He closed in then, and she stumbled back until she landed butt first on the bed. Her heart beat frantically as he knelt slightly, taking her leg and cradling it in his hand.
He slid his fingers under her long nightgown and brushed the fabric away to reveal her thigh. The wound where the bullet had grazed her was still fresh.
Elaina should have pulled away, but she didn’t. He bent low and pressed his lips to her thigh. Her loins tightened and her center pulsed. His tongue was hot against her wound as he stroked the healing skin. He let her leg fall and then rose again.
“What the…” She looked down at her leg, only to discover that she was now completely healed. The skin was like new. Not even a nurse would realize that a bullet had grazed her there. “How did you do that?”
“My saliva carries healing properties. You should know that. Your organization keeps records of these things. Yet, only a select few of you are made aware. I wonder why that is…” He winked at her.
“You healed me.” She rubbed at her leg. “This is insane and unreal.”
“Have you made up your mind?”
“I have,” she said.
“And?”
“I’m here for the long haul. I kill rogue vampires for a living. I have no problem with that.” She shrugged.
“You don’t have to stand by a faulty mission to kill rogues for a living.”
“You think our mission is faulty only because I kill creatures like you,” she said, standing and walking in a circle around him. His trench coat prevented a complete inspection, but considering this was her second time being so close to a vampire, her view would have to do for now.
“I don’t think. I know. Your organization kills unjustly. I have evidence.”
“Why are you here, Vicq? If it’s to ridicule my employer, you should leave,” she said, motioning toward the door.
“Why did you let me in? If it’s because you don’t completely trust your employer to tell you the real truth, why don’t you just admit it?”
She swallowed. “Why do they want your blood so badly?”
“I was made by a Master vampire. He was nearly one thousand years old, almost impossible to kill until someone he trusted betrayed him.”
He ventured farther into her one-bedroom condo, walked over to her closet, pressed the collar of a shirt to his nose, and inhaled deeply.
“What did you do to become a District target?” She figured if he were supplying answers, she’d continue inquiring.
“I find anything and anyone linked to them—especially where the funding comes from—and I destroy it. I’ve burned banks to the ground and rummaged through vaults belonging to D5. And once I find a way to infiltrate their headquarters, I’ll destroy that too.”
“Why do you do it?”
“They’ve killed and captured dozens of us. Probably more than that. We’re beaten, studied, mutilated, and treated like savages. We’re not all rogues. Your organization just doesn’t understand the fundamentals of our society. We were executing rogues who carried out acts of violence just fine before this organization came into existence and labeled all of us murderers.”
“But if you were handling your rogue population, they wouldn’t be a problem right now.”
“Truth. But is it not true that your organization is more concerned with creating some kind of hybrid human mutant than they are about helping your government control the rogue population?” he countered.
“There are many missions,” she said. “Each division carries out a different mission. Mine is to keep deadly rogue vampires from preying on humans.”
“What about the mission that involves studying humans against their will? Picking up humans off the street and deliberately trying to infect them with bad blood in an effort to proceed with the organization’s experimentation. What about the mission that involves killing young motherless children to harvest their organs?”
Elaina cringed as a memory of the infected young girl in the labs came back to her. She had never found out how the girl became infected.
“And you have evidence of all of this?”
“I have my sources within your network,” he said and then dismissed the issue. “By the way, I killed your partner.”
“Excuse me?”
“Just before landing here outside your room, I found out where he slept. They’ll find him one day, floating in the lake miles away from here. There’s no use going to look for him. He’ll enjoy it there for now. He seems to like water from what I took from his memory. It’s where his wife was found just last year.”
“Do you mean Danny?”
“Danny, yeah, that was his name. His blood was tainted. He committed a lot of felony crimes in his days before joining that vampire slaughtering agency. He seemed worried about the case revolving around the disappearance of his new wife. Something about an insurance policy and a hitman. The images were fuzzy. He did a good job using his training to try and hide them but like I said, I’m no dirty rogue. He thought you were dead, you know? He was actually glad he had killed you. After drinking him, I was going to let him live, but then he had such nasty, non-remorseful thoughts about what he’d done to you that I couldn’t help but to drain him lifeless.”
Bile rose in Elaina’s throat. “You had no right.”
“You were going to seek revenge, weren’t you, Elaina?” Vicq grinned.
“I was. The day would have come, and I would have acted then. I didn’t need your help.”
“You don’t belong with these low-life convicts. Are you ready to answer my question?” he asked. “Will you die for this dirty, ratty organization of yours, or do you want your freedom again?”
“Again?”
“I visited you on the fourth night as you made the call and voiced your decision. You could’ve walked free, Elaina, but instead, you walked back into a trap. They’re using you, and they’ll use you until there’s nothing else left of you but a bag of blood on a shelf or a vat of ashes.”
A nerve literally popped in Elaina’s throat. “Get out!” She pointed to the door.
“Very well,” Vicq said. “Should we give it another three days?”
Elaina stormed over to the balcony doors, threw it open, and pointed into the night. “Don’t come back. I could be severely reprimanded for inviting a vampire here.”
