Jaded Touch (Vesper) Read online

  “Funny,” he said. “Sometimes I just can’t resist things either, even if it gets me in trouble.”

  I blinked. What?

  Jack’s mischievous gaze darkened in the silence after his words. He cleared his throat and brought his hands down into his lap, averting his gaze, and it dawned on me.

  He was talking about resisting me. Oh. And by my lack of reply, he probably thought he was already in trouble for the insinuation.

  “I guess we have that in common,” I said.

  Jack nodded. “Wonder what else we have in common?”

  I wondered, too. Was that a door I wanted to open?

  Yes, yes it was. Jack’s charm was infectious. But I knew the rules. And I was going to try to follow them better to keep myself out of lockdown. I thumbed over my shoulder. “I’ll be in the lounge car if you need me.”

  He licked his lips and something humorous glinted in his eyes. “Why would I need you?”

  Good point. I liked Jack. What wasn’t to like? He spoke casually to me, he kept in shape, and his skin was nicely tanned from many long evenings on his patio, barbecuing with other train men and probably drinking heavily, as our fearful, traumatized hoggers tended to do. That’s how I imagined he spent his spare time, anyway. I shook my head, embarrassed that I’d imagined it so thoroughly.

  Yes, I liked him. And now he probably knew it. I should have just gone to the lounge car without bothering to say hi. The smile melted off my face in an attempt to hide my familiarity and I rose to my feet, kicking the hatch shut. It made a satisfying, loud thud that vanished behind me in the whip of the train’s momentum, and I stalked back to the lounge car and slid inside.

  I was busy beading a stone and leather bracelet in the lounge car halfway back the length of the train when I felt the explosion. I didn’t have time to guess at what happened, because the train flipped and I struggled to find my orientation, scrambling up the floor as the car tilted sideways. I relented in the struggle to climb and let myself slide down the floor on my ass until I reached the open side door of the car, and I tried to get out. But the crunch of folding metal surrounded me and my legs were pinned down against the Earth, the train car smashing me into the soft dirt.

  I scoffed as the dust and mud settled around me. Lucky I’m not human! What the hell blew up? My legs ached from the crash and the way I was trapped beneath the crumpled, still-groaning metal, but my body was intact. I wiggled my toes, relieved to be unharmed. Yep, that good ol’ Vesper strength came through for me again.

  I heard shouting at the front of the train and knew I had to get out if I was going to help the humans, the faithful train operators who transported us across the Canadian countryside without fail. I tried to pull my legs out, but I’d likely come away missing a boot. Why did something bad have to happen now? I had to handle this carefully. I didn’t want another tedious week of confinement if I screwed anything up again.

  More shouting, and the sound of metal on metal. The men! Were they stuck? They knew I was on board, so I guessed they were trying to make sure their prized passenger was alright. I wrapped my fingers around the frame of the giant, sliding door that pinned me down, and began to heave. I pulled and pried until the metal bent against my superior strength, and I was able to wriggle my legs out, boots and all.

  I’d dare any male Vesper to challenge that we Maids were inferior of physical strength!

  I dusted my hands off, staining my dark jeans, shook some wads of mud and grass out of my black curls. Thank God my boots were okay. It wasn’t exactly a fetish – I just loved leather boots of any variety. These were my knee-high, black lace-up chunk heels, and I didn’t want to lose them to the dirt beneath a train, of all things. I dusted them off, too, and then dove at the roof of the train – which was on my left, thanks to the derailment - throwing my weight and strength into the impact of my shoulder. I shoved until the metal creaked once again, welding seams popped, and a hole opened in the corner of the train car where the joints met. I pried at the hole and widened it to accommodate my slight figure, and then slipped through unmarred, though the sharp edge of metal ripped a bit of my shirt by my shoulder.

  I bolted forward, my heels pounding the iron of the rail, until I reached the engine of the overturned train. We trusted these humans with our immortal lives, and I owed it to them to make sure they were alright.

