Violette Dubrinsky (15 page)

“Everything.”

***

She was nervous. Azaleigh knew the spell front the back to the front, but her stomach felt as if at any moment, it would lurch and whatever was in there, which couldn’t be much since she’d been too terrified to eat, would come up. She’d followed Antoinette’s instructions to the tee, finding the ingredients necessary for the spell, and now, she waited, sitting in her white nightgown in the large chalk-drawn circle as the crescent moon shined its soft light through the thick woods.

There was a blast of cold, and she stood, knowing he’d arrived. Victor. A smile curved her lips but as she rushed to him, Azaleigh couldn’t help the words that left her lips. “You don’t have to do this, Victor. I love you. There’s probably another way. I don’t think—”

He silenced her, stroking his lips over hers until she grew pliant in his arms. The tension ran from her body as if sucked out by his kiss.

“This
is
the way.”

Victor made quick work of his shirt, hanging it on the nearest tree branch. He removed his shoes and the rest of his clothing as she wrung her hands and stared. “You’re sacrificing too much, Victor.”

“But it’s worth it.” He winked and Azaleigh felt warmth travel the length of her body. He was already perfect. They didn’t need a spell. “I’m ready, baby.”

Before he could enter the circle, Azaleigh caught his hand in both of hers and shook her head. “I changed my mind. Please. I can’t—”

“I won’t watch you die, Azaleigh.” His voice was harsh, and Azaleigh shook her head and tried to interrupt, but he wouldn’t let her. “I need you, and you need this. I don’t care which world we choose, as long as you’re in it.”

Entering the circle, he lifted the chef’s knife she’d brought for the occasion. She’d tested it against the skin of her thumb and it was sharper than the rest. “Are you ready?”

Azaleigh wanted to scream
no
, but nodded and joined him. Victor immediately lay down, his body straight and arms at his sides as he nodded for her to begin.

Standing over him, Azaleigh began the spell, asking the elements for their cooperation on this fateful night. The circle glowed bright and the winds picked up, sending the fallen leaves flying around them. Moving over Victor, she sat on his chest and continued her chanting, her gaze holding his. When the time came for the use of the blade, she cut quick and sure, her vision blurring to obscure the red line that opened at his neck as the words from the spell rolled off her tongue.

“Out of the Darkness I call thee, Blooded Protector. Out of the Darkness, you
must
come.”

Victor’s face grew pale and drawn, his body losing consciousness, but she continued, repeating the words until he stared unseeingly up at her.

Cutting into her wrist, she bled into his mouth, and continued chanting.

“Out of the Night I call thee, Blood Protector, Out of the Night, come to me.”

She repeated that twice, three times, and when nothing happened, felt fear claw its way from her gut, latch onto her heart, and come through her voice. Why wasn’t anything happening?

After then fifth recitation, tears streamed down her face. By the sixth, her words began sticking in her throat. When the winds died down and the circle’s light faded, Azaleigh fell onto him and cried. She shouldn’t have asked him to do it. She’d been selfish, thinking of her needs over his.

What have I done
?

Azaleigh didn’t know how long she remained in that position, hugging the cold body of her lover, but something shocked her into motion. He twitched. Beneath her, Victor twitched. Sitting up, she noticed his eyes were focused, staring up at her. Gradually, he grew warm.

“Victor?” she murmured uncertainly.

His hands closed around her waist and he sat up, holding her in his lap as he scanned the area, before his gaze came to rest on her once more.

“Victor? Do you know who I am?”

“Azaleigh.”

His response was instant, and she immediately pushed up to kiss him, desperation making her aggressive. He seemed surprised at first, but his hand tightened around her waist and his erection prodded at her. Needing him now—she thought she’d lost him forever—Azaleigh lifted up, pulling her gown up and underwear aside, and took him deep.

They both groaned as she rode him fast. His hands slid under the gown, grasping her buttocks and aiding her stokes, before moving to her breasts. The material was too much in his way so he ripped it down the front, suckling her as she rose and fell on him. When his hand pulled her head back and his teeth nipped her neck, Azaleigh froze. Victor sniffed her skin as he licked at her pulse.

“Victor,” she moaned.

