Crossfire (Book Two of the Darkride Chronicles)

by Laura Bradley Rede

I turn back towards the door. I’m sure they must be gone. “You know what I mean.”

  “No,” she says. “I don’t. Listen, I’m just offerin’ you a feed is all, Luke. It’s as much for the rest of our sakes as for you. We need everyone at their strongest, in case something goes wrong. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “And all I’m saying is you aren’t my type.” I carefully turn the doorknob and inch the door open a crack. “It’s nothing personal.”

  “Why?” Her eyes narrow suspiciously. “It’s not a race thing, is it?”

  I scowl at her. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m sure my family is at least as varied as yours, and proud to have the best of many cultures. I have no use for human bigotry.”

  She folds her arms across her generous chest. “Then what?”

  I sigh. I want to go find Cicely, but I’m sure hunting her down isn’t going to win me her favor. She has an odd dislike for being followed. “A preference, that’s all.”

  “Is this about Cicely?”

  Everything is about Cicely, I think. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, are you trying to save me for her? Do you think she’s taking too much blood, and you don’t want to wear me out?” She smiles. “Because that’s real chivalrous of you and all, but you don’t have to worry. Michael packed Juice along with the other potions, and I know a blood bar not far from here where I can get some more. Plus, for a new vamp, Cicely’s pretty well-behaved, so…” She spreads her arms wide. “I’m good.”

  “I’m very sure you are,” I say politely, “but my family doesn’t feed from thralls.”

  Emmie looks surprised. “What, at all?”

  “Yes. My mother taught us that vampires hunt. Feeding from the willing leads to domestication and it’s far too easy to bond.” I shrug. “No offense.”

  “Oh.” I can hear her heartbeat slow with disappointment. I wasn’t even aware I had been listening. “Well,” she says, “if you ever change your mind…”

  “I will know where to find you.”

  “Okay, then.” She turns dejectedly and heads for the door, glancing back once over her shoulder. A whiff of her scent hits me—the warm, human scent of blood, mingled with the smell of nail polish and sweet candy. It’s not really as bad as I thought. I press my lips into a tight line to keep my fangs from shifting. I’ve become domesticated enough lately, following Cicely around like a well-trained dog. The last thing I need is to start feeding on thralls.

  Although, I’ll admit she’s right. I am hungry, and talking about it has only made it worse. I’ll hunt soon, I promise myself. As soon as I know what happened to Cicely.

  “See you later, Luke,” Emmie calls. She doesn’t turn around, but I can tell from the tone of her voice that her usually boisterous spirits are as flattened as her damp curls. Well good, I think. The girl can be annoyingly chipper. I should be proud of my self-control.

  But I can’t help feeling sorry for her. I imagine she’s unused to being rejected. It can come as quite a shock.

  I should know.

  As soon as Emmie is out of the room, I open the door to the kitchen and peer inside.

  As I suspected, Cicely and Ander are gone.

  A horrible sinking feeling fills me. Did they leave together, or did they go back to fighting and go their separate ways? I don’t know what I’m more afraid of: the thought that he might hurt her, or the thought that they might be somewhere together alone. I silently curse Emmie for interrupting my spying. Now my only option is to hunt them down, and that will only anger Cicely, maybe even annoy her to the point where she becomes fed up with me completely and chooses him. The thought makes me frantic. I am unused to things being out of my control, yet here I am, watching this entire situation escape me like a rope slipping through the fingers of a drowning man, and there’s nothing I can think of to change it.

  Suddenly I want to bite something, hard. Emmie’s right—I’m starving and I can’t think straight and the bonding withdrawal has driven me mad. I need to sink my fangs into something and feel the pain flow out of me as the blood flows in, feel the blood fill the hollow spaces in my chest, let it wash away this horrible insecurity. I need to remind myself I am not human and I do not need to feel this human pain.

  I cannot follow Cicely without driving her away.

  So I follow Emmie instead.

  Chapter 7: Emmie

  Luke catches me before I reach the stairs. I’m so lost in my own thoughts, I don’t even hear him coming, don’t even know he’s there until he’s grasping my arm in a grip too strong to be human, spinning me around to face him and pressing my back against the wall in the same swift motion.

