In Blood We Trust (14 page)

“But I remember
you
,” he continued, just as cocky as I was, but for only a fraction of the reason. “You were a girl with red hair. I was in too much of a frenzy to recall the bite itself, but my, oh, my, as I lay there on the floor, you were burned into my memory. You and your father. I healed slow, and I had a lot of time to dwell on how you'd treated me. I even claimed this territory after the monsters took over because this house is where I was reborn, thanks to your dad. And, really, I'd be grateful for that if you all hadn't tried to kill me, too.”

By now, Gabriel was shaking with his restraint.

But I was all ice.

“Aw,” he said, tilting his head at me. “Looks like you haven't forgotten anything, either. What keeps
you
awake most often? Is it when I was with you? Or when your family's blood became a permanent decoration in the living room?”

That was enough for Gabriel, because he turned vampire all the way, hissing, opening his mouth to show how big his teeth could be, as well.

Tyree laughed while his two friends entered the room, hunching, their bodies flowing with a willful change.

“Bring it, sweetheart,” he said to Gabriel. “After I have my way with you, I'll finish what I started with the prettier one, here.”

This guy still thought he was only up against a vampire and his own begotten progeny, a werewolf like him. He had no idea about 562 and what he was actually baiting in me.

That was when I started to get real happy that Gabriel had brought me here.

Three-to-two odds. Poor wolfman. I was just sorry it wasn't a full moon and I couldn't give him all the justice I'd been storing up in me for years.

Gabriel sensed this in me, and he held still, seething next to me. His anger bled into mine, making me even stronger.

“You aim to claim me,” I said, “just like you did this house and the territory round it?”

He and his men merely laughed.

When I exchanged a glance with Gabriel, his eyes red, his fangs readied, we smiled at each other.

Tyree's men came out from behind him, as if to manhandle me while leaving Gabriel to their lowlord.

And I let myself go.

My change seemed to take forever, but really only a split second went by. Even so, I had enough time to realize that when I'd changed during the full moon, it'd been like an explosion. Not now, though. Now, without the lunar pull, I was able to revel in the spreading sensation from my core, like pale balls of moonlight growing and banging against me from the inside out.

My heartbeat got so loud that I thought everyone in the room might be able to hear it. In the darkest parts of my head, I heard the worshipful chants from the other night.

My lust flipped over, focusing on these bad guys. Revenge—just the thought of it thrilled me.

Bad guys.

While I got closer and closer to my nonlunar form, the lowlord and his small gang were busy undergoing a full change themselves. I could see it in my blossoming violet gaze—how they panted and howled while they all slipped and slid into the stretched bodies of werewolves: huge, hairy, grotesque versions of a regular wolf that had adapted in this day and age to survive.

As for Gabriel—he was way ahead of everyone else, bent over, preparing to spring at the weres.

Everything kept going slowly to me, though, so slowly, while new teeth sprouted, going to daggers in a mouth that yawned to three times its normal size.

But, unlike my lunar form, I didn't feel another set of arms blasting out of me, nor a fall of long hair, nor the rotating of my eyes to vertical slits—not without the full moon . . .

As I let loose a scream, I saw myself through a shattered haze in the mirror on the wall—the mirror that used to show a young girl with long red hair that hid her face most times. A girl who'd slashed off that hair with a knife, knowing she'd never be the same again.

Now she was this: a reflection of 562 whenever our origin got mad. Huge teeth, huge mouth, and short-cut hair barely covering blazing green eyes.

Unlike my previous, more normal werewolf form, I could experience everything that was happening now in this state, and I turned to my enemies just in time to see Gabriel already springing at Tyree, who ducked, then batted my vampire into the other two werewolves.

That only allowed Gabriel to go to work: in a blur of speed, he made those werewolves resemble two bodies that'd been sent into some whirring blades.

Blood swished outward, covering the walls, soaking the carpet in pools.

The scent hit me hard as I launched myself at Tyree, who was crouching, then flying, his claws ready to rip.

Mine were, too, and I slapped his face before he got too close. It's just that my reach was longer than usual. Real long.

He twirled in the air, landing on his ass, splashing into a collection of his buddies' blood.

I waited.

I smiled, making sure he saw all my 562 teeth.

I thought he might have it in him to mindlessly dive into his friends' blood out of feral hunger, but he was fixated on me instead, and he got up again, his cheek raw with gouges that would start were-healing soon. Behind him, Gabriel had stopped motion, standing there with one werewolf in each hand, holding them by the hair as blood dripped from severed heads with faces that hardly existed anymore. They were more pulp than expression.

He moved to the door and tossed them into the hallway, casually coming back for the bodies and discarding those, too.

Pitiful Tyree was looking at me as if he didn't understand why I was like this instead of like him, since he was my maker.

“Slight malfunction in the gene pool,” I said between my teeth.

He angled his head, an animal that didn't comprehend, and, again, I saw in him the creature who'd come into my room after the bad guys had broken in. I felt my gown being lifted as the men laughed, the hideous werewolf sniffing up my leg, then a scratch on my skin. . . .

Shame and anger impaled me, and I screamed, zooming toward Tyree, opening my mouth to give him my bite.

I munched down on him, sending bits of bone and blood everywhere, then spit him out of the bedroom, into the hallway with his friends where I could barely see what remained of him.

Poison . . . The taste of him hurt, nauseating, profane as I spit it out . . .

And, just like that, Gabriel was by my side, opening the skin on his wrist with a fang, pressing me to drink from him and wash out the bad.

I drank and drank, and soon I was flush with calm, my mouth and teeth receding until I was back to normal. But I was hot.

Still so hot.

As Gabriel's wrist healed, he looked down at me with an expression I'd longed for all my life. An expression made all the more intense by the red in the room.

