by AJ Larrieu
“Take from me.” The thought was like a roar in my head. “Take what you need.”
I wanted to. God, how I wanted to. The fluttering, terrified part of me that would’ve done anything to survive the next few moments almost reached for him, but the stubborn, rational side of my brain triumphed.
I pulled from the night, from the heat and the wind. It was slow, and my blood flowed faster now. Where were the cops? Why hadn’t they noticed a goddamn vampire sucking someone dry in their holding cell? The floor below me grew cold and iced over. My rapid breath fogged in the air.
I funneled the energy of the pull into the ball of light I’d conjured. Its frequency shifted higher, taking on a blue tinge, then deep indigo, then violet. Annette’s cool tongue went still on my skin. I cringed away, and she hissed and shook me, but still I funneled energy to the light, pushing it higher, out of the visible spectrum and into ultraviolet and beyond, penetrating frequencies. High UV. X-rays.
Annette shrieked. She jerked back enough for me to see her, and the exposed skin of her face crackled red and blistered. Her hands flew from my shoulders. The nails split and curled, leaving raw, bleeding flesh beneath. She shrieked again, and I recovered enough of my conscious mind to bring my knees to my chest and kick.
She flew back screaming, red skin bleeding and peeling. I struggled to my feet and stumbled after her, the orb soaring in front of me. I might have weakened her, but she was still freakishly fast, and she fled down the hall before I could close in. The sound of glass breaking came from upstairs—she’d thrown herself through the entry door. I collapsed to the floor and stayed there. It was easier.
The orb dissipated. I couldn’t see the radiation anymore, but I could tell when it died, a kind of relief, a kind of sinking back into myself. Blood was still running down my neck, so I pressed my palm hard against the wound, feeling a day’s worth of accumulated grit dig into my skin. I was raw all over, as though I’d fallen asleep at the beach without putting on sunscreen. I closed my eyes and wondered if it would be all right to fall asleep where I was lying.
“Cassie?”
I didn’t have the strength to look up. Shane’s footsteps were close, and then there was another set. Diana. Still here. That was good.
“Can you hear me?”
“M’fine. Lemme sleep here.”
Shane gathered me into his arms and lifted me, half with his physical strength and half with his mind. Something like concern filtered from his mind to mine.
“M’okay. You can put me down.”
He didn’t put me down. He carried me, favoring his right leg.
We walked through the station and saw the officers, three of them, slumped at their desks. There was no blood—they were alive. They were going to have a lot of questions when they woke up, but I couldn’t make myself care. Shane strapped me into the car. I made a bandage for my neck out of fast food napkins, but they soaked through in seconds. It occurred to me I should be worried.
“How are you doing, Cass?” Shane was in the driver’s seat. We were moving. I hadn’t noticed him get in. When had we gotten on the interstate?
I tried to say I was fine, but I couldn’t string the sounds together.
Shane levitated his cell phone and dialed telekinetically while he zoomed past a minivan. “Bunny? Yeah...I know. It’s an emergency. Yeah, another one. All right. See you there.”
“Not necessary.” Mindspeech was easier than talking. “Be fine.”
I wasn’t sure if the words made it from my head to his before I passed out.
Chapter Thirteen
I woke up when the feeling of motion subsided. Diana was asleep in the back seat, and my shirt was soaked with blood. I twisted in my seat and looked around. We were in a small parking lot rimmed by two-story buildings, and the threat of rain was in the air.
“Where...” My throat was dry.
“Shh.” Shane got out of the driver’s seat and came around the car. I tried to unbuckle my seatbelt, but I couldn’t muster the strength to unlatch the thing. Shane opened the door and did it for me. He gathered me into his arms and lifted me. Diana didn’t move, and Shane had to telekinetically open her door and nudge her with his foot to wake her. She blinked and looked around, taking in the parking lot and the dark blue Dumpster.
“Where is she?” she said, and I knew she could only mean Annette.
