“How did you end up in those tunnels?” Lucien inquired.
“They kidnapped me off the street.”
“Where were you when that happened?”
She opened her mouth to answer him before clamping it shut again. Was it a good idea to tell a vampire where she lived?
Lucien stared expectantly at her as his fingers dug deeper into his palms. For a minute, blackness descended over his vision, and he couldn’t see anything. Feed. Eat. Eat. Eat. Feed. So hungry.
The incessant words ran on a loop through his mind, and he became so still that the first drop of his blood falling on the wooden floor sounded as loud as a gunshot in his head.
Callie stared at him as his eyes closed and blood trickled from his clenched hands. When she took a step back, his eyes flew open, and she couldn’t stop herself from emitting a small squeak when those eyes landed on her.
When his lips skimmed back to reveal his fangs, Callie froze and her heart battered her ribs. Every one of her instincts screamed at her to run, but she sensed running would trigger an explosive reaction from him. He was teetering on the edge of losing it, and she couldn’t push him over.
Instead, she released a breath and waited to see if death was about to befall her.
CHAPTER 8
Lucien’s breath hissed in through his teeth as he uncurled his fingers. He had to feed soon, but no matter how tempting she was, he wouldn’t take from the woman. He’d already bit her twice; he’d starve to death before he did so again.
“Where did they take you from?” he asked again.
When she continued to stare at him like he was a monster, he bowed his head and looked down at himself. For the first time, he saw the dirt and blood caking his chest, his bare feet, and his arms.
His jeans were covered in filth and far looser on him than when they first imprisoned him. He ran a hand through his hair, only to have his fingers catch on the grime encrusting it.
He was no better than any Savage right now; in fact, he was far worse. Those things were at least in control of themselves. He didn’t feel controlled right now.
“Where?” he asked more harshly than he intended.
“New Jersey,” she said.
“Where in New Jersey?”
“I’m not telling you where I live.”
Lucien ground his teeth together. He couldn’t stop himself from baring those teeth at her. She cringed before lifting her chin. The look in her eyes was one of defiance and terror. It was a look that said she wouldn’t yield, but she also expected him to unleash the worst on her.
He tried to see himself through her eyes; when he did, he hated the monster reflected at him. “I’m not going to hurt you… again.”
“I’m still not telling you where I live.”
She was poking the vampire, but she’d rather poke him and have him kill her now than have him draw it out. After everything she’d endured, she was not in the mood for him to toy with her.
“Fine,” Lucien grated through his teeth. “Do you think we’re still in New Jersey?”
“I don’t know. It felt like I was in that van forever, but it may have only been ten minutes, or it could have been hours. It was around eleven at night when they kidnapped me.”
She glanced toward the sun slanting through the windows as the crackling flames consumed the bodies and the stench of burnt flesh filled the air. She placed her finger under her nose to block the stench, but it did little good.
“I’m guessing it’s maybe seven or eight in the morning now,” she said in a voice made nasally by her squeezed nostrils.
Lucien glanced at the windows and nodded. “Probably. What month is it?”
She blinked at this odd question. “June.”
“June,” he muttered as he tried to contemplate how much of his life he’d spent in chains beneath the earth. “June, what?”
“June seventeenth or maybe the eighteenth.” She bit her lip as she tried to recall the details. “The eighteenth. I think it’s the eighteenth now.”
Lucien closed his eyes as her words sank in. “It’s been a month.”
She preferred not to engage the crazy vampire in more conversation, but curiosity got the best of her. “A month since what?”
“I was in there for a month. They had me locked down there for a month.”
She wanted as far from this monster as possible, but this revelation caused her heart to go out to him. Her short time in those tunnels had been what she considered the equivalent of a day in Hell. She couldn’t imagine a whole month spent down there and in the presence of those things.
But she was free of them, and as of now, she was still alive, which was more than she could say for those other women. Callie glanced away from him as tears pricked her eyes, and their screams reverberated through her head.
She hadn’t known them, but she mourned their loss. If they were anything like her, they’d done nothing to deserve their fate.
“Why did they keep you there for so long? Why did they have you there in the first place?” she asked as she tried to figure out why they were still alive when the others weren’t.
“Because they were trying to make me like them. And they almost succeeded,” he muttered to himself, but when her eyebrows shot up, he realized she heard him. “What’s your name?”
He was unwilling to delve further into his imprisonment. He was too unstable to rehash what they did to him. It would only infuriate him and cause him to unravel further.
Callie hesitated as she debated giving him a fake name, but in the end, she decided against it. With everything going on, there was no way she would remember to respond to any name that wasn’t hers, and she suspected lying to the crazy vampire wasn’t the best way to ensure her survival.
“Callista, but I go by Callie.”
“Callie,” he murmured and tugged at the ends of his grimy hair. “That’s pretty.”
She lifted an eyebrow at this statement; he was the weirdest, ex-inmate, half-deranged, lethal vampire she’d ever encountered. Though he seemed a lot less murderous than those freaks who chased them through the tunnels, and at least he didn’t catch on fire in the sun.
