Intervamption

by Kristin Miller

  As her muscles clenched around him harder and harder, she took him right to the edge of release. His body seized up. He felt like he was about to tumble into a dark abyss from which there was no escape. With one last thrust, one leap into the unknown, he emptied himself into her.

  Drenched in sweat and dizzy beyond repair, Slade collapsed on top of her, feeling like he’d finally touched ground after a long and terrifying fall.

  Breathing heavy in her wild mane of hair, he realized her smooth stretch of legs was still wrapped around him tight. He may’ve lost himself in an abyss of immeasurable pleasure, but she was right there beneath him to catch his fall.

  It was the most comforting thought in his world.

  When Slade rolled off her, Dylan took a good hard look at his chest, his shoulder, and his marking, studying it with long sweeps of her eyes. She should’ve known better than to lay with someone who’s sworn to kill her kind, but the war between their races suddenly didn’t matter.

  He was irresistible. Different. Gorgeous. Just. Like. This.

  As he realized she was staring at his marking, he reached behind him for his sweater. “If this bothers you I can cover it up.”

  Touching his bicep, she stopped him. “No, don’t cover it. I’ve never seen one up close and I . . . I kinda like it. It looks like some sort of tribal marking or elaborate tattoo. May I touch it?”

  He lifted her finger and placed it on his chest.

  She traced the black mark around and around, looping it up and over his shoulder, then back down and around his side. “It’s like a detailed vine, branching out . . .”

  He twitched, winced.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, jerking her hand back. “Does that hurt?”

  “No . . . it tickles.”

  How odd. Someone so brash, so stoic . . . was ticklish. She had in her right mind to tickle him again when his deep husk cut through her intentions.

  “Don’t even think about it.”

  “Does everyone in your family have the same mark?” she asked, once she resolved not to test him. “I mean, your kind are born with those, right?”

  He laid flat on his back, his hands clasped behind his head, tension tightening his muscles. “Yes, they’re familial markings. Therians of the same blood are born with the same mark . . . but I don’t have any family to speak of.”

  “Guess that means you’re one of a kind, then.”

  “Guess so.” His jaw clamped shut.

  “How old were you when you first realized you could shift?”

  “About fifteen. The change usually hits around adolescence.”

  Dylan had a million and a half questions, but thought carefully about sifting through the memories that seemed painful. “Can I ask what happened?”

  “You know we can only shift into things we’ve heard or seen in our lifetimes, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, I shifted into my dog. It was an accident, really. He was the only pet I had growing up. Took me three long nights sleeping out in the doghouse with an itchy coat in the summer heat for me to figure out how to change back.”

  Stifling a laugh, Dylan said, “Guess you acquired a taste for Alpo, huh?”

  He turned to meet her eyes. “Glad you think it’s funny. Let me tell you, there are plenty of things about your race that are just as weird; that Valcdana shit for one. No therian mother of mine told me who to spend my life with.”

  “Did you know your mother?” The question came out lightning quick.

  His answer rolled off of his lips like thunder. “I don’t have a mother.”

  “Listen, if you don’t wanna talk about it, that’s fine. I just thought—”

  “You just thought you’d make small talk about the thing that bothers you most about me, thinking maybe it wouldn’t bother you so much if you knew more about it. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but small talk does nothing for fear or apprehension; it only muddies the waters . . . as if they’re not muddied enough already.”

  She pulled her tank over her head and slipped into her jeans. “I only wanted to know more about you, Slade. This is all foreign to me. I’ve never known a therian before—especially one like you—and I don’t really know where to go from here.”

  “It’s not rocket science. We go the same direction we were going before. To Meridian. Hopefully he has the answers we’re looking for.”

  “Yeah, except we still don’t have a way out of here.”

  “That’s not true.” He dressed quickly. It was a shame to cover such marbled perfection, no matter the sharpness of the mouth attached. “I’m gonna shift back into what I was before, as long as you promise not to chuck rocks at me this time, and fly through one of those stairwell skylights. I’ll shift back to a vamp and let you out through Erock’s chamber once the coast is clear.”

