The Vampire’s Wolf #1
Warrior Werewolf Guardians
THE VAMPIRE’S WOLF #1
She’s the werewolf’s natural enemy … but as a Marine, he’s duty-bound to protect her.
Brianna Vittori discovers her supernatural powers after a narrow escape from the vampires hunting her. She seeks the protection of werewolves, the vampire’s natural enemy. They are the only creatures alive who can save her ꟷ if they don’t kill her on sight.
Travis MacConnelly, a Marine turned werewolf, is confused that Bri doesn’t recognize that she is also a vampire. He doesn’t understand his attraction to her or his desire to keep her safe. Werewolves are immune to the deadly energy-sucking power of female vamps. But he’s not immune to her fear or desperation. When she offers her throat, choosing death over capture by the vamps, she gains his respect. He agrees to be her bodyguard. But if she stays, the vamps will find her, and the risk grows along with Bri and Mac’s mutual desire, because the gravest danger comes with loving each other.
The Vampire’s Wolf is a complete novel with HEA, the first of two in the Warrior Werewolf Guardians paranormal romance series.
Length - approx. 300 pages
Excerpt from The Vampire’ Wolf #1 - Warrior Werewolf Guardians series
Chapter One
Brianna Vittori peered out the windshield at the wet April snow falling so fast the wipers couldn’t keep up. Any sane person would pull over. She kept going because the only thing worse than capture by the military was capture by the vampires.
Bri passed the sign announcing the distance to the Marine Mountain Training Center in the predawn gloom, driving without headlights, because for her the darkness meant only the loss of color from her vision and not the blindness humans endured. She could still see perfectly. Or could, if not for the spring storm sending sleet splashing ice across her windshield. There had been no snow down below in Sacramento. But here in the California mountains, spring acted differently. Driving conditions were so dangerous that even the plows and sanders hadn’t ventured out. But then they weren’t fleeinpg from vampires.
Was she mad to run headlong toward the only creatures that could stop them? The wolves could save her, if they didn’t kill her first.
Werewolves were the vampires’ natural enemy, but she didn’t know what they thought of Feylings. Her grandmother had not said. She thought again of this new woman who had appeared in her life. She didn’t look like the one who had found her when Bri was in high school, but something about them was the same. That first visitor had rocked her world. She’d told her about the werewolves and said that Bri was like her, first generation—a Feyling.
Tonight she might have walked right into a trap if not for the second visitor. That Feyling had taken a risk to seek her out. The woman was blunt as a dull hatchet with her warning, but without her, Bri would have been caught. No doubt in her mind. They were there at the hospital. She’d barely escaped. But they hadn’t given up. They were out there right now, hunting her.
The thermostat told her it was twenty-two degrees outside, and she was only wearing sneakers, jeans and a tight white T-shirt with short sleeves. Brianna gripped the wheel of the rental car and stared out at the night. The sleet flew at her like a living thing, blasting against the windshield and exploding on the glass like droplets of plasma.
She peered out at the sky, searching vainly for daylight. They didn’t like daylight. She knew that much, and she knew what they wanted with her. Bri shuddered.
She glanced into the woods that lined the road, catching glimpses through the snow of something moving there. An elk, a werewolf, a vampire? It hadn’t been until she was in elementary school that she discovered every child couldn’t see in the dark. Now she wished that she couldn’t. She shivered and fiddled with the heat, knowing the cold she felt came from inside. Better not to see what was stalking her.
She’d never run so far or so fast. But she’d outpaced the one at the hospital and the one in her apartment. It had been stupid to go back there.
She’d known she was different— “special,” her grandmother had called her—but she never knew she could run like that. Perhaps you needed the devil on your heels to learn such a thing.
God, she wished she’d never found out about them. Brianna rubbed her tired eyes with her thumb and index finger as she steered with the other hand.
She passed the base entrance with all the floodlights and security. She lowered her head and continued on, eager to get past this place. She didn’t trust the military. The soldiers seemed like drones, mindless and intimidating, while their leaders were more secretive than vampires.
Something stood upright in the road. Brianna slammed on the brakes with both feet, and the car fishtailed. The man stood motionless as a ghost, his white face blotched with huge purple spots. Brianna’s heart hammered in her chest as she straightened her arms and braced for the collision, no longer trying to miss him but trying to hit him, because she had realized that the being in the road was no man, but a vampire.
