Moon Kissed

by Michele Hauf

  Her eyes glinted with unnatural light, a silvery shard of hunger. “I wish you no harm physically. My mark would mean little for one so proud and one who walks alone. Were you in a pack, it would be different. I’d drink you until you moaned for me to satisfy you.”

  She spoke truths. A vampire mark would mean little to him now—unless he ever wished to start a new pack. Should she bite him, he would feel it as a human would. As an intense orgasmic draw at the core of his being, one that commanded he submit.

  The idea of succumbing to this bitch’s persuasion brought bile to his throat.

  “Besides—” Elvira tilted up his chin “—there’s another who’ll wish to take a bite out of you soon enough.”

  She propped her hands at her hips. The pale globes of her breasts were the only discernible shape on her black-cloaked figure. “Come on, boys. Our work here is finished.”

  Turning, she marched off, her sycophants in tow.

  The whip dragged across his shoulders, slicing his jacket and jerking him forward to the ground. He landed, digging his fingers into the pummeled grass and clutching dirt.

  Severo could only repeat the words she’d said over and over until he understood them.

  ...another who’ll wish to take a bite out of you…

  “Bella!”

  Rage twisted Severo as he made a quick shift. Within moments, the werewolf howled out its anger. Vampires had hurt it. Yet though it could sense that they were close, it did not seek to track them.

  A stronger scent drew it into a loping race across the field, toward the house.

  The patio door was smashed in. The granite coffee table lay on the patio flagstones, on top of the shattered glass.

  The werewolf charged across the debris. Glass shards pierced its paws, yet it did not slow down. Barking at the fierce cuts to its flesh, it trotted into the living room.

  A thin streak of crimson ran across one couch cushion. The werewolf knew that scent. It was tainted with cloves. The scent briefly calmed it. Her. Its mate. Where was she? Was she harmed?

  Calm turned to rage.

  Rushing through the kitchen, it followed a trail of broken dishes and a crack in the wall where a force must have punched through.

  Moving quickly, it took the steps downstairs, scenting blood so strongly, it growled and punched the walls as it made it to the laundry room.

  Not a wolf or vampire, but not a human, either.

  Not your mate.

  It loped upstairs. Closing its eyes, it twisted its neck, scenting the air. Longtooths. Three of them dead. Others, no longer in the house, had left a scent trail that led toward the front door, which hung on one hinge.

  Another scent grabbed at it. Mate.

  Down the hall.

  Inside the room with a bed the werewolf found her. The limp, bloodied body of its mate lay across the tousled white sheets.

  A howl birthed from its core and vibrated through its entire being.

  Severo shook off the sharp tingles of the shift and became instantly alert on the floor before the bed.

  He clutched his foot and gripped the glass shard that had penetrated all the way through the top of his foot. Growling as he pulled it out, he tossed it aside. Blood spilled from his foot, but he gave it no mind.

  He spied a body on the bed—and let out a cry.

  Clenching a fist, he wondered if Elvira’s minions had finally done what they’d set out to do that night of the chase. Please, they must not have raped her. He would tear those vampires limb from limb, and then…But no, she’d been placed on the bed. Perhaps she had not been violated, after all.

  She moaned, and he lunged to the bed and leaned over her. “Bella, I’m here.”

  “I did it. Killed…vampires.” Her voice cracked and her head fell back as he lifted her by the shoulders.

  A pile of ash on the other side of the bed startled him.

  “Good girl. You got them. I’m sorry. I don’t know how they made it through the wards. I was outside. There were so many of them. Bella, you’re bleeding.”

  He reached to flick on the lamp. Just leaning over her, filling his senses with her blood, sickened him. He should have been inside to protect her. What hell had she gone through while he was out batting around vampires?

  What he’d thought a head injury was quickly revealed to be neck wounds when the light gleamed across her side. Thick, viscous blood glittered. It had begun to coagulate, but there was so much, he couldn’t tell if she’d been slashed or stabbed.

