Page 23 of Slayer Mom
I rolled my eyes. “So, you’re not going to try and kill me?”
“I am the Grand Master. I don’t try to kill people. I just do.”
This was the Grand Master? But he seemed so small and easily distracted to be the ruler of all the world’s vampires. “Ah. Such a fine distinction. If you’re going to kill me, get it over with and put me out of my misery.”
“Are you so miserable? In that case, I will be happy to serve you. To me.” He grabbed me and bit me, holding me in his cold and intractable grasp.
Vampire bites are glamorized as all kinds of pleasant, but the reality was incredibly painful. He wanted it to be painful, because there was no reason for his teeth to be so dull. I’d seen his fangs. No, he wasn’t breaking through the skin. It was too painful to be pleasant, but he wasn’t eating me.
After only a few seconds, he stopped biting my neck and climbed into the passenger’s seat. “What are you going to do with the bodies?”
I rubbed my neck and stared at him in horror. He acted like that had been completely normal. “What is wrong with you? Don’t bite me unless you’re killing me! I’m married!”
He sniffed and wrinkled his nose. “You don’t have the scent of any man on you.”
“Of course not. I don’t want him to get zombie-marked. I’m not a monster.”
“Ah, you’re keeping your distance to protect him. How noble of you. What are you going to do with the bodies?”
Maybe he wasn’t that easily distracted. “I want to burn them, but I’m not sure where a good place would be. That’s what we did with the other monsters.”
“We?”
“Oui, French for yes. I don’t speak French, but if I did, I would tell you how incredibly rude it is to break someone’s window, particularly after the last glass replacement people tried to kidnap me.”
“You’re protecting your partner. Is he also your lover?”
“You have an unhealthy interest in my sex life.”
“Do I? Perhaps I’m interested in you. Shall we see?” He leaned over and gazed into my eyes, his own disgusting orbs black from rim to rim and completely unattractive, and as for mood, zombies under the dock, dead werewolves in the back seat, yeah, you don’t get more romantic than that.
He brushed my cheek with his fingers and everything went golden and sweet, like the first taste of the elixir. I should resist, but I couldn’t remember why, couldn’t think anything other than how long it had been since I’d touched anyone, and how good hesmelled. He didn’t smell like death, but like a woodsy cologne and the wind. My eyes drifted closed as his hand moved down to the side of my neck, sending shocks of warmth and happiness through me, centralizing on the place where he’d bitten me. He felt so good. So right. So not undead. I felt the breath of his lips on mine and parted them, but something about Hazen losing his job meandered through that intoxicating labyrinth of desire and euphoria, enough so that I bashed his face with my forehead instead of kissing him.
He released his hold on my neck and the pleasure dissolved like sugar in a rainstorm.
“I told you that I’m married!” I gripped the knife that I was getting really fast at drawing, pointing it at him. How could I kill him? I had to kill him if he was going to make me cheat on Hazen. “Also, you’re a disgusting corpse! What’s wrong with you? You don’t go around trying to corrupt perfectly nice housewives!”
He studied me for another beat before he nodded. “You hit my face with your forehead. Did you crack your skull? I’m a vampire. You can’t fight me as though I’m a regular human. Come on.”
He reached over me to open the driver’s door then climbed out over me and yanked me out after him. “Your grip is terrible. Let’s start with that. I’m a vampire. I have very few vulnerable spots. Do you know anything about slaying vampires?”
“No.”
“But you did kill one?”
“It was more that she got caught in the zombie trap. Fire and explosions seemed to work well.”
“True enough, but you have a knife. It’s a good knife, with enough silver in it to do permanent damage to a werewolf, but how can you defeat a vampire with it?”
“Chop off your head?”
“Have you ever tried to chop off anyone’s head before?”
“No, but I did knock off a zombie’s head with a big bottle of schnapps.” I shuddered. “And then we burned it.”
“That French yes. Why are you protecting him?”
I glared at him and said nothing.
