Vamprotica 2006 Part 3

"d.a.m.n you, Stephen," Leo cursed into the silent autumn woods, no longer certain why the younger vampire had sent Eve. He hadn't wanted to believe Stephen had meant to be cruel, but the idea he was trying to make up for stealing Marian away was ridiculous. No one could ever take her place, especially a girl not even a third his age who didn't remember a time before televisions and microwave ovens.

Who you ache to bed more than any woman you've ever met, who challenges you even as she looks at you like you like you hung the moon, who- "Shut up," Leo mumbled to himself, moving into a run, grateful that the sun had yet to set. Eve would be slower in daylight. She was too young to retain her full powers during the day. She actually needed to lean on his arm at the end of their afternoon walks in the woods, a small intimacy he had looked forward to more than he wanted to admit.

With any luck, he would catch up with her long before she reached her destination. Though he had sent his servants to scour the town and rest of the grounds, Leo had little doubt where she was going in her present state of mind. There was only one place he asked her not to go, one section of the woods that she not explore. Leo had actually been surprised that she hadn't pressed him further about the cottage, hadn't demanded he tell her why she should never go there, especially alone. But she had obeyed him without question.

Now that he thought about it, no matter how much she defied him with her mouth, she obeyed with her actions on almost every request.

True, she fed on one of the humans under his protection, but then he had been asking a lot of a young vampire to feed on nothing but animal blood, and refrigerated animal blood at that. Then there was what she had done to her room, but he wasn't too old fashioned to realize what she had in mind with those silky black sheets and the leather straps on the wall. In fact, his imagination had launched into such overdrive at the sight of the little leather crop by the desk that he'd had to sit absolutely still for several minutes to keep from acting on the fantasies flooding his mind, to keep from pulling her over his knee and putting that crop or the flat of his hand to use on her tightly rounded bottom.

He knew that was what she wanted, he finally understood that she had been testing his limits because she wanted him to push back. He hadn't played games like that in years and even then, they hadn't been as enjoyable as he had hoped they would be. Marian didn't like bedroom play, preferred to keep herself as tightly controlled in the bedroom as she was out of it. It made him wonder what it would be like to finally have a lover who would enjoy indulging his fantasies. It would have been a heady thought, far too tempting to refuse if he thought himself capable of that level of abandon.

After a hundred years of denying that part of himself, of tightly controlling his life so that there would be no more surprises, he didn't know if he could let go of the thousand daily habits that helped keep him aloof from his stronger emotions. And he knew that he couldn't take a woman like Eve into the bedroom without taking her into his heart. He had heard modern men say that only women allowed s.e.x and love to be so inextricably connected, but he had seen enough men fall c.o.c.k first into lifetime commitments to know better.

It was true there were some women a man could keep as a s.e.xual partner and nothing more. But a woman like Eve, a woman full of life and spirit and a ma.s.s of intriguing contradictions, she was the type that would soon have him wrapped around her little finger to do with as she wished.

Until she tired doing with you and decided to do someone else.

"Exactly," Leo said as he quickened his pace toward the cottage, glad that his inner voice finally remembered he didn't need to let a woman get that kind of hold on him again. Especially not the woman in question who had even more of a head start than he originally thought.

"She must have leapt out the window the second I left the room," Leo said, a mix of anger and fear mingling in his chest as he realized Eve might actually make it to the cottage before him, that he might arrive a few seconds too late. The very idea that Eve might be exposed to the horror he had kept carefully concealed for centuries made him churn his legs even faster until he practically flew along the ground, feet barely touching the forest floor as he dodged quickly in and out of the trees, racing toward a woman he absolutely didn't love, but who he feared losing more than was anywhere near reasonable.

"h.e.l.lo?" Eve called into the empty cottage, a small, cozy-looking, straw roofed affair that should have been cute but just wasn't. It was creepy and she jumped nervously as the old wooden door creaked closed behind her.

Despite the fact that you want to make Leo really mad, I think it would be wise to haul a.s.s out of here.

"Yep, I think so," Eve whispered to herself as a horrible shiver worked its way down her spine and she decided that she really wasn't too stupid to live, no matter how often Stephen and the other vampires on the compound had teased her about her impulsive decisions.

She inched slowly backward, her hand nearly on the handle of the door before she heard the growl, an unearthly, terror-inducing rumbling that seemed to emanate from between the very floorboards under her feet. "I'm leaving. I was just leaving," Eve whispered, her throat tight as she grasped the handle of the door and pulled. But it wouldn't open.

