by Margaret Carter, Crystal Green, Erica Orloff, Patricia Rosemor
“Really, you should’ve given the guards actual bullets,” he said. “Though I doubt even those would work on me now.”
Need. Blood.
She hesitated, staring at him. Maybe even regretting trying to cure him.
Then she threw herself downward, thunking to the floor, reaching, thrashing her body in order to get to a gun he’d only toss away again.
The vampire sighed, bent over, tugged her up by the lab coat and firmly seated her on the steel table.
“I’m trying to make this easy for the both of us,” he said. “Help me by staying still.”
Her arms flailed, and he easily restrained her, grabbing both her wrists. With his other hand, he stroked her soft, gray hair back from her forehead.
“I won’t make you one of me, Dr. Grasu. I only want a drink to sustain me before I leave. Please.”
She kicked, railed. The vampire stopped trying to calm her and pressed his hand over her mouth. His very own version of a mouth sealer. Not very scientific, but effective.
While she bit at his palm, he leaned over, gently pierced her neck with his fangs. Like knives through butter. Sucking, taking her into him, tasting the tang of life and energy. The sustenance made him giddy with power.
Whimpering, she stopped moving. He went back to stroking her hair, calming her, slowly working his mouth at her throat.
Flash floods of memory washed over him: slipping inside Camille, fitting into the places only he could fill, her slick muscles clamping around him, throbbing, pulsing as they moved together.
This drinking was personal, too, something he could keep for himself. Something he could hold on to, unlike his parents. Unlike his old life with Camille.
Dr. Grasu’s blood was his now. No one could take that away because he’d internalized it. Owned it fully.
And that only made him hungrier.
When he drew back, moisture soaking his lips, she was limp, eyes fixed on the ceiling, her fingers twitching as her palms lay upward on the table.
The old Griffin’s conscience clicked into the vampire’s mind. Did I drain her?
But the vampire seized control again. Who cares?
The musical tattoo of a techno song invaded his perception again, washing away his guilt.
Dancing. Sweat. Lust. Blood.
His veins thrummed, wanting it all.
Time to leave. Time to open the door to a new world where he had the control.
Filled with the surging power of someone else’s life, the vampire laid Beatrix Grasu down and headed for the strigoiaca’s cells. On the way, he ripped out the throats of three dart-gun-bearing guards, all the while thinking about how his Girls could use a good drink, as well.
When Camille and Ike ran into the lab, she screamed at the sight on the steel table.
“Bea!” She stumbled forward, spying Doc’s punctured throat.
Remembering her own struggle with Griff, Camille clutched at the bandage under her breast. The male assistant had secured it over Griff’s bite, the gauze coated with coagulating gel that’d stopped her bleeding.
A sob heaved through her.
As Camille took Bea in her arms and cuddled her limp body off the table to the floor, Ike cursed, rushed away, yelled, “The strigoiaca are gone! Guards are—”
She could hear him gag to a stop.
“Ike, contact the entrance guards, see if they’ve encountered Griff and the Girls.” Camille ran a loving gaze over her mentor, saw the fang marks in her neck. “Talk to me, Doc. Come on. And, Ike, get the coagulator.”
He rushed around the lab, contacting the guard station, collecting medical supplies and setting up for Bea’s blood transfusion.
“They’re not answering,” he said, cell phone to his ear as he passed in a blur, arms full of jars and tubes.
No. They had to be there. If they weren’t, that would mean…
Glancing down at the doc, Camille contained her rage, her sorrow. Tried not to break down and spill how much Bea had come to mean to her. How much fortitude she’d taught her. How much she’d been like another parent.
“Did Griffin…?”
“Yes.” Her voice wasn’t even louder than a scratch.
Ike heaped the same coagulating gel he’d used for Camille on the old woman’s neck. She caught his grave expression, and translated for herself.
Too much blood lost already.
