First Blood

by Susan Sizemore

  “Annie?”

  She swallowed, sat up, and swung her legs to the floor. Lowered her head into her hands. “I’m fine. What happened then?”

  “What you’d expect,” he said slowly, then rose to his feet. “It leaked out. Mostly just ribbing, but Gallagher . . . Gallagher said he couldn’t believe I’d fallen for her line of bullshit.” He sighed. “I hadn’t, but she was as clever with how she’d worded and presented her report as she had been with everything else. And it wasn’t long before I was proving her right.”

  Hands in pockets, he walked to the window, stood looking out. Annie couldn’t; the pale light in the sky pricked at her eyes. Sunrise was minutes away.

  There was so much to ask—but time demanded that she jump to the end. “How does this relate to the nephilim?”

  “Not the nephilim,” Jack said. “The cover-up. One hundred and thirty people disappear at once—jobs, homes suddenly abandoned—but no one notices?” She squinted over at him, saw him shaking his head. “I only caught on to it when one of my property managers called me. I kept a few of my dad’s buildings; this was in Kensington. The door left open, signs of a struggle. So I checked with the occupants’ references, and found the same thing at their house. And so on. I opened a case file.”

  His footsteps alerted Annie to his approach before he sank on his heels in front of her. “Within a day, Annie, it was taken out of my hands.”

  But who—? Oh. “Agent Milton again?”

  “Yes. Under a new division of Homeland Security—and with enough power to take over the investigation. And those disappearances I knew about were suddenly being explained: sick relatives, accidents, better jobs or apartments . . .” He trailed off, his eyes unfocused and his anger radiating off him like waves of heat. “One hundred and thirty lives erased. The Bureau didn’t put up any resistance, and Gallagher was happy to let it go.”

  The sick ball of dread in her stomach tightened. Annie scrubbed her palms over her face, wondering if she could ever explain her response.

  Probably not. But it had to be said.

  “It was the right thing to do, Jack.”

  He rocked back a little, his baffled gaze searching her face. What he saw there hardened his jaw. “You don’t mean my resigning,” he said flatly.

  “Maybe that, too.” She swallowed, got to her feet. He rose, smooth and quick. “But what Milton did—it was right.”

  “How, Annie?”

  Despite his confusion and anger, his question was controlled; she couldn’t do the same. She pushed past him, seeking distance.

  He came after her. “How, Annie? You tell me that ‘people like you’ are just like everyone else, with jobs and family. They aren’t soldiers. They aren’t agents. They haven’t signed over their lives in the name of national security, to be swept under a goddamn government rug. You cried in my arms because no one knew they’d died. Yet it’s right? Fuck that.”

  “And what would you do, Jack?” Her teeth were clenched; it was little better than a growl. She ripped aside the curtains surrounding her bed, hating them suddenly. Gaudy. Stupid and gaudy and embarrassing to need a bed with jade satin curtains. “Expose us? Let everyone know we’re here?”

  “Who is here?” He flung his hands wide with a hard, disbelieving laugh. “Who is left to expose? Everyone but you is dead, Annie. You’ve said these demons can’t hurt humans. Couldn’t we have offered some protection? Prevented it? Or at the very least, if we’d known what was happening, then people like you might have, too—and prepared for it.”

  She yanked off her boot, threw it across the room. “And what about protection from people like you?”

  “Like me? Humans?”

  “Yes,” she snapped, and the second boot made a matching dent in the wall.

  His silence was sudden and cold.

  Oh, Jesus. Annie turned, faced him. He’d closed himself off somehow, raised emotional shields. But she could read his expression. Could see the bleakness there.

  “I don’t—” The words stumbled. She brought her fingers to her lips, as if she could drag them out by force. “I don’t mean you. Not personally.”

  “No?” He stalked toward her, his gaze hot upon hers. “Tell me, Annie—why didn’t you come to me six years ago? Did you think I’d hurt you?”

  She snorted. “What—afraid that you’d pull out a stake? Whatever.”

  His mouth tightened, but he didn’t answer—just kept coming. Wondering if she’d back up? To test the truth of it, to see if she was afraid?

  She wasn’t. Not of him. Not now.