No matter how hard she pulled, it wouldn't open and the growls grew closer until she could feel the warm breath of something horrible seeping through the ground beneath her, smell the ancient rottenness of a creature who fed on the dead and had been feeding on them for a very long time.

"Eve!"

She heard Leo's scream from outside the door. The terror that stuck in her throat like something with physical ma.s.s seemed to ease for a second, but then the growl sounded beneath her again and Leo's voice seemed to fade away as if down a long, dark tunnel.

"Eve, that's a pretty name. It makes me think of apples and girls who like to break the rules. Do you like to break the rules, Eve?" Suddenly, the interior of the cottage began to glow with an unearthly green light.

"Nope," Eve whispered, her voice sounding small and hollow as she clutched her arms around her body and tried not to shake her head any more quickly from side to side for fear of snapping something necessary for reasonable thought. She was a vampire, a bloodsucking demon of the night; she shouldn't be getting this freaked out by a glowing voice with creepy breath. It was undignified.

"How disappointing," the voice rumbled into the room as the green light began to congeal in the center of the cottage, an imposing bulk of a body and head forming until some sort of dog-like creature knelt on the bare floorboards.

Now she could officially start freaking out.

The thing was scary grossness personified, its cold blue eyes two glowing orbs of craziness suffused in a sea of red. It was as if its diseased mind had bled down into its eye sockets and onward. The rest of its muzzle was also damp and sticky-looking, bringing to mind images of wolves tearing into the flesh of a recent kill and making Eve's skin grow cold with the fear every potential prey felt in the face of a predator.

But it was the body of the creature that was most terrifying. Where there should have been the furry legs and haunches of a canine, very human looking skin stretched tight over the animal skeleton. Veins stood out boldly from pale flesh that twisted painfully around itself as the arms and legs turned toward the ground and something between a hoof and a swollen human foot met the floor. The creature clicked its three grotesque toenails on the floor and seemed to chuckle, as if it could sense Eve's revulsion and was immensely pleased.

"So that leaves apples," the creature said, moving forward two small steps before it sat back on its hind legs and raised the front two hoof-feet to its muzzle.

"Apples?" Eve said, knowing the thing was making some sort of sense, some sort of play on the forbidden fruit and her name and all the rest of it, but too d.a.m.n scared to think clearly. Where was Leo? Had he left? Decided she deserved to be puppy chow for whatever the h.e.l.l this thing was?

"Yes, apples," the thing laughed as it opened its mouth, revealing a wealth of terrifyingly sharp teeth. "Do you think your bones will crunch like an apple, Eve? Because I have no doubt that your blood will be just as sweet as any fruit."

"Leo will kill you," Eve said, struggling to believe her own words were true. Leo didn't want to f.u.c.k her and planned on kicking her out of his house, but that didn't mean he wanted her to be creature kibble. Otherwise, he wouldn't have followed her, right?

"I'm not afraid of my brother," the thing growled viciously, baring its teeth again as its unearthly blue eyes narrowed. Eve suddenly realized why that one part of the beast looked so familiar. They were Leo's eyes, even drowning in red and set in the face of a monster, she could see the resemblance. This thing was Leo's brother? No wonder he tried to keep him a family secret.

"Right, I wouldn't be either if I were you," Eve said and felt a sharp laugh burst from her throat, a tight, strangled, sc.r.a.p of a sound that didn't sound the least bit amused.

"You mock me."

"No way. Wouldn't dream of it."

"You're not one of his people. Do not think he will offer you protection."

"He might."

"You're a fool, a lovely little fool. My favorite."

"Leo's outside, I heard him. Why don't we open the door and ask him if he wants to bother protecting me or not? If he doesn't, you can close the door and crunch my bones, gargle my blood or whatever it is you're planning to do," Eve said, putting her hand back on the doork.n.o.b and giving it a gentle tug, but it seemed the creature wasn't impressed with her suggestion.

"You've entered my resting place of your own free will, but you will stay until I will you to go," the thing growled, though it did turn its head to look around the empty room, as if making sure no one had arrived inside while he was unaware. It then sniffed the air once or twice and finally lowered its muzzle to the floor and inhaled, narrowed its eyes, and inhaled again.

"If I will you to go," it continued, raising its snout from the floor and turning its eyes back to her with a gleam of antic.i.p.ation. Apparently it was satisfied that they were alone, that Leo wasn't coming to the rescue, and that they had all the time in the world to play cat and mouse, or demon dog man and mouse.

Eve was trying to decide whether to scream her head off or burst into a fit of hysterical laughter when the sound of groaning, buckling wood filled the room and Leo burst up from underneath the floorboards not two feet from where she stood.

