Seeing that the bag at his teeth was almost empty, Alex snatched another from the cooler, but then hesitated. Maybe she shouldn’t be giving him blood. He was weak and in pain now, but what if the blood healed him? She knew what he was now. He wasn’t trying to control her at the moment, but that might just be because he was too weak from blood loss to do it. If she kept giving him blood and he got stronger … then what? Would he make her forget what he was? What else could he make her do? Would he keep her as a pet, a walking blood supply and sex slave until he tired of her? Again, then what? Would her body be found by the side of the road, drained of blood? He’d gotten the bagged blood in the cooler from somewhere. Did he find victims, drain their blood, then bag it and keep it for future use until he found another victim?
“Christ,” she breathed.
“Alex?” Cale pulled the bag away and peered at her worriedly. “What are you thinking?”
She glanced to him as another thought suddenly struck her. “You’re a friend of Mortimer’s. He’s not … like you? “ she managed.
Cale didn’t speak, but she could see the answer in his eyes. Mortimer was a vampire too.
“Oh God,” Alex breathed again, thinking that explained why Sam had suddenly dumped a career she’d worked toward her whole life just to play den mother to Mortimer and his friends. Mortimer was controlling Sam, probably using her as a walking blood bag and sex slave too. She had to warn her.
“Alex?”
Cale watched her with such an intensity that she fancied he was trying to control her but was too weak. She couldn’t afford for him to get strong enough to do it. Alex dropped the bag she held back into the cooler, slammed it closed, and scrambled to her feet, dragging the cooler out of the car as she did.
“Wait! Alex. No!” She heard the rustle and tearing again and knew he was struggling to get free and come after her. Unsure what he was capable of, and terrified that he’d succeed, she raced back along the road toward his rental car. She was only a couple of feet away when her feet slid out from under her. Alex dropped the cooler as she started to skid and was trying to stay upright when the ice patch suddenly ended. Her right foot stopped abruptly as it hit the rough tarmac, and she was suddenly falling forward. She threw her hands out, trying to brace her fall, but her head swung forward as she went down, her forehead making a bone-jolting impact as it hit the ground.
Moaning, Alex squeezed her eyes closed against the pain, but then crawled to her hands and knees and glanced back the way she’d come. Cale had dragged himself out of the car to come after her. Scrambling to her feet, she charged around the rental to the driver’sside and pretty much threw herself inside, almost closing the door on her ankle in her desperation to get it shut and locked.
Grateful that she’d left the car running, Alex shifted into drive, and then glanced toward Cale in time to see his legs collapse beneath him, too damaged to carry his weight. Her heart wrenched at his roar of pain as he fell, and she hesitated, but then spotted the cooler she’d dropped. It had opened as it fell and several bags of blood had spilled out and were gleaming dark crimson in the beams from the rental’s headlights.
Grinding her teeth, she spun the steering wheel and hit the gas, fishtailing to head back down the ramp the wrong way. She wasn’t even going to risk driving past Cale. She just didn’t know what he was capable of. Fortunately, no one appeared on the road ahead, coming in her direction, and the way was clear when she reached the highway. Alex turned on to it, tires spinning and back end fishtailing again before she got control and shot off up the highway. Her mind was now focused on only one thing; she had to get to Sam and warn her.
On his knees and panting heavily, Cale watched his rental car speed away, then collapsed onto his back and roared with pain and despair. He’d nearly ripped his own foot off trying to get out of the car. The pain was excruciating. But then his whole body had been in terrible pain since he’d woken after the accident. Without the seat belt to restrain him, he’d flown into the dashboard and had heard the crunching of bone on impact. He suspected he had a cracked skull, brokencheekbone, broken nose, a broken collarbone, several broken ribs, and he didn’t even want to speculate on the internal damage. Then there were his legs and feet. He raised his head and glanced down at them, grimacing at the state of them.
