Chapter Two
The underground community of Ţărână
9:05 A.M.
Leaning forward in his black leather armchair with both elbows braced on his knees, an Xbox controller held loosely in his hands, Breen pulled his attention away from the TV screen long enough to check his wristwatch. He’d only just started exploring the new interface of the upgraded Xbox One S that came in the mail this morning, but he would need to disconnect now if he was going to arrive early for the morning training session.
The video imagery of Gears of War was unreal, but he’d have to leave in about ten minutes to be on time anyway. And ten more minutes of gameplay wasn’t worth getting stuck in a locker room full of warriors busting on each other. He wasn’t a big talker himself, and being around all the warriors’ pre-workout bullshitting just seemed to blaze a spotlight on this fact.
On the television, an animated snipe popped out from behind a shed, and a second later red blotched across the TV screen.
Toast. Breen paused the game instead of respawning. A good time to quit.
“What’s up?” The voice came through Breen’s headset, although it was only his warrior buddy, Jeddin, one floor down.
Breen and Jeddin were two of a small group of serious gamers in Ţărână who consistently petitioned the higher-ups for permission to join multiplayer games with people topside. But in MP battles, gamers could talk freely to one another, and Ţărână’s security guidelines still didn’t allow for completely unmonitored communication.
This was mostly to protect against new Dragon humans accidentally disclosing dangerous info. Unlike Vârcolac, the humans who were regularly brought into the community nowadays hadn’t been raised living and breathing exposure avoidance, so someone might inadvertently mention “vampires” to an Aunt Bertha in a text message or email. Security had loosened a lot since Toni Parthen took over as co-leader of the community five years ago—travel to and from topside happened a lot more, for one—but Ţărână was still mostly a hidden community.
“You glitch out?” Jeddin asked him.
“No,” Breen said into his microphone. “I just gotta go to work.”
“Roger that,” Jeddin said. “See ya.”
They signed out, and Breen tugged off his headset and set it and the controller on the floor next to his armchair. He came to his feet and stretched, the sinews in his right shoulder popping, then checked his cell phone—it’d beeped while he was playing. His younger brother, Barbu, was wondering if he could drop by and pick up some of his Blu-ray movies.
Barbu lived in Ţărână’s slum, Stânga Town, where theft was a problem, so Breen let his brother keep valuable shit here. About the only time they saw each other was when Barbu came by to grab his stuff. Otherwise they pretty much operated in different worlds. Stânga Town kids kept to themselves…or, really, they were shoved aside by a lot of the main townspeople, who judged Stânga Towners as being genetically inferior.
These kids were the last to be produced from Vârcolac-to-Vârcolac mating, born in the ’80s when stillbirths among the breed had become epidemic. The deaths grew so numerous, in fact, that by 1993, Roth Mihnea—Toni’s co-leader—banned all procreation.
Breen, born in 1978, just missed becoming a Stânga Town kid.
The new administration—Toni—was trying to change this attitude. Donree, her assistant, was a Stânga Towner. But it was slow going. Mostly, these fringe-born Vârcolac hung out together in their own part of the cave and tried to meet town expectations by getting into a lot of trouble.
It wasn’t right for brothers to be on opposite sides of the law, but Breen and Barbu never seemed to know what to do about it, and Ungar, their father—whose job it probably should have been to fix things between his sons—didn’t do anything and never would.
So Breen just texted sure to Barbu on his way out the door and strolled to the elevator. He lived on the fourth floor of the new Water Cliffs Apartments.
Constructed three years ago, the complex rose an impressive ten stories high, all the way to the uppermost reaches of the cave ceiling, and overlooked the Water Cliffs water park. The first story was a solid block of black-painted concrete, built for the sole purpose of adding height. This way even people who lived in apartments on the first floor, which was really the third—the lobby being on the second—would have a view of the waterfalls and geysers of the Cliffs. And, yeah, the views were definitely awesome. Every living room in the complex sported a huge plate glass window, plus a balcony.
Before the Water Cliffs Apartments existed, the warriors and single Dragons lived dorm-style in a mansion at the south end of town. Breen headed there now—the mansion was also where the gym was.
Once inside, Breen descended a short stairway to the basement floor and then went into the locker room.
