Possession-Blood Ties 2 (27 page)

“Where is that damn spare?” I said a little too loudly, in case someone was around. I pulled the glowing marble thing Byron had given me from my pocket and rolled it in my palm.

Instantly, a flash of light like a heat wave shivered up from the ground. A millisecond later, the roar of an engine filled my ears.

I turned toward the source of the sound and nearly rubbed my eyes, until I remembered I wasn’t supposed to be able to see the scene before me. Seemingly from nowhere, the ruined church had reassembled, the stained-glass windows illuminated from within casting weird colors on the desert sand. Bathed in the blue glow of a mercury light, a few vampires revved their motorcycles impatiently as two other figures argued animatedly in front of them.

With the sound of the engines covering their voices, I couldn’t tell what they were arguing about, but they were unconcerned by my presence at the side of the road, and that was all

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that mattered. They thought they were invisible, and that was all right with me, as long as they didn’t decide to take advantage of the element of surprise and come out to grab the tasty stranded motorist. After a few minutes of pretending to rummage for something in the back of the van, I retreated to the front and leaned under the hood, as though something might be wrong there.

From the few glimpses I could sneak of the parking lot, I saw the argument devolve into a shoving match, then a full-fledged fistfight. Now I could guess what they fought about. The Fangs from town had never shown up. Finally, the bikes grew louder, then began to roll onto the road, their riders intending to look for their friends, I presumed. The lumpy shape of an unconscious vampire remained on the pavement as the rest of the horde thundered away in the direction I’d come from. I wouldn’t have much time before the two groups met up with each other.

With a distinct feeling of now or never, I slipped the chloroform in my back pocket, a stake into the opposite one, and set off.

It was just my luck the vampire came to as I entered the parking lot. He cradled his head in his hands and cursed, blinking rapidly to clear his vision. As he did, his feeding face flashed on and off, like a broken neon sign. I cleared my throat to get his attention as I approached.

“Fuck,” he repeated, pinching the bridge of his bloodied nose with his thumb and index finger. The digits protruded from a fingerless black glove and were marked with bad, homemade tattoos.

“Hi. I had some car trouble. You got a phone in there?” I smiled, hoping I could squeak by before his head injury cleared up and he remembered he was supposed to be invisible.

“No, there ain’t no phone,” he growled, but his demeanor changed instantly as he dragged his gaze from my shoes to my legs and parts farther north. “Somebody musta forgot to pay the bill.”

When he laughed, it sounded like dirty bubbles popping in his throat. He smiled—I guess I was supposed to find the expression charming—and displayed broken, rotted teeth. His dirty hair hung down beneath a ratty bandanna, but he looked as though he honestly believed I found him attractive.

“Oh, darn.” I eased my hands into my back pockets, my fingers closing on the stake. I waited for the moment when he would realize something was amiss. When he was wrapped up in his confusion, I would strike.

It didn’t take as long as I expected. No sooner had I spoken than his brow wrinkled and his eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute, you’re not supposed to—”

I lunged forward, bringing the stake down hard so it would penetrate his sternum. The impact vibrated up my arm, shaking my bones painfully, but I’d hit my mark. He didn’t have time to scream before he burned.

Good thing, too, I thought as I rubbed my elbow. I wasn’t exactly in fighting shape. It seemed too gutsy to burst through the front door. Besides, they’d spray-painted a huge, complicated mark on it, and I had the sneaking suspicion it might be another spell-type thing to keep out, or alert them to, intruders. I walked around the side of the building, where no lights indicated the presence of the Fangs. A side door, carelessly left unlocked, opened to a dark room. I would never accuse the Fangs of being an intellectual organization. It took me a minute to recognize it was a

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kitchen. My gaze fell on the empty sink. If Cyrus was human, they either weren’t feeding him or they were diligently doing the dishes.

I was feeling pretty confident as I crossed to the door opposite me. Then it opened, and in stepped the ugliest vampire I’d ever seen.

