Page 11 of Bound By Blood

Instead of calling an Uber, she decided to walk. She needed to clear her head, and it was only a few miles to get back home. She began walking in long strides, stretching her legs as she went.

Oh, yeah. She knew exactly who and what Landon Creed was. There was no way that vampires existed, but all the evidence was there, screaming in her face. What was she going to do about it?

She raised an eyebrow as she passed a streetlamp. There was nothing she could do. The knowledge would have to die with her. The moment she opened her mouth, she knew she’d be dead. No. She’d have to protect this secret, and she was sure that telling Lily would only put her in danger as well.

There was a bookstore on the way home. Carly stopped by it and grabbed a few books off the shelf, purchasing them quickly. She was lucky to find some books on vampires, but she wasn’t going to go on with life not knowing every fine detail about them.

She took the haul back home, and once she arrived, she put her key into the hole. She paused for a second, feeling like someone was watching her. She turned and looked around, but nothing and no one was there.

Shaking herself, she headed inside and went straight to the fridge, her haul still in her hand. She dropped it on the counter for a moment, grabbing all the materials to make a sandwich. The house was still quiet. Lily wasn’t home yet, and Carly was grateful for it.

Collecting her haul and her sandwich, she headed to her room. She plopped them down on her bed and went to get her laptop and the notes she took today. Once they were spread across her bed, she climbed in and went over everything while eating her supper. Crumbs littered her bed, but she didn’t care.

She looked to the shadows of her room again, checking periodically. She couldn’t help but feel like she was being watched. Was shadow magic a real thing? Or did they make that up?

She pulled the picture out of her pocket and set it down on the nightstand. She then tugged the knife out and looked at it too. It glinted in her dim light. She didn’t want to put it away. She didn’t want it anywhere but near her, so instead of sliding it back inside her nightstand, she tucked it under her pillow. She’d be stupid to put it away after everything she’d learned.

Once it was under the pillow, she peeked at the picture once more, staring at Landon Creed. He looked exactly as he did last night. She shook her head at herself and turned away from it. She began comparing notes she found online and the information she gleaned from the books. She made a new list of constant ‘facts.’ The list was long; it just kept going, giving her a headache.

The research quickly became an obsession. She heard Lily come home late, but she never popped her head in. She probably assumed that Carly was asleep. She couldn’t get enough of the vampire shit. She didn’t want to believe vampires and magic were real, but she had nothing else to explain what happened, nor the information she gleamed on the Creeds.

When the headache became too much, she flopped back into her bed, rubbing her eyes. Despite all her research, she still didn’t feel like she had more answers than when she began. Nothing was concrete. Those notes could be completely wrong.

She didn’t know when, nor how long she lay there staring at the ceiling, but eventually, sleep took hold of Carly.

Chapter 5

Landon Creed

Landon was sitting at his desk at the office, staring out of the window while drumming his fingers impatiently on the glass surface, as he waited for the elders to arrive. He had called them early that morning and all but demanded they meet with him today. He couldn’t wait much longer than that. Not when he felt like he was losing pieces of his mind.

Creed Financial Group was the largest building in the city, and it was where his father did most of their business dealings, both legal and illegal. Landon was head of security there, and it was also his job to make sure things ran smoothly when his father was not around. Though, unlike Landon, Drayton didn’t live in the same building that they worked in. Instead, he resided in a large mansion on the outskirts of town, leaving Landon the condo on the top two floors of the building.

Two of the four walls in his office were floor-to-ceiling windows, giving him an unobstructed view of the city that they had in their back pocket. In the middle of the room sat his glass-topped desk holding his computer, four monitors, and a few files he was supposed to be working on. Two black chairs had been placed in front of his desk for when he needed to hold meetings and the like with the other members of the security team, and to his left were a leather sofa and a minibar, for those nights when he needed to unwind a bit. Behind him sat a few filing cabinets, but apart from that, the office was sparsely furnished.

At night, they may be monsters, but during the day, they were just prominent members of society. They had to keep up the appearance of being human, even though they were so far from it. But they had managed to do so for this long already; he didn’t see that changing anytime soon.

Currently, Landon’s father was out to lunch with the Mayor, just like he did every week. Which meant that this was the only time that he could meet with the elders without his father knowing what he was up to. He wasn’t intentionally keeping it a secret. He just wanted to have all the facts before he bothered his father with his trivial problems. The guy had enough on his plate already, what with secretly running a city and all.

In truth, it was rare when either he or his father called upon the elders for anything. They were some of the oldest vampires and had a tendency to ramble on about things that meant nothing to them. However, they were also the ones that they went to whenever they had questions that they didn’t know the answers to. Being alive for as long as they had been gave them certain insights that no one else had access to, and Landon definitely needed answers now. He was actually beginning to fear that something might be wrong with him, that he was losing his ability to kill altogether. He didn’t like to fear anything.

It also didn’t help that Landon had not been able to stop thinking about Carly Harris either. He had thought that after he had tucked her into bed the night before and left her place, that would be it. But he had been wrong. Her face plagued his dreams whenever he tried to force himself to sleep, as did her delectable body. Because of this, he didn’t sleep much the night before.

Even now, he could still taste her blood on his lips, the spicey yet sweet mixture that he couldn’t get enough of and wanted to savor at the same time. He vividly remembered how her blood seemed to strengthen him from the inside out, making him feel more powerful than he had ever felt before. It was intoxicating, addicting, and he couldn’t help but think about tasting her again.

He also couldn’t stop thinking about how she had felt in his arms. He remembered how her body had melded with his and how soft her skin had been beneath his fingertips. Just the thought of it had his dick hardening in his pants, and he took a moment to resituate himself into a more comfortable position.

The fact that he couldn’t kill her was concerning. But not so much as the strange desire he had to protect and shield her from the monster inside of him. He had never had the urge to do that before, and it really threw him for a loop, which was why he contacted the elders the first chance he got.

Leaving a human alive after feeding from them was dangerous, and it quickly became clear that Carly was no different. He had utilized the shadows a few times already to peek in on her and see what she was up to. He wanted to see if she was beginning to put the pieces together or if she was brushing it off as a false memory due to the alcohol she had consumed. Unfortunately for him, it was the former.

Landon had seen her talking to her friend that morning, though it surprised him that she didn’t say anything about his attack on her. Instead, she led her friend to believe that it was some kind of sexual encounter that she didn’t remember. Then, once her friend was gone, she began researching ‘vampires’ on her laptop, and his panic began to set in. If she discovered the truth, there was no telling what would happen. It put everything and everyone in danger.

He found himself watching her from the shadows for longer than he had intended. He watched as she continued her search on her laptop for a few hours before she decided to head to the city archives. The moment she had decided to head there, Landon knew they were in trouble. It was only a matter of time before she found evidence of what they were. And yet, a part of him didn’t care. A part of him actually wanted her to discover it, which was the most terrifying part of all.

These were all the reasons that he had called upon the elders and asked them to meet with him. If anyone could explain what was going on with him, it would be them. At the very least, they would have a solution. He didn’t want to involve his father until he knew for a fact it was going to be a bigger issue. As it stood, it wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle on his own.

He felt strange like he was fighting a war within himself. He never kept things from his father before, but he couldn’t bring himself to bring up his mistake. He didn’t want to face his father’s wrath, and he wanted the chance to be able to fix it himself. He just hoped that the elders had a way for him to do that.