Collared By The Warrior

by Daniella Wright

  “Sorry about earlier,” I said.

  “Not a problem,” he replied, looking up. “All part of the job.”

  “Do you want to go to the hospital cafeteria and get a cup of coffee before it closes?” I asked. He leaned in closer to me, his eyes smoldering sexily. It seemed as if he were about to say something flirtatious. Suddenly, his demeanor changed as his nose twitched violently. The usually jovial, warm expression on his face changed, and I saw beneath the kindhearted veneer. I saw the face of the killer; his eyes grew dark, almost black with a violent hunger. His mouth twisted in a cold smile. Shocked, I began to back away, but he grabbed my forearm in a vice-like grip. He began to drag me down the hall. I looked around for help, seeing no one, I began to scream, but my vocal chords failed me.

  When he had me out of sight, he gripped me by the throat, pulling me in close to him, placing his hand on the flat of my lower back like a lover. Perhaps, anyone looking would think that we were in the middle of an illicit love affair. He squeezed my throat, and my vision darkened. I clawed at his hand, my lungs heaving for a breath.

  “You reek of dragon,” he growled in an undertone, and I couldn’t understand what he was talking about, my brain reeling from lack of oxygen.

  This is how I die, was my last thought as I passed out. It seemed to come from someone somewhere outside of my body.

  Chapter Seven

  I had been dreaming—I was on a table in one of the exam rooms of the ER. It was, I knew, the ER at Linda Vista, with its clean white and seafoam green walls and brand new medical technological instruments. I had been in some sort of accident, and I couldn’t move, and doctors and nurses that I didn’t know were all standing over me, the overhead light bright in my eyes.

  “She’s losing blood!” One of the doctors cried out.

  “Get us some O-neg!” another yelled.

  “I have some,” It was Mark’s voice. They all turned, screaming in fright. Mark attacked them viciously, tearing out throats with his teeth. Suddenly, all was quiet in the exam room. All I could hear was the beeping of my heart monitor and the rushing of the ventilator that I was on.

  I tried to move, but my limbs were locked. The light above me was suddenly blocked out. Mark’s face was above me; his teeth dripped with blood and gore.

  “Your turn,” he hissed menacingly, his face ascending upon my throat, his lips twisted into a manic, hungry smile. I screamed, my body seizing in fear.

  I jolted awake, freezing; I was wearing only my hospital scrubs. My face was pressed up against a cold concrete floor, and my neck ached. I sat up, the scent of mold and old, damp concrete in my nostrils. Looking around me, I found that I was in an abandoned warehouse; old, rusting machinery falling into disrepair from standing unused for several decades. There was light coming through the broken windows from the streetlights outside. I moved my legs, which had pins and needles in them. As I tried to get the blood flowing into my extremities, I heard the clink of a chain. Affixed to my right ankle with a leather-covered cuff was a chain, bolted into the nearby wall.

  I screamed, calling out for help. I wondered if there were any people out on the street—I could hear the sounds of cars—the freeway was nearby…maybe a mile or less, if I had to make a guess. My voice was raspy after Mark had choked me into passing out. As I screamed for help, to my horror, a shadow detached itself from a nearby wall. I froze in terror to behold Mark.

  “You can scream as much as you like, Samantha,” he said, looking at me in a dark, coy manner. “It won’t matter. I know of the trap that you and your vampire hunter lover tried to set for me.”

  “He’s not—”I began, but he cut me off.

  “Don’t lie to me,” he hissed violently. “I can smell him on you. There is no scent so…distinctive, yet disgusting as a dragon in this world.” He paused, looking at me darkly, with disappointment. “I thought that you were smarter.”

  “Anyhow, I have sent for Jared. Now, I am the one who has laid a trap. When he comes for you, I will kill your dragon shifter boyfriend. I will do it slowly, brutally, and in front of you so that you can see his agony.” Two thoughts occurred to me: wow, Mark was a psychopath. And, Jared was a Dragon shifter. This threw me for a moment. I recalled Mark’s comment, just before I had passed out, about smelling a dragon. I had not known, although from what I knew of the Dragon shifters (which was not much to begin with, having only come from supposed myths), Jared fit the description. Why would he not want me to know?

