Predatory

chapter Two



Cassie flung her hand in front of her eyes and turned her head away to protect herself from flying glass. At the same time, she bent to retrieve her own glass shard. Because beneath her gibbering fear, she still wanted to live. Then she straightened.

Who to face? But her subconscious recognized the real danger. She looked at where the coffin had rested. . . .

At the man crouched among the shattered remains, all smooth bare skin and hard muscle. Cuts from the broken glass dripped blood that trailed over his chest and stomach. His tangled dark hair framed a face that spoke of violence in shadowed planes and sharp edges. He stared at her, his black eyes alive with rage and something so predatory that she stepped back. Len seemed safe compared to this . . . She wasn’t sure anymore. The word “man” suggested human. Too tame a category for what glared back at her. Male. Definitely male.

As she stared with unblinking horror, he curled back his upper lip, exposing long sharp fangs.

She gripped her small glass shard so tightly it dug into her palm. Blood trickled between her fingers. The pain kept things real, because on some level she still wanted to believe she’d wandered into a dark nightmare alley. But this was no dream. And she didn’t have any illusions that her puny weapon would stop him.

Then she realized he wasn’t looking at her any longer. His gaze swept past her to focus on Len, who was throwing himself against the door in a vain effort to break it down. The force of his desperation shook the room.

The fanged . . . male laughed, a soft sound that terrified her more than an angry roar ever would. She edged over to the wall and pressed herself flat against it, wished she could sink into it and disappear, and prayed to a God she hadn’t spoken to since she was ten.

“Leaving so soon?”

His voice was dark and deep, filled with such menace that she had to force herself not to join Len in flinging herself against the door. Instinct whispered, “You’re prey. Don’t move. Don’t breathe. Don’t call attention to yourself.”

“I’m sorry that I don’t have more time to discuss things with you—life, death, and how payback is a bitch.” He didn’t move closer to Len.

Len finally turned away from the door. All color had drained from his face, his eyes were wide and staring. “No. Don’t. Tony did the binding.” He sounded almost incoherent.

“But Tony is dead. That only leaves you.” He sounded regretful that Tony was beyond his reach. Then he smiled.

Cassie shuddered. She felt what was coming, sensed death filling the room, the air thick with fear and finality. She told herself to close her eyes.

She watched.

Suddenly, Len’s head jerked sharply to the left, farther than any human neck should be able to twist. If there was an accompanying sound, Cassie couldn’t hear it past the roaring in her head. Len dropped to the floor. Cassie recognized death in his loose-limbed sprawl and empty eyes. And no one had touched him.

She stared at Len’s killer. Was she imagining the slight change in his face—the more predatory shape of his eyes, a more dangerous slant to his mouth? Cassie blinked. Of course she was. No way could she trust any of her senses right now.

It was too much, too much. She slowly slid down the wall until she was sitting. She opened her hand and released the bloody piece of glass. Cassie couldn’t even blink as she stared past Felicity, Tony, and Len. She’d finally found something that frightened her more than dead bodies.

He ignored her as he methodically stripped Len of his clothes. He pulled on the dead man’s pants and shrugged into his shirt. He glanced at the shoes. “Too damn big.” But he put them on anyway. Finally, he turned his attention to her.

“What’s your name?” He moved closer.

Cassie should be a shaking, drooling puddle of terror, but she felt strangely calm. Her heart still pounded way too fast, and she knew her breathing wasn’t normal, but she felt detached from what was going on around her. He would kill her now. He didn’t need to know her name to do that. But she couldn’t work up enough emotion to care. “Cassie.”

He crouched in front of her. “Well, Cassie, we need to get the hell out of here. Now.” He reached for her.

She started to cringe away from him but then stopped. Get out of here? He wasn’t going to kill her? Why not? Cassie’s thoughts felt as though they were slogging through knee-deep mud, each word coming loose with a sucking sound.

His black gaze pierced her. “Here’s the deal. If you stay in this room, Roland Garrity will take care of the job that Tony and Len botched. Even if you run home, you’ll die. You can’t hide from him.” He grabbed her hand and hauled her to her feet.

She flinched at the sharp pain in her cut palm.

He didn’t miss her reaction. Loosening his grip, he examined her bloody palm. “Nasty cut.” He glanced up at her from under thick dark lashes. “It’s not wise to tempt me.” Without warning, he bent his head and slid his tongue across her palm.

The stroke felt warm, and weird, and something . . . more. What should have been a shudder turned into a shiver. But she stopped wondering about her strange reaction as she stared at her palm. The cut was closing. And within a few heartbeats, she couldn’t see where it had been. “What . . . ? How . . . ?” She knew her eyes must be wide and staring.

