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  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

  577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520

  Macon GA 31201

  Hunger

  Copyright © 2009 by Barbara J. Hancock

  ISBN: 978-1-60504-460-6

  Edited by Heidi Moore

  Cover by Scott Carpenter

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: March 2009

  www.samhainpublishing.com

  Hunger

  Barbara J. Hancock

  Dedication

  For Todd who loves me, come sunlight or shadows…

  And for my mother who loved me first.

  Chapter One

  The man sagged to the ground like every bone in his body had dissolved when the girl let him go. If she hadn’t been less than half the man’s size, Jarvis Winters might have been fooled. He might have thought drugs or alcohol had gotten the better of one of the partiers along Belmont Street. He might have thought a little groping in a back alley had ended with someone passing out.

  Jarvis wasn’t fooled.

  He’d had the dance club under surveillance for hours. Long enough to stiffen his shoulders and dim his sight. Still, when the waif exited, followed soon after by a gorilla in jeans, he had known. He’d seen this set up before. Little Miss Victim luring a big bad predator to his turn-about-is-fair-play demise. He wasn’t impressed. A killer was a killer. It didn’t matter who they chose to kill—or feed upon—as the case may be.

  Winters wanted to wait until she moved on before opening the squeaky door of his ancient Ford Fairlane. It took longer than he expected. His hand was frozen on the door handle as she leaned back against the brick wall for a long moment. At more than a hundred yards away, he couldn’t see the expression on her face. He didn’t need to. He’d seen that satiated look countless times before. Her body would be in an unresponsive swoon. Her face would be slack, way past satisfied. The kind of look every man dreamed his lover would have after a tumble in bed…except, of course, for the fangs.

  Finally, she staggered around the corpse at her feet and made her way out of the alley and down the dark street. Too many busted streetlights made her tiny figure seem hunched and grotesque as it stumbled in and out of shadows. A fitting aura for a monster.

  Jarvis tightened his fingers and wrenched the handle harder than even the stubborn forty-year-old mechanism warranted. The rusty shriek was followed by a thud as he headed after his prey. He hadn’t been able to see her face, but he knew what it had looked like. Pure, drunken ecstasy. She would die happy.

  ***

  The woman who was once Holly Spinnaker pulled her feet away from the unconscious man and shuddered against the warm zing arching through her flesh. She wasn’t ready to let go, but dying had to be preferable to this mini-death, this loathing of the “life” she now led.

  She wiped her hands on the hips of her jeans as she slid along the wall and away from the would-be rapist without so much as tapping him with the toe of her sneaker. The awkwardness of the maneuver caused one elbow to knock and drag against rough brick, but she didn’t care. She was as tainted as she needed to be. His blood was in her for God’s sake. She wouldn’t touch him again.

  She stumbled when she was finally in the clear. The blood had gone straight to her head like too many glasses of sparkling champagne on New Year’s Eve. The memory of that cool, bubbly sweetness mocked her. She pushed it away, but she knew the analogy would stay with her. When she finally made it home and her bed spun beneath her, she would think of it. When she woke tomorrow night with a head-thumping, soul-splitting hangover, the sick analogy would be there to haunt her.

  She didn’t know she might not live to see tomorrow. She was too new. Too inexperienced. As she made her way across town, dizzy and weaving, she didn’t notice a man following her. She didn’t realize she’d been zeroed in on as prey for the second time that night.

  The voice mail light was blinking when she finally managed to get the key in the lock and open the door to her loft. She walked by the phone, straight to the kitchen where she doused her hands with orange antibacterial dishwashing liquid and scrubbed her face and hair and arms and hands in a disinfecting frenzy. Suds-filled water splattered the floor and the countertop and dripped into her eyes.

  She pushed her hair back and stood dripping and shivering and quaking in the dim shadows of a home that had seen happier times.

  The light still blinked. It beckoned her and she moved away from the sink toward it. Habit, despair, longing—all propelled her forward. Her shoes left damp footprints all along the deep rose-colored carpet that was actually a pale shade of mauve when the sun gleamed through the bank of high windows above her. She hadn’t seen that bright pastel hue in over a month.

  With a cold, damp finger, she reached for the button. Even in the dark she found its worn rubber pad. Habit or, heaven forbid, her coordination and night vision were better, aided by the fresh blood in her veins.

  A slightly breathless voice filled the room at high volume as it filled her heart with pain.

  “Holly? You there? Pick up… Well, guess I didn’t catch you. Hope you have fun at the concert—”

  “But not too much fun,” a different voice interrupted her mother’s, deep and male, full of humor and fatherly concern.

  “John, stop it,” her mother protested with a laugh.

  Holly could imagine the loving push Elizabeth Spinnaker would have given her husband. She could close her eyes and see the playful way her parents had always interacted with each other.

  “Listen, Holly…call me tomorrow and tell me all about it.”

  “And don’t let Jayne talk you into anything stupid.” Another interruption from her dad was followed by a less playful admonition from her mother. Then, the last words of the last normal message she would ever receive from her parents echoed through the dark empty room. “We’ll see you next week for Christmas.” That from her mother. “Be careful.” That from her father. And then, they were gone.