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” I snapped. Now was not the time to be afraid. Death was coming to me, and soon. I wanted to go down bravely. “I am not even sure that he will come for me, to be honest. I was just a means to an end for him; bait, as he called me. If anyone, you’re the one he’s coming for.” Mark knelt down beside me, caressing my cheek with an ice cold hand; it sent chills down my spine, but I made sure to not move a muscle.

  “If he doesn’t,” Mark leaned in, whispering in my ear, his cold lips against my skin, “then I will have a tasty treat.” He stroked my cheek, and then got up.

  “I’ve given Jared a deadline…” he laughed maniacally. “Get it? A deadline.” He laughed some more. I sniffed, looking about me at the old machinery for something that I could use as a weapon. Even if Jared came, there was a huge possibility that we would both end up dead. Mark was a wild card. We couldn’t expect him to act rationally.

  I reached for my grandmother’s cross necklace, pulling the metal that had warmed against my skin out from beneath my scrubs. Mark turned around, coming back to play with me some more. I held it up like an amulet or a protective spell, praying that it was big enough to protect me. Mark paused for a moment before he laughed.

  “This isn’t a movie, girlie,” he said, voice dripping with derision. My heart sank. His cell phone rang, and Mark turned, walking off to go and answer it. As I listened to his voice echo from far off, I pulled halfheartedly on the chain. It was bolted solidly to the wall. I looked at the lock on the cuff—it was heavy, and gleamed with newness. He had planned this…recently. I heard Mark’s footsteps as he returned. His teeth shone in the dark, light from the streetlamps flashing off of his noticeable fangs.

  “Good news,” he said, clasping his hands before him. “Your boyfriend cares about you. Quite a bit, in fact. I am going to save you for something post-lunch. Dessert, perhaps.” I threw my head back, wondering why Jared had let Mark have the impression that I was special. He had completely ruined the angle that I had been working. I sat, trying to figure out where to go from here.

  Chapter Eight

  While I was waiting, I began to feel about me in the darkness. The floor was smooth and dirty with collected grit. It had been closed for several decades, at least. I felt about me in the darkness, going slowly. If I cut myself, it could spell the end of the line. To my surprise, I felt the familiar, smooth, thick cloth of my medical coat. With bated breath, I patted it, feeling for my makeshift stake in the inner pocket. I exhaled in relief when my hand met with its solidness. I pulled the coat on, hugging myself, making it look like I was trying to get warm, and hiding the fact that I was reaching for the handle of the stake.

  The last thing that I wanted to do was to have Mark focus his attention on me. Although I didn’t want to engage Mark in conversation, I also knew that I needed to get him off-guard. I needed to lull him into a false sense of security, so that I could find an opportunity to slip my makeshift stake in between his ribs. I was a doctor—familiar than most with anatomy. This should be something that I excelled at.

  “So, who were you, like, originally?” I asked him. He faced me, frowning a bit. “I mean, you must have been someone important if such a powerful rogue vampire like your Maker turned you. Jared told me all about him and how great he was. He didn’t tell me much about you, though.” To my surprise, he answered.

  “You assume wrong, Samantha. I was your average kid. I was the youngest of two brothers,” he said. “My older brother was a straight-A student, a star athle
te, and then a decorated Marine. He died in Vietnam. My parents didn’t pay much attention to me before his death. But after, it was like they were ghosts. It was like I was a ghost.”

  “That must have been hard,” I said, coaxing him.

  “Indeed. They were the first that I killed…when I became this.” He smiled. “The terror in their eyes as they found that they had been harboring a monster, and the fear that permeated their blood made it sweet and succulent. And perfect Brian, dead.” He laughed as something occurred to me. “If only I had been able to kill him, too. Alas.”

  “That’s why most of your victims were young men, isn’t it?” I said. “You feed off of young men who look like your brother because it’s like killing him.”

  “You are so good at putting two and two together,” Mark said sarcastically. “Clever, Doctor.” He sighed heavily.