My dress was soaked with the weres' blood, and it slicked my skin, hot, but already cooling. Still, I burned, my chest feeling as if it'd opened up for Gabriel, who'd protected me without my even asking him to.

Overcome, I pulled him down to me, and when his mouth crushed mine, I sipped at him as if he were the only thing that could keep me alive.

In the harshness of our kiss, he pierced my lips with his fangs, flinching at the taste of me, then healed his mouth with a press of his fingers, his red gaze so ferocious that I dug my claws into his back. My mind—not so much my body—was still affected by my monster, still lusting.

Wanting.

“I can't kiss you like this,” he said in that terrible voice.

“Then don't kiss me.” Spiked by my desire—God-all, how I wanted him and didn't know if I could get enough of him—I rolled him to his back.

Blood haloed him as I ached, my clit sharp and swollen. I led his hand there, and when he touched me, my stomach flipped, as if I were going to turn again.

But I could keep it back. I
would
.

He stroked me, roughly, greedily, and I moved with every motion, riding him until he bowled me to my back, splashing me in a well of blood, his fangs at pierce points as he hissed over me.

He was dominating me, and I only smiled, taking hold of his neck and squeezing.

When he did the same to me, I slammed him down to the ground again, blood splattering. I laid my body against his so my breasts flattened against him, marking him with more blood.

I slid up his body, teasing him, feeling his hard cock between my legs and crying out a little with the agony of it.

I would've killed him for you,
he thought to me as I grinded against him.

He reached up, taking my dress by the collar. It stuck to me like a second, bloodied skin, and he yanked down, tearing it, exposing my chest. My skin was wet with red, too, and he sat up, rubbing his face against me.

I wasn't covered in
my
blood, and the smell had to be driving him crazy because he hadn't fed earlier.

“Gabriel,” I whispered, holding him against me, urging him to take what he wanted.

And he did, licking at my breast, drinking the weres' blood, sucking, lapping, shivering. Then he went for more, laving at me, circling his tongue round my nipple and making me go so hard and hot that I felt the stab of it deep inside my belly.

While he sucked at me, roaming his hands over my slick skin, tearing off the dress until it hung at my waist, he undid his pants. Then he reached under my skirt, ripping my panties off.

I leaned my cheek on the top of his head. I saw the blood round us, and I closed my eyes.

His hair was thick and damp, and I buried my fingers in it as Gabriel thrust up into me, making me haul in a tight breath. He filled me, not only with his cock but with all the blood that was pounding at his skin in its frenzy to reach me.

Mine did the same to him, fighting to get where it couldn't.

He rammed into me, driving hard as I planted my boots on the floor for purchase. But even with that, he buffeted me backward until I arched, pressing one hand to the blood-soaked ground so I could meet him all the way, hammering back against him, churning, asking for more, although I wasn't sure how I was going to get it.

Or maybe I did. I wanted to devour him, but not in a monster way. I wanted him to be a part of me so completely that I didn't know how to manage it. Didn't know how I'd live without being able to do it.

The blood scent made me dizzy, but it was the screeching temperature of my body that almost made me so insane that I just about lost my tenuous hold on my calm.

It was as if I were holding a leash on a force so strong that all ties were snapping, strand by strand, and I felt every single break in my center, the popping sensation creeping up, up, up . . .

Just as the last hold was about to come undone, I moaned, cried out, asked him for more, and that was when
he
broke altogether, coming into me.

I came, too, hard and fast, an explosion of red, wet ecstasy.

As we recovered, we breathed together, and with every passing second, I realized how the blood cooled round us and against us. I held Gabriel to me, cold, hard skin and all.

I held him tighter than anything I'd ever held to before.

G
abriel and me deserted that old Dallas house of mine right away. It seemed already vanished, anyway; it had to be if I was going to put my ghosts behind me. I'd gotten that reckoning I'd talked so long about, so I just kept telling myself that everything was squared.

So why, even now, did it feel so good to think about giving more bad guys what was coming to them in the future? And why didn't it bother me as much as it should've to know that me and Gabriel had done sex right after this last confrontation, cavorting in the blood as if it were the most normal thing?

While I grappled with all that, we found a location way outside Dallas to lie low. It was a mansion that didn't belong to anyone now, and I sat on the parlor floor while Gabriel lounged on a rickety swing on the front porch. I could see him through the smudged window.

I wasn't sure how many minds out there would interpret him as beautiful with his rough features and taciturn attitude, but just being this far from him cored me out, like there was a knife scraping round inside me. Good cuts. Good pain.

I decided to join him, willing to hurt even more.

As I came to the doorway, I saw that it was a peaceful sort of night, the moon sliced like a sideways smile that only grew with every approaching night to its fullest expression. The land was quiet, maybe even as far as Dallas, where the monsters in their hub were doing whatever they needed to do.

I just hoped that didn't include hunting us down for what we'd put on the wolfman Tyree and his men. I'd been expecting the rest of his gang, including Plattoh, to find us, even out here, but it hadn't happened yet.

But that might've been because we'd cleaned the scene and ourselves up well and good, trying to leave no traces of who we were, although any vampire or changed were-creature worth their weight in water would be able to follow my scent. Yet, maybe the monsters in Dallas were happy to be rid of Tyree's ilk. Or maybe Plattoh had found another sugar daddy to help him out and he'd already stopped missing this one.

Whatever the case, we'd relocated out of common sense, and here we were. When Gabriel saw me, his eyes glowed ever so slightly, silver caught by the moon. Neither of us seemed in a punchy mood, so I sat down on his lap, tracing a finger over the cool skin of his jawline. Gabriel had found me a new dress to wear, since we'd ruined the other one with the red and all the rips he'd made while getting to me and the blood. The length of the material dragged on the porch as his swing creaked back and forth, barely moving.