Blood Awakening (13 page)

Before she could finish speaking, Dirk let out a crazed
war cry and lunged at Marquis with his knife in hand. Marquis welcomed the
battle—well, the annoyance—but he was equally sick to his stomach, Kristina’s
words still swimming around in his head.

Freezing the human in suspended animation, he
turned to face his
destiny
. “Words are funny things, Kristina. Once
spoken, they’re very hard to take back.”

Kristina blanched. “I...I just meant that—”

“I know exactly what you meant, you foolish child,”
he hissed and grabbed her by the arm, trying not to squeeze too hard in his
anger. “You are my
destiny
—
my mate
—yet you offer yourself to me
like a common street-walker…and for this human?”

Kristina shook her head. “No, I—”

“Be quiet!” Marquis was about to lose it.

Not only had he found—and lost—the only woman he
had ever really wanted in all of his life, but he was now stuck with a virtual
child, a female who had little education, even fewer manners, and no formal
upbringing whatsoever in how to behave like a lady. On top of that, she was
under the protection of the house of Jadon yet repeatedly insisted upon letting
some pitiful excuse for a human being—he checked to see that Dirk was still
suspended in midair—beat her like a punching bag.

His voice dropped to a low growl. “Know this,
Kristina: If Dirk had never laid a hand on you before tonight, he would still
be a dead man for trying to take what belongs to me. He would be a dead man
because of his arrogance. And he would be a dead man because you dared to
defend him—to offer your body—in exchange for his life.”

Kristina caught her breath and then quickly squared
her shoulders. She raised her chin in defiance, even as she trembled. “If you
kill him, Marquis, I will never let you touch me.” She swallowed, as if
gathering all of the courage she could. “You will have to rape me to have your
sons.”

Marquis took a step back then, not at all certain
if he was impressed by her courage or floored by her stupidity. He drew back
his lips in derision, the tips of his canines now showing. “Is that what you
think, Kristina? That I would have to rape you to get you pregnant?”

Kristina’s eyes dimmed, and her face turned gaunt.

Marquis laughed. “Woman...” He shook his head. “
You
truly are a silly human female…
”  He felt his eyes heat up and his fangs
begin to elongate. “If I wanted you to crawl across the ground like an animal, weep
at my feet, and beg me to take you, I could make it happen with the wave of my
hand.” A deep, feral growl emanated from his throat. “Woman, I could make you need
me so badly that the only time you were
not
in pain was when I was
inside of you.”

Kristina recoiled, stunned by his words.

“Oh, trust me, Kristina: I could make you beg for
it...sob for it. Luckily for you, I may be a lot of things, but I have never
been a rapist—nor have I ever taken a woman who offered her body to me in barter.”

His voice dropped an octave lower and all but dripped
with venom. “And as for what you will or will not do: You will do whatever I
tell you to do, Kristina Riley
Silivasi
. Now. Get. Inside.”

Kristina took off like she had seen a ghost. Her
eyes were as big as saucers, and her mouth hung open in stunned horror as she kicked
off her heels and ran toward the house.

Marquis was just about to release Dirk when he heard
the loud pop of a gunshot in the distance. As he whirled around in the
direction of the high-pitched drone, his eyes narrowed into two tiny slits that
could perceive heat, motion, and light in infrared. The world began to move in
slow motion as he listened for the trajectory of the bullet, his hand coming up
automatically to shield his face from impact.

He ducked with preternatural speed as the blazing
red metal soared right at his head, the missile searing straight through his
hand instead. He looked down at the hole in his palm and hissed like a snake,
his lips turning up in a smile: Dirk’s biker gang was approaching his house on
their Harleys, all leathered up and loaded with weapons. As they rode in like
the cavalry, some fool had caught Marquis off guard and shot him.

So, that’s what Dirk had been doing under the tree
for so long—calling his biker buddies for help before he got up. The stupid...cowardly...fool.

He had just led seven uninvolved men to their
deaths.

The moment Marquis released Dirk—so that the dim-witted
human could watch what he had wrought—the short, muscle-bound cretin flew at
him with his knife still over-head. He was almost like an ancient, Apache
warrior; well, except for the strength, skill, courage, or element of surprise.
Marquis chuckled, thinking that if anything, the idiot should have approached
him thrusting upward, coming in low from the ground.

