Blood Reaction Saga (Book 2): Blood Distraction

by Atha, DL

  His arm caught me at the waist like a clothesline, and I was pinned against the windowless wall, the cold dirt pressing into my back. “I thought you’d decided to let me go.” My voice was shaking a little.

  His ice blue eyes stared back at me. “I decided not to kill you. I never agreed to let you go.”

  “What does that mean exactly?”

  “I assumed the duties of your creator, and there are many things you need to learn.”

  I’d heard that from a few men across the years. Granted, it was without the creator part. But usually they thought they were qualified to teach the lessons. “And I guess you’re the man to teach me?” I sneered.

  “Are you challenging my right?” he asked. I didn’t say anything and just stared past him at the wall. Some people think silence is submission. I consider it a good cover‐up for plotting. “Lesson one. You asked the night we met why I couldn’t stay in the same room with you after you fed from me. Tonight, I am going to give you the answer.”

  He leaned in close, stretching my arms up across the dirt wall of the basement. The movement itself was sensual as he pressed his body hard against mine, and I gasped as he nipped the sensitive area beneath my ear. I started to struggle, but he was so much stronger than me that I didn’t stand a chance. His mouth grazed my neck again before his fangs slipped through my skin. He stole only a few mouthfuls, but what followed as he licked his lips and stepped away felt like cocaine had been injected straight into my bloodstream. The puncture site began to tingle, and from that spot, the sensation traced through every connecting blood vessel until my entire body burned with what felt like electricity. And then I began to feel the all too familiar hunger that Asa’s saliva had caused.

  What I’d felt as a human had been strong, but this hunger was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. It was like taking the lump sum of all human cravings and adding it to the sensation of being starved. My pelvis ached, and I reached for him, but he nimbly sidestepped and grabbing my arm swung me around so that my arms were twisted behind my back. He pulled me backwards until I felt the backs of my legs touch the bed and was pulled onto the mattress.

  By the time Levi had stretched me out beside him, I was writhing with the fire of lust and want. His saliva was so powerful that I felt like I was on fire. Hanging in the sun might have been the easier of these two tortures. That would have just hurt, but along with this pain came an intense desire and want for the vampire behind me. In that moment, I would have done anything for him. I would have let him drain me willingly if it meant I could have his lips on me again. I would have killed for him. I would have died for him. I struggled to get to him; I begged for his touch, for his body. But he was immovable. He kept me firmly turned away from him, my face buried into the pillow.

  “Listen to me, Annie. I know it’s hard, but try. Try to reason with yourself. The sun’s coming up in moments, so you’ll ache for only a short time before the deep sleep takes you. You need to understand the hunger, the pain, and why letting your own kind drink from you can be a liability, one of the reasons making another vampire is so extraordinarily dangerous to the maker. Their desire strips you of reasonable thought. It makes you irrational and careless. Never let another vampire bare fangs on you unless you trust him or her explicitly. I’m taking a risk every time I let you drink from me. As your creator, I willingly accept the danger, and you can trust me equally.”

  Speech eluded me at that point. I lay there wrapped in the shackles of his arms while his saliva and his desires tore ribbons of fire through my arms and legs. It was all the more painful that he lay behind me, his chest pressed into my back, the hard muscles of his arms and legs wrapped around me, and for once, I was grateful to feel the sun crest the horizon and extinguish my internal flames.

  Chapter 23

  I came to myself, my hand clutching my throat, dried blood fragmenting underneath my fingernails as I pulled my hand away. I remembered the burn ripping through me when the death sleep came. I’d managed to pull one hand free from Levi’s grasp and was clawing at my neck in my last moments. My fingernails had brought blood to the skin, but it had been as though I had no control over my hand. I couldn’t stop clawing at the fire in my throat. Thankfully, the sensations were gone now. My skin felt its typically cool temperature, and I no longer burned. Levi wasn’t beside me when I rolled over although the blanket still held the impression of his body.