  “How’re you going to get him out of his chamber?”

  Slade picked up the scroll and handed it to her. “Pissing people off is what I seem to do best. It won’t take much incentive to get him to come after me.”

  Realizing the next time she saw him he’d be a bat, then a vampire, Dylan took him in. His caramel skin was close to the same flawless tan of his vampire form, his hair the same dark stubble. Jaw and lips were more pronounced this way, and his eyes were a mesmerizing black, but other than that. . . .

  “Slade,” she said, brushing her hand along his. “What if I told you I don’t want you to shift back? That I wanted you to stay in this form, just like you are now.”

  He turned to her, eyes blazing through the dark. “I’d say you’ll die down here if you don’t get something to eat within the hour. Or did you forget about your hunger?”

  She hadn’t forgotten. She’d just been distracted by head-spinning sex. Now that he mentioned it, her fangs were humming with need. “Maybe you could call it in . . . like an anonymous tip or something. You could say you found the entrance to the catacombs. That’ll bring them down here faster than you could hang up the phone.”

  “And what would you say when they found you locked down here? That you stumbled upon it by yourself and, Oh look! You happen to have the scrolls that tell of the end of the war? That won’t fly and you know it.” He started walking down the right corridor. “We came down here for a specific reason, Dylan, and now we have to see it through.”

  “I know, but . . . what’s your reason for being here? I mean, you never told me what you were doing as one of us to begin with.”

  He sighed, like he wasn’t sure how much to reveal. “I was assigned to find the entrance to the catacombs and the scrolls.”

  She looked down. Clutched in her hand was the scroll he’d just handed her, the one he’d been looking for. He was handing over the reason he’d come here. “Are there others like you among us?”

  “No.”

  “You seem so certain, yet if you were able to—”

  He stopped walking, looked down one corridor, then another, finally deciding on the darker of the two. “I don’t know why I’m able to shift into a leech . . . ah, a vampire . . . and I know for a fact no other therian can. I think you’re holding the answer in the palm of your hand, and I intend on finding out what that is. Is that reason good enough for you?”

  Keeping her eyes on his, Dylan remembered something her father had told her when she was a child. Vampires were born vampires, transforming during three stages, ending in complete vampirification sometime during puberty. They didn’t have the makeup of any other species on the planet. They were inherently different from birth. An anomaly of nature.

  Therians, on the other hand, were born with the genetic makeup of humans. Completely and boringly normal. Only during a freak chemical imbalance during adolescence were they able to first shift into other living forms.

  But vampires weren’t like other living forms.

  They were of their own species. With their own complex and impenetrable genetic code—one into which therians couldn’t figure out how to transform. Except Sla
de. . . .

  “Slade, I just thought of something. Your lack of hunger when you first came to the khiss is easily explained, now that I know what you really are. I’m sure your body wasn’t able to fully accommodate the complexity of the vampire form.”

  “Yeah, that had to be it,” he mumbled. “Vampire complexity.”

  “Would you let me finish for once? Later, when you were on the streets, you were bloodlusting like a newborn. Did you ever wonder what changed between when you were first inducted and then?”

  “The more time I spend in a form, the more their natural habits start to rub off. I can’t imagine vampires being much different than any other animal I’ve shifted into.”

  “Back there for a second . . . I . . . I thought you were going to bite me. There couldn’t be any vampires in your family history, right?”

  He laughed, two loud blasts that cracked the still of the martyred tombs. “Yeah, because vampire and therian genes are compatible? Come on, you know better. If I had both genes I’d have died during birth two hundred years ago. You can stop trying to grasp at straws. We’ll know what’s really going on soon enough.”

