1
RAVENOUS WAS THE PERFECT NAME FOR A PLACE LIKE
this.
I’d arrived at the
seedy North Hollywood bar a half hour ago. A friend had sent an
email earlier today asking me to meet him here tonight at ten
o’clock because he “had to talk to me about something very
important.” So here I was—ready, willing, and able to
talk.
But by ten thirty he
still hadn’t shown. And I was getting worried.
Maybe he’s dead, a little voice in my head
whispered.
My chest tightened at
the thought. No, he was too smart. Too wily. Too young and cocky. I
refused to allow myself to believe he’d let himself get killed.
Tonight he could possibly have the information that would help get
my life back to normal.
Where are you, Noah?
My attention shifted
to a blond guy in a leather duster approaching the far left of the
small dance floor. A heavy metal tune had begun to blare through
the speakers, making it difficult to concentrate. Even in the dim
light of the club, his skin was so pale it seemed to faintly glow,
easily making him stand out from the rest of the crowd. He scanned
the few dancers, coming to rest on a petite redhead wearing a
micro-short leather skirt.
When he smiled I saw
the subtle glint of fangs beneath his upper lip.
She noticed him
looking and smiled back at him, thrusting her ample chest
forward—the universal easy-girl’s signal for “Come and get me, bad
boy.”
The girl had no idea
this bad boy was a vampire.
“For fuck’s sake,” I
said under my breath. “Don’t be so stupid.”
Two weeks ago I
thought vampires didn’t exist. But they do. There were those who
preferred to keep their distance from humans, but others like this
one, well . . . they were just really hungry.
The redhead was going
to die.
I wasn’t psychic. I
had no special supernatural powers, no superstrength, no
otherworldly abilities—but I knew her fate. I saw it in the
vampire’s pale gaze as he flicked a smug look at his friend, also
standing at the edge of the dance floor.
A large part of me
didn’t want to get involved. I had my own vast and varied problems
to deal with. Plus, not to judge a book by its cover, but girls
like this one, seemingly alone and vulnerable at this kind of dive,
would likely find trouble sooner or later. If she couldn’t protect
herself, if she had no one around to keep an eye on her, then I
didn’t think her future was a bright one.
But it didn’t mean I
was just going to let this monster make her his
nightcap.
After another quick
scan for the missing-in-action Noah, I slid off the tall stool and
began weaving my way through the rough-looking crowd toward the
exit. The vampire and the girl were now dancing together, if you
could call it that. His hand closed on her ass under her short
skirt, pulling them groin to groin as he pressed his lips to her
throat. It looked sexy—kind of romantic, even—but I knew it wasn’t.
Or it wouldn’t be for long.
I froze in place as a
horrible thought occurred to me. He was going to bite her right in
front of everyone.
I wanted to walk
away, pretend I hadn’t seen the vampire, leave this club, and
contact Noah another night, but I couldn’t do that. I’d never be
accused of being a sweet and softhearted woman who wanted to help
the helpless, but if there was a problem that was standing right in
front of me and I might, possibly, be able to do something about
it, then I had to. My conscience wouldn’t allow
otherwise.
“I really don’t want
to do this,” I whispered to myself.
But I did it
anyway.
I forced myself to
walk close enough to brush against the vampire. He immediately
caught my scent and released the girl.
I kept walking. I
didn’t have to look over my shoulder to know he was now following
me. He was the mouse and I was the cheese. It didn’t really matter
what I looked like, how I filled out the thin white tank top I
wore, or how long my legs were under my skirt. I was
irresistible.
Believe me, I wasn’t
saying it to be vain. I wished like hell I didn’t have this
particular affect on the bloodsuckers.
I exited the club.
Even though it was hot air that brushed against my bare arms and
legs, I still shivered. I picked up my pace, ignored my racing
heart, and walked toward the parking lot out back of the
bar.
“Hey beautiful,” the
vampire said from close behind me. “What’s your name?”
I forced myself to
look coyly over my shoulder. “Sorry, I don’t talk to
strangers.”
“Oh, c’mon, don’t be
like that.” He was right next to me now, and he stroked a long
strand of black hair off my forehead, pausing to roll it between
his fingertips. He held it up so he could inhale its scent and his
eyes darkened with lust and hunger. “Damn, you smell good. Where
are you going, honey?”
I shuddered. “Back to
my motel room.”
“We can keep you
company.” He glanced at his friend—dark hair, sallow skin, and a
slow smile stretching his gaunt cheeks. He bared his sharp fangs as
if he didn’t care who saw that beneath his human facade he was a
monster.
I’d just wanted to
lure the vampire away from the girl. I didn’t want this, but it did
come with the territory. I tried my best to stay calm. “I don’t
want company. Really, just leave me alone.”
