He moved silently and the ugly bastard never heard him coming. With the element of surprise, he grabbed the man by the back of the shirt collar and lifted him into the air. The guy had to weigh at least two hundred and fifty pounds but Philip lifted him as easily as if he were only a rag doll.
He let out a comically high pitched squeal of surprise and fright as Philip turned him around in mid-air so that the two of them were face to face. The noise the man made got the attention of his buddies and they both stopped what they were doing to turn and look at Philip as well. Good. If all three men were looking at him, that meant none of them were attacking that girl.
He couldn’t see her from where she had been so casually tossed aside behind the piles of stinking trash, but he thought that if she had already been hurt it wasn’t that bad. He should know. If she had been really badly injured he would definitely have smelled the blood.
“Hey! What the fuck, man?”
Philip grinned at him, allowing all of his inhumanly long, sharp teeth to be exposed. Even suspended in the air, the loser cringed and flinched back, trying as hard as he could to get away. It was beyond gratifying to watch him squirm. His policy of not getting involved didn’t mean that he was a fan of bullies.
It was so easy for jacked up douchebags like these to play macho when they were messing with a girl half their size and totally outnumbered. Philip couldn’t stand guys like these and he never had been able to. When he was human, he had (according to his vague recollections) cared deeply for the feelings and plight of those less fortunate than him and even after a century of being a vampire, he would not kill a person who seemed decent unless he was totally out of options.
So even though there was still a part of him that was cursing his decision to get involved and risk his own exposure, the larger part of himself was starting to have a good time. It seemed only right that these guys get a taste of their own medicine. That way they would think twice before pulling a stunt like this again. If he let them walk away, that was.
“Hey man! I’d put him down if I were you, bro.”
“Would you?” Philip growled, his voice coming from deep in the back of his throat and hardly sounding human at all.
The guy he was still holding up in the air started to whimper and his two friends exchanged quick, hesitant glances. Those looks said that the men weren’t quite terrified yet, but they were on their way. Good. That was good. He wanted them scared. He wanted to smell it coming off of them in waves, to taste it in the warm night air.
“That’s right,” the third man said, shoving his shoulders back and puffing his chest out like he was going to be the one to start something physical, “put him down if you don’t want to get the shit kicked out of you. You don’t know who you’re messing with.”
“I think I have a pretty good idea.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Philip considered the man he had dangling in the air for a minute, letting the lot of them wait, letting the waiting feed their fear. The guy was now white as a sheet and Philip noted with distaste that he had pissed himself. He could have held him up like that for hours without getting tired but he was getting tired of his stench and so he dropped him with a loud thump.
The guy didn’t even bother getting back to his feet before moving back towards safety (like something like that could happen without Philip deciding to let it) and he didn’t stop moving until he was cowering behind his friends. Philip took a slow, somehow careless, step towards them and the whole trio practically jumped back. Their macho bravado seemed to be failing them, now that they had a real opponent to face.
“So, the three of you like to pick on women, is that right?”
“Hey, man, this shit doesn’t concern you.”
“I’m afraid that doesn’t answer my question,” another casual step forward, another nervous jump backwards from the pack, “so I’ll ask you again. Do you three enjoy picking on women? Do you enjoy picking on people who won’t be able to stand up to you?”
No answer. And really, what could they say? If they said no, he would know that they were lying. Talk was cheap and their actions made it painfully obvious that they did indeed like to mess with women who were outnumbered and out of their element. On the other hand, if they said yes, wouldn’t that just make this freak angrier at them? They were between a rock and a hard place, which was exactly where Philip wanted them to be.
He could have done this for hours. He was thoroughly enjoying the game of cat and mouse. He had forgotten how good it felt to allow himself out of the cage, to let himself be the predator he truly was. He could have done it for a good long while if it hadn’t been for the men’s victim. His steps forward hadn’t given him any clearer of a view of her but he could hear her labored breathing and he knew that she was still very much afraid.
He was enjoying this exchange mightily but he could tell that she was absolutely not and it didn’t seem quite fair for him to prolong an already horrific situation for her. He sighed theatrically and looked them up and down lazily, appraising them and deciding what it was he wanted to do with them. After what he was sure felt like an eternity to everyone but him, he rolled his eyes and began to speak.
“Here’s what we’re going to do. I want all three of you to listen very carefully, OK? Do we all understand each other?”
The one he had held up above his head didn’t even register that he had heard. He looked like he had pretty much checked out and if he was listening, it definitely didn't show. He might as well have been rocking back and forth with his hands clamped over his ears. The other two were nodding vigorously. He could see the first signs of hope on their faces and had to fight back the urge to just rip them into pieces. Men like this were shit. He would have loved to teach them a real lesson, a lesson they wouldn’t forget, but it wasn’t the right time or the right place.
