Page 63 of Ruthlessly Mated
“First of all, your mates couldn’t even keep a port defended,” he says. “Honestly, ridiculous. I came full force, but I feel I could have sent a slightly incendiary postal note and achieved much the same result.”
Vampire Alexander is funny. It does not make up for any of his other heinous qualities. It is mildly entertaining at best.
“Second of all, I might have left you to your own devices if you’d merely run away, but you didn’t. You took my maker’s heart.”
He sounds faintly annoyed. More annoyed than angry. Our relationship is complicated, always has been. This is the second time he has captured me. The first time, I was much less prepared.
The night he came…
My mother and my father are bickering about who has done the dishes. Neither one of them has done the dishes in three days.
“If you don’t step up around the place, Martin, I’m going to start throwing these at your head.”
“You wouldn’t.”
A cup goes sailing through the air and crashes into the cabinet next to my father’s head. He is a big man with dark hair, dark eyes, and a thick beard. As the ceramic shatters, he grins broadly and lets out a laugh. My mother has a temper, but that has never bothered him for a single second. He rushes forward, picks her up under her butt, and snugs her against him, pressing kisses to her lips until she stops sounding angry and starts sounding happy.
The dishes don’t get done that night either.
I am curled up watching late night television. I’m not really supposed to be up after nine, but Mom and Dad went to bed early and I think they fell asleep after all the giggling they were doing.
It’s a show I’m not supposed to be watching, with a lot of explosions. I have it on really quiet, so I can’t actually hear the explosions, but I am imagining how they sound. Also how the other bits sound, what it’s like when the limbs come off. The main character has chainsaws for arms. Also sometimes his head is a chainsaw. It’s complicated, but also simple in its brutality.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
There’s a light tapping at the window. It makes me jump and makes me more than a little nervous. I turn around and see a face in the window.
I’m mostly guilty because I know I’m not supposed to be up, and I am instantly worried that if that person knocks harder, he will tell my parents I was watching TV, and I’ll get grounded from TV, and then I’ll miss the next episode.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Damn! He’s getting louder, just like I was afraid of. He’s going to wake my parents up, and he’s already seen me so he would have seen the TV. It’s angled toward the window, and right now body parts are absolutely flying.
I turn the TV off. That’s the first thing I need to do. Then I go to the window.
There is a man there. He looks kind of evil, actually. The sort of person who is going to tell on me. He has a thick scar on his cheek and his face is very pale. I crack the window just a little.
“What do you want?”
“Hello, pup,” he says.
That’s interesting. It’s supposed to be a secret that we’re wolves. It’s okay to be wolves, Mom and Dad told me that, but it’s not okay to tell people in case those people get scared and think we are going to eat them. We’re not going to. I mostly eat sausages. And nuggets. No people in either of those things, I don’t think, though sometimes I do think how easy it would be to put people in sausages, but Mom doesn’t like it when I think that way and Dad always tells me the story of how he founda mouse foot in a burger patty once. My parents have twelve stories between them and they tell them on repeat.
“I’m not supposed to talk to strangers,” I say. “And you are very strange.”
“My car broke down. I need to come in and use the phone.”
“Oh, I could wake my dad up. He’s good with cars.”
“Yes,” the man smiles. “What a good idea. Why don’t you wake your dad up? He will want to know what you’ve been watching, I’m sure.”
How does he know? There’s a smile on his face like he knows. He clenches his fingers as if he’s going to make a fist to knock hard on the window, but he doesn’t do it. Not yet.
“Okay, you can come in,” I say. “Let me get the front door.”
“Good pup,” the scarred man says. “Go and get the door.”
I pad over to the door. The house creaks a little as I go, my light footsteps betraying me even though I don’t know it yet.
