Page 5 of Saved by the Vampire Goddess (Dark Wine Vampires #1)

Chapter five

Valroy

Minnesota Ark Prime—The next day

W hen I wake up on the first day of my new life, I’m alone and find a note from the creeper telling me how to make breakfast. I follow her instructions, then exercise for three hours, search the entire living area for an exit, and finally find the garage that houses the snowmobile. The metal exit doors are down and locked. I bang on them but can’t figure out how to raise either one, and finally resign myself to reading a book.

By the time the creeper wakes, I could use some company, and rise from the couch the minute I see her. “Jonkill, before it gets too late—”

“Call me Evelina.”

I’m brought up short by that. “I don’t understand. At the reclamation bin, you told the others—”

“That’s the name I use when I demand their respect. My real name is Evelina.”

“Wait. You whispered that name to me—”

“When you called me the goddess Diana.”

“But you also go by Jonkill?”

She shrugs. “I prefer Evelina.”

I pause, fighting the temptation to ask her whatever feat is behind a name like Jonkill . But I have a more important goal. “Anyway, before it’s too late, could you take me to the reclamation container? I’d like to try—”

“No.” She marches past me to the kitchen. “I told you, there’s no way back in.”

“I must return—”

She huffs, drowning out my words. “Since I’m stuck with you, I guess I have to teach you to cook for yourself. What have you prepared on your own before? You’ve made at least a sandwich, right?”

My frustration mounts. I can’t anger her too much or I’ll never convince her to take me to New Rome, but my desperation claws at me. I must return now and do what I can to protect Tina.

Silence stretches as I weigh my tactical options and decide to retreat for the moment. “I had a cook and a manservant. I’ve never been in a kitchen for more than a moment.”

“Oh fer crying out loud, not even the basics, then. Spoiled little rich boy.” She throws her hands in the air. “I don’t have time for this, but fine. Come here and pay attention.”

Then she teaches me how to boil an egg and grill an elk steak. She shows me some vegetables in the refrigerator she calls winter squash, and I slice those and put them in something she calls a steamer .

Once she sticks a fork in the vegetable and declares it done, she hands me a plate so I can serve myself, then waves goodbye. “I gotta dash. Clean up—wash the pots and dishes. Soap is under the sink.”

“Evelina—”

“No time now. I gotta get to work.”

And she whooshes away.

For the next week, I focus on learning basic food preparation and how to do laundry, and read from her extensive library. For an hour each night, she teaches me how to use a cookbook, measure ingredients, and prepare my meals. I’m well aware of how desirable she is while we work together—the accidental touch when we bump into each other, the curve of her ass when she bends over to find a frying pan.

Each night I ask her to take me to New Rome. Each night she denies me, claiming it’s impossible.

If I stay here much longer, I’ll get lulled into complacency by the excellent cuisine and other luxuries. I’ll get trapped by a seductive goddess, never wanting to leave her. I’ll find excuses to forget my duty to my sister.

I can’t let that happen.

Evelina has threatened me, ignored me, and growled at me for even starting the question, but I keep asking. For Tina’s sake, I can’t stop, even as I try not to think too hard on what my sister might be going through at Maliff’s hands, hoping and praying to the gods that Titus made his claim. At the last minute, I filled in his name on the marriage contract before signing. I know Titus would never disrespect her. He’d care for her, even if he saw her more as my kid sister than a potential wife. If only I could learn whether she’s safe with him, then I’d quit hounding Evelina and accept my fate.

But I’m afraid. Maliff’s influence on the emperor was strong enough to overcome our laws and traditions. What if the emperor nullified the marriage contract I signed in Titus’s favor? My doubts won’t allow me to surrender the fight.

By now, Evelina only answers with an emotionless “no” before turning away and leaving. I’m asleep by the time she returns in the early morning. Sometimes I hear her go into the shower, but I keep my eyes closed. If she doesn’t want to be around me, I won’t force my presence on her.

When our first week together ends, so does my patience. I make plans to confront her over dinner about New Rome. I will not accept the simple “no” she gives.

We prepare elk chili along with something she calls corn bread. Each time we work in the kitchen together, I feel heated, and not just from the stove she uses to cook the elk meat. Desire builds whenever I’m close to her. This time, I ignore my growing lust.

I carry my bowl and plate to the dinner table. Once she’s seated opposite me with a glass of blood in one hand and her arm resting on the table, I trap her wrist. “Evelina, we must talk. Please, when will you take me back to New Rome? Why do you always say ‘no’?”

