by Eva Sloan
Delia leaned forward looking at Lucy with faux confusion. “Can you say that bit again? I didn’t quite hear you.”
Lucy gritted her teeth, pulling up her power around her, felt it scorch and lick out of her hot and angry. “Let me out of this house, you nasty bitch!”
Again Lucy felt herself weaken. She staggered backward into the wooden door, gasping.
Delia looked as if she were pondering Lucy’s command, rolling it around in her mouth as if tasting the very words. “Nope,” she said with a cheerful chirp. “Don’t wanna.”
Lucy felt the icy fingers of shock and realization climb up her spine. She could call up an entire graveyard of zombies, and she’d been able to control Delia before. What was different now?
The house, Lucy thought. The house and all those weird ass markings on the walls.
“Come on Luce…”—Lucy gulped. Delia had heard Gabriel call her that. And now, hearing it come out of the vampire’s mouth, made Lucy cringe—“Want to try that once more with feeling?”
“It’s the house, isn’t it? The creepy marking’s on the walls.”
“Now you’re getting it.” Delia paced around her, her eyes laughing. “Guess you’re not as dumb as I thought.”
The annoyed heat flashed in her head again, “Well, I knew it couldn’t be you.”
Delia’s face turned hard and angry.
“I mean, you didn’t paint all these marks. This is just somewhere you knew about. Some secret safe house you’re family owns. You probably have the mystical power of a doily.”
Delia smiled again. “Safe? No, this house is anything but safe.” She chuckled as she spread her arms out to encompass the entire building. “This is a house of interrogation, a house of torture.”
Lucy gulped reflexively. She didn’t want to know anymore about the house. And she certainly didn’t want to imagine the torture visited within these walls. She especially didn’t want to think about what kinds of torture this wacked out vamp would like to dole out on her.
“But you’re right,” Delia said. “It is the markings that keep your filthy little trick from working on me again. And no, I didn’t have anything to do with the magic of this place. The markings are old magic, the kind you don’t see much anymore. And they’re very specific. They make everything—except vampires—powerless within the confines of these walls.”
“I knew it.” Lucy waved her hand dismissively.
“Even though I’m one hundred percent sure what kind of power you actually have—I’m guessing you’re a necromancer—I’m sure you’re not going to be able to overcome them.”
Lucy’s mind was practically sprinting through all the thoughts swirling through her mind. If Delia had wanted to kill her, then she could’ve just done it while she was passed out. Why the whole kidnapping bit? Why drag her all the way to this hexed house?
“So…you’re just going to keep me locked up in this house?” Lucy scowled at her captor. “Cause if you are, I’d like a TV, with cable…and some better furniture.”
“What are you—?”
“And you’re going to have to call for pizza or something...no, make that Chinese,” Lucy continued like she was dictating orders to her personal assistant. “I’m dying for an egg roll, and some sweet and sour chicken.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Delia shrieked.
“Well, you went to a lot of trouble kidnapping me: knocking me out, dragging me here. And all for what?” Lucy brushed some dust and leftover grass from the graveyard from her sleeve. “I don’t see you killing me, especially since you had plenty of chances while I was passed out.”
Delia smiled again, her eyes brimming with excitement.
The bitch has a plan, damn it…
Delia said, “It occurred to me that if I killed you, I wouldn’t really get much satisfaction out of it, vengeance wise it’d be kind of short lived. I want Gabriel to feel this for a long time.”
Lucy glared at her. “Just get on with it already.”
Delia rushed at her, grabbed her by the throat and slammed Lucy against the wooden door again. She snarled, baring her teeth. “Patience…”
She let go of Lucy’s throat and pushed herself away from her. “There is a way,” Delia said with naked hatred in her cold blue eyes. “A very simple way to make sure you can never marry Gabriel…and yet keeps blood off my hands, figuratively speaking.”
