BloodImmoral (2 page)

“Looks like this is where the action is, boys. C’mon!” a harsh voice called at the entrance of the alley, followed by the sound of running feet.

Six men, stinking of drugs and testosterone raced into the alleyway, took one look at the scene and fanned out, assuming the role of predators. She smiled, her fang tips piercing her bottom lip. These boys were no threat.

“Ooooh.” A faint groan emanated from the corpse on the ground.

“What the…?”
The cop
turned, his face greying as he saw the battered woman struggling to sit. “Monica, honey, just stay still, I’ll call for an ambulance and backup.”

Monica, the-once-corpse, regarded him with pale eyes. “You don’t need to call for anyone. I’m fine. Just a bit drained, that’s all.” She laughed.

“She’s transforming,” Mirra said. Even as she spoke, she saw the human flesh knitting rapidly. Where there had been gaping holes, now there was smooth, white skin. The resurrect would soon be at its peak. Not a moment to waste. Mirra broke free of the handcuffs in one surge.

“Stay where you are!” the cop demanded.

“If you don’t get out of here, you’ll be on the menu, you and the other six.” Not that she should care. Leave the new vamp to her first eating.

“Ric, what happened?” Monica asked. “One minute I was with Luigi, the next…shit!” She pushed herself to her feet and stretched her arms above her head. “I feel…” Her gaze fastened onto the men. “Hungry.” She swept her tongue tip over her lips.

“Hey babe, you want to feel something? Feel this.” One of the men unzipped his pants and pulled out a semi erect cock.

“That?” Monica asked disdainfully. “I want a full salami, not some piddling sausage. Ric, you’d better come here, now! I’ve always wanted to fuck you, so let’s do it here. But I’m kinda hungry, so I’d better feed and save my strength for you, because when I do you, it’s gonna be good. For me, at least.”

In a movement too fast to watch, at least for human eyes, Monica had broken the necks of the first three men before they knew what had hit them. Two more went down with severed jugulars. The last fled screaming into the night. Monica fell on each of the men, tearing open their flesh with her talons, gulping the blood from ragged throats. Temporarily assuaged, Monica stood up and turned her attention to Ric. Wiping the blood from her lips, she began to circle him.

“Moni, you stand back now, I’ll shoot you, goddamn it. Hold still!”

Monica laughed. “First I’ll have the pretty girl.”

“I’m not for the likes of you, bitch,” Mirra snapped. “You’ve fed enough. Get out of here while you can.”

“Oh, how quaint, a challenge from a succubus-whore. We vampires have dominated your kind for millennia.”

“In your dreams, fang-bitch.”

Monica launched herself at Mirra and Ric was knocked aside as the two women fought, fangs and talons biting, slashing, tearing, impaling. They went down onto the ground in a tangle of limbs, the new vamp screaming and cursing, Mirra, silent, intent. Monica was too young, too fresh to know and as Mirra stretched her fingers over the once human skull, succubus overcame vampire and Monica again died as her cerebral cortex imploded.

Mirra stood up shakily, wiping her bloodied hands over her leather mini skirt. She gagged at the unholy stench of different bloods intermingling, and the stale musk of rogue vampire.

“What the fuck…?” Ric’s gun wavered. His face was ashen, his eyes a notch below wild as he stared at her.

Mirra began to move and he started out of his stupor, his gun aimed at her chest. In the distance, she heard the wail of police sirens.

“You’d better get out of here,” she said. “You can’t hope to explain this.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, bitch. My partner just killed five men and she was dead when I found her.” He took a step towards her. A red light, a trick of the Hunter’s Moon, perhaps, flickered in his eyes. Tension coiled through him, so cold she could taste it. His aura flared crimson and orange. He vibrated with anger and danger, a man on the brink of out-of-control. Mirra’s throat constricted. Until this night, she had never been wary of a man before. The sensation was both shocking and fascinating. As the man was shocking and fascinating.

Mirra sent another soothing aura-lap to him. “Monica’s not dead, even now. But you’re going to wish she was when she wakes up again. The only way you can kill a resurrect is by decapitation. That gun of yours is worthless. She’ll be after you, because she’s marked you, and one thing about a vamp, once they mark you, you stay marked until one of you is dead. Properly dead.”

