Animal Attraction (28 page)

It was getting worse too. I thought the
battle between going and staying might tear me apart.

Somehow Ryan’s agonized yells broke through
my own. “—then shoot me now! You want to kill, then do it!”

“There’s no sport in that,” Tattingail spat.
He turned to Mark. “Perhaps you should go fetch his wife and son.
You said they would come with you if you told them you’d found
him.”

Through streaming eyes I saw Ryan had half
shifted again. He still managed speech through his elongated
muzzle. “You leave them out of this, you monstrous bastards!”

Cold to the end, Tattingail said, “Last
chance.”

I fought to pay attention. They couldn’t
bring Ashley and her little son into this. They wouldn’t dare.

Ryan glared, but he finished his shift.
Within seconds, a hulking black bear hunched in the cage. It
rumbled a growl. Duke hit a huge button on the wall, the kind that
malls use to open doors automatically. Behind Ryan, the door to the
outside swung out. I saw the outlines of trees in the darkness
beyond.

Tattingail smiled. In that moment he looked
as predatory as any vampire I’d ever met. “The deal remains despite
your poor sportsmanship. Survive the night without leaving the
hunting grounds and we destroy the evidence of your wrongdoing. You
go home to your wife and son and obscene parody of a life.” He
checked his watch. “You’ve got a ten-minute head start from this
moment.”

The bear continued to growl, but the sound
seemed halfhearted. He might have been an animal at that point, but
Ryan still managed to look heart crushingly sad.

He dropped to all fours, wheeled around, and
ran out into the night. The men gave a cheer and fell to
conversing. I went back to my still-growing misery. I had thought I
might rip apart before. Now I was sure I would. I felt stretched,
pulled like a rubber band to its final limit before it breaks.

It wasn’t just a feeling. My ethereal body
stretched taut. At some point my ghost had begun to extend towards
the far side of the room. I stood tilted at an impossible angle,
everything from my ankles up distended in a straight but diagonal
line.

I sobbed to Dan, “I can’t handle this. It’s
driving me crazy. Something’s about to give.”

His gaze horrified, he tugged on me. He tried
to make me stand upright. “Come on, baby girl. You’re stronger than
this. I know you are. Gerald will figure out something is wrong.
He’ll come. Hang on, Brandilynn!”

I shook my head, as much to refute him as to
argue with the force pulling so hard on me. “I can’t. I can’t. Oh
somebody, please make it stop. Pleeeease—”

I didn’t expect an answer. I didn’t expect a
white knight on a charger to come crashing in to save me. And when
the door on the far side of the room blew open in chunks of wood,
it was not Sir Galahad that shoved his way through.

It was Patricia’s body, animated by sheer
undead vampire force. As the hunters howled in surprise and
scrambled for the guns in the racks, she stalked straight up to
me.

I had no time to react before the draw of the
vampire won out over the ward and I flowed into the undead body
that had come to claim me.

Chapter 12

From the moment Patricia’s body embraced me,
I ceased to have a clear understanding of the events unfolding
around me. Even Dan screaming my name had little importance. I knew
only raging thirst. The vampire was hungry.

I sensed warm beings full of blood behind me.
I heard their terrified yells. The fear told me they were prey.
They would feed me. Only through them could my need be sated.

The five men, their bodies pulsing with life,
struggled with the guns hanging on the wall. I recognized the
danger but I didn’t care. For once no werepanther shoved cold,
unappetizing bottles of long-dead blood at me. Before me stood the
real thing. The best thing. The thing that would bring me back to
true life, to warmth and feeling and joy.

I gathered myself to launch at them. I
sighted on the one that had angered me too often before. Yes, he
should be the one to take away the first of this onslaught of
hunger. I would enjoy drinking from him best of all.

Three of the five turned, pointing shining
metal at me. Dan yelled again. Sparks of fire and smoke appeared at
the muzzles of the guns. I felt the shot digging small tunnels
through my body an instant before the guns spoke their deafening
voices.

Pain, almost blinding in its agony, erupted
into rage. They had hurt me. Now I was famished and furious. I not
only had to feed to find peace, but to heal the damage they had
done. If I’d had a mote of conscience before this moment, it was
long gone.

