First Blood

by Susan Sizemore

  She sat back, her jaw clenched.

  Jack looked at Brian. “Did Milton say what they were?”

  “Yep. They’re demons who possess the bodies of humans who’d died and were bound for Hell. And that they take on the personality of the host—which means you’ve got one perverted fuck on your hands. One who has a thing for young girls.”

  Annie turned to the next sheet and paled, pressed a hand to her stomach. “That’s him.”

  Jack studied the photo, felt his flesh crawl with remembered horror. Lawrence Oates. The bastard’s sheet stretched back five decades: molestation, rape, child porn. His prison cell had had a revolving door. “You got an address.”

  “I checked it out,” Gallagher said. “It’s above an ice-cream shop, the ones where they make the waffle cones. His whole place smelled like them—but he’d cleared it out. Employees below said they hadn’t seen him in a day or two.”

  “I need to be out there,” Annie whispered, finally glancing up from the file. “I need to get back out there, be looking for her.”

  “All right.” Jack wiped his hands, stood. “You got anything else, Gallagher?”

  “Yeah.” He looked from Jack to Annie. “Milton said you can expect a couple of visitors soon. She asked you not to shoot them before they can explain who they are.”

  Annie shook her head, shoved to her feet. “I’m not promising anything.”

  ELEVEN

  ANNIE CLOSED HER EYES AND SUBMERGED HERSELF in hot water and bubbles. The throbbing in her head had eased, but her disappointment and fear didn’t soak away so easily.

  An hour remained until sunrise, and they were no closer to finding Cricket. They’d spent most of the night taping up more flyers, and Jack slowly driving while Annie had riffled through thousands of minds . . . until the pain in her head had prevented her from searching through more.

  He’d been the one to force her to stop, told her to rest. That she’d been hurting too much to fight told her he was right.

  The bathwater reverberated in a soft, even rhythm: Jack’s footsteps. Annie automatically slipped her arms over her breasts, but his jolt of shock and horror had her erupting out of the water, snatching up her weapon.

  Jack stood as if frozen. Then he shook his head, laughing quietly. “I forgot you don’t need to breathe.”

  “Oh.” Suddenly laughing, too, she settled back into the tub—this time, with her head above the bubbles. With a toss, the dagger was back on the sill with the row of lighted candles. She eyed Jack’s T-shirt and jeans. “Are you coming in?”

  He said something that might have been “Hell, yes,” but it was muffled by his shirt, already over his head. Annie bit her bottom lip, holding back her quiet growl of appreciation as each long, rangy muscle was revealed, as he discarded his jeans in record time.

  Her gaze centered low as he approached. She wanted to reach out, stroke him, but she kept her hands beneath the water, soaking up the heat.

  She wasn’t an icicle, but . . . “I’m not very warm, Jack.”

  He grinned. “It won’t be a problem. Trust me.”

  She nodded, scooted back. He eased into the water in front of her, and she couldn’t resist a nip at his taut ass.

  “Already biting,” he muttered as he settled between her legs, leaned his back against her chest. “Uh, Annie—although this is very nice, I can’t do much in this position. And your knees are gorgeous, but I like to grab soft parts.”

  “You talk. I grab.” She kissed the side of his neck, curved her palms over his shoulders, down the planes of his chest. “Our partnership is still unequal—because as hard as I try, I can’t figure out why you went to a séance.”

  She felt his pained groan vibrating against her cheek. Her hands disappeared below the bubbles, her fingers running the ridges and hollows of his abdomen. “C’mon, G-Man. Spill.”

  “You go any lower, and I will.” With a sigh, he tugged on her knees, wrapped her legs around his waist. His erection was hot against her calf. “All right. Milton pissed me off. And I couldn’t understand how someone like that had made it as far as she had—but considering my experience, it seemed likely that she’d twisted the truth to suit her needs before. So I looked at her past case files. Flying out to re-interview, going over evidence.”

  Her hands stilled in surprise. “The FBI approved it?”

