by Marie Dry
“You dare to try and kill an enforcer?” He leaned down to hiss that in her face. Blood trickled down his neck where Mark increased the pressure, but he didn’t even flinch. Not even the smell of burning blood interrupted him.
Sabrina knew she should apologize. Get to Mark so that he could get them away from there and back to the safety of her house. But she couldn’t back down. No vampire was going to cower her.
“Yes. If it meant getting you to stop your cruelty,” she said and got up on her toes to try and meet him straight on.
For a moment, she thought he’d kill her and let Mark finish him off with the silver knife. With a crazed laugh, he let go of her throat, his laughter echoing evilly in the cavern, a scarily crazy laugh. She went to Mark and stayed behind him.
Nicholas shrugged Mark off. “You better explain to your little human wife the meaning of the word enforcer. Just because she now has your blood in her does not make her any less human in my eyes.”
Sabrina didn’t know what he meant that she had Mark’s blood in her and didn’t care. She wanted to set him straight, tell him she wasn’t Mark’s wife, but who knew what he’d do to her if he thought her without protection?
“You’d better consider her untouchable or Cape Town will be short one enforcer,” Mark said with grim intent.
Sabrina expected Nicholas to react with fury and maybe go for her again or take on Mark, but he threw back his head and gave that maniacal laugh again. This man wasn’t sane and she wanted to get away from him.
Limping over to her, Mark grabbed her arm and tried to steer her away. “Let’s get out of here.”
Sabrina dug in her heels. “I’m not going anywhere until he takes that thing out of your knee.”
“It’s staying,” they both said.
Sabrina crossed her arms. “As long as that thing is in your knee, I won’t eat.” She and Mark locked gazes and her heart sank. He wasn’t going to budge on this. She glared at him. “If I understand everything right, you have a war on your hands. You can’t go into it limping.”
“She’s got a point,” Nicholas said.
“Stay out of it,” Mark snarled without taking his eyes off her.
Nicholas said something foul and, moving so fast one moment he was standing a distance from them and the next flush against Mark, he slapped a hand over Mark’s shoulder. “There, that’s done. It will come out in one week. You get to prove you can suffer for your ladylove and still be ready for the drogge.”
“You had no right,” Mark gritted.
“Get out,” Nicholas said.
The next moment they were back in her house.
Looking around her, she had a flash of disorientation. A moment before she’d been facing down a very dangerous being deep in the mountains. Now she was back in her mundane house.
“Can he follow us here?’
“If he wants to.” Mark shrugged carelessly and she gaped at him.
“Doesn’t it worry you that that madman can come into my house at any time and kill us or torture us or goodness knows what he’s capable off?”
“He won’t enter our house without my permission. He would only enter if he sensed I needed protection or if I break the laws of his people.”
She noticed both distinctions in his sentence. Now he considered the house his as well and the enforcer did not care about her protection.
He limped to the couch and she battled tears. “Please take out that thing in your knee.”
“No, Sabrina. It is only right that I suffer as you have suffered.”
She looked at Mark and didn’t know what to say or do. Before she had time to figure it out, a booming knock came from the front door. Sabrina ran to Mark. The dreaded drogge had found them.
“I don’t think they’d knock on the door when they come, Sabrina,” Mark said, his voice gently mocking.
She blushed and tried to get off him, but he held her a moment. She didn’t even remember jumping into his lap. He kissed her, a soft sweet kiss, before he set her next to him on the couch, got up, and limped over to the door. She clenched her fists. She’d get that piece of silver out, come what may.
The opened door revealed a furious Christopher. “The drogge are stirring and you’re keeping her here?” he snarled at Mark.
Christopher stood with his fists on his hips and Sabrina sighed. He didn’t look like her cousin’s gentle boyfriend. It was a hundred percent vampire snarling on her doorstep.
“Your point?” Mark asked with a calm that was like the ocean gathering itself for a mighty storm.
“My point is that she is clearly unhappy and that is because of you. My point is that she is now in danger and you are not sending her far away.” He leaned toward Mark, as if wanting to emphasize his point.
Mark didn’t give way once inch. “Where do you suggest I send her? When the drogge move, where the hell do you imagine she’ll be safe?”
“They always concentrate on one area. All indications are they’re surfacing here this time.”
“They’re here because of Sabrina,” Mark said quietly.
A long silence followed.
Christopher started that inventive swearing again. She’d never heard him do it when he was with Jennifer.
“Exactly. Now explain to me your interest in my wife.” Mark’s voice was pure menace.
“She’s like a sister to me, she’s the cousin of the woman I love.” Pain threaded through his voice and Sabrina had to swallow. He cleared his throat and corrected himself. “The woman I loved.”
She missed her cousin too. She’d seen the love Christopher and her cousin had for each other and she doubted it would ever wane.
Mark pulled his hand through his hair in a weary gesture. “Why do you go to university every damn century? You’re too old for the student life.”
“That’s none of your business.”
Mark nailed Christopher with eyes backlit by amber. “You went to one of those crazy oracles.”
