âYou win tonight,â she said. There was always tomorrow night.
âSo whatâs my prize?â he asked.
His prize? If he expected what she had just denied the wolves, she would slay him right here and now, and be damned if she fell to her death.
âI canât bite you,â he said, dashing his tongue along one fang, âbecause youâve got that damned collar. Too sharp. Though painâgives me a thrill. But I can do this.â
And he kissed her. Hard and urgent, forcing his sweet breath into her mouth. The vampire persisted, pressing his body against her knee, challenging her to hurt him, to deny him this stolen prize.
Training had not covered this sort of attack. She could feel his fangs pressing into her lip, but not cutting. Insanity! Never would sheâ
Suddenly the hard crush of their mouths softened. Lark dropped her knee. And like a moth with tattered wings surrendering to the flame, she granted the vampire his prize.
MICHELE HAUF has been writing romance, action adventure and fantasy stories for more than twenty years. Her first published novel was Dark Rapture. France, musketeers, vampires and faeries populate her stories. And if she followed the adage âwrite what you know,â all her stories would have snow in them. Fortunately, she steps beyond her comfort zone and writes about countries she has never visited and of creatures she has never seen.
Michele can be found on Facebook and Twitter and at michelehauf.com. You can also write to Michele at PO Box 23, Anoka, MN 55303, USA.
Smoke billowed and clouded the halls and rooms in the Levallois pack complex. Werewolves, in both animal form and human form, retreated from what had once been their sanctuary.
The alarm sounded a droning cry but didnât coerce the pack leader to work more swiftly. Remy Caufield, pack principal, stuffed a valise with valuable financial records taken from the safe, along with other documents he was unwilling to leave behind. Sure, the safe was fireproof. But he could not guarantee he would be first on the scene following the fireâs devastation to claim what was inside the safe.
The door to his office slammed open, and thinking the flames had raged this far, he held up the leather valise in a protective manner to block his face.
What stood in the doorway was not flame or a fellow werewolf.
The haggard creature who bounded into the office, right leg dragging limply, and wild black hair tangled about his head so only his eyes showed, was the packâs pet vampire.
Well, pet defined the man ironically. Theyâd had the longtooth for countless months, and had used him well. The thing just would not die. It had become a sort of experiment to see how long the creature would cling to life. He had defeated every opponent put to him in the circular steel cage kept in the compound basement. And remarkably, the UV sickness, while it maddened the creature, only seemed to make him stronger in the ring.
The werewolves had made a mistake last night. Remy hadnât known the vampire theyâd matched against this creature was a phoenix. The phoenix was a powerful vampire who decades ago had survived a witchâs blood attack, which had once been poisonous to vampires. Drinking his opponent to death must have infused their petâs blood with the nearly indestructible phoenixâs blood.
Domingos was his name. Maybe. Remy didnât care.
âYouâve gotten loose?â he asked stupidly.
The vampire slapped his filthy hands on the desk before him and growled, showing his bloody fangsâblood that could only have come from Remyâs men.
âYou will pay for this!â the creature raged. âI will return!â
Remy scoffed, but his heart cringed. The vampireâs eyes were black as hell and yet bright, so frighteningly bright. He looked into a strangely lucid madness.
âServe me your worst,â Remy said bravely. âYou wonât make it beyond the flames.â
The vampire grinned maniacally. For a second Remy thought he would leap the desk and attack. But instead the longtooth grabbed the office chair and tossed it toward the window. Glass shattered.
Leaping to the windowsillâthey were three stories up from the concrete courtyardâDomingos turned and saluted. âI will kill every wolf in the Levallois pack.â
And then he jumped.
Remy slapped the valise to his chest, knowing he would see the vampire again.
One month later
The pack complex had not been rebuilt after the fire. The pack principal, Remy Caufield, had created a sort of family home in an eighteenth-century town house at the edge of the sixteenth arrondissement, close to the forested Bois de Boulogne.
Or so Lark had been briefed an hour earlier by her supervisor.
The Order of the Stake tendered a fragile relationship with werewolves. Knights in the Order exclusively slayed vampires, but there was nothing to keep them from tracking and killing a werewolf should it prove a threat to mortals. The Order, populated exclusively by mortals, allied with none from the paranormal nations.