DarkInnocence

by Madeline Pryce

  Skin ice-cold, heart hammering, brain supplying images of Lizbeth and her electric-blue eyes filled with sadistic pleasure, I turned to look out the window without wanting to. Through the bloody, dripping heart now painted on the glass, the silhouette of a man in a long trench coat sauntered down the road. Then vanished.

  I could hardly navigate my phone through my shaking hands.

  “It’s about time you called me back!” My sister’s voice washed over me and the fear and adrenaline clashed together. She let out an amused snort. “I cannot believe you punched Julian in the face. So awesome.”

  I clutched my phone tighter, afraid it would slip from my clammy, trembling fingers. “I’m in trouble.”

  Her tone sobered. “Where are you?”

  “I-I-don’t know. On the side of the road. My brakes stopped working, and—”

  “Holy shit, Hannah, are you okay? Did you crash?”

  “No. I got it stopped, but he’s here, Ella. He’s watching me.”

  “Who is ‘he’?” she asked.

  I gripped the phone tighter and felt like crying. “Mr. Restricted.”

  “What? Hannah, you aren’t making sense. Did you hit your head?”

  “No!” Tears rolled down my cheeks. I brought my legs up on the seat, bent them and curled an arm around my calves. “Someone’s been stalking me, I thought it was a prank, but…it isn’t.” I rocked back and forth, bouncing my gaze from the rear to the side-view mirrors. “I’m scared.”

  “Is he there now?”

  “No, I don’t think so.” I turned in a frantic circle and checked out the back window, no longer trusting the mirrors. “He vanished…” But if he were a vampire he could just as easily reappear whenever he felt like it. Lizbeth had proven that.

  Male voices sounded in the background, Micah and Eli, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Ella came back on the line. “I’m going to try to phaze to you, hang on, sweetie, okay?”

  I nodded, switched the phone from one ear to the other, and realized she couldn’t see me. “Yes, okay, hurry up.”

  Seconds later, out of the darkness, my sister popped into existence. She took a single step and stumbled into the side of my car. I was out of the door and in her arms before I could blink.

  Even though I was several inches taller than she was, Ella held me close, pressed my face into her neck and stroked my hair. “Shush, it’s okay, I’m here now. You’re going to be fine. I’m not going to let anyone hurt you.”

  “Everything is so messed up!” I wailed. And then I emotionally vomited all over her. My words came out in a jumbled, confusing mess. “Lizbeth is haunting me from her grave. I’ve been doing drugs, drinking, popping pills and sleeping with random frat guys. I’m a slut. I hate our house. I hate Eli who, if you haven’t noticed, is fucking his way through the district! Then, to top it off, I totally threw myself at Dante tonight and he rejected me.”

  “Oh, honey.” Ella held me tighter and I cried even harder. She sniffled and her shoulders trembled as if she were crying too. “I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know how bad it was. When you needed me the most I wasn’t there for you. I’m a selfish bitch.”

  The knot of guilt and stress loosened its tight, suffocating grip around my throat. I should have known Ella wouldn’t judge me.

  “It’s not your fault,” I blubbered. “I lied to you, kept lying to you. I could have asked for help and I didn’t.”

  We clung to each other. The more I cried, the better I felt. Some people cut to release the pain lurking in their veins. If I hadn’t been so squeamish about blood, I might have tried it. Turns out, what I needed was my big sister and her bony shoulder to cry my eyes out on.

  Our sisterly moment was officially ruined when some man yelled out his car window at sixty-miles an hour, “Fuck ya, lesbos goin’ at on the side of the road!”

  I looked at Ella and she looked at me. We both started laughing.

  She wiped away the last of my tears. “You threw yourself at Dante?”

  I stepped back to let her see the jacket I hadn’t managed to button while driving and having a nervous breakdown. Through the gap in material, my pale skin practically glowed.

  “Oh, my God!” She clutched the coat closed and buttoned it quickly. “You’re totally naked under there.”