She’d been trying not to do it, but she glanced at the burning bodies as heat radiated off them. The flames were starting to spread to the floor. With as old and rotten as this place was, it would go up in no time.
Uneasiness churned in her belly as she shifted and glanced at the door again. He couldn’t mean to make them stay here for much longer, could he?
“And you are?” she asked as she returned her attention to him.
“Lucien.”
“I’d like to say it’s nice to meet you, Lucien, but I’d be lying.”
A small smile played at the corners of his full mouth as he tilted his head to study her. “It is nice to meet you, Callie, and that is the truth.”
She didn’t know how to take that, and thankfully she was saved from having to figure it as he continued.
“We have to get out of here. As soon as the sun sets, they’ll be hunting us. We only have a day to put as much distance between them and us as possible.”
Callie gulped. “You could let me go.”
“And where would you go? Home?”
“Yes. And I would never reveal to anyone what happened here tonight or what you are, or”—she waved a hand at the burning bodies—“what they are. I swear it. Besides, no one would believe me if I did try to tell them.”
“And what would you do when they hunted you down and showed up at your house?”
“They grabbed me off the street. They have no idea who I am.”
“You didn’t have a purse on you?”
“I don’t carry purses….”
Her voice trailed off as her hands went to the front of her pockets. She didn’t carry purses, but she did keep a small holder with her ID and credit cards. She felt the emptiness of her pockets, but she couldn’t stop herself from continuing to pat them as if that would somehow make her ID magi
cally reappear.
“But you had something else,” he said when she stopped speaking and a panicked look came over her face.
“It could have fallen out somewhere. I could have left it at the bar. I pulled it out to pay for drinks. I wasn’t drunk, but I had a good buzz going. It could easily be there. I could have….”
She couldn’t finish the sentence as she recalled her captor’s hands running over her body as she lay on the cold floor of the van. She didn’t think they’d taken anything from her, but she’d been so petrified she probably wouldn’t remember it.
“Just because it’s gone doesn’t mean they know who I am,” she stated.
“Is that a chance you’re willing to take?”
“What am I supposed to do, give up my entire life? And do what? I have nowhere else to go and no one to go to. If they know my name, then they can track me anywhere.”
Lucien pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes as he shoved aside his incessant, whispering thoughts to feed and kill. She needed him to be rational right now; he couldn’t give in to the madness seeping through his brain.
What do you care what she thinks or needs? It was a good question; he couldn’t recall the last time he considered someone else… outside of his friends in the Alliance. And even then, half the time, he’d prefer to take his friend’s feelings and shove them up their asses.
Why didn’t he feed on her and ease his misery? What did it matter if he harmed her? She may not want it, but what did he care? He wanted it.
He gritted his teeth against his impulse to take her blood and lowered his hands. Her cognac-colored eyes watched him warily while her distress beat against him, but she kept her chin high.
“It’s my life,” she said. “I can’t give it up.”
“If you go home, you’ll be giving it up. They will find you and kill you.”
The words came out callous, but they didn’t have time to stand here while she tried to figure out her life.
“Look, none of this will matter if we don’t get out of here,” he said. “We have a small window of time, and we need to take advantage of it. You can figure this out at another time. Until then, you’re coming with me.”
She recoiled a little from his pitiless words, and her eyes flew back to the doorway. Something in her eyes, and the way she winced before covering it up, caught his attention. He tried to figure out what he’d seen there, but his mind was too cluttered, and his hunting instincts kicked into hyperdrive as he prepared to chase her down again, but she didn’t try to flee.
“And where are we supposed to go?” she demanded as she waved a hand at him before turning it on herself. She wasn’t anywhere near as bad as him, but dirt and blood stained her clothes, and she was sure it was on her skin too. “We don’t exactly blend in.”
“We’re going to steal a car and get out of whatever city this is before nightfall.”
“You know how to steal a car?”
She didn’t know why she was so shocked by this revelation, considering he had red eyes, fangs, and was an immortal creature. But then, maybe he wasn’t immortal. Just because he was a vampire didn’t mean he could live forever.
Everything she knew about vampires, she learned from movies and books. She’d certainly never expected to find herself standing face-to-face with one.
“Yes.” He dug into his pocket and removed the metal key he’d taken from the Savage earlier. He turned it in his hand as he examined it; he could only hope it unlocked his manacles. “But first, we need to see if this key will unlock my chains.”
Callie studied the key as it glinted in the light beating down on the burning bodies. Thankfully, the fires were dying down as there was little flesh left to consume, and the fire wasn’t spreading across the floor as fast as she’d assumed it would.
“Can you unlock this?” he asked.
Callie started to tell him no, but the word froze in her throat. He’d managed to get them out of that place with those chains on, and he’d killed these two, but if he remained shackled and those monsters discovered them, he would eventually lose.
Besides, he’d gotten her to freedom; as much as she didn’t like it, she owed him for that. However, her feet remained planted where they were as she gazed between him, the burning vampires, the key, and back again. She didn’t want to get any closer to him.
