And then the light had gone. It was a darkness so deep that his bright eyes could not penetrate it. He fumbled in his pocket for the tiny mag-light clipped to his keys. He twisted the barrel as he brought it forth, but no light broke the darkness. Light could not exist in this place, it was sucked from existence. His skin crawled; an unholy, unnatural thing.
Things moved in this darkness. Tiny sounds. Shufflings. Scurrings. Nikos would have known what to do, but Nikos was waiting back at the club for it to be finished. This had been his test to prove himself worthy of Nikos, to become, truly, one of the hunters; to take this young one and kill her. And he was failing.
Movement brushed his leg; a cat’s tail push along his ankle; then another against his thigh. He back peddled, slipped and fell. The unseen explorations worked up his legs, spider feet thumping against his trousers. He screamed. The night fingers cut into his legs, a vice of feathers, and he was drawn inexorably across the ground by them. As he struggled and screamed they wound their way up his body, binding him in their grip, like the slow creep of vines engulfing an ancient wall, until they filled even his mouth and ears.
Tears slipped down his face. This was not how it was supposed to be. What had gone wrong? A hand, a woman’s hand, touched his chest. Small circles of electric frost to grew under his skin where her fingers made contact. He heard the slide of air as she bent over him. He could not see her but he knew she was there.
The darkness faded slowly. The silver white light of the moon seeped through the air and came to rest on her heart shaped face. His body was still entombed in a chrysalis of shadow, but he could see, and he sobbed his relief.
She smiled at him. She was beautiful; pale skin, large dark almond eyes, a wild fall of ebony hair framing her features. Her eyes closed and her mouth opened and she took in his scent. Wicked fangs shone silver. Bowing down until her lips met his she sucked the breath from his lungs. Her lips were cold steel on his skin. Her frost bitten tongue licked the sweat from the line of his jaw and down along his neck. He whimpered as her teeth sliced into his skin. Daggers of ice ripped the flesh and his blood welled up in the wounds. She drank from the red fountain, and her body became warm as his grew cold.
She stood. The blood froth that coated her face and chest, soaked into the low-cut, black nylon tank top, and ran down her arms, seeped into her pores; her body cannibalizing every corpuscle, every cell. The warmth faded quickly. The rime of her blood devoured it.
An itch in her muscles; pain in her belly….something was not right. There was a burning under her skin that should not have been there. The hillside shifted sideways. She stumbled and dropped to her knees. Poison.
Nikos watched and waited. The poison he had given his disciple would have killed the man eventually, a small sacrifice for the greater good; in her it would run rampant in a matter of seconds. Vampires metabolized toxins far quicker than any mortal. A weakness of their race. It would not kill her, she was already dead. But it should wreak havoc with her senses, her powers, leaving her stranded like a fish pulled to dry land.
He straightened his lapels. His immaculate suit bore no wrinkles except those that were caused by the ripped frame beneath it. A nightly struggle for existence offered up to Nikolai Osipovich Zaitsen what others strove to perfect through hours of self torture. His dam had whelped him for this purpose. His sire had beat and pushed him until he knew no fear. His family had commandeered this new world and made it theirs. The eternal fight to rid the scourge of mankind had flowed even to the San Gabriel foothills in which they now battled…although the vampire did not know yet whom she battled. Tall, handsome, graceful, possessed of the knowledge that he would accomplish his destiny. A killer in thousand dollar suits Nikos’s grey-black eyes watched her writhe in pain as the toxin wrought its signature through her system.
He knew, without knowing, that she was young. All his training taught him to see her that way. It was evident that she still labored under the mistaken belief that she needed to draw breath. He had stalked her over countless nights as she hunted the Valley….her saw her as chest rose and fell and her skin forced what little mortal blood it could sacrifice to color her skin. He saw her as she moved through the throngs of mortals without tripping there senses as to the wrongness of her. The other abominations called her Amriel Missial Moraine: angel of dark knowledge, word of God, land of sorrow…. God, Vampires were worse than his kin with their overblown names.
