“You’re going to be all right. You have a concussion
,
but nothing that won’t heal in a few days of rest.
You have some—
”
“I can read your mind
,
you know.
I know just what happened and that you’re terrified that my eye is full of blood.
Please don’t lie to me.
We’ll never trust each other if we start off lying.”
She closed her eyes and turned her head. “I was so afraid I was going to die.”
“Holly.”
When she turned to look at him
,
he kissed her again.
“So was I.
You have no idea how terrified I was when I lost your connection.”
He took her hand in his.
“You’re right, you look like shit
,
but if you’ll take a bit more of my blood, I’ll be able to help you get better quicker.
There are things going on here that require you to be healthy a lot sooner than you can be down.”
She nodded and he felt her attack his mind.
He looked around the small curtained off area as he put his wrist to his mouth and bit.
As he put his bloodied wrist to her mouth, he tried to gentle her search.
“Slow down
,
love,” he said as she raided his memories.
“You’re going to give yourself a headache if you continue like that.”
When she suckled at his vein
,
he had to reach down and adjust his cock.
Giving her thoughts of what he really wanted to do to her
,
he managed to distract her from harming them both.
He filled his mind
,
and thus hers
,
on carnal images of them together in this bed and anywhere else he could think of.
He was just thinking about how he could lean in and lick her pussy when she moaned.
“Phil, if you don’t stop right now I’m going to scream a climax out.
And I’m reasonably sure I’m in no place to do that in.”
He kissed her again before he told her he didn’t care.
“How am I?”
He licked his wrist and reached for her hand.
It was hold her hand or take her right there on the gurney. When she growled at him he leaned his forehead to hers and tried to control his inner beast.
“Broken ribs, concussion
,
and a multitude of bruises in places that I’m sure you will discover soon enough.”
He raised his head and looked at her.
“I don’t suppose you know who did this
,
do you?”
She nodded.
“His name is Mervin Adams
,
and yes
,
before you ask
,
we worked together.
He was driving
,
but I’m not sure who was with him.
I only knew who the driver was because he kept spinning by as I was out of control.”
She looked away again and he saw the tears forming in her eyes.
“The other man, the one in the car I hit, he died
,
didn’t he
?
”
He pulled her face back to his gently.
“Yes.
He was dead at the scene.
You’re not being charged with anything because there were enough witnesses around to see that you’d been hit from behind.
There are several families that came forward to say that you’d pulled into a driveway that
,
by all rights
,
should have rolled your car. And the fact that you’d picked the only driveway with no one in the yard spoke volumes for how much in control you were at the time.
The other driver, the one that hit you
,
hit a little boy
,
but he’ll be fine.”
He didn’t add thanks to him being in the emergency room when he’d been brought in or he too would have died.
A little of his blood had given the doctors enough time to save the child from certain death.
But she seemed to know it anyway and thanked him.
She dozed off again and he held her until the nurse came in and told him his time was up.
She was taking Holly’s blood pressure as he walked out the door
and
smiled when he thought of how high it would have been had she come in earlier
,
or taken his for that matter.
Phil ran into his parents just as he turned down the hall.
“I have the information you asked for
,
son,” his mom said after a brief kiss to his cheek.
“I don’t know a lot about the girl
,
but I can tell you that the area she grew up in had its share of murders around that time.
And they suddenly stopped
,
as you thought they might have
,
just after the funeral for this child was held.”
He nodded and opened the large envelope.
A picture of the girl, Theresa Elizabeth Sykes, as they knew her name was now
,
stared back at him.
It was from a crude drawing, something that would be seen in an old newspaper clipping.
“In there is a list of the people who went missing for ten years before this girl.
There’s an empty casket where she was buried, they claim in the article that someone stole her body.”
His dad handed him another sheet of paper.
“According to that
,
Suzanna Reeves ceased to be the day the girl came up missing.
I’m assuming
,
like the Trustees said
,
that Miss Sykes killed her for whatever reason.
Maybe she wasn’t too thrilled about being a vampire at such a young age.”
The vampire told the Trustees that his child, Reeves
,
had died several days later.
He’d felt that since she was a rogue no one would miss her
;
he stated that he certainly wouldn’t.
“She would not listen to reason.
Her way of survival was to bite and then not seal the wounds.
I am well and truly rid of her.”
He was killed three days later when the Trustees decided it was their decision to take out a bad seed and not his.
And even though he’d had nothing more to do with her death than to report it, it was his attitude that pissed them off.
“And of the names on this list, are any of them still living?”
