First Death

I woke up shortly after 5 pm, I think. I knew I was hungry and it felt like dinner time; I stumbled into the bathroom to relieve myself before getting dressed again. Jinx was sticking his paw under the door, trying to grab it so he could pull it open. I pushed him out of the way with my foot and twisted the handle; he shot out like a bolt of lightning. I saw him run up the stairs so I followed, still rubbing sleep out of my eyes.

The living room was empty but I could smell the aroma of hot food out of the oven, savory and meaty. When I walked into the kitchen, a very massive Evan was sitting at the table eating. He glanced to me, sizing me up. Then, with his foot, he pushed out a chair.

While I sat down he stood, taking a turn about the kitchen before he came back with a plate, a fork and a beer. He set them down in front of me, pointing to the still steaming pie dish on a trivet in the center of the table, "Shepherd's pie," he said.

I didn't need any more instruction as I was starving; I heaped a good sized scoop on my plate, letting it cool while I opened the beer and took a sip of the dark Guinness. Figured, he was Irish. I blew on a forkful, taking the hot food in my mouth, eating it despite it singeing my tongue, "It's good," I said and actually meant it.

Evan nodded, drinking his beer, "She always forgets. When you're hungry, you need to remind her you're not some dead, blood drinking corpse. It would be wise to pack some protein bars when you're in her company too."

Jinx jumped up on the chair and started to climb on the table; a growl from Evan stopped the cat, who reluctantly sat back in the chair and looked expectantly. Evan rolled his eyes and thunked a chunk of meat on a napkin, placing it in front of the cat, "It's hot you daft creature, so you will have to wait."

We ate in silence. Evan scooped himself seconds and offered me some as well; I accepted.

"Where is Lily?" I asked casually.

"She's in her office," he replied, taking another bite.

Her

office. That confirmed it. It also explained the reason for the double sink back at her cabin. Inwardly, I groaned; I didn't stand a chance against this guy and whatever history they shared, "Do you know what her plan is?"

"No," he responded, "she has a tendency to leave me out of the loop. If I were to take a guess, I'd say it would involve you staying with me while she runs off into the night alone."

I groaned outwardly this time, "That didn't work out well for her last night. Is she always so pigheaded?"

"Yup," he eyed me, "she told me the gist of last night. It was brave, if not foolish of you to follow her in there. None the less, it sounds like you were smart enough to figure out Ian is a twat."

I guess she left out the part about me fucking her against the side of the SUV, "I think calling him a twat is an understatement. Can she take him out?"

"Of course," he said casually, "in a one on one fight but he's a cunning bastard and rarely plays fair."

I nodded and finished my food by the time Lily walked in with a phone in her hand. She gave it to me without saying a word.

"Hello?" I asked, curiously. I watched Evan's arm snake around Lily's waist; she leaned easily into him. When he looked up at her expectantly, she gave in and leaned down to place a tender kiss on his lips.

"Hey Matty, glad to hear you're still kicking," Teddy said.

"Crist, dude, it's good to hear you too," I was happy to hear my brother; until I realized he was with Ian, "Hey, are you—"

He cut me off, "Don't worry about it, Matt, I'm with Lily on this. She'll fill you in on that prick, I just wanted to make sure you weren't dead yet."

"Not yet," I glanced up at Lily. Her face was blank as she stared down at Evan; idly she ran her fingers through his hair.

"Good, keep it that way," Teddy ordered, "I'll talk to you in a few days." He hung up before I could say good bye.

I handed Lily back the phone, "Care to enlighten me?"

Still leaning against Evan, she took the phone and shut it off, "I gave Teddy a call, discretely, in case Ian was still around but he apparently booked a flight not long after we left. He's here in England, somewhere."

I shuddered, that was not a good thing, "So what is the plan?"

"You stay here with Evan and I go kill him," she replied off handedly.

Evan rolled his eyes and put his finger on the tip of his nose.

"I don't like it," I said, "you shouldn't be going alone. We should be going with you."

She laughed, "Taking you with me the first time was a mistake; I cannot afford for you to get captured by anyone. Now I'll give it to you that you showed some balls and can shoot, but both of you will just slow me down. Ian will be able to hear your heart pounding before he sees you, and Evan is more of a smash and smash some more kind of fighter. This is going to be strictly a stealth attack—I'm in, I kill him, I'm out. Then we go from there to figure out what to do about you."

