The way her eyes flitted down to my teeth, I knew my fangs had elongated. Thankfully, the woman wasn’t a dummy. She turned to run, leaving the groceries behind.
She got one step before Bruiser was on her, fast as lightning. She hit the ground and Bruiser easily rolled her over and pushed her head to the side, revealing the length of her neck.
Before fang could scratch skin, I threw a roundhouse kick at his head and it snapped to the side. I shot out a second kick that sent him rolling off her body. The woman wasted no time crab-crawling backward.
Blood rushed through her veins hotly, and her heartbeat was impossibly loud. The whites of her eyes nearly swallowed her irises. Hunger pounded in me as instinct demanded I jump on her next. I gritted my teeth as the thirst took hold of me. I should have found more rats to feed on before going topside. I wanted to tear into her. Bad.
Do not feed on the woman you are trying to save.
The woman got to her feet and ran. She sprinted with an athletic gait.
Digging my fingernails into my palms, the urge to hunt her hit me like a Mack truck. Oh god. I wanted to chase her. Play with her, then corner her and rip out her jugular. I took one step in the direction she’d fled.
Oh, fuck no.I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to think of anything else. Mud. That weird dog in the hospital. The sexy line of Death’s jaw.
Something hard hit me from the side, and I was on the ground under Bruiser this time. He leered down at me with a slightly unhinged look in his eye. “So the girly wants to play.”
My instincts warned me this guy brushed up against, if not crossed over, the line of psychotic. Was that a vampire thing? I wasn’t demented…or so I liked to think.
The memory of laughing until I was crying after binging on blood flashed in my mind.
Bruiser flew off me, landing an impressive twenty feet away. When I looked over, I saw Death standing there, his suit slightly rumpled now. The dark hair that had been slicked back now hung over his forehead with a slight curl. His eyes had turned completely golden again, and he looked seriously pissed. His energy shimmered in the air around him, a dangerous, dark power. His hand was still raised, and I realized Death had tossed big boy like a rag doll.
The vampire was on his feet in the blink of an eye. Hunching over, he was ready to charge back at Death like an incensed rhino. But then his face emptied of expression and he stood in a neutral pose. It almost looked like he had a sudden attack of amnesia, then streaked off in the opposite direction.
Death looked at me, then in the direction Bruiser had gone, as if weighing his options. Lucky me, he decided not to give Bruiser chase. He yanked me to my feet, his face too close to mine.
“Did you call for them to come save you?”
“Are you kidding me? I don’t know who the hell they are, and I don’t know what they want with me.”
“It is clear they were trying to get a hold of her, sire,” said the slimmer man with the tablet.
He was Asian with square features, and what might have been a thousand-dollar haircut. He wore a blue pinstripe suit that screamed uptight, organized, and always packing an extra pen or five. Even the pink pocket square matched his socks and tie.
Where the pinstripe-suit guy reminded me of someone who enjoyed train schedules that ran on time, Death was more the sexy, dark playboy type. I imagined he could pick out any girl and take her to an exclusive backroom of a club to fuck her until her body gave out, then walk away without a second glance. Or maybe when he took her behind the curtain, he’d cleave her like a cow for the butcher.
Shaking off my disturbing, if not vivid fantasies, I ground out the words. “I don’t know them, or you. I only came to talk to the schmuck who hightailed it out of here when you showed up.”
The gold in Death’s eyes softened, revealing hazel eyes that searched mine as if trying to ferret out any lies. I set my jaw in a hard, defiant line.
“Then they’ll be back for her,” Death said. My gaze flitted down to his mouth. I couldn’t help but notice how full his bottom lip was. This close up, his sex appeal was magnetic. Like I knew sleeping with him wouldactuallykill me, but it was probably worth it. Of course, Death resembled sin itself.
“You’re coming with me,” he growled.
I opened my mouth as my brain calculated the odds of fighting Death and getting away.
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” the other man cautioned, as if reading my thoughts. “Come along with us or he can kill you right now.”
Death had already laid waste to the three other vampires in ten or so minutes. My odds weren’t good at all.
My hands shook, so I balled them into fists to hide the tremor. Fighting Bruiser had spent almost all of my energy. Then there was that woman tempting me with her blood. The thirst had struck up in me again, like a match that threatened to burn me from the inside out. Strangely enough I wasn’t drawn to either of the men in my presence. It was as if my senses were blind to their blood. I knew Death was, well, Death. But what was the other guy? If I had to guess from his formal, business-like demeanor, my first guess was robot. My second guess was cyborg. Or maybe he was just British.
I considered my limited options. Even if I were to make it back to my makeshift camp, people would be in danger. I couldn’t risk it.
Dammit to all. If I was going to be backed into a corner, they sure as hell didn’t need to know that.
I shook off Death’s grip and brushed off my tee-shirt and straightened my jacket. “Yeah, well, I guess I shouldn’t leave until you give me my money, anyway. Take this down, Jeeves: two hundred and fifty dollars in cash…no, scratch that, three hundred for my trouble.”
