Blood Lust (7 page)

He held up his hand, which had already healed from its
scalding encounter.

I leaned up against the cell, studying him curiously and
trying not to gawk at his perfectly sculpted torso. He hadn’t been wearing a
shirt underneath the sweatshirt, and his frame was lean and hard, his muscles
perfectly outlined beneath his tanned skin. His spiky hair was perfectly
mussed, like he’d spent an hour styling it already. Did he carry around a tube
of hair gel in his pocket for emergencies? I stifled another giggle,
overwhelmed by the sheer impossibility of the situation. I had so many
questions, but somehow I doubted that he would want to answer all of them.

“So what do we do now?” I asked instead.

He shrugged, as though there were nothing at all to be
worried about, being trapped in a cellar by a bunch of werewolves. “We wait.”

“Why were you in the forest last night?” I asked. I couldn’t
bring myself to ask why he’d been so close to Gram’s house, but he must have
known I wanted to, because he met my gaze steadily.

“I was worried about you,” he said.

I bit my lip nervously, unaccustomed to his directness.
“Why?”

He moved up to the bars then, carefully staying away from
the patch of sunlight, and braced his hands on either side of himself, resting
his forehead against the bars. “I knew they’d be attracted to your scent.”

I grinned and wrinkled my nose. “You can smell me? What do I
smell like? Wait, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.”

He smiled back. His teeth were straight and even. He really
was frighteningly handsome, so much so that
 
I struggled to catch my breath, trying desperately not to show how he
affected me.

“Why’d you save me last night?” If I kept firing off
questions, maybe he’d be too distracted to notice that I was almost salivating
over his half-naked body.

He quirked an eyebrow. “You have to ask?”

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “You don’t even know
me. You could have taken on all those wolves and won. Why would you allow
yourself to be captured for me?”

Something flickered in his eyes. “Perhaps I’m as curious
about you as you are about me.” He turned and slid down the bars until he was
sitting on the floor. I noticed a tattoo of a falcon on one arm, its wings
outstretched, feathers curling up his bicep.

After some hesitation, I sat down on the floor, too, and
made sure to smooth his hoodie down so it was covering everything essential. “I
am curious,” I admitted. “But I don’t want to annoy you with too many
questions.”

Jericho glanced over his shoulder at me. “I rescued you last
night so you’d have the opportunity to ask questions. I was expecting it.”

I glanced at the window. We were on the west side of the
cellar, and I could see the sun. It must have been late afternoon. “Did I sleep
all day?”

“Yes.”

“Is that normal?”

“I don’t know. Is it?” He smiled, taking the sting out of
his words, and continued, “Your body is going through changes, trying to
accommodate its new abilities. You’ll be sleeping more than usual for the next
several days.”

I nodded slowly, and suddenly remembered what the witch had
said last night about a nomad. “How did you know I wasn’t the…nomad they were
searching for? The wolf that is responsible for all those attacks?”

“You were human at the carnival,” he replied promptly.

That’s what I’d figured. “How did you know for sure?”

Jericho tapped his nose with one finger.

How was I the only one finding his supernatural sense of
smell a little creepy?

“Will I eventually be able to…smell when people are
different?” Last night I had known he wasn’t human, but right now I couldn’t
tell any difference. If I hadn’t seen his hand nearly catch on fire in the
sunlight, I never would have guessed that he was a vampire.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “There are a few gaps in my knowledge.
I haven’t spent a great deal of time around your kind in the last century.”

Century?
How old
was he? I opened my mouth to ask the question, but something stopped me. Was it
squicky to be attracted to someone who could possibly be a hundred years older
than me? And what about Jericho? Did he view me as a child?

It was silly, but for whatever reason, I didn’t particularly
want to draw attention to the difference in our ages.

“Are you a vampire?” My voice was almost a whisper. I knew
the answer, but I had to ask.

His gaze locked with mine. “Yes.”

“I’m…a werewolf, right?”

“Yes.”

I thought back to all the recent movies about vampires and
werewolves. The two species had never been on good terms- more often than not,
they were at odds with each other.

“Are vampires and werewolves…enemies?”

