“His mind won’t be any clearer when he’s sober. All he’s going to care about then is finding his next meal and his next high.”
Chapter Five
“What was that place?” she asked as Brian drove through the streets and back toward the highway. “I mean, I’ve heard of crack houses before, but vampire crack houses?”
“There have been rumors swirling around about them lately.”
Abby turned to study his rugged profile. She couldn’t shake the sick feeling in her stomach ever since he’d put her back into the truck and closed the door. “What kind of rumors?”
“That houses like that were beginning to spring up around the world again. The humans want their drugs, the vampires want their blood, and vampires tend to have a lot more money than humans, even the drug-addled vampires. It’s a lot easier for a vamp to steal money and anything else without being caught. The vampires pay for the human’s drugs and in return the vampires are allowed to feed from them, but the contaminated blood effects them too.”
“I’ve seen my brothers drink a keg each and not be as messed up as those vamps in there were.”
“Beer is one thing; drugs are something entirely different. Not to mention, your brothers allowed themselves to sober up after those kegs. These vamps aren’t doing that. They’re drinking drug-enhanced blood as often and as continuously as they can. It’s building up in their systems and keeping them on a constant high. I saw something like it with the opium dens in the eighteen hundreds. Vampires were falling under the spell of drug-enhanced blood then too. Many of the vampires involved were slaughtered.”
“Why?” Abby gasped.
“The knowledge of our existence can’t ever get out to the humans. Drug-addicted vampires, who are under the influence of the blood containing that drug, often don’t care about consequences and slip up. This sort of thing is not allowed amongst our kind. Not only do Ronan’s men go after them, but so will other vampires in order to keep our existence a secret. Apparently these younger, imbecilic vamps never got the memo.”
Abby’s blood ran cold, and her mouth parted as her heart beat rapidly in her chest. “You’re going to tell Ronan,” she whispered.
She knew from her brothers that Brian sometimes worked with Ronan, the oldest pureblood of their kind. She’d never met the man, but she’d heard the stories of him from her family. If Ronan decided her sister was somehow a danger, or these drug-addicted vampires were, he wouldn’t hesitate to kill them.
Vicky may know someone in that house, but she wouldn’t be mixed up in the same thing as the vamps in there were. Her sister had changed a lot over this past month and half though. Maybe she was wrong and didn’t know Vicky as well as she believed, at least not anymore.
No, Vicky is not messed up in this. There has to be something else going on.
Maybe she was in denial, but she’d call herself the queen of denial until she had definite confirmation of something different.
Brian glanced over at Abby, hating the horrified look on her pale face. He should tell Ronan about what they’d witnessed; it should be his first call when he got her somewhere safe. They risked exposure by allowing those vamps to continue with what they were doing, but he knew Ronan and his group would raze every vampire drug house they could find without a second’s hesitation. It wouldn’t matter who was inside, not even if it was Abby and Aiden’s sister.
“I’m not going to tell him yet. We’ll find your sister first,” he assured her. Lust has blinded you, you idiot, and it will get you killed. Go out tonight and find someone else to slake yourself on and come back to this tomorrow with a clear mind.
Maybe that was all true, but when he glanced at Abby again, he knew he wouldn’t be going out to ease himself between the thighs of the first woman who welcomed him. Desire for her may be clouding his decision making processes, but he wasn’t going to leave her unprotected for one second while her sister remained missing. He had a feeling she wouldn’t stay where he told her to, and he highly doubted he’d be satisfied with any other woman right now.
“If he finds out you didn’t tell him and you knew—”
“He’ll rip off my head,” Brian informed her as nonchalantly as if he’d said it looked like it might rain.
The sick feeling in her stomach intensified. It was one thing that she’d involved him in this whole mess, it was an entirely different thing to put his life at risk. She couldn’t stand the idea of anything bad happening to him because of her.
“I can do this on my own,” she said. “You don’t have to be involved anymore.”
Those icy eyes flickered over her. “It’s too late for that, young Byrne. I already know and haven’t made the call to Ronan. If you try to do this on your own, I will find you and make the call.”
Her eyes widened at the callous words and the flippant way he’d said them. “Don’t threaten me—”
“I don’t threaten. I make promises, and I keep them.”
Abby glowered at him. Over the years, she’d eagerly drank in every word her family members had said about him. She’d raptly listened to their stories while ignoring the numerous times she’d heard them say he’s cold, ruthless, indifferent, violent, yada, yada, yada, but she had always believed there was so much more to this man who had captivated her six years ago. Her family had started to come around to him a little more after he’d helped them a couple of times, but they were still wary of him.
Out of all her siblings, Isabelle had been the only one who’d always believed Brian was, or could be, decent. Abby had never opened up to Issy about her strange feelings for him because Issy had left with Stefan shortly after they were married, and by the time she’d returned, Abby had been determined to get past her hang up on Brian.
Abby realized now that he could be kind and understanding, and he could be giving, but he was also very much the brutal man her family had spoken of.