Please no, not Bea, too…
With a burst of energy, Doc grabbed Camille’s hand, moved her mouth as if to talk. Camille leaned over so she could hear better. Unbidden, a tear landed on Bea’s neck, mingling with the blood.
“He…is not strigoiaca,” she said. “More evolved. Methodical. Perhaps introduction of female blood acts exponentially as steroid on male system…”
Camille wanted to tell her to rest, to be at peace, to stop this grueling torture of a body that only needed stillness. But she had to know more before she went after Griff and the strigoiaca.
Before she stopped them from doing this to anyone else.
Bea’s lips were moving again, and Camille cradled her head, listening, the tears pooling in her eyes.
“This is his response to stimulation….”
Ashamed of her part in this, Camille took it out on Ike. “Are you ready to transfuse yet?”
“I am trying.”
The old woman exhaled, her body seeming to shrink right in Camille’s own arms.
“Should have tested sexual reaction…” Bea wheezed, and a blood bubble popped at the side of her mouth, spiking Camille’s cheek with moisture. “Science. Fickle thing.”
“We’re not perfect. We’ll get it right next time.”
“Next time.”
Bea choked, and Camille strengthened her hold on her.
“Transfusion!” she shouted, voice breaking, but this time Ike was too busy to answer.
“Hey, Aunt Bea,” Camille said, throat tight. “Just hold on until Ike gets the equipment ready.”
The old scientist tried to smile, forcing Camille to lose control, inviting the angry tears to spill.
Ike shouted from his transfusion station, “Ready!”
Grasping the collar of Camille’s tank top, Bea desperately tried to tell her something.
“Don’t talk, okay?” Camille tried to calm the agitated old woman.
“Can save him.” She pulled Camille down closer, fire in her eyes. “You and Ike adjust serum formula.”
“But it didn’t work in the first place.”
“It will work, darling girl.”
The doc seemed so confident that Camille couldn’t doubt her.
But they should’ve known better. Try to fool with nature, and science would come out the loser. Damn their arrogance.
As the life bled from the doctor’s body, Camille held tighter. “Stay. Come on, Bea, don’t give up, here. You’ve got lots of work to do.”
“No.” She made a quiet rasping sound. “Is your work now.”
And the woman who’d devoted her life to science made the ultimate sacrifice for it. Her body lost form in Camille’s arms, drained of too much blood.
But Camille wouldn’t believe it. Couldn’t grasp the truth.
“Stop it, Aunt Bea.” She gave her a gentle shake. “I want to see you jump up and down when I bring those vampires back. I want to see you all cute and excited.”
“She will not jump, Ms. Camille.”
It was Ike, standing above them. He was still pretty young, in his thirties, his winged black hair giving him a mad-doctor look. Camille had always been amused with his clichéd appearance, but not now.
Not when she needed to get her ass over to the guard station to see why they weren’t answering the phone.
She tenderly picked Bea up, laid her on the steel table as if it were a comfortable bed. Then she cradled the old woman’s fragile, liver-spotted hand. Held it to her cheek, feeling the coldness. The lack of blood.
With all the care in the world, she positioned Doc’s hands over her chest
, leaving her at peace.
Then, to the sound of Ike’s sobbing, Camille collapsed to the floor, body heaving with sickness. Shock.
Just a minute, she thought. A minute to regroup.
But, as with the death of her parents, it took much longer than a minute for her to get back on her feet.
The guard station looked like a slaughterhouse.
White tile steeped in blood, necks and bellies torn, eyes sightless, dart guns and mouth sealers scattered all over the floor. Door torn off its hinges and mangled to steel curlicues on the ground.
As a tearstained Camille marched out of the lab building and into the night, she tried not to fear this change in the strigoiaca. They clearly weren’t just stinging a potential pet with their tongues, then whisking him off to a private place for some feeding.
They were frenzied. Indiscriminate.
And judging from the clawed-open stomachs of three guards, wanton in their appetites.
Dressed in her jeans, tank top, cowboy boots, watch tracker and the baby ring, the talisman that had thus far always protected her, Camille took a dimly lit side street, following the blump of the tracker and the trail of bodies.
