by Lisa Edmonds
Then another face appeared. Bright silver vampire eyes met mine and I heard Charles Vaughan’s familiar voice in my head: Alice, let us help you.
The larger of the two shadows said something I couldn’t hear, pried my fingers away from my shoulder, and ripped my suit jacket and blouse apart. He tore off his own shirt and wadded it up against the hole in my shoulder, while he lifted me and used what was left of my jacket and blouse as a bandage on the wound on my back. When he compressed my shoulder between his hands like a vise, the wave of pain made me convulse and struggle to get away, but Charles held me down. The room did a weird kaleidoscope spin and the ringing in my ears drowned out all other noises as I started to fade out.
A cool hand brushed my forehead. Alice, look at me. Charles’s words cut through the fog of pain and dizziness and I was compelled to obey.
I opened my eyes—which was odd, since I didn’t remember closing them—and met the vampire’s gaze as everything else faded to background noise. My world shrank until all I could see or think about was how beautiful his eyes were. They glowed with a soft silver light as if lit with moonlight from within. The pain faded to a distant ache. I exhaled in a long sigh.
Dimly, I realized Charles had used suggestion to ease my pain. Normally I would have resisted or refused simply on principle, but the wound was bad and the agony was worse. Despite Charles’s command, my eyelids were heavy and unconsciousness pulled at me.
Bryan Smith, Charles’s head enforcer, said something else I couldn’t understand. His tone was urgent and it galvanized the vampire into action.
Charles caressed my cheek. Bryan lifted the makeshift bandage away from my shoulder. A blade flashed and cool fingertips pushed into the gunshot wound.
Even vampire suggestion had its limits. I bit back a scream and retched. I’d experienced a lot of torture, but having someone stick their fingers into a bullet wound was pretty close to the top of my personal pain scale.
A nexus of soothing warmth and comfort formed in my shoulder, taking away the pain like a tide going out. I recognized the healing effects of vampire blood, but instead of offering me his wrist to drink from, Charles had apparently slashed his own fingers and stuck them directly into my wound. How bad was the injury if the vampire had decided drinking his blood might not heal me fast enough?
Charles withdrew his fingers from my shoulder and pulled me against his body until I was half-sitting. He tore back his sleeve, bit savagely into his wrist, and pressed his arm to my mouth. Cool blood ran down my chin. Drink, he told me.
I blinked slowly up at him, torn between my reluctance to put myself under his influence again and the knowledge that though the blood from his fingers had begun the healing process, my wound could kill me or leave me incapacitated in the middle of whatever was happening here. My head buzzed like it was full of bees.
Alice, drink, the vampire repeated, more forcefully. You are losing consciousness.
Reluctantly, I obeyed.
As I drank, the waves of pleasure and warmth that rolled through me were frighteningly intense. Things began moving in my shoulder. I moaned and struggled in Charles’s arms. When he gently started to pull away, I licked his wrist to clean off the blood. The vampire made a sound low in his throat that was definitely not pain.
He held me as my bones and flesh healed and the ringing in my ears faded. It took a long time. Finally, the strange sensations subsided and my other senses returned as the blood healed the damage to my vision and inner ears.
When I opened my eyes, I discovered someone had turned on a few lights but left the house in semi-darkness, probably in deference to those of us who were still suffering the aftereffects of what I now realized had been a flash-bang grenade.
When the lights went out, I’d been almost at the front door, but now I was lying in the living room with no memory of how I’d made it there. I stared around the room, trying to process what I saw and make sense of it.
Robinson’s living room was in a shambles. The large windows facing the backyard were gone, the curtains were torn down, and broken glass was everywhere. Bullet holes in the walls indicated a gun battle. The furniture was overturned and smashed as if a big fight had taken place. A half-dozen Vampire Court enforcers in black stood guard around us. Through the missing window, I saw several more in the backyard.