  Her hands curled in denial. She closed her eyes when he stopped in front of her, avoiding that intent gaze, trying to suppress the bloodlust it stirred. “Maybe a little,” she admitted. “But it was more than that. And everything was . . . confusing.”

  God, what a weak word for the turmoil she’d gone through. The painful riot of emotion.

  Her eyes flew open when she felt his hands at the hem of her shirt. “What are you doing?”

  “Taking back what’s mine.” His voice was rough, but his movement smooth as he tugged the jersey up and over her head. A second later, he was shoving the jeans she’d borrowed over her hips.

  Almost naked—and hungry.

  Annie crossed her arms over her breasts, excited, terrified. “Bad idea, Jack.”

  But it was too late to go anywhere. And she didn’t want to run from him. Didn’t want to fight.

  “You, in your panties, on a bed? Very good idea, Annie.” He picked her up, pushed her back onto the mattress. He tore out of his jacket, let it drop to the floor. “I should have done it six years ago.”

  He didn’t waste time now. His body covered hers, long and hard. Even through his clothes, he was like a furnace against her skin. His palm swept up her side. Annie clenched her teeth against the pleasure of that simple caress, the rampant need.

  His lips were hot against her ear. “Maybe if I’d touched you more often, maybe if I’d been inside you, a part of you—if you’d known how I cherished every inch of you, you wouldn’t have been afraid.”

  Her heart twisted. “No, Jack.” Annie turned, cushioned his cheeks in her hands, met his eyes. “I knew. I knew.”

  His mouth flattened. “But it wasn’t enough. You didn’t come.”

  “It was everything.” Her breath shuddered, and she traced the line of his bottom lip with her thumb. “That’s why I didn’t come.”

  A muscle in his jaw worked beneath her palm before he made an obvious effort to relax it. The corners of his mouth tilted up. “Maybe you can explain that. Later.”

  Nodding, she lifted her head. His lips met hers in a kiss of surprising delicacy. It shouldn’t have been so soft, not when need and hurt lay sharp and pointed between them. But it was, his mouth gentle as she parted her lips, the touch of his tongue like a whisper across hers, coaxing a moan from her throat.

  Bitter coffee, a hint of whiskey. She couldn’t taste him, had never regretted the loss of that sense so much. But she could scent them, remembered their flavor, and the decadent slide of his tongue past her fangs sent a delicious shiver under her skin.

  Magic hands, magic mouth.

  With a groan, he deepened the kiss. Flavor struck, bright and blinding over her tongue.

  Annie jerked away, scrambled to the corner of the bed.

  “Go, Jack.” She wrapped her hands around the bedpost as if she could anchor herself.

  It wasn’t going to matter. She couldn’t resist the bloodlust, couldn’t stop once she’d had a taste.

  Not unless he resisted, too.

  He wouldn’t. Jack had risen to his knees; he wasn’t running. Crimson dotted the finger he’d touched to his lip, but he didn’t look at the blood in horror.

  And his arousal hadn’t abated. His hair was tousled, his chest heaving. He lowered his hand to his side.

  His eyes met hers. “Come, Annie. Take what’s yours.”

  Not like this. But her body didn’t heed her mind—only th
e thirst.

  Her leap knocked him onto his back. Her hands tore at his jeans, shoved down to stroke his rigid length. Her womb clenched. He was thick, ready. She’d be filled, quenched, warmed.

  His body arched beneath hers on a strangled groan.

  Shaking, Annie lowered her mouth to his neck . . . and continued descending, into darkness.

  The bloodlust shrieked a denial—but it was relief that carried her through to dreams.

  SEVEN

  FOR A HEART-STOPPING INSTANT, THE COMBINATION of cool skin and dead weight made Jack fear the worst: She’d been taken away from him again.

  She’d fallen slack, her face buried in his throat. Her chest wasn’t moving; he couldn’t feel her breath.

  He slid his fingers to her inner wrist. His blood ran cold, killing his arousal. No pulse.

  Jesus, no no—

  Then it was there, a soft beat against his fingertips. His guts in a knot, he waited. Almost ten seconds later, he felt another.

