Blood-Bonded by Force (14 page)

Crumpet howled.

Curses erupted from the warriors.

Nichita gave Pändra a steady look. “I need your help,” he told her quietly. “Thomal has to get your scent into his head, okay?”

Feeling right knackered at this point, she didn’t protest when Nichita propelled Thomal toward her again, pressing him right up against her body. With a hand on the back of Thomal’s head, Nichita angled his friend’s face into her neck.

She stood there, arms limp at her sides. Her body hummed as Thomal’s breath hit her flesh in ragged bursts. If memory served, this bloke’s bite gave quite a lot of pleasure and, as shagged out as she felt at present, she could stand with a bit of that. “He’s warmed a bit,” she told Nichita.

Nichita pulled Thomal back. “Hit him again, Doc,” he told Natty.

Natty set his probes. The small bulb reignited.

Thomal came awake with a shout, thrashing in Nichita’s embrace, his body convulsing and his legs kicking out.

His left foot missed Pändra by mere millimeters.

“Hey, man, it’s me, Dev. Everything’s fine. Your woman’s here and you gotta feed now, okay?” Nichita placed Thomal against Pändra once more.

Thomal’s chin came to rest on her shoulder and he shuddered against her, a jumble of quaking, shivering muscles, his body jerking over and over. A low growl reverberated out of him and then his head came up, his eyes locking on hers like blue laser beams.

The two of them stood frozen in place, suspended in a strange tableau for she didn’t know how long. She started to speak, but…what was she supposed to say?
So sorry about all that raping bosh, my good man, didn’t mean to give offense
seemed…rather gauche. She wasn’t sure if she was sorry, anyway.

Thomal broke contact first. With another low growl, he lurched against Nichita’s hold and drove his fangs into her throat.

She tensed, then air eased out of her lungs. His bite didn’t hurt this time. She gripped his shoulders as the sound of his frantic gulping filled the garage. Her eyesight grew fuzzy at the corners, but she still could make out Nichita, forehead bowed to the middle of Thomal’s back, and everyone else in the garage, also with lowered heads, as if to give them privacy for some intimate act. But they were only—

Oh, my giddy aunt
. Her belly liquefied. She’d bloody well forgotten how intense the pleasure of this was. A quiet moan slid out of her before she could catch it back. She was suddenly sitting on a volcano, hot lava ecstasy boiling up all around her, lifting her up until it felt like she was floating outside of her own body on a cloud of steam. The heated sensations seeped into every cell, swirling through her body in hundreds of mini twisters that funneled directly into her naughty bits. Her knees turned to porridge, joining her belly in the land of mush. She dug her fingers into Thomal’s shoulders as her nethers throbbed with a primal, aching need, wetness slicking the area. She arched in his hold, only a thin remnant of willpower keeping her from slamming her hips forward into Thomal’s and biting him back: his earlobe, his throat, his nipples…

With a torn breath, Thomal extracted those lovely ivories from her neck and surged back against Nichita.

She stumbled out of Thomal’s hold, her lungs working heavily.

Thomal’s eyes glinted like sapphires, his cheeks ruddy with color. His wanger was erect as a Scottish caber in his trousers.

She swallowed carefully.
Intimate, indeed
. Her own knickers were practically stuck to her.

Nichita lifted his head. “How’re you doing, man? Can you stand now?”

Thomal didn’t answer. His chest moving, he kept his attention nailed on her, his face a churning cauldron of savage emotions, too many for her to read. She was savvy enough to ken most weren’t good, though.

Tonĩ broke the spell. “Oh, crap,” she hissed.

They all turned around.

Visible over the backseat of the Lincoln Town Car were two identical faces, both wearing the same expression of utter, jaw-breaking shock.

Faith and Kacie Teague had regained consciousness and been watching this drama play out for…how long?

To judge by the looks on their faces, they’d seen every blooming thing.

Chapter Fifteen

Faith sat with the cup and saucer balanced on her knees, the tea cold, the spoonful of honey she’d added two hours ago congealed at the bottom like a modern art blob. She’d barely been able to swallow, much less drink anything, during Dr. Parthen’s lengthy explanation of everything that had…happened…in that garage.