I sprang at the one I wanted most as the guns
fired again, digging more agonizing tunnels into me. The primary
object of my wrath – Tattingail, his name was Tattingail – grabbed
another man and shoved him at me. Too crazed to care who I devoured
first, I bit into the throat of the betrayer named Mark.

I barely felt his desperate battle as I fed
on the sweet heat filling my mouth. His fists bounced off my back
unheeded. His frantic kicks went nowhere. I kept my eyes open as I
claimed his life force for my own, keeping his struggling body
between me and the others. He shrieked for help, but there was none
to be had. They could not shoot me without killing him.

Except for Tattingail, who ran out of the
room, the rest tried to save that first feast. They danced around,
jockeying to find a clear shot. I put the wall to my back and
shrieked with demonic fury as they tried to yank away the man in my
arms. My strength was so much greater than theirs. All they could
do was curse and yell at me as they pulled the pleading meal.

I had one clear thought; that humans were not
nearly as delicious as werepanther. Yet they were still wondrous. I
felt gloriously alive and sexually excited. But more than that, I
was furious. More than sex, I wanted to kill. Most of all I wanted
to catch and destroy the one who’d gotten away.

Some part of me recognized I had to deal with
the immediate threat first. I tossed the first victim aside and
grabbed the closest man. Again I buried my fangs in the soft flesh
of a throat. My eyes rolled in ecstasy as the first gush of blood
slid down over my tongue.

That was the last straw for his companions.
Except for the first victim who lay still, the lot ran from the
room, screaming almost as loud as my latest catch did.

The thirst abated, leaving me to contend with
my other base urges. Sex as always was there, but anger continued
to shove its way to the fore. I remembered Ryan’s desperate pleas
for his family. I remembered my fury that these thugs had
threatened my sister and nephew.

I had fed, but some things could not be cured
with blood. Vengeance was my new priority, even over an unrequited
libido. I would catch them, these monsters who wore human clothing.
I would catch them and I would stop them.

I dropped the second body, letting it fall on
the first. I ignored the ghost shouting at me because I didn’t want
to be talked out of finishing things once and for all. I ignored
the conscience that was more plague than boon when I became a
vampire. I heeded only the instincts that felt so right in the
moment, the instinct that said I ruled all simply because I was the
most powerful creature on the planet.

Swift as the wind, I raced out of the room,
out of the cabin where too many had come to die. I was outside in
less than a second. I scented the passage of warm bodies, people
who had run away, leaving the scent of fear in their wake. That
aroma of panic smelled almost as delicious as the blood they
carried beneath their skins.

I did not have to think about what to do
next. I was vampire. I knew how to be that from instinct. I lifted
into the air and flew with the wings of night.

About halfway down the lane leading to the
country club’s drive awaited a scene of chaos. Talk about your
pile-ups. Even in my state of crazed anger, it wasn’t too hard to
figure out what had happened.

Tattingail had run for it first. In his
panicked race to get away from me, he’d lost control of his car,
taking a curve too fast and smashing into the trees. The Buick had
ended up sideways, the back end halfway in the little trail that
was just big enough to allow one car through.

That hadn’t stopped the rest of the exodus
from trying to pass. An SUV had smashed both the back quarter of
the Mercury and a tree. The two vehicles clogged the dirt road.

Ed Duke in Ryan’s F-250 tried to power the
truck through them both. The Ford’s front end had crumpled and
smoke billowed from under the hood. Yet the engine revved,
screaming along with Duke as he tried to push apart the vehicles
blocking his path.

I had a look at his face before I ripped the
door off. He’d turned beet red in furious terror. Veins stood out
on his forehead as he yelled a single, long cry of frustration.

His wide eyes looked ready to pop right out
of his head when I yanked him out to face his doom. His voice and
the truck died at about the same time.