“We don’t know.” Shane shoved the door wider. “Come on.”
Diana got out and stretched. There was only one other car in the parking lot, a gunmetal gray sedan that looked expensive. Shane carried me past it to a set of concrete steps and a metal door, and I finally recognized where we were. The back of Bunny’s spa on Magazine Street. The door opened before he could knock.
“Darling, do I need to give you the spare key?” Bunny, looking impeccable as always. My vision wavered for a minute.
“It would probably be easier if you followed us everywhere,” Shane said.
“I’m not sure I would survive the experience.” Bunny backed out of the doorway to let us pass inside. “And who are you, darling?” She looked at Diana.
“I’m nobody,” Diana said.
Bunny furrowed her brow. “I’m sure you’re wrong about that.” She led us down the darkened hallway to one of her treatment rooms and pushed open the door.
Shane set me down on one of her massage tables. “She’s lost a lot of blood.”
I was still losing it. Ink-like drops of bright red marred the white bedding. I hoped she wasn’t planning to keep the sheets.
“So I see.” Bunny put her hands on my shoulders. “What happened?”
“Vampire,” I managed, then giggled. It sounded ridiculous when I said it out loud.
She raised one eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”
“We were attacked by a vampire,” Shane said. “It bit her.”
“She’s not an it,” Diana said.
Shane cast her an inscrutable glance and then looked back to Bunny. “I got here as fast as I could.”
Bunny’s mouth opened, but no words came out. She cocked her head. “A vampire. As in...fangs?” She hooked two fingers in front of her teeth.
I nearly laughed. I would’ve, if it hadn’t hurt so much. Bunny tilted my head back, exposing my neck so she could see the marks of Annette’s fangs. She bent close and stared for a long moment, her breath warm on my skin.
“For a few moments I hoped you were mistaken,” she said finally.
“’Fraid not.” I was feeling dizzier by the minute. This whole sitting-up thing was getting challenging. “So’migonna be immortal now?” It seemed uproariously funny, but all I could manage was a kind of cough-laugh. No one else smiled. The room dipped and spun, and I shook my head, trying to steady it. It got worse. Shane grabbed me by the shoulders, and I realized I’d tilted sideways.
“Doesn’t work that way,” Diana said. “You’d have to have her blood in you—a lot of it. You’ll be fine if you live.”
There was no mistaking the quelling glare Shane sent her that time, but she didn’t seem affected. She leaned in a corner and looked at her hands.
“You’ll be fine,” Bunny confirmed, and pressed two fingers to my neck just below the wound.
The fang marks tingled. I couldn’t tell what she was doing—and I didn’t dare dip into her head and risk interfering—but I could feel the way power flowed through her. It wasn’t the same as when Shane or Lionel used their gifts—more like when I used mine. She was a channel for it. My skin warmed while she worked, and the rush of returning blood made me shudder with a sensation close to pleasure. The holes in my neck flared hot, and then the pain was gone.
The dizziness remained, and Bunny moved her hands to my chest. She laid both palms flat along my clavicle, and after a moment, I stopped shivering. I hadn’t realized I’d been shivering in the first
place. My toes and fingers tingled with warmth.
Bunny squeezed my shoulders. “Good as new.”
I looked around experimentally. The room stayed still. Shane looked grim.
“And you?” said Bunny, looking over at him.
“I’m fine.”
She raised her eyebrow at him and motioned him forward. He obeyed, and she gripped his arm with one perfectly manicured hand. When she released him, Shane rolled his shoulders and tested his weight on his leg. He didn’t wobble.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Hmm.” Bunny looked him over. “Try to stay out of trouble for a little while, won’t you?” She left the room, heels clicking on the tile.
Shane helped me off the massage table and supported me back to the car. I felt fine, but he wouldn’t let go. Diana followed behind in silence and let herself in while Shane arranged me in the passenger seat.
