To Love a Vampire - A.K. Koonce Page 0,3
away from her touch, a glare hardening his hooded features. The title he holds as commander is washed away, a shrinking figure left hunched in his place.
Her wispy long green hair disappears into the crowd; she doesn’t give the scowling commander a second look.
Kaino’s strange but kind words circle my mind again and I can’t help but smile into my drink. The smirk causes a pain to flare in my stomach, so I bite my lip and the happiness is pulled away as quickly as it came. “Careful. That was nearly a compliment,” I warn before taking a big drink. The alcohol burns and threatens to take my breath away but I’m so familiar with the sensation the drink brings, that I no longer feel the effects of it when it passes over my tongue and down my throat.
An empty expression fills his dark eyes, his emotions once again lost within his calculating mind.
“Only an observation, Princess.”
Luca rolls her eyes and pushes Kaino away. His stumbling steps shuffle a bit under the unnatural power she holds. A look passes between the two of them, a smirking and playful moment, before Kaino walks off toward a group of other warriors and doesn’t look back at us in the shadows of the firelight.
What many within our community don’t know –another blanketed secret– is Kaino and Luca are brother and sister—half brother and sister. Unlike the village I grew up in, many people here have half and step siblings. The community is very open minded. Something I am still adjusting to.
Luca takes my arm and leads me to get another drink. Unlike Kaino, Luca really is my friend. My only friend. She knows everything. Everything I had. Everything I lost. Everything I now am. She found me alone and dying and made the two days hike back to the Wanderers. A place that accepts the broken and tries to find pieces to put you back together again. Though, I am still standing, I still have tears and scars that the Wanderers will never fix.
I remember the tree we passed when I first arrived. I was starving and bleeding out. Luca dragged me the whole way. I thought I’d die before the graceful warrior got me to wherever she was taking me. But, I remember the tree like it was the gate to heaven. At the time, I had no idea what to make of my saviors.
Carved into the rough bark of the largest redwood I’d ever seen, were the jagged words Wanderers Welcome. The words sunk into me, filling my gentle heartbeats and broken limbs with a strange feeling. A feeling of hope.
“Ahhh and so the circus begins.” A wolfish smile slashes across Luca’s face.
As someone approaches, I turn with another drink already in my hand. I brace myself for whatever wolf might be lurking, but to my surprise it isn’t a wolf at all.
“Hello, Declan.” I give a short, careless nod, refusing to fully acknowledge the hybrid.
“Hello, Fallon.” He gives a mocking nod in return.
Declan is an outcast among castaways. The confident hybrid-vampire moves to stand next to me, earning himself scowls from a few nearby warriors, their rivaling wolf instincts simmering just under the surface. Clearly, he also wants to watch those who watch me… and maybe piss them off in the process.
His calm and familiar presence is enough for fire to burn through me. Something similar to anger and hate settles around my fingertips, and I have to clench my fist at my side to keep the placid look on my face.
I don’t hate him, I have no reason to. And yet, the reminder his features bring is enough to build unwarranted fury within me.
“I haven’t missed the first yet, have I?” he asks, playing with a lock of my long brown hair that Luca had twisted and weaved into a beautiful cascading masterpiece this morning.
I swat his hand away lightly and take a step back from him, my spine tensing with every move. He reminds me too much of someone else but also not at all. He’s tall and blonde with the steely eyes of his kind. I haven’t been able to look him in the eye since we met. He knows he makes me uncomfortable but he has no idea why. Annoyingly, my distance seems to only cause more of a fascination within him.
“Some might say you’re the first, Declan,” Luca says, scanning the crowd like a hungry cat in a field of mice.
Declan assesses every inch of