Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Aila
I blurt out the question before giving it much thought.
Theron briefly squeezes my shoulder, maybe as a reminder of his immense strength. It’s a reflex action which shows me he’s thinking how to answer without scaring me away.
“Before you get any ideas, darlin’, there’s a li’l something you should know.
The knife was made from meteorite metal, which was the only kind of iron we could access in those days.
Most of our tools were made of stone, horn, or wood, and our swords were forged from iron that fell from the sky.
As a nomadic tribe, we knew fuck-all about mining quarries.
When we saw a star fall to the ground, the chief would send a team to see if any part of it had survived. ”
That makes me sit up. “My God, Theron, you’re talking about ancient history! So how old are you?”
He can see that I’m teasing, but there is a serious question under all my bravado.
“You’ll have to ask Shadow when the right opportunity presents itself. Out of all of us, he kept track of time best.”
Theron sighs before continuing. Pulling the bedcovers to form a cozy layer of warmth between our skin, I settle down to listen.
I never thought I’d enjoy being intimate and vulnerable with a man again, but here I am, lying in Theron’s arms and loving it. For me, our union is a gamechanger.
Theron might be a vampire, but other than that, he ticks all the boxes when it comes to being the ideal… creature? Thing? I don’t know what to call him because he’s clearly not human.
What the hell, no one’s perfect anyway.
“When it was Heikkinen’s turn to go into the tent, he pretended to be willing. Leaving the seven of us shivering in the snow outside, he made us promise we would run once he killed the queen.”
“Seven? I thought there were only five of you?”
I’m in heaven as one of Theron’s fingers lightly strokes my arm.
“Heikkinen, he was the last to go in. Rundas, Shadow, and me were already changed. And the queen had four other captives she had already enthralled. I don’t think Luna introduced you to Rundas, but you know two of them already. Artim and Jaecar.”
“Um, remind me which one of the Midnight Riders are they again?”
“Artim looks like that dude from The Witcher. Jaecar is the one with short black hair and what looks like a permanent snarl on his face.”
“Got it. They don’t look very friendly. And what about the other two? Where are they?”
“Artim and Jaecar are regular rays of sunshine compared to some of the other Riders, Aila. But try not to get on their bad side, y’know what I’m saying.
The other two Riders chose to go nomad. The female population around Landslide could never support all seven of us.
Don’t feel sorry for them. It’s in our blood to roam. ”
“How did Heikkinen manage to kill the witch queen?” I have so many questions.
This little ecosystem of bloodsuckers has been living under our modern noses for hundreds of years, and no one ever came close to suspecting it.
That’s the problem with drawing such a definitive line between superstitious legends and reality.
No one takes the blurred lines into consideration.
“The creature was so smugly satisfied with her power and beauty that she could not imagine any man fighting back. That was her downfall. As for how Heikkinen managed to pull it off, I have no idea. The moment we heard her scream, we ran.”
I can’t stop trembling when I think of how awful it would have been had the Red Queen managed to catch them. “Didn’t her soldiers try to stop you?”
Theron pauses as he thinks back to the day so long ago. “You have no idea how loud her scream was. Stabbing a dragon through the heart would have sounded less dreadful. All the humans could do was fall to the ground and block their ears.”
“Metal rock concert loud?”
I’m joking, but Theron gets it. “Louder. Like a skyquake shaking the demons out of hell.”
Wincing, I shut my eyes. “That’s a mental picture I’m going to try hard to forget.”
Why does it feel so good when he leans over to brush his icicle-cold mouth over my cheek?
“You know, Aila, even then I hadn’t realized what I had become.
With dawn lurking under the horizon, certain parts of my body were sounding the alarm bells.
We knew we must run as far away as we could before the red sun rose over the mountain.
The snow was still fairly thick on the ground in parts of the forest. That’s where we were headed, to burrow under the snow and hide from the sun.
But do you want to know the real kicker? ”
I’m fascinated with the Midnight Riders’ warped history. If Theron stopped explaining the MC’s origins to me now, I might be tempted to go and ask one of the other scary-ass vampires.
“As starving and frozen as we were, we were not tempted to drink the blood of men.”