Something like that would be far too messy and it would draw a whole lot of attention. That was the last thing he wanted. He wasn’t in the mood to skip town again, which was always the best way to escape suspicion in unfortunate situations. Trouble with the law was something vampires needed to avoid.
In most cases, they could just pay the officers off and go on about their business but there was always the risk of them dealing with that one all American boy scout type with plans to change the whole world. That kind of cop could be a major headache and Philip didn’t want that. This trash wasn’t worth all of that trouble, especially when he could fuck up their world quite nicely without creating a crime scene.
“Good. Looks like everyone is paying attention. Now, I want you to answer a question for me. Do I strike you as a normal kind of a guy?”
Silence. Not one of the three was eager to pipe up and tell this weirdo they didn’t know at all that he struck them as more of a freak than a normal man. That meant they were too afraid to own up, which was a good start. He wanted them to be so afraid that they didn’t ever forget the feeling. He wanted them waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and having just the fleeting memory of his face as an explanation for why.
“Aw, I can see that you’re all feeling shy at the moment, so I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’m not. I’m not a normal guy. If I wanted to, I could be your worst nightmare.”
He opened his mouth again, raising his face up towards the bright moonlight to let them catch a full on glance of his terrifying incisors. He ran his tongue over them, drawing his own blood and letting it drip down his chin for a second before lapping it back up again. Now the men looked both frightened and disgusted. He knew that they wanted nothing more than to get out of this alive. It was exactly how he wanted them to feel.
“Is that what you want, boys? Do you want me to be your worst nightmare?”
“No! No man, we don’t want that at all. We just want to get out of here, OK? That’s it, end of the story.”
“Good, I’m glad to hear it. I think I’m going to let you do just that thing, too, but first I wa
nt you to understand something.”
“Sure, anything, man. Just let us know and we’ll do it. We’ll do whatever you say.”
“Well I’m glad, and lucky for you, it’s an easy concept to grasp. I just want you to know, to be really and completely sure that I mean it when I say, that if you ever try something like this again I will know. I’ll know, I’ll find you, and then I’ll rip you apart. I’ll drain all of the blood out of you and by the time I’m done even your own mother wouldn’t recognize you. Assuming that she’d want you, that is, and I don’t see why she would.”
As he spoke, the men grew whiter and whiter and by the time he was quiet again it looked like he had already done the thing he had threatened to do. He thought they might protest, that they could possibly convince themselves that fighting back was in their best interests, but it didn’t happen. He had scared them well enough for them to stay as silent as the grave.
“Do you understand? Nod if you do. I would tell you to say something but it looks like a cat’s got your tongues.”
They all nodded, their eyes glassy with a faraway look. He thought there was a good chance that at least one of them had convinced himself that none of this was actually happening and if that were true, well then good luck to him. If he decided there was no boogey man watching after all, he would be a dead man.
Philip would see to that because he wasn’t joking. He was going to keep tabs on these guys. He had lived in New Orleans on and off for a long, long time and he had enough connections to cover every inch of the city. If he wanted to know everything about these guys, from when they ate their breakfast to when they fucked, to when they went to bed, he was going to know it.
“Alright, that’ll do. And you believe I can do it, too. Don’t you? You know I will do it.”
Again the vacant nods and from the back, the big one he had tossed around started to whimper again. It didn’t look like he even knew he was making a sound. Suddenly, Philip wasn’t enjoying himself anymore. He just wanted them gone. His head was starting to pound and he was starting to think about his chat with Caroline again. He didn’t want to waste any more time on these sickos. He just wanted them to go somewhere else.
“Good. Now get the hell out of here. Go on, get.”
They ran as fast as their legs could carry them, all shoving each other and tripping every few steps. Philip watched them go with a tired kind of disgust. He waited for a few moments to make sure that none of the three would get it into his head to double back for some heroic last stand, and when he was completely sure that they were gone he walked slowly towards the dumpster.
He could still hear the girl’s rapid breathing, smell her sweet perfume mingled with fear-tinged sweat. He didn’t want to make her any more afraid than she already was, but he did want to see that she was OK. After all, it had been in the interests of saving her that he had involved himself with those low lives in the first place.
He still couldn’t explain to himself why he had done it and that made him feel like he had to see her. He was hoping it might make him understand and, if he was being honest with himself (something he wasn’t all that interested in doing at the moment), he was so drawn to her that the idea of not getting a look at her was almost painful. He approached slowly, God only knew if she had fashioned herself some kind of a weapon while she was holed up behind that dumpster, but there was no way he wasn’t going to see her.
