Blood Crave 2 (2 page)
Authors: Jennifer Knight
Tags: #Social Issues, #Love & Romance, #Vampires, #College Students, #Juvenile Fiction, #Paranormal, #General, #Romance, #Werewolves, #Dating & Sex, #Fiction, #Occult & Supernatural
Then someone screamed.
My heart stopped completely, and it took everything I had to keep from running into the barn.
“Get the human!” someone shouted.
An unearthly growling sound erupted and then more screaming. Sounds of a scuffle—banging, grunting, and Lucas’s yowling—reached my ears. Pain radiated from his vibe so strongly it hurt me as well. I clutched the stake, flipping it around so that the wooden end faced outward. Any longer, and I was going in. To hell with the plan.
Another high-pitched scream and a thump.
More fighting, and then, without warning, the connection dropped.
I ran into the barn, yelling Lucas’s name. It was almost completely dark inside with only the blue light streaming in from the hayloft above. At first I couldn’t see anything, then I caught sight of a human lying still on the ground with blood pouring out of her throat. I started to rush to her to help, but a noise to my left made me stop. I whirled around to see—
Oh, thank God.
Lucas was okay. He was just human again.
That wasn’t part of the plan, but at least he was alive. And he’d managed to subdue the vampire. It was a man, thin and eerily beautiful as all vampires were, but still sort of creepy-looking when you really looked at him. His pointed, blood-soaked teeth were bared, and he was doing everything is his power to throw Lucas off of him.
“Get off of me, filthy dog!” he yelled, thrashing.
“Yeah, because that’s gonna happen,” Lucas said. He waved me over, and I handed him the stake. Careful to avoid the silver, he pressed the wooden end directly above the vampire’s heart. “Move again and you’re history.”
The vampire calmed somewhat, but let loose a stream of vile curses.
“Is the human okay?” Lucas asked.
I went over to check. “She’s been bitten,” I said, voice shaking. “She’s paralyzed.”
The vampire hissed a laugh and I heard Lucas punch him.
“Leave her and I’ll deal with it afterward,” Lucas said. “I need you here.”
“But she’s bleeding.”
“Faith.”
His tone told me not to argue further, so I returned to the struggling enemies and stood behind Lucas, too afraid to get closer. Lucas was supposed to be a wolf for this part, since he was stronger that way, but I found myself glad he’d changed back into a human. Just the sight of this vampire—of any vampire—was enough to make my brain all slow and fuzzy.
Lucas, however, didn’t seem to have the same problem.
“We gotta do this quick. There was another one that got away, and she might bring reinforcements.”
“What were they doing in here?” I asked.
“Looked like a feeding frenzy.” He nodded to the right and I turned to see—
I choked back a sudden surge of vomit.
“Oh, God,” I whispered, looking away quickly.
In the corner of the barn was a pile of dead bodies, some new enough to have been killed tonight while others ... well, it accounted for the smell of death Lucas had reported earlier, and which I was now privy to.
“The girl,” I said, worried about the one who was still alive over there.
“Will die,” Lucas said.
“But—”
“It’s protocol, Faith. Either I kill her now, or she becomes like this sack of maggots.” He slammed the vampire’s head into the earth.
At his grunt of pain, I came back to the situation. Now was not the time to lose it.
“We need to find out if he knows anything before we bring him back to the mansion,” Lucas said. “So you need to read his emotions when I ask him the questions.”
“I know,” I said.
“Just reminding you. You look a little freaked.”
“I’m fine.” I swallowed hard and tried to focus. Looking at the vampire’s bloody, beautiful face was not something I was keen on doing, but I had to in order to get the strongest read on his emotions. In fact . . . “I should touch him.”
“Screw off, human slime,” the vampire growled. Lucas slashed his cheek with the stake.
“You don’t speak unless I say,” Lucas rumbled. He glanced back at me. “Touch his foot or something.”
