Her hand was as pale as his, but smattered with golden freckles across the back. Her other hand rested against her knee, the skin still flushed from her earlier injury. “Briar.”
“I know,” she replied and drew her hand away to cover the redness. “I’ll figure this whole daylight thing out. I already set my phone up with alerts and reminders.” Something caught her attention, and she stood, glancing around the room. “I should probably call my mother.”
Her mother. Briar still had a mother. She still had a family. Who was he to think he had a right to her? One misstep, and he could hurt her. No. Let’s be honest. One misstep, and he could kill her. All of them walked the edge, their urges sated with a poor substitute for human blood.
And Briar smelled so good.
His growl rumbled through the room, causing Briar to spin around. “Was that you?”
His fangs ached with the need to bite, and he covered his mouth.
“What’s going on?” Briar hurried to him and gripped his wrist, pulling hard.
Behind him, the door opened, admitting all of his brothers. “Hey, Hudson. Your phone is ringing. I think you have class.” The excuse was weak, but he latched onto it. With his back to Briar, he finally dropped his hand. “Sorry, Briar. I need to go.”
“No! Wait. I want to know what’s going on. Valen did the same thing. And Marcus. What’s going on?”
“You stay around people long enough, and you begin to adopt their habits,” Marcus said, but his joke fell flat. Part of Hudson wanted to turn around, drop his hand and reveal himself. But another part of him, the part that was desperate to keep Briar, made him hurry away.
“Hudson,” she called after him, but he ignored her.
“We owe you an apology,” Valen began, distracting her.
Once he hit the bottom step, his legs wobbled, and he sat. He’d come close, so close, to biting her. His mouth filled with saliva. She would taste as good as she smelled. He wondered if she’d taste like the wine he’d made from the ancient, sun-filled fruit.
If she was going to stay here, all of them would need to hunt more often. Or he’d need to join Marcus in his lab. Between the two of them, they might be able to find a better substitute to slake their thirst than animal blood.
One sip.
The beast inside of him began planning. Wait until she’s asleep. Drink her blood. Give her yours. Heal her.
Turn her.
Hudson slammed his hands to his head, slapping them against his temples. The beast sent him image after image. The temptation was too much, and before he knew what he was doing, he found himself at the top of the stairs.
“Hudson! No!” Sylvain pressed his hands against his chest, fingers hooked like claws.
“One sip.” The voice wasn’t his, but his beast’s, and just like that, Hudson disappeared, leaving his bloodthirsty monster wearing his face.
Chapter 20
Briar
A crash sounded from the hallway, and as one, Valen and Marcus spun, crouching low.
“Back up.” Valen threw a glance over his shoulder before his focus went back to the doorway.
The crawlers. Briar remembered the creature’s long fingers wrapping around her leg, and its weight as it pulled itself eye-level to her. Valen growled, the sound more animal than human, and the fine hairs on the back of Briar’s neck lifted.
Something was wrong here. Neither Valen nor Marcus looked at her again, but she got the sense they were wholly focused on her.
As she backed up like Valen asked, their bodies shifted minutely. The cacophony of noise from the hall suddenly stopped, before erupting into something louder and more frightening. It was as if lions fought for dominance right outside her room.
Roars shook the walls. Briar jumped and rammed into the furniture. One of the framed photos from her bureau shattered on the floor, sending glass flying in all directions.
Like a flash, Valen suddenly jumped into the air to catch the dark form flying toward her. The two figures landed with a crash so hard Briar expected to see an impact crater in the floor.
One of the forms shook free of the other, pinning Briar with a blue-eyed stare that froze her in place.
Hudson.
At least, it was a creature who wore Hudson’s face and body. It twisted Hudson’s features. The handsome, distant man replaced with a slavering, wild-eyed beast.
“Hudson?” Her voice shook, and the beast smiled to reveal four curved fangs along the top of his mouth. They dug into his lower lip, splitting the skin to ooze blood he then licked away.
A flash of brown leapt between her and Hudson. Marcus. Knees bent, he shifted like a soccer player guarding the goal.
