Loving the Man Read online

  “Not for much longer. Amazing contraption,” he added, indicating the car. “Where did you come across it?”

  “South,” David said vaguely, moving his hand to the gear lever while the other security men peered in the windows. “It’s a lot quicker than walking. Is it all right to go through now?”

  “Wait a minute! The Council may well be interested in what you have to tell, and in your vehicle… where can they reach you?”

  David blinked. “What Council?”

  “The City Council!”

  “We have a City Council now? Clearly I’ve been gone too long. Don’t worry about it -- I’ll find your Council.”

  Reluctantly, they let him go through, and that was when he began to notice that things weren’t right. For a start, although people stopped to gawk at his car driving through the gloom, no one attacked it. No one so much as thumped it on the way past. Even more astonishingly, people walked openly on the street, among them several men with red scarves on, walking in twos, who seemed to be regarded with a mixture of furtive awe and respect by their fellow citizens.

  And then he saw a food distribution centre. Open. Serving bottles of water and food parcels. Just like the suburbs. Several more of the red scarf people stood there, as if guarding it. Which was presumably why it still existed.

  “Will?” David murmured. “Where are you, Will?”

  Davie! Are you here already? It was Will’s voice, speaking excitedly in his head. He smiled, because his little brother was the person he loved most in the world.

  “Not sure. Doesn’t look like our city. I’m beside a food centre… and no one’s robbing it. Where are you?”

  At the old school…

  With the lupi then. “Can I stay there?” David asked doubtfully.

  Nowhere else will have you, Will said happily.

  * * *

  “Bloody hell,” said Will, laughter in his voice as he grasped his brother’s hand and stared at the vehicle he’d just emerged from. “What is it?”

  “It’s a car,” grinned David. “In the old days, everybody had one.” For a moment, he scanned his brother’s face, savoring the pleasure he found in the reunion. David was a wanderer. He always thought he hated this city, and yet he always came home, because Will was here.

  And Will was -- happy.

  He’d sensed that, of course, during the brief telepathic links that Will could form with him. Most of it had to do with a girl. But there was more, David saw now. His idealistic little brother bristled with energy, radiated competence as well as confidence. Clearly there was a lot to talk about. Later.

  “Is it safe here?” David asked, jerking his head from the loaded car to the old school that the lupi had adopted as their den some time ago.

  “Yes, of course… we’ll help you unload it.”

  “You’ll need to be careful with some of it,” David warned as a couple of men obligingly emerged from the shadows.

  “This is Max,” Will said, indicating a third man who materialized at his shoulder, a tall, dark man in a long leather coat.

  David lifted his brows. “Max the scientist?”

  “My reputation travels before me,” said the dark man dryly. “I haven’t been a scientist for thirty years and more.”

  David blinked at him. A flare of torch light flickered across night-black hair and a fine-boned face. If the man was thirty now, he was surely no older…

  “Max is a vampire,” Will said calmly.

  David’s heart lurched. He closed his mouth. “That’s funny. I met a friend of yours earlier today.”

  Max’s lips twisted. “Vampires don’t have friends.”

  “Stop being a cynical old bastard and help get this stuff out,” Will commanded. “After all, you’re the guy who knows if he’s brought the right things.”

  * * *

  Later, when the contents of the car were safely stowed in one of the classrooms, the brothers left Max sifting through it and found a quiet place on the roof to talk.

  “So what’s this City Council then?” David asked as they looked over the blackening skyline.

  A ghost of a laugh came from Will. “I am. At least in part. There are humans and lupi on it so far…”

  “And vampires?”

  “Not yet. Don’t push it. Max is a one-off. I’ll tell you about him another time. The point is, we’re cleaning up the city. Bringing back the rule of law together with a fair system of food distribution. We have two water filters working in the inner city now too, and we’re setting up trade with safe food growers. If you’ve got connections there, I’d like to hear about them.”

