Four
“Get her! Don’t let her get away!”
Several pairs of hands grabbed me and none of them were trying to be gentle. I thrashed around, trying to break free but the silver net that covered my head and shoulders not only stung like fire but weakened me considerably. My arms felt too heavy to move but I got in a few good kicks, hoping to break some ribs, before one of my attackers wrapped a silver chain around my legs as well, rendering me immobile. My jeans protected me from the sting of the metal but not the lassitude it caused—I suddenly felt as if someone had dipped my feet in lead.
“Who are you and what do you want with me?” I demanded in a voice that was more shaky than I would have liked.
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” sneered one of the men. I could see him in the dim light of the parking garage—he was wearing tattered jeans and a stained T-shirt and my nose told me he hadn’t bathed in a good long time.
“Yes, I would so why don’t you tell me?” I tried to sound calm—tried to be calm as much as possible. If ever a situation called for a panic attack this was it but if I let the fear carry me away I might not get out of this alive.
“We don’t have to tell you shit, lady.” The other attacker came into view. He wasn’t in much better shape than his friend except he’d added to the stained and tattered clothing theme with a ball cap that said No Fat Chicks. Classy.
My nose was telling me that both of them were human, which explained their need to use silver to capture me. But where had two guys who looked like they did their shopping at the Salvation Army gotten the money for such high-silver-content items? My T-shirt and long hair mostly protected my arms and neck but even now I could feel the mesh of the net burning one of my cheeks.
“Let me go now or you’re going to be sorry. My brother is in Los Lobos.” Even in the human world my little brother’s pack had a reputation. Though I had been fighting with him about it earlier, now I was more than willing to use it to my advantage.
One of my attackers—the one without a hat who needed a bath—looked pale. “Oh man, they didn’t say nothing about that. That’s some bad shit, man,” he said to the No Fat Chicks guy.
“Only if they find out. And ain’t nobody gonna find out what happened to this little lady where we’re taking her. But first I think we oughta have some fun.”
“I dunno, man,” the really smelly one said. “I thought we weren’t s’posed to mess with her. Didn’t he say she had to be a virgin?”
“Yeah, he did. But there’s more than one garage to park your car in. He wants her pussy—fine. He didn’t say nothing about that tight little ass, though.” No Fat Chicks leered at me and I felt my calm slipping.
God, this was so not good. I was in trouble if I couldn’t get free. But the idea of them killing me didn’t upset me nearly as much as the veiled threat in his voice and the leer on his face. Who had sent them? And why would whoever it was know or care that I was still a virgin?
No Fat Chicks and his unwashed friend, who I was beginning to think of as Needs a Bath, carried me around to one end of the garage and placed me between a concrete barrier and someone’s ridiculously large Hummer. I tried to wiggle away but the silver made me too weak. I wondered if I was getting silver poisoning—which is similar to mercury poisoning for humans—from the part of the net that was still brushing against my cheek. The burning had almost stopped and all I felt was a numb kind of ache and the beginnings of a throbbing headache.
“Now we got some privacy.” No Fat Chicks was already working on the button of my jeans. Panic was clawing at my throat but I made a desperate effort to keep my voice calm.
“You’ll have to unchain my legs to do that. And I guarantee the minute you do you’re losing your balls.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that, girly. We can do it doggie style.” He flipped me over on my stomach and stripped down my jeans and panties, baring my ass.
“Doggie style—that’s a good one. Fuck the werewolf cunt doggie style,” chortled Needs a Bath.
Rough fingers grabbed at my thighs, seeking to pry them apart and now I could feel the panic taking me. It was so much like before—the feeling of helplessness, of inevitability. Knowing that no matter what I did I couldn’t save myself from this horror…
I opened my mouth to scream but suddenly the hands on my body disappeared. I looked up at Needs a Bath and saw that his face had gone as pale as a dirty sheet. “What the hell?” he muttered and then there was a choked gurgling sound behind me and his face was suddenly spattered with crimson. The coppery smell that permeated the air around me let me know what it was—blood. I had a feeling that I wasn’t going to have any more problems with No Fat Chicks but I needed to be certain.
Rolling over while I was draped in silver was a considerable effort but the adrenaline that still flooded my system helped me. What I saw when I finally managed the effort both surprised and frightened me.
Jude was standing there, wearing jeans and a black leather jacket that emphasized the width of his shoulders. But it wasn’t his wardrobe I was concerned with. His fangs were out and his mouth was covered in blood. His eyes pulsed red rage in the darkness.
