by Lane Hart
“Sorry,” I reply over my shoulder before I bring my fingers to my lips and lick them clean. It’s torture on my cock to taste her since one lust always goes with the other, but totally worth it. Her blood is so much sweeter and thicker than a human’s, with a flavor that’s similar to warm honey. As soon as I swallow the drops, I feel their difference in a rush of heat that travels down my throat and spreads through my stomach. It’s the way a shot of liquor felt before I was turned.
And what do you know? I was fucking right.
She’s got to be a witch, because human blood never tasted so delicious.
“Did you-did you just–?” She starts to ask me if I licked her blood off my fingers, but I don’t give her a chance. I turn the throttle and we take off down the road.
It’s convenient that our campus is less than a mile away from hers, so she doesn’t even have any idea that I’m not actually taking her home, not until I turn left instead of right on Wallace.
As soon as I make the move, she’s frantically patting me roughly on my shoulder. “Hey, you’re going the wrong way!” she shouts over the sound of the rushing wind as I pick up speed.
“Oh shit,” I say over my shoulder. “I’ll make a U-turn up ahead.”
Instead, I pull into the gated entrance and slow to a stop at the guard house.
Before she even knows I’ve moved thanks to my vampire superspeed, I’m off and hoisting her up with my arm banded around her waist.
“What? What’s going on?” she squeaks as I carry her over to the guard’s window, her fingers trying to pry mine from her and getting nowhere.
“Drake? Who’s the girl?” Trent, one of the shifters, asks when he looks up and sees us.
“Put me down!” she yells as her fingernails begin to dig into my arm.
“Let me in and tell the masters to get their asses down here right now,” I inform him while the witch continues squirming, scratching and now kicking the shit out my shins. “I’ll come back for my bike.”
“Help! You have to help me!” she shouts and bangs on the window at Trent, who is not the least bit moved by her pleas.
“Man, you know the rules,” he says as he leans back in his chair and hitches his thumbs in his security belt. “No visitors allowed. The masters are probably all asleep. I’m not about to get my ass chewed out tonight.”
For fuck’s sake, I hate how fucking stubborn the shifters can be. It’s one of the reasons the masters put most of them on security work.
“Look, will you at least call Voss? Trust me, they want to see her.”
“Please! Please let me go!” the witch begs, going limp in my arms when she starts to sob, realizing there’s no way she’s escaping my grip.
“Hell. No,” Trent replies. “If I get fired, I’ll have to go work in the kitchens, or worse - in the shitters.”
“Believe me, you won’t get fired!”
“Why should I trust you?” he asks, cocking one eyebrow at me and sounding like the wiggling witch in my arms just a few minutes ago. “Fine! Tell Voss I’ve found a witch and brought her to him!”
“Bullshit!” he chuckles.
“What? Did he just call me a witch? He’s insane!” the girl screeches and begins fighting again. “I’m not a witch! That-that’s ridiculous! Let me go! I just want to go home!”
“Call Voss now or I’ll drain you dry!” I finally shout at the kid, losing my patience.
“Jesus,” he says while pulling off the walkie talkie from his belt. “But if this ends badly for me, I’m coming after you.”
“Whatever, just let us in! Thank you,” I say on a sigh when the six-foot tall iron gate finally creaks open. As soon as it’s big enough for me to slip inside, I do and yell back, “Close it!”
The mechanisms grind, and then the gate is sliding back into position, locking us inside. I still don’t let go of the girl.
Thankfully, Voss wanders up a moment later with a flashlight in his hand, his bald head glowing in the moonlight almost as bright, highlighting the scowl on his face.
“This better not be some type of prank,” the head coven master tells me when he comes to a stop right in front of us.
“She’s the real deal,” I assure him around an audible swallow. “Look at her knees.”
He angles his light down and then falls abruptly to his own as if worshipping her.
“Finally,” it sounds like he murmurs to himself. “She’s finally arrived!”
“Good. Great. Take her,” I say, feeling only a twinge of guilt for deceiving the girl, who is still pleading for someone to help her. I tell myself that she’s better off, even if she doesn’t know it. Here at the academy she’ll be safe. The masters will treat her like a queen while out there in the world alone she could’ve been found and tortured, burned at the stake for what she probably doesn’t even know she is yet.
“Trent!” Voss yells as he gets back up on his feet. “Get Dr. Murphy out here now with a sedative, along with four more guards to help get her inside!”
“Yes, sir,” the lapdog calls back. “Oh, and here’s some bras and panties she dropped, unless they’re Drake’s,” he says before flinging the items over the gate, nearly hitting me in the head with a pair of pink ones.
“No, no, no!” the girl cries as she continues to fight me. “I want to go home! Please don’t do this!”
“Now, now, sweet one. We’re not going to hurt you,” Voss says to her. I doubt she heard him over her sobs. He shoves her panties and bras down the front of his pants which is so gross. “Thank you, Drake. You did well, especially for a greedy vampire, but I’ll take her from here,” he tells me when he holds his arms out, asking for me to give her to him.
“Are you sure?” I ask, finding it hard to give her up, mostly because I feel like an asshole, but also because I’m already craving another taste of her. The more she fights, the more her wounds bleed. “Do you mean that? You’re not going to hurt her, are you?”
