The Wolfen Lover Read online

  She sat close to him and wondered if the other young ones were dead, if he was the only one left now. She was certain he was one of the young ones, now almost grown. Wolves grew fast, and she knew he must have witnessed the terrible attack her parents had waged. Staring down at him, she focused her thoughts on him, almost willing him to awaken. She could feel the strong energy of his body as it rose and fell with each breath.

  As dawn neared, she grew indecisive, watching him stir a little. She could still find other shelter if she left now, but she did not want to leave him. She felt certain he would change soon. How could she deprive herself of this, her only dream! I must see him as a man, she thought wildly. I want to see another magical being who is not one of the clan, like me!

  Dawn came and knew her answer—she would rather risk his attack than leave this place, which made her feel so alive, so . . . human. She began to murmur to him, so gently. She made sure her voice was alluring and comforting. The wolf stirred, small noises of pain echoing in the large cave, and he began to writhe under her hands. She stepped away, just a little, and waited, excitement churning in her belly.

  As she backed into the shadows, he changed, writhing on the pelts he slept upon, groaning in a voice rich with pain and suffering. His body seemed to blur as the magic took hold, and it seemed only seconds until the limbs of a man emerged, and the silver-grey of his fur turned to smooth, bronzed skin.

  Even the cave smelled different now, a human smell she knew so well, the smell of warm, fragrant human blood, the most delicious of all. She watched his eyes open, feeling joy she had never before experienced. The sky was lightening, but it was dark here in the corner, and she would be able to observe him until he chose to attack her. He would notice her scent soon, the alluring mixture of flowers and warm skin that mimicked the human. It helped her to entice her victims, especially the men, but it would also alarm him, and there was no way he would not sense her presence.

  He stood, stretching his long limbs in the cave, his body naked and perfect. His smooth shoulders seemed to be carved as perfectly as those of a statue created by a master sculptor. His hair was dark, like hers, but his skin looked so warm, so . . . succulent. His eyes were silver-grey, with flashes of blue, and her own eyes widened at his beauty, for she had never, even among her own beautiful kind, seen such perfection of coloring and feature. His chiseled face was a study in angular, masculine beauty, and his soft, reddened lips seemed to cry out to be kissed.

  She looked down, staring at his strong, muscled legs, so much longer than hers, for she was petite, and he must be a foot taller than she. She could not help but notice the hardened cock that stood out from his body, and she felt her thoughts grow hot. She had not been with a human, but she knew what they did. She had seen them, when she was out hunting for prey. She had come upon couples of all sorts, men thrusting into women, moaning in pleasure.

  She felt her own body grow warm in the cold cave, where the fire was turning to ash as he reached for some rough clothes that hung upon a branch. He looked around him, moving with animal grace as he pulled on a tunic and pants and rough brown boots. He is like a prince, she thought, sighing, running her hands over her body, feeling her nipples harden. I want him to touch me, to love me . . .

  Laina knew he sensed her, and probably had since his eyes opened. She gazed at him and waited, ready to fly but unable to budge from where she stood. He walked toward her, his eyes blazing, and he stepped into the shadows with a dagger of iron in his hand. It glinted silver in the darkness.

  She was excited rather than afraid, when he came closer to her. She felt a hot flush creep up her throat as she took in his chiseled features and saw his look of shock.

  Laina continued to meet his gaze. She felt as though they were suspended in time, each taking their measure of the other. The moment seemed to last forever, and Laina felt some burden lifted from her, some feeling of loneliness she had never, ever been able to shed for her whole life.

  “Who are you?” he whispered.

  Laina grew excited as she watched his eyes stray to her lips and then her breasts. She could see the tension in the lines of his body, and she admired his animal grace, so like her own.

  “You are a vampire!” he said, but still he did not attack her. He only stared at her.

  “I have come to be . . . your friend”, she whispered, comfortingly. “I am not like the others, and I have never been like them. I left them, for I know what they all did to you, and I don’t wish to live among them anymore, ever.” She reached out for his hand, but he pulled away from her, his jaw tight with anger and perhaps fear.

  “You cannot be my friend, if you are what I think you are,” he answered softly. “We are enemies and always will be. You must leave here now, for I wish no contact with you. You are a monster to me, and your kind are killers, ruthless and cold . . .”

  Destroyers, she thought sadly. He speaks truth.

  “I will never harm you,” she said quietly. She smiled, using all her charm to try to soothe his anger.

  “I will never, ever hurt you,” she murmured, her soft voice rich with pain and with kindness. “I am not so different from you, for you are Wolfen, and magical, and so am I. Like me, you must feed. It is in your blood. It does not make you a monster, and I choose my victims carefully. They are bad people, people who deserve to die, not wild creatures of the woods or magical beings. I want to be close to you. That is why I have risked so much to come to you. I will not hurt you. I have no other place to go” She finished, softly, tears choking her voice.

