Embraced by Blood

by Laurie London

  HER DRY SPELL WAS OVER.

  Or at least partially so.

  Kip’s scent was heavy in the damp air as they crept through the forest. Finally, she’d tracked him.

  Alfonso’s even breathing on the other side of the room had finally lulled her to sleep that morning. Though she’d wanted him in a bad way, she hadn’t held out any hope that he’d join her in bed. But his presence had been strangely calming. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept so well.

  At nightfall, they’d left Niva’s place and begun their search again. Slowly and methodically she worked, just like they had the night before. And although that muddy smell was still messing with her tracking ability, it wasn’t nearly as strong as it had been and she was able to pick out Kip’s faint scent. Hours later, she and Alfonso had driven almost to the Canadian border when it became a little stronger. They’d turned east, and after losing it only a few times, she’d tracked it to this remote, wooded area off the North Cascades Highway.

  A quick call to the Vancouver and Seattle field offices confirmed a backup unit wouldn’t get here until just before dawn. She wasn’t about to wait till then to make a move. Kip had been held captive by Darkbloods long enough—they’d go in alone.

  With Alfonso at her back, Lily plastered herself against a huge cedar and peered around the trunk to a run-down cabin about fifty meters away. One of the support beams on the front porch leaned precariously outward, threatening to collapse part of the moss-covered roof. Another winter of heavy snowfall would do it, she thought.

  “There,” she whispered. “He’s inside along with a few Darkbloods and—” she sniffed the air “—a sweetblood female. She’s alive, barely. I just hope we arrived before they’ve gone too far with him.”

  “How many are inside?”

  With her hand lightly on his arm for support, she closed her eyes and concentrated. Even through the layers of clothing, his muscles felt hard and powerful as he towered over her. “Three—no, four. I think.” She breathed in a few more times and filtered the smells. “Also, there’s another one outside somewhere.”

  “So that makes four inside and one outside. Is that correct?”

  “Yep.”

  He squeezed her hand. “Come on. Let’s move closer.”

  Without letting go, he whisked her toward the next clump of trees, hardly disturbing the undergrowth. Good Lord. This was crazy fast. The wind whipped through her hair and whistled in her ears. She’d thought that she was adept at melting into the night, moving like their kind had done for centuries. Joined like this, they shadow-moved as one cohesive entity.

  What a friggin’ rush!

  When they stopped, she stifled the idiotic urge to laugh. Her hand tingled in his while her heart pounded madly in her chest. It took a moment to collect herself again.

  “Over there.” Alfonso nodded his head.

  Lily caught a movement on the opposite side of the clearing at the precise moment she heard a shovel striking the earth.

  Then she smelled it.

  Fresh dirt and a fresh kill. A sweetblood.

  They were too late for someone.

  “Did they make Kip do that?” Her voice was scratchy, the words difficult to verbalize. “The body— I can— It’s been drained.”

  His fingers tightened reassuringly around hers, his thumb stroking the tender skin on the back of her hand. “Maybe, maybe not. They want to turn him, but they also want something to sell. Like a spider, they’ll suck out every last drop from their victims before casting them aside.”

  She shivered at the thought.

  He continued. “It could’ve been Kip, but then again, it could just as easily have been one of them.”

  An arctic breeze whispered through the fir boughs, churning the waxy leaves of salal into a frenzied dance around them. She froze. If the wind changed direction now, the Darkblood might detect their presence. Then their plans of a stealthy attack would be thwarted. Outnumbered as they were, that wouldn’t be good.

  Alfonso pulled her close, fitting the contours of her body to his. “Shhhh.” His voice so low, it was as if it came from inside her head. “Wait till the night air settles again.”

  Not needing any more convincing than that, she relaxed against him. The smell of warm leather invaded her nose, and the powerful beat of his heart thundered in her ear. In the darkness, she’d always felt a part of him. With her cheek pressed to the thin fabric of his shirt, she felt the cord of his medallion.

  That’s right. Why is he still wearing that thing?

