Chapter Thirty
Isabella jumped up and ran at me, grabbing my wrist and tugging me towards Luca. I planted my feet as firmly as I could, and shoved her away.
‘I will do this myself – don’t try to force me!’ I said, hissing at her. She hissed back, and her fangs gleamed white and terrifying. It was potentially a bad move, but I was sooo sick of being bossed and dragged and bullied. It’s happened to me my whole life, and I needed to make a stand. Choosing a feral vampire to test it out on might not have been the wisest of decisions, but the time had come – the time for people to just back the fuck off and leave me alone.
I could see her body trembling with the need to rip my throat out, but one glance at the ginger Amazon hovering behind us told her that would be a bad thing. They were way more scared of her than of Gabriel, so I was going Team Morrigan all the way. Miraculously, she backed the fuck off.
I kneeled down beside Luca, the blood and gore sloshing beneath my knees, and stroked his pale face with my good hand. He was so beautiful. Why wouldn’t I want to save him? And as for owning him … well, I’d find a way to give him back later. Assuming Donn had the same returns policy as M&S, that is.
I leaned forward, cradled his blond head in my arms, and pressed my bleeding wrist to his lips.
At first, there was nothing. Not a twitch, not a lick, and I thought it was too late. That all the arguing, all the fighting, had been wasted.
‘You’re not doing it properly!’ whispered Isabella, still hovering at my shoulder, her tone a mixture of plea and threat. ‘You need to bleed better!’ I ignored her, and pressed my flesh deeper on to his mouth, willing him to wake up and drink. To feed. To live.
‘Come on, Luca …’ I muttered, stroking his hair back from his face. ‘Be a good little vampire, and drink up.’
It was tentative to start with: the tiniest flicker of his tongue. Like a kitten lapping at milk. It felt soft and gentle and pleasant, and I was just starting to think that this wasn’t so bad when his mouth crunched down on to my flesh.
I wanted to scream – in fact, I suspect I may have – as his lips clamped down on my wrist, sealing off the wound. The suction was so powerful I thought a few internal organs might slip out with the blood, and I found myself straining backwards, trying to pull away from him.
After the first couple of mouthfuls, he regained enough strength to move, and grabbed my arm to hold it forcefully in place. I could feel his fingertips hitting bone, and knew I’d be bruised. His eyes flickered open, deep and dark and shining, going a fraction wider when he saw it was me.
He yanked his mouth away, letting his head fall back into my arms, and licked his lips.
‘No!’ shouted Isabella, dashing forward. ‘He needs more – you need more, Luca!’
I heard rather than saw the Morrigan intervene, and the sound of Isabella screeching as she was thrown yet again across the room. I guessed it just wasn’t her night.
‘Do you?’ I asked, really hoping that the answer was no. It hurt. God, it hurt. I felt dizzy and sore and ached all over. I liked Luca, and I wanted to save him, but I was praying that was enough. I glanced down at his body, at the tattered rags of his T-shirt. The flesh had started to knit back together, and his insides were back where they belonged. But the cuts were still open and gleaming, blood seeping from the edges as his body tried to heal itself. Shit. He was better, but still not right.
He shook his head, too weak to speak, and I knew I had to make the decision for him.
‘You need more,’ I said, offering my wrist to him again, clenching my eyes shut and hoping for the best.
‘Relax, bella – this can be fun, you know?’ he murmured, pausing to lick a few stray droplets from my skin. Yeah, right, I thought. Fun in the same way getting electric shock therapy was fun. And as for ‘relax’ – well, that sounded about as convincing as when the nurse doing a smear test says it.
I took a breath, deep and long, realising that he had stopped. That he was waiting for me to give him some sign.
‘Do it, Luca,’ I said, ‘but please – be quick.’
‘That’s not what the girls usually say,’ he replied, and I realised that if he was joking again, this must be working. I was doing it. I was saving him. Yeah, it hurt – but so what? This was bigger than that. This was what I was meant to do. It made me feel good. It made me feel powerful. It made me feel like when I’d finished with Luca, I could go and grow Kevin a new eye, and then make my way to the nearest hospice and carry right on. Yeah. Go Goddess.