I am so confused right now.
“B-but… I thought you said you were vampires?”
Bursting out laughing, Theron enjoys my astonishment. “The appetites of our human flesh carried over into our undead lives. I find only women desirable, darlin’. If I don’t want to hit that, then I’m certainly not going to feed on it!”
“A fussy vampire? Or would you say it’s more like a diet?” The craziness of that makes me wriggle as I laugh, because it’s so bizarre. “So, only hot girls need apply if they want to feel the vampire’s deep kiss?”
Theron is earnest when he replies.
“Taste in all things is subjective. How do I explain it? Okay, take Rundas for example. He prefers to feed off women with a bit of meat on their bones. In his eyes, the women you call slim today are too puny and weak for him. And don’t get me started on how wretched artificial enhancements smell to a vampire.
All those chemicals and plastics under the skin? Satanas perkele! Toxic.”
He’s talking about cosmetic surgery. I don’t suppose a biker gang of ancient vampires understands the social pressures we women feel about our bodies. But it’s comforting to know natural is nice.
“Drugs in the bloodstream are different. We really got to enjoy prowling the city streets at midnight, because drug-blood makes us high without the addiction. Win-win.”
Hilarious.
“Enough about your taste in women, Theron. Get back to what happened next.”
“We never saw Heikkinen or the witch queen again. Only later on did we find out her army had broken up and returned to their own lands. The devastation they left behind was incalculable. The following night, we dug ourselves out of the snow and returned to what was left of our village, taking our four new brethren with us. Finally, we could feed.”
Pulling away from him, I want Theron to know I am revolted.
“Those poor women! They survived a horrendous prehistoric invasion only to be savagely bled dry by their own folk.” Jumping off the bed, I start to pace the floor with the sheet draped around me.
“For someone who was human one day before, am I reaching for the moon to think that you could have shown some compassion?”
My sensitivity has zero impact on the vampire lying on the bed.
“I did warn you about my true nature, darlin’. The Red Queen didn’t select pussies to suck on. My thinking is this: maybe real men taste better.”
“Ugh, you are so cocky sometimes.” I must never forget that a long trail of dead women lies in Theron’s wake. But he’s so gentle and kind to me that it’s easy to forget.
And from the way he’s grinning at me right now, Theron couldn’t care less about my soft-hearted outburst.
“You’ll be pleased to know we learned from our mistakes.
Believe me, it’s much more fun coupling with a woman when she’s very much alive.
A little suck and a big fuck kinda became our motto.
If we wanted more blood, we took it from reindeers, because what we ate when we were human made the blood palatable to us. ”
“I am pleased to hear that.” Flouncing back to the bed, I throw myself down next to him when he lifts his arm to show me he wants me back in its nook. “So, why did you leave?”
“None of the women in our tribe had the secret ingredient we craved. That, plus the fact no one wanted us there anymore. We were monsters of the night, loathed and feared. The shaman cast us out. All we took with us was our father’s names.”
Secret ingredient? Theron makes females sound like his favorite dish on the menu.
It’s like he can read my mind.
“Luna’s aunt, Tempest Aherne, discovered what it was in the blood we vampires were most attracted to: the part of a human’s essence that carries the imprint of red hair with it.
That’s what’s in the—I suppose you could call it beer for lack of a better word—the beer we drink. Artificial red hair fluid.”
“You mean the genes?”
“Yep.” Theron stretches on the bed like a jungle cat, pleased to see that I am understanding him so well. “That’s the word. Our women were blonde. Everyone in our village had fair hair in varying shades of dark to light. We only found the perfect flavor of woman after we traveled south.”
“But you have red highlights in your hair. I noticed that first time I saw you.”
“You are what you eat, sweetheart.”
“Ugh. You can be such a reptile, you know that? And that mountain you mentioned, is that the one under the moon on your t-shirt?”
Pointing to the floor where his t-shirt lies, Theron’s reply is offhand.
“Our MC logo? That’s not the moon, Aila. That’s the sun. It’s a warning.”
“And what warning would that be?” Hey, I’m curious to know more and I might as well make the most of Theron’s laidback confessions.
