Read Marked Clan #2 - Red Online
Authors: Maurice Lawless
Marked Clan #2 - Red
Table of Contents
Red
The Marked Clan Series: Book Two
Maurice Lawless
Copyright © 2013
To Wallace,
How's that weather?
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank the Office of Letters and Light for starting National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo). Without that yearly kick in the pants, works like this might never get finished. Thanks also go to Sara Reine of Red Iris Books, for her infectious enthusiasm and marketing skills. Her work has helped turn a little thought experiment I banged out during a dreary October into my best-selling book to date. She may have a formidable medieval arsenal in her house, but she’s really a loveable psychopath. I promise.
Chapter One
He came straight to me from across the room. They always did—it was my scent. They smelled the woods on me—the leaves, the soil, the blood. I never had to look hard for a hunt when I was menstruating. This one was young, maybe no more than twenty. I almost felt sorry for him.
“Buy you a drink, Red?” he asked.
Cute.
Do you have any fucking idea how many times I’ve heard that nickname?
My hair fell midway down my back in auburn curls. I pushed back a lock of it and gave him my best bashful grin. “If you’re trying to get in my pants, you’re going to have to come up with a better line than that, stud.”
He froze like I’d slapped him. In a way, I guess I had. People tell me I have the subtlety of a sledgehammer. I’ve always been like that, even before things like him took my best friend. Learning to kill them didn’t exactly soften me up much.
“Umm,” he stumbled. “Yeah, how about we start again? My name is Tyler.”
“Of course it is. Buy me a scotch, neat. We’ll chat.”
He sat down next to me. The lights from the dance floor lit him up in a hundred unnatural hues. He wore a loose fitting button-up shirt and slacks. I couldn’t see the intricate runes tattooed on his back, but I knew they were there. On a night like tonight they must have been on fire. The moon did strange things to them.
My drink came, and I sipped on it slowly. I’d nearly lost a chunk of my throat once going after one of them drunk. I’m a fast learner. Trying to get
him
drunk was a lost cause. They metabolize drugs quicker than I could spell their names. My best tactic was to get him alone, let him think he could have his way with me, and hope he gets hit with the bloodlust before he has time to snap my neck. So far I’d been lucky—their urge to fuck outweighs their urge to feed.
“What’s your name?” he asked. This one wasn’t very good at the seduction routine. Guess he spent too much time on all fours.
“Jane,” I lied. Just because he was about to die didn’t mean I wanted to let him know my real name. I never knew if my reputation would spread among them. So far it hadn’t.
“Do you like to dance, Jane?”
The game was on. I debated leaving my drink, but downed the rest in one gulp instead. “Sure,” I said, “Think you can keep up?”
His smile was predatory. Any normal girl would have made up an excuse to leave, maybe an invisible boyfriend they had to meet. I was doing the ladies of the world a favor dispatching this creep. We walked out to the center of the club among the dozens of sweat-slick bodies, and I let the music flow into me. I’m a sexy dancer and I know it. I used to go to clubs like this, pick out the youngest guy I could find, and then tease him until he came in his pants. I could slip and rub and grind a man to his knees on the dance floor. For all of his conversational awkwardness, Tyler held his own with me.
We moved together like we had practiced for months. His body molded against mine, picking up on each movement almost before I made it, slipping himself around me, and tracing his hands down my hips and lower back. I saw where his strengths were now. He was slick, and it got me the same. Shame he had to die—I had a feeling he fucked like a champ. Lord knows I hadn’t had a good one in a while.
The song ended, and I took a dive like I was drunk. The flush from our dance helped the ruse along. I let him catch me and help me back to the bar. I even giggled a little when he copped a feel of my ass. Jerk.
“Guess I had one too many,” I said. He laughed.
“I hear food is good for that. Want to get something? My treat.”
I shook my head. Can’t appear too eager, or they get suspicious. I was not about to let this pup lose interest and feast on another girl tonight. Thankfully, he bought it.
“Aw, come on,” he said, “It’s a full moon tonight. We can walk to that deli a few blocks down. It never closes.”
I’ve seen the commercials too, dickwad.
I hiccupped, and he laughed at the look of genuine shock on my face. Maybe I really
had
drank one too many. No slap and tickle for this one tonight.
Time for Plan B
. I gave him my best innocent smile.
“Okay, but nothing funny. Let me just get my stuff at the door.”
We made our way through the crowd, and the son of a bitch copped another feel before we made it to the coat check. I showed the guy behind the counter my wristband and he handed me my purse. If he thought it felt a little heavy, he didn’t say anything. Discretion was the rule in clubs like this. It’s why their kind chose them and why I hunted them here.
The night air dropped on us like a blanket as soon as we stepped outside. It was humid and warm, easily ninety degrees even though the moon was out. I felt sweat beading up between my shoulder blades. Tyler wasted no time getting cozy. He draped his arm over my shoulders, pulling me close. He stood about a foot taller than me, and even as a normal human he could have broken me in half over his leg. I clutched my purse and felt for the familiar metal bulge. At five-foot-nothing a girl needs every advantage she can get. We walked a block in the wrong direction, toward a row of old houses that had recently been renovated into trendy flats. I knew where he was going.
