Vampire Mate: BBW Paranormal Romance (12 page)

He cut her off, his tone firm.
“No buts.”

Her smile was sad. “No
buts. Just...us.”

There was something she was
not telling him. He frowned down at her, but she buried her face in
his chest and held him tight. “Charlene, what are you planning
to do?”

“
What do you mean?”
she asked, her voice muffled.

Glenn held her shoulders and
forced her to look at him. “Sideous Kron,” was all he
said.

“
I'm going to kill that
demon.”

Glenn released her in shock.
“Kill a demon lord? You?”

“
Yes. Me.” She
jutted her chin, her eyes flashing. “You don't think I can do
it?”

“
Oh, I think you can do
anything you set your mind to. I've seen you, as a human, barely
thirty yet working inhuman hours and hardly sleeping at all, and
still have the energy to laugh and love. You brought up your sister
so well. You did a great job, Charlene. Charlotte is happy and
well, because of you.”

She started, blinking rapidly.
“You...you know Charlotte. Is my sister...is she...?”

Glenn nodded. She deserved to
know. “Charlotte is now a PAC Enforcer. She is also the PAC
Alpha's mate. Lucas Rieve, the Alpha, loves her with all his heart
and protects her with his life.”
I
'll
do the
same for you, Charlene.

She sat there, looking dazed
for a long while. Slowly, her features softened and she smiled, her
joy and pride shining in her eyes.

“
Charlotte...I'm so
glad, so, so happy. And so relieved,” she whispered. “The
Alpha will protect her.”

Again, Glenn could sense a
thought and a plan forming and firming up in her head. But again,
she clamped up when he questioned her.

“
Nothing. I'm not
planning anything, Glenn,” she said, giving him a doe-eyed,
innocent look.

He was about to interrogate
her further when she squinted at him. “Wait. You know my
age,” she said in an accusing tone. “You know that I'm,
well, thirty, in human years. Demon-wise, I'm not sure myself. But,
yeah. You know how old I am.”

Glenn shrugged. “Yeah.”

“
But I don't know how
old you are.”

At this, Glenn grinned.
“Would you like to guess?”

“
Okay.” She
drummed her fingers. “I'm guessing...you are my age—times
ten.”

“
And multiply that by
three,” he finished.

She gasped. “You're...nine
hundred years old! But you look like you're in your early thirties.
I'd say you look barely a day over thirty-three!”

“
What can I say? I age
well,” he said smugly.

When she punched his arm, he
laughed and pulled her to him. Leaning back against the pillows, he
rested his cheek against her temple and sighed. She was his mate,
and she deserved to know all about him. About his life and his deeds
and misdeeds before he became a vampire.

He began to speak quietly, “I
was turned into a vampire when I was thirty-three years old. I was
the only son of the village chief, a merrymaker by day, a vampire
hunter by night. Don't be mistaken. I didn't hunt vampires to
protect my village. Nothing quite so noble. I hunted the vamps for
sport, for the thrill of the chase and the kill. And sometimes, the
lay. I bedded some female vamps, and boasted about my exploits and
conquests.”

He felt Charlene tense in his
arms, and he hastened to add, “That was a long time ago,
Charlene. Long before I met you.”

She winced a little. “Long
before I was even born,” she mumbled.

“
I won't deny that I was
a rake. I took my fun and my pleasure where I could. In my free
time, in between tumbles in the hay with the village maids, I
fashioned all sorts of weapons for hunting and slaying vampires.
Sometimes, some of the village men and boys joined me in my hunts,
and we turned it into some sort of contest.”

“
I...didn't know you
were a vampire slayer,” she said, turning to look at him in
wonderment.

“
I was. I was many
things. An irresponsible thrill-seeker, and a rake as well, which
was why I never married and sired young. I was just after a good
time, the excitement and the thrill. I guess vampire hunting allowed
me to experience the adrenalin rush and work off my excess energy,”
he winked at her.

“
You slept with many
women then,” she said, arching an eyebrow at him.

“
Yes. But they didn't
mean anything. We had fun, but I knew and the ladies knew that their
future was not with me. I would not make a good husband. Who wanted
a man who chased skirts and vampires?” he said wryly.

Charlene settled back down
beside him, and he felt some of the tension leave her body. He ran
his hand up and down her arm soothingly. “That was a long,
long time ago, Charlene. When I was still human. And I've been a
vampire far longer than I've been a human,” he said softly.

She nodded, letting that fact
sink in.

He paused, closing his eyes to
savor the feel of her soft, curvy body against him. “I wasn't
a good man. I...did things on the spur of the moment, on impulse,
and never stopped to consider the consequences.”

“
What do you mean?”

“
Some of the vampires we
hunted were harmless. They lived solitary, quiet lives, feeding off
the blood of animals in the forests. But there were nests of
vampires that terrorized the villagers. These vampires weren't
content with the villagers' offerings of livestock, and lusted for
human blood. They demanded a human be given to them every seven
days. If not, they would swoop into the village and help themselves.
Those vampires were violent and brutal, and—I stirred up a
hornet's, or in this case, a vampires' nest with my recklessness.”

Glenn exhaled heavily. It was
his burden to bear, but she was his mate. She had a right to know.

“
My village was
massacred because of me.”

At that, Charlene gasped and
pushed herself up to stare searchingly into his face. “What
happened?” she whispered at last.

“
I slept with a female
vamp, a Master vampire's mate.”

“
You did what!”

Glenn put up both his hands.
“I didn't know. I swear I didn't know she was his mate! I was
human, young, foolish. I...did the unforgivable, I know. When the
Master vampire found out, he ordered his vampires to slaughter the
entire village, spare no woman and child. We tried to fight them,
down to the last man. I was the last man. And I refused to die.”