“And what if we don’t
want to leave you alone?”
“Then you’re in
serious trouble.”
He grinned at that,
then inhaled deeply and thin, dark veins branched along his jawline
and down his neck. Each vampire showed their hunger slightly
differently—it was like a fingerprint, and along with their fangs
it revealed them to be much different from humans. The black of his
pupils spread out to cover the pale gray of his
irises.
His hand shot out and
he grabbed me by my throat. I clawed at his arm as he dragged me
around the corner into an alleyway, and then he threw me roughly at
his friend.
“Hold the bitch
still,” he snapped.
I tried to struggle
against him. I’d hoped very hard it wouldn’t come to this, but I’d
overestimated how much control a hungry vampire had. Fear laced
through me as the blond’s lips peeled back from his
fangs.
“No, wait—my blood—”
But I wasn’t able to finish my sentence. He wrenched my head to the
side so violently he easily could have snapped my neck. I gasped in
pain as his fangs sliced into the soft flesh of my
throat.
The vampire’s friend
had grabbed my left breast and was squeezing it so hard that tears
sprung to my eyes.
“She tastes
incredible,” the blond growled as he slurped at my
blood.
A moment later, he
gasped and pulled back from me, his black eyes registering surprise
now that he realized that my incredible blood came with a bit of an
aftertaste.
“What’s wrong?” his
friend asked.
“I don’t know.” The
vampire’s mouth gaped open and he touched his lips, looking down at
the unnaturally dark crimson color of my blood on his fingertips.
His brows drew together in confusion before he staggered back a few
steps from me.
When he screamed,
fire poured out of his mouth. In mere seconds, the only thing that
remained of Thirsty Vampire #1 was a fall of fiery ash, turning the
hot July night into a Christmas card from hell.
The paralyzing effect
of the bite disappeared and I clamped my hand to my neck to stop
the flow of blood. I felt weak and my legs threatened to crumple
beneath me. I had to struggle to remain standing. The vampire’s
friend moved his shocked gaze to me. His hunger showed along his
hollow cheekbones, the sallow skin etched with a spiderweb of dark
blue veins, his eyes soulless and black as pitch.
“You’re the one I’ve
heard about, aren’t you? Your blood is poison to us.” His voice was
a whisper, but his hands were clenched, his jaw tight. Anger and
grief flashed through his eyes as he came at me, not waiting for my
answer.
He wasn’t going to
bite me. He was going to kill me just as I’d killed his
friend.
Before his hand did
more than brush against my throat, someone grabbed him, spun him
around, and a scarred fist slammed into his jaw, knocking him
backward.
“Don’t fucking touch
her,” the man attached to the fist growled. His gaze flicked to me,
resting on my injured throat for a split second, before returning
to the vampire.
I pressed back
against the cold wall as the vampire recovered quickly and launched
himself at his attacker. Silver flashed, too fast to fully
register. The blade sank into the vampire’s chest right up to the
hilt. He attempted to pull it out, but didn’t have enough time. His
hands burst into fire along with the rest of his body and he
exploded outward into another ashy cloud.
The knife clanged to
the pavement and the man crouched to snatch it up and slide it into
the sheath he wore at his hip. Then he glared at me through his
right eye. The left was covered by a black patch. He’d lost the eye
a long time ago in another fight with a vampire in which he hadn’t
fared quite as well as this.
I hadn’t realized I’d
been holding my breath. I finally released it and inhaled
shakily.
He was well over six
feet tall, heavily muscled, and covered in ragged scars, including
those on his face, branching out from where his eye patch sat, down
his cheek and jaw and along the left side of his neck. His dark
hair was cut very short, almost shaved. He wasn’t the type of man
you wanted to meet in a dark alley like this. Not if you valued
your life. Declan Reyes was scary as hell.
My hero.
I finally allowed
myself to relax just a little bit and I wiped my tears
away.
He came toward me and
roughly brushed the hair back off my neck. “Let me
see.”
I reluctantly pulled
my hand away from the bite wound.
“Damn it, Jill.” His
lips thinned. “What the hell did you think you were doing just now?
Trying to get yourself killed?”
“They were going to
kill a girl in there. Right in front of everyone.”
“So you offered
yourself up as a willing sacrifice instead ?”
“I thought I could
distract them without getting bit. I guess I was fooling
myself.”
“Where’s Noah?” He
pulled a clean rag from his pocket and held it against my
throat.
“He hasn’t shown
yet.”
“Then you shouldn’t
have stuck around.” He glanced over his shoulder in the direction
of the bar. “You need to stop trying to protect others all the
time. You have to focus on protecting yourself.”
