Kiss Me Deadly (3 page)

Two months earlier

J
amming the syringe into the gel-tipped shotgun cartridge, Ravin filled the last of a dozen bullets with five milliliters of her blood. She did this every Sunday night. It was a ritual. She needed rituals. After two centuries of living, rituals kept her life on track and her focus sharp.

She’d been stalking the Kila tribe for weeks. They laid low and never made a mistake. She attributed that to their leader, Nikolaus Drake, who was known to keep a very tight rein on the tribe members. No unnecessary kills—that was their law.

A dead vampire was never an unnecessary kill, as far as Ravin was concerned.

A count over the weeks had determined two dozen in the tribe. The number of enemies didn’t faze Ravin. She was a witch. So long as she kept her back to a wall, and her gun loaded, no longtooth was going to mess with her. The vampire’s choice was to either run, or take a blood bullet and explode into ash.

She preferred the exploding part as opposed to running. But they could run forever; she’d never give up her quest to annihilate every bloody longtooth on this earth. It was a promise she’d made to her parents on the eve of their deaths.

Ravin checked the sawed-off shotgun for a full load and fitted it into the leather holder strapped across her back. Another belt strapped at her thigh secured a silver dagger, the edged metal soaked in her blood. She wore leather chaps over tight-fitted black suede pants and a black T-shirt beneath her leather vest. A big silver cross swung around her neck.

Reaching back, she secured her shoulder-length dark hair out of the way with a rubber binder. Her gloves slid on and snapped, and she donned clear safety glasses to protect her eyes from vampire debris.

The only thing that could take her down tonight was reluctance or fire.

Neither would bother her. For beyond the innate determination lived an indelible image of her parents’ dying faces. No matter the notches Ravin marked on her gun, or the plunge toward darkness that occurred when slaying tipped her balance, that image would never be erased.

Not once did she question her relentless quest. For if she did, the truth might be harder to face than a tribe of bloodthirsty vampires.

The wolves had sent a messenger stating that there would be no communication-gathering this night. The nerve of Severo, the leader of the northern pack. He insulted Nikolaus with his blatant disregard for the vampire/wolf relations.

The vampires had always considered the city their territory. The wolves kept to the suburbs and countryside. And while he preached peace to his tribe, Nikolaus would not stand back and watch the wolves creep onto his grounds and begin to terrify Kila’s source of nourishment.

“We’ll snuff him out of his lair,” Truvin Stone, second in command to Nikolaus, suggested. “I’ll gather the troops?”

“No. They have shown us their fear. It is enough.” For Nikolaus would not march his men into needless battle. The werewolf pack had retreated, offering a bloodless victory this day.

He could sense Truvin’s tension, the need to react and charge into danger, as it stiffened his cohort next to him. Never would Truvin completely accept the peaceable ways of Kila, but Nikolaus was reassured in knowing that he did try to embrace them. The man had not killed for survival in the three years he’d been with Kila.

With a whistle, Nikolaus called the nine vampires who had accompanied him and Truvin into a circle in the middle of the dark alley. They would regroup and disperse.

Too late, he realized the bad tactical move. He’d drawn them into a tight target.

The first cry of “Witch!” froze Nikolaus’s blood.

Two of his cohorts went down in a flash of sizzling flesh and blood. Their cries were unreal, choking screams as their bodies were destroyed by the surprise attack. It could only be a vigilante witch, armed with blood bullets—the death cocktail.

“Bitch,” Nikolaus swore, and sought the direction of the attack, while calling out to the others. “Retreat!”

Another comrade—a friend for fifteen years—exploded before Nikolaus. He caught bits of flesh and blood against his palms.

So quickly they were taken down. Not right. How to stop it?

Truvin caught his gaze and nodded. He was on his way out—every vampire for himself, and woe to the fool who did not flee.

Nikolaus turned and spied a glint of silver in the narrow alley between two brick buildings but fifty strides away. The witch. She stalked the shadows, sure and relentless.

There were two vampires left standing besides himself. Panicked, they raced toward the approaching menace.

Nikolaus caught Cory in his arms. The man had been hit, but he would not be reduced to ash like the others, for he was a mortal supplicant to the tribe, one who sought immortality, but first must prove his dedication to
the dark
. He dragged his dying body behind a rusted Dumpster.

A bullet shrilled past Nikolaus’s head and hit the brick wall right above his shoulder. A glass-tipped bullet that contained witch’s blood.

