Finding Fire: Paranormal Romance (Bad Boys Of The Underworld Book 1) (11 page)

She added it to her growing list of things to worry about later. “Where should I head?”

He told her the freeway she should get on. It took her a second to get the seat and mirrors to the right positions. She could drive, but she hadn’t recently, and this was a different car than she was used to. It was also much newer than the cars she’d driven, so there were a lot more buttons, and Anna couldn’t decipher a purpose for most of them.

Soon enough she had the car started and pulled out. “Where are we going to drop him off?” She motioned to Brad.

Brad sat nice as could be in the backseat. Nicolas had even buckled him in at some point. Nicolas, in contrast, was sprawled in the back with his head leaning against the headrest with a pained expression on his face. He still had the pallor she’d seen when she opened the door earlier.

“Not right now,” he said.

“Are you all right?” She repeated her earlier question he’d ignored.

“I’m tired,” he responded. “Those men who were meeting spent all night searching for me. I was running pretty much the whole night. Just before sunrise, they finally laid back to get shelter from the sun.”

“You didn’t get a chance to rest today?”

“I wanted to be alert if any humans came searching for me.”

“You were afraid they would control humans to search for you?” she said, not expecting an answer. “Is that why Brad was at my door? A vampire made him do it?”

Nicolas nodded. “He was being controlled, but not all of the display in your hallway was due to a vampire. A vampire could make him hit your door, but he couldn’t put that rage into it. That human does not like you.”

Anna didn’t like that Nicolas called Brad a human as if it was a bad thing. “I can’t imagine why. I only see the guy once a month. What can I do in that time to piss him off this much?”

“Has he ever showed any sexual interest in you?”

She raised her brows at that, but she saw in the rearview mirror that his eyes were closed. “He never showed any interest in me, sexual or otherwise.”

Nicolas opened his eyes and turned to Brad. “Tell me why you went to her,” he commanded with his voice.

Brad answered in a monotone voice, “The vampire told me to.”

Anna looked to Nicolas. “You said it was mind control.”

“He could’ve told the human and reinforced his order with his mind.” Nicolas looked at Brad. “Why did you do as you were told by the vampire?”

“He would kill me if I refused,” he said.

“Why would he threaten to kill him if he could just will Brad to do whatever he wanted?” asked Anna.

“Three reasons that could have happened. If the vampire is not nearby, but communicating over the phone lines, he would be unable to exercise his influence and would have to resort to threats. Eye contact is necessary. If it is an impure vampire, he would be unable to influence the minds of mortals. The other possibility is that it’s a pure vampire who wants us to believe he’s impure.”

Anna took a second to absorb that. “So you’re a ‘pure’ vampire? What on earth does that even mean?”

“Both of my parents were vampires, so I’m considered pure. Impure vampires are mortals turned vampire,” he said.

“You do know what I’m going to ask next, don’t you?”

“A mortal becomes vampire by drinking the blood of a vampire,” he responded. She made a face at that, not being able to imagine drinking someone’s blood. “It’s not nearly as unpleasant as it might sound.”

She gave him a quick look over her shoulder. “Says the guy who was born drinking blood,” she said. “So what other differences between pure and impure are there?”

“I survive on mortal blood. I can feed off vampire, but it does not fuel me like mortal blood. Impure vampires are the opposite. They must continue to feed off vampires, or they will starve.”

Anna thought about that, and then her eyes widened. “You are
not
going to eat Brad,” she ordered.

“I need to feed, Annabelle,” he said. She still hated when he used her full name. “I’m weak from last night, and I’ve used a lot of the strength I had left to get to you this evening and take care of this human.”

“That human is Brad,” she said. “You can’t just bite him. I know him!”

Nicolas closed his eyes, and his hands cradled his head, reminding her how weak he was. “What did you think I was going to eat on this little trip?” he asked.

“I don’t know. You had that bottled stuff at your place. Can’t we get more of that?”

He shook his head and winced, as if the action hurt him. “I’m being hunted now. I can’t be seen. If you remember, my apartment had unexpected visitors last night. There was no way I could get to my supplies.”

He looked up at her, and her face must have still shown her worry, because he said, “I’m not going to kill him. If vampires had to kill to feed, there would be no way we could’ve remained secret this long. He won’t remember a thing.”

Anna mulled it over. She didn’t like that his argument was beginning to make sense. She supposed she should be grateful he was even telling her all this. If he really wanted to feed, there was nothing she could do to stop him. After all the ruckus Brad had caused this evening, maybe he deserved a bite. For heaven’s sake, Anna had been ready to bash his head in with a skillet. A bite didn’t seem any worse than that.

“What will we do with him when you’re done? He’ll probably be too dizzy to walk anywhere.” The last time Anna had given blood, she had to wait at the office for an hour before she could walk a straight line. They couldn’t just push him onto the side of the road like that.

“We can ditch him in a cheap motel for the night.”

“Were you planning on biting me?” asked Anna. They obviously hadn’t planned to bring along any other human. Was she Nicolas’s other food source?

Nicolas was silent for a minute before he answered. “I wasn’t intending to use you as a food source, but biting and sex often go together, so I hadn’t ruled it out.”

Anna’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. If he were within reach, she might have considered slapping him. As he was out of her reach, she chose to ignore the comment. “What about the mind control stuff? Were you going to make me do anything for you if I refused?”

He seemed to get angry at that question. “You think I would make you have sex with me?”

“Anything you make me do against my will is offensive to me. Will you agree to keep out of my head?” she asked.

“When we have sex, you’ll be plenty willing without me messing around inside your head with anything besides my tongue,” he ground out.

“Will you shut up about the sex? It’s not happening!”

