Do something, Candace
, I thought.
Stop following him like some lovesick schoolgirl and make something happen
. If the vampire wasn’t going to give me the opportunity I wanted, I was just going to have to make one of my own.
I quickened my pace, sliding a second chopstick of silver from my hair, tucking it into my left-hand jacket pocket. I had one ready and waiting for either hand now.
Come on
, I urged him.
Hear me coming
.
Precisely as if obeying my command, he turned around. I let my momentum carry me forward, crashing into him, clutching at him as if he were a lifeline. I pulled him around the corner, onto the side street.
“Oh, thank goodness,” I sobbed out. “I’m so glad I found someone.”
“Whoa,” the vampire said, and then smiled. In the time it had taken our bodies to connect, he had come to the conclusion I posed no threat. How could I? I was only human, after all. Sure, I could have just nailed him right away and been done with it, but that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to toy with him a little, work him around to just the moment when he could see the end of his existence coming. See it and be powerless to stop it.
“I’m being followed. I think I’m being followed,” I gasped out, letting my words tumble over one another even as I leaned into him. I felt his arm snake around my waist to hold me close. If anyone saw us, we’d look like two sweethearts, hurrying to get home out of the rain.
“Please, you’ve got to help me,” I pleaded. “I’m new to Vegas. I’m just a tourist. I got lost—in the storm—I lost my way.” I began to pull at him, urging him away from the street corner as if expecting my pursuer to burst into view at any minute. My goal was the center of the block, where the spill from the streetlights left a dark band of shadow.
“Of course I’ll help you,” the vampire said. “A woman like you shouldn’t be
on her own
. Vegas can be a dangerous town. But you don’t have to worry. You can trust me.”
In a pig’s eye
, I thought.
“Oh, thank you,” I sobbed out. I stopped moving, dropped my head against his chest as if overwhelmed with relief. “You can’t imagine what it feels like to find somebody kind. I’ve been so frightened. You have no idea.”
“First thing we do is get you out of the rain,” he said.
“And out of those wet clothes.”
You are such an asshole
, I thought.
Pouring down rain, damsel in distress, and what do you do? You hit on her
.
I giggled then, as if he had actually said something original, and gave a shiver that insinuated me a little closer to his body.
“I just feel so confused,” I confessed.
“Like I’m having a panic attack or something.
I can’t even remember the way to my hotel. If I could just be somewhere safe, I’m sure I’d get my bearings back. I’m just so scared, so cold.”
“Not to worry,” the vampire said easily. “My place isn’t far.”
It never is
, I thought.
“What if he’s seen us?” I exclaimed suddenly. I jerked backward, out of the vampire’s arms. Instantly, he reached for me, but I scooted out of range. I was in the darkest part of the block now. I wrapped my arms around myself, hugging my elbows,
then
slid my right hand down and into my jacket pocket. “I could get you in trouble. You might even get hurt. I couldn’t bear it if that happened. I would never forgive myself.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” the vampire said, his voice soothing. He followed me into the shadowy center of the block. He reached for me again, and, this time, I let him bring me close. Palming the silver, I wrapped my arms around his back. He tilted my face up, brushed the water from my cheeks. “Trust me. I can handle anything that comes along.”
“Can you really?” I asked, my voice breathless, for
all the
world as if we were standing together on a night drenched with moonlight instead of wind and rain. I watched the cockiness come into his face.
“You don’t have to worry about a thing,” he said.
I slid my hand up his back and jammed the silver straight into the side of his neck.
“You know what?” I said. “You’re absolutely right.”
I had it, then, the moment I’d been waiting for. His eyes went wide with horrified comprehension, his mouth made a round
O
of astonishment and pain. And then he crumbled into dust.
I heard a sound, then.
Behind me.
Sibilant, leathery, vaguely familiar, but not readily identifiable.
And then there were strong hands against the small of my back, shoving me forward with brutal force, propelling my body straight into the wall of the closest building. Fingers wrapped themselves around my wrist, the hand that still held the silver, slamming it up against the building once, twice, three times. I heard a sharp
crack
, felt a searing pain, cried out even as I heard the silver clatter to the sidewalk. In the next instant, the hands released my wrist to tangle in my sodden hair, propelling my head forward against the building so hard that I saw stars. Blood erupted from my nose.
Cold
, I thought.
I’m so very, very cold
.
I knew then what I would see as my attacker spun me back around. He shook me, my head flopping, my neck as limp as a rag doll’s.
“Look at me. Look at me, you stupid little bitch,” a voice rapped out.
