Page 11 of Blind Date with a Werewolf
“It’ll do.” Kelly hoped he sounded resolute.
“So while we are waiting for them,” Bruce said, his voice changing just a little, softening into an intimate tone, “I think I have something we might do to pass the time.”
He took two steps closer. Kelly’s back was against the fence and he had nowhere to retreat. Even if he could have, his feet felt oddly heavy and he swayed toward the vampire.
“Shhh, be calm,” said the vampire. “We’ve done this before,you and I. Shawna is dying—I need another servant. You’d like to be my servant, wouldn’t you? Just say yes. It would be an early Christmas present for me.”
Kelly forgot to breathe as Bruce’s words threaded through him like a hook laced with happy thoughts. He justknewthat belonging to the vampire would be the best thing that ever happened to him, like winning the lottery.
“Christmas is my favorite time of year,” Bruce continued as Kelly took a tentative step forward. “So much misery for humankind as they scuttle around spending more money than they can afford, on gifts no one wants or appreciates. A season that points out how miserably little your life is worth. Christmas is a fitting remembrance for a gift humans despised so much they hung it on a cross so it wouldn’t bother them anymore. I was a priest once. I know, who’d have thought, right?”
Bruce’s face was revealed for a moment when the clouds opened around the half-full moon and silvery light illuminated their private space. The light distracted Bruce. He blinked, and Kelly remembered that Bruce was a vampire.
“No,” Kelly said, the word dragging out of his throat—but the word broke the vampire’s hold, and he could move again.
Snarling, Bruce whipped his hand out and wrapped it around Kelly’s wrist. Kelly’s response was instinctive, born of fear and six years of training. He twisted his arm until the narrow boney edge of his wrist was at the weakest point of the vampire’s grip and jerked it free.
He didn’t hesitate—he ran, crashing blindly through the underbrush and the uneven, snow-covered terrain that threatened to trip him at every night-blinded step. And behind him, keeping up easily, the vampire followed.
“Run, yes, run,” the vampire chanted to himself. “You ran the last time, too. I like it when my Christmas presents run.” He laughed, a weird half-hysterical laugh, and then said, “Run, Kelly, run.”
Finally the inevitable happened and Kelly put a foot wrong, crashing to the ground in a tangle of snow, tree root, and bush. He rolled until he could get some leverage for his feet, then crab-walked frantically backward until the solid trunk of a tree hit his back.
The vampire stayed where he was, laughing quietly—not out of breath at all. The only way Kelly could tell it was Bruce was Bruce’s suit, because the creature who wore it had only an incidental resemblance to the human he had aped.
Either his eyes were glowing or they caught the light of the moon differently than human eyes did—like the Siamese cat Kelly’s older sister had. Red and shiny, they held him in a hungry grip more sure than the vampire’s hand on his wrist had been. Flesh pulled away from the bones of Bruce’s face until no one looking at him would see anything but a monster. If any doubt about Bruce had lingered (and it had), the fangs both delicate and sharp that Bruce was displaying were an answer.
“Not that I didn’t enjoy that,” the vampire said, “but we need to take care of business before Meg and Trace show up, don’t we? Never fear, Kelly, I won’t let Trace bully me, though it was good of you to be concerned.”
“I wasn’t actually worried about you,” Kelly managed with more bravado than he felt. “I just needed you outside.”
The vampire stilled. “Why is that?”
Sometime while he was running, it had started to snow again, and white flakes drifted to the vampire’s shoulders. Thesnow brought with it the deep feeling of silence that was so much more than just a lack of noise, a silence Kelly had only ever felt on a winter’s night in the woods.
Despite knowing that the dance venue couldn’t be more than half a mile away, Kelly felt as though they were the only beings here in the winter-embraced woods. He heard nothing, sensed nothing that told him differently. He had only Asil’s word that he was not alone in the night with the vampire. Somewhat to his surprise, it was enough.
Kelly stood up slowly, keeping his back against the tree for support, because he wasn’t sure that his legs would hold him. There was a tear in the knee of his trousers—he’d have to have Meg sew him a new pair.
“I have a present for you,” he said, pleased that he sounded as cool and calm as James freakin’ Bond.
The vampire jerked his head to the side as a great shadow emerged from the darkness tucked under a thicket of leafless aspen. Before Bruce could move closer, the werewolf was upon him.
“Merry Christmas,” said Kelly, his voice lost in the roar of the attack.
He hadn’t actually seen Asil as a werewolf; apparently it wasn’t as fast as it was in the movies to change from human to wolf. He wished Asil would stand still or that the sun was out so he could get a better look. If he had to describe the werewolf right now, it would be golden eyes and huge. Also fast and strong and graceful. And very, very huge. The vampire looked like a toy in his jaws—not that the vampire wasn’t fighting back.
It wasn’t a noise that alerted him—the fight was unexpectedly loud—but his eyes were drawn away from the melee bysome instinct. On the other side of the battling monsters, Meg stood with Trace. They were close enough to watch without becoming collateral damage—or so Kelly hoped.
Trace was a big guy, but Meg was three inches taller and a lot meaner. She had a hand on his neck as if she’d dragged him here. Not that Trace was fighting her hold right at this moment. Like Meg, his attention was all on the battle in front of them.
About ten feet from him, a smallish tree cracked, broken about four feet off the ground. Kelly didn’t see the hit that took it down. By the time he focused on the white inner wood of the dying poplar, the combatants were twenty feet away.
The vampire had freed himself from Asil’s jaws. He did something, maybe a kick, but he was moving so fast Kelly couldn’t really see it. But the wolf—Asil—let out a grunt and tumbled like a motorcycle wreck into the trees.
The vampire was a lot stronger than he looked.
Kelly had the thought, as Bruce threw himself on the werewolf, that maybe Kelly hadn’t broken out of his hold earlier. Maybe Bruce had let him go because hewantedthe hunt. Kelly’s throat was too dry to swallow.
