Sundown & Serena (26 page)

Of course, the inevitable happened. No sooner
had I become animal than I wanted sex. I spent a good part of my
first night in each form whining pitifully, rolling on my back, and
scooting along on all fours with my tail raised in hopeless
anticipation. Nick and Vince stroked my fur, and told me again and
again they were sorry, but they couldn’t do what I needed.

Vince came to me the night after I turned
coyote, and told me he would put up the money to get a potion for
himself to become coyote, as I hadn’t earned enough yet from
working with Devlin to pay what the potion would cost. After I
became fox, Nick came to me and said the same thing the next day,
in terms of that form. Devlin himself visited me the night after,
and told me he was pleased with my “adventuresome spirit” and he
would put up some of the money himself, as I’d been a “good sport”
about Kev “joining us.”

I got a little chill, thinking I’d been wise
to accept Kev’s extra money, and to do what he requested of me.
Holding in my nervousness, I thanked Devlin and accepted his help,
glad I’d maneuvered the tricky situation successfully.

Chapter
Seven

I was reading in bed on the afternoon of
Halloween. Vince and Nick were in the closest small tourist town,
getting me some candy along with supplies for the estate: bullets,
some meat, some new clothes for themselves, some bottled water, and
some kind of discs for Devlin’s laptop. There was a knock at the
door.

I got up with surprise, and went to answer
it. I had no one scheduled for that day until nine, when Vince got
back.

Maybe it’s Jazz.
He’d come to me apologetically a few times now for sex. His mate,
Valerie, sometimes said nasty things to me, and he apologized for
that, too. According to him, though Valerie liked sex, she would
permit it only one way. And like most men, he liked it another way
sometimes, a way she wasn’t willing to do for him. I’d asked Devlin
about it the first time Jazz had approached me, not wanting to
cause trouble. He replied that Jazz had come to him asking and
requested that I comply. “Val will deal with it,” he said, rolling
his eyes. “If she’d just blow him once in a while, he’d never look
at another woman. But it’s her choice to say no. Just as it’s his
choice to look elsewhere for satisfaction.”

I’d flushed and nodded. And the few times
Jazz had come to me since then, I’d taken care of him.

To my surprise, Lars was the guard standing
at my door, not Jazz. He looked anxious, almost rattled. “Serena,
could you do me?” he said, sounding almost desperate. “I need it
bad.”

I hadn’t seen him since he’d left for Rio
weeks ago. I’d thought he’d decided I wasn’t worth Dev’s price, or
something. But Devlin hadn’t said he’d stopped paying. Maybe he’d
been delayed in Rio? I opened my mouth to say “yes,” and then got a
good look in his eyes. They were glassy and bloodshot.
He’s on something.
“No, I’m sorry,” I said, closing
the door. “Come back tomorrow. I have someone coming at six.”

“They can fucking wait!” he roared, growing
fangs. “I told you I need it, bitch! Now get undressed!”

“No!” I grabbed the door, and tried to slam
it. He grabbed it too, and pushed back.

“Stop!” I screamed. “Help!”

I pushed back hard as he tried to push his
way into the room, wishing Vince or Nick were here. Lars was
stronger than I was, and with a crack, he pushed the door fully
open, knocking me to the floor, and burying the doorknob in the
bedroom wall.

“You whore! You’re going to do what I say,
and I’ll call you anything I want to!” he said, starting towards
me. “When I get through with you...”

A sharp crack sounded. Lars roared, and
turned, a fresh stripe down his back bleeding through the hole in
his shirt, just in time to get a bullet through the heart. He fell
to his knees, and then Lash put another bullet between his eyes.
Lars’ body fell to the floor, twitching.

Lash came to me, and helped me to my feet. I
was still so scared I hugged him. “Are you all right?” he hissed
gently.

“Yes,” I said, stepping away from him, and
trying to compose myself. “He just went crazy.”

