They just hadn’t had enough time yet to sort through everything.
Her hands trembled slightly as she strapped on her holster. She paused, staring at her shaking fingers, her throat thick.
They wouldn’t get much time.
She was beginning to exhibit the effects of alternating living blood with packaged. Soon she’d be tired, slow-witted—and one human couldn’t supply all Annie needed.
But two vampires could drink from each other forever.
Her breath hitched. Slowly, she closed the cabinet, leaned her forehead against the door. Her heart raced, a thready beat, a need so deep that it felt like sickness.
Forever. With Jack.
It would be asking so much. Six years ago, they’d have been married, no question. But they’d both changed during their time apart, and transformation was more than marriage; it meant a completely different life, sacrificing the day, and concealing their nature.
Would Jack conceal his? He hadn’t changed his mind about the cover-up Milton had done—but if he pursued it as a vampire, still thought to expose their kind, a demon might take notice.
A demon had taken notice before, with horrific consequences. Remembered fear shivered beneath Annie’s skin.
Maybe it wasn’t even right to ask him; a vampire lived with risks humans never had to face. When The Five had ruled the community, Annie’s position had been too precarious, and she hadn’t wanted them to know Jack existed.
Now the nephilim posed a greater threat than The Five ever had. What had changed, that she could consider bringing Jack into her life now?
From the kitchen, she heard Jack’s heavy sigh, then his determined approach. Annie rubbed her face, composed herself before he came around the screen.
Cricket, first. And as they searched for her, Annie would let him see what it meant to be a vampire. He’d either choose to be the same, or let her go.
And she’d try to find the strength to move on.
Jack’s eyes were solemn when they met Annie’s, and he examined her features before his gaze dropped to her hip. “The guns don’t surprise me,” he said slowly. “You could always talk weapons and procedure with the rest of us.”
She shrugged. “Cop family.”
“Cops don’t carry swords. You’re good?”
Her fingers played over the hilt, and she nodded. “The first year, practicing was almost all I did.” Reading the question in his eyes, she explained, “The community enforcer—Dante— needed a partner. I showed up at exactly the right time, had a background that fit what he needed. And when he was killed, I took over his job.”
He frowned. “Only a year?”
“We move faster and think faster than humans, so we can fit more into a day. So that year was the equivalent of twenty years of training for a human.” Although she sensed she hadn’t taken the question exactly as he’d meant it, she continued, “I’m not as old as most vampires I hunt down, but most vampires don’t train with weapons . . . and they didn’t grow up with my dad.”
“They just live normal lives.”
She knew her smile exposed her fangs. “As normal as possible.”
His answering grin broke the tension between them. He held her gaze for a long moment, then glanced at the cabinet again, tugging at his earlobe. Thinking. “You prepared for an emergency with weapons, money. Didn’t that plan include where Cricket would hide?”
“Only if she was hiding from vampires. If it was anything else, she was supposed to hole up, open her shields, and wait for us to find her.”
His brow furrowed. “Open her what?”
“Her mind. I’d recognize the scent of it. The feel of it.” There was really no way to explain the psychic senses. Sometimes they registered as a taste, a scent, a touch—but were not exactly like that, either.
Jack was utterly still. “You can read thoughts?”
Annie shook her head. “Only emotions, and we can recognize an individual’s distinct flavor. But demons are more powerful psychically—and we don’t know how much more. It might be that they can take a location out of our heads. That’s why we didn’t plan one in advance.”
His breathing was unsteady, but he nodded. “And when you went searching for her, you didn’t . . . feel her.”
“No. Which probably means her shields are up.”
“Which means she’s not expecting you to look for her.”
“Yes,” Annie said.
He smiled faintly. “Your mother and I might have changed that. Should we go?”
“Yes, but what—”
“You’ll see.” Jack snagged her jacket from the top of the screen, his eyes widening. “Jesus. What’s in this?”
Annie stuck her arms through the sleeves, then opened it like a flasher.
