Chapter Seven
A nna kept her eyes closed and pretended to be unconscious. Someone tore paper quite close to her head, and she allowed her eyelids to open a crack.
The paramedic was unrolling a gauze bandage and draping her left shoulder and arm with it.
“Why are you putting the bandage over her clothes as well as her burns?” Brian asked.
“Often it’s the best thing to do,” the paramedic said. “We’re not set up to treat them, and infection is one of the biggest dangers. So, we do what we can to protect the area until we can get the patient to the hospital.” The paramedic took a good look at Brian. “Were you also injured?”
“Yeah, but this is from before the fire.”
“What happened?”
“I didn’t dodge a bullet fast enough.” He lifted his arm slightly. “All this blood on my clothes is mine.”
Anna couldn’t see the medic’s facial expression from her vantage point, but it must have been suitably skeptical because Brian added, “I’m an FBI agent. Occupational hazard.”
The paramedic sighed as if he were very irritated. “Take your jacket off, please.”
Brian began to shrug out of his suit jacket, wincing as he put pressure on his injured arm.
The ambulance came to an abrupt stop, jerking everyone and all the supplies and equipment forward. Brian was pitched off his box and nearly face-planted on Anna’s left arm.
“Sorry,” the paramedic driving called out. “Two vehicles just cut us off and came to a stop.”
“Back up,” Evan ordered, in a tone with no room for argument. “And go around.”
Anna stopped pretending to be unconscious and propped herself up on her elbows so she could see what was going on better.
The driver changed gears, and they moved backward, but stopped after only a couple of seconds. “A van just blocked us from behind,” the driver said.
“What the hell is going on?” the paramedic sitting with them asked.
“Nothing good,” Evan said. He pulled his gun out of his holster and held it up.
“Whoa,” the paramedic said, raising both hands. “What the hell, man?”
“Do you know who’s out there?” Anna asked Evan.
Everyone turned to stare at her with eyes wide and jaws loose.
Evan was the first to recover. “No, but—”
“Put your weapon away,” she ordered. Then added, “Please.”
He studied her face for a moment, then lowered his hand, though he didn’t holster the gun.
The rear doors of the ambulance rattled, then one side opened. At first, it was too bright outside and she couldn’t see who was standing there, then the other side opened and dispelled the shadows.
Two men stood there, dressed in suits with a decidedly Italian flair. They looked at everyone in the ambulance, then paused on her.
Both men smiled, showing off canines that had been filed sharp.
Enzo and Luca Agosti. An Italian family who were infected with the same disease as Anna and her family, then became the same kind of monster. It happened to them in the early fifteen hundreds, and they went on a rampage through their part of the world.
It took a few years for the news to reach Anna and her family, but she’d come to see them once it did. They’d been irritated to discover that they weren’t the only ones who were suddenly more than human. She’d had to have a very pointed conversation with them. They hadn’t liked taking orders from a woman then, and they still didn’t.
“Sirs,” the paramedic next to her said, the tone of his voice telling her he was confused. “Please, close the doors and allow us to take these injured people to the hospital.”
“Not taking very good care of your people, Anna?” Enzo asked, completely ignoring the man.
“You’re looking a bit worse for wear as well,” Luca said, with a smirk. “Looks like you had a bit of a headache.”
Enzo chuckled, a slimy, sarcastic sound.
Her rage, which had been simmering in the back of her head, flared up, nearly choking her. They knew . Those bastards. Those stupid, short-sighted bastards .
She would bet half of her very large fortune that they were behind the Homeland Security agent’s attack and kidnapping of her and Brian. But why would they do it? Giving any information to a government agent, especially one as high up as Ledger was...suicidal.
“Why?” she asked, tempering her tone with confusion rather than threat. If she wanted information, threats wouldn’t give it to her. Not with these two narcissistic, chauvinistic idiots. “We have a treaty.”
“Which is of no use to us,” Enzo said. “When it results in us getting picked off one at a time.”
Their words turned her anger into something colder and harder. “What are you talking about?”
The two Italians just grinned at her.
“Has boredom and paranoia driven you both mad or is there a real threat?” she asked, as if she didn’t care about the answer.