Lash flicked out his tongue, and a good foot
of it came out of his mouth, vibrating. I shivered slightly, as he
repeatedly scented the air. “Meth,” he pronounced disdainfully.
“And probably coke, too.” He paused, flicking his tongue out again.
“And fresh VD, probably bear type, but I can’t tell for sure.” He
looked over at me. “Good he didn’t get to you, or you’d have caught
it.”

Another shiver went through me, this one more
a convulsion. Then I let out a scream. Lars was stirring, already
healing. Both bullets had fallen out of him, and his eyelids
fluttered, then flicked open.

Lash rolled his eyes, gave a long-suffering
sigh, and deftly reached down with both hands, using the doorjamb
for a brace. With a dull crack, he broke Lars’s neck. Lars stopped
moving, though he kept breathing.

“Stay in your room,” Lash hissed, picking up
Lars’s body in his arms with effort. “You may hear screaming, but
ignore it. It won’t last long.”

I knew he expected me to be relieved, and I
was. He’d saved me. Yet I was horrified, too, because I knew he’d
kill Lars in some horrible torturous way as soon as possible.
Covering my revulsion, I nodded, and closed my door with a
click.

Vince was subdued when he came to me that
night. But so was I, considering what had happened. “I’m sorry that
happened to you,” he said finally, as we lay sated together
sometime around eleven. “I’d have kicked his ass, if I’d been
here.”

“Was he whipped to death?” I asked, afraid of
the answer but compelled to know.

“No. Lash beheaded him, and stuck his head on
a post as a warning. The body we buried.”

I hugged him close to me, trying not to think
how awful this was. But Lars would have hurt me. It was right to
defend myself, and what had happened was deserved, just grisly.

“Shh,” Vince said affectionately. “That
potion will come in a few days, Baby. And we’ll take care of your
needs then, just like you took care of ours.”

I hugged him and didn’t explain my true
feelings. Vince often misunderstood me, as did Nick. I knew he was
trying to be kind the only way he knew how to be.

* * * *

My close call did drive home a point to me;
I’d been blessed with how well my life was going now. It was truly
past time that I gave thanks to the being who’d helped me so much.
That next morning, I had Nick take me into town, where we went to
my church. We were in time for afternoon mass. As always, there
were more than a few of the local seniors in the pews. Several
nodded to me and smiled, pleased to see me there with a male
friend. I prayed a good deal, and thanked God, giving a fair
tithing portion of what I’d earned so far in the collection plate.
Nick looked incredulous at my offering, yet he was also generous,
though not so much as me.

After, I went to the confessional, and made
my confession. The priest was appalled at my new choice of work,
but he forgave me, though he assigned a massive penance. I agreed
to it, but I also decided that I’d leave what I did for money now
out of any future confessions.

I wasn’t hurting anyone. Animals did what I
was doing in nature all the time, they were just paid with food and
shelter and protection, which was the same as I was receiving. I
was and had always been part animal. No human had the right to
judge me, to say that what I was doing was a sin, or evil, or not
according to God’s plan for me. I’d felt the desire for sex as soon
as I became animal; I had got that from God himself, it was
hardwired into me, and it wasn’t wrong. I was not going to sit in a
booth in the dark, and let some man who’d never experienced it
himself tell me that it was.

* * * *

In early November, both of the transformative
potions came. Vince and Nick took them, as they had agreed to.
Afterwards, I thought I’d never felt so good, so sated, as when I
lay with my respective lovers in my own animal form, my head
resting on his shoulder, his muzzle against mine.

In late November, Devlin called me to him,
and asked me for my blood. But this time we did not have sex, or
even kiss. His only touch was his light embrace as he fed from me,
and then the brief press of his lips as he healed me.

I wasn’t unhappy about giving him my blood.
His bite was pleasurable, and I appreciated everything he had done
for me. I didn’t even expect to get any extra money out of it. Yet
I found an extra two hundred dollars in my paycheck that week. I
went to him immediately, and asked him about it. “Is this for the
blood I gave you?”

“Yes, of course,” he answered.

“You don’t have to pay me for the little you
took,” I said.