“I didn’t go to the oracles. The enforcer in Siberia told me that I’d find my fated love at a university in Cape Town.” He leaned against the door jamb and regarded his crossed feet with a somber expression. “I ignored him for seven months. And then I came, out of curiosity. I was skeptical about the prophecy, but curious about this continent. So I came. I came and met Jennifer and I wished I had come earlier. I revealed myself to her and she still loved me, knowing I’m a monster that lives on blood.”
“I’m sorry you lost your woman. I do need you to protect mine,” Mark said.
Sabrina wanted to be mad at Mark. What he’d done to her was horrific, but he’d just asked for Christopher’s help because he knew Christopher needed a purpose.
Christopher straightened. “I won’t let them get her.” Unspoken were the words that he wouldn’t let her die like Jennifer had.
“Your laws clearly state that a single vampire doesn’t hang around a married vampire’s woman,” Mark almost sneered.
“It’s time we bend these ancient rules, break them, and put in place new systems.”
It was heartbreaking seeing Christopher this somber. He used to laugh all the time.
“I’m not a vampire, they leave me alone because they might need my hunter services,” Mark said.
“Idiots.” Christopher obviously didn’t have a lot of time for vampire rules.
“They need my hunting services. You, they might go after if you violate their precious rules.” Mark walked toward Sabrina with a slight limp he immediately checked with a wince.
Christopher shrugged. “Don’t care.” He frowned at Mark’s knee. “What the hell happened to you?” he snapped.
Mark said something in a language she didn’t understand and Christopher pulled in an audible breath.
“You’re shitting me. Where?” he said in incredulous English.
“Sliver in the knee,” Mark said briefly.
“Brave. Stupid with the drogge on us, but brave.” He looked around the house with open curiosity. H
e and Jennifer had lived in Stellenbosch, close to the university. Sabrina had gone to visit them many times, and they were supposed to visit her as soon as the university closed.
“Please come and sit down.” Sabrina indicated the door of the sitting room and they all walked in. “Do you drink blood?” A picture of both vampires lounging in her chairs and sipping goblets with blood had her swallowing. “I honestly don’t know how to get you some.”
Christopher laughed. “I prefer whiskey and koeksisters.”
Mark smiled faintly. “I second the koeksisters.”
Suppressing a shudder at the thought of whiskey and koeksisters together, Sabrina sank down in a chair to see Christopher take the one farthest from her. He focused on the carpet and she realized that he’d been doing it since she saw him at the party. He rarely looked straight at her.
“Why do you never look at me, Christopher?”
“You look like her,” he said, sounding like a man walking around with a dead heart.
Sabrina didn’t know what to say to him. She couldn’t imagine knowing she could have saved someone she loved and had eternity with them, only to be thwarted by fate.
The tragedy in his voice echoed the void Jennifer left in her heart. “I understand. For a long time afterward, I couldn’t face a mirror.” She laughed and knew it was a little hysterical. “This is all so strange. In those days, I would never have guessed we would have ended up here. With you a vampire and me un-married to a gargoyle.” She sighed. “I’ll get us some tea, and I baked yesterday.”
Feeling like a coward, she quickly went to the kitchen. She would’ve enjoyed her new ability to walk without pain, if she wasn’t so concerned about the silver sliver in Mark’s knee. Why would he do such a dramatic thing?
She carried the tray and put it on the coffee table, reveling in her ability to carry it without staggering.
“Tea.” The way Christopher said it, it could have been poison.
“She enjoys tea,” Mark said pointedly.
“Well, in that case I will, of course, force the vile stuff down my throat,” Christopher said with mock suavity.
“Yes, you will.” Mark didn’t smile, but she thought she saw his lips twitch.
Sabrina poured the tea and handed the vampire and half-vampire, half-gargoyle a cup before serving herself. She had to force herself not to stop and shake her head at the surreal situation. Who would’ve guessed the path her life had taken?
There was silence for a while, and she sipped her tea. Mark wolfed down four koeksisters and Christopher made a whole production out of grimacing and taking smaller and smaller sips.
“Who are the drogge, where do they come from?” she asked.
They’d talked about them a lot, but all she knew was that they kidnapped young women.
“We don’t know where they came from,” Christopher said.. “Our race has been on earth since the dawn of time. While your ancestors were hiding in caves, we already had great civilizations. Nothing was mentioned of humans in the earliest manuscripts.”
“You have manuscripts about ancient vampire civilizations,” she asked, awed.
“Yes, did you think we just wandered the earth at the edges of human civilization and had no civilization or culture?”
“Uh no,” she said, but that was exactly what she’d thought.
Mark leaned back in his chair, his legs stretched out. “The first mention of the drogge was in Roman times. They appeared and wiped out a million vampires, thousands of shifters, and hundreds of thousands of human.”
“They thought it was the plague,” Christopher said and grabbed the last koeksister.
“Why so many vampires?” Sabrina asked. She’d have to do some more baking soon. They’d demolished twelve koeksisters each.
“No one knows. There is speculation that they use them for food.”
Sabrina had never thought that vampires would be used for food. Somehow she’d thought they were the baddest things out there.