He didn’t bother answering. “We’re wasting time. Let’s go.”

“What if I don’t want to go with you?” She realized she was in shock, but even knowing that, she couldn’t shake the inertia holding her in its grip.

“Did I say you had a choice?”

He led her to the door, and she didn’t fight him. Even through the shattered reality messing with her mind right now, she recognized the futility of trying to escape.

“I need to call the police.” She glanced back at Felicity. Her friend was dead. Soon the horror of what had happened would crash over her, and she’d drown in her what-ifs and should-haves. But not now. Now her mind was still wrapped in a cotton wool world.

“No police.” He barely touched the door and it swung open. “Tony would’ve had instructions to call in as soon as you were dead. He hasn’t called, so Garrity will know that something went wrong. Right now all of his people will be on their way. We don’t want to be here when they arrive.” He pulled her into the elevator and hit the top button.

“But the police . . .”

He hissed at her. “By the time the police get here, the bodies will be gone. Where’s your purse?”

“How can they get rid of the bodies so fast?” She winced. When had Felicity become just a body?

Cassie was starting to think again. She needed her cell phone and her car keys. Once out of the elevator, she ran down the hall with him right behind her. She grabbed her jacket and purse before following him out the back door. Night had fallen while people died in the funeral home’s basement. She was selfish enough to be thankful she hadn’t been one of them.

“They have . . . resources. Where did you park your car?”

“Out front.” She hadn’t wanted her car sitting in the funeral home’s parking lot. Stupid. As if death would stick to her tires if she parked it there.

They were almost to the street when he suddenly grew still—not moving, not even breathing. Cassie looked away. His complete stillness creeped her out. She scanned the street. Quiet. A mixture of homes and businesses. For the first time, she really thought about running.

“Don’t. I’d catch you. Besides, we don’t have time for that crap. I can feel them. Any minute now they’ll turn the corner and see us.” He’d emerged from his suspended animation thing and herded her toward the street.

How had he known . . . ? No, she’d think about that later.

When they reached her car, he took her keys from her and slid into the driver’s seat. She didn’t argue. Her mind was starting to function, and depending on his answers to her questions, she might decide to bail at a stoplight along the way. Then she remembered. He could kill without touching his victim.

“Won’t need to kill you. All the doors are locked. Relax and enjoy the ride.” He pulled away from the curb and merged into Philly traffic.

Cassie sucked in her breath. Okay, she couldn’t ignore it this time. Her fear had receded a little, but now it came flooding back. “You were in my mind.” Breathe, breathe. “Look at me.”

He glanced at her and smiled. The smile didn’t reach his eyes.

Blue eyes. Straight, even teeth. She folded her hands in her lap to stop their shaking. Had she hallucinated the black eyes and fangs? Had seeing Felicity’s corpse pushed her over the edge? She closed her eyes for a moment, and once again saw his body lying in that glass coffin with the headstone beside it. She opened her eyes.

“Is your name Ethan?”

“Yes.” He didn’t elaborate.

“Where’re we going?”

“To check on some friends.”

Ask him. The sensation of the world she thought she knew flipping upside down made her want to throw up. Ask him. Cassie had never thought she was a coward except for her horror of dead bodies. But at least there was a good reason for that particular phobia. The fear she’d felt in that room, though, proved she’d never make anyone’s top ten fearless women list. To make up for her total shutdown back there, she had to ask him.

“What are you?” Please, please don’t say it.

“I’m vampire.” He never took his eyes from traffic. “But you knew that already, didn’t you?”

“There are no such things as—”

“There are. I’m one. Get over it. We don’t have time for you to have hysterics.” His voice was cold, devoid of any sympathy, any understanding.

“Bastard.” She didn’t know how he’d react to name-calling, but for just this moment she didn’t care. Surprised, she realized that some of her fear had faded. No matter what he was, or said he was, he hadn’t killed her yet. Maybe a person could only sustain mind-numbing terror for so long.

“Technically, no. If you’re making a judgment of my character, though, then you’ve nailed it. Give me your phone.”

Cassie pulled her cell phone from her purse and handed it to him, then watched as he tapped in a number while weaving in and out of traffic.

“That’s dangerous.”

He took his attention from the road to stare at her. “I can’t die.”

“I can.” Did anyone really have eyes that blue? Pale skin, blue eyes, dark hair. She’d guess at an Irish ancestry. But then what did she know about vampires? They all had pale skin, didn’t they?

Vampire. She flinched as she thought the word. Even after everything she’d seen, she wasn’t doing a great job of wrapping her mind around the realness of him.

She waited quietly as he tried to make his call, then another and another. No one answered. He didn’t leave any messages. And he didn’t return her phone.