  “I feel so pathetic.” I swiped at a new tear. “He was in the shower, so I got undressed and waited for him in his bed. At the time, it seemed foolproof, ya know? What man doesn’t want a naked woman in his bed? He saw me and you know what he said?”

  Ella shook her head and I sniffled.

  “He told me to put my jacket back on!”

  “He didn’t!” she said in outrage.

  God, I loved her. The tension in my shoulders eased just a little bit. “He did! I’ve never been so humiliated in my entire life. I don’t know how I’m ever going to look at him again.”

  The second I said the words, a large silver truck pulled off the freeway and onto the gravel shoulder. Oh, no. Dust from the pulverized pebbles plumed into the air and I coughed to clear it from my lungs. With horror, I turned as Dante got out of his truck, slammed the door and stalked to us.

  He wore a pale-green shirt stretched across his muscular chest and arms. The faded blue denim covering his legs hugged his thighs and made my mouth water.

  My sister—god bless her condemned soul—stepped in front of me.

  “Move outta my way, Ella,” Dante growled.

  My fearless sister got right in his face, as much as she was able to considering he was more than a foot taller than she was. “You’ve hurt her enough. Get in your truck and go home, I’ve got this.”

  “Oh, that’s rich.” He laughed. “You’ve got this? How fucking convenient.” His eyes smoldered with anger and he stepped into the finger my sister pointed at him. “Where in the hell have you been for the last two months when your sister was puking her guts out because she’d drunk too much or took too many pills? Where were you when she let those assholes use her? Where were you when she woke up in the middle of the night screaming ’cause Lizbeth haunts that fucking house you moved her into?”

  “That’s enough, Dante!” I yelled and stepped in front of Ella to glare up at him.

  His rant made it seem like he cared about me. My stupid girl hormones couldn’t keep up. Either he wanted me or he didn’t.

  Unaffected by my anger, he pointed at me. “And you,” he said, his nostrils flaring, “are the most infuriating woman I’ve ever met. You drive me fucking crazy.”

  He cupped the back of my head and yanked me against him. Before I could ask what in the hell he was doing, he grabbed my hair, pulled so my face tilted up and smashed his lips against mine.

  Chapter Four

  Dante thrust his tongue between my lips and took possession of my mouth. Oh wow. At the first licking caress, my insides went liquid and I melted. He slid his large palm from my waist to my ass, squeezed. I lifted higher onto my toes and wrapped my arms around his neck to deepen the kiss. After he thoroughly explored my mouth, he pulled away and rested his forehead against mine.

  “I’m into you, Hannah, more than I should be,” he said on a soft pant. He lifted his head and used his thumb to swipe my moist bottom lip. “I wasn’t rejecting you earlier, only refusing to use you like those other pricks you’ve been sleeping with. You pulled away from the driveway and I was so fucking furious with you for leaving it took me several minutes to realize there was a pool of brake fluid in my driveway. Are you okay?”

  “I got the car to the side of the road okay. And if you’re into me, why’d you tell me to put the coat back on?”

  He held me tighter and shook his head. “I told you to get dressed because you naked—and sexy as fuck, I mean seriously fucking sexy—spread out on my bed was almost more than I could take.” As if validating his words, the hard, steely length of his erection pressed into my stomach. “I’ve got a lot of self-control, but I also have my limits. When in the hell did you
get a tattoo?”

  Ella’s piercing voice popped my happy bubble. “You have a tattoo? Where?”

  I looked over my shoulder, glanced at my sister’s raised eyebrow and tapping foot.

  “It’s on my right side and I got it a few weeks ago. But I was high and probably drunk at the time so the details are fuzzy. I barely remember getting there, telling the guy what I wanted. I passed out almost straight away. When I woke up, it was done.”

  “Let me see it!” Ella demanded and tried to shove Dante out of the way. She had a better chance of moving a mountain.

  “I’m naked under here.” I batted her hands away when she tried to pull the lapels of the coat apart. “You want me to flash the entire freeway?”

  Dante’s eyes narrowed. “No one except me is seeing you naked.”