“We’re fairly sure they sense vampires and gargoyles. Shifters can hide from them by shifting to human. They don’t seem partial to them when they are in human form,” Mark said.
“The shifters came out of the killings in Roman times almost intact, only their king’s woman was killed,” Christopher said.
Mark nodded. “And those persistent bastards are still looking for revenge.”
“So basically they’ll hunt me to give to Kratos to sacrifice and hunt you two because you taste yummy to them. Wow, I’m going to sleep well tonight,” she said. “So what happened next in Roman times?” She did not wait for an answer. “Has anyone ever killed a drogge?”
“One person did,” Mark said
“The person who killed it must have given a description.” Privately Sabrina thought the drogge probably counted on fear and superstition to muddy the waters.
“He said he was eight feet tall and hairy with big protruding teeth. His wife, who saw the whole thing, said he was a dwarf with a vicious laugh that was so fast she couldn’t see him move,” Mark said.
“Another eye witness swore it was a handsome prince, valiantly fighting against the vampire. Of course, the body became ash when the drogge died,” Christopher said.
If they had such mind powers that one of them could confuse witnesses at the moment of his death, they were in trouble. It could make them see and do anything.
“We know the women disappearing is the sign that soon they’ll kill as many of the nations as they can find,” Mark said.
“I can’t believe they’d do all this for food?” she said.
Just the thought of anyone looking at Mark and Christopher and seeing food turned her stomach.
“Look what humans are doing to their food source,” Christopher said.
Sabrina held up a hand. “Don’t go there or I’ll never eat again.”
“Nobody makes food out of vampires,” Mark said between his teeth.
Christopher toasted him with his cup. “I hear you.”
For the first time Sabrina realized how different they were from her. A whole different species with pride and a sense of nationalism. She couldn’t fathom how they existed alongside humans for centuries without being discovered.
“What can I do?” Sabrina asked. “Besides being sacrificed.”
“Nothing,” both men said at once.
Sabrina glared at both of them. “I’m not going to sit in this house and wait for one of those things to get me.” She jumped up and glared at them. “I might not be a vampire with superpowers, but I can help.”
“Superpowers?”
“You know, seeing in the dark and appearing and disappearing all the time. I want to know how to fight and what to look out for. Maybe I can’t fight like you do, but I should at least be able to defend myself. And I can obtain a lot of useful information simply by going online.”
“She’s right,” Christopher said.
“Any information you can find could help. Look at any unexplained deaths or natural disasters.” Mark rose slowly to his feet until he towered over her, compensating for his knee. He reached out and dragged her against him. “You only do research. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” She wasn’t about to do anything stupid.
His look changed, became heated, and she was only vaguely aware of Christopher clearing his throat.
He stood. “And that’s my cue to leave.”
“I’m putting together an alliance,” Mark said.
Christopher’s smile was a bitter twist of lips. “Good luck with that, but call me when you need me.”
He left and Mark looked down at her with such heat, she stumbled back, still not used to her knee actually supporting her. “What are you doing?”
Mark grabbed her, picked her up as if she weighed nothing, and walked to the stairs.
“This won’t solve anything, Mark. We need to talk and you’re straining your knee.” She didn’t know what she felt anymore. She loved him, wanted him, but didn’t trust he
r own emotions. He’d raped her mind, but now he wore a piece of silver that caused him to shiver with pain to prove her importance to him. She knew he was trying to put the alliance together to keep her safe.
“This will solve something for me,” he said. Rhett Butler might have stormed up the stairs with Scarlet O Hara in his arms, but Mark carried her with a deliberation and intent that was a hundred times more exciting. In their room, he gently put her on her feet. “When I gave you the memory of the first time we made love, that was my fantasy. I wanted to do that with you, I wanted it to be more than a fantasy.”
He unclasped the gold clip that held her hair at the back of her head. Her hair spilled over her shoulders. It was so long it covered her like a silk blanket.
“Beautiful, like midnight silk.” He ran her hair through his fingers. “I love your hair, I love how it hangs straight down to your lower waist.” He grimaced. “You have a memory of me brushing your hair before we make love. I had this fantasy of doing that the first time I saw you.”
“When, where did you see me?”
“I came here, knocked on the door, and saw a stunning woman with long midnight black hair and beautiful copper skin.”
She scowled up at him. “So you decided to mess with my mind?”
“You...enchanted me. I was lost, I came to find out what happened to Christopher and found a woman I could love.”
She snorted. “Yeah, right.”
“I sensed you were the woman the drogge was hunting and put you under compulsion.” He smiled, a crooked self-mocking smile, walked over to the dresser, and picked up her brush. “Or I tried to. I told you that you wanted to invite me in and answer all my questions, and you said no you didn’t. Imagine my surprise. It was the first time I’d encountered resistance from a human.”
He pushed her down into the midnight blue velvet chair against the wall and started brushing her hair with long sinuous strokes.
“Can you restore my memory of that day. Of the time I’ve lost?”
He didn’t answer for a long time, continued to brush her hair. “It would be too dangerous. When I realized you withstood the compulsion, I opened my senses and knew why women were disappearing in this city. Why there were indications the drogge came here. They came for you.”