All male victims, so far—beggars by the look of it. But the big question was: were the strigoiaca exchanging blood and saliva with women to replenish their tribe?
She’d soon see.
While she passed a stone church oddly located in the center of an apartment’s concrete courtyard, a pack of dogs barked from one street over. Camille kept the minor threat of them in the back of her mind, one hand on her aspen-wood stake, the other on her machete.
The weapons felt so cold to her, foreign, as if a part of her had died and she’d woken up to find herself changed.
But science had failed her.
It was time to get real.
The guardhouse massacre only validated the gathering of her weapons. Three months ago, with the images of the disappearing vampire and the castle wolves still fresh, she’d purchased an arsenal that rivaled Sarge’s. Though she’d stored them in her apartment closet, their presence had given her harsh comfort. A just-in-case balm. A safety net for her inevitable fall from scientific grace.
Dammit, she was getting such a late start. Obviously, the vampires had taken their time feasting on the guards. The carnage indicated that they’d made slow work of killing them. There were even claw marks on the men’s thighs.
Playtime for the strigoiaca?
And what about Griff? Had he hung back, enjoying the sight of their carnal frolicking or…
Stomach churning, she pressed on, resolute.
It was time to fight death with death, no matter what her mentor had taught her.
Still, what would she do when she saw Griff? Was there a chance he could be saved?
Bea, pale and still in her arms.
Shaken, she concentrated on her tracker, which was going crazy with the blumps of vampire recognition, mingling with the hammering music from a disco.
She recognized the place. Chill, it was named. She’d wanted to dance there with Griff some day. To forget all their worries in the primal humidity of dance-floor catharsis.
Stopping outside the door, she noticed there was a line to get in. People were chatting, laughing, staring at the whacked-out girl dressed in red cowboy boots and wearing everything from blades to a crossbow with a quiver of holy-watered arrows.
As she strolled right past the bouncer while staring at her ever blumping tracker, he tugged at her bare arm. The yank reminded her that Griff had bitten her under the breast, and the wound thudded with bruised agony. It was more mental pain than physical, but sharp all the same.
Ignoring the injury—she’d popped a few Motrin before leaving the lab—Camille grasped the wrist of her captured arm with her left hand, violently levering her right arm out from his brawny grip.
“You’ll thank me in a second,” she said in Romanian, hand on the machete hilt.
The bald brute’s mouth gaped, and he didn’t have much to say in return. Satisfied, Camille sauntered into the club, through the red-velvet lobby. After that, she was enveloped by the cloying mist of pheromones and the pounding blast of ear-shattering music.
Immediately, she lost herself in a sea of undulating bodies, sweat coating her arms, moistening her tank in the gathered steam of a summer night. She glanced around the huge, smoky room—the balcony where patrons leaned over the railing, the private alcoves where women in their short skirts and stilettos straddled men, the endless dance floor, the colorfully drab flickers of a light show.
But her tracker told her something was in here. It flashed red, pounding out big bangs of proximity.
Then she saw it. The vampire Claudia.
Good Lord. The science-lab treatments made her blend with the crowd.
She was no longer dressed in tattered hiking gear, but wearing blue pajamas, compliments of the lab. Her blond hair had been washed daily, making her seem as groomed as a normal barfly while she danced with an unsuspecting male. He was grinding into her, and she was returning the favor. What that poor meat substitute didn’t realize was that she was stroking his neck, baring fangs.
So this was the strigoiaca’s new game. Quiet attacks, now that they’d gotten over the initial hunger by snacking on the guards.
As if that weren’t enough, Camille’s spine came alive with icy shivers. She turned around to find Mina and Star dressed in the guards’ bloodied tan uniforms and hats. They stared at her from a private table in the corner.
The UV treatments and serum hadn’t cured these animals. It’d just made them a little less feral in appearance. Made them more human.