He shifted his hips under hers and she slowly began moving again, concerned with his attention to her pulse. She’d forgotten all about that moments later as her peak approached, when teeth sank into her neck and even as she screamed denial her body burst into jolting pieces. The pulls, painful on her skin, sent her into further convulsions and Azaleigh fought a losing battle with herself. Victor released her throat to shout his release, before returning to his feast.

Azaleigh came back to her body on the way to another orgasm. He’d stiffened inside her again, and was now above her, still at her neck, thrusting furiously into her. The wet slap of their bodies seemed to override the other sounds of the night. The grainy earth bit into her bottom and legs but she ignored it. Instead, her hands went to his tight buttocks, driving steadily against her, as he pulled and pulled, drinking her in. When her heart began to slow, and tiredness settled in, Azaleigh realized he was drinking too much.

“Victor!” Even to her ears, it sounded like a scream of pleasure. She tried to focus on anything but him stroking her, and managed to whisper, “Victor, you’re taking too much.”

His teeth seemed to clamp down harder, his body still swinging as he pushed her up, up, up...

She must have blacked out again because she came to on top of him, her mouth held firmly to his bleeding chest as she swallowed the thick liquid spurting down her throat. He was still hard inside her, though his movements were slower, more sensual. It was an intoxicating feeling, the taste of his blood, rich and spicy, almost like a dry wine, running down her throat as he stroked her so lovingly. Her hips worked down and he increased his pace, pumping up as she came to another shattering orgasm, wondering if this one would ever end.

***

When she awoke next, the sun’s rays were beating down on her. Shielding her eyes, Azaleigh sat up. Her lower body throbbed and she began searching frantically for Victor. Worry made her stand despite the pain, and she called his name. A twig snapped to her left and she turned to find him coming to her, a large wide-brimmed, straw hat covering his head and his black-tinted sunglasses on his face. He wore jeans and boots once more—and was bare-chested.

“It worked!” she shrieked, both in disbelief and awe.

Throwing herself at him, unmindful of her state of undress, Azaleigh peppered his face with kisses.

“Well,” Victor murmured against her lips. “I’m not dead.”

“But last night, last night you...I...we...what happened last night?” The spell was supposed to change Victor from Night Walker to Protector, binding him to her and allowing him to walk in the sunlight. It was the one Antoinette had used years ago. Victor taking her blood, and giving her his had not been in any of Antoinette’s notes on what to expect.

With a smirk on his lips, Victor replied, “Magic.”

He set her back on her feet, and even through the sunglasses, Azaleigh knew he stared hungrily at her exposed breasts, which were tightening painfully for his touch despite the amount of attention they’d received only some hours back.

“Are you still a vampire?” she asked slowly, taking in the soft tan he’d accumulated already. Was there such a thing as a blood drinking zombie?

He tugged her ripped nightgown until she was closer to him. “I’m still me.”

Grinning, Azaleigh nodded, accepting his answer. “Good, because I love you.”

She kissed him again, sending a prayer to Antoinette, wherever she was. Whatever Victor was, he was hers as surely as she was his. When he lifted her into his arms and marched her into the house, his intentions obvious in the way he began chucking her already damaged nightgown from her shoulders, Azaleigh giggled like a school-girl and let him.

Epilogue

Ears attuned to the smallest peep, Victor Winters sat up, cradling his wife against his body as she fed from the vein at his neck, and turned to their bedroom door. He heard the patter of small feet moments before the door creaked open and a small, cherubic face, haloed by wild brown curls, peeped in. Victor doubted she could see them, because four-year-old Victoria stood there peering into the dark, her eyes squinting and widening as she looked around the room.

“Did you have another bad dream, sweetheart?”

She shook her head and clutched Teddy, the bear his mother had given her when she was born. It had seen some bad days, was missing an eye, had a few stitches where he’d been cut open, and was a faded brown due to Azaleigh’s tossing him in the laundry whenever she felt it was time, but Tori went nowhere without Teddy.

“The bad man’s in my room again, Daddy.”

Azaleigh, who’d been in some form of blood-lust, jerked away from his vein at the sound of their daughter’s voice, and turned to the door. She instantly licked at his wound and crawled off, pulling her nightgown down to cover her exposed parts and glared at him until he pulled the sheets up to cover his.