I stumbled “accidentally” into a dark alley between two of the houses and Tyler was on me. His hands grabbed my ass and he ground himself into the front of my jeans. The hunt made him hard, and there was a lot to him. Holy fuck, why didn’t I get some before I went out tonight? Oh yeah—mankind’s abject unwillingness to dip their wick in a blood pool.
His mouth closed on my throat just under my earlobe, and I couldn’t help but shiver. He didn’t bite. Damn. That would have ended the tease quickly. He nibbled and licked and kneaded my ass with his hands. When he finally made it to my mouth, his tongue slipped inside like he was probing for oil. He had my pants undone not long after. I tried to fumble my purse open, but he pinned my hands above my head. The metal inside clinked as it hit the ground.
Fuck!
“Easy there, lover boy,” I said. “Be gentle. No need to rush. We’ve got all night.”
He was beyond the point of being gentle. Apparently, he’d expected me to scream, to fight, anything other than encourage him. He gave up all pretense then, shucking his pants and turning me around to face the wall. If he’d been a normal guy, it would have been hot. Okay, I admit it still was, freak or not. Of course, my life was in danger so maybe the endorphins were just muddling up my brain. I had to get to my purse before he changed. I bent over to reach for it, and he took that as a further invitation. He tried to pull my pants down, but they got stuck.
Thank god for my hips.
What the hell did he not understand about being gentle? Selfish fucker. The moon and his cock made him greedy. I shot my hand back, found the first thing that stuck out and squeezed. That disarmed him quickly. By the time I locked my foot around his ankle and shoved back, he was helpless to keep himself from falling. I reached into my purse and pulled out the cold metal cylinder.
“What the fuck?” Tyler said. He had stumbled over his pants and fallen bare-assed onto the ground. I zipped up my jeans and turned around. He lay there, cock bruised and writhing in pain. I couldn’t imagine what he must be feeling, but it wasn’t anything compared to what he’d feel next.
“What the fuck is right, shit-for-brains,” I said. He looked at me with inhuman yellow eyes that glowed in the moonlight. I knelt down and slammed the metal cylinder into his chest. It hissed its payload into his heart, and I stepped back.
“You’ve been a bad dog, Tyler—it’s time to put you down.”
His hands dug into the ground as he started to change. His skin went dark, and long claws split the tips of his fingers. His face grew longer, and his ears moved to the top of his head. Fur sprouted from his muzzle and down the length of his body. I watched with detached fascination. He couldn’t hurt me now, not with the injection I’d just given him. My blood kills them, you see. It was a damn lucky thing he hadn’t tried to fuck me on my period. It would have felt like dipping his wick in battery acid. It would have served him right, too.
He let out one final piercing howl and lay still. The wolf features receded, leaving regular old dick-for-brains Tyler. It took all my strength to roll his corpse over and rip open the back of his shirt. From the top of his shoulder blades to the small of his back, he was covered in the precise lines of Celtic knots interwoven with runes. The runes themselves were different for each one, depending on their maker, but the end result was the same.
I watched as the tattoo faded, then disappeared entirely. The only sound left in the night was my own heavy breathing. I didn’t have their boundless energy. Before I left, I knelt down and pulled out the small caliber pistol I’d strapped inside my pant leg. I flipped over Tyler’s body and put two bullets into his brain. It wasn’t really necessary, but it made me feel better. It connected me to Poppa in a way. My grandfather had done it old school, with just bullets. My way was messier, but it got the job done. There was something more…intimate…about shooting the bastards up with a piece of me that burned them to death from the inside out.
After Poppa passed on, and my uncle refused the mantle, I was left with the task of cleaning up after my ancestors’ mistakes. Lucky me.
I stepped on Tyler’s exposed cock one last time for good measure, and walked out of the alley for my car. Long live the Mackenzie curse.
Chapter Two
I woke the next morning in a cold sweat, with sheets tangled around my ankles. Sadly, this was normal for me. I slept a little better when I’d killed a wolf, but there were always more. I spent most of my waking hours now searching for them. The one I wanted most was gone, five years ago to the day. It was the day I lost Dreama. She’d gone to them after they corrupted her. If I ever found the one who did it, I’d make what I did to Tyler seem merciful.
I felt for the familiar lump under my pillow and panicked for a second when I couldn’t find it. I bolted up and took a deep breath when I saw it. I’d shifted in the night, and it lay exposed and gleaming on the other side of the bed—Poppa’s silver revolver. I held it to my chest, and the cool metal against my skin calmed me.
I’m still here, Poppa. Your Bonny Lass is doing her best.
It was Saturday, the first day after the full moon. That meant research, and to do that I’d need coffee. I got up, pushed my hair out of my face, and padded to the kitchen in my nightshirt. I didn’t have far to go—the whole second-floor flat consisted of the kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom. I tried to open the place up with some light colors, but there’s only so much you can do with four hundred square feet. It wasn’t much, but it was mine.
I put some coffee on to brew and leaned against the counter. The flat was directly above my family’s tattoo shop,
Celtic Knot
. It had once belonged to my grandfather, and no one else claimed it after his death. There really was just my uncle Connor and me now. The rest of the Mackenzie clan had spread off to the four winds or died (some with more fanfare than others).