“I know it is challenging for you.” He pulled her into his arms. “Soon this will all be over, I promise.” She softened against him, her hands cradling his back, her pulse throbbing in his ears. He imagined the silk of her blood sliding down his parched throat, sinking to the pit of his empty stomach.
He felt his teeth tingle—his fangs elongate.
She pulled back, her breath warm on his face, and he inhaled her scent. The ache stirred in his stomach, into something hungry—no, not hungry, ravenous.
Her lips moved to his …
Bite her, and this agonizing thirst will be gone. Bite her and you’ll explode with power. Just a small taste won’t harm her.
He jerked back as their lips touched and leapt from the bed, pretending he didn’t notice the way her face filled with hurt.
He was furious with himself for not being stronger. “I have to …” He didn’t finish his sentence. Didn’t want to admit how close he had come to biting her. He was halfway down the hall when he heard her whisper, “Drink, and be anywhere but with me.”
His step faltered and he stumbled. He actually stumbled. The damned ash in his system. He felt an unbearable urge to turn around and go back to her, to cradle her body to his.
But he couldn’t laze in bed with Amelia wrapped in his arms, not while Sarah stalked the earth. He had to find her, remove the threat and get that book. Even if his heart ached.Ached.
He drew a deep breath and kept walking. He was the king of vampires, and he had a job to do. There was a possible battle looming, and he was far too busy to allow weakness to control him.
Chapter 9
Leah Parker
Under the wooziness of drugs, Leah Parker stumbled as the ground shifted beneath her feet. She paused and cocked her head to the side, disorientated for a moment by the moving concrete. A blister burned against her heel. The boots she had bought from a charity store were fake leather and half a size too small, but she had loved the look of them, and they were all she could afford. She squatted down and pulled at the heel, trying to take the pressure off the blister.
The ground swayed again as she straightened and squinted into the night. Bitter wind blustered against her skin, stinging her bleary, bloodshot eyes. Churning clouds brooded against the darkness, making it so dark it was hard to see past the washed-out glow of a couple of streetlights that remained working. All around were signs of poverty, run-down, abandoned buildings, cracked pavements and rubbish. It was an area she knew well, a haven for the homeless and people intimate with cocaine.
She wondered for a moment if she should turn back and walk along the block, then over the bridge where she’d at least be in the light and seen by passing cars. But that would add anotherfifteen minutes to her walk and the blister was stinging like someone had taken an inch-wide razor to her heel. Besides, she needed to get home to her children.
At the thought of them, she suffered a flash of guilt, a gnawing in her gut, a feeling of doing something wrong. She chewed on her bottom lip for a moment, trying to recall … Then she remembered she needed to buy them dinner. Leah shoved a hand in her jacket pocket, fumbling around for money. Her fingers tapped on the chocolate bar she’d bought for them to share. She checked her other pocket, but it was empty, all her money gone. But they had bread in the cupboard. She was a good mother. She was. She truly was.
Not like her mother had been.
She was fourteen and her brother was seven when they were taken from their parents and placed into foster care. She thought she’d be safe then, thought she’d be given food, thought she would finally be able to sleep at night. She only met more monsters. An aunty came and took her brother, gave him a home filled with love. But they didn’t want her. She was too damaged, too wild, they said. No one wanted her. Not for anything good, at least.
Her brother loved her though. They were close when they were younger and he found her again when he was old enough. It was good for a while; it made Leah happy to know someone in her family cared about her. But then tragedy struck and he had to be locked up for years. He had come back not long ago wanting to reconnect with her and the kids. Leah wasn’t sure at first, but he seemed to have changed … he seemed better … he seemedsafenow. She’d agreed to let him meet the kids soon. She hoped they could be close again and he’d give them the love no one in the family had given her.
Leah wrapped her arms around herself and kept walking.
Body odour, rot, and the stench of urine choked the air as she passed a homeless man crouched over a burning pot of fire. He barely gave her a sideways glance. She passed another man hunched against a wall on an alleyway floor, his shaved head bowed. His skin was the color of snow, large, festering sores marking his face. There was a blue rubber tourniquet around his bruised arm, and a needle still hung like a spear from the skin. Just another addict in a sea of addicts. Humans sprawled on the gray floor, grim reapers waiting to die.
She passed a group of boys who wanted to be gangsters, legends in their own lunchtimes, dressed in black hoodies and ripped jeans, with tattooed skin. One, a weedy-looking boy with an olive complexion and eyes the color of dirt, had a permanently marked red teardrop tattooed under his right eye. She felt the boys scan her body—she was beautiful, after all. She could have been a model, if the world wasn’t so cruel. Leah Parker supermodel extraordinaire—it held a ring to it. A smile tugging at her lips, she straightened her shoulders and tried to align her legs to resemble the strut of a model down a catwalk. Despite the ground’s relentless shifting, she was in fact pretty good at it.
Laughter echoed against the night, the sound not sweet but sinister to her ears. Leah paused before a large concrete bridge. The light from the streetlights didn’t reach all the way through. She squinted. She could make out thick old pillars covered in crudely painted graffiti, but the rest was bathed in darkness so thick it was like looking into an abyss.
Turn back, a voice in her head whispered.
Chills roiled through her body. The voice was familiar; she’d heard it speak to her before. It was cold and archaic and unearthly, as if the devil himself whispered in her ear. It hadn’t spoken to her for years; alcohol and heroine ensured it was drowned out. When she was a child, it used to frighten her. Hermother always told her she was mad, that she was making it all up. Maybe she was right. After all, she’d been right when she told Leah she was worthless and stupid. Still, she couldn’t shake a sense of dread that was curdling in the pit of her stomach.
Leah bit her bottom lip and her gaze drifted back. She looked past the shadowy outline of the boys talking in a group, past the old man, to the distant lights pinching through the blackness.
But it was stupid to get herself worked up. She’d walked the night for almost as long as she’d been alive, and no harm had ever come to her on the streets. And she was exhausted. She just wanted to get home and crawl into bed.
Leah stepped under the bridge. Cars crossing above quaked its old bones, causing motes of dust to drift down, sprinkling her blonde hair and hazing her vision.
Footsteps on the pavement somewhere behind her.
Leah’s heart startled. She whipped her head around, staring into the dark, seeking the source of the noise. Strips of fire tore orange through the night like a tiger’s claws. But she couldn’t see anyone close by.Nothing to worry about, she told herself. She turned?—