  She chewed on the side of her lip, deciding to wait to push the issue until they talked to Meridian. Maybe Dylan was directing her questions at the wrong person. Or maybe she just wanted a way for Slade to stay in his very different, but very gorgeous therian form, and be welcomed into the khiss as one of their own. That way she’d have the best of both worlds.

  Damn it, she knew better than to think such things.

  Having her cake and eating it too had never made her happy in the past—just pushed her beyond reach of her skinny jeans and overwhelmed her with guilt for being greedy.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “Crimson Council invited a Sheik to speak on behalf of Crimson Bay therians. Instead of investigating suspicious mundane killings using aligned therian and vampire forces, the shifting leader waged all-out war. Vampires seen on streets will be killed without warning.”

  —San Francisco Haven Newsletter: Note from the Primus, November 2010

  Slade was right.

  It didn’t take much to pull Erock out of his chamber—a rat-a-tat-tat on his door, a hungry-for-a-beating mug, and some ridiculous tip on Dylan spotted in the alley in front of the haven was all it took. He went scurrying out of his room, locking it behind him of course, without so much as a worthy glance at Slade—Ruan hovering over his ass, all eager-beaver to lay his eyes on Dylan.

  Moving as quickly as he could to free Dylan from the catacombs wasn’t quick enough for Slade. He kept thinking he was taking too long.

  Ten minutes passed.

  Then thirty.

  An hour.

  Normally he would’ve been able to shift from one form to the next with little holding him back but a ravenous hunger. This time, however, it took him longer than ever to recover after shifting from the bat’s form back to vampire.

  Once he’d recovered completely, able to walk and talk like a normal vamp again, the rest came naturally. Like the last time he’d taken to this form, he was hungry for blood immediately. His fangs dropped into place, his speed and strength returned to his muscles—he didn’t have to test them by bashing Ruan’s head in, although it would’ve been fun for the hell of it.

  After shooting side glances down the hallway, Slade front-kicked Erock’s door in, right between the wrought-iron handle and the frame. The door busted open, hanging crookedly on its two shaken hinges. He moved fast, just in case that giant buffoon of a guard heard the crash and wanted to check on the noise.

  A large stainless steel refrigeration system in the far corner caught Slade’s attention. He opened it up, grabbed two bottles of the first thing in sight, and sped to the bookcase.

  Not sure which book released the entrance, Slade yanked on bindings at whim. One book after another released from its perch, took flight over his shoulder, a flock of new and old pages flapping wildly through the air, landing on the floor with heavy thuds. Finally, he reached a book that resembled an ancient encyclopedia and pulled.

  The bookcase creaked open. Air flushed through the room.

  He half-expected Dylan to emerge from the dark, scroll in hand, ready to answer to anyone who’d opened the case had it not been Slade. But it didn’t happen.

  “Dylan?” he called, searching the span of tunnel as far as his keen eyes allowed. “Dylan, we don’t have much time, we gotta go. Where are you?”

  Whimpers came from around the corner at his feet. He stepped into the dark and scanned the floor.

  So help him if he was too late. Why had he gotten so snippy with her back in the catacombs? Why had he wasted time being closed-lipped about his marking? He should’ve told her about the incident all those years ago when he saw—thought he saw—a vampire with the same marking. He should’ve ignored the clenching in his chest, telling him to shut his trap or he’d scare her away.

  Out of the shadows he saw her. Lying shaken and huddled into a ball on the floor was the woman he knew to be strong and level-headed. Gripped in her strained-white fingers were the scrolls—the key to figuring out why Dylan’s future included prophecy lore, why his markings appeared on their most sacred writings, and why David would give his life to figure out how to beat the Valcdana.

  “Dylan, I’m here. I know I took a long time—damn it, I took too long—but I’m here now. I’m gonna get you something to drink but first we gotta get outta here, all right?” He cradled her in his arms, rested her head against his chest, and carried her to Erock’s bed.

  She’d gotten so pale in the small time she was in the tomb, she made Erock’s ivory sheets look dirty and stained. There wasn’t much time to get her back on her feet before bloodlust would reign over her senses, taking her beyond the realm of reality, thrusting her into crazed delirium.