It was also making Luca feel good, I couldn’t help noticing. Despite the fact that his torso was still covered in half-healed wounds, his leathers were shifting and filling in an obscenely male way. I wondered if this was normal – if that happened every time he fed – or if I was, you know, special.
I decided I didn’t care, and pushed my wrist back to his mouth. He clamped back down and started to suck again, but this time he was slower, gentler. More controlled. He reached up, placed long fingers on the side of my face, softly stroking. I leaned into his touch, rubbing my skin against his in the way I always felt free to do with him. God, he was right. It was starting to feel … nice.
His sucking was slow, rhythmic and sensual. He started to time it with my heartbeat, and that sent a great big shuddering throb all through my body. His hand was twined into my hair, and I rubbed against it, murmuring quietly, feeling his fingers stroking my scalp.
I glanced down at his body. The cuts had closed. There were still faint pink lines where the wounds had been, but he was whole again. And gorgeous again. And so damned sexy again.
He stopped just drinking, and replaced it with feathery touches of his tongue, licking and probing and quite frankly making me go all wriggly in the knickers department. He never broke eye contact with me as I hitched a leg over his lap, straddling him until I could feel his body pressing into mine through the fabric of my jeans.
He sucked. And I squirmed. And he got even bigger. And I got even hornier. I leaned down, started to nip and nuzzle at his neck, licking the tanned skin and strong muscle at the top of his shoulder. His hand in my hair twined deeper, pulling me closer, and his whole body bucked up to meet mine. I shook and trembled and ground down even harder against him. I had no control over it at all, and the fact that I had an audience hadn’t even entered my mind – I was going on pure, delicious physical instinct, for the first time in my life.
I honestly had no idea what was happening to me. Bear in mind my sexual history is completely and utterly blank. Nothing had ever prepared me for this. Sex was something that other people did. That other people felt. And yet here I was – writhing around on top of this drop-dead gorgeous hunk of newly healed beefcake, feeling my face flush red with desire, thrusting away at him with every beat of my heart, every suck of my blood.
I pulled my wrist away, looked down at him. Blond hair falling to the sides of his cheekbones; pupils huge in chocolate-brown eyes. My own blood smeared on his lips. And I kissed him – long, and hard, and desperate, as he snaked one hand up beneath my top, stroking erect nipples through the lace of my bra. I gasped, and kissed, and wriggled, and sighed as an intense feeling of need built up through my whole body. Something very good was coming. I just knew it was …
The next sound out of my mouth was a scream – but not the kind I’d been hoping for. The Morrigan had grabbed me by my hair, and dragged me away, boots kicking against the slippery floor as she pulled me back to her.
‘Ow!’ I yelled, rubbing my sore scalp. ‘Why did you do that? You could have just told me to stop!’
‘I did,’ she said, ‘several times. You were distracted by the vampire, and he would have drained you dry in your need.’
‘I would not,’ said Luca, sitting up and grinning over at us. ‘I would never harm her – unless she wanted me to. She is my mistress, and I live to serve her – in any way she chooses …’
I looked at him. All healed up now. Cheeky again, brown eyes glinting with h
umour and the remnants of desire. I still wanted him. I wanted to sit on him, and bite him, and have him bite me, and see him completely naked while we did it …
‘Pay attention!’ said the Morrigan, taking me by the shoulders and whirling me round to face her. ‘This is not real – this is not right. We will leave now, whether you want to or not.’
I didn’t want to leave. And if I did, I wanted to take Luca with me. I opened my mouth to argue, just as Gabriel walked back into the room.
He’d been in the shower, and was wearing only a battered pair of faded Levis. Feet bare. Chest bare. Hair damp and curling on his shoulders, trickles of water running over ridged muscle and smooth skin. His eyes met mine and they were bright, brilliant violet. He’d known. Of course he had. He looked at Luca, looked at me, and dragged a hand back through his hair. More water. On even more muscle.
He looked angry. And edible. And like the most gorgeous creature I’d ever laid eyes on. My body was still thrumming with need, and all of my desire detoured from Luca, and headed in Gabriel’s direction – channelled by the clamouring want I could feel beating through me. I shook the Morrigan’s hands from my shoulders, and ran towards him.