  I sprang into the air and landed on the side of another car, the wheels still slowly turning in the air as I ran atop it. I reached the engine and poked my head inside, but there was no engineer, no conductor… no one. The entire engine was blackened by smoke, the wheels were distorted from the explosion, and the grass around the tracks was black for half the length of the overturned train behind me. I straightened and gazed around, scanning for signs of life, or anything else. All I saw was the low fire burning in the damp grass to the side, probably caused by sparking of the wheels on the rail, or perhaps by the explosion itself. There was no one around to tell me what the hell happened.

  This was bad. I craned my neck to survey and took in the hot smell of death, and the faint thrumming of a heartbeat somewhere nearby. Someone was still alive, at least.

  “Three…” a voice tugged my attention from deep down in the ditch.

  I leapt off the train and skidded through the wet ditch until I reached his side. The train engineer half-sat, leaning on his elbow, clutching his bicep. The familiar scent of hot blood wafted through my nostrils and I clenched my jaw shut to staunch the natural flow of poison from my fangs that surged whenever my appetite was pricked.

  Hoggers were not food. We needed them; therefore we were only allowed to kill them if they broke the rules. My Lady made sure we understood that best of all.

  I slid to a halt and pressed my hand to his bicep, trying to stop the bleeding. His muscle was solid and warm, liquid pulsing through my cold fingers, and I peered up into his face.

  “Jack,” I said, relieved he was okay. He cringed, his face dirty and swollen.

  “I’m sorry, Three.” His voice was breathless with fear. “I saw people on the tracks, so I called for the brakeman… all of the other hoggers are dead. The people... the ones on the tracks... cut the brakeman to pieces, and I hid...” Jack shuddered, his brown hair quivering with the motion over a dark, bruised temple.

  I pushed him down onto his back, my hand still firm against his wounded bicep and climbed over him. I tossed my black curls out of my face as a vicious gust of wind rushed around us, and laid my hand against his forehead. I might not be the oldest of Vespers, or even the most senior of the Maids, but I ran at a cool enough temperature to soothe the ache in his head, so I pressed on the purple swelling like an ice pack.

  “Breathe, Jack,” I whispered, and he shook again. “Who? Who did you see on the tracks?”

  He shivered. Shock? How much blood had he lost? Would he be able to stay conscious long enough to give me the answers I needed? His blood was so hot on my hands, and that familiar hunger surged through me at the contact. I wanted to taste it. To drink just a touch, and then let him crumple up so I could swallow him whole…

  But then he’d be dead. I’d be in trouble and this warm life, this man with the carefree smile, would be gone. It went against my nature to abstain from feeding when the urge struck, but this was a train man.

  A warm train man beneath my hands, trusting me to save his life when my instinct was to end it. I leaned closer to inspect his eyes, to make sure he was still conscious.

  Jack groaned and I squeezed tighter around his arm, forcing the wound to stop bleeding even though I knew it hurt him. He tried to double over but I held him down, shocked by the human’s strength even in this compromised state. He couldn’t push me off, that was for sure… but he strained against me with unexpected intensity, and I shushed him to try and calm down his fighting.

  “Don’t you fucking eat me, Three,” he muttered through his groans.

  “Jack, talk to me!” I hissed, trying to catch his gaze with mine. Even when c
ompromised, his candor inspired humor behind the severity of the situation. “You’re safe. Talk!”

  He squeezed his eyes shut, and then opened them, and I sucked in a gasp. Impossibly light blue irises, like the rarest jade, or the cloud-dusted daytime sky, met mine, but only for a moment. I hadn’t noticed his eyes before, how light they were. His pupils couldn’t focus on my solid black eyes, couldn’t catch my gaze the way I wanted him to. He squeezed them shut, and I knew he was fighting pain.

  I could calm him down if he’d look at me. And then I could see those eyes again. Having never spared a breath of time to be in such close proximity with a human like Jack, or any human at all, curiosity spread through my heart with a surprising intensity. I wanted to look at him. This wounded man, this human who survived the wreck with me, strong and suffering all at once…

  “I don’t know!” Jack said through groans of pain, shudders of fear. “There were men, and a woman with red hair… crazy red curls. They were on the tracks, so I stopped, but we hit the explosive anyway. We all made it out, but they were there, and they had swords… who carries a fucking sword? I got cut, but I ran, and I watched…” He shuddered and gestured with his chin to an area in the ditch ahead of the train engine.