Charged up, Camille glanced around, needing to know where Griff was. Whether he was in a position to attack.
Could she take all of them alone?
Not that there was much choice. Ike had called the police, but they’d just laughed at him. And all the on-call lab guards were too afraid to help.
It was up to her.
A giant hand landed on her shoulder, spun her around.
“Come,” bellowed the bald bouncer from the door.
He had a friend with him. Two big dopes who had no idea what was about to go down.
“You’ve got four vampires in here,” she yelled over the music, “so don’t screw with me.”
They both paused, laughed, glancing at each other as if asking, “Did she say vampire? Nah. Couldn’t have.”
Laying hands on her, they started to drag her away into the relatively empty velvet lobby.
“I’m in no mood for this,” she muttered, drawing out the machete and the stake at the same time, brandishing them.
They backed away, hands up.
Right into another body.
Griff.
Camille’s adrenaline flared, awakened by the sight of something that had taken over the man she loved.
With minimal effort, he picked them both up by the scruffs of their shirts, banged their heads together in an explosion of red, then tossed them away. Around them, the few lingering patrons scattered, screaming.
Done, he turned back to her. “Hey.”
It was his usual greeting, that casual, sexy word that meant he’d been thinking about her all day.
But now it was a mockery.
She tried to separate this thing from her boyfriend. These golden eyes from Griff Montfort’s deep-brown ones.
“Hey.” She’d spit it out. Rejecting what he now was.
Still, she couldn’t strike. Couldn’t move.
Somewhere in that body, Griff still lingered. Her Griff.
He smiled, touched the tip of his tongue to a fang. Reminded her of the ecstasy she’d felt earlier in the night when he’d had his mouth on her.
In spite of itself, her body reacted, heating up, moistening, aching.
“Camille,” he said, reaching a hand toward her face. “You tasted so good.”
Enraged, she dodged his touch, raised the stake, knowing she should just plunge it
into his heart right now.
And she would have—maybe—if a pinprick of red light hadn’t locked on Griff’s chest, right over his heart.
With her gaze, Camille traced the line backward, following its path through the smoke of the room.
Then she gasped in utter shock at the person who was aiming the laser-sighted crossbow at her boyfriend.
Chapter 15
Sarge fixed his sights on the man he wanted to kill more than anything.
Except for Howard, of course.
She was just to the right of his target—Griffie, the object of his revenge dreams.
Good positioning, he thought. After Sarge put an arrow through Vamp Boy, he wanted a good view of Howard’s face. Of the realization that she’d made the wrong goddamned choice back in those woods three months ago.
So he took his shot.
But Griffie was fast, even speedier than he’d been as an infant fang freak, when he’d kicked Sarge’s ass. The kid literally leaned to the left, avoiding the shot just as if it were a slow-motion bullet.
Nice. A Matrix-inspired bloodsucker. Now Sarge’s world was complete.
As the arrow thwapped off of the club’s etched-stone wall, the vamp got this soulful look on his face, then glanced at Camille, who was aiming her stake at him.
Just heave the damned thing, he thought, reloading.
“Camille?” Griffie said, sounding confused.
Oh, no. Not this. Vamp psychology, where they acted all contrite and saved their skin.
Unaffected, Sarge brought up his bow again, catching the Brit’s attention. In turn, the kid seemed surprised, then dived behind a red-velvet curtain, disappearing. Sarge humped it over there with his pain-in-the-wanker limp, kicking aside the heavy material while targeting.
Gone. He was freakin’ gone.
Then Sarge locked on to a square hole near the floor, a missing block of stone. Hell knew where it led.
Screaming cascaded over the pumping music and, suddenly, all the horny customers were crowding the lobby, bowling over Howard, who fought her way toward him.
“Sargent!”
Either in response to Griffie’s attempt at screwing with her mind or to her seeing Sarge again, Howard’s pale complexion was stark against the red of her loose, wild hair. There was a crimson splash against her pale T-shirt, right under a breast that wasn’t wearing a bra.
