Standing Before Monsters (Vorans and Vampires) (23 page)

“There,” Charlotte proclaimed pointing to the sky as she stepped back expecting the change to take her. Moans and cries of pain sounded from the other two on the other side of the car.

Her eyes revealed her pain and those brown eyes turned red as the moon tried to force the change. Charlotte doubled over crying out in pain, but Nick could see no shifting of her body. The pain continued to increase and the woman fell to her knees. After a moment’s uncertainty, the voran moved to kneel in front of Charlotte with concern. The sounds of the change had already subsided on the other side of the car and still the brunette looked the same save for her eyes.

Two wolves loped around the front of the Escape and whined with worry and fear. Still the girl cried out and told Nick through pain clenched teeth, “I can’t change. It’s like I want to, but I am stuck. It hurts really badly, Nick.”

Taking off his shirt, the man hugged her to him and asked, “Does this help?”

Skin contact had always helped her and even as the man felt her breasts held against him, he could also feel the heat within her increasing and the shudders of pain continue.

“N-n-no,” she said shaking against him as her teeth began to chatter like a feverish patient experiencing a chill.

Turning to look at Logan and Kate, Nick ordered the two wolves, “Go run, but stay nearby. I’ll take care of her.”

With the intelligence of their humanity subjugated by the wolf, it took a moment for them to overrule their instinct to protect Charlotte before they turned to lope away. The brunette looked him in the eyes as he turned back to face Charlotte. Her red eyes revealed pain and concern, but also she questioned what he planned to do.

“Nick?” she asked as the man debated the few choices they had left.

“We don’t know if this pain is necessary to get over your condition,” he mused trying to put off the decision, “but I think we both can agree that it is doubtful. Eric doesn’t actually know what happens to a female who is turned away as a mate.”

“It might be like my first change,” Charlotte agreed. “That was the most painful thing I had ever experienced, but I survived. Do we wait? I know you love Nicola, but could you even love me to do it?”

The scent of her was sweet and Nick felt like her words tugged at his heart. Her face was beautiful and feral with red replacing the brown of her eyes, but she was mesmerizing even still.

“God, help me, I think I do love you,” Nick confessed still not wanting to admit it, but now the woman before him knew his heart if not his mind.

“You wouldn’t be the first man to love two women,” she sighed but the woman sounded like just hearing the words put her more at ease.

Nick stood and kicked off his shoes. Struggling to her feet with him, Charlotte gave him a questioning look, but as his pants joined his shoes a smile crossed her face and hope was in her eyes.

Lying in the grass, the two were slightly hesitant with one another at first. It wasn’t like the passion he had had with Nicola their first time. This was different and Charlotte wasn’t Nicola. Cool skin was replaced with the heat of a werewolf trapped in human form. Both had passionate lips and as he moved with her, a rhythm formed as they made love beneath the silver moon.

Hours passed as the two made love over and over. Two supernatural creatures with nearly inexhaustible reserves of energy, Charlotte and Nick had multiple orgasms and still they made love, until finally the woman breathed into his ear and said, “That’s enough for now, Nick. I think I need to change.”

Kissing him one last time, the dark haired woman stood from where she had mounted him during this last round of sex. Blowing a kiss to her lover, Charlotte started to run towards the brush changing seamlessly into a gray wolf before leaving the clearing. The baying cry to her brother brought two more from the north.

Nick picked himself up from the soft grass. Breathing a contented sigh, he now wished that he had given in sooner and let Charlotte avoid the discomfort of the last several days. She had respected him and tried to suffer through, but in the end it had been for nothing. Nicola had already given them her blessing, so his heart could rest easier, but it still seemed wrong.

He wasn’t cheating on Nicola, technically, but being shared by two women didn’t seem right either. They were supernatural, logic told him, as the girls had as well. Other men had multiple wives throughout history, but that didn’t mean it was right for him, and yet the voran knew that he could love them both equally. Charlotte was his love of the day and Nicola that of the night, two sides of his life given to different women.

Putting on his clothes, the voran went to the front of the SUV and retrieved Logan and Kate’s piled up clothing before putting them on the passenger front seat. He had several hours before dawn and the return to humanity for the werewolves. With little to do or think about, the voran realized that he hadn’t slept in nearly a week. Often his body allowed him ten days before he needed sleep. Chronic insomnia when he was younger had turned from every other day to over a week as the decades had passed. Now when he slept, he rarely dreamed and the man missed that. A person needed to dream, if not while they slept then when?

Adjusting the back seats, Nick folded the one on the driver’s side before climbing in to lie down. It wasn’t as comfortable as his bed, but the man had slept on the earth under the stars many times throughout his life and the SUV bed was certainly softer than that.

As he lay trying to sleep, which usually came quickly, Nick pondered the changes during his life. First, a fateful voyage that brought him into contact with Marek for the first time changing him into a voran; then Vivian had found him. The woman had centuries of knowledge about being a voran and became his mentor even as Nick found a strange relationship forming between him and the vampire that had changed his life.

Decades of a limbo like existence as the three moved around the country avoiding long term contacts had isolated him. Marek found a like spirit in Jake, another vampire trying to survive when they
met and then they were four. Fourteen years later, Marek brought Nicola into the fold. He had sworn that she would be the one he would love forever. Nicola had seemed to adore him, but adoration turned quickly to disillusionment.

The older vampire couldn’t completely comprehend Nicola and her needs. She was born almost four decades after Marek into a world beginning to change with new technology. A world war and several revolutions had made the girl escape to a new land. Little did they know that another war would shake the world soon after, but as the two broke up as lovers though not as friends, it was something the rest of world could have learned from for the next decade’s descent into war.