"So you want to leave me here? I mean, this isn't exactly Fort Knox. You broke in, in less than a minute," I pointed out.

Lily frowned slightly, "Despite that, this house is one of the safest places I know. It would take quite a while to break into the basement."

"He's got a point, though, the two of us make sitting ducks." the wolf added, "There is a pack a few miles away that has a bunker. He and I will go there for the night, and then come back tomorrow. If you're here, then we know everything went as planned. If not, well...we'll figure it out if we need to."

It was a shitty plan at best but I knew no amount of bickering from me would change any of it. Lily nodded and walked away. I pushed back my chair and followed behind her, leaving Evan in the kitchen. When I got into the room that must have been her office, I shut the door behind me. She looked up from the desk and waited for me to speak.

"I don't appreciate you acting so cavalier with my life and expecting me to just comply," I snapped out, "in case you have forgotten, I am a person and I should have a say in my fate."

She looked me over, "What is this really about, Matthew?"

I froze, staring back. I thought on it a moment and realized that her assumption was correct—it wasn't so much about my undecided future, it was about

our

undecided future. If there was one. "It's about last night."

She shrugged, "What about it? You performed well enough but it was a shit show to begin with."

"What?" I said, my face was mortified.

"Oh," she replied, realizing what I was talking about, "I meant about what happened inside the house. But you meant..." In a very human way, she dropped her face into her hands and rubbed it before sitting back in the chair behind the desk, "Look Matthew, you don't strike me as the kind of guy who falls for anyone after a single night, especially a femme fatale like me."

"I'm not," I said defensively. I dropped into a plush chair opposite her, staring into her still red eyes, looking at her fangs, "This is stupid, I know that. Of all the impossible relationships, for me to be drawn towards a vampire who is already mated to a wolf—"

She cut me off, "I am not his mate." Her voice wasn't angry or defensive, just calm like stating a fact, "at least not in the sense a true wolf would feel it. Evan wasn't born a wolf, he was changed against his will—one of the few remaining half breeds left, though that is simply because none of the wolves know. He never found his true mate. I suppose it is my fault, since he is out of his time."

This wasn't solving or answering anything, just making more questions, "What do you mean?"

Shaking her head, she dismisses it, "It doesn't matter. Yes, Evan and I are...lovers. I left him in hopes that he would move on to a more normal relationship but clearly that isn't something he has been able to do. What happened between you and I, Matthew—I am sorry, I don't wish to hurt your feelings but honestly I didn't think I was going to make it out of that house alive."

Ouch, "Yeah, I get it, it was a pity fuck. Who was being pitied exactly, I'm not sure but you've made it pretty fucking clear that I'm expendable so it only makes sense to throw me away when you're done," I was acting like a child and I knew it but the words kept pouring out of my mouth, "I guess what I was trying to get at, Lilith, is that in some fucked up way, for some fucked up reason, I want more. I'm not even sure if it is possible but there it is. If nothing else maybe you can use my sentiments to help you decide if you're going to kill me or not."

I turned and walked out, getting the last word but feeling like a complete ass hat at the same time. I put my shoes on and met a waiting Evan by the front door; I assumed correctly he would want to leave before it got dark. Lily walked out of her office but before she could say anything to me, I left through the front door, soaking up the dwindling afternoon sun.

Evan drove a truck; it was a nice one, plush and expensive but I wasn't in the mood for polite conversation so I climbed into the passenger's seat and stared out the window. It was easy enough to see the scenery because he wasn't driving a million miles an hour, but it didn't really matter because I wasn't interested in the country side. None the less, he pushed the subject.

"She can be really intolerable sometimes," he said.

"I gathered as much."

"You fucked her, did you?"

I froze; no good way out of this situation—denying it wouldn't work, lying wouldn't work, hell even silence wouldn't work, "Yeah. If it is any consolation, she thought she was going to die."

He was quiet for a while, "I've been with her long enough to know better than to think she's mine. That doesn't change the fact that it still hurts when she leaves—there's something about her that just eats away at you. A bit of advice, kid—let her go. As soon as this is over get as far away from her as possible and never think about her again."

