Revenant's Kiss (Chronicles of the Afterlife) (23 page)

"Indeed, but perhaps you didn’t know that a powerful enough Maker can use that bond."
Jennifer shivered against him remembering the way Ada had forced her mind to work against her, had
simply whispered into her head for her heart to stop and the organ had done its best to comply.

"Ada can’t get into my head," she pointed out.

"That is because luckily for you Ada did not create Nickolei, I did," he confessed with a shrug.
Why her mind stumbled around this she had no idea, he was a vampire, vampires made other vampires.
Outside of Ada however Nickolei had been the worst coven vampire she’d ever encountered. "You
look at me so accusingly, if it helps to know that I abandoned him to Adelaide’s machinations and that it
wasn’t any fatherly influence of my own that shaped him would that make it better or worse?"

"He was a monster," she accused him.

"So he was, but by all apparent measures to you aren’t all vampires? Or have you reconsidered
after reacquainting yourself with the truly soulless undead?"

Jennifer tried using her hold on his shoulders to push him back away from her but he didn’t
budge, "get off of me."

"No, I think I rather like you where you are," he taunted her, "however if you admit that my kind
are different from the nightmare from your childhood I might be inclined to give you the space you
desire."

"You’re disgusting," she told him with more than a little venom in her tone, "I know what you
and your kind are, you’re no different than those things, feeding and killing helpless people, all soulless
monsters." She wanted him to react badly, violently even, anything to get him away from her, to get him
to behave the way he was supposed to. But the only thing that happened was his ever present smile
wilted a little around the corners, why did he have to be so good at pretending to be human.

"Perhaps we should test that theory then and see how disgusting you really find my kind." He
put enough emphasis on ‘my kind’ to make her squirm, she was aware she had a physical and apparent
weakness for this vampire. For reasons she could not explain, even though she’d felt his fangs graze her
skin just now he was still completely off her monster radar. So when he gripped her hips and lifted her
off the floor her traitorous legs didn’t hesitate to wrap themselves around him.

"You......you’re controlling me," even though she knew on some level that he wasn’t.

"Ah this is your head remember, what makes you so certain you aren’t controlling me." He
accused her right back, Jennifer didn’t take notice of what she was wearing in her head or otherwise
until his hand touched her bare hip. She looked down and realized she was wearing exactly what she’d
gone to bed in, her underwear and a towel. That was insanely unfair of her own head, he ran his
fingertips up her back and she arched forward for him, practically begging through body language for
him to touch her. "So responsive to a monster," he reminded her, "I wonder how far you’ll let a vampire
go?" She was going to tell him to stop, any minute now she was going to say it, but then he lowered his
head and set his mouth to kissing the swells of her breasts. Her chest suddenly ached with the need for
him to rip her towel off and give her breasts the attention where they needed it most, but in her head she
repeated the mantra, ‘stop this.’ But she didn’t want to stop him, her fingers laced themselves in his hair
and she groaned when he stopped to look her in the eye. His smug smile was in place but if her erratic
breathing was any indication he probably felt he’d earned it. "I really want to fuck you in your head right
now," her breathing got even more uneven when his lips got within inches of her own. She wanted him
to kiss her, had probably wanted it since he’d kissed her and she’d stabbed him for it, wanted the
opportunity to kiss him back. "But it’s time to wake up."

Chapter 16

Jennifer came awake with her heart racing and fighting to get her breathing under control, not at
all because she was afraid. She wanted to hate the vampire, she wanted to be mad that he’d tried to
seduce her in her own head, but in the end she was just grateful. True she’d woken up irritated and
turned on, but she wasn’t entirely sure how she would have woken up from her own nightmare, angry,
terrified, sane? She wasn’t sure what she’d felt at the end there, but there was clearly a reason that as a
child her mind had shut it out, forgotten it, and never touched the memory again. Clearly zombies were
too much for her to wrap her head around, or they were simply because of the memory she’d refused to
face. Just like the vampire said, fears to face and be conquered before she could do her job without
shrieking like a girl and dying. Damn she hated that vampire, with an exasperated sigh she rolled onto
her stomach and allowed herself a moment to consider what she was going to do next. She thought
about taking a cold shower, she wanted one, she still felt flushed all over, irritated that instead of kissing
her the vampire had woken her up. Twice as irritated that she was irritated that he hadn’t kissed her
because she shouldn’t want that at all.

When she rolled over again she came face to face with Khan who sat with his head on his paws.
"Hey buddy," she called trying to make herself sit up and go take care of other matters that needed to be
dealt with. First thing as a matter of fact was that she hadn’t fed her giant pup before she’d gone to
sleep. With another sigh she rolled unto her back and sat up in bed, Khan whined behind her so she
took the blanket she’d been sleeping under and tossed it over him, covering all but his wagging tail.

He made no move to follow her so Jennifer slid her feet into slippers and made her way to the
kitchen where she rinsed and filled his dog bowls. When that didn’t immediately bring him out from
under the covers she figured that with how she’d slept he’d probably stayed up all night and that she
might as well let him sleep. Still she went back to the room, ditched her towel and pulled on a clean bra
and cloths. She didn’t bother making a trip to the basement because she still had her arsenal from the
night before in her cousins trunk. That was where she was going first, she would need to go speak to
her cousin, from there she could take her car which was still tucked safely behind the same building and
drive herself back to the hospital to visit Manson and Clive. She hadn’t yet decided where she would
go from there, it would still be hours before the vampire was awake, and even then she didn’t think that
she wanted to deal with him again. Which left her solely with the government Cyborg and she wasn’t
sure that she was prepared to face him just yet either. Not that she really had any choice, she’d gotten
one of his men killed true but given the circumstances whether she went to the vampire for help or not
Tom had to be involved.