Seeming to sense this, Lucien sighed and trudged toward her. She almost felt sorry for him as his head bowed and his shoulders hunched up. He’d spent a month in captivity with those things torturing him. And from what she could see, they’d done an excellent job with that torture as she seriously doubted he looked this awful before they got their hands on him.
When he stopped before her and held out the key, her hands trembled as she took it, but she slid it into the lock. Neither of them breathed as she twisted it to the side.
Something clicked, and the manacles gave way with a rattling clink as they hit the floor. Callie didn’t look at the metal. Instead, her gaze remained riveted on his wrists. The flesh had peeled away to reveal the muscle and bone beneath.
Despite this bastard having inflicted a great deal of pain on her, her heart went out to him. She was a healer at heart; usually, it was animals she healed, but she hated seeing anyone suffering.
She started to reach for him but pulled her hands back when she recalled he could kill her with a flick of his wrist. She clasped her hands before her. When she lifted her head, she found his vivid red eyes studying her.
“We should clean those wounds, or they’ll get infected,” she said.
“Things like that don’t concern me. Once I feed, they’ll heal.”
Callie cringed, and the reminder of his penchant for blood made her glad she hadn’t touched him.
CHAPTER 9
Lucien was confident in his ability to steal a car. It would be easy to walk up to someone and talk them into handing over their keys.
They were back on the street for less than five minutes before encountering a man who was exiting a car that had started rusting during OJ’s murder trial. When the man saw Lucien approaching, he scrambled into the car, slammed the door, and locked the vehicle. Lucien stepped up to the driver’s side with its cracked-open window and started speaking to the man.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said in a soothing tone and hoped he was right. The frantic beat of the man’s heart caused saliva to pool in his mouth. “Get out of the car.”
“Fuck you,” the man replied as he shoved a key in the ignition.
“Look at me,” Lucien commanded as he strained to gain control over the man’s mind.
However, the man didn’t look at him as he started the car and stomped on the gas. Lucien jumped back to avoid having his feet run over as the man squealed out of his parking spot. Before he took the corner on two wheels, the man’s middle finger emerged out the window.
Lucien seethed as he watched the car vanish. His ability to bend another’s will to his wasn’t working. It was because he was weak and starved, but it was the worst possible time to lose the ability he required the most to get them out of this mess.
“Was that your big car-stealing plan?” Callie asked. “Because it didn’t work.”
He shifted his attention to where she stood on the sidewalk with an almost amused look on her face. The sun streaming over her illuminated her striking eyes and delicate beauty.
The depth of that beauty slapped him in the face. In the tunnel, he was motivated by an incessant compulsion to keep her safe. That compulsion continued to thrum through his veins; he didn’t understand it, but he couldn’t deny it.
He’d taken note of her appearance too, but it didn’t really sink in… until now. With her full lips, oval face, and straight-edge nose, she was lovely. A thick fringe of black lashes framed her large, almond-shaped eyes. He didn’t detect a hint of a blemish on her smooth, olive skin.
He guessed her to be about seven inches shorter than his six-foot-two height. Her jeans and formfitting, s
hort-sleeved, maroon shirt emphasized her curvy, hourglass figure. For the first time since his captivity, a new hunger woke inside him, and his deadened cock stirred.
His new desire didn’t last long as the burning in his veins returned and his parched guts twisted into knots. However, he couldn’t remain unaware of her beauty.
“It should have,” he said. “But I was too weak to take control of his mind; I’ll have to take the next one by force.”
Callie’s jaw fell open at this revelation. “Control his mind?”
“Yes, it was a talent of mine, but it’s not working right now. Once I feed, I’ll be more capable of protecting us and getting us out of this city.”
“You can control minds?” she practically squeaked.
“When I’m stronger, yes. All vampires possess the ability.”
Holy shit. Callie’s mind spun as she tried to process this information.
Her eyes flew around the quiet street. Some kids were hanging out on a porch at the end of the road, and a man was passed out on a set of stairs, or maybe he was dead. She really hoped he wasn’t dead, but she wasn’t going any closer to find out.
She was sure the guy in the beater car had come here for drugs, but she didn’t know where his supply was located. However, just because she didn’t see many people didn’t mean they weren’t there.
Lucien might let her go rather than cause a scene. If she got free, she could go to the police and tell them someone abducted her.
Yeah, that will go over great. You can explain to them how you were tossed into a van by a group of vampires. I’m sure they’ll think you’re perfectly sane.
Her heart sank as she realized she could never tell anyone about her abduction. If she gave all the details, they would consider her nuts, and if she omitted some of what happened, they would realize she wasn’t telling the whole truth.
She couldn’t go to her friends; she’d only put them in danger, and how could she explain what happened to them? How could she tell them she couldn’t return home but not give them a reason?
And she had to go home. She didn’t care what he said; she had to at least return for some of her things. They may be things, but they were hers, and some of them held a really special place in her heart. Some of them were all she had left of her father.
Bound by Danger (The Alliance, Book 6) Page 5