Here Be Sexist Vampires (12 page)

I didn’t speak. I was afraid of what I’d say. One part of me had an instinct to yell a string of profanities at him and tell him to go jump up his own arse. But another part of me wanted to run to him and beg him to forgive me for leaving him and ask him to take me home – thanks to the weight of the guilt that he was throwing at me. The more I tried to fight it the more my head hurt.

Knowing that the closer I physically was to him the easier it would be for him to rule my emotional state, I stopped about five feet away from him. Jared halted beside me. It seemed that it was only then that Victor noticed him. I watched as Victor read Jared’s emotions. A smile appeared, which surprised me.

“Aren’t you going to come and give your old hubby a hug?” he asked me.

The strength and sharpness in my voice surprised me. “You’re not my husband.”

“There’s no need to lie.”

But I wasn’t lying. And Victor knew that. Just like he knew that I hated being called something that I wasn’t, especially a liar. “I know what you’re trying to do,” I told him. “Trying to piss me off so my composure will crack and you can control my emotions easier.” I shook my head. “It won’t work.”

Suddenly the force of the guilt was overwhelming, and there was a new emotion too: self-loathing. I had the sensation of being stuck in a pit with emotions that weren’t my own clinging to me and trying to devour me.

“You agreed not to manipulate her emotions,” warned Antonio.

“And I’m not.” Victor was utterly unaffected by Antonio’s air of authority, I realised. That was probably a lot to do with the fact that he was a fruitcake. “You must have noticed by now that my Sam can be temperamental. One minute she’s furious, the next minute she’s calm, and then all of a sudden she develops a sense of humour.”

As usual, he was coming across as reasonable and fair while making me out to be the pain in the backside. Planting the seed of suspicion was a specialty of his. Plus, he knew that falsely accusing me of doing things or being things was likely to crack me.

“She did a runner because she was angry with me, not because she doesn’t love me or want to be with me. Isn’t that right, Sam, luv?”

God I wanted to smack him. I wanted to scream out to Antonio that Victor was a lying, manipulative twat and not to listen to a word he said. Victor knew this. But I didn’t do those things, because I knew that the more energy I spent trying to defend myself the weaker I would be to his power. “What is it you want?”

Victor’s smile disappeared but his friendly, caring tone remained. “I just want you to come home, luv. What else would I want?”

“No.” The word was no more than a whisper. It had hurt to get out, especially since a part of me hated myself for saying something so awful. Self-loathing.

Good girl.
I could almost feel Jared’s pride.

“No?” giggled Victor. He took a few steps toward me.

Simultaneously another emotion came crashing down on me. Desire. It stirred low in my stomach. My thighs instantly clenched and I had to swallow back a moan.

“Don’t be daft, luv. Come to me.” He opened his arms and I almost did go.

What’s he trying to make you feel now?

He wants me to
want
him.

A second later Victor’s head whipped to face Jared and I felt a million times lighter as the saddle of emotions slipped away from me. I could only guess that Jared must have sent a telepathic thought to Victor that he really didn’t like.

I spoke quickly, “You’ve come to hear it from me so here it is: I’m not going back with you, Victor. I’m asking you to free me from your hold.”

Victor snickered. “I bet you’re very pleased with yourself, aren’t you; getting picked for the legion tryouts and then getting hired by Antonio as a Commander. You just remember that
I’m
the one who made you and
I’m
the one who taught you how to use your gift -”

“
Taught
isn’t the word I’d use,” I spat.

“- and every single strength you have you owe to
me
. You wouldn’t be where you are now if it weren’t for
me
.”

I smiled. “Then you only have yourself to blame for Antonio offering me a position then, don’t you?”

His snarl was loud and feral, making Nero and Achilles bark.

“Victor, will you release me from your hold?”

“Never,” he growled. No surprise there. “You’re mine.”

I turned my attention to the Latino-looking bloke on the sofa. “Antonio, you’ve witnessed me say I don’t want to leave with him, will you grant me release from his hold?”

Victor pivoted on the spot and bore his teeth at Antonio. “She’s mine.” The guards were beside their Grand High Master in less than a second.

