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Till the Break of Dawn
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Till the Break of Dawn Copyright © December, 2010 Tracey H. Kitts
Cover art by Tracey H. Kitts
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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
Till the break of Dawn
By
Tracey H. Kitts
Dedication
To Jordan for helping with my plot twist. Priscilla, for listening to every word in this book several times. Jeremy, for putting up with me in general. And last but not least to Justina, the Jager Queen. Long may she be kept out of bars.
Other books by Tracey H. Kitts
The Lilith Mercury, Werewolf Hunter Series
Red
Object of My Affection
The Dread Moon
Original Sin
A Dream Forbidden
Books unrelated to the series
Necromancer
Bitten
Once in a Blue Moon
Diary of an Incubus
Wicked City
Sex Symbol
Till the break of Dawn
Three Days of Night
Fate’s Embrace
Raven’s Destiny
Touch of an Incubus
Frank and The Werewolf Tamer
Constant Cravings
The Eternal Kiss
Writing as T.K. Hardin
Dracula: In the Flesh
Chapter One
Our Place already had customers lining up by the time I got there. This wasn’t entirely unusual seeing as how we were the only place within a fifty mile radius to sell beer on Sunday. I still wasn’t sure how Jamie got the license for that. The Deep South is strange. No beer in most states on Sunday. Everyone parties like hell the rest of the week and stocks up on Saturday night. The appearance of the familiar one-story brick building brought a smile to my face, even if the crowd didn’t. However, my temporary dejection had nothing to do with the people outside. After all, if we didn’t have business, we didn’t make any money.
Tonight’s crowd was bigger than usual though, and it had little to do with the beer.
“Just a few more minutes, guys,” I said as I took out my keys.
“Honey, you can’t keep us out here much longer, it’s supposed to rain.”
I smiled at George. We’d gone to school together and he never missed a fight. The way he said “honey” was more of a provocation than an endearment. But that was just George. He enjoyed provoking people, especially me.
“You’re here early, sugar. Not my fault.” I smiled sweetly before turning to open the door and locking it back to the sounds of laughter from the men outside. By their reaction it was obvious they were well acquainted with George as well.
As soon as I walked in Jamie yelled, “Did you forget it was fight night?”
She was already behind the bar getting everything ready. From the sounds of the pots and pans banging in the background our cook, Terry, was already there too.
“I never forget fight night,” I said wearily.
As I walked to the back to put up my purse Jamie said, “Oh, right. Sorry.”
My cowboy boots echoed on the wooden floor as I made my way down the hall to the back office. I put my purse on the desk, tossing my keys on top so I wouldn’t forget them. I kept a hat and t-shirt in the office just in case I forgot to wear one with the bar’s logo or hadn’t done my laundry, like tonight.
I was just pulling on the tight orange t-shirt that said “Our Place” right across my boobs when Jamie walked in. She is several inches taller than me with long black hair that she usually wears in a ponytail. Her cowboy hat was already in place and looked quite natural at the jaunty angle she always wore it. Her t-shirt was purple. We didn’t have an official color.
“Sorry I was late.”
Jamie loved the bar and I hated to let her down. But I was never quite myself before watching the fights.
“You’re my business partner. You can be five minutes late if you want to.”
The bar belonged to us so technically I could show up when I wanted. It was “our place.” After all, that’s why we picked the name. Jamie walked over and hopped up on the desk. The scent of her perfume reminded me of cotton candy. I liked the fragrance but wished she’d wear it less often. It always made me hungry. Her blue eyes were full of concern when she looked at me and I felt like a wimp for not being able to suck it up and hide my feelings better.
“Are you okay? I know you don’t like to watch the fights—”
“I’m fine,” I said, cutting off whatever else she was going to say.
I turned to the full-length mirror on the back of the door, and fluffed my long red hair a few times before putting the cowboy hat on and laughing. What can I say; it went well with the cut-off jean shorts.
“I still can’t believe we picked this as our uniform.”
She laughed. “Hey, it’s the south. It works.”
Jamie was a stripper down in Orlando before moving here nine years ago. When we met I was a struggling twenty-one-year-old waitress looking for someone to help share the rent. She came into the restaurant where I worked and ordered a cup of coffee. It’s not like me to start up a conversation with strange, sad-looking women. But she looked like she needed someone to talk to and my shift was almost over. We hit it off instantly and had been friends ever since. She is two years older than me, but it doesn’t really show. I’ve always thought she was beautiful. At five-foot-nine and built the way she is she has always reminded me of a superhero. You know, the kind that could wear stars and stripes and still manage to look sexy.
