She did neither. She stood as quiet and still as possible and tried not to tremble as the contrast between his heated, living flesh and the ice in her bones made her feel colder than ever.
“You can’t approach the grave. Police will be watching for the killer to come and admire his handiwork.”
Holly laughed. For some reason she couldn’t take her eyes off the long, slightly brown fingers on her arm. They flexed beneath her gaze and the movement caused her eyes to seek out his face. He knew. The copper embers in his eyes were alive with knowledge. He knew she was hungry and he knew the hunger wasn’t only for sustenance.
She pulled away. Jerked actually. And staggered back several feet. The effort left her winded…and alone. She would get used to it. She had to. The fact that she’d always been someone who touched others in life meant nothing now. Monsters kept their hands to themselves.
“He does admire it…his handiwork, I mean.” Holly tapped her fist angrily on her chest. “He wants me.” She spit out the words as if they were a tasteless joke. “He won’t let me starve. He’ll be back before then.”
“You have to be ready for him.”
Her body throbbed with need and hunger and pain. She was dizzy with it. Surely he wasn’t suggesting…
“If you die, the only link I have to Dillon will be lost. I’ll be back to staking mindless freaks in alleyways. Your mother will be his plaything for centuries or until he grows tired of her. Is that what you want?”
He stood framed on all sides by aging gravestones. He looked rumpled and earnest and passionately devoted to his cause. The passion stirred Holly not only because she loved her mother, but for darker reasons she tried to fight. His passion made the blood rush faster through his veins.
The heat of his blood as his heart beat faster was like a glowing campfire to her frozen skin. The need for it a palpable force propelling her forward.
Holly didn’t move. Wouldn’t move. Winters did. One step. Two. His desire to recruit her help must have made him forget the urge to keep his distance.
“There are ways you can survive without killing humans…until we save your mother.”
He thought her mother’s salvation would come from the killing wood he had hidden in his pocket, but neither of them mentioned it.
Winters came closer still. The living Holly would have noticed his spice-scented aftershave. The living Holly would have been moved by the way passionate argument lit up his plain brown eyes with amber and belied her earlier assessment of him as not handsome.
But Holly was no longer living. Those fleeting human impressions were quickly overrun by deeper needs. Her veins were collapsing in on themselves. Her body demanded sustenance and here it was in front of her. This man was full of hot, pulsing life.
Winters saw the trembling. He had to see it. Her teeth tried to chatter with the force of it. One pointed incisor pierced the skin of her lower lip, but nothing remained of the rapist to well up in the resulting wound.
Some part of her heard Winters suggest animal blood. Some part of her cringed away from the idea of surviving on the blood of the innocent. Some part of her thought no substitute would keep her from taking the blood of the man only inches from her face.
In the end, she didn’t think of her mother or father or sister. She didn’t think of hunting Dillon or drinking from Winters. She only thought of rest as a black blanket of peace wrapped her in its cool embrace.
Chapter Four
Holly was warm. She sighed and stretched. Her arms and legs were reluctant to move. She stretched languorously, the heat making every part of her seem heavy. Oh, so beautiful, hot contentment, there was nothing like a nap in the sun. She could feel its light wash over her skin and soak right down to her veins. Veins.
There was a song deep inside of her. A psychic hum. She could feel each cell, full and nourished. Plumped up to total satisfaction. Satiated.
The horror of it finally caused her eyelashes to flutter open.
Full of who?
Holly focused her eyes. Beneath her was a cold, metal examining table and in one arm was an IV. It didn’t explain her fullness because the fluid in it was clear. No windows meant that she was in an interior room. The posters on the wall were drug advertisements masquerading as informatory charts and graphs.
How had she wound up in a hospital or clinic and, more importantly, who had she killed?
Winters?
Holly remembered wanting his blood and shuddered even though her skin was heated to the point of feeling feverish. Her stomach clenched and she realized that organ was still empty. Once, when she was eleven, she’d had her appendix removed. She hadn’t been able to keep down food, but an intravenous drip had nourished her. That’s what she felt like now. Her empty stomach would still like a veggie pizza with gooey soy cheese, but she wasn’t actually hungry.
She reached to rub her tummy through the hospital gown she wore and gasped when she felt firm rounded flesh instead of gaunt, cold skin stretched over protruding hipbones. She pulled the loose gown away from her chest and looked down. The sight of pink full breasts tipped by even pinker nipples surprised her. Her hands moved quickly up to her face where she found actual cheeks and warm moist lips.
“It’s like a miracle.” Winters’ voice interrupted her hopeful frenzy of rediscovery. He walked into the room. Very alive and very pale. “None of it even touched your stomach so don’t go looking all woozy on me.”
He looked grim in spite of the lightness of his words.
“This isn’t the first time I’ve called in a medical favor from an old friend. Although this did stretch his abilities to the max considering he’s a vet.”
That would explain why all the posters displayed the anatomy of a German shepherd.
Holly felt cheated. For long seconds she had been almost normal again. Now she felt tricked, or worse, experimented upon. She was still a monster. Only now she was a monster with a debt she could never repay.