  Swamped by relief, he pressed a kiss to the point of her pulse. She’d said she would crash soon; he hadn’t expected it would be so dramatic.

  Had the sun risen?

  If so, that explained the curtains around the bed. They didn’t fit Annie, now or then. But they would be practical—if she ever forgot to close the heavy drapes at the windows, the satin would still block the light.

  Nights. She worked nights.

  He began shaking with laughter. She’d made a joke of it, and his tired brain hadn’t gotten it until she was prone on top of him, in a sleep that felt like death.

  Awake from sunset to sunrise. Even with her speed—and any other abilities she had—that didn’t give her much time to look for Cricket.

  He could extend that for her.

  Reluctantly, he rolled her over. No rigor; her body was simply limp. He tucked the sheet around her shoulders, let his fingers tenderly roam her face.

  She’d dyed her brows to match her hair, but the makeup around her eyes had been washed away. Her lashes were pale fans above her cheeks. Naked—yet even in sleep, she didn’t look vulnerable.

  The points of her fangs gleamed behind her parted lips.

  The cut on his own lip was stinging now, but it hadn’t hurt when he’d scraped it on her teeth. No, it had been more like being Tasered. A hit of pure sexual need, arcing from her mouth to his cock, jolting his arousal to impossible, painful levels.

  Jack hoped to God she woke up hungry.

  THE early sun glared off the windows of Gallagher’s house. Annie’s brother pushed through the front door, and Jack slid on his sunglasses—more to hide his exhaustion and bloodshot eyes than to shield them from the light.

  He’d stopped at his own house for a blistering shower and three cups of enamel-stripping joe, but the wait outside Gallagher’s had been longer than he’d expected, and the edge the caffeine had given him was starting to wear.

  So was his patience.

  The heat soaked through Jack’s T-shirt the instant he climbed out of his Land Rover. Seven-fifteen in the morning, and it was already shaping up to be a steaming bitch of a day. Hopefully, Gallagher would roast in his suit every time he stepped outside, sweating as much as Annie had searching the streets alone.

  Gallagher blinked when he noticed Jack, then glanced back toward his house. The windows were empty, but a curtain was falling into place the next home down the row. Annie’s mother.

  Family meant so damn much to Gallagher that he’d bought a home that shared a wall with his parents’—and made his sister unwelcome in both.

  “Running late today, Brian?” Jack’s grin must have been on the maniacal side; Gallagher’s friendly smile turned wary.

  “Marnie and the kids are down the shore, so there aren’t as many stops to make before heading in.” He came to a halt, studying Jack’s face. “What’s up with you, Harrington? You’re retired; you should be sleeping in, not haunting my yard.”

  “I’m looking for a favor.”

  “Ah, fuck me to hell. I knew this day would come.” Gallagher’s trapped expression was a good-natured, male version of Annie’s. “All of those boxes. It’ll be damn hot moving them. I’ll need beer. A keg.”

  With a shake of his head, Jack passed him a folder containing latent fingerprints from the cane, Cricket’s glass, and Annie’s front and balcony doors. “I need you to run these.”

  Frowning, Gallagher set his briefcase on the concrete walk, flipped open the file. “Whose reference prints?”

  “A missing girl, a demon, and—”

  “God damn it, Jack!” A tide of red rushed beneath Gallagher’s jaw, and he slapped the folder shut. “You might not give two shits about your career, but don’t drag me down—”

  “And Annie,” Jack finished quietly.

  Gallagher sucked in a breath. He fumbled through the folder, tugged out the ink impressions Jack had made of her fingers while she’d slept, and studied them as intently as he would a picture.

  There was love in that gaze, and regret—and Jack wanted to ram his fist through Gallagher’s face.

  Never mind that he considered his former partner a friend. Never mind that he thought meatheads who resorted to chest-thumping displays of aggression were assholes. Before him stood a man who’d told Annie that she was dead to her family—a man who’d been cozily sleeping three blocks away while a demon had stabbed a cane through her stomach.

  Gallagher had contributed to the pain his woman had experienced—and by God, there would be blood.

