Here was an ancient immortal with powerful blood, offering it to me. If the Cure had created a resistance to vampirism in my system—and it was possible that was why Cazimir was in a coma—my best bet at combating it was ancient, vigorous blood that had survived for millennia.
And to get it, all I had to do was kill this whiny, unhappy vampire who should never have been given immortality in the first place. I could correct that mistake and earn my immortality back in one swing of the sword.
I stepped toward Eva and her frantic head shaking stopped. Her eyes widened to the size of ping-pong balls. She looked so betrayed, as if the foolish woman had thought we were friends. My heart pounded. If I cut off her head, vampirism was mine. I could have my fangs back. My life back. Everything would be as it should be. I lifted the sword, and then I glanced at Tertius.
He was grinning from ear to ear, his hands clasped together in delight. It was gross. He was gross. He had what I wanted—no, what I needed—but he was a disgusting, sick motherfucker.
I swung the sword forward and Eva flinched, her screaming muffled but wild. I stopped it short of her face.
“Go on, Henrietta,” Tertius said. “It’s a mercy killing. We all know it.” He met Eva’s eyes and tears sprung to hers.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “It is.”
And I swung the sword toward Tertius instead.
Chapter 25
It was painfully idiotic to attack a vampire with anything less than a flamethrower. Especially one as ancient and nimble as Tertius.
My blow caught him off guard. The blade sunk into his shoulder, but he had the sword out of my hand a second later. He clutched the blade with his palm and blood spilled out. He rammed the hilt of the sword at my solar plexus. I flew backward and hit the ground, rolling to my side as I did. My sore ribs exploded in pain and I knew at least one had finally cracked.
Tertius righted the sword, taking it by the hilt in his other hand, and licked his bleeding palm. He stared down at me with a look that brought unbidden images of my human father into my mind. How disappointed he’d been when I’d started dressing in the flapper style and embraced “debauchery,” as he’d called it. Tertius wore the same look my father had worn right before he’d kicked me out of the house. I hadn’t thought of my father in decades. It was unsettling. And it made me mad.
“You failed,” Tertius said. “Such a shame. But I will enjoy the taste of your blood as your heart stops.”
I fumbled in my pocket to get out my Taser, making sure the stake was in the other pocket. Tertius paced in front of me, smirking. He was amused. This game was win/win for him. Or so he thought.
I scooted back and got to my feet slowly. Tertius didn’t move. He watched me carefully, not willing to let me surprise him again, but he didn’t attack. After all, he didn’t want to slice me to ribbons with his sword. He wanted to drink my blood. That was his prize. And that gave me an advantage. Not a big one, but it was better than nothing.
I shot a glance at Eva, who was straining against the wires holding her in place. I caught her eye, trying to impart some silent message, and then turned back to the vampire. The sword was gone, as if it had vanished into thin air. He’d used his vampire speed to put it somewhere out of sight when I’d turned away.
He didn’t need a weapon, after all. Vampires are killing machines, designed for efficient and effective murder. Sharp fangs, strong arm, super speed.
I panted. Adrenaline coursed through my veins. I dusted off my pants. My palms were bloody and gritty from scraping against the dirty wood floor. I moved slowly, keeping my distance.
He had most of the advantages, but I had a few. He didn’t think of me as a monster. That was one. He saw me as weak, injured prey now and I was going to do my best to make sure that was his fatal error.
“Really, Henrietta, we can do this the hard way or the easy way. I gave you a shot at immortality. You forfeited it. Now come to me and let me end it painlessly.”
“Let Eva go,” I said.
Tertius cocked his head like a predatory bird considering a mouse. “And why would I do that?”
“She’s just a pawn in this game of yours. Let her go, and you can have me.”
Tertius’s smile was cold but still tinged with amusement that his eyes echoed. “My dear, I’m afraid you don’t get to bargain. You’ve made your choice. Now you have only one final choice left: come to me willingly or I make it hurt.”