“I’m fine. Didn’t Bunny just heal me?”
He ignored me. We only passed a handful of cars on our way back to the B&B, but I didn’t miss the way he continually checked his rearview mirror.
“She won’t follow,” Diana said finally, startling us both. “You hurt her too badly, and she was exposed to the sun. She needs time to heal. And blood.”
There was a hint of anger in her voice, and not all of it was directed at Annette.
“We’re not going to risk traveling right now,” Shane said. “Not while it’s dark out.” I could tell he didn’t trust that we were safe.
The B&B was quiet when we pulled into the garage. Diana went up to the room she’d left only that morning, and Shane made me wait in the kitchen while he went out to the backyard. He turned on the UV lights and went into the old kitchen, coming out with a machete and a crowbar. Then he led me up the stairs to his old room and shut the door firmly behind us, settling the weapons on either side of the bed.
He shucked off his shirt and shoes. “Come here,” he said.
I obeyed, walking into the circle of his arms and letting him wrap me up.
“I’ve never been so scared in my life.”
I scoffed at him. This, from the man who’d taken a bullet for me not six months ago. “She threw you—just threw you like you were a piece of paper.”
He only buried his face in my hair and inhaled.
“And you’re the one she wants to kill.”
Shane shook his head. “I don’t buy it.”
“Diana said—”
“Cass, I’m just a guy.” He lifted his head and framed my face with his hands. “I’m not as powerful as you—don’t shake your head, we both know it’s true—and I don’t have abilities like Diana’s. Why would she want me dead?”
“I don’t know. But Diana said she wants to kill you. There has to be a reason.”
“Yeah—like maybe I get in her way.”
“Or maybe you’re the one to kill her.”
“Not likely.” He took a step backward, pulling me with him. “Come to bed.”
I knew he didn’t mean to sleep. I looked out the window at the UV lights bathing the backyard in a weird purple glow. “We just got into a fight with a vampire. What are we going to do if she comes after us again?”
“I don’t know.” His mental touch slid to my waist and tugged. I let him draw me along until we reached the bed. Shane sat and pressed his face to my belly.
“You aren’t taking this seriously.” I ran my hands over the black curls of his close-cropped hair to rest on the back of his neck. His skin was warm. I kneaded the corded muscle of his shoulders.
“I’m taking it very seriously.” He looked up at me. “I’m scared out of my mind. But Diana said your trick with the light ball bought us some time. We should use it.” He parted his knees and tugged me into the space between them. “Maybe my brush with death has made me remember the important things in life.”
“Like sticking around to enjoy them?” The memory of his mental voice pinged in my head. Take from me, Take what you need. I pushed it around, but I couldn’t get rid of it.
Shane lay back and pulled me with him, rolling to pin me beneath him, trapping my wrists in his hands. The delicious weight of him encouraged my legs to spread wider and accommodate him. He touched his forehead to mine while his mental touch traveled from my waist, up my side, along the side of one breast to just below my ear. “I thought she’d killed you,” he said.
“I thought she’d killed you.”
He kissed the hollow of my throat and worked on the buttons of my shirt. His lips traveled up my neck to my earlobe, teeth grazing my skin. “Why didn’t you pull from me?”
“Shane...”
“She could’ve killed you. Why didn’t you take what you needed?”
“I couldn’t. Not from you.” The needful ache lived just outside my conscious mind. Just the idea of pulling from Shane, of tapping into the bone-deep connection we shared—I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stop. In fact, I was sure I wouldn’t. I shuddered and turned my head.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay.” He slid his arms beneath me and pulled me close to the wall of his chest, shielding me. “We made it. We all made it.”
“For now.”
“Now is what matters.”
We pulled off the rest of our clothes, and for a little while, I lost myself in the immediacy of warm mouths on warm skin. When he slid inside me, my world funneled into the place where our bodies were joined. I convinced myself there was nothing else.