She does that thing with her eyes, where she rolls them while looking at the ceiling. Women in New Rome never do that. Then she shakes off my hand like I’m a butterfly.

“I told you already.” She tsks before downing the glass of blood she holds. “There’s no way for you to get inside.”

“But I should try.” I shove a mouthful of chili in my mouth, and my eyes tear up from the hot spice. Next time, I’ll use fewer of the potent peppers grown in her agricultural dome.

“Don’t you think we’ve tried getting inside New Rome ever since the domes fell? We’re sick of drinking blood from a bag.”

My face warms even hotter at being reminded of what she did in the reclamation bin. Yet I can’t understand my desire to feel her lips at my throat again. “Even if you’ve been unsuccessful, I must try. I have a duty to ascertain my sister’s wellbeing. I cannot sit around reading all day and night. Or do you plan on making me your blood slave? Is that why you deny me?”

Her eyes darken, pupils expanding before she looks away. “We don’t keep blood slaves.”

I’m not sure it’s entirely relief I feel. “I’m glad, but then—”

“Why can’t you get it? I’m not sayin’ no to be a witch. I get that you care about your sister. Downright honorable.” She squeezes my hand. “But there’s no way back in, for cripes’ sake. When the Lux designed those domes, they made sure none of us from the outside could break in—nothing with a heartbeat, not even a slow one like mine, can get through. They didn’t want lawless vampires invading your dome and slaughtering the mortals inside.”

She sounds sincere—she doesn’t know a way back in. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t one to be found . How can I persuade her to discuss the strategies she or her kind have attempted so far?

“Look,” she says, “since you’re stuck here and there’s no way back into New Rome, and since the Lux don’t want you, I’ve been thinking I could use your help with the ark.”

Ark . Another word she’s used before that I don’t know, although I have vague memories of seeing it written above the metal doors when she brought me into her dome. “What is an ‘ark’?”

“This.” She waves her arms around. “Do you know the story of Noah and the flood? How he took the animals on a boat two by two and saved them to repopulate the earth?”

“No, they don’t teach that story in New Rome.”

“The boat in that story was called an ark.”

I take a bite of corn bread. How can I redirect our conversation? Rather than talking about mythical boats, I want to ask about the methods they tested to get inside New Rome, but in a way that won’t anger her.

“Well,” she continues, “the Lux figured that someday the world would stabilize again, and we could repopulate it with animals and plants from before the Collapse.”

I gape at her. “You mean live out there again? No domes?”

“That’s the goal.”

I finish my last bite of chili and wipe my mouth with a cloth napkin, feeling fortunate to enjoy such luxury, while my sister—

No. I can’t keep thinking those thoughts.

Evelina stands and motions for me to follow her. “Come on, I’ll give you the tour I promised. Yesterday, your people paid me an additional eight blood bags they owed for the diamonds I found the night you arrived. I can afford to take time off, and we need more meat for you and the dogs. I thought bison might be a nice change of pace.” She snatches a padded jacket off a peg rack by the door and tosses it to me. “Put this on first. Winter’s started in the preservation domes.”

Above the coat rack hang weapons I never expected to see. I recognize them from my time as an imperial officer. New Rome has few working guns, but I never had the honor of firing one. “Is that a…rifle?”

“Top two are AK-47s, semiauto. The middle two are my current hunting rifles, for culling the wild herds. The bottom two are shotguns.”

“How did you obtain those?”

“Scavenged them, and the Lux provide fresh ammo.”

I feel my eyes widen as my brain tries to understand. She’s alone inside a secure dome. Hoarding such valuable weapons makes no sense. “Why do you have them?”

“Well, sometimes raiders need dissuading. Some mortals survived outside for a while, and they tried to raid this ark, until the weather killed them all. These days, it’s mainly vampires who were turned after the Collapse. We haven’t had an attempted break-in in, oh, it’s been decades. But other arks have.”

Okay, from a military viewpoint, the rifles make sense. “Why do you have shotguns?”

“I keep those in case one of the belligerent bison makes its way through the automatic doors. Those suckers can get darn aggressive during rutting season.” She gestures at the jacket I’m still holding. “Come on, don’t be a laggard.”

Once I’ve donned the lightweight but warm jacket and zipped it up, she slings two hunting rifles over her shoulder and grabs a box of ammo, then drags me by my hand between the automatic doors as they slide open.

“Ricky. Lucy. Come.”

After eating their dinners, the beasts slept under the table while I ate. Now they scramble to their feet, the ticky-tack of their toenails on the floor as they follow us.

