Vamps usually made swooshing noises as they fled past their victim, or, in this case, their threat.
“D-0008, come in,” D-209 urged. “0008?”
“He’s…got…me. Roof…” D-0008 didn’t sound so hot as he rasped across the channel.
“Oh, shit,” D-209 exclaimed.
Suddenly there was a loud thud. Elaina shot up from behind the van, weapon aimed to fire. The vampire had jumped from the roof onto the ground with D-0008 by the neck. His feet were about three inches off the ground as the vampire held him high but positioned strategically in front of his own body.
“Why are you hunting me?” the vampire asked. Its eyes blazed red. A common trait in the most powerful Dresdan, and the color only came out when they were mad or high on emotions.
“Drop him, vamp!” D-209 ordered.
“That’s not how it works. You came for me. This is the problem you created,” the Dresdan said. Long black hair floated in the wind, gracefully, yet the creature held D-0008 with inhuman force that turned his face white.
D-209 fired a warning shot near the vampire.
It laughed. “What a fucking waste! You’re garbage.”
In that instant, the van came plowing across the parking lot, nearly swiping Elaina as it hit top speed. Apparently, it wasn’t fast enough for a vampire. The creature shifted out of the way just in time, but D-0008 never made it.
Elaina cringed and diverted her gaze from the carnage. She took that moment to open fire after the vampire.
“Go, go, go,” D-209 urged as they followed the vampire to the dilapidated building.
Elaina led the way, every one of her senses on alert while D-209 followed far behind her. There were no lights inside. The only thing that greeted them was the smell of dirty motor oil, engine grease, and rust.
D-209 fired behind her and only succeeded in busting through a row of paint cans.
“What?” she yelled at him, startled.
“I thought it was him,” D-209 said.
“Control yourself. Aim to kill. Don’t just shoot in the air aimlessly. You’re giving us away,” she warned.
“Fuck that. That thing isn’t going to kill me.”
“Shut the fuck up before you give our location away.”
“I can hear you two,” the vampire drawled from a location unknown to Elaina. “Amateur assassins. They send you all the time, knowing you’ll die.” The vampire laughed.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Elaina taunted.
“I love the way you sing to me, human,” the vampire said. “I just might.”
His reply made Elaina feel uncomfortable. Not afraid, but uncomfortable. That was odd, given that her life was on the line. Fuck her comfort, she wanted to get out of here alive.
“Do I need to ram the place? Jake’s dead, man,” D-57 reported, his voice muddled, yet came through as panicked.
“W-we’ll h-have to abort,” D-209 stuttered.
Elaina couldn’t turn to give him the side-eye with her motivation still centered around finding their target, but she said, “No fucking way! We finish this. Come on out, vamp.”
In a turn of events that caught Elaina off guard, the vampire came to a screeching halt right in front of them. A bullet blasted Elaina in the leg, and she cried out. She had no idea who’d shot the bullet until D-209 shoved her right at the vampire.
“Take her!”
He dashed out of the warehouse and left her there in the darkness.
The vampire had a stronghold on her arm, and when she raised her gaze to confirm her dilemma, his eyes flashed red.
A scream caught in her throat, and her life literally flashed before her eyes. Fear. She hadn’t felt it in a long time. Someone had the upper hand against her, and that had provoked her fear.
“I’ve come out,” the Dresdan said. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
Elaina opened her mouth, but no words left her lips. She heard a motor rev up outside and some tires scraping the dirt. Her heart dropped when she realized what had just transpired. Where her heart seemed absent, anger rose in its place.
Her leg burned like hell where D-209’s bullet had grazed her. Good thing the bullet wasn’t poisoned. She would have been out like a light…and probably the vampire’s snack by now.
“You are too beautiful to be my executioner,” the Dresdan drawled. His accent was foreign and exotic. She could tell English wasn’t his native language.
Elaina examined him. He looked different up close. Almost like a man. Almost human. He was…striking. Handsome. Yet, lethal and deadly.
The Dresdan turned her so that she was facing away from him and brushed his nose against the bun secured to the back of her head. He then sniffed behind her ear.
“Your blood smells like sunshine. Funny…sunshine is the thing I detest the most, yet it is the thing I most want to conquer.”
“I am no sunshine, vampire. Let me go,” she finally said.
“You came for me, beautiful.” The Dresdan inhaled deeply. “Your blood flows freely like an evening shower. Just an inch more and your colleague would have killed you.”
He was referring to the bullet that had grazed her leg.
“If you’re going to drink me, you might as well go ahead and kill me first. Don’t play cat and mouse with me. I don’t play nice,” she shot back at him.
He chuckled deeply. “I work for my meals, sunshine. And I don’t prey on the weak.”
Weak. That word didn’t resonate with her. She didn’t like being called weak, but she held her tongue. She’d much rather have the vampire believe she was weak and decide she wasn’t worth it, than come to the conclusion that she was strong and hunt her down for the kill.
“What will you do to me?” she asked.
“I just want to know who sent you and exactly where I can find them,” the Dresdan said.
