Marc And Kianna’s Love

Marc’s claws tightened around the angel’s stone shoulder. The statue crumbled under him with a tired little crunch.

Every manifestation looked up.

“Wonderful,” Marc muttered. His voice came out rough, smoky, and much too attractive for a creature with half a rib cage visible. “I was hoping for a quiet evening of solitary predation.”

The corpse-things shrieked.

Marc launched himself from the statue.

His wings opened with a leathery snap, throwing dust across the moonlit graves. He dropped among the creatures, jaws wide. One lunged. He caught it by the middle and flung it through a tombstone. Another sprang for his throat, but he seized its arm and bit down.

The arm tasted of cemetery mud and regret.

Marc spat it out.

“Disgusting,” he said.

The severed limb crawled back toward its owner.

“Oh, come on.”

A burst of blue-white water exploded from the crypt.

The manifestations froze. Every crooked head turned toward the flooded stairwell. Water poured over the steps, glowing from within, and the graveyard filled with the sound of distant bells.

Marc felt the presence then - not merely magic, but a living will moving through the water.

She was close.

The realization struck him harder than any claw. His hunger twisted into something unfamiliar, something with no useful name. His dragon instincts demanded that he claim the source, guard it, circle it, breathe fire at anything that came near.

His vampire instincts whispered that he should taste her.

His zombie instincts, less refined but deeply sincere, suggested he lie down in the water and see what happened.

Marc shoved all three instincts aside.

“Behave,” he growled at himself.

The water surged up the crypt stairs. A figure moved within it.

For one breath, Marc saw a woman’s silhouette: tall, bare feet touching the submerged stones, hair floating around her like dark riverweed. Pale light traced her shoulders. Behind her, something larger moved - a wolf-shaped shadow made of waves and storm clouds.

Then the water collapsed.

The manifestations shrieked again, this time with fear.

Marc felt fear too, though he considered it an insulting development.

A wet, bubbling laugh rolled through the cemetery.

“Marc.”

The voice came from the mausoleum behind him.

He turned.

Jean Blanchard stepped out of the darkness wearing a woman’s shape as if it were a costume borrowed from a particularly ugly theater. Her demon body bulged beneath a dress of black membrane. Her face had the swollen, grotesque softness of a blobfish dragged onto dry land, and venom shone green at the corners of her mouth.

She smiled at him.

“I know what you smell,” Jean said. “You smell her.”

Marc’s wings lifted. “You smell like a dead aquarium.”

Jean’s smile widened. “And yet you noticed me.”

“I notice all threats.”

“No. You notice all appetites.”

The words struck too close. Marc’s fangs lowered before he could stop them.

Jean pointed one claw toward the flooded crypt. “She is mine.”

The water inside the crypt shuddered.

That was enough.

Marc moved between Jean and the stairs, his body blocking the moonlight. “You can’t own water.”

“I can own what drinks it.”

The manifestations rushed him.

Marc roared. Fire burst from his throat, not orange but corpse-blue, burning cold across the nearest creatures. Their wet bodies hardened into steaming lumps. He swept his tail through three more, sending them into the graves.

Jean laughed as though he had performed a charming trick.

Marc charged.

His claws struck her chest. Venom splashed across his scales, sizzling through the dead flesh beneath. Pain flashed white. Jean caught his foreleg and twisted. Bone cracked.

Marc snarled, then sank his teeth into her shoulder.

Jean screamed.

Her blood was thick, bitter, and hot enough to make his vampire hunger howl. He tore away before the taste could become desire. Jean staggered backward, clutching the wound. Black fluid dripped between her fingers.

“You could have drunk,” she hissed.

“I have standards.”

“You are a corpse with wings.”

“An alive corpse with wings.”

Jean’s eyes narrowed. “For now.”

The crypt bell rang again beneath the water.

Marc looked past her.

A trail of glowing droplets had appeared on the stones, each one bright as a fallen star. They led away from the crypt, across the graveyard, toward the riverbank beyond the ruined wall.

The sacred presence was leaving.

“Run after her,” Jean whispered. “Show her your teeth. Let her see what you are.”

Marc did not answer.

The trail pulsed.

He took one step toward it.

Jean hurled a spear of black venom.

Marc twisted. The spear tore through his wing instead of his heart. He hit the ground hard enough to crack a grave slab. Pain thundered through him. The dragon inside him roared for revenge, but the water trail glimmered beyond the wall.

Connection before blood.

The thought was absurd. It was also his.

Marc ripped himself free of the broken stone and beat his good wing once. The force knocked Jean backward. He leapt over the wall, landing among the reeds beside the river.

Behind him, Jean screamed his name.

The graveyard answered with a hundred wet voices.

Marc ran.

The riverbank smelled of rain, crushed mint, and moon-cooled mud. His injured wing dragged behind him, leaving a dark line through the reeds. Each glowing droplet of sacred water vanished as he passed, but another appeared farther ahead.

She was guiding him.

Or fleeing him.

The distinction irritated him.

At the edge of the river, Marc found a circle of stones half-buried beneath willow roots. Water moved between them without touching the ground. The air trembled with divine force.

He stopped outside the circle.

A growl came from the darkness.

Not Jean’s.

This sound was lower, rougher, alive with warning. A massive wolf stepped from beneath the willow branches. Her fur was made of shifting water, silver at the edges and dark as a storm at the spine. Her eyes held the pale blue of deep rivers.

Marc’s hunger vanished.

The wolf bared her teeth.

“Stay where you are,” she said.

