First Blood

by Susan Sizemore

  His brown eyes widened in surprise as they locked gazes, before he was the one to look away first. Chicken-shit bastard. A small triumph in her death, but she would take it.

  The pressure was sharp, the invasion repulsive, as he sank his fangs into her neck, and her stomach roiled in disgust. She fought him as he sucked and pulled her life’s blood out of her, kicking and shoving and squirming, as the ringing in her ears grew louder and the weight of her limbs grew heavier. She fought even as the dizziness swept over her and her thoughts scattered, confused and disjointed, her mind trying to cling to consciousness.

  “Hey, that’s enough,” she heard the one holding her say, his voice echoing in her pain-wracked skull. “We’re supposed to bring her back alive.”

  The pressure, the pull subsided. “I’m just getting her weak enough so that she won’t fight me when I stick my dick in her.”

  “Uh, I don’t know if that’s such a good idea, man . . .”

  Sasha didn’t think it was a good idea either. She reached out with the last of her strength and grabbed the wooden stake held loosely in the man’s hand, and drove it straight into her chest. Even as she gasped with shock at the pain and pressure, she smiled in satisfaction. If he was going to rape her, it would have to be over her dead body.

  And at that point she would no longer care.

  FOUR

  ALISTAIR WAS IN THE ALLEY IN LESS THAN A MINUTE, and what he saw infuriated him. Two guys had Sasha down on the ground, her legs flailing beneath the one as he bent over her. Not sure if the guy was biting her or touching her or both, Alistair saw red. It was just all so wrong, and there was no way he was going to let it end like this. He was running toward them, when he saw the bigger man step back away from her body.

  Revealing a wooden stake in her chest.

  Holy shit.

  The mother fucker had staked her.

  Alistair hit the guy on the run with the full force of his body, knocking the guy backward onto his ass. Then he turned, hit the other guy in the face to momentarily distract him, and reached down and grabbed a hold of the stake sticking out of Sasha’s chest. He was moving quickly, but he could see she was pale and waxy, her breathing short and labored. At least she was breathing. Pulling hard, he removed the wood from her flesh, trying to ignore the moan of pain she gave, and the sick sucking sound of blood and tissue clinging to the stake.

  Without hesitation, he spun around and drove the stake into the chest of the man who was moving toward him, fists up, face angry.

  There was a howl of pain and shock, then the guy was down on the ground, writhing.

  That left the second one to contend with.

  Having been a seventeenth-century soldier, Alistair was comfortable with hand-to-hand combat. He went in without hesitation, landing a blow on the guy’s face, than shoving him hard to put him off balance. His opponent came by with a wide swing that he easily dodged. It was clear these guys were used to using brute force and intimidation more than skill or intelligence.

  Alistair was quicker on his feet and had better reflexes. None of the guy’s punches made contact with him, and he was able to get in a half dozen on the kidneys and face. But he needed to take him out or at least encourage him to leave. Not wanting to waste any more time, he used his superior speed and went behind the guy. With a quick twist, he broke his neck, sending the guy crumpling to the ground in pain. The first one was dead, so Alistair retrieved the stake from his chest and impaled the second bodyguard, a sharp in and out with the stake.

  He tossed the bloody piece of wood into the Dumpster and wiped his forehead, breathing hard and sweating. The bodies would disappear into dust by morning. Leaving them in the alley until then didn’t sit well with him, but he couldn’t risk getting caught moving the bodies, and Sasha needed blood immediately. Alistair decided not to worry about it, and reached down and lifted up Sasha.

  She looked on the verge of death herself. The T-shirt she wore was wet with blood and she hung limp in his arms, unconscious, the messenger bag still over her shoulder, hitting him in the thigh.

  Damn it, he shouldn’t have let her leave.