She felt his fingers trailing down the side of her body. She tried to wriggle from his grip, but he held her to his chest. She expected it to be cold and hard, like an unmoving, undead person, yet surprisingly, he was far from that. Almost human, yet not entirely.
“That’s classified,” she said.
“Would you rather I drink you?” he asked.
“Won’t do you any good. I’ve been trained to hide memories,” she replied.
“Trained, but can you? Don’t take me for a rogue. I’m Dresdan, and if I wanted to, I could drain every last memory you have.”
She frowned. “Is that a threat?”
His fingers grazed over the wound on her leg. He lifted his hand, coming up with blood, and then his arm disappeared behind her.
It didn’t take Elaina long to realize that he’d tasted her.
The Dresdan inhaled sharply and then stiffened. “Sunshine…but you are irresistible, despite the drugs in your system.”
“I don’t do drugs.”
“You shot up with the same drugs as the last weak group of trackers they sent after me,” he said.
Elaina bit her tongue. She shouldn’t have to explain to this Dresdan that the drugs she’d shot up with were to prevent infection should she come in contact with any of his blood.
Elaina would have never imagined she would be this fucking close to a vampire.
“So, am I going to have to drink you to get what I want?” he asked.
“Looks that way.” She shrugged. “But like I said, I don’t play nice, so you’d better kill me first.”
“I don’t drink from dead humans, either,” he said.
“Then it looks like you won’t eat tonight,” she said.
“We’ll see.” He breathed against her neck.
Elaina acted quickly. Grabbing the dagger from her belt loop, she spun around, slashed the sharp end against the Dresdan’s chest, and pulled out a handgun.
She fired near his head, missing by only a fraction. A few strands of his glossy black hair fell onto his right shoulder.
The Dresdan never even flinched. In fact, he stood there, unmoving with
those deadly red eyes of his and fangs so thick and long that Elaina almost passed out from the sight of them.
“You’re not afraid of dying, are you?” she asked, gun held tightly in her hand.
He laughed. The cut she’d made on his chest with the knife began to heal. “Why would you ask a vampire that question?”
“I’d ask anyone that question.”
“Are you insinuating that I am just anyone?”
Elaina’s eyes flickered over him again. Head to toe and back again. Almost human. Only more. Her gaze shot back to his and she tightened her fist around the butt of the gun.
“No, I’m not,” she said, aiming for his chest.
He shook his head. “A bullet in the chest won’t kill me.”
“The bullet won’t…” She narrowed her gaze, challenging him.
“If you shoot me with that thing, you want to make sure it kills me.” He grinned. “Do you have a clear shot?” He pushed off the wall.
“Take another step, bastard, and I’ll blow your brains out.”
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Sounds like you mean it.”
“I do.”
“Your colleague betrayed you. You need to be saving those bullets for him.”
Fury rose in her chest. Yes, she would kill that rat bastard.
“You’re hesitating because you don’t want to kill me,” he said, lowering his voice a little.
She swallowed.
“I know why you don’t…”
She pressed her lips together but didn’t respond.
“You’ve been told lies about me and my kind and you know it. We’re not the murderers you were taught to believe.”
“Liar!”
“Who are you going to trust?”
“Not you!”
“No, not me. But whom? A vampire-killing, mafia organization that sends you out here after me to certain death…or your instincts?”
“Lies,” she whispered.
“They sent you here to die. You’re a pawn. How much of my blood are they trying to steal? How much more do they want? Do they even know what they are doing?” He pondered, his tone of voice growing in irritation by the second. “What are the lives of four trackers worth to gain a pint of Dresdan blood when they have hundreds more sheep ready to take commands without question and are recruiting by the dozens?”
Her temperature rose and her lips parted in shock.
“Oh? You didn’t know. There are lots of things you don’t know…Elaina.”
“How do you know my name?”
“Lots of memories reside in the blood. It only takes a drop.” His eyes changed from deep red to black, and his gaze fell to her thigh where blood seeped against her leather and drained down her leg.
The injury wouldn’t kill her, but if she didn’t get treatment for it soon, there was a chance it could become infected.
“Tell me, sunshine, are you afraid of dying?” he asked.
“No,” she stated without hesitation.
“Then what would you die for? An organization that doesn’t give a rat’s ass about your life, or a cause that benefits more than just a few greedy shareholders?”
The warehouse was silent as she pondered his questions, but it was too late, he’d already raised the doubts within her.
“Ah, you have reservations about all of this.”
The Dresdan extended his hand toward her. She jumped back right before she realized there were keys in his palm.
“What is that?”
“My offer. I’ll give you three days to think about it, and then I want you to answer me.”
She shook her head. “Who do you think I am? Your child?”
“I don’t know who you are. You seem to be confused about who and what you represent.” He shrugged. “The choice is yours. Freedom and a set of wheels to get you out of the ghetto where your organization sent you to be slaughtered.”
Elaina frowned. “I can walk.”
“Si?” He tossed her a skeptical look.
She held out her hand, and he dropped the keys in her palm.
