The camp was active but quiet, men gathering around small fires, an occasional Chieftain or leader moving from group to group. Tents glowed golden and slowly as the moon reached the horizon, everything began to darken except three guard fires strategically placed around the large army.

“Wow. I can’t fucking believe it! I shot for the day before the big battle but I think we got even luckier. My bet is April 13th or 14th, 1746.” Cal whispered, grinning like a Cheshire cat in the darkness.

“Well, Einstein, care to tell me how you came up with that estimate?” the vampire asked, his nostrils flaring at a faint, coppery scent on the air.  

“Easy,” Cal pointed down the hill. “Look at that camp, can’t be more than what, 1,200 maybe 1,500 men down there. By April 15th there will be over 5,000. They’re still coming I guess. This is great, gives me another what?” he pulled out a tiny flashlight and aimed it at a notepad, “forty-eight hours before they head off on their night march toward Nairn … and a day again before the big ass battle right here.”

“Battle has begun, I smell the human blood.”

“Scrimmages, nothing more.” Cal fumbled his pen and flashlight, causing a flipping beam of light to swing an arc over them. Northman actually covered him with his whole body, a hand scrambling to grip both items. When all was silent again, the vampire crushed the ball point pen and small halogen flashlight effortlessly in one hand.

“Hey!” Cal struggled to free himself. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Protecting out lives, you jackass. A flashlight? Really? Cal, for a man who has studied this era down to the number of warriors about to face death … you’re a damn stupid jackass.”

Cal sneered then pushed the stem of his wrist watch and it too lit up. He didn’t even wait for the reprimand, simply handed the Timex over and watched it become as pulverized as everything else.

“Anything else?” Northman’s brow rose.

“No … well … a small tape recorder but I don’t give a fuck if you break my arm, I’m not giving that up. Can you imagine, man? Actually recording the sounds of the most famous battle in Scotland?”

“You’ll need to rely on memory.”

“Won’t give it to you!” Cal hissed.

“Won’t need to,” said Northman as he opened a palm to show the destroyed recorder.

“Wha …”

“You may be our compass, McAffrey, but I bring the brains, strength … and the speed to our joint efforts.”

And Cal’s small spiral notepad of lined paper was now on the ground with the rest of the mess. “I’ll leave you your twenty-first century boxer-briefs … for now.” The vampire chuckled. “Go. Over there, in those trees and bury this. You stay there until I return.”

“From?” Cal asked, gathering all the shards of plastic and metal and batteries.

“I must find a village or town and gather appropriate clothing for us. We must blend in, perhaps as soldiers, down to the weapons.” Northman looked left and right.

Cal pointed west. “Inverness is about four miles that way. What if you don’t come back?”

The handsome vampire grinned. “I’ll return before you even finish burying your garbage.” And he seemed to vanish into thin air.

“Damn,” Cal started digging in the soft earth beneath a tall pine. “He is fast.”

***

Eric covered the four mile distance in mere moments and scoped the village. It too was darkening for the night, candles going out, window by window. Knowing what he needed and how he might be forced to get it, he opted for the outskirts of the town, farmhouses, shacks, possibly people moving along the roads, but with an army gathering nearby, most were unlikely to venture out.

This was obviously a country suffering the ravages of war. Poor, shabby people he had known in his own time. But he’d seen so much of this over so many, many years he began to wonder why he had chosen to accept this venture with McAffrey. For the adventure of it, of course. And the man was gathering research for a book about war. What more could Eric want? In the current time, little of his own warrior nature could be used. If nothing else, he’d fight a good fight … and drink his fill of warm blood along the way.

Movement caught his eye. A woman, fair and lovely, wrapped in a blanket over a long white night shirt left a darkened door from an old farmhouse. He followed at a distance, watching her pick her way to a privy. She opened the privy door and shied back, then looked around and stepped across an open field. There, she looked up at the star speckled sky.

