Chapter 5
FIVE
Kit
Just who the fuck did this werewolf think he was?
Kit hadn’t expected to see him—Quin—in human form. And he certainly hadn’t expected him to look like that. Tall, thick with muscle all over, sky-blue eyes, and styled dark hair pushed off his face with a beard to match. Kit supposed that Quin grew the beard to cover up a weak chin.
Kit was kidding himself. Quin probably had a perfect square jaw under the scruff. Of course he would. Because the werewolf was all of Kit’s fantasy men combined into one.
It was horrendous. Kit had never wanted to bite anyone more in his life. He’d had to restrain himself during their entire conversation.
And Quin’s voice. Kit never would have put the melodic Welsh accent up there on his list of attractive accents, but it stole first place with a few words from Quin. Deep but soft, his voice matched Kit’s overall impression of him as a gentle giant.
The longer Kit stood there, with Quin bumbling over his words, the more Kit wanted to like him.
But he couldn’t.
Not only was Quin a werewolf, which made him dangerous, but he’d tracked Kit down. Sure, Kit’s guts told him that Quin was no real threat, and Kit was almost certainly faster and stronger than him when in human form, but Kit had a rule.
Don’t let anyone in.
Bad enough that Kit stopped to have an entire conversation. He should have run away. Kit cursed himself for being nice to Quin when he was in his werewolf form. Kit’s own damn fault for inviting trouble into his life.
But now he had the problem of an overfamiliar werewolf in his new home.
Kit moved around a lot, but he liked where he lived now.
He had the sea. The weather was milder than on the islands.
He could travel around more easily, and the steady stream of tourists ensured a varied diet. So, he didn’t want to leave.
Which meant the werewolf had to be the one to move.
Kit ran far enough from Quin to stop and take stock of the situation. He didn’t have many options. At least this time, nothing stopped Kit from asking for help.
Decision made, he doubled back on himself to get his car and head towards St Andrews.
The massive electric-blue Mercedes-Benz handled the country roads well and was stupidly expensive enough to have made a dent in the money he’d inherited from Lawrence—once he’d reflected and realised that refusing it only hurt himself.
The roads were never busy at night, so the journey didn’t take long.
He parked close to the converted old church that the vampires in the territory considered home.
Kit had visited it once before, when he’d first arrived on the east coast. A second floor had been added to the building, which Kit had been told was full of bedrooms, but the lower level retained most of the original features, minus the pews and with the addition of plenty of leather furniture.
Kit didn’t know why vampires were so drawn to leather.
Perhaps it was easier to clean than any other natural material, but for whatever reason, it seemed the go-to aesthetic of choice.
Some vampire must have started the trend, and the rest of them had gone along with it.
The St Andrews vampire community was populated by American vampires getting in touch with their so-called Scottish roots (sick-inducing), English vampires that considered themselves slumming it (also sick-inducing), and Scottish vampires of the sort descended from royalty (especially sick-inducing).
Insufferably posh, each and every one of them.
Kit wondered if he should wear a sign on his shirt proclaiming himself as a member of the working class.
He might have been wealthy thanks to his share of Lawrence’s holdings—the portfolio so large that it made millionaires of every one of Lawrence’s dozens of creations—but Kit didn’t delude himself into thinking the nouveau riche would ever be welcomed.
A vampire, whose physical age looked to be around mid-thirties, caught sight of him as he entered the church. Her eyes lit up, and Kit thought she was about to subvert his every expectation.
Instead, she exclaimed, “Oh, aren’t you adorable!”
Kit was so over being adorable. He sped over to her, stopping right in front of her face. Too close to be considered friendly. “Who taught you to speak to your elders like that?”
Her body may have appeared older than his, but there was no way she’d been a vampire for longer than a couple of years.
She still hadn’t shed some clear signs of her youth: a chest that fell and rose with unnecessary breaths, movement just this side of too careful—telegraphing that she wasn’t yet comfortable with her new strength—and the slight smell of something uniquely human. Kit had decades on her.
“Oh!” She took a step back. “I’m sorry.”
“Make sure you are,” Kit said, though he wore his sweetest smile.
She cocked her head, studying his face as if to deduce whether he was insulting her. She concluded he was and flounced off.
