Chapter 26
Pushing away the thoughts of Ryder’s disapproving looks and comments, I angrily locked the door behind him and went into my room, discarding the sheet to the floor. I went into my bathroom and started up the shower, and as it was heating up, I looked at my reflection. I had sex hair and my eyes were bloodshot from crying. As I peered at myself in the quickly-fogging mirror, I looked at the irises of my eyes and noticed they were yellow. They weren’t changing back to their natural blue. I blinked slowly and opened them back up again, and this time they were yellow with a ring of red around the outer edges. I had seen that once before, when I had looked at myself in the mirror the first time I’d shifted into wolf-girl. I blinked once more and they were now blue.
All this shit going on with my body was beginning to freak me out. Maybe my parents or Sanja would know what it meant, I thought as I stepped into the shower.
I first lathered up my hair with my vanilla-scented shampoo, and then rinsed that out. After applying conditioner, I went to grab the body wash, but was suddenly struck with a piercing pain behind my eyes, and I immediately recognized the familiar psychic headache. I dropped to my knees under the hot spray of water and pressed my palms to my temples.
I came to the corner to an alleyway of a very dimly-lit street, and before I reached it, I heard the faint sound of moaning by two voices, male and female. Were there people having sex in the alley?
Slowly, I crept toward the corner and carefully peered around the edge. There, I saw a woman, her sparkly red dress barely covering her ass, with her back up against the brick wall of the building. A man had his head at her neck, and his hand was climbing up her thigh to reach under the bottom hem of her dress.
Her moans eventually turned to panicked screams, and I began to realize what I was seeing. As if in slow motion, and unable to stop myself, I ran at full speed to the vampire and ripped him off the woman…
Gasping for breath, I opened my eyes to see I was still in the shower, warm water pounding down on my back. I was on all fours and trying to get my heartrate down to a normal rhythm. Gripping the side of the tub, I stood and put my palm to the wall to steady myself. With shaky hands I rinsed the conditioner out of my hair and pondered the strange vision I’d just had.
* * *
“Ryder’s pissed at me,” I said sadly, stirring my seltzer water. I plucked the olive off the stick and popped in my mouth.
“Why’s that?” Sanja asked, piercing me with her intense brown eyes.
It was now spring break and my bestie was staying with me so we could hang out and catch up.
“I foolishly told him of my plans to kill Linden. He told me it’s a suicide mission and I should just let it go.”
She chewed her lip and looked at me sympathetically. With her hand on mine, I felt that weird electric current, but ignored it. “He’s just concerned about you. It’s not very smart to go after someone like that. But I understand why you’re doing it.”
“Do you?” I asked.
She looked hurt. “Of course I do. You’re hurting and need closure.”
“Linden isn’t the only one I’m going after,” I said, looking around the club. We were once again in Moon Chasers.
“I understand you wanting to confront the vampire who bit you. And I think you should… just with caution,” she said.
“Excuse me, would you like to dance?” said a voice from behind us.
We turned to see a young, pale-skinned human wearing dark clothes. He was looking at Sanja.
She smiled sweetly at him, brushing some of her dark hair behind her ear. “Thank you, but no. We were just catching up.” She pointed at me.
He looked at me and smiled, and then back to her. “Okay, if you change your mind, my buddies and I are hanging out at that table back there.”
We both looked to see where he was pointing, but I never got to the table with my gaze, as it landed on something else. Kellan and two of his guys stood near the DJ booth, and he was, of course, staring at me.
I gave him a small smile, but he did not return it. My grin quickly dropped and I looked away. “Asshole,” I muttered.
“I didn’t think so,” Sanja said. “He seemed pretty harmless?”
I chuckled. “Not that dude. Someone else in here.”
She sucked down the rest of her rum and Coke through the little black straw, and said, “Who?”
I tried to discreetly show her Kellan, and then I launched into the entire story about what had happened since I met him, and who he was to Linden. Her asking about him was a good segue way into the whole psychic vision thing, because I was dying to ask her what the hell it had meant and what was going on with me.
When I was done with my account of what I’d been through in the past few weeks, including my strange encounter with Evan Grant, she furrowed her dark eyebrows and chewed on the little plastic stick that once held the lime from her cocktail.
“So you’re telling me that you have these… visions… and then hours or days later, they come true?”
I nodded. “I’ve only had two, but yes, so far they have.” Then my eyes went wide. “Wait! I had another one today. But Kellan wasn’t in this one.”
“You did?” She gasped.
I nodded. “Yeah, it was strange.” I then told her about it.
“Could it be about the vampire who bit you?” she asked, concerned.
