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It was only later that she realized they hadn’t used a condom.
KAT WANDERED INTO THE NEXT CABIN AS ETHAN TOOK A shower. The front door was open, and the smell of rain and pine hung heavily in the air. Gwen was visible through the doorway, a steaming mug of coffee held between her knotted hands. She made herself a cup, then joined her grandmother on the porch.
The sky was still heavy with the remnants of the night’s storm, and the chill of winter was in the air. Days like today were best spent huddled in front of a warm fire, chocolate and a good book in hand, not out hunting the dead. Not that they had any choice—not when time was running out for those kids and maybe even themselves.
She ignored the premonition of rising danger and raised her cup to the sky. “If the color of those clouds is anything to go by, it’s going to be a bitch of a day.”
“At least zombies don’t like the cold any more than we do. It slows them down.”
Which could be a good thing if there was a houseful of them to contend with. “You think that’s where Janie and Karen are?”
“Too easy. But the zombies have to be guarding something, so it’s definitely worth a look.”
She sipped her coffee for a moment, watching a small brown bird flit from tree to tree. “Has Seline come through with anything?”
Gwen nodded. “She’s been able to confirm a lot of what we already know, and has found some additional information. This thing is an extremely ancient spirit and apparently very hard to kill.”
“Great,” Kat said sourly.
Gwen’s gaze became speculative as she continued, “As I suspected, it is similar to a vampire, only it feeds on souls rather than blood. It does have one interesting restriction—it can only feed while at the height of passion. But the same sort of weapons that kill a vampire can kill the mara.”
“I attacked it with a stake last night, and it didn’t seem to do much.”
“Was it in human or spirit form?”
“Spirit.”
Gwen nodded. “Apparently it can only be killed in human form. Attacking it at any other time will do little more than wound it.”
No wonder it was so hard to kill. “So why is it taking these kids?”
“That’s the frightening bit. Apparently, when the mara is coming near the end of its life cycle—”
“I’d be resting a whole lot easier if this thing was actually at its end, rather than just near it,” Kat cut in, voice grim. “And just how long do these things actually loll about having fun at humanity’s expense?”
“Eons. And life never-ending is not all it’s cracked up to be.”
Kat raised her eyebrows. “Oh yeah? Says who?”
“Says Michael, who’s the oldest vampire in the Circle. According to Seline, he was pretty close to either ending it all or stepping across the line when he met Nikki.”
Kat nodded. She’d met Michael only once, but she had been more than a little overwhelmed by not only his good looks and charm, but the dark aura of destruction that had seemed to shadow him.
“Anyway,” Gwen continued, “when a mara is near the end of its cycle, it breeds. To do this, it needs to find a supernatural to procreate with. Apparently it’s incapable of reproducing with those who are its food source.”
“The werewolf said he had sex with her.” Her partner could hardly be vampire—vampires weren’t fertile.
Gwen nodded. “From here on, it’s purely guesswork, but we think it’s the children’s terror that actually induces fertilization.”
“How many kids is this thing capable of having?”
“That I don’t know, but I suspect it’s more than we might wish.”
A chill raced across Kat’s skin and she shivered. Facing one mara was bad enough. Facing a host of them, whether youngsters or not, was not something she wanted to contemplate.
“So it’s dark emotions she needs to breed,” she said. “Like horror. Terror. Maybe that’s why she’s keeping them alive for six days. Plenty of time for fear to build.”
“Or plenty of time for the current crop of youngsters to siphon off those emotions before the mara uses the kid to create another lot of horrors.”
