Bloodline by Joel Abernathy

4

After the secondblizzard in one week, it became clear that as eager as I was to be rid of my unexpected houseguest, mother nature had other plans. I came downstairs one morning to find a stack of freshly chopped firewood by the chimney and Jonas nowhere in sight.

Before I could venture out to see if Skybird was still in the stable, he came through the door, a dusting of snow covering his broad shoulders. He shrugged out of his damp clothes and looked over at me with a smile even though his teeth were chattering. “Cold as a witch’s tits out there.”

I was still far from used to his colorful remarks. “What were you doing?”

“Taking care of the animals. I saw your barn latch was on its last legs, so I swapped it out for one I found in that old box of scraps.”

The box had been there since I had bought the place, and I’d never bothered looking through it. “Thank you, but none of that was necessary.”

“Of course it was. You saved my life, and as long as I’m here, I’m gonna make yours easier. Mama Hart didn’t raise no freeloader.”

“Well… thank you.” Why did he have to make it so difficult to stay frozen? “I suppose you’re hungry after all that.”

“Starvin’,” he admitted, leaving his wet boots by the door.

“I think I still have enough flour for pancakes.”

“Sounds good to me. You actually gonna eat this time?”

I blew a puff of air through my lips. It wasn’t that I couldn’t eat. I’d gone through the motions plenty while living with Ian, but my body had no actual need for it and I’d long since lost my taste for solids. Jonas’ blood grew more appealing by the day, and it was getting harder to sneak away to feed, especially now that he insisted on tending to my rations.

“Not much of a talker, are ya?” he asked, sitting down at the table to watch me.

“I suppose not.”

“Come on, I’ve been here a whole week and I hardly know anything about you.”

“It’s been closer to two,” I informed him, pouring a circle of batter into the skillet.

“Everybody has a story. For a pretty boy from Greece to end up here of all places, yours has to be a good one.”

“I wouldn’t call it good, but it is quite the story,” I admitted, watching as the white batter bubbled and browned.

“What’s his name?”

I glanced over my shoulder. “Pardon?”

“The guy who screwed you over bad enough to make you run all the way here and hole up in the middle of nowhere.”

“What makes you think I fancy men in the first place?”

He snorted, like it wasn’t even a question worth answering.

“His name was Enoch,” I replied, sliding a pancake onto the plate in front of him. “And for the record, it wasn’t a broken heart that sent me away. He tried to have me burned at the stake.”

“They still do that in Greece?” he asked in disbelief.

“Boston.” It didn’t matter if I told him the truth, I decided. There were thousands of miles and hundreds of years between me and that life, and even if my name was still remembered in that place, no one would make the connection to the life I led now. In a way, it felt good to finally tell someone who I was. It made the endless years seem real rather than the dream I so often felt I was living.

“Huh. And how’d you get from Greece to Boston?”

“I didn’t. I got from Greece to London and from London to Paris, and from there, I got on a ship to Boston.”

He gave me a weary look. “You know what I meant.”

“Why are you so interested in how I got here?” I asked, sitting down in front of him. He didn’t answer for a moment, and I realized he was waiting for me to eat, so I rolled my eyes and took a bite of the sugary bread. “Happy?”

“Reasonably,” he replied, scooping a forkful of pancakes into his mouth. To his credit, he didn’t chew with it hanging open like I assumed most cowboys did. “You can’t blame a man for his curiosity. You saved my life, so you’re obviously not a bad person, and yet you live out here like a fugitive. It figures you’re either runnin’ from a man or from the law.”

“I suppose it does.” When I looked up, his jaw was clenched in frustration, but he made no further attempt to question me.

“Pancakes are good,” he remarked.

“I’m glad you like them.”

We finished eating in silence, but by the time I dared to glance up, Jonas was staring at me. It was something I’d grown accustomed to. He often watched me, but it wasn’t in the same hesitant, pitying way the few people I’d interacted with since moving out west tended to. The new frontier was so unlike the Boston I had known. The rules were scarce and authorities even scarcer, but survival left little time for meddling in others’ affairs. I no longer felt in danger of being hunted down as the monster I was, but isolation had become a habit and I knew none other.

