Witchcraft (#2 Witchblood Series) (10 page)

I nodded back, grinning again.

‘
Now, our last little problem is
putting some colour back into your cheeks, because if Daniel sees
you looking all pasty again, we could have an unfortunate display
of protectiveness on our hands. I could get you your usual bottled
type, but I’m not sure of its effectiveness in such a dire
situation. I feel it only fair that I repay my debt to you in kind,
so to speak.’

‘
No! The bond. Daniel would kill
us if I bonded to you, and I don’t want to be bonded to anyone
right now,’ I said.

‘
You can only bond to Daniel, of
that I am sure. You are already a vampire Jess, and Daniel remains
your creator, so it will be safe to drink from me, and also the
quickest way to get your blood back,’ he added with his typical
slow, sexy smile.

Damn! ‘Okay then,’ I said, knowing what
he said was true. Even if I had a couple of bottles of blood,
Daniel would know the difference immediately.

In what seemed like one fluid movement
Sebastian left his desk chair, crossed the room and sat himself
next to me on the couch again. And here we were again! But this
time he was gentle, his eyes focused on the window, controlling his
inner demons as he pulled my face towards his neck.

I sighed. It had to be done, it really
was the best way. His scent was musky, heavy and masculine. I
paused, breathing it in and waiting for my vampire instincts to
take over and my fangs to break out, but it didn’t happen.

‘
Um Sebastian, I have a little
problem…no fangs,’ I mumbled. ‘I had fangs earlier, when I threw
Eva across the room, I know I did, I just can’t seem to access them
now. I…’

‘
Here, how about now?’ he said, as
he ran a sharp nail through the skin, making a small incision and
letting his blood pool at the surface.

Seconds later, the scent of the fresh
blood assaulted my senses, the hungry vampire took over and losing
my inhibitions, I jumped on him. My arms wrapped around his neck,
my hand pulling at his dark, almost black hair. I clamped my mouth
to his neck, feeling my teeth bite down hard into his flesh. He
moaned with pleasure and pulled me round, so I was sitting in his
lap, his hands running up and down my body. A moan of desire
matched his own, but the fire didn’t burn quite as hot as with
Daniel. I untangled my fingers from his hair and still greedily
gulping down his blood, reached for his hands and held them still.
This wasn’t about sex, this was about dinner.

A couple of minutes later he gently
brought his hands up to my face and holding my jaw, he pushed me
back. I climbed off and sat back, embarrassed as I attempted to
wipe my mouth with a handkerchief he handed me. I was buzzing,
alive, and wanting Daniel.

‘
Daniel and Eva will be here any
minute. It appears there has been some trouble,’ he said staring
into the distance.

‘
How do you know? Oh your bond…of
course. Will Eva know what we’ve done?’ I asked.

‘
No, I made her, so she only knows
what I want her to.’

What’s happened? Is Daniel alright?’

‘
Yes they are fine. Eva will
explain when they arrive. Ahh, they’re here now.’

The door swung open and Eva, followed by
Daniel, Troy and Isabelle entered the room. Troy and Isabelle were
the first to glance warily across the room, but at a stern glance
from Sebastian, neither said a thing.

‘
What happened?’ Sebastian
asked.

‘
The police have found a body a
couple of streets away, a young girl, one of our regular feeders.
We believe she’s been drained, but we couldn’t get there in time.
The police are all over it,’ Eva said.

‘
Well, there’ll be no proof we
need to worry about. The teeth marks should have disappeared almost
immediately. Who was the girl’s favourite?’ Sebastian
asked.

As I watched them from Sebastian’s side,
I noticed a quick glance pass between Daniel and Eva. Something was
being said through their bond. Something I wasn’t supposed to hear,
but then Eva shrugged, and Daniel took a step forward.

‘
A while back she was known to be
a favourite of mine. I haven’t seen her for weeks though.’ He
glanced at me, concern etched in his eyes. Daniel had a favourite?
He had promised me he didn’t, but then he did say this was weeks
ago…

My thoughts drifted off, as I thought
about what was being said, what Daniel had told me, and all that
had gone on over the last twenty-four hours. A yawn escaped my lips
and all eyes centred on me.