Charles sat on the floor with me in his lap, in a distressingly large puddle of blood that had apparently come from me. Bryan was on one knee next to us, shirtless, our blood-soaked clothes in a pile beside him. I was covered in my own blood, my jacket and shirt were gone, and my bra was held on by a few threads, but I was sitting in the middle of what looked like a war zone and that seemed more important at the moment.
Three men lay face-down and unmoving on the living room floor, their hands cuffed behind their backs. I recognized them as Robinson and the Davis brothers. They were alive but unconscious.
“Where’s the other guy?” My voice sounded funny; my hearing was still messed up, or maybe it was shock and blood loss.
Bryan shook his head grimly. “Escaped.”
He had a welt across his chest where my cold-fire whip had struck him. I grimaced. “Sorry,” I said, gesturing at the wound.
“Don’t worry about it,” he rumbled, waving off my apology. “You were confused and blinded, and it will heal.”
Someone crouched beside me. “Miss Alice.”
I looked up at my oversized Vampire Court-assigned bodyguard. “Hey, Fortune. Oh, crap, were you hit?” His suit jacket was bloody near his right shoulder, as was his right pant leg, and he was pale.
“They’re just flesh wounds. I’ll be fine.” He looked at Charles, his expression grim. “Sir, I failed to protect her. I offer you my blood and my resignation.”
“Wait. Back up. What the hell happened?” I started to sit up but thought better of it when a wave of dizziness reminded me that my shoulder might be healed, but I’d lost a lot of blood.
Charles looked like he’d bitten into something rancid. “We intended to arrest Robinson and the others once you had obtained their confession.”
His arm was still around my middle, holding me against him. I pushed at it, but he tightened his grip. “Let go.”
“Don’t try to stand up,” Bryan advised. “You’ll pass out.”
As much as I hated to admit it, he was probably right. I stayed on the floor and glared at them. “Somebody needs to explain this to me,” I snapped. “We had a plan, Charles. I go in, get the confession, hand it over to the feds, and they make the arrest. Why are you here?”
Charles’s eyes flashed. “The Court was concerned the bombers would suspect they had been deceived and flee before the federal agents acted on our evidence.”
I might have known the vamps would change the play at the last minute. I scowled. “So you decided to toss in a flash-bang and get us shot?”
“They planned to wait until we were clear of the house before coming in,” Fortune told me. “Stevens cut the lights and threw the flash-bang.”
So Fortune had been in on the Court’s plan all along and hadn’t told me. What a surprise.
“Why did he do that?” I remembered seeing Fortune turn toward the former Marine right before all hell broke loose. “What happened when the lights went out?”
Fortune looked mad enough to chew up rocks and spit out gravel. “Stevens got some kind of alert. I heard something buzz twice, like a signal. He put his hand in his pocket and the lights went out. The flash-bang was hidden in the couch next to him. He threw it before I could get to him.”
Which meant he’d been close to the grenade when it went off. I winced. As much as the flash-bang had left me deaf, blind, and disoriented, it had to have hurt Fortune far worse. The enforcer’s hearing and eyesight were enhanced from drinking vampire blood regularly, which meant he healed faster, but the initial detonation would have left him virtually incapacitated long enough for Stevens and the others to grab weapons.
“We came in whe
n the banger went off,” Bryan said. “In the confusion, Stevens and Robinson got a couple of shots off before we could gain control of the situation.”
“Looks like it was more than a couple, unless some of those are yours,” I said, gesturing at the bullet holes in the walls. “Stevens probably had some kind of perimeter alarm set up and you guys tripped it as you were making your approach.”
He nodded grimly. “It would appear so.”
Well, I’d have some words for Charles about being left out of the change in plans, but that could wait until we were in private. “Did you call in the feds?”
“We did,” Bryan told me. “The neighbors called the police about the gunshots. There are officers outside. Agents from the ATF are on their way to take them into custody.” He gestured at Robinson and the Davis brothers.
“How did Stevens get away?”