Antonio, completely unfazed by Victor’s behaviour, said calmly, “Samantha Parker, I release you from your Sire’s hold with immediate effect.”

No one else felt it but me. That surge of black, bottomless hatred, that seething need to cause pain. It was coursing through Victor, I could sense it. Then there was a snap within him, I felt that too. Antonio’s guards were quick and would have easily apprehended Victor before he reached Antonio, but I didn’t think about that when I saw him ready to pounce. All I thought about was defending Antonio.

Soaking up the energy around me, I felt it swirl in my grasp and I blasted it out of my palm in the form of a thermal beam; a long, silver ray of hot energy that buried itself into Victor’s abdomen and burned him from the inside out: his favourite thing for me to do to his marks.

He cried and writhed and fell to his knees, and I felt that same pain...Like being torn open and sliced by a boiling hot knife while heat shot through my body, singing my extremities. And then he disappeared in the flame and disintegrated completely. It was my turn to cry out.

(Jared)

I couldn’t believe she’d done it. Not many vampires would kill their Sires. It was the same feeling of killing a parent; even if they were a total ass you respected that they created you and you had a special link with them – in most cases, anyway. Plus, the physical pain of destroying that link and killing your Sire was, from everything I’d heard, unbearable. It could even make vampires ill, it was the only thing that could.

So there Sam was on her knees, gritting her teeth against an agony that I could only imagine.

I was the first to react. It was pure instinct to kneel beside her and pull her to me and envelope her with my arms. I half-expected her to push me away – what with her being as stubborn as she was. But instead she buried her face in my chest while her hands clamped down tightly on my arms. An ear-piercing whine still escaped her mouth despite how much she ground her teeth together. She was shaking so hard she was more or less convulsing. I couldn’t even tell where the pain was coming from.

“What hurts?” I asked Luther and Antonio as they rushed over to her. The dogs where making slight howling sounds. “Will it be her stomach, her head – what?”

Luther gazed down at her with sympathy. “The pain supposedly hits every single part of your body.”

I sighed out of my nose. I wanted to punch something. “How long will it last?”

“She could be like this for minutes or hours,” replied Antonio, running a hand over her hair but she didn’t seem to feel it. I wasn’t even sure if she knew who was holding her.

Sam? Sam?

It BURNS!
The pain was obvious in her mental voice.

Where?

EVERYWHERE!

“Brave little thing, isn’t she,” said one of the guards.

“A very extraordinary young lady,” commented Luther.

Just then her body shook hard and blood poured out of her mouth and drenched my t-shirt.

I glanced up at Antonio and Luther. “Is there anything that’ll make it stop?” I already knew the answer would be
no
.

“You have to think of it as her body grieving,” said Luther. “As vampires, our links with our Sires are based on the exchange of blood that occurred during the creation process. Victor drank her to near death and then fed her his own blood. Her body no longer has a living, breathing blood-link and it is grieving it. Grieving is a process – painful, draining, overbearing. It must run its course. For vampires who have ended the life of their own Sire, the agony will be no less than excruciating. I’m told that the pain is bad enough that it makes you want to die.”

Jared?
She sounded weak but there was something else in her mental voice. Hope, maybe?
Hold me still.

What?

Just hold me still.

So I did. I tightened my arms around her until she was as still as I could get her. Then I watched, completely baffled, as she moved one of her hands from my arm to her chest. A slight zing went through her body and then she was limp in my arms mere seconds later.

“What’s wrong with her?” Seized by panic, I set her back slightly and examined her body with my eyes. The hand she had against her chest flopped down to her lap, revealing something small lodged there. Holding her securely with one arm, I used my free hand to pluck the little thing out from between her breasts.

“Is that a thorn?” asked Antonio.

I laughed a little. “I would never have thought of that.”

“What is it?”

“When she was coaching the guys she absorbed Chico’s power to exhale poisonous thorns. Thorns that knock you unconscious for a couple of hours.”

“Smart,” said Luther. “By the time she wakes up the effects of severing the link may well have worn off.”