So, how did we end up as business partners? Well, a few years ago we put our last two dollars and fifty cents together to buy a five dollar lottery ticket. Believe it or not, we actually won. Since we had contributed exactly the same amount, we both owned exactly half of the business. Both of us had always wanted a place of our own and in the area where we lived (a little place called Happy, Florida) a bar seemed like the most likely type of business to be successful. We have been open for three years now and have more than doubled our money. You know how people say you’ve got a better chance of getting hit by lightning than winning the lottery? Personally, I’d always expected to be hit by lightning. The shock of our winnings still hadn’t worn off.
Jamie still looked to be reading my facial expression and when she scooted off the desk and gave me a big hug I knew something was up. “You could always get back in touch with him, you know?”
Him. Why did she have to go there? This was not the first time we’d had this conversation. Very few main events went by when we didn’t have the same discussion.
I shook my head. “I don’t think that would
be a good idea.” I gestured to the room around us. “Winning the money to start this place is the only good luck I’ve ever had.”
She patted my shoulder. “You and me both, babe.”
Despite our winnings, Jamie and I weren’t rich. We’d won enough to pay off our debts and start a business. Sure, that was great. But we weren’t millionaires or anything. We were just finally starting to be successful for the first time in both our lives.
“I’m gonna go see if Terry needs any help.”
Jamie smiled and turned to the mirror to adjust her hat. “All right. I guess I can go ahead and open early. Weather report said it was supposed to rain tonight.”
I laughed softly. “Yeah, that’s what George said.”
“Shit, George is here?”
I took her by the shoulders and turned her toward the door. “He’s one of our best customers. Just smile and pretend you like him.”
“I do like him. He just needs to stop asking me out. Hell, you sound like Billy.”
We both laughed. Billy was the name of the guy who owned the club where she used to dance. When we got assholes in the bar I would tease her with his words, “Just smile and pretend you like him.” Billy must have been a nice guy because they still kept in touch. George on the other hand could be sweet if he wasn’t so persistent. It was really starting to get old.
Terry was nowhere to be seen when I walked into the kitchen. This was strange seeing as how he is six-foot-four. I heard something fall and walked around the counter to find him sitting in the floor in front of the refrigerator.
“Need some help?”
“We ain’t got no fucking cheese.”
I smiled at Terry’s usual language. It wasn’t that I didn’t curse. On the contrary, I can be quite the potty mouth at times. But Terry’s normal, everyday conversation could make sailors blush. Even though I was sorry to see him frustrated, it helped to take my mind off my own feelings and that was a good thing.
“Then we’ll just tell people we’re out of cheese tonight.”
I offered him a hand up, but he refused and pulled himself up using the counter. I wasn’t sure I could have supported his weight, but I felt it would have been rude not to offer.
He winced and I asked, “Is your leg bothering you?”
Terry’s right leg was artificial from below the knee down. He lost it in an accident when we were in high school. At the time I was a freshman and he was a senior. Trying to find work in an area where there were mostly manual labor jobs had been a real bitch for him. I didn’t win enough to be able to give him money, but I could give him a job. Unfortunately, all he could cook was burgers and fries. Oh, and anything you could drop in grease.
“Just a little. Nothing I can’t handle.”
“You know if you stand for too long that happens. Why don’t you get that stool back in here?”
His smirk might have seemed rude to some, but I knew it was about the closest he came to a smile most of the time. “Why don’t you stop babying me and go tell them motherfuckers we ain’t got no cheese?”
*****
Jamie and I took turns waiting tables and mixing drinks, even though we had two other waitresses. Since she was already behind the bar when I walked out that meant I got to wait tables. Every now and then we’d hire some extra help, like during the holidays. But for the most part people seemed more than willing to wait a little longer as long as the food was good and the drinks weren’t watered down. It didn’t hurt that we had a huge plasma screen television on both ends of the bar so that everyone could come by to watch most any sports event. The more word spread about Our Place, the busier we got. It was getting hard to keep up.
The evening went by in a blur of beer and pretzels. We were so swamped that I almost didn’t get a chance to breathe. The event everyone had come to see was nearly over when I propped up beside George at the bar and Jamie handed me a glass of water.
“I can’t wait,” George said, his excitement obvious. “Nightmare is up next. It’s the main event!”
I put the water down without taking a sip. George had no idea he’d hit a touchy subject.
“So, what do you think?” George asked, elbowing me. “You think he can take this new guy, what’s-his-face?”
“I don’t see why not.”