“Oh, it’s definitely boredom,” Enzo said.
“That and watching our Portuguese cousins get tortured by some secret organization,” Luca added.
“Until they were destroyed in a huge explosion,” Enzo said, with an empty kind of glee. “That certainly gave us a show to watch. We figure they were close to escaping and someone pressed their self-destruct button.”
“I was told that communication with them had been cut,” Anna said, frowning. “All of the them are dead?” she asked. “Are you sure?”
“Nothing could have survived that explosion,” Luca said. “We were attacked too. Most of our people are gone.” His face fell, but after a moment his empty grin came back. “That’s when we remembered. Your family has found potential.”
Both men looked at Brian.
They weren’t after her at all. They wanted what they didn’t have, more people with the potential to become vampires.
“What a pity you’ve both lost touch with reality,” she said, as she sat up straight and shifted her body to get off the gurney she was on. “Do you remember what I said to you the first time I had to clean up your mess? Do you remember what I promised?”
The smiles fell off their faces.
“You’re hardly in a position to deliver on those promises,” Enzo said, his lip curling in disgust.
“I don’t know what’s going on here—” the paramedic began.
Luca leaped toward him, hands reaching.
Anna was closer. She grabbed the paramedic by his collar and jerked him over her and up against the bank of latched metal storage boxes built into the side of the vehicle.
By the time he was sliding down to flop on the gurney next to her, she was reaching for Luca’s throat.
Pain bloomed in her chest as she wrapped her fingers around his neck. She squeezed hard enough to crush his trachea and esophagus, then grind the soft tissues into the bones of his spine.
Luca collapsed to his hands and knees, making a series of grunts and choking noises.
Why did her chest hurt so much? Anna looked down to see a knife hilt sticking out from between two of her ribs. He’d stabbed her in the heart.
The world grayed and her hearing became fuzzy with white noise.
Two loud shots, far too close to her ears, slapped her, grabbing her attention. She glanced up and saw Evan with his gun in his hands, pointed at Enzo, who now had bullet holes in his head and chest.
He dropped to his knees, then fell forward onto his face, hitting the edge of the ambulance. His body slithered out of sight.
Evan turned to look at her and his eyes widened. “Anna?”
She pointed at Luca, who was still trying to breathe and failing miserably. “Shoot him.”
Evan glanced down at the Italian, who was trying to push himself into a kneeling position. He had another knife in his free hand. He lurched forward, thrusting the knife at her face this time.
Evan shot the Italian before he could land his strike, point blank between the eyes. Luca recoiled and flopped onto the floor.
Anna reached up with her right hand, grabbed the hilt of the knife in her chest, and slowly pulled it out. The pain was excruciating, sharp and cold, as if she’d fallen into a deep crevasse of a glacier. She shivered, and the world faded again.
“Anna,” Evan shouted. He kicked Luca out of the way so he could put a hand over the wound. “Stay with me,” he ordered, as he pressed firmly, his face only a couple of inches from hers, his eyes ablaze with worry.
She covered his hand over her heart and held on. “I’m not going anywhere,” she promised, allowing herself to fall into his gaze. His focus was totally and completely on her. All his energy, intelligence, and desire was hers and it did something to her, altered her view of the world just a little. Made room for him on the very short list of people she trusted.
“What the hell?” The paramedic in the driver’s seat shouted. “Did you just kill those two guys? And where the hell is my partner?”
“I’m okay,” the paramedic she’d manhandled said, as he levered himself to his feet. “Just a little uncertain of how I got over here.” He blinked and tried to maneuver around Anna and Evan.
“Stay where you are,” Brian ordered, sounding confident and sure, nothing like he usually did.
Anna blinked. People seemed to have changed positions, but she didn’t think she’d lost consciousness.
“I’m FBI,” Brian continued. “He’s Army, and she’s a foreign diplomat. This was an assassination attempt.”
“Holy shit,” the driver breathed.
“We need to get moving before the killers try again,” Brian said.
“The people in the cars around us all ran away when the shooting started,” the driver said. “I’m stuck.”
“Can you force your way through?” Brian asked. “The FBI will cover the damage.”
Where had this take-charge version of Brian come from? And why hadn’t she seen him before?
