Rancor: Vampyre Hunter (Rancor Chronicles) by James McCann Page A

o’ ’im. ’E’s pale and does noy look like ’e’s eaten in days.” Rancor picked her up and twirled her in the air. “I ’ave found ma chance ta show true honor! Da merchant needs our aid, and I know we ’ave noy food ta spare, but I will cut me own rations in ’alf–”
    Ariana smiled. “Speak no more. You may welcome this stranger, but not to my home. Welcome him to our home. He will take your lodgings in the barn–”
    “And I?”
    “You will sleep in the house. With me. I am, after all, your angel.”
    Rancor turned back to the merchant, who asked, “And who might this vision be?”
     
    “This is Alexandria,” Rellik answered coldly, no longer so young, nor so innocent.
    Alix added to Rellik’s introduction: “And this is Betty.”
    Rellik didn’t turn to face them, not even when Shay stepped around him.
    “I am Shay. Shay Jackson.” He beamed his pearly whites and a sparkle shimmered from his sunken, brown eyes. “Could one of you lovely ladies please show me to my history class? A Mr. Pausron, it is.”
    Rellik cringed at the thought of Shay taking the same class as they were.
    “That’s my class!” Betty said. “I’ll show you where it is.” Wrapping her arm around his, she gave Alix a strange glance. Alix didn’t tag along.
    Shay spoke a few incoherent words as they departed from the alcove. Rellik, with his back to Alix, smiled for the first time in centuries.
    “Rellik?” Alix asked with a slight quiver in her voice. “Do you want me to walk you to class?”
    Her voice sang in his ears more beautifully than a chorus of songbirds. Her kindness hadn’t changed in a millennium, and Rellik didn’t know what he’d do if he lost her twice.
     
    Rancor finished lighting the fire and walked to Ariana. He smiled, looked deeply into her eyes, and pulled her close to him. He thought briefly of his brother, of the love that Kendil had said he would find. Slipping a ring from his finger, he said, “Ya should ’ave dis.”
    As he handed her the wedding band Kendil had given him, he met her curious eyes.
    “What be this?” she asked.
    “’Tis ma soul, Ariana. Wear it only if ya want it.”
    She took it and smiled, leaning to him and kissing him deeply. As she took his hand in hers, Ariana led him toward the bedroom. Rancor gently pulled her back.
    “Noy, Ariana.”
    “‘Tis all right. I love you.”
    “And I ya more than life itself. ’Tis why I wish ta wed ya first.”
    She handed him back his band and said, “Then give this to me that day, Rancor. Give me your soul only when I can give you mine.”
    He took it back and vowed by his honor they soon would wed. Gently kissing her he praised the heavens for his good fortune. Knowing there would never be a time when he didn’t need her, when his heart didn’t feel empty without her.
     
    “No. I can find it myself,” Rellik answered, the words sounding foreign against the love he still felt for her. He wanted to take Alix’s hand, to pull her close, and never let go. But as his vision hit the ground he walked past her, uncertain why he felt so afraid to open his soul once again.

“Evil, I once thought, was a birthright passed on in the same way as the color of one’s eyes. As I grew from an infant to a man I believed that my clan was evil, and, because I was one of them, so must I also be. After all, we fought together, we killed together, and we conquered together. What I could not understand, however, was why no one but I saw our bane.
    “When I left the Alsandair I feared their lessons would never leave me, and that I would always be tempted into selfishness. What confused me was the virtue left in me by my true bloodline, the Wulfsign, a clan I never even knew.
    “Often I contemplate: Is evil an ailment of ignorance, or a genetic disposition from which there is no escape?”
    -Wulfsign

 
     
     
    CHAPTER ELEVEN
     
    L ittle more than two years had passed since Sam last stepped inside Conway Groceries. Just as he’d