‘
Right! Well, Daniel, you take
Jess home. She’s had a busy day and needs to rest. For the time
being I am happy to let her be, bondless. I don’t want to hear any
more about it, and it seems like we have a new problem to fix now
anyway,’ Sebastian said.

‘
Daniel was with me all night. He
is blameless,’ Eva said, her eyes flicking between Daniel and
Sebastian.

‘
Nearly
all night,’ the vampire known as Isabelle said. ‘There was
the ten minutes you were feeding with that young pup that follows
you round.’

‘
You know quite well Daniel
wouldn’t drain anyone, so stop making trouble Izzy, you bitch,’ Eva
said, menace flashing in her eyes.

‘
Now girls, I’m sure we all know
Daniel is not to blame for this, so let’s get it sorted as soon as
possible. Daniel you take Jess. Eva, Isabelle and Troy, I’ll chat
to you, each in turn. Eva first. Daniel I’ll catch up with you
tomorrow.’

Chapter Nine

On our return to the house Daniel paced
the ground floor, back and forth until I stopped him and asked the
words he'd been expecting to hear.

‘
Hey! Stop a minute. I know it
wasn’t you, okay? Sebastian knows too, or else he wouldn’t have let
you home with me,’ I said, sure of his innocence. ‘When did you
last see her anyway? Have you fed from her…since me?’

At my final question, Daniel stopped
pacing and looked at me. We were standing in the back living room,
the girl’s room, and he took both my hands and pulled me down so we
sat next to each other on the couch.

‘
Jessie, I swear it wasn’t me. You
know I wouldn’t, don’t you?’

I’d already answered that question so I
nodded again, and waited for more.

‘
Her name was Sophie, and yes she
was a regular before I met you. The last time I saw her was
actually the night before you awakened and we took you to Cumbria.
I told her that night I was going away. She was fine,’ he
said.

‘
And you haven’t seen her since?
Doesn’t she know you live here?’

‘
No, honestly I haven’t, and we
never tell feeders were we live, as sometimes they become too
dependent. It complicates things.’

‘
Right, so you have nothing to
worry about then. Eva knows you haven’t seen here either, and she
was already vouching for you tonight.’

‘
It’s not just me I’m worried
about. She was a sweet girl Jess. She didn’t deserve to die, and
the fact that she was also drained leads to more concern.
Why
?’

‘
Oh! Of course. I’m sorry.’ I
didn’t know what to say. Shit! Of course this girl obviously meant
something to him, and I was acting like it was nothing. It wasn’t
nothing, but I didn’t know the girl. I mean if you let vampires
feed from you, there had to be a risk factor involved. My concern
was Daniel, but he had other ideas.

‘
It’s fine. Look, I’m sure you’ve
got some spells to be learning anyway. I need some time to think,
Jess. I think it means something,’ he said, and with that he left
the room.

I wanted to run after him. I didn’t like
to let things go, not until I had them sorted out in my head, but
instinct told me to give him time. So deciding there was nothing
more I could do, I headed upstairs to get some sleep.

It seemed the dead girl had caused
a furore within both the human world and the supernatural one, and
whilst Daniel was called to interviews with both Sebastian and the
Council, I watched the human story unfold on the television.
Obviously the police, doctors and forensics were stumped, as living
in the twenty-first century no-one was able to admit to believing
in
monsters
. Equally there
were no wounds to be found on the girl – the bite wounds would have
healed even before her death. Consequently, they were
bewildered
as to how she had lost three quarters
of her blood. Requests were put out for information, but it seemed
no-one knew the girl, or where she was from.

With the distraction all of this caused,
I was relieved to find that for the time being, Daniel let the
subject of our bond drop. I spent the time studying my Book of
Shadows, and the Wiccan handbook Franny had brought me. Franny
herself had returned to Boston, realising for the time being that
she needed to steer clear of Eva and Daniel.

Daniel was quickly cleared of suspicion
within the Council, but continued to act strangely, quiet and
withdrawn. We needed to get out.

‘
Daniel, let’s go to the club
tonight. Eva mentioned she was going to meet up with some friends,
and we need to get out,’ I said.