“Tony?” the driver asked, looking at the paramedic in the back, making the name a question.
“Do it,” Tony said, looking around with a confused frown. “We’re all dead if someone else shows up and starts shooting in here.”
The driver put the ambulance into gear and moved forward until the bumper contacted the first of the cars blocking their way.
“Brace yourselves, this might get bumpy,” he said, and stepped on the gas.
Metal screeched and rubber scraped across the cement roadway. Then they hit the second car in front of them and the noise got worse.
Evan, his face pale, shifted back, slowly pulling his hand away from her chest. He waited for a moment, poised to continue putting pressure on the wound, but the bleeding had stopped.
He let out a big breath, but his gaze dropped to Luca, who was sprawled on the floor. He grabbed the Italian by his collar and the waistband of his expensive slacks and heaved him out of the back of the ambulance like he was a sack of rotten potatoes. His body hit the pavement with a meaty smack .
Tony the paramedic made an odd grunting sound of protest.
Evan closed the doors and locked them.
He looked at the paramedic as he sat down on the floor again. “He would have killed you if you hadn’t tripped over Anna,” Evan said to him. “You were nothing more than a door or a piece of furniture blocking the route to his goal.”
The ambulance jerked as they pushed past the cars, then gained speed.
“I don’t think there’s much damage to the front of the vehicle,” the driver called back. “The roll bars on the front did their job.”
Tony fell rather than sat next to Anna. “Who are you?” he asked. He was staring at her as if he’d never seen a human being before.
“I’m a government official in my country,” she replied. “Those two men are notorious European criminals. The police have been trying to track them down for some time as they are wanted for the assassination of other members of government.” She gave him a wan smile. “I didn’t think they’d try to kill me in the United States where so many people carry guns.”
The paramedic nodded, looked down, then frowned at something on the floor of the ambulance.
A fresh puddle of blood.
He looked around, first at the spot where Luca had fallen, but the two places were completely separate. His gaze rose slowly until it hit Anna at her chest.
“Holy...were you shot?” he asked, his voice rising with surprise instead of as a question.
“No,” Anna said, looking down. There was a lot of blood on the front of her shirt. Too much blood to blame it on a mere scrape or cut.
When in doubt, deflect. “I don’t know where this came from.”
The paramedic reached out with his hands to touch her, look for a wound, but she leaned away from him.
“I’m fine,” she said, in a firm voice.
He froze with his hands still extended toward her. “You might think you’re okay now, only to find out in thirty minutes or an hour that you have a life-threatening injury.”
When her only response was to raise both her eyebrows, he said, “I’ve seen it happen before. I had a guy who’d been stabbed, but he thought the assailant had hit him with the hilt of the knife, not the blade. He was fine, walking and talking, for about twenty minutes. Then he crashed. Hard. He’d been bleeding internally and didn’t know it. Adrenaline is great, until you run out of it, then you die.”
“I’m not hurt,” Anna said, then to satisfy his need to know, she pulled up her shirt until her abdomen was revealed. It showed some bruising, but no cut or stab mark. “I have so much blood on me, and I don’t know where most of it came from.”
Tony stared at the area as she released her shirt, his whole face rigid with tension. “Okay, then.” He tried pasting a smile on it, but it only made him look afraid. “Hey, I’m not complaining, I’m just doing my job.”
“I apologize,” she said, rubbing her face and letting her shoulders drop until she was nearly hunched over. “I haven’t slept in...a very long time and it’s making me overreact.”
“Roger,” Tony called. “How far out are we?”
“Three minutes,” the driver called back.
Her paramedic gave her a tight grin. “We’ll be at the hospital soon and get you completely checked out.”
He was trying so hard to be comforting and not freaked out.
She patted his hand and said, “Thank you.”
“We will also call the police, get you some protection.”
“You’re very kind. Oh...” She put a hand to her head and said, “I’m feeling dizzy, can I...?”
“Oh, of course.” The paramedic slid off the gurney so she could lay down.
He stepped in the various blood pools on the floor of the vehicle as he moved toward the front of the ambulance.
She glanced at Evan, who raised an eyebrow at her, and flashed him a smile. He didn’t smile back. The worry on his face wasn’t going anywhere.