Glenn closed his eyes,
recalling the gruesome sight of all the dead, mutilated villagers.
He swallowed painfully and went on, “Maybe it was a desperate
fight for survival, to save my own skin. I'm not sure what came over
me, but I managed to lop off the heads of eleven screeching vampires
before I was overpowered by the Master himself. Defiant to the last,
I told him to just kill me, get it over with. But on hindsight, I
think I shouldn't have uttered those words. From what he did to the
innocent, defenseless villagers, I should have known that he had a
sadistic streak a mile wide. He would make sure that I would be
trapped in my own living hell forever. Since I wanted to die so
badly, he saw to it that I couldn't die. At least not as a human.
Instead of killing me, he turned me. I became one of the monsters
I'd hunted.”

Glenn sighed and laughed
bitterly. “I wonder if vampires can be hunted to extinction,”
he mused. It was a joke, a bad joke but still.

After such a long, conflicted
existence, he had seen almost everything. He saw that there was more
ugliness than beauty in the world, that it was easier to be cruel
than to be kind. He saw violence and vengeance in all their
different forms and guises, repeated by different actors through the
ages in an endless cycle like a serpent swallowing its own tail.

And he had learned to make
light of his own existence. It was the only way. Laughter was the
best antidote to the poison of life. He was the butt of his own
joke. A vampire hunter turned vampire.

Charlene reached out to
squeeze his hand. But she didn't say a word, just waited for him to
carry on. She was listening intently, wanting to know everything
about him, about her vampire mate.

“
Only Master vampires
can turn someone into a vampire,” he told her. “Ordinary
vamps just drink, or kill. Do you know how a Master vampire turns
another into a vampire?”

When she shook her head, he
said slowly, “By draining the person's blood, and forcing the
person to drink his blood. Yes, even after he drained me, it took
three vampires to hold me down and force my mouth open while he
pressed his slit wrist to my mouth and poured his blood down my
throat.”

She pressed trembling fingers
to her lips, stifling a cry. “Oh Glenn,” she whispered,
the pain evident in her voice.

He hugged her to him. “Maybe
I should thank the bastard. If he hadn't turned me, I wouldn't have
met you.”

“
But he is no longer
around, is he?” she said shrewdly.

He smiled at her.
Clever
Charlene.

“
No, he's not,”
Glenn answered. “Shortly after I was turned, the Great War
broke out. I jumped at the chance to enlist in the vampire army to
get away from my Master. But I should have known that he had let me
get away on purpose. He was just playing with me, letting me think I
had escaped. I was a good soldier. I obeyed the vampire generals
and fought well, but when my Master finally swooped into my army
camp, demanding my return, the generals had to let me go. My Master
humiliated and punished me in front of the whole camp. I was angry,
filled with hate and blood lust. When he was about to tear out my
heart, I exploded with wrath and pain. I killed him on the spot,
right in front of my generals and all the troops. A vampire became a
Master vampire by taking out his Master, so there I was, a Master
vampire in charge of his vile coven. I didn't want anything to do
with it. I sent all the vamps in the coven on their separate ways,
and remained in the army. After my little display of violent rage, I
was swiftly promoted through the ranks. Vampires are funny
creatures. I should have been locked up, labeled insane and put in a
straightjacket. Instead I was lauded and applauded. But I strove to
be a far better Master vampire than the Master vampire I had killed
and replaced. Over the centuries, I turned some humans into vampires
but I never bound them to me. I did it to save their lives. And I
tried to make sure that they were good people before I turned them.
An evil person became an evil vampire. You don't change their
natures, just their diets. They were free to live their own lives as
vampires, and some moved across the continents and I never heard from
them again. But always, I can feel their last breath. I always know
when a vampire that I have turned is about to breathe his or her last
as a vampire.”

Charlene turned round to face
him. “That's...hard. Like a parent having to watch his child
die,” she said at last. “Have you turned
anyone—recently?”

He nodded, smiling a little.
“I turned Bryn Ellis. Bryn is a PAC Enforcer, like Charlotte.
In fact, she is Charlotte's partner. They work together as a team.
They play and party together as well. She's a good Enforcer, a good
friend to Charlotte. They have each other's backs,” he assured
her.

Charlene smiled, her eyes
growing misty. “She really is a good vamp, like you said. I
like her. A lot.”

“
Caleb Thorn was turned
quite recently as well. That boy is...rowdy. Like Bryn, he was
turned in his twenties, so he will always remain a pretty boy. Not
an old man like me,” Glenn finished with an exaggerated
grimace.

“
You're not old,”
Charlene hurried to say. “Well, you're not old old. You
are...” She searched desperately for the right word.
“Ancient.”

“
Thank you. That makes
me feel so much better.”

She winced. “You know
what I mean.”

“
No I don't.”

“
Yes you do.”

“
So...” Glenn
began slowly, trying to keep his tone light and casual. “What
are you going to do with your ancient vampire mate? Are you going to
fuck his brains out then forsake him?”

Are you planning to do
something that would tear him apart, hurt him deeper than any mortal
wound ever could? Are you planning to hurt yourself, Charlene?

She pushed herself up and
knelt beside him. Taking his face in both her hands, she replied, “I
am going to love him, with everything I've got, with all the time I
have...left.” She whispered the last word.

“
Charlene, no.”
He refused to let go of her hand this time, even though she tried to
pull away. “You are not going to kill a demon lord. That is
insane! That is suicide!”

She glared back at him, her
expression grim and determined.

“
Charlene, I will help
you. You don't have to do this. You can't do this! Sideous Kron is
an ancient demon. He will kill you and entrap your soul—forever.
I know that he has done it to some of his Made demons. I haven't
lived so long without seeing a thing or two, Charlene. Trust me. I
will free you from Kron.”