“I don’t know.”
I was about to say something else, but suddenly, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and a goosebump-inducing shiver ran up my spine. I slowly turned to see Kellan standing behind me.
I found it odd how my mind and body always knew when he was close.
“Hello, love,” he said, a smile on his handsome face.
I swallowed hard, and said, “Hi, Kellan.”
Grinning in his deliciously wicked way, he said in his strong accent, “Are you going to introduce me to your pretty witch friend?”
“I’m Sanja,” she said quickly, putting out her hand to shake.
Kellan looked down at her hand, but did not remove his from his pants pocket. With a grin, he said, “Nice to meet you.”
I knew why Sanja wanted to touch him, but he was not falling for it.
Kellan put his intense gaze back to mine, and said, “May I speak privately with you for a moment?”
Nodding, I said, “Sure.”
He put out his hand and I took it, standing from the barstool and adjusting my little black dress.
“Excuse us,” he told Sanja.
She simply nodded, and turned back toward the bar, signaling the bartender.
Kellan brought me to a dark corner of the club, and I noticed his two bodyguards, if that’s what they were, were behind him, but not close enough to hear our conversation.
Wait, what was I thinking? Vampires had supersonic hearing. Disregarding those thoughts, and after being seated in a booth, I watched as Kellan slipped in, sitting dangerously close to me. I was nervous for some unknown reason, but I held my tongue and waited for him to speak.
“You are probably wondering what we’re doing here,” he started.
I grinned. “The thought did cross my mind.”
“I know you have a boyfriend, Ayla St. John.”
“Okay, so you did some digging on me. I’m not impressed so far,” I said in a bored voice, breaking his intense stare and looking out into the club.
He reached over and used his fingers to tilt my jaw, making me look back into his eyes. “I am not trying to impress you. I am simply telling you that even though you have this adolescent crush you are still entertaining, it won’t last long.”
Twisting my head so my face was released from his fingertips, I rolled my eyes at him. “Whatever, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, sliding over the booth’s bench so I could slip out and leave. “My love life is none of your business.”
I stood and adjusted my dress, but before I could storm off, Kellan was in front of me, gripping me gently by the shoulders. “Don’t leave. I didn’t mean to offend.”
I glared up at him, not knowing what to say.
“It’s just that you intrigue me is all. You’re a wolf but you smell of a vampire, too. You’re strikingly beautiful, and have a strong resolve and fierce determination in your eyes.”
Once again taken aback by his words, I simply asked, “Thank you, but why do you talk like that? How old are you?”
He chuckled and removed his hands from my shoulders. Then, before I could blink, his right arm slunk around my waist and he pulled me up against his hard body. “I’m no bloody teenage vampire, I can assure you.”
Ignoring the delicious way his body felt melded up against mine, I kept my hands at my sides and said, “You didn’t answer my question.”
“What do I get if I do?” he said, a cheekiness in his voice.
“Maybe a kiss,” I replied, and then immediately regretted it. Why was I toying with this guy—this vampire, who was most likely very old and very dangerous?
His eyes lit with a flirtatious flame. “Is that so?”
I swallowed hard, half regretting my words, and half becoming just as ignited by them as he seemed to be. So, lifting my chin in confidence, I said, “Yes.”
With his arm still around my backside, and me not resisting it, he said, “I am two-hundred-and-ten years old.”
My jaw came unhinged from its sockets as my mouth hung open.
Kellan chuckled at my reaction, as his other hand moved up to cup my jaw and close my mouth.
“You’re shitting me,” was all I could think to say.
Still grinning at me, he breathed, “No, little wolf, I am not.”
I could not form any more intelligible words, so I said nothing else. Turned out I didn’t need to, since he leaned down and covered his mouth with mine, turning me inside out with a searing kiss that was considerably more scorching than his last.
* * *
“Well, I can see why you and Ryder are having problems,” Sanja said with a chuckle, linking her arm with mine as we walked the five blocks back to my apartment.
“Hey!” I said, looking at my friend, but unable to keep the smile from my face. “We’re having problems because he doesn’t respect my agenda. He thinks I should be in college getting an education, not on a mission to kill vampires.”
“He may have a point, though, my friend,” Sanja said as we walked.
“You Team Ryder now?” I asked, quirking an eyebrow at her.
She shook her head with a laugh. “I will always be Team Ayla. I’m just saying… I worry about you, just like he does.”
“Well, don’t, girl. I can take care of myself.”
“Man… I wish I had such problems as yours. A love triangle with two hotties sounds soooo cool.”
I gasped. “I am not in a love triangle!”