Nikos had not seen the darkness, it did not cloud his senses as it had his sacrifice. He did not know. Even if he had seen, he would not have understood.
Her body tried to expel the poison. Amriel struggled to her knees and purged the filth from her system. She retched, and the tainted blood spilled from her. As Nikos strode towards her, she looked up. She recognized him. His reputation among her kind told her who he was. The shaved head, the sharp features, the chiseled body underneath the Armani suit, his predatory walk all said pack leader. A wolf, wearing the skin of a man.
He laughed, he had her. His pace quickened until he was loping up the slope, shedding his clothes as he ran. Nikos’s mouth opened all sharp fangs and blood as the wolf inside him burst forth slipping through his skin like a diver parting the ocean’s surface. He landed in front of Amriel, lusting for the fight, the kill. The grey fur ruff and black muzzled face snarling, ears back, eyes bright and deadly. He was a magnificent creature.
The blood of his assassin coated her chin and hands where she had vomited it up. He had been smart poisoning the man to poison the vampire. His reputation as a hunter of her kind was well deserved – the poison would have immobilized a younger predator. Even at her age, she knew she was in no shape to confront him, so she chose not to. Closing her eyes, Amriel became the darkness, folding herself into it until she ceased to exist as anything save a diffused shadow in a plane of shadows.
He howled in rage and disappointment. It ripped the air sending shockwaves of fear through every living thing within its borders.
---
Nikos had never watched another vampire hunter before. Not outside a few simple practice hunts. You ether learned on the streets or you died.
What made Nikos’s skin crawl was who hunted. It was cannibalism. Seemingly distracted and un-focused, Amriel stalked her prey. But then, for a moment, the charade would break and he would know she hunted the other vampire. An older vampire….old enough that it’s mere passage through the press of mortals made them shiver slightly, touched by a fell breeze. They sensed their own mortality. He was a handsome one, surfer blond good looks. Well dressed and possessed of enough charm to overcome the lingering fear his presence generated.
Not that he should care that she hunted her own kind. The rules of men were not for monsters.
They wound their way through the Burbank Media Center. A few blocks of glittering movie palaces, shops hawking Hollywood’s past, mid range chain restaurants and college crowd bars. Lots of bars. That was what attracted the predators. Humans whose inhibitions and senses were lowered with each tick of the clock towards closing time.
The unknown male vampire, Nikos christened him Blondie, fed several times that night; never taking too much from one victim…literally necking his way to a meal. His victims would wake tomorrow complaining of vicious hangovers and suffering the embarrassment of a large hickey or two. If they’d met the vampire any where but here chances were they wouldn’t be waking in the morning.
Through it all, Amriel had watched and stalked and Nikos had watched and stalked. The bars were closing. People were emptying out onto the streets, some stumbling towards cabs, some towards their cars. Blondie resided nearby. Even in the flush of Burbank’s fleeting dance with European street life, the seamier side of the commercial district hovered just in the wings. There were dens and dark allies where monsters dwelt. Nikos lost sight of Blondie. It didn’t matter; he knew where the creature was heading. If he kept pointed in the general direction their paths would intersect.
Winding his way south and west, crossing over San Fernando Boulevard he entered the more industrial area lining the Five. Auto body shops, low rent sound studios and thrift stores huddled under the exit ramps. Nikos found him in the city tow yard; or rather he found them in the city tow yard. The male vampire was propped against the side of a stripped red Camrey, his feet splayed out before him. Struggling, twisting against the body of the abandoned car, Nikos could see nothing restraining him. But the vampire pushed against the asphalt and metal as though parts of him were welded to it.
Clothed in black, low cut t-shirt, jeans, boots; she looked like she might be a co-ed out with friends. That is if her fangs had not been sunk into Blondie’s arm. She knelt next to the beast, his wrist raised to her delicate mouth, feeding on the other vampire.