I felt tears prick at my eyes. They were born of frustration and anger, but Tertius seemed to think it was hopelessness. His face softened, the cold, icy edges burning away into something warmer. The urge to go toward him tugged at me again.
“My dear, my dear,” he cooed. I walked toward him, holding the Taser loosely at my side. Eva tried to yell something but it came out as muffled nonsense. My vision tunneled. Tertius opened his arms as if about to embrace a relative he hadn’t seen in ages.
My heart slammed into my ribs, which screamed in pain. Every part of me hurt and I wanted it to stop fucking hurting.
“I’m so tired,” I said.
“I know, my dear,” he said warmly. “You’ve had a bad run of things. But you needn’t worry anymore.”
He lifted my hand that held the Taser and pried it out of my fingers, dropping it to the floor with a small clatter. He lifted my hand to his lips and kissed the back of it. His lips felt like cold snails and a chill traveled up my arm.
He swept my hair away from my throat and then pulled me closer. Over his shoulder, I saw the sword, propped against the wall in the back corner.
His tongue snaked over my neck, and my skin crawled. I tried not to shudder. Surreptitiously, I pulled the stake from my pocket, trying to pretend I was swooning into his embrace rather than digging for something.
It came free at the same moment that sharp pain exploded in my throat from his fangs. I shivered, and not in a good way.
I let him drink for about two seconds. I took a breath and let it out. I brought my arm up around him. He didn’t care. He was too lost in bloodlust to give a damn what the rest of my body was doing.
I said a small prayer to the universe at large and then thrust the stake as hard as I could into his back, about where I thought his heart would be. Years of being a vampire gave me a good idea of where hearts lived.
The stake plowed through his tailcoat and sank into his muscle, scraping against bone. He growled, wrenching his fangs out of my throat. The tip of the stake hit his heart before he could attack. He sank to the ground but he was already gasping. He was old and would heal lightning fast.
I ran for the sword. Unsheathed it. The stake hit the wood floor and he sat up, eyes flashing with fury.
Fuck. It couldn’t have even been an entire minute. I held the sword out but he was on me in a flash, ready to tear me apart. He clawed at my face, a nail raking down my cheek. It burned. He grabbed my head in his hands as I thrust the sword forward. He was too close for me to get the weapon in front of him. He held my head still and shook his own head in disappointment. He was going to snap my neck. This was how I was going to die.
I was so fucking pissed off.
And then I smelled smoke.
Tertius jolted like he’d been poked with an electric wire. He whirled around. Eva stood behind him, holding my Taser. Her wrists and legs were bleeding in thin lines where the wire had dug into her skin, but the wounds were healing. Behind her, I could see broken wires sticking out from the hand truck where she’d snapped them free. She still had duct tape on her mouth.
I loved Eva so much in that moment, there were no words.
Tertius stalked toward her, hissing and spitting in rage. I gripped the sword tight in my bleeding palms and swung for his neck. The blade cut through his throat like it was butter, the blade sharper than it had any right to be.
Tertius’s head hit the floor before the hissing stopped. Eva dropped the Taser and burst into tears. I wiped the sweat from my forehead and tried to tell my heart the marathon was over.
Tertius was dead. We’d have to burn his body. And Fiona’s. There were stories of headless vampire corpses coming back to life.
Those, I thought, were definitely tall tales, invented by some bored vampire or maybe some wannabe vampire hunter. But better safe than sorry.
Chapter 26
I got the tape off of Eva’s mouth. She winced as it tried to take a layer of skin with it and then moved her jaw up and down, relieved to be able to open it again.
“I thought you were going to kill me,” she said. I wasn’t sure she realized she said it out loud. She seemed to be in shock. Probably, we both were. I should have been in a lot more pain, for instance, and would be once the shock wore off.
“What for? I don’t think he was going to give me a damn thing.”
Eva gave me a smile that held exactly no warmth. It was reactionary, automatic. “Probably not. Bastard.” She kicked his corpse.
