Bare Throat, Naked Hunger =  Paige E. Roberts

To Heal a Wolf
    Scents of damp earth and green trees mixed with faint traces of rabbit, opossum, and squirrel tickle my nose as I run on four paws through the thick undergrowth along a deer path. A fox has marked this area, leaving his strong scent to claim it as his own. The night mist brings every scent out in sharp, vivid richness, but it also clouds sight so that trees are illusory shadows appearing suddenly out of the darkness. Sounds are muffled to cottony, dreamlike silence.

Even when I was a young boy on the reservation, nights when the moon was bright and the mist rose from the ground in ghostly wisps made me want to strip off my clothes and run naked through the woods. We are the brothers of the wolf, my grandfather taught me when I was old enough. We are the skinwalkers, what white men call werewolves.

On this night, I have come to the wild places seeking healing, not of the body, the scars of my last battle are clean and sealed. The wounds I have taken are deeper. I need the peace of the pure forest to cleanse the filth of the hard-edged crowded city from my lungs. I need the honest company of beasts and trees to help me forget the treacherous enemies I have fought for so many nights. I need the scents of life all around me, to forget the cloying stench of death that has filled my nostrils till I choked.

My enemies are the blood drinkers, the vampires who defy death itself, and kill people to live. I have seen friends and enemies alike ripped apart, again and again. Each night's battle is like a poison inside me that makes me more like the monsters I fight. I'm not sure what the difference is anymore; not sure why I have any more right to live than they do after I have killed so many.

With luck, I will encounter creatures who know nothing of war, creatures who kill only for their own survival, and only what they need, the true wolves that live in this wild space. They share the territory with me peacefully, accepting me as one of the pack, a strange kind of brother who wanders in and out of their lives.

One sharp, coppery scent makes my nose twitch as it drifts to me on the rich air. It makes me salivate with a wolf's instincts and draws me forward on quiet paws. Fresh blood. Smells like deer.

I slip out of the trees, one gray ghost among a thousand other silent ghosts of mist. I can see the deer down in a clearing with the silhouette of a single black wolf standing on it, teeth in the throat of the prey. The big buck's legs still kick slightly, as the black wolf holds it down and finishes it, an impressive kill for a lone wolf.

There are no black wolves in my pack. A strange wolf entering our territory is an unusual thing given the dwindling number of true wolves in the wild.

The black wolf looks up as I pad forward, showing my side to indicate to the stranger that I intend no aggression. I sniff the air to get the other wolf's scent. A female is all I can tell. The scent of the fox that marked this area is strong enough to overpower more subtle odors, and a light breeze blows the wrong way. I will have to get closer if I want my nose to tell me more about her.

In Service Immortal

I was kneeling, trembling at her feet, the first time she touched me. I was fifteen. Having been raised as a servant in the royal palace after my parents died when I was eight, I had seen the queen many times, from a distance, always beautiful and unchanging. That day, the queen’s normal attendant was ill, and there were several demanding foreign dignitaries staying in the palace. Everyone was overworked and distracted, but the queen called for her tea, and someone had to bring it to her. A harried looking cook shoved a silver platter in my hand and told me to take it to the queen in the throne room. It was a simple task even a skinny, awkward teen could manage.

I stared fixedly at her beautiful feet in their satin open-toed slippers while holding the tray up in shaking hands. Her delicate toenails were painted shiny scarlet, like fresh blood. Her long shapely legs were almost completely bared by the short ornate skirt of dark silken layers she wore, and the layers of black silk in her long train framed her pale skin. Scarlet silk embroidery that matched her toenails traced intricate flowing designs in the darkness. I had never seen anything so beautiful as her feet and legs, but I was too terrified to look any higher.

It was just the lightest brush of her fingertips with those long perfect scarlet nails on my cheek, but it brought my head up immediately, and I met her eyes. She looked so human up close, aside from her eyes, incredibly beautiful with her long shimmering black hair, and unusual dusky pale skin. Her nose was even a shade crooked as if it had been broken some time in the distant mists of the past. But her yellow cat eyes could make a person think that she had never been human. And looking into those eyes, my already terrified boyhood self nearly fainted with fear. They were the eyes of a predator, and they made me feel very small and very vulnerable.