The two bags he’d managed to consume had started the healing, but he needed much, much more to heal fully. And then he had to find Alex, calm her down, and try to save this situation. He couldn’t lose her now, he thought, and cursed the idiot who had hit him.
Grimacing as a shock of pain ran through him, Cale dug into his pocket to find the cell phone Alex had been searching for earlier. Fortunately, she had only managed to try the one pocket and had mistaken his attempt to tell her he didn’t want her calling in help, for his saying he didn’t have his phone. Now he dragged it painfully out and began to punch in Bricker’s number but paused when he realized nothing was happening. He turned it over and saw the large crack across the back. The damn thing had been destroyed in the crash.
Cursing, he tossed it away, hearing it skitter in the snow. He then rolled onto his stomach with a groan to peer at the cooler lying up the road. He couldn’t call for help and couldn’t walk, but he
would
get to that damned cooler, he thought grimly, and began to drag himself through the snow, using his arms to pull himself forward, his useless legs leaving a bloody trail behind him.
Alex pulled into the driveway of Mortimer’s house, only then recalling the ridiculous level of security hehad. Probably to keep anyone from sneaking in and staking one of them, she thought as she hit the button to roll down her window. Usually they recognized her car and let her in without stopping her outside the first gate, but she was in Cale’s rental tonight. However, they apparently recognized that as well and before she could lean out to press the button and lie and say she was just stopping by for a visit, the first gate began to open.
Sighing, she sank back in her seat and hit the button to roll her window back up, but then began to fidget as she realized they would stop her between the two gates to glance under the car while finding out why she was there. Alex had no idea what they were capable of but suspected she should keep the real reason for her visit out of her mind. If they could control people like she suspected, they might be able to read minds too. She was pretty sure that in books and the movies vampires could read minds.
It had been stupid of her to come here. She should have called Sam and had her meet her at a coffee shop or something. Alex had barely had the thought when an SUV pulled into the drive behind her. Realizing she had no choice but to go forward now, she cursed under her breath and removed her foot from the brake, allowing the rental to slide forward into the area between the two high gates barring the entrance to the house. A glance in the mirror showed the SUV following her inside, and then pulling up beside her as the first gate began to close.
Alex watched it unhappily, wondering if she would ever leave this place … alive.
A tap on her window drew her attention, and Alex glanced around to see Russell smiling in at her quizzically. Her gaze slid from Russell’s blond hair and golden eyes to the dark-haired man moving past him toward the back of her car to look underneath. Francis was the second man’s name, and while no one had said so, she suspected the two men weren’t just work partners on the security detail but life partners as well. They were the only two Sam hadn’t introduced to her and Jo. Besides, there was just something about the way they looked at and treated each other that made her think there was more than friendship between them.
Alex shifted her gaze back to Russell and hit the button to roll down her window again, quickly trying to blank her mind as she did in case they could read her thoughts.
“Hi, Alex. What’s up?” Russell greeted her.
Something about his stance or the way he spoke made her fear it was already too late to hide her thoughts, but she forced a smile and tried to sound casual as she said, “Nothing. I just swung by to see Sam.”
“It’s kind of late, isn’t it?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.
“A little,” Alex agreed, realizing that it was nearly dawn. Her gaze slid to the SUV to see two men getting out to talk to Francis, who had finished at the back of the car. She recalled them from other visits. They were usually on duty during the day. She’d arrived at shift change she supposed.
“I’ll call up to the house and have someone meet you at the door.”
Alex turned sharply back to Russell. His expressionwas closed, and there was concern in the depths of his eyes. She was positive he’d been able to read her mind and considered shifting the car into reverse and trying to crash her way back out through the first gate.
Russell nixed that idea by saying, “I wouldn’t if I were you. You could get hurt.”
Alex swallowed. The words had been softly spoken, but they sounded like a threat to her in that moment. Worse yet, there was now no denying that he could read her mind.
“Go ahead.”
Alex glanced to the front to see that Francis had opened the second gate for her and now stood waiting for her to drive through.
