Dawn Reclaimed

He had his route mapped out and more than enough pieces of her jacket to make it happen. He'd blend in with the morning commuter traffic and scatter the scraps of cloth along the way. A piece here, a piece there, leading the vampires in circles. He didn't want to make the game too easy. He wanted them frazzled and confused. Keeping the woman alive was killing him. He wanted to hear her scream. Wanted her to hurt. But she was too important to waste. He'd just have to keep himself busy doing other things. Besides, he could hurt her a little. Take the edge off his cravings. He preferred blades, blood, and pain, lots and lots of pain. But, considering what he could do to her instead, she should thank him for his generosity. Praise him like a god every time he made her bleed. Count her blessings that he wasn't a rapist. Sick bastards. Even he wasn't that low on the sociopathic food chain. He had some standards and taking a woman by force or any other way was simply beneath him.

His stepmother had taught him the pain and humiliation of sex and release early in his young life. His mother was a saint, a godly woman who did her best to protect her son. But, one weekend a month, she had to send him to his father's house for a visit. His father, stupidly oblivious to the suffering the bitch inflicted on his little boy, was too busy working and when he wasn't working, drowning at the bottom of a bottle of scotch to notice. The minute his father left for work she'd come to him stinking of cigarettes and cheap booze. She'd touch him, say it was a game, and would force him touch her. Made him swear not to tell anyone about their secret. And with all the shame she poured on him. She made certain he never would. She'd stroke his hair affectionately, and tell him that she loved him, as she sated her filthy needs with his scrawny, seven year-old body.

By the age of ten, he'd learned the bliss that came from digging a blade into his skin. And he'd learned far to well that love meant pain. And passion was a trap from which there was no escape. But, he did escape, to the streets, by thirteen. His mother couldn't stomach his father or that bitch he was forced to call a stepmother. God bless her soul. When he insisted in riding the bus across town, she'd been too eager to avoid his father and that foul woman, she'd readily agreed.

The kindly folk that took him in one weekend a month from the ages of thirteen to eighteen finished the education his stepmother began. The darkest alleys of the city were filled with all sorts of lowlifes. Rapists. Druggies. And they were his kin, one weekend a month. At eighteen, he'd made his first kill. His stepmother. Closing his eyes, he could still recall the shocked expression on her face. His stepmother, her bleached blonde hair tangled in a rat's nest, tits hanging out of her housecoat, wrinkled as a raisin, drunk as usual, and reeking of mad dog 20-20 and stale cigarette smoke, went down so easily. Barely put up a fight as he cut her throat from ear to ear.

Killing his stepmother brought him a peace he'd never known. The high was unlike any other, and he was immediately addicted to it. Through death, he found release from his pain as he released his victims from theirs. He was merciful when life was not. The screams of his victims were akin to sounds of pleasure. The gentle sigh of their last breath, was his fulfillment, his orgasm. He loved his victims and was their deliverer. He gave them something no other lover ever could. When he loved, he loved completely in a way that transcended the physical. He loved them to death.

Gina was in full-blown panic mode. According to her guesstimate of the passing of time, dawn was coming. She had been left alone in her cell for hours. Her wrists and ankles were bruised and tender from pulling against the unyielding cuffs around them. Her head throbbed and her stomach rolled with nausea. Probably a left over side effect from whatever drug he'd injected into her body. She flopped on the cot, crying hot tears of frustration. She had nothing to use as a weapon. She couldn't pry her wrists or ankles free. And as he'd told her earlier, the cot was bolted firmly down. She couldn't even force it to budge.

The assortment of blades and surgical instruments lined the table across the room. Gleefully reflecting the harsh light of the overhead bulb. Glittering like a macabre string of Christmas lights. Patiently waiting their turn to go to work on her flesh. She wondered how much time she had left. And how much pain her body would allow her to endure before it gave up and delivered her soul to death.

