Caleb (6 page)

She
yanked her arm free, clutching her wrist against the pain and took a step away,
staring at those fangs, at what they implied. She shook her head.

“Are
you telling me that the big, macho Johnson brothers went goth to the point of
getting cosmetic dentistry?”

“Technically,
I don’t think goths are vamp imitators,” Slade offered almost conversationally.

“We
don’t have time for this,” Jared interrupted. “We need to get on with it.”

“Get
on with what?” she had to ask, even though she was reasonably sure she didn’t
want to know. The hairs on the back of her neck were prickling, and a sick
feeling of dread settled in the pit of her stomach. First the monster wolves
and now . . . this.

Jared
grabbed her arm again. “Caleb needs a reason to live.” He pulled her toward the
bed. “You’re going to give it to him.”

She
dug in her heels. It didn’t do any good. The man was incredibly strong. “By
giving him blood?”

His
smile was cold and hard. “You’ll give him a hell of a lot more than that.”

He
held her bloody wrist to Caleb’s dry, cold lips. Caleb was so still, she
couldn’t even feel a breath against her skin.

“You’re
crazy,” she breathed, staring, as everyone else was, at Caleb. Waiting in
horror and a sick fascination for him to do something. As if he was capable of
doing anything except dying right then. She shook her head. This was insane.

She
braced her feet and pushed back against Jared’s grip. “You don’t have time to
indulge in this mass delusion. You need to get Caleb to the hospital.”

Jared
merely held her wrist more firmly against Caleb’s lips while the other brothers
stood, tense with anticipation. Waiting. She didn’t know what they expected of
her, but she knew she didn’t have whatever they thought it took to revive a
dead man.

Caleb’s
eyes flew open with a suddenness that jarred a scream from her throat. She
jerked back, met the barrier of Jared’s strength, and went nowhere.

“Feed,
Caleb,” he whispered, for the first time showing the faintest hint of
vulnerability as he scraped his nail across her raw wrist. The pain made her
gasp. Fresh blood welled. Caleb’s nostrils flared as his eyes changed from dead
flat to a deep green lit with strange, swirling golden lights.

“Feed,
damn you,” Jace whispered as if terrified of disturbing the moment.

Caleb
closed his strangely glowing eyes. Allie’s knees went weak with relief. He
wasn’t going to do it.

“Son
of a bitch!” Slade cursed. “He said he’d never do it again, and you know how he
is.”

Tension
flooded the room.

“Oh
no you don’t,” Jared muttered as he stared at Caleb. Allie dared a glance at
his face. His lighter eyes began to glow in the dark room as the lines of his
face settled into an expression of formidable determination. “You got us all
into this. You don’t just get to walk away.”

Who
or what were these people? Pain in her arm drew her eyes down. She could only
stare in openmouthed shock as the nails on Jared’s hand grew into talons that
curved and pierced her skin. The scream that welled in her throat died as a
presence pushed into her mind and quelled the instinct, holding her bound,
paralyzing her in a cocoon of horror and pain.

We’re
vampires
.

Jared’s
previous statement reverberated in her head, growing from a small black speck
of knowledge to an ominous dark cloud of incomprehensible certainty that
blocked all hope. With a calm slash of his thumb, Jared laid her wrist open.
Blood sprayed over Caleb’s mouth and face. Her horror exploded into terror.
He’d severed her artery. She needed to clamp off the wound, but she couldn’t
move. Couldn’t scream, couldn’t do anything but watch as Caleb’s eyes sprang
open in his bloodstained face, the swirling golden light consuming his pupils,
a vivid contrast to the crimson stain of her blood.

Everything
in her recoiled. This wasn’t her Caleb. She’d never buy a fancy bra to tempt
something like this.

Could
they really be vampires? Even witnessing what she was witnessing, she couldn’t
accept it. Vampires did not exist.

Feed
Caleb. Take from me.

