Viola Grace - Nexus Chronicles 06 - Chubby is the Night, page 1
Max just wanted to have a night out with her cousin and go home. As a plus sized lass, she didn't fit in amongst the tiny blonde gazelles, but protecting her cousin from a perv in the alley changed her fate. In a moment of self-preservation when a man started chewing on her neck, she bit the hand over her mouth, setting a paranormal chemical reaction into play. Now that she is infected with his blood, he either needs to turn her or destroy her. The vampire tribunal chips in with an option for Max. She can rescue their kidnapped Guild Master, and he will decide her fate. Sounds like the best deal of the evening.
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Chubby is the Night
Copyright © 2010 Viola Grace ISBN: 978-1-55487-711-9
Cover art by Martine Jardin
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
Published by Devine Destinies Books An imprint of eXtasy Books
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www.devinedestinies.com
Chubby is the Night
A Nexus Chronicle
By
Viola Grace
Chapter One
f she had to try on one more pair of jeans before they went out, Max was
I
going to scream. The
jeans were so tight most of the time that she did.
“It’s no use, Tabby. I am not getting into any of your clothes. Just let me wear the ones that I showed up with. Please. I am begging.” She would have fallen to her knees if the denim would have let her.
“But the clothes you had on were so… boring.”
Tabby shook her head in despair.
“Yeah, but they fit. And that is the most important thing to me at this stage.” Up on her toes, she waddled back into the bathroom and put her comfy clothes back on. The blouse was a respectable and sedate navy and her jeans clasped her curves in a faithful representation of her form.
It was the metal wear that made the outfit. Her crafty friends had given in to her urge for accessories and she now sported a steel chainmail choker she had studded with hematite, metal cuffs on her wrists and a wide belt dotted with semi-precious stones on more steel. It was 1
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unconventional but rather striking.
Black low-heeled boots completed the outfit and Maxine Dorothea Munroe was ready for an uncomfortable night in the club.
Tabby tilted her head and assessed her cousin, nodding finally in agreement. “You won’t cause any hearts to pound, but you don’t look horrible.”
“Thanks. Let’s go before I change my mind.”
“I promised Tammy a well-attended girls’
night. That means you have to be there.”
Max grimaced. “Because you couldn’t get anyone else to go to that obnoxious twig’s bridal shower and I take up enough space for two of you?”
“Something like that. Let’s get moving.” She clutched her tiny purse and led the way out of her apartment.
Max shuddered when she saw the collection of tiny, fashionably thin women lining the sidewalk outside Club Nyt. A heavy dose of Goths were sprinkled in the crowd that they passed with no hostility visible in their audience’s eyes until the moment Tabby caught the gaze of the doorman and they were inducted into the dark hell of the club.
The cries of protest erupted behind them and Max hunched her shoulders trying to make her almost-six-foot frame blend in with the smaller form of her cousin. Social interaction was bad 2
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enough, but hanging around these girls always made her feel like a moose amongst gazelle.
She was too big, too wide and not built for speed.
Sighing, Max took a corner of the table and ordered a strawberry margarita while she waited for the other shrieking and giggling ladies to get completely hammered.
Tammy received her gifts with the aura of a queen accepting her due. When it came to Max’s turn, the ladies eyed her empty arms and she merely grinned and pulled a birthday card out of the left side of her bra and a gift card out of the right. She had the storage, she may as well use it.
They didn’t have much of a cleavage-related sense of humour. She was relegated to watching the purses for the rest of the night.
After the first alcoholic beverage, she stuck to soda. Tabby was not the most sober of ladies at the best of times and her cousin’s propensity for getting plastered was predictable.
A prickling along Max’s skin made her shiver and she looked around for the cause.
Deep in the shadows of the club, a man was watching the writhing dance floor with what Max could only construe as hunger. His skin was chalky and pasty, his dark hair slicked tightly to his head. Not the kind of guy that Tabby would normally be interested in, but he seemed to fixate 3
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on her cousin as she flashed her boobs to the DJ.
He was leaning forward, almost licking his lips as Tabby flipped her blonde hair forward and back, gyrating to the heavy beat. The moment that he moved to intercept Tabby on her way to the ladies’ room, Max abandoned her post near the purses and followed, noting that her cousin started clinging to the stranger’s arm in a most un-Tabby-like manner.
The wild sounds and sights of the nightclub were lost to Max as she followed Tabby and the stranger out of the rear fire door. The darkness of the alley blinded her for a moment until her rapidly blinking eyes adjusted to the lack of light.