All three of them, Faith, Kacie, and Dr. Tonĩ Parthen, were currently gathered in the sitting area of a well-appointed bedroom located on the third floor of some glorious mansion. The door to the room was decorated with an opulently painted mural of a Flamenco dancer in traditional Spanish dress, her skirts flared out in swirl of color against the backdrop of a soaring cathedral.

Inside, the décor was equally dramatic. The walls were covered with dark red velvet wallpaper inlaid with golden whorls, a huge four-poster bed had swags of gold cloth draping the canopy, and over in the sitting area, where they were now, a three-foot-tall earthenware urn was filled with bright silk flowers of the type a Flamenco dancer might wear in her hair. The three of them were seated on iron-framed, black-cloth-upholstered furniture, Dr. Parthen in an armchair, Faith and Kacie on a couch.

When the doctor had first arrived, a man in a white serving coat had trailed her inside, pushing a tea cart. As if Darjeeling, scones, triangle-cut cucumber sandwiches, and salmon canapés—none of which a ballet dancer would eat, by the way—could soften the blow of what was about to come next.
Not quite
.

“I realize everything I’ve just told you sounds far-fetched.” Dr. Parthen’s slim hands were folded in her lap, her legs elegantly crossed.

Far-fetched
? Faith smiled wanly. According to the last two hours’ worth of explanations, they were currently in a town built inside a subterranean cave, complete with its own plumbing, electricity, Internet, houses, a water park, football field, movie theatre, several restaurants, and myriad shops. It was a refuge for a human species called Vârcolac. This species’ blood makeup was different from “regular” humans, requiring them to frequently ingest blood by biting a host using a set of…No, she couldn’t even think that word.

Oh, and also demons, referred to as Om Rău, lived in a neighboring town and caused all kinds of trouble. Up in the city of San Diego, which was “topside,” there was another group of these nasty characters under the leadership of the now-infamous Raymond Parthen. This Raymond had wanted to capture Faith and her sister for some kind of special DNA they possessed—looked like Wolverine had been telling the truth at the airport—called “Dragon.” This was the same gene which most of the other humans living in this town carried…except Faith and Kacie owned a
supercalifragilisticexpialidocious version of it, making them
Royal
Dragons. Faith sighed. Like most little girls, she had once dreamed of waking up one day to find out she was actually a princess, but
this
wasn’t exactly what she’d had in mind by being dubbed royalty.

Honestly, she didn’t know what she’d had in mind after seeing all she had in that garage. She and Kacie had been left alone in this bedroom for only about fifteen minutes before Dr. Parthen had arrived with the tea. In that short time, “ketamine-induced hysteria” and “cruel prank” were about all they’d come up with. Unfortunately, everything they’d seen had looked very real.

Drawing a shallow breath, Faith scrunched her toes together inside her shoes, rubbing her calluses together. Too much excitement with Adonis, Wolverine, and their aberrant gang, plus being drugged, were making her punchy. Not to mention that everything had happened after a cross-continental flight which had landed her in California with three hours of jet lag; her body said it was 1:00 o’clock in the early morning, her watch read 10:00 at night local San Diego time, but down here, it was actually 10:00 in the morning. She was really starting to feel like vomiting should be her next course of action.

Dr. Parthen smiled reassuringly. “Luckily, you two are way ahead of where most people begin when they come to Ţărână. You’ve already seen for yourselves the truth of everything I’ve described.”

They had, at that
.
Faith swallowed tautly, the tea cup
clinking
softly beneath her trembling fingers.

“Do you have any more questions?” Dr. Parthen asked.

Faith pushed to her feet and crossed to the tea cart, setting her cup and saucer down on it. “I just think…we need some time to let everything percolate for a bit, doctor.”

“Of course. Take all the time you need.” Dr. Parthen rose from her chair. “The Lucerne room two doors down has been prepared for your use, as well.” Apparently every bedroom door in his mansion was painted with a different European theme to distinguish one from the other. “Rest a bit, and I’ll be back at dinnertime to give you two a tour of the town. Hopefully when you see what a great community we have here, it’ll help you decide to stay.”

