by eden Hudson
Tiffani was the polar opposite. I had this sort of half-memory from when I was a kid of coming home from school every day and feeling my guard drop as soon as I walked in the farmhouse door. Being with Tiff was like that, like I could finally relax. Maybe that was what it felt like to be in real love, the kind that didn’t come from Fairhaven Syndrome and torture and brainwashing.
“Yep, and it definitely has nothing to do with her being the first female to put her mouth all over you,” Ryder said.
I glared at him.
“Fine.” Ryder held up his hand and spit bottle. “The first female to put her mouth all over your wrist. All’s I’m saying is it doesn’t take a psychoanalyst to see how a lonely, sexually frustrated nineteen-year-old could transfer the feelings from a vamp sucking off his arm to sucking off his dick. The transferring man’s beej. Hell, for all you know, that’s the reason you’re so fucked up. That first—”
I tuned him out. Tiffani had saved me. I’d been trapped and she set me free. She’d been torn up and blown apart and burned alive. What was more, she knew everything and she still wanted me, no matter how screwed up I was.
When I looked up, Tiff was staring at me.
“What?” I asked.
“What’re you thinking about?” she asked.
That image of her with the rocket launcher flashed through my head. I felt myself smile.
“You’re such a badass,” I said.
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t remind me how young you are.”
I thought about it for a minute.
“Not that much younger than you, right?” I said. “Physically.”
“Hell.” She massaged her temples. “You were still jailbait when I bought that new mixer. Makes me feel prehistoric.”
“Less of an age gap than my last relationship.”
Tiffani’s fake exasperation disappeared. She dug her cigarettes out and lit one.
“Good one,” Ryder said, clapping sarcastically. “Gold fucking star.”
I looked down at the floor, then pushed away from the counter and grabbed the coffee pot to pour myself a refill. Tiff wasn’t ready to make jokes about Mikal yet. Maybe that wasn’t something sane people did.
“You got to deal with that shit somehow,” Ryder said. “What’re you supposed to do, cry all the time?”
“Is there a reason you’re still here?” I snapped.
Ryder straightened up.
“Son of a bitch. I never thought I’d see the day my little Sunshine would want to hang out with a girl instead of his big brother.” He pretended to wipe away a tear. “I am the proudest motherfucker on this planet.”
“Colt?” Tiffani was watching me, her body slightly forward and weight on the balls of her feet like she was ready to run or fight, whichever it came to.
Oh, right. Because Ryder wasn’t really there.
I set my coffee on the counter and scrubbed both hands across my face like that would stop the blush. “Is there any sane way to say that I wasn’t talking to you?”
“Ryder?” she asked.
I nodded.
“But no Mikal?”
“No. I think you got rid of her for good.”
“Then I don’t care,” Tiff said. She leaned into my side.
I put my arm around her and pulled her into a hug so I could smell her hair. Coffee, cigarettes, cinnamon, hot peppers. I wished I could smell nothing but her for the rest of time.
Someone knocked on the bakery’s glass front door.
Tiff straightened up and checked the clock. Four-thirty.
“Probably a regular wondering why I’m closed today.” She sighed. “I’ll go get rid of them. You stay out of sight.”
I gestured at my lack of shirt and the rip in my jeans’ fly. Even if I wasn’t hiding out for my life, I wouldn’t be real eager to greet somebody from around town.
More knocking.
“We’re closed,” Tiff hollered.
Whoever it was didn’t stop banging on the door.
“Dammit.” She raked her fingers through her hair. “Do I look respectable?”
“Yeah. Why don’t you wear your hair down more often?” I asked. I couldn’t remember if I’d ever seen it down before tonight.
She shrugged. “It’d be in the way.”
The knocking got louder.
Tiffani headed out to the front. The kitchen doors swung shut behind her.
The knocking stopped.
The hair on my arms and the back of my neck prickled.
