Blood Judgment (Judgment Series)

by Nickie Asher

  “Thank you.” She didn’t meet his eyes.

  He touched her cheek. “You don’t have to thank me. It’s my duty to see to your needs. Come on.” He slipped an arm around her, encouraging her to move close enough to feed. Though he didn’t allow himself to hope for anything more.

  She moved up against him and nuzzled his neck, licking the skin over his vein.

  Julian shivered and tilted his head, giving her better access. “Go on, take what you need.” He’d give her every drop if she and their child needed it. His chest squeezed. He missed having her in his arms, missed their connection, and missed the love she had given him so freely.

  She eased onto his lap and pressed the points of her fangs against his skin. She struck hard, sinking her canines deep into him. Moaning, he closed his eyes. Her lips were a soft contrast to the pain of her bite.

  She drank, taking his life-force into her body. He groaned and his cock stiffened. She pressed tight against him and he clamped his mouth shut to stifle the cry wanting out. His balls ached.

  After long moments, she finished and licked over the bite. The warm velvet caress tore another moan out of him that held pain, not pleasure.

  “I’m sorry, Julian. But you brought this on yourself.” She moved away from him. Dismissing him.

  He slid from the bed. “Maybe so, but remember what I said. I haven’t changed my mind and I expect you to cooperate with my demands.”

  She looked away.

  “I’m willing to work with you. I’ve offered before. I’m not willing to tolerate you putting yourself in danger. I care too much for you to allow it.”

  Heart aching, he left her alone.

  “JESUS, I hate that fucker,” Slade said.

  Vali closed the laptop he’d been surfing on. “He’s a good mate for her. You should be happy your sister has him.”

  “Give me a break. I’d rather she hump some frigging human.”

  “Slade, man, I’m gonna truthenize you. No one is ever gonna be good enough for Saranna to you. But those two belong together. And no matter what you think or want, it’s their decision. You need to grow up. She isn’t your daughter and she isn’t your property.”

  “Ouch. Do I act that bad?”

  “You act more like a jealous lover than her brother.” Vali gave him a long, measured look. “And that shit isn’t right. Ever. And you know it.”

  “Vali! You don’t think I’ve been lusting for my sister, do you?”

  “Haven’t you?”

  “No! God, no.”

  “Yes, you have. I see it in your eyes, whether you want to admit it or not. And I’ve got news for you, I think she’s pregnant. So you need to cool your shit and leave them alone. Stop bein’ a carbuncle on the ass of their relationship.”

  Slade looked as if he was going to throw up. “I swear, on my life, I don’t want to do my sister.”

  “Then grow up and act like a mature male.”

  “I don’t like Julian, but I’ve accepted him.”

  Vali didn’t believe Slade for a minute on that one.

  “It’s hard to let go. She’s been my vulnerable little sister all my life. I’ve always taken care of her. I don’t know any other way.”

  “I know, man. I know you want to protect her. But she’ll be okay with him. Trust me.” Slade was afraid of being left alone. Why had it taken him so long to figure it out? Slade’s parents had abandoned him and now, in his mind, Saranna had, too. Because of Julian. What a fucked up lot they were.

  THE TEARS weren’t to be stopped.

  How could Saranna love someone so much when he infuriated her on the scale Julian did?

  She thumbed away the tears with angry swipes.

  He had every right to make demands, whether she liked it or not. She’d already shown the utmost disrespect by ignoring his wishes. And though she didn’t want to admit it, she knew two things were fact. The danger he’d pointed out was real and she had hurt him already.

  Her heart squeezed painfully. She didn’t want to hurt Julian. He’d been through a lot and didn’t need any more. He was probably already in the guest room putting a blade to himself.

  She should go to him. But she’d given him the ultimatum. If she gave in to her desire to comfort him, nothing would change. There wasn’t anything she wanted more than for him to say he loved her. But he wouldn’t do it. Not yet.

  Maybe never.

  So what was she going to do? Obey the demands of her mate or carry on as if his wishes meant nothing?

  She wanted to accept his offer to help her. But how could she while refusing him her bed? She didn’t want to defy her mate. She wanted to hold him in her arms and take him within her body. Not drive a wedge between them.

  But she couldn’t cave. She just couldn’t.

  JULIAN’S NEWLY acquired boots hurt his feet and seemed to weigh a ton but he wasn’t about to bitch like some little pussy.

  Ashton led, Julian and Slade followed, walking abreast along a poorly-lit street toward the evening’s target. The building of interest was supposed to house medical supplies, but an informant had fingered it as a government-run lab where some seriously non-vampire-friendly concoction was being brewed. And that sounded way too credible considering the evidence they already had which pointed in that direction.

  Something bad was coming down the pike that even a blind man could see. If they could cripple the operation, then they needed to do it as soon as possible. Taking out the building wouldn’t stop the bastards, but it might slow them enough that the Resistance could get a handle on it.

  As they drew closer, the buildings were less cared for and an unidentified odor on the stagnant air made Julian want to gag.

  Slade focused on a crappy-looking apartment building and nearly stumbled in a sidewalk crater.

  “What’s so interesting?” Ashton asked.