Her voice was a woman’s voice, calm but carrying the weight of a flood.

Marc raised both claws. “I had planned to.”

“You followed me.”

“You left a trail.”

“I left no invitation.”

“That is a fair criticism.”

The wolf circled within the stone boundary. Water dripped from her jaws, striking the earth with tiny flashes of light. Marc noticed the way she favored her right hind leg. Injured, perhaps. Or exhausted.

He wanted to ask.

He wanted to step closer.

The wolf’s lips lifted farther. “Do not look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’ve found something you intend to keep.”

Marc glanced at his claws, stained with Jean’s blood. “I don’t know how to look at you any other way.”

For the first time, her expression faltered.

The river rushed behind her. Moonlight touched the curve of her cheek as the wolf’s shape shifted. Fur melted into streaming water. Her limbs lengthened, her shoulders narrowed, and a woman stood within the stone circle, wrapped in a veil of liquid that moved like silk.

Kianna.

Marc knew her name before she spoke it. The knowledge entered him with the river’s scent, sudden and absolute.

She was beautiful in a way that made his dead heart attempt a dangerous little stutter. Dark hair clung to her throat and shoulders. Her eyes remained wolf-bright, and a faint glow moved beneath her skin like moonlight trapped under ice.

“Kianna,” Marc said.

Her gaze sharpened. “How do you know my name?”

“I don’t.”

“That was my name.”

“Yes.”

“You said it as if you had the right.”

“I said it as if I was surprised.”

“Those are not the same thing.”

“No,” Marc admitted. “They are not.”

She studied him - the scales, the torn wing, the exposed ribs, the blood at his mouth. Her attention paused at his fangs.

Marc felt suddenly, horribly visible.

“I’m alive,” he said.

Kianna’s brow lifted. “You are bleeding black.”

“I’m still alive.”

“You have a hole in your chest.”

“It’s an old hole.”

“You smell like a tomb.”

“That one is difficult to argue.”

Her mouth twitched.

The tiny movement struck Marc harder than Jean’s venom.

He stepped toward the stones.

Kianna raised one hand. Water climbed from the river and coiled around her wrist. “Do not.”

Marc stopped.

The water hissed against his scales without touching him. The sacred force inside it rejected his undeath. He felt the clash in his bones: her magic pushing outward, his dead blood pulling inward. For one terrible instant, he imagined reaching through the barrier and ruining the clean brightness of her.

Kianna saw something in his face.

“What is it?” she asked.

Marc looked away. “You should leave.”

“That is not an answer.”

“Jean Blanchard is coming.”

“I know.”

“She wants to kidnap you.”

“I know that too.”

“She wants to kill me.”

Kianna’s gaze moved to the torn wing. “That part appears to be going well.”

Marc laughed once, without humor. “You’re welcome to go back to the crypt and let her collect you.”

“I have been fighting Jean’s creatures for three nights.”

“And tonight?”

“Tonight they followed your scent.”

The words landed between them like a stone dropped into deep water.

Marc looked toward the graveyard. Blue fire flickered among the tombs. Jean’s voice floated over the wall, sweet and rotten.

“Kianna! Come out, little goddess. Bring your dead dragon friend.”

Kianna’s face tightened.

Marc saw it then - not fear of Jean, exactly. Fear of what would happen if anyone stood too close to her. Fear that her sacred nature would become a weapon against them.

“Your magic hurts me,” he said.

“Yes.”

“You could have warned me.”

“You crossed into my sanctuary without permission.”

“I was following the water.”

“You were following me.”

Marc had no defense for that.

Kianna came closer to the boundary. The water around her fingers trembled. “Why?”

He could have lied. He had lied for decades, to hunters, priests, vampires, dragons, and himself. But the river was watching. The moon was watching. Worst of all, Kianna was watching.

“Because I was hungry,” he said.

Her expression hardened.

Marc forced the next words through his fangs. “Not only for blood.”

The water stilled.

He swallowed, though he had no need. “I have been alone so long that I mistook every desire for hunger. Then I felt you, and I wanted to know whether something beautiful could stand near me without becoming ruined.”

Kianna stared at him.

Behind them, Jean’s manifestations began climbing over the wall.

“That,” Kianna said softly, “is a dangerous thing to want.”

“Yes.”

“You may be dangerous.”

“Yes.”

“And if I let you near me, my power could destroy what remains of you.”

Marc’s eyes held hers. “Then don’t let me near you.”

For a moment, neither moved.

Kianna’s face changed - not into softness, not yet, but into recognition. She understood that he was asking for a choice, not offering a promise he could not keep.

The first manifestation reached the riverbank.

Kianna turned. Her body flashed silver, wolf and goddess folding together. A wave rose behind her, towering over the reeds.

“Marc,” she said.

He braced himself. “Yes?”

“Survive.”

The wave struck between them.

Marc was thrown backward as water thundered across the bank. It did not crush him; it carried him, flinging him toward the graveyard while sacred cold burned through his veins. He hit the mud on one knee.

When he looked up, the stone circle was empty.

Only a line of glowing droplets remained, winding along the river toward the distant dark.

Jean’s creatures surged behind him.

Marc rose, wing torn, mouth empty, and heart behaving like a badly assembled clock.

He could return to the graveyard and hunt until dawn.

Instead, he followed Kianna’s trail.

Not because she had invited him.

Because she had told him to survive - and for the first time in a very long night, Marc wanted to obey someone.

End of chapter one. 39 more chapters in the full book.