  “Why do you wake up before me?” I asked as I came up the stairs. He was standing beside the remains of the fireplace, his arms crossed, as he stared out the empty panes of the broken windows. The wooden cross of the antique window frame clung steadfastly in place, refusing to acknowledge it no longer served a purpose.

  “You’re just a babe,” he answered. “And babies need their sleep.”

  I rolled my eyes and went to the other window. Also broken, the cool night air poured through the openings and ruffled the fragments of newspapers I’d left lying on the floor. “Do you get to see the sun? How much extra time do you get?”

  He shrugged his shoulders as if he didn’t want to tell me. “By my age, about an hour. But don’t be in any hurry. I was over fifty before I even had an extra fifteen minutes. And no, I cannot see the sun. I can look outside and see what the rays touch, but that’s about the extent of it. And even that can be painful.”

  That long? My daughter would be well past middle-aged and my mother gone. Half a century to wait to see dusk.

  “What did you see this evening then?” I asked. Jealousy pulled my voice into a thin, stringy sound. My desire wasn’t to see the sun, the thought made my skin crawl. But to see the world bathed in the light of day again, now that was something I craved.

  He joined me in front of the broken window, tracing the cross of the decaying glass strut. “The trees had long shadows when I woke. So it must have been a cloudless day, but the light was muted like you would expect in late winter. A pack of coyotes passed through. They were after a rabbit that has a den a few hundred yards from here. I watched him chew on some grass before he took off to his hole. I read a couple more of those old newspaper pages.” He turned towards me. “But I spent most of my time looking at you.”

  I tensed up like lightning had coursed through me. “Looking at me? That sounds really dull.”

  “Yeah, it was a colossal waste of time,” he answered smoothly.

  “You know, you’re welcome to leave whenever you get the urge,” I answered back. “I didn’t ask you to come here.”

  He shrugged as if he didn’t care one iota what I requested or didn’t. “I came because of my brother. I’m staying because of his mistake. So I won’t be leaving any time soon. His mistake keeps mushrooming, and you’ve got a lot to learn.”

  I backed up immediately, remembering the fire in my veins from last night’s events. “Yeah, you’ve said that once already, and I don’t want any more of your education.”

  Levi reached my side, his hand wrapping possessively around my rib cage before I got very far away. He was smiling, his blue eyes lit up with a little too much knowing. “Oh, but I bet you will.”

  Chapter 24

  Blood was dripping down her arm, forming a small stream of red that soaked into the hem of her black dress. The woman was unconscious at the moment, and as such, she didn’t take any notice of the fresh blood tracking down her skin; Levi didn’t seem to either. She’d been awake, talking and flirting heavily minutes before and, no doubt, she expected to be doing more of the same when she’d walked towards the back of the bar, arm in arm, body linked with Levi.

  Of course, she had no idea she’d been armed-up with a vampire, and as I watched Levi in action, I was mightily impressed. He’d led her off, the oblivious lamb to the slaughter, shackled to him by a lust she couldn’t process. Their mouths touched, briefly, a few times as she followed him, and I could imagine how her lips were tingling—a burn she swallowed down into the pit of her belly and spread from there to all her limbs. I could smell the desire as it
reached her pelvis, the pheromones a thick haze around her. I hung back, not wanting to cast my violent, hungry gaze on her back until I heard him lean her back against the wall in a darkened, forgotten corner of the bar.

  She’d given herself over in increments, and the hunt had truly been beautiful to watch. It had started, a girl sitting alone, at least mentally. A collection of her friends were gathered around her, but she wasn’t with them in spirit. They’d laughed with exaggerated movements, consumed plenty of wine, made toasts, ate with abandon while they talked about dieting, and she’d made the correct responses each time.

  From across the room, I could hear the trite words and clichés that whispered from her lips but she wasn’t thinking of her friends. She wasn’t thinking of the wine or the jokes. She was in her own world, where something or someone had caused her pain enough that she prayed for a diversion to drive it from her mind for a while. Maybe it was a loss. Or a betrayal. Maybe she’d given up the most important someone in her life, or perhaps she’d just lost her path. I couldn’t be sure.