I bent and pulled his slacks back to touch his calf. At once, a wave of his emotions fell on me like a collapsed building. He was furious and scared, but that didn’t take a rocket scientist—or a telepath—to figure out. What I was looking for was signs of deceit.
“I’m ready,” I said.
Lucas rounded on the vampire. “Tell me what you know about the uprising.”
“What uprising?”
“You know damn well what uprising. Start talking or I’ll start taking your eyes out.”
Gross.
This was definitely a side of Lucas I’d never seen before.
This was definitely a side of Lucas I’d never seen before.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But I could feel differently. He was hiding something—I just couldn’t tell what it was.
“He knows something,” I said. The vampire hissed viciously at me, cursing me off.
Lucas rammed his head into the dirt again. “Tell the truth. As you can see, we’ll know if you lie.”
“I don’t know anything ab—”
Lucas brought the stake directly over his eyeball, and the vampire cringed. “Lie again. Please. I think I’ll enjoy making you eternally blind.”
The vampire gulped and then said, “Okay . . . but promise to let me free after.”
“Only thing I can promise you is a swift death, leech. Now start talking.”
“Why should I—”
Lucas lowered the point of the stake so that it dug into the delicate skin of his closed eyelid.
“Okay!” the vampire screeched. “I know very little, but I know enough. If you just let me go . . .”
“We’ll let you go,” I said. Lucas turned to me. I shrugged. Why would he tell us anything if he was going to die anyway?
Lucas looked a little stunned by my input, but to my surprise, went along with me. “Sure vampire, we’ll let you go, okay? Just tell us what you know.”
The vampire deliberated for a long moment, and I felt the mistrust roiling through him as he did so, but finally croaked out with, “I know that the monarch is collecting women. She likes them young and she likes the pretty ones because they make the best hunters. She wants them for the army.”
Lucas looked over at me, fire in his eyes.
“He’s telling the truth.”
“What else?” Lucas demanded. “Who’s your monarch? Where is the lair?”
“I can’t tell you.”
Lucas began to start up with the stake-in-the-eye thing again, but the vampire screamed out, “It’s the truth! Ask her! Ask her!”
I felt for it, and found, unfortunately, that he wasn’t lying.
“Why can’t you tell?” I asked.
“It’s forbidden. Vampire magic ... when we swear our allegiance to the brood, we are bound by a gag. I cannot utter her name nor reveal the existence of our lair without her permission. And I do not have it.”
“But it’s a chick,” Lucas said. “That’s something.”
“Not enough,” I said. “Rolf will need more than this.”
Lucas adjusted his hold on the vampire, but made sure to keep the stake poised at his chest. “What can you tell me about the plan to wage war on the wolf packs?”
Something flickered in his vibe—not exactly deceit, but close. I was about to say something, when the vampire began talking.
“The monarch wants to crush Rolf ’s pack and all others on the planet. We’re sick of living in the shadows. We want to kill without consequence, and the only way to accomplish this is if the werewolves are out of the picture.”
Lucas looked back at me again and I nodded. It was the truth, all right. It just felt like there was something missing. Whatever it was, it didn’t matter at the moment. We had what we needed.
2
VERDICT
I
wasn’t sure if there’d ever been a vampire at the werewolf mansion, but if there had, you certainly wouldn’t have known it from the ruckus we caused by bringing one into the living room.
wasn’t sure if there’d ever been a vampire at the werewolf mansion, but if there had, you certainly wouldn’t have known it from the ruckus we caused by bringing one into the living room.
Every werewolf within a mile radius—or so it seemed—had smelled the rotting corpse mere seconds after we’d tugged him out of the silver-reinforced trunk. The silver didn’t exactly hurt vampires as much as weaken them slightly. It wasn’t as bad as it was with werewolves, who’d die if pierced through the heart with silver, but it was enough to keep him from breaking out of the trunk.
Inside the house, the vampire was heavily chained to a chair and surrounded by the pack. Not all of them, but darn near. Rolf stood at the head of the crowd, flanked by Yvette, his human wife, and the other Council members, all of whom were currently deciding Lucas’s fate.
