Feral Hearts Page 20

  * * *

  Strange, they don’t seem to be anywhere, and yet I haven’t seen any bodies either. Could they have turned?

  For a moment the old familiar pain lanced Angela’s heart, the reminder of Dallas and his dedication, his desire to make a better life for her, and finally his utter lack of forethought…

  “I know what I’m doing, Babe. I’ve got this.”

  “But vampires? Why do you have to work with vampires of all things?”

  “One last job, then we’ll go away, make a go of it.”

  “Don’t tell me about rugrats and a perfect life, Dallas. We both know it’s impossible for people like us. We can’t fucking hack that.”

  He smiled his smile, leaned down to give her one last kiss, and then he opened the door to leave. “Wouldn’t dream of it, Ang. Just quiet for us now, quiet and all the time in the world…”

  Anyone else might have teared up at the memory, but Angela growled and gritted her teeth, her face painted with blood. What’s the point in playing hero if you’ve got no one to save?

  From somewhere over to the side of her, she heard a woman clear her throat. When she wheeled around, spax raised, she saw Stefania with her own shovel and a raised eyebrow. The end of the handle was broken off, leaving a sharpened wooden point. It was covered in blood.

  I seem to have underestimated her, Angela thought. She doesn’t look half bad in that top and those shorts either. She sported a shit-eating grin. “So, how many have you gotten? And where have you been hiding your balls?”

  Stefania’s eyebrow rose again. “Do you think any of these men would put up with a woman telling them what to do on a singles tour if she made it clear she could kick their ass every time she opened her mouth? Not these idioti! And the women have no trust for a woman they think behaves too much like a man.”

  Angela laughed. It felt good to laugh after all of this time.

  “I killed a few of the lunatics,” said Stefania, “but they’re easy. I killed one vampire, but only because I got lucky. The handle of my shovel broke, and she happened to fall on it as she pounced on me.”

  “Well, I guess she got the point,” said Angela grinning.

  “I guess she did.”

  Was Stefania flirting? Maybe it was worth the trip after all.

  * * *

  Jamie was worried about what Jenna would think of him. God she’s going to think I’m insane. She’ll know soon enough, and by then it’ll be too late to do this right.

  “It all started a few years back. I was 21 when I met her and…and everything that was good in my life went wrong. I thought it was bad then. I mean, I had friends, I had…a few relationships but nothing that stuck.”

  He ran his hand through his hair, pausing before going on. “When she started to come to me in the night, at first I thought I was crazy, like I was having some fucked up nightmares, but it was really happening. Viktoriya, she came and she…”

  Tears slipped from his eyes, hot, angry, and frustrated. “She would come and she would…she would fuck me. At least that was what I thought was going on at first.”

  Jamie frowned. “Have you ever heard of, um…succubae?” He met her eyes, seeing her confusion but also a clear watchfulness. She was waiting, letting him explain. “Viktoriya…she’s one of those things…no, that’s not quite right.” He rubbed his index finger over his upper lip, thinking before he started explaining again. “Vampires…they’re like the real version of the succubae legend. In the legend they, uh… well this being called Lilith would come and steal the seed of men and she would…she would take it and make demon spawn. Sometimes, maybe, it would change sex and become a man to impregnate a woman with the baby.

  “Viktoriya came to me for a long time, and she tortured me in so many ways, mentally, physically, and sexually. I guess maybe part of it was that I was lonely and insecure, a sort of perfect victim for this. The thing was—God am I…am I disgusting you?” He looked at her worried, his eyes blood shot and tired.

  Jenna looked back at him calmly and gestured with her hand for him to go on. “No, tell me. If it makes you feel better, then it’s good, right? It means you can work through it like when I talk to Doctor Ed. I get it.”

  Jamie took another breath and he went on, tears staining his face as they slid down one-by-one. “I met a girl after a while, her name was Mary, and despite all of this we managed to stay together, Mary and I. We made plans to get married, but things were really hard because Viktoriya was still coming to me and I wanted it to stop, so I told Mary. She said we should confront her, make her go away. They met that night and…and then Mary disappeared.”