How had she overcome him? Nikos was confused. And why couldn’t the vampire defend himself? At his age he should have crushed her.
Nikos slipped closer, moving stealthily between the cars. Closer and closer until he could reach out and touch the pair. Then it hit him. The wall of fear. Evil seeped up through the soles of his shoes and crawled along his body. His hackles raised and he uttered an involuntary low dangerous growl.
Amriel lifted her eyes at the sound. They slid up to lock his gaze in a cobra’s stare. Her eyes were bright and hard; taxidermist marbles set in a face of carved alabaster.
A terrible miscalculation. Amriel was far older than he could comprehend. He’d never seen one so ancient. Somehow she had mimicked the newness of the young undead, banished the miasma of dread that clung to the old ones. Only now, here, while she was feeding did the masquerade drop and her true self was revealed.
Deadly and beautiful, she knew Nikos was there. She could see him through the red haze of the blood. The blood which was becoming richer and darker and the struggles against her mind more frantic. She had no fear of Nikos, in this place, let him watch.
Watching the vampire die held Nikos. The vampires he killed died quickly. He ripped off their heads, impaled them on fence posts. This was death by inches. As the blood drained from Blondie’s extremities, they began to crumble. His fingers drying into mummy dust powder, dropping like so much cigarette ash to the pavement. The drying consumed his body; his arm, his legs, his head, leaving nothing but a writhing torso and an incongruously flush and plump arm held against Amriel’s lips. The creeping desiccation finally consumed him all and Amriel blew the remains from her fingers and offered up a blood stained smile to the werewolf.
Nikos prepared to battle. She would not let him live. He hunted her kind. Crouching, preparing to lunge, the night shadows coalesced about his arms and legs and became solid. He struggled to stand. Ropes of nothingness pulled him down. Now he knew why the other vampire had not fled. Her mind crawled across his, slipping into the cracks and crevices of his person filling him with what he imagined was fear.
“Have you come to kill me again Nikos?” She laughed, a horror show laugh, more menace than amusement, “You weren’t very successful the first time.” She reached out to touch him and he snapped at her. He didn’t revert, he told himself that he wanted to catch her unaware, his only hope to break free.
She placed her hands on his shoulders and pushed him back until he knelt before her. His arms had come free of the ground as she pushed, but it felt as though she were moving him through tar, he had no freedom. The shadows clung to his skin, hands bound with twistings of nightshade that moved against his skin. The moment she relented his hands were sucked back to his sides. She could manipulate the darkness to her liking.
One cold hand caressed his chest, she stroked his thigh with the other. Her hands moved to his belt, fingers pulling on the buckle. She could smell the wolf inside him, so different from a human’s scent. He writhed against her touch, muscles straining to break free. “No!” it issued from Nikos’s throat as a low warning growl.
“Yes,” her viper’s voice hissed back, “You don’t see that your body wants this? If you want so badly to run, then change.” A wicked smile played with her mouth, “Your body won’t obey you, will it?”
She was right. He had tried to change as she began to touch him, and couldn’t. Her caress excited him….made him tremble. He swallowed hard, this was wrong. His reactions were all screwed up.
Slowly she undid the buttons of his fly, one, two, three, four, her eyes never leaving his. Ariel reached inside his jeans, cupping his erection in her palm. Nikos wasn’t wearing briefs. When he hunted the fewer garments that could impede his change the better. Her hand was cool and smooth against him. She stroked the base, moving forward, pressing her chest against his. The T-shirt material covering both only enhanced the contact. The touching without touching made him suck in his breath.
“Let me show you something, hunter.” She squeezed him and he gasped again. Her strong grip plied him from the confines of the denim as she bent down and took him into her mouth, drawing down onto him. He was large. If she had been human, she would have had trouble with his size, but her body followed different rules. Muscles could stretch without tearing, breath was not necessary.