“Something’s wrong.” He sped up.

“You think?” She was substituting snark for courage.

A short time later, he parked on a street lined with row houses. Cassie didn’t have a clue what part of the city this was. She’d moved to Philly a month ago to search for a job. The city was still strange to her, and getting stranger every minute.

They got out and he led her down a side street before turning into an alley that ran behind the houses. “We’ll be going in the back way.”

Cassie didn’t care which entrance they used. She was still fixated on the vampire thing. “If you’re a vampire, couldn’t you just dematerialize and pop up wherever you wanted? Avoid traffic?” Avoid women who won’t shut up? She closed her mouth.

“Not one of my powers. But I can move so fast humans think that I’ve vanished. Can’t move that quickly right now, though. Energy’s low. I was in that damn coffin for days. And killing Len drained whatever I had left. I need to feed.” He glanced at her. “Want to volunteer?”

She widened her eyes. He was joking, right? “Umm, no.”

He looked away and picked up his pace. He was walking so fast now that she almost had to run to keep up.

“Too bad.” He didn’t sound as though he was joking.

She could see him studying a man who was outside emptying his trash. Don’t even think about it. She wouldn’t survive watching him chug down a human energy drink. Cassie rushed into speech. “Where’re we going?”

“To my house. Three of my friends are staying there with me.” His eyes narrowed. “None of them answered when I tried to call.”

Please, no more life-or-death moments today. Sudden weariness washed over her. Her adrenaline supply must be running low. “Won’t Garrity check there first?”

“He didn’t capture me there, so he might not know about it.” His smile was a mere baring of teeth. “And if he does, he’ll think I’m too smart to go home. He vastly overestimates my intelligence.”

“But what if he has people watching the place?”

“I’ll kill them.”

His answer would’ve horrified Cassie this morning. Now? It made perfect sense.

He finally slowed down and moved into the shadows. Silently, he pointed at a brick row house with a green rocker on the back porch. She covered her mouth to keep from giggling at the image of a vampire rocking on his porch. Or maybe the urge to giggle was the first stage of hysteria.

Sliding along fences and gliding around trash cans—he slid and glided, she shuffled and tripped—they drew close to the house. Then he raised his hand to stop her. He grew still again, and she held her breath. She wanted the house to be empty so they could leave for somewhere safe.

“There’s one person in there.” He sounded grim.

She didn’t question how he knew. “Anyone you know?”

“Yes.” With no other explanation, he guided her to the back door. He did his magic door-opening thing again and slipped into a darkened kitchen. He beckoned her inside.

Cassie was beyond thought, beyond feeling, beyond everything. Right now he was the only real thing in her life. So she followed him.

He moved quietly into what must be the living room. She couldn’t hear his footsteps. Behind him, she was an elephant tramping through a field of bubble wrap, announcing her presence with every step she took.

For the first time, she noticed the smell. It was coppery and too familiar.

He stopped so suddenly that she almost slammed into his back.

“Hello, Ethan.” The male voice came from whoever was sitting in an overstuffed chair she could see silhouetted in the darkness.

“Dan. What’re you doing here?”

Ethan’s voice might sound neutral, but she sensed tension, and something else.

“Trying to figure out who the hell to call.” The man’s, or maybe vampire’s, voice sounded terrified. “I couldn’t reach you on your cell. Then I came here. I used the key you gave me. No one was here, but . . .” His voice trailed off.

Cassie moved up beside Ethan. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark and there was a tiny bit of light filtering in through the slats of the blinds. She could now see that the room was trashed—furniture overturned and pictures knocked from the wall. There were dark stains on the walls and carpet. “Is that . . . ?” Blood.

The other man said it for her. “There’s freaking blood everywhere. Fresh blood. What’s going on, Ethan?”

That explained the coppery scent. The rising panic in his voice mirrored her own emotions. She wished someone would turn on a light so she could see both of them. Then she thought of Roland Garrity hunting them and decided the darkness was just fine.

“I’ll explain later. Do you have your car?”

Cassie didn’t have to be particularly sensitive to feel Ethan’s rage. It didn’t seem aimed at the man in the chair. She thought that Roland Garrity should be very afraid.

“No. There was nowhere to park, so June just dropped me off. I told her I didn’t know how long I was staying, and I’d call her when I was ready to leave.”

Cassie had kept silent as long as she could. “Who is this, Ethan?” Using his name sort of moved him a little out of the mythic-monster column into the almost-human one.

Ethan turned to look at her. In the darkness, his face became a stranger’s again, all sharp planes and dangerous shadows. She’d been wrong. He wasn’t even close to the human column.

“This is Dan. My brother.”