  When she’d bought it for him years ago, she wasn’t sure he’d even wear it because he wasn’t a man-jewelry kind of guy. Whatever the reason, she liked that something she’d given him rested against the bare skin over his heart.

  The wind gust quieted just as the Darkblood finished tamping down the soil.

  “Wait here,” Alfonso said. “I’ve got this one.” And before she could say anything, he was gone.

  Not dropping her gaze from the Darkblood, she palmed her favorite handgun, a Glock 27 .40 caliber with a smaller, customized grip and a magazine of Agency silver-tipped rounds. Alfonso’s shadow-form separated from the dark forest and slipped in behind the DB. There was a flash of silver and, before she could even comprehend what was happening, the guy staggered forward as if he’d been pushed. He collapsed to the ground just as Alfonso wiped off his blade.

  Watching the body charcoal at Alfonso’s feet, she was both exhilarated and slightly unnerved. In an instant, he’d gone from calm and protective to cold and lethal. Although he’d spent many years working inside the Alliance, she’d forgotten what an efficient killer he was.

  When he slipped behind a car parked in the overgrown driveway and motioned for her, she holstered her gun and joined him.

  “That was— You were—”

  He held a finger to his lips. “Can you make out the individual locations of the DBs inside?” he whispered.

  She flipped the ends of her ponytail as she glanced toward the cabin, but didn’t know if she could get into that level of detail.

  “I’m not sure.”

  He grabbed her hand and forcibly pushed some of his energy to her. It sizzled up her arm and into the center of her chest before she jerked away.

  “What are you doing?” They were about to engage these assholes. He needed to conserve his own energy, not donate it to her.

  “Just giving you a boost. Trying to up our advantage.”

  This part of the forest was devil’s-mouth dark. They easily shadow-moved to the overhang of the long, narrow cabin. His thumb absently stroked hers as he pressed his ear to the moss-covered siding. She inhaled and was surprised to find the muddiness all but gone. The jumble of smells around her untangled, each one crystallizing and becoming more precise.

  She squeezed his hand to get his attention and whispered, “Two at this end with Kip and two at the far end. Probably a bedroom.”

  “What time do you have?” he asked, glancing at his TAG Heuer.

  She passed a hand over her own Agency-issued watch, which wasn’t nearly as handsome. The movement made the numbers glow just enough for her to see them. “Eleven forty-one.”

  “Okay, at a quarter to the hour, we go in. You take this door. I’ll take the rear.” Then he disappeared around the end of the cabin.

  Crickets and other night insects chirped in the bushes, oblivious to the horror taking place on the other side of this wall. But when a female voice cried out from inside, the cricket noise stopped, and the night felt suddenly heavier. Lily’s patience waned as the minutes ticked by.

  A male voice protested. “Not again.”

  It was Kip.

  A surge of anger heated her veins. Bastards. It wasn’t enough for Darkbloods to live by their own set of barbaric rules; they had to coerce an idealistic young vampire like Kip to help them carry out their plans. She vowed to see them all dead before the night was over.

  The clock ticked down.

  Three, two,
one. Go.

  Stepping in front of the shabby door, she easily kicked it in with her booted heel.

  Even though she’d taken a deep breath outside, the thick smell of Sweet hung like a heavy sickness in the air of the cabin. Having led many raids on Darkblood dens, she was prepared for the scent and didn’t let it affect her judgment.

  However, she wasn’t prepared for what she saw.

  Kip was hunched over a woman on the floor, his dark head at her throat. She struggled futilely against his chest. Two DBs flanked him, holding on to tethers at his wrists and neck, watching the display like eager spectators at a cock fight.

  For a split second, she hesitated, unsure whether to pull Kip off the woman first or to go for the DBs, and in that moment of indecision, she was shocked when the two of them fell to the ground in unison.

  Alfonso.

  With his mouth pressed into a determined line, he leaped forward and retrieved his blades. She hadn’t heard him enter the back door, nor had she seen any movement or flash of a blade. Figured. As she’d already witnessed, he was wicked fast with his knives.