I heard truth to his words but they weren't what I wanted to hear, "It's hard to take advice from a man whose been pining after her absence for a decade." There was bitterness in my tone that I couldn't erase, "Believe me, I realize how stupid this is and I want nothing more than to get as far away from her as I can. It just feels like there is something pulling me into her, like Icaraus to the sun—I'll burn up soon enough and then she's all yours again."

"Nah," he said, ignoring my attitude, "she doesn't belong to anyone."

The sun was setting, the road covered in the shadows casted by nearby trees. The sky was a blended mixture of blue, hues of orange-pink and the blackness of the oncoming night. I figured we were close to the pack land Evan had mentioned.

"Aren't wolves territorial? Won't they see the arrival of someone like you as a threat?" I asked.

"I called ahead and asked permission from their Alpha; he owes me a few favors. He wasn't thrilled about me bringing a human but as long as you don't mention anything about vampires, or being an immortal's descendant, or Death, or...well, maybe just don't talk at all."

"Yes sir," I fake saluted. He narrowed his eyes at me irritated.

I thought I saw a flash of something outside the window; it made me sit up right.

"What is it?" Evan asked.

"I don't know," I responded, "something feels off."

He kept driving but rolled down his window; he tilted up his head and sniffed the air as it flowed in, "Fuck." I turned to him; he barely glanced at me, "There are vampires out there."

"Ian," I mumbled, "this is bad."

"Yes, it is." He grabbed his phone, taking care to keep it out of sight; he dialed Lily's number and hit mute. Not even a second later, something crashed into the truck from the side and threw us off the road.

We rolled; it was a good thing I had my seat belt on. I felt the weightlessness of my arms and legs as they were pulled away from my body in the centrifugal force of the motion, before crashing back down against me. My head swung to the side and smashed into the glass; everything got blurry and I felt like I would vomit. I remember turning to look over at Evan—he appeared to be unconscious against the steering wheel. I saw his phone had landed on the seat beside me—the call was connected. My hand was unsteady but I picked it up and was barely able to slip it into my sock before the door was ripped off the side of the truck; I didn't recognize the man who cut my seat belt, but I did see his red eyes and fangs before everything grew black.

...

My head pounded worse than any hangover I've ever had. My eyelids were heavy but I forced them open. They were slow to react and everything was still blurry.

I was on my side on the ground; my hands were bound behind me, my feet together at the ankles. I felt tape over my mouth. I had to blink a few times before I was able to take stock in where I was; it was a small room, stone floor and walls, old iron bars. I saw Evan, bound and gagged, only a few feet away from me; I could tell he was awake, his eyes were half closed as if he were pretending to still be asleep. Then, I heard a familiar faint English accent.

"You have got to be kidding me—you're telling me that you were out smarted by a kid?" Ian was pissed.

"I checked his pockets when we pulled him from the truck, no one would have thought he'd have a phone in his sock," the second man replied.

Ian growled, "I should kill you again for being an idiot. Take them up to the solarium,

now

!"

I quickly shut my eyes before they knew I was awake. We were fucked.

Someone heaved me over their shoulder and from a groan I figured another did the same to Evan. I did my best to remain dead weight, trying not to fight. It took forever, up several flights of stairs, down twists and turns of hallways until finally I was dumped onto the floor.

I heard footsteps leave; I slowly opened my eyes, making sure that the room was empty before I started moving. My head hurt like a bitch but I rubbed my face against the carpet until I was able to pull the tape off.

"Evan," I whispered.

There was enough dim light that I could see him lying only a few feet away.

"I'm here, kid," he said quietly.

"Ian has us."

"I heard. That was quick thinking, stuffing the phone into your pocket. She will come, we just have to stay alive long enough," he groaned a little bit.

"What's wrong—are you hurt?"

"Yeah, I think my arm is broken. They have me in silver shackles too, those bastards."

I tried struggling against my binds but it was no use, they were cinched tight and already cutting into my skin, "Fuck."

Evan coughed painfully, "I've been in worse situations before. You'd be surprised how many times your life is at risk when you hang out with a bunch of Death's minions."

I stopped struggling and laid there, "Seriously? You can't be more than ten years older than me—how many times a week do you get your life threatened for crist's sake?"