Somehow Lucy knew what Delia was going to say. If she wasn’t going to kill her, and she wasn’t going to hold her captive—and once she was done Delia wouldn’t have to worry about Lucy and Gabriel getting married—that left one more alternative.
“So you’re going to…”—Lucy gulped down a huge, ice cold ball of fear—“to…”
“Make you vampire. Yeah, that’s the idea.”
Lucy stood there, astonished, her mouth gaping.
“I was going to say disfigure my face.” Okay, Lucy thought. Not my best guess.
Delia laughed and let Lucy go. “Maybe later.”
Lucy took off at a dead sprint as she rushed toward the back of the house. Some annoying girl was screaming like an idiot. Lucy suddenly realized she was the annoying screaming idiot. Straight ahead she saw another thick wooden door and she rushed toward it, grabbing the knob and finding it blessedly unlocked. She yanked it open, rushing into the dark little room—definitely not an exit!—and pulled the door shut with a slam. She felt for a latch, but once again she could only feel the subtle notch for a key—another dead bolt.
Lucy gulped air and then held it. She listened for Delia’s approach. She had all her weight leveraged up against the door, but knew she could never hold it against Delia’s vampiric strength.
Without ceremony, the pitch dark room filled with light from an overhead light fixture: a large, dusty crystal chandelier. On the other side of the room, peering at Lucy from another open door, Delia flashed a most beatific smile.
“Silly girl…you can’t actually think you’re going to get out of this…or away from me.”
All around the bare room Lucy saw those creepy markings adorning all the walls. In the bright light of the chandelier Lucy could see they weren’t just painted on. No, the symbols were brushed onto the walls with blood, having long ago dried to a deep, dark crimson.
Delia streaked with blurry speed across the room and flung Lucy against the wall. “This was...well, it was fun! But we’ve got more…appetizing business to tend to.” Her fangs lengthened and glowed in her mouth. “This might hurt a little.”
Lucy was about to scream bloody murder, which was actually kind of what was about to happen, but then her mind clicked onto something she’d completely forgotten about.
Mr. Winkie, Lucy thought. Come to me. Immediately she felt the sheath and harness materialize on her forearm. Delia was leaning in to bite Lucy’s neck, so she didn’t notice when Lucy felt for the knife, then pulled it out of the sheath.
Delia’s teeth sank into her throat with merciless efficiency. The pain and shock of being so penetrated, and the instant weakening that having your life blood rush from your body, made Lucy shake and moan, the weight of the world crashing down on her.
But she had the blade in her hand, thin and light as a feather. Miraculously it was pointed in the just the right direction. With her blood rushing from her into the vampire’s sucking maw, she thrust up with the last bit of strength she had and slid the blade into Delia’s belly like she made out of butter.
Delia screamed and pushed herself away from Lucy. She staggered back with her hands holding onto the gushing wound at her core. The blood spilled in splashes on the hard wood floor.
She laughed, though this time it sounded raspy with pain. “Silver.” She nodded to the knife still clutched in Lucy’s hand, Delia’s blood dripping from it. “Nice. But this wound won’t kill me…it’ll just piss me off! Believe me…” She staggered back against the nearest wall. “I’ll make you suffer for this.”
“I believe you,” Lucy said breathlessly.
She struggled to keep herself standing, her one hand clutching at her injured neck—the vampire’s teeth had ripped a chunk out—the other hand holding the knife. The blade and her hand were drenched in the vampire’s blood. “But it will slow you down.”
“Not enough to save you,” she laughed. “Stupid cow!”
Lucy looked at her hands, dripping with her blood and the vampire’s blood, and an idea popped into her head. “You said the markings on the walls protected vampires, making anything else’s powers useless.” Lucy dropped the knife, stumbling toward the closest wall marking. She reached out to the creepy crimson design and swiped her bloody hands over it, immediately feeling a sizzle and then a flux of power. Suddenly she knew, right then and there, that the spell (at least in that room) had been broken. She could feel it.