  She didn’t replay the four following messages. She didn’t want to hear their concern as it grew into terror when they realized their only daughters had disappeared without a trace. Instead, she pressed the button to replay the normal message. Again and again and again. She knew it would wear out one night, but she stood shivering and compulsively torturing herself with one replay after another.

  ***

  Jarvis listened from a dark corner. It wasn’t smart, but he listened. Better to have made the kill quickly after slipping through the unlocked window. Every one of them had been human at one time. It was the nature of the beast. You took that knowledge and you buried it or you couldn’t do the job. He should have attacked during her odd dishwashing-liquid ablutions. It would have been quick, easy and painless…for him anyway. Vampires didn’t go quick, easy or painless, but it was better to catch them by surprise. It saved a lot of wear and tear on his part.

  He had watched, mesmerized by her frenzied washing. Then, he’d been caught off-guard by the sound of disembodied voices floating up from the answering machine. Her parents? For the whole long year from hell he’d managed to avoid empathy. Now it punched him right in the gut, lea
ving him nauseated and slightly out of breath.

  She was a waif. That hadn’t been an act. He could finally see her in the greenish glow from the machine that held her transfixed. He could see the runway-model quality to her hollow cheeks and the bones of her delicate wrists. Less than half an hour ago she’d dropped a man who weighed a good fifty pounds more than he did. He stiffened as his brain gave his heart that much-needed reminder.

  She was pitiful. And her compulsive washing and repetitive playing of the message on the machine made her seem desperately human. But she wasn’t. She was a monster. And she had to die.

  ***

  “How can you possibly miss them that much?”

  Her sister came from the bedroom. In the middle of the large loft, floor-to-ceiling walls had originally been installed for privacy in the open space. Now, black and airless as a coffin, the bedroom served another purpose. Once lamented as depressing, it was now a haven from the sunlight they had once both craved. Holly found that depressing. Jayne would never be depressed again.

  “How can you not?” she asked her sister hoarsely.

  Jayne laughed. It was a gross imitation of the way she used to show amusement. Her sister had gone from a slightly wild and adventurous college student to a lustful killer in less than a week. Now that a month had gone by, she was more animal than girl. Her teeth gleamed as her mouth widened in a carnivorous smile.

  “I’ve been…busy.” Jayne flicked her tongue across the tip of each elongated canine. The fact that Holly now had the same sort of deformity didn’t stop her from shuddering.

  Jayne had always been beautiful. Dark hair, light blue eyes, tall and lean. These days, her figure bordered on voluptuous. She looked like an actress who had gained weight for the role of a lifetime. She definitely wasn’t starving. In spite of the night’s chill, she wore a thin, strappy sundress to accent her decadent new curves. Curves she would have fought with daily trips to the gym when she’d been alive.

  Defensively, Holly wrapped her arms around her own rapidly disappearing chest. The move didn’t hide her weight loss from Jayne’s notice. If anything, it only served to accent the changes to her physique as startlingly as Jayne’s sundress accented hers. Holly’s sweater was suddenly pulled too close. It hugged against her hipbones. The pose would have snagged her the cover of a tabloid if she’d been a Hollywood starlet.

  “Jesus, Holly, you look anorexic. You’re killing yourself!” The real concern on her sister’s face was so achingly similar to expressions she had displayed when they were both alive that Holly cringed.

  “She’s already dead, darlin’. She can’t starve. Her body won’t let her.”

  This time Holly didn’t cringe, she jumped. The move caused her to knock into the table that held the phone and a basket of old mail tumbled like so much past-due snow to the ground.

  Unconsciously, her hands fisted at her sides.

  “I’m not going to hurt ya, little one. We’re here to help.”

  The vampire, Dillon, would have been a time traveler’s erotic dream. He had the lean, leather-draped grace of a ’70’s punk-rock star. He had the whiskey-kissed Texas drawl of a wild-west cowboy. He was James Dean’s rebel. He was Jim Morrison’s poet. He was Bon Jovi’s gunslinger all mixed with the angry lost boy of Sid Vicious. But none of those icons held a candle to him because they hadn’t been backed by the power and immortality of vampirism.

  Dillon was wicked sexy…really, really wicked…and his joy in it was made manifest with every step he took, every word he spoke, every reaction he set off around him. For him, the world was a stage and Holly was always a little bit surprised when he wasn’t backlit by paparazzi flash.

  She hadn’t seen him in three days, but it had been like a reprieve. His overwhelming presence was painful. Physically painful. Her heart pounded because she was afraid, but it also leapt to life as it changed its pattern of beats to match his. It recognized his status as her Maker even if she refused to. Suddenly every drop of stolen blood in her veins strained toward him as if they were liquid metal and he was a powerful magnet.

  Jayne reacted differently. Her concern, that slight vestige of humanity, disappeared from her face in an instant. It was replaced by rapture. Apparently giving in to Dillon created a high and her sister was way past addicted. Holly swallowed and turned away from the urge to “try it she might like it”.

  “It’s useless, Dillon. She’ll never come around.”

