He didn’t realize he’d said the words aloud until her hand fell on his arm. He glanced down at the small hand heating his flesh. The urge to grab hold of it and pull her against him seized him, but he pulled his arm away from her and turned to pick up the next body. He’d destroy her if he got too close. His world was not a place where she belonged, and he was the last creature on Earth who deserved any kind of solace or peace.
“Did you know these guys?” she inquired as she fought against the disappointment filling her over the loss of physical contact with him.
“Nope.” The third body thumped against the bed when he dumped it into the truck. He pulled a tarp over the three bodies.
“Why did they attack you then?”
“Because that’s my life. I kill their kind, and they try to come after me for it. It would be a huge coup and a lot of power for one of them, if they were ever successful in taking me down and drinking my blood. They must have discovered I had a place here.”
Abby pressed her hand against her mouth as concern for him coiled in her belly. “They come after you often?”
“Only the dumb ones. Many have tried to kill me, all have failed. Their attempts aren’t as frequent as they used to be.”
That did nothing to ease her concern for him. He appeared completely unfazed by what had occurred as he pulled a towel from the silver toolbox on the back of the truck. He wiped his face and hands on it before tossing it back inside and closing the lid. He retrieved her suitcase and threw it into the backseat of the truck before walking toward her.
He didn’t look like someone who had just slaughtered three vampires who had been trying to kill him. He hadn’t broken a sweat, there wasn’t a mark on him, and the only blood she could see was a couple of specks on his right cheek that he’d missed with the towel. She had no idea what to make of this man who could make her body ache and her heart beat faster, all while her brain was telling her to run for the hills.
“You have some…” Without thinking, she brushed away the blood on his cheek.
Before she could wipe her fingers onto her jeans, he grabbed hold of her wrist. “You shouldn’t be touching that,” he said as he tenderly wiped her fingers off with his own.
“I’ve dealt with blood my whole life,” she said with a smile, hoping to coax one from him too. His expression remained unreadable and distant.
“Not death though,” he replied after a little bit. “And you shouldn’t have to deal with it at all. Maybe—”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she insisted before he could suggest it, as she knew he was going to.
His eyes were like chips of ice when they met hers. “I’m not someone you should be around, Abigail.”
Her fingers wrapped around his hand as he continued to hold her. She shouldn’t be around him, vampires everywhere hunted him, he was beyond hazardous to her heart, but she couldn’t walk away from him.
“Maybe not,” she replied honestly, “but I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.”
His eyes searched her face before he released her hand and stepped away from her. Taking hold of her elbow, he walked her to the passenger side door and opened it for her. He helped her climb into the tall vehicle. She immediately missed his touch when he released her elbow and closed the door.
Fool. Keep your distance. However, the loneliness she sensed in him, the need for something more than death and violence in his life, called to her. She so badly wanted to make his life about more than fights in a garage and fending off those trying to kill him.
“What about cameras?” she asked when he started the truck and pulled out of the parking spot. In a building this upscale, there had to be a security system.
“I’m sure those guys took them out before they came after me, but just in case…” his voice trailed off as he stopped outside the guard’s office. Abby hastily turned away from the blood-splattered walls and windows of the small office near the exit of the garage.
Brian gritted his teeth at the realization he was once again exposing her to more death and violence, but he had to make sure there was no taped evidence of what had transpired. Opening the door, he jumped out of the truck. “Stay here,” he told her.
“I will.”
He stared at her for a minute, but she kept her gaze focused on her hands folded in her lap. Closing the door, he walked over to the room. He stepped over the two mutilated bodies of the guards as he headed for the monitors set up on a desk. All of the screens were blank, including the ones that would have shown the inner halls and elevators of the building. At least those three morons had been smart enough to cover their tracks before coming after him.
Walking out of the small room, he stopped when he saw Abby still intently focused on her lap rather than the massacre in the room. He didn’t like her exposed to these things but he had to make sure she stayed protected throughout her hunt for her sister, and he didn’t trust anyone else to keep her safer than he could. He had vamps hunting him, yes, but due to his age and the power he’d harvested from the countless vamps he’d killed over the years, he was a lot stronger and more lethal than most. He also had a lot of extremely powerful allies. Right now, by his side was the safest place he could think of for her.
Her family was strong, but he would happily destroy any vamp who tried to hurt her, and he had more experience at it than the Byrnes did. Hurrying back to the truck, he pulled open the door and jumped inside.
“I’m glad those vampires are dead,” she whispered.
“So am I,” he told her as he shifted into drive.
“Will you come back here?”
“No. If they managed to find out I was living here, others will too. It’s time to sell and move on. It isn’t the first time, won’t be the last.”
Tears burned her eyes for him and for the poor humans who had only been doing their jobs when their lives had been torn away from them. “Where are you going to put the bodies?” she asked.
“There’s a quarry nearby I’ve used before.”