“Perhaps you should teleport her to her apartment,” suggested Antonio. “I think it will be better for her to wake in her own bed. Oh and leave her a note to the effect that she should avoid work for the remainder of the night.”

Standing upright with her in my arms, I nodded. 

In a blink we were in the centre of the living area in her apartment. I’d been curious to know what it was like inside; whether she’d tried to put her own mark on it or whether she’d left it to look like a show-home. With books stacked on the shelves, a bowl of glass sweets on the little table and a throw hanging over the sofa, it had a homey feel to it.

I noticed the tiny, pink, decorate cushions on the sofa and suspected that Fletcher may have had something to do with them. Sam just didn’t seem that
girly. It was impossible to not also notice, as I walked en-route to her bedroom, that she wasn’t the type that had a specific place for everything. The apartment wasn’t disorderly or cluttered, but it wasn’t obsessively and freakishly tidy; it was lived in. Like mine.

Unfortunately there was no underwear lying around. Whoa, did I really just wonder about that? Shaking off my perverted thoughts, I laid her carefully down onto her bed and covered her with the satin bedspread.

And now I should probably leave. I really should. I really, really should. Especially since she’d be absolutely irate to wake up and see me sitting here next to her. Yes, I was now sitting next to her. I could stay for a while and then just teleport out the second she woke up though, right? She’d never know I was here.

Tentatively – I know, since when was I tentative? – I brushed that gorgeous curtain of dark hair away from her face and ran my knuckles from her temple to her jaw. I’m pretty sure that I’ve never done that to a woman before. Not in my eighteen years as a vampire or in my twenty-four years as a human. But, then, there’d never been anyone like Sam around me in all those years. She intrigued me on every level.

I saw then that I had dried blood on my finger. Her blood. It was all over my shirt too from when she’d had some sort of coughing fit. Well that explained why subconsciously my eyes kept dancing to her throat and why I’d gotten so incredibly thirsty out of nowhere. It was that enchanting scent. Christ, even the potent scent of her blood all over me hadn’t been enough to distract me from how worried I was about her.

But as much as I was yearning to taste that blood on my finger right now and had almost brought it to my mouth, I didn’t want to taste her until she wanted me to. And she
would
want me to, I’d make sure of that.

At least now I had a good enough reason that would motivate me to leave; I needed to change out of this shirt that was soaked in her blood before I lost it. Tentatively – again the tentativeness! – I kissed her forehead and ran my hand through her hair one last time.

It was when I stood upright that I heard her.

Jared.

Of course I had to question whether I’d only heard it because I’d wanted to. And I’d have to question my sanity if things were so bad that I wanted to hear her voice in my head for no good reason.

Jared.

I smiled down on her. They say that when you’re unconscious you can still hear and stuff, right? Maybe on some level she’d sensed me around her. Or maybe she was dreaming about me. If it was the second, then I’d be interested to know just what was going on in that dream.

And now, just because I’d heard that husky voice saying my name in my head, I couldn’t leave. Sighing in defeat, I shrugged off my leather jacket – which I knew she loved a little too much so I wore it all the more – and hung it over the wardrobe door that was wide open. A lot of skin-tight stuff in there. Good. Definitely pushed on her by Fletcher though.

I peeled off the bloody t-shirt, wiped my hands with it, and balled it up before plonking it in the kitchen bin. Then I lay next to her. Yeah, she was going to crack every one of my ribs for this. It was a good thing that I healed instantly. Keeping a respectable distance between us seemed like the decent thing to do considering that she was unconscious and my hands wanted to wander just like they always did when she was around. So I positioned myself on my back with my arms behind my head, and just watched her sleep...wondering if she’d say my name again.

(Sam)

I was in that hazy, faraway state that was one stop away from being awake when I felt the body beside me. A chest that was firm and hard, covered in the softest skin. The scent that flavoured it was spicy and masculine. A scent that I’d know anywhere and happily inhale all day long. So what I did next I did without any real thought; I snuggled into him, laying my head on his shoulder and draping my arm over his chest. God this was comfortable. And right.