"Eve, come here," Leo ordered, shaking a bit of wood dust from his hair and holding his hand out to her, never taking his eyes from the dog man.

"Is this any way to greet your brother, Leo, after so many years have pa.s.sed since our last meeting?" The dog man sneered, voice filled with hatred, though he already sounded slightly defeated. So doggie was afraid of Leo, surprise, surprise.

"h.e.l.lo, Bane. My apologies for disturbing your rest."

"You didn't tell me you had family living so close," Eve said as she took Leo's hand and let him guide her behind him.

"I don't."

"He's not your brother?"

"He's not living," Leo said.

"But neither am I dead. Our mother saw to that, didn't she?" The beast growled, his rage a palpable thing that seemed to press around Eve's face and cut off her breath.

"Our mother's sins are not mine, brother," Leo said, his fingers tightening almost painfully around her own, as if he were trying to tell her something with the pressure of his fingertips. It wasn't the first time Eve wished she could read thoughts without a blood exchange, but wishing wasn't going to help her a whole lot at the moment.

"I can't read thoughts," she whispered into his neck.

"I know that, but I a.s.sumed you could receive telepathic messages," he said in a normal tone, obviously insinuating it was stupid to try to have a private conversation with Bane the creepy less than five feet away.

"Nope, not without blood exchange."

"Good to know," he said dryly.

"Bet you wish you'd bit me now, huh?"

"This isn't the time for that conversation."

"So there will be a time for that conversation?"

"We'll have to wait and see."

"Wait and see for what? To see if Bane's still going to eat me? Maybe he'll decide to eat you instead."

"I can't kill him. Mother made sure of that the day I was born. You were her favorite, Leo. You were always her favorite." Bane moaned, dropping his head down onto his hand-hooves and rolling onto his back in a writhing motion that reminded Eve of a three year old throwing a tantrum before he began to keen in a horrible high-pitched voice, "Why, Mother, why? Why?"

"Now!" Leo hissed, shoving her down into the hole in the floorboards.

Eve hit the ground running, though her pace was slowed by the fact that she had to stay hunched over to avoid hitting her head on the floorboards above her and that she kept tripping over the bones scattered under her feet. Bones? Yep, they were definitely bones. Human bones if she had to take a guess, but they could be vampire bones, the two looked pretty much the same unless you examined cell samples under a microscope.

"Hurry," Leo said, his strong arm wrapping around her waist and urging her toward a tunnel in the earth. She'd never been a fan of dark, enclosed s.p.a.ces, but anyplace had to be better than where they were at the moment.

"You can't take her! She's mine!" Bane's voice howled from the room behind them, prompting Eve to haul even more serious a.s.s toward the tunnel and dive headfirst inside. It was a s.p.a.ce that a grown person had to crawl through and crawl she did, urged onward by Leo's presence at her back and Bane's wails from inside the cottage. He didn't sound like he was getting any closer, but she wasn't willing to bet her crunchy bones on it.

"Eve," she heard Leo call from behind her, but there was no way she was stopping until she emerged in that patch of sunlight she saw at the end of the tunnel. She hadn't been so glad to see the sun since the day after she'd been changed into a vampire and known for sure that she wouldn't burn to a crisp in it. Stephen told her only one in one thousand vampires were that photosensitive, but it was still nice to learn for a fact that her luck wasn't that bad.

"Eve!" Leo called more loudly as she scrambled through the leaves at the end of the tunnel and pulled herself to her feet.

"What? Do we keep running? Can he open doors with those hoof feet or what?" Eve gasped, more than grateful to fall into the arms that Leo held open. He didn't look worried anymore, so she a.s.sumed they were safe and a little comfort sounded really good right about now.

"No, he can't materialize outside of the cottage. His soul was confined there during the burial ceremony two hundred years ago," Leo said, lowering his face to the top of her head and planting what almost felt like a kiss there as his arms tightened around her. So he was glad she wasn't Bane bait. That didn't mean he had changed his mind about her. Eve reminded her heart not to get too optimistic. "He couldn't have hurt you as long as you didn't believe he could. That's what I was trying to tell you."

"So he's a what? A ghost?"

"You could say that, but his spirit is still of this realm. In life he was a Barghest, so in death he couldn't pa.s.s over. He could have chosen to descend to h.e.l.l, but even Bane wouldn't have liked what he found there."

"What's a Barghest?"

"The English word for the offspring of a human and a h.e.l.l hound."

"You're mom did it with a h.e.l.l hound?"

