No Man's Land (8 page)

“This place is considered the buffer zone between two large families. The only vampires coming through here are scouts and spies. Well, and me.”

Jaq nodded. “That’s another reason why you can’t stay. I’m assuming you’re from that family up north. Most of the vampires that come through here are the southern ones. I don’t know much about vampires, but I’m guessing they’d kill you if they caught wind of you here.”

They would. Kincaid spies wouldn’t hesitate to rip her head off. An unaffiliated vampire was a disgrace and would be culled. Kelly put the butter in the pan and grimaced. One day at a time. Just survive. She didn’t have the luxury of thinking that far ahead when starvation stood right outside her window.

“Why do you have — ouch!”

Kelly turned and saw Jaq waving her hand frantically, a small silver ring rolling across the table.

“Don’t touch it!” With vampire speed, she snatched the ring, shoving it in her pocket. The werewolf’s eyes widened. “I mean, don’t…it’s personal. I’m sorry, just please don’t touch that.”

Jaq tilted her head. “No problem. Are your fingers okay? It was silver.”

Kelly nodded, turning back to the cooking liver. Her fingers were red and blistered just from that quick touch. She took a deep breath, getting her emotions under control. Jaq must think she was a complete fool, acting like that over a cheap band of silver.

Within minutes, the smell of cooking filled the small trailer, and Kelly’s glass of blood was empty, replaced with one filled with wine. She felt better. Maybe it was the nasty cow’s blood, maybe it was the wine. Any alcohol effects would be quickly burned off with her ramped–up metabolism, but the slight buzz the sweet liquid gave her was welcome.

“What’s all this?” Jaq asked, sorting through the contents of Kelly’s plastic bag of found items. It seemed that werewolves weren’t particular about respecting privacy. Coming and going in each other’s homes, digging through personal belongings.

“Are vampires like magpies? Are you a hoarder? That would make a great show. ‘Vampire Hoarders of the Appalachian Mountains.’ I’d watch it.”

Kelly paused, spatula in hand, and turned to face the other woman. That little smile had turned up one corner of her mouth, and she wiggled her eyebrows as she waved a bungee cord at the vampire. The woman was teasing her. Teasing. Kelly stood there, speechless, unable to think of a reply — unable to think of anything.

“I know where there are some abandoned cars in the woods,” Jaq went on. “Or maybe you’d like that bag of rusty nails just past Melody’s place.”

Kelly knew she was trying to lighten things up, but her comments just brought home how bleak her situation was. What the hell was she planning on doing with that junk anyway? All the thoughts of vampire MacGyver she’d had while collecting it seemed foolish right now. Accumulating random junk off the road was a futile act. It was a way to lie to herself about her terrible situation, to pretend it would somehow be better. Her eyes strayed to the knife drawer. Perhaps that was the best thing for her to do.

“Hey. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been making jokes after all you’ve been through.”

In a blink, Jaq’s arms were around her. The woman’s sharp, clean sent filled her nose, the pounding of her heart so close to her ears. Could this day get any weirder? Frying liver in a kitchen, being hugged by a werewolf. Kelly held the spatula awkwardly in her hand and remained stiff in the other woman’s embrace, wondering what she should do. Hug her back? Beat her with the spatula? Rip her throat out with dull incisors? Just as she thought she couldn’t take any more, Jaq pulled away, sniffing the air.

“You’re burning the liver.”

“Shit! Shit!” Kelly spun around and lowered the heat, fanning the meat with her spatula. Was it burnt? She thought it was supposed to be that dark, although come to think of it, the liver Cook had prepared back in her human days hadn’t smelled quite this charred. She looked up and saw Jaq watching her. The woman’s lips twitched.

“Maybe I’ll cook the liver.” Gripping her arms, Jaq led Kelly over to the sofa and pushed her gently down onto it. “You sit right there. I’ll bring your drink and finish cooking.”

The werewolf relieved Kelly of her utensil and walked back to the kitchen area. Kelly gripped her wine in both hands and watched the tall woman flip the liver once more, expertly sliding it onto a plate. Why had she invited a werewolf to share a crazy dinner of liver and blackberry wine when she should be out trying to find a human to drink from?

“Thank you,” Kelly said, taking the plate of liver from Jaq and glancing past her to the window on the other side of the trailer. As soon as it was dark, she’d head out. And in spite of the warnings from two werewolves, if a neighbor had to meet with a bloody accident, so be it.