Brian was texting on Evan’s throw away phone. When he finished, he looked at her and nodded.
She sighed. He thought their problems were over and everything would be fine, but like Evan, she was sure their problems were just beginning.
The ambulance slowed down, and the siren went silent. They entered a large parking garage that was about half full of ambulances.
As soon as the vehicle came to a stop, Tony opened the rear doors, then turned to Anna. “We’re going to check in with hospital security, make sure they’re aware of the danger to you.”
She heard the driver’s side door open and close. The other paramedic had gotten out. “Okay.”
The paramedic gave her, Evan, and Brian another tight smile, then went out the doors and disappeared.
“Paramedics don’t normally leave a patient alone,” Evan said, with a frown, his gun back in his hand.
“I think we freaked them out,” Brian said. “I bet you twenty bucks they come back with cops.”
“We need to be gone before that happens,” Anna said, getting to her feet. She wobbled a little. She couldn’t remember the last time she felt dizzy. “I need blood. Soon,” she whispered.
“Soon,” Evan said, making the word a promise.
He got up and stuck his head out between the rear doors and looked around. “Get ready to move,” he said to Anna and Brian.
Brian stood and put a hand under her elbow.
As soon as Evan hopped out and waved at them to follow, they also stepped down from the vehicle.
They walked casually toward the nearest exit sign.
Anna looked at herself, then Brian. “We need clean clothing.”
Brian gave her a flat look. “I need my head examined.”
Evan laughed, but made an effort to mask it with a cough.
They went out through a side door opposite the main entrance of the emergency room and found themselves in a small parking lot. Full of very expensive cars.
“Must be doctor’s parking,” Brian said.
“How do you figure that?” Evan asked.
“There are three Porsches, a Lamborghini, and a Rolls Royce parked here.”
“Good deduction,” Evan said. “Does our backup know where we are, or are we going to have to move from this location to find them?”
“He told me to wait here.”
Evan’s eyebrows rose, and he moved to stand between Brian and Anna. “He’s familiar with this hospital?”
“It’s more like he’s familiar with the parking lots of this hospital,” Brian said, looking at the gated entrance to the lot.
“What does our backup look like?” Evan asked.
“A yellow cab,” Brian said, glancing backward at Evan, then doing a double take. “What?” He looked around quickly. “Did I miss something?”
Evan didn’t reply.
She couldn’t see his face, since she was behind him, but she imagined Evan was giving Brian a hard stare.
Brian’s face morphed from confused and slightly alarmed to disappointed. “You think I’m setting her up? That bastard shot me, too. He’s absolutely nuts!”
Evan shrugged. “I’m probably more suspicious than a regular person. I am with Army Intelligence.”
“You’re saying you have a spy mentality?”
He shrugged. “It’s kept me alive this long.”
“Evan,” Anna said.
He turned so he could see her and Brian at the same time.
“A yellow cab means my son is coming.”
“Your son? I was only aware of your nephew.”
“Yes, my son. He’s the dirty sheep of the family.”
“Black sheep,” Brian muttered. “We say black sheep.”
Movement near the parking lot entrance had everyone’s attention. It was a yellow cab. The driver stopped at the gate and flashed his headlights once.
“That’s Baz,” Brian said, walking toward the car.
Evan didn’t immediately follow. “Baz? As in Bazyli Breznik?”
Anna walked up to him. “Yes, have you investigated him?”
He looked at her. “No, I know him. I served with him a few years ago. The thing is, no one knows you have a son.”
“Only people in our, admittedly small, circle know.”
“How did you hide him?”
“I didn’t. He walked away from the world five hundred years ago and refused to have anything to do with the rest of us.”
“Why?”
She sighed. “That is a very long story. We should go before someone else shows up.”
He grunted. “The way today is going, it could be the Marines.” He walked next to her as they approached the car.
Bazyli was looking at them through the passenger side window and he was staring at Evan hard.
Brian got into the front passenger seat, leaving the back seat for her and Evan. They got in and Baz put the car in gear, driving away from the hospital.
“Gunn,” he said, his tone flat.
“It’s good to see you, Baz,” Evan replied, sounding a lot happier than Baz was.