  His heart knew it hadn’t been a weapon of steel that had harmed her.

  Fingers shaking, Severo touched the blood. He winced when the nature of the two wounds was revealed. Teeth marks.

  Gathering her into his arms, he rushed into the bathroom and deposited her in the tub. As water filled the tub, he tore her clothing from her and tossed it behind him. He tugged down a towel from the bar and plunged it into the water.

  Scrubbing the towel over the wounds on her neck, he wasn’t sure what he could accomplish. He only knew he had to wash away the blood.

  Chapter 18

  E merging from a groggy dream of ash-filled air and snarling fangs, Bella blinked and groaned. Was she underwater? Her skin was wet, yet the pressure of the water did not pull her down. The steamy scent of lemons made her wonder if she was in the bathroom.

  Opening her eyes, she saw her lover sitting there, his shoulders bowed, his hands hanging between his bent knees. There was such intensity in his eyes. They were what had held her since day one. A promise of truth, trust and honor lived there in Severo’s eyes.

  Beyond him, she saw a strange disaster. The doorway had a big bite out of it. A force had punched the wall and taken out part of the door frame and Sheetrock. Bloody footprints led from the bedroom to the bathroom tiles.

  Every part of her ached and her muscles had been stretched beyond their capacity. But of course, after battling a houseful of crazed vampires, what did one expect?

  “Oh my God, the vampires.” When she tried to move, her hand slipped on the edge of the porcelain tub and she fell back into the water. “What the hell?”

  Now she realized Severo sat on the toilet lid, not reacting to her distress, but waiting patiently. He wore only jeans. Watery blood pooled at his bare feet. His face was dirty and his shoulder had blood on it.

  “Why am I in here?” she asked. “Why am I all wet?”

  She followed his gaze over the floor. A pile of bloody towels sat heaped before the vanity.

  “I had to clean the wound,” he offered in a raw, quiet voice. “It’s still bleeding. It was left unsealed. I…couldn’t take it away. I’m sorry.”

  She shoved herself up but the slick tub kept her sliding to a reclined position. “Wound? Your shoulder?”

  “No, sweet. You.”

  “Was I cut? None of them had weapons. I ran from them. Took a few out with those wooden bullets and a stake. They got Heloise. Oh, Severo, Heloise.”

  She slapped a palm to her forehead, and when she thought the tears would come, she realized she had gone beyond them. Her chest heaved. Sorrow for the fallen housekeeper prodded her sympathy, but she had abandoned tears sometime after that first vampire had been staked.

  Among her thoughts she remembered what Severo had said.

  “What do you mean, ‘left unsealed’?” she asked him.

  Why didn’t he just hug her? More than anything she wanted him to hold her and make her know everything was all right. That the vamps were all gone. They were alive. That meant they had won, right?

  “Saliva is necessary to seal the wound and prevent the vampire taint from rushing into the bloodstream,” he explained. “You don’t remember?”

  Standing, he loomed over her. He had blood all over him—at the corner of his eye, on his shoulder and at his abdomen. Blood had dripped onto his jeans. Not from fresh wounds. Streaks of dried blood from earlier wounds that had rapidly healed.

  “Bella…”

  He sucked in a breath. His ey
es shifted up and along the shower curtain rod, searching for something. The pulse of his jaw, which she had once thought so sexy, now disturbed her.

  “You’ve been bitten. And there’s nothing I can do to reverse the imminent change,” he blurted.

  She gripped her neck and flinched at the pain. Slippery blood coated her fingers. “A vampire bit me?”

  She met her lover’s tired gaze and he nodded. “I’m going to tend to Heloise. She should not be left as she is. You’ll be fine until I return?”

  Fine? What was fine? She’d been bitten by a vampire. Was she going to change? Would she die? Would she want to drink blood?

  Severo awaited her reply. Why wasn’t he holding her?

  If she closed her eyes and opened them again, would this crazy nightmare go away?

  “Bella?”

  She nodded, though she couldn’t meet his tired eyes. “Sure. Fine.”