I didn’t stick around long to make sure the
bastard was dead. My thirst was quenched, having been drowned in
the blood of three full-grown men. Only pure hatred and the need
for revenge drove me now. The silver still slowly ejected from my
healing body. It hurt like hell, and someone was going to pay for
that, along with their many other sins. There were two more of them
out there, and one would not finish the night in one piece. Not if
I could help it.

My next victim hadn’t gotten far down the
road. Like Duke, I disabled him in a hurry. I left him
incapacitated but moaning.

I flew again, only slightly marveling on my
innate ability to fly well. Tattingail. I wanted Tattingail, and I
wanted him dead. My focus went laser sharp on that one goal.

At last the worst of the bunch was in my
sights. He ran, now only yards from reaching the paved road that
would take him either to the country club or Highway 17. He would
not make it.

I dropped down on him, flattening him
facedown to the ground. Lightning quick, I flipped him over so he
could see me. So he could stare Death herself right in her red eyes
the moment before she drained him of every drop of blood.

“No! No!” Tattingail screamed.

I opened my mouth wide, ready to strike. I
never got the chance. A tremendous force barreled out of the dark
woods with an earthshaking roar, knocking me several feet away. I
howled in pain. My whole body bellowed from the monstrous blow it
had taken. I leapt to my feet, ready to tear apart whatever it was
that had prevented me from meting out swift justice.

My fury dropped away as I stared at the
screaming Tattingail and what now had him in its jaws.

The big black bear lifted Tattingail by the
throat and jerked its head. The preacher and would-be commissioner
flew, thrown like a ragdoll to land unmoving on the side of the
road.

I watched in awe as Ryan stomped on hind legs
after his prey. Shocked out of my state of pure predator, I
wondered if I should try to stop him from killing his tormentor.
The Tats had it coming, but my sister’s husband had enough black
marks on his naughty list. Besides, Ryan didn’t strike me as the
kind of guy who could kill and not have his conscience tear him
apart for it.

The night erupted in growls and yowls. Two
big shapes bounded out of the woods and stopped, bristling as they
faced Ryan and stood between him and Tattingail. Wolf and panther
stood shoulder to shoulder, blocking the enraged werebear from
getting to the groaning man.

The wolf shifted into naked man. Levi Ward
stood before the looming bear shifter, speaking in calming tones.
“Stop, Ryan. You don’t want a murder charge, man.”

Ryan bellowed, pawing the air. I guess he was
telling Levi he was quite fine with facing a murder rap, thanks so
much. I couldn’t say I blamed him.

Levi tried again. “Listen to me. I know you
want to go home to your wife Ashley and son Jesse. Cool down. We
can fix this.”

Hearing the names of the people he loved
turned the trick. Ryan took a step back. He dropped to all fours.
With a sound much like a human moan, his head lowered.

He shifted back to human. He sat naked and
vulnerable in the middle of the dirt road. Sobs rang out in the
night.

Gerald also shifted into human. Good heavens,
naked men all over the place. My blood-fed libido gave an eager
surge. I told it to shut up and let me think.

I spoke up. “Maybe he’s in the clear, but I’m
not so sure we can fix what I did. I left one hell of a trail of
destruction behind me.”

Levi took a long look at me. I felt the blood
I’d taken drying on my chin and throat. He dragged in a deep breath
and muttered under his breath. I could still hear the word he said.
“Shit.”

I nodded. “Does it matter that they had it
coming to them? They did shoot me first.”

There were a lot of exchanged looks. Levi and
Gerald looked at each other, fear in their expressions. Ryan looked
at Tattingail, anger and horror crossing his face in quick
succession.

As for me, I was still not quite myself . I
knew I should have been horrified at what I’d done. But with fresh
warm blood singing in my body, I felt exhilarated. I’d flown
without any trouble at all. I had three attractive, naked men in
front of me.

I’d unloaded so much exuberance in violence
that the usual need for sex had blunted. That didn’t mean I wasn’t
interested in a taste of naughtiness though. I caught myself
licking my lips as I contemplated a feast of a different kind.

Levi’s voice wavered between amused and
irritable. “Eyes up here, lady,” he rebuked in a firm voice as he
waved towards his face. He shook his head and turned his back on
me. Well, that was a nice view too.