BloodBorn

by Linda Jones Linda Howard

  As she stepped onto the first of the three steps that led to the porch, Chloe thought that she should probably buy the house before she started thinking about renovations.

  She didn’t have even a whisper of warning, before he was on her.

  About damn time. Luca had been waiting over two days for this moment.

  A dark-clothed figure slipped out of the building, using a back exit where the light conveniently hadn’t been turned on. Recognizing his prey by both shape and movement, Luca rose silently to his feet from behind the heating and air unit he’d been using as both shelter and concealment, and floated from the roof to the ground.

  Trailing a vampire, especially a strong one, was an exercise in discipline. He had to maintain absolute control over his body, because a vampire’s senses were acute. He couldn’t make a sound, not even an unguarded breath. Over the centuries Luca had learned how to reach out with his own senses and isolate his prey’s heartbeat, synchronize his own heartbeat to that of his prey so the other vampire wouldn’t hear that telltale second heartbeat and know someone was behind him, and he had to do it fast, within two beats at the most. If there was any wind he had to position himself so his scent didn’t carry, and sometimes that was damn difficult. He also had to make certain that he moved only when he couldn’t be seen.

  Scent was the most difficult sense to bypass, because he couldn’t control the wind. He’d tried; no dice. He also had to account for the possibility that his prey might have a heightened sense of danger awareness, something that developed with time; a vampire either learned and grew, or died young. Maybe it was his own force field of energy that set off the alarm in his prey, in which case Luca could do everything right and something would still alert the prey to his presence. It was a real pisser when that happened.

  He was relieved to at last be doing something, anything. When he’d first left the Council building, almost three days ago now, he’d urgently needed to feed; being awake so long, being out in the daylight, had seriously sapped his strength. He’d done the most expedient thing, glamoured the next jogger he encountered, and took the woman to his parked rental. To anyone passing by, they would have looked as if they were making out, especially as the woman had her arms around him. Then he’d taken her back to where he’d found her, the small wound on her neck already almost healed. The only effect she’d feel was that she’d have to cut her jogging routine short because she was unaccountably tired.

  Finding a place to rest, to get out of the sun, had been a calculated risk, but one he’d had to take. Using his secondary ID and credit card, he’d checked into a nearby small hotel, pulled the covers from the bed and dumped them in the tub, stripped off his clothes, then closed the door to the bathroom and settled in the tub for a few hours of refreshing total darkness. His entire body seemed to heave a sigh of relief. Despite the discomfort of fitting his six-plus frame in a five-foot bathtub, despite the hardness, he’d slept like a baby.

  When he woke, it was almost nine o’clock at night, and full darkness was looming.

  After tossing the covers back onto the bed he quickly showered and got dressed again, then headed back to the Council headquarters. He didn’t approach the building itself; instead, he settled himself on the roof of the building next door. Then he waited.

  For almost three long damn days, he waited. He did take breaks, to get away from the noon sun, to sleep a little, to feed, but he spent most of the time on that roof, waiting for his prey to leave the building, watching to see who came and went.

  None of the Council members had left, unless there was a tunnel that came out in the basement of some neighboring building, but given the residential nature of the area he didn’t think so. There was very little activity, which made it easy for him to keep watch but at the same time was boring as hell. If he guessed right, he almost didn’t need to keep watch during the day, but he did it anyway, just in case.

  He had almost decided that nothing was going to happen tonight, either, because the hours were ticking toward sunrise. The vampire he was following could withstand sunrise, to some extent, but most of the rogue vampires enlisted in the uprising wouldn’t have the same ability. Either the errand or meeting was expected to be a short one, or his prey was up to something else entirely.

  He stayed well back, often losing sight of his target but using his senses of smell and hearing to stay on track. It was a delicate game he played, one of balance; he had to stay close enough that he could follow, but not close enough that he could be detected.

  Being followed evidently wasn’t something Enoch had considered, because he never once stopped to check his surroundings, or so much as looked over his shoulder.