  And he walked from the room without bowing to kiss her or offering to help her out of the tub.

  Was he horrified by her?

  “He hates vampires,” she murmured. Sliding a finger along her neck to feel at the gaping tooth marks, she now found tears. “Will he hate me?”

  Severo jogged downstairs. A sense that he had been here recently—as the werewolf—put up his hackles.

  As suspected, he did not find Heloise’s body in the laundry room. The ichor pool glittered brilliantly, and he knew that, by some strange and magical means, her body had returned to Faerie, whence it had come.

  He knelt before the devastation.

  Sheets were shredded, some spattered with red. It could only be vampire blood. So Heloise had put up a fight? Good girl.

  Closing his eyes and bringing his joined palms up to his face, he wondered what he could say, then knew it would be better to say nothing. Thanks for all she had done for him would be inappropriate. It was a bittersweet moment.

  He slammed the laundry room door closed behind him and made a hasty retreat to the kitchen. Piles of vamp ash sat among the debris of broken furniture, of his life.

  How many vampires had gone after Bella? There must have been as many inside the house as outside.

  How had they breached the wards? And the locks?

  Looking around, he realized he did not know where to begin. How did one make things right when they were so wrong?

  She is wrong now.

  Catching his balance against the kitchen counter, he gasped in a breath. Wrong? No, not his Bella.

  “Please, let her be right.”

  He placed a call to the cleaners, who promised they’d arrive within the hour.

  Well and fine. He should probably tend his own wounds. Not that it mattered. They’d all healed—save the gaping gash through his heart.

  “Bella,” he whispered. “Bella.”

  Not wrong. Never wrong.

  The wards and locks would have to wait before he could figure out why they had failed. He wouldn’t need them now. He sensed Elvira had gotten exactly what she’d wanted, and would not return.

  And what had she won from this round of battle? She would turn the one thing Severo most loved into the one thing he most hated.

  “Masterful revenge,” he muttered, then kicked aside a bloodied couch cushion.

  The patio-door glass clinked beneath his boot toe. Sunshine tickled across the shards of safety glass as if they were large pieces of faerie dust. Poor Heloise. She was an innocent.

  As was Bella.

  He snapped a finger against a shard stuck in the door frame. Soaring through the air, it landed and slid across the pool tarp.

  “I should go to her.”

  She would want him to hold her, to reassure and kiss her, to give her proof of his love.

  For a long time he’d sat in the bathroom after scrubbing furiously at the wound on her neck. If only he could have washed away any trace of damage, taken the bite from her with the cleansing water.

  What now would he feel when he again looked upon her?

  “I love her,” he growled at his insensitive thoughts.

  Could he love a vampire?

  A minute possibility remained that she would not change. To do that, she had to survive till the next full moon. Elvira had planned this so well. The moon had been waning but a day. There were four long weeks till the next full moon.

  “She’ll never survive without going mad.”

  Exhausted, and knowing that Severo was busy with the cleaning and security crews, Bella slept through the day. After she’d showered, the wound had stopped bleeding. She crawled naked into bed and fell instantly asleep.

  A fitful sleep. She’d been aware when the water in the shower again beat against the tiles, and then when Severo had carefully tiptoed about the bedroom, selecting clean clothes and leaving her alone.

  All she craved was spooning against his body and knowing that everything was going to be all right. But the dread that their relationship would never be the same kept her in bed, even when her stomach growled for food.

  When the noise from the cleaners ceased and the sun had again set, she decided to sneak out for a morsel. At least now she wouldn’t have to see piles of ash or signs of the struggle she’d been through.

  Pulling on a black silk robe, Bella combed her hair and leaned toward the mirror. The bite mark was swollen and red. She couldn’t conceal it with makeup. It didn’t hurt, only ached.

  “How did you do it, Seth? This is not my idea of a good time.”

  Of course, when the wound healed, she could get on with her life. She suspected Severo was avoiding her for the very reason that she bore the mark of the vampire on her neck. It couldn’t heal fast enough.

