Fang Chronicles: Zenya's Story (4 page)

You’re no fun Zenya. For a wolf, he’s pretty damn sexy even with his skinny bones showing.”

“Enough.”

It was the vampire this time. Slowly, Nicolas’s eyes focused through his pain. Vorlyk bit into his good wrist and fed. Unavoidable shadows rolled in.

Chapter Six

He woke in a feminine room. A frilly comforter covered him and a pink canopy hung over the bed, along with a noticeable feminine cat scent. Pushing back the cover, he stood quickly. Not caring about his nakedness, he walked to the door. He needed answers, and his growling stomach needed food.

Opening the bedroom door, he tripped over a feline on the floor in the hallway. His wolf almost burst through his skin with the need to kill the cat scrambling from beneath him. Before she could slip and fall due to three legs, she changed into a young woman missing her left arm.

Fuck. Even he couldn’t kill a one-armed woman who was little more than a child.

“You must be hungry.” She sounded exasperated.

“Are you my guard?”

“If I was, I think you’ve healed enough to eat me. Hmm, I like the thought. Why don’t you have a bite?” Now she sounded outrageously flirtatious.

“You’re a child.”

“I’ll be eighteen next month.”

“I like grown women.”

“You probably like women with two arms.”

“I don’t care if the woman has
no
arms. It’s not that part of her I fuck, but I don’t fuck teenage girls or cats.”

“Well at least you don’t watch your language in front of me. I haven’t heard that word in over a year.”

“Could you shut up and help me find food?”

“I’d be fucking happy to.”

Great. A she-cat with a sense of humor.
And another one he couldn’t kill.

He followed through the cavernous home, taking stock of his health while mapping their path. His arm and ribs no longer hurt. His stomach did, but that was lack of food. His skin was paper thin and seemed to barely keep his bones contained. He needed to shift and could feel his wolf just beneath the surface. The smell of cooking made his stomach growl loudly, causing the she-cat to giggle.

The kitchen appeared at the end of a long hallway. Stone walls surrounded the large room.

A woman looked over her shoulder. It was Madayah, the vamp’s female.

“Thanks for bringing him, Talya. Now go do your chores and then head to lessons.” Her heavily accented Spanish held no room for argument.

The she-cat gave Madayah an impish grin. “Nicolas asked me to marry him, and we’re eloping after he eats.”

Madayah’s unmarred eye held steel.

Talya gave Nicolas a wink. “Don’t keep me waiting wolf. I have beaus standing in line.” She walked out with dramatically swaying hips.

“Sit down, wolf.” Again the hard voice.

He didn’t argue, because he needed the food too badly. The aroma also held back the overpowering scent of cat.

“Where is Zenya?”

“I think she’s bathing. She went to sleep smelling as bad as you. All the sheets will need to be washed.” A steaming plate of rice and tamales landed on the table in front of him.

He picked up the fork laying next to the plate and dug in.

“It’s hot,” she warned.

It was. Spicy hot. He didn’t stop eating until the last bite disappeared. Madayah sat in the chair beside him and pushed a glass of water closer. He looked up, took the glass, and downed it.

“Sorry, it’s not exactly pleasant to look at me while you eat. Would you like some more?” Her statement didn’t hold self-pity.

He ignored it. “Please.”

She stood and made another plate before sitting back down.

This time he didn’t take his eyes off her while he ate the second helping. If she cooked, he’d look.

She gave him a smile. “At this rate you’ll fatten up in no time.”

He didn’t answer, just kept shoveling and then drank another glass of offered water. Feeling a chill across his naked back, he turned slightly, looking over his shoulder.

Vorlyk stood watching. “Clothes in the kitchen please. This is my woman’s territory, but I’m laying down the law.”

Madayah stood and walked to the vampire, giving him a brief hug. “I don’t want him in any of our clothes until he’s bathed.”

“It still won’t take the wolf stink away,” Vorlyk said.

Nicolas jumped to his feet, reacting without thought.

The vamp had him on his back and on the floor in the same instant. Cold hands wrapped around Nicolas’s throat and cool breath brushed against his ear. “Don’t forget your place, wolf. You’re alive at my whim.”

“Then kill me.”

“For some reason Zenya wants you alive. She has a soft spot for wolves that I don’t understand.”

“My plan is to kill every cat I can get my hands on.”

The hand tightened.

“Vorlyk!” Madayah spoke. “He’s lying. If he wanted me or Talya dead you’d be digging our graves right now.”

Nicolas coughed but managed to say, “I don’t hurt women of any kind if they mean no harm.”

Vorlyk laughed. “That she-cat would wipe the floor with you. Her claws even manage to keep me in line.”

Nicolas ignored the hand Vorlyk offered and ungracefully got to his feet.

“Stubborn wolf.” Vorlyk chided.

“Blood sucker.”

