“You can.”
“But I need my sense of smell back. I’m vulnerable without it.”
“You’re not overly vulnerable. These days, a vampire doesn’t need an acute sense of smell for protection. There are other ways to protect ourselves. Your life won’t be cut short because of a failing nose.”
“A failed nose. Except for the scent of one particular person.”
“Make a fist for me,” the doctor said. He tightened a band around my upper arm and punctured my vein.
I shut my eyes against the stick. “Can you get me any information you have on blood bonding?”
“I’ll see what I can find out.” He filled the clear tube with my blood and then bandaged the tiny wound. “I assume you want these results as quickly as possible?”
“Yes, please. How soon can you get them?”
“Probably in the next few hours. My staff does all the work right here. I’ll give you a call when I know something. Otherwise, all your vitals are perfect. You’re in excellent health.”
“All right. Thanks, Doctor.”
“Call me Jack. Everyone does. I’ve known your family for years.”
“How’s my sister doing?”
“I can’t discuss my other patients, but since you’re her brother, I’ll tell you that the pregnancy is progressing normally. I don’t foresee any problems.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. Thank you. She won’t tell any of us anything.”
He smiled. “Emilia’s her own person. That’s for sure.”
I nodded and left the exam room.
Now…what to do for the few hours before I could be with Erin again?
If I could be with Erin again.
No, it would work out. Jack had said it was unlikely she could have diseased me with anything.
I clung to that thought as I drove back to Bill’s, remembering the night I’d escaped.
She hadn’t come to me in a few days, though the goons had come to drain me so she could drink. At least I assumed that was why they took my blood.
They hadn’t tortured me.
Three times a day, they came to unbind me and feed me.
I’d learned to pass the time.
I lived in my own head, dreaming up adventures, thinking about home. About what might be going on with my father, Emilia, River.
Most often I dreamed of the severed human heads feeding me what I craved most. Human blood. I hadn’t tasted a drop of human blood in… Had I ever? We’d drunk animal blood from the butcher at home. I’d been taught that vampires didn’t feed on humans unless the need was dire. It was morally wrong.
But oh, how I craved it.
The bitch’s blood was thick and acidic, as if it left talon marks in my throat as it oozed down to my stomach.
Did my blood taste as repugnant to her as hers did to me?
I hoped so.
I slept off and on, never knowing whether it was night or day.
I relished the time when I was unbound, could allow my muscles a tiny bit of freedom. Oddly, they never atrophied. She said it was from the vampire blood she coerced me to drink from her. The repugnant ooze that clawed at me constantly as she forced it into me.
Maybe it was. I didn’t know.
Her blood…
The goons had drained from me, but she hadn’t fed me her blood in a couple days. At least I thought it had been a couple of days.
I’d long since stopped pulling against my bindings. It was no use, and the leather had cut into and scarred my wrists and ankles from trying.
But what if…
I pulled against the binding on my left wrist. Nothing. Then my left foot.
No again. My right foot.
I sighed. Wishful thinking.
Then my right hand.
I gasped.
It pulled free! Though I couldn’t see because of the darkness, and it required quite a stretch, I worked the binding on my left wrist with my freed right hand.
I struggled, sweat pouring from my brow into my eyes and stinging them. Still I kept at it, until—
Yes! The binding unfastened, and my hands were free.
I sat up. How glorious to sit up alone! I leaned forward, aching a bit at the stretch, and again, without the benefit of sight, unfastened the bindings at my ankles.
I was tempted to go into the small room that housed a toilet and sink to check out how I looked in the light, but no. I had to act quickly. Who knew when someone would be back in to check on me?
Of course, there was no way I could get out of this room. It had no window, and the door would be sealed shut for sure.
I walked slowly forward, so as to keep steady on my wobbly legs, and tried the doorknob.
What? It turned in my hand, and I pulled the door open.
More darkness, but small slivers of light illuminated a dark path before me. I inched forward, wishing I had eyes in the back of my head. My vision adjusted to the tiny bit of light, and it was like the sun was shining on me compared to the pure darkness I’d been in for so long.
I walked, naked, along the tiny pathway for…an hour maybe? Two? Time had ceased to exist for me. It might have been four hours. It might have been ten minutes. I didn’t know.
Finally, I came to a narrow flight of stairs. I climbed up, stopping at what appeared, from this side, to be a manhole cover.
I sighed. It would be bolted down of course.
But I nudged it upward, and it loosened. I pushed it away, amazed at my own strength, and peeked out into the world.
The world.
The world that had been denied me for so long.
My eyes adjusted once again. It was nighttime, and I was in a dark alleyway.
But noise. Noises I hadn’t heard in so long. Noises that conjured images of Bourbon Street. The scents of people.
Of blood.
I gathered all my strength, climbed out of the manhole, and ran.
I pulled into Bill’s driveway.
I hadn’t thought about it at the time because I was so eager and thrilled to finally escape.
But it all added up now.