I think she was a woman, but I didn’t have time to ask before she grabbed a butcher knife from the counter and hurled it at me. I dodged it, whirling toward the huge commercial gas stove. I grabbed one of the cast-iron burner plates and hurled it at her. She knocked it out of the air with a swipe of her huge forearm, and kept advancing. Retrieving the stake from my pocket, I braced myself in a ready stance. But she didn’t attack me the way I thought she would, with full physical contact. Instead, she lunged, grabbed a handful of my hair and jerked me upward.

Plenty of experience with battered women in the E.R. had taught me a valuable piece of combat knowledge: Never let your hair go where your body doesn’t. Once the scalp was pulled free of the skull, it didn’t grow back easily. I wasn’t willing to chance it, so I stopped struggling, dropped the stake and clamped both my hands on my head as she hauled me over the top of the stove. With an expression of clinical disinterest, she flicked the dials and ignited the burners.

Pain exploded in my back as my flimsy T-shirt caught fire and seared my skin. Screaming, I kicked my feet, grappling for footing as I lay horizontal on the stove. I managed to hook my heels over the lip of the counter and arch upward, breaking free just long enough to get out of the range of the flames.

Though I was clear of the burners, I was still on fire. I dropped to the ground and rolled on the shockingly cold tiles, yelping in agony as my charred T-shirt separated from the skin beneath.

The vampire made another lunge for me as I rolled to my feet. I sidestepped her, and her miss proved to be my window of opportunity. I snatched the stake from the floor and caught her between the ribs as she rounded for another pass. Her face contorted in disbelief as flames traveled up her body. She clenched my arm, my hand still locked on the stake, in a death grip, as though the simple action would be enough to drag me into hell with her. Then her hand disintegrated into ash and I tumbled backward onto my burned elbows.

With all the noise we’d made, I expected the room to flood with angry biker vampires. When it didn’t seem that would happen, I climbed to my feet and shrugged off the burned remains of my T-shirt.

Of course, I couldn’t have worn a decent-looking bra. Why does it matter what you’re wearing when you find him? my all too insightful brain asked accusingly. And don’t let the fact you’ve probably got third-degree burns bother you more than your appearance, or anything.

Shaking my head as though I could knock the thoughts loose, I stepped cautiously through the kitchen door, into a wide hall. The floor bowed out to accommodate a curved inner wall. I’d never been a faithful churchgoer, but I knew enough to guess the room beyond the wall would be the important one. As I advanced along the curving hallway, the large, double doors of the main entrance came into view, along with the set of doors leading into the church proper. Another chalked-on sigil marked the latter. Beyond them, the muffled sound of music didn’t disguise angry voices.

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No wonder the vampires hadn’t heard the struggle in the kitchen. I pressed my ear to the wood, avoiding the chalk marking, to eavesdrop.

“Where the hell is Angie? The glamour’s not going to hold much longer if she doesn’t get her ass back to the circle,” an agitated male voice warned.

“She’ll come back,” a calmer female replied. “She’s probably checking on the guy.”

The guy. That could only mean Cyrus. My heart pounded wildly in my chest. That someone else acknowledged his presence made my job suddenly too real.

“If she’s not back in five minutes, I’m going after her,” the male vampire declared. His footsteps thundered closer to the door than I found comfortable. I backed away, glancing around for some way to secure the doors from the outside. A row of chairs was lined up waiting-room style beside a rack of pamphlets about natural family planning and how to pray the rosary. I grabbed the nearest chair and lifted it off the floor so its legs wouldn’t make a sound. With held breath, I eased the flat back beneath the door handles and slid it up until the rear legs were wedged against the carpet. It wouldn’t hold them indefinitely, but it would give them some trouble, if I was lucky. Down the hall a little way I found another door. This one was plain wood, with rough edges and a flimsy doorknob. I tried the handle and found it unlocked. Does no one care about security these days?