  “For a long time, I thought she murdered her…but no…” He broke down, tears coming down hard and fast as he struggled to get the words out. “Mary, Mary, she…”

  * * *

  Angela and Stefania made a perfect pair. Back to back, they met their foes full-on and unafraid. Over and over the lunatic Renfeilds came to attack, monstrous battering rams meant to destroy. One-by-one they fell under Angela’s spax and Stefania’s shovel, dead and useless corpses creating a mass of stinking detritus around the fountain where the two girls had chosen to stand their ground.

  In time, there were no more Renfields to be found. Whoever survived must have fled the area. However, there were two vampires in the square. Tired and covered in blood, dirt, and all manner of offal, the warriors stood firm, waiting to see what the vampires would do.

  All around them houses and buildings burned. Derosso was a charnel pit but for the Derosso Grande, which stood still and quiet, utterly empty and devoid of life. There were only a few more hours left to the night, and Angela and Stefania had to make it.

  “Ready?”

  “As ready as I’m ever going to be.”

  “All right then.”

  Stefania and Angela met the two vampires with a full volley of kicks, punches, and slamming thrusts from their farmer’s tools.

  However, quick, cunning, and vicious, the vampires proved to be less easy to contend with than their human lunatic slaves.

  * * *

  Jenna crossed the space between them and threw herself into Jamie’s arms, holding him tightly to her own body. “I can see it hurts you.” She sighed and pushed herself away.

  For a moment, Jamie thought that maybe she’d changed her mind, that she wanted him to leave, but instead she met his eyes with her own steady gaze. In a moment, she was slipping out of her clothes, revealing her warm curving body bit-by-bit to him in the moonlight. She’s so beautiful.

  Moonlight clung to her every curve, her flesh a lovely pale color that complemented every other aspect of her being. She had high, full breasts tipped with dark, erect nipples. Her hips and thighs swelled out from her body in a counterpoint to her breasts.

  She was beautiful in body, but she was also beautiful in mind and spirit, welcoming and free in a way that he was not. She stood tall and proud with her hand held out to him, waiting for him to cross the room to accept what she offered. Bewitching in her innocence, her trust.

  “Jamie, make love to me.”

  “I—”

  “None of what came before matters. It’s just you and me now.”

  “Jenna, I—”

  “Shh. Come to me.” They were going to die, and Jenna decided at that very moment that she wasn’t going to die a virgin.

  They hardly knew each other, and their movements at first were clumsy, but soon enough they were ready to couple. Jenna’s legs were thrust high on Jamie’s shoulders, her legs splayed and her body ready to receive him. “Jenna, what I am now…”

  Jenna threw her arms up around him and entwined him with her legs, pulling him close and her folds up and around his member. He plunged deep inside her, and the pair started to thrust in locked rhythm fueled by adrenaline.

  “I told you, Jamie, it doesn’t matter…now. It never…uhh…did. We are…one and the same, both…misfits.”

  * * *

  Stefania struck out, aimin
g for the vampire’s snarling face, but her hands were slick with old and congealing blood. The thrust was too hard, and without its handle the shovel very nearly slipped from her fingers, slipping just far enough to the left to miss her target.

  The vampire charged straight at her. She grunted as it hit, letting the weight strike her and carry her down while keeping her hand as firmly locked on her weapon as she could manage.

  The vampire’s toothy maw was spread open close to her face, and her arms were trapped tight under its grasp. It was not a good place to be and left her far too vulnerable. An involuntary shudder slipped through her as she struggled, making the vampire laugh. “Not such a pretty little vampire slayer now, are we? Oh, poor lost little thing!”

  “Fuck you!” Stefania spit in the creature’s face, trying to put on a strong front but knowing it could smell her fear.