  I gasp, but I don’t scream. I’ve trained myself not to—not unless the customer asks for it special. But this isn’t any customer, this is Luke Marianez, vampire royalty, and there’s no mistaking him for anything else. His dark eyes are wild, the pupils so big and black I feel like I could fall right in. My voice comes out small and breathy, “You said you didn’t want to.”

  “I changed my mind.”

  Well, I can see that. Luke’s fangs shift into place, smooth as a switchblade in a James Dean movie. He’s breathing hard. I can feel his chest rise and fall against mine as he pushes me tighter against the wall—and I’m sure he can feel mine, too, considering I’m just in my jammies, and I don’t exactly sleep in my bra. He plants one hand on the wall beside me as if blocking my escape, even though I’ve got no intention of running. The other hand goes to my hair, fingers twisting into the damp curls at the base of my neck, knotting them in his fist. He tugs, tilting my head to the side, exposing the length of my throat, and a low animal noise escapes him.

  Do it, I’m thinking, Do it! My blood hums like the wire of an electric fence when you wrap your hand around it on a dare. Luke leans in and runs the very tip of his fangs over the soft skin of my neck, not hard enough to break the skin, just hard enough to send little tremors skating through me. I moan low in my chest. I can feel him so close to the sweet spot I want to scream, want to squirm, but I force myself to stay still, frozen, like if I move he might run away. I give a little whimper. “Please.”

  That’s all he’s got to hear. Luke’s fangs pierce me so hard I cry out. My blood bubbles up like champagne when the cork is popped and with it comes the rush, the insane happy that goes with being bit. I’m in every inch of my body—every inch that’s touching him—but I’m out of it, too, my consciousness flowing out like blood as he drinks me in. Oh lord, he means business. His tongue works expertly against my pulse, his cool lips hungry on my fevered skin. For all Luke’s manners and his fancy clothes, he’s a predator and he’s not used to leaving his prey alive. I can feel myself getting light headed, as if it was only my blood weighing me down, and now that it’s gone, I could float away. Part of me knows I should stop him, but most of me doesn’t want to. The feel of his body pressed tight against mine makes me want to do anything but stop. It makes me want to do things that are against the bar rules, but this isn’t the bar and there’s no one here to scold us. I lean into his arms, letting him take my weight as he turns me away from the wall, lifting my feet off the ground and dipping me backwards like it’s part of a dance we’ve been rehearsing for ages. My head spins. Yeah? I think, the hell I’m not your type.

  “Emmie?”

  Cicely’s voice seems to come from very far away, like a dream, but I wake up fast when Luke sets me down suddenly on my feet. The room spins.

  “Cicely!” Luke steps away from me, the sudden gap between us seeming to suck the warmth out of the room. “What are you doing here?”

  “D.J. needed Ander for something, so…” Her voice drifts off as her eyes move over me. I can imagine how I look. I comb my fingers through my curls, but they’re as out of control as I feel. There’s a bright streak of blood on my t-shirt, like a red tear on the cartoon deer’s cheek.

  “Cissa,” I say. “I can explain.”

  “No,” she says. “There’s nothing to explain. Everyo
ne needs to eat.”

  Everyone including you, I think. I can tell Cicely is struggling with her fangs—and with something else, too, some emotion I can’t quite identify. Jealousy? Does she envy Luke for biting me, or me for being so close to Luke?

  Crap. I am quickly coming down from my high. I can see the confusion in Cicely’s eyes and I’m thinking I made a mistake. I should never have let Luke bite me.

  I have a feeling he’s thinking the same thing. Luke looks a lot more composed than I do—there’s only one dot of blood on his white shirt, like a tiny wound above his heart—but the expression on his face looks pained. “I needed to feed, querida, and Emmie, is a professional…”

  He doesn’t finish. We both know there was nothing professional about it.

  Cicely puts her hand over her mouth, whether to keep from biting me or from saying something she’ll regret, I can’t be sure. “You know,” she mumbles behind her hand, “I think I should go.”

