Midnight in Berlin (25 page)

As they sat together with steaming cups of instant, Nick found himself hoping like hell Julian would take the conversational initiative soon, or any minute now he’d be saying “Well, this is nice, isn’t it?” like a member of the Women’s Institute taking tea with the vicar, and then he’d have to kill himself. He managed not to sigh in relief as Julian rested his mug on his knee and cleared his throat.

“We should go for a run together sometime. You know, as wolves.” Julian’s manner was a little hesitant, and his finger traced a circle around the top of his mug.

Was he offering because he thought he ought, or because he wanted to? “I—well, are you sure that’s wise?” Visions of Carl shot through Nick’s head. God, there’d been so much blood…

“As long as we don’t go to Coe Fen, why not?”

“You don’t think we might, well, fight?”

From the look Julian gave him, one might have thought he’d just suggested they invite the Master and all the fellows along for the trip. “Of course we would not fight.” He blinked. “You have places you like to go?”

“Ah, yes. Well, a place. Some woods out to the south of town.”

Another sidelong look. “You think it’s safe to go to the same place all the time?”

“Well, it’s only once a month, after all.”

“Once a month? You mean you don’t change any more frequently than that?”

Nick was getting rather tired of Julian’s incredulous expressions. “Since that is the approximate frequency of full moons, no, I don’t,” he told him rather shortly. “What on earth are you talking about?”

Julian stared at him in that curious way of his, tilting his head away and looking at Nick out of the corner of his eye. “You mean you’ve never changed except at full moon?”

“I wasn’t aware that it was even possible,” Nick said slowly. “In any case, why on earth would I want to? It’s hardly a barrel of laughs. Why would anyone want that kind of pain any more often than they had to endure it?”

Julian drew in a sharp breath. “If you change more frequently, the pain lessens. Considerably. I can’t believe you didn’t know that.”

“Well, forgive me for not having been brought up by werewolves!” Nick regretted his temper immediately, as Julian’s face took on that closed look he’d seen all too often. “Look, I’m sorry,” Nick forced himself to say. “It’s just a little galling—I’ve been a werewolf for three years now, and here you are, telling me I’ve been doing it wrong all this time!”

Julian shifted position on the sofa, looking uncomfortable. He looked at the mug in his hand for a moment, then carefully placed it on the floor by his feet. “What about the one that turned you? Didn’t he teach you anything?”

Nick snorted. “Apart from not to go sneaking round my boyfriend’s house on full moon nights to see if he was cheating on me, no, he didn’t.”

He sighed, remembering. He’d met Carl whilst doing his PhD at Durham University, a place he’d chosen on a whim because he’d never really been up north and he’d fancied a change of scene. It hadn’t hurt that it had something of a reputation as a home from home for Oxbridge graduates. Carl had been a postgrad Modern Languages student doing French and German.

They’d met at the Durham version of the CUGS Stammtisch, which Nick had been disappointed to discover involved rather less beer and rather more discussion of worthy topics than its Cambridge counterpart. They hadn’t hit it off straight away, and in truth the relationship had always been a little uneasy, each of them seeming to feel a need to score points off the other. Nick had been rather appalled to discover this hitherto unsuspected side of himself.

And then one afternoon Carl had told Nick abruptly that he wouldn’t be seeing him that evening. Somehow Nick hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that Carl wasn’t telling the truth about his reasons.

So, fired by motives he hadn’t cared to examine too closely, he’d borrowed a friend’s car and driven out to Carl’s little rented cottage, way out in the back of beyond. There had been a light shining from the living room window. Nick had been planning to simply knock on the door—of course he had—but hadn’t been able to resist just taking a look through the window. Just to reassure himself. As he’d made his way around the house,
something
had leapt at him. He’d been knocked flat on his back, looking into bloodthirsty eyes. Hot, reeking breath had flooded his nose, making him gag, and he’d been paralysed with fear. And then the creature had
bitten
him. Hard, on the shoulder, tearing his flesh and drawing blood—lots of blood. Nick had never known pain like it. He’d screamed with the agony of it, but there had been no one there to hear. And then the creature had
howled
, and he’d passed out.