Turning on the soft-lit lamp on her end-table, Azaleigh picked up his mirror-image, kissed her fat, honey-colored cheeks and brought her further into the room.

“Did you tell the scary man Daddy’s going to beat him up if he continues to come into your room?” Victor asked the other half of his heart with a serious face.

Tori nodded, and turned big, green eyes on him. “I tell him, Daddy, but he won’t go away.” When she started tearing up, Azaleigh gently rubbed her back and said, “Don’t cry, baby. Let’s go back to your room, and Mommy’ll scare the bad man away, okay?”

“But Daddy’s bigger,” Tori whined, her voice high-pitched and sleepy. “The bad man’s not
aferd
of you ’cause he’s big.”

“Daddy’s going to get his secret weapon for the bad man and then he’s going to come to your room, okay, sweetie?”

Victor waited until Tori’s eyes could no longer reach him and found his pajama bottoms among the tangled sheets. Of the late, Azaleigh had been taking his vein more. With almost every love-making session, his wife was finding her way to his neck. He didn’t mind it. He actually loved the feeling of her sharp little teeth piercing his body, but Victor wondered at the sudden change.

Since that day just over five years back, he’d learned he could walk in the sunlight, but was still a Night Walker. It was strange. He needed blood to survive and Azaleigh’s was enough to sustain him, but the sun did nothing but give him sunburn if he stayed out too long. His eyes were sensitive to the rays, but sunglasses took care of that. Azaleigh, on the other hand, was a greater anomaly. The things he’d done to her in the circle were forever burned into his brain, but she hadn’t taken his blood again until the night she conceived Victoria and after that, it had been sporadically during the pregnancy. Now, she bit him almost as much as he did her, which was frequent. Azaleigh was also healing quickly, faster than normal for a witch, and hadn’t developed one wrinkle in the years they’d been together. He suspected she was immortal, like him, but wasn’t a vampire, though she fed from him. The fact that they were compatible reproductively was another strange, though much welcomed, part of the puzzle, as Night Walkers were only able to breed with their own.

As he stepped into the hallway, Victor nodded to Garland, who stood like a statue at the top of the staircase. In contrast, his eyes were bright and alert. He’d probably heard movement upstairs and decided to investigate. Because Victor was
dead,
as his Protector, so was Garland. Victor found he didn’t mind the other man living with them at all, especially as Garland was another pair of eyes, and great deal of strength, keeping vigilant watch over Victor’s two most precious gems. Once he confirmed all was well, Garland turned and headed silently down the stairs. For a man who stood inches taller and weighed at least forty pounds more than Victor, his foot-fall was surprisingly light.

Victor found his family sitting on the
Barbie
bed in Tori’s room. His daughter was tired, but she was fighting sleep as she waited for him to take care of the bad man. Flexing his muscles, much to Tori’s giddy delight, Victor demanded she point out the place the bad man was hiding.

The pony-decorated closet.
Of course
.

Victor made a big show of luring him out as Tori crawled into Azaleigh’s arms, hooking her smaller ones around her mother’s neck for protection. When the bad man still didn’t come out, he went in to the dark closet and proceeded to make lots of noise. Victor shook the door, he kicked the wall, he grunted like he was an MMA fighter taking hits.

Eventually, he emerged, winded and victorious. He walked to the delighted little girl who smelled of baby powder and that Shea-butter baby shampoo Azaleigh used for her silky curls, and kissed her forehead. “The bad man’s not going to bother you anymore, munchkin.”

“Did you beat him bad, Daddy?”

It was asked with such childhood innocence, his heart warmed. The first time he’d seen Victoria Winters, all seven and half pounds of wrinkled baby with that soft down tuft atop her small head, he’d felt a type of love he hadn’t thought possible. This was his and Azaleigh’s creation, both of their bloods mingled into something better. Anyone who touched his baby girl was dead. The bad man was lucky he was the figment of a little girl’s imagination.

With Azaleigh watching him with hawk eyes, Victor kept the beat-down short. His wife didn’t appreciate his descriptive tales. Giving Azaleigh a smirk, he answered Tori, “Uh huh. He cried like a baby.”

“Worse than me at Dr. Stokes’s office?”

The doctor was the Hallows Brook pediatrician she’d come to associate with needles and bribe-candy.

“Much worse.”

“Good!”