  Either way, when Levi had made eye contact from two tables down, she didn’t mind being the hunted. The slant of his hungry eyes had the opposite effect of mine; his gaze led her shyly, but willingly, across the floor to sit down at his table. He’d bought her a drink, which she’d poured back quickly for courage lost in his eyes and voice. He’d given her his undivided attention, listened with keen interest to her every word, and stroked the back of her hand when she’d divulged the real reasons as to why she was there. Not that those reasons mattered in the slightest to the master that sat across from her.

  And master Levi was, I recognized, as I watched him weave a thick magic across her shoulders that cocooned her like a shawl, the free edges of which he used to pull her closer to him so that in this crowded room even I couldn’t hear them as they talked. He drew her farther and tighter to him until they’d gotten up, a couple in one fluid motion, and disappeared to the back.

  A bathroom break, I’d heard her say as they’d passed me sitting quiet and alone at my table. Levi had jerked his head only slightly at me, and I’d looked away as they neared me so as not to frighten her with my thirst. That was the only point of my being allowed to come. I was learning to sit in a crowded room and not terrify anyone while hungry, the hunger being the most important qualifier, and I was starving. If I accomplished that small feat, Levi said, it would be a miracle. He’d said I looked wild and felt even wilder, but I was certain I could pull it off. After all, I’d spent nearly an hour in a bar in Fort Smith. He ended the conversation by reminding me a man had died, so my track record wasn’t convincing.

  Tonight, I’d managed to go unnoticed for the most part. I’d turned a few heads and then turned them back again when I smiled. Desperation drives men away, I’d decided, even more than fear. But no one was running out screaming, so I counted it a success.

  I let Levi and his chosen lady get several feet past me before I turned my head back in their direction. The woman followed him with full confidence into a poorly lit corner of a hallway that led to the restrooms, and he’d melted himself against her. A couple, reuniting as they emerged from the bathroom doors, smiled at each other as they passed them, their steps light but fast as they sped past the oblivious couple in the hall.

  I’d gotten up from my chair without meaning to and was walking towards them when Levi pulled his head up from her neck long enough to cast an icy look towards me. The look alone was enough to stop me, but the quiet growl was the icing on the cake. I stopped several feet shy of them and sat down at an empty table, resuming my observation status only.

  The rise of the woman’s chest had slowed. Her hands twitched a couple of times before he pulled back again, his fangs pressing into his lower lip. He slipped her gently down the wall to rest, head on her knees, her black hair hanging across one leg. She looked as if she’d just sat down to take a rest. Maybe she’s had too much alcohol, a passerby might think. Or overheated on the tiny dance floor.

  Her friends were still drinking heavily at the table. Earlier, I’d sent over another three bottles of wine and a round of pink panty droppers—from an anonymous admirer, of course. The women had cast giggly looks around the room looking for who could have sent it before collapsing again into another spasm of laughter. One or two of the group wandered away to talk to a small collection of men. Not one of them had come looking for the woman at Levi’s feet. Their rational thoughts sifted by the alcohol, her friends would make poor witnesses when they finally noticed she was missing.

  Levi pulled me to my feet as he casually walked by the table that I’d sat down at moments earlier. My throat was cracked; the pit of my abdomen burned like the smoldering coals at the bottom of a campfire. As he led me towards the door, I started to protest. Why was he taking me away? This was where the blood was?

  I wrenched my hand from his and turned towards a table of men watching a game on the TV. Basketball? Football? I can’t tell you. The only thing that mattered to me was that they were breathing. Their body heat reached me from several feet away, the heat hot against my skin. I was ready. I just needed to prove it to Levi.