“Because a woman can never have too many daggers,” he said dryly. He stepped closer, running his fingers down the lining. “And pockets filled with . . . ?”
“Everything.”
“No wooden stakes,” he observed.
“No garlic, holy water, or crucifixes, either.” She let the jacket fall closed. “I do have a few shuriken.”
“Throwing stars?” He put a hand over his heart. “Quieter than a gun, more distance than a sword—and with a dark/ mysterious/sexy rating of ten. How’s your aim?”
She struggled to contain her laughter, gave a cool shrug. “Decent.”
“You rock my world, Annie.”
Tears sprang to her eyes, and she looked away.
His grin faded. “But you knew that.”
Swallowing to clear the lump in her throat, she said, “Not until you said it. For all I knew, everything you felt stemmed from six-year-old memories. Or that you were angry and uncertain because you can’t recapture now what you felt for me then.” She moved past him. “A person can feel violent without hitting, happy without smiling. I’m walking to the door because we need to go—but that’s not what I’m feeling.”
“And if it was?” His tone teased, but she caught the intensity behind it. “If I only have your actions to judge by, I might think that you only want me for my blood and for Cricket.”
Annie pivoted. Before Jack could blink, she shoved her fingers into his hair and pulled his mouth down to hers.
She couldn’t be gentle, not when she poured her longing into it, her heart. It was fierce and passionate, hungrier than the bloodlust at its sharpest.
His kiss was, too. She felt the powerful swell of his emotions, a match for hers. Desperate to touch, tongues seeking, breath mingling. He took what she gave, offered as much.
And together, it became more, pulsing into a low, liquid need.
With a harsh sound, Annie dragged her lips away. She forced her legs to stop quaking.
“So, just blood and Cricket? Whatever, G-Man,” she said, and turned.
His breathing was as ragged as hers. “Maybe you’re only hot for my body.”
“Vampires aren’t hot for anything—and you can’t goad me into a repeat.”
“Damn.” He opened the door. “And now I can’t wait until you get your fangs into me again.”
“Nap or not?” She paused, met his heated gaze with her apologetic one. “I should have explained, Jack, and I’m sorry I didn’t.” Her fingers smoothed over his left arm. “I don’t plan to use it again.”
“Good.” He pocketed her keys. “What are you planning instead?”
“To explain,” she said.
NINE
IT HAD BEEN HOT THAT NIGHT, TOO. AND A HOLIDAY weekend, so the ER had been busy.
“Kids with fireworks, idiots drinking too much before lighting up the barbeque or getting in their car—we had it all,” Annie told him. Jack was driving this time; she stared out the passenger window, her sword across her lap. “I saw the paramedics wheel this guy in. Obviously DOA. A good portion of his frontal lobe had been sliced away, almost like a textbook cross section. Deep lacerations in his chest and neck—a near decapitation. The attending confirmed death, and then they must
have taken the body down.”
“To the morgue?” Jack asked quietly, and she heard him swallow when she nodded. “That’s where you called me from. One in the morning, before you got a nap in.”
And they’d only spoken for a few minutes. She looked down at her hands, opened herself to the flood of memories. “It was quiet down there. God, I was so tired. I’d been on since that night at Brian’s—I was thinking of you when I fell asleep. And when I woke up, I was already dying.”
“He got up.” Jack’s voice was hoarse. “The DOA you saw earlier.”
“Yes. Woke up hungry, and without enough brains to have control. He hit my jugular, and I was a goner.” No chance after that. No chance but a miracle . . . or something else. “That’s when the demon showed up to finish the job she’d started on the vampire.”
She glanced over at Jack. “You look as shocked as I probably was. She appeared human, except her eyes were red, glowing. And by the time she’d chopped off the vampire’s head and got some of his blood on my neck to heal me, I was pretty much dead.”
“But a demon—she?—saved you.”
