The Beloved, page 18
He touched her hair, stroking back the flyways that were damp from them rolling around in the snow, laughing. He still couldn’t believe she had lifted him up and marched across the meadow, and he was never going to forget the sight of her concentration, everything she had in her focused on getting them both back to the house: There could have been an NFL defensive line set up between her and that back door into the garage, and he was quite certain she would have plowed right through it.
Did he want to kiss her some more? Fuck, yeah, he did.
Except it had been a while since he’d done anything sexual with anybody, including himself, and anyway, he didn’t think the escorts he’d paid for back in the day had prepared him for this moment, right here, right now. That had been transactional. This was… real.
And as with how it had been by the fire, Nalla was the one who came forward—and he wanted that. His urge to roll her over, mount her, and penetrate her was so strong, he didn’t trust himself not to rip off her clothes with his fangs and—
The contact of their mouths stopped his thoughts, slamming all of his consciousness into the brick wall of sensation: More of her warmth and velvety softness. The movement of her breasts against his bare chest. All kinds of sexual stimulation shooting down his spine and going right into his cock.
Which throbbed against the button fly of his leathers.
More. Now.
Cupping her nape, he urged her into him, tilting his head so they could continue the exploration. His reward was a moan that vibrated out of her and into him, and as he swallowed it, another, different kind of urge exploded in him—
She pulled back sharply.
At first, he thought she was getting off the bed—at least one of them coming to their senses—and the disappointment sucked. But then she unzipped her blue fleece, and shifted over so she was lying on her side next to him.
His heart rate exploded as she exposed her throat and held the collar down.
“Take my vein. I can feel how much you need it.”
She was right, of course. For the last decade, he’d been living off the synthetic stuff his mother had formulated in her lab. That breakthrough, which the species had needed for centuries, had made things so much easier in so many ways, but bio-identical was not the same as the real thing—especially not when the vein in question was a female like Nalla’s.
Turning to face her, he ran a fingertip over her jugular, feeling the pulse, bump… bump… bump…
His fangs dropped and he licked his lips.
“Are you sure?” he breathed.
“I wouldn’t have offered otherwise. You’ve got to need it after last night and just now.”
In the silence that followed, all her questions about who and what he was threatened to come between them, and he found himself wanting to answer them. On the surface, it wasn’t that hard: Rahvyn had resuscitated him after he died from a gunshot wound to the gut, and that was all he knew about the immortality stuff. The subject was a Pandora’s box, however. Everything that was under his surface, going all the way back to his past in that human lab and what had been done to him there, was bound to come out.
And he could not deal with that.
Good thing the single most powerful drive in a vampire was front and center in his mind.
Moving slowly, in case she changed her mind, he stroked her face. Then put his mouth to hers once more. This time, the kiss was deeper, and as he entered her with his tongue, he felt her hand slip onto his lower back. Putting his leg over hers, he gradually shifted so that he was on top of her—something that was made easier when she parted her thighs for him. As they intertwined, he got an even better sense of her body. She was strong, but softer than he was, and he relished the differences in her, so much smaller, so incredibly compelling.
When he finally broke the contact of their lips, he stared down into her yellow eyes. “You’re not afraid, are you.”
“Of what—you? No, I’m not.”
“I won’t hurt you.”
“I know.”
He kissed her cheek, and did the same to her jaw. Then he was nipping at her ear… before moving over to nuzzle her neck. Extending his tongue, he licked up her vein—
“Do it,” she commanded.
Closing his eyes, he was surprised as a sudden calm floated under his hunger. Deep inside of himself, he abruptly knew he could trust his self-control—but it was for a reason even more shocking than the fact that he was going to bite her.
It had everything to do with the dark spices flooding the bedroom:
He had bonded with Nalla.
And bonded males had one, and only one, prime directive: Protect their females against any threat, from any source.
Including themselves.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Downtown, in the abandoned office building, the elevator bumped to a halt in the basement, and Evan almost shot out and ran around all panicked, willy-nilly-nowhere—except at the last minute, before the doors could close and the Otis could be summoned upstairs by that killer, his brain kicked in and he jumped back inside and hit the stop button to freeze it in place. The alarm started ringing, but what did he care about that.
Stumbling out, he looked around at the buckets of black oil and red blood, got assaulted by gruesome memories, told himself to get the fuck over it.
That entity or whatever it was would not lose any time finding the stairs. What was going to save Evan, if anything did, was whether or not there was a fire door that he could barricade. If he could just secure this level, and if the trainer could come back, then—
Evan’s body wheeled around on its own and started moving fast, his feet shuffling and then running properly toward a dark corner.
“Wait, wait, wait—”
His head bobbed on the top of his spine as he kept looking back over his shoulder. But as much as he commanded his legs to change direction, and take him to that door with an EXIT sign, it was as if he were on autopilot.
And then came the same popping noise from where the main entry had been breached upstairs.