  He ignored Jayne. His focus was on Holly. It was as terrifying as it had been that night. More so. Because then Holly hadn’t felt this pull, this need, this…want. Her body’s reaction to him was a betrayal, tangible proof it was no longer her own.

  Holly squeezed her fists tighter and felt a trickle of sweat down the back of her neck as she resisted Dillon’s sick allure. He said he wouldn’t hurt her? She knew he was lying. He could hurt her and would…soon. If she didn’t embrace the change. If she didn’t embrace him.

  “Why don’t you come along with me? It’s an hour or so ’til dawn. Let me take care of you.”

  “Like you take care of Jayne?”

  His gaze shifted briefly to her sister and then back to her. “Jayne can take care of herself.” That must have been news to Jayne because she narrowed her eyes.

  “I don’t need you,” Holly insisted. Only she knew that somehow her body did need him. It took every ounce of stolen energy she had to fight the pull.

  He moved closer and she couldn’t stop the breath of air that escaped her lips in a quiet gasp. The little secret smile that tilted his lips said more than words what he knew of her reaction. It would be so much easier to give in, better to be with him than against him. It was as if she stood poised above a dizzying height. A precipice. All she had to do was jump. He would wrap her in his power and make all the ugliness go away. Her past, her conscious, her self. Wouldn’t the rabbit be better off as the fox’s treasured pet?

  And then there was the other, darker, more hopeless reason to be his. The reason he might not even know about. She was alone. Afraid. Adrift. With no one to care, to love, to anchor her. She came from a close-knit family with a we’ve-got-your-back mentality. For the first time in twenty-two years, she was all alone.

  He could be an anchor. She could see it in his eyes. He would keep the ship of her sanity steady in the sea of madness he had created.

  “I. Don’t. Need. You.” The words came from deep within her, from some instinctual certainty. Better to die than be Dillon’s slave. Better to be unloved and alone than be a monster’s puppet lover.

  He was close now. His scent filled her nose. It was a good fresh scent, pine trees kissed with ice on a snowy night. She reminded herself he was evil even as she breathed deeply. His hand lifted to brush wet, half-rinsed hair from her forehead. His thumb, crazily warm, well-fed warm, brushed her cheek.

  “Don’t you?” he whispered.

  In a move so fast she couldn’t track his arm with her eyes, he lashed out behind her, knocking the phone with its still-blinking light to the floor. He used the heel of his leather boot to crunch through plastic. It ground the treasured recording of her parents’ voices into broken bits.

  Holly slipped to her knees to grasp and pull and try to move his leg. His calf felt like steel beneath his jeans. It wouldn’t budge.

  “Don’t you?” he repeated. He expected her compliance. He expected her to finally cave. Holly felt the hopelessness of her weak fingers against flesh that wouldn’t dimple even if she’d been the heavy-weight champion of the world.

  “You know, if you miss them that badly, we could always pay them a visit,” Jayne suggested with sly enthusiasm from across the room. The girl who had once loved volleyball and soccer now liked to play different games.

  Holly jerked her head up, the phone forgotten.

  “No!” Her protest only heightened Jayne’s excitement for the idea.

  “Come on, Dillon. Wouldn’t you love to meet the in-laws…make them outlaws like us?” Jayne snickered, her
obvious effort to play with words in order to appeal to her Maker’s cowboy style came off as desperate and sad and very, very frightening.

  The idea of her mother’s smile turning into a just-fed snarl sickened Holly to the core. It also strengthened her. She ignored the sound of plastic popping beneath her feet as she stood. Her parents were dead to her, but she wouldn’t allow Dillon to kill them. Thank God she had fed tonight. For one maniacal moment, she thought she would drain the city dry if it would give her enough strength to kill the two monsters beside her.

  ***

  The littlest vampire—Winters refused to think of her by the name they had been calling her—rose to her feet. He could tell it took the cowboy by surprise when she went for his throat.

  Jarvis didn’t wait to see if the waif’s fangs met their mark. He went for the other female vampire while the cowboy was occupied. Surprisingly, the voluptuous vamp was stronger than she should have been for a monster her age. She was young and soft and still managed to hold him off for several seconds before his wooden blade bit dully through the flesh of her chest.

  “Jayne!” The waif’s shriek was drowned out by the dying cries of the thing at his feet.

  He pulled his knife loose and turned in a well-practiced defensive crouch. The other two would attack him now and he’d be lucky to get out of this fight alive.

  But it didn’t go down that way.

  The cowboy wasn’t looking at his paramour as she writhed in skin-dissolving death throes, more dramatic than anything you’d ever see on the silver screen. He nodded at Jarvis and tapped his forehead as if it was the brim of a hat—as if Jarvis had done the fangy Jesse James a favor. Then, he was gone. A blur of movement. That’s all it was. A blur of movement. Jarvis had never not seen a vampire move that way.

  The one left had dropped back down to the floor. Her former sister was dying a gruesome second death, but the aptly tagged little one crept to her side and took her hand. Though barely more than charred bone, the fingers of that hand moved to wrap around and hold.