“Yes. It pissed her off, too; she bitched about it the entire time.” Annie allowed herself a smile. “Saying that being friends with a vampire had made her a witless idiot. Saying that Lucifer would punish her regardless for letting the DOA get away earlier, but that the punishment for a human dying would be worse than turning a human into a vampire. Saying that she’d descended so far that she was doing a Guardian’s job. All the while, telling me that I had to drink the vampire’s blood, that I had to willingly accept the change for the transformation to work.”
“And you did.”
“I did, and she dumped me outside one of the community elders’ houses. Flew me there.”
Jack was silent for a minute, absorbing it all. Finally, he said, “Lucifer?”
“Yes.”
“Jesus.” He was quiet again. “What’s a Guardian?”
“I’m not sure. There are stories about an army of men who are like angels, but I don’t know anyone who’s actually seen one.” She hesitated, then said, “But when I was in New York, I heard them mentioned several times. Tied to rumors about the nephilim who’d been defeated in Seattle, and there’s a vampire community in San Francisco that supposedly had help overthrowing a demon.”
They stopped at an intersection. Jack glanced over, studied her expression. “You’re wondering about them. These Guardians.”
“Yeah,” she said softly. “I want to know. And when I leave Philly, I’m thinking about heading that way. Cricket would like San Francisco.”
“Count me in, then. Chasing down angels won’t be any different than what I’ve been doing.”
In the same instant, his answer lightened her heart and weighed it down. “And what is that?”
Jack shook his head. “You haven’t finished explaining.”
“Oh.” Dread gripped her chest, tipped the scale to heavy. “So the demon dropped me off with the elders who headed the community at the time.”
“Before The Five?”
“Yes. They took over a year later.” Remembering his story from the night before, she met his eyes. “That’s something else I need to tell you about. The demon came back.”
He shot her a puzzled look. “All right.”
“All right.” She drew a long breath. “They said the same thing as the demon did—you have to be willing, that resisting the bloodlust can hurt the transformation, and those who do just waste away and die.” Her shoulders hunched, and she barely noticed when she began rocking a little in the seat, back and forth. “And I was so hungry. Worse than when I woke up today. The DOA had had enough in him to change me, but I hadn’t really fed. But Dante was there, said I could take his blood. And I was thinking how disgusting it was . . . but I wanted to live, so I just told myself to go for it, to throw myself into it.”
“I’m glad you did, Annie.” Jack’s warm hand clasped her knotted fingers, and the echo of his words filled his psychic scent.
“The blood tasted incredible. Felt incredible. I was halfway done before I even realized that I was . . . That Dante and I were—” She closed her eyes, forced herself to finish. “Fucking. And it was good. Like it didn’t matter what I wanted, who I wanted. So after we’d finished, I was just . . . shattered. And so ashamed.”
“Annie.” His grip tightened. “Don’t.”
“It was supposed to be you,” she whispered. “We wouldn’t have lasted until we married—but marriage was never why I’d waited. I wanted sex to mean something. It was important to me, that intimacy. Dante and I were as intimate as animals.”
His other hand cradled her cheek, and she realized dimly that they’d parked. Her eyes burning but dry, she met his stricken gaze.
“And it stayed that way for a year. I was a tool to him, we fed from each other, but there was never anything else. I didn’t want that with you.”
“I understand that, Annie.” Jack’s voice was low and careful. “But even with six years apart, we had more between us tonight. It could never be just feeding. If all you did was stick your fangs into my neck and ride me, it still would mean more than that.”
“There’s an image.” She tried for a smile. Failed. With a sigh, she finished, “I’ve only had sex when the bloodlust was in control. But I held on to you—the memory of what we had. Now you’re here. And I’ll be damned if the bloodlust takes over the first time with us. Or the second.”
“But it’s all right the third time, hmm?” His thumb smoothed the corner of her mouth.
Her breath escaped in a silent laugh. “I do have to eat. But I promise I’ll be gentle when I ride you.”