Hanging limply from his hand was what was left of No Fat Chicks. His head seemed to be at a very strange angle to his body and at first I couldn’t understand what my eyes were seeing. Then everything came together and I saw that it was barely attached and only hanging on by a thin strip of bloody flesh. His body was still shaking spasmodically like a chicken that has just been to the butcher’s block but the blood that had spattered my other attacker—and probably me too although I was too numb to feel it—was flowing more weakly now, trickling over Jude’s hand to patter on the dirty concrete like red raindrops.
“Holy shit!” Needs a Bath had finally found his voice. “Look, man, I swear, I didn’t touch her.”
“I know. That’s why you’re still alive.” Jude’s deep voice was ice cold and if he was feeling anything at all about what he’d done, you certainly couldn’t see it in his face. Well, except for the glowing red eyes. For the first time I wondered if that was normal for vampires. I had never heard that their eyes changed colors according to their emotions but what did I know?
“Please…please don’t do me like you done Bill,” Needs a Bath whimpered. “Please, I swear to God—I won’t never come near her again. We didn’t know when they paid us to take her that she belonged to somebody like you.”
I wanted to ask who had hired them but I was too frightened to open my mouth.
Jude looked at the other attacker. “Leave. Tell the ones who hired you that Luz Velez is mine. Anyone who threatens her risks the same fate as this one.” He shook the body and the No Fat Chicks ball cap, which had somehow managed to stay on even though the owner’s head had come off, finally flopped to the floor in the growing puddle of blood.
Needs a Bath scrambled to his feet and my nose told me he had a new reason to pay better attention to his personal hygiene. Sure enough, when he stumbled past me I saw a dark patch on his already stained pants. The sharp reek of urine competed with the heavy tang of blood in the air, making my stomach roll. I leaned to one side, retching. I never eat before a test so there was nothing to come up but my body was determined to try anyway and I was helpless to stop it.
“Luz. Wait a moment.” There was a blur where Jude had been and he disappeared for probably five seconds while I did my best to cough up a lung. Then he was back, sans body, and kneeling in front of me.
As my nausea finally subsided, he pulled the silver net off me and threw it to one side. Then he unwound the silver chain from around my legs, wincing as he did so like a man touching a hot skillet. When I was free, he held out a hand to help me up.
It was covered in blood.
I’d been numb when I first saw Jude standing there with a bloody body in his hands but now the panic came back full force. I felt my lungs tightening up, my airway constricting as I struggled to get a deep breath. I was dizzy and sweating bullets, my palms clammy and my heart racing so fast it felt as if it were trying to pound its way out of my chest with a sledgehammer.
“No-no, don’t touch me!” I scrambled to my feet, yanking up my jeans, which were still somewhere down around my thighs. All I could think was that Diego had been right—Jude was a monster, capable of anything. Don’t get me wrong, weres aren’t exactly the most peaceful types and sometimes pack justice can be enough to turn your hair white. But I had never seen anything so brutal, so final as the dead body dangling from Jude’s hand.
“Luz, please.” His eyes had stopped glowing. They were back to their normal pale green and they were filled with concern.
“You…I…” I couldn’t get the words out. “You killed him.”
“He was hurting you.” He said the words simply, as though they explained everything.
“Can’t breathe.” I sank down beside the back bumper of the Hummer. My head was spinning and black spots were dancing before my eyes.
“Luz…”
But I didn’t hear whatever else it was he said because at that point I fainted.
I had a strange dream while I was out. Someone was telling me I had to invite them in. I couldn’t fathom why anyone would want to see my crappy apartment but they seemed very insistent about it and kept asking. Finally I slurred, “Come in,” and blacked out again.
When I woke up the second time I was lying on my own bed, covered by the fuzzy pink and blue afghan my grandmother had knitted for me when I was eight. I still felt dizzy and shaky but the panic had passed and I took a deep breath, gratefully filling my lungs with air.
What happened? I sat up slowly, noting that my cheek hurt as though I’d burned myself with a curling iron. I started to get out of bed and go look at myself in the mirror when I saw that the bathroom door was closed and there were puffs of steam coming out from under it. Someone was in my apartment taking a shower in my bathroom.
Jude. When I thought his name, it all came rushing back. The attack, the intended rape and the very final way the vampire had resolved the situation. The panic wanted to come back too but I took a deep breath and held it off grimly. I can’t always do that—not in the heat of the moment. But this time I did. Closing my eyes, I counted backward from a hundred, thinking of absolutely nothing but the numbers until I stopped feeling so shaky. Over now. It’s over now, I told myself. Breathe. Just breathe.