Hope this doesn’t make things worse. . . .
Lucas and I stood on either side of the vampire, waiting for Rolf to speak. He’d been disconcertingly silent upon seeing what we’d done. Usually when something he didn’t like happened, he took to screaming and throwing things. Heavy things. That the eighteenth-century vase behind him was still intact ... well, it was curious.
After several more moments of tense silence—during which Katie, Julian, and his human fiancée, Melanie, showed up—Rolf finally murmured, “What have you done?”
Hoping this was meant for Lucas, I remained silent, though refused to look away.
“We found the proof we needed,” Lucas said, also calm, but firm.
“Regarding?” Rolf asked.
“You know what this is about. Don’t feign ignorance.”
Rolf’s face tightened. “Fine. But I do not see how bringing a bloodsucker into my home is going to change my mind.”
“Will you at least listen?” Lucas asked.
He waited a beat, and then, “I will listen.”
Lucas kicked the vampire in the leg. The guy had been silent too, probably scared that one false move would turn him into an undead bag of Puppy Chow.
“Tell them what you told us,” Lucas commanded.
It seemed to cost a lot of effort, but the vampire obeyed. He was likely hoping we’d hold up to our end of the bargain and set him free if he complied.
Stupid.
When he was done, I turned my attention to Rolf, who had not uttered a word. In the low light from the fire behind him, I could see a vein ticking in his temple—the only clue to the fury raging beneath his calm exterior. And yeah, if I stretched my power, I could feel it. He was
livid
. But, strangely, his voice was subdued when he spoke.
livid
. But, strangely, his voice was subdued when he spoke.
“I thought you claimed to have proof,” he rumbled.
I shot a glance at Lucas, who looked about as shocked as I felt.
“What do you mean? This is proof.”
“This is nothing but a scared little boy who will say anything to stay alive.”
Lucas’s mouth thinned. I knew he wanted to tell them all that I’d read his emotions and confirmed what the vampire said, but that would mean my death along with the vampire’s. No way was Rolf going to let me live if he knew what I could do.
“It’s the truth,” Lucas snarled.
“Prove it.”
“What more do you want, Rolf?” Lucas exploded, flapping his arms out to the side. “A vampire from the Denver brood just told you everything he knows about the uprising and you still believe it’s a lie? Are you really that damned stubborn?”
“You hold your tongue,” Rolf said, voice like a gunshot through the room. “I am over five-hundred-years old, and there has never been a day in my life that I have sunk so low as to trust a vampire. Today will be no different. This creature knows that information—whether false or otherwise—is his only chance to be released. He will say whatever you want to hear to be set free. You should know that, Lucas.”
I watched Lucas chew on the inside of his mouth, veins popping out of his neck. Yeah, I too wanted to blurt out that I had confirmed the vampire’s story with my power, but I didn’t want it bad enough to risk death. Still, if we didn’t convince Rolf to take action on the uprising, the gory scene in the barn would be just the beginning.
“So you’ll just sit around and do nothing while innocent humans die?” I asked.
Rolf’s cold gaze locked on me, and it took everything I had not to shiver underneath it.
“We work every night to hunt the vampires that assault our territory. We always have and always will. But I refuse to waste time preparing for a war that will never come. Do you realize that if I were to accept this war as a reality, I would be obligated to alert every single pack master in Northern America? Word would spread throughout the wolf packs that
I
started this. That
I
initiated the fight. Hundreds of thousands would be mobilized, families evacuated from their homes, curfews, weapons, even riots among the conservative packs! It would be chaos within weeks. And then what if your little theory proves to be false, hmm?”
I
started this. That
I
initiated the fight. Hundreds of thousands would be mobilized, families evacuated from their homes, curfews, weapons, even riots among the conservative packs! It would be chaos within weeks. And then what if your little theory proves to be false, hmm?”
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