“What’s your n—?”
Before she could get the last word out, he was gone, leaving her standing in the middle of the abandoned, old, dilapidated building.
This warehouse could have been her resting place. She could have died. But by luck, she was still here.
Once outside, it didn’t take long for Elaina to find the car the vampire had offered her. She sped off into the night, but she wasn’t headed to her condo. She was probably believed to be dead, and until her mind was made up, she’d pretend to be for the time being.
Chapter 10
Four nights had passed when Elaina finally decided to ditch the hotel she’d been lying low at to call a District head. The vampire hadn’t shown his face as promised, but Elaina had already made up her mind by then.
She’d signed a contract with District 5. There was no getting out of it.
The phone rang twice before someone picked up. “This is DH-3.”
“This is D-33, checking in.”
“We have you on the records as deceased,” he said, his tone uncaring. “You and D-0008.”
“I was severely injured and abandoned by my unit with no phone access. I only just recovered enough to report in. I couldn’t move for days,” she said, half telling the truth.
“Do you need me to send medical assistance?”
“No. I’ve managed thus far.” Her mom had been a paramedic before she quit to take care of Elaina when she was first born, so Elaina knew how to reduce the symptoms of almost any ailment and dress many wounds.
“There were plans to replace the two of you,” DH-3 said. “The assignment has been shifted to another unit until further notice, but these are serious allegations against your fellow unit members. It’s against protocol to leave a dying colleague behind, especially after being attacked by vampires.”
“They were only doing their jobs,” she said, carefully. “I was…held against my will by a vampire. I fought him off. Killed him.”
“Good work on killing a mere rogue, but D-209 reported that our main target has yet to be located.”
So D-209 had lied. About everything. It meant he didn’t want the District heads aware that he’d had the main vampire suspect contained in a building but had instead pushed her and ran like a cowering bitch.
Elaina contained her anger. “He hasn’t been captured,” she confirmed.
“It’s quitting time, D-33. Report first thing in the morning for further instructions. You and what’s left of your unit. Understood?” DH-3 ordered.
When Elaina hung up with him, she triple checked to make sure that all of her doors and windows were locked and her curtains were pulled taught. Her unit members didn’t even know she was alive. When she saw D-209 again, she wasn’t sure that she would be able to contain her anger enough to keep from lashing out. She wanted to kill him. If he betrayed her once, he’d betray her again.
Chapter 11
Elaina woke up to tapping noises on the sliding glass doors of her balcony. She grumbled, seriously hoping that whatever bird or night owl had landed on her terrace would go away. She’d tossed and turned the previous nights after lying on a hard mattress waiting for her leg to heal. Now she was finally back in her own bed, and if she wanted to confront D-209 tomorrow and convince a District head to put her in another unit, she’d need all the rest she could get.
But the tapping didn’t stop.
She picked up a fluffy pillow and pulled it over her head. Then she heard the Dresdan’s call.
“Elaina.”
What the fuck?
She jolted up in bed and her attention immediately flew to the balcony doors. The curtains were pulled closed and she couldn’t see a thing. Half unbelieving and half mortified, she tiptoed over to the door and peeled back the vertical blinds.
Sure enough, a dark figure stood on her balcony, silky, black hair flowing in the breeze. When she gasped, he turned around and grinned at he
r.
Elaina backed away about two feet, shaking her head. The blinds fell back in place, and the image of the Dresdan disappeared.
“No, no. I’m not seeing this,” she told herself. She peeled the blinds back again and he was still there. “Fuck.”
Had he come to kill her? Finish what he started? Four nights had already passed. He hadn’t kept his end of the bargain.
The vampire held up his hands, palms facing her, and then he made a peace sign.
Elaina turned around and looked toward the foyer of her condo. What was wrong with her? Why was she paranoid? No one would burst in here unannounced. She had no friends. Didn’t get any visitors. It was well past midnight, and the whole building was probably asleep except for a handful of night staff.
She unlocked the balcony door, slid it open, and a gush of fresh air flooded inside. Her heart picked up tempo when she realized there was nothing between her and the Dresdan.
“My name is Vicq,” the Dresdan said.
“Vicq,” she repeated. “Just Vicq?”
“When I was made, I gave up my last name.”
It was difficult to remember that he was a vampire. He was so calm and civilized. D5 had taught all recruits and trackers that vampires were vicious, wild creatures. Vicq was not vicious or wild.
“Are you going to invite me inside?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“Are you going to kill me?”
He took a moment to answer her as his Adam’s apple bobbed slowly on his throat. “No.”
“Come in, but remember…I don’t play nice.”
“Duly noted,” he said and crossed the threshold. His gaze roamed over her area and he moved around, observing her things.
She slid the door closed again, applied the locks, and pulled the curtains shut.
“How did you find me?”
“Your blood,” he answered.
“Is it that simple?”
“No. But when a Dresdan becomes addicted to a human after just one little taste, he’ll trace the source anywhere…even to Hell.”
Elaina chuckled. “You can’t be addicted to me.”
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