Declan had a tendency
to see me as way more altruistic than I actually was. “So I should
have just stood by and watched them tear her throat
out?”
“Next time come find
me first before you decide to play the pied piper to vampires.” He
touched my face gently. “Are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine.” I
searched for some emotion on his battlescarred face—anger, fear,
maybe even annoyance—but came up empty.
“We need to go,” he
said.
“But
Noah—”
“Isn’t here.
Something must have gone wrong. We’ll wait for him to contact us
again.”
“Don’t you think we
should wait just a little while longer?”
“No. Best to cut our
losses and try again later.”
I felt the thud of
disappointment push away the small amount of hope I’d allowed
myself to feel earlier. Declan had chosen to remain outside when
we’d arrived just before ten o’clock. While it wasn’t the classiest
bar in Los Angeles, the way he looked—like death incarnate, which
as a vampire hunter he came by honestly—might have gained us a bit
too much attention.
Declan was a
dhampyr—human mother, vampire father. While this gave him a great
deal of extra strength, it wasn’t nearly the same as being fully
vampire. He healed much faster than a human, but every single time
he received a flesh wound it left a scar behind as a reminder of
the horror he’d been through.
It was Declan who’d
kidnapped me, kicking and screaming, from my normal life two weeks
ago. It may as well have been two years by how different I felt and
looked. It was the Nightshade formula I’d been injected with that
had changed my hair and eyes to black. It was the Nightshade that
meant any vampire who drank my blood would die a horrible, fiery
death.
Declan stopped a
dozen feet away and glanced over his shoulder at me. “Are you
coming?”
When I moved closer
to him he turned his face away so the scarred side would stay in
shadows, away from the light shining down on us from the street
lamp. The undamaged side of his face showed the man he could have
been in a different life—a handsome, if a bit rough around the
edges twenty-eight-year-old. Same age as me. Very different
lives.
I wanted to touch
him, but I restrained myself. “Don’t hide from me.”
“I’m not
hiding.”
“You asked me how I
was feeling, so now I’ll do the same. How are you feeling right
now?”
His jaw tensed. “I’m
fine.”
“The new serum
is—”
“Holding strong. Much
better than before.”
Better. It wasn’t exactly the word I’d use to
describe the experimental drug he’d been pumped full of a week
ago.
His now-deceased
adoptive father, Carson Reyes, had been very concerned about
Declan’s dhampyr nature. So much so that he’d developed a special
serum that had to be injected every three hours since Declan was a
child. This serum was meant to curb any vampiric tendencies he
might have—violence, bloodlust, erratic behavior of any kind. The
serum also restrained his emotions so much that he appeared to have
none. This made him the perfect weapon who could follow orders to
the letter and not give his father or anyone else any problems.
He’d been an effective killing machine who felt nothing apart from
getting the job done.
Shortly after he’d
met me he’d been forced to stop taking his serum regularly when it
was stolen. I’d been worried that the violence and need for blood
might overwhelm him, but it hadn’t. Instead I’d met a different
Declan, one who felt emotions strongly and wanted more from life
than merely being a blunt instrument sent out to kill
monsters.
Carson was still
convinced he was right, that dhampyrs like Declan were dangerous
and unpredictable. He’d been developing another serum—one that was
meant to be permanent. He’d forcibly injected Declan with it,
hoping it would save his son from giving in to any bloodlust. Ever.
But that also meant that his emotions—including love, compassion,
and sexual desire—would be permanently dampened.
I needed answers.
“I’m going to check the bar one last time.”
Declan shook his
head. “Not a good idea.”
I felt the resolve
flow through me. It helped me to ignore the stinging pain from the
vampire’s bite. “Five minutes, I swear. Wait for me
here.”
“Jill,
no—”
Before he could stop
me, I turned and quickly reentered the dark and musty interior of
Ravenous. Keeping a close eye on my surroundings, wary of anyone
who looked suspicious—and, admittedly, a lot of people did—I made a
beeline to the bar where I’d been sitting earlier. The newspaper
I’d been flipping through still lay closed on the scarred wooden
bar top. On the top of page twenty-two I’d seen a small
black-and-white picture of me and a heartfelt plea from Cathy, my
older sister, asking anyone who knew my whereabouts to please
contact the police immediately.
I forced myself to
look away from the newspaper toward the bartender.
“Have you seen a guy
in here tonight?” My words came out in a rush. “Early twenties,
about five-ten, sort of thin. Light brown hair. Looks a bit like a
frat boy?”
He eyed me as he ran
a wet rag along the countertop. “Not a lot of frat boys come in
here.”