  “No. It was on my own time. And I found discrepancies. Tiny ones, but when you added them up, you got a different picture than the one she painted. A picture that suggested some freaky shit, but it was still blurry—because in her files, she found a way to explain everything supernatural. But the witnesses I talked to weren’t convinced, and it was consistent: visits from people who were dead, tempting them into various sins. People who changed their faces, had glowing red eyes. A few mentions of angels.”

  “No vampires?”

  “Not many. And pretty soon, word had gotten out how I was spending my time—and I was ordered to back off. So I dropped Milton’s files, but I was hooked. I started checking out locals, listening for anything that might be worth looking at: the cure rate at the Lady of Mercy, haunted houses, the séances.” He paused. “Eventually, Annie, I’d have run into you.”

  She smiled against his neck, her heart huge in her chest. “You think so?”

  “I think of Milton, of you taking Cricket around to the same places I went, of all the different ways our paths might have crossed. Fate, God, or just dumb luck—I’d have found you again.”

  Emotion flooded her throat. With her hands braced on the side of the tub, Annie slipped around, straddled him. Heat flushed her skin, water and sweat slicked it.

  His gaze fell. Tiny waves lapped at her breasts, bubbles played a peekaboo tease with her nipples. With the pad of his forefinger, he circled the pink tip, cleared a path. “So we’re equal now?”

  Annie arched into his hand. “Yes.”

  “You don’t mind that, according to most of my colleagues, I’ve become a certifiable nutcase?”

  “I suck blood, Jack.”

  He laughed, bent forward to sip a drop of water from her neck. A shudder ripped through her, tore at her control.

  Her fingers streaked wet trails into his hair. She took his mouth with hers, a long and needy feast. His cock rose hard against her belly.

  Then his hands found her, and she was drowning. She’d been overwhelmed with need before, but it had been like a blade, flat and sharp, a single destructive edge. Now it rushed in on a caressing wave, surrounded her with murmurs of love and wonder, with an eager, seeking touch.

  As devastating as the bloodlust, but made up of so much more.

  She clutched at his shoulders as he drew her nipple into his mouth, as he eased a finger between her slick folds. Her legs trembled, and he deepened the invasion, gently thrusting.

  Annie gasped, writhed against his hand. Water slapped the sides of the tub, her ears filled with the desperate sounds she made, Jack’s harsh breathing.

  Her hands speared down, found him, stroked. His hips jerked beneath her, and he froze, strained to hold still.

  Annie rose until the thick head of his cock pushed against her sex. “I can’t wait,” she panted. “I can’t wait.”

  “Thank you, God.” His head fell back against the edge of the tub. “Next time, Annie, I’ll get my mouth on you for an hour—”

  His words strangled as Annie took him in. Her flesh resisted for an instant, then gave way to the heated pressure of his shaft. Jack sucked in a sharp breath, and she leaned forward, cried out as he sank deeper, filled her.

  “Annie . . .”

  She rocked, took him in again. The uncertainty clouding his eyes burned through with need, but didn’t disappear. With her lips against his, she said softly, “I waited, Jack. So my first time was after my transformation—and I healed.”

  He held her still when she tried to move. “Every time?”

  “It doesn’t hurt.”

  “Jesus, Annie,” he breathed, but the uncerta
inty fell away. His hands anchored her hips, his mouth possessed, his tongue plundered.

  Mine.

  It was fierce, a claiming. Annie gripped his shoulders, claimed in turn: his body, his heart.

  And, when he tensed beneath her, his blood.

  BATHED in shadows, the curtains around the bed drawn tight, Annie lay on her side and stroked lazy fingers down his spine, hating the coming day. But he would fall asleep with her, she knew. His fatigue would take him down, as the sun took her.

  Jack watched her, and when he spoke, his voice was heavy with exhaustion. “You only drank a little.”

  Her fingers reached the sheet draped over his hips, started back up. “I just needed it to have an orgasm. Not to feed.”

  “I’m not complaining. It was one hell of a jolt. And tomorrow?”

  Her soft smile faded. “We’ll go to the clinic. You can’t every day.”

  “Annie—”

  “You can’t.”