I didn’t know what I believed. Maybe I just didn’t want to admit to myself I’d given up my last chance to be a vampire again for the sake of a woman I hardly knew and who definitely didn’t appreciate what she had.
Eva and I stacked Fiona’s body and head on top of Tertius in the middle of the warehouse’s floor, where there were lots of empty boxes and flammable machine liquids. Vampire bodies burn hot enough to turn their bones to ash. Or most of their bones. Even if the authorities found them before the skeletons were totally destroyed, they’d chalk the fangs up to cosmetic alterations and “kids these days.”
Strange times we lived in.
I let Eva light the match. I grabbed the sword. No sense in leaving a perfectly good weapon behind. And then we walked, dirty and bloody, to my car. I didn’t ask where Eva was staying. I brought her to my place. I was on autopilot, going through the motions: get home, be safe.
No police were waiting to haul me off, so I guessed Max had lied for me after all. I’d almost forgotten about it until I’d caught a flash of blue approaching my building, but it was just a neighbor with a tinted flashlight walking their dog.
I owed Max big. Not that he was likely to speak to me again.
Eva took the first shower and I got her clean clothes. The only bra I had that would fit her was a sports bra, but she put it on gratefully. Eva was not lacking in the chest area and I was sure going without a bra was uncomfortable for her.
I threw away my work slacks, which sucked because women’s work pants were not cheap, but they were ripped and torn along the side. My shirt was bloodstained and ripped where I’d started to make a bandage, and it went in the garbage, too.
The shower’s hot water helped me feel alive again. I scrubbed my neck like it’d been covered in acid. Tertius had been a vile, disgusting creature. I’d been a monster. Still was a monster. But Tertius was something else, something worse.
Thirty minutes later, I came out of my room wearing pajamas and found Eva sitting on my sofa, staring into space. I poured us both glasses of wine, but Eva refused, so I drank hers, too.
Around three in the morning, after a straight hour of sitting and staring at my blank television screen, Eva stood. She left, still looking dazed.
As soon as she was gone, my front door opened. I hadn’t bothered to get up to lock it. I thought maybe Eva had come back, but it was Sean.
“I saw the fire,” he said. His tone was light and airy, which in my experience meant he was completely freaked out and determined not to admit it. “I assumed that meant you were all right.”
“You always were an optimist,” I said from the sofa.
I took another swig of my wine. It was a Pinot Grigio, crisp and tart with a little bite to it. I was on my third glass. I picked the wine bottle off the coffee table and started to dump the rest of its contents into my glass. Sean snatched the bottle from me and sniffed it before taking a swig.
“Not bad. You always had excellent taste.”
“Mm,” I said and drank a little more. I was achy and sore in too many places to name.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?” Sean asked. He stood in front of me, watching me drink and making me anxious. His eyes roved over the wound in my neck. He didn’t comment on it. He could probably guess what had happened.
“Not really,” I said firmly.
“Henri…”
“Where the fuck were you?” I got to my feet, grabbed the nearly empty wine bottle from him and stomped into the kitchen. “I called you. You’ve been MIA for days while vampires tormented me with corpses, Sean. Tormented me. And then, when I know I’m walking into a fucking trap, I call you and you waltz in two hours later like nothing happened. So no, I don’t really feel like catching you up on recent events. I feel like being left alone.”
Sean pursed his lips together and put his hands in his pockets. He wore designer jeans and a sport coat over a t-shirt that looked feather soft, like it cost way more than a t-shirt should. His eyes were bright and his dyed black hair was a stark contrast to his pale white skin.
“That was your cue to leave,” I said, but with no heat in the words.
“You don’t really want me to leave,” he said. “Do you?”
“No,” I admitted. “But you won’t give me what I do want.”
Sean sighed. “I was at Ryuto’s house,” he said, answering my earlier question.
“Is he awake?” I asked, meaning Caz.
Sean shook his head.
“Well, hell,” I said. Sean walked through the living room and I thought he might head for the door after all. My heart sank to the black depths of my stomach. But he came into the kitchen instead.