I didn’t slow as I approached, and slammed him physically back against the wall, pinning him up against it and leaning into his body. My hands flew to his bare chest, stroking the outlines of his pecs, his nipples, leaning down and licking the droplets of water from his flesh with my tongue. I wanted to lick him clean, then make him dirty, then lick him all over again.
‘No …’ he muttered, trying to push me away. ‘This is not right …’
I crooked my neck to look up at him, and knew that whatever he was saying, he didn’t mean it. He wanted me. I wanted him. I’d never given in to anything like these urges before – hell, I’d never known these urges even existed. All I knew was that I was going to bloody well have him.
I twined my hands behind his neck, and tugged his face down to mine, meeting his lips like an invading army. His arms went around my waist, and I was crushed against him, left in no doubt that I was right. He wanted me – a lot.
Gabriel. My mate. Just then, it didn’t sound wrong. It sounded … perfect. I started to fiddle with the buttons on his fly, and he groaned in response, swept away by the lust that I was throwing out like a garden sprinkler. For a moment my mind collided with his, and I caught a snippet of what he was feeling: regret, and anger, and pride that he had at last proved himself irresistible. But all of that was overshadowed by need: hard, driving, ignore-everythingelse-in-the-universe need.
I’d just about managed the first few buttons when, once again, I was torn away – and, again, by my hair. I was going to fucking kill that woman.
The Morrigan grabbed hold of me and threw me against the wall, face first. She twisted one arm behind my back and tugged it upwards, all the time crushing my head into the wallpaper. It hurt, and it showed no signs of stopping. Maybe I wasn’t going to kill her after all.
‘Stop pulling my hair!’ I hissed. ‘I’m not a naughty puppy!’
‘But you are behaving like a bitch in heat,’ she said, leaning so close to my face that I could feel her warm breath on my cheeks. ‘Time to go to sleep now, Goddess.’
As she murmured the words, I slid down. Down to the floor, and out. Sleep. At last.
Chapter Thirty-One
I twisted my head upwards.
I was looking at birds. Thousands of them, streaking through a sky that was tinted with the grey haze of dawn. They flocked and swirled like starlings, but I could see all kinds in their twirling nimbus: gulls and pigeons and sparrows and many I had no name for, all swooping and screeching and wheeling around us in a dark cloud of fluttering wings.
If that wasn’t strange enough, I could also, when I looked to the side, see Carmel’s legs. Or Carmel’s jeans, at least – those slinky Karen Millen numbers, now customised with dried blood and goop. I was upside down, looking up at crazed birds and my friend’s thighs, my head bobbing around like a nodding dog in the back of a car.
I was not only upside down; I was being carried. I twisted myself up as far as my abs would allow me, and saw the Morrigan’s red-and-white hair streaking down her back. I was over her wide shoulders, dangling in a fireman’s lift, and I could feel a tingling sensation as the blood started to move more freely around my body.
Carmel leaned down to my eye level and gave me a quick smile. Her scar was vivid, red and angry, stitched together with black thread. She looked like something from a Tim Burton film.
‘She’s awake!’ she piped, as she straightened up again. The Morrigan immediately dumped me to the ground, which happened to be a patch of scrappy grass, surrounded by wind-blown old crisp bags snagged in clumps of long-dead flowers.
I closed my eyes for a moment, clenching my eyelids shut and trying to regain my balance. When I snapped them back open, the birds were still there, blocking out most of the sky. Carmel was still grinning. And the Morrigan was staring down at me, now looking seven feet tall and built like the proverbial brick shithouse. She nudged me in the side with her massive biker boots, gently enough to break a couple of ribs, I should think.
‘Get up,’ she said. ‘It does not befit the Goddess to lie in discarded trash.’
Cow, I said. Silently.
‘It probably doesn’t befit the Goddess to be dumped there in the first place …’ I muttered, staggering to my feet. Minor defiance, but better than nothing at all, I supposed.
