Chapter Four

Fletch

Nights of dreaming of things he did not fully understand, and now he’d had her in the flesh, her dress sliding through his hands and her lips coaxing the most exquisite, intense feelings from his body, feelings he didn’t know he could have outside of his most torturous dreams.

Her lips had obliterated his father from his mind, filling it instead with blissful nothing, nothing but the desire to have more nothing, more oblivion within the world of his body and her body. He would have joined the two of them in the frigid cold of the snow if he had been able to and had known how. But he’d been content to drown in her kisses as though she held the secret to every worldly pleasure trapped beneath her skin.

Her breasts had pressed against his chest, and he’d been vaguely conscious that she must have been able to feel his erection. Part of him had thought he ought to be embarrassed, maybe even ashamed, that he’d moved it against her so blatantly, but she hadn’t seemed to mind. Instead, she’d pulled herself closer, passing the fullness of her knowledge to him through each kiss.

All of a sudden, she’d tightened her grip in his hair and jerked him back. The cold that filled the space between them had reminded him who he was and what his job was this night.

Then Ivory had grown fangs. They’d glinted in the diffused moonlight off the snow. “So it is you.”

“It’s you,” he replied as the mark of the cross steamed on her breast.

His horror had been too great for word or expression.

That he had kissed the woman whose wanton lips were filthy with the blood of those she’d killed. That he had fallen prey to her deception, just like the other men she had forced him to put in the ground and sanctify in the wake of her desecration. That for a few minutes, she had made him a party to her corruption.

He would see to it that this momentary lapse was rectified with her ashes.

Fletch had grabbed the silver cross around his neck and held it up. She had released him and backed away, hissing and bearing her teeth like a viper, and just as deadly.

“Stay back, devil spawn! You murderer!”

“You’re the murderer, you son of a bitch,” she’d snarled.

Fletch blinked.

“How am I the murderer?” he asked. “You’re the one that drank deep of their blood and killed them.”

“I killed them so that they could rise up again,” Ivory replied. “So that they could live.”

“You don’t live,” Fletch spat. “You’re dead, demon. You are a beautiful corpse, but a corpse nevertheless.”

“You didn’t seem to mind,” Ivory said, still crouched, her fingers curled as though tipped with claws.

“I freed them from your damnation.” Fletch drew the stake from his pocket. “I stopped the vampiric infection from spreading.”

“You robbed me of my mate!” she screamed. And she lunged in spite of the cross he still held in his hand, the cross that had burned its shape upon the exposed portion of her breasts. The cross that was supposed to completely repel her. She reached beyond it and closed her hands around his throat. “You killed him! You killed them!”

Startled by the ineffectiveness of his cross—despite the burning—Fletch thrust the stake forward to impale her heart. His surprise impaired his aim, and it plunged between the ribs on the right side of her chest. Useless.

And if he were honest, it wasn’t just her strangling him and bypassing the shield of faith that startled him. He had seen pain in her eyes, marring her lovely face, but it wasn’t from the pain of the cross burning her flesh. He had caused her emotional pain.

‘It is a trick. The devil will lie to you.’

Whatever Warner might have had to say about it, it didn’t feel like a trick, any more than her kiss had felt like a trick. When he’d fought against her, he’d called her the demon she was, declaring her as his spiritual enemy. When she’d tried to kill him, she’d explained her actions as revenge, not in the name of her Unholy Father but in the name of…love? He knew she had killed those men, but she thought he had killed them by making them remain dead?

The pain he saw in her eyes was that of a grieving widow alone, not of a soldier in a vast, conspiring army. He had seen his share of grieving widows—he recognized it in her immediately.

The simplicity of her fury baffled him.

His stake didn’t pierce her heart, but she stumbled back. It wouldn’t kill her. Even so, being impaled had to hurt like hell.

Fletch took the opportunity to gulp in the sharp, cold air. It knifed down his throat, but his vision rapidly cleared. While Ivory was still recovering from the stake in her chest, Fletch kicked it farther in with his heavy boot. Ivory screamed obscenities at the sky. Blood spurted out to stain the snow around her, and she fell back into a small snowdrift. Her head narrowly missed an iron fence spike. Ivory jerked and her face twisted as she whimpered and clutched at the handle of the carved stake.

Bloody tears seeped from the corners of her eyes. Against his better judgment, and in spite of all the signs that she was the vampiress he sought, he hated to see a woman cry.

He batted her hands away from the stake handle, grasped it and yanked it out. Another fountain of blood spurted from the through-and-through hole. To his horror, he saw her insides recreating themselves and sewing back together, writhing like mealworms.