  I didn’t need to investigate further to know what happened to them. The absence of heartbeats in the air and the aroma of exposed organs – weirdly enticing to my appetite but also repugnant, for it meant the death of humans I was supposed to protect in this bizarre paradox of guardianship and feasting – permeated my senses, and I shushed Jack again. He shook harder. His fellow hoggers were dead, killed by those people on the tracks, people who were already gone. I couldn’t smell them or hear them anywhere nearby.

  Protocol for train men was to stop the machine if anyone was on the tracks, so Jack had done all he could. I almost wanted to laugh at that. How the hell did humans kill anyone these days if they couldn’t tie them to a train track like the movies of the old west?

  But the world had changed much since I was a part of the human experience, almost seven decades ago. And trains stopped for other humans, partly out of value for life, and also partly for reasons exactly like this: who knew when some crazy, psychotic human might plant a bomb.

  One thing was certain: I couldn’t leave Jack here to die, and he needed to get safe and warm. Vespers did no good for providing body heat, with our frigid temperature. I pulled off my outer shirt, leaving just a white tank-top covering my torso, and cringed at how exposed I felt. I knew the top of my spine was visible, and I hated it when my scars showed. But Jack would die if I didn’t help him, and he was the only witness to this crime left alive. I twisted the shirt and tied it around his arm tight enough that it almost tore.

  “Jack, where do you live?”

  He cringed and reached for the pocket of his jeans, but lacked the strength to dig out his wallet. I fished it out and glanced at an address on his identification. He lived in Vancouver. Oh, poor Jack. His train had been heading home and was almost there when the bomb went off. I tucked his wallet back into his pocket and gathered him into my arms.

  “Wait, what… no…” he murmured, but he was fading fast. He struggled a little bit, and I knew I had to drug him if I wanted him to hold still. But my arms were full.

  Oh, well, it wasn’t like I’d let him remember what I did with him, anyway.

  I leaned down, intending to only slip my tongue over his lower lip, the potent poison of Vesper fangs rendering him subdued when he tasted my toxin. But Jack took me by surprise, stretching up and capturing my lips with his. I froze, my lips clamped shut.

  His mouth was so warm, lips soft but commanding, the lips of a male, a human, a man. I sucked in a breath, his breath comforting and alive, and that flicker of curiosity burned through my core like lava, melting away the reserved intrigue to make way for a yearning I hadn’t felt in nearly seventy years. Not since my creator, and even that was only a ghost of a memory. I figured we weren’t together long before or after I became immortal. We were caught too quickly for breaking the rules.

  I kept my lips closed, letting Jack kiss me, my poison never touching his tongue. He moved in rhythm with my lips, and though I didn’t mean to, I kissed him back. I pulled at his lips as he pulled at mine, the wet of his saliva chilling my already-cold lips in the crisp, nighttime air. And then he collapsed into my hold, and I knelt there for a moment in absolute shock, panting.

  Did I just kiss a human?

  Bad! Very bad. That was wrong in the eyes of my superiors, and deplorable by my own code of morals. We held power over the humans. To seduce them, accidentally or otherwise, was to assault them. It wasn’t like they had a choice but to consent.

  Jack murmured against my shoulder where his head rested, his breath hot along my chest, and I shook my head to gather my wits. Okay. No big deal. He wasn’t fighting anymore, so I didn’t bother to try drugging him again, afraid of what might happen if he kissed me once more, or let me taste his skin. Pleasure and feasting were so symbiotic to my Vesper needs, and I couldn’t let my guard down again if I wanted either of us to live.

  I lifted the human into the air and sprinted off into the night.

  Capture

  I darted up the front stairs to Jack’s two-story house, admiring the his little yard and the untended weeds, sporadic flowers decorating the grass yellow. Hoggers weren’t home often enough to keep up on the household chores, I knew. I twisted the doorknob, and though it was locked, I pushed it beyond the lock and broke it open without effort. Slipping inside, I glanced around the entryway, shocked to see no extra shoes on the mat and no other jackets on the coat rack. Huh. Jack lived alone.