One of my bindings had been loosened. The door had been unlocked. The dark path had been illuminated just so. The manhole cover had been loosened.
Coincidence? Never.
She had let me go.
Chapter Fifteen
Erin
Ugh. My head was pounding. I’d never been prone to headaches, but this one was a doozy. I took a few ibuprofen when I got home from my meeting with Dr. Bonneville. She had wanted my help with a research project. At the time, I’d meant to ask her why she hadn’t published any of her so-called research—at least not that I could find online—but then the thought had fled my mind. Strange. Why she couldn’t have asked someone on duty to help her, I didn’t know. She gave me some BS about my being the most qualified for this particular project, but I wasn’t buying it. She wanted me to research blood types in pale-skinned women with dark hair. Since I was a pale-skinned woman with dark hair, apparently I was qualified.
She’d given me some ridiculous reason why she needed the information—something about genetics and blood types. Everyone knew that blood types were hereditary from either the mother or the father. They had nothing to do with hair color or skin color. But I knew better than to argue with Dr. Bonneville, especially since she’d agreed to pay me fifty dollars an hour for my work.
I promised her I’d work on it during my next night off. Right now, all I wanted was a hot bath and a good night’s—or rather day’s—sleep. The perfect combination to help me shake the headache.
I went upstairs and started the bath water running, pausing for a moment to inhale the steam floating off the water. I added a few drops of lavender essential oil—no bath bomb this time—and shed my clothing. I didn’t even bother aiming for my hamper. Everything ended up on the bathroom floor.
Right now, I needed relaxation.
I let my hair out of its ponytail, brushed it quickly, and the
n piled it on top of my head in a messy bun.
I lifted one leg to step in the tub, when—
“What is that?” I said out loud.
On my inner thigh, oddly close to my vulva, were two pink marks. I palpated them gently. They were slightly raised. They didn’t seem to itch, but they looked a lot like bug bites. A lot like…
I turned and looked into the mirror.
A lot like that mosquito bite that Dante had nicked on my neck the night we were dancing…to no music.
A lot like the same type of marks I’d seen on my brother’s neck at breakfast a few weeks before.
A lot like the marks on Abe Lincoln’s neck in the ER…
Did you see him?
See who?
The vampire.
He’d told me about vampires, how he let them feed from him in exchange for a hot meal…
I stared in the mirror. The mark from Dante’s nick was nearly gone.
How would a bug bite me on my inner thigh, though? That part of me was almost always covered except when I was here at home, and I hadn’t noticed any mosquitoes flying around lately.
Abe Lincoln had said—
I laughed out loud. This headache was doing a number on me. A really big number. I was exhausted and achy, and I needed this bath and some deep sleep to get my mind back in order.
I was a nurse. A scientist. I knew what was real and what wasn’t, and here I was letting my imagination run wild over bug bites.
I rolled my eyes.
I turned back to the tub and turned off the faucet. The water had run deep, and I stepped in and immersed myself, breathing in the relaxing aroma, letting the heat soothe my tired body, my aching neck and head.
I closed my eyes and inhaled again.
No more worry about bug bites.
Just a hot bath.
Chapter Sixteen
Dante
She had let me go.
Bill had told me I was safe in this house, that she wouldn’t find me.
How could he guarantee that?
He couldn’t guarantee that…unless he knew.
He knew I had been let go.
I raced to his office and entered without knocking. “We need to talk, Bill.”
“How did the tests go?” he asked.
“I don’t know yet. Jack said it would take a few hours for him to run the results. But I need some answers.”
“You’ll have them in a few hours.”
“No, that’s not what I’m talking about. You said I was safe here. That no one would find me under this roof. Maybe you’re right. I don’t know. But I’ve been out and about since I returned. I haven’t been thinking about my own safety because this pull I have with Erin pervades my mind and pushes everything else out. But I should have been concerned about my safety, concerned that the person who kept me prisoner would come after me. I should have been concerned for River, for Em, especially in light of her pregnancy. Their blood is the same as mine. If not for Erin, all of that would have been foremost in my mind.”
“Yes. I understand that.”
“But you never seemed concerned. River was concerned. Emilia was concerned. But not you.”
“That’s not true, I—”
“She let me go, Bill. It hadn’t occurred to me because I was so happy to get away, and then I was so preoccupied with Erin and the pull…but today I thought about it. I relived it. She fucking let me go.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
I curled my hands into fists. “No, that’s not a bad thing. What’s bad is that you knew, didn’t you? You knew she let me go.”
“How would I know that, Dante? You’re just worried right now. Worried about the tests. Your mind is—”
“My mind is fucking fine, damn it. Yeah, it shouldn’t be. She messed with it for ten years. But I lived. I survived. I gritted my teeth and I bore it all. Because I was the son of Julian Gabriel, the grandson of Guillaume Gabriel, part of one of the most powerful and respected vampire lines still in existence. I made it through, and yeah, I should be majorly fucked up, but I’m not. I won’t deny that there are times when I feel like I’m on the brink of madness, but I still know what reality is, Bill.”