No one said anything for a few seconds, not until they were well away from the hospital.
“How did you get caught up in whatever the hell is going on?” Baz asked, his voice casual, as if the question was completely unimportant.
Anna had heard that tone in her son’s voice before. Right before he had to make a decision he didn’t want to make. She cleared her throat. “He’s a...friend.”
“A friend?” Baz asked, laughing. “You don’t have any friends. You have relatives, underlings, and occasionally allies, but no friends. Try again.”
Evan coughed. “To be precise, my grandfather was her friend. During the Second World War.”
“Oh yeah, that makes it so much better.” Baz met her gaze in the rearview mirror. “What happened to nobody knows the family business, mom?”
“It was war.” She shrugged. “Poop happened.”
“Shit happened,” Brian muttered. “We say, shit happened.”
“Once again with the shit,” Anna said. “Americans use that word for so many things. Sometimes good things, sometimes bad.” She shook her head. “It’s very confusing.”
Evan chuckled.
Baz glared at her via the mirror. “Keep laughing Gunn, because you won’t be if I decide you need to die.”
“You’re not going to touch him,” she said. It wasn’t a suggestion or a request, it was an order.
The silence in the car sat on her shoulders and gained weight with each passing second.
“Why not?” Baz asked.
Because he didn’t look at her with fear in his eyes.
Because he smiled at her, and it wasn’t fake.
Because he made her feel things she hadn’t felt in years.
She couldn’t say any of it.
“Because he blew up a building to aid in our escape.”
“And damn near got all of us killed,” Brian said.
“Ledger was going to kill you,” Evan said to Brian. “He planned to kill you and I, and torture Anna.”
“Sounds like it was a huge bonding experience for you,” Bazyli drawled.
“It’s a fucking problem because Ledger is the Counterterrorism Coordinator for Homeland Security,” Evan said. “And stop acting like an asshole. You’re better than that.”
“Are you sure?”
“Baz, you proved it more than once over in the sandbox. Acting like the heavy now just makes me want to laugh some more.”
“ Fuck ,” Baz swore. “Counterterrorism? That’s not a problem. That’s a fucking nightmare.” He abruptly turned a corner and stepped on the gas.
“He’s not our only problem,” Anna said. “The Agosti brothers tried to steal Brian from the back of the ambulance we were in.”
“I shot both of them in the head,” Evan said, helpfully.
“And then we had the paramedics just drive us away,” Brian added, waving his hand toward the big wide world.
Baz didn’t say anything. Nothing. Nada.
Not a good sign.
“I believe the Agosti brothers told this Ledger that I have...abilities.”
“Ledger told me he’d gotten information about Anna, fast healing and other superhuman abilities,” Evan added. “But didn’t say how he’d gotten the info, or who gave it to him.”
“We are supposed to be a secret,” Baz growled. “We are supposed to stay off law enforcement radar,” he got louder and louder with every word. “And now we are on everyone’s radar.”
“Huh,” Brian said, into the following silence. “When you say it like that, it sounds really bad.”
“Where are we going?” Anna asked. “This direction won’t take us to Manhattan.”
“Going to Yvgeny’s place would make it easy for any of the people looking for you. No, we’re going someplace else.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe this. All those years of you lecturing me and the rest of the family. Hell, the rest of all of us whackos, and you’re the one who ends up outing us.”
“I am a victim of someone else’s greed for power,” Anna told him, with as much dignity as she could manage, dressed in bloody and burned clothing.
“Yeah,” Baz said, sounding tired. “It’s the golden rule. Someone else is always responsible.”
He drove them through a quiet neighborhood, past a diner, and parked the car in front of a small bar.
He turned around, taking a long look at Evan. “It’s not open yet, but Joe will be in the kitchen. I’m going to the back door. Stay in the car until I open the front door for you. Got it?” He looked at each of them in turn.
“Of course,” Anna said.
“Sure,” Evan said, with a casual shrug.
“Got it,” Brian said, sounding like he was either going to pass out or run screaming from the car. One of his legs was bouncing up and down so fast it looked like it was vibrating.
She’d have to watch him.
Baz got out and slammed the door. He walked down the street, then disappeared into an alley.