The way he looked at me was something else entirely. Even Ian had never been able to stand it for long. It didn’t bother me. He’d never lied and told me I was easy to look at, so when he told me he loved me anyway, I believed him. Jonas’ gaze held longing, which was far more dangerous than any other lie.

“What is it?” I asked, feeling myself the prey and him the hunter in this moment.

“Twelve days,” he murmured in a voice that was not the one I had come to know. The one that made my breath falter whenever it called my name.

“I’m sorry?”

“I’ve been here twelve days,” he said in a grave tone, letting his fork drop with a clatter. “When you brought me here, I was at death’s door. Weak. Helpless as a newborn foal.”

“You found your legs quickly enough.” I wasn’t sure what he was getting at, but I wasn’t going to give him ammunition.

“You could have killed me, and no one would have ever been the wiser.”

I froze with my coffee halfway to my lips. “And why on earth would I do that?”

“I know what you are, Marcellus,” he said in that foreign tone I was starting to think represented the real him. The man beneath the mask of country charm and cluelessness. “I’ve been here damn near two weeks, and I haven’t seen you so much as spill a drop of blood. What’s your secret? How are you alive?”

I stared at him in a state of disbelief and humiliation. He knew what I was. His words could mean nothing else, and yet, it shouldn’t have been possible. I kept to myself. I hunted animals, never humans. Nary a whisper of my former life, the self I’d fought so hard to bury, could have carried across the ocean and through the years, and yet here this man was, echoing those same words that had made me run all those years before.

What is your secret?

I flew up from the table and bolted for the door, but Jonas was faster than I gave him credit for. He slammed the door, pulling it out of my grasp, and pinned me up against it, wrenching my arm behind my back.

“Don’t make me use this.” His voice was rough, pleading. I felt the tip of something hard and sharp digging into my back, just underneath my heart. A knife would have cut through the fabric of my shirt. A stake? “I don’t want to hurt you. God help me, I don’t, but I will if you move.”

My breathing was shallow, but I was already planning my escape. I knew from experience a stake to the heart would not kill me, but it would certainly incapacitate me long enough to give him another chance to try something else. He obviously knew what he was doing. Maybe it worked on other vampires. Maybe I was some sort of anomaly, but if that were the case, surely he knew something that would work on me.

I just wasn’t sure if it mattered.

“Who are you?” I asked through my teeth.

“I’m asking the questions here,” he grunted. I was keenly aware of his body pressed to mine, hard and hot. Such close proximity to a human should have stirred my thirst, if anything, and it did, but those natural instincts were muted in comparison to another shade of need. Desire. “How long can you go without feeding?”

“A few months,” I said in a strained voice. If he didn’t ease up on my arm, I was going to find out more about the extent of my regenerative abilities. “That’s the longest I’ve bothered to try.”

“How old are you?”

“Older than this country, and then some.”

“How old, Marcellus?” He pressed the stake in deeper.

“I lost track after twelve hundred,” I muttered.

He paused, like he was trying to decide if I was lying, or perhaps simply trying to wrap his head around it. “What coven do you belong to?”

“Coven?” I scoffed. “I’m not a witch, contrary to popular belief.”

“I’m talking about a family of vampires. Sometimes they call it a nest.”

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve only ever met one other, and I sired him.”

His grip loosened. “That’s not possible. If you’re as old as you say you are, you’d be a goddamn founder.”

“I don’t know what a ‘founder’ is, and I certainly don’t belong to any covens. If you’re going to kill me, get on with it.”

For a few seconds, he seemed to be trying to decide. He finally let me go and spun me around to face him, his hand then wrapping around my throat. “You’re weak.” It was less of an accusation and more of a realization, it seemed. “Why don’t you drink more often?”

“Because animals take time to replenish and sheep are expensive,” I snapped.

He stared at me like he was waiting for the punchline. “I’m sorry…you eat animals?”

“I bleed them,” I corrected.

“Are you saying you don’t hunt humans at all?”