The
thought welled in her mind, in her voice, and projected outward. But she wasn’t
thinking it. Would never think it.

She
could feel the resistance in Caleb. She encouraged it. The presence in her mind
doubled in strength and urgency. Her silent cries of
Don’t do it
were
snuffed out as easily as one extinguished a candle flame.

Her
blood continued to gush, and Caleb continued to resist for precious seconds.
The voice echoed in her mind again.

Feed.
For me. Please.

Allie
felt a moment of relief. Caleb would know it wasn’t her by the pleading tone in
the request. She wasn’t one to beg.

Her
relief evaporated to horror when Caleb’s mouth opened and, with the speed of a
striking snake, he sank his fangs into her wrist.

As
the agony exploded through her body, she dropped to her knees, a chorus of
yeses ringing in her head, three of them heavy with relief, one filled with a
euphoric jubilation that scared her witless.

Every
movie she’d ever seen, every book she’d ever read projected a vampire’s bite as
something seductive, but this wasn’t seductive, this was pain. Pure white-hot
agony. It felt like Caleb was devouring her arm whole, his teeth working harder
in a constant demand for more, greedily sucking the blood from her body until all
she could wonder was how long she had to endure before she passed out.

She
glanced at his brothers, desperate for help. Her eyes met a wall of implacable
resolve. They were playing a game in which only they knew the rules and in
which her role was clearly one of sacrifice. They could block the pain if they
wanted to. Common sense told her that. If they could hold her prisoner in her
own mind, they could block her pain, but they wanted her to suffer for their
own perverted reasons. Sick bastards.

She
gathered every bit of energy she had left in her rapidly weakening body and met
Jared’s cold hazel gaze with her own.
Fuck you.

Surprise
flickered in his eyes, whether from her choice of words or the fact that she
managed to communicate them telepathically, she didn’t have the strength to
debate. She laid her cheek on the side of the bed and followed the trail of
weakness out of her body and sighed, “Caleb.”

CALEB
struggled with the lassitude holding him prisoner.
Struggled against the weakness dragging him into the sweet, welcoming dark he
didn’t want to come back from.

Caleb.

The
whisper echoed in his mind. Allie’s voice, filled with an unbearable pain and
hopelessness. His Allie, of the irrepressible optimism and incredible bravery.
Someone had dared to hurt her.

He
crashed into awareness on a surge of primitive rage and endless hunger.
Immediately, he knew his brothers were in the room. He could feel their elation
mixing with a wariness he didn’t understand until he registered the other
presence. Allie. Close and hurting.

He
opened his eyes. She was slumped against the side of the bed, her hair a
waterfall of silken brown on the white sheets, her arm stretched toward him,
pale and insubstantial. Her body lifeless as the sweet taste of her blood
filled his mouth.

Horror
joined his rage. Jesus H. Christ, he was feeding on her. The woman he’d never
meant to taint. He broke his brothers’ mental hold on him, now strong enough to
do so thanks to the infusion of her blood. He pushed up to his side. The wound
on her wrist was a gaping testament to his hunger.

“Goddamn
you,” he swore at Jared, knowing who was behind this. “Did you even have the
decency to block the pain?”

“You
were leaving us, Caleb,” Slade stated calmly. “We did what we had to.”

As if
anything gave them the right to use her. Hurt her. His Allie. His woman. The
one he’d never intended to claim. He stroked his tongue over the wound, sealing
off the sluggish spew of blood. He brushed the hair off her deathly white face,
all that bursting life gone, leaving a waxen impression of her true self.

“She
didn’t ask for this.”

“None
of us did, but it didn’t make a difference to you before,” Jared inserted, his
bitterness undiminished.

And
it wasn’t going to make a difference now, Caleb knew. Two hundred and fifty
years ago he couldn’t face eternity without his brothers, and today he couldn’t
face this. He slid down to the floor beside Allie, pulling her into his arms.
She flopped like a rag doll against him.

“Goddamn
you all to hell.”

