Broken Heart 09 Only Lycans Need Apply (17 page)

Then I stuck my hand into the hole.

Dove

“Y
our knowledge of swear words is impressive,” said Patsy. “Still, don’t get your panties in a bunch. You didn’t get to go on the field trip. Suck it up.”

How could I explain to the queen of the vampires that Moira needed me?

Or that I felt completely weirded out being left in the company of vampires?

Or that Moira had abandoned me and it hurt. Even though she hadn’t done it on purpose. Probably.

I inhaled deeply. Oh, yeah. I needed to suck it up. Quick.

“What’s there to do around here?” I asked.

“Are you kidding me?” asked Patsy. “It’s Oklahoma. You can tip cows, skinny-dip in the pond, or watch reality TV.”

“Spectacular.”

“How do you feel about babysitting?” she asked.

I stared at her for a full thirty seconds. “How do you feel about dead children?”

She blinked, and then she snorted a laugh. “Jesus, you’re a pistol.” She looped her arm through mine. “C’mon, buttercup. We have plans to make and bad guys to defeat.”

I perked up. “Now, that sounds fun.”

“M
oira!”

Drake’s shocked exclamation made me feel guilty. Well, I had to be sneaky, damn it. He was trying to protect me, but I was saving the world. His parents had told me so.

I stretched out my fingers, wiggling for . . . ah, there it was. I felt a sharp, swift prick as I pressed my palm down onto the point. Blood welled, dripped, and then . . .

I passed out.

•   •   •

I floated. Like a feather tossed by the wind, I danced and whirled in the night sky. Another dream? Below me was a silver trailer, and I swooped down, lower and lower, until I melted through the metal roof.

Now I was in a white room.

Below me, a woman with brunette hair lay between the legs of a spectacularly naked man.

I kept floating, floating . . . until I sank into her skin. Melded with her essence. Became her.

I was a woman named Jessica Matthews.

And she was just waking up . . .

•   •   •

I was latched on to the velvety inside of a muscular male thigh, my teeth embedded in the flesh near his groin, my mouth soaked with warm, very tasty liquid.

After another minute or two of sucking on the stranger’s thigh, I felt firm, long fingers under my chin.

“That’s enough, love,” said an Irish-tinged voice. “You’re healed now.”

With great reluctance, I allowed the fingers cupping my jaw to disengage me from the yummy thigh. I sat up, licking my lips to get every dribble of blood smeared on my mouth.

So, I was Jessica. Only I was me.

And apparently, I liked blood.

Or was she the one who liked the blood?

Oh for—gah! Well, if I wasn’t nutballs before, this kind of shit should do the trick.

“Ssshhh. Everything will be explained.” He tilted his head, looking me over in a way that caused heat to skitter in my stomach. Or rather, Jessica’s stomach.

“So . . . with all the, uh, bloodsucking, I’m guessing I’m a vampire now.” These words were spoken by Jessica . . . and I was just inside her head, inside this dream, with her. It was a weird sensation to be inside another person, even if it was a dream, or vision, or . . . me, finally sailing over the edge of sanity.

“Yes. We Irish vampires call ourselves
deamhan fola
.” He grinned at me. “It means ‘blood demon.’”

“Oh. Well, that’s certainly . . . descriptive.”

We were in some sort of small white room. It had a long, uncomfortable steel slab sticking out from the wall and we were on it. About six feet from the steel slab on the left side of the room was a door without any visible knob or handle. That was it. White room. Steel bed. Naked man. Jessica was in some sort of white hospital gown and smelled like antiseptic.

Jessica was a vampire.

The guy who’d been the lifesaving snack leaned against the wall, his knees drawn up slightly. Raven black hair feathered away from his face, the ends of it curling on his shoulders. He watched me, or rather her, with the strangest eyes I’d ever seen. Of course, I knew this was Patrick. And his brother Lorcan looked exactly the same. As did their father, Ruadan. Following the vampire bloodlines was probably going to require a chart. And someone who understood how to explain charts to people like me.

I heard a steel scrape, then
clang, clang, clang
. Patrick had put his hands on his knees and revealed that he was chained to the wall. The chains, maybe as thick as those that secured bicycles, looked too delicate to hold him. Swirls and weird words emblazoned the silver cuffs.

“You’re a prisoner?” Jessica sounded aghast. “I thought vampires were super-duper strong.”

He chuckled. “We are very strong. But these little beauties”—he shook his arms—“have special charms on them. I cannot break them.”

“Special charms? As in . . .” Jessica wiggled her fingers in a bad sorceress impression.

He nodded. “I had to be bound, love. Because of that ring you’re wearin’.”

On the ring finger of my right hand—well, Jessica’s right hand—was a beautiful silver ring. I looked at it, as if doing so would make it clear why the vampire needed chains to protect him from it. “My claddagh ring?”

“It’s a
fede
,” said the man. “It’s made from the purest silver and it’s very old.”

•   •   •

I woke up with my face buried in werewolf thigh. I pushed up and sat back, staring at Drake in shock. My lips felt swollen. “What the hell?”

He seemed dazed. “You . . . were acting out something,” he said weakly. “I’m afraid I had no choice but to . . . do as you wished.” He grimaced as he adjusted himself, and my gaze was drawn to his crotch.

He had a hard-on. A really big, delicious hard-on.

“Wow,” I said.