Shaking her head she gave Khan’s sleeping form a pat beneath the blanket and retrieved the
Beretta where she’d left it. She had told her Cousin that she would call him, now she was certain that
this was a conversation that needed to be face to face. Slipping into her shoes she grabbed both her
Cousin’s car keys, her own and her phone and shoved them in her pocket before locking the door
behind herself. It was a short drive from her home to the church, a boring drive, for most she imagined it
was amazingly rural. One wouldn’t expect to find the headquarters of a monster hunting collective down
the lane from a cul-de-sac and on the corner to the right. Maybe the church could be expected,
especially if one was continually fighting monsters with which couldn’t step foot on holy ground without
bursting into flames. That was helpful and so it made sense, but to pick a church so close to homes
where children were playing down the block, and the frickin’ cul-de-sac, it boggled the mind. Or at
least it did hers, it was nothing like she’d expected.

Her father had worked where Tom did, he started in the Army and stayed with the government,
it just hadn’t been the only route to go. Her father had mentioned on a couple occasions that Jennifer
could remember that he worked out of the city, not a neighborhood, not that it made a difference in the
end she supposed. Clearly after what had happened to her family, Doug’s family, she had a good idea
why neither of them had wanted to go the city route. She could admit to herself that Doug hadn’t gone
the route she had at all, he had chosen another path to deal with what he’d seen, but he was still
connected to it. Jennifer pulled her Cousin’s car into the lot behind the church and parked in the spot
she knew was reserved for him. Sometimes it amazed her that he had a car at all as he rarely left
anymore. She supposed he had it in case of emergencies like last night, and she knew that she wasn’t
the only person that he rushed out to offer assistance to, although she hoped that he didn’t often have to
help others escape crime scenes.

As she climbed out of the car she gave herself a moment to simply look up at the building in front
of her, to try and absorb some of that sturdy brick structures constitution. She didn’t feel like herself
lately, she felt weak, and not just because she’d nearly gotten people she loved killed, now there was the
vampire. But this was her church, the place where she could come to feel safe, the place she came to
try and make the world safer for other people. Taking another deep breath she made her way to the
rear entrance, it was her usual route and she was sure that at this time of day she was more likely to find
her Cousin there than in the confessional. She was going to have to try and hold herself together, and
she wasn’t entirely sure that given this upcoming conversation that was something she would be capable
of managing. She had felt something in her unraveling last night, in a way that she wasn’t entirely sure
would have left her sane, if it hadn’t been for the vampire she didn’t know where she’d be. She might
still be standing here getting prepared to ask her Cousin if she was completely mad or if their entire
family had turned into ravenous undead and eaten each other alive, or she might be lying in a puddle of
her own drool screaming about the sky falling.

She reached to pull her keys back out of her pocket and hesitated, pulling her phone out as well.
She checked but there was no return message from Tom, there was however a voice-mail from Marcia,
"shit." Hitting dial and praying that she had been left a message that she wanted to hear and not one with
screaming and crying involved, she was greeted by her voice-mail and when the message finally did play
it was just Marcia calling to tell her she was fine and had taken a cab home. It was a relief but not one
that she fully trusted, vampires had their ways. She would call when she was done here but for now she
stuffed the phone back in her pocket. Quickly she unlocked the back entrance, just as quickly locking it
again behind herself. "Doug!" She probably shouted a little too loud given the fact he couldn’t have
been far, perhaps the idea of the conversation ahead was making her hysterical.

When he didn’t immediately appear she made to call again but as if he could sense that she was
getting ready to disturb the peace of a holy place he popped his head into the room she was about to
make her way out of. "Wait just a moment," he indicated she should try to be quiet for that minute by
holding his finger to his lips. There was nothing for her to find irritating, not really, it was just because
there was too much coming at her at once. A past she hadn’t remembered with zombies in it, a vampire
she couldn’t handle, a voice in her head, more zombies, and still it felt like she was wasting time. If the
vampire had any sense of how important all of this was he would have told her if they’d found anything.
Instead she’d been reduced to his bedside manner which clearly had worked quite effectively on her
given the fact that he’d showed her a mother and child he’d murdered in his past and she’d still wanted
him to kiss her. "Jesus," but like Doug knew that in that moment she was going to be using that as a type
of swear word her Cousin was back.

"Manson wouldn’t like you using that name in vain," Jennifer nodded, hadn’t Manson just been
reminding her of something similar last night.

"You need to go back to the hospital."

Jennifer nearly jumped out of her skin when the voice in her head popped in out of nowhere.
She just barely managed to contain herself from using another deities name in vain in front of her Cousin.
‘Go away,’ she thought because she couldn’t say it out loud.

‘If you go now you’ll make it before your friend does.’

‘I’m headed there next, now please shut up,’ to be fair she shouldn’t be angry with the voice,
she had no real reason, but it had proven to be of little assistance the night before.

"What’s the matter Jennifer," Doug took her hand and led her out to the chapel where for a
moment she allowed herself to be distracted by the stained glass windows showing visages of saints.
Not that unlike her dream from the night before he led her by the hand to a pew, indicated for her to sit
and then followed suite. "Something’s bothering you," her Cousin shifted in his seat, "is it this vampire?"