“We’re
already there.”

The
rage swirled again, primitive and nearly out of control as Caleb tilted Allie’s
head back. She was almost gone, the flicker of life in her barely detectable.
All he had to do to let her pass over was to delay just a little longer, let
the lack of blood starve her body of the oxygen it needed and she’d pass
cleanly to the other side, untainted. The vampire in him howled at the thought,
raged at the concept of losing his mate—primitive as always, thinking in terms
of possession—while the human part of him, the part he struggled to keep alive,
knew it was the right thing to do.

He
positioned her body, placing her mouth against his chest. He whispered into her
mind, to that small, terrified, huddled bundle of light that harbored her soul,
“It’ll be all right, Allie girl. I’ll make it all right.”

Slade
came forward, reaching for her, “We’ll feed her, Caleb. You’re too weak.”

For
the first time in centuries, Caleb bared his fangs at his middle brother, ready
to rip his throat out if he came an inch closer. “Don’t touch her.”

Jace
caught Slade’s arm and pulled him back. “Leave him be, Slade.”

Slade
jerked his arm free. “He can’t afford the blood loss.”

“We’ll
replace it,” Jared said, as calmly confident as always.

“What
if he refuses to take from us, like before? Caleb can be a damn stubborn
bastard when he gets the bit between his teeth.”

“Before
he was protecting her.”

“And
now?”

“He’ll
feed.”

“What
makes you so sure?”

Jared’s
gaze stroked over Allie with something akin to satisfaction. “He won’t leave
her
.”

Jared
was right, Caleb knew. As long as Allie lived, he’d stay in this world, doing
what he had to in order to insure her happiness.

He
elongated his pinkie nail to a razor sharp talon and slashed his chest. Blood
gushed. He pressed Allie’s mouth to it, blending his mind with hers, soothing
her horror with calm, changing the scenario to one of a first date, changing
the taste of blood to the effervescent bubble of champagne, ignoring the
clenching in his body as her soft mouth moved erotically on him, each brush of
her lips whipping through his body on a swelling wave of white-hot pleasure.

He
looked at his brothers across the room as Allie fed, loving them, understanding
their motivation. It had always been the Johnson brothers against the world.
But no more. It had been their choice to change things. He stroked Allie’s soft
hair, better positioning her mouth against him, quelling her struggle for
control with another touch of his mind to hers, biting back a moan as her lush
hips shifted on his hungry cock. She was everything to him now. Joined to him
forevermore. His hope and his reason for being.

He
locked his mind to theirs and spoke very clearly so there would be no
misunderstanding of Allie’s importance to him. “If you ever endanger her again,
brothers or not, I’ll rip your throats out and leave you in the sun to burn.”

ALLIE
awoke to darkness, a scream tearing from her throat.
One certainty beating at her mind. She had to get away. Now. Before they got
her.

She
couldn’t remember who
they
were, but she knew they were bad. Very, very
bad. She didn’t need to know any more than that. She worked her elbows beneath
her, trying to find up in the inky darkness.

A heavy
weight settled over her, rupturing her scream into a gasp. She pushed off the
mattress, twisting with the wild cadence inside her, but there was no moving
the heavy mass. Pressure countered her every move. She was trapped. In a
nightmare. This had to be a nightmare. Only nightmares left a person with this
level of unsubstantiated panic.

“Easy,
Allie girl. I’ve got you.”

The
murmur filtered out of the darkness, extending a thread of hope through her
hysteria. Caleb. She was lying beneath Caleb. She tentatively reached up and
bumped her knuckles on the flat of his chest. She opened her hand and slid it
up over the hair-roughened surface until she found the solid curve of his
shoulder. A naked Caleb?

Okay.
Maybe this wasn’t a nightmare. Maybe it was more of a fantasy. The heat of his
skin seared her breasts, her stomach, and her legs. She wished she felt good
enough to enjoy the intimacy, but the mother of all headaches was beating
behind her eyes.