“Christ Almighty, what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that your cop partner got killed by a vamp, and not just any vampire, but one of the renegades and she’s going to cause Hell for us all, especially when she joins up with her initiator.” Mirra shuddered at the thought. Rogue Initiator and Initiate—the unholy alliance that every Blood-kin feared. “This is beyond you, so you’d better run and run fast. Once they all wake up, it’s going to be murder for us all.”

“There’s been murder enough already.” He shivered. “Are you telling me that these guys and…and Moni… Fuck me!” He paused, his narrowed gaze, level, no trace of the terror she sensed swirling in his blood. “But vampires don’t exist.”

Mirra smiled without humour. “You mean you wish that they didn’t. Oh, some of them aren’t so bad, if you don’t let them get close enough to fang you. The creature, the Initiator that does this sort of killing, is a pestilence. These will resurrect and then there’ll be more deaths until they’re stopped. Get out of here, come with me, now!” She took his arm and dragged him down the alley.

“I can’t just leave.”

“Yes you can, unless you know how to deal with six psycho vamps. I’m good but not that good,” Mirra said as she struggled against his attempts to break free. She grabbed him by his jacket and twisted him about to face her. For a moment she raised him to the toes of his boots, to prove a point. She might be petite by succubus standards, but she could out match any man in speed and strength. “You can’t deal with them. I can’t. We have to run.”

“I never run from anything, or anyone.”

“Tonight, you have to.”

Behind them, they heard groaning, then laughter and swearing. A chilling hiss. Monica’s voice commanding them. The male voices fell silent.

“Shit!” Ric whispered. “Moni…”

“Your former partner is their mistress and they’ll do her bidding. C’mon!” Mirra grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and flung him in front of her. He stumbled and righted himself, and rounded on her, his fist raised.

“Do it, and it’ll be the last thing you do!” Mirra tensed herself. No man hit her. Ever. He’d be dead before he swung his arm.

He exhaled, long and hard before lowering his fist.
“Sorry. I don’t hit women, but understand this! You don’t push me around, sweetheart, no matter how you might’ve saved my butt
.”

“Okay, so now we get away from here and fast. You have a car?”

“Yeah.”

“What are we waiting for?”

“I want to deal with this, here and now.”

“Then you’ll die,
here and now
. On your own.” She half turned from him, but watched him from beneath her lashes. She could compel him to save his own skin. That would take time and energy—for her, both were in short supply. Why bother with him? Because too many had died this night, and more would follow before this Blood-night was over.

He glared at her, his square jaw clenched, his green, gold flecked eyes burning through her. His aura lashed against her, black and orange, the colours of disgust and fury. He struggled to contain the explosion, the conflicting emotions. He trembled with the effort, the desire to stay and the need to run.

“Okay, let’s go.” He holstered his gun beneath his leather jacket and sprinted down the alley. She ran after him, catching up.

Side by side, they raced across the street, down several more alleys until he halted before a beaten up red mustang parked beneath a tattered awning.

Mirra glanced at it, then him.

He nodded. “I know what you’re thinking, but believe me, she goes when she has to. Get in.”

He jumped into the driver’s seat and gunned the engine, even as Mirra settled down onto the torn seat. The tattered leather pricked the backs of her bare thighs, scratching like an ardent lover. She suppressed that thought. But her sex-hunger was nagging, demanding succour. Everything around her was taking on sexual connotations, because of her need, and her denial of it was so great.

Not now! Not now!
She forced away her mating instinct. Her talons extended into the seat, tearing the fabric, the sound like a knife splitting a melon. Pop. Rip. She braced herself against the seat, fighting for her own control as Ric swung the wheel hard and fast.

With a squeal of tyres, the mustang tore out of concealment and careered down the alley, side-swiping a garbage bin before entering a main street.

They sped along the street in silence. Mirra was aware that he stole glances at her, a measuring, that was both horrified and admiring. He was turned on, his pheromones washing over her, tasting like musk and...jungle. She frowned. Jungle? Her nostrils flared. She caught his deeper nuances, the thick, heavy tang of spice and heat.

He was sexed-up. What he had seen would fry the brains of most men, but not this cop. He wanted to fuck her as much as she wanted him. He was resilient and strong. He’d need them and more if she was to… She shook her head to clear her thoughts.