The son of a bitch hadn't even left her anything suitable to do herself in with. She'd been considering and then rejecting that thought all night or day...whichever it was. If she was going to put herself down, she was going to have to do it in a painful way. The frame of the cot was bolted tightly together. No chance of slitting her wrists on a sharp edge. She'd worked a small hole in the mattress cover with her fingernail. Strangulation would be slow and painful. Maybe, not as slow or as painful as the kind of death he had in store for her thought. She'd kidded herself into thinking she wasn't going to give up. That she wanted to live. However many hours had passed later, the only thought was of snatching the sick, demented, pleasure of killing her away from him. Oh, he'd probably have fun with her corpse. But at least, she wouldn't be around to know about it.

Gina hoped heaven had a special place for people who suffered their deaths at the hands of heartless bastards like him. And that Hell had a nice, hot pile of steaming brimstone waiting, for sick sons of bitches like him. Fuck that, she hoped that Hell had a rotisserie and that Satin himself would shove the spit straight up the twisted fuck's ass.

In three, maybe four hours: she was pretty insignificant in the workplace though and it might take longer. But, maybe someone would notice she wasn't there. By tomorrow, if anyone in that office had any sense, the cops would be notified. And by the next day, assuming the cops or her office mates gave a damn, she'd be listed as an official missing person. The police would start looking for her. But, that wasn't all that warm and fuzzy or reassuring. Cops couldn't find a donut shop with a map and a compass. But, still, the hope that she might survive this ordeal, gave Gina the small glimmer of hope that she needed, to keep hanging on. "Find me, someone please, find me."

Rather than cry, or simply give up, she passed the time daydreaming about her rescue. She'd make national syndicate with her story. Maybe, even tour the country and write a novel about her ordeal. She could go on Oprah and undergo her therapy on the Dr. Phil show. Hell, some big Hollywood type might even want to buy the rights to her story. Gina envisioned herself as a heroine. Ripping that bastard's balls off and feeding them to him until he choked on the mushy parts. The truth was just too pathetic to think about. She was chained up like a fucking dog. Holding her piss rather than use the bucket. And waiting for someone to rescue her like the piteous loser she was. Gina Klein was no heroine. She was not feeding balls to anyone. She was going to die and quietly fade into obscurity after fifteen minutes of fame. The tears she'd been struggling to restrain rolled down her cheeks in a waterfall of hot grief over the life she would never get to live.

The twenty-story apartment building was deserted at this time of morning. Most of the occupants were off to work, or to the gym, or in the trendy coffee shop across the street, sipping lattes and cappuccinos, whatever it was yuppie types did before the official start of another day. Hunter used his proffered key and let himself into the woman's apartment. He found he couldn't use her name in conjunction to her kidnapping. Made the whole thing too personal for him.

The apartment was neat and tidy, sparse in decoration and in furnishings. The apartment was a white box with a whole bunch of nothing inside. Of course, with the cost of this little slice of urban pie, he understood why she didn't own much in the way of personal effects except for her extensive and very pricey wardrobe. The woman had more shoes than a centipede and twice as many blouses, pants, power suits, and skirts. He picked up a silver framed photograph from the glass and brass nightmare of a coffee table and studied the picture of her in a happier place and time. Definitely, too personal and with disdain Hunter set the frame down in the pattern of light dust where he'd found it. He didn't want to know details about the woman's personal life. The life, even if he did manage to save her in time, she wasn't going back to.

His wolf hated indoors. And the stark white walls of the woman's boxy apartment were stifling and closing in on him. There was a chance that the killer had come here, searching for a trophy. Hunter couldn't smell a trace of him in the stale air piped in from the vents. But, he was limited to a degree in his human form. He stripped with his usual precision and fierce efficiency and gave his body over to the wolf.

The wolf took his time. Inspecting and sniffing the confines of the small space, with deliberate intent. He wrinkled his nose at the chemical smell of the soft, padded carpeting beneath his paws. The female's scent was everywhere. Embedded into the fibers of the carpet. Lying in a blanket over the posh fabric of the couch. Hovering like a cloud of fragrance over the bed. He sniffed there too. His nose buried in the heap of pillows, burrowing into the bed linens. Indoors was an awful place. Smelly and stifling. It took all the restraint and control his human had over him to keep him from bolting for fresh air.