A moment before impact he leaped, clearing the car as her vehicle rushed beneath him. She was now sliding toward the ditch. The back end of the car hit the shallow embankment first. The car skidded sideways, tilting, and rolled to the driver’s side. Her vehicle careened across loose gravel. The tearing metal shrieked and collapsing plastic crunched. The impact shattered the driver’s-side window, which exploded into a million flying crystals of glass that flew at her like tiny bits of shrapnel. With a final jolt, the car came to an abrupt halt.
Her heart slammed against her ribs, and her breathing came in puffy, white, vaporous pants of steam. Everything else was silent. Brianna unfastened her seat belt and looked about. The moment she breathed in the air, she noted the sharp scent of the werewolves. They were close.
Where was that thing that chased her? Had she hit it?
The answer arrived an instant later when the windshield exploded and the vampire reached his cadaverous hands inside the cab to haul her out.
She screamed and kicked, but he held on. He shook her to silence as another one grabbed her from behind. Brianna screamed again and the first one let go of her arm to slap her hard across the face. She’d never been struck before, and the sting and explosion of pain in her cheek and ear made her dizzy. She swayed as they dragged her to the vacant road.
Her knees wobbled, but she remained standing. She was certain what would come next. Brianna recalled what that strange girl outside her high school had said. She was not to be caught by them. Never. For what awaited was a living death. Why did vampires capture Feylings? she had asked. The answer had turned her blood to ice. The April dawn and her panic turned her skin cold. She trembled as one leaned in. It was the first time she had ever seen one close up, and his appearance made her flesh crawl. He stared with eyes white as milk. He seemed blind, until she saw the perfect black pupil and realized it was only his iris that had the strange lack of pigment. His wrinkled ears and distorted head made him look as if he had some terrible genetic abnormality. But his eyes terrified her the most.
His slitted nose flared as he leaned close.
* * *
Staff Sgt. Travis “Mac” MacConnelly woke to Johnny pounding on his door and then to a female voice screaming outside his quarters. He shook his head like a dog to clear the dreams from reality and groaned. What time was it? Oh six hundred, he realized. The pounding came again, on his window this time.
“Bloody hell. Johnny, I swear to God, I will chain you up at night,” Mac bellowed.
From outside the door, Johnny roared back. John Loc Lam had once been his grenadier, on his first combat assignment under a squad leader also on his first and his last command. Mac scoured his face with his rough hands, trying to scrub away the grief that clung like tar.
“Fine. I’m up.” Since the Marine staff sergeant no longer quartered in the barracks and he had more privacy, Mac slept in the buff. He tugged on his pants and thrust his bare feet into his boots. Then he stood, stretched, and winched at the familiar twinge across his torso. He glanced at the scars that crisscrossed his chest and right shoulder. There were four long slash marks from the creature’s claws and the punctures and puckered flesh where its teeth had torn open his shoulder. After four months, the battle wounds given to him by that thing had still not completely healed. Mac snatched up a shirt and thrust his arms through the sleeves, covering the worst of the scars, but he left the shirt unbuttoned as he tugged on his cap. “This better be good, Johnny.”
He buckled on his holster, tapped the knife down in the sheath and checked the .45 pistol before sliding it home. Then headed out, not dressed for inspection, with his shirttails flapping in the wind. The first thing that hit him was the cold, the second was the unfamiliar scent. Since the attack, he could smell things, tiny insignificant things like the antacids the colonel carried in his left pocket. But now he smelled something new. Enticing. Alive. Something that did not belong in the middle of his territory. He inhaled deeply, bringing the scent to his sensitive nose. Like orchids and the ocean and exotic spices, and then he caught the scent of dank earth, rotting leaves and musty clothing. His body snapped to attention. They smelled different to everyone, they’d said, but the females’ scent was universally irresistible and not like humans’. Since the attack, Mac easily differentiated between them and any other kind of animals, even from a distance. But these creatures did not smell human. They lacked the odor of meat and salt, but not the scent of blood. That came through now and grew stronger by the minute.
Johnny appeared around the side of the concrete two-story enclosure that had once been a training site built to resemble the family compounds back in the Sandbox. Now it was their quarters.
John Loc Lam had once been a fine Marine. Now he was a huge wolf-like creature, eight feet tall, who easily balanced on his two hind legs as he lifted massive claws and roared a warning, flashing dangerous fangs. His features were not human, but neither were they wolf. Instead he combined both: small pointed ears, a long snout, wicked jaws and a face covered with glossy black hair.
“Do you smell orchids and blood?” he asked.
Johnny nodded.
Exactly what he’d been prepped to expect if he ever came upon flesh eaters. They were out late for vampires, because the sun was up. That would make them easier to spot, track and kill.
“Training exercise?” he asked.
