Tempted by Blood

by Laurie London

  Footsteps outside. Someone was running.

  Then a loud crack. It didn’t quite sound like a gun—maybe a tree limb breaking.

  Light filtered in through the slats in the closet door and glinted off the curved blade she was holding. Even the carved hilt was slightly curved. Holding Krystal like this boosted Arianna’s protective instincts even more. If someone tried to harm her cousin, she wouldn’t hesitate to use this blade.

  “That’s one huge honkin’ knife.”

  “It sure is,” she started to say, but her words were cut short by a loud thud that sounded like the front door.

  They both jumped.

  Then the sound of something being dragged down the hallway, straight toward the bedroom.

  Krystal grabbed her arm. “Is that—”

  “Shh.” Arianna shook her free so that she could use the knife if she had to.

  The bedroom door opened. She could hear someone breathing and remembered Jackson saying he could smell that Krystal was a sweetblood.

  Her heart was beating so loudly that she hoped the intruder couldn’t detect it. Could vampires hear the sound of blood rushing through their victims’ veins? If only she could make her heart stop for a moment. She grabbed the hilt of the knife with both hands and watched for a shadow to appear under the door.

  She listened but heard no sound for what seemed like a lifetime.

  Had the intruder already melded with the darkness? Would she be able to see him if he had? Did the shadows mask sound, as well?

  A small shuffle of a shoe on the carpet. Then a grunt and another thud.

  Oh, God, he was right outside the closet.

  Despite the knife, Krystal grabbed her arm again. A little squeak came from her lips.

  “Arianna?” It was a man’s voice. It came not from eye level, but from the floor.

  Jackson? He didn’t sound right. Had he been hurt? She reached up to press open the bifold doors.

  “Don’t!” Definitely Jackson. “Stay where you are!”

  “Why? Are they still out there?”

  “No…I…killed them.”

  “Oh, my God,” Krystal gasped.

  “Then why can’t we come out?”

  “I’m cut…by a silvie…I’m weak…will—”

  She didn’t wait for him to finish.

  “Don’t move,” she ordered Krystal. She burst through the door and shut it quickly behind her.

  Jackson lay on the floor at the foot of the bed, clutching his arm. It was covered in blood. “Stay away,” he hissed.

  She didn’t listen to him. Instead, she crossed the room and dropped to her knees at his side. Blood was oozing out from between his fingers. Without thinking, she yanked off her sweatshirt and wrapped it around his arm.

  “Don’t. You can’t. Be. Near me.”

  That’s when she noticed his mouthful of teeth. Fangs that had been hidden earlier were now fully exposed. She knew she should have been scared at the sight, but she was more preoccupied by assessing him for injuries. The thick slashes of his brows were drawn together and his pupils were almost fully dilated. Did he have a concussion, as well? A head injury?

  “I’m not going to let you bleed to death. I’m calling 911.”

  “No.” His hand shot out, grabbing hers. “You can’t involve humans.”

  A snap of electricity jolted her and she felt a weird pulling sensation along her arm. It was as if something was flowing out of her and going into him. She could feel herself growing tired, lethargic and she stifled the urge to yawn. His pupils didn’t seem quite as wide as they had been a moment ago and his fangs seemed to have shrunk.

  What she wouldn’t give to lie down next to him and go to sleep.

  With an angry yet pained expression on his face, he let go of her and rolled to his side. “Get away before I take too much from you.” His voice sounded less strained, a little stronger.

  “What can I do? Is there someone I should call?”

  “You need to get away from here. Take Krystal and go.”

  “Without you? I don’t understand. Why?”

  “Because there are more of them coming and I’m in no shape to protect you now.”

  Something inside her clicked into gear. “Krystal, honey, run. Get into the car.”

  “I don’t understand,” came the reply from the closet.

  “You heard me,” Arianna barked. “Open that door and run straight from this room. Don’t look back. Grab my purse in the kitchen by the door. I’ll be right behind you.”

  Thankfully, the teenager did as she was told.

  “Good,” Jackson said, his voice strained. “Now, you, too.”

  “Like hell am I leaving you here. You’re coming with us.”

  “I can’t, Arianna. I’m too weak. In the closed space of the car, my defenses will be down and I’ll attack her. I need blood and energies. It’s my body’s natural reaction. I’m liable to attack you, as well.”

  “I’m not about to leave you here to bleed to death all over Krystal’s floor. So get your ass up.” She stood and dragged his hulking form up with a groan. Thank God she’d been doing squats as part of her exercise routine for a while, not that it helped all that much. He was really heavy. At least his legs seemed to be functioning all right.

  Despite his protests, she draped his arm around her neck and with the curved knife in her other hand, she shuffled him down the hall, through the kitchen and out into the garage.

  He stumbled on the step leading into the garage and something clattered to the floor. A set of handcuffs. They were black around the outside, silver on the inside.

  “At least put those on me,” he growled.

  “The handcuffs?”