It was empty.
He stood for a moment, hands shoved into his pockets, just observing the two rows of tall metal lockers and listening to the quiet. Fragments of conversation came murmuring through the right-hand wall, probably Roth talking to someone. His office was right next door.
Breen opened his locker and started to change. Why was it he came early for the silence, then felt strange in it? He geared up in his workout clothes—black Lycra T-shirt and shorts, plus pliable wrestling shoes—then went from the locker room to the gym across the hall.
He would stretch out for about five minutes, then—
A curse woofed out of him as a raging hammer-pulse pounded through his nuts. He staggered backward, his knees turning to beer mash, and banged into the wall next to the door. He thrust his spine against the plaster to stop himself from sliding down the wall, hitting the floor ass-first and what the shit nuggets? second.
His dick was next to fall victim to the rhythmic pounding. His mouth dropped open. He hauled in breath after breath, listening to the thunder of his heartbeat…and to the insectile whir of one of the gym’s treadmills working.
A curly-haired blond woman was running on it.
Breen swallowed hard against a sudden rush of saliva. The capillaries in the gums behind his canines began to swell. Some Vârcolac males could handle the scent of an unmated Dragon woman; Breen couldn’t. Even a whiff of the hormone-drenched blood of an unmated threw him into a state of such rampant lust, he couldn’t tamp it down and he could barely control it. Was his hunger stronger than others’? Did he lack some sort of tempering gene? He couldn’t even guess, and right now the reasons were BFD. What mattered was that he was losing control fast—he was getting way more than a whiff of this woman.
The ventilation system in the gym was turned off, and with the treadmill runner currently lathered completely in sweat, her aroma was saturating the entire space. Breen swore his Vârcolac vision could practically see large, tasty droplets of her scent rolling down every wall. On top of that, she was all but naked, dressed only in a middy jog bra and blue spandex running shorts.
His nuts danced around some more, then a tingle ran the length of his spine, shot up the back of his neck, through his jaw, and landed right where his fangs rooted in. His instincts were telling him he needed to feed even though he didn’t. And maybe this was why he couldn’t handle scented females so well—it always felt like a part of him was starving. No matter how much donor blood he choked down, no matter if he’d fed five minutes ago or five days, he walked around feeling like a mass of rapacious hunger.
Yeah, and about that…he should probably pay attention. Being in the same space as a sweaty, extra-aromatic female for any length of time couldn’t lead anywhere good. He needed to leave before—
“Hey!”
Before she spotted him. Shit.
She stopped the running machine, her eyes brightening on him as she popped out a set of earbuds. Flipping those over the treadmill’s handhold, she hopped off, grabbed a towel—also off the handhold—and started toward him.
He swallowed very, very slowly. Her full frontal was amazing. Shapely hips swayed. Breasts that defied spectacular rose and fell from her labored breathing—the chest-expanding, in-breath making his eyeballs press at the edges of their sockets. Her hair was hiked into a high ponytail, creating a puffy fountain of curls on top of her head…and leaving the healthy pulse of her carotid bare.
He licked his lips. A mistake: he drew the taste of her right out of the air.
She stopped in front of him, wiping herself down with the towel. “Hi, I’m Charlize.”
He clawed at the wall behind him as her aroma vibrated through his neural pathways so hard it shook some teeth loose in his jaw. She wasn’t wearing any scent-reducing mud behind her ears. Not even a smudge. That his fangs hadn’t unsheathed yet was astounding.
“What’s your name?” She grinned, blazing a hundred and twenty watts at him.
“You—” Speech stopped. He stared at her smile. Her canines were on the pointy side for a human’s. He managed a shallow breath and tried again. “You’re not supposed to be in here.” Had another Vârcolac male been in the gym, Breen’s low, growly tone would’ve snapped the man’s attention over. Predators knew the sound of other predators on the hunt. “This is one of the times when the warriors train.”
“Oh?” She tossed the towel toward a storage cubby on the other side of the door.
“There’s a schedule posted on the wall,” he told her.
“Sorry, I didn’t notice. But also I’m a marathon runner, so, you know”—she shrugged—“I gotta run. First thing I do whenever I arrive at a new place is check out the gym.”