  “My father owned this factory,” he said, waving his hand in the air. “He built it from the ground up, spending his entire life perfecting it…making it run like clockwork. He so desperately wanted my brother to follow in his footsteps after attending college on the G.I. Bill. Instead, it came to me. And I let it fall into ruin and disuse from the moment my father’s heart stopped beating.”

  “My Maker showed me how to have power. Going rogue was the best thing to happen to me. And then Jared had to go and kill Gregor…bring him to some sort of justice. But that just freed me from the bonds of my Maker. Now that I have all of the power, I can ascend to the greatness for which I was meant.” He looked at me, and there was a strange gleam in his eye. “Now that I am the Undead, nothing can stop me.”

  “Why would you want that?”

  “And your life is working out so well, Samantha?” his voice was hushed, yet menacing. He was looking at me, his face in shadow, his head cocked to the side, as if he were making a study of me.

  “I can’t complain,” I replied, shrugging. “I mean, my relationships don’t seem to work out, and then I do tend to be a little awkward in social situations, but you know, my career is working out really well, and I love my apartment.”

  “And this is what you want? Always struggling, always rushing about to put other people back together?” It was like he was looking inside of me and finding something wanting. “Always tired, always the one in the relationship who gets left for someone else…someone with more time, someone more confident?”

  “When you put it that way…” My voice came out sounding hurt, as though stung by this remark. I steeled myself: I wasn’t about to let him get to me. I needed to survive this. I needed to stay on point.

  “Have you ever thought about what it would mean to put all of that aside?” he was walking closer to me, kneeling down so that we were face-to-face. I could smell his breath; it reeked of blood. I wondered that I had never smelled it before. “What if you could have power, and wealth?” He caressed my cheek with his frozen hand. “What if you could have beauty that would last for eternity?” He paused, exhaling in a rush of frozen air, reminiscent of a refrigerator door opening. I knew that this was not yet my moment. I let him go on and let him get comfortable within my reach.

  “You know, Samantha,” he said. “One of the reasons why I talk to you is because I really do find you attractive. Your pale, creamy skin, hair blonde like corn silk, eyes that would look like cold stars when I take all of the warmth out of you.” I suppressed a shudder at the thought of being so cold.

  “You would taste…incredibly sweet.” His voice was seductive. I tried to keep my breathing calm, and to not move a muscle, my hand gripping the stake in my jacket, but I was shaking horribly from tension and fear. From Mark’s undisguised pleasure as he smiled, cruelly stroking my cheek, and then my neck, right along my carotid artery, I could tell that he was savoring my poorly disguised fear. I was his plaything.

  He leaned back, pulling out his phone, and glancing at it, his pale skin blue in its light. He sighed as he checked the time.

  “We still have some time yet,” he said, placing his phone back into his pocket before he lunged at me, like a snake striking at its prey. He grabbed me by the neck, standing and lifting me to him in the cruel mockery of a kiss, his ice cold lips at mine. His razor-sharp fangs cut my lip as he forced his tongue inside of my mouth. I knew—it was time.

  In a single movement, I pulled the stake from my coat pocket, shoving it as best as I could up and in between his ribs and in the direction of his heart. He screamed in surprise and threw me against the wall, where I hit, sliding down to the floor in a daze. He looked down at the stake, sticking out from beneath his sternum. With a sinking feeling, I realized that I had missed his heart.

  He pulled it from his chest, and, snarling, leaped at me with lightning speed.

  Chapter Nine

  I ducked, curling into a fetal position to protect myself, certain that Mark was about to tear me to pieces. His strike never fell. An enormous, echoing growl permeated the warehouse. I felt an intense heat fill the air. I looked up to see a massive form, blocking out the doorway. It was reptilian, with a long and large, sinuous body. There was a crackling, thrumming noise coming from within the beast, as though it contained fire.

  Its eyes were lit from within, green and glowing; they were trained on Mark, who stood, crouching before the beast, sizing it up. Although Mark was smaller by a mile, I knew that they were evenly matched. The vampire attacked the dragon, who I knew was Jared, come to rescue me and exact justice.