A voice sounded from behind him. “Kit, darlin’, don’t you look delectable this fine evenin’.”
Kit pasted on a polite smile before he turned. “Conroy,” he said calmly. Recreated during the American Civil War, Conroy led the St Andrews vampires. Judging by the makeup of his creations, Kit could guess which side he’d been on.
Despite this, Conroy maintained a devoted following in his little corner of the world.
It boggled Kit’s mind that Conroy’s collection of young and attractive vampires lusted after someone who thought the height of fashion was a magenta silk cravat.
Conroy even matched it to the bow that held back his shoulder-length brown hair.
“Other than to insult my dear Kezia, to what do we owe this visit?” Conroy asked, teeth gleaming. His accent sounded like a poor impression of Colonel Sanders. Kit was convinced it was exaggerated. Another vampire clung to Conroy like a limpet.
“I wasn’t sure if you knew a werewolf has moved into the territory,” Kit said, careful not to sound too accusatory.
The female vampire gasped, her talons growing and digging into Conroy’s arm.
“Hush, Tati,” Conroy said, prying her fingers away before addressing Kit. “A werewolf? Here?”
Kit had no patience for such dramatics. “Yes.”
“Where specifically?”
“Anstruther.”
Conroy pursed his lips. “Ah. Not much I can do if it’s not in my town. Has it caused any bother?”
“He chased me through the woods the other night,” Kit admitted.
“Ooh, kinky.”
“He was a wolf at the time,” Kit said, nonplussed.
“Hence my observation,” Conroy said with a smirk.
Kit bit his tongue, ignoring his instinct to stoop to Conroy’s level. “So, you aren’t going to do anything about it?”
Conroy spread his arms, Tati getting shunted to the side. “What do you want me to do about it?”
“Tell him to leave?”
Conroy gave Kit a condescending smile that Kit wanted to punch off his moustachioed face. “You can always move into the nest if you’re feeling threatened.”
Tati narrowed her eyes at Kit, as if sensing competition, but Kit held no desire to be another of Conroy’s countless lovers.
The vampire had tried it on with him when Kit first came to town and, as per law, declared his presence to the closest authority.
Conroy, for all his sleaze, was somewhat handsome, moustache notwithstanding.
But Kit wanted to have the sole affection of whoever he was with.
It had even been apparent with Lawrence.
When you’d been the sole target of someone’s attention for twenty years, it rankled when they picked out a shiny new toy.
Kit had not only watched Lawrence gear up to take Shaun, but had been forced to participate in finding his own replacement.
And then Kit had faced a final choice: run…or die.
“I’ll be fine, Conroy,” he said.
“Kit, you should stay. Eat with us. We have a midnight tour coming in soon. Plenty on offer.” Conroy gestured to the surrounding area. “Lots of entertainment.”
Conroy’s idea of fun was the opposite of Kit’s.
For easy pickings, the St Andrews nest ran something akin to the ghost tours of Edinburgh, but instead of ghosts, they claimed to be a coven of vampires.
It was bold and undeniably risky, but they’d been getting away with it for decades, with no humans becoming any the wiser.
“No, thanks,” Kit demurred.
“Maybe you should stay—you look positively underfed,” Tati said, flashing her fangs.
Kit ground his teeth together to stop his fangs from dropping. “I’m good,” he said, shooting her a glare. “I suppose I’ll have to deal with the werewolf myself.”
Without waiting for a further response, Kit stormed out of the church. He heard their laughter following him, but he ignored it. All the territory leaders were the same: narcissistic arseholes who surrounded themselves with fawning sycophants.
The territories had been established as a way of maintaining population control back at the advent of the Industrial Revolution, with lines drawn on a map and land given to the most influential vampires of the day.
As technology ushered in a new era of humanity, one that questioned and innovated and grew at a scale unseen by generations beforehand, it became more difficult for vampires to hide in the shadows.
The future territory leaders then banded together to get rid of the old guard.
They’d taken down the ancient vampires who’d roamed the earth for hundreds and thousands of years, determined to wipe the slate clean.
So many lifetimes had passed for the ancients that they’d lost any trace of the humans they’d once been.
They existed only to take what they wanted from whomever they liked. It had been a necessary culling.
If only the territory leaders had culled Lawrence, too.