Which was her.
Hudson feinted left and then right, but each time Marcus stood between them. Nearby, Valen shook off what must have been a massive body check and rushed to stand next to Marcus.
Something slammed into the door, and Sylvain appeared.
Oh God.
Sylvain’s features were a mirror of Hudson’s. Fangs. Sharp teeth. Wild eyes. It wasn’t the sunlight that was going to be her end; it was these men. Hands clenching into fists, muscles bunching, Sylvain blurred.
Briar’s brain wasn’t fast enough to keep up with the action. One second Hudson appeared in front of her, straight backed and grinning, and the next, he disappeared, swept away in Sylvain’s massive arms, only to reappear at her side. Each time he came close, one of the other guys stood in his way. They didn’t fight, like she expected, but blocked.
They were trying to protect her, but they were also protecting Hudson.
What had she done to cause this? How could she go from conversing casually with the man to becoming his prey?
“What do I do?” she asked no one in particular. Was she supposed to stand here, frozen like a deer in headlights?
Hudson crashed into Marcus, spun away, and then crashed into Valen. Sylvain stayed at his back, arms outstretched to catch him should he try to double back or come at Briar from another angle.
“What do I do?” she asked, but no one answered her.
Hudson was tireless. He went at the guys, biting, tearing. Their clothes shredded beneath Hudson’s fingers. Blood ran down their faces, and dripped onto the carpet.
They hurt. Sylvain favored one side, and Valen’s arm hung at an unnatural angle.
At a loss, she called out, “Hudson, stop!”
And he did. The smile fell from his face, and he tilted his head.
“Hudson, you’re hurting them and scaring me.”
The smile appeared again, but a second later, disappeared. A glimmer of awareness seemed to pass over his eyes before the beast wrestled control again. He leapt, straight into the air, twisting in an attempt to go over Marcus’s head. His fingers grazed Briar’s shoulder, nails shredding her sweatshirt.
Reflexively, Briar swept her arm to knock his aside. “I said, stop!”
Her voice finally pierced his consciousness, and just like that, Hudson was back. He blinked, and his fangs retracted. His entire body shuddered as he came back to himself.
“Briar.” Horrified, his gaze took in her trembling form. Her knees gave out, but he caught her before she hit the ground. “Briar, I’m so sorry.” He helped her settle, then immediately released her, putting distance between them. “I’m so sorry.” Stumbling backward, he collided with Marcus. “Marcus.”
Her fear drained away as she watched Hudson come apart.
“It’s okay,” she said. It wasn’t, but it would be. She was sure of it. “Come here.” She held out her hand, but he stared at it. She wiggled her fingers. “Hudson. Come here.”
He shook his head. “I can’t, Briar. I—”
“Okay.” She allowed her hand to drop and folded her hands together. Deliberately, she let her gaze fall on each one of the guys. “Who’s going to tell me what’s going on?”
No explanation was coming from Hudson, which was fine. The man—man?—was a mess.
“Look,” sh
e said. “Y’all…” Her accent was stronger, even to her ears. It was a dead giveaway that she teetered on the edge of losing her cool. “You know I burn to a crisp in the sun. The sun can literally kill me. And recently, I met a creepy crawly in the woods. I’m uniquely suited to understand the unexplainable. So… hit me. What’s the deal?”
Marcus stared at her, his light brown skin drawn tight over the bones in his face. He opened his mouth and shut it. No help there.
“Sylvain?”
The long-haired wild man shook his head. “It’s hard to explain.”
“Try me.”
He side-eyed Valen, looking for support, and Briar lunged forward. Cupping her hands on either side of his face, she forced him to focus all his attention on her. “Spill.”
He bit his lip, and she was reminded of his sharp teeth. Without hesitating, she used her thumbs to lift his upper lip and examine his teeth. “Where’d your fangs go?”
“They retract,” Valen answered for him while Sylvain stared at her.