“It’s a small town, and I’ve been here a long time. Don’t you think people would have noticed by now if I did?”

He frowned, searching my face. “You really like humans that much?”

“I don’t like most of you at all,” I answered. “But I loved one once, enough to lose my appetite for the sport.”

I could see the recognition in his gaze. He pulled his hand away from my neck, but it remained in contact with my body, coming to rest against my beating heart. He froze and looked down at it. “You’re… alive.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“No,” he said, backing away like he’d just found out I was a ghost after all. “Vampires aren’t supposed to have a heartbeat.” He looked me over again, like he was only just seeing me. “What are you?”

I hugged myself, feeling more vulnerable than I had when he was prepared to stake me. “You know what I am. I assume that’s why you were on my land in the first place, isn’t it? You were hunting me?” He didn’t answer, but I could tell I’d gotten at the truth. If there were vampire hunters now, that meant there were enough of my kind to hunt, which was a dizzying revelation on its own. “If you’re not going to kill me, then answer this. Who sent you, and how do they know about me?”

“These days, keeping a low profile is the surest way to get you on the wrong folks’ radar,” Jonas answered in a somber tone. “Now, I don’t believe in ghosts and the like, but in my experience, wherever you follow the rumors of one, you’re more than likely to find a vampire.”

“I see. And you’re in the business of finding vampires, are you?”

“I’m a hunter, Marcellus. Killing the monsters who feed on people, that’s what I do.”

“And what of the monsters who don’t feed on people?” I challenged. “What do you do with them?”

A strange look came into his eyes. A darkness I knew all too well. One that crept up around me whenever I looked his way for just a bit too long while he was sleeping shirtless by the hearth. “I know what I want to do,” he said gruffly. “And I know what I was made to do.”

The strangeness of his words was momentarily lost on me since the tone in them was bewildering enough. “Made?”

His eyes narrowed, like he was trying to decide whether I was lying or not. “I’m a hunter. You get what that means, right?”

“It means you hunt, I assume,” I said dryly.

He laughed in disbelief, his hand cutting through his light hair. “You really don’t know? Marcellus, the hunters are probably one of the few orders in this world that goes back as far as you do. It’s not some job we pick once we’re good on our reading, writing, and arithmetic. We’re born and bred to kill vampires. It’s what my family has done for generations, as far back as anyone can remember. We’re hunters first, people second.”

I was trying to process what he was saying, but the idea seemed so absurd. “An entire family line devoted to wiping out the likes of me?” I couldn’t help the laugh that escaped me at the thought of it.

“You’re not like any other vampire I’ve encountered,” he said quietly. “I knew something was up when you saw my mark and didn’t say anything. Then there’s your heartbeat--”

“Your mark?” I frowned. “The one on your ribs?”

“It’s a brand. It marks us as part of the Hart line, in case we get killed on the job. Happens often enough.”

“Are there really so many vampires that you’ve managed to stay in business for all these generations?”

The line of his brow creased, probably in response to the curiosity in my tone. “If we didn’t keep your population in check, the world would be a very different place than it is now.”

“And these other vampires… they’re all monsters?”

“Every one I’ve met so far. Until you.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I spent a thousand years as one of them,” I murmured.

“But you stopped. For a human.” The disbelief in his words was almost insulting.

“People change.”

“Vampires don’t.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Jonas. If you’re looking for me to beg for my life, it isn’t going to happen. I would welcome death, but nothing so far has worked.”

He looked down at the stake in his hand and seemed almost embarrassed to still be holding it. “A stake to the heart doesn’t kill you?”

I smirked, taking his hand to bring the stake to my chest once more. “You’re more than welcome to put it to the test if you don’t believe me.”

He frowned. “You ran from me.”

“Instinct.” He had a way of making them go haywire as it was.

“And you don’t burn in the sunlight.”

“Am I supposed to?”

“Considering you’re from Boston, I guess not. Just never ran into one like you out here. You’re territorial creatures.” With a heavy sigh, he tossed the stake aside before I could question him further. “I can’t kill you. I’ve been trying to talk myself into it these last two weeks, and I just can’t. I was trained to kill soulless monsters, not sad vampires who live alone and drink sheep’s blood and hum while they make stew.”