She stroked the base of his shaft the first few inches of him within the burning sweetness of her mouth. He wanted to reach up and push her down on him, but he was still trapped, helpless to her ministrations, and his hips bucked in protest. She rode him up and down with her mouth, tongue circling the tip and working its way down. Amriel didn’t have to breathe; it gave her time to work. Where a mortal, or even a werewolf, would have relented she kept on. The pleasure grew so intense, Nikos’s teeth ground into his lower lip. “Suck it, God, please.” He couldn’t believe he was pleading with her to keep going.
The vampire’s tongue pressed the glans to the roof of her mouth, she was applying awe-inspiring amounts of suction….driving him mad because he wanted to go deeper, push himself inside her, but was restrained. Instead of going down, she drew back. Nikos whimpered in frustration. Her hand was still working him, but it was nothing compared to the exquisite confines of her mouth.
Blood fangs descended, piercing the delicate skin. Nikos cried out at the violation. His blood, colored by his lust, was a dark and pure thing. The other vampire’s blood had fed Amriel’s hunger; this fed a much deeper need. It was electric, a drug…. no moral, no vampire, could taste this way. Nikos rocked her body to its core with his blood.
The werewolf was lost in the blinding pleasure. The heat began. The sucking, the stroking, the pressure as she drew the blood from his shaft. He pleaded for it to stop and for it never to stop as he felt the pressure screaming for release deep within his body. His hands clenched and unclenched locked to his sides. Fighting invisible restraints, his animal howled as the orgasm tore free within him.
---
In his dream he woke up. He’d hunted, and killed, a vampire that night, seeking to purge the humiliation. He was brutal in his revenge, toying with the thing before breaking its neck and ripping the still warm heart from its chest. The creature had been young, melting into a reeking, oozing mass of decay as whatever life force inhabited it fled.
Exhausted and battered from the fight, he had fallen into bed, naked, after showering the rot off his body. Before slipping into a restless sleep, he had fingered the red welt on his cock where Amriel had fed on him and masturbated to the memory of it.
The Angel’s Trumpet outside his window flooded his bedroom with its lemonade aroma. He lay face down, one arm flung off the bed, legs tangled in the sheets. His back burned. It was as if someone were drawing his muscle, strand by strand, from his body. Reaching to the pain he encountered a delicate hand. The fingers curled into his own pressing both into the mattress near his face. A woman’s hand, nails colored with cherry lacquer. The throbbing pull against his shoulder blade faded and soft hair brushed his cheek. Amriel’s intense brown eyes found his, her weight lay cool on top of him.
She kissed him and he tasted the bitter copper of his own blood.
That’s how he knew it had to be a dream. Vampires, like everything, had rules, laws of existence they were bound by. She couldn’t have been in his house unless invited in and Nikos had not seen her since the encounter in the tow yard.
As he rolled over, Amriel broke off the kiss and sat back. The votive candles on his nightstand, reminders of past romances, flared to life. She was nude. Licked by the candlelight, her skin was alive with motion. Shadows caressed the valley between her small breasts, stroked her flat stomach, kissed her rounded hips. Definitely, a dream; no matter how much Nikos had wished for it, naked women mortal or immortal never materialized in his bedroom.
She sat next to him, her knees in front of her, spread just far enough that he could see the dark fringe of her pubic hair. Nikos ran his hand up her leg as he sat up, leaning forward until his mouth found hers, fingers searching for the sensitive regions between her legs, dreams were to be enjoyed. Amriel reached down to him, he was already hard for her.
She pulled him down, her kisses eager, hungry on his body. Spreading her legs with his, he guided himself with his hand so that his head pushed against her moist skin. He left it there for a moment savoring the want, the need. Then, slowly, he entered her, hissing as her wet heat surrounded him. She cried out at his size. It stretched and pulled her delicate opening, but her hips rose to meet him, drawing his entire length into her.