Johnny shook his head.
Mac inhaled again. “Bloodsuckers. Males and females. Did you see them or come here first?”
Johnny gave no answer. He couldn’t. He could answer only yes-or-no questions, to their continual frustration.
“I thought they avoided our kind unless provoked.” He eyed his corporal. “Did you provoke them?”
Another shake of his shaggy head dismissed that line of questioning.
“Why would they come here? Can’t be an accident. Got to be hunting us.”
Johnny growled.
Mac drew his sidearm. A bullet wouldn’t stop them, but he felt better with a gun in his hands.
“Come on.”
Johnny looked at Mac’s weapon and shook his head.
“I’m going to keep it, thanks.” Mac released the safety. “A couple in the head will slow them down. The bullets are steel.”
Johnny groaned and thumped his chest. He wanted Mac to change.
“I’ll turn when we get closer. Don’t worry, I’ll keep up.”
Johnny nodded.
“We have to kill them.” He stepped around his gunner. “Capture one if we can. The colonel’s wet dream is to have one alive. Might prove we’re ready for combat duty again.”
Johnny nodded his agreement. He was as tired of being a lab rat as Mac was. The two of them set off, hunting as they often did, only this time the quarry was vampire. When the scent grew strong, Mac pulled up to disrobe and stash his clothing before summoning the change.
Johnny paused to look back. Mac felt the familiar flash of guilt at his ability. He motioned Johnny on. No reason he should have to watch. Mac slipped out of his boots. Before the change gripped him in that momentary blinding bolt of agony, he issued one last order to his corporal.
“Circle behind them. If they come your way, kill them. That’s an order.”
Mac recovered quickly from the change, but Johnny had already gone. Mac was faster now, running on two long, powerful legs, his gray fur flashing white in the sunlight that now shone in bright rays from the east. He thought of what might have happened if the vampires had found him in his quarters asleep and wondered if they were inside or outside the perimeter of the training center.
He saw Johnny now, a black shadow running parallel to him through the trees.
Mac recalled what he’d learned in his new training. He needed to get to an artery, a big one. Femoral, brachial or carotid. Open a vessel and hold the thing down until it bleeds out. Don’t let it bite you and don’t let it go. It will regenerate any lost body part except its head. Reopen the vessel if necessary.
Instead of the forest, for the smallest fraction of a second, he saw his Fire Team around him at the building they had once used for training ops before deployment. He pushed aside the tug of grief at all the good men who had died in the Sandbox, his men. If he’d known what they faced, could he have kept them alive?
Decisions made in an instant now rolled through his mind with the regularity of the tides. He didn’t know, but maybe.
Now he was back in the present, facing more split-second decisions he’d have to live with every damned day. If he told the doctors about the flashbacks, they’d say PTSS and he’d be sidelined for who knew how long. Maybe he and Johnny could prove their worth right here and now. If he didn’t fuck it up again.
The changing light caused by the breaks in the clouds made it hard to see the things, but he sensed them. Could the vampires sense Mac the way he scented the bloodsuckers? Two males and a female, traveling together.
He saw Johnny drop and realized they were nearly on the intruders. Mac threw himself down to stare through the perimeter fence. He saw two male bloodsuckers dragging a female along the shoulder of the highway beside an overturned car, her feet kicking wildly, uselessly. They seemed oblivious to their company. He glanced at Johnny, who looked to him for the signal to charge.
He signaled for him to hold and glanced back to the intruders, gaping, as this was the first time he’d seen the Night Stalkers. The sight sent a shiver down his spine. There were two males and they were hideous, pale and rodent-like, as he’d been told, with purple-skinned and misshapen heads that looked as if they’d been crushed. Their eyes were milky, and their noses, if you could call them that, were slitted as if they belonged to reptiles. And then he fixed on the woman, struggling against their grasp and making every effort to wrench herself free.
She did not seem of the same species. They’d said the females were lovely, and he was curious to see for himself.
She was tall and lithe, dressed modestly in a pair of faded blue jeans that sat low on her curvy hips. Her struggles showed him both the pink mobile phone that did not entirely fit in her back pocket and also the scrap of white lace undergarment that peeked from above her jeans. Her white T-shirt fit her like a second skin and had hiked over her flat stomach, showing a wide-open stretch of perfect skin and the dark indent of her navel. How long had she been a bloodsucker, and why was she fighting them?
The beams of sunlight chased across the yard, illuminating her to reveal that her hair was coppery red, shoulder length, and with ringlets that wound tight, curly as a corkscrew. They bounced as she tossed her head. He wanted to see her face, which was now covered by her hair.
