Vampire Dreams 04 That Time of the Month Read online

  THAT TIME OF THE MONTH

  By Angela Knight

  Copyright 1990

  The hunting had been bad for two nights now, and hunger was a relentless pit in his belly. The smell of blood filled the bar and his hypersensitive nose, and he had to keep his mouth closed because he knew his aching fangs were visibly extended, like ivory erections.

  It was Jim Decker's third night as a vampire.

  Hands wrapped around a warm beer--in his present frantic state of hunger he had no taste for alcohol--Decker remembered that first night. And Crystal. God, it had been good. God, he wanted her again. But it was too soon; he'd hurt her if he took her blood so soon. It would be two solid weeks before she was recovered enough to take his passion.

  Now he understood why Beau Gabriel kept a "harem"--thirty or so women happy to submit to a vampire's teeth in exchange for his very skilled, if exotic, love making. Al Gabriel had to do was give one of them a phone call, and she'd present herself at his door.

  Decker was almost hungry enough to ask to "borrow" one of Gabriel's oh-so-willing victims. Almost, but not quite. Somehow he just couldn't bring himself to admit that he was having trouble finding a lover on his own. He'd rather starve a couple of more days.

  Actually, he'd rather find a woman.

  Like the pretty brunette at the end of the bar, the one with the big brown eyes. She wore a flirty blue silk dress that draped over her high breasts and long thighs, swirling from a tight, small waist. He concentrated on the curve of her lovely calves, trying to avoid looking at her neckline, which plunged seductively, revealing more throat than was safe for him to see in his present mood. He considered his approach.

  Decker had never been one for bar-hopping in his human days. He'd had women, yes, that had never been a problem for him, but he'd always met them at work or some party or through someone they both knew. Women liked him, liked his handsome face and big muscular body and the charm he could exude when he wanted to. Or they had when he was mortal, anyway. Right now, that old Decker magic just didn't seem to be there--perhaps because they could sense his hunger, the razor sting of his desperation.

  Or maybe they sensed he wasn't really human any more.

  He was so sunk in that dark line of thought that he started when the brunette said, "Hi. You look lonely."

  Decker snapped his eyes up to meet hers. She had gotten up from her bar stool and was standing beside him now, close enough for him to scent the sweet drift of her perfume. And her blood.

  He smiled, ducking his head in a gesture he hoped looked boyishly shy, but which in fact kept his fangs from showing when he spoke. "I WAS feeling a little lonesome, now that you mention it. Things are looking up now, though." At that, he lifted his head and gave her a deliberately heated stare.

  She licked full crimson lips, and he was caught suddenly by her beauty, by her huge brown eyes surrounded in long feathery lashes. Her cheekbones were as high and arrogant as a fashion model's, her jaw delicately square, nose straight, with tiny flared nostrils. She shook back her cloud of dark curls, and they danced, shining like honey, around her shoulders.

  "I'm Lynn Campbell," she said, extending a slender hand to him.

  He took it, enjoying its tender warm weight. "Jim Decker," he said, tilting his chin again before going on to make a moment's small talk--to be polite, and to distract himself from his own hunger.

  But she wasn't listening. Instead she kept looking toward the bar's door, anxious, as though dreading the appearance of something she wanted to avoid. Decker started imagining jealous husbands.

  "What time is it?" she asked suddenly.

  "8:15," Decker said, wondering how he could get her out of the bar and home. Wondering if she wasn't about to call it quits on him in a fit of guilt and fear. His fangs twinged desperately at the thought, just as his balls ached in longing for the rest of her.

  "Look, it's getting late. Would you like to go somewhere more private?" Lynn said, shifting uneasily on her high heeled shoes. "My apartment's just up the block."

  The sudden invitation so surprised Decker that his suspicions were aroused. That was awfully quick. What was her hurry?

  But then the scent of her blood came to him again, twining around the smell of jasmine perfume and femininity, and the wave of lust that washed over him drowned any other thought. "Whatever you want," he said hoarsely, and hoped he could resist the urge to jump her as soon as they reached a concealing darkness.