Taking his weight on his hands, he caressed her insides with his thrusts, and her chest with his mouth, responding to her moans and gasps. He pulled one of her legs up in his arm, so that he could probe deeper within her. His shaft was hot from her body and slick with her moisture. Amriel’s fingers clawed at his back. She screamed his name as he drove her to the edge of release and held her there. He worked their bodies slowly, rhythmically, listening to her cry out as she came, letting it carry him up to his own release. Shuddering with the intensity of his orgasm, he collapsed onto her.
Amriel stroked his shaved skull and he slid into sleep. As he drifted off, he thought it very odd that she had a heart beat.
---
The meeting had been hell. He had waited almost a month before he told anyone; arguing with himself to keep quite. Eventually he told. The pack had to be informed; a being that powerful walking the streets, the family had to know. He’d tried to keep much of the specifics out of his narrative, but with their questions and prying eventually all the sordid detail of the encounter was reveled. He did not tell them of the second encounter. It would have served no purpose, only shown them how total his degradation had been. He knew that somehow, when he’d thought of Amriel, he’d “invited” her. It wasn’t brain surgery.
He had been standing, staring down onto Colorado Boulevard, dark and as deserted as anywhere in So-Cal could be at the late hour, avoiding their eyes, massaging the bruise on his back. As he described what she had done to him in the tow-yard for the small gathering grouped about the conference table, his body had stirred and the erection came fast and hard with the memories. Quickly he had taken a seat, squirming, hoping their keen senses would not detect the change in his body heat, his smell, his heart rate. In the weeks following the “attack,” every time he had thought back on it, his body reacted to the memory. Nothing helped banish it.
Why had Amriel left him there? Why had she left him alive? Why had she done what she had done? What purpose did it serve? They had wanted the answers to those questions. Answers he could provide neither for himself nor the family.
When released, he had rushed to the men’s room, working himself as he remembered the feel of her mouth on him, her body against his. He had been as out of control as a boy going through puberty. There was no relief when he finished, only a cold emptiness.
When he came out, his mother was standing in the corridor, waiting. He had been embarrassed in the meeting to provide the detail they demanded because she was there. He was shamed again. The sadness in her, the way she had touched his face, she knew that he had desired it and it hurt her. He had broken down and cried then, that she had to know. And she had comforted him, her little boy, saying soothing mother things that had no meaning. Before parting, she had taken his grand-dam’s cross and placed it around his neck. It was barely the size of his thumb nail, gold, set with six square emeralds, looking too small and delicate resting atop the caramel silk tie. But the symbol was there, protection, protection by the ones who loved him, cared for him and always would.
Now he stood next to his black Lexis fishing for his keys in his pocket, pulling the tie from his collar, olive suit jacket flung over the hood. The family was still arguing upstairs about his “problem,” on conference call to relatives in the old country, but he was told to go. The parking garage echoed empty, abandoned at night. This was Pasadena, not downtown, key cards and gates and underground levels and bright white lights were secure enough, the parking attendants would only be on duty during business hours.
Nikos was not alone.
Amriel stood behind him. Nikos’s broad back was to her, he tensed, and she knew he had sensed her. What a gorgeous body he had. He was beautiful in a way no mortal could ever achieve, powerful, lean, deadly. As he spun to face her she marveled. Every movement flowing with deliberate purpose into the next, no wasted effort. The deep velvet black of his eyes were so much the monster within him.
Approaching slowly, seductively, she smiled, her mouth full of perfect angel’s teeth, and spread her hands, “You have called to me.” Short black skirt, oxblood shirtwaist, black slides, ebony hair pushed back from her face, she looked as though she had walked down from one of the offices upstairs. Her scent caressed him, carried forward as she moved….lilies and roses…funeral home flowers. When she was a few steps from him she stopped. Her eyes dropped to the small pendant on his chest. Even resting atop his shirt he could sense that it was radiating heat. It was soothing. It told him he would be safe.
“Take it off.” The vampire commanded.