  And then she turns and is gone at vampire speed.

  Luke looks stricken. “She’s upset. I have to talk to her.”

  He starts to follow her, but I grab his arm. “No,” I say. “Let me.”

  Luke gives me a sharp look. “You’re barely on your feet. I’m hardly going to let you follow a hungry enluzante to—”

  “I’ll grab my Juice on the way.” I say. “Cicely’s my friend, and I’ve gotta make sure we’re all good.” I look him in the eye. “Please.”

  I can see Luke start to relent. Maybe he’s not sure what he would say if he found her, so he’s willing to let me try. I’m not one hundred percent sure what I should say, either. It’s not like Luke and I did anything more than I normally do with a bunch of strangers five nights a week. And it’s not like Luke is Cicely’s boyfriend. Not exactly.

  But he’s not not her boyfriend, either, at least in his mind—that much I can tell from the worried look on his face—and I shouldn’t go messing around, making a complicated situation even more complicated, even if the boy is hot as August in Atlanta.

  I pat his arm reassuringly. “You let me make this right.”

  He still looks hesitant. “What if she tries to bite you? I have a feeling you’ve lost enough already.”

  I wave him off with my pink-painted nails. “I’ve handled vampires a whole lot more badass than Cicely Watson.” I smile. “You said it yourself: I’m a professional.”

  Luke sighs. “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”

  Folks think it’s always the vampires who hunt us, but I’ve never known a thrall who couldn’t hunt down a vampire when she wanted to. Plus, girls who are upset tend to head for the little-girls’ room, right? So I swing through the kitchen and grab a big cup of Juice, then head straight for the bathroom in search of Cicely.

  She’s brushing her teeth kind of obsessively, and I can only guess it helps her keep the fangs in. She keeps glancing up at the mirror above the sink, even though she doesn’t show up in it.

  I knock real soft on the open door. “Hey, Cissa.”

  “Hey.” She spits toothpaste into the sink, then wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “Can I come in?”

  She gestures to the toilet. “Pull up a chair.”

  I sit down on the toilet lid and Cicely hoists herself up onto the counter beside the sink and sits there with her feet dangling. “So…?” She says.

  “So,” I take a deep breath. “I wanted to make sure we were good. The way you rushed out just now—”

  “We’re good,” she says quickly. “I just left because… Well, I wasn’t sure I could keep myself from…” She looks so embarrassed it pains me.

  “Hey,” I reach out and touch her hand. “It’s okay.” I grin at her. “Everyone has trouble resisting me.”

  She rolls her eyes. “I know. It’s just… well, Ander and I just had this big fight about whether or not I could handle being around humans, and I told him I could, and then I see Luke biting you and…” She shakes her head, her long hair falling forward to hide her face. “I’m just used to being in control.”

  I give her hand a squeeze. “Cicely, I’ve seen a lot of newly undead vamps and, trust me, you’ve got your shit together better than the best of them.”

  “Yeah,” she says quietly. “But what if I didn’t? What if Ander was right and I lost it? You couldn’t stand up to me and Luke together, Emmie. You wouldn’t have a chance.”

  “Okay, first of all, Ander is a beautiful, brilliant boy, but he doesn’t know everything. And second of all, who says I couldn’t?” I give her my most confident smile. “It’s like I just told Luke: I have handled vampires more badass than you.”

  She smiles up at me from behind her hair. There’s a smudge of toothpaste on her thrift store shirt. “Are you saying I’m not a badass vampire?”

  “Oh, I think you’re badass, alright. Or you will be once you get the hang of this vampire thing, once you accept it and just go with it.”

  “But what if I go with it too far? Ander says I shouldn’t trust myself. He says not trusting myself is the only way to keep everyone else safe.”

  Cicely may be undead, but her face has none of that unreadable vampire quality. I can clearly see the pain in her eyes, and it makes every thrall instinct in me rise to the surface. I want to make her feel better, to feed her, even if her hunger is for something far less tangible than blood. I take her other hand in mine so I’m holding both of them. “Look at me.”

  She peers up from behind her hair. “Yeah?”