“The prophecy says she’s going to single-handedly save our species. Now give her to me!”
His response doesn’t really answer my question, causing me to hesitate further. When he shines his light in my face, he sees the proof of my longing and mutters a curse. “Put your fangs away! Drinking from her is a death sentence!”
“Right. I know that,” I humph over the sounds of her crying. Clearing my throat, I ask, “And why is that exactly?”
“Because she may be the last of her kind!” he yells. “And warlock’s blood is addictive to vamps. Hers could be even more potent. One sip could end with you draining her!”
Addictive? Oh shit.
Voss’s light lowers to her leaking knees and then back up at my face again. “Now let me have her so we can get her cleaned up.”
Dammit. What choice do I have? I knew what would happen when I brought her here, so now it’s time to let her go.
Pressing my lips to her ear, I tell her, “I’m sorry,” and then I heave her into his arms.
After I let go and take a step back, her elbow connects with Voss’s chin so loudly, I hear his teeth chatter. I try not to laugh, and fail, especially since the idiot is still juggling the flashlight too. He lets her go and she takes off running to the gate, attempting to climb over it.
Oh well. Now she’s his problem, not mine, no matter how much I may want another taste.
Chapter 3
Harper
One minute I’m climbing the six-foot-tall iron gate while no less than four people try to pull me off, and the next I’m trying and failing to open my heavy eyelids.
“She’s finally coming to,” a man’s voice says. “Let’s wake her up.”
When a zap of electricity starts at my arm and radiates painfully through the rest of my body, I give an involuntary shudder, or as much as I can shudder. My wrists are locked together behind the back of what I’m guessing is a wooden chair, and my ankles are shackled to two of the chair legs.
Great. Just great! At least my eyes are finally opening wit
hout much struggle, taking in the massive dark room lit with a big fancy chandelier above us with actual candles. There’s an oak desk in the corner, a few deep crimson velvet sofas positioned around a fireplace, and a long, wooden table that has enough chairs to seat at least ten people. The place smells like old, dusty library books, which isn’t exactly bad, but it makes me think it wasn’t built in the last century.
Standing in front of me is the same older bald man from outside who I think was named Voss with two other greying men. There’s also a white-haired guy in a white lab coat holding what I’m guessing is a stun gun in his hand, the same one that just hurt me.
What kind of doctor shocks the crap out of women for no reason?
And what the heck did I do to deserve this sort of treatment?
First, I was kidnapped by a stranger on a bike, then they knocked me out, and then restrained me before electrocuting me! Who are these evil people, and what do they want with me?
I vaguely remember hearing the man on the bike mention something about a witch. Surely these men can’t be insane enough to think I’m one of the pointed-hat-wearing, broom-stick-riding, spell-casting, fictional beings. That’s so ridiculous it doesn’t even begin to make sense.
“Hello again,” Voss, the bald one, says with a smile.
“What do you want from me?” I croak.
“To start with, what’s your name? Where are you from? How old are you?”
I just stare at him until I’m hit with another jolt.
Jesus, that hurts. “My name is Harper,” I cave and admit. When the doctor brings the stun gun close to my arm again, I add, “Rhodes. My full name is Harper Rhodes and I-I go to school at Salem. I’m only eighteen!”
“Good. Now, tell us who your parents are.”
I purse my lips together because there’s no way I’m going to give up my dad even if he hasn’t exactly been father of the year for any of the eighteen that I’ve been alive. The poor man, he lost his wife the day my brother and I came into the world. Our mother was the love of his life, the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. And there we were, the two murdering spawns that he was left to care for while he was still grieving.
My twin brother is a deviant. Hugo ran away from home more times than I could count. He was in and out of juvie for four years before we both turned eighteen. Now, he’s residing in the Wake County Department of Corrections. Because of my brother’s persistent criminal offenses, I tried to be nothing but the perfect, good Christian daughter for my father.
“Go ahead and tell us or Dr. Murphy will light you up again,” he warns.
“No.”
He tsks before nodding his head, giving the doctor the go-ahead to zap me.
This time I scream. Maybe I screamed before, but I don’t remember.
The minutes it takes for the pain to subside again feels more like years.
“We don’t want to hurt you, Harper,” Voss says as a few stray tears race down my cheeks. “All we want is to know who made you and hid you from us.”
“I-I don’t know,” I say which is only a partial lie because I don’t know anything about my mother other than the fact that her first name was Gwendolyn. She never married my father, so I honestly don’t even know her last name.
Another zap hits me followed by more until groans are the only sounds I’m capable of making. My hair has fallen in front of my eyes from the violent tremors, and thanks to the sweat and tears, strands are sticking to my face so that I can barely see a thing.
“Again!” someone orders.
“I believe she’s had enough for one night, Voss.”
“I said again!”
“No. Just give her some time. She’ll talk.”
“How can you be so sure?”
There’s a loud clanging sound like a door slamming before a new man’s voice growls across the room, “What the hell are you doing in here?”
“That’s not your concern, son.”