No matter.

Marquis caught Dirk by his wrist and then snapped
his arm like a chicken bone, easily breaking the radius in half. He lifted him
by the collar of his dirty leather jacket and paused to read the lapel. “Scorpion,
huh?”

Dirk howled in pain.

Marquis extracted one of his razor-sharp claws and
slowly traced the matching tattoo of the insect on Dirk’s neck, being sure to
cut deep into his skin as he went along. “You did not feel as if the artistic
representation of the scorpion on your throat was enough of a statement?” He
shrugged. “You felt the additional need to have the name sewn into your jacket,
huh? Hmm. Interesting.”

Dirk kicked his legs wildly in an attempt to break
free, his eyes dilated and fixed on the three-inch talon shooting out of
Marquis’s hand. “What are you?”

Marquis smiled, and his fangs exploded from the
roof of his mouth. A deep, feral growl rose from his throat even as his eyes
began to heat like molten lava, undoubtedly glowing crimson red. “I’ll give you
three guesses...before I kill you.” He snarled for added effect.

“Ohhhhh...shiiiittttt!”

Dirk squealed like a pig.

He kicked his legs, twisted his body, and flailed
his arms frantically in a desperate attempt to break loose. Somehow, he managed
to slide right out of his jacket, although Marquis had no idea how—considering
Dirk’s ample size. And then he hit the ground running, sprinting toward his
buddies like a banshee out of hell, waving his one good arm in the air as he
went.

“Run! Run! Runnnn!”

A filthy-looking mortal with a blue bandanna
wrapped around his head and a goatee that flowed into a five-inch beard stepped
off his bike and stomped his steel-toed boot into the ground. “What’s that you
say, Scorpion?” he spat, looking annoyed at his friend’s sudden lack of manliness.

“
I said run
, Spider!”

Marquis smiled:
spider…scorpion…
a few more insects
and he’d have enough for a Discovery documentary.

Apparently Spider couldn’t hear Dirk over the
seven—well, now six—roaring engines behind the men. “I can’t hear you, buddy.”

Marquis waited until Dirk was about twenty-yards
away from the men. He launched himself in the air—allowing his six-foot wings
to unfurl for added effect—flew across the yard, and hovered just above Dirk’s
head. Through five-inch fangs, he snarled, “I believe he said
run
!”

He snatched Dirk up by the waist before he could
react—twirling him around until he folded in on himself in a fetal position—at which
point, he tossed him at the row of bikes like a bowling ball speeding down a
lane. The men dove from the bikes as they fell over and crashed into one
another, and then they stared up at Marquis—and froze—almost in unison.

All then all hell broke loose.

Grown men stuttered and yelped like baby seals. They
ran into each other, kicked at their bikes like they were stomping divots in a
wild frenzy, and reached for weapons they no longer believed would work. They
cursed and screamed, and a few even threw up. It was a hell of a thing to
watch, really.

Marquis let his wings recede.

Like the magical quality of his fangs—or his
claws—they simply retreated into the powerful, sculpted muscle of his back,
leaving no visible sign that they were ever there, unless and until he needed
them again.

He stalked slowly toward the men, breathing in the
acrid stench of fear and desperation, which only grew stronger as he approached.
A dagger came hurling through the air at his heart, but he simply stopped it in
mid-flight and reversed it. Unfortunately, his heart-level was the other man’s
eye-level: The clean pierce to the skull made the death instant and painless.

And then he heard the tell-tale sound of two
rifles being cocked and looked up just in time to see Spider simultaneously
level two sawed-off shotguns, one in each hand, right at Marquis’s torso.

Whoa…Spider was serious.

Not a bad decision, really. The body made a much
better target than the head. Marquis smiled and tilted his head to the side. “Now,
Spider: Why would you want to do that?”

The man actually snarled, “Go back to hell,
vampire!” He aimed both rifles and pulled the triggers.

Marquis threw up both hands at the same time, the
tips of his fingers pointing toward the guns as he unleashed two powerful bolts
of electricity in the oncoming path of the bullets. Both missiles exploded in
the air, and the sizzling arcs of fire burned the shotguns right out of
Spider’s hands. “What the—”

Marquis leapt the remaining distance, lifting
Spider off the ground by his throat.

