by Mina Carter
She shivered, and he yanked her closer. The long, hard bar of his erect cock pressed against her soft stomach. “But there’s blood. I cut you.”
“I know,” he breathed against her lips, teasing the corner with his. “It turns me on. I want to feel your claws all over my body.”
She couldn’t help the moan that escaped her lips as the dark need, the one that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with the scent of blood in the air and worse, rose within her. The part that wanted to use her claws and rip through the flesh that covered his body, just to see what was inside.
“You’ve got it, haven’t you?” He used a thumb to tilt her head up. His lips grazed over her throat. She moaned again, way more vocal than she’d ever been before, wanting to roll over like a cat and show him her stomach in submission. “That thing inside that wants unspeakable things.”
She swallowed, the sound raspy in the silence of the room. How did he know? His tongue brushed the hollow at the base of her throat, and heat over-ruled the darkness, her hips grinding against his. It knew what it wanted, and that was him, filling her. Now.
“It calls to me,” he admitted, his voice hoarse. The hand not holding her jaw swept down her back to cup her ass. Strong fingers dug in. Not enough to hurt, but more than enough to have her gasping and squirming against him. He hauled her closer, trapping his hard cock between them so tight it must have hurt. “The darkness in you. I feel it, and it calls to me. Makes me want to take you…claim you. Make you all mine.”
She bit her lip at the words, soft gasps tumbling from her mouth as he worked his way along her collarbone. His thumb traced along her jaw until his fingers burrowed into the thick fall of her hair, cupping the base of her neck. He moved, looming over her again to look down into her eyes.
“We have to stop,” he told her, but didn’t let her go. The heated shadows in his eyes kicked her arousal up another notch. “You’re not through conversion yet. Not fully. We can’t risk this.”
Slowly he let her go, as though he was convincing himself every step of the way, and stepped back. She pouted, feeling the loss of his body against hers like a physical pain. Gritting her teeth, she fought the urge to follow him, to press herself against him and beg him to continue what he’d started. What was wrong with her? She was never like this over a guy.
In desperation, she gave in to the ache in her gums and relaxed. Sharp pain lanced through her mouth as the fangs there tore through. The pain distracted her from the need surging through her veins and brought her back to the questions she had asked.
“What did they do to me?”
She tried hard to keep the panic and fear out of her voice as she asked, but it crept in anyway. Screw it. The world had gone mad. She was entitled to be freaked out. All in all, she thought she was handling it well.
“Oh, sweetpea.” The heat dropped out of his expression, replaced with tenderness as he reached for her. She fought the urge to step back, but let him pull her into his embrace. “Come on. Let’s sit down…. Hell, what’s your name?”
“Julia,” she murmured, and yielded to his strength as he led her to the couch. “Julia Collier.”
It felt nice to be able to lean on someone, even if just for a little while. They sat, side by side, in the growing darkness. It was odd. She’d always been a little scared of the dark before, a holdover from childhood terrors, but now she welcomed it. The shadows held safety and comfort, easing something deep within her soul.
“Okay.” He turned to her. Took one of her hands in both of his, like he was ready to comfort a bereaved relative. “You were right. They did something to us, so we became something else.”
She nodded. The new instincts, the ones she didn’t understand, told her that whatever they were, he and she were different, and not just on the boy-girl level.
“The Project had three areas of experimentation. Viruses, serums.” He shrugged and a piece of medical tape peeled away from his ribcage. She frowned. She hadn’t noticed he was injured before. “I’m not sure of the science. I’m…was...a soldier, not a scientist. Long story short: the Project injects its subjects with one of three viruses. Lycan, Blood and Re-Animate. Some don’t survive the conversion. The unlucky do.”
“Lycan. Blood and Re…?”
“Re-Animate.” He smiled, the curve of his lips visible to her even in this low light. Surely she shouldn’t have been able to see anything by now? “The living dead. Zombies in other words.”
