Tainted Blood (38 page)

Although anger fueled me at that moment, my heart was broken. No, it felt like it was shattered. I was overwhelmed by my emotions, but my feelings were no excuse for what I did next.

I shifted into drive, and after a split-second of hesitation, I floored it. It turned out there was a dark scary place inside of me that I didn’t even know existed.

Oliver shoved that
trampy bitch
out of the way just in time. My only satisfaction was that she fell flat on her ass. I was pretty sure I had a smirk of satisfaction on my face until I realized I was still speeding forward and Oliver hadn’t moved out of the way.

My car collided with him a moment later and the next thing I knew the front airbags had deployed and my windshield was shattered.

My head was a little too clear at that moment. It was like I’d had the sense knocked
in
to me. I wanted those last two minutes back.

There was an eerie silence in the car until Carter asked if we were both okay. His nose was bleeding. Not badly, just a trickle, and thankfully Kiera was fine.
In the rearview mirror
,
which
was barely hanging on to my busted windshield
,
I saw her nod to Carter silently.

Then, through the shattered glass of my windshield, we saw Oliver get to his feet in front of the car and Kiera breathed, “Holy shit.” In all the years I’d known her, I’d never once heard Kiera curse, and that was more surprising to me than seeing my vampire boyfriend, whom I’d just struck down with my car, rise up unharmed.

Oliver moved fast to my side of the car and I wasn’t quick enough to lock the doors. Not that that would’ve helped. He had my door open and jerked me out in the next moment. Kiera was freaking out and Carter was shouting at her to calm down, while at the same time yelling at Oliver to get his hands off of me. Avery pulled herself up from where she had fallen. Her cat-like eyes were bugging out of her head.

Oliver, holding my upper arms tightly, shook me against the car causing my teeth to slam together. My focus fell on him and I glared, hard. He had a nasty gash across his forehead and thick, dark vampire blood was trickling down the side of his head. A wave of anger rolled off of Oliver and hit me, and as it mixed with my own anger, I thought it might take me to my knees.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he hissed.

I glared harder. He’d obviously turned into a raging idiot. He still had ahold of both of my arms and had me pressed against the rear passenger window of my car. His dark eyes looked me up and down and then settled on my own.

“I can feel your anger,” he growled.

“I don’t care!” I screamed in his face. I tried to shove him away but he didn’t budge.

He gnashed his teeth and bared his fangs at me as a rumble rolled out of his chest. I heard a very quiet Kiera say, “What the shit…?”

He let go of me and took a step back. I was shaking so badly, I held myself up against my car.

“Go home, Laney,” he spat and began walking away, toward a waiting and petrified-looking Avery.

“Go to hell, Oliver,” I retorted.

He stopped and shot me a look like he actually believed that I’d meant those words, and then he continued on.

“I wish I’d never met you!” I shouted, and as the words slipped out, I wished I could take them back.

He stopped again, this time he really looked at me, and it looked like what I had said had actually affected him, like the words had truly hurt. He took one step toward me, just one, and I pressed myself against my car so I wouldn’t run to him. Then the look vanished and he said, “Yeah, that probably would’ve been for the best.” He turned and walked away from me, and the broken pieces of my heart felt like they were piercing my insides.

I hugged myself and fought back tears as I slipped my phone out of my back pocket. A crowd had formed outside of the frat house and right in the center of that crowd was Ashton. He had his arm around a random tramp and a beer bottle tipped up to his lips. I hated him for everything at that moment because I needed to be angry or I was going to shatter.

I dialed Felix, but before he could answer and before I could slide into my mangled car, Oliver was beside me once more.

“What are you doing?” he questioned as he pressed me against my car again. “I told you to go!” he shouted, and I just closed my eyes in the hopes that it would all end, right then.

I heard Felix’s voice on the other end of the line and my eyes snapped open. Oliver yanked my phone from my hand and shattered it on the ground. He loomed over me with his fangs out and his pupils oddly dilated and he growled, “Get away from me.”

I did. I slipped out of his grip and into my car. He slammed my door and walked back to
her
. Tears blurred my vision, and I wanted my heart to stop beating so that it would stop hurting.

My car started on the second try. Carter pushed the windshield out with his feet and it slid down the side of my car with a horrible scraping sound. We left it where it landed on the road in front of Ashton’s fraternity house and drove away.
I wouldn’t let myself look back. I just couldn’t.

It was silent in the car all the way back to the apartment. My hand hurt from smacking Oliver and punching Avery and my entire body ached, not to mention the gaping hole of pain I felt in my chest.

My car was smoking by the time I parked it next to Oliver’s in the apartment lot. My friends and I climbed the steps in silence. I paused at the top, hesitating. I couldn’t go back to
his
place and sleep in
his
bed. I went to my apartment and unlocked the door.

I shoved some boxes out of the way and dropped down onto the couch. I asked Carter if he wouldn’t mind getting my things from his place.

“Of course not, Laney,” he said softly. “I’ll give Felix a call, too.”

“K, thanks,” I told him as my head fell against the back of the couch.

Carter left and that’s when I noticed Kiera sitting close to me, stunned. I sat up and watched her for a moment. “Kiera?” I questioned.

“What just happened, Laney?” she asked, staring forward.

I shook my head and replayed everything in my mind. Tears began to fall and I brushed them away angrily.

Kiera turned to me. “Laney, I think there’s something you need to tell me.” Her gold-flecked eyes knew the truth, she just needed to hear me say it, so I did. I told her that Oliver was a vampire, and for the third time that night, I heard Kiera curse. It felt good to finally tell her.

