Chapter 7
At first she thought the guys had gone out for donuts and left her to sleep in, as they sometimes did; she deeply disliked the feeling of being abandoned, sure, but a few hours of peace and quiet almost made up for it.
As a bonus, there were no nightmares, unless she counted a particular vivid dream about being trapped in a deteriorating warehouse while a terrifying invisible force whisked her squad one by one into darkness.
Before she opened her eyes, Layla could even pretend the slight headache was a combination of summer dehydration and missing the morning coffee call. Her throat felt raspy and there was an odd heaviness in her limbs, like the fourth-day echo of a super hard workout with one of Shawn’s crew.
Thinking of O’Shaughnassey so early in the morning was a bad sign. Layla groaned, rubbed at her face with nearly numb palms, and draped an arm across her eyes. The outside world could goddamn well wait for a few more minutes.
Doozy of a dream. I almost thought…
It was so quiet. And blessedly, wonderfully cool, though she was under tangled covers and her T-shirt had ridden up but good.
She’d slept in her jeans again, ugh. Plus, her surroundings outright smelled wrong—no overlapping mildew, old pizza, and gun oil, but canned air, heavily sprayed Pledge, and industrial-strength fabric detergent.
That wasn’t a dream. Sudden, inarguable certainty, rising like a shark in dark water. Then the instinctive certainty she was being watched arrived, unwelcome and familiar; memory flooded in, a bright, nasty collage of terror.
“Good evening,” the vampire said, and Layla was out of the bed like a shot.
The sheets and coverlet tried to stop her, wrapped like clinging seaweed, but she scrambled free—harsh lick of rugburn against her right palm, her knee hitting the pink-carpeted floor hard enough to click her teeth together—and threw herself for the door she must have somehow, on some level, remembered.
Or she tried to. Less than halfway there a pair of iron-hard arms closed around her and she was lifted off madly flailing sock feet.
She writhed, attempting to elbow him, to shake free, to kick, but wild motion made absolutely zero difference.
A hot, dry palm closed over her mouth, trapping a despairing scream, and a deep, imperturbable male voice purred near her ear, muffled by tangled hair and the thumping of her panicked heart.
“Hush, shhh, little Leila. Be still, pax, I do not wish to harm you. Shush, now. Please.”
She clamped her teeth into the hand, hard. A low, nearly disbelieving laugh brushed her hair, warm breath touching her cheek. She was sweating again, despite the air conditioning. Her nose was clear, but maybe that wouldn’t last and she’d suffocate with a biter holding her face.
OhGod please, please don’t let me die. She went limp, lungs heaving, air whistling faintly through her nostrils.
“Very good.” A faint tremor passed through the steel bars holding her as the vampire inhaled, deeply; he sounded, of all things, almost businesslike. “I am going to take my hand away. If you scream again I will stopper your mouth, very pleasantly. Nod if you understand.”
What the fuck? But she did get, very clearly, that he didn’t want her to yell, and maybe she could figure out a way to survive this if she played along for a few minutes. Watching for an opening, waiting for a chance—oh, she knew all about that.
Sometimes opportunity didn’t bother to arrive, but Meemaw Cathy always said chance favored the prepared. And that was good enough.
Layla managed a tiny nod, chin dipping, rising again. Then she had to loosen her jaw as he worked his hand free of her teeth. At least she hadn’t drawn blood.
Vampire blood. Too late—he bit you, goddammit. You know what that means.
One problem at a time, Layla decided grimly, and was finally able to get enough breath into her aching lungs. Violent trembling poured through arms, legs, all the rest of her; she hoped he didn’t think she was still fighting.
“Now,” he continued, as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world, “I am going to set you on the bed. Please be cautious, little Leila, and move slowly. I have… certain instincts, and they are a little difficult to control at the moment. Again, nod if you understand.”
Oh, God. But she nodded once more, trying to make the movement at once definite and conciliatory.