  Luca had known from the first time he’d stepped into Hector’s quarters that Enoch was the killer; even if he hadn’t been able to read the residual energy, he’d have known from listening to Enoch’s rapid heartbeat, from the smell of fear oozing from every cell. He’d been tempted to execute him on the spot, or at least take him into custody for questioning. He hadn’t for one simple reason: he wanted to know who had given the orders. Enoch hadn’t acted on his own authority. Hector had suspected that someone on the Council was a traitor and he’d almost certainly been right, but there was also the chance that the Council member wasn’t the one giving the orders, that someone from outside was the actual leader. Personally, Luca thought the traitor had to be a Council member, simply because of the enormous egos involved. He couldn’t think of a single sitting member who would willingly take orders from another member, much less from someone on the outside.

  If he’d acted then, he wouldn’t have found out who was behind it all. He had carefully watched Enoch’s every move in the Council chamber, but Enoch was both smart and careful; not once had he looked at any member who wasn’t speaking, not once had he volunteered any extra information in an effort to tip off his cohort. He’d been sweating it, though, spooked by how much Luca had already been able to tell but not knowing exactly what else could be read at the scene.

  If the rebels were meeting anywhere, it wasn’t at the Council headquarters, which only made sense. Therefore Luca’s best bet was to follow Enoch and see where he went, who he met, maybe overhear a name. Then he’d kill the son of a bitch.

  Enoch was bearing north and east. He was moving fast, using vampire speed, but there wasn’t much risk that anyone would see him because of the hour. He did use some caution, staying in the deepest shadows much of the time. Luca stayed with him as Enoch moved deeper into an older, less affluent neighborhood. This didn’t strike him as a good meeting place, Luca thought. People lived in neighborhoods like this for years and years, and they paid attention to who came and went, and what went on. What was Enoch doing here?

  A bare, burly arm circled her neck and jerked her backward off the step, back onto the sidewalk. Chloe gasped, instinctively bringing her hands up to grip her attacker’s arm as the pressure on her throat increased. Clamping his free hand over her mouth, he lifted her off her feet and held her there, choking. Panicked, she jerked her head back, slung her elbows, kicked at his shins, but it was like fighting with a rock.

  Colored spots swam in front of her eyes, and in despair she realized she was close to passing out. The thought came, bitter and angry, that she wasn’t paranoid, after all. If anything, she hadn’t been paranoid enough. Her thoughts darted. Her keys, her pepper spray—shit! She’d dropped them in her instinctive fight for air, trying to loosen the killing hold around her neck.

  She was going to die. The realization hit her like a fist to the gut. She was going to die because some punk dickhead was too much of an asshole to work for a living, choosing instead to rob and kill women like her, and knowing that made her so furious that the world shrank to a tiny point, a point filled with nothing but wild determination to tear him limb from limb, to dance in his blood, to stay alive. Her muscles surged, heat flared until she felt as if her skin would melt. She couldn’t scream, couldn’t get a curse out, but a rhythmic snarl sta
rted in her chest and rolled up her throat, feral, savage. Wildly she threw her head back again, trying to catch him in the nose. She dug her nails into his skin, scratching as hard and deep as she could, marking the bastard so maybe at least the cops could find him and he’d—

  He paid no more attention to her struggles than if she’d been a child, even laughing very softly, his mouth close to her ear. There was a strange, coppery smell coming off him as he whispered, “Do you know what you are? Have you heard him? How close is he?”

  The words didn’t make sense. She heard them, recognized them, but they didn’t make sense. Still snarling, she reached back, digging for his eyeballs as she arched her back, heaving and twisting. He jerked his head away from her scrabbling fingers and tightened his grip around her neck, laughing again.

  “Fight all you want,” he crooned. “You can’t hurt me. I’m not weak and mortal, like you. You’re just an annoying little fly, and I am the swatter.”

  Black was closing in on her, she could feel her brain shutting down from lack of oxygen. Fly … swatter? Not fair. Her killer was a nut…. Might not stand trial, claiming nuthood…. Just wasn’t fair.