“I don’t come from hell, Spider. In fact, my people
are actually from the heavens. Now, pick your poison, Wyatt Earp.” He unsheathed
his four remaining claws. “Would you prefer that I dislodge your heart? It is
horribly painful, but relatively quick.” He ran his tongue over the tips of his
fangs. “Or I could rip out your throat—extremely nasty business.” And then he shot
two narrow beams of light—two glowing red lasers—out of his eyes, pulling them
back just before they made contact with Spider’s skin. “Or I could simply burn
out your brain: clean and effective.”

Spider started to jerk like a man having a seizure,
and Marquis heard a curious, unsteady rhythm coming from his chest like the erratic
beat of a drum. It sped up, paused, and then quit altogether. The man was
having a heart attack.

Marquis shrugged. “Very well then, the heart it is.”

He dropped him to the ground, allowing nature to take
its course.

Just as Spider fell, a tall, lanky, bald guy with
a curved mustache, two-inches long on either side of his mouth, came at Marquis
with a pair of spinning nunchucks in his hands. He shouted as he swung a high,
powerful round-kick right over his head.

Ah, martial arts
.

Marquis sighed and weaved backward, avoiding the well-placed
kick and catching the man with a clenched fist right between the legs. And then
he twisted as the biker squealed like a soprano. Doc Holiday disguised as Bruce
Lee released the nunchucks, and Marquis caught them effortlessly with his free
hand. He spun the center chain around the biker’s neck, releasing his grip on
his groin, and catching—then pulling—each wooden handle in an opposite
direction with a quick, hard snap. The man’s head shot up in the air like a
rocket being launched into space before tumbling back to the ground, absent of
his body.

Marquis grunted and spun around to face the
remaining five men.

And then he stood in quiet curiosity.

They were huddled together like a small herd of
cattle, the smallest one—a kid with spiked blond hair—standing in the front. The
kid held up his arms in a gesture of surrender and then promptly...wet himself.

Marquis frowned. “Is this your representative?” He
snarled and snatched the kid’s jacket right off his chest without removing the
sleeves, ripping the leather like it was mere paper, and then he read the
center emblem aloud: “The Pagan Brotherhood. Is that the name of your club?” he
asked. “Can just anyone join, or do they all have to be cowards?”

The blond kid was shaking from head to toe now. “N...n-n...no,”
he quivered. “I mean…I...I...I mean...we’re not really that organized.”

Marquis sighed in annoyance. He was just about to
strike when the kid started talking a mile a minute, rambling like his life
depended on it—because, well, it did. “L...l-l...look...” he stuttered, “we...we...we…we...we’ve
been talking it over, and you don’t have to kill us because we’re willing to
serve you.” He gestured toward the other men. “All of us.”

Marquis shifted his weight from one leg to the
other, and the kid immediately hit the deck like a grenade had just been
launched. Marquis scowled, growing impatient.

 “S...s-s...sorry,” he squeaked, once he had
collected himself.

When Marquis leaned over to look at him, the man
flinched and covered his head. “I’m listening.” Marquis crossed his arms and
waited while the kid slowly stood back up.

“L...l-l...like I’ve been saying...we...we...we
would like to be your...puppets…or minions...or whatever it is you call human
servants”—the boy knelt down on the ground then—“and I swear to you, we would never
tell anybody.” He looked over his shoulder, and the other men bobbed their
heads up and down, encouraging him to keep on talking. “We can bring you things,
lots of things. Anything you want. Whatever you need.”

“Women,” one of the other cattle whispered.

“Y...y-y...yeah...women,” Blondie offered.

“Or blood,” a slovenly male urged, poking the kid
in the back.

“Or...or...or blood...or…women to drink blood...I
mean so you…you can drink the women’s blood.” He scratched his nose. “When we
bring them to you.”

When Marquis didn’t answer, the kid became
desperate, and his voice raised an octave higher. “We could do things for
you...you know...in the day. Like whatever you can’t do for yourself. Like go
to the bank maybe...or even pick up your dry cleaning.”