Abby refrained from asking how many times he’d used that location. She probably wouldn’t like the answer, and it really didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. They didn’t speak as he drove to the quarry, tied some rocks to the bodies, and tossed them over the side into the water below. She cringed at the sound their bodies made when they splashed into the water before soundlessly sinking to the bottom.
Chapter Eight
Abby barely noticed the streets and buildings they passed as he drove through the city and toward the highway. She took a steadying breath as her thoughts turned to her sister. What was Vicky doing? What had she gotten herself mixed up in?
Before this, the brazen and wild things Vicky had done had always been more free-spirited and fun. Like when she had streaked across the football field on prom night or stolen five pigs from a local farm and put them in the principal’s office. She’d always enjoyed a good party but had always disdained the use of drugs before. Her sister could be wild and sometimes reckless, but none of this was like her. Abby rubbed at her temples as she tried to ease the headache forming there.
“Are you okay?” Brian inquired.
“Yeah,” she murmured and sat up in her seat. She’d vowed she wouldn’t ask him anymore about himself, but she’d happily take any distraction from thoughts of Vicky right now. “Why are you able to locate people and vampires?”
“Why are some humans able to see the future, commune with the dead, or bend things with their minds? They are simply born differently, and just as my strength and power has grown over my years as a vampire, so has my ability to locate others.”
“Interesting.”
“That it is,” he replied and glanced over at the rigid set of her shoulders.
Her chin was thrust forward, her eyes now fastened on the scenery. She was steadfastly avoiding looking at him, which irritated him far more than he would have believed possible. His hands tightened on the wheel. Was it because of what had occurred in the garage? Was
she afraid of him now or repulsed by him?
What does it matter? It shouldn’t, but it did. He missed her attention even though he wanted her to keep her distance.
“I used to be able to find things my mother misplaced when I was only three,” he said, trying to draw her attention, but she still wouldn’t look at him. “Vivian” —her fingers twitched at the name. Interesting— “was always losing things and coming to me to find them. I can’t locate things from long distances, but I can still uncover them if they’re within a few miles of me by following the traces of the person they belong to. The vampires who attacked my family and me that night were the only ones I couldn’t find right away.”
“Why not?”
“They fled the country shortly after turning me. I didn’t realize that at the time, and my ability hadn’t developed enough for me to be able to locate them. It took over a hundred years for that to happen, and the minute it did, I went after them.”
His voice came out a gravelly rumble, and his knuckles were white on the steering wheel. “And then you helped Stefan find the vampire who turned him?”
“That took more time. I’d known what my attackers looked like; they were a part of me. Stefan described the woman who had turned him, but it wasn’t enough, and he’s not much of an artist. I do a lot better when I have a clear image of someone in my head.”
“And then what happens?”
He smiled at her and leaned back in his seat. “Not so fast, young Byrne,” he replied. “Some things are for me to know.”
“You’ve told me almost all of it, why keep this from me?” she asked in frustration. She was foolishly still eager to learn every detail she could about him.
“Perhaps some things are too unknown to explain.”
“I see,” she said, although she didn’t.
She lapsed into silence once more; her emerald gaze fixated on the roadway as the tires spun over the asphalt. He turned on the radio, but he found not even Creedence Clearwater Revival could soothe his irritation over the distance he sensed in her. She didn’t speak again for another hour.
“How old were you when you were turned?” she inquired.
“Thirty.”
“How old are you now?”
“Two hundred and fifteen in vamp and human years. I was born in eighteen o’one.”
Abby managed to keep her jaw from dropping. He wasn’t as old as Stefan, but he’d definitely been around the block a few times. What things has he done in two hundred and fifteen years? How many women has he been with?
Never mind. She really didn’t want the answer to that question. She took in his handsome countenance with his broad cheekbones and the chiseled jaw he’d removed the stubble from this morning. Lines crinkled the corners of his eyes. She doubted they were laugh lines, but more lines earned from when he’d still been human, dealing with human tribulations and standing over a forge while he learned to become a blacksmith. She had a feeling that when he’d been human, he still hadn’t laughed much. She was dying to know what his laughter would sound like.
“In all that time, what is the craziest thing you’ve done?” she asked.
“I think you’re too young for the answer to that question.”
“I’m not a child.”
No, she most certainly wasn’t a child anymore. He couldn’t keep his gaze from the form-fitting black sweater snugged over her breasts. Blood flooded into his cock, hardening it in his jeans.
The heated look that came into his eyes when they latched onto her breasts stole her breath. “Eyes on the road,” she murmured when the truck drifted into the other lane.
He glanced away from her, his hands clenching on the wheel once more. He couldn’t get away from the pressure of his erection against the front of his jeans. The sweet scent of her hair and the aroma of her blood called to him in a way it never had with any other before her.
He’d fed on many vampires over the years, taking their power, absorbing more and more until he’d teetered on the edge of becoming like one of the monsters he was determined to hunt and destroy. Never had he longed to sink his fangs into someone as badly as he wanted to sink them into her and experience the connection it would bring.