After the climax, I fell asleep with my head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat and thinking we were going to be all right.
* * *
It happened again.
I woke up in a cold sweat.
Shane’s words came back to me, over and over and over. Take from me. Take what you need.
The lust for it was back, the wheedling, persistent want. My mind spun in a circle of failed logic, some primitive part of me arguing for surrender, some fierce, weakening part insisting on resistance. It was going to crumble, I could tell. The inevitability of it was almost comforting.
I got up and sat on the edge of the bed. Shane shifted and turned onto his side, mumbling in his sleep. I bit down on my knuckle and sobbed as quietly as I could.
I stayed that way until I didn’t have tears left and the house woke up. Lionel’s alarm went off on the other side of the house. I felt his mind wake up and then his body. He went down the creaking stairs to make breakfast.
I waited a few minutes, then washed my face with freezing water and went down too. It was cinnamon roll day. I found him taking the rolls out for proofing.
“You’re up early, Cassie.”
“Couldn’t get back to sleep.” I busied myself making coffee. “Figured I could make myself useful.”
“Here you go.” He sent a bag of peaches floating over and rested them on the counter. “Chop ’em up.”
The methodical process was distracting—slicing the fruit in half, prying out the pits without bruising the flesh, cutting each hemisphere into neat slices, blood-red half-moons fading to deep gold at their edges. I focused the whole of my mind on the process, and I was so intent, I had the entire bag finished and arranged in a bowl before I looked up again. Lionel was watching me, but he turned back to a pan of frying sausage patties when I met his eyes.
There weren’t that many guests left. Wasted Guy and his friend, plus a married couple who’d checked in the night before. I didn’t know their names. None of them were up yet.
“Bunny called me,” Lionel said, still looking at the sausage patties. “Dunno why you thought I wouldn’t find out.”
I sighed. “We didn’t want to worry you.”
Lionel shook his head. “Dunno where you got the idea being worried was the worst thing that could happen to me.” He might’ve
smiled a little, but I wasn’t sure. “The girl still with us?”
I nodded. “Looks like we’re stuck with her for now.”
“Poor lost little thing.” Lionel slid a batch of sausages onto a plate lined with paper towels. “So we still have our vampire problem.”
“We still have our vampire problem.” I went to stand next to him. “Where’s Bruce?” I’d only just now noticed he was missing from his usual spot at the table.
“Off at his brother’s in Bogalusa.” He said it casually. Too casually. I frowned.
“Lionel, why—”
“We’re fine, sugar. Just going through a little rough patch.”
“It’s because of all this. Ian and Diana and...” Me. I didn’t have to say it out loud. None of this would be happening if it wasn’t for me, if I hadn’t answered Diana’s call. Someone banged on the front door.
Lionel looked up with his brow furrowed.
“New guests today?”
Lionel’s frowned. “They wouldn’t come this early.” The knock came again, even louder this time.
“I’ll get it,” I said.
I opened the door to find two policemen in full uniform. They didn’t ask for permission to come in. They shoved a folded piece of paper at me and pushed past me into the hallway.
“Hey, what are you doing?”
I might as well have been talking to the empty space they’d left behind. I opened the paper in my hands. Warrant. Arrest. Ian West. Homicide. Ian.
Shit.
“Hey. Hey!” I ran after them, trying to slow them down, broadcasting a mental message to Shane and Lionel at the same time: “Cops—cops coming—tell Ian—”
Upstairs, Shane jerked awake. “Wha—who—shit—where?”
“Headed for the dining room. I’ll stall them as long as I can.”
“You can’t just barge in here,” I said to their backs. I might as well have recited nursery rhymes.
They went into the guests’ dining room where, unfortunately, Wasted Guy was getting coffee from the urns. At least his friend wasn’t there as well.
“Whoa, cops!” he said, and stared with obvious voyeuristic delight. Lionel came through the swinging door with a plate of sausage and feigned surprise.