Just as the panicky feeling was passing, the bathroom door opened and Jude stepped out. He was shirtless, wearing only a pair of faded jeans that had a few dark red spots around the knees, now drying to brown. His blond hair was slicked back from his forehead and there were water droplets clinging to his broad shoulders and muscular chest. He looked like a fantasy straight out of Playgirl and in any other circumstances my mouth would have been watering. But now my eyes kept returning to those drying reddish-brown spots on his jeans.
“I hope you don’t mind. My shirt and jacket will have to be cleaned before they’re wearable again.” He lifted the low armchair I had in the corner of my bedroom and placed it beside the bed before sitting down. “Are you all right?”
“I…don’t know.” I looked at him uncertainly. “I don’t…exactly know how to feel about you now.”
“The same way you felt before, I hope.” He was sitting relaxed in the chair, one long leg crossed over the other at the ankle as though we were talking about the weather.
“But…” I shook my head, trying to get my thoughts in order. “But you killed him.”
“And I would do it again.” His tone was absolutely calm. “I am sorry you had to see it, though,” he added. “Maybe I should have taken him elsewhere first. But when I saw him touching you…” His eyes glinted red for a split second and then he shook his head and they went back to normal. “Anyway, I am sorry if it upset you.”
“But not sorry you did it,” I said flatly.
He shrugged, his broad, bare shoulders moving gracefully. “Why should I be?”
“My brother warned me about you,” I said, pulling the afghan up to my chin. “He said you were ruthless. That even other vampires are afraid of you.”
He arched one blond eyebrow. “Luz, all vampires are ruthless. The reason my own kind avoid me is something else entirely.”
“Why then?” I asked, not even sure I wanted to know.
He shrugged again. “It’s not important. I have…a disability. Something like your own condition.”
He didn’t seem inclined to say any more about it and I supposed I couldn’t blame him. I wouldn’t have wanted to explain ad nauseam to someone who didn’t know about my inability to shift with the moon, either.
I thought of something else. “Diego—my brother—he said you skinned someone—a were—alive. That’s not true, is it?” I really, really didn’t want it to be true.
Jude’s face was suddenly closed. “I always have a reason for everything I do.”
“So you actually did that?” I couldn’t believe it, even after what I’d seen him do. I had seen the darkness in him before but then it was just winking at me—now it was out in the open. Killing my attacker had been a spur of the moment kind of thing. But to skin someone alive…that took a cold heart and a steady hand. That took a monster.
“I did it, yes. But I will not discuss it with you now.”
I closed my eyes, willing myself not to imagine what he was admitting. “You don’t seem like someone who could do something like that. Or you didn’t…before tonight.”
Jude was silent and I realized he really wasn’t going to talk to me about it.
“Well, who were those men? What did they want with me?” I asked, changing the subject because I couldn’t bear to think about it anymore. “They seemed to have been hired. Who would hire them to come after me like that?”
Jude shook his head, a thoughtful look on his face.
I took a deep breath. “I think whoever hired them must have been a were.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because…” I bit my lip, looking down. “They, when they were talking one of them said something about me being a…being a virgin. Only another were—one I knew—would know that.”
Jude frowned. “How would they know?”
“There’s a chemical shift—a change that occurs in a were female’s scent the first time she has sex. It’s caused by…by the male’s seed when he…”
“When he comes in her?” Jude finished for me.
I nodded, blushing. Despite the things we’d done together the last time I had seen him, I was still embarrassed talking about sex. I guess that’s what twenty-seven years of virginity will do for you.
“So someone who knows you’re a virgin—someone you know because they know your scent—”
“Yes—they hired those two guys to come after me. But why?”
He looked grim. “I don’t know but I am going to find out. In the meantime, I don’t want you to worry about it anymore. This is all going to be taken care of.”
“How will you take care of it?” I demanded. “By hunting them down and killing them?”
“If I have to.”
“Jude…” I shook my head. It was no use. He would do what he wanted and I didn’t want to think about it. “Why were you here, anyway?” I asked. “I mean, you…you haven’t been following me, have you?”
He laughed. “You seem to think I have unlimited personal time to do whatever I want. Actually I have a business to attend to. But tonight I wanted to see you—to hear if you had good news. Did you pass?”
I knew he was changing the subject, knew I should hold on to my fear and frustration and not give in to the easy way he had of drawing me into conversation. But somehow I just couldn’t help myself.
“I’m pretty sure I did.” I sat up straighter on the bed, letting the afghan drop a little. “At first I could feel myself getting panicky but I did what you said—closed my eyes and remembered how I felt when I took your blood. And it worked.”
“I’m very happy for you. I was a little concerned that maybe the blood would have worn off early if you were too anxious. In fact, I almost called and offered to give you more last night.”