  David nodded. “There are a few covered farms and orchards, especially in the south. They grow more than they need… in fact, I’ve brought some. I think it went straight into your kitchen.”

  Will grinned. “Thanks.”

  “And what about all this stuff you asked me for? This Max character can really disperse the cloud with it?”

  “He thinks so. Something to do with ionized gas… But it won’t be an overnight job. I think he’s more impressed than he expected to be by the amount of stuff you managed to find!”

  “Yes, well, I aim to impress.”

  The city had looked like this since David could remember. The war had permanently blackened the sky, blocked out the sun so that nothing grew, even all this time after the war had ended. The people of the city lived by scavenging. Sick and hopeless, they drank toxic water and ate food that would have killed their parents outright. Wasn’t evolution marvelous?

  “Davie, what’s wrong?”

  David smiled faintly. “Wrong? Nothing.”

  “Liar. Something’s been bothering you since you arrived. I can feel it.”

  “Stay out of my mind, Will,” David warned. It was an old pact born of David’s obsessive need for privacy.

  “That’s why I’m asking. I’m not sifting, but I know you’re -- unsettled, shaken up.”

  David gave a twisted smile. “I met another vampire today. I thought she was going to tear my throat out and she didn’t.”

  Will frowned. “Did she feed from you?”

  “Not a drop. Something spooked her and she ran off.” The huge surge of unreasoning disappointment hit him again like a tidal wave. He could still feel her body pressed against him, sweet and sensual and dangerous. Her very scent lingered in his nostrils. Elusive, subtle, arousing, it felt now like a drug to which he had become instantly addicted.

  Will said, “Lara’s police, probably.”

  “No, this was outside the city… there’s a load of storehouses between here and the next city, great places for books. What bothers me -- one of the things that bothers me -- is what was a vampire doing out there? No one goes there apart from the odd crackpot like me. Vampires need other creatures for sustenance.”

  Why had he been so sure in the beginning that she wouldn’t kill him? His only previous encounter with a vampire had encouraged the opposite belief. And then what had caused her to change? He could swear she had seriously considered draining him dry, before she had bolted. He wanted answers to these questions almost as much as he wanted the woman herself. The vampiress…

  Christ, this is insane.

  He swung away from the city view. “Talking of which, when do we eat? And when do I meet your Lara?”

  “Round about now,” said Will, nodding downward to the waste ground that surrounded the school. Following his gaze, David saw a girl striding across to the door, exchanging some laughing remark with one of the lupi. Her hair was tied severely behind her head. She wore dark jeans and jacket and a red scarf around her neck like a badge.

  * * *

  Dinner was a communal event. The whole pack -- or at least such of them as were not busy on other tasks -- ate together. David recognized many of them, received a few nods and even smiles of recognition, which was a first. Will had finally done something with his troubled pack of werewolves. He had given them the confidence, the pride not to resent anyone different
from themselves, anyone “normal.” Like David. And like Lara, Will’s wife.

  Lara was a surprise. Not that she wasn’t beautiful and strong, as Will’s mate would inevitably be. She was both these things, and her beauty, of which she seemed totally unconscious, wasn’t just skin deep either. No, what surprised David was the bond, invisible but unmistakable, that already existed between them. Will hadn’t known the girl a month. The pack called her his mate, but to David, she was simply and inescapably, his wife.

  Right down to the sharpness of her tongue. Though she was welcoming in a pleasantly understated, almost shy way, David sensed a curious nervous tension in her, and his brother’s watchful reaction. Something wasn’t right with her.

  Even as the thought entered his head, a late arrival at the communal table took him by even more surprise. Entering the old dining hall like a whirlwind, she threw herself round the table to embrace him.

  “April!” he exclaimed, and she laughed, releasing him to throw back her shining blond hair. In fact, everything about her shone. She had always been lovely in her own wild, defiant, and occasionally sleazy way. But now she positively glowed.