What the fuck did he want with her? Most of his file was simply a list of sightings, generally right before another high-powered biter vanished; Shawn’s second-in-command Feargus had even made the grim joke that maybe Nemesis was a cannibal, cleaning up his own kind.
There was another list in the folder as well—hunter groups which had brushed up against this particular biter and dropped off the map.
Sucked into a black hole, maybe with a little ulp sound like Ben made when…
The biter glided backward, carrying her along as if she weighed less than nothing, and finally halted next to the tangled pink bed.
The leashed strength was just as terrifying when he set her, lightly and with exquisite control, on numb feet.
Her legs threatened to give way, rubbery as overboiled noodles, and he steadied her.
“Careful,” he murmured. “There. Down.”
Her ass hit the bed. It was hard to stay sitting upright instead of sliding right off the edge and ending to the floor; she managed, ignoring the mattress’s faint squeak, and squeezed her eyes shut.
Her hands knotted together in her lap, like she was waiting in the principal’s office after some playground prank.
Then it occurred to her she might as well see her own death coming, so she forced her eyelids open again and snuck a quick glance upward.
Same black sweater, on a disturbingly broad chest she now knew was stone-hard, plus warmer than it should be even through a layer of heavy knitted wool.
He went still for a moment, and the blank look on his face was utterly terrifying, as if he’d forgotten how to make the human mask work.
How did anyone mistake these creatures for people, especially at short range?
Maybe biters only let henchmen and hypnotized employees close enough to see the thousand subtle signals adding up to this thing just ain’t right?
Looming over her like this, he was even more terrifying than last night. If that were possible.
The vampire dropped fluidly into a crouch, finishing the movement by peering up at her through a shelf of dark curls fallen over his forehead.
Except for the eerie gracefulness and the way he went utterly, creepily motionless right afterward, it could almost have been kind of comforting, a guy deliberately making himself smaller as if he understood female caution.
“Hello,” the biter known as Nemesis said, gravely. “You are very frightened.”
No shit. Layla swallowed hard, dry throat giving a tiny forlorn click. She nodded, and once she started, she couldn’t seem to stop for a few seconds. Her head bobbed vigorously, until the entire plush, pinkish—Meemaw would call it dusty rose—room seesawed like a ship on high storm-waves.
His mouth curved into, of all things, a smile. It wasn’t bad, especially as the corners of his eyes crinkled a bit, but the thought that he might show his teeth was suddenly, overwhelmingly too much.
So she froze. At least that stopped the nodding; she felt like a goddamn bobble-head attached to a dashboard.
“And very brave.” As if conferring a favor, one of her very least favorite tones for a man to take. But the vampire probably couldn’t care less what she thought right now, or ever. “You know what I am.”
She was trembling almost too hard to breathe, Layla realized. Her head now felt even funnier, light and stuffed with cotton. He’d bitten her; how much blood had he taken? Was she running a few pints short?
Was she a vampire’s juice box now? A self-sustaining snack?
“Say it, little Leila.” A soft, coaxing tone, again adding an extra syllable to her name.
Worst of all, he was smiling—just a little, as if he meant to be encouraging, lips curving upward but so horribly stiff, as if he didn’t really remember how to grin correctly.
“Let me hear you, so I know you understand.”
Oh, Christ. What answer did he want? “You’re a biter,” she heard herself whisper. Hard to talk with her teeth wanting to chatter, her tongue tangled-numb with terror. “A v-vampire.”
“Sanguinant is the term we prefer, but you are not incorrect.” A considering look, measuring her for God-alone-knew what. His dark gaze was so flat, so closed-off, he could give anyone the heebie-jeebies with just a glance. “You know of the demimonde, then.”
It was one thing to have Shawn or one of his guys lecture on proper terminology. It was entirely different to have an honest-to-goshness fanged sonofabitch lecture her—especially so casually, patient and expectant as a teacher with a distracted student.