  I snarled as Levi’s hand landed on the back of my neck and pulled me into a crushing embrace. I wanted to fight him and every instinct urged me to do it. My newfound confidence took its own glancing blow when he pushed my head down against his chest and pulled one of my arms behind my back. “We’re leaving!” he hissed into my ear.

  “I want blood!” I demanded. I tried to twist away from him again but he entrapped me against his body, his right arm holding my right arm crossways against my back and my left arm twisted under his own.

  “I will feed you,” Levi answered. “The girl’s still alive. They’ll call 911 soon, and no one will remember much about us. If we leave now, that is.”

  Unimpressed with his warnings, I tried wrenching against his hold again. “I want it fresh.”

  “This will have to do,” he said, pulling me on towards the door, his body still wrapped around mine. He was much stronger. On any given day, he had the advantage. He was a hardened fighter and had lived for over a century. Fully fed as he was, I didn’t stand a chance against him.

  Outside the bar, Levi stepped off into the shadows. He pulled me with him, and I quit protesting as the fresh air blew the smell of blood out of my nostrils. Freeing my arms as we cleared the parking lot, he kept a hand on my wrist and dragged me farther from the bar.

  Fayetteville sits nestled in a hollow of the Arkansas Mountains, a beautiful crown of lights that trails down into the valleys like the shrinking tails of kites as the city fades away into the rural landscape. And there, in the lower valleys, the forests turn dark and secretive at night, with hiding places deep enough to cover every sin, but in the rising light of day, reveal a world of old hardwoods, streams that tumble over and through moss-covered stones and disappear into fern enshrouded rock crevices to mingle with underground caverns.

  It was towards these unknown parts of the forests that Levi pulled me. He sprinted away through the quiet of the alley onto a blackened street, and within the span of three minutes, we’d left the city and reached the trails that would lead us into more distant mountains. I tried to pull away again and turn in the direction of a different bar; I didn’t want to leave the city with its bright lights and buildings full of hungry people, but he was insistent and pushed me forward, shoving me roughly ahead of him. He challenged me with his eyes and voice. Soon his insistence caught me in its energy, and I raced Levi headlong down the mountain.

  It wasn’t much of a contest. His speed was twice that of mine, but when I thought to pull up and return to the city he’d pull me forward at times with his insults and goad me from behind at others with threats before disappearing into the forest only to reappear behind me. All in all, he was good-natured, and his mood was infectious. Soon, I found myself enjoying the game, and I chased him with every ounce of strength I had.

  The race ended in a valle
y strung narrowly along a creek whose shallow banks climbed gently out of the water and then stretched short eager arms towards cliffs that shot starkly up to join with the night sky. Heavily dewed ferns made a thick carpet on the ground, and the first of spring’s flower offering had tucked their heads in for the night. The creek, swollen with late winter rains, was running hard and fast before boiling over and cascading down triplet falls into a rock-lined grotto.

  Levi had stretched himself across a piece of driftwood. Stripped of its bark and bleached from time and the sun, the log looked like the dead white arm of a fallen monster, its roots reaching gnarled fingers towards the cliffs.

  “Come and drink,” he said, motioning me towards him.

  “I want to drink from the living,” I answered. But I walked towards him. I was thirsty.

  “You’re not ready for the living yet.”

  “And why not?”

  “Because I said so. And until I say otherwise, you drink from me.”

  “I wanted one of those men.”

  “You’ll not be having any man.”

  “I’ll be having whatever I want,” I sneered. And I felt that way. Like I could have whatever I wanted. If I were human, it would have been adrenaline racing through my veins. I wasn’t sure what the substances flowing through me tonight would be called. Addictive, dangerous, provocative were good adjectives. I was on edge. Every nerve ending turned outwards to the world around me. From the birds settled in for the evening in the treetops and the mice bedded deep under the tree roots to Levi waiting for me. He sat up as I approached, settling back into the limbs of the fallen tree which held him like a throne. Come to think of it, he did look like a god. A ravenous, raven-haired god with eyes so deeply blue they might cure my craving to see the summer sky.