His blood flowed in her veins. The fact that it had been freely given didn’t make it any less forbidden. Truthfully, the knowledge that he had given such an intimate part of himself to her, no matter his motivation, awakened the hunger. Her body would crave this warmth even more now. Would crave what it had already tasted. Did he realize the risk he had taken?
His eyes widened slightly under her intense gaze. Was it predatory? She felt like it might be predatory. His warmth was that good inside of her. She was torn between thanking him, cursing him or begging for more. Or simply taking the rest.
Winters’ face went hard.
“I’m anemic, not stupid.” His wooden knife was suddenly there between them. It indented the cotton material of her hospital gown and the flesh of her breast. She had moved. Without realizing it, she had risen up from the table to stalk him. They were inches apart, separated only by the blade in his hand.
Suddenly, the warmth fled. Holly was left cold and shaken. She closed her eyes against the distaste in his.
“I’m not used to being…full…like this. It’s almost like being drugged. A little giddy. A little…wanton.”
Her eyes opened in time to see his pale cheeks flush. So he understood that the desire for his warmth went beyond the animal appetite for his blood.
“I’m only interested in following Dillon.”
Unspoken was the message that he only wanted her as a tracker. A bloodhound. He wasn’t interested in being her dinner…or anything else.
Holly stepped back. Her limbs trembled as if in the aftermath of adrenaline rush. Her body only wanted to hunt one man and it wasn’t her Maker. Her pride encouraged her to hide that. Not to mention self-preservation. If Winters knew how deep her desire for him went…
“I don’t need any more blood.”
“You need to be strong to fight Dillon.”
“I need to be hungry to resist him.”
Pride bedamned, Holly let some of what she was feeling show. Winters stepped back so fast that his back bumped into the door jam
b.
“Less will keep me going. Much less. And you shouldn’t…it shouldn’t come from you.”
She wondered if her eyes gleamed in the dim fluorescent light. She wondered if licking her lips would be over the top. Her tongue slipped out to moisten and taste even though she hadn’t given it permission to do so.
Winters got a hold of himself. She imagined she could actually see him steady each individual nerve and call it in line. In her current state, the rise of his chin and the stiffening of his spine was almost more of a challenge than she could resist. Almost.
“We’ll figure something out. It’s Sunday. You’ll have the rest of tonight to…get control.”
Holly slowly made her way back to the examining table. It went without saying that his gift might have taken away her ability to be controlled around him ever again.
***
Winters left Holly alone so that she could come back down from the blood rush he had inadvertently given her. His blood had done that to her. There was an almost primal thrill in what had happened. And he couldn’t understand it. He’d never been the type to play with fire. He hadn’t become a cop because he was a thrill seeker. He hadn’t decided to hunt vampires because he got off on dark chills. Though that moment with Holly had touched something dark inside of him. No doubt about it.
That moment when she had risen from her sick bed vital and strong and still hungry for what he could give her. That moment when she had looked torn between rape and feast, lust and need, want and hunger. That moment had made him feel like crack personified. Like the fountain of youth. Like a happy hour on legs. Like he wanted to crawl up on a freakin’ buffet table for her pleasure.
It had to be some kind of thrall. If a wooden knife could make a vampire go down in a wet, smoldering pile of ash, then maybe some of the other Dracula crap was real too. Some of that “look into my eyes” mojo. Sharing his blood had been a calculated risk and it was one he was already regretting.
Those crazy feelings were like an odd trip. The kind of trip that brought goose flesh rising in the night…among other things. He didn’t avoid Holly because he was afraid of her. His fear ran deeper than that. He’d been killing blood drinkers for a year and in that time he had never ever thought one was sexy. Until that moment with Holly. And he didn’t ever want to feel that way again.
***
By dusk on Monday, Holly was ready to leave. She was cold again. Cold and controlled. The veterinarian who had helped Winters share his blood never showed. Apparently, Winters had enough clout with the doctor to make him reschedule a whole day’s worth of work. The vet hadn’t showed and, when Holly awoke, she wondered if Winters would ever show again.
He did.
As if she hadn’t tried to seduce him to death, as if she hadn’t behaved like a hungry beast, he came into the room with several bags of clothing and dumped them onto the bed. While his back was turned, she tugged on a familiar bra and panties and jeans and a tank. She wondered if he understood her need for sweaters when she found one in the pile as well. Spring was coming, but it felt like an Arctic winter to her. She told herself that was a good thing. When the memory of the warmth Winters had shared with her was enough to send her into a near swoon, she needed the equivalent of a cold shower and the cold air would do.
She shoved the extra clothes back into one bag. He had raided her loft to bring her these things. It felt like an invasion of privacy. Stupid, but there it was. His blood was in her veins. Losing your autonomy took some getting used to.
When he turned to face her, Holly adopted a casual, disinterested expression. It was a lie, but she was glad to be able to do it.
“This isn’t going to be easy. I’m not a bloodhound. I can sense him when he’s near, but he could be halfway around the world by now.”
“You’re forgetting he wants to be found. He took your mother because he wanted you to follow.”
