Four hundred clicks outside of Weissenberg the skies opened up. Buckets of torrential rain poured down on the long stretch of autobahn highway. A horrible day for riding, Kara cursed her luck. She barely crawled at thirty miles an hour. If the rain kept up there was no way she’d make it to town before sun down.
Annoyed with the snail-like pace she and Nilos kept, she put a bit more pressure on the gas and upped the speed to fifty. She could feel some control slipping away, but didn’t think much of it. The road had been boringly flat and straight for hours.
Her mind wandered as the forest passed by on both sides of the two-lane, undivided highway. She could almost feel Dylan holding on to her waist as they ripped through the Welsh countryside. He hated that bike. Riding it scared him half to death. Kara never understood his apprehension. When you were next to indestructible, what was there to fear?
She almost missed the way he winced when she pushed harder on the accelerator, the way his grip would tighten until he became comfortable with the speed. She knew he would never admit it, but Dylan was as much of an adrenaline junkie as she was. His silver Aston Martin was a testament to that. Once she had asked him what the difference between his car and her bike was. With a bashful smile he’d offered, “Seatbelts.”
Typical Dylan Vorcla. Always playing it safe.
Kara shook her had when she realized that her visor wasn’t fogging up because of the weather. She wiped away the water pellets on the outside of the plastic and squinted. She hated riding in heavy rain; it screwed with her night vision horribly. Everything was tinted slightly green in color.
She leaned forward when she saw something ahead begin to cross the highway on the left. Prancing on four legs a white wolf sprinted gracefully out of the woodsy hedge on to the soaking asphalt. Her body was sleek and beautiful, a finely tuned hunter. She stopped in the center of Kara’s lane and turned her head directly towards the oncoming motorists.
Kara could feel her jaw dropping as she stared at the majestic creature. She almost seemed to glow in the darkness. Entranced, Kara panicked when she realized how close she was to the animal, and panicked even more with the brakes failed to work. Avoiding the mysterious wolf, she swerved her bike into the lane of oncoming traffic. She hadn’t seen a car on this stretch for hours and just as she swerved the headlights of a large truck burned her retinas.
Kara leaned back into her lane, narrowly missing both the wolf and the truck. However, the sudden motion coupled with her speed and the road conditions caused her to lose control of the bike. She gasped as the Ducati slipped out from between her legs and she hit the asphalt hard, rolling off the road and tumbling into the guardrail on the shoulder.
LaGory came to a quick but safe stop a few yards ahead of her. Ripping off his helmet he ran back toward her, calling over the thunderous rain.
“Are you okay?” He knelt beside her. He placed a careful hand on her shoulder and slowly rolled her on to her back, then pulled off her helmet.
“Oh my God!” Kara screamed, tears mixing with raindrops on her flushed cheeks. The burning sensation of broken bones along her right arm and shoulder ripped through her body. She grinded her teeth and tried hard to breathe normally. The bones would begin to heal themselves soon enough. “Do you see her?”
“Her?” LaGory looked down. He squinted but couldn’t see any immediate signs of a concussion in her eyes.
“The wolf! God she was,” Kara grimaced as she clutched her arm tightly to her chest. Through agonizing pain she managed to choke, “Beautiful.”
“Wolf?” he asked, worrying. Perhaps she had hit her head after all. “What wolf? There was no wolf.”
“You didn’t see her?” Kara exclaimed in shock. Her eyes almost bulged out of her head as bones began to mend themselves, cracking back together.
“Why are you holding your arm?”
“It’s fine,” Kara recoiled as he tried to touch the healing limb. She propped herself up with her good arm and looked back over her shoulder to where the wolf had just been moments before. Nothing stood in the center of the road. It was as if she had vanished all together.
“We should get you to a hospital,” LaGory stated, beads of rain trickling from his long black hair. “I think you may have hit your head—”
“No!” Kara almost screamed. His suggestion alone was enough to make her panic, but coupled with the painful cracking of her arm and shoulder it was almost intolerable. “I’m—I’m fine. I swear.”
“Your arm?”
Grinding her teeth, she forced her fingers to move and a spasm of pain ripped through her entire right side. “See? Fine.”