“Dante, with all respect, no, you don’t. You’re overreacting and you’re projecting your anger for your captor onto me. I’ve been patient—”
“Patient? That’s a laugh. You kicked me out of your house, Bill.”
“I acted irrationally when you got violent. You know you’ll always have a home here.”
“A home where I’m safe, right? A home where she can’t find me. That’s bullshit. You know something, Bill. You know she let me go, and that’s why you think I’m safe here.”
“Dante”—he advanced toward me—“listen to reason. I don’t know anything about your abduction. If I did, don’t you think I would have found you long before now? Don’t you think I would have moved heaven and earth to free you?”
No. I didn’t think that. Ten years ago, I would’ve thought that. I knew my grandfather—and my father and uncle—would do anything to protect me. Now? I wasn’t so sure.
“You’ve been reading my mind since I got back.”
“I don’t have that gift. You know that.”
“I know it’s not common among vampires. It’s not common among humans either. But a select few can do it.”
“I’m not one of those select few. If you think I know what you’re thinking sometimes, it’s because I do. You’re my grandchild. I’m intuitive when it comes to all three of you.”
“That makes no sense. You don’t even know me anymore. I was gone for a decade.”
“That doesn’t change the blood between us, Dante.”
I sighed. Was it possible I was making this up in my head? I felt normal, felt like I had a grasp on reality, but I could not deny what I’d been through. I also couldn’t deny that many of those memories were fuzzy and I didn’t know if they were real or nightmares. And the whole thing with Erin had wreaked havoc on my mind.
Was Bill truly on my side? He had been in the past. I was sure of it.
“How do you know I’m safe here, Bill?”
“I just do.”
“Damn it!” I brought my fist down on his desk. “Can’t you be honest?”
“All right. You want honesty? Fine. Here is honesty. This house is safe—you are safe—because you have a ghost watching over you.”
A ghost. I scoffed. “I haven’t lost my mind. You have.”
I walked out of the office.
I drove around for a few hours, trying to work off my head of steam, until my phone buzzed with a text.
From Jack.
I closed my eyes for a moment, breathing in, before I looked at his words.
All tests negative. Congratulations.
Chapter Seventeen
Erin
“Erin!”
I jerked upward, water sloshing over the sides of my tub. A chill swept over me. The water was lukewarm, even cold in places. Why hadn’t I gotten out?
Dante stood above me, holding a towel.
“You were asleep, Erin. You fell asleep in the tub. Do you have any idea how dangerous that was? You could have drowned!”
I shivered, rubbing my arms as I stood and stepped into the towel he was holding. “How did you get in here?”
“Your door was—”
“Unlocked? Again? I could have sworn…” I shook my head. “Oh, never mind. What has gotten into me lately?”
I’d come upstairs with that horrible headache. I could easily have forgotten to lock my door. Still, though, this was happening a lot lately. What was going on with my mind?
My headache seemed to be gone, thank goodness. I was still tired though. It was the middle of the night…er…day.
My body throbbed just being near Dante. He looked wonderful, as usual, his dark hair mussed and his coffee-colored eyes blazing as he gazed upon me.
So gorgeous.
My nipples were hard. From
the roughness of the terry towel? Maybe. More likely because Dante was doing the rubbing of the fabric against my skin.
“Erin, you have to lock your door. I know it’s the middle of the day, but—”
“I do lock my door. At least I think I do.” My mind flew back to the time I had made myself remember the actual turning of the deadbolt. All the other times? I was on autopilot. I’d never neglected to lock my door in the past, even on autopilot.
Not since I’d met Dante…
But he was here, taking care of me. The man I loved, who miraculously loved me in return.
I leaned into him and inhaled his woodsy fragrance. Cinnamon, wood, and man. Dante.
“Mmm…not that it matters,” I said, closing my eyes as I melted into him. “But why are you here?”
He chuckled against the top of my head. “Because no matter what happens in my life, I always feel like I should be here. With you.”
“I know the feeling.”
He pushed me slightly away. “Erin, seriously, you need to—” He stopped abruptly.
When I looked at him, his eyes were wide, his eyebrows arched.
“What?”
“Have you always kept your door unlocked?”
“No. Of course not. Not on purpose anyway.”
“Have you ever fallen asleep in the tub before?”
“No. But—”
“Oh my God. You’re not going to get sick.”
“What? Of course not. Why would you want me to get sick?”
“I don’t. I mean…” He shook his head.
“Dante, what are you talking about?”
“I had it all wrong.” He walked out of the bathroom, his hands on either side of his head. “It’s all making sense now.”
“I hardly ever get sick,” I said. “I’ve been around sick people for so long that I’ve grown immune to most common illnesses.”
“I’m glad. I don’t want you to get sick. Of course. I just thought…” He sighed. “Never mind what I thought. Please don’t ever fall asleep in the tub again.”
“I don’t make a habit of it.” I smiled.
Unchained: Blood Bond Saga: Volume One Page 25