  “We all love Ander, but he has his own damage to deal with, right? And he may be D.J.’s alpha, but he’s not mine, so I’m going to disagree with him right here. He says you should trust yourself less, always be suspicious of your own intentions? He thinks that’s the way to keep everyone safe? Well, I’m going to say the opposite. I say you should trust yourself more. Trust the part of you that knows good from bad and loves your friends. Cissa, Ander can’t help but hate himself. He grew up Hunter, and he’s got that inside. But you…” I smooth the hair aside and tuck it behind her ear so I can see her face. “You don’t have to hate what you are. You don’t have to go down that road.”

  She still looks skeptical. “So you’re saying I should embrace my inner vampire?”

  I shrug. “Why not? I embrace vampires all the time!” I take a deep breath. “And speaking of which, I just want to say there’s nothing between me and Luke. I know how it might-a seemed when you saw us just now, but sometimes a feed is really just a feed.”

  “It’s okay,” Cicely says. “There’s nothing between Luke and me, either.”

  “Come on,” I say. “We all know you have feelings for the boy.”

  “I never said that.”

  “You didn’t have to! Cicely, you died for him. What more is there to say?”

  She takes a deep breath out of habit. “I died to save Ander.”

  “Sure,” I say. “That, too. Listen, nobody’s sayin’ you don’t love Ander. I just know not loving Luke isn’t as easy as flippin’ a switch. Love is messy, Cicely. It’s out of control, no matter how much you or Ander or anyone else might want to rein it in, and you just have to accept that. Bonding is a once in a lifetime thing, but love isn’t quite like that and our hearts don’t always choose just one person to love. Heck, my heart can’t even settle on a category! Boys, girls, humans, vampires… I fall for someone new every day!”

  Cicely tilts her head to one side, studying me. She suddenly looks every bit the vampire. “But you haven’t fallen for Luke?”

  “No!” I roll my eyes. “I told you, that was just a bite.” Her gaze is too intense. I pull her down off the counter and turn her to face the mirror, so I won’t have to meet her eyes. I pick a hairbrush up and start brushing her long, dark hair.

  I can’t see her face any more, since the mirror doesn’t reflect it, but I can tell she’s still watching me intently in the mirror. “But you do like Luke,” she says. “Right?”

  I flash back to Luke’
s fangs against my skin, to the way it felt when he picked me up off my feet. I can see my cheeks flush, but I push the thought out of my mind. “Well,” I say lightly. “You know what I always say: I like my vampires like I like my chocolate—dark, rich, and slightly bitter. Luke’s got me on all counts. But he also annoys the crap out of me, to be honest. And even if he didn’t, it’s not like I’d put the moves on the guy, knowing there’s still stuff between you two.”

  “But I told you, there isn’t anything between us!”

  It’s strange, not being able to see Cicely in the mirror when she’s standing right in front of me. It looks like I’m talking to myself when I say, “Luke’s into you.”

  She shakes her head, her long hair swinging, but she doesn’t say anything. We’re both quiet and for a long minute there’s just the swish of the hairbrush. Then Cicely says, “I should have let Ander give you the necklace.”

  “What?”

  “A cross. Ander gave one to Naomi, and he has one for you, too, but I told him not to give it to you.”

  “I wouldn’t want it!”

  “Yeah,” she says. “But here you are being such a good friend to me…”

  “Which is exactly why I wouldn’t want it,” I say. “Those things scare the bejeezus out of you!”

  “But Ander says that’s the point. You should have it as a line of defense.” She sighs heavily. “What if I hurt you, Emmie? What if I killed you?”

  “You take that soap right there,” I say, “and you wash your mouth. Nobody is killin’ anybody. I know it’s hard to believe after all we’ve been through lately, but this little group of friends has done all the dyin’ we’re gonna do.”

  “You don’t know that,” she says quietly. “Luke’s family and Ander’s family are both out to get us. They’re predators, Emmie. Hunters. Tracking people down is what they do. They’re bound to find us, and then—”

  “You’re not going to lose me,” I say, “and you’re not going to hurt anybody. You’re going to get the hang of this thing. You’ll be an expert vampire in no time.”