“You are my employee,” Devlin said patiently,
his honey-colored eyes almost slitted. “I am not one who abuses
that relationship, Serena. Besides, I appreciate your blood, both
its taste, and that you give it to me willingly. You also recover
faster than a mortal, and I can take more from you. Esperanza also
‘donates’ her blood to me once a month, and I give her four or five
hundred, as that is her price.”

Five hundred?
Maybe I
should be offended.

“But I take enough to make her pass out,” he
finished coolly, that addendum making me feel much better. “I take
much less from you, the same amount I take from my guards when it’s
an absolute necessity. Not enough to make you weak, but enough to
keep me strong for a week or so. That is the same amount I give
them each time I’m forced to feed from them.”

I wanted to ask him if he paid the families
of the women he drained, but held back, reminding myself I had no
proof of that at all.

Devlin sighed. “I miss hunting, and drinking
from mortal women. It’s hard, trying not to be noticed. I have
spent my life being noticed, and my time since becoming vampire
making it the point of my existence. It’s hard trying to blend into
the shadows now, and not to my liking.”

This being in hiding was because of Perseus,
the vampire whose territory he was in. And because of his tryst
with that married woman.
You could have stayed in
the limelight and your own territory, if you’d have kept it in your
pants.
“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling it was the only safe
response.

“She did not respond to the card!” Devlin
said bitterly, his eyes angry and accusing. “And I have e-mailed
her poetry as well for a week now and she does not respond to those
either!”

What should I say?
“I’m sorry.”

“That is all you have to say?” he hissed,
baring his teeth. “You who gave me hope and made me believe that
she might care for me?”

It had been a long day, and I was annoyed.
He’s blaming me? When did I ask to be his love
life counselor?
“Do you love her?” I asked bluntly.

“Yes, of course!” he hissed back at me.
“But—”

“Then don’t give up,” I counseled calmly.
“You seduce all these women, and they all tell you that you are so
wonderful. Then one day, one woman doesn’t tell you she’d just love
to give up her life to be with you, and you get annoyed! Did you
ever stop to think that maybe she’s going through her own
problems?”

Devlin looked shocked. I thought him
abhorrent in how much he thought about himself, and not about this
woman he professed to love. He thought of her in terms of how she
related to him, not in any other way. That didn’t sound like love
to me, even if I’d never been in love myself.

“So what should I do?” His tone was
respectful now, hushed. “Tell me.”

“She liked what you did to her in that hotel
room, yes?”

“Yes, of course.”

Could his tone be any more
confident?
“So what did you do to her?”

“Everything she asked for and more besides.”
Now his tone was lustful, obviously remembering some sex scene with
her.

Whatever had occurred was probably more
involved than our night together, with so much emotion on Devlin’s
end.
I will never be that important to him.
That’s probably a good thing.
Nick had told me enough about
Devlin to get my hackles at attention, coupled with what I’d seen
of his mood swings. “Send her some of that poetry you seem to
always be reading.”

“I did that already,” he answered,
exasperated. “I wrote her some, even!”

“Write more! Send her flowers! Call her!”

“I can’t call her, save at Danial’s!” Devlin
said angrily. “The same with flowers! I do not want her husband
finding out about her and me! I shouldn’t even be trying to contact
her. I am supposed to be in hiding.”

I thought briefly that he was a jackass, but
held that thought inside. “Do what pleased her most when she was
with you then, as discreetly as you can manage.”

“Fine!” Devlin said, with a dismissive wave
of his hand. “Leave me.”

In early December, Devlin came to me, excited
that his love had responded to him. “She said I should stop writing
her poetry, that I was making it hard for her to let go of us! You
were right!”

In the weeks after that, the sullen look
returned to Devlin’s face, and he spoke no more to me about his
love. I also avoided the subject, heeding my animal side’s warning
to leave well enough alone.

Chapter
Eight

It was nearly Christmas. Eager to see if
there would be any type of holiday festivities, I asked about the
coming weeks in terms of any change to my normal schedules. But
none of my lovers mentioned any changes at all in their allotted
times with me. From the absence of any decorations and my needing
to ask for December 25
^th
off instead of being offered
the day, I deduced that Devlin and his men didn’t celebrate
Christmas.