  “Go back to them!” he thundered. “I will not take care of you, or anyone like you. I hate all your kind and always will. You destroyed my mother, who loved me well, and left her drained and lifeless. There was no pity for her, and I have none for you.”

  She walked out of the shadows, closer to where he stood. She wondered what he would think of her face in the stronger light. She was pale, it was true, but there was a luminous quality to her skin, and she did not look frightening. I want him to desire me, she thought I do not want him to find me cold and monstrous. Laina decided to take a risk.

  She stepped in toward him, mere inches from his beautiful face. She leaned forward to kiss his warm cheek and felt the stubble upon his jaw, so human. He smelled like a human—warm blood moving in his veins, eyes hot with emotions she could only dream of feeling.

  Perhaps I am feeling them, at last, she thought, exultant. She reveled in the softness of his lips.

  “We are not meant to be together. We are too different,” he said, more gently now.

  She shook her head sadly. “I am different from them, and I can never . . . love . . . one of them, as I should. I need you. You are the only one who makes me feel like this. No matter what I am, or who I should be. I have loved you from the first moment I saw you, sleeping by the fireside.”

  She shivered with pleasure as he went to her and buried his carved, full lips in her hair. Se sensed he had always felt different, too, different from the others. I know our souls are alike, she thought. It is like looking into a mirror, she thought, wonderingly. Can it be true . . . that there is another creature like me, but not exactly like me, also lost and alone, unable to understand his own kind, as I no longer understand my own?

  She held him close, longing all of a sudden to protect him, though he towered over her. She knew his trust was thin and weak, yet it seemed to strengthen every second he held her in his arms.

  * * * *

  “I am going to kill them, all of them,” he murmured, and he kissed her satiny hair. “And you are going to tell me how it must be done.”

  “I will help you,” she said, adrift with love. He felt, almost despite himself, that he had come home at last, safe and warm in her arms. He closed his eyes against the soft, golden traces of daylight that filtered into the cave. “I hate them, too, for what they did to you,” Laina told him, running her hands over his shoulders. And his heart was touched by her honesty. He led her to the pelts w
here he slept, and sat down with her, looking into her face, for the cold, joyful look the others had shown when they floated above his mother and the elders and prepared to feed.

  She is not like them, the animal part of him answered, and he relaxed, drinking in the unearthly beauty that was like a dream to him. But she knows their secrets and all their ways, and I need her. And I am so lonely . . .

  Chapter Three

  Laina’s mother went to her room, later that night, to let her know the clan was going hunting. Laina hunted alone now, but her mother, Melissande, always wished that she would share this ritual with them. She found her daughter’s window wide open and bed mussed but empty. Melissande stared out in the night sky and she wondered where the girl had gone. She was not known to fly out from her own window. When she went to feed, she always told the family first.

  Melissande sat in Laina’s room and looked through her things, angry and bewildered at the changes in her daughter that she could not understand. I did not know that she would have the courage, or the stupidity, to leave all of us. She held her daughter’s hairbrush and stared into the mirror where Laina would brush her silky hair.

  It was the attack on the Wolfen kind that started the changes, she thought. Laina has always been . . . strange . . . about the Wolfen. I remember all the pictures she drew of them and the way she romanticized those foul creatures, as though they were faeries or angels.

  Melissande threw the brush onto the ground with a thump. She ran down the stairs and told her husband, Alastair, that Laina had run away. “She’s gone to find those awful Wolfen creatures, the ones who survived,” she spat.

  Her husband nodded. “She still cares for them, yes.”

  His voice was dangerously quiet, and Melissande wondered if she would have to take the blame for this. After all, I am the girl’s mother. That was why she had been left alone on that Hallows’ Eve night. She would have ruined the attack with her protests.

  “I am sure she has gone to them, as you said.” The king sneered, his eyes dark with hate.

  Melissande shuddered at the thought of the daughter she had raised so carefully, so painstakingly, consorting with her enemies, with mere animals. Melissande had always made sure Laina had the finest of everything. She felt emptiness as she looked about the great house that was their home, and forlorn.

  “If Laina has gone to them, is she doomed?” she asked Alastair, and his eyes were like ice. He merely stared at her. She knew it was a fatal mistake.

  Melissande could never understand why their daughter had seemed so unhappy with them. The royal bloodline filled her daughter with the strongest power and the potential to enjoy every pleasure, for all of eternity. The king seemed likewise confused by his child.

  “She’s very powerful, you know,” Alastair said, reaching for a glass of wine. He drank deeply, his lips stained with the ruby red wine he loved the most.

  Melissande had never really believed this about her daughter. She seemed so fragile and quiet. But the king had told her again and again that Laina was the only other in their clan who could eclipse him. He had given her that power himself.

  “She is just a child,” Melissande said in protest.