His pulse sang in her ears as the hard line of his jaw tensed. He shook his head, “No. I won’t.” If he killed her now he might be forgiven, his honor restored. Nikos twisted his head, popping his neck, loosing himself as he undid his pants and stepped from his shoes. He move forward letting his slacks fall behind him. Amriel’s Bela Lagosi laughter drifted towards the werewolf; he was strikingly handsome but clad only in boxer style briefs, socks and a dress shirt, standing in a parking structure, it was a ludicrous sight.
She sensed as his skin twitched and swallowed her laughter. Nikos’s frame pulsed, rippled, twisted. Amriel turned to run. She’d come from a corner where the building met a support wall, and it trapped her now, the wide open expanse of the garage was behind the werewolf. There was no place to hide in this modern place, no place for her to go. The false sunlight wouldn’t hurt her but it drove out all shadow robbing her of her strength.
Neither wolf, nor man, he advanced, his paws slamming into the pavement; little earthquakes with each step. She spun. She couldn’t let him take her from behind. There might be a chance of survival, hand to hand, facing him. A giant, almost nine feet tall, he towered over her, silky black fur shimmering in the electric glow. Long muzzle, long sharp canines, ears laid back against his skull, the little cross swung and deadly intelligent eyes focused on her as he shook the shreds of his clothing to the ground.
Amriel leapt, trying to go over and around him to safety. He plucked her from the air and threw her down. The floor cracked when she hit. Jumping up, she sliced at him, nails extending into knife blade talons as she raked the air. He caught her wrist in one massive claw and yanked her off the ground, tossing her back against the wall. Concrete shattered. She dropped, landed on one knee, palms to the floor and hissed, fangs barred. She lunged. He met her in mid air; body slammed her against the wall; half wolf, part changed, his muzzle twitching against barred teeth. Terror seeped from her, he could smell it. He pushed his face against hers, savoring the scent.
Pinned. Trapped. Nikos would end it if she didn’t do something. Amriel moved her lips to him, pressing her mouth against his muzzle, feeling the wolf teeth between them. His beast retreated. The animal was still there pacing in the back of his mind but the man melted into her kiss. He could hear his wolf howling to kill her, knowing he never would.
The moment he had touched her skin, the craving had begun. The tactile memory of her body, the burning pleasure of it; he was desperate for her. He pinned her arms above her head, her delicate wrists bound in the grasp of one great hand. His other ripped at her shirt popping the buttons and tearing the thin silk from her body. Amriel opened her mouth to him, drawing his tongue within. Her fangs nicked his tongue, and he trembled with the anticipation of the fever that would come when she took his blood.
There was a white hot irritation, a tiny creature gnawing on his chest. He clawed at it as he pressed against her. It burned his hand when he tore it from his body and dropped it to the pavement.
Her flesh was cold and warm at the same time.
As Nikos tore at her skirt, shredding it with his supernatural strength, she spread her legs and pushed her hips against his erection. She wore no undergarments. Clothing was a façade to allow her to pass among men…she wore only what could be seen.
He growled in his inhuman half voice. She pushed against him again and he reached down her belly, between her thighs, pulling her tight against him, grinding his hardness into her. “Do you…can you feel?” He whispered the question and every fiber of his mind was washed in the yes.
She was slick as he slid his finger between the folds of her flesh, his thumb caressing the warm nub of her clit. Running his tongue down her neck and chest, Nikos removed what little remained of her ruined blouse with his long, sharp teeth, then took one small hard nipple into his mouth. Gently he sucked on her, teasing with his tongue. Amriel gave a small cry as he slid a second finger to join the first and again when he pulled both from her to coat her sex with her own moisture as he caressed her.
She could feel and it was wonderful, the cold hard concrete against her back, his warm body against hers, the strain of her arms winched above her head. As a mortal, sex had been pleasurable, since becoming it was insanity. Senses, touches, caresses were a thousand times more intense.