“Who is she? I could hear her screams from two floors down!” the man shouts as he stomps closer. “Why are you hurting her?”
Gently, my hair is brushed from my eyes, and I can see the face of the new voice for the first time. His hair is the same jet black as his bearded jaw, which is currently clenched, and his forest green eyes are narrowed as he takes me in.
“P-please…help…me,” I beg him.
“Let her go!” he demands as he straightens to his full height which is a lot. While he’s dressed casually in jeans and a tee, he has a certain air of authority about him. He’s easily several inches bigger and broader than the old men. His arms are thick and muscular and flex with his raised voice. Thank god for this man. Maybe I’ll finally get out of here!
“If we do that, she’ll try to escape again and we can’t have that,” Voss informs him. “Son, you’re looking at the first witch we’ve encountered in over two hundred years!”
Ugh! There they go with the witch nonsense again!
“I’m not…” I hiccup. “I’m not…a witch.”
“How can you be so certain?” the younger guy turns to ask Voss, who I’m starting to think may be his father since he referred to him as “son.” And if he believes the nonsense his father is spewing for even a second, maybe he’s not as sane as I thought.
“See for yourself.” I barely feel the sting when Voss rips the bandage from my right leg that they must have put on while I was unconscious.
“Her blood is red, not black,” he tells them.
“Now it is,” Voss replies. “Earlier it was the color of coal, darker than the night. Much darker than yours, Kingston. Look,” he tells him as he holds up the bandage to his face. “And she came to us.”
“Not by my choice!” I add.
“Oh fuck. She’s the one,” the son, Kingston, says in awe as he eyes the blood stain. “But she’s too young...”
“Her looks are deceiving,” Voss responds, talking about me like I’m not in the room. “She’s a freshman at Salem college, more than ready to begin reproducing.”
Reproducing? As in babies? He can’t be serious.
“You’re young and the second most powerful warlock after me. You will have the honor of being the first sire,” Voss tells his son.
“No,” Kingston snaps.
“That wasn’t a request! You will do your duty to save our species!” Voss tells him when the older and younger man go toe to toe.
“Only with her permission and only by insemination.”
“No, that won’t do,” Voss says as he shakes his head in disagreement. “The act itself causes a surge in power. It must be done the old-fashioned way.”
“You can take my offer or leave it. I don’t really give a shit.”
Voss spins away from his son and paces around the room for several silent moments, his hands clasped behind his back. The son eyes me curiously the whole time with a scowl on his handsome face as if he’s annoyed and intrigued. Finally, Voss finally stops and holds out his hand to him.
“Fine, you win. All I’ve ever wanted is for you to give me powerful grandchildren. I concede that you hold our fate in your hands.”
The younger man looks at me and says, “You have to let her go if you want her cooperation. This isn’t exactly rolling out the welcome mat. Besides…” He leans forward and whispers something I can’t hear into his father’s ear. Whatever it is, his father’s eyebrows lift in interest.
“Very well. As long as you can guarantee she won’t leave the premises, she’ll be under your care.”
“Thank you,” the son says through gritted teeth before the two men finally shake hands.
And while I didn’t understand all of their conversation, I get the feeling that my fate has just been sealed and that I’m going to hate every second of it.
Chapter 4
Kingston
“Leave me with her,” I tell my father, doctor, and the other two coven masters.
The girl looks so delicate and petite. If she’s a freshman in co
llege then she can’t be more than eighteen. Add in her long, wavy blonde hair and bright green eyes, and she’s classically gorgeous with an air of innocence about her. While the masters would never admit it, those old men are a bunch of horny bastards who would give anything to use her to make the most powerful witches and warlocks in centuries.
I’m not about to let that happen, and I don’t plan to lay a hand on her myself. What I will do is try to be her friend, to gain her trust, and convince her that without her our species is doomed. Eventually she’ll understand and help us.
Hopefully.
“I said leave me with her!” I bellow when no one moves.
“How will you ensure she won’t escape?” Walton, one of the masters, asks.
Shit, that’s a good question. She’ll probably try to run, and we can’t afford to lose her.
“Get me a GPS collar.”
“Like we use for the dogs?” my father asks.
“Yes. They can’t be cut with everyday scissors once secured; and if she tries to go over the gate, she’ll get zapped.”
“Perfect!” he exclaims with a clap of his hands. “Walton, will you do us the honor?”
“Yes, headmaster,” he replies before hurrying out of the room.
What I failed to mention to my father and her is that later tonight I’ll have Ed in security deactivate the collar. The threat alone should be enough to keep her from trying to leave unless she’s an idiot. And I can see the intelligence behind her eyes. She’s smart and scared.
The men don’t budge until Walter returns and I crouch down to fit the thick collar around her slim neck, clicking it into place with about an inch away from her flesh. I then spin it around so that the chip is at the base of her neck and not her throat.
“Can you swallow okay?” I ask her. She does so visibly and then nods.
“Good,” I say, hooking my finger in the excess and giving it a tug. “This is a shock collar. It will only hurt you if you try to leave the campus. It’s ten times stronger than the volt of the stun gun,” I embellish. “If you get shocked more than once, it could kill you. Don’t be stupid, okay?”