“He went out a window on the other side of the house and made it to a vehicle.” Bryan’s eyes blazed. He was obviously furious Stevens had escaped their net. “We have people looking for him. He won’t get far.”
“Good.” I looked at the blood on the floor and sighed. “I can’t leave that here. Get me up.”
Bryan looked at Charles doubtfully.
“This amount of blood loss will be debilitating,” the vampire told me, as if I hadn’t already figured that out.
“I have a job to do. Just get me on my feet and I’ll do the rest.”
Charles stood and lifted me in one smooth motion, then held me upright when my knees tried to give out and my ears rang. Fortune stood beside us, guilt written on his features as I trembled from blood loss and the feeling of cold air on my bare skin.
Fortune took off his suit jacket and draped it over my shoulders. It was bloodstained and hung almost to my knees, but at least I was no longer standing in front of a room full of people in what was left of my bra.
I pulled out of Charles’s grip and crouched carefully, putting my fingertips in the blood on the floor. “I’m going to burn this,” I said.
Charles gave Bryan a nod. “Do it,” the enforcer told me as some of the other enforcers moved back. Their caution was understandable but unnecessary; the burner spell would only remove traces of my blood without touching anything or anyone else.
I took a deep breath. “Burn.”
The spell flared, knocking me back. Charles caught me before I could land on my butt. White fire rushed across the floor and across our clothes, consuming my blood and leaving behind a thin layer of fine ash. The vampire helped me stand and held me up as ash floated down to the hardwood floor.
In the meantime, Mike Robinson was coming around. He struggled, pulling at his cuffs and swearing, his words slurred. He rolled onto his side and tried to rise, flopping like a fish.
Bryan put a hand the size of a baseball glove on Robinson’s shoulder, pinning him to the floor without noticeable effort. “Stay down,” he rumbled.
“Screw you,” Robinson spat. He craned his neck and spotted me, standing with Charles’s arm around my middle. His face twisted in rage and disgust. “You. You c—”
“If you wish to keep your tongue, you will be silent.” Charles’s voice was pure menace. A slight lisp told me the vampire’s fangs were out and he was angry enough to not enunciate carefully.
Robinson made the wise choice and shut up, but hate radiated off him in almost visible waves. Unfazed, I stared back at him.
You don’t need to protect me from words, Charles, I told the vampire. Sticks and stones and large-caliber bullets may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
No one speaks to you in such a way in my presence, was his curt reply. His arm tightened around me.
Adri Smith, another of Charles’s enforcers, came in through the front door. “Sir, the ATF agents are two minutes away.”
Charles addressed Robinson. “I am Charles Vaughan, the vampire whose bar you bombed. It gives me great pleasure to see you in handcuffs. You will be handed over to federal agents momentarily.”
It occurred to me rather belatedly that Charles had a second motivation for arresting Robinson and the others in person tonight, rather than simply letting the feds handle it: he’d wanted the satisfaction of putting on the cuffs himself. I couldn’t say I blamed him; I’d been a part of the investigation for much the same reason. I’d almost died when they bombed Hawthorne’s. If I’d been a second slower in my reaction when the bomb was thrown through the window, I’d be dead. It was worth the bullet wound to see Robinson on the floor in cuffs, his eyes widening as the reality of the situation began to sink in.
“You murdered my wife,” Robinson ground out.
“I had no involvement in her death,” Charles countered. “Nor did anyone of my line or any of my employees. The Court investigated your wife’s murder. The vampire who killed her was unfamiliar to us and not sired by anyone on the Court. Your target had no bearing on your wife’s case.”
“I don’t care. You all deserve to burn in hell.” Robinson turned to me. “I did it for my wife. I did it for Samantha.”
“No you didn’t,” I told him as the front door opened and four federal agents came in. “You did it for yourself.”
With Charles’s arm around my waist, we slowly made our way toward the front door as the feds took over.
One agent, an African-American man in a suit and ATF windbreaker, stopped us in the foyer. “Ma’am, are you injured?”