“Do not fear me, child,” she said, in a voice like silk and fur. “I take only the willing.”

Wolfhound

Bone-deep tired is what I feel when I walk into the little English-style pub in Austin, Texas. I’ve been traveling a zigzag path across the country on my Harley for weeks. Have to get as far away from Los Angeles as possible and hide my tracks. I took out the leader of a powerful wolf pack there and two of his pack mates, after I saw them slaughter a ten-year-old kid. It was idiotic to attack a pack that powerful head on, but I plain lost it. I’ve had to close my eyes to a lot of ugly things, but killing kids messes with my maternal instincts. The rest of the wolf pack are hunting me. Not a literal pack of wolves, as in wild four-footed canines, but the type of vampires that live like wolves, hunting and killing humans like they were sheep.

You see, there are dogs and wolves in the vampire world.

Most vampires are dogs. They’re users, parasites, but generally not killers. Dogs claim “flocks” of humans. They mark their pet humans, keep them clueless with short-term memory wipes and guard them from the wolves and from any other danger.  They serve a useful purpose, even though the humans don’t know it. A lot of seemingly miraculous survivals or claims of guardian angels are really just dog vampires protecting their flocks.

To a wolf vampire, humans are just prey, food, nothing else.  Wolves serve no purpose but their own pleasure. Wolves form packs and claim hunting territories. They don’t have to worry about keeping humans in the dark with mind tricks. They just kill them when they’re done torturing, terrorizing, and drinking them dry.

Sacrifice

Chapter One 

Vampires are real. I found that out the hard way, when I woke up with fangs. Ironic thing is, I’m an undercover cop. I was sent here to catch the demons of the modern world, not become one. My sergeant sent me under deep cover to infiltrate a secret women’s occult club called The Society that was suspected of being involved in the disappearances of several young men. I was looking for psychotic cult serial killers, not vampires.

Now, I’m in, all the way deep, and no way out. I’ve lost contact with my team. They don’t know where I am. Hell, I don’t know where I am. Not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

My foot slips on the edge of the clay roof tiles, and I hang for a moment from the edge, looking down three stories to the manicured lawn full of night-blooming jasmine, lavender and evening primrose that fill the night with their beauty and luxuriant scents. I could probably survive the fall. In fact, it seems likely that I wouldn’t even be injured now that I’m no longer human, but the threat of falling still makes my heart beat faster.  The threat of making too much noise is far worse. If Valeria hears me up here, she’s bound to wonder why I decided to climb the house.

That bitch queen, Valeria, slipped all us new initiates something in the wine at the ritual a week ago, blood I think, hers. She bit all six of us in turn, pierced our skin until we bled and drank from us. At first, I thought the strange eyes and the fangs were just stage magic, but they felt all too real when she bit me. She only took a swallow or two of blood from each of us. Then she left for a moment and returned with wine. It was like a burning poison going down, and yet we craved it at the same time. I remember drinking every drop and sucking at the edge of the glass trying to get more. Then, nothing after that, but darkness and strange confusing dreams. We were all out cold when we were transported here, wherever here is.

I stand up carefully on the peak of a big rambling mansion with electronic security systems and walls around the grounds that make Fort Knox look like a Cracker Jack box. Up here, at least I can study the security a little better. When I tried to scout it at ground level, the light was so blinding, all I could tell was that I wouldn’t be able to get within fifty feet of the walls surrounding the gardens without getting fried by the sun lamps. If I squint, I can just make out the light fixtures themselves now, encased in sturdy steel grates, it looks like. Naturally, a place made to be this secure wouldn’t leave itself open to sabotage by something as simple as a thrown rock.

I let out a sigh of frustration. I can’t see any way over those walls. If I were still human, I could get to the walls and get nothing worse than a light tan, but I wouldn’t have been able to climb them without a grappling hook. For a vampire, it looks like the only way in or out is by helicopter. The power lines are buried deep, and there are no telephones, no Internet connections, no contact whatsoever with the outside world. No back-up here, and no way to get any. I’m on my own.

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