  “There are no children among out kind, my wife,” he roared. Our bloodline is as old as time itself. Even in biblical times, our kin fed and prowled the ancient squares and villages, cloaked in robes and hoods.”

  Melissande knew this was true. Alastair had made her what she was. Without his blood, she was nothing. For this reason, she worshipped him.

  Long ago, he had rescued her from death, and she had been a sinner of the worst sort. She was not sure what fate would have greeted her if he had let her die. Instead, she had been permitted to drink his royal blood and become immortal. What greater gift could she have asked for?

  Melissande stood up and paced the room, her thoughts going back to the night when Alastair has rescued her. Would God have damned me to hell? she wondered, thinking of her human life. In hell, there would have been no power for her and no glory. Here, the world was like a toy she could play with.

  Melissande had once shared all the passions of a woman, and all the darkness of the worst sorts of humans. When she had been betrayed by a lover, she had killed him, driving a knife into his flesh as he slept, and slitting his throat. She had also killed the woman who slept beside him, young and blonde and rosy, as Melissande could never be. Melissande had given Laina her dark beauty, but none of her vengeful nature. Laina killed because she must, to feed, but Melissande drew power from death, and she reveled in it, in the feeling of taking life from another.

  She had loved the man she killed, or so she told herself, but she had killed him in cold blood, her rage like ice, and she had enjoyed it. Alistair had come to her in her prison cell. She knew not how he entered the little room, but it did not matter. Her terror had been so great, as he sank his long fangs into her throat. She had wondered afterward if the evil of her deeds was only another enticement to the vampire king.

  He had drunk deeply of her and then, letting her be, waited for her to join him as one of the undead. He had pressed her mouth against his own throat and whispered for her to drink. Soon enough, she had felt the timeless hunger, like a sort of aching lust, and she had done what he asked. Then, she had slept for a while on the cell’s little bed, her eyelids fluttering, and woken up as one of his kind.

  It was so easy, Melissande thought, still grateful for that night. Her family had disowned her, and she knew that the scaffold would have awaited her. For that, and for the betrayal of her true love, she hated all of humankind and took fierce pleasure in feeding upon them and leaving them dead. Especially, she preyed on couples, and she preferred young, blonde women, with ivory skin touched by a coral flush in their cheeks and bright blue eyes.

  The strong men, so like the one who had spurned her, were also favored victims, and she always felt a surge of the rawest power when they fell to their deaths like toy soldiers under her steady gaze.

  Why can’t my daughter understand that humans hurt other humans . . . that they lie? That they are no better and that they are so much worse. Being of our kind is honest. All beings prey on others, only we are truthful about it, instead of lying and betraying. Melissande felt fretful and angry, and her pride was injured. All the other vampires knew she had not been able to keep her daughter with them and that she had failed as queen. Although none of them could die, there was a pecking order to their ranks, just as in any society. By losing Laina, who was strange but royal, and the chosen historian of their clan, she had reduced her own reputation and decreased her power. She had failed as mother and as queen, and she felt the derision of the others, and rage filled her heart, as her pride swelled up in her, filling her with ego and hate. The clan had not loved Laina, but they had needed her in their own way, for there was some safety in numbers and some comfort in seeing the royal bloodline continued.

  * * * *

  The king watched his wife move about the room, but his mind turned as he decided what to do about his daughter. He loved Laina in his own way. She was an extension of his very being, but he did not love her for herself. His ancient bloodline was the purest, and the most revered of all, and Laina was his princess.

  He knew Melissande would be angry if he destroyed their child, but he did not care. He would wait only a few more days before he set out to find the girl. If she failed to return, he would destroy her forever. He could learn how it was done. He was the only one, of all of them, who knew how to find out, and he guarded the secret carefully.

  How strong is Laina, really? he wondered. And he felt a great weariness. I never thought I would come to this, he thought gravely, refilling his glass. But still, he must make his plans. Melissande would accept his decision, for she owed him everything and her own security was always foremost in her mind. He cheered up a little at the thought of his wife. The vain, selfish creature that she was suited him very well. He enjoyed the little traces of humanity that would erupt
in his still-young queen, who was not yet cold or hard enough to be completely of his kind.

  The queen would harden like marble, as he once did, with every passing year making her more ruthless and bold. For now, she still struggled with some human failings, which were more like memories, and she still mourned and raged at the things that a human man had done to her.

  I will kill Laina. I will find out the ancient ways, and I will kill her, he thought, staring at his wife. “She will be destroyed if she threatens our clan,” he told Melissande. Her back stiffened as he spoke. He asked his wife to gather his court around him, and she left the room to do his bidding. She did not meet his eyes.

  He went downstairs and gathered the vampires who served him. He spoke quietly with them. They did not know his name, only the power they could feel held them to him. They knew he was a natural force that they could ignore at their own peril.