The Bloodline War (The Community)

by Tracy Tappan

  A rush of heat swamped her belly, followed by a stab of pain. Not in a million years would she have thought she’d end up wanting one of the men here, especially not Hard Face. Had she learned nothing from her long run of bad date choices? Evidently not, because here she was falling for the one man in Ţărână who wasn’t stumbling around on three legs after her. Or couldn’t have her because of some foolish vow of—

  Pop, pop, pop.

  She startled at the strange noise. “What was—?”

  “Get down!” Kasson tackled her to the ground and pancaked on top of her.

  She omphed and cursed. “Jesus, what’s going on?”

  People started screaming.

  Blowing sand out of her face, Toni craned her head up and scoured the Water Cliffs, her breath catching when she spotted an unfamiliar young man high up on one of the rocky overhangs. He was holding a rifle. Shirtless, he was sweating profusely, and—

  An icy cold washed through her. Dear God, the guy had a creepy black flame tattoo on his jaw. Up close would he also have a sprayed pattern of dotted scars on his chest?

  Her insides quailed. Good God, that was the guy from the murder scene two weeks ago with John Waterson. The dead guy!

  Two more men materialized next to the supposedly-dead kid, one with spiky black hair, the other a tattoo-covered shaved head. Both were bare-chested, as sweaty as the kid, and also carrying rifles.

  The maniac kid propped his rifle back against his hip and swept the crowd with another hailstorm of bullets like he was Scarface.

  Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop….

  Bodies began to jerk and fall. Shouts rose to shrieks as Ţărână’s angelic family outing at the Water Cliffs turned into a panicked mob scene.

  Kasson hopped off her body and pulled her to her feet. “Let’s get to the mansion!” he yelled, urging her into a run toward—

  Pop-pop. Two hits to the back and Kasson plowed face-first into the sand.

  Toni screamed and dropped into a crouch next to Kasson, checking his injured back. There wasn’t any blood…. The sound of pounding feet brought her head up. The spike-haired man and the bald one were racing at her, directly at her. Holy crap! This time she didn’t hesitate as she had with Lørke. She leapt to her feet and raced for the gates of the Water Cliffs, picking up speed as she left the sand behind.

  She barreled onto Main Street, running faster than she ever had in her life. Her lungs were soon on fire, the muscles in her legs screaming, but the sound of pursuit kept her feet moving even when she couldn’t feel them anymore. Jesus, please, just a few more—

  She cried out as something bit into the back of her leg. She tripped, righted herself, then went down hard, scraping her shins as she skidded onto her belly. Bright lights sparkled before her eyes and shards of electricity spiked under her skin. Groaning, she cranked her head around and looked at her leg. A dart was sticking out of her hamstring. Poison? She slumped back onto her face. Oooooh. Something weird was happening. Her body jerked and her brain clunked, like a car popping out of gear, control slipping from the driver.

  A man’s rough hand landed on her shoulder. And then she was being rolled over….

  Chapter Twenty-six

  “Nỵko!” Jaċken yelled into the mic of his headset. “Do you copy!?”

  Only an ominous dead static answered him back. Damn it to hell! His brother was one of the warriors on guard duty today, but hadn’t squawked a single heads-up warning about this incoming furball. Maybe for a really bad reason.

  Growling, he forced his mind into a necessary blankness as he hurdled another of a growing pile of bodies in the sands of the Water Cliffs. Even if all these people were dead, his brother, too, he sure as shit couldn’t think about it now.

  He angled hard to the left, trying to cut off Skull from a headlong charge at Toni. Yeah, Skull. He recognized the prick who’d tried to punch his brains into La-La Land at Scripps Hospital, the guy Thomal had stabbed in the throat and supposedly killed. Jaċken rounded the corner onto Main Street and—

  Spike Boy was pointing a rifle at Toni. Horror flipped a circuit in Jaċken’s brain, switching everything to slowmo, the action before his eyes fragmenting into dozens of individual movie frames; Spike Boy pulling the trigger; a dart appearing at the back of her leg; Toni hitting the ground hard; Spike Boy grabbing her by the shoulder….

  “You crotch stain! I killed your asshole buddy, now I’m gonna kill you!”

