The gun was up and pointing at him. It barked three times, the gunshots reverberating through the air as an afterthought.
He moved as soon as the gun came up, jerking as one of the bullets entered his shoulder. He was beside me in the next moment, slapping the gun down and wrenching my wrist hard. I refused to let go, baring my teeth at him and hissing like a pissed off cat.
The sound surprised me. I hadn’t known I was capable of making a sound like that.
“I wish you hadn’t done that,” he gritted out.
Blood oozed from the bullet holes. I was gratified to see all three had hit, though not in as tight a grouping as I’d like. No doubt because of how quickly he’d dodged. There wasn’t as much blood as there should have been with wounds like that. Already the flow slowed and stopped.
He touched his shoulder, his fingers coming away tacky. “I see we’re going to have to work on your impulsiveness first.”
I jerked against his hold, stomping on his instep and elbowing sharply in his stomach.
“Stop that,” he snapped.
I head butted him.
“Aileen,” Mom screamed as she burst out of the house, my dad and sister right behind her. She paused when she saw us. “We heard gun shots. Are you all right?”
“You need to make your choice right now,” he said in my ear. “Obey or they die.”
I jerked away from him one last time. His hold didn’t even budge.
“Fine,” I snapped.
“Good girl,” he whispered. In a louder voice, he said, “Its fine, Elise. Just a car backfiring. Nothing to worry about.”
I didn’t need to see his eyes to know he’d switched the high beams back on. Bastard was whammying them again. I sent a sharp elbow into the wound in his shoulder and smirked at his pained grunt.
“Good news, your daughter has agreed to come visit my facility.”
I jerked away from him, fully aware I only succeeded because he let me. I gave him a nasty glare that said exactly what I thought of his words.
There was a way out of this. I just needed to find it. For now, I had a small reprieve because of the deal I’d made with the sorcerer.
“Oh good,” Mom said, that vacant, Stepford wife look on her face.
“Stop whatever it is you’re doing,” I said harshly.
“I’ll do what needs to be done.”
“Aileen, you know we love you right? If you truly don’t want to do this, you don’t have to,” Mom said softly.
That right there was why I refused to give them up. Why I came home even knowing it would be difficult. Even with someone screwing with her head, she still fought for what she thought was right for me. Our family might be dysfunctional, and we almost never got along, but we loved each other. The kind of love that meant we’d fight for our family even if we spent the entire time cursing each other up one side and down another.
“It’s okay, Mom. It’s just a visit. There’s no harm in checking it out.”
“Oh, good.” She gave me a relieved smile, a bit of her personality peeking through even under the weight of the vampire’s mind control.
He took me by the arm. “Alright, enough. Time to go. I’ve wasted enough time chasing you all over the city.”
“No one asked you to, asshole.”
“If you had just stayed put, none of this would have been necessary.”
“Not a dog.”
He stopped, fixing me with heavy glare. “You are if I say you are.”