  His words, all fierce and protective, heated my blood. I pulled my lower lip, the one that still tingled from his thumb, between my teeth. Speaking of no one else seeing me naked…

  “Dante, someone was watching me, us, at your house. It’s not a coincidence my brakes went out.”

  His body stiffened with anger. “Come again?”

  Ella stepped up to my side and took my hand in hers. The simple contact gave me strength. If I weren’t wearing these stupid shoes and about a foot taller than her, I’d have rested my head on her shoulder.

  “Hannah,” Ella narrowed her eyes at me, “apparently has a stalker she didn’t tell anyone about.”

  A dark look crossed over his face and I could see why Castro, a sexy, smoking-hot demon lord who Dante called boss, kept him around. “One of you better start explaining,” he demanded.

  At Ella’s squeeze, I opened my mouth and let the words tumble out, desperate not to feel afraid, to have someone I knew could protect me completely, know everything.

  “This guy, I call him Mr. Restricted because that’s how his number comes up, has been calling me non-stop for the last few days.” The more I spoke, the angrier my not-so-gentle-lion got. Even though I knew he’d never hurt me, I scooted closer to my badass vampire-hunter sister. “I thought it was a prank or something, but tonight after my brakes failed and I wrestled the car to the side of the road—”

  A muscle in his jaw ticced at the mention of my brakes. The muscles in his arm bulged when he lifted a hand and ran it through his hair. He looked from my car, parked on the side of the road, then to me. “You sure you’re all right?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know. After it happened and I pulled over, Mr. Restricted called and asked if I was having car trouble, like he saw the entire thing. If that wasn’t bad enough, he started talking about watching me in your room when I got naked and crawled on the bed. God, I think he was jacking off…”

  Rage manifested in Dante’s eyes and spread out from there. Heat licked from his skin like a furnace and even Ella was smart enough to take a step back in case a giant lion sprouted from his skin. Linked to Ella by the hand, I went with her.

  “I’ll kill that motherfucker.” Venom dripped from his every word.

  I knew in the pit of my stomach that he was serious, that he’d kill to protect me. That thought should not have excited me.

  “I hung up on him and that’s when he showed up here, at my car. I heard a scratching noise on the passenger side and while I was looking that way, someone tapped on my window. After I turned, there was something painted on the glass and I could see him walking away. Then he vanished.”

  Dante hooked a hand around the back of my neck, ripped me from Ella’s grasp, and pulled me into a tight, suffocating hug. The strength of his arms sheltered me from everything. Where my head pressed against his chest, his heart hammered. I inhaled, let the subtle scent of his soap and something else that was just Dante, soothe my nerves.

  After a long minute, he lessened his hold and closed his hand around mine to keep us connected. “Show me.”

  We walked the few feet to the car and I teetered on my heels in my effort to keep up with his long strides. He stopped at the driver’s window and studied the finger painting. Dante bent and sniffed the crude drawing of a dripping heart.

  He straightened and shot a hostile glare at my sister. “Smells like vampire to me.”

  My stomach clenched and little stars danced in front of my eyes.

  “Don’t look at me like that! I didn’t do it,” Ella grumbled. “Hannah, you say he vanished? It could be a master vampire who’s able to phaze in and out.”

  Ella chewed on her thumbnail and I could practically see the thoughts spinning around in her head. She was hiding something from me. Once again, I was the fragile glass doll who couldn’t handle any pressure. She paced the length of my car. With every step, her long dark hair danced from the cars zooming passed us. She stopped, looked up at Dante and I.

  “Julian’s been having problems with a few of the old vampires who no longer want a monarchy.”

  Finally! Information. “Is that why he came by tonight?” I asked.

  She nodded. “They’ve been creating fledglings and building their own armies. Even though we don’t work for the Shadow Agency anymore, Micah, Eli and I have been neck-deep in vampire ashes. Julian has five of the sacred eight, himself included, accounted for. That leaves three rogues still out there and a number of other master vampires who were never a part of the court.”

  “Just what the world needs, more fucking vampires,” Dante mumbled. He handed me off to Ella and walked to the front of the car.

