Free Rancor: Vampyre Hunter (Rancor Chronicles) by James McCann

Man’s Alcove!”
    Betty nearly burst as she sprang from her chair. She pulled Alix’s arm to force her friend to come with her.

 
     
     
    CHAPTER TEN
     
    Alix looked at Fred apologetically. He’d never be enticed into going with them. Not even his crush on Betty was enough to tear him away from his principles.
    “Alix! Hurry!” Betty said in a harsh whisper, sensing her friend’s hesitation. Then she noticed Fred and replied in disgust, “He can come, too.”
    Betty never used Fred’s name when she spoke of him, not even when she spoke to him. With that insult Fred regained color in his cheeks, buried his narrow face deeply into the center of a book and replied, “Alix, I refuse to be swayed into witnessing such barbarous actions.”
    Betty clicked a photo of Fred with her iPhone and said, “That’s going in the Loser Files.” Tightening her grip on Alix’s arm, she demanded, “Coming?”
    Rising from her chair, Alix asked Fred, “I’ll see you later?”
    Fred kept his face buried deeply in his book and pushed his fallen glasses up his nose. He nodded to let Alix know she had nothing to prove to him. No matter what, he’d always be her friend.
    Then Alix followed Betty to where the fray was about to happen. The place that Rellik had deemed as his turf.
    Dead Man’s Alcove.
     
    Alix stood beside Betty as she watched Carl at center stage, where the whole school could see. Her mind was racing, wondering when Kim was going to make her move. More so, Alix wondered if she was willing to sacrifice having the star football hero for a boyfriend.
    Just as she wondered where Kim was, Alix swayed and suddenly had to catch her breath.
    “You okay?” Betty asked as she caught her arm.
    Alix felt light-headed and the world started to darken. She closed her eyes, and when she awoke . . .
     
    She was a woman dressed in sackcloth living inside a drafty wooden cabin. Alix poured steamy water into two bowls and placed them on the table, one before a cloaked stranger and one before herself. The stranger’s hood, catching his long, dark hair like a valley would a waterfall, lay around the back of his neck. His rigid jaw reminded her of rocks that built a slope up into a peak. Her heart beat faster, but at the same time his soft gaze relaxed her. His eyes, whenever they looked upon her, moistened.
    He cupped his hot bowl, neither flinching nor backing away from the pain. Lifting it toward his lips he leaned into it, sniffing its aroma like a beast would a fresh kill. When he drank, he did so as if to extinguish a fire within his stomach, finishing it in only two gulps. The girl wondered, as he returned the bowl to the table, why she had let such a frightening person into her home.
    But when he sighed and met his eyes with hers, she knew.
    “You have lost someone dear to you?” she asked.
    “I ’ave.”
    He rose and turned his back to her. His squared shoulders slumped, and the head he held so high fell. He sighed again, this time wrapping his arms tightly around his chest as if to block any more pain from escaping. The girl bit her lip and considered for a moment what to say. He turned to her and when their eyes again met she knew in her heart they needed one another. Their meeting was not so much chance as it was fate.
    “You could call my abode home if you wish.”
    He smiled, his gesture meaning so much when it came so awkwardly to him. “T’would please ma much. Ya kindness would please ma.”
    She rose and shot him a frown. “I ask only because my family was taken by the fever and I need help with the land. You, Sir, may sleep in the barn.”
    He was still smiling, and when he saw her do the same he said, “Way th’other beasts. ’Ow appropriate.”
    The girl smiled back and motioned to his bowl. “Would you fancy another?”
    “Noy, but I thank ya. Whoy I fancy is sleep. I bid ya farewell till ta morrow.”
    He turned and walked out the door without waiting for her to respond. The girl stared after him,