Hunter emerged from his wolf form and crouched on the off white carpet, somewhat darker now thanks to the dark fur of his wolf's shed pelt. He dressed and why, he could not fathom. But for whatever reason, he located the vacuum and swept up the mess his wolf had left behind. The apartment was cleaner than it had been when he'd arrived. The bills scattered across the marble counter top stacked neatly on the desk beside her laptop. Spoiled food, of which there wasn't much else in the fridge, dumped into the trash to be taken to the chute at the end of the hall. And her plant, the only thing in the whole place with any color whatsoever, a straggly little vine, forlorn and sitting on the window sill struggling to survive in the weak rays of the sun filtering through the blinds, watered.

Hunter did not share the mystical connection to the brotherhood that Grant did. No way in hell was he going to allow one of those toothy sons of bitches to stick their fangs in his neck. He'd refused the electronic trackers the brotherhood embedded in the heels of their booths as well. He was not going to be brought to heel by any leash, psychic, technological, or otherwise. The only reason he carried a cell phone was because Dane had refused to let him go on the mission at all unless he complied with this rule. The phone buzzed like an angry bee in his pocket. With a grunt, he answered the call. Dane was quick, abrupt to the point of rudeness. Not that rude had ever bothered Hunter in the least. "Hunter, we need you back. We've found something."

Toby still was not set on the idea of Anna putting herself in danger. But, he'd reluctantly conceded. Knowing he couldn't stop her once she'd made up her mind to go. He pressed his dark glasses hard against the bridge of his nose as Patrick worked his magic with the coffee shop's owner. How he did it, Toby would never know. There was no such thing as vampire mind control. Sure, they had a few tricks up their sleeves, here and there. But, he'd talked the reluctant coffee shop owner in to not only hiring her, but giving her the coveted early morning shift.

Toby caught the smell of fresh blood riding on the warm, summer breeze. Delicate and gentle as the perfume of a blooming flower, the vampire in him had no trouble following the alluring scent to the source. The frayed ends of a tiny sliver of pink fabric, wedged into a crevice between two bricks fluttered in the downdraft created from the passing street traffic. Reeking of blood, a female's blood, type AB negative, to be exact. He pulled the fabric free and lifted it to his nose. His eyes didn't tell him anything, especially in the garish light of full day. But, his nose was never wrong. He ran a hand through his thick, ebony, hair and leaned against the wall. Tucking the scrap back into place and covering it with the sole of his boot, he tried to look casual to any passersby. Not that anyone in the city ever noticed anybody else anyway. People rushed to get from one point to the other, always with the destination in mind with out the slightest bit of interest in the bigger world around them. He didn't know the scent of the woman his brothers were searching for. But the smell of blood in the middle of downtown was never a good thing.

Anna waggled her new nametag at Toby and swung her blonde ponytail behind her shoulder. She adjusted her dark glasses over her pale glacier blue eyes and smiled widely, like an eager teenager with an A on her book report. "Look! I'm gainfully employed again..." Her nose wrinkled as she caught the scent. Toby stood just inside the mouth of the alley. She'd assumed he was doing so to avoid the direct hit of the sun overhead. "What's that?" she whispered. "Blood?"

Patrick was already on it. His nose sifted through the scent of commuters and bad, overpriced coffee, locking on the smell of the woman's blood on the scrap of fabric beneath Toby's boot. The dense, humid air of the city smog carried with it a trail, from the east. "Stay here and wait for Dane," he barked at Anna and Toby. Melting into the foot traffic, he followed the sweet scent of freshly spilled blood.

The game pieces were on the board. The man found himself with nothing to do but sit tight and wait for the vampires to take their turn. He wished he could watch them scramble about collecting the pieces he'd left for them to find. He supposed he could go and play with his guest for a couple of hours. Let the sweet sounds of her screams fill his ears and inspire him to greater heights. He had to be careful though, to remember not to kill her too soon.

Chapter 47

Grant held Claire in his arms, gently tracing the outline of her lashes with his fingertip. He hated to wake her, to leave her side for a second. But, he had duties to his Pack to fulfill. And he was not about to repeat the same mistake twice and let her wake up alone.

The morning was warm and sunny. A perfect day to let his wolf run free, guarding the borderlands of the vampire's territory. So far, things were good. There was nothing in the woods that didn't belong there. He wondered, how much longer though, he could or should keep the existence of the Sons, his cousins, from Claire.