He had watched as Marek found Audrey only a few years later and as Nicola would turn first Derek and later Mike with an untold number of men who she didn’t turn throughout the years. She had always been on the look out for love, a hopeless romantic. Nicola had never lost hope and now it was their turn to see where love would take them. Would Charlotte being part of their world ruin what they had or simply add to it?

His cell phone found its way to his hand as his mind wandered through the decades. His thumb pulled up Nicola’s number, saved to his contacts to be speed dialed so easily that the number was ringing before he knew it.

“Hello?” her voice called out both warming him and bringing new worry.

“It was worse than we thought for Charlotte,” the man responded with a sigh.

“How bad?” Nicola’s voice revealed concern. For a woman turned undead nearly eight decades before, her heart was still as warm and sweet as the young girl she appeared to be.

“Her body was stuck trying to turn into a wolf, but it wouldn’t change anything other than her eyes. She was burning up with fever.” He couldn’t finish the message her lover had called to deliver. Was
saying it by phone too much of a coward’s way out or was it simply the quickest way to tell her? He didn’t want to hide anything from the beautiful soul he was in love with either.

Saving him the struggle, Nicola jumped straight to what he couldn’t say, “You had to make love to her then?”

Her voice didn’t accuse him, but he realized that she had used the term ‘making love’ as opposed to having sex or something more clinical. Surprisingly, he noted that she also seemed vaguely happy.

“Yes,” was his first brief
response.

“How was it? Was it as good as we are together?”

Her curiosity perplexed him, but he answered, “A different kind of good.”

A moment of silence made him fear that she would hate him for his answer, but he was being truthful. There was a passion to his relationship with Nicola that had made their first time together amazing, though perhaps a bit desperate fearing what might happen with Charlotte. Their subsequent nights of passion had lost some of that and became just about their passion for each other.

With Charlotte, there was something else. Of course there had been the desperation to heal her of her condition, but it was so far in the back of his mind as they made love that it mattered little. He had given in to a longing for the woman that Nick hadn’t realized he truly had for her. Charlotte was amazing as was Nicola. He knew that he actually loved them both.

“I’m glad you could help her. She needs to be loved.”

He countered with, “And you don’t? I’m not replacing you with her, you know.”

“
Pfft,” he heard her exasperation with him, though he wasn’t exactly sure why, “of course I need to be loved, you dummy. Can’t your heart love more than one person at a time?”

“Of course, I can, but it doesn’t make it any easier on you,” he protested.

A long sigh came through the phone before she replied, “Who said love was easy?” Shifting the conversation, Nicola moved to less shaky ground asking, “Are they all off on the hunt leaving you to wait again?”

“Yes,” he replied even as he nodded though there was no one to see it, “I was thinking about catching up on some sleep. It’s been over a week since I’ve slept. Since I should have time and I am feeling a bit tired I was going to rest, but I wanted to talk to you first.”

“Ease your conscience and sleep, lover boy. I am alright with it. This may not be what we thought was going to happen, but then again I’ve never had any single romantic relationship last either. Maybe sharing you is for the best, so that you won’t get bored with me.”

Unable to stop from venting a short laugh at such a concept, Nick retorted, “I’ve known you for decades. You are never boring, so I know that I will never grow bored with you.”

“Hmm, well I do try to entertain, but why don’t you get some sleep and maybe dream about me for awhile then. You must be tired if you’ve thought to try and sleep. I’ll see you in the morning. Love you.”

“I love you too,” he said before the call cut out from her end.

Though her words had attempted to ease him, Nick still had difficulty getting to sleep, but once he did only the morning sun coming in through the front windows could wake him.

When Charlotte appeared alone walking towards the car, stretching after having slept on the grass in the forest; Nick was already awake and waiting. She looked glorious as the beautiful, naked woman walked in from the forest like some mythical wood nymph. Her eyes caught him and she smiled. The girl
seemed to glow in the morning light, but to Nick’s enhanced vision it was her eyes that caught his attention.

At his odd look, Charlotte asked perplexed, “What? Do I look so bad after this last week? I feel great, even after all our... Well, you know.”

“You look beautiful, but your eyes... Look in the mirror,” he gestured towards the side mirror of the car.

Gasping in shock, the woman said in shock, “They’re blue!”

Her formerly chocolate brown eyes had been dark and mysterious, yet warm and inviting. In their place were vibrant blue eyes, which looked like she was using special contacts to create the medium blue color, showing with the morning light.

Chuckling despite the strangeness of the change, Nick added, “It’s a new look, but they’re an amazing color. There must have been some crazy reaction to the bond. Maybe we’ll have to ask Logan and Kate if she experienced something like it, though they bonded sooner; so maybe it was the full moon that caused it.”

“Great,” the dark haired woman said shaking her head before lifting both hands to draw her hair back into a ponytail as she exposed her naked breasts more prominently. Reaching through the open window, Nick offered her a hair ring. It was with her clothing since she had been very warm earlier and used the tie to give her neck more air than her mid length hair allowed.

“So now I am a blue eyed freak in addition to being a werewolf. Well, how am I going to explain my eyes changing color for the DMV?” she finished with a laugh even as the woman noted his eyes straying to her bare flesh. Dropping her arms to her sides, Charlotte moved more seductively before running her hands up his arms to his shoulders before chiding the man, “You haven’t seen enough of me
by now? I mean, I don’t mind being looked at the way you are eying me, but after a week of fighting being with me, I would just assume that you would be sick of seeing me naked.”

Shaking his head knowing that the beautiful woman was toying with him now that they had made love, Nick replied, “I never disliked seeing you naked. I was just resisting like an idiot. You and Nicola knew that, but I tried. As for the way you look now, I don’t know if it was your run or finally getting a good night’s sleep, but you look amazing in the sunlight this morning.”