“Uh-huh….” She nodded, absorbing it all. “I’m a Blood. That’s what…your friend called me. Said I was fair game. Why?”
Brett tipped his head back and blew out a sigh. She fixed her gaze on his throat. On the pulse that should be beating there, but wasn’t. In fact, his heart wasn’t beating at all. Frowning, she extended her senses a little more. Neither were the hearts of the three men in the room next to them. She could smell them, an odd dry smell that reminded her of spiders and cologne, but there was a strange silence where she expected their heartbeats to be. A void area.
“Okay…now things get a little more complicated. It all started with a Lycan pack. Alpha Three. Good team, all of them came through conversion okay, and they were the best the Project had. Bloods don’t work so well in teams; they’re more loners, but the Lycans? They’re pack animals through and through.”
“You refer to them as ‘they’,” she commented. “So you’re not a Lycan then.”
He shook his head and carried on. “But the scientists got nervous about them. Something to do with the way they shifted form—”
She blinked. “Form? What you mean, like…?”
“Werewolves, in a word,” he finished for her. “The Project doesn’t use those names, but Bloods are vampires. Lycans, werewolves and Re-Animates…well, zombies. Science imitates art. Ironic, isn’t it?”
“Crap.” This was unreal. She struggled to take it all in. The army had done this…created vampires which had gotten out? And then attacked her? She looked back at him. “Okay. Alpha Three?”
“The base commander ordered them locked down and assessed pending termination. But we lost contact with the holding location. Our squad was sent in with a Blood to check it out.”
She arched an eyebrow. “They send you guys in after werewolves? That must have been an interesting encounter. Did any of them survive?”
“Ah, no.” He stroked his thumb over the back of her hand, the movement so small she wasn’t sure he was aware of it. “We were human. Didn’t get the Lycans, as it happened. We just got caught in the crossfire as they escaped. All four of us sustained injuries and were shipped back to the base. That’s when they hit us.”
“Hit you?”
His movements stilled, and she could almost feel his frustration and rage in the air.
“Injected us with the virus. Changed us. We woke up in cages, like this.” He waved toward himself. “Not human anymore. The project used us for…clean up.”
She wanted to press him more, but the ominous tone of his voice and the tortured look in his eyes made the words dry up in her throat. Shit. Whatever they’d been through, it had left a scar on his very soul.
“What happened?”
He shuddered and blinked, his eyes clearing as if he returned to the present. “Uh, Alpha Three attacked the base to get one of their members out. The distraction gave the rest of us a chance to escape . Trouble was…we weren’t the only things to get out. The Bloods, the ones who took you, did as well. Do you know anything about what they’re up to?”
Chapter Eight
“I’m not sure how many they have down there.”
Julia perched on the edge of the couch and looked at the three zombies clustered in front of her. Brett, sat next to her, had clued her in. But their strangeness, and the smell, still pulled at her. Before she’d been taken she wouldn’t have known the difference. All she’d have noticed was that they were all horrendously good looking, because even with the Blood virus circling in her veins, she felt the pull
of attraction.
Brett had told her that was how they hunted. Their prey came to them, unable to resist. She had to admit, that was clever. Very clever. She narrowed her eyes. Even though she could feel the pull when she looked at them, with the three men in front of her it was an abstract thing. Something she could take a step back from and assess them, like a scientist studying a bug under a microscope.
“Even a vague idea would help, doll,” the big one that Brett had called Dom said, his voice a deep rumble in the darkness. The room wasn’t lit, but she could see as well as she could in broad daylight. Like her eyes had adapted to use up every little bit of light available.
Bride of Dracula or what? She had the fangs; the claws freaked her out a bit, so all she needed now was the kickass goth outfit to go with them. And the hair. Healthy chestnut curls didn’t scream vamp like straight, jet-black locks did.
“Okay.” Her new fangs hidden safely away, she nibbled at her lower lip. “I woke up in a room. Small, like a cell. I could hear someone crying, a woman, so I knew there were more people there. She told me to be quiet. Said we were in hell.”