  Spike Boy froze in the act of turning Toni over, his black eyes latching onto the man who’d just snarled that at him.

  Fucking A! Jaċken almost shouted in relief. It was Thomal, roaring down from the sloped face of the cave wall.

  Spike Boy’s eyes flashed red and then he was up on his feet and launching himself at Thomal.

  Thomal did his fast Dragon-thing, the image of his body blurring with his inhuman speed. And suddenly, he was whaling on Spike Boy with his fists. No knives, good man. Thomal remembered the Topside Om Rău bled acid.

  His chest heaving, Jaċken slid down onto his knees next to Toni and rolled her over. Her eyes were slitted and glazed. Crap! What was in that dart?! “Stay with me, Toni,” he panted.

  Her pupils wiggled strangely, then her eyes snapped clear and stared fixedly at him.

  “Just hang in there. I’m going to—”

  She missiled herself against his chest, her legs clamping his waist and her arms linking around his neck.

  He choked on his next breath. He couldn’t have been more shocked if she’d just asked him to paint a daisy on her ass.

  “Rën!” Skull shouted as he ran toward Spike Boy. “You ballsed it up, you chuffin’ wanker!”

  Jaċken staggered to his feet. “Holy motherfucker!” he hissed when Toni stuck her tongue in his ear. With no time to figure out what this newest shit-storm was, Jaċken just took off for the mansion, Toni locked firmly in his arms.

  He didn’t know how fast he ran; he wasn’t aware of his legs anymore. The feel of Toni’s luscious breasts jammed so closely against his chest that there wasn’t a breath of space between them pretty much eclipsed every-damned-thing else in the whole world.

  Thomal was soon tight on his heels.

  Halfway there, a sexual purring noise started to come out of Toni that curled every little hair in his ear canals. He ran faster, the purring sound scaring the ungodly shit out of him.

  “Hurry!” he shouted as Thomal took forever dicking with the key code box into the mansion. By the time he was blasting into the Main Parlor, Thomal right behind him, he was in a dead panic.

  “Whoa!” Dev raised his hands when Jaċken almost mowed him down. “Slow down, sir, I got a SITREP for you, okay. Things are chilling. The townsfolk are stuffed in the Drawing Room and the kitchen, upset but—”

  Toni bit his earlobe, and his panic spiked to the ceiling. If she drew blood he was screwed to the hilt.

  “Nỵko’s checked in through the main phone lines,” Dev went on, oblivious to Jaċken’s frantic efforts to pry Toni off. “We’re assholes and elbows with men down, but none are dead, only knocked—”

  Something garbled came out of his mouth.

  “Apparently, those guns were shooting pellets, not bullets. Our men chased those Topside Om Rău shitheads back into the Oţărât tunnels to—”

  He hauled in a huge breath. “Get her the fuck off me!” he belted out on the exhale.

  Dev stopped talking, his mouth hanging open mid-sentence. The dipshit just stood there, though, he and Thomal both, staring like a couple of cows. Were they blind?

  “Toni’s been drugged and she’s trying to—ah!” Air left his lungs in a rush as Toni started to grind her hips against him, forceful pelvic thrusts that made the polyethylene-like bathing suit she was wearing feel like nothing at all.

  Dev shifted into high gear at that, leaping forward and grabbing Toni under the armpits. He tried to pull her off, but only managed to get the top half of her semi-levered loose. Her fingers were fisted firmly into the front
of Jaċken’s shirt and her legs were locked around his waist like he was a runaway horse.

  “Peel her hands off!” Jaċken yelled at Thomal, staggering forward as he was hauled about in the Dev-Toni tug-o-war.

  Thomal didn’t make it in time. Jaċken’s shirt ripped, splitting all the way down the middle.

  Toni made a small sound of pleasure at the sight of his bare chest, and then she did let go…but only long enough to turn and punch annoying Dev right in the face.

  “Ow!” Dev barked, blood squirting from his nose.

  Toni rounded on Jaċken again and charged.

  Jaċken backpedaled crazily. “Get Dr. Jess!” The carnivorous look in Toni’s eyes meant that he was in deep shit and heading deeper. “Have him bring a tranquilizer or—Jesus!”