He looked down, then at me, and sighed. “You were nibbling,” he said. Then his gaze tracked down my arm, to my stinging upraised palm that I rested on my thigh. Did I mention the stinging? He frowned. “You are bleeding.”

My heart was pounding, either from the vision or from lust or from excitement. Maybe all three. I looked at my palm and noted that the first blood sacrifice had been minimal. More like a scratch. But yeah, the wound was still bleeding. I looked at Drake and batted my eyelashes. “Are you going to rip off a piece of your shirt and wrap it around my hand?”

I think my voice held too much hope. Drake offered me a wicked grin and then leaned to the side and dug into his front pocket. “Patsy gave me a handful of Band-Aids,” he said, pulling out said Band-Aids, along with a pack of peppermint gum. “She also wanted me to have fresh breath.”

I laughed. I went to take one of the bandages, but he said,
“Nein.”

He chose a Band-Aid, stuffed the rest and the gum back into his pocket, and undid the wrapping, which he tucked into the opposite pocket. Then he put the bandage over my minor wound. He looked at me with that smoky gaze that made my stomach squeeze, and then placed a kiss on top of the bandage. “It is my understanding that kisses help boo-boos heal faster,” he said.

“I’ve heard that, too.” I grinned.

“Any other boo-boos?” he asked in that smoky voice. My thighs shivered.

“I’ll let you know.”

He cocked his lips into a half smile, a reminder that his lips could be on my body anytime.

“So, what do we do now, Moira?”

Well, I had some ideas (see: trembling thighs), but they didn’t involve pyramids, Ancients, or blood. Drake caught on to my line of thought rather quickly. Actually, he was probably already skating in the same direction, waiting for me to catch up.

Here I was, stuck in a pyramid, where my blood would be drained drop by drop, and all I could think about was getting horizontal with Drake. I hadn’t forgotten that he was a werewolf, either. I couldn’t imagine what the sex would be like. Oh, wait. Yes. Yes, I could.

Drake slipped his hand around my neck and leaned close. “For luck,” he whispered. Then he kissed me.

Just one, sweet, soft meeting of lips. A promise, really.

My heart skipped a beat, and I felt lust take flight in my belly. I’d been in relationships. Or tried to be. Not many men in my social circle could understand my archaeological mind-set, much less allow themselves to be put aside so I could constantly go to Egypt. Some had been concerned for my safety, others were under the impression that I needed a reason to stay home (i.e., them), and yet others believed I just needed a man to guide me. And that, of course, was before they understood that I was highly medicated because I had the crazy in me.

So, I guess I mostly dated idiots.

I had a feeling that Drake wouldn’t expect me to be anyone other than myself, and that was a nice thought . . . someone who accepted me for who I was without expectation that I would change to suit him. And he hadn’t seemed to give a rat’s ass about the pills I had to take, either. That was a refreshing change. But maybe parakind was more understanding of humans who were different.

“You were obviously having a vision earlier,” said Drake. “Unless you were looking for an excuse to nibble on me.” He brushed his thumb across my lower lip, and that light touch made my mouth tingle. “For the record, you can nibble me anytime.”

“Noted,” I said. We stared at each other, both of us breathing a little too heavily. It was probably because we were in a space with limited oxygen or because we wanted to fall on each other like rabid hyenas. Hmm. Would a reference to the werewolf and Red Riding Hood be more appropriate here?

Ahem.

I explained what had happened to me, and as the words tumbled out of my mouth, the frown that formed between his eyebrows deepened into a V.

“You experienced a memory, I think. Patrick and Jessica’s first meeting is very well known. But what has that to do with our current circumstances?”

“To know the beginning is to know the answer,” I said.

“The beginning of our presence in Broken Heart?” He shook his head. “Why would that matter so much?”

“There’s a clue in what I experienced.” I held up my non-bandaged hand and counted off my fingers. “I would say that the important elements that jump out at me are . . . magical cuffs . . . silver . . . and a ring.” I wiggled my ring finger.

“The
fede
ring,” he murmured. “Jessica’s prized possession, held even above her swords, which she adores nearly as much as she does Patrick.”

I remembered how good Jessica had been with those swords in the desert, and how she and Patrick, like most Broken Heart couples I’d met, seemed so in tune with each other. Two halves of a whole—I couldn’t quite wrap my brain around the idea that true love was real. But if vampires and werewolves and banshees were real . . . then why not soul mate love? “Why wouldn’t a pyramid made three thousand years ago have ancient clues? Why toss me into the memories of two vampires with a recent history?”

“Maybe it’s using our location to create the clues—and if so, then the traps as well. Magic is powerful, especially spells cast so long ago, when magic was more present in the human world.”

“Magic,” I mused. “So, the pyramid draws from Broken Heart . . . and from me . . . to know the beginning . . . er, of what?”

“Broken Heart. And you.”

“The beginning of me? That makes no sense.”

“Perhaps it will as we get through the pyramid.”

“Maybe.” I sat back, studying the blank walls, my gaze scraping over Drake, who leaned against the wall, one leg bent and an arm casually draped over the knee.

Silence thickened as we tried to puzzle out meaning from the strange vision.

“I got nothing,” I said.

“We have something,” he replied, nodding toward the door. It was gone. An entrance beckoned us to the next phase of our pyramid adventure.

Drake stood, and then reached down a hand, which I took with my non-injured one. He pulled me to my feet, and we both turned to consider another narrow passageway lit with torches.