  He shoved the bookcase closed, sealing off the draft circling the room, and rushed back to her side. Lifting her head, he brought the bottle to her dry, cracked lips.

  “Come on, baby, drink up. That’s the way . . .”

  Her eyes fluttered open then closed, barely responding to the plastic brushing her lips. He tipped the bottle back, letting blood flow freely onto her mouth. It ran along the crease of her lips, falling onto the bed in tiny rivers of red.

  Not a single drop made it in.

  “Dylan, you have to open up.” Parting her lips with his finger, he tried again, tilting the bottle back little by little. The second he released his finger, her lips closed tight again, refusing the blood flow.

  He did the first thing that came to mind.

  Slade took two giant gulps of blood, squashing down his own greed to devour until his need was relieved, and kept a small amount in his cheeks—for her. Leaning over the bed, one hand on either side of her petite frame, he dropped his mouth down. Working back and forth, he softened the hard purse of her lips, until finally she responded with small shudders . . . and kissed him back.

  When she opened up a sliver he slipped his tongue inside and let the blood flow freely from his mouth to hers.

  As the blood hit the back of her throat she whimpered. Opened up to take more. Her hands flew to the back of his head, her fingers raking his head in greedy strokes.

  Wanting to get her mouth to the bottle as quickly as possible, Slade pulled back. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted the gleam of her fangs coming at his throat.

  It was too late to dodge or jump back, and he sure as hell wasn’t about to strike her.

  She reared up in a flash, sank her teeth into his jugular, and made long, dragging pulls on his vein.

  Slade gasped. Jerked back. He was a heartbeat away from detaching her by shoving her off him. This was so not happening. No vamp, Dylan or otherwise, was ever gonna take blood from him.

  Except in an instant, her long draws slowed, transforming into a fluid suck rather than hungry pulls. Shock gave way to intense pleasure unlike anything he’d ever felt before.

  Each pulse of his blood
flowing out of him and into her made sexual fantasies surge through Slade’s mind. He wanted to be inside of her as she fed from him. No, scratch that. He needed to be inside of her, filling her up as she drained him.

  “Dylan,” he moaned, palming her neck. “Sweet . . . Jesus, that feels just like . . .”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  Orgasms, he thought. Pure and raw, intensely blazing orgasms that tiptoed right along the border of pleasure and pain. One after another after another.

  Pressing her against him, angling his neck to give her better access to what she desired, Slade realized she was taking all of him. Everything he had to give was inside her, flowing through her veins, her body. He possessed her now, body and soul. Nothing could separate them.

  Almost as if she realized what she was doing and to whom, Dylan’s eyes shot open, lust flowing through them like lava. She tried to pull back, but met the brute force of Slade’s hand pushing her on.

  “More,” he moaned. “Whatever you do, don’t stop.”

  God, he was so ready to take her here and now. Lay her back and pump her full of him until the only scent in the room would be their blood and sex.

  She melted in his arms, whimpering, swiveling her hips around so she was kneeling in front of him. Her curls floated down her back, giving him a clear shot of the dark vein on her neck.

  Oh yeah, he was finally gonna taste her. Screw stereotypes about leeches and parasites. Sign him up for buggy eyes and a shell if that’s what it took. One time, just once, he was gonna forget everything he’d been told about vampires. Roll her over, sink his teeth into her, and bathe in her essence as it flowed through his veins.

  But first . . .

  He tipped back the bottle in his hand and drank. Gulped blood like it was Dasani on a hot summer day. Everything became crystal clear: the coils of her hair as they wrapped around each other, her fresh rain fragrance, the blue hints dancing in her eyes.

  Dylan detached from his neck, slunk against his body until she was purring at the bottle like a kitten. He guided the spout to her lips and poured. She savored every drop, letting the blood trickle over her lips, down her throat, soothing her hunger.