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My brain tried to understand. If he were just changed, he would have known how long he had been dead for. And he wouldn’t be calling me young one. I’d be older than him in vampire terms.
“I can sense your confusion.” He said as he stepped into the man’s jeans. They were too short, stopping at his ankles, but they did fit in the waist. “I am unlike others of our kind.”
“That I can see clearly,” I muttered under my breath, though for our hearing it was pointless.
When he put on the other man’s jacket and zipped it up, covering his abs, and he finally looked back at me. “I shall tell you more if you agree to help me, young one.”
“First of all, my name is Druella. Druella Zirie Monroe, not young one. Secondly, you can’t just steal their clothes!”
“Firstly, I am Theseus Christian Apollo de Thorbørn.” He bowed his head slightly before walking barefoot across the forest floor through the maze of bodies toward me. “Secondly, you were uncomfortable with my nakedness, so I sought clothing. Now, what is the complaint? For what good are clothes to the dead?”
“What is going to happen when the police stumble in on this in the morning?” I questioned, but he was unbothered or just slow. “They’re going to wonder where their clothes were, and after that, they will try to track them down. You’re wearing evidence.”
“Or we could destroy the bodies—”
“We? Why we?” I questioned quickly. “There is no we. I’m an innocent bystander.”
“Now that we’ve been introduced, Ms. Monroe, you would not be opposed to helping an old vampire find his way. Would you?”
There was nothing old about him. He looked like he’d just hit his thirties. Before I could ask, a twig snapped in the distance, and the rustle of leaves alerted me to a deer running deep into the forest.
“I can wait until after you finish your giant rat.” He smirked, and I felt like he was teasing me.
“I don’t know if I want to help you, Mr. Thorbørn. You are strange…even for a vampire.” I stepped back from him.
He looked unbothered by my words. “I see, then I shall not force you. Enjoy your hunt, Ms. Monroe.”
I nodded, stepping away again, not wanting to turn my back on him. He stood tall, straight, and completely calm, his grey eyes never leaving me. When there was enough space between us, I turned and ran as fast as my feet would take me, bewildered by whatever I had just witnessed. I hadn’t met many vampires. In truth, I’d only met and spoken with one other. But if I had seen or felt them in passing, they kept their distance, and none of them had been naked as far as I knew.
His body flashed through my mind again, how perfectly sculpted everyone one of his muscles were as if he were a Greek god. I wanted to laugh. That was how men were described in romance novels, but he actually was Greek, so then was he just a god? I was so lost in the thought that I didn’t hear or feel the heat until it was too late.
“Get down!”
I heard his husky voice before I felt as though twelve semi-trucks smashed into my waist. In the briefest of milliseconds, all I saw was fire before my body collided with the base of a tree. It shattered against me, and I fell to the ground with a thud.
“Are you so young you cannot even smell a witch?” he snapped.
When I looked up, my thick, curly hair was all over my face with leaves stuck in it. He stood on top of the broken base of the tree, blood dripping from his hands. His grey gaze narrowed on the freckled-face, red-haired man now on the ground, holding on to his bleeding side.
“If you could not smell him, you should have at least known, within a big coven, there are circles, and they move in groups of nine.” He licked the blood from his mouth and then wiped his lips with the back of his hand.
It was only then that I remembered the bodies from which he drank. There had been seven on the ground, plus the one he’d had in his hands—eight. My eyes shifted to the man as Theseus picked him up from the ground. His hazel eyes narrowed as he looked at the clothes Theseus wore.
“You damned sick beasts!” he hissed, and his hands exploded with fire. The witch threw a bolt of fire toward Theseus, but he was faster. Before I could see, he was behind the witch, gripping the man’s neck.
“Unfortunately, I cannot tell you that your friends put up a fight. They were all far too weak and young to be roaming alone. Then again, maybe you thought you’d only meet an uneducated vampire such as her.” He referred to me as he slowly crushed the guy’s neck. The man struggled, his hands sparking, but Theseus just bit the man. As he drank more, Theseus’s eyes glazed over as the blood rushed into his mouth. It was only when the man went limp again that he stopped and released him, shivering with pleasure before he looked back at me.
“Your rat is gone, drink.”
“I don’t—”
“I have saved your life, young one; you owe me a debt. I do not have time to wait for you to find your dinner, nor do I know how many others may be in this forest. Drink, so we may leave.” He held up the body for me.
I knew very little about vampire society, but from what I did know, I had to drink. Debts, especially those of life and death, were honor-bound. Not doing so would haunt me for the rest of eternity. Rising from the ground, I brushed off the dirt and leaves before moving over to him. He once more lifted the neck to me. I tried not to look at his face and exhaled a breath I didn’t need to hold, before sinking my teeth between his shoulder and ear.
Oh God. I moaned as the liquid entered my mouth. Hugging the body to me, I drank even more, shivering happily as the pain disappeared, and I came alive once again. It was so warm, so delicious. Then I saw it: his memories, a baby’s face I didn’t know but had meant something to this human.
When my eyes snapped open, Theseus was watching me. I let go of the body, and he fell to my feet. I wipe my mouth, looking away.