“Ah, but you didn’t invite me. I came to you. It is not every day that a vampire can venture near sunlight, but you are sunshine to me. The only sunshine I will ever come to.”
Vicq turned and folded away into the night. Elaina’s leg tingled where he had kissed it. That night, Elaina realized that she would be forever connected to this Dresdan.
Chapter 12
Elaina came to understand that being without a work unit was no fun. No one wanted to work together where there was no uniformity. For over a week, she’d been organizing deliveries between District headquarters and a government storage facility where they kept an overflow of weapons.
Following the disbanding of her crew, she’d been moved to a clerical post until she was reassigned to a unit or another one was created.
Elaina walked down the row of boxes, double-checking the serial numbers against the data on her clipboard. She grumbled as she moved. This was not her idea of actual work; it was just busy work. The only thing that had come from the change was that she was the lead on the project—one step closer to her goals.
“D-33?” One of the guys peeked his head into the storage unit. “We’re all set. Should I send the next truckload back to headquarters?”
“Yes, do that. Also, select someone to stay behind and help lock up. It’s time to close up shop and head out. It’s getting late, and I want to get an early start tomorrow morning.”
He nodded. “Sure thing.”
If everyone at District 5 were as nice and sensible as that young man, she’d probably find that being in the same room or space with them for several hours a day wasn’t so bad after all.
Elaina grabbed her duff
le bag and checked it to make sure that her keys were inside. She wasn’t in the mood to go through all of the security checks for gaining entry when someone lost their set of keys. Security was so tight that most things were on lockdown or required three levels of approvals these days. Plus, most of the staff had already clocked out that evening. Now, every time she left this place, she made sure that her keys were with her.
Something exploded outside, but it took Elaina more than a second to realize that the sounds that followed were the panicked screams of her colleagues. She rushed out of the storage building and saw a fireball near the left gate where an eighteen-wheeler had either been bombed or set on fire.
The sun had barely receded, yet a handful of vampires had made haste in attacking them. Two workers were already dead.
Elaina dropped her duffle bag to the ground, grabbed her Glock from the holster on her hip, and opened fire at the throng of swarming vampires. She couldn’t tell if they were weaker rogues or Dresdan. They worked in a team, debilitating the few workers that hadn’t left for the day.
What a coincidence that they had enough weapons here to start a small war, but most were locked up in boxes waiting to be shipped to headquarters. Not to mention, the vamps had bombed a truckload of that supply. Despite the immediate availability of weaponry around them, these District 5 workers weren’t trained to fight. A few were probably trackers or had been—like herself. But many here had been re-assigned to this station until their official post was provided to them. Stocking weaponry wasn’t Elaina’s idea of a frontline duty assignment. This wasn’t exactly the average clerical work either. In either case, the attack had caught everyone off guard, including Elaina.
As she fired a series of rounds at her targets, a vampire blocked her path. She sheathed her Glock quickly and pulled out a set of daggers. There was no use trying to shoot at close range. When a vampire stood within a few feet of its target, the best way to fend for oneself was the use of hand-to-hand combat force or small weaponry like her daggers.
The vampire was quick, but she used her training to anticipate his moves. Luckily, he still moved around and fought like a human, which told her that this one was, in fact, a young rogue.
Her break came when his back was turned. She propelled herself forward and drove her dagger straight down into his spine. The vampire flung itself forward, turned, and ran straight for her. Pushing off the ground with the balls of her feet, she leapt about two feet in the air and executed a jumping axe kick. The vampire took the blow to the upper chest and landed on the ground in front of her. When he regained his balance, she hook-kicked him across the side of the face. She dropped her daggers while the vampire was still down trying to pop his spine back into place, grabbed her Glock, and shot the creature twice in the head.
As she moved forward to finish off more vamps, she reloaded her Glock.
The scene before her wasn’t pretty. Several of her colleagues were lying dead on the ground. She picked up another weapon from the ground, raced up behind an unsuspecting vampire from behind while he was feeding on one of the dead, and sliced through the middle of his neck with a machete she found lying nearby on the ground.
When Elaina looked up again from the carnage, that’s when she saw him. Vicq. A dark figure approaching the scene as if he owned the place. At first, she could have believed that he was responsible for the wreckage, but then he began to murder his own kind. He grabbed them, one by one, and snapped their necks for an easy execution. All the while, her colleagues labeled him a threat just like the others and continued to pump him full of bullets. Blood wept from his wounds as he expelled the bullets. That’s when Elaina realized that what was left of her crew was no match for a Dresdan.
They couldn’t kill Vicq. He was unstoppable. It was why D5 wanted his blood and why they wanted him dead.
Odd though. Elaina didn’t want him dead. From the moment she had exchanged words with him in that old dilapidated warehouse, to the days that had gone by without him returning to her condo, she’d been harboring the very same intuition that rose in her gut now. An intuition that went against everything District 5 had ever taught her—Vicq wasn’t the enemy.
All the rogues had fallen, most of them by Vicq’s hand. The only people who remained standing were herself, two of her colleagues, and Vicq.