Evan turned to her and grinned. It was terribly out of place.
She narrowed her eyes. “What?”
“I’m beginning to see the similarities between the two of you.”
She reared back. “Bazyli and I are nothing alike.”
His grin turned wry. “You both care too much.”
“Care?” She rolled her eyes. “Baz doesn’t care about much.”
“He talks a good game,” Evan said, with a shrug. “Calls everyone on their bullshit and attempts at manipulation, but when it counts, when lives are on the line...he doesn’t hesitate to step in, to do the hard job.”
Baz popped out of the bar’s front door at that moment.
“He’s incredibly dependable,” Evan finished, putting his hand on the door handle.
“Don’t say that to him,” she suggested in a low voice. “He gets grumpy when someone tries to tell him he’s anything less than evil.”
“That hasn’t changed then.” Evan shook his head. “The man needs therapy.”
“I need therapy,” Brian said sourly, as he opened the car door and got out. “Lots and lots of therapy.”
Evan and Anna followed him onto the sidewalk, then into the building.
“I smell barbeque sauce,” Anna said.
She looked around. The décor was dated, but its theme of a neighborhood bar was timeless. The tables and chairs looked used, but not shabby, and the bar was one large gleaming piece of wood. Perhaps giant sequoia? Someone took care of it.
Along one wall was a collage of photographs, with the bar’s interior as a backdrop. Patrons grinned, toasted each other, and otherwise had a good time.
Anna walked over to study the photos. Yes, Baz was in more than one picture. Hovering at the edge of the crowd with a disgruntled smile on his face. She shook her head. He almost looked constipated.
“Mom,” Baz said, standing next to a table. “Come and sit down. You look like you’ve been through a war.” He frowned. “I’m going to have Nika pick up some clothes for you and the kid.”
“Would everyone please stop calling me that,” Brian grumbled.
“Sure, we will,” Baz replied. “In another ten years or so.”
Anna studied Brian. The pulse on his neck attracted her gaze. He was young and healthy, and he wouldn’t miss a pint if she took a few sips.
She took a step toward him, and ran into Evan. Anna blinked and frowned. She hadn’t seen him move.
She met his gaze. “What?”
“Thirsty?” he asked, in a low tone.
Anna glanced around. Somehow, she’d crossed the space between herself and Brian without realizing it. He stood very still right behind Evan, his wide eyes full of fear and hurt.
This was not good. It meant she needed to feed, and soon, or she might do something unforgivable.
“Mom, when did you last eat?” Baz asked.
“A couple of days ago. I normally wouldn’t want more for another day or two, but I’ve lost a lot of blood to injuries, and...” She tore her gaze off Brian and looked at Evan.
He smiled and angled his head to one side. Offering unrestrictive access to his vein.
She took a step toward him, and another, into his personal space, until she was pressed up against him. “Yes,” she whispered, against his skin. He smelled delicious, musky and strong.
Someone cleared their throat.
Evan stiffened a little under her hands, and she realized she’d slid her arms around him.
Lapses in her memory were not good. She could hurt him, take too much blood in this condition.
“Let’s take this into the bathroom,” he growled in her ear.
She heard him, but the scent and taste of his skin drove away all her words.
He tried to move, direct her somewhere, but that would mean she’d have to give up the ambrosia of his skin on her tongue.
He bent a little at the knees and picked her up, carrying her the few steps to the lady’s bathroom.
She vaguely noted him shouldering open the door and stepping inside the dark space. A single emergency light provided the only illumination in the small room.
She scraped her teeth across the tendon in his neck and he stumbled a step before catching himself.
She did it again, and he groaned in her ear. “Anna.”
Her butt hit a flat surface, and he pushed her legs apart with his hips so he could stand between her legs. An impressive erection pressed against her sex and for the first time in many, many years, desire heated her belly.
Drinking blood from a willing donor had never included sex for her before, but with Evan...it was intoxicating.
“Can you control how much you drink?” he asked, a sexy growl in his voice.
“Yes.”
“Then drink.” It was an order.
She licked over the big vein in his neck. “Are you sure?”
His breathing was deep and uneven. “Fuck, yeah.”