“Only the sun can save you.”
As horrifying as it might be for me to hear that, I have to admire his candor. I’m trying to imagine what it must have been like for those primitive tribes struggling to make sense of a vampire invasion.
Theron continues.
“To see the world through the lens of a monster’s eyes is not as shocking as you might think.”
Turning on his side, Theron moves his hand over my skin the same as a vision-impaired man might read an exciting book.
“Being part of the original seven was lonely at first. When I was human, I slept in the same lavvu as my family in winter, huddled close to the sod fire, listening to the huffing and stamping of reindeers outside. In summer, we moved with the herd, sleeping under the stars. As monsters, our presence was enough to make every nighttime animal run far away.”
I can’t resist making another sassy comment.
“And humans, too, right?”
Pressing his mouth against my lips with a tempting hunger, Theron uses the tip of his tongue to lick the most sensitive parts. The dimple in my lower lip, the cupid’s bow denting my upper lip. Those forgotten corners of my mouth that I use for smiling.
When he murmurs, the tremor of his gruff voice vibrates my skin.
“Would you run away if you saw me coming, Aila?”
As he says the words, his hand grips me. It’s at that ticklish part of my body where my waist becomes my hips, very sensitive and tender. I can’t help it. I give a little scream, but I’m also laughing because it was so surprising.
“Argh! Theron. You are a fucking monster, you know that? Don’t you dare donkey bite me with your cold hand again!”
He laughs, too. “Donkey bite? Now that’s one you’re going to have to explain to me, darlin’.”
Pulling the covers up, I pretend to be irate, but he can see the twinkle in my eyes.
“That’s what my mom used to call it. She would make a puppet shape with her hand and say the donkey was coming to bite me. I found it hilarious up to the point when I became a tween.”
“Now it is my turn to ask for an explanation, Aila. The strange relationship you had with your mother, I need to know if it’s over now.”
He’s talking about me being with my mom as if I enjoyed the irritating dynamic we had together. How can I make this clearer?
“My mom and me, we’re not codependent, Theron! All these labels do not help. You wanna know why? Because they don’t take all the variables into consideration.”
He’s amused. I can tell from the way his mouth tilts up on one side.
“And what variables might those be?”
Taking a deep breath, I begin making my list.
“Mom was very young when she had me. As a kid, I couldn’t remember much of my father.
Maybe we were searching for a daddy figure.
Or perhaps we just needed a man to take the wheel, you know?
But this much we have learned… It takes a very special kind of man to stay with a woman through thick and thin. ”
“Is that Ben?”
I am slightly distracted by the way he curls my hair around his finger. The tugging feeling is so lovely.
“Um, yes, I sure hope so. It’s early days. But to say that I am relieved not to have to be the most stable relationship in my mom’s life anymore is an understatement!”
He shifts closer to me, close enough for me to smell the faint scent of iron on his skin.
“And what about your stable relationship, Aila? Now that you don’t have your mother, who do you have?”
When he smiles, a tiny part of me is riveted and revolted to see the razor-sharp points of his canines exposed. Those teeth are the least human part of Theron, so I suppose that makes them the most monstrous.
Fascinated, I reach up and touch one.
“Ouch!” The pointed end of the tooth pricks me as easy as a hot knife sliding through butter. A droplet of ooey-gooey blood seeps out like a glistening ruby.
Catching my hand, Theron raises it to his mouth—and sucks.
I hold my breath, waiting for the crunching sound as my small fingerbone snaps. But it never comes. When he drops my hand, the bite mark is gone, with only a lingering sting of pain to remind me what happened.
“Who do you have, Aila?”
He knows I don’t like the answer, because we both know what it is.
If I don’t stay with Theron, I will have no one.
I refuse to accept that.
“Don’t try to dominate me, Theron. I value my freedom more than you realize.”
That wicked laugh of his again. How can someone be so scary and charming at the same time?
“If that’s how you feel about it, darlin’, why don’t you come on and show me who’s the boss in your bedroom?”
He is so gorgeous, he doesn’t have to ask me again. Climbing on top of him and straddling his hips, I show Theron how deeply alluring I find every thrusting inch of him.