Nightmare had been the most feared undefeated fighter for the past twenty-six years and at one time I was probably his biggest fan. He was the leading name in the business. And what business is that you might ask? It’s called the P.F.C. or Preternatural Fight Club and it was all the rage. Vampires, werewolves, and any other beastie that saw fit could now beat the crap out of each other in no holds barred fighting. And, they could get paid for it. It was the hottest thing since professional wrestling. Well, since normal professional wrestling. The P.F.C. was still wrestling and the shows were just as scripted. The real difference was that the matches were not. The entire act, right up until the bell chimed was fake. But no one ever knew who was going to win a P.F.C. fight. Not to mention they could get really brutal. Sometimes wrestlers lost body parts. But the good thing about being a vampire or a werewolf was, they could grow it back.
The wrestler everyone was waiting to see was Nightmare. He wasn’t completely undefeated, just at the P.F.C.’s headline event known as Monster Mash. He’d lost a match here and there to someone cheating or other interference. But at Monster Mash he was always the champ. And tonight’s event was leading up to the Mash. I tried to pretend all of this didn’t excite me, but the truth was I’d been watching since I was a kid.
As soon as Nightmare’s entrance music started to play my heart fluttered. His music sounded like something Beethoven had written, but the melody was better suited to Dr. Frankenstein than the famous composer. Everyone in the bar stopped to watch, including me. I couldn’t help myself. You could feel his presence it seemed, even through the screen. He was six-foot-seven, but when the camera got a close up he looked seven feet tall. Darkness hung about him like a cloak. The lights dimmed when he entered the arena. Not because of special effects, but because that was one of his powers. He could control the shadows. His pale green eyes became a solid, glowing, emerald fire as he made his way to the ring.
He removed his long cloak so slowly that it looked like a mini striptease. I noticed he had a few more tattoos since I’d last seen him and it made my heart ache. He added a new tattoo down his arm for every family member or loved one he outlived. All of his tattoos were tombstones of sorts, but some were beautiful angels while others looked more like gargoyles. His left arm had a nearly complete sleeve of tattoos. He had started the collection when he was alive and it only stood to grow now that he was dead.
I knew all of this because I knew him. He ran a hand through his long dark hair and I gasped.
“I know, he’s scary looking, right?” George said from beside me.
Truthfully, I’d forgotten the other man was there. I’d forgotten everyone was there except him.
When the announcer said, “Good evening ladies and gentleman and welcome to the FANG event,” I had to look away.
Terry had come out of the back and was standing on my other side. He’d removed his hairnet and I did a double take. It had been a while since I’d seen his shaggy brown hair without the net.
“Hey,” he said, pointing at the screen, “didn’t you used to date him or something?”
Shit. That’s just all I needed, George knowing something about my personal life. I knew Terry enough to understand he didn’t mean any harm, but he might as well have hit me. It would have been less painful.
“You used to date Nightmare?”
George was looking at me now instead of the screen and his eyes were nearly bulging out of their sockets. I wanted to slap him.
“Mind your own business.”
About that time the bell rang and everyone’s attention was drawn back to the screen. The man across the ring from Nightmare threw back his head and howled. In an instant a werewolf stood before the s
ix-foot-seven vampire.
One of the coolest things about Nightmare was not his undefeated streak, it was the fact that he’d never had to show his true form in the ring. All vampires, no matter how good they might look, do have a second form. For some it’s turning deathly pale (even more so than usual) and having glowing eyes. For others it’s stuff like sprouting wings and having even longer fangs. They’re stronger in their true form. But Nightmare had never had to use any of that stuff. The thing he did with his eyes was just for show. They were back to their natural pale green as soon as the match began. Other fighters, especially the werewolves, resented him for this reason. He was just a natural born badass.
Chapter Two
I tried to watch the fight, but had to keep looking away. When I walked back to the kitchen, Terry followed.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said. “But you guys did date, right? You have to admit, the prospect of knowing someone who dated Nightmare is pretty awesome.”
“His name is Marcus,” I said softly, before walking to the fridge and taking out a beer. I felt like I’d earned one.
I spent one night with Marcus and it had changed my life. All I was, all I’d ever be came into being in his arms that night. He was only the third man to ever touch my body. Never before had I truly given all I was, not even the first time. Not like this and not since.
I laid myself bare before him in so many ways. My body and soul were like an empty canvas. Like clay to be molded. He taught me things about myself I hadn’t known. And once known, some things cannot be forgotten. His memory burned within me, flaring painfully to life every time I heard his name.
After I took a few gulps of beer I realized Terry was still there. I also realized he looked unsure of what to say. His eyes offered an apology. He knew how much I hated nosy people like George knowing anything about me.
“We dated for about three months,” I answered finally.
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