I looked. And found myself staring straight into the second vampire’s eyes.
Dark as midnight, as the lowest level of Hell.
In them, I saw precisely what he wanted me to see: my own death.
Sheer instinct took over then, pushing back even the bone-chilling cold. I was Candace Steele. I’d faced strong vampires before. I was not going down without a fight. I slapped at him, desperately trying to gain even a little room to maneuver, then screamed as pain from my broken wrist sang up my arm. He laughed, backhanded me viciously, releasing his hold on me at the same time. My head snapped sideways and back, connecting with the wall once more. My vision went stark white, then gray around the edges. My ears roared with sudden sound. Slowly, I began to sink down against the wall, my only support. Before I hit the sidewalk, the vampire reached down, seized the lapels of my jacket, and hauled me upright. He yanked the jacket open as if the leather were a dry corn husk, grabbed my hair,
pulled
my head to one side.
And then his teeth were in my throat.
My whole body
spasmed
, arcing up on a great wave of pain.
My lips opened in a silent cry. My hands scrabbled against his back, trying to gain some sort of purchase, to pull him away from me. He made a sound like an animal, and I swear I felt the grip of his teeth tighten, worrying at my neck like some feral dog. My knees buckled and my legs gave way. Slowly, locked together in our terrible embrace, we sank to the wet sidewalk.
His teeth never relinquished their hold on my neck as he shifted position, turning so that his back was against the wall now. Supporting me as I slid to the ground, cradling me in his lap as a loving parent might a child. Sounds seemed to magnify inside my head. The sound the rain made against the leather of my jacket, different than where it hit the sidewalk. The even, steady rhythm of the vampire’s swallows as he drank my blood. My ears rang,
then
began to pound.
Thum
thump
.
Thum
thump
.
Thum
thump
.
My heart.
That is my heart
, I thought. Desperately beating, trying to keep me alive. It wasn’t going to work. Nothing was going to work.
I was going to die.
I had a strange, crystalline moment then, a moment out of time. Even as sensation began to leave for good, I felt my whole body, every single part of it, for the very last time.
My butt against the vampire’s lap, my shoulders and head where they rested against his supporting shoulder and arm.
My legs, stretched straight out in front of me, extending past him to rest on the wet sidewalk. The throb of my broken wrist, trapped between us. My head, turned away, facing out toward the street.
My free arm extending into space, the hand, palm up.
As if they belonged to a stranger, I watched the fingers move, and it seemed to me that they were trying to tell me something. My body was getting it backward, and my hand was trying to give my brain a command. There was something the hand should do.
Something important.
Just go for it
, I thought. The world was a sea of shades of gray, like an old black-and-white television show. I watched as my pale gray fingers trembled,
then
jerked toward the darker gray that was the closest jacket pocket. My hand fumbled there for precious, endless seconds, then found its way inside. And, at that moment, my brain caught up. It knew what it was supposed to do now. It was supposed to save me.
In that pocket was my other silver chopstick.
I felt my fingers close around it, and, for one blinding second, there was color in the world once more. A haze of red pain so bright and vicious it made me scream even with the vampire’s teeth embedded in my throat. My hand jerked, straight out, the silver chopstick clutched in my fist. My arm shot straight up. Then, as if those two motions had exhausted my last strength, my arm began to fall back down. Against all odds, I felt the tip of the silver chopstick catch, then drag as my arm descended.
The teeth in my throat let go as the vampire opened his mouth to howl, a furious, inhuman sound. He released me, shoving me from him with a violence so sudden I tumbled over backward,
the
back of my head bouncing against the sidewalk like a rubber ball. Stars wheeled before my eyes.
Gorgeous, silver, sparkling.
They reminded me of something. A thing that made me
want
to weep and sing, all at the same time.
And then even they disappeared, and the only thing that existed in the world was the rain, falling down into my open, sightless eyes.
“
D
ammit
, Candace,” Ash said, taking a step closer. “I want you. And all you do is
fight
me.”
Out in the desert, beneath the light of the stars, I took a step closer.
“And if I stopped fighting?” I
asked,
my voice low and husky. “Not forever. Just for tonight. What would you give me if I stopped fighting you, Ash?”
He bent his head,
then
put his mouth to mine, and the world exploded in a shower of sparks. Ash’s hands were on my breasts, trailing fire in their wake. There was no patience in his touch. Other nights were for explorations, for going slow. Not this one. On this night Ash and I desired one and the same thing: to take what we wanted.