The day Mom died, Dad and I were down in the barn fixing a tire on the John Deere G. Tough had gone into town with Mom to pick Ryder up from detention, and Sissy was in her room throwing together an end of quarter project she was supposed to have started weeks before. Dad and I had just gotten the tire off the axle. We were about to break away the seal so we could get the inner tube out. Then up at the house, the kitchen door banged open.
Dad couldn’t have known what happened. Sissy hadn’t even yelled for him yet, but as soon as he heard the door open, Dad dropped the wedge and the mallet, and he ran.
I thought about that all the time afterward—Dad couldn’t have known. But he had. How had he known?
Right then, when the knocking stopped, I knew. Before the gunshots, before the glass broke, before I even heard Tiffani cuss, I knew. I dropped my coffee, reached into Hell for the Sword of Judgment, and I ran.
Tiffani
It took me a second to realize that I was looking at Rian’s local sheriff getup through the glass. By then, the vamp instincts had already registered the threat and thrown me into motion.
I sprinted across the bakery floor. Under normal circumstances, I would’ve been running away from this fight. But I had to protect Colt. I couldn’t let them take him back.
Rian raised his shotgun and blasted the glass out of the door. Slivers and birdshot peppered my face, chest, and arms. I hissed, but didn’t slow down.
Rian stepped in through the door’s empty frame. I swiped at his throat.
The vamp speed made me fast, but fallen angels were hundreds of times faster. My hand sliced through the air where Rian had been. He appeared at my side and grabbed a handful of my hair. I clawed at his face. Scraped ribbons of skin from his jaw.
He slammed me into a table. I grabbed a chair and swung it at him. The metal legs bent across his wings. I raised it for another swing, but he jammed the shotgun into the crook of my elbow and pulled the trigger. I screamed. The chair bounced across the floor. My arm fell limp at my side, hanging by shredded muscle and ligaments.
Wood and metal splintered in another room. The deliveries door. They were coming in through the kitchen, too. I sucked in a breath to warn Colt.
But the vamp healing kicked in, reconnecting veins and flesh, pulling my arm back together and turning my warning shout into a growl of pain.
Metal ratcheted shut around my useless wrist. A handcuff.
I yowled like a mountain lion. Tried to twist around and rip Rian’s arm off. Swept my free hand at his face, his throat, his groin, anything.
Rian jerked my free arm behind me, dislocated my shoulder, and slapped on the other cuff. He pulled up on the cuffs until I had to bend forward. The vamp healing tried to snap my shoulder back into place, but it couldn’t because of the angle Rian was holding them at.
“Tiffani Cranston,” Rian said. “You are under arrest for aiding and abetting—”
He went dead still.
With my hair in my face, I couldn’t see Colt, but I felt him there. The vamp senses searched out every smell, sound, and movement in the bakery. Fury radiated from him. His heart thundered in his chest. The scent of hellfire mingled with his usual smells, and the tension of tightly coiled muscle swirled around him like a gathering storm.
Beyond that, rotting flesh, so warm and rancid that it almost overpowered the smell of feathers, tar, gun powder, loamy ground, and scorching hot skin. Boots scuffed the floor. Wings rustled. At least eleven foot soldiers, accompanied by th
e Tracker.
It didn’t make sense. I had scrubbed down Colt’s trail until even I wouldn’t have been able to pick up the scent. How had they found him?
Behind me, Rian chuckled. “Glad to see you didn’t lose my sword, boy. Just set it on the floor nice and easy, then kick it over here.”
“Get your fucking hands off her,” Colt said.
“I don’t think you appreciate the depth of the shit you’re wading in right now, Whitney,” Rian said.
He dropped my handcuffs. I straightened up and shook the hair out of my face.
Colt stood in front of the counter, clutching Mikal’s flaming greatsword in his fists. The Tracker was in the corner directly behind Colt, his antique revolver aimed at the back of Colt’s head. The rest of the foot soldiers had fanned out around the room. Every rifle was aimed at Colt, but their eyes were locked on that sword.