Over in the opposite corner, a flare of light and then the banging sound of a door once again flattening itself on concrete announced that Evan was officially out of time.
“No!” He began to hyperventilate as his feet stayed their course into the shadows. “Oh, God, no—”
He might be in the dark, but he wouldn’t be able to hide there for long. His heavy breathing was making too much noise, and—
His arm ripped forward with such strength, it spun him around, and before he could fall on his face, he threw a hand out and made contact with something that was cold.
Instantly, a keypad glowed blue at waist level.
“I see you,” the thing with the explosives said from across the basement. “And I’m coming for you, lesser.”
“My n-n-name is Evan,” he called out. “I don’t know you—”
His free hand went down to the keypad, and against everything that made any sense, he punched in a seven-digit code. Or maybe it was eight? He didn’t know. Immediately, there was a hiss as a vapor lock released, and he found himself gripping a cool, vertical rod and leaning back with a sharp pull.
The vault-like portal was oval shaped, and it revealed a well-lit metal-walled corridor. Without missing a beat, he jumped over the lip, spun back around, and yanked the heavy weight behind him. The instant it was in place, there was a click and a whirring sound.
Tumblers falling into place.
He was breathing so hard he was wheezing, and as he contemplated a tunnel that seemed a mile long, he didn’t understand how he had known it was here and had gotten access. The autopilot had saved his life, however.
It would take a ballistic missile to get through that portal.
With a shaking hand, he touched the burnished silver wall. Then he knocked on it with his knuckles. Steel? Who made an underground tunnel out of—
His feet pulled another turn-and-burn, pivoting his body around and falling into a jog. As his arms started to pump and his strides became more sure, he wondered where the hell he was going—although clearly whatever was taking over had his survival in mind.
What was a lesser? he wondered.
And what about this speed? He hadn’t had it last night when he’d been bolting around the city in the dark. Because he’d never been athletic.
So this running, as the tunnel continued on ahead of him, shouldn’t have been a thing. Yet he had no soreness in his muscles, and his heart rate and breathing slowed down as his fear lessened. It was like he had an engine inside of his body, and one that was a car, not an electric bicycle, his thighs and calves, his respiratory system, more machine than human.
And what was weird was that the harder he went, the stronger he felt—until he was sprinting, his heavy snow boots pounding down onto the steel floor, the impacts a thunder echoing around and reminding him of that freak snowstorm with the lightning.
Back when all this had started.
What the hell was a lesser… and who was his enemy?
He was still wondering all that when the end of the subterranean pedway finally presented itself. He must have run a mile or more and he could have gone a hundred more—he was breathing like he was sitting on a couch, and as for sweating? What sweat.
The awareness of his newfound strength was a kind of intoxicant, and he was so distracted by cataloguing his capabilities that he barely noticed as his forefinger square-danced with another keypad and another oval door was released from its locking mechanism.
Pushing things open, he peered out into…
A basement apartment, it looked like. And a shitty one at that.
Worn furniture and dust in the corners. Trash scattered everywhere. A dripping faucet in a kitchen sink that had probably been white, but was currently stained with mineral deposits and God only knew what else.
He was cautious as he stepped out. There were a couple of doors, one of which was open to reveal a closet with a splatter stain on the back wall and another showing a slice of a bedroom that had a dirty mattress on the floor and tapestries hanging in shreds from the ceiling.
Someone was in there.
He knew this not because he heard them moving around, but because there was a radar ping to the recognition, a like-to-like registry that was akin to seeing a reflection in a mirror: Oh, it’s me.
There was no following up on whoever it was.
Evan’s body turned to one of the doors and marched him over to it. As his hand reached out, he had a thought that he needed to close the tunnel entrance—but a quick glance back showed that it had shut and relocked itself, and talk about camouflage. There was a pretend crappy door tacked onto the front of the portal so it looked like it was just another part of what clearly was a stage set.
Turning his attention back to the knob he was gripping—
“Come on, we’re late.”
A woman strode out of the bedroom with all the command of a military sergeant. Short and built like a powerlifter, she had braids tight to her head, no earrings in spite of having holes that went up both lobes, and a switchblade in her hand. There were other munitions on her body, strapped and holstered on, but as she drew on a black duster coat, they were fully covered.
She stopped. “Where are your weapons and your clothes?”
He looked down at himself—and realized that all he had on were jeans and boots. Why hadn’t he been cold? And as for weapons, Mickey’d never let him have any.
Before he could answer out loud, she cursed in Spanish. “You fucking new recruits are never ready.”
With her coat in place, she strutted over and shoved him out of the way. “I’m not giving you none of mine. After the meeting, we get you the weapons.”
Evan opened his mouth to—
His body just started forward after the woman, falling in line and heading up a flight of rickety stairs. After he went through another door that only appeared to be flimsy—but which shut with a clang like it was made of steel—he found himself out on the street. Glancing around, he wasn’t sure of his precise location. Did he really need it, though? This was some avenue in the teens, about ten blocks to the south of the Financial District.