  Angry that he had, Alistair carried her up the back stairs and through the window to his apartment. He laid her on his couch. Immediately, he got six bags of blood out of the fridge, the last of his personal stash. Fortunately, his bar kept a large supply to serve to vampires in mixed drinks. Once he was sure Sasha was okay, he’d go down and grab some more. Poking a hole in the bag with his fang, he dribbled it over her mouth and fed her slowly. At first she didn’t swallow, and he had to open and close her mouth manually, but then she started to drink voluntarily. He propped a bag against her mouth and let it dribble in as she sucked.

  Lifting up her shirt to inspect her wound, Alistair recoiled. It was a raw and gaping mess, her thin and narrow chest just torn open from the impact of the stake. It didn’t look to be healing either. Her bra was ripped, and the satin was sticking to the thick blood and bits of exposed tissue. He thought it would be a good idea to remove the bra before her body started restoring itself, given the way it was clinging to her.

  Feeling a little nauseated and disgusted with himself for being such a wuss, Alistair tugged off the shirt, taking care with her head and the bag of blood she was feeding from, slowly and with obvious pain, her eyes still closed. He lifted her hair up and out of the way. The bottom of her dark blonde hair was saturated with her blood, and for a man who had spent four hundred years drinking the stuff, he was amazed at how thoroughly grossed out he was. But there was something about Sasha that was so strong and yet so vulnerable, so sharp and raw and fierce, that he was shaken by how close to death she was.

  Tossing the shirt onto the floor, he unhooked her bra by sliding his hand under her back. Normally, it would have been a hell of a turn on, but under the circumstances, he wasn’t feeling the slightest bit sexual. When he pulled the straps down her arms and went to pull the bra off her chest, it actually stuck in the wound.

  “Bloody hell.” He winced. That was some seriously nasty shit.

  But then it was on the floor next to the shirt and he let out a sigh of relief. He hadn’t even realized he’d been grinding his teeth until the deed was done. Switching the empty bag on Sasha’s lips to a fresh one, Alistair went for a sheet to cover her up. He’d never noticed how crappy his linens were until he pulled a sorry, dingy white sheet out of the closet. His laundry skills sucked, but it was unlikely she would care at the moment.

  When he was unfolding it to settle over her, Alistair noticed all the bruises and scratches on her arms and shoulders. And the vicious bite mark on her neck—stark, throbbing red against her pale skin.

  Cassandra’s bodyguards had almost killed Sasha. It didn’t make any sense why they would do that.

  But he knew that it was going to raise some flak when his ex-wife realized her goons were missing. Not that she’d trace it back to Alistair, but there would be questions in the vampire community.

  He’d childishly wanted to take a jab at his ex, and damn if this wasn’t a big old poke in the eye. A confrontation was in their future.

  But as he smoothed the sheet over Sasha’s damaged body, he knew it would be worth it for having saved her.

  SASHA was not sure if she was alive. Her body certainly felt real, the pain and pressure in her chest uncomfortable in its hot throb. But her mind felt hazy, disconnected, and her eyelids did not seem to want to open. She didn’t think she was in the alley. The ground beneath her was flexible, and her face was no longer in the gravel, but on something that smelled faintly like cologne.

  A hand touched her hair, startling her, and she smacked at it, the fear, the anger back. If she wasn’t dead, she wanted to be left alone. Why couldn’t she ever just be left alone?

  “Shh, hey, it’s okay. It’s me, it’s Alistair.”

  Sasha forced her eyes open, certain she was at least alive, but uncertain if she were in imminent danger or not.

  Alistair was staring down
at her with concern in his green eyes. He had a bag of blood in his hand, with a straw stuck into the side of it, aimed at her mouth.

  She was on his couch, she realized with relief, a sheet over her. A quick glance under it revealed she was naked from the waist up, her chest covered in blood, her wound gaping and visible, but showing signs of healing. “What happened?” she asked, though she knew.

  The bodyguard had been about to rape her, while she lay there helpless and weak from lack of blood. So she had staked herself.

  And Alistair had saved her from death.