Seemed kind of extreme. She’d probably only arrived here a couple of hours ago, and it had to be nine thirty at night her time—here in Ţărână, they switched AM for P.M. with topside time, and vice versa. She should be in bed right now…for more reasons than tiredness. “Didn’t they tell you not to leave your room?”
When a noob Dragon was brought into the community, she was required to stay in her mansion guest room until she’d read the community manual, then taken a test to prove she was completely up to speed on Vârcolac culture. Once cleared, she’d be assigned a place to live in the Water Cliffs Apartments.
“No. I was just told not to leave the mansion.” She edged closer. “So you’re a warrior, huh?”
His vertebrae slid together, his spine feeling like it was growing lubricated. For what activity, he wasn’t sure.
“So you work with Marissa’s husband, right?”
“Uh…” Only half-listening, he directed his sub-response to her breasts. Sweat had reformed and was making patterns down her cleavage, in beads and streaks, drops swelling, rivulets darting. His own sweat formed around the collar of his workout shirt.
“What kind of stuff do you do when you train?” She tilted her head toward the boxing ring. “Fight?”
“Uh…” he said again. He was getting stupider by the second.
“Do you want to work out with me before your buddies show up?”
The AC needed to go on now or—He stopped short and squinted. “What did you say?”
A smile played at one corner of her mouth, and her eyes crinkled a little. “We could spar in the boxing ring.”
He stared at her. “You want me to hit you?”
“No.” She laughed, and somehow the noise tugged straight at his balls. “I want you to let me hit you. Nothing too hard. Just something to give me a good arm workout.”
Exactly what he needed: add fang-elongating aggression to what was already a serious Molotov cocktail of lust.
“Come on, it’ll be fun.” She upped the wattage of her smile.
He stared some more. At her smiling teeth. The sharp dig of those pointy canines at his throat would feel… His package started to burn, the throb in his dick nearly unbearable. Throttling off a moan, he tugged at the crotch of his workout gear.
The woman’s attention followed where his hand went—caught! Her focus remained on his crotch for an extra-long moment, then lazily, slowly, her eyes trailed back up his body and she met his gaze again. Her pupils were dilated, hunger in her eyes now…
Shit-nuggets. Get out, Dalakis. Lashing his hand out sideways, he made a blind grab for the door handle. Missed it. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. A force inside him wouldn’t allow it.
“Or we could wrestle,” she suggested in a soft, inviting voice.
He went still. His gnawing hunger made more growly noises in his ears.
“I have to warn you, though, I usually win at wrestling. ’Course I’m thinking that’s because men let me.” She tossed him a wink.
Getting horizontal, sweating together, legs and arms entwined, breasts that defy spectacular smashed against me… Another moan worked its way up from deep in his diaphragm. He trapped most of it in the back of his throat. But not all of it.
She heard enough.
Her blue eyes sparkling, she let out a playful whoop and jumped him.
He tried to jerk away from her, but with the wall right behind him, there was nowhere to go.
She easily cranked her right arm around the back of his neck, crossed her forearm in front of his throat, then grabbed her right wrist with her left hand, putting him in a good old-fashioned headlock. Dropping all of her weight toward the floor, she dragged down on him.
He bent over, going where she wanted him to go.
If she’d been a warrior or a man, he could’ve escaped her hold in a dozen different ways. But not in a way that wouldn’t have caused her pain, and there was the problem. He had no idea how to resist her without hurting her. He’d never wrestled a girl before. So he just went with the flow of her body.
When she went down to her knees and twisted, he allowed his right shoulder to hit the mat.
When she pushed at him, in large part with the side of her soft breast, he rolled over.
When she caught his wrists and scrambled on top of him, her thighs—still hot and tight from her workout—straddling him, then slammed his hands above his head, well…that’s when he got into deep, deep trouble with his Vârcolac side. Because that side couldn’t tell the difference between playful aggression and the canine-elongating real stuff.
“See?” Her eyes were sassy. “I win.” She leaned over him, the position putting those voluptuous, sweaty tits of hers right in his face, and… It might’ve actually been a better idea if he’d resisted her.
His fangs punched down into his mouth, stretching longer than he’d ever felt them go.
The sass cleared off her expression. “Whoa.” She stared, riveted, at his extended canines.