  “Yes. They’re lined…with silver. It’ll make me…too weak…to attack Krystal.”

  “You seem plenty weak enough already.”

  “If you want me to come with you, it’s the only option.”

  She heard the not-too-distant sound of screeching tires on wet pavement.

  Jackson’s head jerked up. “They’re here.”

  Without arguing further, she grabbed the cuffs and snapped one side around his wrist. He groaned and would’ve stumbled had she not steadied him. Noticing Krystal was in the front seat, she yelled at her to get into the back. If Jackson was going to be unpredictable, then she wanted him up front where she could keep an eye on him. Once inside the car, she snapped the handcuff to the passenger-door handle, pressed the garage-door remote and started the engine.

  As it slowly rose, she jammed the car into Reverse and twisted around in her seat to back out of the garage.

  “Come on. Come on.” Please don’t give out on me now.

  The garage door had been giving her problems lately. Just yesterday, she’d had to manually open the thing when it got stuck halfway. She cursed herself for not mentioning it to her landlady, but it hadn’t seemed like a big deal until now.

  The door finally cleared the back bumper. Inch by inch, she saw the driveway behind her.

  Then two sets of feet, then legs, then bodies.

  Two men in sunglasses and black trench coats, who looked very similar to the ones who’d tried to kidnap Krystal, stood fifteen feet behind her car.

  “Drive!” Jackson yelled.

  Despite who they obviously were, the thought of purposely hitting someone with a vehicle made her hesitate.

  “Punch it,” he commanded. “Trust me. If they don’t move and you hit them, they’re not going to be dead.”

  All right. She hit the gas and the Caddy flew out, making a loud scraping noise in the process. She’d scratched the driver’s side on the edge of the garage door and broke off the side mirror.

&nb
sp; Thunk.

  She hit something. That’s when she realized she’d pinched her eyes shut. She had no idea if she’d nailed one or both of them.

  His window rolled down, Jackson leaned out with a big-ass gun in his free hand, which, thank God, was his uninjured one.

  Where had that thing come from? Given that she hadn’t known where he pulled the curved blade from, either, she imagined he must have other weapons strapped to his body, as well. He was a man full of surprises.

  As she barreled out of the driveway and onto the road, she heard three quick snaps from his gun and realized it must be the sound of a silencer.

  “Got him. One more to go.” He sounded as if they were at a shooting range at a carnival and he was on his way to winning a giant stuffed panda.

  She jammed the car into Drive and cranked the large steering wheel like the captain of an oil tanker. Thank God for power steering. The back of the Caddy lurched and she heard the sound of metal grinding on metal again.

  “He’s holding on. You need to crank it. Take the corner up there fast and hard. See if you can lose him.”

  With the accelerator pressed to the floor, all eight cylinders roared to life. The tires screeched, spinning momentarily until they gripped the pavement. Her neighbors were going to hate this. If they made it out alive, she doubted the Neighborhood Watch would ever forgive her.

  The intersection came up fast. She must’ve clipped the corner more tightly than she had intended, because Mr. Baker’s garbage cans went flying, which meant there were probably tire tracks in his petunias, too.

  The old guy was going to have a total meltdown when he went out for the morning paper tomorrow. She could picture it now. Coffee cup in one hand, cigarette in the other, bony knees poking out from under his plaid robe. “Those goddamn good-for-nothing kids.”

  If only all of this were just a bunch of rowdy teenagers.

  “Holy crap, Ari,” Krystal said from somewhere in the backseat.

  “Yeah, no kidding,” Jackson said. “You drive this thing like a tank.”

  What could she say? It was a piece of shit and they were being chased by a vampire. What was another dent or two?

  She swerved around a parked car. “Is he gone?” she asked, looking into the rearview mirror.

  Before Jackson could reply, or maybe he did and she just didn’t hear him, she got her answer.

  A hand, then a head, appeared on the trunk.

  Despite the force of the speeding car, the Darkblood was somehow pulling himself up over the bumper. Long razor-sharp teeth hung from his mouth. With the sunglasses gone, his eyes were two black orbs staring at her through the back window. The face of a devil.

  “Get down, Krystal,” Jackson yelled as he leaned awkwardly out of the passenger window. If only she hadn’t handcuffed him to the door. If only he wasn’t hurt. She gunned it through a yellow light.

  Snap, snap, snap.

  Jackson was firing at him.

  A quick check in the mirror showed that the man was still there. One gloved hand reached for the ledge right behind the back window.

  “Look out,” Krystal yelled.

  Not watching where she was going, she turned around just in time to see a huge pothole in the road marked by several orange cones and the blinking lights of a construction project. She slammed on the brakes, tried to swerve, but it was too late.

  With a bang, they hit the cones, then the hole.

  A loud, grinding noise filled the air as the Caddy bottomed out. She held the steering wheel straight and prayed that they didn’t get stuck.