  Using the hand that continued to silence her, he pulled her head to the side, exposing the curve of her neck. Chloe hung on to consciousness, still trying for his eyes even though she was aware her hands were flailing uselessly now. His mouth moved over her neck, nuzzling, opening—

  And then he was gone. Just like that. The arm around her neck, the big body pressed against her back—gone. Chloe fell limply to the ground, landed half on the sidewalk and half on the grass, choking and coughing and unable to think, to do anything other than lie there dragging deep, rough breaths of air into her lungs. Somehow she managed to roll onto her side and curled up in a fetal position, shaking and crying, unable to think.

  Sounds … she could hear something. She didn’t know what it was, some kind of thudding sound, but with a wet sound, too. Her chest heaving, she tried to focus her eyes. There were dark shadows cut by streams of light from her front porch and the streetlight that was several yards away, in front of her neighbor’s house, shadows that seemed to swirl and blend until she wasn’t certain what she was seeing. Two men … fighting, she thought, though they were moving so fast she thought she might be hallucinating. One of the men was her attacker; she saw his bare arms flashing. He was completely bald, and big—damn, was he big—but he fought with a speed and silence that was disorienting.

  The other man … who was he? Someone passing by? Coughing, she struggled to her hands and knees, thinking only that she had to help him because the other man was so much bigger. But she couldn’t get to her feet, couldn’t help—

  Her cell phone … 911. She had to call 911.

  She silently repeated the numbers to herself as she looked around, as if she was afraid she might forget why she was looking for her purse. Where was it? It had been on her shoulder, but it wasn’t there now, and the yard was too shadowed for her to see. Blindly she patted the grass and concrete around her, sweeping her hands out … there. Her hands shaking, she grabbed the strap and pulled the purse toward her. The effort upset her balance so much that she fell weakly to her side again, but she didn’t lose her death grip on the purse strap.

  The two men were moving so impossibly fast they were nothing but a blur. Her eyes and mind weren’t working in sync yet, the effect dizzying, so she simply shut her eyes and felt around inside her purse for the sleek hard plastic of the little phone, right there in the side pocket where she always put it.

  It slipped from her nerveless fingers, fell to the concrete. The back popped off, but the battery stayed inside. Panting, she grabbed it up again—and became aware that the sounds of the fight had stopped, and the silence was as terrifying as the attack. Which of them had won, her attacker or her rescuer?

  A shadow of a man came around the car, and Chloe surged forward, a tiny mewling sound coming from her throat as she crawled up the front steps, fumbling with her phone, trying to punch in the numbers at the same time she kept darting panicked glances over her shoulder. His eyes … dear God, were his eyes glowing?

  “It’s all right, miss,” he said in a deep, steady voice, the tone as calm as Sunday. “He won’t bother you anymore.”

  She froze, staring up into those eyes as he moved fully into the light, and relief washed through her in a warm flow that eased all the tension from her muscles, all the terror from her mind. He wasn’t her attacker. She didn’t know who he was, but he definitely wasn’t the huge bald guy. This man was tall and muscular, but with a lithe grace that made it seem as if he were flowing, instead of moving in the slightly clunky way most people walked.

  He wore boots and jeans, and a dark, long-sleeved shirt, which as far as she was concerned was the best outfit ever for a man. His hair was long and dark, too, falling around his broad shoulders. Did she like long hair on a man? She wasn’t sure. And when had she decided that boots and jeans were it for dress code? Didn’t matter, though; she liked it now. She was so relieved she liked everything about him. Vaguely she wondered if she should be relieved, and why she was. This guy was a stranger—a helpful one, but still a stranger. “I’m calling the police,” she said, showing him the phone in her hand.

  He smiled, and for a moment she forgot about the phone. “You don’t need the police.”

  No, of course she didn’t. How silly. The danger was over, the bad guy gone. She hadn’t seen his face, anyway, so she couldn’t give a description beyond “big, bald, bare arms.” Yeah, that would really get his ass caught. She tried to remember why she’d been so desperate to call 911.