‘
I didn’t think you liked Exodus,
Jess. Are you sure you can handle it, after last time?’

‘
Sure, that was months ago now. I
have to move on, just like you. We live here, and we can’t hide
forever,’ I said.

Exodus was Sebastian’s nightclub, and
the club where I had first met Daniel. It was also near the club
that I’d been attacked in an alleyway and left to die by a girl
gang, after losing my best friend and deciding, rather stupidly to
walk down a shortcut to the main road. That night Daniel had found
me and given me his blood, and the next time I visited Exodus I was
a new-born vampire, with rather unsettling DNA. Every time I
visited the club something went wrong, be it me coming face to face
with old friends – who luckily didn’t recognise me – or me
unleashing uncontrollable magic and destroying Eva’s nineteenth
century dressing table. Then there was the time I decided to seek
revenge on the girl gang, and ended up in Sebastian’s cells, and of
course the final time when Sebastian nearly drained me and we found
out Daniel’s feeder had been killed! It didn’t bode well, but
something told me my luck had to change.

It was a Thursday night, student night
at Exodus, which meant cheap drinks and jeans. Not that we’d be
drinking the drinks, just buying them for show. Then again, maybe
tonight with my green eyes glowing under the lights, I’d give my
old favourite a try.

‘
Hi Johnny,’ I said, to the only
vampire bartender in the place, the guy who Alex, my best friend
and I had decided was ‘Manchester’s Best Looking Bartender’, before
I was turned into a vampire myself and forbidden from contacting
Alex again. She thought I was dead, and I missed her like
crazy.

‘
Wow Jess, those are some awesome
contacts you’ve got there. How’d you get them past Sebastian?
Thought we weren’t allowed to change our eye colour?’ he
said.

‘
Erm, haven’t you heard? They’re
not contacts. My initiation…’ I trailed off, unsure as to how much
Sebastian’s staff had been told about me.

‘
Oh right! Wow! So it’s true
then.’ He suddenly took a step back and his eyes flicked nervously
from side to side.

‘
Hey Johnny, get us some drinks
will you. She’s not going to turn you into a toad,’ Eva said,
coming up quickly behind me and giving me a quick hug.

‘
Erm, I was going to try a rum and
coke,’ I said, wishing I could sound more confident.

‘
Later, okay. We don’t need any
dramatics just yet. Let’s relax. Thanks Johnny,’ she said, grabbing
the fake beer bottles and striding off to the corner table where
Daniel and a couple of other vampires were sitting.

As I sat down, all conversation stopped
and all eyes zeroed in on me, searching my face, gazing with wonder
at my eyes. I tried to ignore it and pulled up a chair next to
Daniel.

‘
So, what’s new?’ I
said.

As an attempt to shatter the awkwardness
it worked and everybody laughed.

‘
Right, let me rephrase that,
what’s new apart from my freaky green eyes?’ I said, with a
grin.

As conversation returned to normal I
relaxed and settled back, my bottle of slightly warmed blood
nourished me, but didn’t excite me; in fact it tasted worse than
usual.

‘
Eva, is this blood different? It
doesn’t taste great,’ I said.

‘
Oh! So you’re finally developing
tastebuds now are you? No, these are the same, they always taste
rank.’

After we’d finished our drinks, I
noticed Daniel had relaxed and was engrossed in conversation with
Troy about the latest football league results, so I grabbed Eva and
we headed to the dance floor.

I’d always loved dancing, and Alex and I
had danced till dawn most weekends of our first term at university.
I missed her, but Eva was a great substitute, her movements fluid
and sexy, and we developed that intuitive link girls have when they
dance together. Our bodies moved in time with both the music and
each other. We laughed and smiled as we watched the boys around us
circle, their eyes fixed on our writhing bodies. How easy it would
be to take things one step further and choose one to take somewhere
quiet, to kiss him, hypnotise him…bite him.Whoa! What was I
thinking? I’d never thought that before. The one thing that really
stood me apart from my fellow vamps was my unswerving dislike of
feeding from humans. I had never bitten anyone but Daniel, and as I
told Luke, I had no intention of changing that.