Her profile was delicious, her cheeks, pink from the spring night chill, her hair, a wild river of gold and red in the darkness. Eric ran a hand down his chest. Such a beauty deserved better, but she would not have it. He continued to observe as she squatted near a bush and relieved her bladder. His heart raced. The mere idea of her warm pearly flesh, naked and blood filled pulled Eric’s feet closer and closer. She stood and adjusted her blanket.

“Oh! Sir!” she gasped, her words a mesh of English and Scottish expletives.

“I’ve startled you.” He carefully imitated the Gaelic accent, stepping closer until he could catch her eyes. Such eyes, bluer than even his. Her mouth twisted to scream but he leaned near enough to whisper. “You’re safe, lass. No harm will come to you.”

She numbly nodded and stepped into his open arms, docile as a new lamb.

“I must have clothes, weapons,” he spoke gently, tenderly as his lips trailed along her long, pulsing neck and to her lips. She sighed and melted. “Will you provide them for me and another lost man? We are just passing through and mean you no harm at all.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” she whispered as his fingers worked their way beneath the blanket and finally gripped a begging nipple. “Yessss!”

“Good,” he suckled her lower lip. “Good, go and bring me the clothing and weapons. Return here and I will love you warm and hard, I will love you with a passion you’ve never imagined. Bring those things quickly.”

The girl ran off and Eric shook his head. Too easy, even in 1746. But then again, he’d learned how to glamour a woman at thirty paces, it should be easy.

She returned, out of breath and without the blanket, a bundle knotted in her hand. “I’ve given you some food sir, for your journey.” Her mouth desperately sought his and Eric grinned.

“Now,” he growled and shredded the night shirt from her trembling body. He kissed and ran his cold hands along every inch of her warmth, lifted her knees and penetrated her, pummeled, gasped and released just before plunging his fangs deep into her neck … and all this without lying on the ground. The lovely creature sobbed and panted, shook and finally dropped to a curled heap at his feet, drained and weak but basically unharmed.

Eric shook his head then knelt. “Go inside now. Remember nothing.”

“But …”

“Nothing.”

“If I conceive?” she sobbed.

“You will not,” he ran a hand across his bloody lips and smiled gently. “You have done well, lass. You have been spared. Now return to the house and sleep. You will recall nothing of this encounter.”

She stood then leapt, her arms tight around his neck. She sighed and licked the shell of his ear. “My name is Mary. Mary McAffrey. Return for me, I will follow, sir. I will follow.” And she obediently returned to the house.

Eric gathered the bundle, wondering how Cal would feel if he knew a vampire … a vampire he had personally brought to 1746 Scotland … just screwed and sipped from one of his distant relatives. He silently laughed all the way back to the woods.

In the wooded area there was a hole, almost covered and filled with McAffrey’s contraband … just no McAffrey.

“Motherfucker,” hissed Eric as he quickly changed from his clothing into the rough, ragged clothing provided. He dug out one of two dirks and slid it into the leather belt then tucked everything into the hollow of a tree and left to find McAffrey.

Moments later and less than a mile away, he glared down at Cal McAffrey. The man was tied down, spread eagle and wearing nothing but his underwear. “I knew those boxer briefs could be the death of you,” Eric chuckled, again wiping blood from his mouth. The rescue was fast and brutal and three men lie broken and mangled to a pulp.

“Get me the fuck outta this!”

“How did this happen?” Eric grunted as he twisted the rough rope to examine the knot.

“I was burying that shit and bam! There they were.”

“Did they rape you?” teased the vampire, leaving strategic knots intact as he joked.

“Fuck no!” Cal tugged at a wrist.

“Would you like to be raped?”

Cal’s eyes blazed like fire. “Let me loose or I swear to God!”

“Ah,” Eric pulled the dirk and slit the remaining bondage. “Too late. I’ve already had my fill of fucking and feeding, but I do have some food for you too. Let’s go. There are clothes for you too, my nearly naked friend.”

“I hate you, you know that.”