WIP Wednesday

I'm still working at Throne of Thralls, the het vampire story I posted the beginning to last week. Felice has blown up the boat of a rival vampire, but is sticking around as long as possible to make sure there wasn't a survivor...

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The others grew restless when the night began to warm. Sunrise approached, and none had fed. Felice had chosen her companions for this excursion carefully, but even they had their limits. The lack of bodies to wash to the shore and her command for diligence had taken its toll. She was about to give them leave to hunt in the last hour before dawn when a fresh scent caught her attention, and she stiffened, taking a step closer to the water.

Gerard immediately stepped forward as well. “What is it?” He craned his long neck, dark lanks of hair falling against his thin cheeks. “I don’t see anything.”

“Don’t look.” Felice closed her eyes and breathed in. “Smell.”

The others crowded around, too close for her comfort, but she was too absorbed by the incoming aromas to tell them to disperse. Blood, coppery and rich, pumping hard, pumping fast, spilling into the sea as quickly as it could gobble it up. Flesh, scorched and succulent, enough to make her taste buds water and her fangs itch. And sweat. Salty. Hot. The kind of sweat that came from muscles exerting themselves so strenuously that the body was forced to cooling measures.

Someone had survived the explosion. Someone who was now swimming to shore.

A human.

“Get back,” she hissed.

Immediately, they retreated, though the fresh prey tensed their reflexes so they stayed at the ready, just a couple meters behind her. Her features shifted, canines descending, eyes silvery as they turned to the edge of the water. As hungry as her minions were, the spoils were her to take, if she wished, and they knew that. Any moment now, the human would emerge from the sea, and she would know at a single glance whether it was worthy enough to feed from.

And there it was.

The sound of splashing water broke the calm first. Then came the pale slice of an arm through the surface, followed by the bob of a head. Someone fair. Another stroke. More details. The arm was powerful, a circlet of thorns tattooed around the biceps.

A man.

Felice smiled.

He reached the shallows and crawled rather than swam, coughing up water in one breath, gasping for air in the next. The muscle shirt he wore was no longer white, torn along the back and stained with soot and ash, and from his neck dangled silver dog tags that jingled in the silent night. Corded muscles bulged where his arms continued to work, and his dark blond hair was cropped to a mere stubble. Military. He had to be. He had the body of a soldier and the stamina of a fighter.

Then he looked up. Eyes the color of blue ice found her unerringly in front of him, and his sensual mouth twisted into a scowl.

“Well, shit,” he muttered. “Another fucking vampire.”