Page 2 of Saved by the Vampire Goddess (Dark Wine Vampires #1)

Chapter two

Evelina

Minnesota—Forty-eight hours later

C heese and f’n crackers . I’ll never grow used to how gray the world is here. Bleak clouds fill the night sky and dirty snow piles against the protective dome. From the outside, the structure reminds me of a toy from my childhood before my father went broke. A snow globe. I’d shake it, watching the pristine snow fall in gentle white flakes on an idyllic village scene.

Except the scene has reversed. In what used to be Minnesota, the snow isn’t white, and it covers the dome’s exterior instead of being held inside. The mortals sealed within the dome enjoy an environment perfectly warmed to seventy-two degrees. They live protected from the chaotic weather plaguing us vampires who live on the other side.

I tug the bison-hide tighter around me and edge my snowmobile closer to where my seven vampire brethren form a half-circle on our side of the reclamation container. Uff-da . Like I have time for this nonsense. A shirtless man stands in the bin, chained to a stake by his ankle. His tight pants show every flexed leg muscle but provide little protection against the already frigid and rapidly dropping temperature.

The word HERETIC is carved into the flesh of his muscular bare chest, but his well-shaped physique and stance scream imperial military. The blood from the cuts has frozen into ice crystals, and I imagine running my tongue over the tasty treat. Refreshing.

He’s pointing a silver knife at my brethren. At least, I assume the blade is silver, given how far away they stand from the captive’s striking arm. As a team, they’re trying to distract him from one side in order to move in and disarm him from the other, but he whips the knife around fast enough to keep them at bay and, in the process, turns his butt in my direction.

Hot damn. Those round, taut cheeks aren’t a sight I see every day.

Easing off on the throttle, I slide to a stop, eying the action. My ex-boyfriend, Gavin, stands a few feet from the captive, trying to use a wooden staff to disarm the mortal.

Enough of this nonsense. I was an actress in my mortal life, and the experience pays off in situations like this. Standing tall, I channel all the power I can into my voice. “I am Jonkill, and I claim this one for myself.”

Their heads whip to face me. I invoked the name that demands their respect, the one I earned years ago when I killed a vampire named Jonathan, who’d gone revenant.

“But—” Gavin objects.

My team can’t kill this guy, not when I don’t know his story. I pull my sword from its scabbard with one hand, pointing the blade at them. My eBeam is palmed in the other, discreetly by my side.

Weapons: never leave home without them.

Of course, of the eight zookeepers in this area, I’m the only one armed with an eBeam. Not that any of the others need to know that juicy little tidbit.

Trevor spits at the icy crust by his feet. “He’s all yours. The knife is silver and I don’t feel like getting cut just to have a live feed.”

“But we could share,” Gavin says.

“Let it go, boy. It’s her right as leader.”

I scowl at Trevor and point my sword at the chained man. “Did the inners give him the list?”

“No, that’s nailed to the dispensary’s corkboard.”

“Then grab your copy.”

“What about the blood bags? They’re gonna freeze if we don’t remove them soon.”

I flick my gloved fingers at the corner of the reclamation bin. The container is large enough they can place their trade goods there without being within striking distance of the knife. “Leave your stuff, then take your payment and go.”

“But we’re five blood bags short.”

Crapola. The inners expect me and my people to feed off the man in payment for the goods we scavenged.

“Divide what you have among yourselves, and I’ll take the prisoner.”

Gavin scratches underneath the knit cap he wears. “Why do you think they left him?”

“Oh fer cute. How am I supposed to know?” I study the handsome captive, my gaze traveling from the icy blood on his chest to his frosted pleasure trail, which leads into his tight pants. “Execution. Imperial royalty or high-ranking military, I’m guessing. ’Cause they gave him a knife.”

I crunch across the snow, my waffle-tread boots creating divots in the frozen ground. After the Collapse, I snagged enough pairs of finely made boots in my size and squirreled them away, which lets me break out a new set every year or three. My winter solstice gift to myself. Yay, me!