When they finally got back to their bedroom and pushed in the door, Victor caught his wife around the waist and stared deep into her dark eyes. She was still the prettiest thing he’d ever seen. The second was currently asleep, thumb in her mouth, in her Pepto-Bismol colored bed.

“How are you feeling?”

Mrs. Winters smiled. “Tired.”

Victor had cautioned her numerous times about overworking. Azaleigh didn’t seem to have an ‘off’ switch once she took a case or became interested in the plight of one of their neighbors. There were many times he’d tossed her over his shoulder and marched her from the storage room he’d converted into a self-contained office into their bedroom. And when he wasn’t doing that, he was prying the spell book from her fingers as she looked for remedies of some ailment or the other. Over the years, they’d learned Azaleigh was not only a Guardian, but a Healer, able to cast spells, and create potions to ease and sometimes cure sicknesses.

Despite her two exhausting jobs, Victor suspected her fatigue was more than work.

“And hungry?” he asked softly.

At her slight blush and nod, Victor turned her around and pulled her against his body. His hand ran down the front of her thin, summer nightgown, coming to land on her flat stomach. “Should I tell my parents they’re going to be grandparents again?”

The King and Queen of the Georgia Night Walkers hadn’t been accepting of his plans to be with Azaleigh. His father had ranted and raved, and his mother cried, but Victor had made it known more than once that if they wanted him, they had to accept her as well. It had taken the birth of their grandchild to ease the tension between Rachel and Azaleigh, but once that was crossed, everything had fallen into place. As he was a living anomaly, a vampire who could walk in sunlight, he was no longer heir to the throne. If any of his race learned of him, there would be questions, demands, and threats Victor couldn’t afford. The title of heir had fallen to Nicholas, and Victor didn’t mind. He had a family he cared about more than any territorial kingdom, and if having his people think him dead was going to protect them, he would gladly continue feeding the lie.

“It’s possible,” Azaleigh answered in a soft, thoughtful voice, relaxing against him. “I’ll know for sure in the next two weeks.”

Leaning down, Victor kissed the side of her neck. “I already know you are, baby.”

She turned in his arms, and eagerly returned the kiss he gave her. “How?”

“You’ve been insatiable lately.” He grinned as she quirked a brow. “Much more than usual.”

“I haven’t heard you complaining,” Azaleigh shot back, running her fingers along the already healed cuts at his neck.

“You’ll never hear me complaining. I like it when you get all feisty.” As he spoke, he walked her back to the bed. “Get under the covers.”

Azaleigh instantly did as told, shutting off her lamp in the process. Victor slid under too, meeting her for a passionate kiss as his hand cupped her breast. A sharp inhale later, she tugged it away.

“What’s wrong?” Concern laced his voice.

“Nothing,” she replied with a guilty look, until she finally caved and said, “I’m sensitive.”

Victor smirked.
So pregnant
.

Knowing he’d have to make do without those succulent orbs for another week, maybe more, he slid his hand to her generous buttocks, cupping them and pulling her against his aching cock. She gyrated in a slow tease, gasping each time he squeezed or smacked her cheeks.

Growing impatient, Victor caught her leg and pulled her onto him.

“I thought I was the feisty one,” she murmured against his neck.

“I can smell your hunger. I was only being a gentleman.”

As his wife laughed, Victor pushed her nightgown up, knowing she was bare underneath, and maneuvered his pajama bottoms down. With a four year old, the days of haphazardly tossing clothing were gone. They’d learned the hard way, with Tori making a surprise appearance during one of their more adventurous sessions. Victor was forever grateful the three-year-old had bought that “Mommy and Daddy were playing
Bouncy Cars
.”

“Ready to continue where we left off?” he teased, brushing the tip of his erection against Azaleigh’s welcoming heat.

In response, Victor felt two sharp pricks at his neck. With a deep groan, he slid his fingers into her thick hair and thrust into her body, her delicious whimper almost driving him to completion. He moved slowly, and she purred at his neck. Victor could only smile. In some months, Tori would have a brother or sister to play with, and he and Azaleigh another baby to dote on. Hands tightening on her waist, Victor lovingly caressed Azaleigh’s back. She’d once told him he’d have to give up everything for this. In hindsight, he’d have given up so much more.

The End