  “I found you in the alley. You’re going to be fine. You just need blood and lots of sleep.”

  He held the straw up to her mouth and she took a sip, sitting up slightly. The movement caused a sharp pain in her chest and she lay back, exhausted and nauseous. She wondered how close to death she had been. “The two men?”

  “Don’t worry about them. They’re not coming back.”

  “You killed them?” Looking up at him, she searched his face, curious what his reaction would be.

  But he didn’t even flinch. He just nodded, his eyes cool, satisfied. “Yes.”

  “Thank you,” she said, and meant it. She owed him her life. She wasn’t sure why he was helping her, or if she could actually trust him, but he had, in fact, saved her life and regardless of his agenda, she did owe him for that.

  “You’re welcome.” Alistair looked like he wanted to say more, but he didn’t. He just stared down at her, his jaw stern, his mouth turned down in a frown.

  “What?” she asked him, shifting a little on the couch and moving her arms out from under the sheet to rest on her stomach. The dizziness was clearing, and when Alistair handed her the blood to drink, she did so readily.

  “Nothing. I’m just wondering why those guys were willing to kill you. The value to Cassandra exists only if you’re alive, so she can sell you off to slayers. So why would they be so quick to stake you?”

  Sasha’s first instinct was to lie or to simply not answer at all. But she felt that she owed Alistair the truth for risking his own life. And she had questions in return for him, so she shrugged. “They didn’t stake me. I did it myself.”

  “What? Why the hell would you do that?” He looked appalled. “Why would you want to kill yourself?”

  As if he could possibly understand. Sasha knew she sounded defensive, defiant, but she didn’t care. “I have no death wish. I want to live, just as much as the next vampire. But I chose the stake over what he intended to do to me.”

  It took him a second to process her words, but then his frown turned grim, and his fists closed when he realized what she meant. “They were going to rape you.”

  She nodded. “And I made the decision to die rather than endure that ag—”

  Sasha cut herself off. She didn’t want to reveal her past, to share her private pain.

  But Alistair had caught what she had intended to say. “Oh, God,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

  The genuine sympathy in his words made her uncomfortable. She didn’t know how to process or respond to compassion. No one had shown it to her in a long time. So she just sipped her drink and watched him. She knew how to watch, how to wait, how to gauge a man’s emotion and reactions. It was what she’d spent her entire adult life doing.

  “I’m glad I killed them then,” he added, his voice quiet but filled with conviction. “Fucking disgusting cowards.”

  As so many were. Sasha sighed, weary. She wanted to close her eyes and sleep, but that was not a good idea. She needed to think, to plan. She needed to create a life for herself, in another city, where no one knew her, and she needed to leave before someone else came for her.

  “I would like to take a shower before I leave.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? You can’t leave tonight.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re hurt. You need to recover. And soon enough, Cassandra will notice her muscle never came home, and then more men will be out looking for you. It’s not safe for you to leave.”

  Sasha knew that. But she did not see what other choice she had. So she changed the subject. “How do you know Cassandra? Why are you involved in my situation?”

  Maybe he would tell the truth, maybe he would not. But she was too curious not to ask.

  Alistair was clearly caught off guard. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Then he bit his fingernail and gave her a grimace. “She is my ex-wife.”

  That was an unexpected response. Sasha raised an eyebrow. “Really? How long were you married?”

  “Two weeks of actually living together. Two more months before the vampire court cleared the paperwork and made the divorce official. It was one of those brief moments of insanity that I recovered quickly from. At first, I appreciated her cleverness, and I admit, I fell for the package, but living together it was obvious almost immediately that she was greedy and selfish, and just plain cruel. So I cut my losses and got the hell out.”

  “You are embarrassed by your mistake, are you not?” She could see that it bothered him. “Yet so many do the same. I think you are too hard on yourself.”

  He gave her a slight smile. “I should have known better. At my age, I should have been able to slice through the lust and see that Cassandra’s core was rotten.”