  She jumped to Kip’s side and tried to pry him off the bare-breasted woman beneath him. But with his fangs buried in her neck, he didn’t want to let go. Lily couldn’t rip him away for fear it’d tear out the woman’s throat.

  “What the hell is going on down there?” a voice called from down the hallway. “Need any help?”

  Alfonso pointed in the direction of the others. “I’ll take care of them.” And then he was gone.

  “Kip, you’ve got to stop. You’re killing her.”

  His mouth stilled. And although he stopped swallowing, he didn’t pull away.

  “You’re stronger than this, Kip. Let go. It’s me, Lily.”

  When he lifted his head to look at her, Lily shoved him away, sending his body flying against the far wall, separating him from the woman. Most vampires feeding from a sweetblood wouldn’t have had the willpower to stop as he did. Before he came at the woman again, she quickly tied his tethers to a length of chain on the wall, vaguely aware of crashing sounds coming from the back room.

  The whites of Kip’s unfocused eyes were grayed out and his black pupils completely covered his irises. They must’ve force-fed him massive quantities of human blood to get them to change that quickly. A thin red trickle ran from the corner of his mouth, while the tips of his fangs indented his lower lip.

  “Jesus H, what did they do to you?”

  His jaw worked back and forth, as if he were trying to speak, and the smell of Sweet was thick on his breath. She leaned in close anyway, his voice barely a whisper. “Keep…her…away…from me.”

  Lily turned to the woman and knelt beside her. She pulled the bloodied shirt back over the woman’s bare shoulders, but it was so tattered that it was almost pointless. Uneven steps, one heavier than the other, echoed on the dirty pine floor.

  Lily jumped up and leveled her weapon.

  “It’s me, Lil,” Alfonso said.

  Relieved, she lowered the Glock. With a thick lock of hair covering one eye, he limped into the room. “Did the other two make out better or worse than you?”

  “Much, much worse.” A touch of sweat gleamed on Alfonso’s upper lip. “Here, let me take Kip. You deal with her.”

  The woman trembled violently, no doubt a combination of cold and shock from the blood loss. After licking her thumb, Lily ran it over the puncture wounds on her neck and the holes quickly healed. She scanned the paltry room and spotted a ratty blanket bunched up on the cushion of the threadbare couch.

  She grabbed it, shook it out, and a large brown wolf spider fell from the folds. It skittered over the ashes of one of the Darkbloods and disappeared into the blackness under the couch. Lily flicked the blanket away. God, she hated those things. Where there was one, there were more. Darkbloods she could handle—spiders, not so much. She removed her own jacket and cocooned the woman inside.

  “How’s he look?” she asked Alfonso.

  “He’s drunk on Sweet. It’s a bad high. One that will take a while to wear off.”

  But at least they’d found him. She’d get Kip to her mother’s clinic, where he’d be put through detox. Hopefully, since not much time had passed, the addiction wouldn’t have had a chance to take hold.

  The sweat on Alfonso’s forehead captured a piece of his hair. He pushed it out of his face and appeared to stagger slightly as he hovered over Kip.

  “And you?” she asked him. “Everything okay?” He hadn’t been in the back room for long. Was he having trouble being around the woman and all this blood? She got a glimpse of his face. His irises were still blue, not black with hunger, but the pain was evident. He had been hurt back there.

  “Quite an operation they have,” he said, changing the subject. “They’d been portioning the Sweet into vials. Or at least that’s what they were doing.”

  That wasn’t what she’d asked him. Her eyes narrowed when she noticed him putting most of his weight on one leg.

  “When the rest of the crew gets here,” she said, “they’ll have a team comb through the cabin for any usable intel, then dismantle everything else.”

  “Or just burn it down. Nothing like a little fire to destroy what shouldn’t be saved.” The brittleness in his voice told her he wasn’t only referring to this place. “Hey, get her out of here, okay? We need to keep them apart. He’s likely to lose control and attack her again. From what I counted back there, she’s had three units of blood taken already, and who knows how much he took from her. She won’t be able to withstand much more.”

  Lily tried to help the woman to the door, but she was so unsteady that Lily scooped her up and carried her outside instead. She managed to dig out her cell phone and called the local Vancouver field office.