  A long breath escaped him. Then he rolled, pulled her to him, chest to chest. He draped his leg over her hip. “We’re snuggling.”

  She wiggled in closer. “Now we are.”

  “So this is what I’ve missed. Six years of cold hands on my cock— Don’t you even think about moving them.” He tensed. “Or, all right, move them like that.”

  She laughed, brought her hands back up to his chest.

  “Tease.” He said it softly, pressed a kiss to her lips before meeting her eyes. “Maybe it was best that you didn’t show up at my door, Annie. I’d never have turned you away—but I don’t know if this would have been so easy to accept, either. Not without all of the changes in my life; not without losing you first.”

  “I don’t think a lot of people could accept it,” Annie said. “And I couldn’t blame them.”

  Jack held her gaze. “That’s why you think the cover-up is right.”

  “I think many people would have the same reaction as my dad. When I weigh truth—people’s right to know—against safety, I just can’t put truth ahead of vampires who are simply living their lives. And seeing how meaningless it all is when a community is wiped out, for God knows what reason, only makes me more certain that exposure isn’t an answer. But I don’t know what is.”

  The constriction around her heart eased when he nodded, then stared thoughtfully up toward the ceiling.

  “But you’re right: You are different than you were six years ago,” she said. “You’re angry.”

  “I’m actually about as happy as I’ve ever been.”

  “Not right now. In general. The gloss has burned off—that gleam of idealism. Things touch you more personally now, you feel them more.”

  She felt the hurt at the edges of his surprise. “I’ve never been a robot, Annie.”

  “No, you were passionate, but it was almost all here.” She touched his forehead. “Now it’s here.” Her palm covered his heart. “And it’s wonderful, incredible.”

  He grabbed her hand, kept it against his chest. “Get me drunk quick, Annie—or tell me that you’re still in love with me.”

  “A tiny part of me from six years ago is still in love with you.” The words quivered, but she refused to let them break. “But the rest of me is falling again, deeper and harder than I did before. And it’s not easy this time, because I know the risks, and I know the hell of not having you. There’s fear there now.”

  “Too much?”

  She shook her head. “I love you forever, G-Man.”

  He pressed his face to her throat, said in a rough voice, “Sunshine boy.”

  “Whatever.”

  TWELVE

  JACK STRUGGLED TO WAKE, COULDN’T THINK PAST the heavy fog in his brain. Christ. Annie hadn’t needed to drug him this time. And where the hell was that goddamn ringing coming—

  He sprang out of bed, tripped through the curtains. The glow of Annie’s cell phone in the darkened room led him straight to her vanity, and he snatched it up.

  Silence greeted his hello, and his heart thudded.

  “Cricket?”

  He heard a gasp, a shaky breath. Young. A girl’s. “Cricket, you know Annie can’t be awake, so you must have called to leave a message. You probably saw a flyer outside, about a sunshine boy. That’s me. My name is Jack Harrington, and I knew Annie a long time ago. So you can leave your message with me, and I’ll tell her when she wakes up.”

  For an endless second, there was no reply, and he felt the dreadful certainty that she would disconnect. Then there was another shaky breath.

  “She’s not killed?”

  The wealth of fear in that small voice made his heart ache. “No, sweetheart. She was in New York, and she’s been looking for you since she returned. We’re at her apartment now. Do you want to come here?”

  “No!”

  “All right, Cricket, that’s fine.” Jack quickly backpedaled, reconsidered. She’d been frightened away from here and her own house—neither location would work. Anywhere she might feel trapped could send her into hiding again. “Annie said that she’d promised to take you somewhere this weekend. How about we keep that promise?”

  “YOU’RE sure?”

  It was the third time since she’d woken that she’d asked him, but Jack apparently didn’t take offense.

  “I’ll be more certain when she shows,” he said. “But yes.”

  “God, I love you.” She smashed another kiss to his mouth, then strode past him, yanked on a shirt. “Where’d she call from?”

  “Gallagher traced the number to a pay phone—only two blocks from the penitentiary, as it turned out.”