“It isn’t as bad as you think,” Russell said quietly when she hesitated. When she glanced to him again, he added, “Go on up to the house and let someone explain things to you. Everything will be all right.”
Swallowing, Alex hit the button to close the window and drove through the gate, her hands gripping the steering wheel tightly. That drive, short as it was, was the worst of her life … because she suspected she was driving herself to her own doom.
Cale could have sobbed with relief when he finally reached the cooler. That relief just increased when he saw that it was already open, its contents spilled out onto the snow like precious rubies. Grabbing the nearest bag, he dragged it to his mouth and sank his teeth into it, waiting impatiently as it emptied, his thoughts on Alex and where she could have gone.
He should have explained everything before revealing his teeth, Cale berated himself. It must have been something of a shock when his fangs had suddenly appeared. However, he’d been in such need, and she had been bleeding, the smell and taste of the blood on her cut palms taunting him … It had been a case of the lesser evil, suck on a bag of blood or give in to his desperation and bite Alex. Either one would have revealed what he was; but he was in no shape to woo and caress her so that she would be excited enough to open her mind and feel his pleasure rather than her own pain. His biting her then would have hurt, and while he would never deliberately hurt Alex, with the hunger on him as it had been, he hadn’t trusted himself not to. Getting her to bring him the cooler of blood had seemed the only recourse.
If he’d been in a little better shape, Cale might have thought to have her leave the cooler and go for help so that he could feed without her seeing, but once he’d seen the cooler, he hadn’t been able to think of anything but the sweet relief the blood would give him.
Cale ripped the now-empty bag from his teeth and dragged another over to replace it. He fed on four bags like that before worrying about anything else … like the fact that he was presently lying at the side of the road where anyone might find him. And that within seconds the blood would hit his system, it would start to heal him, and he would be in so much pain he wouldn’t be able to control himself. If a Good Samaritan should come by at that point, he was likely to rip into their throat without even being aware of what he was doing.
Sighing, he glanced around. There was nothing but the metal rail and a triangle of snow between the highway and the off-ramp on this side, but there was a small copse of trees starting about fifty feet from the road on the other. It seemed a long way away at that point, but Cale didn’t feel he had much choice. It was that or risk hurting someone. He had already been incredibly lucky that no one had come along yet, he couldn’t risk—
Cale’s thoughts died as lights splashed over him. Raising his head, he saw that someone had turned onto the off-ramp and was slowing as they approached.
If Alex thought driving up to the house was bad,
forcing herself to get out of the car and walk to the house was even worse, but she made herself do it. For one thing, Sam was in there, completely oblivious that the man she loved was a ravening vampire who was just making her think she loved him so that he could feed off of her like a parasite. She had to go in and warn her, and—if she could—get her out. Though Alex was starting to think that wasn’t likely.
Pausing at the door, she took a moment to try to compose herself, and then finally raised her hand to knock. It wasn’t exactly a loud rapping, it was more a timid tapping, but then she was scared out of her wits at that point … and really had to pee, she realized unhappily, wondering why things like that always seemed to happen at the most inopportune times. Onegood boo would be enough to have her wetting herself at this point, and since she was entering a vampire lair, Alex suspected she was going to experience more than a boo … which meant she was likely to experience humiliation on top of horror tonight, Alex realized, and was suddenly irritated. That irritation only grew as minutes passed without someone answering her summons. Geez, if she was going to be sacrificed on the blood altar of a bunch of neck suckers, the least they could do was not keep her waiting.
That last thought told Alex she was probably losing her grip on sanity. It just didn’t seem all that sane to be angry that her would-be killers lacked promptness. Sighing, she shook her head and knocked again, but it still wasn’t very loud. She just couldn’t bring herself to pound as if she really wanted someone to come kill her. When another moment passed without the door opening, she hesitated, and then reached for the doorknob and turned it. Much to surprise, it wasn’t locked.