8

J
aq eyed the setting sun with trepidation. Pink and golden rays streaming over the distant mountain range should have filled her with peace, but not this evening. Drat Jonah and his customs. What should have been a quick one–hour meeting had turned into dinner and a tour of his back property. It’s not like she’d never been here before. It’s not like she didn’t see her Alpha weekly.

“There’s a vampire one trailer down from me. I’m respectfully asking everyone to keep their paws off.”

Jonah turned to her, his ruddy face tightening with displeasure. Interrupting the Alpha was not polite, but Jaq had been more than patient this evening. It would soon be dark, and she’d need to hurry back to make sure her new neighbor didn’t start eating the locals.

“Yes, Dale told me this afternoon. He’s more upset that you’re protecting a vampire than the fact that one has moved in half a mile from his place of business.”

“She’s injured, and pretty young from her scent. I just want to give her a chance to heal up a bit, then I’ll chase her off.”

The Alpha halted and turned to face Jaq, his hands on his hips. “What, like a wildlife catch and release? Seriously, Jaq, this isn’t a bear cub for you to bottle–feed then return to the wild; it’s a vampire. You’ve seen what they can do, how little regard they have for any life but their own. What in the world are you thinking to allow such a danger to live?”

“She was severely wounded,” Jaq argued.

In truth, she wasn’t sure what the heck she was thinking. The broken and bloody girl in the trailer had tugged at her sympathies somehow. Maybe Jonah was right. This was complete folly. Kelly wasn’t a little kitten in need of help, she was a predator that would most likely turn on Jaq the moment she was strong enough.

“Severely wounded now,” Jonah said, echoing her thoughts. “Give her twenty–four hours and we’ll see how quickly she tries to take your head off. They’re fast and strong, sneaky with no sense of honor. It doesn’t matter that you fed or sheltered her; she’ll try to kill you, and you won’t be able to take her by surprise like you’ve done the others.”

He was right, but something inside Jaq still rebelled when she thought about killing Kelly. “Her own family beat her almost to death and dumped her here to die. They know we’re here, that we’d kill her. What kind of people do that?”

“Vampires do that,” Jonah’s voice was firm. “And don’t you ever forget it. Don’t go thinking that this one is different because she’s a little tiny thing covered in bruises. Dale told me what she looked like, and said even he felt a bit sorry for her himself. I don’t blame you. You’ve got a big heart, Jaq, and you’re full of kindness and optimism when it comes to others, but you’ve got to snap out of this sentimental crap and face the reality. Kill her tonight and be done with it.”

No
. Jaq held back the word. The circumstances of her birth had always allowed her great privilege when it came to the pack and the Alpha, but she knew better than to draw a line in the sand with Jonah.

“Can I please have one month? I’ll take care of her, be personally responsible for making sure she doesn’t break any rules. One month, then I’ll drive her back over the border.”

Crap, she
did
sound like a child pleading to keep a found pet
. I promise I’ll feed it, and clean up if it pisses on the floor….

Jonah muttered a soft explicative. “I swear, Jaq, if you weren’t a First–Born, you’d never have the balls to ask such a thing of me, your own Alpha for Christ’s sake. If this gets out, I’ll have a riot on my hands. Full–fledged riot, pitchforks and torches and the like. Vampires.”

Jaq smothered a grin. He’d spat out the last word like it was rotted possum in his mouth, but she knew she’d won. “How’s the leg doing?”

Jonah instinctively reached down to his thigh and rubbed it. He was still young, barely fifty, and with more blond to his beard than gray, but even a werewolf in the prime of his life found it difficult to take down an enraged bear. “Not even a twinge,” he replied, gratitude in his voice. “Just a scrape. Nothing compared to what I did to that bear.”

Jaq nodded, her eyes solemn. It wouldn’t do to have their Alpha bleed out on top of a dead bear. She’d kept his secrets, and he’d kept hers. They’d all kept hers. That’s what a pack did. She felt a twinge of guilt for putting them at risk. A vampire — what was she thinking? But then she remembered Kelly, twisted and bleeding on the floor of the trailer, the look of fear and loss that crept all too often into the woman’s brown eyes. She didn’t seem like a monster. Maybe Jonah was right, but maybe he was wrong. Could there be more to this vampire than a dangerous predator, or was she once again being a sentimental fool?