“Another woman?” The one who’d introduced himself as Fredericks looked up, pale gaze keen and interested. That was another thing she’d noticed about them, their eyes were all pale, as though the color was leeched out of them.
“Yeah. She was in one of the other rooms. I think there were more. There were certainly more doors all along the corridor.” She shivered at the memory. “It was like a prison. They were cells.”
“Okay. So what happened then?” Fredericks asked, flicking a glance behind him at the third man. The one who’d attacked her. Apparently his name was Kelwood, and he was, to put it bluntly, a few nuggets short of a happy meal. She’d say he was missing the freaking fries to boot, but she didn’t want to piss Dom or Fredericks off. Especially not Fredericks. There was something about him, a stillness that the others didn’t have. A stillness that scared the crap out of her.
She closed her eyes for a moment to marshal her thoughts. The fear she’d felt, still felt, reached out from her memories to try and ensnare her. Her breathing shortened, her heart speeding up. Brett’s hand covered hers, squeezing in reassurance, and it all fell away. She opened her eyes and slid him a smile of thanks.
“Then there was a guy…a Blood I think. I didn’t know that’s what he was back then. Just thought I was in the middle of a nightmare or something. I managed to get past him when he opened the door, but….” She paused and closed her eyes, getting her reactions back under control. When she opened them again, her voice was calmer. “He took me to a room. There was another guy there. He told me I was lucky. I was going to be the mother of a master race.”
She didn’t miss the sharp look between the men before Fredericks spoke again. “This man…was he in charge? What did he look like?”
“Oh, he was definitely in charge. The other guy looked at him for orders.” She looked down at her feet on the cold concrete of the floor. They were dirty, and somehow that bothered her more than the fact that she couldn’t feel the cold. “Tall, blonde…all-American. And an asshole.”
“McCoy,” all four men said at the same time. Dom laughed. “She even got the asshole bit right.” He looked right at her and smiled. “I like you, even if you are a Blood.”
She grinned back. “Not been one for long; perhaps it takes a while for the assholishness to set in, if we all turn out like this McCoy.” Her expression dropped serious. “Better than the alternative anyway.”
“Oh, no,” Brett shook his head. “McCoy was a wanker before they changed him. I think the batch they used to make him was off.”
Dom joined Brett in laughter, and her lips curled in response, until she looked up to find Fredericks looking at her levelly. “What do you mean ‘alternative’?”
“There was a woman there. The only one I saw. She was one of them, but she wasn’t quite right,” she explained slowly. “Like she was broken somewhere mentally. She said things when she let me out. Something about a bird called Alice.”
Kelwood paused his pacing at the back of the room. Lifting his head slowly, he fixed her with a glittering gaze. She felt tension roll through the three men around her as the temperature in the room dropped by several degrees. The ends of her fingers and her gums ached, her fangs and claws reacting to the perceived threat, but she held them in check.
“Alice?” He asked, taking a step forward, then another. “Are you sure she said Alice?”
She nodded. “Absolutely. ‘Take care of baby Alice.’ Why? Does it mean something?”
“What did she look like?” Kelwood demanded, his face mere inches from hers. The speed at which he moved made her jump, but before she could react, Dom hauled him back.
“What did she look like?”
“Errr.… Small, dark hair. Very delicate looking. Pretty. She has a beauty mark here,” she said, touching her cheek by her eye.
Whatever reaction she expected, it wasn’t the one she got. Kelwood’s face hardened and he dropped his head back, howling with rage. Then he was gone, breaking through the door like it was matchwood and tearing through the workshop. A second later they heard the outer door splintering as he burst through it.
“Shit!” Fredericks was on his feet in a flash. “Dom, get after him. Make sure he doesn’t get far.”
The bigger man nodded and raced off after Kelwood. Julia looked between Brett and Fredericks in confusion. “I’m sorry, did I say something wrong?”
