Page 18 of Crave

Vampire blood tasted like the last thing they’d fed on—only holding a traceable scent for seventy-two hours. This male tasted like human, which wouldn’t ordinarily have been unusual for a vampire. They were the most readily available food source. Except nine times out of ten when the covens sent their lower castes out to fight, it was amped up on shifter blood.

I tried to throw a glance at Lacey, but Mrs. Dracula had flashed around behind her, drawing a length of chain from her black trench coat. Indie Rock used my moment of distraction to get back on his feet and charge towards me. Undeads were hell to fight because of their superior speed and strength. When you tacked on the fact that one of them could bear hug you and flash both of you out a half a mile in any direction just like #DashCamVlad had done to the human cop, outing supernaturals everywhere (because thanks, asshole), they weren’t exactly on our Christmas card list.

My mother, Sofia Montemayor-Caldwell, was one of the deadliest Tracers the Southern Territorial Council had ever known. Her philosophy? Vampires were gonna fight dirty. So you’d sure as hell better have a few dirty tricks up your sleeve.

The length of chain whistled through the air. Lacey leaped back with the grace of an acrobat, not allowing the female undead to get in close. Through the pack bond, I could hear West shouting for me. He was a mile out, closing fast. Just a little longer. I bared my teeth, snapping at the male vampire’s thigh.

And then, with a sharp crack, both vamps ghosted out at once.

Lacey whirled. “Dallas, look out—"

I felt him reform over me a hairsbreadth too late, his knife sinking deep into my shoulder. White hot pain short-circuited my brain, my front leg spasming beneath me, making it impossible to pivot, to twist away. My vision went black. Through a gray haze, I watched Lacey twist at the last second, slashing up and out in a tight arc to slam a dagger through the throat of the female vamp who had just reformed behind her.

Blood sprayed across the snow. The vampire slumped to the ground. Dizzy and shaking from the pain, I bucked beneath Indie Rock in a last-ditch effort, trying to throw him off—

—only to find he wasn’t there.

Biting back a scream, I shifted to human. Hot, pulsing blood soaked the sleeve of my shirt, the knife wedged into my shoulder almost to the bone. Vision spotting, I ripped it free from my arm.

“Lacey,” I gritted out, slumping to the frozen ground. “Get out of here—"

In that instant, Indie Rock reformed, seizing her from behind. I lurched to my feet, his dagger clasped in bloody fingertips. But I couldn’t throw it. Not with my bad hand and not at this distance. Not when an undead had a knife pressed to her throat.

“Let her go.” The air sawing in and out of my lungs felt raw as sand. “Take me instead.”

“You’re not exactly my type.”

“If you touch her—”

The knife nicked up, a thin stream of blood trailing down its gleaming silver blade. A weight slammed into my chest, cutting off all available oxygen.

Cal told me once that contrary to what you see on TV, time doesn’t really slow during a traumatic event, just our perception of it. The fear center of the brain goes into overdrive, forming layer upon layer of memory, all those details distorting reality, making time impossible to grasp.

“Please,” I whispered.

And in that eternity that Lacey’s gaze held mine, what I knew was this:

That when she laughed, the world stopped. That if I turned out the pockets of her hoodie, I would find a strawberry chapstick, a receipt for two breakfast tacos from Guillermo’s, and an assortment of homemade dog biscuits from her morning run, which was probably why half the dogs in Lindley County were now on a diet. I knew without a moment’s hesitation that I would have given anything to switch out our places and feel that silver blade against my throat instead of hers. And as those January gray eyes widened, her lips starting to form my name, the only thing I couldn’t have told you was why we had wasted the last five years apart.

And then she and the undead vanished into thin air, carving out part of my soul with them. I collapsed to my knees, screaming to the empty winter sky. But in the answering stillness, there was only the hollow brush of the wind over miles of sage and cedar. Concern from my brothers flared through the bond. West was in wolf form, nearly to me, Brody and Ethan close behind—

Ignoring them, I staggered across the clearing. The female vamp jerked when I yanked the knife free from her throat. The wound was already trying to close, bright pink skin knitting together at the edges. Unlike shifters, vampires had no enhanced regenerative abilities, and could only go out during daylight or heal rapidly if they’d been feeding from one of us. This one, at least, had.

I bared my teeth. “Where did he take her?”

Her pupils dilated at the smell of my blood, dark eyes large and sunken in a bony, wasted skull. Vampires who stuck to a diet of human blood could pass as human much of the time. Their fangs retracted when they weren’t feeding or aroused, and as long as they were careful to stay indoors once the sun rose, no one would suspect they wanted to drain their victims to the point the blood loss caused cognitive impairment, then dump them in an alley somewhere. Vampires in the lower castes like this one, the common soldiers who fueled up on shifter blood and went out in daylight to raid and kill, were often mistaken for your typical meth head. Pale. Twitchy. The more times they drank from one of us, the more their bodies degraded from exposure to the lycan virus. From the looks of this one, she’d taken a hit of shifter one too many times.

Her blood-tinged lips moved, mouthing something I couldn’t make out.

“Tell me where they went and I’ll make sure you aren’t harmed.” I already knew what Brody would say about the idea of offering protection to a leech. Like any answer a vampire gave could be trusted. But I was out of options.

“Give us Topher Greer.”

The hair rose at the back of my neck. “What do you want with him?”

She clawed for me, back arched, fingers grotesquely splayed. The blood staining her lips turned to a pale pink froth. Poison.

I swore, knowing it was already too late. Within seconds, her eyes dimmed.