  Jack shoved his hands into his pockets when Mrs. Gallagher came out on the porch, shielding her eyes against the sun. But he couldn’t stop himself from stepping closer, nose-to-nose with Gallagher.

  “I ought to drop you where you stand.” He spoke through gritted teeth. “Six fucking years, you lied to me. Kept me from her.”

  “Back off, Jack,” Gallagher said wearily.

  “Left her to go it alone.”

  “Back off!”

  The shout echoed through the street. A vein throbbed at Gallagher’s temple, but apparently he realized Jack had no intention of backing down. Gallagher retreated a step, shot a glance over his shoulder.

  Annie’s mother had disappeared inside her house, but obviously intended to return; she’d left the door open.

  “Christ.” With a heavy exhalation, Gallagher staggered to his own porch, sank down on the top step. The folder dangled from his fingers, his wrists limp between his knees. “You didn’t see Annie that night, Harrington. Licking the blood off her hands—her own goddamn blood—and she couldn’t stop herself. Because she hadn’t fed yet. She told us she hadn’t wanted to, because she couldn’t control the . . . other.”

  Gallagher averted his eyes, but Jack barely registered the other man’s embarrassment. He wished Gallagher had punched him; it’d have been easier to take than the image of Annie he’d painted. Sickening, pathetic.

  Heart-wrenching. She must have been terrified.

  “Her own blood?” He rasped the question through an aching throat.

  But Gallagher only nodded absently, either assuming that Jack already knew what had happened, or too lost in his memories of that night to hear Jack’s confusion.

  “I said things that I regret, but I don’t know if I’d have changed anything. I had two little girls next door, and Marnie with another baby on the way. Dad was dead on the floor, Ma begging him to wake up. And Annie didn’t have control.” He lifted his gaze to Jack’s. “She agreed that leaving was the right thing to do. That telling everyone she’d died was.”

  The right thing to do. The whole damn Gallagher family had a different definition of that phrase than Jack did.

  “And I thought Annie and you hadn’t been any more than buddies, hanging out here. You two sure as hell never let on,” Gallagher continued. “I didn’t know until the funeral.”

  When Jack had been shit-faced and broke down; he remembered Gallagher’s shock and discomfort too well.

  With a soft curse, h
e looked away. The urge to hit something didn’t fade, but his anger dissipated into frustration and disappointment.

  “I just didn’t think that Annie would . . . not with someone she didn’t know.”

  “She knew me,” Jack said quietly.

  “That’s what I’m saying.” Gallagher sighed, rubbed his forehead. “I didn’t understand it. Looking back, I could see how it happened with you. Yet by the time the funeral rolled around, she’d been shacked up with Dante for a week and a half. That’s not the kind of thing you break to a guy who wept through the hymns.”

  Every muscle in Jack’s body tightened. His stomach hollowed. But a soft step and a pair of light blue eyes prevented him from demanding answers.

  Mary Gallagher glanced from her son’s face to Jack’s, then lifted the bucket she’d carried out. Chunks of ice floated in water.

  “As you boys have settled down, I won’t be needing this. Will I?” She sent a quelling look toward Jack, and he shook his head, the tension in his body fading.

  He didn’t know if it was something every mother could do, or just Annie’s—but her calm manner and quick humor always put him at ease.

  After setting the bucket down, Mrs. Gallagher wiped her hand on the leg of her trim blue pants, patted the blond hair clipped at her nape. “You haven’t visited in a while, Jack. A part of me wants to dump ice water over your head for your neglect—the sight of you in a wet T-shirt would make up for a multitude of sins.”

  Gallagher’s groan was almost as loud as Jack’s laughter. “Jesus, Ma—”

  “Don’t curse, Brian,” she said mildly, smiling up at Jack. “What brings you here now?”

  Jack removed his sunglasses. With Gallagher, he’d wanted the shields. With Annie’s mother, it felt rude to wear them. “I had a visitor last night.”

  Her gaze flicked to the cut on his lip. “What sort of visitor? You look like hell, Jack Harrington.”

  “Not as bad as the last time he ate your meatloaf, Ma,” Gallagher said. “He’s here about Annie.”

  Surprise smoothed her features, then relief. “She called you then. Is the girl still missing?”