Hot Vampire Seduction (Vampire Wardens 2)

Oh God, a werewolf. Suddenly she was standing over Aiden where he knelt on the ground, holding Troy, feeding his brother his own blood. The pain, the anger, the fury, of the day he’d lost his parents and sister, blasting into Aiden, and bleeding into her. Bleeding like Troy’s throat.

Kelly blinked the room into focus, gasping. She sat up, realizing that she was somehow on the ripped couch, with Aiden beside her. She stared at him, searched his face, thinking of the pain in him when he’d held his sister’s body, the fear when he’d known Evan would be killed.

“I…I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what I just saw. I mean…I do, but Aiden-”

“I’m sorry,” he said softly. His hand was on her legs, where they were draped across his lap, and though he touched her, she could feel him withdrawing from her as he spoke. “Feeding memories to someone isn’t an exact science. I didn’t mean for you to see Troy’s attack. It’s clearly front and center in my mind right now after what happened to him tonight.”

“Memories,” she repeated. “You fed me your memories?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“What…are you?”

“A Warden,” he said without emotion, without hesitation, but she could feel the waves of tension rolling off of him. “The law of our kind.”

“Your kind,” she said, because she couldn’t bring herself to voice the word ‘vampire’.

“Yes,” he said. “My kind. Vampire, Kelly.” There it was. He’d said the impossible, said what her mind rejected despite what she’d seen – no – what she’d felt, what she’d relived with Aiden.

He lifted her legs and tried to scoot away from her and get up.

“No,” she said, grabbing his bare arm. He was still gloriously shirtless, his jeans unbuttoned, and all the confusion and fear over this night didn’t change how masculine and perfect she found him. That had to mean something, had to be a part of her that still saw him, as Aiden, her lover, her protector.

“Kelly-”

“Don’t tell me to let you go.” She dropped her legs to the floor, so she could follow him if necessary. “I just need to understand all of this, Aiden. How can you be what you say you are? How is that possible?” He turned to her more fully, his eyes, too black and unnatural, she realized now, found hers. “The laws of my race dictate that no human be left with a memory of our existence. I’ll tell you what you want to know, because it’s the best way to protect you. But when this is over, I will erase your memories, Kelly.

To do otherwise, is punishable by death - yours and mine.” She drew a sharp breath, but she wasn’t sure she could even process the implications of what he was saying. Not until she understood more of what was happening, of what he was.

“Okay,” she said. “So you’ll erase my memories, just like you gave me yours. Agreed. So now you’ll answer my questions?”

He hesitated and then gave a short nod.

“You eat real food. And today you were with me during the daytime, when there was sunlight.”

“I’m a vampire,” he said flatly. “Not a myth or a movie. I don’t burst into flames in sunlight and blood is a necessity on a limited basis. It becomes a drug, a high, that is not so unlike human drugs. It turns the abusers into the monsters I hunt down and kill.”

“And exactly how does one become a vampire?” she asked, because thinking of the science, the questions, seeking answers, was all that was keeping her sane right now.

He studied her a long moment, then, “I’d spare you the details but considering your career choice, I’m going to assume you can handle it. A human must be drained dry of their own blood and then fed that of a vampire. Other than that – where did we come from? I don’t know. No one knows our true origins.” She inhaled and let it out, still seeking answers, and mentally seeking the cold dark place in her mind that allowed her to separate herself from the horrors of her work. “And the animal – the wolf – that attacked Troy? Where does it, or they, come from?”

“A werewolf can be born, as most are, a race of their own, not so unlike humans. Or a wolf can be created by a virus that infects a human. The virus creates a monster, a creature that lives to kill. That is what Andres is. A wolf that was once human.”

Her chest went icy. “So you think this Andres killed those women?”

“There is no tidy death when a wolf attacks you, so no. I don’t think he killed them, but Troy has informants that say Andres is the creator of the drug that’s indirectly responsible for the deaths. We believe it’s a combination of his blood and that of a vampire. And Andres, like the wolf that attacked Troy, is a new breed of wolf, not fully understood. We don’t know exactly what he is and we have no blood samples available. Troy’s informant tells us that the result of the two blood types is an extreme aphrodisiac, and by extreme, I mean without pleasure there is pain. Horrible, intolerable pain. The vamps dose the human, and then Gangbang her.”

She could feel the blood drain from her face. “And they drain her dry and kill her during sex?”

“I’m not going to tell you that sex and blood are not one and the same for a vampire. It’s erotic and the vampires would drink from the female. And no, I didn’t drink from you, and not because I didn’t want to.

That’s my point. Vampires have willpower unless we have bloodlust. A vampire with bloodlust would not tidy up after themselves and the victims were not visibly injured. Troy’s source tells him some of the women stroke out from the drug and the vamps go ahead and drain them.”

“I didn’t see any signs of stroke,” she said, still reeling from his reference to not drinking from her, to the flashes of them naked and making love, to his mouth on her neck. To moments when his teeth had graved the delicate skin. She shook off the memories, tried to focus on what was most important. The dead women. The possibility of more dead women. “But I’ll look again. I’ll look more specifically.”

“It could simply be what you suggested,” he said. “A group of vampires misjudged how much blood they took from one human and overindulged. Either way, the drug is dangerous and the source, Andres, has to be destroyed.”

“Right,” she said, her throat closing, the calm place in her mind exploding with the horror of vampires draining innocent women dry.