Page 440 of Evil Hearts

“I am Madoc. You were bleeding and would not have lived long enough for the outsiders to arrive.”

“Outsiders?” Nora asked.

“Outsiders. Your people,” he responded. It wasn’t so much an accent as it was a tiny bit of a lisp in his speech.

“Outsiders?” Nora was confused. Caught between the veil of increasing pain and the growing fear icing her blood, her heart and breathing sped up. “I don’t understand.”

A calloused hand took her arm and gently squeezed. Another hand rested on her shoulder. They were comforting, large and warm compared to the air around them. “Please calm yourself, Nora. You are safe. Rest now. I will bring you food when you wake again.”

“But where… who… who are you? Where am I? I don’t understand.”

“I am Madoc. You are in my home, far beneath the mountain where you fell. Sleep now, Nora, when you wake you’ll feel a little better.”

“Madoc?” she whispered as she gave in to the exhaustion and slept.

Slowly he reached out to touch her face. With both hands, he gently traced the contours of the bones in her cheeks, around her eyes. She did not move. His thumbs smoothed her eyebrows and along her hairline. He paused at each scratch and added a salve for healing. He told himself that he was only touching her to treat her wounds, but he knew that to be a lie. Her earthen brown hair and pale, freckled skin had pulled something out of him that had been dormant his whole life. Madoc wanted her in ways he’d never wanted another person. Physical ways. Ways that made his cock grow heavy and hard.

He traced down her neck and arms, touching every bit of exposed skin. She was so smooth, so soft. He’d never felt skin so soft. The few women of the cave he’d touched had skin weathered by their hard life—tougher and marred with scars from childhoods lived in the dark.

Madoc’s hands slid up Nora’s wide hips and under her shirt. He paused at her thick stomach and marveled at the contrast of her soft skin against his calloused hands. Women in the caves were lithe and wiry, but this woman was swollen with the easy life of the outsider—their packages of food and comfortable homes and vehicles. He longed to feel her pressed against him, every soft curve of her called out to him. He leaned over, pushed her shirt up, and ran his tongue along the skin above her belly button, his tiny fangs barely scratching the surface of her skin. Nora stirred in her stupor, but did not awaken.

His hands traveled up her torso as his tongue traveled to the edge of her bra. She was so sweet. The mixed aromas of the sun and wind danced from her skin to his tongue and he relished the flavor, never having known something so delicious. He cupped her large breasts in his long fingers and squeezed them gently as Nora slept on. He knew if she woke, she’d fight him, but he couldn’t help himself. He’d never been able to take his time and savor a woman. His previous couplings had been quick, only to enter and finish, not to explore and savor.

Finding her had been a shock and a gift. Shock because of the blood flowing from her leg and that despite her injury, she still lived. A gift because his kind did not often find women, and when they did, there was usually a huge fight: either other males attempting to steal the woman away or the woman herself. When one was found, she stayed with the man who found her. Because Madoc had found her, he would keep her. The choice of the woman was of no import.

Madoc’s world was dark and lonely and hard. In the caves, there were few others like him. Most of the gray bat colonies were single-natured. That is, they could only be the small gray bat. There were some like him: two-natured. He could move between his man-like nature and his bat nature with the ease that other bats found their way home.

As the only-bats grew, they learned to live and survive as bats. The dual-natured like Madoc had to learn all of life’s skills twice: Once as the small furry flying mammal, and once as the large, furry, winged man. Hunting, hibernating, exploring, navigating, mating–all skills and lessons learned as both man and bat. He knew, for example, that most bats stayed in their own location, and if they left for migration, they would almost always come back to where they started.

The hardest part for Madoc was that the only-bats shunned him for his dual nature. His ability to shift set him apart from the world of men, too.

When the bats did go out into the world, it was at night—always at night—because the sun was like a hundred daggers in their eyes. Madoc knew from previous encounters with outsiders what he looked like. His large, black eyes stood out in stark relief against his long gray hair and pale skin. At night, Madoc could move like magic through the trees, making nary a sound and leaving nary a mark as he slid through the night’s shadows. As bat or man, he was a silent hunter.

It had just turned dark the night he’d found Nora. Like the other bats, he’d come out to hunt. The recent storm had wreaked havoc on the landscape, rearranging creeks and rivers and leaving nothing she touched unblemished. Madoc’s people didn’t mix with the outsiders at all, so finding survivors wasn’t something he’d been thinking about.

Madoc had thought the rustling sound he tracked was an animal, but he’d been wrong. It had been Nora, lying like some pre-medieval sacrifice, writhing in pain, her mouth opened in a silent scream. In that moonlight, she’d been so beautiful, so lovely that Madoc felt the sight of her in his very soul.Mine, he thought.I found her. She is mine.

He perched on a stone outcropping near her to observe. She was too injured to walk, let alone climb. His head cocked to one side, Madoc stared.

Her light brown hair had been tangled in the branches, and her tan skin was bruised and scratched and marred with many bug bites. He transformed and searched for a rag to tie off the bleeding, and finding none, he ripped her shirt off. More gently than he’d ever done anything, he untangled her from the limbs and branches and carried her as far as he could.

It was hard for him to carry her so far–a human is heavy, yes; but a passed out human is heavier. It took him til nearly dawn to return home, but he did not mind so much because he could smell her. It was intoxicating. She was perfumed with the things outsiders used on their bodies, but they could not cover the smell of her own scent, the little hint of sweat from being out in the heat of the day.

His woman. He’d never considered finding one. None of the new women came willingly, and he wasn’t like some men who went out to specifically capture one. He hated the first months after new ones were brought back to the caves. The echoes of their screams and cries were terrible indeed; then, over time, they slowly dissolved into quiet crying and eventually, occasional bad dreams.

He understood that his people needed the women they found. Without them, the males like him would die off. He could not reproduce in his bat nature. Taking a woman wasn’t done often, and it was never from the same area twice. The mountains had more caves and passages underneath them than they did trees above them. While it took effort to find a woman to bring home undetected, it was not impossible. Without the taken women, there would be few babies, but Madoc hated the ragged cries of the new ones. Their begging and pleas were a distasteful burden.

At the cavern entrance his friend Willum stood guard and froze at the sight of his friend with the woman tied to his back. “You found one,” he whispered in awe. “I never thought…”

“Me either,” Madoc replied. “But she is injured, and I must care for her if she is to live.” Willum moved to the side, letting his friend pass.

“Best luck!” he called after Madoc, who did not slow down as he descended into the cave’s darkness.

Chapter Three

When Nora wokeagain, she wasn’t panicked, but she was definitely scared. The cool, damp smell reminded her that she was in a cave. The sway of her body reminded her of the hammock. She knew she was in the far eastern part of North Carolina, being cared for by a man with a strange accent.In a cave.

That was the part that scared her the most. Why did this man live in a cave? And besides the why, how in the hell did he survive here? How was she ever going to get out? What if she couldn’t get out? Would she starve? The faster the questions came, the faster her heart beat, the faster her breathing got.

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