Massimo turned to her, his jaw clenched tight. “You will do what I say, or you will face the consequences. Now, pull this stronzo’s head off his body so I can go stake it to the roof.”
She shook her head as she backed away. “No,” she said again. “I’m not doing that. You can’t make me.”
In an instant, Massimo was at her side, his fist full of her hair as he jerked her head sideways. “Have you forgotten your lesson from last night? Do you need a refresher?”
Her eyes were still spitting fire as she looked up at him. “I don’t give a shit what you do to me. I’m not going to kill for you.”
He pulled her closer, his hand tightening in her dark hair as the anger visibly pulsed across his face. Finally, he tossed her aside, and she fell on top of the vampire and the silver blanket draped over him. She squealed in pain as she scrambled to her feet and away from her maker. It echoed inside me, reminding me of our new connection.
Massimo watched her, his eyes still bright with fury. In a movement I couldn’t follow with my human eyes, he rushed over and grabbed me by the throat. I immediately clawed at the hand crushing my larynx, but it made no difference to him. I might as well have been a butterfly, gently caressing his fingers with my delicate wings for all the good it did me.
“If you won’t kill him, I’ll kill her.”
“No!” Adrienne yelled.
Massimo shrugged. “I think I’ll break her arm anyway, just because you’ve displeased me so much tonight.”
Even with the warning, there was no way to prepare to have my arm broken in half. But that was exactly what he did. With one hand on my elbow and the other on my wrist, Massimo snapped the bone in my arm, and it fell limp at my side.
Interestingly enough, Adrienne screamed louder than I did.
“Massimo, you son of a bitch! Let her go!” Adrienne charged across the space between us, but Ivan caught her around the waist before she could get too far.
“This is all your fault, wife,” Massimo said. His voice was eerily calm, and it did nothing but make my stomach twist violently inside me. “If you would just do what I say, your friend would be fine.”
“I’m not killing someone for you!” she screamed as she struggled in Ivan’s hold.
Massimo shrugged again. “Have it your way.”
He grasped my other arm, and as easily as the last, he broke it in two. This time my screams scraped my throat raw as the blinding pain radiated through my body.
“Leave her alone!” Adrienne screeched as I just tried to stay standing through the torture.
“Kill this bastard and I’ll stop breaking her bones.”
“I’m not killing anyone! If you want him dead, you can do it yourself! Or have your little minion do it!”
“You know, you’re only hurting your friend more,” Massimo said as he lifted his boot and stomped on my foot with enough force to break several bones. I knew because I heard each one of them crack in my shoe.
This time I wasn’t able to stay standing, and I fell at his feet.
Adrienne wailed in Ivan’s hold like a caged animal as I tried to not pass out from the agony racing through my limbs.
“Fine!” she yelled. “Just leave her alone and I’ll rip his head off.”
Massimo took a step back and waved a hand at the vampire still lying prone on the ground. “That’s all I ask.”
Adrienne’s hands shook as blood raced from her eyes and dripped off her chin. She crouched beside the dark-skinned vampire again, her soft voice breaking through the pain and fear pounding in my head. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
I watched as she placed a hand on each side of his head and took a deep breath before wrenching it from his body. Her scream was filled with fury and pain as she ripped the vampire’s head off his neck and let it fall from her hands.
She sat there, her shoulders heaving with her sobs as Massimo stalked toward her. He kneeled at her side and whispered, “This is just the beginning.”
Chapter 12
Alexander
“Hope you two had a great stay!”
I turned to the woman at the front desk and recognized her immediately. She was wearing a different top, but she had the same indulgent smile on her face.
I slung an arm around Nicholas’ shoulders again. “We had a fantastic time. Thank you so much.”
My boss shrugged me off with a disgusted look. “Quit messing around.”
I shrugged as we excited the hotel and headed for his truck. “I was just being polite.”
“You were just being an idiot,” he said as his phone rang and he answered. “Talbot.”
I climbed into the passenger seat, eager to get on the road and make it back to Manhattan. I knew that Nicholas was right, and it would be almost impossible to track them there, but at least I’d be in the same city as her.
Because right now, she’d never been farther away.
“Where?”
Nicholas’ sharp voice cut through my thoughts and I turned to watch him.
“Send me the address. We’ll head there now.”
He pulled his phone away from his ear and watched the screen until it dinged with an incoming message. Nicholas tapped on the screen a couple times before cursing under his breath.
“What is it?”
“They found Van der Waal’s van.”
My stomach flipped deep inside me. This might be the information we needed to find them. “Where?”
Nicholas reversed the truck and then slammed it into drive as he raced out of the parking lot. “Only fifteen damn miles away.”
So close.
So fucking close and we’d had no idea.
“The human authorities are at the vehicle now. We’ll take care of them and then canvas the area from there. If the van broke down, they either found somewhere to stay nearby, or they stole another vehicle. Either way, we might be able to still track their scents.”
I fisted one hand and dug it into my palm. “How quickly can you get us there?”
