critter his kids dragged home. Now he only wanted her.

  She came against his mouth in a sweet flood of sound and moisture. When her body stopped trembling and she relaxed back to the earth, Mac scaled her slim body and gathered her against him. They both needed sleep. But Bri was not done with him.

  She wriggled from his grasp and sunk down to take him in her mouth. She used her hands to toy with his balls as her tongue danced along the ridge of engorged flesh, stroking him from stem to stern. Sweet Lord, the sensation of her mouth on his body. He groaned and threaded his hand through her hair, encouraging her with a gentle pressure on her head.

  He drew her away just as the need grew too strong. But she wrapped her eager fingers about him and brought him the rest of the way home. He came in a sweet rush of pleasure and liquid. Bri held him a moment longer, then drew away to crossed to the heating water and gingerly retrieved the cloth, returning to wash him clean.

  The lay together in each other’s arms, dozing. Sometime before Johnny returned, Mac slipped into his clothing and helped Bri into hers. He nestled with her beside the fire and drifted toward sleep.

  “I love you,” he whispered.

  He thought he felt her stiffen, but then she relaxed and he dozed.

  * * *

  The birdsong woke him before dawn and they found Johnny roasting a shank of elk for Mac and cattails for Bri.

  They ate and washed, and he changed to his werewolf form before they were off again. Bri was unusually quiet all morning, which Mac attributed to worry and fatigue. He and Johnny remained watchful for pursuit by either Lewis or the six male vampires they had sighted.

  Last night’s rain and the morning fog condensed on the needles and leaves, dripping down onto them as the sky lightened in slow degrees.

  By sunrise they reached the higher elevations and left the timberline, crossing into open country. Mac knew the chance they were taking. In broad daylight with nothing but the rocks and sage to hide them, Mac felt as exposed as a miner with the seat torn out of his britches.

  In the afternoon Bri asked to run and he agreed, provided she stay close. She kept up easily, vanishing and then reappearing up the trail. Somehow they reached their destination without seeing anyone, though that did not necessarily mean they were not seen. He hoped he had guessed right, that the very thing that made this course most dangerous for them would also make it the least likely place the colonel would search and a place the vampires would not wish to journey, for they had good reason not to be seen in daylight. The open ground would also provide no opportunity for the bloodsuckers to come at them unawares. Unless, he reminded himself, they came at them fast. Not even he coul
d see a vampire moving at high speed. But Bri could. He’d need to count on her for that.

  They crested a high rise of exposed rock and strawlike grasses and sighted their destination.

  Below, the defunct stamp mill clung to the hillside like a big, ugly wart. The ore-crushing plant was by far the largest structure but was by no means the only surviving building. Despite boom and bust and several fires, much of the town remained, with wide spaces between buildings like the gaps between the teeth in an old man’s mouth.

  The dirt road wound down the valley and threaded through the town that once bustled with miners, gamblers and businesses at the peak of the California Rush. He’d taken the tour. “Bad men from Bodie,” they’d called them, and with three killings a day they’d earned their reputation. Now managed by the California State Parks system, the desolate heap attracted curiosity seekers, history buffs and two werewolves escorting a female vampire.

  They needed to get to the cover of the buildings before the tourists arrived, so they cut straight past the mill. Mac kept alert for attack from within the hulking three-story structure with wooden trestle, which once held the track from which the ore cars ran from the mountain to the top floor of the stamping plant. Mac recalled that the plant once crushed stone into dust to extract the ore. Inside, he recalled, lay rusting pistons, flywheels, camshafts, and other equipment. Could Bri sense all that iron? Was that why she leaned away as he descended the mountain where the building perched?

  They made it past the stamp mill without incident. Mac felt a mixture of relief and unease at reaching the relative cover of a sagging shed and tilting house that seemed to be losing the battle with the winter’s heavy snows. Beyond, a bellows with dry, rotted leather and fallen timber told that the blacksmith’s shop had given up to collapse. Before them the town of Bodie waited.

  Mac instinctively moved toward cover, checking the interior of a charred outbuilding and finding nothing but dirt, weeds and piles of gravel. He called a halt.

  He glanced at Johnny and found the familiar look of agitation. His gunner felt it, too. The town was too quiet.

  Mac stared down the empty road to the series of ramshackle buildings, and a chill stole down his spine. What was it that set him on edge?

  He listened to the creek and groan of the wind whistling through the abandoned buildings but found no threat. The smell of dust and decay clung to his nostrils, but it was the decay of dry rot and moldering wallpaper and charred wood. Not the sweet, sickly stench of vampires.

  What, then?

  He could see nothing that threatened. Yet both he and Johnny were crouching in the dead grass, uneasy as steers in a slaughterhouse.

  He listened and surveyed their surroundings. The wind and snow had scoured all paint from the planking, leaving the entire place the universal gray of driftwood. Portions of the wooden walkway stretched beneath overhangs beside the false fronts of a few buildings.

  Bri hunched down beside him, her gaze flashing from the empty town below them and then back to him.

  And then he realized what made his insides swirl like water down a drain. He had not realized how much this stretch of century-old wreckage resembled the rows of buildings recently abandoned by the Afghani outside of Kabul. Now daylight streamed down upon the town. Back then he had seen the world through infrared goggles. But it felt exactly the same as the night he had led his men to their doom. Then as now he did not know what awaited him inside. Then as now he needed to secure a building for the safety of others.

  Which building should he choose? Mac gazed from one to the next, knowing he must find cover but fearing another mistake.

  Bri again offered Mac the rumpled clothing that she had stolen for him. This time he accepted them.