The Morrigan ignored me, and instead looked up at the riot of birds above us. She grinned – the first time I’d seen her crack a smile – and it transformed the sharp plains of her face from ‘scary but handsome’ into the realms of ‘knock-out beautiful’. No wonder she didn’t do it often – men would fall at her feet, and she’d get gunk on the soles of her boots as she crushed their puny skulls.
The smile, needless to say, wasn’t at the sight of me, hopping on one leg while I wiped mud and a half-eaten Snickers bar off my arse. The smile was for the birds.
She lifted up her hands and made a swirling gesture, like a conductor in front of an orchestra. The birds clouded and leaped in response, coming together to create a downward flurry of thrumming wind: like a tornado pointing to the ground, larger beasties at the top, cawing and honking and endlessly circling, and the tiny ones fluttering together at the bottom to form the spout.
The Morrigan flicked her fingers, like she was sprinkling water from them, and the flock immediately flew away, a single black mass scudding off into the distance, presumably to go back to eating worms, or building nests, or shitting on cars, or whatever it was birds did all day. I was glad to see them go. It had all been getting a bit Hitchcock. She chuckled and watched as they flew, like Mother Duck saying goodbye to her kids on the first day of school. I guess we all have our weaknesses.
I looked around me, trying to figure out where we were. I had no idea how long I’d been out, and I didn’t trust these Otherworldy types one bit when it came to transport. For all I knew, we could have jumped through a fairy portal and be in a back street of Mozambique, or about to take a front row at the Colosseum to watch some heavy-duty gladiator action.
Instead, I saw a dim, abandoned car park, cracked concrete, and a vast tower block looming above us in the grey half-light. Across the road were neat terraces, with well-kept front yards and brightly painted front doors. I could almost smell the Mersey whipping up towards us on the same wind that had been playing havoc with those crisp bags, and heard the hungry wail of gulls over the water.
‘Are we in Dingle?’ I asked Carmel.
‘Yup,’ she said, nodding. ‘And you got a lift the whole way.’
Great. Another dignified exit from … well, a highly embarrassing scene. As I recalled the way I’d behaved back in the apartment, I felt a fiery flush claim my cheeks. God. How awful. Bitch in heat indeed. I didn’t know what had come over me – maybe my lager had been spiked – but I was hoping it never happened again. At least n
ot with an audience.
The Morrigan stamped away ahead of us, and used her mighty boots to kick open the door to the tower block. Once, it must have had some kind of intercom system, but that now hung in shredded wires from a small metal box. I didn’t know if that was her handiwork, or just the natural fate of a block of flats mid-regeneration.
The air was dank and chill inside, and the walls were decorated with graffiti of varying quality. The lighting was strip neon, flickering on and off over our heads, and the smell was akin to a male urinal. Old newspapers – the weekly free sheets that sometimes got dumped instead of delivered by enterprising youths – were rotting in a damp, mouldering pile, and the quiet rustling inside them led me to believe that a few four-legged residents had moved into a new des res.
Looking around at the silent, dim lobby, edged in grime and months of neglect, I immediately knew three things: that nobody human lived here any more; that the lifts wouldn’t be working; and that the Morrigan would most definitely be holed up on the top floor.
Some time later, I’d been proved right on all three counts. I was also, finally, catching up with the others. I’m pretty fit – for a mortal – but those two sprinted up the stairs (all twenty-two storeys of them) like superheroes heading for a cape sale. I needed to up my game, maybe invest in a Zumba video or something.
I arrived on the top floor huffing, puffing and even redder in the face, also itching to wash my hands from holding the scum-coated railing for the last few flights. I felt marginally peeved that I hadn’t been magically transformed into a superior physical being by all this supernatural crap, in the way Carmel seemed to have been. I got to save the world, and Carmel got to run up stairs really, really fast. Them’s the breaks, I suppose.
They’d thoughtfully left the door open, and I took a moment to catch my breath before I followed them in.
I found both in the living room, which was dingily lit and decorated in unsurpassed Eighties chic. A Florence and the Machine poster was tacked to the wall, and I wondered if it was a remnant from a previous inhabitant, or if the Morrigan had brought it with her. Maybe it was her daughter; they looked enough alike.
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