Releasing her hands, Nikos caressed her other breast, his claws scratching fine blood lines on her chest. Her fingers ran down his back and across his skull, then gripped his face and pulled his mouth away from her body and into another deep kiss. His fingers worked inside her as she rode his hand. Frost coated her nerves burning the underside of her skin, the world collapsing around her as she shivered into orgasm.
He’d never taken a woman in this form. It was not done, even between his own kind. This was the shape of killing. He backed up, left her leaning against the wall, his breath wuffing from his mouth. Little tremors were rocking her body. Her eyes searched him out, hungry. She came to him, even as he retreated, until he was stopped by an immovable metal object, his Lexis.
His fur was silky and soft between her fingers. Amriel ran her hands across his belly and up his chest, nuzzling against his ribs. He was a magnificent monster as beautiful in this body as in both his man and wolf skins.
Nikos wanted her, like this.
He braced himself against the door. Hands gripping the vampire’s thighs he lifted and slid her onto him. Hot, wet tight against him, she took his length, her mouth pressed at the base of his jaw. The moan traveled through Nikos’s bones and he couldn’t tell whether it had come from her or him or both.
He caught sight of them in the car’s side view mirror….he caught sight of himself. Bare chest, teeth bared, naked hips, his hands caressing nothingness as he thrust into the air. And he was bleeding. Small sweat beads of blood coated his shaft and were drawn away into a vacuum. He roared and rolled to the side, throwing her across the trunk. Looking down, Amriel’s body was solid beneath him. Her mouth was open, her eyes were closed, her fangs shown hard white in the harsh light of the garage. The surreality, what he was doing hit him hard; the image from the mirror clawed at his brain but he couldn’t stop.
Riding his thrusts, she was driving their pace, harder and faster. Her legs were locked around his hips, her fingers sunk into his arms. She pulled herself forward against his body and sank her teeth into his shoulder. Nikos wound his hands into her hair and let go of caring. A thousand miniature teeth prickled on him as he rammed into her with a force that would have killed a mortal woman, the Lexis’ alarm screaming in protest beneath them.
Ecstasy rippled through their joined bodies. A low keening howl wove through the vacant garage as he fell forward onto his hands. She slid her fangs from his flesh as he withdrew. He wouldn’t stop kissing her, her face, her body until the whine of the elevator forced his change and flight
---
The horror of his indiscretion had been capture on surveillance video. Grainy, black and white, soundless pornography. Evidence of his sickness.
The pack turned on him. Amriel pulled the darkness to her, clothed herself in its embrace and stared out through a thousand small eyes, listened with the ears of the tiniest night creatures. She could no more help him than he could help himself. She could only watch when they caught him, drug him out amongst them.
A blinding fury of changelings attacked him.
Dog fights are terrible things. These were supernatural wolves, charging in, tearing at Nikos’s throat and belly, rising on hind legs, fangs ripping fur and flesh. He was a savage thing defending himself. Blood matted his fur, ran from horrible wounds. He spun and tore and bit. Met teeth with teeth, growling, barking, howling his rage. More than one of the mob was driven back, their tails between their legs. They harried and charged, relentless in their anger at the transgressor. Sheer numbers had worn him down, blood loss had robbed his body of its strength. He fell. He tried to rise and fell again. It was done. He would die.
The attackers shed their wolf forms. A naked assembly of monsters, they turned their back on Nikolai. Many of them bled, he had inflicted a terrible toll on his executioners.
His mother knelt down beside him, licking then kissing his wounded face as she changed; crying for her dying son. She stroked his savaged muzzle and whispered promises into his torn ears. The evil was purged. God would forgive his sins. She would not let them desecrate his body….a vampire required three bites to damn a man. Twice only he’d been bitten. Nikos stirred, he tried to make the change, but death was taking him. He could only plead with his velvet eyes. The darkness caressed him and a gentle breeze wound through his fur. He whimpered, he had no way to tell her Amriel was waiting for him.