There was a pause, "I first met Lily and Lucas in 1797."

The pause was mine this time, "Lily said that wolves don't live much longer than humans—you can't be that old."

"I chock it up to vampire voodoo," he grumbled.

I rested my head on the ground, staring at his outline in front of me. I guess that is what Lily meant when she said he was out of his time, but I wondered how it was her fault, "You weren't born a wolf, you were changed?"

"Yeah. They broke into the house I shared with my wife, my brother and his wife. I never found out why exactly but we were attacked in the middle of the night by a small pack of wolves—there were only half a dozen of them. My brother got bit, but he was fortunate—he died within minutes. After they bit me, I could hardly move. I tried to fight them off but in the end I was forced to watch as those animals did unspeakable things to my wife and sister in law. Beyond that, it was a haze; I can remember a rocking motion, so they must have thrown me on a ship and brought me from Ireland to Scotland," he drew in a deep breath and shifted his body on the carpet to try to alleviate some of his pain. To past the time, he continued his story, "I vaguely recall being in the bottom of a dirt pit-the ceiling was a lattice work of metal bars. Sometimes wolves walked over, sometimes men. I was in agony. I vomited more than one would think possible. I had a fever, I couldn't sleep most nights but when I did I had nightmares of things that I hadn't done. Just when I thought I couldn't take it anymore, my fever broke, I stopped vomiting and my sleep was dreamless. I have no idea how long I was down there—it could have been weeks or months, there was no way to tell. One night, instead of dropping scraps down through the metal bars, some men dumped buckets of water on me to wash some of the dirt away before they opened it up and drug me out of the pit. I was bound and collared like an animal before being led through a large house and shoved into a grand room—clearly, I was out of place but so were the few others in the room, all bound and filthy like me. One by one we were paraded in front of an audience of well dressed, upper class snobs. I had enough wit about me back then to realize that I was being sold at an auction.

When they arrived at me, the one selling talked about me like I was an object. He said that I was 'newly turned' and strong as an ox with the fight and smarts of a wolf. That's when it dawned on me that the beastly creatures who attacked my home were men in the form of wolves and that the horror stories were true—and that I was now one of them."

I absorbed the ghastly way Evan was created, "Why would they bite you and sell you?"

He groaned and rolled slightly onto his stomach, resting his head on the ground, "That's how wolves used to make their money—changing humans into half breeds and selling them off as slaves to the highest bidder. They had no qualms about it back then but almost a century ago when slavery started to dwindle, they decided to wipe that bit from their history and started killing all known half breeds—it was genocide. There really is no way to tell the difference between a half breed and a pure breed; the only way of knowing is if someone confesses to biting them. Even today, for a pure breed to bite someone is a death sentence to both."

After thinking on it, I came to a horrific realization, "Lily bought you?"

He sighed, "No. Lucas bought me, but Lily picked me out. She was still evil back then—after a few of the buyers came to inspect me up close I lost my shit; they treated me like a horse, grabbed my head and turned it, poked in my mouth to see my teeth, my hands, my legs. Before I had a chance to think about it I broke through my binds and went after anyone who was close; I killed a few buyers, the auctioneer and several of the pure breeds. Somehow, I recognized something in them that told me they were the ones who attacked my family. I went ballistic—the new wolf in me was strong, defiant and out for blood. Bodies piled up around me and all of the aristocrats scattered like cockroaches—all but Lily. Fearlessly she fleeted up to me and grabbed me by the throat with her bony little fingers. If you think she is strong now, you are mistaken—back then she was a force of nature. She brought me to my knees and could have easily snapped my neck but instead she influenced me to calm down.

Lucas was pissed that she wanted me and because of my out lash they had to pay ten times my asking price to clean up the mess but he had promised her a half breed as a present to mark the anniversary of the day she died. He didn't trust that I would mind her, so as soon as we were in their carriage he wasted no time; he pulled out an ornate looking dagger, sliced his finger open and spoke something in Latin before grabbing my cheek and letting a drop of his blood fall into my eye. A Blood Oath, they called it; a way to bind nonhuman creatures to them, a long forgotten skill that was now their secret. I was bound to do Lucas' bidding and some part of that oath and the ones that followed kept me alive past my normal time."