“Shit!” Delia spat as her eyes flashed murderously at Lucy. She lurched forward, forgetting the painful gash in her stomach, and ran right for Lucy, her eyes crazed, her fangs dripping with strings of saliva.
Lucy called her power up around her, the familiar heat flickering in her head. “Delia, stop.”
As if she’d run into an invisible wall, Delia halted in her tracks; though she was still seething and trying to reach her arms out to grab at Lucy.
Lucy fell to her knees, suddenly too weak to stand. She pulled her hand away from her neck wound again to find it drenched and dripping with even more blood.
I’m dying…
Delia stalked closer, as if she were trying to pull free of whatever was holding her back.
“I said stop, super bitch!” Lucy’s power flashed hot in her mind, and she felt it reach out and hold Delia back.
But the vampire was smiling.
“You’re fading fast. Won’t be long before all that delicious blood of yours is all over the floor. And when you pass out…” She clapped her hands together in exclamation and smiled all the more devilishly. “You’re mine.”
The psycho-bitch-monster-of-death has a point. Once I pass out—which I’m already starting to feel—I won’t be able to hold her back at all. Lucy shivered as darkness crowded her peripheral vision. Either she’ll kill me, or…or I’ll wake up with fangs.
“I’m torn,” Delia said, obviously feeling better, her wound probably almost healed already. “Should I just turn you and get this over with? Or…I could make you drink just enough of my blood to heal you, and then I can carve you up for a while, see how you like it!”
While Delia was monologuing her ass off about the ravages she was going to inflict on her, a very simple thought revealed itself to Lucy. She didn’t know if her little ability covered it…and even if it did work, would it last after she’d passed out?
“Or I could wait until you dead, dead.” Delia twirled with excitement. “With only the tiniest sparks of life left, and then bring you back as—”
“Go to sleep,” Lucy said, her eyes locked on those of the vampire.
Her monologue abruptly interrupted, Delia stared at Lucy with slack jawed disbelief.
Lucy breathed in one deep breath, calling up what was left of her strength, feeling the hot annoyance burn in her skull. Delia was just about to say something when Lucy said: “Go—to—sleep—Delia! And don’t wake up again until I tell you to.”
She gave a snort of laughter, shaking her head, but then her knees buckled and she fell to the ground, her arms shaking as she tried to hold herself up from the floor.
“No...you...you can’t...”
“Sleep...” As the word fell from Lucy’s lips, so fell Delia to the ground. Her frosty cold blue eyes stared out at Lucy for a few very uncomfortable beats before they too slid shut, and Delia’s entire body went slack with sleep.
Hopefully she’ll stay that way after...after I... A dark curtain started to fall over Lucy, only the sound off her own breathing filled her ears, a frightening cold enveloping her body, making her numb and scared.
I’m really going to die…
She felt a tear trickle hot down the side of her cheek.
This…so…bites!
From the other side of the room came an earsplitting crash, the sound of splintering wood and metal being ripped apart. Lucy tried to keep her eyelids open, but they fell like a curtain as a very large, very scary shape burst through the wall, roaring like a freaking T-Rex.
Great… It rushed on all fours toward her. Something else that wants to kill me.
Chapter 18
IT WAS THE TASTE that woke her: sweet and rich and…to freaking die for. It gushed over Lucy’s tongue and down her throat in greedy droughts. Better than ice cream, better than chocolate, better than a caramel mocha latte made with whole milk—even better than the cake her grandmother had baked special for her birthday.
As if the scrumptious liquid was a magical cure-all for everything that had ever gone wrong in your life, or had ever laid a finger on you, Lucy felt the panacea rush through her veins, warm and pulsating with life, making every molecule in her body sing with joy, all her pain vanishing as her heart thrummed in her chest.
Strong arms held her, cradled her as she drank from—her lips were latched tight to flesh—someone’s wrist.