“You half-cocked son of a goat,” Ivory wheezed, floating herself upright. Her eyes glowed red in the twilight-like darkness of the snowy cemetery. “When I kill you, you’ll wish I’d have given you the gift of my life, what you call damnation, just to numb the pain, because I’ll make it slow.”

She swiped at him with her nails like claws, revealing still-blistered flesh on her palms as she left bloody lines on his cheek and neck. Any effect that the stake had on her was subsumed under her determination to avenge the salvation of her men. Her third swipe tore through his shirt and caught on the chain of his cross. She hissed again as her palm connected to the cross.

“You see,” Fletch said, “God has condemned you with the symbol of his strength.”

“And if I shoved it down your throat,” Ivory shot back, “would your death mean that God condemned you?”

He caught her wrist as she tried to claw him again, then her other wrist. He kicked her legs out from under her and tried to force her to the ground, but she merely floated her legs in front of her to kick at his stomach. He shouted and stumbled, but he kept his footing and didn’t let go of her wrists, so he dragged her back with him until he backed into a thin tree.

She raised her hands above his head, trapping both of their arms against the trunk and pressing her body against his as she ran her tongue over the bloody lines she’d made on his face. The coiled anger that had made her body rigid and immovable to him released. She turned soft, relaxing against him, in spite of the burn of his cross against her chest again. She moaned as she traced another line of blood.

Fletch tightened his hold on her wrists, but he didn’t try to force their arms down or her arms behind her back. His desire for her hadn’t abated when she had revealed herself to be the demon, and now, with her skin warming from the taste of blood—his blood, he thought blearily—he was more aware than ever of her body against his and how much he still wanted it.

‘I told you to watch out for the she-devils, boy. They’ll ensnare you so easily. Are you just going to let her beat you like this?’ His burdened conscience berated him in the voice of his father, as it had always done without fail, even in the years before his father’s death. Yet he felt paralyzed.

She moved from the seeping beads of blood on his face down to the shallow wounds on his neck. They stopped stinging under her ministrations. Instead, the wounds tingled like bubbles under his skin, water on a hot skillet. The newly cooked scent of her flesh between them smelled like smoked meat, but it didn’t seem to cause her anything more than discomfort, because she burrowed deeper into the crook of his neck. She ran the flat of her hot tongue up the cord of his neck.

The smooth length of her fangs slid over the skin in a sensual caress disproportionate to the gesture. His knees almost buckled, and his cock felt harder and hotter than an iron rod out of the fire.

The first pricks of her fangs, though, galvanized him into action. He abruptly released her wrists and shoved her away. Fletch slid the stake out of his sleeve where he’d stored it while warding off her blows.

“Unnatural whore of the devil, I’ll kill you before you can get your teeth into me,” Fletch said. “The Lord has ways you cannot fight. Your evil burns under the symbols of our Savior, and I fear no evil, demon.”

“Then you should still fear me.” Ivory shed her cloak. She’d clearly worn it for pretense only. The cold didn’t touch her. “How can you call me evil?”

“You’re a demon,” Fletch said in disbelief. Does she not even know what she is?

“Just because I can’t walk into a church and your silly spells and symbols hurt me? Because I cannot stand the sun’s rays?” Ivory asked. “Many a man walks through our swinging doors who wouldn’t dare spin his spurs in a church, and ain’t none of our women welcome in the pews, although the Reverend’s taken a few in the parsonage. Besides, many a man has walked through our doors burning and blistering from the sun’s rays. Does that mean the good Lord simply hates men less?”

“You’re talking nonsense, woman,” Fletch said. He advanced and she circled about him, keeping him at a distance. As he brandished his stake to distract her, he slipped his hand into his pocket and opened the holy water container, preparing for just the right moment. “You know your own nature, killer of men.”

“They wouldn’t have stayed dead if you hadn’t consecrated them into ash, you bastard,” Ivory said. “In the ten years I’ve been in this town, the only men I’ve killed were the ones you kept in the ground. I keep telling you, you’re the killer. Now hold still. I have one more man to put in the ground—and this one’ll stay dead, too. If you only want to rise with St. Peter’s trumpet, I’ll make sure of it.”

She bared her teeth again and flew at him. He yanked the holy water from his pocket and made a sign of the cross over her. The blessed water hit her in the face and chest and steamed. She reeled back head over heels. He dropped the bottle and grabbed her skirts before she could get out of reach and pulled her back.