“Yes.”

Despair roiled inside me, although I didn’t quite know why.
I’d only just met Jericho. It made no sense for me to be upset about him being on
the other side, so to speak. But I was upset nonetheless.

“Eve.”

I looked up, and saw that he had shifted so that he was
facing me, his shoulder pressed against the bars.

“You know that I allowed myself to be captured last night,”
he said, and his eyes, more gray than silver in this light, were serious.

I nodded.

“Would I have done that to save my enemy?”

I flushed under the intensity of his gaze, an intense rush
of desire curling my toes. “I guess not.”

There was a clatter of footsteps, and I immediately sprang
to my feet, backing away from the sound. I could see the steps we’d taken to
get into the cellar the night before, but beyond that, there was a wall
separating us from the other half of the cellar. Presumably the staircase
leading down from the house was on the other side of that wall.

As I’d expected, a man and a woman emerged from behind the wall.
I moved closer to Jericho, who was also standing, facing the newcomers.

The woman stopped in front of my cell. She was tall and
model-beautiful, her slender figure poured into a pair of skintight jeans and a
black tank top. Her hair was an average sort of brown, unremarkable in its
shade, but her eyes were a brilliant, sparking green. I knew, without a doubt,
that she was the green-eyed gray wolf from last night.

“She can’t be the nomad,” was the first thing she said. “Her
eyes are blue.”

I’d already figured out that the only thing that didn’t
change during your wolf transformation was your eye color, but now I
remembered, in a rush, that the wolf that had attacked me on Friday had been
green-eyed.

“I’m not,” I said, and my voice didn’t come out as strong as
I’d hoped. “Last night was my…first time. I was attacked by a wolf on Friday
night. Before that, I was human.”

“That’s impossible,” the man spoke up. He stopped beside
her, and I could see immediately that they were related. He had the same
slender frame, the same brown hair, and the same square jawline. Only their
eyes were different. His were a rich chocolate color. The black wolf.

“No one shifts on their first night,” he continued, glaring
at me.

“She may be an alpha,” the girl said.

“Amy! Do you know how incredibly unlikely that is? Only-“

“One in a thousand. Yes, I know,” she replied impatiently.
“How else do you explain it?”

“She’s been turned for a long time. She’s solitary, a nomad.
Maybe not the nomad we’re looking for, but still a nomad.”

“I
was
attacked on
Friday night,” I insisted. “You can talk to Dr. Good Crow. He treated my bite
wounds.” I turned, sticking my bare leg out to the side so they could see the
shiny scar tissue on my calf. “Look, here’s where the wolf bit me. The marks
healed really fast- but you can still see where it got me.”

“Dr. Good Crow isn’t even in town right now,” the man said,
and I could tell he didn’t believe me, despite the scars- or maybe because of
the scars, since I was making the ridiculous claim that they’d completely
healed in less than two days.

“I know. He left yesterday, right after he took care of me.
He said he’d stop by my house on his way to the clinic tomorrow morning to
check up on me. He’s good friends with my- my family.” I stopped short of
saying Grandma Sam. I still didn’t know these people, and I wasn’t quite sure
of their intentions.

“You’re lying,” the man growled.

“Calm down, Kaiser.” Amy looked at me, and I could almost
see the wheels turning in her head. “I can’t let you go,” she said finally.
“You’ll shift tonight, and even if you’re not the nomad- even if you’re telling
the truth, new wolves can’t be trusted to control themselves. When Max comes
back, he can decide what to do with you.” She turned and headed for the stairs.

“Wait,” I called after her. “Max? You mean Max Good Crow?”

She didn’t respond, and Kaiser shot me a dirty look before
he followed her behind the wall.

I slumped against the cell wall, frustrated. Gram had to be
freaking out right now. I wondered if she’d called my parents. No doubt they
would be beside themselves with worry, too.

“This is such a disaster,” I muttered, and turned to see
Jericho watching me. “I don’t suppose there’s any way for you to bust us out of
here.”