  Toni jumped on him, slamming against his chest and fastening onto him again. He went flying backward, his feet slipping out from under him until the backs of his knees hit the edge of one of Roth’s dainty parlor chairs. His ass came down hard on it and—crack!—the chair split in half, dumping the two of them onto the Turkish carpet with a bone-jarring thump.

  Toni didn’t waste any time. She climbed up his body and latched her lips onto his.

  He muffled a call for help as he grabbed her shoulders and pushed. Somewhere in the back of his mind he was aware of Thomal thundering out of the parlor and Dev trying to pull Toni off by the waist. Otherwise the blood pounding against his temples made it difficult to attend to much of anything but the overpowering feel of Toni’s hot, eager lips devouring his. A guttural sound boiled up in his chest. He’d never been kissed on the mouth before, and having his first time be like this, with a wild and passion-crazed Toni, was the equivalent of trying to light a cigarette for the first time with a blowtorch instead of a match. It consumed him entirely with heat.

  “Damn it, Jaċken,” Dev ground out, “what do you want me to do? I can’t get her off you, not unless I hurt her.”

  Like he could answer that? Toni’s tongue was in his mouth, slipping deep inside to swirl and explore, to taste him in a way he’d never been tasted before, in a way he’d never even thought possible. Lust hit him like a thunderbolt right between the thighs, the honey-sweet caress of her warm, moist tongue against his own sending a tidal wave of blood rushing hectically toward his crotch. He went tense all over and drew in a torn breath. This one’s going to be a bitch…. The blood slammed against the stop-dam in his cock in an excruciating collision.

  He tore his mouth from Toni’s on a bellow. “She’s killing me, Nichita!”

  “Shitfuckpiss.” Dev pulled on her hard this time.

  Jaċken hissed as he and Toni were yanked up together, the grip of her legs around his waist unbreakable. He was jerked up onto his knees, then sent falling all the way over on top of her, his face planting helplessly between her ample breasts. He wanted to scream—in both frustration and ecstasy—as Toni dug her fingers into his hair to hold his face in place and pumped her hips up against him.

  “Good heavens!”

  Yeah, this was the scene Dr. Jess dashed into along with Thomal. And that, along with Dev’s bloody nose….

  The doctor just naturally assumed it was Jaċken who’d blown the fuse.

  “No!” Jaċken rocketed upright onto his knees, Toni finally sprawling off him, and glared at the syringe dangling from his arm. “Not me, you idiot! Her!”

  Jess blinked owlishly. “Oh.” Then he blanched, his eyes going saucer-wide on Jaċken. “Oh, dear, what have I done?”

  Jaċken’s body jerked as a burning sensation roared through his veins, oxygen howling in his lungs like a high wind. Oh, shit. What had Jess done? He felt his muscles start to pump full of iron, growing heavy. Powerful. No—no, no, no. The tranquilizer was making him go Rău. He gritted his teeth, molars grinding. Fight it, fight it. He concentrated on the texture of the carpet, the scent of rug shampoo, the sound of—

  The parlor splintered into a dozen puzzle pieces. Ah! He grabbed his head, swaying on his knees. The crackling filled his ears first, then the red haze unfurled over his vision. He shook his head, but couldn’t clear it. His skull felt big and weighted as a mastiff’s. Through the static in his ears, he heard a breathy whimper. A female. He raised his eyes, glaring up from beneath black brows. There she was. The female. Hair, tousled and fiery, lips, red and swollen. Beach skirt dipped between her parted knees. He made a low snuffling sound, an animal picking up a scent. The female was aroused. For him. Instinct reared up and clubbed him.

  Bite her.

  Mate her.

  Nostrils flaring wide, he grabbed her under the knees and yanked her forward, locking her thighs around his hips and shoving her beach skirt up to her waist.

  One of the other males in the room ground out a nasty curse.

  With another whimper, the female arched her pelvis up to him, showing him the panties of her bathing suit. Wet. His chest vibrated. The fragrance of her was a sweet essence in the air. His fangs pierced down into his mouth, pulsating, heavy with a load of Fiinţă. He flung back his head, the cords in his neck flexed, and howled his possession. My woman. A glass hurricane on the coffee table shattered, a bulb in a standing lamp burst.