With little effort, I adjust my vampire vision to see right through the dome’s skin. The inners keep the dome on a twenty-four-hour clock, matching the time outside—so the low lights create an illusion of nighttime, streetlights dot the narrow roads, and no inners are nearby. The industrial district runs up to the edge of the dome near the portal where the reclamation bin slides inside, which it can’t do until the man is dead or removed. Nothing alive can enter the dome from here.

I wave my sword at the half-frozen mortal. Floodlights shine above the bin where he stands—not that I need the light to see every detail. “You can surrender and make this easier on yourself.”

He raises the knife. “I’ll die first.”

“Uff-da. No, you won’t. You’ll just end up battered and bruised for your trouble.”

I whoosh to the reclamation container. The sides lie on the snow, lowered by remote control from inside the dome. That the man is still on his feet is a miracle. His hair is so frozen that the chestnut curls spiral downward, heavy with frost. Visible goosebumps cover his bare skin.

Standing at the edge, out of reach of the captive, I point my sword at him. “You can’t survive out here without my help, ya silly goose. You’re shaking so hard from the cold, you’re gonna crack into pieces.”

“I’ll die on my feet fighting before I’ll let a creeper drain me.”

“That’s keeper, not creeper, Lord Idiot.” I roll my eyes at him. His tone tells me he’s definitely nobility.

“Lord… I’m Dominus Valroy, creeper.”

I scoff. Like I don’t know the Latin term for lord . I had a decent public school education. “Look, I can wait until you’re a Popsicle—”

“A what?”

Yeah, vernacular drifts are a pain in the patootie when you’re a vampire who’s lived two centuries. I crunch a step closer, tired of waiting for this dude to get his act together. Speed and stealth are my superpowers. Whooshing to where the chain holds him to the pole, I raise my sword to slice through the metal, only to have it bounce off, rattling my entire arm. Not a scratch on the chain. The sword, however, has a good-sized divot in it.

Gosh darn it. They’ve used a tungsten carbide chain. Even my vampire strength can’t cut through that, not without destroying my sword. And I’m not wasting my best sword on this dude’s freedom.

I cock my head to the side. Why would the inners squander such valuable metal to chain this guy here?

They must want his body badly, probably to hang from the palace to discourage other disobedient boys and girls. They expect us to drain him where he stands and abandon the body, allowing them to display the carcass.

And they call us the monsters.

While I consider my options, Lord Idiot swings around and stabs through the bison-skin cape, slicing my arm with his silver knife.

“Crap, that hurts,” I scream at him, backing up out of reach, clutching at the wound. Fire flares through my arm, the silver scorching my skin.

“Begone, demon.” He waves the knife again. “Go back to the underworld you crept from, creeper.”

Christ on a crutch, not this superstitious bull snot.

Yeah, I should leave him here until he freezes to death. I can then slice his leg free of the metal cuff, take his body with me, then defrost and drain the doofus at my leisure.

I sweep my gaze over the retreating tracks of my brethren, who are already returning to their respective arks. Which I’d be doing too if it wasn’t for Lord Screws-Around.

With no one left to see—except his majesty—I slip my sword back in its sheath and use the eBeam to carve right through the chain.

Now free, he takes a step and slips on the slick, frozen surface of the reclamation container’s floor. “Arrgh,” he cries out as he lands flat on his back with a thud and the silver knife skitters across the icy snow out of reach.

With no handcuffs or rope in my kit, I have only one choice to subdue him. I pounce and slam my fangs into his neck, holding his arms down and swallowing a mouthful of his hot, tangy blood.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. He’s strong, his biceps bunching, his pecs tightening into bricks, as he strains to push me away.

I keep a forceful grip on him. He may be strong, but so am I. This is normally when I’d mesmerize and turn him into passive prey. I’ve already plunged my fangs into his tasty neck, so it should be easy, right?

Wrong.