  He sank to a crouch in front of where she half-sat, half-lay on the porch steps, reached out and touched her arm. “Are you hurt?”

  “Just shaken.” Shaken, not stirred. She almost laughed at the stray thought but her throat hurt, her knee hurt, her hand hurt, and she realized she had just lied. She turned her hand, looked at the scrape on her palm, blood darkly smeared there. “Maybe a little banged up, but not much.”

  “May I?” He took her hand, not waiting for her to actually give permission, but she was oddly charmed and comforted that he’d asked. His own hand was very warm, masculine, his long fingers hard and comforting as he turned her palm up. Chloe found herself staring at her hand, at the way it looked so feminine and delicate cradled in his, at the gentle way he touched her as if he, too, was acutely aware of how much bigger and stronger he was. She didn’t usually feel like a delicate flower, and the sensation was a little bemusing. She was Level-Headed Chloe, who had—Hadn’t she been about to call 911? Why had she stopped?

  That was puzzling, but not enough for her to worry about it. All in all, she was feeling very peaceful right now.

  Then he lifted her hand to his mouth. The touch of his lips was soft on her scraped palm, the tiny licks of his tongue so light she could barely feel them. Wait. He was licking her?

  “You can’t lick me,” she said sternly. “I don’t know your name.”

  He looked up and a quick grin slashed across his face. “Luca,” he said.

  In his own way, he looked as … brutal wasn’t the right word; dangerous, maybe? … as the other guy. Yes, dangerous was a good way to describe him. There was something very hard about him, not just that he was obviously in great shape, but a look, an expression, that said he was as tough mentally as he was physically. His features weren’t exactly handsome, but they were so sculpted that she didn’t think she’d ever forget exactly how he looked.

  With that last thought, she had the impression that the very air around them began to shimmer. Yesterday the shimmering had alarmed her; tonight it simply felt all apiece with the night, the moment.

  He was striking-looking, in so masculine a way that no one would ever associate the word “pretty” with him. His skin was tanned, and in contrast his eyes were strangely light. Whenever he caught her gaze she found it almost impossible to look away. Okay, flat impossible. She felt as if she were bein
g cocooned in velvet, all her cares and hurts floating away as if they’d never existed.

  “Luca,” she repeated. “Is that an American name?”

  “No.” He lifted her hand to his mouth again, and his tongue once more began a slow, gentle movement over the scrape. She was okay with it now, because she knew his name. They’d been introduced … sort of. She knew his name but he didn’t know hers, and that seemed wrong.

  “I’m Chloe,” she said. “Chloe Fallon.”

  He looked up again, his pale gaze meeting hers. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Chloe Fallon.”

  Her hand had stopped hurting.

  “Sit very still,” he said softly. “I’m going to heal your knee, too. You won’t be alarmed, and you won’t even remember that it was hurt.”

  “Of course I’ll remember,” she said automatically.

  He smiled, eased her pencil skirt up over her knee, and bent his head to her leg where a thin line of blood trickled down from her bruised and scraped knee.

  Chloe took a deep breath. Warmth flowed through her again, and it had nothing to do with relief. She looked down at his dark head bent to her leg, at the two strong hands cradling her calf and ankle, and she took yet another breath as images swirled through her mind, images that had to do with her skirt being pushed higher, with his mouth moving higher. Her breasts tingled as her nipples began to tighten. Oh, my.

  He’d told her she wouldn’t be alarmed, and she wasn’t, but he hadn’t said anything about “disturbed.”

  He lifted her leg a little higher, moving his mouth and tongue over her shin; cool air rushed under her skirt, all the way up her thighs. Chloe leaned back a little more to maintain her balance. She was all but lying on the steps now, her legs spread a little, the injured one lifted as if to his shoulder … Stop, her subconscious whispered. Brakes on.

  “That’s enough,” she managed to say, though her voice wasn’t very loud or very forceful.