  He stood, and Lynn reached out a long narrow hand and caught his upper arm, as though afraid he meant to escape. As they headed for the bar's double doors, she walked quickly, leading by a few steps. Sensing a strange combination of eagerness and fear in her, Decker wondered again what was going on.

  He hoped it wasn't a jealous husband, he really did. Because in his present mood, Lynn's spouse was in more danger from Decker than the other way around.

  She was chattering now, babbling really, something about her apartment and the Farmer's Almanac. Her dark eyes kept flashing toward the east.

  "Is something the matter?" Decker asked, finally unable to ignore his instincts.

  Lynn gave him a smile that was a little too broad and bright. "Why, no. Everything's fine. My apartment's just around the corner, I hope you like it, I just redid everything, the furniture, the drapes, the car..pets..." Her step faltered, then she stopped altogether, staring again at the eastern horizon. "Oh, damn," she said softly.

  "What's wrong?" Decker snapped his head in the direction, expecting to see an irate husband bearing down on him.

  "The moon is coming up," she said in a tense voice.

  "How can you tell?" he asked idly. "The buildings hide it."

  "I can tell. I can always tell..." She gasped, once, as if feeling a sudden sharp pain.

  Decker wheeled in time to see her double over, arms wrapped around her middle as though she was seized by stomach cramps. "Hey, are you all..."

  Lynn screamed in raw agony.

  Automatically, Decker jumped toward her, grabbing for her arms. She arched in his grip, head thrown back, face contorted with some unimaginable pain. "Jesus!" He looked over his shoulder, frantically scanning for some bystander. "Somebody call 911! Get an ambulance!" he roared, trying to make himself heard over her screams, knowing even as he shouted that there was no one nearby to hear him.

  Lynn began to convulse between his big hands, only his supporting strength keeping her from falling. Decker held on desperately as her body twisted and snapped, his eyes fixed helplessly on her face. The pain was contorting it to inhuman proportions; she was no longer even recognizable as the same woman. Her mouth was a gaping square hole, stretched wide with agony, her teeth lengthening to long, razor-sharp points...

  ...Long razor-sharp points?

  For a second Decker thought the stress of the moment was making him see things--but then he saw it was true. Her teeth had become fangs. And that wasn't all. Like her teeth, her hair was actually growing at he watched, reaching down her back, fluffing into a thick mane.

  Come to think of it, there was suddenly a whole lot of hair in other places it hadn't been before. The thin smooth arms he held had gone softly furry under his hands, and a full ruff was growing at her throat to extend down between her breasts. Her pale face rapidly acquired a coat of fine white down even as she screamed, hoarse and hopeless with pain.

  Cloth began to rip with a sound as sharp as the screams. As Decker watched in dumbfounded astonishment, her dress began to shred right off her body. Then he saw why; she was growing, her bones lengthening and stretching until she was almost as tall as he was.

  The unearthly screams had become howls, high and wailing, pi
ercing his vampire eardrums with their power.

  Suddenly they stopped. She stood between his hands, erect, breathing in pants. She opened her eyes. They glowed at him like yellow caution lights. Fur covered her entire body --which was just as well, because her dress had gone by the wayside. Not that the fur covered much; it thinned over her breasts despite the thick white ruff between them, and her nipples were prominent and nakedly pink against the fine white fur, just as the lips of her labia looked full and lewdly swollen.

  "This is ridiculous," he told her, feeling a little stupid in his shock. "There's no such thing as werewolves."

  Lynn looked at him and rumbled, cocking her dark maned head on one side. Her lips parted, exposing a mouthful of teeth even sharper than his own. Suddenly her hand snapped out and she grabbed him, furred fingers digging into his arm. Her claws were an inch and a half long.

  He stared at them. "Then again, I've been wrong before."

  Rumbling, she dragged him closer. Decker, eying her mouth with its compliment of razored teeth, instantly decided he didn't want to GET any closer. He set his booted feet against the asphalt. She pulled. He didn't budge, though it took every ounce of his vampire strength to resist her.