Claire's eyes reluctantly fluttered open. Her bedroom was bathed in the warm golden-pink hue of morning. She sighed and nuzzled her cheek into the warmth of Grant's chest, filling her nose with the scent of sleep and man. "It's early," she mumbled.

"Do you want to stay in bed and sleep a while longer?" Grant asked. Carefully sliding his arm from beneath her head, he smiled as she groggily nodded. "Ok. I've got some things that I need to do today. I'll be back before evening. You won't even miss me." He inched to the edge of the bed, easing out from under the covers, trying not to fan them as he got up. Gently, he tucked the blankets in around her and pecked her cheek with a kiss.

Claire studied Grant through her lashes as he dressed. She'd never guessed the artwork tattooed on his back was the truth of what he was. Lines of indigo swirled into an intricate design. In the center, right between his shoulder blades, a wolf's soulful and pensive eyes, stared back at her. She recognized the wolf immediately, recognized the eyes as Grant's. "I miss you already," she pouted. She was hoping for a repeat of last night. Morning sex was the best. Especially when followed by a nice hot cup of coffee and a couple of pancakes. But, only if the pancakes led to afternoon sex, and afternoon sex extended to evening sex. Of course, there would be a quick intermission for a Happy burger, or a delivered pizza, to replenish all the calories burned, and then, a shower and bedtime sex. She'd fall asleep in his arms, like she had earlier this morning, exhausted, thoroughly sated, and very happy.

Grant bent low and pecked her on the cheek before heading out for patrol. There was no mistaking the direction of her thoughts. The scent of desire hung over her like a glittering cloud. "You make it very hard to keep my mind on what I'm supposed to be doing. I'd love to crawl back in that bed with you instead of spending the day working."

"Ok." Claire patted his side of the bed. "I'm good with that. It's nice and warm in here."

"Hold that thought. I promise, I'll be back as soon as I can." Grant took a deep breath and forced his lips away from her cheek.

"What if I change my mind by the time you get back?" Claire asked coyly. She wasn't going to change her mind and he knew it. By the time he knocked on her door this evening, she'd probably be more than eager to jump his bones.

"Then I'll have lots of fun trying to convince you otherwise." Grant bent and swiped a kiss from her lips. "I'm leaving that canister tea on the kitchen table for you. Incase you need it. Rest up. I know you're going to need your strength for later on." He winked.

"Thanks. Exactly what's in the tea?"

"I dunno." Grant shrugged. He really didn't know and had never bothered to ask. "A blend of seven secret herbs and spices?"

Claire laughed, "That's KFC you dimwit."

"The recipe for the tea has been handed down from generation to generation. Only the midwives and Shaman know what's in it for sure. The nasty stuff has been easing morning sickness and other ailments for over two centuries and it's never killed anyone yet." He stole one last kiss before forcing his feet to carry him to her bedroom door. "I gotta go or Nash is going to have my ass. Love ya."

Claire scooted up in the bed and yawned. Listening as his boot steps echoed against the wood floor, down the hall, away from her. The sound of the door opening, the lock being clicked in place, and the door closing behind him had a depressing finality to it that she really was going to spend the day alone.

She contemplated lounging in the bed, as Grant suggested. But once she was awake, she was awake. She slid out from beneath the covers and shuffled into the bathroom. A nice hot shower would do her good. And a steamy cup of coffee would make everything in her world more perfect than it already was. Maybe today, she'd struggle to finish the second chapter in her book on the joys of pregnancy.

Claire ran her hands along her belly. She was getting so big already. By the time her ninth month came, Grant would be able to roll wherever she needed to go. Nah, she wasn't really that big. It was in her mind. But, she pressed her hands to her bulging midsection, trying to feel the curve of the waist that had once been there.

She rushed through the shower and dragged a brush through her hair. Tying it back with a scrunchie. Scrubs and yoga pants weren't going to cut it, they'd stretch and keep her believing the lie that she wasn't really as big as she thought she was. The truth was in the jeans. Fishing in her closet, she found her old faithful pair. The ones that would tell her the painful truth, not only was she pregnant, but she was getting fat. She took a deep breath and wiggled into them. Her belly protruded between the gap where she'd been able to zip and button them with a little room to spare, not quite two months ago.