“He wants me.” It wasn’t an agreement so much as a flat, emotionless statement of fact. The casual mention of her mother sent alarm tracking across her skin. Her reaction was control and more control. It would be too easy to let the monster take over. Too easy to drain Winters and hunt down Dillon as a full-on, ravening beast.
“It’s up to us to give him more than he expects.”
“Or much, much less,” Holly mumbled.
“So, we hang until he lets you get the scent.”
Winters used casual words, but his body was tense. She could tell it from all the way across the room. Knowing it made her nervous. The man was a ruthless hunter. He had killed more than a hundred people-turned-monsters and he was strong, in and out. He had probably seen it all. And she made him nervous. If she needed a constant reminder that she was no longer peppy little Holly Spinnaker, he provided it.
She felt like the beast she was. And that was a good thing.
“Right. We’ll…hang.” And somehow she would hide how badly she wanted to be near him.
Chapter Five
The Underground was loud. Pressing through the noise, she walked down the stairs into the dance club as if she stepped into a pool of warm, smoky water. Sound waves lapped at her feet, rose up to her thighs and washed over her chest. The vibration of drum and bass, the shuffle of feet against a polished cement floor and the hum of the singer’s voice brushed against her skin like liquid. She swam to a table in the corner and sat down, almost losing her train of thought as the sensation of sinking up to her neck into a Jacuzzi of sound took over. Almost. Winters was here. Somewhere. The knowledge kept her from drowning in the band’s seductive crescendo finish.
The next song started before she could come up for air. When it did, she didn’t want to. Haunting strings and an eerie vocal bathed her ears and numbed her nerve endings. She swayed slightly, almost hypnotized by the rise and fall of the singer’s voice. She felt as well as heard each breath of air that caressed vocal cords into soulful expression.
On the dance floor, lovers and would-be lovers moved together in a skin-to-skin glide. Holly took a shallow breath, trying not to add scent to senses already immersed in more input than they could handle. So many hearts. So much overheated and rushing blood.
“Don’t you think getting off on this Goth stuff is a little cliché?”
Holly swallowed hard against the painful dryness in her throat and looked up at Winters. She was getting used to the way he forced a casual tone into his voice even when his expression was deadly serious.
She felt raw, naked and exposed. As if she’d been caught doing something more than listening to some music. Of course, she had been doing more. Her body betrayed her again and again. It betrayed her now, even as she fought the embarrassment of being sensually aroused by the music, by making her hyper-aware of Winters.
He had opted to blend in tonight. Gone were the baggy, wrinkled trench and trousers. In their place, he wore low-slung, hip-hugging jeans and a graphic tee. The faded denim and black cotton accented muscle with his every move.
He sat down on the couch-like chair beside her and draped an arm across her shoulders. Again, casual but not. She still didn’t know about that ironing board, but she sure as hell knew a brand new definition for handsome.
It might have been the fresh look. It might have been the blood. It might have been an intoxicating blend of the two, but Winters wasn’t handsome, he was dangerously attractive. The slight touch of his fingers on her shoulder turned her hunger from the dance floor. She fought to tamp it down before the full force of it could turn to him.
“None of these people are going home in a doggy bag.”
Anger and shame fought for dominance in her chest. Anger won…barely.
“No, but at least two will leave in body bags unless we stop the other vampires in this room.”
She hardly had time to enjoy the look of surprise on his face before it was gone. She did enjoy the fact that he’d been so focused on her that he hadn’t picked up on the other predators in the room. Shallow, but a monster had to scrap for a complimen
t any way she could get it.
Later she would worry about how closely Winters was tied to her since the sharing of the blood. Later she would wonder and worry over the unbidden almost predatory excitement that warmed her when she thought of those ties. Now she only wondered if the coming fight would break the tenuous control she had over the beast within her.
Two men who had been muscle-bound in life now moved toward her and Winters with a strange grace that didn’t match their physiques. She watched them over his shoulder. He didn’t turn to do the same.
“We get up and head out back to the alley. With any luck they’ll let us take this outside.”
“One hundred and thirty-one, right?” She was a vampire, but suddenly she felt like a ninety-pound weakling. She had been a college student. One who had never had to utilize the whopping ten self-defense classes she’d taken two years ago.
“Trust me.”
And, amazingly, she did. He’d killed her sister and threatened to kill her and her mother repeatedly, but she trusted him in this. He killed. It was who he was and what he did. At one time, he may have been a very different man. He might have laughed and smiled and loved. Now, he killed and, for tonight at least, she was glad.
He rose and took her by the hand. From the corner of her eye she saw one vamp’s face break into a wide grin. They thought she was playing with her dinner. They saw a powerful fiend allowing a human to lead her outside and they wanted to join in the fun and games.
Unless they were Dillon’s.
If her Maker was ready to be found, she wasn’t sure that trust would win the day. She did know she was stronger than she’d been since he’d made her. Winters had gifted her with power. If she could harness it, if she could somehow manage to channel and control it… She was terrified. There was going to be blood in that alley. One way or another there was going to be blood. And she wasn’t entirely sure that the adrenaline zinging through her hungry veins was the adrenaline of fear. The very idea that it could partially be anticipation scared her more than she’d ever been scared before.
Hunger Page 4