There. In the shadows behind a dumpster, she heard a breathy giggle from Tabby followed by a harsh squeak. It was the squeak that demanded action.
Max looked around and grabbed a chunk of wood from the alleyway. “Oy, jackass, get your face off my cousin!”
The stranger had his mouth on Tabby’s neck and the whites of her eyes were showing with pain. He didn’t move and Tabby whined softly.
With her hands clenched on the wood, she swung at his shoulder and knocked him three feet away from Tabby.
“What do you think you are doing, cow?” His snarl displayed bloody lips and teeth that glowed 4
Chubby is the Night
eerily in the darkness.
“Getting you away from her, ass hat.” She was holding the wood like a broadsword.
“You don’t want to do that.” His eyes glowed a creepy green and she felt a tugging, like she didn’t actually want to do whatever she was thinking about.
Before she could track his movement, he grabbed her and shoved her up against the wall, his fangs gleaming in the darkness. Fangs? What the hell? His hand covered her mouth as he swooped in to bite her neck and she did what came naturally.
With all her power, she closed her teeth on his hand and tore a chunk of skin off his palm. Blood spilled into Max’s mouth and her jaw was held so tightly she couldn’t spit. He was gnawing at her neck, but he couldn’t do more than scratch the surface, her choker prevented him from getting a solid grip.
Strength born from fear and fury helped her push him off, but the damage was done. He had tasted her blood and she had gulped his. With a snarl, he ran down the alley, leaving Max bent over trying to wretch, her cousin sitting nearby with her hand pressed to her neck.
“Tabby, are you all right?”
“He bit me. He really bit me.”
Max groaned and helped her cousin to her feet.
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The club exit was not accessible from the alley, so Max walked them to her car. Tucking her cousin into the passenger seat, she winced at the mess of blood and torn flesh that was her neck.
With her mouth tight, she got behind the wheel and started her car.
Tabby’s voice was soft, helpless. “He bit me, Max.”
She gunned the engine and announced grimly,
“Don’t worry, Tabby. I bit him back.”
6
Chubby is the Night
Chapter Two
he hospital staff was surprisingly helpful when Max brought Tabby in
T
. Perhaps it was that Max
was obviously stone cold sober, or maybe it was the dark blood of the psycho that covered her jaw and neck. Whatever the cause, they were incredibly helpful.
The nurse who helped remove the blood gave her a piercing look. “Did he…was there a sexual…”
“No. Just the blood fetish. He munched and ran.” She winced as she helped the nurse remove the collar and her dried blood made the steel stick to the skin.
“Looks like some deep scratches, but nothing dangerous. Your cousin is in much worse shape. It looks like a garden tool was taken to her neck.”
>
The nurse shook her head and blotted gently and then more aggressively at Max’s wounds. “Huh, they seem to have closed completely. You must be a fast healer.”
Max didn’t want to tell her that the opposite 7
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was true. The lightest scratch had scarred her.
She held still as the woman removed the blood and her lips twitched as the coppery scent filled her nostrils. Normally, her sense of smell was nowhere near this acute, but today, she was hypersensitive. It must be all the adrenaline in her system.
“Well, there is an officer who is speaking to your cousin while they work on her. He will be coming in here next. There is nothing for me to do, so just stay here and wait, please.”
The woman made some notes on the chart that was ubiquitous to a hospital patient and she left the room.
Max sat quietly. The noises coming from the hall got her attention and she made a game of sorting the probable height of the person outside by the sound of their step. A light murmuring came to her ears and she focussed on the voice of her cousin coming from another exam room down the hall.
“No, I don’t know his name. I don’t remember anything. I was dancing and then I was out in the alley with my cousin Max covered in blood. I have no idea what happened. I remember eyes, weird green eyes and then nothing.”
The masculine voice calmed her, “Nothing happened to you. You went outside to get some fresh air and tripped and fell on a board with nails 8
Chubby is the Night
exposed. There were no weird eyes, your cousin wasn’t with you and you will heal well and completely. Do you understand?”
The odd vibration in his voice almost had Max’s ears perking up as she waited for him to laugh or make a joke. Nothing. He spoke to the doctor and muttered, “Drunk, she tripped and fell.
She came in alone.”
Whoa. That was twice he had mentioned that Tabby had been alone. Max got quietly to her feet and slipped out the door, casually moving as if she had been visiting someone. The police officer was indeed the owner of the voice she had heard and he looked at her dismissively as she passed him. It was a look she was used to. No one ever noticed her despite her height. Sometimes it was a curse.
Today, she was counting it as a blessing.