  She heard Angela fighting her own battle a few feet away. She heard grunts, snarls, and small tings as the spax hit one thing and another. It seemed her companion was too busy fighting her own battle to come and free her.

  No matter, she would do her best and if it wasn’t enough...

  Stefania kicked and tossed, not letting her body be an easy target for the vampire as it dove toward her over and over again, laughing at her attempts to get free. Claws scratched at her face, leaving a snarl of ragged bloody lines on one cheek, burning and angry. Another sweep and her abdomen bled in long bloody furrows.

  As Angela fought on in the distance, Stefania thought she heard her whimper. There was a clatter as her weapon fell, grunting, and the weight of a body hitting the pavement. Was it Angela? Am I alone and is this the end? No. No If I can just—

  Stefania reserved her energy, counting a little as she watched for just the right moment. She thrust her thigh hard and fast into the vampire’s gut, following it up with a kick from her other leg.

  It wasn’t much, but it bought her an extra few seconds. She swept her arm out, grabbed the bottom of her shovel lying next to her, and thrust it out the sharpened tip of the handle just as the vampire descended on her.

  It stuck fast in the vampire’s chest, buried by the weight of its body and the power of its vampiric strength. Stefania pushed its still corpse to the side. She rose to her feet, flipped the shovel in her hands so she was gripping the handle, and thrust it down repeatedly, metal hitting pavement, severing the vampire’s head from her shoulders.

  Only then did she risk looking up to assess the outcome of her companion and the remaining vampires. She didn’t see Angela at first. Bodies were strewn here and there at odd angles, dead and torn apart, making it hard to see the vampire and Angela grappling with each other.

  Stefania saw the white snarl of Angela’s face as she thrust the brunette’s fanged mouth away from her throat and slit her belly open from waist to throat. Stefania threw herself across the distance and wrenched the vampire from Angel’s body. As it turned on her, Stefania drove her pointed handle into its heart.

  As the demon lay dying on the ground, Angela and Stefania looked down into the vampire’s face, Angela’s spax held to its throat. “Where is that she-bitch? Tell us where she is.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Good question.” Tired and angry, Angela drove the hook at the back of her weapon through the vampire’s throat and ripped it out. Stefania severed the head and kicked it free of the body.

  Stefania’s fine features were not so unappealing now, swathed as they were in blood and sweat, her eyes lit with bloodlust and the glory of battle writ all over her body. Close as they were, breathing in each other’s breaths and studying the other’s cool countenance, it wouldn’t be long before one of them crossed the distance, took that final risk, and owned the other’s vulnerability, trading it for hers.

  Angela swept forward and pulled Stefania close, holding her to her body with one arm as she kissed her long and deep. It was a promise of other things to come, not least of which was the intimacy they’d lost in their pasts and were hungry for again.

  They stood there with their foreheads pressed together, feeling the power of the moment, preparing to go to Feral Hearts where Viktoriya must surely return.

  * * *

  “What will we do now? Where do we go?”

  Jenna looked up at Jamie, thick with the sweat of their lovemaking, and she kissed him. “We live.”

  * * *

  When Angela and Stefania went inside, they found the strip club empty of all of its inhabitants—all, that is, except the pair they found in a room to the right of the girls’ dressing rooms. They were wound into each other’s bodies, looking old and worn, two beings whose reliance on each other was clear.

  “Good Christ, what is that?” Angela didn’t fear them, not in this moment, but her horror was writ all over her face. When she looked to her companion, she saw that Stefania was just as thrown.

  The thing on the floor, the one that they knew must’ve been Viktoriya, now ancient and worn, opened her mouth to speak with an effort.

  “Her name is…was Mary. I found her one night when Jamie tried to confront me to demand his freedom. She knew what he was, and she knew he had only to stand and face me with his power, but no one told him what he was. That I had no right to claim him. Angry, knowing what she knew and what she could do for me, I took her. I swept her away from his life.