“No shit.” I hissed
out a sigh of frustration.
“But, yeah, I think
I’ve seen the guy you’re looking for.”
My breath caught in
my chest. “Really? Where?”
His gaze moved over
my shoulder. “Right behind you.”
I spun around to see
Noah standing ten feet away after coming out of the restroom on the
right side of the club.
A wide smile spread
across his boyish features and he closed the distance between us in
a few steps. “Jill, I wasn’t sure if you were here or
not.”
I hadn’t realized
until this very moment how incredibly worried I’d been that he was
hurt . . . or worse. The last time I’d seen him he’d been
recovering from a bullet wound.
“Where the hell were
you? You said you’d be here over a half hour ago.”
His smile widened.
“Good to see you, too.”
I hugged him tightly.
“I thought you were dead.”
“I’m not. But, ouch.
Be careful. I’m still recuperating.”
“Sorry.” I released
him, and he placed a hand over his chest wound hidden under his
dark blue shirt.
“Don’t worry about
it. But if this was a normal world I’d likely still be in a
hospital bed slurping up Jell-O cubes.” His amiable expression
faded and he touched my face. “Christ, you look like
hell.”
I’d take it as an
insult if he didn’t look so concerned. “I feel better than I look,
believe it or not.”
“You’re paler than
last time I saw you. Maybe it’s just the new hair color. I mean,
don’t get me wrong. You’re still hot. You’re a hot chick who looks
like she hasn’t slept in about a decade.”
“I’ll go heavier on
the under eye concealer the next time I enter polite
society.”
“Are you in any
pain?”
Having poison in my
veins came with a whole set of issues, a couple of which were
excruciating pain and nausea. I’d been given another drug, a fusing
potion, meant to bind the Nightshade with my blood on a cellular
level. Since then, things had been better.
“Other than feeling
headachy and weary, kind of like a constant low-level hangover, I
haven’t experienced any severe pain since taking the
fuser.”
“Not yet, you
mean.”
I cringed. “Thanks
for the reminder.”
“I got more fuser for
you so you can take it regularly. I know it doesn’t exactly go down
easily, does it?”
“It sure
doesn’t.”
The fuser ramped up
the pain I felt about a hundredfold before it started to work. As
the saying went, it was always darkest just before the
dawn.
“A spoonful of sugar
helps the medicine go down,” he said.
“Thank you, Mary
Poppins. If I didn’t have to inject it, I’d be happy to swallow a
bucket of sugar with it.” I reached for his sleeve to draw him
closer when some other rough-looking bar patrons moved past us. “Is
that what you wanted to see me about tonight? The fusing potion? I
thought you might have some other answers.”
His expression
tensed. “Not yet, I’m afraid.”
I felt a stab of
disappointment at his answer. “Oh.”
“Where’s
Declan?”
“Waiting vigilantly
outside. Armed to the teeth.”
“That’s surprisingly
reassuring to know.” He glanced at my neck as I twisted a lock of
hair around my finger. “Making new friends?”
I touched the fresh
fang marks. Luckily for a newly designated pincushion like myself,
a vampire’s bite healed in a matter of a few days, leaving no scars
behind. It was small comfort since they stung like a bitch. “You
kept me waiting too long. I met a couple guys who liked the way I
smelled.”
He grimaced. “Sorry.
I take it they’re gone now?”
“Permanently.” I
glanced around. “Now that you’re here, I do want to talk to you
about Declan’s new serum.”
Noah looked nervously
over his shoulder. “Yeah, sure. But . . . listen, Jill, there
actually is another reason why I needed
to see you tonight. And it’s not because I enjoy the dulcet tones
of Black Sabbath and the smell of sweaty leather.”
“What is
it?”
Noah shot another
look over his shoulder. “Jesus, Jill, when he contacted me
yesterday it scared the shit out of me. It was the last damn thing
I expected. He wants to see you, but he didn’t want me to mention
that until you got here.”
My heart sped up.
“Who?”
Noah met my gaze and
held it. “Matthias.”
There was a long
moment of stunned silence before I gathered my thoughts together
enough to answer him. “He—he’s alive?”
Noah
nodded.
Fresh panic raced
through me. “And he’s here? Right now?”
“In the
flesh.”
I had the sudden urge
to turn and run, to escape this bar as fast as my feet could carry
me. But my legs felt like lead.
Matthias was alive.
It couldn’t be possible. It shouldn’t
be possible.
I turned as if in
slow motion to see the vampire king in question step out of the
shadows to my left, his pale gray gaze trained on me. My mouth fell
open in shock. I couldn’t help but be stunned to see him
again—alive and well and standing right in front of
me.
After all, I’d been
the one who’d killed him.