  “When did you get back?” she demanded. “How are you? You look wonderful!”

  “So do you.”

  She gave him a playful thump on the arm. “Where’s Max?” she asked Will.

  “Gloating over the load of old junk that David brought with him.”

  But David didn’t listen to the rest of the conversation. Mention of Max had brought the vampiress back to the forefront of his mind. Not that he had truly forgotten her for an instant.

  * * *

  Returning to the happy hunting grounds of the inner city, Katia was conscious of raging dissatisfaction. Still hungry, she felt no real desire to feed. There was no pleasure in the hunt. There never had been, she supposed. It had always been a means to an end, and who could blame her for trying to make it a little more interesting by playing with her victims for a little…

  Like she had played with the car man. Or tried to. Somehow, it hadn’t worked. He’d been too unafraid of her, too still despite the raging erection in his pants. There should have been a little fun tormenting him about that, and yet somewhere the fun had disappeared. When she had considered sex with him. And the blood had become secondary.

  Damn him. He was just a man.

  And she was old, much too old.

  “Vampire!”

  The accusation wrenched her out of her reverie. She had been walking openly in the streets, ignoring passersby. Occasionally people gave her a second glance, even stared at her. This had always been true. And old habits being hard to break, even in this new era of growing law and order, some people instinctively gave her a wide berth. But to be accosted in the street by a mad old man pointing into her face and screaming out “vampire” along with his spittle, was a new one.

  The few people nearby -- there was a new food centre just ahead -- all stopped and stared. One woman pressed herself into the crumbling wall beside her as if she could thus escape.

  Katia smiled. “So what are you going to do about it, old man?” she asked softly.

  “Vampire!” he shouted again. “Police, she’s a vampire!”

  Bored, Katia reached out and pushed him out of her way. The force carried him several feet across the road to the feet of the cowering woman, where he sat, still pointing and screaming, “Vampire! You stole my baby, my grandson!”

  “Old fool,” Katia murmured and walked on. However, one of those new red-scarved lupi stood in her way.

  “A moment please,” he said amiably. “The gentleman says you stole his grandson.”

  Katia stared at him. “What would I do with a child?”

  “Eat him! Drink his blood! Vile, disgusting, murdering creature!” screamed the old man, hurling himself to his feet again and bolting toward her. “Where is he?”

  Just for an instant, Katia sensed a genuine grief emanating from him. Though it wouldn’t have stopped her throwing him to the ground again, she didn’t need to. The policeman caught the old man and held him immobile.

  “Slow down there! Are you formally accusing this woman of murdering your grandson? Did you see her take him?”

  “Not her! A male vampire took him! Murdered my son and daughter-in law and took the child! A vampire and a wolf!”

  The policeman’s eyes flickered at that. Katia laughed. The lupi didn’t like to be called wolves.

  “I didn’t take your baby,” she said contemptuously. “I don’t eat children. There isn’t enough blood in them.” And this time she walked on without looking back.

  The lupi let her. They both knew she was stronger, but in this case, she was fairly sure he saw no reason to act against her. The old man was clearly mad, and in any case was now blaming a male vampire for his loss, imagined or otherwise.

  Behind her, she heard the old man screaming, “You’re in league with them! You’re all in league against us! Bloody mutants steal our children and cover for each other!”

  Katia’s lip curled in cynical amusement. The lupi in league with vampires? In truth, any sort of co-operation involving vampires was impossible. They didn’t even work with each other.

  Although there was Max, she remembered thoughtfully. A couple of weeks ago, she had seen him leaving the club with a pretty lupi girl. And now there were rumors that he was involved with the Council, was thick with Will, the leader of the lupi. All the people, in fact, who were making vampires’ lives so difficult. A month ago, even that mad old man wouldn’t have dared accost her in the street.