“One week,” Jonah warned her. “One week, then either she goes or she dies.”

9

D
usk was slipping into night as Kelly looked at her assortment of items and went through the alternatives in her head. She needed to find something tonight, hopefully something alive that walked on two legs, or she’d be in the agony of starvation by dawn. Already she felt it gnawing at her sanity.

Options. Top choice was to grab a neighbor, but Jaq’s brother was keeping a close eye on her. She could occasionally hear him nearby, catching a whiff of werewolf in the air. The wiser alternative was to waste precious energy losing the werewolf and head down to that bar. But would that other werewolf from the afternoon be there? Would she have enough strength left to defend herself against one or more of them? It would be difficult to poach a human customer right from under their noses and not get caught, especially with no fangs. No, that bar was almost as risky as snatching one of the neighbors.

But how to get far enough away without a vehicle and without the energy to run a long distance? She could hardly take a bus to and from her hunt. At the thought of it, a laugh escaped her. The number nineteen into town, then back again, covered in blood from her messy dining experience.

There had to be someplace besides that bar down the road. Kelly had no idea how big a territory the werewolves had, or if Mike was fast enough to keep up, but she was fairly certain if she could lose her babysitter, she could be sneaky enough to take one human without notice. Humans went missing all the time — if she chose her victim carefully, they’d never know.

A pang of guilt went through her at the thought. She had never killed a human on purpose before. Outside of that one accident after she was first turned, she hadn’t killed any at all. Maybe if she found someone really drunk or high, she wouldn’t have to kill them. Or maybe she could find a mass murderer. It wouldn’t be so terrible to drain one of them dry, would it?

Kelly wrapped a razor blade and the silver filet knife into a plastic bag then shoved them into her waistband. Like it or not, she was starving. Hopefully there would be some alternative to killing her victim, but she may not have much choice.

The night air bit with the promise of winter. The best thing about cold was that it brought all the scents into sharp relief. Moving quietly with vampire stealth, Kelly ducked into the forest and trailed down along the road. She sniffed the air. Humans, dogs, cars. The werewolf scent had dissipated, and she took a few seconds to prowl by Jaq’s trailer. The lights were on, and she could see the television through the window as well as the back of a man sprawled across the sofa. Mike must have gotten bored with her. Kelly chuckled, thinking how pissed–off Jaq would be that her brother abandoned his post for an episode of Breaking Bad.

Feeling a bit like a hunting dog, Kelly distanced herself from the trailers, scenting the air for prey. The closest was a fox. She tracked it by smell, locating the animal with her night vision. The fox looked unthreatened by the vampire woman trying unsuccessfully to sneak up on it, but as soon as she got close enough to lunge toward it, the fox jumped, dashing into the safety of the briar bushes.

Her stomach growled and cramped as she struggled to her feet. There had to be more than one animal in this neighborhood. Forcing down waves of dizziness, Kelly continued to prowl the line of trees between the trailers and the woods. In only a few moments, she’d scented a rabbit.

It hopped along, eyes reflecting the light from the porch of a nearby trailer. Kelly hesitated. It was one thing to drink cold animal blood from a bag, another thing entirely to grab one from the woods. It seemed so uncivilized, and this rabbit was kind of cute. Starving vampires couldn’t be picky, though, so she steadily moved within striking distance then snatched it at full speed. The rabbit twisted in surprise, biting down on her hand and digging in with sharp claws.

“Ow, damnit!” Kelly swore, nearly dropping the animal as she transferred it to one hand and sliced its neck with the razor blade.

A wave of shame rolled through her as she frantically tried to get as much of the fountaining blood into her mouth as possible. Pitiful. Drinking from a defenseless animal with blood smeared all over her face and hands. Along with the blood, she tasted fur on her tongue and tickling down her throat. This had to be the most horrible thing she’d ever done. It certainly was the most disgusting thing she’d ever eaten, even including Cook’s terrible attempts at kidney pie.

Finished, she dropped the animal and collapsed to the forest floor, panting with relief. Blessed relief. That should keep her going until she could manage to find a human a few safe miles away. Kelly leaned against a tree and closed her eyes, trying to steady her breath. Now she’d only need to dispose of the carcass and clean up a bit then head out five miles or so to find the prey she really needed.