  Thank God. Backup was already on the way and would be here shortly. Given Kip’s present condition, they couldn’t risk transporting him and the sweetblood in the same vehicle.

  Cradling the injured woman as gently as she could, Lily shadow-moved through the forest toward where they’d parked the car. She opened the trunk one-handed and removed the emergency kit. The space blanket crackled as she spread it out on the dirt road and set the woman down.

  Thankful for the Agency’s desensitization training, which all Agents were required to go through, Lily tried not to inhale too much of the sweet-smelling bloodscent as she tended to the woman. That training, which Kip had recently completed, was probably what had prevented him from draining her dry. Not many vampires in that weakened condition would’ve been able to perform a Stop and Release on a sweetblood. It was too seductive. The call too powerful.

  She’d see about putting a letter of commendation into his file.

  A sob hiccupped from the woman’s lips, her terror-filled eyes wide and unfocused. Damn. She’d thought the woman was still unconscious. Things had just gotten a little more complicated.

  “Where…are they? Those men? Please…say they’re gone.”

  Lily placed a reassuring hand on the woman’s arm. “You’re safe now. They can’t hurt you any longer.”

  Twin rivulets of tears streamed down the sides of the woman’s face and into her tangled brown hair. “Their eyes… I’ll never forget. They made…the scared one in the chair b-b… Do terrible things.” She covered her face in the crook of her elbow.

  “The main thing is you’re safe now. The medic team will be here any minute, and they’ll take you to a medical facility. You’ll be as good as new, I promise.”

  “I…I feel so…weak. This sounds crazy…but they were…vampires. You know—” she crooked two fingers “—with…fangs. They killed…that other girl. I…saw it. Cut her wrists…and threw her…at the one who was tied up.”

  So Kip had killed the other girl. Lily let out a slow sigh when she thought about the psychological damage he’d suffer. He’d be forever changed, knowing a human had died from his bite. How could she forgive herself for letting this happen to him? If only she could’v
e killed at least one of the assholes responsible, but Alfonso had gotten them all.

  Lily decided to be truthful with the human. She wouldn’t remember anything after the memory wipe anyway, and it only seemed fair.

  “Yeah, honey, I’m afraid they were.”

  The young woman balled up into a fetal position, silent except for a few sniffles. Lily noticed several dripping puncture wounds on her wrist.

  Where was the medic team anyway? She’d rather leave stuff like this up to them.

  Through the trees, she glimpsed Alfonso sitting on the front porch of the cabin, a fatherly arm around Kip. The display of protectiveness tugged at her heart. Maybe he was sharing some of his own experiences, recounting the horrible things DBs had forced him to do. Unfortunately, he and Kip now had a lot in common.

  She turned her attention back to the woman. “What’s your name?”

  “Elisabeth.” The woman dropped her arm from her tear-stained face. The circles under her eyes were so dark that Lily wondered when she’d last slept or ate.

  “I’m Lily.” She flashed her most disarming smile, hoping to calm her down before she proceeded. “I wish we could’ve met under better circumstances. Listen, I’d like to take a look at your wrist. See if they—”

  Elisabeth examined her hands as if they were a stranger’s, but Lily knew it was the blood she saw. “Oh…my God,” she whispered.

  Lily couldn’t wait any longer. She licked her finger, reached over and quickly swiped it across the puncture wounds. The torn edges of skin began to heal upon contact, the holes getting smaller and smaller.

  “What did you…do? It’s tingly—” Elisabeth’s eyes blazed with the realization that something strange had just happened. With surprising strength, she scrambled backward, elbows and knees pumping, until she slammed into the Panamera’s back tire. “You’re one of them…aren’t you?”

  Lily thought about lying, giving her some lame explanation for what had just happened. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time she’d been less than forthcoming with a human. It’d sure be easier to deal with her in the short term, if Lily did lie. But when she glanced in Alfonso’s direction again, she decided not to. Honesty, however painful, seemed the better choice today. “Yes, I am the same as them. A vampire.”