“Ah, Annie. You destroy me.” Jack dropped his forehead to hers, and she felt the familiar anger lifting through him, a multi-pronged hurt. Felt him battle against it before he said abruptly, “Let’s go then. I couldn’t find parking, so we’ve got a three-block walk.”
The damp blanket of heat enfolded Annie as soon as she left the SUV. In the apartment above the street, a man yelled for his kid to get him a beer. Almost everyone had a TV or stereo on; some had both. Teenagers lounged on stoops, laughing, flirting, fronting. And over it all was the constant blow and rattle of ancient air conditioners.
Jack joined her on the sidewalk. He’d put on his lightweight blazer again.
“There’s no reason for both of us to cook; you can dump the jacket,” she said. “I have more than enough weapons.”
“Everyone in West Philly has more than enough weapons.”
They strode past a group of now-silent, wary-eyed teenagers, and Annie grinned. “They made you, G-Man.”
“Or they’re wondering how you escaped the Matrix.”
“Hey, now. I don’t wear vinyl and leather. Not in the summer, anyway,” she muttered, tugging at the front of her tank. Sweat was already trickling between her breasts. “You should just tell me what’s eating at you, Jack. Or I’m going to start thinking the worst—like you can’t forgive me for being with someone else.”
“Forgive you?” His brows snapped together as he rounded on her. “Jesus, Annie. The bloodlust slipped you a Mickey. You aren’t to blame, and there’s sure as hell nothing that needs forgiving.”
Emotion clogged Annie’s throat, but the hurt in him was still there, buried like shrapnel. She focused on it, precise as a scalpel. “You mean, nothing to forgive the first time.”
“No. I mean every time. You feed, or you die, right? And if you hadn’t chosen to live . . .” He dragged his hands through his hair, then dropped them to his sides. His voice flattened. “Did you think I’d blame you? Is that why you didn’t come?”
Whatever, she wanted to say. But his pain was at the surface now. This was the root, and it bloomed when she admitted, “I was afraid you might.”
His bleak expression ripped at her heart. “Did you think me so small-minded, trust me so little that you thought I’d consider it a betrayal? That I’d judge you? I loved yo
u, Annie.”
She reached forward, caught his hand. Held it tight. “My dad did, too, and he—”
“Oh, Christ.” Jack stilled. The bleakness melted into a well of compassion. “I should have—”
“Listen.” He knew that her father had shot her, she realized—but she had to push past those memories. She couldn’t dwell on them now. “You didn’t have to judge me, Jack. I judged myself. I felt I’d betrayed you. If I hadn’t, I’d have gone to you first. But I was trying to find the courage, and thought my mom and dad would be behind me, help me. And instead he . . . and I—” She had to stop, but Jack still deserved to know why she hadn’t come. “I felt so guilty. For Dad, for Dante . . . for everything.”
“You aren’t to blame for either.”
She smiled at his fierce tone. “I know. It took me a while to see. But at the time . . . there was just too much, all at once.”
Annie let go of his hand, allowed silence to fill the space between them. Jack must have been thinking through what she’d told him; slowly, the anger and hurt faded.
They were almost to the house when he narrowed his eyes. “Here’s what I don’t understand, Annie: Dante.”
She sent a cautious glance toward his profile. “What about him?”
“Come on. Dante?” His brows lifted.
She bit the inside of her cheek. It wasn’t full-blown jealousy, but it was still some kind of male thing. “It wasn’t his real name.”
“He chose it? Jesus. Did he name himself after the poet or the guy from Clerks?”
She stopped, tilted her head. “Which is worse?”
“Did he wear flowing, ruffled shirts?”
“No,” she said, grimacing. “But it must have been the poet; Dante was about a hundred years old.”
“I bet he wore tights,” Jack said. Then the humor dropped from his tone, and he pulled the keys from his pocket. “He had a century of experience, and something was able to kill him?”
“The demon came back,” Annie said simply. “I’d actually been on the verge of contacting you—after a year of training, I’d worked through most of my guilt. But then everything changed.”
First Blood Page 29