“I was pretty busy cramming,” I said, trying not to remember what our last blood exchange had entailed. I wouldn’t have gotten a lick of studying done if he had come over—I could guarantee that.
Jude nodded. “I thought as much. Which is why I decided not to bother you.”
“Well…I’m glad you were here tonight,” I said, feeling suddenly ungrateful after the way I had accused and interrogated him. “You saved me. They were going to…going to…” It all came rushing back and I had to look down at my clenched hands and concentrate on breathing.
“I know what they were going to do.” Jude was suddenly sitting beside me on the bed though I hadn’t even seen him get up. Shifters are fast but vamps can practically move at the speed of light.
“Jude…” I looked at him fearfully but he only stroked a strand of hair away from my face and didn’t try to touch me any more than that.
“No one will take you against your will. I promise you that, Luz.”
“Including you?”
“Including me.” His thumb brushed over the sore spot on my cheek and I winced. “You should let me tend that for you.”
I put my hand to my face. “I was going to look at it before you came out of the bathroom. Is it bad?”
“As silver burns go I have seen worse. But it looks painful.”
I got off the bed and went over to the mirror that hung above my dresser. The burn looked more than painful—it was disfiguring. My right cheek was crisscrossed with a hatch mark of thin red lines that were tender to touch—it looked like I had fallen asleep on a waffle iron.
I bit my lower lip, trying not to cry. “Shit. That’s going to leave a scar.” Shifters can heal most any wound but one inflicted with silver.
“It doesn’t have to.” Jude was suddenly behind me. In the mirror we looked as different as night and day—I with my big dark eyes and cloud of curly dark hair and him so tall and blond and brooding.
“How do you mean?” I examined my cheek again. “You can’t heal silver burns. At least, weres can’t. I don’t know about you vamps.”
“My blood can heal almost any harm. Even silver burns.”
I looked down at the dresser, tracing the shapes of my jewelry box and hairbrush with my eyes. “I don’t know about that, Jude. I know we had a deal but…but I don’t know how I feel about taking your blood again. Or giving you mine.”
He was quiet for a minute. “I’m sorry you feel that way.”
“It’s just…” I looked up, meeting his eyes in the mirror. “It’s such a…such an intimate experience. And…I don’t feel like you’re who I thought you were when we first agreed to all this.”
“Did I deny my nature to you? Did I tell you I was perfect?” He kept his tone light but his eyes were shadowed.
“No, never,” I said. “But you…you were so understanding. So gentle. When you touched me, I mean. And I thought…”
“You thought hands that touched you so tenderly could never do violence.” He turned me to face him and his fingertips trailed lightly over my unburned cheek. “I am a creature of violence, Luz—that is what it means to be a vampire. But that doesn’t mean I have no gentleness in me.”
“I’m a were,” I countered. “You don’t see me killing people—although I am grateful that you saved me. But still.”
“You don’t need blood to survive. It’s different for us.”
“I guess so.” I sighed painfully. “What I’m trying to say is that, well, maybe you should leave. I need time alone. Time to think.”
Jude frowned. “If you were anyone else I would remind you that we made a deal.”
My temper flared. “We didn’t sign any contracts, Jude. And if you want your money back I’ll be more than happy to give you a refund. Or you could just take what you want by force.”
His eyes flashed. “You know I won’t do that.”
“Then you’ll have to wait and give me some space. What I saw tonight…what I learned about you… I’m not going to say it was a deal breaker. But it was close. I’m sorry.”
“I am sorry, too.” He ran a hand through his hair—a very human gesture of frustration, I thought. “Will you at least consider another blood exchange? It would mean a great deal to me.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Think about it, then.” He lifted my chin, looking into my eyes. “Think about the pleasure it brings us both. It’s not always like that you know, Luz. What we felt when you fed from me and I from you was special—unique.”
“I wouldn’t know about that.” I could feel heated blood rushing to my face and I tried to look away.
Jude searched my eyes a moment more before dropping his hand and releasing my chin. “I know you wouldn’t,” he murmured.
Released from the spell of his eyes, I walked out of the bedroom, heading for the small living area of my apartment. Jude followed me. Good, that was the idea. I knew why I wanted him to leave so badly—it was because the longer he was with me, the more inclined I felt to just forget all the horrible things I’d learned about him and drag him to bed. I kept thinking of how good his mouth and hands had felt on me last time. How he’d tasted me and touched me until I came and came.
My body longed for his touch again like it was a drug and I didn’t like feeling that way—dependent, needy, helpless.
Jude put his hand on the doorknob, looking as though he was about to leave. Instead, he turned to me and put his hands on my shoulders. “There is another way.”