“Is this genetic?” Briar asked, her mind whirring with possibilities. Earlier, she’d imagined a rich benefactor adopted the guys, but now she wondered if someone adopted them after they’d been abandoned. Their condition frightened off their birth parents who left them in the custody of the state. Perhaps they’d never been adopted, but had been fostered together. “What is this condition called?”
“Vampirism.” The explanation came from Hudson. Briar faced him, her hands dropping from Sylvain’s face. She crept toward him and perched on her heels.
“You know what I mean,” she said. “They call my condition vampirism, too. What’s it really called?”
Lifting his head, he held her stare steadily. “It’s really called vampirism, Briar. We’re vampires.”
“Shut up.” She clapped her hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry. I mean—”
Barking a laugh, Hudson broke away, staring at the ground and shaking his head. “I tell you we’re vampires, and you apologize for saying, ‘shut up.’”
“It was rude.” And as her mother always said, there was no excuse for rudeness. No one said anything. Briar was struck by the lack of sound, except for her sighs. She sucked in a breath and held it, listening hard.
Nothing.
Hudson’s shoulders didn’t move. Sylvain’s chest didn’t expand.
Her breath rushed out of her. “Are you not breathing?” Lurching forward, she laid her head on Hudson’s chest. “No. You have a heartbeat. So it stands to reason you’d breathe. Why aren’t you breathing? There’s no point to having a heartbeat if you don’t. The blood brings the oxygen to your cells so they don’t die. You need your lungs to—”
Against her ear, a rumble vibrated Hudson’s chest. He cupped the back of her head, holding her there for a second. “We breathe. Not as often as you need to. We have heartbeats. Our body works more efficiently than yours.” Gently, he set her away from him. “More efficiently than a human’s.”
“Vampires.” There was no doubt in Briar’s mind that Hudson told the truth. “But it’s not genetic? It’s something that happens to you?”
“Something that was done to us.” Sylvain’s voice was bitter, and his eyes, when she met them, were angry. “Poison.”
“You were poisoned?”
“Not exactly." Settling himself next to her, Valen spoke. Each of the guys sat now. Hudson across from her. Sylvain and Valen on either side, and Marcus, perched on her bed near Hudson’s shoulder. They stared at her, as though their entire beings lasered on her. Never in her life had she felt like every move she made mattered. What she said, how she responded to them, would dictate how they moved forward.
“We’re venomous,” Marcus said. “If we bite someone, we fill them with our venom. If we give them our blood, they will change. Hopefully into a vampire, but sometimes not. Sometimes, our venom changes them into the thing you saw the other night. A crawler. A being who will live forever in a rotted, broken form.”
“What I saw the other night was a crawler and a vampire?” she asked and shivered. As long as she lived, she'd never forget the feel of the crawler’s hands on her body.
“A crawler and a soldier," Sylvain ground out, his lips curled in disgust.
“A soldier is a vampire who was turned, but only given enough blood to make him immortal. They have no will, no soul. No part of the human they were is left.”
“You're not soldiers,” Briar said, stating the obvious.
“No. But we could have been. We were lucky. At any point in our turning, we could have been crawlers, or soldiers—”
“Or a meal,” Sylvain said over Marcus.
Hesitantly, she lifted her eyes to Hudson. “You wanted to eat me?”
Immediately, Hudson’s lips drew back over his teeth, and he hissed. It wasn’t a threat, but anger, and it seemed to be directed at himself. “I’m so sorry. I should have controlled myself better.”
“I call my vampire a predator,” Valen said, his sympathetic gaze on Hudson. “Sylvain’s is a monster.”
“Mine is Predator,” Sylvain corrected. “Yours is Beast.”
“No. It’s Predator."
“You’re insane. I’ve been calling mine Predator since I turned.” Sylvain crossed his arms, like it was the end of the argument.
“I’m a thousand years older than yours. If I want to call my vampire Predator, I will.”
“Dibs,” Briar interrupted, and both guys stared at her. She cleared her throat. “It sounds like Valen called dibs."