  Momentum propelled them back onto the paved road and she floored it, putting the construction zone, with its cones as bowling pins, behind them. She didn’t see the guy in the rearview mirror. A quick check into the one side mirror that worked didn’t show him, either. He wasn’t on the roof, was he? It was vinyl and—

  Jackson sat back in his seat, eyes closed, a smile plastered on his face.

  “What’s so funny?” she demanded, glancing at the roof of the car, expecting to see a knife poke through the vinyl at any moment.

  “Your driving and this piece-of-shit car may have just saved us.”

  “Why? What happened? Where is that guy?”

  “When you hit that pothole, your back bumper came off along with our…bumper sticker.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  JACKSON WASN’T USED TO FEELING so helpless. With this silver cuff around his wrist, he couldn’t be any less of a threat than if Arianna had had him by the balls.

  While Krystal used the facilities at the rest stop, Arianna leaned on the door of the Caddy, his cell phone in her hands. She’d swiped it from him at some point and now she stood just out of his reach.

  “Give that back.”

  “It’s a bitch when someone takes your phone without asking. Kind of a violation of your privacy, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Okay, I get it. I’ll give you your phone back as soon I can. Now…give it…back.”

  She swiped her finger on the touch screen and started scrolling. “Tell me who to call to get you some help.”

  “I don’t need help.”

  “Would you like a mirror? You’re clearly in bad shape. The wound on your arm needs to be dressed and whatever those handcuffs are doing to you, it isn’t good. If you don’t want me to start at the top of your contact list and start dialing for dollars, then you’d better give me a name.”

  He pulled at his wrist, but the silver kept him in check, sapping his remaining strength. These strong-arm antics of hers were infuriating. She had no clue what kind of fire she was playing with. “I can’t get anyone else involved.”

  “Why? Surely there’s someone at this agency you work for who will know what to do. This can’t be the first time that something like this has happened. I’m sure guys like you get hurt all the time.”

  “What do you mean guys like me?”

  “Guys who put themselves in harm’s way in order to protect someone else…someone they don’t even know. Guys who don’t think about what could happen to themselves if they should fail. They just do it, without hesitation, because it needs to be done.” She stopped messing with his phone. “Guys like you, Jackson.”

  She made it sound as if he was a fucking hero or something. Someone who didn’t let innocent people die. She couldn’t be further from the truth. “It’s my job.”

  She turned her full attention to him. Although she had a determined set to her jaw, her eyes were soft and full of concern. He looked away. He didn’t need the walls around his heart to waver under the scrutiny of this beautiful woman. She’d quite possibly saved his life back there, even though she knew full well what he was. That, to him, was heroic. A group of Darkbloods who came across an injured agent wouldn’t have hesitated to stake him.

  “What are you afraid of?” she whispered, her eyes soft and full of concern.

  “Nothing.”

  “I know most guys don’t like being sick and dependent on other people, is that it?”

  If he weren’t so tired, he’d turn on his trademark charm, flash her one of his killer smiles to disarm her and get back on an even playing field, but he couldn’t. “I’m not sick. I just…need a little time. That’s all.”

  “But the sun will be up in a few hours. I don’t know what to do or where to take you. We can’t go this alone and neither can you.”

  It felt as if he’d hit a brick wall, with nowhere to turn. All his friends were with the Agency. They were his family. If he contacted Mitch or Dom for help, not only would they insist on taking him to the clinic, which would be disastrous, but if what he suspected about Arianna was true, that she was immune to mind manips, then she’d be in danger, too.

  “Don’t you have a fr
iend I can call?”

  Gibby in San Diego was too far away. Besides, he sometimes worked on the cleanup crew, which meant he was the last person Jackson would want to take advice from right now.

  Then he thought about Lily. She was shrewd, the daughter of a Council member, and would probably ask too many questions. And yet…she was engaged to Alfonso, who’d operated outside the bounds of their society. She’d kept their relationship a secret for years.

  “Jackson?”

  “Okay, hold on. I’m thinking.” Lily might demand answers from him, but she’d also respect his wishes. If he didn’t want help, she wouldn’t force him to get it. “Let me call Lily.”

  The line was already ringing when she handed the phone to him then walked to the curb about fifteen feet away, just out of earshot. This surprised him. For a blogger investigating the paranormal, he would’ve assumed she’d use every opportunity to get information to report back to her readers.

  Lily answered on the second ring. “Yo, Jacks, what’s up?”

  He quickly explained to her about the Darkblood attack. “So, now they know…where the girl lives. She and her cousin aren’t…safe in their house…anymore.”

  There was a slight pause on Lily’s end. “You know what Santiago would say about this, don’t you?”

  That was the problem. He knew exactly what the region commander would say. Guardians shouldn’t get involved in the day-to-day affairs of the ones they’re trying to protect. There will always be humans dying at the hands of vampires. We can’t be responsible for all of them. We can try to prevent Darkbloods from succeeding, but our primary concern is keeping our secret safe. The guy gave a version of that speech at almost every briefing.

  “Yeah, and Dom would say the same thing. That’s why I came to you.”

  “What do you want me to do?”