He looked at his dad when he didn’t answer right away.
“What is it?
Christ, are you saying all of them are?”
“There are over fifty names there and all but one is still around causing problems.
Your girl, that Sykes child
,
she’s their leader by all accounts.
They get together at least once a month to brag about their conquests.
Whenever someone has a number of kills more than your girl, she ends up killing them later.”
His mom looked over at his dad before she continued.
“The one that is dead went to the Trustees when someone in the group decided to attack someone he knew.
He ended up dead three days later.
That was just over two weeks ago.”
He was still reading over the file when his parents left.
And when his turn came to see Holly again he took it with him. She was awake now and sitting up in bed.
He showed her what his parents had brought him and waited while she read it over before he asked what he’d wanted to earlier.
“The driver of the car, do you think he was set to bring you in and it got out of hand
,
or was he there to kill you?”
He told her what the guy from earlier had said.
“The guy that I touched had a very low opinion of his boss.
He has only worked for him for several months but feels that he works for a goon, his words not mine.”
“I don’t know who he is.
I’ve heard of some underground group that works for the same area of the government that I do
,
but no one has ever seen them.”
She lay back on the bed and said nothing for several minutes. When she spoke again
,
he knew she’d been putting pieces of the puzzle together.
“So this guy, Blair
,
was there to offer up condolences because he didn’t know I’d survived.
Why?
Because he had contact with Adams
,
I’m betting.
Then there was the other guy with Connor.”
She grinned and Phil was suddenly sure she knew who he was.
“Big guy with hair down his shoulders, black as night
,
with one blue and one silver eye?”
“Yes.
Who is he?
He looked like he was taking Blair out to tear him to ribbons and your brother was going to eat a big bowl of popcorn while he did it.”
“Connor hates popcorn.
And he does know him.
He’s one of Connor’s snitches.
His name is Randy Stout and he wouldn’t hurt a flea.
About a year ago
,
this guy came forward to tell Connor he’d been bitten by a wolf. The wolf happened to be Alexis’ ex-brother-in-law Paddy.
They’d been in a ring together.
Randy didn’t turn
,
which is a good thing. The guy wouldn’t have survived after the first change. He’s terrified of wolves.”
Phil watched her to see if she was kidding and when he realized she wasn’t
,
he raised a brow.
“Then how is he friends with a pack?
I mean
,
your brother Connor is a big fucking wolf.”
“Yes
,
he is
,
but he’s more afraid of CJ.
She threatened him within an inch of his life if he didn’t go back to school and get an education.
Apparently
,
she’d heard he’d dropped out of school when he’d been sixteen.
When she realized he wasn’t all that smart
,
she told him he’d either get a good job or she’d find one for him.
He’s been Connor’s muscle since.”
Phil laughed, the first real
,
tru
e
laugh he’d had in a long while.
They were still laughing together when the nurse came in to say that her new doctor, Doctor Clint Burris
,
was releasing her to go home.
Phil had a name now
,
but it still did him little good without anything to go with it.
There was something about the man that made Phil think he wasn’t to be trusted
,
and the hatred he’d gotten from the other man still made him shudder.
Burris was a walking time bomb when it came to vampires
,
he was sure of it.
He added his name to the list that was growing for the Trustees to look into.
She was bored.
Theresa watched the humans walk around in the rain and wondered if she walked out there and killed one of them by ripping out their throat
if somebody
would stop to watch.
Smiling
,
she was nearly ready to find out when she felt a presence behind her.
Without turning
,
she spoke to the woman.
“You should know by now that you can’t sneak up on me.
I’m a lot smarter than you think I am.
I wasn’t born yesterday
,
you know.”
The woman growled
,
but Theresa ignored it for the most part.
“What brings you to my part of the world?”
“They have your real name.
I told you to not keep any part of you.
Once they had that
,
all your information was there for them to find.
That nosey bastard Phil has all he needs now to take you out.
Then what happens to your merry little band of idiots?”
Theresa didn’t say anything to her. What would be the point
?
She was supposed to be helping her
,
not giving out information like it was her job.
Glancing behind her
,
she looked out at the humans again before she decided that she wouldn’t have time to have fun and turned to deal with the intruder.
“W
ere
n’t you supposed to keep them from finding me?
I thought that was the deal.
It’s your duty to keep me safe
,
not help that old fool.”
Theresa sat on the couch and glared at the woman.
“As my mother
,
aren’t you supposed to have some sort of need to keep your baby sa
f
e?
You didn’t do much when I was a kid, don’t you think you should be better at it now?”