He watched a shiny bauble of perspiration slip out from behind her ear. He followed its progress as it slowly traveled the length of her jaw and arrived at the tip of her chin, hovering there, reflecting the light. It grew into a long, stretchy oval, quivered, then fell…fell, fell…
It splashed apart on his right fang.
He rolled his eyes into the upper reaches of his head. The taste of her was unreal: sweet, but in no describable way. Not like sugar or honey or fruit…maybe like all-over divine body pleasure. Heaven, Nirvana, Elysium, Valhalla—whatever was out there. It’s what she tasted like, and he had to have her.
An inhuman, beastly sound escaped him.
Her grip on his wrists loosened. “Uh…are you—?”
He flipped her onto her back so fast the band from her ponytail flung out of her hair, sending the blond mass into a wild tumble of luminous corkscrews around her. He rough-kneed her legs apart and jammed himself between her thighs.
Her eyes flared wide.
From atop straight-locked arms, he stared down at her, his eyeballs feeling like they were burning twin holes through the back of his skull. He was growing more punch-drunk on her scent every second. And her taste… He smoothed his tongue over his right fang and actually grayed out for a staggering heartbeat. His arms shuddered, like his body was a thousand-pound weight he very much wanted to drop down on top of those spectacular breasts. Get off, Dalakis
He tensed.
She grabbed his shoulders. “Don’t go,” she breathed, her eyes flagging to half-mast. Whatever shock or alarm had been her initial reaction was gone now. “You’ve got the right idea.” She slid her palms along his shoulders and down his biceps.
He gritted his teeth, his fangs squeaking against his lower bicuspids.
She linked her fingers behind his neck and pulled him down to her, her lips finding his.
Their mouths came together in a kiss and melded instantly, moving together in natural synchronicity, slanting, pressing, anticipating. He expelled a short blast of air from his nostrils. Her lips were so soft… How could a woman’s lips be this soft? More taste, and more when she urged his lips apart and thrust her tongue inside his mouth. She went after his tongue in a way that wasn’t at all gentle, but the aggressiveness of her attack was coupled with wet and smooth sensations.
Every muscle in his body knotted. Tongue-kissing was…was… He needed to stop. But how? Here again, he didn’t have any experience. He’d never kissed a girl before. Maybe she knew it. She seemed to be taking full advantage of his dumbstruck paralysis, completely plundering him, driving him to the point where pain was starting up in his crotch, blood pounding at the closed doorway into his dick—the curse of every unmated Vârcolac.
His mind whispered the way to relief. Bite her. Canting his hips more tightly against her crotch, he—
A sharper discomfort speared through his crotch, and a hiss of pain helped him break the seal of their lips. He tried to move off her, but she grabbed him firmly by the ass.
“Don’t stop,” she panted. “I want this.”
What? He peered down into her languid eyes. What? Had a host just told him she was willing?
Her fingers dug into his butt.
Hadn’t she just said…? I want this: it’s what she said.
Her head fell to one side, the long, fair line of her neck flaunting its artery at him.
A feverish mouthful of saliva pooled against his lower lip and fierce need rippled along the small of his back. Vocabulary scrambled. Individual words smeared into blurry syllables.
She writhed beneath him and moaned. “Come on, baby.”
The edges of his nostrils flexed. His vision narrowed down to pinpoint focus, the gym disappearing from his periphery. Animal instinct reared up and took over. He came down on top of her.
“Yes.” She closed her legs around his hips.
His nuts balled up into hard fists. The walls somersaulted. A hot wind roared through his ears. The ether of primal drives whited out his brain, pitching him into nothingness, and…
The next thing he knew warm skin was beneath the crush of his lips and an inebriating taste was flooding across his tongue. He groaned, a guttural sound from deep in his throat. He was being transformed. It was as if his skin was changing out for a new set with a better fit while intense energy reinvigorated every cell, and…and then his dick grew hard. He groaned again and gulped her down. Gulped and gulped and—
A strong hand fisted into the scruff of his shirt and hauled him out from between the eager clamp of the treadmill woman’s thighs. His shirt collar wrenched tight across his Adam’s apple.
“The fuck are you doing?” bellowed Jacken Brun, leader of the Warrior Class.