We enter a lit hub of sorts. Tubular corridors extend in ten different directions.

“Okay,” she says. “When you step out, you might get dizzy. Grab the wall if you need to.”

I’m an imperial officer of the Republic. I won’t need to grab a wall to steady myself. Although admittedly, I’ve served my time and am now in the reserves. My business ventures were too important to ignore.

I follow her into the middlemost tube, and air resistance slows me until I pass with a pop through a membrane of some kind. After traveling about a thousand steps, I enter a silver-black expanse and almost stumble. The ground is uneven and unlike anything I’ve seen in person. A dark field of stark colors and shapes fills this dome.

Trees. Yes, trees, with leaves on the ground underneath them. The leaves are the color of brown leather and red peppers. Plants I don’t know grow in the dirt, bending under a layer of snow. A creature flies by, cawing.

Beast One and Beast Two run off ahead as we walk along the uneven path. There’s enough faint light from above to see them.

“This meadow goes about a half-mile, then you reach the forest where the bison, elk, and other animals roam.” She ticks off a finger with each animal she mentions. She then motions at the night sky. “The Lux also preserved birds and insects that were indigenous in this area. About once a month, I check the herds and go hunting to bring back food for the dogs.”

“This world—it’s magnificent.” Not looking where I place my feet, I stumble, tripping over a rock.

She catches me in time and half drags me to a wooden bench by the path, plopping me down. “Could be worse.”

How can she dismiss it so casually? I never want to leave. “Is this how the world was before the Collapse?”

“Before you mortals destroyed it with your greed. Rich men like you could never get enough.” She sweeps her hand at the sky, motioning outside the dome. “They ignored the warnings and kept polluting and warming the environment until Mother Earth couldn’t take no more and fought back. You’re only alive because of the Lux’s scientific ingenuity.”

For the briefest moment, I imagine what it might be like to stay here for years, to be near this land, this nature, basking in it.

But I can’t abandon Tina. I can’t even consider it.

Evelina sits next to me and bumps her shoulder against mine, derailing my thoughts. “Are you ready to go hunting?”

“Seriously? Absolutely.”

“Good. Wait here. Don’t go wandering off. I’ll be right back.”

When she calls the beasts to follow her, they go charging past me to return to the tunnel.

My feet feel leaden as I stare at the beauty of this meadow. Spread out before me is wealth beyond all imagining. Not wealth in terms of what I can plunder and turn into luxuries to use or sell, but just the wealth of being surrounded by genuine nature. Peace invades my soul. This world has so much more beauty and tranquility than New Rome.

The sound of wood scraping over concrete alerts me, and doors to a barn of sorts fly open on the other side of the tunnel from where I sit. Evelina drives out on a two-horse wagon. The rifles hang in holsters on opposite sides of where she sits on a cushioned bench, along with two battery-powered lanterns lighting the path.

“Come on, get up here.”

I place a foot on the single flat iron step and swing myself up onto the seat, which bounces stiffly when I sit on the cushioned leather and rap my knuckles on the frame of the seat, trying to figure out what the rigid sides are made from. It looks like wood but feels and sounds different.

“What is this?”

“Pollution-free polymer that the Lux and mortals in the mixed domes engineered. PFPs can be melted down using atmosphere-safe chemicals, sterilized, and reshaped.”

“Oh. Why doesn’t New Rome have this technology?”

“Because mortals would abuse it. Y’all can’t be trusted. As a species, you’re too greedy.”

After that, Evelina is quiet for most of the two-hour ride. I’m aware of her nearness, but the scenery distracts me. Even though it’s night, there’s enough illumination from the lanterns in front and the simulated moon above that I have no trouble seeing the sights, and the horses have no trouble finding their footing on the path.

When we reach a moonlit pasture, she turns off the lanterns and guides the horses behind a stand of trees. “If the bison run, they won’t hurt the horses or trample the wagon protected like this.”

She hands me a device, shows me how to place the lenses near my eyes and adjust for my vision. Now I can see the bison as if I’m standing next to them.

I stare at the small herd, maybe fifteen animals, and some are reddish brown and much smaller. The larger beasts have dark brown, shaggy coats and enormous heads and shoulders, with fierce horns. “These are bison?”

“Hush. Don’t wake them.”

We’re at least a half-mile away, and so far they haven’t stirred, despite the noise from the horses and wagon, but I lower my voice. “Can I ride one?”