Faith offered up another pallid smile, the best she could manage at the moment. She’d lived her entire life in big cities, her days and evenings filled with dancing, rehearsals, fittings, dinners, the theatre, and premieres. She didn’t need more than a peek outside her bedroom window at the dinky town of Ţărână to know she absolutely did
not want to stay.

Dr. Parthen extracted what looked like a small cosmetic pot from her pocket. “You’ll need to wear this special mud before either of you can go into town. A double hit of Royal scent will knock the single men over like bowling pins.”

Faith moved her brows together.

Dr. Parthen chuckled. “That’ll make sense once you’ve read the community manual, which I left for you on the desk.” She crossed to the nightstand and set the cosmetic pot there. “A dollop behind each ear will do. It’s been cleaned and treated to remove allergens. It’s sticky, though. All right. You have my cell number if any questions or problems arise.” She paused at the door. “I would like to apologize once again that you two were drugged. I can relate to how disconcerting and frightening it feels. I also want to reiterate that you were brought here for your own safety. You’re free to go at any time. I only ask that you carefully consider the danger that Raymond now poses to you before you make such a decision.” With a nod, Dr. Parthen opened the door. “See you soon.”

As the door closed, a ripple of incredulous laughter escaped Kacie. “Wow.”

A little too simple of an exclamation for all this, but Faith supposed there weren’t any other words descriptive enough. “Do you believe everything Dr. Parthen said? I mean…”
Vampires, demons, and Dragons
.

“I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t seen it, but…” Kacie waved airily.
We both saw some very unnatural stuff: that one man stopped a moving vehicle with his bare hands, and the other extremely large
…
creature just yanked the car door off. We saw that woman bleed white acid and her broken jaw heal in minutes. And we saw that hunky blond guy suck on the woman’s neck using a
definite
pair of fangs
. “They didn’t know we were watching them in the garage,” Kacie added. “So I think we can trust they were being their true selves.”

“Yes,” Faith uttered the single syllable on an exhaled breath. Was she actually agreeing or just uttering? Her brain was numb from the effort of trying to digest everything she’d heard about this outlandish community while simultaneously processing the news that she’d flown to San Diego for nothing. Certainly not to rejuvenate her career.

Kacie pushed up from the sofa. “Dr. Parthen also came across to me like a perfectly reasonable and rational human being.” She moved over to the tea cart, standing across from Faith. “So what do you want to do?”

“What do you want to do?”

Kacie caught her lower lip between her teeth. “Find out more about this place, for sure. I’m curious to see what it’d be like to live here.”

Faith gaped. “You’re seriously considering staying?”

“I know it sounds crazy, but…” Kacie shrugged. “They really need us here. You heard that sad story Dr. Parthen told.”

Sad
? Mostly, bizarre. The Vârcolac were apparently a dying breed, the result of a hundred-year-old betrayal leading to the deaths of a majority of them. With so few left, the Vârcolac family tree had become somewhat of a straight line over the years. No surprise it hadn’t worked out. Vârcolac had ceased producing live offspring nearly thirty years ago, landing them on the endangered species list. Their future had looked extraordinarily bleak for a while…until it was discovered that Vârcolac could procreate successfully with Dragon humans, women like Faith and Kacie, along with others like them. There were twelve currently living in this community, four singles, the rest already married.

“From the sound of it,” Kacie went on, “they treat their women like queens around here. I think it would be nice to be special.”

“Are you kidding me?” Faith set her hands on her hips. “We’ve always been treated as special. Too much so.”

“We’ve been treated as a circus act,” Kacie countered. “Not for what we can do. Well, you maybe, but not me.”

“They want us to have babies.” The pitch of Faith’s voice was rising. “That’s what they want us to do.”

“So?” Kacie threw out a hand. “You’ve always wanted to have a family, Faith, but you’ve kept it on hold because of ballet. Now that your career is over, maybe we both can finally—”