  “What are you doing?” I asked and shivered when a gust of wind nearly ripped my coat open.

  He bent, the bulk of his body eclipsed by the car. His words drifted in the wind. “Seeing what went wrong with your car. I’ll be able to tell if the brake line was tampered with.”

  “Don’t you need to jack it up?” I asked.

  As I spoke, Dante lifted the front of the car off the ground. I quirked an eyebrow and looked to my sister for confirmation that he’d just picked up a damn vehicle. Her mouth dropped open. We both looked back to Dante. Still holding it up as if it weighed nothing, he peered at the undercarriage.

  “Or not,” I muttered.

  “Wow.” Ella fanned herself. “That’s kinda hot.”

  I nodded, imagining all the other things Dante could do with his big, strong arms. “Totally hot.”

  “Fuck.” Dante lowered the car. He wiped his hands on his pants and left a dark-black streak in its wake. “Someone punctured your brake line.”

  Something cold slithered down my spine as I started connecting the dots. If I hadn’t know exactly what to do, I could have very easily hurt someone, or worse, killed myself. “Not a coincidence then.”

  He shook his head. “No. The hole isn’t in a crease, just smack-dab in the middle of the flex line. How long were you at my house before I came out of the shower?”

  “Five, maybe ten minutes,” I said.

  Dante curled his upper lip to expose slightly elongated feline canines. “So he tailed you to my house. Then followed when you left.”

  Ella looked down one side of the road and then the other as if she were waiting for vampires to start popping up at any moment. “We need to get her out of here and somewhere safe.”

  “You got a change of clothes?” Dante asked.

  “Backpack in the front seat.”

  He opened my car door, reached inside and gathered my stuff. He took me by the hand and led me to his truck, away from my sister. “I’m taking her home to get dressed, and then we’re going to the Vault.”

  Ella narrowed her eyes and trailed after us. “She’ll be safer with me.”

  “Dante, wait.” I dug my heels in and he pulled me behind him anyway.

  At the truck, he stopped and set me inside despite my half-assed protests. He was taking control. The small glimpse of his dominance made me feel more secure than I had in a long time. Dante faced off against the vampire queen.

  “Safer, maybe. Saner, no. That house you moved into is fucking with her head. She hates it there and I’m no
t forcing her to go back. Until this guy is caught, she ain’t leaving my side.” He crossed his arms over his chest, his words respectful, but final.

  Ella mirrored his posture, a lot less respectful, and growled, “You don’t get to decide what’s best for her.”

  “The hell I don’t.” His shoulders stiffened and widened. If possible, he appeared larger, more serious. “A woman gets naked in your bed—you get input on what’s best for her.”

  “God, you sound just like Micah,” Ella shouted. “You turned her down!”

  Dante dropped his hands to his side and curled his fingers into a fist. He yelled right back, “She deserves better than a quick fuck.”

  I shook my head and gingerly got out of the truck, mindful of both my heels and the fact I was naked under my coat. “How about I decide what’s best for me.” Neither spared me a glance. Anger simmered.

  Dante raged on. “You concentrate on finding out who the creep is that tried to kill her and I’ll focus on keeping her safe.”

  Ella looked at him for a long moment before shifting her hostile gaze to me. “Is this what you want, Hannah?”

  How nice of them to realize I had opinions, jerks.

  “The sooner this is over, the better. Honestly, I’m not sure if I could survive another session with a homicidal vampire. I’ll be okay with Dante.”

  My sister pulled me into a tight hug. “I love you. Call me if you need me. Don’t shut me out, not anymore, okay? We talk everyday at sundown. Got it?”

  I nodded.

  One-half of Ella’s mouth curled up and she lifted onto her toes to reach my ear. Her voice was barely above a whisper. “When you have sex with him, I want details.”

  “I can hear you,” Dante rumbled, seeming amused.

  I cracked a smile, glanced at Dante. My cheeks heated in direct correlation to the naked hunger in his gaze. To my sister, I shooed her away and said, “We’ll talk later. Go. Micah is probably ready to murder someone right about now because you’re away from him.”