  I took the stairs four at a time and found what looked like Jack’s bedroom. I laid him down in his bed and pulled off his shoes, slipped off his filthy, torn jacket, and then cleaned the wound on his arm with a cloth I found in an attached bathroom.

  Bathrooms. I hadn’t needed one in seventy years. It was odd to glance at the mirror and see no hint of a reflection as I wet the cloth with hot water. It was only moments before I had the wound clean and dressed with a chunk of that shirt I’d shed, and the bleeding had nearly stopped.

  Jack mumbled when I tried to get his shirt up over his head, so I stopped and glanced down at his bare skin. Oh, my, he was as strong a human as I’d suspected, and I yanked the hem of his t-shirt back down to cover his abdomen, which rose and fell with heavy slumber. I’d only meant to help him get comfortable, but undressing a human... and admiring his body... none of it was appropriate. His lips twitched when I covered him. He didn’t move again, so I sat back and sighed. Sunrise was less than an hour away, and I didn’t want to get caught outdoors in it, so I sat on the edge of Jack’s bed and touched his cheek, hoping the chill of my skin would wake him up. He didn’t move.

  “Jack,” I said, keeping my voice low so as to not startle him. For anyone, waking up to a Vesper in your bedroom would be a terrifying experience. It was worse for train men, who both knew what we could do, and had probably witnessed it a time or two transporting Vespers across the country. He still didn’t stir, so I stroked his cheek with my cold palm, hoping he’d rouse soon. I glanced at the window, the telltale sign of morning brightening the room to an icy glow.

  “Jack,” I said again. I rubbed his cheek harder and frowned. Stubble from his chin scratched at my skin, and I rubbed it again, intrigued. Huh. Did male Vespers grow facial hair? I’d never seen my friend Sychar, or any other Gent, with a beard. Maybe they didn’t. My body hair was scarce anyway, but what about the men?

  I ran my fingertip and thumb along his chin, dragging silken skin across rough stubble. That curiosity prickled through my nerves again, and I leaned down to get a closer look at him.

  Age had not yet weathered Jack’s temples, nor had stress grayed his hair. He was young, and in damn good shape for a human, and…

  Crap, Three, focus!

  Jack wasn’t waking up. Had I done the wrong thing by bringing him home? Should
he be in a hospital? No! If he died here in his bed, I’d never get any more information about the explosion, and he’d be dead.

  Why did that bother me? And why was I still touching his face? I jerked my hand away and jumped to my feet, realizing what a total creep I was, stroking the stubble of an unconscious man – human, a meal – in his bed.

  But he wasn’t waking up.

  Okay, think, Three! In movies, men slapped the cheeks of fainted women to wake them up. With my strength, I had to be cautious not to concuss him further. I climbed atop him and sat astride his lap, adjusting his head on the pillow so he was straight beneath me, lying on his back.

  I cringed and tapped his cheek with my fingertips.

  He didn’t move. I’d have to hit him harder. My heartbeat pounded a rhythm of don’t-kill, don’t-kill, don’t-kill as I squeezed his body between my thighs, holding him still as I prepared to shock him awake in the worst way possible.

  I winced and slapped him on the cheek at half-strength, and his eyes snapped open, his muscles all clenching beneath me as he sucked in a gasp. He stared straight at me and I grabbed his wrists, pinning them down above his head, hissing to quiet him.

  “It’s okay, Jack!” I hissed.

  He blinked and focused on me, and then dropped his head back on his pillow and let out his breath in a rush. “Oh, good, it’s you.” His body relaxed beneath me. He glanced at his wrists. “Let go of me.”

  Oh good, it’s a man-eating Vesper? Okay. Ignoring the things I didn’t understand was the best policy, I figured. I leaned down and got a good look at his light, jade-blue eyes, and his pupils seemed normal in the dim light. My heartbeat picked up in pace again as the glow of nighttime lifting though the window brightened, signaling the looming day. I’d be out of time to get to darkness in minutes.