  "Look, Lynn," Decker began, on the off-chance there might be a human intellect behind those fangs, "I think we should..."

  She reached out another long hand and wrapped it in the thick fabric of his jeans waistband. And lifted him right off his feet, all 200-odd pounds of him.

  "To hell with this shit," Decker said, and popped her smartly on the nose.

  The werewolf dropped him with a roar that sounded more startled than hurt. He danced back like a street fighter just as she swiped at him...

  Then it was Decker's turn to scream as her claws dug inch-deep furrows in his arm.

  His first impulse was to slug the shit out of her, but just as he drew back his fist, his eyes fell on those pink nipples. And Decker discovered, to his chagrin, that he couldn't bring himself to hit anything with breasts like that.

  Instead, he turned and ran like hell.

  A roar sounded behind him. Throwing a look over his shoulder, Decker saw her coming, running in a long low lope that was astonishingly fast. She was going to catch him... So he poured on the speed.

  Decker had no idea what his new abilities were, now that he was a vampire; he'd had no reason to test them, and Amanda had never said. He certainly had no idea how those abilities ranked against a werewolf's--but he hoped like hell he was faster.

  As it turned out, he was pretty damn fast. So fast that buildings and sidewalks and street lamps blurred around him, so fast that the wind whipped tears from his eyes. So fast, in fact, that when he rounded a corner and realized he was about two paces away from a major Atlanta intersection, there was no way in hell he could stop.

  Seeing that he was about to slam into the side of a Nissan waiting for the light to change, Decker did the only thing he could think of. He jumped. To his complete surprise, he cleared the roof of the car--then smashed down on the pavement on the opposite side so hard he almost fell.

  About six inches from an oncoming Mack truck.

  Decker yelped and leaped in a long, flying dive that carried him completely across the intersection.

  And into the side of a building. His head hit the brick wall, he bounced back three feet, and his ass slammed into the sidewalk. For a raw, throbbing moment, Decker just sat there on his aching behind, blinking the blood out of his eyes. If he'd still been human, he knew he'd have been dead.

  He staggered to his feet and looked around. The traffic hadn't even slowed. For a moment Decker thought that was damn callous of somebody, but then he realize the whole thing had happened so fast nobody had really seen what happened.

  "Where's that fucking werewolf?" he growled, looking back the way he'd come. He didn't see anything. And God knew, a six-foot-tall white werewolf with great tits shouldn't be that hard to spot. Evidently he'd lost her. Or maybe she was just too smart to run through Atlanta, slamming into buildings at 30 miles an hour.

  Looking toward the corner, he saw a street sign. Peachtree Street. Not that far from his

  apartment building either; he'd gone a hell of a long way in those few seconds. He revised his speed estimate upward.

  Oh hell. He'd walk home. His car, still parked back at the bar, could wait to be picked up until the next night.

  Sighing, Decker started wearily up the sidewalk, noticing in an absent way that the gashes on his arm were closing nicely. At least he healed fast. If he kept running into buildings, he'd need to.

  An hour later, he was standing on his apartment balcony, showered and dressed in a long black robe, sipping brandy from a balloon glass and trying to nerve himself into calling Beau Gabriel. Sort of like ordering a pizza delivery, he thought darkly. "One blonde, type AB negative, hold the anchovies."

  Yeah. Right. Gabriel would laugh his ass off, the bastard. He could almost hear that mocking Texas drawl, "What'sa matter, Deck--can't get any on your own?"

  The thought held so much sting that he was almost relieved when he saw a clawed white hand reach over the side of his balcony. A moment later, the werewolf's dark maned head appeared.

  "At least I'm popular with SOMEBODY," Decker muttered, retreating a step as she pulled herself onto the balcony with supernatural ease. "Jesus, you had to climb four stories to get up here..."

  She must have tracked him by his scent, he decided, as she stalked toward him. And now that she knew where he lived, she could come after him again and again, even if he managed to fight her off this time.