“A little.” She couldn’t speak above a pained, strained little-girl mutter.
“I won’t tell anyone, I promise. I swear.
” She hated begging, was helpless not to.
Her palms were both sweaty and cold, her throat ached, and waves of scorching and freezing alternated, roaring up and down her entire body like a pair of small dogs fighting over a plush toy.
This was the nicest hotel room she’d ever been in, and she was going to die here.
“Be calm, sweet Leila. You are in no danger.” Calmly, as if he thought she’d believe him.
He didn’t even twitch every so often to adjust his balance, like a human would.
No, he just crouched like a gargoyle statue—or a cat contemplating the next helpless, unwitting bird it was about to snack on. “Now, have you ever heard of leman?”
Wait, what? Is that Spanish? Limonada, or… wait, lemon? What the fuck did furniture polish have to do with all this? Or… did he mean lemonade? Was she supposed to mix beverages; did he want a fucking bartender?
Bet he drinks Bloody Marys. The dark, screaming hilarity was a bad sign, and the shaking intensified. Soon she was going to fly apart, in a million pieces all over industrial mauve nylon carpet. What would he do if she tried to escape now? Catch her again, maybe.
But perhaps, just possibly, she could make it.
Stock-still, patient, the vampire waited for her answer. No doubt he was just playing with his food. Either way, the urge to bolt crested, and Layla gave in, rocketing to her feet. If she could just reach the door—
Unfortunately, he was faster.
The world flipped onto its side—no, she was thrown flat on her back across the already-muddled bed, and her arms flailed uselessly. There was a harsh rip of fabric, cold air hitting now-bare legs, and her despairing scream was trapped as the vampire’s mouth closed over hers.
His tongue probed insistently, a strange, sweet taste spreading numbness against her teeth; her knees were shoved far apart as his hips settled against her inner thighs.
No leverage, her attempt to scoot away doomed to failure; the bed gave a small forlorn creak as a hot, insistent iron bar probed at her most sensitive juncture.
Her T-shirt rasped against tangled sheets below and his sweater above; the contrast between its thin comfort and her utterly bare lower half—save for sock feet, her heels scraping against wadded comforter and more thrash-tangled sheets—adding to the confusion.
Another instinctive attempt to wriggle free, the world painted dark red with panic, a stretching and invasion.
He surged into her, a single thrust sinking deep, and Layla realized what was happening just as another odd, stroking pressure settled a little higher, massaging where nobody else had ever touched her before—her two high school quasi-boyfriends had been strictly limited to above-the-belt petting, and afterward she’d avoided all intimate contact, vaguely repulsed by the thought of further sweaty, greedy male bumbling.
Fire arced up Layla’s spine; her back arched, another long trailing cry boiled in her throat, and the creature above her sank a fraction deeper.
He braced on his elbows, muscle-corded forearms across her biceps, effectively pinning her flat.
A strange rumbling growl spread from his chest, vibrating in her own bones.
He thrust again, and again, Layla’s body shuddering helplessly under the onslaught.
One of his thumbs brushed her cheek, almost a caress; his fingers on the others side threaded into her hair.
Familiar pressure rose—as if she were rocking on her own fingers late at night, safe in a familiar bed instead of pinned under a heavy inescapable weight.
Her body didn’t care. It had been tormented by endless fear, exhaustion, the interminable awful strain of staying alert to variable male moods, suppressing the cold white glare of grief, and so much else.
Slick hot impossible pleasure spilled through her, a luxuriating relief from all uncertainty, all the dread and second-guessing of her own thoughts.
Tossed over the tipping point, nerves sparking, muscles locking in waves as excruciating pleasure tore through every inch, her body took what was offered.
Slack and unresisting, her mouth was full of a candied-metal taste; a single thread dribbled past the fire in her throat.
Again and again the pulses tore through her, all coherent thought lost, only an endless now.
For her very first time, it wasn’t bad.