A set of stairs led down into a dark basement that, at first glance, appeared to be empty. My foot was on the second step when the rhythmic creak of bedsprings stopped me. A woman gasped and a man groaned in the darkness. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I recognized that male sound.

I guess Angie was “checking” on him, after all. Unexpected jealousy burned in my stomach. I blamed it on the sputtering blood tie between us, and the fact I hadn’t exactly planned to walk in on him mid-coitus.

I flattened myself against the wall, praying I was out of sight of the bed, wherever that was. Charging down the steps and starting a fight would only get me killed, especially considering this Angie person apparently had something to do with the spell cloaking the place. I’d had plenty of run-ins with witches—well, at least one—and I didn’t feel like taking my chances with another.

It seemed like forever before they were finished, probably because of the awkwardness and embarrassment of the situation. I started to wonder how much time had passed, and if the vampires upstairs would come looking for Angie. I hadn’t heard any pounding on the doors yet, but I might have mistaken it for the pounding of the bed against the floor. They were really going for it downstairs.

Finally, their ecstatic noises ceased, and the bed creaked as Angie climbed from it. “I’ll be in the bathroom.”

I found it strange that a vampire with the power to make an entire building vanish into ruin would speak with such timidity to Cyrus, human or vampire. Then again, mortal terror of his dear old daddy probably inspired unusual reserve in most of his followers. I heard Cyrus’s sigh of contentment over the rustle of sheets as he arranged himself on the bed. A pang of longing speared through me, the exact feeling someone would get watching the ex they dumped shopping happily for china patterns with his new love. You can put the vampire into the human, but you can’t take the human out of the vampire. When the bathroom door closed and I heard the sound of running water, I made my move.

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I came down the steps as quickly and quietly as I could, but he still heard me. My eyes adjusted easily to the darkness and I found him, staring at me in disbelief as he sat up on the bed.

He was still human. I could tell from the smell of him, and the warmth that seemed to wrap around me. He’d cut his hair.

He opened his mouth, probably to shout to Angie for help. All he managed before I covered his mouth and nose with the chloroform-soaked scrap of my burned T-shirt was

“No, she’s—”

Then it was done. He dropped, limp and unconscious, to the bed, and I lifted him over my shoulder. Carrying his weight this way was easier, but getting up the stairs took a bit more effort. Luckily, the woman in the bathroom seemed to be filling the tub. She never heard me struggling up the steps, into the hall and back through the kitchen. If my departure had set off any sort of magical alarm, it was too late. I dumped Cyrus in the back of the van and drove into the desert before anyone could pursue us.
16

Unpleasant Discoveries

D espite the fact she could barely walk, the damn woman insisted she come along with him.

Max ground his teeth as he paused for the umpteenth time for Bella to catch up. “You know, this would go a lot faster if you’d just stayed at home.”

“That place is not my home,” she snarled—actually snarled, the vicious bitch.

“You know what I meant.” He let her pass him a few steps before he started again.

“You’re not exactly incognito with the smell of blood all over you.”

“If you would have done a better job patching me up, I would not smell like blood.” She limped a few steps, then visibly forced herself to straighten her leg. Max sighed in frustration and caught up with her easily. “Do you want me to carry you?”

Her gold eyes widened, then narrowed in anger. “Absolutely not!”

Damn. It might have been fun to let her climb on him piggyback style, her legs wrapped around his waist.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he cursed out loud. Thinking sexually about a werewolf was practically bestiality. And if he were going to swing that way, he’d much rather do it with something that didn’t talk as much as she did, like a goat or a pony. Ally or not, she continued to grate on his nerves.

Her expression flickered for a moment, and she looked hurt and offended. Then he remembered he’d spoken aloud, and she probably thought his remark was directed at her. He’d opened his mouth to explain when she cut him off. “Fine. Carry me, if you think it will be faster.”

Recovering fast, he smiled superciliously. “I do.”

She stood behind him, tentatively placing her hands on his shoulders. He stooped slightly and reached back to lift her up. The natural place to rest hands, of course, was the perfectly round curve of her ass.