The vampire shrugged his shoulders. “I give up.” The intensity left the vampire’s voice and he went on. “I won’t grant your death wish unless you refuse to bathe. Seriously, you stink.”

Nicolas scratched his unshaven face. He was sure he had lice. Zenya probably had them, too. With an internal sigh, he gave in, deciding to stop fighting fate. “I’ll bathe and if possible borrow a razor.”

“Not a problem. How’s the arm and ribs?”

“Almost as good as new.”

“It’s going to take a few days to get you back to normal, but you’ll feel a lot better after you’re clean. I’ll show you to the bathing area if you’ve finished eating.”

They left the kitchen and then walked deeper into the mountain. The warmth of the stove tapered off, giving way to cool surrounding stone. After three turns and walking several hundred yards, the temperature and humidity shot up again. One final turn and they entered a muggy cave very un-home like with a natural hot spring.

He immediately recognized the muffled sobs coming from the side of a large pool. Zenya. The vampire’s hand stopped him from entering further.

She looked up and immediately stopped crying. Rising quickly from the water, she wrapped herself in a towel without looking at the two men.

Her voice cracked slightly. “Everything you need, including clothes, is against the far wall.” Without another word, she left the room.

Vorlyk didn’t speak until the sounds of her footsteps faded completely away. “The only reason I don’t kill every wolf I see is because they saved her. The only reason I don’t kill every cat I see is because, believe it or not, some of them are good. They also have too many vampires for me to take on.”

“That’s your excuse for helping them torture me?” Nicolas had no success concealing his hatred.

“It’s the only excuse I’m giving you.”

“How old are you?”

The vampire laughed. “I would love to look inside your mind sometime. I was turned at twenty. I know I look younger. It’s the bane I’m stuck with.”

The vamp’s boyish features stared back at Nicolas—blue eyes that turned amber when angered or feeding, brown hair trimmed in a perfect shaggy style, and a lean agile body that contradicted with the cold-blooded killer beneath crisp jeans and a t-shirt. Nicolas didn’t blink. His wolf wouldn’t let him. Even without a pack, he remained alpha. “I’ll help you kill cats.”

“We were hoping you’d say that. But, even I draw the line at a smelly wolf. Bathe first and then we’ll talk. Can you find your way back to the kitchen?”

“I won’t have a problem following the smell of food.”

“Be sure to let Madayah know you like what she makes or she gets cranky.” Vorlyk left the wolf alone.

Chapter Seven

Under the hot trickling stream of water in the back corner of the cave, Nicolas scrubbed himself using a bar of strong soap. He then shaved his beard and considered shaving his head, but decided to wait to see if the delousing medication worked. The filthy water splashed off his body and fell between rock crevices to the side of the shower area. When he finally felt clean, he jumped into the bathing pool. The back section was at least five feet deep. The pool wasn’t as warm as the hot spring that fed the shower, but he welcomed the cooler temperature. For months he’d lay in his own sweat.

It was hard to pull his body from the pool, but his stomach eventually growled and he wondered how long he’d spent cleaning himself and thinking about Zenya’s tears. One minute wasted on her was too long when the revenge for the entire Eastern Clan rested on his shoulders.

He couldn’t allow her emotions to soften his heart toward his enemy. Obviously he wouldn’t be killing every cat he could sink his fangs into, but he needed his hatred because his wolf screamed for revenge.

Following his nose was easy, and as he drew closer to the kitchen he heard conversation.

“The wolf won’t help our cause.” He didn’t recognize the she-cat’s voice.

“Then I’ll kill him.” Vorlyk made it sound so simple, and Nicolas guessed for a vampire it was.

“Vorlyk, please. He’s not our enemy.” Zenya’s firm voice held no doubt.

“I agree with Zenya.” He recognized Madayah’s accented words.

He walked into the room expecting the talk about killing him to stop, but they continued as if he wasn’t there. Looking around, his eyes froze. The new she-cat in the room wasn’t a wolf lover. Her scathing eyes showed contempt as they looked him up and down. “He can barely take care of himself much less any of us.”

Well, she put him in his place.

Zenya snarled at the other she-cat. “Just a year ago you were a sniveling housecat. I’m surprised you didn’t dig a hole and bury yourself. Now, you might be some kind of Amazon, but I remember what you were before.”

“Better a hole than fucking a smelly dog.”

Zenya launched herself at the unknown cat but came to a stop when Madayah stepped between them.

“Enough. If the two of you must fight, take it outside. This is my kitchen, and unless you want to hunt your own food and eat it in the jungle you’ll stop arguing here.”

Nicolas looked at the un-phased vampire. Vorlyk barely held back a grin. The unknown she-cat left the kitchen in a huff and all remaining eyes turned his way.

He’d donned black drawstring cotton pants and a white t-shirt left in the bathing area. His feet remained bare and he braced his legs apart, ready for whatever came his way.