Because the Alatus Lux, the aliens who created the domes, are also my employer, and they’ve designed a crystal to make mortals immune to vampire mesmerizing powers. Originally embedded in the wrist, the device is now hidden in different places on the body when the mortal is an infant. Not much bigger than a quarter-carat diamond. Yeah, that tiny, darn their infernal souls.

I have ways to find the crystal, but not out here on the frozen tundra.

“Get off me,” he yells, “before I rip your head from your shoulders.”

I ignore his threat and slurp him down. I haven’t had fresh mortal blood from the vein in seventy-four years, eight months, and twelve days. “Hold still,” I mumble. “I want to enjoy this.”

Of course he doesn’t. Lord Turd gives me a run for my money, flailing his legs and bucking his hips, but after a pint, his motions weaken.

And then something happens.

I slow down and savor the luscious taste, savor the enticing warmth, savor the wicked feel of his muscular body beneath me, the hardening length in his pants pressed against just the right spot.

All fight for freedom leaves him, and a different fight begins.

I moan.

He moans.

It’s just the fang serum, it’s just the fang serum, it’s just the fang serum.

My vibrator might have become my bestie when I took this job, but this isn’t how I want to change that.

I stop drinking for a moment to take a deep inhale against his skin, trying to calm things, but breathing in his delicious scent is a critical mistake. Masculine pheromones have doomed women for millennia. For a man who lived inland, under the dome, it’s strange how his scent reminds me of a salty ocean breeze on a warm day.

Ignoring the warnings flashing through my mind, I take another sniff and clamp my jaws on a moan.

His blood calls to me to take more, to keep going, to rip his pants off and take him right here. Except that wouldn’t be fair to either of us. I’d get a nasty case of frostbite, but he’d die from exposure.

Blast the Alatus Lux and their ethics classes for vampires.

With great effort, I push myself off his neck and look down at him. His eyes are heavy-lidded, his breath coming fast, his hips still dry-humping me. He raises his head and kisses me.

I’m so surprised by it, I don’t move.

He plunges his tongue past my lips, claiming my mouth, and all thought leaves my mind. The velvet feel of tongue against tongue, the lick of his inside my lips, his mortal warmth against my mouth.

It’s something I haven’t felt in years.

Oh sweet Jesus—

He breaks from the kiss. “Diana…goddess…you’ve come for me.”

Diana? She must be from the Roman pantheon. I never was that good at keeping Greek and Roman mythology separate.

“You’ve come for me…” he says in a whisper. “Please…please save my sister instead.”

His sister? We’re alone in the reclamation bin.

I look into his glazed eyes, the prettiest golden brown I’ve ever seen. Is he hallucinating?

“I’m Evelina, not Diana.”

He reaches to kiss me again while his hips dry-hump me, and the wrongness of this situation finally penetrates my thick skull. I push off him, rolling away and bounding to my feet.

It’s nighttime, temperatures are rapidly dropping, and a major storm is due—and with it, tornadoes. Time to go.

I snap the metal cuff from his leg and leave the valuable chain behind. Let the inners worry over how he got loose and quake in fear of the portable technology that could cut the chain.

Crunching my way back through my already-snow-covered footprints, I carry him to my snowmobile and dump him in the scavenger trailer attached to the hitch. I tear the bison-skin cape off my shoulders to wrap it around his half-naked body. Then I extend the trailer’s solid sides and top to block the freezing wind.

The cold won’t bother me. I use the bison skin mainly to keep toxic pollutants and bacteria off my puffy thermal jacket, so I don’t track that shit inside my dome. But he needs it for warmth. With the blood loss, the cold might kill him.

Not that I care whether he dies, not really. It’s easier if he does. A mortal has no business being on this side of New Rome’s dome. If Las Vegas still existed—which it doesn’t—I’d place a steep bet against his long-term survival.

Then again, if he survives, I bet we’d have some fun. I mean, even though the man is half dead, he was still raring to go a round with me. Having a warm male in my bed—for even a few nights—sounds more tempting than a cheesy hotdish.

And when I was still mortal, a cheesy hotdish was mighty tempting.