Kicking and squirming, she fought blind—the water had splashed in her eyes. But her skirts were an added hindrance, cushioning her attempts to strike him, and he managed to get his arms around her, her back to his chest, one arm pinning both of hers, and his stake poised above her heart, denting the generous flesh of her breast.

“I’m going to send you back to the hell you came from,” Fletch said in her ear.

“That’s not where I come from,” Ivory snapped. Her eyes still bled tears, but the red glow in them was blocked by what looked like cataracts. “I’m from Boston. I’m a vampire, but I’m no more evil than you.”

“The holy water purifying your unholy flesh with fire suggests otherwise.”

“Damn it, all I wanted was a man of my choosing instead of a man who chose me. Sorry if that pisses in the Lord’s whiskey. You’re the one who gets off on your holy war, killer. Don’t think I can’t feel your ‘righteous anger’ against me right now.” Ivory squirmed harder, but his weapons had weakened her. “You don’t understand vampires, but I understand men.”

“I may be a sinner, ma’am,” Fletch said, “but I don’t let that get in the way of my duty. If you stop wriggling like a worm on a hook, I’ll make it quick.”

“No. Please,” she whispered, revealing fear for the first time as he pushed the stake a little deeper against her chest.

Fletch experienced a twinge of reflexive pity, but the softness of her plea also made his cock twitch in his trousers. She was helpless, completely at his mercy, begging him for her undeath. It made him feel powerful. He had conquered his first vampire, the scourge of the town, proven his devotion to his faith…and it made him feel good, but in all the ways he associated with bad, unclean things.

He was about to plunge the stake into her heart and rid himself of both the vampire and his confusion when he heard voices coming their way.

Fletch flipped the stake back into his sleeve and covered Ivory’s mouth, dragging her against him away from the open land of the cemetery and into a thorny, scratching thicket of winter-dead bushes.

‘You have a sacred duty, boy, but most men won’t understand that. You have to keep the spirit world a secret. No one can know, or they’ll run you out of town and leave themselves vulnerable to the powers of darkness.’

The Reverend laughed his way down the road, swigging from a frosted amber bottle and accompanied by two young women in scarlet. His booming laugh rent through the quiet night. The two women laughed with him, flirting and urging him on with their high-pitched girlish voices. One of them squealed when he pinched her buttocks.

Fletch clenched his teeth with old anger at the unrepentant hypocrisy so close to the seat of the Lord’s throne, by a man who ought to speak the Word of God and only spouted lies masquerading as truth. As the Reverend and his whores passed by the cemetery, Fletch stood himself and Ivory back up and snuck back to his small home. He’d already invited her in, stammering fool that he’d been, so they passed over the threshold easily enough. A fire and gas lamp still burned—warmth and light to guide him back home after his hunt, although it turned out he hadn’t had far to go.

As soon as the door closed, Ivory ran her boots up the wood and used it as leverage to push Fletch back. In spite of her injuries, she was still stronger than most men, and she caught him by surprise after being so compliant with the stake against her heart.

They crashed into Fletch’s work table. It was sturdy enough to stand Fletch’s weight and Ivory’s strength, but Fletch grunted and coughed when the edge of the table shoved into his lower back. He’d have a nasty bruise later. The flowering of pain loosened his hold. Ivory took immediate advantage, whirling around and pushing him facedown against the table.

He tried to reach behind him while his cheek pressed against the smooth grain of the table, but all he could do was scrabble his fingertips against her skirts.

He’d had her. If he had just taken a risk that he’d be seen destroying her, Fletch would have had her head cut off by now.

Now she took the stake from his sleeve and tossed it to the other end of the room. Then she raided his pockets with fleet, delicate fingers. He heard her hiss when she touched the garlic and the ritual book, but she endured the momentary pain for the security of getting them as far from her as possible. It was only a small house, so they still landed rather close when she threw them, but Fletch could no longer reach them as long as she pinned him to the table. Her legs and hips lined up with his, pressing up against his buttocks almost like a man to a whore, and Fletch trembled with anger that she’d made a woman of him, especially since he was still aroused by her body and the fight.

“Now that I have your attention,” Ivory said, “it’s time for us to talk. But first, I need your blood. You hurt me real bad, Fletch, and it’s time to fix what you did to me. I also want to show you that this is all I do. You kill more of God’s creatures for your food than I. Now,” she added, rubbing his back and leaning over him, although she didn’t give him an inch of leeway to slip out from under her, “you can fight all you want, but I think you’ll like it.”