“No, just disoriented from the flash-bang,” I told him, speaking too loudly, as if I was still a little deaf. Charles shook slightly. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought he was laughing silently.
The agent handed me a card and I tucked it into the pocket of my borrowed jacket. “I’m Special Agent Marshall. You’ll need to come to our office to give your statement.” He glanced at my attire and raised his eyebrows. “Once you’re had a chance to change, of course.”
“Of course,” Charles interjected smoothly. “Three hours from now, at your office?” When Marshall frowned, Charles added, “She can hardly be expected to give a statement before she has recovered, Agent Marshall. Her testimony would be compromised.”
I did my best to look shaky and unfocused. With the blood loss, it didn’t take much acting.
Marshall relented. “Three hours,” he agreed, then headed into the living room, where the other agents were conferring with each other and ignoring Robinson, who was loudly demanding a lawyer and that we be arrested for assault and false imprisonment.
Three hours is time enough to see to your medical needs and discuss your statement, Charles told me as he ushered me out the door. An SUV waited at the curb with Adri behind the wheel and Fortune at the rear passenger door, ready to open it for us.
With each step, the buzzing in my head got louder and I could no longer feel my own feet. I stumbled and almost went down. I gritted my teeth. Unless I wanted to collapse on the sidewalk in front of a dozen feds, I needed help. Charles, I’m not going to make it to the car.
He picked me up and moved vamp-fast to the waiting SUV. Fortune opened the door and climbed into the back seat much quicker than I would have thought possible for a man of his size. Charles handed me off to the enforcer, who laid me on the seat as his boss climbed in and shut the door.
“Ride in front,” Charles told Fortune, who quickly exited through the other door and hurried around to the passenger side. He jumped in and Adri pulled away from the curb, accelerating down the street in a roar of horsepower.
Charles arranged me so my feet were propped up against the opposite door and my head was in his lap. The increased blood flow helped clear the cobwebs and the ringing faded.
He met Adri’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “Call ahead to the house and have a doctor and blood transfusions waiting.”
“Already done.” Adri glanced at me in the mirror. “How are you doing, Alice?”
“Never better,” I muttered.
Charles brushed hair back from my face. I am sorry our change of plans led to
this, he said in my head.
I understand why you did it, but you should have included me in your plans instead of dropping me into the middle of a shooting gallery. I’ve earned that much.
He twitched, as if my statement had startled him. Yes, you have. I apologize.
An apology from a member of the Vampire Court. As if the day hadn’t already been strange enough.
2
I woke up just after noon to the feeling of a large, warm body curled up behind me and a heavy weight pinning my legs.
“Hey,” Sean murmured, his lips on the back of my neck.
“Hey,” I echoed, my voice thick with sleep. “How long have you been here?”
“Since about ten. I didn’t want to wake up you up, but I couldn’t stay away once I knew you were back.” He wrapped his arms around me.
“I’m awake, sort of.” I yawned and smiled at the black-and-white dog lying on my feet. “Hey, Rogue.”
The dog woofed and laid his head back on the bed, closing his eyes.
“When did you get home?” Sean asked.
I rubbed my eyes. “A little after dawn.”
“So you’ve only been asleep for a few hours. Go back to sleep. We’ll go downstairs.” He kissed my cheek and started to pull away.
I held him back. “No, stay.”
He settled back in and nestled me against his body. I was bone-tired, but it had been too long since I’d seen Sean or my dog and I couldn’t have gone back to sleep now if I’d wanted to.
“You want to tell me about it?” Sean asked after a few minutes.
His werewolf nose had no doubt alerted him immediately that things had gone sideways. I was surprised he’d waited until I woke on my own to ask what had happened. The Sean I’d first known would have demanded an explanation for why I smelled like blood that was not my own, and that earlier version of me would have been annoyed and angry at being questioned. I realized neither of us were the people we’d been when we first met and was surprised that I liked the change in myself.