  “We do unwise things when we are lonely.” She should know. Loneliness had led her to New Orleans, had pulled her to Ivan, who had betrayed her.

  “That is very true. Is that why you married Gregor?”

  If only she had married him by choice. Then she would have no one to blame but herself, and perhaps she could move on. But she knew her marriage had damaged her irreparably. “No. I married Gregor because he asked me and you do not say no to him.”

  “So you weren’t attracted to him?”

  She did not even hesitate, or attempt to lie. “No. I despised him.”

  “Why would he want to be married to you then?”

  “I have no idea. But as a mortal, I was easier to control than a vampire wife would have been. I also suspect I was a political strategy. And perhaps, most important of all, a personal toy for his own amusement. I grew up in his household and he was fond of me.” Sasha heard the distaste, the venom, the bitterness in her voice, and wondered why she had just said that out loud. It had to be the result of the loss of blood, the weakness she was feeling. It was dulling her rationale and making her vulnerable. “Not that it matters,” she added, to soften the emotion she had revealed. “He is gone now.”

  She hoped Alistair would drop it, but he didn’t. Pulling the coffee table over closer to the couch, he sat on it, hands on his knees. It was a casual pose, nonthreatening.

  “Why was a mortal child growing up in a vampire’s house?” he asked.

  Now Sasha did close her eyes. She did not want to do this. Or maybe she did. Maybe she was dropping hints and pieces of information to Alistair because she never talked about any of this. She tried to pretend it did not exist, and kept her inner thoughts, her secrets, solely to herself. It kept her completely isolated from others, and for once, just once, she wanted to share. Because while it would make her feel better to vent, it would forever alter Alistair’s opinion of her. He would be disgusted by the life she had led, and he would willingly let her go, and that was as it should be.

  She was destined to remain alone.

  “My mother was Gregor’s blood slave. We moved in to his house when I was five years old. He kept several women, and I was raised communally, so to speak, with my friend Ivan, who was two years older, and whose mother was Gregor’s favorite.”

  Alistair was staring at her, his expression incredulous. “I know there are plenty of blood slaves running around, but why the hell would any woman bring her child into that? Just for the pleasure she gets from being fed on? That’s crazy.”

  Sasha shrugged. “I do not think my mother saw any harm from it. I was cared for, educated, and had friends to play with.”

  “And you grew
up, and he wanted you.” Alistair’s words were flat, repulsed.

  “Yes. As I said, he had a fondness for me. Gregor never fed from me. I was never a blood slave.” It was important that she point that out. She wanted him to know that her will had never been weak. “But I still had no choice but to marry him. I had no money, no experience of the world outside of the estate we lived on. I was under lock and key. My only access to the outside was on the Internet, which is how I learned English. If I could have escaped, I would have.”

  “I don’t doubt that.” Alistair gave her a slight smile. “You’re pretty damn tenacious.”

  It felt like a compliment, and that pleased her. “When we moved to Las Vegas, I saw it as an opportunity to escape. Such a busy, crowded city, with so much glitz and costuming . . . but I never had time to implement a plan. Gregor was killed first.”

  And she had shed not one tear.

  “Then I miscalculated with a vampire who was addicted to drug blood. I used him for access to vampire events, then I pushed him too hard. He turned me, and took pleasure in doing so, knowing it was truly my worst nightmare.”

  Alistair reached out and pulled her hand into his. Sasha’s first instinct was to yank it away. She didn’t want anyone holding her, controlling her. Touch had always been manipulative in her life, and someone always wanted something from her.

  But the man in front of her, his knee poking through the hole in his faded jeans, wasn’t sly or cunning or possessive. He was honest and concerned and he was trying to comfort her. He had saved her life and he felt sympathy for what she had suffered in her marriage.

  She could see it on his face, yet it was almost too difficult to comprehend. No one cared about her, no one. Not even in passing.