Which side of him is the more dominant one? She had a feeling she’d find out the answer to that before this was over.
* * *
“What is this place?” she asked as they rode up the elevator past floor after floor.
“My apartment.”
“You have an apartment in Boston?”
“Yes, for as long as I’ve been a vampire I’ve had numerous apartments in this city. I also have a beach house on Cape Cod.”
“You must really love Boston to stay here for so many years.”
He shrugged as he stared at the silver doors across from them with her suitcase in hand. “I was born here. The city is my home.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I’m sure there’s much you don’t know about me.”
Abby glanced away from his probing stare. There had been a cool distance about him ever since they’d left that house behind and he’d told her he wouldn’t call Ronan. “Are you and Ronan good friends?” she asked.
He snorted as he ran his fingers through his platinum hair. “I have no friends. Not anymore.”
She winced at his words. “Not since Stefan?” The tick of a muscle in his jaw was the only indication she’d hit the nail on the head. “You two talk more now.”
“We can never be friends again; our worlds are too different.”
“Maybe so, but you’re not a killer. I can’t smell the rotten stench of death on you anymore.”
Relief filled him when she revealed this to him; the last thing he wanted was to smell repulsive to this woman.
“How did you and Ronan meet?” she asked.
“He heard about Stefan and me, about how we were murdering vampires who killed humans and gaining power from drinking their blood. He warned us if we ever started destroying humans, he would come for us, but he left us be. After Stefan and I went our separate ways, he found me again and knew from my scent I had killed humans. When I explained I’d been attacked by hunters and had only been defending myself, he allowed me to live, but kept a closer eye on me. Over the last eight years, I’ve worked more and more often with him
and his men, especially these last five years.”
The elevator dinged and the doors slid open on the top floor. He made a sweeping gesture with his arm. She hesitated a moment; she was going to see where Brian lived. If someone had told her last week that this was where she’d be right now, she’d have laughed in their face.
Taking a breath, she stepped into the massive loft. She was fairly certain her eyes bugged out of her head as she gazed at the beautiful open space before her. The entire top floor of the building was his.
“Wow,” she breathed. Her gaze latched onto the floor-to-ceiling windows across the way. “Amazing!”
She rushed across the floor and just barely managed to stop herself from flattening her hands and nose against the glass to stare out at the city laid out below her like a million twinkling stars. Cars moved through the streets; lights blazed from the buildings surrounding them. She spotted the Prudential building in the distance, rising high into the night sky.
Right then, she would have killed for Paige’s artistic talent of being able to bring things to life with a pencil or brush as she gazed out at the sprawling city. Her sister-in-law would love to come up here and paint this view.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
Brian stared at the city skyline then back at Abby’s awed expression. He’d bought this place five years ago, but felt so out of place with all the luxury it offered that he rarely spent any time here. He’d been a street urchin for only ten years of his life, yet he’d never shaken his basic urge to be out in the open, in nature, and free to hunt. He’d only bought the apartment because he could, and it made for a good stopping place when he needed one while in town.
Looking at this place through her eyes, he realized it really was a spectacular view, even for one as old and jaded as he was. Seeing her reaction to the city skyline was almost as breathtaking as the view itself.
“Would you like a drink?” he asked to distract himself from the urge to touch her pale cheek still tinged with color from the fall air.
“Water is fine. My throat is dry.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Not enough for it to be a concern,” she replied with an absent wave of her hand.
Forcing himself to turn from her, he made his way over to the open kitchen with dark wood cabinets, black granite counters, and ultra-expensive appliances he would never use, except for the fridge. He pulled a bottle of whiskey from one of the cabinets and poured some into a tumbler.
“Come now, young Byrne, growing up in that household, I know your brothers and uncles introduced you to something better than water to drink over the years.”
“They did,” she replied, without looking back at him.
He removed a bottle of water from the fridge, stocked by the housekeeper he’d hired to come in once a month just to keep the place clean. He’d implanted it into the woman’s mind that she never remembered anything about this place other than it was often tidy and unoccupied. She certainly never remembered the bags of blood in the fridge.
He walked over to rejoin her near the windows, handing her the glass of whiskey and the water. “One is for your throat, the other is for your nerves. I have blood in the fridge if you get hungrier.”
“Thank you,” Abby said and sipped at the water as she placed the whiskey on a glass table. “So if Ronan isn’t your friend, what is he to you?”
“A necessary acquaintance,” Brian replied as he turned and walked back to the kitchen area. Watching her swallow the liquid was testing his restraint more than anything else he’d encountered in all his long life. That luscious mouth of hers wrapped around my cock—
“What does that mean?” her question cut into his musings.
He turned subtly to adjust his growing erection so that she couldn’t see his physical reaction to her doing nothing more than drinking a bottle of water. He had to pull it together if he was going to continue being around her for long enough to locate her sister.