As Vicq closed the gap between Elaina and himself, her colleagues continued to shoot, clueless to what she already knew. Vicq was trying to protect her.
Blood leaked from his mouth and down against his fangs as his pace slowed.
They were killing him. Elaina let go of her weapons and dashed toward him.
“Stop!” she yelled. “Stop shooting.”
Of course, they wouldn’t listen. A District 5’s employee’s number one rule was to kill all vampires on sight.
When her body collided with Vicq’s, she linked his arm around her and rushed him toward the metal storage unit. A bullet caught her in the shoulder as she ran. She cried out once, but kept pushing toward safety. Once they were inside and she had bolted the doors, only then did the shooting stop.
Vicq slumped to the floor, sitting up against the wall. “Elaina, are you okay?”
“Yes.” She choked on her words as the pain from the bullet in her shoulder began to consume her.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner.”
She knelt beside him. “What? You knew about this?”
“No…I’ve been watching you.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
He lifted his hand and stroked her cheek. His hands were surprisingly soft, and she exhaled softly, trying to focus on how good his touch felt instead of the bullet inside her.
“I’m going to protect you now,” he said. “I don’t trust your mafia organization with your life.”
“Here’s what you need to understand. Stay away from me and from anything connected to the District. They’re going to kill you if you don’t stay away from me.” She reached behind her and tested the severity of the open wound with her fingers. She cringed. “Fuck…”
“You’re hurt. Let me heal you,” he said.
“Vicq…”
He held his hand out, palm side up. “Trust me. Come closer.”
Elaina crept close, knelt between his thighs, and bowed her head. She grimaced as he peeled the leather aside and ripped it away from the bullet hole. When he dug the slug out, she screamed. Relief finally came when he pressed his lips to her wound. She felt the sting of his healing powers as the serum in his saliva coursed through her flesh.
“Elaina, I have to…slumber. It’s imminent, but I’d rather will it myself. I’ve lost too much blood, but I’m not leaving you out here to go back to them.”
“Slumber?”
“It’s how a Dresdan heals, but slumber should happen in a safe place. Not here.”
“I can’t go with you.”
“Then I won’t go.”
“You have to. Please,” she urged. “My crew is still out there. Soon they will call to report this mess. They saw me bring you in here. They will kill you.”
“Come with me. I can’t risk losing you because of how you helped me.”
She swallowed.
This time he opened both of his arms, inviting her to embrace him. “I have just enough strength to shift one hundred miles. It’ll be quick. All you’ll feel is rapid movement.”
“Where will you take me?” she asked.
“Someplace where you’ll be safe. A house near the countryside.”
Elaina hesitated, but then she heard the footsteps of her colleagues just outside the storage warehouse. They weren’t going to relent until Vicq was dead, and she had no idea how she would explain herself. She’d assisted a vampire. The same vampire that she’d been assigned to execute. Time after time, she’d failed her mission. She had failed it on purpose.
She glanced at Vicq again. His eyes weren’t red anymore, but rather a dull hazel. Almost human, but not entirely. He was weak. V
ulnerable.
“Ven conmigo,” he whispered. “Come with me.”
Chapter 13
Elaina couldn’t sleep.
Not because there was a vampire slumbering in the lowest level of the countryside manor. Not because the home had very few windows and steel doors. She was fatigued, and her eyes were heavy, but she had this inclination to observe everything around her.
She hadn’t gone outside yet since it was still dark, but when she looked out the window she spotted nothing but fields of straw and hay under the moonlight. She would have never imagined that she would be here, taking refuge in a vampire’s home. With a vampire slumbering only one story below her in an underground vault.
Vicq’s injury must have been severe because the moment they’d touched down in the foyer, he’d told her that the home was stocked with everything she’d need and then disappeared. Moments later, she’d heard footsteps on the level below her and a loud thud as if someone had closed a door. She’d understood what he had done, and her uneasiness had soon worn off as she ventured from room to room, admiring the intricate wall paintings; old, refurbished English style furnishings, and wood carvings.
The miniature carvings were what fascinated her the most. They were on almost every flat surface of the home. There were wooden cranes and other animals. Carvings and depictions of people and buildings. Bowls, utensils, pedestals. As far as Elaina could see, there were hundreds of them.
Elaina wondered if he’d made them? What had his life been like in the past? What did he think of his life now?
And what would her life become now that she’d committed a District offense by befriending a vampire—and not just any vampire—a Dresdan.
A carved, wooden owl sat on the mantle of the brick fireplace. She traced the perfectly cut ridges with the pads of her fingers…
Vicq would have followed the scent of Elaina’s blood anywhere, so finding her looking at some pieces on his mantle was easy. He’d gained enough of his strength back by shutting his body down for a few hours. Now he hungered for the very thing that would empower him the most. But first, he had to see the woman that intrigued him. The female that stirred something so deeply within him that he hadn’t really figured out what it was yet. It had been so long since he’d felt the need to protect anyone like he did Elaina. He would protect his coven members, yes. But with Elaina, his urge to safeguard her was different.
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