He’d woken up on Carl’s sofa, his shoulder feeling so bloody awful he’d actually checked to see if his arm was still there. Carl had been hovering around agitatedly. He’d had the gall to blame
Nick
for what had happened. Said it wasn’t his fault Nick had come sneaking around. Had said a lot of rather confusing stuff about
instincts
and
claiming
that Nick hadn’t understood at all. Not at the time, anyway.

These days, of course, he understood it all rather too well.

And then had been the worst part—Carl telling him
he’d
been the beast that had attacked Nick. That he was a werewolf—had been bitten by one during his year studying in Heidelberg and turned into one himself. Nick hadn’t believed a word of it, of course. He’d let Carl drive him back to town, where he’d gone straight to the doctor’s for a rather better patch-up job than Carl had managed, and a tetanus jab. They’d parted on extremely strained terms, as was only to be expected.

He hadn’t seen much of Carl after that. He’d been aware that something was—not quite right, as the weeks went on, but he’d put it down to the trauma of being attacked by a ravening beast and the same night finding out his boyfriend was insane.

On the afternoon of the next full moon, Carl had turned up out of the blue and practically forced him into his car. Nick hadn’t known what had appalled him more—Carl’s almost violent manner, or his own reaction to it. He’d had to restrain himself from attacking the man, had felt a fierce urge to fight him, to dominate.

When they’d reached Carl’s cottage…the angry wait for the moon to rise—after all, might as well humour the madman…the almost comical shock of seeing Carl strip in preparation for the transformation that Nick was firmly convinced would
not
happen…and the tearing, gut-wrenching agony of his own first transformation.

And then, it seemed, the wolf’s instincts had taken over.

Julian was looking at him. As Nick registered this, the boy’s eyes dropped once more. Nick took a deep breath, trying to control himself. Thinking about Carl when he was with Julian was, he decided, a very bad idea. Although the instinct involved was rather different.

Love’s compass is never wrong—even when it points in two different directions…

The Given & the Taken

© 2012 L.A. Witt

Tooth & Claw, Book 1

After pleading his case to his wolf clan’s Elders, Levi is granted the right to bond with Ian, his male human lover, on one condition: they must spend one year apart. Then Levi must use only their spiritual connection to find Ian, or the deal is off.

Tracking down his lover is easy for Ian, but Levi isn’t prepared for the changed man he finds.

The agony of separation was too much for Ian. In a moment of weakness, he reached out—to a vampire. Now he’s a vampire himself, and Levi’s devastation—and rejection—is like a stake to his heart. But it’s nothing compared to the fury of the clan that wants Ian brought to justice for desecrating their most sacred ritual.

Afraid for Ian’s safety, Levi puts the pain aside and races to get to Ian first, but he faces unexpected competition: Darius, Ian’s maker. When they come together, all hell breaks loose, Ian is on the run…and the only way Levi and Darius can save the man they love is work together.

Warning: Contains two vampires and a werewolf who really, really, really want to hate each other. Except when they want each other. And have violent, sweaty, angry sex with each other. But they still hate each other. Mostly.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
The Given & the Taken:

Levi’s footsteps had long since faded into the night, leaving me with nothing but the wind and that maddening, pulsing awareness of
him
. It faded only enough to indicate the growing distance between us, not nearly enough to let me gain a foothold on my sanity. I couldn’t ignore it. I couldn’t
not
be aware of him.

Rubbing my temples, I begged that awareness to recede. It had been almost bearable the last few months. One of the few things that had improved since Darius converted me.

But now it was back with a vengeance. Pounding against the insides of my skull, pulsing beside my own heartbeat, whispering, “This way, this way, this way.” I sank to my knees, digging my fingers into my temples and muttering a string of curses. I was right back in that moment a year ago when I’d watched Levi drive away. When he’d left me to stumble through a year of the worst emotional torment I’d ever experienced.