Nicholas didn’t answer, but the engine roared with his acceleration, so I didn’t bother asking any other questions.
We’d only been driving for a few minutes when a wave of foreign fear washed over me. It was so intense I gasped in the quiet car and gripped the doorhandle.
“What is it?” Nicholas asked, his voice tinged with anxiety.
“It’s Charlotte,” I said between gritted teeth. “She’s scared again.”
But this fear was different than the last. It had a bitter edge to it that hadn’t been there yesterday. With it came this wave of pain that all but broke me.
“She’s hurt too.”
“What about Adrienne?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
The minutes passed by sluggishly as Charlotte’s fear and anxiety radiated through my body. Finally, a sense of relief chased away the panic.
I took a couple deep breaths before I could speak again. “It’s going away now. I think she’s okay.”
I searched deep within me for that connection again and only caught the thinnest thread. I held onto it tight, like it was a lifeline, and I was drowning.
Which wasn’t too far off the mark.
I’d never stopped to think about how empty my life was before Charlotte, but now, without her by my side, there was no denying it. No hiding from it. I was a shell of a man without her.
Suddenly, the fear was back, like a sharp jab to my chest. I reached up to rub at the ache, but it didn’t help. These weren’t my feelings, and I couldn’t make them go away.
But in the next instant, I got my wish.
Charlotte’s presence inside me vanished entirely. She was there one moment, and the next, it was like she’d never been there to start. I searched deep within me, but she was gone.
“No,” I whispered.
No, no, no, no, no.
I squeezed my eyes closed tightly as I dug deeper, hoping to find some trace of her. Some hint that she was still there.
But she was nowhere.
“What’s going on?” Nicholas asked.
I turned wide eyes to him. “I can’t feel her anymore.”
He glanced at me before shrugging. “You said you can’t feel her all the time, right?”
I nodded slowly. “Yes, but this is different,” I whispered, too afraid to say the words too loudly.
Nicholas frowned. “What are you talking about?”
I closed my eyes again and tried searching once more for her, but there was nothing but my fear and panic. “Every other time I’ve felt her, it’s been because of a strong emotion. Fear or pain or whatever,” I said through gritted teeth. “And every other time, it slowly fades away to nothing once it’s passed.”
“Okay,” Nicholas said slowly. “What’s different about this time?”
I stared straight ahead as dread filled my gut. “This time she just disappeared. I was feeling how scared she was one moment, and the next she was just gone. Almost like–” I snapped my mouth closed before I could finish that sentence.
I didn’t want to go there.
I couldn’t go there.
I swallowed hard and willed my heart to keep beating because it felt like it was dying in my chest.
“Almost like what?” Nicholas asked softly.
I took a deep breath and clenched my hands into tight fists. “Almost like she was just gone.” And that was the closest I could come to saying the words out loud. The ones that haunted me. The ones I couldn’t even bear to think.
That I might have just lost Charlotte forever.
We were quiet for a while. I didn’t know or care what Nicholas was thinking, because I was too caught up in my own dark thoughts. Too consumed with what I would do if I’d really lost her. If I’d just witnessed the last fear-filled minutes of her life.
I closed my eyes again, willing those ideas from my head.
I wouldn’t accept them.
I couldn’t accept them.
I couldn’t sit there and believe she was dead because that would mean the end of every good goddamn thing in my life. The end of any shot at happiness I’d ever had. The end of living for something after all these centuries of having nothing.
I shook my head slowly, willing it to not be true. But the longer I sat there with no sign of her, the harder my heart squeezed in my chest until it was just a bloody pulp. Only pumping because it had no choice.
“What if your connection just cut out?” Nicholas asked softly.
I shrugged, but silently grasped onto his excuse for dear life. “Maybe.”
What felt like hours later, but could only have been a few minutes, we pulled off the highway into a suburban neighborhood. The quaint houses and quiet streets were such a juxtaposition to the chaos inside of me, I had to look away. “How much farther?”
Nicholas glanced at his phone. “One more block.”
I stared out the front window, my hands gripping the seat beneath me. Now was not the time to lose my head. I had to focus. I had to separate my feelings from what I had to do.
I needed to find out what happened to her and why I’d lost our connection, or I’d lose my fucking mind.
That meant I needed to turn off the emotions Charlotte had brought out in me. The ones that had made me into the softer man she’d fallen in love with.
He needed to go if I had any hope of finding her and paying back that son of a bitch for taking her to begin with.
I wiped my brain clean until it was just a blank slate as I watched the houses fly by outside the window. We made a right onto another peaceful street, the cop car easy to spot behind a dark, non-descript van. When we pulled up behind it, the officer saw us immediately and began heading our way.
“Can I help you, gentlemen?”
Nicholas approached him and took control immediately. “Officer, there’s been a mistake.”
“A mistake,” he repeated.
“You’ve just been called away. You never saw this van.”
“Never saw this van.”
“Now go,” Nicholas said.
The officer turned around, his movements jerky and awkward as he walked back over to his squad car and got in. He pulled away moments later, and we stood there watching him drive off before approaching the van.