“That was one hell of an arsenal you boys were running out there in them woods,” Rian said. “Guess I ought to thank you for the reloads. We were running low. Now I’d say we’re stocked for a good year or two.”
Rian set his shotgun on a table and reached behind him to unhook something from the back of his belt.
“I even found this beauty.” He held it up like it was on display. A crossbow. “Part of a matched set, but I figured two would be overkill.”
Colt’s fists tightened on the hilt of the sword until I heard one of the blisters on his hand rip. The fluid hissed and evaporated in the flames.
Rian stepped on the bow’s stirrup and drew back the string until it was cocked. Then he reached into a pocket on his uniform vest and pulled out a wooden bolt. He loaded it into the crossbow.
“This right here, boy?” Rian said. “This is what you’d call ‘up to your eyeballs in shit.’ You don’t have any room to negotiate. You don’t call any of the shots. You do what I tell you to do or I put this vamp on the express train to Hell.”
Rian rested the crossbow against my back, just behind my heart.
My body shook. The instinct to run fought tooth and nail with the instinct to hold still and avoid any hair-trigger accidents. The point didn’t touch me, but I knew it was there. The wood was like a laser to the vamp senses.
Colt’s teeth gritted. The sound made the skin down my back crawl.
“Just set that sword on the floor and kick it over here,” Rian said.
Colt swallowed. “If I give you the sword, you’ll let her go?”
“Now you’re catching on,” Rian said.
A sickly sweet corpse dew had started to form on my skin. I hadn’t even realized vampires could sweat. I wanted to scream. I wanted Colt to slide the sword over to Rian. I wanted that wooden bolt pointed anywhere but at me.
“Don’t do it.” The words left my throat in a rusty croak.
Colt glared at me.
Tears welled up in my eyes. I tried to blink them away, but it just forced them to spill out onto my cheeks. The shaking got worse. What the hell was I saying? Now, with a wooden stake pointed at my heart and an eternity of Hell stretching out in front of me, this was where I finally decided to do the right thing? This was where I tried to be the woman Colt deserved?
“Don’t give it to him,” I whispered.
Colt took a step toward me. “Tiff—”
“That’s far enough,” Rian said. “You can make a decision from over there. Does she go to Hell or does she stay? What do you say, Whitney?”
I knew the answer, even before it flickered across Colt’s face. For all of the suffering and disappointments and fighting and death that had plagued his life, Colt was still so damn young. Some innocent, hopeful part of him still thought there was a way out of this. He might be older than he looked, he might have suffered through the hardships of a hundred lifetimes in his twenty-four years, but he couldn’t let go of that last shredded prayer that everything would be okay.
My stomach sank. “Damn it.”
Colt took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. His bad knee popped as he crouched down and put the sword on the floor.
“Now get those hands on the back of your head and slide that sword over here with your foot like a good boy,” Rian said. I could hear the grin in his voice.
Colt stood up, laced his fingers over the back of his neck, and kicked the sword across the floor to Rian.
Without taking the crossbow from my back, Rian bent over and gingerly touched the sword’s hilt. When it didn’t burn his hand off, he grabbed it and stood up.
“And you’re going to come peacefully.” Rian dug the crossbow into my back for emphasis. “Wouldn’t want somebody’s finger to slip on the trigger.”
“Just do whatever you’re going to do to me,” Colt said. “Leave Tiffani alone.”
Rian nodded.
The Tracker eased his revolver into his gun belt, then moved in. The rest of the foot soldiers followed, confidence restored now that Rian had the sword. They pulled Colt’s arms behind his back, cuffed him, and forced him to his knees. Colt didn’t fight them.
“Good dog,” one of the soldiers joked.
Another scratched behind Colt’s ear. “Looks like some of Mikal’s obedience training sunk in after all.”
Colt jerked his head away.
“Now let her go,” he said.
“Yeah,” Rian said. “About that…”
Tiny vibrations sang through the crossbow as Rian’s finger pulled the trigger. The twang of the string and Colt sucking in a breath were the last sounds I heard before the wooden bolt forced its way between my ribs and through my heart.