  "You know," Decker said, dropping into a crouch as he backed through the open glass doors of his apartment, "I really did try to be a gentleman about this, but you just had to push it. Now you're lunch." If he could take enough of her blood to weaken her, she might decide to back off and stay the hell away from him.

  Besides, he was hungry.

  She growled; so, evidently, was she.

  Then the werewolf leaped.

  Her weight slammed him back into the carpet with an impact that made every breakable in the apartment rattle. As he gasped from the sudden attack, cursing himself for being caught off-balance, she swiped at his chest with a handful of claws. Luckily she only tagged his robe; it shredded as she pulled back her fist.

  Decker hit her in the jaw with all his considerable strength.

  It was a beautiful punch that lifted her right off him and smashed her into the back wall with a bang. He heard something break somewhere, and winced, then jumped to his feet and pounced on her.

  Decker had an instant's impression of terror on her furred face, then he jerked her head back, meaning to bite her and end the fight right there. But there was a thick ruff of fur covering her throat, and it stymied him for a moment. He decided to go for the thin skin on the underside of the jaw and pulled her head back further. She pushed at him, stunned and disoriented from his punch and her own collision with the wall, but Decker was in no mood for mercy. He started to dive for a blue throbbing vein...

  *DON'T HURT ME!*

  The psychic cry hit him like a club, and he jerked back instinctively.

  Her great yellow eyes stared at him. *You heard me!*

  Shaking his head against the wall of thought that had hit him, Decker growled, "Hell, they heard you in Doraville."

  *None of the others could hear me,* the werewolf babbled mentally. *And I tried to make them hear, I really did. I can't talk...*

  "They were probably too busy running like hell to listen," he said, irked. "Where do you get off, anyhow, clawing me like that? I ought to bite you anyway."

  *I didn't mean to claw you,* she thought earnestly, straightening against the wall. *I was just trying to grab you so you wouldn't run.*

  "Well, what the hell do you want?" Decker said irritably. His fangs were killing him.

  An expression that looked a lot like shame crossed her face. *Well, ummm, I'm under a curse, see, and...*

  Dec
ker stared. "A curse?" he said incredulously. "There's no such thing as...Never mind. What kind of curse? No, let me guess. There was this gypsy, right, and she turned you into a werewolf..."

  *Actually,* the werewolf thought glumly, *he said he was a wizard. I didn't believe him, of course, because...*

  "...There's no such thing as wizards. Right. How'd you meet this guy?"

  *It was a computer dating service. They hooked me up with him...*

  "I'd sue, " Decker interrupted.

  *I've been thinking about it, but who'd believe me? 'Judge, this man turned me into a werewolf.' Riiight. Anyway, he was a little bit of a nerd, you know, but I went out with him anyhow. He was a medieval history professor, and I have a thing for intelligent men. Besides, the computer's never wrong, right?* The werewolf shook her mane back.

  *But on the first date--the first date, mind you--he told me he wanted me to go to bed with him,* she continued. *So I told him to kiss off. Well, he grabbed me, and I slapped him, and then he turned al red and said something funny in what sounded like Latin. After that he said he was a wizard and that he'd cursed me, and when the next full moon came up, I was gonna turn into a werewolf. And the only way to break the curse was to get somebody to...sleep with me when I was in werewolf form.* She ducked her head, and Decker got the feeling she was blushing somewhere under al that fur. *And he said I'd be back in a month begging him to...ah...well, I slapped him again and left. I didn't BELIEVE any of that stuff, of course.*

  "I know what you mean," Decker said, remembering his first encounter with Beau Gabriel, the vampire.

  *That reminds me, I've been meaning to ask--are you under a curse too? I saw the fangs, and well, you're awfully strong, and I thought...*

  "No. I'm not under a curse."

  *Oh.* She shrugged as though it was none of her business. *Anyway, I've been trying to find somebody to help me break this sucker, but I haven't had much luck. None of my ex-boyfriends believe me. I finally got one of them over to my apartment, but when I made the change he ran like hell. The next day, I discovered he'd packed up and moved out of state.*