It wasn’t supposed to be like that. We weren’t like that. Levi and I had had the kind of solid, intimate relationship I’d always dreamed of, but that ritual changed us. Suddenly he was my lifeline, something to which I was inextricably bound. I’d needed him like I needed air and, these days, blood. It didn’t matter that I’d known then that he’d come back. Tell a jonesing crack addict he can have a hit in a few hours, and it won’t do him a damned bit of good. Knowing Levi would come back didn’t ease the pain.

And now he wasn’t coming back, and I couldn’t fucking
breathe
.

This wasn’t what I wanted. I never wanted us to depend on each other. I didn’t want to need him, never mind to the point it was excruciating to be away from him. How was anyone supposed to live like this? Was I really expected to make it through that kind of hell without finding a way—the right way, the wrong way,
some
way—to
not
want to die for a few hours?

My head throbbed from the intensified pull but also from hunger. I hadn’t fed in…fuck, I had no idea. Days? Far too long. I could push it another day or two before it was either feed or risk an uncontrollable bloodlust, which didn’t go over well in a world where people feared vampires to the point of vigilantism.

But I had to get out of these woods before I could feed.

And before the sun came up.

With a tired grunt, I pushed myself to my feet. For a moment, I wavered, struggling to find my equilibrium. Between the lightheadedness that came from hunger and the newly intensified draw toward Levi, I was lucky I knew which way was up.

When the world leveled out enough for me to keep my balance, I brushed the snow off my knees and muttered a few obscenities at the cold, damp patches that had soaked through the denim. Those would be pleasant, along with my numb feet and hands. There were myths among the human population about vampires, many of which I’d believed a very short time ago, and one of them was that we didn’t feel hot or cold, didn’t feel pain, any of that.

Yeah. Bullshit. I wouldn’t freeze to death or anything, no matter how long I stayed out here, but I’d certainly feel like ass until I got warm again. Oh, the curse of being in this strange limboland between life and death: things may not have killed me, but I could certainly still suffer from them. I’d hated being cold when I was human. I hated being cold now.

So, of course, Levi had insisted on waiting for me out in the woods after it had fucking snowed. I tried to find a little humor in that, but there was none to be found.

Just focus on getting out of here. Deal with everything else later.

There’d been a car with Alaska plates parked beside mine at the trailhead, so I assumed it was his, which meant he’d be going in that direction. Perhaps a risky assumption, but it was all I had to go on right now, so I followed him. At the very least, he’d get me closer to…something. Civilization or a road, somewhere I was more likely to find shelter from the sun than out here.

My night vision was better than it had ever been as a human. Darkness now was like daylight back then, and I easily found both my tracks and his in the snow. There were stretches of trail, though, that had been sheltered from the snow by the thick evergreen canopy overhead. My tracks would only guide me so far.

They were a start, though, and they went in the same direction my hyperawareness tried to pull me, so that was encouraging. Hands in my pockets for warmth, I followed the tracks and my awareness of him.

Minutes after I’d started after him, the pull intensified. He must have stopped, or at least slowed down, because the distance between us was closing even faster. I was gaining on him, and quickly, and with every step came relief. I picked up the pace, resisting the urge to break into a run. Some said vampires weren’t as susceptible to things like sprained ankles and twisted knees, but I wasn’t taking any chances out here.

A heartbeat worked its way into my consciousness. I fought to zero in on it, but the closer I was to Levi, the harder it was to be aware of anything besides him.

Still, my mouth watered. A beating heart. Fresh blood. Something to—

Movement ahead of me stopped me in my tracks. Levi appeared out of the shadows, his expression taut and his jaw set. With human eyes, I wouldn’t have been able to see more than a silhouette, but he was fully visible to me now.

His deep brown eyes were almost black in this light, and I caught myself wishing my night vision wasn’t so acute. Then I’d have been blind to the way he looked at me, his expression running the gamut between seething rage, venomous hatred, and a degree of pain that made me ache with guilt.

A knot of fear tangled beneath my ribcage. He’d come back.

I’d hurt him. I’d enraged him. I was the thing he loathed more than any other.

But if I ever see you again, I can’t promise being your former lover will keep me from killing you for being a vampire
.