Marcus chuckled, and even Hudson grinned. “Our vampires are part of us,” Hudson said. “But they aren’t all of us. Sometimes, though, they want something, and they are strong. We fight to control them, but there are times when they remind us how much they control us.”
Briar nodded. Her condition sometimes felt like another being living inside her. It controlled every aspect of her life, keeping her from the normal things a person did.
“So you didn’t want to hurt me,” she stated. “Your vampire did.”
"My vampire wanted you. Your scent is mouth-watering. Not only to me, but to all of us. But my vampire? He wants to keep you and change you.” Hudson’s eyes were bleak, and she saw how tormented he was. Yes, his vampire wanted Briar, but the vampire was part of him, and so, logically, Hudson wanted to keep her, too.
The knowledge shouldn’t have warmed Briar’s heart the way it did.
“Why are you smiling?” Hudson asked, and Briar slapped her hand over her mouth. She’d smiled. Darn.
“I’m flattered,” she finally answered. “You like me enough to want to keep me. It makes me feel good.”
“You’re not going to feel good if I rip your throat out,” Hudson said, and Briar jerked at the image his words conjured.
“You just said you didn’t want to hurt me.”
“It’s going to hurt, Briar, if I bite you. And once I taste you, I may not be able to stop myself—”
“Hudson. Enough.” Marcus’s voice was sharp, cutting him off.
“She should know,” Sylvain said. “This is what we are. We’re monsters.”
“I thought you were predators,” Briar joked.
“Why aren’t you running?” Valen asked. “I don’t understand.”
Briar let herself lean against his shoulder. His body was strong and hard. The muscles in his arm had no give, but his hand, when it held hers, was gentle. In the short time she’d known the guys, she’d come to care for them.
Maybe because she’d grown up without friends, she knew how lucky she was to have found them. Before these guys, she’d never experienced the acceptance they gave her.
And so she accepted them. Being a vampire didn’t change how she felt, or what she knew about who they were. If anything, it made her love them more.
Love?
Chapter 21
Hudson
Once again, Hudson’s logic abandoned him. Everything that should have happened, wasn’t happening. Briar hadn’t run, she was
n’t screaming. She hadn’t fainted or started to pray.
Instead, she regarded them steadily, seriously. The only sign of her uncertainty was the way she held Valen’s hand. Her knuckles were white, and every so often, she’d squeeze Valen, as if she needed to reassure herself.
Reassure herself of what? That vampires surrounded her?
Hudson took in a deep breath, but she didn’t smell of fear. Or even anger.
“Valen?” she asked. “Are you the oldest?”
“No,” he answered and leaned his cheek on the top of her head. “Why?”
“You said you were hundreds of years older than Sylvain.”
“Oh.” Jealously, Hudson watched his brother press his lips onto the top of her silky head. “Hudson is the oldest. Then Marcus. Then me. And finally the baby.”
Briar giggled and whatever tension was left in the room disappeared.
“Who turned you all into vampires?” she asked, and then the tension was back and ramped up by a hundred. Her gaze landed on Hudson, question evident.
“It wasn’t me,” he said. “We all have the same maker.”
“Oh.” The word came out on a long breath. “That’s why you’re brothers.”
“Yes,” he answered. “But we chose to be brothers more than anything. It was our maker who brought us together, but we decided to stay together. That’s what made us brothers.”
Briar grinned. “I like that. You chose each other. It makes it special.” She lifted her head from Valen’s arm and stared off into space.
“Briar?” Hudson asked.
She bit her lip, tiny white teeth digging into the pink flesh, and shook her head. “Sorry. Is your maker your father then? Will I meet him?”
“No!” The anger in Sylvain’s voice caused Briar to wince.
“Is he dead?” she asked and frowned.
“I wish,” Hudson said. “Our maker is the worst kind of vampire. He is too powerful and cares only for himself.”
“He was mean to you?” Briar blushed. “I don’t mean to oversimplify. I’m trying to understand. If you make someone a vampire, essentially you’re choosing for them to stay with you forever, right? Are vampires immortal?”
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