My lips pulled into a frown at the corner that wasn’t paralyzed. “I thought you were in the barn.”

“I spend a lot of time watching you when you think I’m not looking. You’re even more pathetic when you think you’re alone.”

“Pathetic?” I probably should have been more offended.

“Yes, pathetic,” he said, taking a step closer. “And I mean that as a compliment.”

“If you’re not going to kill me, then what?” I asked. “Surely the others will wonder where you are.”

“I work independently most of the time. They’re used to not seeing me for a few months on end.”

“And after that?”

Another step. His gaze traveled down to my collarbone before sweeping back up, arresting me with its intensity. “I guess that depends on how mad at me you are.”

“I’m afraid I’m too old to hold onto grudges for long,” I breathed. “A day, a hundred, it’s all the same to me.”

He pinned me up against the door once again, his hands wrapping firmly around my wrists and his body searing hot against mine. There was hunger in his gaze that surely must have rivaled any vampire’s. His lips met mine, and the room spun. Never had a human stirred such lust within me. I was lost to it and not eager to find myself.

Our tongues danced passionately as our clothes found their way to the floor, and I lost track of who had torn what. The loft seemed an unacceptable distance away, but the bearskin rug where I’d first nursed him back to health proved an adequate substitute. He claimed my mouth as his body fell between my legs, and he wrapped his rough hand around my hardened length. His slid up along mine, slick with arousal as his hips bucked against me. Every point of contact was pure, pulsating pleasure, but I needed him inside me.

For a moment, as his hands groped me and his gaze swept over my naked form in breathless wonder, I felt whole, like a living person and not the scarred and broken beast I had been from the moment I first tasted immortal blood. His heat was mine, and when he entered me, I felt his life, his strength, his vitality as my own.

I wrapped myself around him, and the pain, short-lived though it was, made the pleasure all the keener. My fingers delved into the damp locks of his hair, scraping down along his neck and the formidable ridges of his shoulders. He was buried so deep, and yet I needed him closer still. I needed the pain to remind me of what had been mine once, what this mortal man took for granted and yet wielded so skillfully.

“Jonas,” I gasped, willing my trembling hands to remain unchanged. He was so close to unhinging me, and despite the power rippling beneath the surface of his skin as his muscular back arched with each thrust inside me, he was still burdened with the fragility of human life. All it would take was a moment of indulging the monster I’d kept bound and starved for centuries, and he would be gone.

He must have sensed my fear because he pinned my hands against the rug and gazed down at me, his intense expression full of knowing. For a moment, self-consciousness eclipsed my fear of hurting him, and I turned my head. His hand closed around my jaw, and he bid me to look at him before his touch went gentle, stroking the scarred flesh that even Ian had never felt.

Humiliation filled me. This man was perfect. Beautiful. And yet, he was looking at me in all my hideous imperfection as if his desire hadn’t changed in the slightest. As if he needed this union as deeply as I did.

“You are beautiful,” he said in a reverent whisper, his hand traveling down to caress my throat. I swallowed, feeling my heart ready to leap out of my throat at the electricity of his touch.

Was this what it had always felt like? To be alive and bonded wholly with another?

No. I could scarcely remember my mortal days, and only vague flickers of emotion rather than fully painted scenes of the life I had lived, but I knew I had never felt this way before. Not with any of the mortal men who’d been so willing to take my body for a price and leave my name with the coins on my pillow. I had never been wanted by another who filled me with such… life.

It seemed almost too cruel to realize it when it was a phenomenon I could only experience in glimpses through the window of another soul, but when Jonas kissed me, I no longer cared. His heat surged deep within my core, filling me, drowning me in bliss, and I shuddered violently as my own climax came.

It had been so long since I’d found release in the arms of another, and longer still since I’d felt my heart beating so thunderously. A bittersweet pain seized me as I realized that this beauty, too, had to come to an end. The way he held me after made it a little easier to bear, and for the first time in many years, I slept like the dead.