“Hmm,” she hummed, as she licked him again. Then she bit down as gently as she could until she’d punctured the vein with only one of her teeth. The tiny single hole meant she had to sip at him slowly, savoring every mouthful of blood.
He gasped and thrust his hips against her. There was no fear in him, not in his body or scent. His trust, his need, stoked her desire higher.
She moved her right hand to his cock and stroked him through his clothing as she slowly sucked another mouthful of blood from him. Another, and another.
“Anna,” he gasped, twisting his hips and grinding his cock against her.
She licked the wound she’d made in his neck until it closed over. In a minute, it would be unnoticeable.
She took her hand off his cock and slid it behind his head, pulling him down so she could kiss him.
As soon as his mouth touched hers, he groaned and kissed her like he was a starving man, all teeth and tongue and voracious need.
It seemed to take forever before he lifted his head to stare down at her with a gaze ablaze with longing. “Did you get enough blood?”
“Yes, thank you.”
He stroked her back with one large hand. “Is it...always like this when you drink from someone?”
“Like we’re having sex?” she shook her head. “No. I’ve never felt anything like this before with anyone.” She glanced at his neck. “It was a completely new experience for me, and that’s...rare.”
Half his mouth turned upward. “Good. When you need blood, you come to me.”
She frowned. “That might not be practical. If we’re separated or if you’re hurt...” She didn’t want to think about him getting hurt, but she had to be logical.
He rested his forehead against hers, as if he needed to touch her with more than just his hands. “If I’m available, you come to me,” he ordered.
“Yes,” she said, her body cradling his. She pulled him tighter into her and hugged him. “I don’t understand what just happened,” she said, in a small voice.
He rubbed her back. “Some things are better felt than thought,” he said, in her ear. “And a lot has happened in the last few hours. Let things sit in the back of your head for a while. Give your brain a chance to sort through it all.”
His expression was wide open and full of satisfied happiness. If he looked like this when they left the bathroom, everyone who saw him would know that she did more than just feed from him.
But they hadn’t even taken their clothes off, and he’d kept his hands on her back and head. Still, the pleasure had been intense, and they both smelled faintly of arousal.
He backed up, letting her slide off the counter. Then he took her hand, and they walked out of the bathroom.
Baz and Brian were sitting at a table where they could watch Evan and herself come out. Baz studied them for a moment, then wiped his face with one hand. “This got complicated in a hurry.”
“Oh, stop fussing, Bazyli,” Anna said.
“I think,” Baz said slowly. “We need to start with in depth introductions, then we can get into what the hell happened to you.”
“Agreed,” Evan said. “I’ll start.” He gave everyone a tight smile. “My name is Evander Gunn. I’m an Army Intelligence officer. I’ve been in that role for almost five years. I served with Baz in Afghanistan. I had no idea you and Anna were related.”
“How do you know my Mom?” Baz asked. “Start at the very beginning.”
“My grandfather was in the Ghost Army during WWII. He told me stories when I was young about this fearless French resistance fighter. It wasn’t until he was dying of cancer that he told me that Anna wasn’t like other people. I have to say, I didn’t believe him. I figured his Anna died of old age. He gave me a picture he drew of her back then. Imagine my surprise when she turned up at an international financial meeting. And again, at another high-level meeting in a different country. I didn’t know for certain that his Anna and mine were the same until I was shown a video of Anna healing from a head wound.”
“You were shown a video?” Baz asked.
“Homeland Security made a request of Army Intelligence for an experienced interrogator to question a suspected terrorist. I was assigned the job.”
Baz looked at her. “You were the terrorist ?” He put air quotes around the last word.
“I was never called that. I heard the words creature and something other than human .”
“I was told,” Evan continued, “That Homeland was given information about Anna. I only heard some of it. Ledger obviously had more, but hadn’t shared it with anyone. He seemed paranoid about who found out.”
“So, Homeland Security is going to be looking for you?” Baz asked Anna.
She bared her teeth at her son. “I’ve got diplomatic immunity.”
“Ledger fucked up,” Evan said. “He was running his own operation completely outside of Homeland Security. He planned to kill me and anyone else who had any knowledge of Anna, including our baby FBI agent. I have him on tape.”