“Come on. We late and I ain’t a tour guide.”
The woman had strides like she was in the NBA despite her short stature. He kept up easily, however, his body resuming that strange state of physical performance that didn’t seem to require—
Hold on. Why wasn’t he hungry? He hadn’t eaten in an entire day. He wasn’t thirsty, either—
His hand shot out and grabbed the woman’s arm, going anchor on their forward motion. “What is going on here. You need to tell me.”
As she wheeled around, she looked like she was going to slap him, and the fact that her disdain reminded him of Mickey made him hurt for so many reasons. But then he wasn’t thinking about everything he’d lost and how disappointed in his family he’d always been.
There was something wrong with her eyes. Her pupils were black, but the irises were nearly white, only a little ring delineating where the line of color was. And then there was her hair. Though it was dark, the new growth was icy white, like she colored it often.
“Please,” he said. “Help me.”
There was a cascade of Spanish. Then she tilted her head. “You really don’t know.”
Evan shook his head. “Last night, I… met this personal trainer in a basement, and…” He shuddered and covered his mouth. “After something terrible happened, I thought maybe he’d come back and explain it all—but then this other man showed up. He called me a lesser and said he was going to kill me. I somehow found the tunnel and—”
“That man,” she cut in. “What he look like.”
Evan put his hand out at a level above his own head. “Very tall. Dressed—well, like you, actually. He had a scar—”
“Like here.” She drew on her own face from the nose to the side of her mouth. Then she waved a black-gloved hand over her skull. “And the hair is no.”
“That’s him,” Evan breathed. “He blew open the door, and—”
“Shut up.” She pointed her finger into his face. “That’s no man. That’s our enemy. That is vampire.”
At that last word, Evan’s hearing took a total timeout—so when her mouth started moving again, there was a delay with her words registering. But the meanings filtered through: Ancient war. Vampires. Lessers. Lessening Society…
Undead.
“What.” He pushed a hand into his thinning hair as his panic returned. “Undead—”
“We do no die.” She punched his sternum. “They can stab in the chest and send us back, but we no die. Be careful. You get hurt bad, you stay like that until the stab—”
“It was just personal training.” He swallowed an urge to scream. “I was just trying to get strong—”
“You did. You feel more of it over the next day. You have strength like you cannot know, and you will use it to kill.”
The satisfaction threading through her voice revolted him. “I don’t want to kill anyone.”
He looked at his hands and the thought of the black blood on the floor, down his throat, coming out of his scratches…
Undead.
As a moan came out of his soul, he lifted his head. The woman had started walking again and was way down at the end of the alley, her duster flaring in her wake like she was the villain in a comic book.
He watched her take a left and disappear from sight.
Putting his hand to his heart, he felt a need to follow her. It was as if he had been summoned—and in all his confusion and terror, he had no reserves to override the tide. His feet got to walking again, and he followed once more the path that was before him, though he could not see it.
Around the corner he went, and down the next avenue he proceeded.
Others did the same.
As storm runoff hits a riverbed, so too did the street flood with a flow of men and women who were dressed in black and moving with the same purpose his body was. Falling in among their ranks, he looked around—whereas their heads never varied, their stares fixated on their destination.
Wherever that was.
Good thing his body knew the way.
He couldn’t see for the tears.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
As Nate nuzzled the side of her throat, Nalla was waiting for the strike. Breathlessly suspended on the sparkling charge between her and the fighter she was determined to feed, pinned down by his greater weight with his lower body resting between her open legs, she was live-wire present and floating off into a realm of sensation at the same time. And then she felt his fangs, sharp but not breaking her skin, ride up her vein. Moaning, she slipped her hands onto his back—
Instantly, her brain came awake in a bad way, the logical side of her restless and unsatisfied, even as her body was about to do what it had been made to do: There were just too many questions about Nate, and worse, no sense she was ever going to get any answers—
As she took a deep breath, dark spices filled her nose and yanked her out of that spiral.
Dear God, she had never smelled anything as enticing as the scent that flooded the room. His arousal was her favorite cologne.
Screw Gucci.
Arching up into him, she rolled her hips so that the hard ridge at her core stroked her in the right place, and the groan that rumbled out of him vibrated on her throat.
“Take my vein,” she said again.
There was a hiss and then his body went tight against her own, as if every muscle in his body tensed at once—
Nalla cried out as she felt the penetrations, the two pinpoints of sweet pain bringing her close to orgasm. And then there was the seal of his mouth and the sucking, as well as the primordial knowledge that she was giving him what he needed to be strong, to fight, to protect. His body required her. Without what she gave him, he was half of what he could be. After all, when the Scribe Virgin had used her one act of creation to bring vampires into existence, the mahmen of the species had made the sharing of blood a requirement of survival.