He gave her a skeptical look as she pushed herself to her feet,
“I’m fine.” She reached for her helmet. “Let’s just keep going. We’re losing time.”
“Let’s find somewhere to spend the night,” he offered. “I’m not so keen on you driving through the night after that.”
“What? No! We’re so close!”
“We’re not that close,” he said defiantly. Kara sighed in frustration then nodded to appease him. She was tired enough that a room sounded half decent. A bit of shut eye wouldn’t hurt either of them.
“Fine,” she succumbed. “First decent place we see, we’ll pull in.”
She slammed her helmet on to her head and hurried up to her discarded bike. Nilos watched her go and shook his head. Her stubbornness was overwhelming, and yet wholly entertaining all at the same time. In many, many ways she reminded him of Dylan Vorcla. The uncanny similarities were comforting, and yet slightly terrifying all at the same time.
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Spreehotel Bautzen’s chalky white edifice burned against the dark horizon of storm clouds, illuminated by the cracking of foreboding lightening. The two travelers parked their bikes under a sickly tree, hoping to keep them slightly dry and then rushed into the hotel lobby. Dripping on the polished tile floors, they made their way up to the check-in counter.
“Willkomen,” the concierge offered half heartedly, more concerned with the large amounts of water splattering on the floor than with their business. “What can I do for you?”
“Two rooms,” LaGory began.
“One room,” Kara interjected. Nilos looked at her, surprised. “There’s no point in wasting money on two.”
“One room” LaGory looked back to the concierge and nodded. “Two beds, please.”
“I’ll see what is available,” the man muttered as he navigated the computer behind the counter. “A hundred and fifty Euros.”
LaGory handed him a credit card and the concierge returned it with a small silver key. Nilos offered it to Kara, who stared at it for a moment and shook her head before turning towards the elevator. Two floors and a left turn later, they stood outside of room 254. LaGory unlocked the door, entered the room, but stopped half way through the threshold.
He motioned to the single king sized bed that rested in the middle of the room and turned back towards the hall. “I’ll go trade in for a different room.”
“It’s fine,” Kara blew past him. She put her bag on top of the small table in the corner and unzipped her soaked riding jacket.
“Really, this isn’t at all—”
“I call the floor.” She ripped a pillow off the mattress and tossed it on to the ground at the foot of the bed. “Problem solved.”
“Really—”
Kara grabbed her bag and blew past him, locking herself in the bathroom. LaGory watched the door slam in his face but quickly dismissed his anger. He lightly knocked on the door then shouted, “I’m going to get something to eat. Can I get you anyth—”
“Not hungry.”
He chuckled to himself before leaving the room. LaGory stalked out of the hotel and walked over to the bikes. A loud crack of lightning followed by the accompanying bellow of thunder dissuaded him from riding. Instead, he spread his arms and in an instant had transformed himself into a giant bat, before flying through the storm to find his prey.
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Nilos LaGory hadn’t bothered to learn the name of the petite youth whose legs were wrapped around his narrow waist as she bucked and suppressed her orgasmic cries. Frankly, he didn’t care. Sex had been her idea; what followed would be his doing.
Tucked under a threadbare awning, barely safe from the falling rain, they coupled, and when she hit her peak the small and most probably under-aged girl let out an ungodly scream. LaGory smiled contentedly as she fell backwards atop the dumpster she’d been propped up upon, her exposed breasts retiring to either side of her frail body. She managed to choke out something in German that LaGory could only assume was an expression of satisfaction.
He leaned over her prostrate body and brought his lips to hers, allowing them to fall along her jaw-line and then settle on the sweet flesh of her neck. She giggled as his tongue trailed over her flesh, searching for the right vein. The initial shock of his lengthened incisors sinking in to her soft skin brought a surprised yelp from her pink lips that quickly subsided into a throaty moan as his pleasure venom entered her bloodstream. Again she began to writhe beneath him until her moaning stopped and she choked on her last few breaths of life. LaGory continued to drain her after she had ceased moving, catching up from an entire day and night’s worth of fasting from being on the road with Kara.