Tough
Armistice weekend was a big one at the bar and Rowdy usually kept it open all night to take advantage of the crowd, but I drove on past. The thought of talking to Dodge or Owen—or fuck, Willow—made me want to scrape my skin off. Scout’s loud dime store potpourri smell and Mitzi’s cotton candy perfume were all over me. I needed a shower. And a drink.
Going to go nail Scout again? My stomach turned over and my face tried to heat up. You fucking man-whore.
I wish I could say the moral dilemma and the slut-shaming were what kept me away, but the truth is it was the thought of all her friends crowded into that crappy little trailer, staring at me. Remembering that made my brain spin around inside my skull and my chest seize up. I didn’t need the oxygen anymore, but not being able to take a deep breath really messed with my head. I rolled down the truck windows and waited for the breeze to kill the claustrophobia.
The dash clock read quarter to five. The sun would be up soon and stuff like washing off the whore stank would take a back seat to finding somewhere I wouldn’t catch on fire.
Maybe if I went back to the motel, Jason would be gone. I’d have to listen to Mitzi run her mouth, but maybe she would have already picked up another groupie. For an ice cold psycho-bitch, Mitzi ran as hot as hell. She never stayed alone long.
Said the asshole who just screwed his way around town.
But I was dying for a drink. My tongue felt like sandpaper and my throat ached. Mitzi seemed like my best bet for some quick blood. Maybe if I just kept fucking her until she passed out for the day, I could get through with the minimum amount of her talking.
A memory of drinking off of Desty flashed through my head—her laying on my bed, that citrusy-beer smell, that electrical fire in her blood. Drinking it had jumpstarted my heart, made me feel invincible. The way I felt when she looked at me like she thought I was a dragon slayer or something.
My hands were shaking. I got a strangle-hold on the wheel. I couldn’t think about that right now. Not this sober.
I stepped on the gas. Somehow I made it across town to the motel without losing my shit. Mitzi’s look-at-me-red Fairlane was still parked out front. I pulled in beside her and shut the truck off. I couldn’t remember which room was hers, so I followed the smell of blood. Number 29.
It was quiet. What was I going to do if she was out hunting?
I banged on the door. A second later, it flew open.
&nb
sp; “Romeo!” Mitzi grabbed my arm. “You’re just in time!”
I almost tripped over the splintered bedframe as she pulled me into the room.
“Quick, open your connection with Tiffani.” She shoved me onto the mattress on the floor and sat on my lap. “Come on! This is going to be fucking incredible. Open your connection. And your pants.”
I tried to remember how I’d opened the connection before, but I couldn’t. It felt like my brain was having that rigor mortis problem. Hadn’t Tiffani said that would go away after the first couple days?
“Connection,” Mitzi said, unzipping my jeans. “You’re going to want to see this.”
I didn’t get the chance to figure it out. The connection opened on its own.
Usually it felt like a radio switching on in my brain, but this time it was like someone screaming right in my ear. Before I could ask Tiffani what the hell, she showed me what she was looking at.
Colt. The Tracker and a pair of foot soldiers slammed him to the floor in front of the bakery’s glass-front display case. Colt was fighting like crazy, but his hands were cuffed behind his back, and one of the fuckers had him in a headlock.
I jumped up, knocking Mitzi off my lap. She giggled.
Hel— The connection with Tiffani cut in and out. —elp him. Plea—
Then the connection was gone. Not like a radio turning off. Not like losing signal. Like the whole sound system had disappeared halfway through a song.
I tried to reopen the connection, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t there anymore.
Mitzi cackled like some kind of cartoon witch and clapped her hands. I shoved her out of the way and sprinted outside. The vamp speed kicked on and I had the truck fired up and back on the street in no time flat. I floored it.
Colt? I tried yelling it at him, even though the connection only went one way for us. Who knew if it even worked over long distances? What’s happening? Can you hear me?
I probably set a new land speed record on the way from the motel to the bakery.