Nicolas leaned forward and put his hands on both of her shoulders. She immediately tensed up, but because of the small space, she didn’t move away. He spoke so close to her ear that she could feel his breath brush across her cheek. The sudden warmth caused a shiver to go through her body.

“I promise to stay out of your head,” he whispered to her. He leaned back into his seat.

“You’re a jerk. You know that, don’t you?”

He didn’t answer her question. By this time, they were getting onto a freeway. They were going faster and almost out of the city. Nicolas looked at Brad. “Who made you come to Anna?” he asked. She noticed that when talking to Brad, he used her shortened name.

“Mr. X,” was his answer.

“Why do you have so much rage toward her?” asked Nicolas.

“It’s her fault he found me,” said Brad.

“How is it her fault?” Nicolas seemed to be patient with the short answers.

“Mr. X was looking for her. If she wasn’t in our group, he would have left me alone.”

“What was he holding over your head if you didn’t help him?” asked Anna.

Brad said nothing. She looked at Nicolas, and he repeated her question. “He would kill me,” Brad said.

“Did you ever meet him?” said Nicolas.

“Yes,” said Brad.

Anna rolled her eyes at the one-word answer, but Nicolas just said, “Describe your meeting.”

“I opened my door, and he bit me. He made me ask him inside, and he spent the night.”

“What did he look like?” asked Nicolas.

“He had my head covered,” said Brad.

Anna sighed in disappointment. “At least we know it’s a vampire. He’s probably impure if he had to physically force Brad to open the door.”

Nicolas dug out Brad’s cell phone from his pocket. He pressed a few buttons. “The last number to call his came up as unavailable.”

“That’s how Mr. X’s number comes up on mine,” said Anna.

Nicolas looked up to Anna. “I don’t think there’s anything more this Brad can tell us.” She felt the blood drain from her face when she understood the implication. If he was of no more use, Nicolas wanted his breakfast.

“You’re going to do it here? Right in front of me?” she asked.

A small smile came to his mouth. “Technically, Annabelle, I’m behind you.”

“Smart ass. You can’t expect me to be able to drive while you’re sucking the life out of someone in the backseat,” she said.

“I’m so tired,” he said. She could hear the exhaustion in his voice. “Please let me have this.”

Now he says please
. Once again, she thought about the strangeness of him even asking her permission. He could bite him no matter what she wanted. She just wasn’t sure she could focus on driving in a straight line with that going on in the backseat.

“How long is this going to take?” She at least wanted to have a timeline.

He smirked at the random question. “I’ve never timed it before. I suppose five or ten minutes,” he said.

Five or ten minutes. She could handle that.

She sighed. “Okay. But try to be nice to him. The last one who bit him wasn’t.”

He cocked his head at that. “You still care, after all he said to you tonight? He’s wrong to blame you for the situation he finds himself in.”

“He might be wrong to be so angry about it, but if it weren’t for me, he wouldn’t be in this situation, or in this car with you about to bite him. This is my fault. We need to know why I’m of any interest to Mr. X. Brad might not be the only one I know who this vampire has visited.” Anna was suddenly happy about her lack of friends in the city, but she still had plenty of acquaintances. Apparently all of them had been in danger.

Nicolas looked as if he was about to disagree with her, but then he shook his head. He pulled Brad to him. Anna tried to focus on the road but adjusted the mirror so she could have a better view of what was happening in the backseat. She noted that Nicolas was perfectly visible in the mirror.

“You’ll not feel anything, and when I’m done, you’ll remember nothing but sitting in the seat untouched,” said Nicolas.

Brad nodded. It looked as though Nicolas was tenderly holding Brad, but Anna knew better. Nicolas gently bent Brad’s head to bare his neck. He leaned to his neck, and Anna could no longer see his mouth. She thought he’d bitten already when Nicolas looked up and met her eyes in the mirror. His eyes were now completely black, with no whites visible. The second after their eyes met, his fangs sunk into Brad’s neck.

Anna immediately glanced back to the road. When she looked back, Nicolas still stared at her. She could only see the upper half of his face. The rest of his body was hidden by Brad’s limp one. There were soft sucking sounds that filled the car. She reached for the radio to try to drown out the disgusting sounds.

The men remained like that for the next two songs. The whole time, Nicolas stared at the mirror that reflected Anna’s face to him. It made her even more uncomfortable than she’d been before.

When he was done, he gently laid Brad against the opposite window. Anna tried not to look at him. She didn’t want to know if his eyes were still black, or if he had any blood dripping from his mouth. She stared firmly at the road. “Do you feel better?”

“I feel much better, thank you.”

She spared a glance at Brad. He looked straight ahead with glossy eyes. He didn’t appear too bad, she supposed. He was just a bit paler than he’d been before. And he had the two fresh punctures, of course.

“How could you keep your existence secret when you leave marks when you bite?” asked Anna.

“We can still control their mind. We give them an alternate reason for the marks. My favorite is bug bites. Even if we don’t give a reason, people’s minds these days do not jump to monsters. They look for logical explanations. Vampires are not logical.”

“Got that right,” muttered Anna. She finally spared a glance into the backseat at Nicolas. He looked much better. His skin was no longer so pale. It almost looked as if it glowed. He sat up straighter, she supposed due to his newfound energy.

“So, um, where are we going?” she asked. It was bad enough she’d ever gotten into the car without asking where Aleksander actually was. She’d been a bit distracted when she’d left her apartment. Her wits were only just now returning to her. She didn’t think they would do her much good now that there was a full-strength vampire right behind her.

“Aleksander has a large compound in the interior of Canada. We’ll probably reach there around our third night,” he said.