  He left her with Johnny for only as long as it took to call back his human form because he couldn’t bear for her to see him writhe and contort again. The transformation bathed him in sweat and left him sick to his stomach, but he knew the weakness would not last. Besides, in werewolf form, he couldn’t sit behind the wheel of the vehicle he planned to steal.

  He dressed quickly and returned to Lam and Bri.

  “We have to get down to the center of town. The tour guides leave their vehicles in that lot and walk.” He pointed and she followed the direction of his raised finger.

  Mac stared down a sagging row of buildings. “The church. We can see approach from both sides and it’s near the parking area.” He glanced at Johnny. “That sound right to you?”

  Johnny’s ears went back. His corporal was still uneasy with his squad leader asking his opinion. Well, things had changed. Mac waited. Lam hesitated before nodding his agreement.

  Mac glanced at the sky. “Park offices should open soon, and they’ll unlock the gates. First tour probably left Bridgeport by now. We better go.”

  The feeling of unease grew as he approached the abandoned town. He could hear nothing but their footsteps as he took point, leaving Johnny to guard their backs. He couldn’t tell if he was sensing danger or just reliving it. His senses were all tangled like a ball of barbed wire. He couldn’t trust them. He couldn’t trust himself.

  Mac made a quick march through town, avoiding the roads but walking in a beeline from the stamp mill past two foundations and across Main Street. They hurried over one wooden walkway past the false front that looked straight out of a John Huston movie. The peeling sign announced the establishment had once been Sam Leon’s Bar. From there they cut past the sawmill, the circular blade visible through the bowing boards and missing timbers. When they reached the church—Methodist, according to the State Parks sign—Mac was relieved to see it secured with only a flimsy wire mesh fence across the entrance. He peeled it back with ease and entered first, turning immediately right. His training caused him to hug the wall. A moment later Johnny was nudging Bri out of the door as he hugged the wall on the opposite side of the doorway. The quiet yawned. He scanned the empty room. Dust coated the wide floorboards and the pews. Midway down the row against the right wall, a cast-iron stove still squatted. Rusty with age, it must have once been a welcome relief from the snow and cold of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The altar had gone, but the commandments remained painted on the wall above the raised dais. Thou shalt not kill. Mac wondered if he’d get through the day without breaking that one again.

  Johnny returned the wire fence to place so it almost looked undisturbed. Mac motioned and Johnny crossed down the center of the pews, his feet raising dust and leaving unnatural prints on the floor. Mac signaled to Bri to follow him then turned toward the door, backing after them.

  Johnny reached the front of the church and looked out the small door to the right of the dais. Then he motioned for Bri, who came at his bidding and waited where he indicated. With luck they could go out that door after the tourists left their van and before they toured past the church. Then Johnny joined Mac at one of the long segmented windows that gave them a view of the road and the parking area.

  “Can Lewis track us?” she asked.

  “He doesn’t know where to look.”

  “They could use dogs or something. Helicopters, maybe.”

  They’d use both, he knew.

  Johnny cocked his head and glanced to Mac. He heard it, too.

  “The van,” said Mac.

  The sound reached her ears, a low hum of an engine and the bounce of struts on uneven ground. The first tour group had arrived.

  “What if they see Johnny?” she whispered.

  “We’ll wait until they clear the vehicle and then we’ll go.”

  * * *

  Bri stooped on the pew below the window, crouching now to peek out of the glass pane rippled with age and streaked with grime. The white van rolled into view. A magnetic sticker on the door advertised Gold Rush Ghost Tours, Badmen from Bodie. The van swung in perpendicular to the warehouse, pulling up to the hitchin
g post in the same place as older tire tracks. The gears creaked as the driver shifted and stopped. Then he exited to the dirt square designated for parking. He was dressed in a wide-brimmed cowboy hat and period clothing, including red suspenders that stretched over his faded cotton work shirt.

  “Okay, folks, here we are. This way for a brief overview and a story of a public lynching that happened back in the day.”

  The van door slid open and a teenage boy unfolded first. His ball cap advertised he was an Angels fan. Behind him came a pretty blonde woman, followed by a tall man who quickly gathered her elbow as if fearful a ghost might spirit her away. The woman checked her camera as he stretched his back. A heavy middle-aged couple groaned and heaved their way from the back of the van and then joined the teen, who ignored them.

  Mac stood beside the window looking at the group. Johnny held the opposite side of the frame. He was so big he did not need the pew to gain a view from the window.

  What came next happened so fast Bri did not even have time to scream. Below them six male vampires rushed in. Each captured one member of the tour group. Bri pointed and fell back. Mac caught her and set her on her feet. Mac and Johnny looked at her, scrambling backward with one hand clamped over her mouth and the other pointing to the window and looked again. Couldn’t they see?

  She knew the moment the vampires became visible to them. Johnny growled and Mac tensed but the vampires already had hold of their victims.

  A scream came from the parking lot, high and thready. Bri leap back to the pew. She saw them, the vampires each with their teeth clamped on the exposed neck of a tourist. They held them from behind as blood poured from the exposed wound at their necks. This was no sensual puncture and romantic draw of the force of life, but a ripping of vessels and a slurping of the hot gush of blood. Bri could not look away. She stared in horror as one after another of the tour group went slack and were discarded in the dust with the rest of the rotting, decaying town.

  Mac acted first, surging toward her and gathering her against his side as he rushed to the side door. Johnny ran past them and leaped out. He rolled to his feet in the yellow grass that dotted the backyard. Mac tossed her like a football to Johnny, who snatched her from the air and threw her over his shoulder.