“So, he might come at us, but he also might have hamstrung himself.”
“Yes.” Evan grinned with all his teeth on display. “I destroyed all his evidence. All he can do is try to grab her again.”
Baz looked at Brian. “How are you involved?”
“I was in the same car as Anna when she was shot in the head by Ledger. He then shot me and kept a gun on me while he watched me bleed for several minutes. He told the FBI that Anna and I were killed in a car accident and fire.”
“That was dumb.”
Brian rubbed his hands together, then winced. “I can’t wait to report in at the FBI office and make him look like an idiot at best, and a lying sack of shit at worst.”
“The Agosti brothers are a bigger danger than Ledger is at the moment,” Anna said. “They’re after Brian for his potential, and I would assume Nika and Samantha as well.” She thought about how quickly the Agosti’s found the ambulance. “They may have been observing the military base.”
“They might not be the only ones we have to worry about,” Baz said.
“What do you mean?”
“There have been sightings of other family reps in the city from China, Japan, and India. We could be fighting a war on several fronts.”
“We don’t have the resources for that,” Anna said. “None of us do.”
“I don’t think they care. I think they’re so scared, they’re willing to do anything to be in control.”
“In control of what?”
“Anything, I suppose.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Brian said, putting up one of his hands in a stop gesture. “They want to try to make us into vampires?” Brian asked. “ Me into a vampire?”
“Yeah,” Baz said. “But it’s not something we recommend. Most of the people who try it, die. Sam is the only one we’ve found who has a better chance of surviving the process, but even she is only at about fifty percent.”
“It would be an act of desperation,” Anna said.
“So, you’re saying I’m being hunted by vampires and Homeland Security?”
“Probably. Lucky you.” Baz got up and went to the bar. He pulled a couple of pints of beer and brought them over to Brian and Evan. “Here, drink at least some alcohol.”
Brian gulped his down without hesitation.
Evan stared at his beer for a moment. “Why? What does alcohol do?”
Anna hesitated. If she answered his question, was she handing a weapon to an enemy?
As she studied him, he leaned forward. “Whatever it is, I won’t use it against you, Anna.”
Trust was not easy, but he’d gotten her and Brian out of that base when it didn’t benefit him at all.
She needed to make a decision.
She nodded. “Alcohol is a poison to us. It acts like a strong acid on our tissues. Leaving blisters and if exposed to enough, will eat through organs. Even a little bit in the bloodstream of a donor can cause a lot of internal damage to us. It is incredibly painful.”
“But Baz drinks the blood of people who’ve consumed alcohol,” Brian said. “Right?”
“Yes, he does, and he goes through all that pain every time, but instead of killing him, it made him stronger.”
“Ouch.”
“He’s been drinking the blood of alcoholics for five hundred years, which is why he’s so popular at places like this. The patrons don’t know they’re donating a little blood to him after they pass out in his car. They do know that when he drives them home, they don’t have a hangover the next day.”
“Wait, he syphons the alcohol out of their systems?” Brian asked.
Anna nodded. “So he tells me.”
Everyone looked at Baz, who seemed completely preoccupied with his phone and what he was reading on it.
Brian picked up his glass and gulped down a few swallows.
Evan also took a sip or two, but not very much.
Baz suddenly got up and went to the front door. He came back with his girlfriend, Nika.
She was wearing jeans, a dark blue shirt, and a jacket almost the same color as the shirt. She also had a handgun in a holster on her right hip, and a police badge clipped in front of the gun on her belt. She held a large bag in one hand.
She looked at everyone in the room, pausing the longest on Evan. “Who’s the soldier?”
Baz quickly explained who Evan was and their current situation.
Nika stayed silent through the entire story, then said, “Okay, we’re finally getting somewhere.”
Everyone looked at her like she’d lost her mind.
“Seriously, I’ve been looking for the motive for the human trafficking and why some of these vampire families seem to be at least peripherally involved. It isn’t just about Sam. It’s about anyone with potential.”
Baz looked like he’d swallowed something horrible.
Nika rubbed his back and handed the bag to Anna. “Here, some clean clothes for you and boy wonder.”
Brian looked at her with his nose wrinkled up. “I think I like kid better.”