Eternal: More Love Stories With Bite Read Online Free Page A

simply didn't exist any longer, and even cargo shipping was rare, heavily guarded, and dangerous. Patrice had finally been able to stow away aboard a weapons shipment, and she'd spent the other time wondering whether German U-boat shells would count as "fire" and therefore have the power to kill her—to send her to the death beyond death. She suspected they would. Once arriving in France, she'd had to try to pass unnoticed in crowds, which was difficult in a nation with few black women.

    But one of these women, a French nightclub singer and resistance worker named Josephine Baker, had proved both sympathetic and enormously helpful. With the fake papers she'd provided, Patrice had been able to get herself almost to the front. The rest had been running by night, hiding by day.

    And the bloodshed she'd already seen had terrified her, not for herself but for poor Charlie.

    He was such a gentle soul. Or at least he had been, before going to war. Although his letters had revealed some of the horrors he'd seen, Patrice knew now that Charlie had been editing them carefully. Because this was the greatest nightmare she had witnessed since the final years of the Civil War, worse even than the atrocities she'd seen during the Russian Revolution, and she suspected that even greater nightmares lurked deeper behind the front.

    The thought of those nightmares being visited on her Charlie made Patrice want to run straight through the woods, without stopping, until he was again in her arms. But the Nazi patrol she'd just encountered had other ideas.

    "Ich glaube, das Madchen ist hier versteckt!" a soldier shouted. German wasn't one of the four languages Patrice spoke, but the voice was closer; that was enough to tell her it was a bad sign.

    It's not as though they can kill me, she reminded herself. But the reassurance rang hollow. They didn't know what she was, but they could hurt her, perhaps even render her unconscious; at that point, they would think her dead. And if they buried her in consecrated ground, or—more likely— burned her corpse . . .

    Don't think about it. Run.

    Patrice dashed through the woods, ignoring the snap of twigs beneath her feet and the branches scratching gouges in her arms and legs. Her skirt caught on something but she simply tore it free and kept running. Machine-gun fire lit up the forest, strobe flashes and reports so loud they deafened her, but there was nothing to do but go faster. She could outrun any human alive.

    But then one leg gave out from under her, and she fell.

    She saw the wound before she felt it, a dark wet mess. The shock of the bullet's impact had temporarily numbed her to the pain, but when she put her hands to her left knee, she found not intact flesh and bone but a gory ruin. Patrice swore beneath her breath. The wound would heal given time, but with Nazi soldiers running toward her, guns in hand, time was something she didn't have.

    Anger was sharper than any hunger. Patrice felt her fangs sliding into her mouth, and the killing rage came upon her. When the first soldier appeared in her line of vision, she leaped toward him—using her arms and good leg, jumping from all fours like an animal.

    He went down under her, screaming when he saw the fangs for the first half-second before she savagely broke his neck.

    Another soldier, and she tried to jump for him as well— but the pain from the gunshot finally blasted through her. Patrice collapsed to the ground, and it took all her strength not to cry out. They had her, they had her for sure—

    And then another figure leaped from the woods and tore the Nazi pursuing her in two. The shadows split in front of her, and droplets of hot blood spattered on her cheek. Patrice lay utterly still in shock, except for the tip of her tongue, which shot out to capture the drops.

    She watched, silently, as the new figure cut through the entire Nazi patrol. Even before his third kill, Patrice had recognized the style of fighting and the way he