Eternal Kiss of Darkness

Flare was behind Jennifer in an instant, his fangs cutting a thin red trail down her shoulder. Kira was on her feet before she even had a chance to wince at how much it hurt her to move.

"I'm not sleeping with Mencheres," she got out through gritted teeth.

Flare let Jennifer go. She stumbled off to the other side of the room, looking scared but not hurt aside from those two red scratches. Dreadlocks and Baldy made noises that sounded like relieved whoops.

"That's a load off," Flare muttered.

"Oh yeah," Dreadlocks said. Then he laughed. "Know how dead you'd be if you worked over the first woman Mencheres has taken up with in how long?"

"He'd be grinding your bones to make his f**king bread," Baldy joked, to more laughter.

"Scared me for a minute," Flare admitted, not looking afraid now.

Kira glanced away from them. Maybe if she concentrated very hard, she could focus on something other than their smirking laughter or the pain radiating up her arm. She leaned against the wall with her good side, closing her functional eye, taking in deep breaths and trying to mentally will herself away.

Unfortunately, even after several minutes of trying, no meditative technique Kira tried could hold up against the throbbing anguish in her hand. If Flare let her go, she could use some of the blood in those vials at her house to heal herself. But could she take some of that limited supply, knowing it might result in robbing Tina of a year or more of life?

"Do you feel that?" Flare muttered.

Kira opened her eye in time to see the two doors across the room explode outward, ripped off the hinges by some invisible force. They crashed onto the floor with a thud that seemed to reverberate around the room. Flare, Baldy, and Dreadlocks jumped, backing away.

Then a tall cloaked figure swept into the room, long dark hair swinging with his rapid stride, charcoal-colored gaze turned to blazing green.

Kira's heart felt like it skipped a beat. Mencheres.

His eyes seemed to meet hers without pausing over anyone else in the room. Then Mencheres stopped, his features hardening like sand turned to glass. The fury that emanated from him was palpable, making her heart skip a beat again.

Was her beaten condition the reason for his anger? Or was Mencheres that furious at her?

Chapter 13

Mencheres crossed the room to Kira, rage erupting through him as he took in her battered face. One sniff revealed that though she'd been grievously mistreated, she had not been raped, which changed her captors' fate from a slow, tortuous death to merely a quick, painful one.

Then Mencheres saw Kira's hand - swol en, bloody, and misshapen - with shards of bone piercing her skin. A slow, tortuous death it was, then.

He didn't spare a glance at the three vampires as he gently took her into his arms.

From their auras, they were too young and weak to pose any threat to him, even with his back turned. Mencheres's mouth tightened when he felt Kira flinch away from his touch.

Was it from the pain she was in, or from fear of him?

He cut open his wrist with his fangs, holding the bloodied slash to Kira's mouth. She didn't attempt to turn her head away, to his relief, though she grimaced as she swallowed. Then a harsh gasp came from her.

"Your hand will hurt as it heals. It will quickly pass," Mencheres said, keeping his wrist pressed to her mouth. Even though his wound closed in seconds, drops of blood that Kira could swallow still clung to his wrist.

Something low clenched inside him as he felt her warm tongue flick across his flesh.

Before his gaze, Kira's nose straightened back into its normal, lovely slope, her swol en eye cleared, her lip mended, and her hand stretched, fingers losing their twisted, crippled malformation until they became straight and smooth again. Even though more blood wasn't necessary, Mencheres kept his wrist to her mouth simply because he wanted to feel her lips on him for a few moments longer.

"Yeah . . . so you must be Mencheres," a voice behind him said. "I'm Flare, and this is Patches and Wraith."

He ignored them, focusing on Kira's eyes as the pain left her gaze and her breathing lost its raggedness. She sniffed, then coughed as some of the remaining blood from her previously broken nose went back up her nasal passages. Mencheres had no handkerchief, so he wiped Kira's face with his sleeve, removing his wrist from her mouth at last.

"Is the pain gone?" he asked.

"It's gone." Her gaze flickered to him before skidding away. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

"I tried not to tell them your name, but - "

"But as soon as she did, I didn't touch her again," that same voice interrupted behind him. "Hey, you'd have done the same thing to someone who crashed your place and tried to make off with your property, right?"

Now the other vampire had his full attention. Mencheres turned around, lasering his gaze on Flare. "Would I?" he asked, drawing the two words out.

Kira had been harshly abused out of loyalty to him, even though he'd only bid her not to speak of him or vampires to anyone human. He knew how much agony the injury to her hand would have caused with its abundance of nerve endings. Flare would have known that, too, and this fool expected him not to avenge her suffering?

"If I would torture a human for attempting an act she could not possibly complete," Mencheres went on, each word drenched in ice, "then what do you think I will do to a vampire who needlessly abused someone under my protection?"

Flare's expression became alarmed. The two other vampires began to edge away from Mencheres, but he slammed them into immobility with a flick of his mind.

"Now, listen," Flare began, holding out his hands. "She wouldn't say who she belonged to, and I couldn't control her mind to find out any other way."

Mencheres debated slaughtering them before any more useless words assailed his ears, but then decided against it. Kira had experienced enough violence tonight.

Besides, these rooms were probably covered by security cameras, and he would leave nothing behind that might cause an issue for Kira later.

He'd kill these three another time, in a more private place.

"I only tried to help a young girl get back to her family," Kira said. She pointed at a human crouched in the corner. "He kidnapped her and forced her to strip here." Flare shrugged. "She wanted to get involved in the vamp world. She got her wish.

Can't help it if she's crying about it now."

Another reason to kill the fool. Young vampires who gloried in abusing humans just because they could would cause even more trouble when they grew older and sought more challenging sport. It was a blatant lie that he'd had no recourse except torture to find out who Kira belonged to. They hadn't even attempted another way.