“He pays me to handle jobs that require killing some of the turned vamps who murder humans when he and his men can’t do it. Sometimes I help him locate problem vampires who are proving difficult to find. Other times, I help Ronan and his merry band when they have a large group to take down.”
“So you’re a mercenary of sorts.”
“Not of sorts,” he replied as he leaned a hip against the kitchen counter. “That is what I am. I enjoy destroying those of our kind who think it’s acceptable to prey on the human race. No one should harm those weaker than they are. Those vampires deserve to die. If I make some money doing it, it’s an added bonus.”
Abby grabbed for the glass of whiskey. She hoped it really would help settle her nerves. “Do you think you’ll ever stop?”
“When I’m dead.”
For some reason, those last words caused her heart to turn over and she almost screamed the word no! She managed to bite it back before making a complete fool of herself, but her hand clenched around the glass so forcefully it cracked. His eyebrow rose as beads of liquid slid down the side and onto her hand.
He walked over to remove it from her claw-like grasp. “Guess you don’t know your own strength yet, purebred.”
“I… uh… I’m sorry,” she managed to stammer as he tossed the glass into the trash and poured her another one.
“Try not to destroy this one, Hulk,” he told her when he returned to hand her the new glass and a napkin.
“I won’t,” she muttered as she wiped the liquid from her hand.
He stood over her, his head tilted to the side as if in confusion while he watched her. Abby’s pulse raced again, and heat flooded her body as those ice-colored eyes surveyed her from head to toe and back again. She felt like a child in his oversized jacket, but the hunger in his eyes said he didn’t see her as one at all.
That hunger. It made her burn to do things to him she’d never done to any man before. He’d haunted every one of her fantasies for years. No human or vampire had ever been able to compare to the image of him in her mind.
She’d messed around with human men over the years, but only one vampire. A sophomore in college at the time, she’d been sure the hot vampire had been the answer to her problem, and she would finally feel something for someone else. It was another epic fail. She could still recall the clammy feel of the vamp’s lips against hers and the way her stomach had turned over when his fangs scraped over her lip.
Would Brian’s kisses do the same to me?
She felt the resounding answer to that question was a no. His lips and taste would only make her crave more and more of him. He would consume her, and she so desperately wanted to be consumed by something other than worry for her sister. Her family would have an absolute fit if they knew whom she was with, and what she was thinking about doing to him right now, but she didn’t care.
Even Vicky, who had always been one for the bad boys and was certainly wilder than her, didn’t like or trust this man. Abby had once tried to tell Vicky that something had happened to her when she’d first seen Brian in that hotel room, that she couldn’t shake him from her mind, but the minute she’d brought up the whole ‘so you remember that guy, Brian’ conversation, Vicky had rolled her eyes.
She could still clearly recall her sister’s words at the time. “How could I forget? He’s a killer who smells of death and nearly got us all killed. I hope we never see the bastard again.”
Those words had clamped Abby’s mouth shut on any further conversation about him. It had been exhausting over the years to try to find someone else out there for her, instead of being so focused on the one vamp who her family would be completely against her dating. Before she’d met Brian, all she’d dreamed of was finding her mate. Afterward, she’d spent a lot of time hoping she hadn’t just met him.
Her family may be against a relationship with him, but she longed to kiss him and ease her curiosity about this frightening, powerful, magnificent vampire. If it turned out he wasn’t her mate, at least she would finally know it h
adn’t been him who had ruined her for other men; she was simply broken or off in some way.
If it did turn out he was her mate, her family would have no choice but to accept him. They well knew what it was like to discover a mate and the irrevocable bond it formed between vampires. They may not like it, but they wouldn’t stand in the way of mates. They understood what would happen if the bond was denied or broken, and they loved her too much to have her endure the insanity and death that would result from that.
Brian couldn’t tear his eyes away from her. The increased beat of her heart thrummed in his ears, and the enticing flush of her skin did nothing to slow the blood flooding to his cock. Her tiny tongue darted out to lick her lips, which was something he now realized she did when she was aroused.
It would be so easy to take the glass from her hand and wrap his arm around her waist. She wouldn’t push him away if he pulled her against his chest, sank his hand into her hair, and took possession of those enticingly wet lips.
Her brothers will cut your dick off if you try.
That mental reminder had him stepping away from her. He never denied himself anything he wanted, he saw no reason to, but he couldn’t have her. Abby was too good for the likes of him and deserved better than what he could offer her. He knew instinctively that one time with her wouldn’t be enough but the guilt was bad enough when it was only once with a woman; what would it do to him if he was with Abby countless times?
Memories of Vivian and his children haunted him continuously. He should have died with them. Instead, he was still here, standing in a room with the first woman he’d truly desired in almost two hundred years. He downed his whiskey and walked over to pour himself another glass.
“Where do we look for Vicky next?”
Her husky voice sent shivers down his spine. “I’ll need something else of hers, another picture maybe.”
“I have nothing else,” she whispered, “not on me now.”
Chapter Six
The Vampire Awakenings Bundle: Books 1-5 Page 118