“Give me your mobile phone,” she said.

“Who the hell you want to call?”

“Backup.”

“You a cop?”

“No, but one of my sisters is. She has jurisdiction here. Every Blood-Hunter has to mop up messes from time to time. And for this mess, I need an expert. Give me your phone.”

“This is unreal. Don’t you night-guys use telepathy?” He raised a dark, sardonic brow at her.

“I’m not a guy!” she snapped.

“Yeah, I noticed.” His gaze swept over her, lingering where her skirt bunched around her thighs.

Mirra almost smiled. Almost. This human really was amusing. “Yeah, we have telepathy, but I’m too tired to
mind-send
. It’s not just as easy as closing your eyes and thinking. Hell’s Gates, it takes time.” She regarded him sardonically. “In a crisis, technology has its uses.”

He snorted and dug into his jacket pocket, tossed the phone at her. She tapped out the number with her talon. After two rings, Sula answered. In the secret succubus tongue, Mirra told her mentor what had happened, all the while aware that Ric studied her, his lips tight, his hands curling around the steering wheel in a death lock.

“Mirrazan, are you hurt? We felt the vibrations, the ether was writhing with the sex-energy the deaths released. A few of us…well, you know how we react to the discharge. Those fucking vamps!” Sula paused. Mirra heard the breath, deep, struggling for control. “The fangs are on them and a couple of the shifters. Where are you?”

“Right now, in an old car, with a half-demented cop, driving down some Goddess-awful street.”

Ric snorted. “I’m not half-demented.”

Sula gasped. “What? What? Who was that? The man heard you! Bloody hell, Mirrazan, you’re speaking his language in his presence. Are you out of your mind?”

Mirra blushed. She’d resorted to English, forgetting herself, forgetting the man. “I’m sorry.”

“Get rid of him and get home. The queen has felt the vibrations and more. It’s not safe for any of us to be topside. You know what you have to do, Mirrazan. Don’t leave a witness. He isn’t worth it. Deal with him and come home. Now. I’m not asking.”

Mirra severed the connection and held the phone between her hands. Her palms were sweaty and not just from fear. She was hungry and exhausted. She glanced sidelong at the cop. Sula had given her an order. The man must die. No human was allowed to know the truth. If they began to suspect that vampires, witches, shifters, the plethora of things-that-go-bump-in-the-night, the stuff of human
legends—that
they were no legends at all, but real, existing on their world, hunting, feasting, slaying, loving… The cop kne
w. He
had to die.

But the cop had given her his name.

Ric.

A name between succubus and hunted joined one to the other. A bond, a connection and from time immemorial that relationship was honoured. What was in a name? Everything. Unless that name was not a ‘true’ name.

“Is Ric your real name?”

He glanced at her. “Yeah.”

Hell’s Gates. He’d used his real name, entrusted it to her and that meant she couldn’t kill him, whether in the heat of passion, or in cold blood. That was her law. Sula would not understand, or the others. And the queen would be told… Mirra swallowed against the horror writhing in the pit of her stomach. Blood-night wasn’t meant to be like this. “Is Ric short for Richard?”

“Ricardo O’Connor Rodriguez.” She smiled at that. His lip quirked in response. “Yeah, I know, I’m a walking United Nations. Colombian, Irish, Australian and God knows what else.” He flexed his hands over the steering wheel, before gripping it again, his knuckles white against his olive skin. “You want to tell me what happened back there?”

“You’ve seen too much already.”

“I want to know.”

“It’ll cost you.”

He smiled grimly. “Yeah, now why doesn’t that surprise me? What’s it gonna cost me?”

“Probably your life.”
If I don’t kill you, others will. That is the Blood Law.

His jaw clenched and he glanced at her, his eyes as dark as midnight, his soul darker still. “I’ve faced death before.”

“Not like this, you haven’t.”

His aura shut down around him and with his eyes and jaw and mouth set and determined, he swerved the car across the lanes of traffic. Oncoming vehicles narrowly avoided hitting the mustang.

Mirra, fighting back a scream, was flung against him. Her talons ripped free from the leather seat.

He sent the car plummeting down a side road and slammed on the brakes. The car skidded sideways, coming to a halt in the shadows of another alley. Ric killed the engine. With a blur of speed he was facing her, his hand clamped around her wrist.