  Slade cocked a thumb at the building. “That’s where Saranna and I took the female who lost her baby. Shitty place for her to live alone.”

  “There’s worse,” Ashton said.

  “True, but she seemed so lost. I felt bad for her.” Slade barely dodged another sidewalk leg-breaker.

  “At least you two were there when she needed it most.”

  Slade stopped, bringing the others to a halt with him. “Are you fucking kidding me? She shouldn’t have needed us in the first place. No female should be treated the way she was.” He spoke with an edge Julian hadn’t heard before and he had seen Slade good and pissed plenty of times. Slade’s blood was sizzling good and hot over that incident.

  Ashton gave Slade a long look. “That’s why we exist.”

  Slade started moving again. “We aren’t doing enough.”

  “We’re doing the best we can.”

  Slade glanced over at the building again. “Not enough.”

  They covered the rest of the distance without talking, as if the plight of the female weighed heavy on all of them.

  After a brief check of the surrounding area, they settled in across the street from the target building to see if anything interesting happened. The sign on the front proclaimed it Multi Med Suppliers, Inc., but, in less than thirty minutes, three different officers from the Vampire Control and Security Center had gone in and out of the building.

  An hour later, a black sedan pulled up out front and parked at the curb. Two men got out.

  “Bingo,” Ashton said.

  “Who is that?” Julian asked.

  “The main man. Ryan Banks. In the flesh. And he isn’t there to pick up a supply of Band-Aids either.”

  “This stinks to high heaven,” Slade said.

  “Ya think so?” Ashton quipped. “Come on. I’ve seen enough.”

  SID SAT across from Tommy and studied his cards. Pretty sad, they should be out filling orders. Except there weren’t any. The destruction of their largest buyer’s business was a major blow. Word had spread to the other hunt clubs they supplied and every one of them had temporarily shut down in an effort to avoid being
next on the attack list.

  Now, the only buyers he had were the labs and whorehouses. How many of those were there? Not enough to sustain them. Shit. His business was on life-support.

  Tommy threw down his cards and shoved his chair back. “I need to go out.”

  “Look man, you have to get a grip. You’re acting way too much like those leeches, wandering all night, sleeping all day.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Tommy spat. “You weren’t the one forced to drink vampire blood.”

  “It won’t turn you.”

  “I know,” Tommy shrieked. “But it fucked me up. I’ll never be the same again!”

  “No, you won’t. But are you going to let it destroy you? Are you going to let Julian win?”

  “I don’t know. I. Don’t. Fucking. Know.” Tommy turned tail and fled.

  BANKS LEFT the morgue in a daze.

  Though Robin’s mother had already identified his body, Banks had to see for himself what had happened to his child. The ME hadn’t been happy about the full body disclosure, but Banks had insisted and then he’d promptly thrown up on the spotless white-tiled floor.

  His son had been butchered.

  He swiped at his eyes with a shaking hand and staggered toward his parked car. He fumbled the door open and got inside before great wracking sobs tore through his body.

  He’d failed to protect his child. He’d failed as a father. Shame and pain warred inside him, twisting his guts into hard, frozen knots.

  He laid his head on the steering wheel and let the grief pour out.

  At last, he raised his head and wiped congealed snot from his nose. He stabbed at the ignition until he finally got the key in the slot.

  He drove without knowing where he was and before long he was lost in the maze of confusing streets. It didn’t matter. He drove in a mental fog, seeing nothing but the pavement ahead.

  His life would never be right again.

  But he wouldn’t suffer alone.

  The son of a bitch who’d murdered his son had sealed the vampires’ fate. Banks wouldn’t know a moment’s rest until every one of the filthy, murdering bastards was dead and the human race was safe once more.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  JULIAN, ASHTON, and Slade hovered in deep shadows across the street from the government lab where Banks’ team of Mengele-wannabes had been hard at work.

  Except for the security guards, the building had emptied by one o’clock with the departure of the cleaning crew. No vampires were housed there. According to the papers Julian had taken, the dirty work using vampires took place at the Control and Security Center.

  Julian wasn’t naïve enough to think they would put them out of business, but they could be slowed down for a while, crippled if not killed.

  He wore a backpack, as did the others. Each pack contained three explosives. Three for each floor. The explosives planted on the top floor would be detonated first, allowing the security guards to get out. They were just people assigned to work there from a security company. Their lives would be spared.

  Ashton broke away from the shadows. Julian and Slade followed him across the street and around to the back of the building.

  No security cameras watched the back because there wasn’t an entrance. “Okay,” Ashton said. “Up we go.”

  Ashton and Slade climbed fast.

  Julian’s throat closed tight. The higher he climbed, the harder he struggled to breath and the sicker he felt. His sweaty fingers clutched at the mortar, but he kept moving. His stomach lurched and, for a moment, he feared he was going to vomit. Climbing was never going to be easy for him.

  If he fell, he would survive.

  Probably.

  All he had to do was make it to the top. Heart pounding, he coached himself and kept his feet moving.

  Relief coursed through him when his hands grasped the top of the roofline. He hauled himself to safety behind Slade and Ashton.