"I'd rather not discuss it," Leo said, his arms stiffening around her tightly enough to cause a little difficulty in drawing a full breath. Obviously time for a change in subject.

"You believe in h.e.l.l?"

"Don't you?"

"I try not to think about things like that."

"You're a vampire, Eve, a creature typically a.s.sumed to be one of the d.a.m.ned. Didn't it seem wise to consider the state of your soul before you chose this life?" Leo asked, pulling away and looking down at her with sad eyes. She had never seen Leo sad before and she suddenly wanted to kiss away the lines of concern on his face, let him know that everything would be okay. Instead, she started spilling her guts.

"I was only twenty-two and had inoperable brain cancer. Maybe I was just young and stupid, or maybe it was the tumor's fault, but I didn't give it that much thought. I figured it was a way to live and I wanted to live. I guess I hoped that G.o.d would cut me some slack as long as I was a good person after I became a bloodsucker. If there was a G.o.d, which I still wasn't sure of," Eve blabbered, unable to keep her hands from running up and over his shoulders and twining around his neck, fingers from tangling in the softness of his hair.

"How about now? Do you believe in a G.o.d?"

"Yeah, I do," Eve said, feeling oddly near tears. She wasn't a born again vampire, for G.o.d's sakes. She didn't usually get this worked up about the heaven/h.e.l.l stuff. Oh well, maybe it was the whole nearly being eaten by a half h.e.l.l hound business that had made her overly emotional.

"And what do you think he thinks of us? Of vampires?" "I think we get the same shot as everyone else. And I don't think he's a he. G.o.d couldn't think straight if he had a p.e.n.i.s." "That would be considered blasphemy when I was young," Leo said, the tiniest trace of a smile on his full lips. G.o.d, she could look at those lips for a very long time. Better yet, she could kiss those lips for a very long time. "So would my pants," Eve said with a suggestive grin as she stood on tiptoe and tilted back her head.

"Yes, they would, praise be," he said. And then he laughed, a sound that made her soul, d.a.m.ned or not, feel one hundred percent lighter before he finally dropped his lips down to meet hers.

That first kiss wasn't at all what she had imagined it would be. It was soft, almost tender, even though the pressure of his lips was firm and the tip of his tongue quickly pushed past her teeth to sweep through her mouth. It wasn't purely pa.s.sion, pure physicality. It was almost as if they were still speaking as they kissed, communicating things she never said to anyone and never dreamed of this man saying to her. Physical hunger was still there, but there was emotion in every gentle caress, in every sigh, every moan, in the way his hands cradled her face so that he could get closer, deeper, could devour more of her mouth with his lips, teeth, and tongue.

"Wow," Eve heard herself breath as they finally pulled apart and Leo let his hands smooth leisurely down her neck, over her shoulders, play down her back until they settled over her a.s.s with a possessive squeeze that made her shiver.

"I'm a phenomenal kisser," he said with a smile.

"Yes, you are."

"You aren't going to argue?"

"I don't argue just to argue. Only when I'm trying to prove a point."

"I think I'm falling in love with you," he said suddenly, his eyes completely serious and his tone inferring that a part of him had just declared his own death sentence.

"You don't have to sound so excited about it," Eve teased as she wrapped her arms more tightly around his neck and jumped up to loop her ankles behind his back.

"You don't have to look so pleased with yourself," he said, his face starting to close down into the familiar mask she'd known for most of her visit even though his hands still cradled her bottom and in fact pulled her closer to the thick ridge of his arousal.

"Leo, don't be a dork. Why shouldn't I be pleased? I'm pretty gone on you too. I tried to convince myself I just wanted to bang you or have you turn me over your knee and spank me, but after that kiss..."

"You want to make sweet love to me right here in the leaves?" he asked. Teasing. He was teasing her. Would wonders never cease?

"Yeah, I guess sweet love would be okay for the first go around," Eve smiled as Leo knelt in the leaves and lowered her to the ground, stretching himself above her and bringing those amazing lips back to her own.

"Sweet love is usually best for the first time," Leo whispered against her neck as his hands pushed up her sweater and bared her black lace bra to the cool autumn air.

"I could argue with you about that, but I won't." Eve sighed as his hands cupped her and his mouth moved over the swells of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"Good. If you did, I'd have to punish you."

"Punish me?"

"If you think you might deserve a little punishment."

"Oh yes, please," Eve giggled and then she moaned, writhing in the leaves as he pulled the fabric of her bra away and brought his talented mouth to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, licking and suckling and biting the sensitive flesh until she arched into him, clawing at the close of his pants.