“I can’t believe you’ve been keeping this from me,” she finally said after a considerable amount of silence.

“I know. I’m sorry. Believe me, I wish I could’ve told you forever ago.”

“So he doesn’t work for the city?” she asked.

I raised an eyebrow and said, “Uh, no, not really.”

She just sat there quietly for some time, and I didn’t know what else to say. She was obviously deep in thought, or maybe in shock, maybe even processing this new information, or possibly pondering all of the moments that stood out to her since Oliver had entered our lives. I waited for a bombardment of questions but they never came.

Carter returned a few minutes later. He had a bag loaded with my things, the most important items, and he rushed the bag into my bedroom and returned a moment later.

Kiera looked up at him and asked, “Did you know Oliver is a vampire?”

I sat up straighter. Carter’s eyes shifted to me and then back to Kiera.

“Uh, yeah, I did.”

“So you were both hiding this from me?” It was like a trick question. We didn’t say anything, just exchanged a glance and waited. She looked up at him again and said, “Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?”

“Uh, um, nope, nothing I
want
to tell you,” Carter replied, fidgeting like crazy and running his good hand through his messy hair. That’s when I noticed that we all had a layer of airbag powder on us. I tried to brush it off of me but soon gave up. My heart hurt too bad to care about the stupid powder.

“Carter.” She said his name in that “tell me now” tone.

He ran his hand through his messy hair again and then shoved it deep into his front pocket. “Kiera, you don’t want to know, okay?”

“Actually, I do!” She raised her voice.

“Well, I don’t want to tell you!” he argued.

She jumped to her feet and confronted him. I just watched the scene unfold. “Carter Thomas, we are getting married! Entire lives together and stuff like that! You HAVE to tell me!” she shouted at him. He looked slightly stunned.

He huffed. “Fine.” He grasped her upper arms and gently guided her back to her seat on the couch. He took a seat on the coffee table in front of us and told her the entire story from the beginning. He started with his trip to Las Vegas where his grandfather told him that he was a descendant of vampires, to when he first realized Oliver was a vampire and decided his grandpa wasn’t a raging nutbag, to why they had to stay the night at Zoey’s a while back, and then he told her about the were-attack that had almost killed him.

He even told her about what really happened to my aunt and the fact that he was related to Felix.

She questioned why she didn’t remember any of the were-attack stuff and he told her about Felix’s mind-wipe ability and that he’d done it to protect everyone involved. Next he told her about our concerns with Ashton, and that the fortune teller at the street fair was a witch. He even told her I was in danger from Oliver, and we didn’t know what was wrong with him.

When he finished, she stared at him wordlessly, her eyes saucer-wide, so he added, “To carry this secret, to keep this from you, has been torture, but…” He stared down at the floor.

“But what?” she asked, coming out of her daze. Her fingers guided his face so that their eyes would meet.

“I didn’t think you would want me once you knew the truth.”

Her fingers traced the pink scar over his left eye. “I would want you no matter what,” she told him in a loving voice as she smiled at him. He grinned back, relieved and caught her hand, bringing it to his lips and kissing her fingers.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“For what?” she asked, puzzled.

His bright blue eyes met hers and I suddenly felt uncomfortable to be in the room with them. “For loving me,” he said with an endearing smile.

“Forever,” she whispered and she leaned forward and kissed him on the lips.

The awkward moment just made my heart hurt even more.

Kiera called her parents and told them that she was staying with me for the night. She told them that Oliver and I had broken up and that she needed to comfort me. I fought back tears as I listened to her relay this information.

My shattered heart ached…the thought of him with that whore and not with me…I locked myself in the bathroom and cried until I couldn’t breathe. My vision was blurry as I dragged in long breaths. I forced myself to suck it up when I heard the deep boom of Felix’s voice coming from inside the apartment.

I rinsed my face and as I stared at my reflection, the necklace Oliver had given me on my birthday caught my eye. I stared at it for a long moment and wished that it was a star I could make a wish upon. I unfastened the chain and let the necklace fall into my hand. I squeezed it tight and then took it into my bedroom and stashed it away in the top drawer of my nightstand. I sighed, a heavy, heartbroken sigh, closed the drawer, and went out into the living room where I was sure Felix would reprimand me for my actions.

He didn’t yell at me, he said hardly anything at all. He just pulled me into his huge, muscular arms and held my head against his chest with his large hand. I bit my lip in the hopes of preventing myself from crying more. It helped a little and I quickly wiped the few fallen tears away as he let go of me.

“I will find him, Delaney, and I will fix this.” His eyes looked as sad as I felt.

He patted me one last time before he left. I figured Carter had filled him in on the details, and I was so very thankful for that.

I dropped down on the couch beside Carter and slumped against him. Kiera was on his other side and the three of us huddled under a blanket on the couch together and watched TV while we waited to hear from Felix.

Chapter
21 - Shattered Hearts

It was the middle of the night when we woke to pounding at the front door. It was Oliver. “Laney, let me in!” he shouted. He pounded again. “I know you’re in there. Don’t make me bust this door down!”

The three of us scrambled to our feet. My heart was in my throat. I was torn between opening the door to let Oliver in or devising a plan to keep my friends safe.

The only light in the room was that of the TV and I switched it off. It’s not like it mattered; Oliver could see in the dark, we couldn’t. Thankfully the clocks on the stove and microwave gave off enough of a glow that we were able to see each other.

“What do we do?” Carter whispered.

In a split-second decision, I pushed Carter and Kiera to Kiera’s bedroom. “Get her out of here,” I said very quietly and pointed at the window.