Now what the hell did he do? He hadn’t counted on killing a woman.
Not a woman, he reminded himself. A dangerous assassin. The female vamps killed by drawing energy. At least that’s what the intel from the Israelis said. The Israelis had captured one but couldn’t turn her, so they’d put her down.
She’s not human. A killer. A beauty, whispered his mind.
He shook his head. This wasn’t possible. Her allure didn’t work on him. That was what he’d been told. But he still found he didn’t have the stomach to kill her. She’d be the capture, he decided. The colonel’s prize.
But first he had to get her away from those butt-ugly male bloodsuckers.
* * *
The vampire’s grip bit into Brianna’s wrists. She twisted and kicked, and she worried that she would simply be one more young woman who vanished without a trace.
“Look in the trunk. See if there’s something to tie her hands.”
The second released the latch and rummaged. “Nothing.” He turned to peer at her. “Just knock her out.”
“No. Not this one,” said her captor, pulling her elbows so tightly that they touched behind her back. “She’s special. First generation. Just smell that. I’d like a taste of her now.”
Brianna stilled as the terror washed through her stomach and twisted her intestines. Dizziness whirled and nausea rolled as his breath fanned down her neck in a hot blast.
“But you won’t,” said the one standing before her, just out of range of her kick. “You’ll wait for orders or face his judgment.”
The vampire behind her sniffed again as if she were some kind of cocaine.
“Still, we did find her first. Who has to know? She’s not a virgin. I can smell she’s not.”
“We need to get out of here before someone sees us. It’s daylight, Ian. Any human could wander by.”
“In this snow? One bite. What do you say? She’ll heal before we get her to the Lord, and it will be her word against ours.”
The one before her cocked his head, staring at her with those creepy white eyes, considering Ian’s proposal.
There was a pounding sound, like a horse at full gallop. Both vampires turned, and the one before her shrieked as a black wolf leaped at him, carrying him backward to the ground as the great jaws closed on his neck. A second wolf, this one gray, attacked from the opposite direction, but the one behind her released his grip and vanished before the monstrous wolf got his jaws locked on him. The snapping sound came from behind Brianna’s head. She crumpled to the earth as the black wolf ripped out the throat of the other vampire. So this was a werewolf, her first sighting and likely her last.
She saw that the one called Ian had run to the front of her car and changed direction, circling the vehicle, coming back toward the gray werewolf which now looked in the direction he had gone. She knew he couldn’t see the vampire. But she could.
“To your right!” she shouted.
The wolf dropped and rolled in the direction she pointed, taking out Ian’s legs.
The vampire sprawled and skidded as the gray one landed on his back, pinning him to the earth before using a hideous claw to slash at Ian’s neck. Blood sprayed across the road like a fire hose turned on for a moment. Then the blood pumped more rhythmically as the werewolf held Ian down. The vampire struggled as his neck wound sealed and healed. But the werewolf opened his neck again. Brianna held a hand over her own neck and vomited in the snow. She would be next. Of that she had no doubt.
Ian’s struggles ceased. His neck wound remained wide open and the gray wolf rose with his fellow. They turned toward her in unison.
They were huge, at least nine feet tall, and their front forearms ended in long fingers with horrible hooked claws that dripped with blood. Neither had a tail. Their snouts were too short for wolves and too long for men, unlike any creatures she had ever seen outside of a nightmare.
Their teeth were worse than any wolf she’d ever seen, and she got a very good look as they peeled back the flesh from the long white enamel and growled at her.
Brianna scuttled backward on all fours and collided with the undercarriage of her rental. The black one snorted and stared with fixed yellow eyes, and Brianna saw her own death reflected there.
It knew what she was. She sensed that it did. A second low, rumbling growl emanated from its throat. She vibrated, preparing to move so fast that even a nine-foot werewolf could not catch her.
They killed the two that took her. Were there others? She glanced about and did not see any.
Brianna lifted a hand to her forehead and recalled thinking that she preferred death to the living horror that came with her capture.
Now that she looked death in the eye, she wondered if she had the courage to accept what came. They would kill her. Why wouldn’t they? That was what werewolves did, all they did, if the female was to be believed. Still, she had to try. They were her only hope.
“Help me,” she said, finding her voice a strangled weak representation of its former self.
The black one stalked towards her.
* * *
“Help me,” she said, huddling small and innocent as a fawn against the compact car which was covered with so much road salt that Mac couldn’t tell what color it had once been. She was an exotic bloom growing there in the snow and dirt, beautiful as dawn, as the first golden rays of morning gilded her coppery hair so it shone like flames about her pale upturned face.