Nicholas made it to the back doors first and yanked them open, like he was tearing off a sticky bandage.
Their scents hit me immediately, and I knew we were in the right place. Even if her peach smell twisted my insides violently.
“They were here,” Nicholas said.
I only nodded as my eyes traced the inside of the van. Thankfully, there was no noticeable blood, so it seemed they were just transported in this vehicle.
Nicholas climbed into the driver’s seat and twisted the key still in the ignition, but the engine wouldn’t turn over.
“They must have broken down,” he said.
I nodded as I looked away from the van to the dozens of houses that surrounded us. “They could be in any of these,” I muttered.
Nicholas slid out of the driver’s seat and walked around back to join me. He lifted his head in the air and sniffed. “I can still smell them. It’s faint, but it might be enough to track them down.”
Excitement raced in my veins at the prospect of doing something. Of actually taking action. And the fact that Charlotte might be so close filled me with a kind of elation I’d never be able to put into words. But I stuffed those thoughts back down and willed my mind blank again.
I caught their scent and took off down the street. “Let’s go,” I called to Nicholas.
I heard him fumbling with his phone and figured he’d be calling this new piece of information in. His need to follow protocol was annoying, but it led us to this abandoned van, so I guess he wasn’t entirely useless.
I hurried down the street as quickly as I dared, following the scent that was just barely noticeable. If I hadn’t already been so used to Charlotte’s peach smell, I might not have been able to follow them at all.
We walked for only a block or two before their scent veered off the sidewalk and led right to a cheerful yellow house. I crouched behind a car parked on the street as I waited for Nicholas to catch up. But as I hid there, another odor hit my nose.
“Do you smell the death?” I asked Nicholas quietly. The words scraped up the sides of my throat as I spoke them, my stomach revolting.
He tipped his nose in the air and sniffed before his face contorted. “Yes.”
Now, there was no doubt we were in the right place. But fuck did I wish we weren’t.
From here, all I could smell was death. I didn’t know who. I didn’t know how many. All I knew was that there was someone dead nearby and I could guess by whose hands.
I just had to pray it wasn’t the one person I couldn’t live without.
“Do you think they’re still in there?”
Nicholas shrugged as he pulled his phone out again. “I can have backup here in five.”
“We don’t have time for that. If they’re in there, we need to get to them now.”
Nicholas tapped away at his phone as he ignored me.
I sighed and stood to my full height. “You do what you want, I’m going in.”
Nicholas grabbed my wrist before I could get far. “You remember what happened last time you went up against Massimo, right?”
I narrowed my eyes as anger raced through my veins and I ripped my arm out of his grasp. “Last time that son of a bitch caught me off guard. This time, I’m ready for him.”
“Just wait an extra couple of minutes and we’ll have plenty of vampires to help apprehend him.”
I snorted and turned toward the house again. “They’re not apprehending shit. Unless they don’t mind taking him into custody in pieces.”
I hurried up the front walkway, but the scent of death was coming from the back. I stood in front of the door, my insides at war.
One part of me wanted to search the house in the hopes I’d find Charl
otte alive somewhere in there. The other wanted to go to the dead body to make sure it wasn’t her.
It couldn’t be her.
I shook my head and hurried around the side of the house, following the putrid scent of rotting flesh to a shed out back. The sound of Nicholas’ footsteps hurrying to catch up to me hardly registered as the awful stench invaded my senses and my hands shook with fear.
“What are you waiting for?” Nicholas asked once he was standing beside me.
I clenched my fingers into fists and shook my head. “I can’t look,” I said, my jaw so tight I could barely force the words past my teeth.
Nicholas was quiet for a moment before stepping forward and pulling the shed door open. I wanted to close my eyes. I almost did. But at the last moment, I willed them to stay open. To learn the truth, even if it broke me.
“There are two bodies in here,” Nicholas said from under the hem of the shirt he had pressed against his nose.
I stayed exactly where I was. Feet planted to the ground. I knew if I’d tried to make them work, to take even one step forward, my knees would buckle, and I’d fall. So, instead, I held myself entirely still, not even daring to breathe as I waited for Nicholas to investigate.
“She’s not here,” he finally said.
Air rushed back into my lungs as I took my first breath in minutes. The relief was so overwhelming, I still felt like I might fall to the ground.
Nicholas stepped out of the shed and shook his head. “They’re both human. Probably whoever lived here before Massimo arrived.”
I nodded once and turned toward the house. Now that I knew she wasn’t dead, I needed to know what happened to her. I was already fairly certain they weren’t there anymore, but I still approached the back door cautiously.
It was unlocked, and I slid it open quietly. The interior of the house was dark and deserted, but I didn’t need the lights to see. I stepped into the kitchen silently and listened.
When Nicholas made it inside, I said, “I can’t hear any heartbeats.”
He nodded. “We should still search the place.”
“Okay, where do we start?”
“Massimo’s selfish enough to take the basement for himself. I’m sure that’s where he stayed the night.”
Blood Lust Page 11