  Frenzied shouting echoed in the room, voices intermittently making it through the crackle in his ears. “Hurry…and go…Nỵko!”

  He turned again to the female, breathing roughly through his open mouth, a bead of saliva dripping off a fang.

  Her head was lolled back on her neck, her lids half-closed.

  He threw himself on top of her soft body, crushing her beneath him as he went for her throat.

  A brawny arm locked around his neck in a chokehold, the weight of a male pressing his spine.

  “Jaċken, no!” The arm squeezed. “…need to…the hell off!”

  A feral, killing growl rumbled in his chest. A primal warning. My woman.

  “Jaċken…me, Dev! Get…!”

  Reaching behind him, he grabbed his attacker by the scruff of the shirt and tossed the body off, a mere jerk of the arm sending the large male hurtling across the room as if he weighed no more than a rag doll. The male crashed through the center of the coffee table in a hail of splinters, the scent of blood oozing into the air from the male’s nose and now his shoulder.

  Fangs throbbing brutally now, he rammed himself harder between the female’s legs and lunged for her throat again.

  A hand in the back of his hair wrenched him to a stop.

  He snarled and snapped. There was an even larger male behind him now, twisting him into a full nelson—both arms pretzeled behind his neck.

  The new male hauled him off his woman. “Get her…of here!”

  A blond male leapt toward his woman, and a noise came out of the deepest part of him. A low vibrato of evil. The inhuman and threatening sound of Rău.

  The blond came to an immediate stop. “…gonna kill me, Nỵko…you’re…only one who can…without getting….”

  The male by the coffee table lurched woozily to his feet.

  The female was standing now, too, breathing unsteadily, staring at him with glazed, greedy eyes. She wanted.

  He wanted.

  There was nothing but the violent rule of need.

  With another shattering howl, he drove his attacker backward, throwing all of his weight into propelling the large male into the far wall. Plaster boomed into a meteor shower of white and a painting hopped into the air then hit the floor, stiff-walking from one corner to the other before whacking over. A breath was forcefully exhaled and the arms around him slackened. He thrashed past his attacker’s hold and charged for his woman.

  “Put her down…linen chute!” The large male was chasing after him.

  A doctor came huffing into the room, still round-eyed, another syringe in his hand.

  The two other males scooped up his female and heaved her down a hatch.

  Bellowing, he plowed viciously through coffee table debris after them. Those males had touched his woman! His vision hemorrhag
ed a deeper shade of red. The taste of murder wet his tongue.

  “Shit!”

  “Holy—!”

  The males dispersed rapidly, but the larger one stayed right beside him, reaching a hand out….

  But no. The only thing that could stop him now was an oncoming train.

  And that’s exactly what he got.

  A palm on his shoulder spun him around and then a fist going the speed and power of a locomotive landed square in the middle of his face.

  A hailstorm of stars burst apart before his vision, drifting, drifting…. Then everything shriveled to black.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Toni stared sightlessly at her bedroom ceiling, the blue glow from her muted TV flickering across the antique brass light fixture above her. Sixteen light bulbs on it. She’d counted them over and over by now. She ran her tongue slowly over her upper lip. Moisture. Smoothness. A little arch. Everyone was gone now. Finally. Some peace. She shifted slightly on top of her lavender duvet as the musical whoo-whoo of wind drafting through one of the cave’s wormholes floated through the room, defining the quiet rather than disturbing it. Her butt ached from so many hours spent lying in bed.

  Her mind was a mélange of images. Pictures from her “unfortunate episode” with Jaċken—Roth’s phrasing, not hers—continuously tumbled through her mind, no matter how much she tried to stop them. A vision of her standing before Roth in his library-office after she’d recovered from the drugging was one of the most prominent.

  Jaċken had been posted at his usual position to the side of Roth’s desk, both of his eyes blackened, a white strip of bandage covering his nose—clearly it’d been broken—and bruises circling his wrists, suggesting that at some point he’d been shackled. Oh, what a hoot that must’ve been for the man.