“Don’t be silly.” She fists my arm. “They’re wild animals, and those horns can kill. We’re not gettin’ close enough to risk your being gored.”

“Okay.” I swallow hard. “What are we doing? Shooting from here?”

“We’re gonna move closer by foot, and cull one of the thirty-month-olds, if I can find a male who’s a bit separated from the herd. That’s the prime age for grass-fed bison. Four years is the oldest you want.”

“How do you know their age?”

“The Lux tag them with RFID trackers. See those colored plastic tags on their ears? Each color is a different birth year.”

From this distance, I can’t distinguish the color of all the tags, and some of the standing bison block my view. “Why are two standing and the others lying down?”

“The males take the outer ring, and a few doze on their hooves. The females are in the second circle, and the young and injured or elderly ones are protected in the center.”

“And the angels? They allow you to hunt here?”

“Responsibly and conservatively, yes. Some of the meat goes to feed the mixed domes, besides feeding my dogs. Because the sick and elderly are in the center, it’s harder to hunt them, and mortals can’t eat their meat. So we let nature take care of them. The wolves gotta eat, too.”

“Wolves? Won’t they attack us?”

My face must look stricken, because her gaze lights on mine, and she smirks.

“Don’t worry yourself. Predators respect other predators. They’ll give us a wide berth.” She steps off the wagon with a light bounce. “Come on, enough talkin’. Grab your gun.”

She slides extra ammunition into her jeans pocket, and I follow her instructions. We leave the wagon behind and stalk quietly toward the herd until we’re less than a hundred yards from the closet bison. She motions for us to huddle behind a large tree.

“We’re only taking one,” she whispers. “You want first shot?”

“Huh?”

“Do you want a shot?”

“I’ve never used a rifle.”

“It’s easy.”

One of the standing bison stirs and snorts.

“They doze by locking their legs in place. And we’re in luck. See the orange-tagged one standing there? That’s our target.” She silently shows me how to load ammunition in my rifle and position myself, one leg ahead of the other. Placing her rear knee on the ground and sitting on that leg, she bends the other knee and supports the elbow of her forward arm on it. “Don’t put your elbow on the knee bone—it’ll wobble. Put it firmly in your muscle here.” She taps my quadriceps above the knee. “Okay, switch places.”

I kneel like she did and support my rifle with my left elbow bent and supported.

She wraps her arms around me from behind and makes minor adjustments to my grip. “Keep the rifle’s butt against your right shoulder and look through the sight.”

Warmth floods me as her whispered breath grazes my neck, leaving goosebumps in its wake. Distracted, I can’t see anything through the sight. It’s dark in the field, and all I see is grass.

She reaches around me to lift the barrel higher, pressing her breasts into my back. The scent of her fills my nostrils, replacing the cool, grassy smell of the meadow with a sweet, crisp, apple-like fragrance. Now my dick stirs and gives a kick. I want to drop the rifle and kiss her. I want to bend her back on the snow-crusted ground, then see where all this heat could lead.

She pinches me. “Hey, buster, get your mind off sex and aim at the bison nearest us.”

How did she know what I was thinking? Did my body tense up that obviously?

I shake her off, so we aren’t touching. Looking through the sight, I finally lock on to the medium-sized male with an orange tag.

“Okay,” she whispers. “You’re going for a double-lung shot. Aim above and slightly behind the front elbow.”

“Elbow? All I see is fur. Where’s its elbow?”

“High on its front leg. Just aim about ten inches above where the leg disappears into fur.”

“Why not a head shot?”

“Bisons have thick skulls, just like you do.” She chuckles softly at her own joke. “Bone can stop the bullet from penetrating. Look. I’ve done this before. You gonna listen to me or not?”

Following orders from a woman grinds at me. But she’s done this before. I haven’t. “Fine.”

I raise the barrel of the rifle and estimate ten inches above the front leg. I’d make a wisecrack about how I know what ten inches are, but if my shot lands short, I don’t want to leave myself open to another barb from Evelina.

She presses against me again and reaches around to position my hand. “Keep your thumb on the same side of the rifle as your trigger finger. Relax. You wanna straighten your trigger finger and rest it on the trigger just below the first joint. No air between your finger and the trigger. You wanna aim and press straight back so your shot doesn’t go cockeyed.”

This seems like a pretty shitty way to learn, because I have one opportunity to get it right, and her hot breath whispering in my ear continues to distract me. Maybe I should tell her to take a step back before I try this. But if I do, I’ll lose the feel of her soft breasts against me, and that’s a sensation I’d rather not lose.