  “Ready?” Ashton didn’t wait for them to respond. He made for the access shack on the other side of the building where he went to work on the electronic lock. He had it open in minutes and they descended one flight of narrow stairs.

  Ashton slipped off his backpack and removed the first explosive. He placed the bomb. They moved on through the top floor and planted an explosive at the mid-point and another at the far end.

  Bypassing the elevator, they hit the stairs and descended to the second floor and repeated the procedure.

  They moved as silent as wraiths. On the first floor, Julian removed his pack and took out an explosive. He placed it in a cubicle. They moved on down a long row of cubes and he set the second explosive in a large plastic palm plant.

  He put the last explosive on top of a filing cabinet. They headed back down the cube row, but the fall of footsteps on the marble floor brought them up short. A guard was making his rounds.

  “Shit,” Slade said. “That fool better not go up to the third floor.”

  Ashton grunted.

  As soon as the footsteps faded, they raced for the lobby. With no need for finesse, Ashton picked up a huge leather chair and launched it through the double glass doors. They shattered and an alarm shrilled.

  Ashton leapt through the jagged-edged hole with Julian and Slade right behind him. They ran down the short walk, darted across the street, and followed Ashton into an alley where they had a clear view of the facility. He pulled three remotes from his pack. “Eat this, motherfuckers.”

  He activated the bombs on the third floor.

  The explosions were simultaneous and spectacular. The top floor evaporated and the ground shook beneath their feet. Debris rained down into the streets and tires squalled as drivers attempted to get out of the danger zone.

  A half-dozen guards raced from the building. Flames and black smoke billowed from the top of the mangled lab.

  Ashton waited three minutes before detonating the explosives on the second floor. Two minutes after that, he leveled the first floor.

  Sirens blared from every direction as the first emergency personnel arrived.

  Julian and Slade followed Ashton, fading deeper into the shadows as the fire department showed up. The lab was out of business, at least for a while. And if the bastards set up a new shop in Seattle, they would bomb them again.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Julian said. “These fuckers are done for a while.”

  HUNGER BURNED through Christopher with a strength he hadn’t experienced since he was young. He would never have waited so long to hunt had he not fallen ill to a nasty vampire-flu that had dragged on for over a week.

  Though not fully recovered, he was ravenous. He prowled, hunting for a human woman to ease the cramping in his guts. A sharp pain lanced through him and he growled as if he might threaten it into submission.

  He kept to the shadows, hugging the walls of the buildings he passed. Wanting nothing to do with the well-traveled entertainment district, he slipped into an alley, passed through, crossed the street, and took another alley.

  The hair at the back of his neck lifted and he stopped. Someone was following him, stalking him.

  “Hold it right there, you son of a bitch,” a voice said from behind him.

  Christopher froze. He’d never been caught off guard before. His heart banged against his ribs. Shit. He wasn’t afraid of a stinking human. He whirled around.

  Something slammed into his shoulder. For a second, he stared dumfounded at the dart protruding from his body. A second dart pinned him. Four men in olive uniforms stood behind him. He spun and fled. Another dart hit him in the back.

  Christopher ran to the mouth of the alley, darted across the street and blazed down the sidewalk, shoving humans out of his way as he ran. But by the time he reached the end of the block, his head swam and his legs had taken on a rubbery feeling.

  “Fuck.” They’d tranqed him with enough drugs to take down a Percheron.

  His legs shook. He was going to go down and if he didn’t hide, they would have him. He
couldn’t lose his wits to the panic biting at him with little razor teeth. If he stayed cool enough to think straight, he would get away. Of that, he was certain. No human had ever whipped him and he’d be damned if these Nazi’s would be the first.

  His right leg buckled and he went down hard on the sidewalk ripping skin from his outstretched hands and his knees. He rolled and curled on his side.

  Within moments, the men caught up and approached slowly.

  Christopher hissed.

  “Shut up, you murdering fuck,” the lead man said.

  Christopher growled, low and threatening.

  The officer kicked him in the head and stars exploded before him as pain ricocheted through his skull. He lunged, but didn’t make it off the concrete. Numbness spread through his limbs as the drugs took a deeper hold on him.

  A red-haired man consulted a wanted poster and said, “That’s him all right. That fucker’s worth some bucks.”

  The one who’d kicked him leaned down and grabbed a fistful of his hair. He yanked Christopher’s head up. “You killed Mr. Banks’ son. I’d hate to be in your shoes when Banks gets his hands on you.” He released Christopher’s hair and laughed. “I’m sure Banks will want a little alone time with your mangy ass before they send you to the execution chamber.

  “Fuck you. And Banks.”

  “Yeah, you talk big shit now. You’ll be talking out the other side of your ass by tomorrow night,” the officer said. “Anderson, get the shackles. We aren’t taking any chances with this bastard. He was a Wolf.”

  Anderson trotted back to the van and returned a moment later with the restraints. He clapped huge iron cuffs around Christopher’s wrists. Heavy chain connected the cuffs and, as strong as he was, he might not be able to break the links. Panic took a little deeper hold.

  Breathe, damn it.

  He wasn’t going down, no matter what he had to do. These were only Security Center goons, not the death squad fuckers. He could do this. All he had to do was settle down.