“That’s enough,” a man’s voice Lucy knew she should recognize said. “Any more and she might…” He didn’t finish. He pulled his wrist from her grasp, eliciting a whimper from Lucy’s lips. He gathered her up in his strong arms and moved them both effortlessly through the ruins of the room, through the gaping hole in the wall, and out into the cool night.
*****
Time flickered by and Lucy now felt warm all over, the wondrous taste still in her mouth, and everything that had hurt wasn’t hurting anymore. She realized she was so warm because she was pressed against Gabriel’s naked chest, his strong arms wrapped protectively around her. She sighed as she indulged in the thought that she’d died and gone to heaven, and in heaven Gabriel was naked, at least from the waist up.
Lucy opened her eyes a little more and saw they were riding in the back of car, a sedan with tinted windows. Delia’s brother, Vin, was driving. Lucy felt the car sway as Vin zigzagged through traffic, making her hold tighter to Gabriel’s bare torso. Glancing up to the driver’s seat again, Lucy suddenly felt a jolt of astonishment. Vin had a white linen handkerchief wrapped around his wrist. Lucy’s stomach lurched with revulsion as she realized what had happened.
It hadn’t been some dream, or a trick of the mind. Vin had fed her his own blood, probably saving her life…but was she really alive anymore?
“Am I a vampire now?” Her stomach did another flip, and her heart started really thumping. She didn’t care that one of them had saved her life or not, becoming fangy and dead and—well, she just couldn’t get past the whole dead thing—just wasn’t in her life plan.
Delia’s brother finally spoke, his voice silky and smooth, and irritatingly calm. “It takes far more than drinking a little blood to make the change.” He gave her a wink as he gazed at her through the rear view mirror. His eyes were the same blue as Delia’s, yet they were not cold as ice. No, they were liquid blue heat, smoldering as he gazed at her. “So, do not worry.”
“You’ll be fine,” Gabriel said, holding her closer. Lucy took a deep breath and snuggled into his bare, ever so warm flesh. But then she saw Delia lying in the front passenger seat beside Vin.
“What the hell is she doing here?” Lucy blurted out, an edge of hysteria to her voice. Her entire body jerked as her eyes snapped open and her heartbeat began to race again.
“I think she’s asleep,” Vin said neutrally.
“And I so was hoping for ‘she’s dead’ to pop out of your mouth.” All of a sudden Lucy felt like an ungrateful child, talking to Vin like that. After all, he’d literally saved her life.
He acted as if he hadn’t heard her, saying: “Would this be your doing?”
Gabriel turned and looked to Lucy with a confused expression on his gorgeous face.
“Yeah,” Lucy mumbled, “I’m surprised it stuck.”
Her power is extraordinary. I’ll have to keep an eye on her. Then, with a frantic flash of images, all of them of her, reflected through the yearning of his mind, he thought: Would I kill to be with her?
Lucy’s entire body tightened until she was sure she’d break apart in Gabriel’s arms. She’d seen in his thoughts that he wanted to bed her, and he wanted to eat her—drink her, whatever—quite literally. She knew without knowing that his thirst for her blood, and his attraction to her and to her very scent, was overwhelming—just being in the confined space of the car with her, even with Gabriel there, was almost unbearable.
He’d kill me in an instant…or worse…
Lucy was hyperventilating and trembling when Gabriel pulled her closer, pressing his soft, warm lips to her forehead. “I won’t let anything hurt you,” he whispered, his breath warm and tickling against the flesh of her ear and neck. “I promise.”
Lucy snuggled deeply into Gabriel’s naked flesh, the thick slabs of super-heated muscle. She wanted to be home. She wanted to see her grandmother and her mother…hell, she even wanted to see Seth…
But most of all Lucy wanted for what she felt right then—in Gabriel’s arms—to be real.
She caught Vin looking back at her again through the rearview mirror. Just keep your eyes on the road, and on your comatose psychopath of a sister.
Lucy already knew Delia wouldn’t stay asleep forever.
***End***
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