Half Blood (30 page)

Nox said, ‘It calls to you.’ Indi’s eyes fixed on his. ‘You want it, don’t you? You want to taste his blood. Take his vein,’ he urged.

Indi looked back at the pool of sticky, red blood under the dog. It was running down its side, its leg, matting in its fur and making Indi crazed with desire. The smell of it was intoxicating. Indi blinked, realising that she had taken a few steps closer. The dog whimpered, its eyes blinking dolefully at her. Those mismatched eyes …

The dog was a sudden blur of movement, shifting even faster than Indi, and apparently Nox, could track because when Indi caught up with the movement the dog was on top of Nox again. Its giant paws pinned him to the ground. Nox laughed into the dog’s face before he screamed out in pain. The dog’s claws had protracted into his skin like a cat’s.

Nox screamed out again, throwing his head back, his teeth gritted with pain. The dog latched onto his exposed throat, squeezing its jaws shut. Nox clawed at the sides of the dog, raking his nails over his ribcage, plunging fingers into the wound still spewing blood. The dog whimpered again, but didn’t release its jaws. Nox pushed and pulled at its fur, trying to get it to move. But with its eyes fixed on Indi, the dog choked the life from Nox.

Indi had seen a lot of gruesome things in her life. She’d been responsible for most of that gore. But what she saw in that alleyway would haunt her memories forever. Nox was finally still when his head was removed from his body. The dog eviscerated Nox, tearing through skin, bone and sinew until there was nothing but air between his neck and shoulders.

The dog’s muzzle was dripping with blood as it limped off Nox’s body. Indi backed up until she was next to Beth again. Indi would die before she let Beth get hurt anymore. When its bi-coloured eyes stared at her, she panicked. She was next. Out of instinct, she bared her teeth at the dog. It held her gaze for a long time before whining and sitting down near her feet. The wind was howling down the alleyway now, creating a wind tunnel with Indi and Beth stuck in the middle. Beth’s skin felt clammy under her touch, and Indi knew she had to get her out of there.

Indi looked up the length of the alleyway. It was only another thirty feet to get out. If she hoisted Beth over her shoulder, she could make it out of there. She glanced down at the dog, finding it shivering with cold. It looked like its skin was crawling with a million bugs under all its fur and they were all trying to get out at the same time.

Drawing Beth closer to her, she cradled her head against her chest even though she was covered with blood. The dog howled mournfully, closing its eyes as pain clearly ripped through its body. Indi watched with wide eyes as the fur along its back seemed to be getting shorter and shorter, appearing as if it was being sucked into its body.

Naked and shivering, its body started to reshape. Bone and flesh was torn and knit back together again. The dog’s body twisted and writhed until it formed into the shape of a man—the muscles still shivering and realigning as moans escaped his lips. With his back to her, she could see the huge wound in his ribs where Nox had stabbed him. She could also see the nail marks where Nox had raked his fingers over his sides. Tiny rivulets of blood escaped slowly down his body.

‘Indi?’ a tired and pain-filled voice asked.

She recognised that voice. ‘Rhett?’ she asked incredulously. Resting Beth against the wall, she went to him. Brushing his hair back from his face, one sky-blue and one pistachio-green eye stared up into her face.

‘I changed back too quickly. I’ll be alright once I’ve eaten and start to heal. But you must kill the vampire properly. Now,’ he demanded.

Indi stood up and walked over to the corpse. With her knife held strong and steady in her hand, she crouched by his body. With shaking fingers, she tore the buttons from his shirt, exposing his pale chest. The tattoo that she’d been so interested in at the café looked as if it was floating on top of his skin rather than being imbedded in it. Now that she could see it, she recognised the design as a snake—a viper. Its head sat on his left pectoral muscle, its huge jaws open over where his heart rested below. The snake’s body twisted and writhed along his skin, wrapping around his shoulders until finally ending with a tail that wrapped around his neck and throat to the base of his skull.

Indi visually measured where his heart would be and took the blade to his skin. Black blood oozed from the incision, dribbling down between the muscles in his chest. When the knife hit bone, she put all her weight behind her and pushed. His chest cavity succumbed to the pressure, caving in around his heart.

His blood was thick; pooling in the cavity like a sinkhole had just formed. Indi looked desperately at Rhett. Sweat had broken out on his brow as he watched her.

‘Reach inside his chest and find his heart,’ he urged.

Indi looked back down at the sludge and swallowed. She could do this. She’d taken someone’s hand for God’s sake. Biting her lip, she dipped her hand into his body finding his blood only slightly warmer than the ambient temperature. Her fingers flexed out and touched the muscle she was looking for. She tested its limits before putting her knife into the space.

The aorta was the hardest to cut through. It was a solid inch of thick, rubbery tissue. When she finally cut through the remaining tendons and connective tissue, Indi took out his heart and put it on the ground beside her. If there was protocol for this, she had no fucking idea what it was. His heart was black, but the veins running through it remained a bright, scarlet red. She looked over at Rhett. Pain was straining his features. She had to get him out of this alleyway or he’d freeze to death.