“He may wake up yet,” Sean said. “I had a ‘chat’ with the gentleman selling that supposed vampire blood and it is now off the market. Turns out Cazimir had sold the man vampire blood from the Factory in the past.”
I frowned at that, but then, Cazimir must have had his reasons. At least it explained why he’d been willing to trust the bottled poison. After all, if he’d once provided the huckster with real vampire blood, why doubt that the man’s wares were anything but authentic? It had still been supremely stupid on Cazimir’s part.
Sean continued, “In addition to formaldehyde, the pig’s blood contained several substances, including something called Lemondrop.”
My heart hammered in my chest. The seller would have gotten Lemondrop cheap once the market for it had fallen through. It was another one of the poisons designed in Neha’s lab of horrors. I clenched my fists.
“None of that should be affecting him now,” I said. Because that was the plain, honest truth of it.
“No,” he agreed. “But Ryuto told me how he was turned. There was nothing else that could have been done, but perhaps failing to do it properly…”
“Or it could be the Cure.” I told him about what Neha had said, about his body rejecting vampirism. Sean laughed at the idea.
“I highly doubt that’s possible, Henri. I’m no scientist—”
“No, you’re not,” I said, angrily. “So you have no idea what her poison might have done to us!”
“I know it hasn’t fundamentally altered what you are. Who you are.” Sean smoothed his hand over the nail mark left in my cheek. The cut was shallow and I hoped it didn’t scar. “Whoever did this, I’m glad you killed them.”
“Me, too,” I said. “Bastard deserved ten times worse.”
“Of that, I have no doubt.”
Sean’s fingers danced over my mouth and then he leaned in and kissed me. It caught me off guard, but before I knew what was happening, I was clinging to him and kissing him back, hard. When we finally broke apart, I was breathless. A cocky little smile danced on his lips.
“There’s a quick way to heal my wounds…” I said. But without much hope.
Sean shook his head sadly, like I knew he would. A flare of fury burst to life inside me. I’d destroyed Tertius and given up the chance to have him turn me. I felt like I was drowning in the open ocean and I’d popped my only life raft.
“Give me a little time,�
�� he said softly. “Cazimir had the right idea, having his fledgling drinking bits at a time to test the effects on him. It wouldn’t do either of us any good if your blood turned me human, now, would it?”
I stared at Sean as the realization hit me. “You knew what Caz was doing.”
Sean smiled wickedly. “Love, it was my idea.”
“Wow. You’re a grade-A evil asshole, you know that?” I wasn’t sure whether to be upset or impressed.
“I certainly didn’t force either of them. I merely planted the idea that it would be good to experiment and see what happened.” Sean touched my hair. It was swept back into a ponytail, and I’d swabbed my neck and other wounds with hydrogen peroxide. The t-shirt I wore had a scoop neck to give the wound space to heal.
Sean’s hand trailed down my check and reached my neck. He touched the wound gingerly, hissing softly. “Perhaps I don’t want to know the whole story.”
“I can’t go through it right now,” I said.
I pulled away from him and chugged the last of the wine straight from the bottle before carrying it and my glass to the sink. I rinsed out the bottle and put it into the recycling bin, then I shoved the glass into the dishwasher. I had expected Sean to sneak out the door as soon as he got a chance, so when I looked up, I was surprised to find he was still there.
“I’m going to bed,” I said.
He nodded and glanced out the window. Sunrise wasn’t for a bit, but it wasn’t all that far off, either. He came closer and kissed me again, so hard and passionately he literally swept me off my feet for a second before putting me back down.
“Are you okay?” I asked him breathlessly when he pulled away.
“No. Are you?” He raised an eyebrow.
“Not by any stretch of the imagination,” I replied.
He nodded. We shared a look. Something passed between us. A little bit of forgiveness and a little understanding. His next kiss was light, lips on mine for only a second.
Bloodless (Henri Dunn Book 2) Page 17