Her blood would be sweet, like her, potent and delectable. A purebred’s blood, he’d never tasted it before, and his fangs throbbed with the urge to do so now.
Shifting uncomfortably, he adjusted his jeans as he focused on the road again. They may both be immortal, but the last thing he felt like doing was crashing into something at eighty miles an hour or being launched from the vehicle because he was paying more attention to her than the road. He’d gone through a windshield once before in the sixties. Sliding down the road on his stomach had been an experience he’d never forget. It had taken two days for his skin to heal and to get out all of the glass.
“I’ve done many crazy things over the years,” he finally said. “Almost two hundred years as an immortal tends to get a little boring. I’m always looking for something new and different to try.”
“Is that why you agreed to help me?”
No, your voice, it ensnared me. I couldn’t say no. “Perhaps,” he lied, knowing he could never acknowledge his growing desire for her. Her mouth pursed, and she turned away from him once more. Unwilling to have her stop speaking to him again, he decided to give her some of the less violent details of his life.
“I climbed to the top of the Sphinx, and had dinner with Lucky Luciano. I’ve been to the running of the bulls, camped in the wilds of Alaska, kissed Marilyn Monroe, and ran around with Billy the Kid for a month. By the way, Pat Garrett didn’t shoot him.”
Abby couldn’t stop the delighted laugh that escaped her. “Really?”
“Truly,” he replied with a wink. “Or at least, that’s what I believe. I simply can’t see the man I knew killing his friend.”
Abby turned toward him, eager to learn more. “Did you know Wyatt Earp?”
“I had a brief encounter with him.”
“What happened?”
“He tried to arrest me for stealing a horse. I, of course, escaped.”
“Oh, of course,” she said with a laugh. “What else?”
“I went to Woodstock. I’ve been to every country there is on the planet, many of them multiple times. I’ve met kings and queens and tsars.”
“Sounds amazing,” she said.
“Some of it was,” he admitted. “And a lot of it was brutal.” She drew her legs up and hugged them against her chest. “A lot of it was death, vengeance, and feasting on the blood of those we slaughtered in order to gain power.”
Abby’s fingers fiddled with her jeans as she watched the merriment fade from his face and the harsh, distant side of him once again emerged. “We all do what we must to survive.”
His eyes flashed red as he glanced at her. “And what about you, Abigail, what have you done to survive?”
“I must drink blood, too.”
“Have you ever killed? Have you ever fed from a human?”
“I’ve never killed, but I have fed from a man before.”
He almost tore the wheel from the truck at the idea of her sinking her fangs into another’s neck. He knew well how intimate the exchange could be, how arousing. He took a deep breath, fighting against the shudder wracking him. Had the mortal been inside of her while she’d been feeding from him? Had that man heard her cries of ecstasy as she rode him?
He barely suppressed the impulse to pull to the side of the road, draw her head back, and sink his fangs into her neck while he caressed one of the breasts that had haunted his dreams last night.
Easy, he counseled himself. He hadn’t felt this out of control and savage since he’d found the two who had murdered his family. That had been a bloodbath the likes of which he’d never unleashed before or since. However, if the boy she’d fed from had been standing in front of him right now, it would have been another bloodbath.
“And you enjoyed it?” he grated through his teeth.
“It wasn’t great, wasn’t horrible; it was just different. I was used to blood bags at the time, but my curiosity about what it would be like to drink straight from the vein finally got the best of me.”
“I see.”
Her eyes were unreadable as they studied him. “Do you think I was wrong to do it? Did you expect I was like Issy and Ethan and shunned all things human? You have met Ian and Aiden before, right? They dove headfirst into the human world, and I must admit, it fascinates me too.”
“Hence college and the social work degree?”
She smiled and leaned closer to him. Her citrus smell assaulted his senses. The beat of her heart fascinated him as his own heart raced faster to beat in rhythm with hers. Perhaps her family would never have to know that he and Abby had any kind of an encounter, and they could both go their separate ways after? Yeah, and pigs flew to the moon every night at ten.
“Yes,” she said. “Humans know they face death every day, yet they bravely go out into the world. They smile, laugh, and love all while knowing it could be over in the next instant. We’re immortal and yet they’re a far more resilient species. I mean, how is it possible to live so much while knowing death is the only end they will have?”
Brian stared at the roadway as he recalled his days as a mortal. He could clearly remember the first time he’d seen Vivian standing in the crowd, her auburn hair shimmering in the sun as she inspected some cloth. Her hair had been what drew him to her first; it had been a burst of color in a drab crowd.
“That’s why they live so much. They know death is their only escape,” he replied.
“Did you live more as a human than a vampire?”
“Yes. Once I became a vampire, my existence became focused only on death, revenge, and increasing my power.”
“I like to think I’m focused on the good things, but sometimes…”
“What?” he inquired when her voice trailed away.
The Vampire Awakenings Bundle: Books 1-5 Page 121