“Hey.”
It was such a nonchalant response that he had to laugh. He wasn’t easily caught off guard, but that was the best way he could think of to describe his feelings about his current situation. And it wasn’t just the fact that he had played vigilante justice with those meatheads or this girl’s strangely calm response to his approaching her after they fled.
She was also the most phenomenally beautiful woman he had ever seen. She was petite but with the kind of body any man in his right mind would stop to take a second look at. She had soft, supple skin the color of fresh cream and thick dark curls piled up on top of her head in a messy bun (made was much messier after her recent ordeal).
Wide, intelligent green eyes peered up at him with an expression he couldn’t possibly begin to read and her perfect bow of a red mouth quivered so lightly that a less perceptive being would never have noticed it. But Philip did. He noticed everything about her. He wanted her, more than he had wanted anything in a long, long time.
CHAPTER TWO
“Hey.”
God, it was such a stupid thing to say, but what exactly was she supposed to say? Thank you for stopping those three assholes from assaulting and then probably killing me behind this dumpster? I’m sorry and I’ll try to be more careful next time? Somehow those things just didn’t seem like they would cut it and she didn’t know how else to handle what had just happened to her, and so she said the first thing she could think of.
She knew the man standing before her probably thought it was weird, but so what? She thought he was pretty weird, too. He had already come out and said as much to those men, and unless he was just a very good actor, she was pretty sure this handsome stranger had the potential to be a mass murderer if he were in the wrong kind of a mood. Not that she wasn’t grateful for his help because she was, she just wasn’t too worried about what kind of a first impression she was making.
“Hey yourself. Let me help you up.”
“Help me up?”
“Yes, help you up. That ground is dirty and the water is soaking you through. Even with the warmth of this spring air, you’ll catch a chill if you just sit there all night long.”
Megan Wright looked down and was somehow surprised to find herself still sprawled on the concrete behind the hulking dumpster she had been thrown behind. Her legs had gone completely numb from being sat on for too long but somehow it still hadn’t registered that she was the one sitting on them.
Shock, she thought, you’re in shock, that’s all. And there could be a concussion as well. That was a pretty hard fall you just took.
Fall. A pretty hard fall. She smiled to herself disgustedly for having thought about it in those terms. She was only making excuses, trying to make things appear nicer and less grotesque than they really were. She hadn’t just taken a little spill while she was being careless. She had been attacked, for Christ’s sake. There was nothing wrong with admitting it to herself.
Actually, she thought it could be dangerous if she didn’t. Not only would it make it harder for her to deal with and get over what had happened, but it would only help her to convince herself that it was OK for her to keep paying so little attention to where she was going and what kind of danger that might put her in. If tonight had proved anything, it was that she needed to stop thinking of herself as invincible.
Even a tough person could be taken out if the situation was bad enough. She thought that the situation tonight had been close to that, close to being too bad to walk away from. She had no idea what would have happened if the odd man towering above her hadn’t shown up but she had a feeling of almost complete certainty that it wouldn’t have gone in her favor.
She was grateful to him for helping her, but she hated the fact that she had needed help at all. It made her feel weak and she thought that was incredibly dangerous as well. She wasn’t always going to have some dashing stranger to help her when she needed it.
She didn’t want to grow dependent on the idea of relying on someone other than herself when she knew she would rarely have that option. She had learned at a young age that relying on outside resources was a fool’s recourse.
“Here, please.”
His large, strong hand was extended down to her in direct defiance to her thoughts of self-reliance. Still, she couldn’t help it. She took the hand being offered and upon doing so felt a jolt of electricity shoot through every inch of her body.
“Oh!”
“Are you OK?”
“Yes-I’m sorry, yes. I’m fine. Thanks.”
She was fine, that much was true, but she felt so strange
! It really had felt like electricity, that reaction her body had to his touch, like she’d stuck her finger in a light socket and was now paying the price. His skin felt unlike any she had felt before. It was tough, as tough as the strongest stone, and smooth like marble.
It was cold like marble as well and she wondered how a person could be that cold and look as comfortable as he seemed to be. Weren’t people supposed to be a certain temperature just to survive? She knew that was true and although she couldn’t remember what that temperature was, she would have been willing to bet money that this guy’s internal body temperature was below it.
But that wasn’t possible, she told herself, there was no way that could be true. She didn’t really have time to think about it because he was pulling her up through the air with such force that she almost toppled forward. She would have fallen right back to the ground if he hadn’t been there to catch her, so instead of hitting the concrete again she ran head long into the strange man’s chest. She found that it was just as stone solid as his hands.
Saved By Blood (The By Blood Vampire Series Book 3) Page 2