When she looked back at the body, it had changed colour. His skin was becoming translucent, so much so that she could see each blue vein under his skin.

Rhett managed a nod. Fascinated by the process, Indi looked down at the body again just as an icy gust of wind blew down the alleyway, causing Nox’s body to flake away even more.

Nifty trick
, she thought idly before standing up and taking a look at Rhett. He was sitting up now, but the wound in his side was still open and oozing blood. Indi licked her lips.

it again. Distracted, she asked, ‘Huh?’

be cleaned before it heals badly.’

‘Sure. Yes,’ she said without knowing whether she entirely meant it. ‘Can you walk?’

‘Yes,’ he replied, standing up and testing his legs. Indi had to look away. Maybe Rhett didn’t have a problem with nudity, but she sure did. Shucking her coat, she threw it at him without looking. ‘I don’t want to get a reputation for walking around town with naked men in the middle of the night,’ she said. She looked back down at James, or Buddy, or whoever he was supposed to be. ‘What are we supposed to do with him?’

Indi went to Beth, scraping back the hair from her forehead. The cut was still bleeding slowly, but it was much better than it had been before. The smell of her blood was enthralling, but she would die before she hurt Beth. She closed her eyes and focussed on getting her and Rhett back to her apartment without too many people seeing them, but then she heard Beth’s heart beating easily in her chest and the smell of her blood became too much of a lure.

‘Indi. Look at me,’ he demanded in a strong voice. She couldn’t do anything but look at him, at his strong jaw and dark hair. His eyes were two brightly-burning orbs holding her in place, tightening her chest and sending her heart fluttering. ‘You. Can. Do. This,’ he gritted out; wincing as he held his side with a shaking hand.

Indi swallowed and turned back to her best friend. She could do this. She could. All she had to do was not look at the cut. Indi picked her up carefully and drew her over her shoulder before making her way to the entrance of the alleyway.

‘Good girl,’ Rhett murmured from behind her. It would have sounded condescending coming from anyone else, and worthy of a slap in the face for it, but from Rhett it sounded good. It sounded right.

The wail of an ambulance siren roared up North Street, stopping outside Indi’s apartment building. When they pounded on the door, Indi made sure Rhett was hidden before letting them in. He didn’t want to go to hospital for treatment, and Indi didn’t blame him. If she could turn into a dog at will, she’d be pretty wary of doctors too.

‘What happened?’ the first EMT asked. She was pale; her freckles standing out on her cheeks like a sprinkle of brown sugar on porridge. Her fire-red hair was pulled back into a low ponytail, her face free of makeup except for some strawberry lip gloss. Crouching down to get a better look at Beth who was laid out on Indi’s couch, her purple surgical-gloved hands tested the cut on Beth’s head carefully. Indi glanced back at her partner standing watch in the doorway. Emergency workers, especially the paramedics, hated coming to Hell at night. There was a ninety per cent chance that every call out was going to turn into a drug heist.

‘She called to tell me her car had broken down,’ Indi said. There was no way in hell that she was going to tell them that she was somehow drawn there. ‘When I went down there, she wasn’t in the car. I heard her scream and when I went to investigate, I found her next to a dumpster down an alleyway.’

‘Was there anyone else there?’ her partner asked from the door. His hazel eyes were narrowed, suspicious. His coffee-with-cream skin seemed luminous in the light coming from the hallway. Indi thought he must have been around forty or so. His hair was shaved, but not to the skin, so he still had a thin layer of curly, black hair on his head. The creases around his eyes and mouth either meant that he smiled a lot, or frowned a lot. By the vibe he was giving off now, she suspected it was the latter.

‘I didn’t see anyone in the alleyway with her,’ Indi replied holding his gaze. When he looked away, Indi looked back at his partner.

‘She’ll need stitches. It looks as if she was thrown pretty hard against something hard. She probably has a concussion too. We’ll take her to Buxton Gen. They’ll more than likely do a rape kit on her just to make sure.’

Indi nodded, but her eyes were fixed on Beth. She brushed some of her hair away from her face and Beth’s eyes squeezed tight and released before fluttering open.

Indi swallowed down on the lump in her throat. ‘It may have been. I saw a guy running down the street before I found you. We’ll know more when we get you to the hospital, okay?’

‘Are you coming with me?’

Indi looked up into the woman’s freckled face. She nodded, but Indi couldn’t be in an enclosed space with all that blood yet. She was barely holding on by the skin of her teeth being in her apartment as it was. ‘I’ll meet you there, okay? I have to change first.’

The two paramedics lifted Beth onto the gurney while Indi squeezed her hands into fists. Beth was wincing and moaning with every single jostle, and Indi wanted to hurt the people who were causing her the pain. They wheeled her from the room, walking towards the less-than-safe elevator down to the foyer. When they were safely aboard, Indi went back to her apartment.

As she passed James’ door though, she knocked. She still hadn’t figured out what had happened, but maybe James had a doppelganger he didn’t know about in town. When there was no answer, she returned to her apartment, sliding the dead bolt across after her like she always did.