  Chapter Three

  Katia sank her teeth into the woman’s neck and drank. The blood tasted good after her long abstinence, so good that she had to force herself not to take too much and make herself ill. The woman moaned in her arms, pressing her hard-peaked breasts into Katia’s, clutching her in the mingled agony and ecstasy to which she was addicted.

  While Katia fed, the music of the club pounded in her ears. She hated this place. It was too full of reeking, rank humanity and their unsavory desires. But it was an easy meal, increasingly important now that murdering or even assaulting people was being punished. Humanity, helped by the wretched lupi, was finding its feet, fighting back, combining to drive away vampires who killed in their neighborhood.

  Slowly, Katia released her suction on the woman’s neck. She mewled with disappointment. “Please,” she muttered incoherently. “Please…” She was offering more.

  “Thank you,” said Katia contemptuously. “I’m full.” She licked once at the wound to heal it -- no point in being careless with the food supply -- and pushed the woman away.

  To escape the heaving throngs on the dance floor, Katia climbed the ladder to the catwalk. Someone groped her almost as soon as she got there, his greedy fingers grasping at her breast from behind.

  Katia stopped. “Get your filthy hand off me,” she said softly. “Before I throw you through the fence.”

  He shouldn’t have been able to hear her through the fog of noise, but his hand disappeared with alacrity. Katia walked on without looking back.

  It was mainly men who prowled the catwalk, looking for sexual prey. From the dance floor you could only ever see a few inches in front of you. From up here, you got a bird’s eye view of the whole, horrible room, from the distastefully heaving, writhing mob who imagined they were dancing, to the band making the infernal racket that turned them on. And you could see new arrivals as they made it past the brutal bouncers at the door.

  It was here that Katia’s attention was caught. She recognized the lupi girl who’d been here with Max. Max wasn’t here now, though. She was with another man. A tall, blond human just emerging from the bouncers’ search.

  It was her car man. The one she’d let escape. Instinct made her back away from the fencing that surrounded the catwalk. For some reason her heart rate increased. A sharp pain twisted through her stomach and gnawed there, paralyzing her.

  The man took the girl’s arm,
saying something to her. The girl only laughed, grabbed his hand and pulled him among the dancers. But they didn’t dance. They pushed their way through, the man looking around him, examining faces, peering through gaps in the crowd. It dawned on Katia that he was looking for someone.

  For her?

  Her breath caught.

  Why should she even imagine such a thing? Why would a man look for a vampire from whom he had already escaped once?

  He would be looking for friends, perhaps people he had arranged to meet here, some welcoming party after his trip. Her stomach tightened. She could go down there, jump down there and land in between him and the lupi girl. She could hold him in her arms again, there on the dance floor, sink her teeth into that strong, earth-scented skin and take his blood from him. Would he still want her? Would he harden with desire, or fall apart in fear? And if the former, what then? In this place, what would prevent her climbing onto his big, stiff cock and…

  She gasped. It was time to leave. Past time to leave.

  Abruptly, she pushed her way back along the catwalk, jumped down the ladder in one easy movement, uncaring for the stares of awe and fear that followed her, and left the club before the man even knew she had been there.

  * * *

  Katia turned her head on the pillow, and opened her eyes to find the man looming over her.

  Instinctively she drew back her arm to punch, but it wouldn’t move. Something rattled, something tightened around her trapped wrists. She was chained to her own bed, her arms stretched as far as they would go above her head. Her legs were spread-eagled, forming her body into a star shape, and she was totally naked for the man’s avid gaze.

  The bed sank under his weight as he sat down at her side. He wore only the shirt she had glimpsed earlier that day, and the frayed jeans. His blond hair fell fetchingly across his forehead. He was beautiful and sexy. And he’d made a terrible mistake.

  “What do you want?” she hissed.

  “You,” said the man. “I want you.”

  “You think these chains can hold me?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  She tried an experimental yank on the chains, then a harder one with all her strength. They held. She snarled, “Do you have to tie a woman down before you can fuck her?”