  They fought, and my heart was pounding in my chest. Mark was using the stake that I had brought against Jared—I was furious with myself for placing a weapon at his disposal. He stabbed at the dragon with all of his might, trying to punch a hole in the scaled hide. Jared, on the other hand, swiped at Mark with his knifelike claws. Throwing the stake aside, Mark wrapped his body around Jared’s neck, squeezing, trying to suffocate him. Jared shook his head violently, causing Mark to be thrown off. He landed with a crash in a pile of rusting machinery parts.

  Jared reared his head back, looking for Mark. I sat, still dazed from being thrown. There was no way that I could free myself and help. Jared was searching frantically through the pile of machinery. I suddenly felt myself being grabbed by cold hands. I tried to scream, but I couldn’t make my voice work properly. I could feel Mark’s lips against the skin of my throat, the pulsing of my jugular as fangs pierced the tender skin of my throat. I could hear Jared, shuffling through the room, searching for the vampire in all of the wrong places.

  The room was alight in a wash of fire that blasted from the dragon’s maw. Mark was a dark shadow in the foreground. Old wood caught, and the room stayed lit as the dragon continued his search in vain.

  I struggled, trying to get the vampire off, feeling his lips tighten at my neck, feeling the strange suction as he drank my blood. The sound of my heartbeat was loud in my ears, and the fear that I was experiencing was nauseating. As I struggled, the cross around my neck grazed his hand. I heard a sizzling sound as Mark pulled away, cursing in pain. I smelled his seared flesh. Seizing my opportunity, I brought my knee up, hitting him in the balls. Mark cried out in surprise and pain. With a rush, I realized that I had lost too much blood already, and I reeled like a drunk and fell to the floor, unconscious.

  Chapter Ten

  I awoke with the taste of blood in my mouth, metallic and bitter. I felt achy, and a little tired, but I also felt brand-new, and stronger than usual. Opening my eyes, I found that I was wrapped within Jared’s arms. Looking at him, I knew that he had watched me closely while I had slept. We lay in a soft bed with a plush down comforter covering the two of us. I smiled at him, reaching up to cup his face in my hand. Two large tears rolled down his cheeks. They glittered in the morning light.

  “Where are we?” I asked, looking about me. The walls were a distressed, aged wood, and the windows were large and full of light.

  “My cabin,” he replied.

  “How long have I been asleep?”

  “We fought the vampire the night before la
st.”

  “So long?” Why had I slept for such a long time?

  “Samantha.” His voice was soft, almost reverent, as though my name was a prayer.

  "I'm alive," I said, happy to find myself in such a state. The last things that I could recall were darkness, teeth painfully biting into my throat, and ice-cold lips sucking the blood from my body.

  "About that…" Jared sighed. He looked away from me. “By the time that I could get to you, you were on the precipice between life and death. I needed to act quickly and do the only thing that I could in order to save you...” He trailed off.

  “What? What is it?” I reached out, cupping his face in the palm of my hand.

  “I turned you.” He looked gaunt and tired…even guilty, as though he had taken something from me.

  “So, I am…”

  “A dragon shifter,” he replied. I pondered this for a moment. I thought of all of the things that I had been told about dragon shifters—none of them were inherently bad. None of them were as bad as being a vampire. “You are…my destined mate. The moment that we kissed, our lives became entwined. But I didn’t want it to happen like this.” He held my hand in his as he went on.

  “I never wanted to turn you and rob you of your human life. I was willing to die with you, the moment that you died, after we had lived a life together,” he said. “But I could not let you die before we’d had any time at all…so I brought you back. I am so sorry. Please forgive me for my selfishness, even if you won’t stay with me.”

  I sat up, looking at him. He expected rejection, I realized. He thought that he had committed a heinous act.

  “Look at me,” I said, and he did, raising his eyes hesitantly. I saw sadness there, and guilt. “I feel stronger than I ever have. You didn’t ruin my life; you saved it.” He sat up, and I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him close to me. I could feel the strength of our bond.