When he was done he stepped back from the fresh corpse and zipped up his pants. He grabbed her by the jaw and with a belligerent jerk snapped her neck effortlessly. With a self-satisfied smirk he tossed her body into the dumpster and made sure to throw her discarded black thong into the rubbish heap as well. It would look like a rape gone bad and there was no doubt that the police would be so confused with the puncture wounds on her jugular that they’d waste far too much time fighting amongst themselves over the existence of monsters. By the time they focused on the case, he and Kara would be long gone.
“Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to play with your dinner?”
LaGory’s blood ran cold when he heard the taunting words drift from behind him in the secluded alley. Turning slowly, his eyes grew wide with a pleased amusement when he saw Lunette LeClerc standing in the pouring rain, her long blonde hair cascading over her shoulders and dripping wet.
He sent her a leering grin as he approached her, “Perhaps my dinner, but never dessert.”
“Save it.” Lunette raised her hand in objection.
“It’s funny,” LaGory chuckled, rubbing his stubbled chin. “But I distinctly remember an incident in a ruined concentration camp where I told you and your brother that if I ever saw either one of you again, I’d make you regret the day you were born.”
“A fairly ineffective threat considering we already do.”
“What is it with you Vorclas?” LaGory shook his head and reached out to stroke her rain-drenched cheek. “So melancholy. So morose.”
“Maybe next time we can talk about our feelings,” Lunette seethed, pushing his cold hand off her face. “Right now, I need to talk to you about something important.”
“Nothing’s really that important,” LaGory shrugged. “I mean, when you’ve been around as long as I have you learn not to get too attached to anything.”
Lunette crossed her arms over her chest and raised her eyebrows skeptically. “So that explains why you’re stalking Kara Gabone with the intent of doing God knows what.”
LaGory’s grin fell. He stalked out of the rain and under the awning, hopping up on the dumpster he’d just dumped a body in. Lunette followed him, and leaned with her back against the alley’s wall.
“I believe I told you to stay out of affairs concerning Stefan Vorcla.”
“Stefan Vorcla’s been dead for eighteen years. I don’t give a shit what you do to his son but Kara Gabone happens to be of concern to me.”
“And what concern would that be, Lunette?”
She took a long moment to gather her words carefully before she spoke. With pleading green eyes she looked to him and said, “I watched you destroy my brother because you decided to kill someone who didn’t have to die, LaGory. You did the same with Stefan Vorcla and you’ve already done it to Dylan. Grow a pair and fight like a man this time, would you?”
LaGory grinned in spite of himself. “If I’m going to kill Dylan Vorcla does it really matter what I intend to do with the girl?”
Lunette merely glared at him.
LaGory heaved a heavy sigh. “Compassion is your only concern with her?”
“Compassion, a mild streak of vindictiveness, and thirst for revenge…Same thing right?”
He stared at her and then nodded. “You have my word.”
“I mean it, LaGory,” Lunette spat. “Harm one hair on that head and Firmin and I won’t hesitate to—”
LaGory could no longer contain his amusement. Openly he laughed, “I should like to know what the LeClerc twins are capable of. Do you honestly think you can do anything to me?”
Lunette’s lips curled up in a wry and unexpected smile. “You were wrong about the Vorcla’s once. What makes you think it can’t happen again?”
“Go,” Nilos LaGory snarled, enraged by her impudence. “Before I change my mind.”
Pushing herself off the wall, Lunette sauntered back out into the pouring rain, but stopped to turn around to send one last look at the brooding vampire. He glared at her with contempt but did not say anything. She let out an amused giggle before opening her arms wide and allowing the rain to fall upon her body. Looking back to him with a rain-spattered face she waved, “Au revoir, mon ami!”
With a quick and elegant gesture she whirled around and effortlessly transformed herself into the large white wolf that had made its way across the autobahn earlier that day. LaGory watched the animal disappear into the darkness of the alley and gnawed on the inside of his cheek. Regardless of how things went with Dylan Vorcla, Lunette LeClerc’s days were numbered.
Incredible writing and ideas still - I wonder how I can bring my own writing up to this level?? hmm....
Re: Vorcla's Quest Three: Reconciliation (Three)
will eat you!
That might explain it. 
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