  Answering her hunger pangs, she headed to the kitchen. It was spotless, with no sign of broken dishes or the wooden stool she’d thrown at a vampire and had broken across his shoulder. She opened the fridge and grabbed the plastic bottle of pomegranate juice.

  When she closed the door, she dropped the juice. Tall and strong, Severo posed as if ready for a challenge, head lowered and fingers coiled, ready to fist. She thought she could smell the fury on him, and his eyes appeared even darker.

  The vampire’s eyes had been so beguiling. Blue, deep and seductive. She couldn’t remember anything after looking into them.

  “I’m sorry. I was hungry.” She picked up the plastic bottle. To run into his arms felt wrong but she so desired it.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Better. Much. I think this stupid bite mark will heal in a few days. I know how it must make you feel. I understand you haven’t had time for me. You’ve been busy all day, I’m sure. Can I make you something to eat?”

  His inhale stabbed her in the heart. Bella closed her eyes. Please, touch me. Hold me.

  “We need to talk, Bella.”

  Call me sweet. I am yours. You won’t abandon me after you realize this bite means nothing.

  “Sure.” She screwed off the bottle cap and took a slug. She didn’t realize how achy her jaw was until she swallowed. “Let’s sit over there.”

  Drawn to their favorite chair, she waited for him to sit and pull her onto his lap. “Severo?”

  He nodded as if jerking himself out of busy thoughts. “Yes.”

  He sat, and when she wanted to climb onto his lap, he allowed it, but he didn’t cradle her as he usually did, only sat stiffly, as if he wouldn’t push her away but would like to if he could.

  “Are you angry with me?” she asked.

  “Never. No. I’m sorry, Bella.”

  “It’s the bite, isn’t it? It reminds you of them. It’ll soon be gone—”

  “It’s going to change everything, Bella.”

  “No, it won’t. When it’s healed, you’ll forget all about this stupid incident.”

  “It will heal. But you will not. You will be transformed.”

  She pushed against his chest and leaned back to study his face. He couldn’t meet her eyes. How dare he not look at her, to make her feel as if she were contagious.
Now she wished she would have found a scarf to tie around her neck.

  “Transformed? You mean…? But Seth didn’t change when he was dating Elvira. Not until she wanted him to.”

  “Because a vampire usually licks the wound after it takes blood from a mortal. The infusion of vamp saliva seals the wound and keeps back the vampire taint. A bite that isn’t sealed introduces the taint to the mortal’s system. It will stir up the blood hunger in you, Bella, and you will change with your first taste of human blood.”

  “No.” She shoved off from his lap and paced toward the opposite wall.

  The now glassless picture of Aby and Severo had been rehung there. In the ten years they’d been together, why hadn’t Elvira gone after Aby? Was it because he’d never made love to her?

  “I don’t want to be a vampire. I don’t want—” To be the one thing her lover despised. The thing that would always remind him of his family’s tragic suffering. “There must be some way to stop it.”

  “There is.”

  The warm weight of his hand on her shoulder made her flinch. Bella did not turn to him. Aby’s bright smile taunted her. She had had Severo for an entire decade. Would Bella lose him after but a few months?

  “You can wait for the full moon.” His voice hurt her heart. So calm. Yet not affectionate, as it had been. More removed, clinical. “If you don’t drink human blood before then, you’ll be in the clear. But you’ll be mad from resisting the intense hunger. Damn it, Elvira planned this well. It’ll be another month before the full moon comes again.”

  “But you said if I drink human blood. Maybe I could…drink yours?” She winced at the thought of doing something so reprehensible.

  “Bella, listen. There are three options for a mortal bitten by a vampire when the wound has not been sealed. You can answer the blood hunger—which should emerge within days—and complete the transformation, thus becoming a vamp.”

  “What are the other two?”

  “You could kill yourself.”

  She gasped.

  Severo punched a fist into his palm.

  “Door number three, please?” she asked softly.