She laughed. “Um, yes, you are so in one. This vampire—Kellan—he has it bad for you. I watched your entire interaction. He’s hot—I don’t need magic to see that—but keep in mind that vampires possess the power of persuasion.”
“I know they do,” I replied. “But you think he controlled me into kissing him? Because I did not feel like I had been persuaded, coerced, or tricked in any way. I wanted him to kiss me.”
She laughed. “Yeah, that’s how persuasion works.”
“Fuck you, ho,” I said, biting back a laugh.
“I think you have enough people to worry about fucking,” she came back with a friendly arm-punch.
We looked both ways to cross the narrow street that held an alley on the right side. As soon as I stepped into the street, I heard moaning coming from the alleyway. Sanja heard it too, because her wide eyes met mine.
“Ahh, crap,” I finally whispered.
“What’s wrong?” Sanja asked, concerned.
With a dramatic sigh, I said, “I think there’s a damn vampire in that alley.”
Her eyes got big again. “Your psychic vision from earlier?”
I nodded, and put a finger to my lips, indicating for her to be silent.
With Sanja behind me, I peered around the corner of the building and into the alleyway. Sure enough, there was a woman in a short, red dress pressed up against the brick wall of the building. A dark-haired man had his mouth to her neck and her head was craned back, her face bathing in the light from the almost-full moon over head.
When her moans turned to screams, I thoughtlessly sprang into the alley.
“Ayla!” Sanja hissed behind me, but I ignored her.
Grabbing the vampire by his long hair, I ripped him from the woman’s now slack body. She slumped against the wall and fell into a heap onto the concrete. I barely registered Sanja tending to her as I slammed the vampire to the ground.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I snapped.
“Bitch,” he hissed under me as I straddled his torso. “Get off me!”
Bucking, he managed to throw me to the ground, where I landed hard on my back, but it did not deter me. I sprang up as he lunged for Sanja and the injured woman.
Before he could reach them, with preternatural speed, I was on him, snatching him by the collar of his black shirt and yanking him back. He landed with a satisfying thud, and I was once again on top of him.
“Filthy vampires need to know their place,” I hissed in his face, not even recognizing my own voice. “You vermin should learn how to be more discreet.”
With a deranged laugh, I leaned down and bit into his neck with fangs I didn’t know I had as they descended from my gums.
“No!” the vampire cried, still trying to buck me off. “A wolf bite will kill me! Don’t, please!”
I showed him no mercy whatsoever. My fucks-to-give meter had gone to zero at that point. As his blood rushed into my mouth, I felt a renewed sense of vigor pour through me.
With the faint sound of Latin chants coming from Sanja as she attended to the injured woman, I happily tore into the vampire’s neck and sucked down all the blood he afforded me. Not as sweet as a human’s, but still satisfying nonetheless, I drank it down and smiled as the light faded from his eyes. I hopped off him as his skin turned a strange gray color, and cracks began to form on his face. Before I knew what was happening, he was nothing but a pile of dust—or was that ash?
Huh. Strange. Another vampire off the street at least. I should have been happy about this. But, was I? I began to mildly freak out that I had killed yet another person. I hated taking a life, but I wasn’t as distraught as I had been the first time it had happened.
“Who are you?” I heard the woman ask.
I turned around to see her stand and back slowly away from Sanja, frightful, as she had just been in her arms. She put her hand to her neck as Sanja continued to chant, “ad sanandum vulnus” three more times, and then she opened her eyes and said in a low, soothing voice, “Go home, pretty girl. Your neck hurts because you twisted it when you slipped in the alley.”
I watched in fascination as Sanja essentially hypnotized the girl.
As she continued to walk backward slowly, watching us suspiciously and with eyes full of fear, I leaned in to Sanja. “Tell her she doesn’t need to turn tricks to make money anymore.”
“Jenna, one more thing, you are going to find yourself an honest job tomorrow. No more hooking. The life growing in your belly deserves better.”
I gasped as Jenna eventually ran away from us.
“How did you know she was a prostitute?” Sanja asked.
I shrugged. “Not exactly sure, to be honest.”
“I guess you are psychic now,” she replied.
I ignored her and asked, “She’s pregnant?”
She nodded. “Sadly, yes.”
I shook my head.
“You saved two lives today, it seemed,” came a voice that caused me to jump.
A man stood at the end of the alleyway, his hands in his pockets, his very presence intimidating and brooding. I couldn’t see his face, but he continued to talk as he made his way toward us, the light from a flickering orange streetlamp eventually illuminating his face. “There are lots of people looking for you, Ayla St. John,” he said, amused.