  “She is kin to me, a creature I could not find in all of my years of searching, a mother for my spawn, the others you murdered here in Derosso. I took what I needed from Jamie. I took his seed, and I gave it her to gain my little army, to begin my own safe haven here away from the humans that wished us harm. It was our nest, our safe haven, and she gave me every scrap of herself to save her Jamie. I loved her.

  “What you see now is not what she was. This is death and decay, the soon to be rotting corpse of all my dreams. With every death, you murdered another piece of her, and in turn sapped away my power.

  “We are succubae, beings you now know as ‘vampires.’ We are ancient, old as time, and now we are fading away as less and less of our mother spawn are born.” Her expression turned bitter. “You humans are inferior creatures. I…”

  I think that’ll be enough of this. With a wide downward sweep of her spax, Angela drove a pit into the soft and pulpy head of Viktoriya, killing her before she could utter another word. “Good riddance.”

  For a moment, she and Stefania were quiet as they took in all that had happened that night.

  “Maybe she was going to say something really important,” said Stefania.

  “I didn’t want to hear it,” said Angela. “What should we do now?”

  Stefania smiled and took her hand. “How about we go and find out if my place is still there? We could shower and then, Bella, I think we could find a way to pass the time.

  * * *

  Jenna smiled up at Jamie. “We are nephilim, Jamie. The spawn of angels and humans. It’s why I was instantly drawn to you.”

  “I-I felt it too. I didn’t know why, but I felt it.” His eyes widened in fear. “But, what about your OCD, your anxiety?”

  Jenna flashed Jamie a sardonic grin. “I am half-human, ya know.”

  “I’m no angel, Jenna. I can guarantee that.”

  “That’s because you’re half human, too.”

  “I don’t understand how this has anything to do with vampire succubae. I don’t understand any of this.”

  “While we are born of angels, Viktoriya and her ilk, they are monstrosities born of anger and hate. That is why she wanted to possess you, dominate you. They are the fallen, and they despise the purity of our angelic background and the mortal frailty of our human side.

  “Yet, once she tasted your angelic essence, your inner light, it was her undoing. Human blood no longer sustained her. She sensed what I was when she was outside the hotel. She let you go so you’d lead her to me. She thought she’d then have the both of us. But, without our blood, she withered away into nothingness.

  “There is a war comin
g between the Dark and the Light. One day, in our time or in our children’s, we will be the ones who rise and save the humans.” Jenna smiled warmly. “I can already hear them whispering to me.”

  Jamie looked at her in confusion. “They?”

  “Our children. They’re already growing inside me.”

  Chapter 13

  Alternate Ending #3

  So long, and fangs for all the flesh.

  Mark Woods

  Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, thought Paul Clarkson as he and Barry 'The Needle' Nero staggered back into their hotel room. What the pissing hell just fucking happened back there?

  His memories of the events just past were hazy. All he knew for certain was that sometime within the last hour, everything had just turned to shit.

  So much for trying to clean my act up, Paul thought. One night. One night was all that it had taken for me to fall straight back into my old ways, ways I was supposed to be leaving far behind me in Blighty.

  I had gotten myself ever so slightly drunk (okay, very drunk) and followed a stripper/ pole-dancer/ prostitute—whatever she fucking was—back to her home (which apparently doubled as a brothel) only for things to go just about as wrong as I could possibly imagine.

  At least, he thought, I didn’t do any drugs. That was one out of three of his vices that he’d managed to avoid. That had to count for something, surely.

  His mind flew back to a memory of snorting a line of coke off Viktoriya’s slender thighs, making his way slowly up her legs towards her moist, wet slit. Her panties were transparent, she was shaven, and Paul could see every detail of her most intimate area glistening in the crimson light.

  Oh fuck, Paul thought, remembering. I hadn’t even been able to turn down a line of coke. I really am just a hopeless failure; just another sad and lonely junkie addict, hooked on my own nasty little habit, totally incapable of changing for even a few days.