Fredericks shook his head, running a hand through his short hair. It was the nearest to rattled she’d seen him so far. “No. It’s just…Kelwood was the only one of us that was married. Before they did this to us. His daughter is called Alice. So....” he trailed off, his throat working as though he couldn’t complete the sentence.
“Shit,” she carried on for him, her words soft in the darkness. “They have his wife.”
*
“Are you sure you can find your way back?”
Julia stopped for a moment, hands on her knees to catch her breath after their breakneck race through the woods. She frowned. Her lungs weren’t burning like they should be after a dash like that. She wasn’t even breathing heavily. Straightening up, she put two fingers on her wrist to check her pulse and the frown deepened. Her heartbeat was barely elevated. In fact, she was filled with so much energy she could probably run like that all day.
“Julia?”
She blinked, brought back to the present by the sound of Brett’s voice. He stood a foot or so away, feet spread as though he’d been caught mid-motion. His abs, now free of the tape, were still flexed, displaying his physique at its best. A rush of heat hit her, the temptation to close the distance and run her hand over the hard muscles assaulting her like a SWAT team on attack. What was it about him that called to her, when the others didn’t? And that kiss….
With iron control, she shut the reaction down and nodded. “Absolutely.”
The three other men stepped out of the shadows around them, and she hid her startled little jump. All her instincts, both human and the new ones she was still getting used to, went on high alert. It was like one moment they weren’t there and then they were. Out here, the wind scattered the barely-there spider scent she’d picked up before. Without their breathing or heartbeats, if she couldn’t see them, she wouldn’t have known they were there.
Freaky. Way freaky.
“How?” Fredericks asked, his voice blunt.
Kelwood lurked behind him, and a tiny shudder escaped her at the intent, over-bright gleam in his eyes when he looked at her. Even though she appeared to have gone from prey to ally because she could lead him back to where they were holding his wife, the guy still scared the living daylights out of her.
Closing her eyes, she opened all her senses. The SARAs disappeared off her ‘radar,’ but it wasn’t them she was looking for. Instead, she searched for the ones from before. The Bloods. The woods around them were silent, so she pushed outwards
, casting her senses into a wider net. It was like sending a pack of hounds out to scent her prey.
Her mind raced as she picked up heartbeats from animals hidden in the undergrowth. Small, fast heartbeats as they scurried about their business. None of them sensed her, and she ignored them in her quest for other prey. She caught it, the faint edge of something, and lifted her head to scent the air.
Luck was with them. The wind changed direction and she grinned, opening her eyes to look at the men around her. “Follow me.”
This time it was she who led, breaking into an easy run as she followed the scent of the Bloods. Stench was a better word. The crisp, dry scent of the SARAs was lost beneath the myriad smells that marked the enemy they tracked. The scent of hot, rich blood warred with the acrid smell of terror and despair. Misery stood side by side with pain, all wrapped around something else…a deeper, darker note she didn’t have a name for, but recognized instantly.
It was the same thing that surged through her own veins. The thing that powered her body as she ran, and for a moment she allowed herself to revel in the movement. She’d been afraid for so long, of Buddy and his goons and what they’d do to her, that she’d forgotten what it felt like to be free, to have the wind in her hair as she ran. To not have to look over her shoulder anymore. To know she could take care of herself.
But this wasn’t about her now. She’d been kidnapped yeah, but she’d escaped thanks to her strange guardian angel. A guardian angel she wasn’t going to leave in that hell-hole, nor any other women, not now that she could do something about it. Her jaw clenched as she leapt over a fallen trunk and kept on running.
She followed the scent until it got so strong it crawled into her nostrils and took up residence there. They’d come past where Brett had saved her from the Blood. McCoy’s bully boy. She rolled the name around her mind as her steps slowed. She had a name to go with the face, but Captain Double A suited him much better. Arrogant Asshole.
The woods thinned out, and the scent of the Bloods thickened. It was so bad she wasn’t sure she’d ever get rid of it. She stopped when the outline of the barn was visible through the trees.