“It’s still daylight,” he said pointedly, and I nodded. If
there were a bright side to my werewolf conversion, I could at least be
grateful that I hadn’t been turned into a vampire. When it came down to it, a
dependence on blood and a severe allergy to sunlight were far worse afflictions
than turning furry and homicidal three nights a month.

“Why do you have a tan when you can’t go in the sun?” I
demanded suddenly. I was practically interrogating him at this point.
Thankfully, he didn’t seem to mind.

“I’ve always looked like this,” he said, looking down at his
exposed skin. My gaze followed his, down to his well-defined chest and
rock-hard abs. I shivered and looked away.

“Am I immortal?” I asked, remembering a book I’d read fairly
recently in which werewolves lived forever.

“No,” Jericho said. “But your lifespan is now significantly
longer than the average human’s.”

“How much longer?”

He shrugged. “I’m not entirely sure. Four times, maybe.”

“Four times? You mean…I might live to be four hundred?” That
was daunting. Truly daunting. How would I explain this to my parents? To my
children? To their children?

“Possibly.”

Jericho didn’t seem at all fazed by my extended lifespan. I
probably didn’t need to ask if he was immortal. Weren’t all vampires? He’d
already said that he was several centuries old, at least. But I decided to
question anyway. “How long will you live?”

“As long as I want.” Jericho held out a hand through the
bars, and I didn’t hesitate to step forward and take it, sucking my breath in
at the electric jolt that ran up my arm when his skin touched mine.

I looked up at him, and there was a smile curving his lips.
“Does that bother you?” he asked quietly.

I thought he was probably talking about the chemistry
between us, but I decided not to acknowledge it. “What? You being immortal? Or
me not being immortal?”

He lowered his head, staring down at our linked hands.
“Both.”

My head was spinning with his closeness, the musky scent of
his skin and the pressure of his fingers against mine. “Not really. Does it
bother you?”

He reached up to tuck a lock of hair behind my ear, and I
fought the urge to lean into his hand. I barely knew him, but something about
him was completely magnetic to me. I couldn’t pull away.

“Everything about you intrigues me,” he echoed my thoughts,
not quite answering the question. “From the moment I saw you at the carnival, I
knew there was something different about you.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but then we heard footsteps on
the stairs again, and he immediately dropped my hand and stepped back, putting
space between us. I clenched my hand into a fist, holding it behind my back and
trying not to miss the tingly feeling of his touch.

Amy emerged from behind the wall again, this time carrying a
plate. She didn’t even look at Jericho, instead walking straight to me and
sliding the plate through the opening in the gate. “Here.”

I made my way towards the gate and accepted the plate from
her hesitantly. It wasn’t much- a sandwich and some pretzel sticks- but I was
grateful. “Thank you.”

She held out a can of soda, and I took that, too.
Wordlessly, she turned and went back to the stairs.

I moved to the connecting bars between our cells and sat
down. I almost sat cross-legged, but that would certainly have given Jericho an
eyeful, so instead I folded my legs off to the side, careful to keep my knees
pressed together. His sweatshirt was long on me, but not that long. I pushed up
the sleeves so they wouldn’t droop over my wrists. “Are you hungry?”

“Not for bread and ham,” he answered, amused, but he sat
beside me anyway.

“Do you eat anything other than blood?” I asked, and took a
long drink from my soda. It was grape-flavored. I’d probably have purple lips
by the time I was finished.

“No.”

“
Can
you eat
anything other than blood?”

“I can, but it doesn’t tempt me anymore.”

“What kind of food did you like to eat before you were
turned?” It struck me as surreal, sitting in a dungeon, chatting with a
vampire. I should probably have been reacting differently.

“I don’t remember,” Jericho mused. “It’s been a long time.”
He glanced at me. “What about you?”

I chewed for a few moments, and swallowed. “What kind of
food do I like?”

“Yes.”

“Anything, really. I’m not picky. I eat a lot of fish. My
mom is a pescetarian, and so is my dad’s new girlfriend.” I remembered the
conversation I’d had with Max yesterday, before this nightmare had begun.
“Except I don’t like eggs. What kind of blood do you usually drink?” The
question was tacked onto the end of my rambling like an afterthought, but it
didn’t seem to surprise Jericho.