As the doors opened and closed behind her, she kept her head high, her shoulders in and her walk casual until she made it to her car. For the ninth time in her life, she thanked her dislike of purses and fished her keys out of her pocket.
A sense of urgency overtook her and she moved as fast as she could to slide into her seat, buckled up and threw the car into reverse.
Mr. Creepy from the alley was directly behind her and she ploughed into him with all the speed she could get her four cylinder to muster.
She heard his curse clearly as the car struck him 9
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and then she flipped the shifter into drive and got herself out of there. Tabby was safe. They had convinced her she had been alone. Max was the one they were stalking and that was not a good thing.
Mr. Creepy was following her and he had fangs. His buddy was a cop and had the ability to convince her clingy cousin that she had been uncharacteristically alone. This was going to get worse before it got better.
Going home was her first instinct and she fought it. Running to the police was out of the question now that her injuries had healed. She had no proof.
“Stupid imagination. I am having a stupid hallucination that a stupid vampire has chosen my cousin as a snack and I am running for my life because I interrupted his late-night munchies.”
She kept muttering to herself as she drove to a park with an open picnic shelter. She parked and got out, running to the fire pit and digging in the ashes. With a two-foot spike of unburned wood, she turned at the sound that rushed her from behind.
Mr. Creepy’s open eyes showed his shock as he struck her quickly obtained weapon and he staggered back before bursting into flames. Max fell to her knees.
The police car caught her in its headlights, her 10
Chubby is the Night
hands covered with blood and ashes, shirt stiff with blood and only her shock at watching a man burst into flame kept her from running.
“You killed him. I can’t believe you killed him.”
The officer shook his head in surprise and lifted her to her feet. She was still slumped on the ground where she had fallen.
She fought him out of reflex and he hissed at her, exposing his teeth.
“Is that supposed to mean something?”
“Yes, it means get in the back of the car before I kill you myself. The tribunal is looking forward to destroying you and it would be unpleasant if I took away their fun.” He cuffed her, but it wasn’t a standard steel cuff. Wide manacles locked her wrists together in front of her and he shoved her into the back of the police car, taking care not to smash her head. Very considerate given the circumstances.
“What’s a tribunal?”
“The ruling body for the vampires. Normally, our Guild Master handles this sort of thing, but in his absence, the tribunal is making the rulings.”
“What kind of rulings?”
He ignored her and drove through the city to a neighbourhood with gated properties. He flashed his lights at the gates and they swung open to let them in.
Max turned her head just in time to see the 11
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panels of wrought iron slam shut behind her.
The house that loomed at the end of the drive way was huge. “Whose house is that?”
“The Guild Master’s.”
“I thought you said he wasn’t home.”
“He isn’t. Never mind. We are here. Shut up, behave and your end will be swift.” The officer parked the car and hauled her out of the back seat.
Her boots crunched gravel as he kept his hand around her bicep and pulled her across the drive spattered with cars and into the house itself. Two fanged guards scowled at her as the officer dragged her past them.
“Evening, fellas.” Being polite couldn’t hurt.
They seemed startled that she had spoken to them, as if she was some kind of pet that had taken up speech.
“This way.” The officer hauled her through room after room of lounging men and women with chalky skin.
In a large ballroom, a set of heavy oak desks were arranged in a semi-circle. Two chalky men and one woman glared at her as she was yanked unceremoniously into the room.
The officer forced her to her knees and held her there with hands on her shoulders.
“I have brought her to face the tribunal.”
The central man nodded and tapped his left fang with the nail of his index finger. “Where is her 12
Chubby is the Night
maker?”
The officer was silent.
“If you mean Mr. Creepy that attacked me this evening, he burned up in a ball of fire that was truly impressive.” Max held up her chin in defiance. They weren’t going to see her freak.
“What? Abomination! How dare you kill your maker?” The woman pounded her fist on her desk, making the pens and paper jump.
She wanted to cross her arms, but the manacles prevented her from taking action. “The only makers I have ever had are my parents and possibly the old mustang convertible they conceived me in.”
Fangs were being shown in every person looking at her. “Vampires, right?”
The irate woman snapped her mouth shut.
“You don’t know what you are?”
“I am a human being. I don’t have an inclination to be anything else.”
The man on the far right looked thoughtful. He looked to his peers and made a gesture. They gathered and left the room.
Max shifted on her knees and looked up at her captor. His face was blank and empty of any emotion, no help there.
The men and women gathered on the edges of the chamber were stone faced as well. Hostility and fear was riding under the surface and Max 13