Of course it was all illusion. She was as harmless as a heart attack and innocent as a brimming cup of poison. But not to him.
“Please. I have no one else.”
She said it as if he were some human she could order about, like a mindless slave.
And he would bet a month’s pay that until this very moment no male had ever refused her anything. Female vamps easily manipulated human males. Apparently, she did not realize that her powers didn’t work on werewolves.
“They were trying to take me.” She began to rise, a blooming rose reaching for the sun. He motioned her to stay down.
Why didn’t she disappear, like the male?
“So I came here to find you.”
She’d come on purpose into their territory? That was suicidal, he thought, or a brilliant tactic. Or a lie. As to which it was, that would depend on if Mac killed her or not.
Sea-green eyes, pale and lovely as glass polished in the ocean, stared up at him in wide astonishment. Her high cheeks flushed a beguiling pink, and a few freckles lay scattered across her nose, giving interest to the skin that glowed luminescent as a pearl. Yes, she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. But she wasn’t a woman.
She covered her face with her hands, letting her fiery hair sweep forward. Now, he thought.
As if reading his mind, Johnny charged her. No, he thought, but he couldn’t order Johnny to halt. Neither could speak in werewolf form, and it was too late. She must have heard Johnny, for she turned, lifting her startled eyes. But instead of vanishing, she turned her head, elongated her neck, making it easier for Johnny to kill her.
This one was ready to die, prepared for just that.
Mac had enough time to throw a shoulder into his corporal and deflect his course. Johnny crashed into the rear of the car as Mac hauled the vampire to her feet. She did not resist, as she had with the males of her species. He tugged her forward and she fell against his wide, hairy chest, looking up at him with sea-glass eyes. He had to remind himself that she couldn’t affect him, because his heart obviously didn’t get that message. Or his skin, for it tingled with a sexual awareness that lifted every hair.
He pinned her wrists against his chest, one in each fist. He realized her jeans and shirt were wet, and he waited for her to slip from his hold like water. But she only stared up at him with wide, frightened eyes. Next he noticed how slender the bones of her wrists were and how silky-soft was her skin. There was an energy about her, like a static charge that made his skin tingle, as if she were stroking him. He banged her wrists on his chest, and she extended her elegant, manicured fingers so they threaded through the fur that covered his chest. Pink, he realized, like the inside of a conch shell.
Beside him, Johnny growled.
The smell of the breeze off the Gulf of Mexico surrounded Mac. So that was her game. The lure of her person. She’d counted on it to entrance him. That meant either she didn’t know he was unaffected or she didn’t know that it made a difference. Had she never met a man who could resist her?
Was he really immune, or had the scientists gotten that wrong, too?
If he were immune to her terrible powers, then why was he staring down at those soft green eyes, those parted pink lips? She gasped, bringing air into her lungs. She would be so easy to kill.
Johnny made a huffing sound, and Mac looked his way. The look of consternation was clear, as was the slicing motion he made across his throat. Johnny wanted her dead.
Mac shook him off and threw the vampire over his shoulder. They’d secure her for now and call the colonel.
He easily vaulted the ten-foot security fence with the woman on his shoulder and ran with her to their quarters, trying not to notice the sweet scent of her skin or the tumble of curly red hair that cascaded over his chest like a silken waterfall. When they reached the yard, he thought to wonder if her purpose was to find exactly where they lived. Would the vampires sacrifice the two males and this one to discover their position?
It was possible.
He tossed her to her feet and motioned to Johnny, keeping her wrist imprisoned in his grip. Her eyes widened as he gestured for Johnny to take charge of her. It was only when she saw him approach, teeth bared, hackles raised, that she started to struggle. Her strength, though greater than what a human female would possess, was no match for a werewolf’s. Johnny clasped her opposite wrist, because he did not want to give her a second to run. Not now that they had her.
How had that male disappeared? Could she do that as well, and if she could disappear, why didn’t she when she had the chance?
He needed to transform if he were to interrogate her. But he wasn’t about to let her see that. Standing naked and vulnerable before her held the kind of risk even he wasn’t willing to take.
He gave Johnny a long look and a slow shake of his head, waiting for the confirming nod of understanding. Johnny would not kill her, though he clearly wanted to.
Was he right?
Mac stared at the beautiful temptation and recognized that he did not want to let her go. He growled. Werewolves didn’t moon after vampires. They caught them and killed them. But even as he let her go, he knew what he wanted to do with her and that troubled him.
The Vampire’s Wolf ©Jenna Kernan, 2020