  Where the Bastille Day celebration was probably in full swing. Everyone dressed as French peasants and aristocrats, reenacting the storming of the prison walls.

  Giddy excitement rolled through her. She couldn’t stop smiling, laughing. “And I just hang out near the guillotine?”

  “And if she determines that it’s safe, she’ll come out.”

  “And you?”

  His voice hardened. “I’ll cover you, and watch for Oates.”

  Some of her giddiness drained away, and she methodically checked her weapons, strapped them on. “I should have invested in plastic explosives. Get close, slap it on, then blow his head off.”

  “Another day or two, and I might have— Jesus, Annie! Get down!”

  She dropped, rolled, and pointed her pistol in the direction Jack was facing. His gun was out, his aim steady.

  Two men stood outside the glass balcony door. The nearest one had his hands up, his brows lifted almost to his shaved hairline in amusement or surprise. Maybe twenty, she thought. The one behind him—darker, leaner, older—had no expression at all.

  “It’s Jacob Hawkins, Annie,” Jack said softly. “The grunt who was MIA.”

  “Aged well, hasn’t he?” Annie muttered, then gestured with her gun, inviting them to slide the door open.

  “About as well as a vampire ages,” Hawkins said as he stepped through, his voice Midwestern, friendly. “But we don’t wrinkle so much in the sun.”

  “That’s funny. Isn’t it, Jack?”

  “Hilarious,” he said, his tone as flat as hers. “You’ve been here before, and scared her little girl away.”

  “I did.” Hawkins grimaced. “We were looking for survivors and cleaning up after those the nephilim killed. Unfortunately, I was on her before I noticed her. She has great psychic blocks for a little kid. Almost as good as some Guardians do.”

  Annie’s heart gave a little skip. “That’s what you are?”

  “Yes.” He glanced from Jack to Annie. “And I’d love to explain, but it’s more important that we go get your little girl.”

  “You’d better explain that,” Jack said, his voice like ice.

  Hawkins gestured to his companion. “Alejandro, my silent but deadly friend here, has a better nose than I do. We were at Oates’s apartment earlier today—and Alejandro picked up the same scent outside on your balcony.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Annie brea
thed in realization. Oates had gotten to Cricket’s computer before them. How could he have known to get it, unless he’d been listening or following Jack and Annie? And letting them lead him to Cricket.

  “He is not out there now.” Alejandro spoke quietly, with a melodic Spanish accent. “But he may have overheard the plans you made over the phone.”

  Jack shook his head. “I told Cricket to watch out for him, gave her a description.”

  “But he is intending to use Ms. Gallagher to manipulate her, is he not? And he knows where Ms. Gallagher will be, and when she and the girl will come together.”

  Jack glanced at her in dismay, and Alejandro continued, “We will accompany you and assist you.”

  “Not him.” Annie gestured to Hawkins. “If Cricket sees you, she’ll take off running again.”

  Hawkins sighed heavily, then turned to Alejandro. “Why do I always have to look like the girls?”

  “Shift,” Alejandro replied, then looked to Annie. “He will be bait.”

  A second later, Annie’s mirror image stood in Hawkins’s place. Even her clothes, her jacket.

  “Holy shit.” Annie took a quick step back. She stared for a long moment, met Jack’s astounded gaze, then glanced at Hawkins again, shaking her head. “It’s not going to happen.”

  Hawkins reverted to his own form, his own clothes. “You’re afraid that she’ll catch on, and run—”

  “Yeah, that about covers it.”

  “So you’ll watch for her from above—from the walls of the penitentiary.”

  “When Oates moves in,” Alejandro said, “so shall I, and distract him from the girl. With luck, I will slay him. A vampire could not.”

  Whatever. Annie’s teeth ground together; she couldn’t deny it. She didn’t have the speed or the strength needed.

  Alejandro’s dark gaze met hers. “As humans, both the girl and your man are safe from Guardians and from the nephilim. You are the only one at risk, Ms. Gallagher. We want to decrease that risk.”

  “Annie,” Jack said softly. “We could use the help.”