A scout had once obtained one of the bullets for the tribe’s study. But a drop of witch’s blood, infused into a vampire’s bloodstream, took a manic trip through his body and ate him from the inside out. It proved a quick yet excruciating death.

Something stung his shoulder. Fiery bites ate along his neck and cheek. Nikolaus dropped Cory onto the tarmac and slapped at the incredible pain. It sizzled down his torso and up, under and along his left arm, eating into his leather clothing and gnawing at flesh.

“No.” He’d been splattered from the bullet that had hit the wall.

Staggering against the unreal pain, Nikolaus dropped to his knees, landing beside Cory’s body. The death cocktail sizzled into his torso. His heart pumped furiously, as if trying to outrun the inevitable. He slapped at the burning flesh, rolled over it to make it stop, but did not cry out. He was dead to the witch.

And in a moment of clarity, he knew what had to be done. He needed blood. Lots of it.

Even as his flesh fell away from his bones, Nikolaus ripped into Cory’s throat, drinking his blood and slapping his hands over the mortal’s gaping chest wound to coat them in blood. He bathed himself in Cory’s fleeting life, but it didn’t seem as if he could ever stop the burn.

Listening, keen for the intruder, he realized his own pulse beats ceased. His heart—

He gripped his chest but felt his insides. Blood. Ribs. Organs.

His vision blurred. Breath stopped.

Drink!

Or die at the hands of a witch.

The Present

H
e laid the witch on the end of a king-size bed that mastered the whitewashed floorboards in the bedroom. A thick white comforter cradled her as if she were an angel resting on a cloud. A bloody angel that he’d…not killed.

Nikolaus straightened abruptly. He smoothed a palm over his face and drew it down his chin.
You almost killed her
.

But he hadn’t.

Why didn’t you kill her?

Ravin Crosse, this…witch? Vampires and witches were enemies.

What the hell?

Fists formed. Nikolaus hissed through his teeth. Rage emerged and flooded his system. Stalking the floor from door to wall, he resisted the urge to growl, to howl out his frustration.

She lay there, inert, her hair splayed, black curls across white. Silent. Unable to lash out, to fight, to challenge him.

This was the witch who had once injured him so badly he had touched death. His heart had stopped. He’d had to feed on a friend to survive.

Heat flushed Nikolaus’s neck and shoulders, and filled him from skull to fingertips to heels. A storm of vengeance raged for release, but—

This felt different. Unusual.

For where the rage should have felt substantial and insistent and uncontrollable, it merely settled, and became an emotional reaction Nikolaus had not touched for what seemed like ages.

Heartbeats quieted. Fisted fingers snapped open. Anxiety fled, softening the thick tension holding his neck stiff.

He bent over the body sprawled across the bed, his palms sinking deep into the plush down quilt.

This witch, this gorgeous woman, deserved—

He swept his head lower, over her face, but stopped short of touching her mouth with his. Blood coated her neck. It smelled different. Not like mortal blood. There lingered an odd herbal aroma to it. Before, the scent of rosemary had come to him, but it had changed. This scent was organic. Cherry? Or musk and then…cloves? Nikolaus couldn’t place it.

Curiosity held him over the bed, the tips of his dark hair sweeping across her bloodied neck and chest. Swiping a forefinger through the blood, he observed the crimson glisten near a lamp that glowed at the head of the bed.

So deadly this small drop of life should be. It had once eaten through him, literally, to his heart. It had rendered dead six of the tribe Kila in less than five minutes.

Death cocktail, this. Dangerous. To be avoided at all costs.
It brings so much pain!

Yet now…he wanted more.

He did?

“Not right,” he muttered, then licked his finger clean.

The taste of her shimmered through him, warming his belly, and revisiting the earlier sexual desire. With the blood hunger always came the need for carnal satisfaction.

“Not right,” he murmured again, “but not…wrong.”

He glanced over the havoc marring the witch’s neck. He’d not taken much from her; she should be coming to soon.

A tangle of wavy black hair scattered across the snow-clean quilt. A heart-shaped face finished at the sharp chin, and above that, a generous red mouth, partially open, hushed out soft breaths. A viscous brown liquid trailed down her forehead and across her cheeks and jaw.

Dark brows arched a wicked slash above each closed eye. A sprinkle of pale freckles danced upon each cheek. Yet, there, at the corner of her mouth, a scar curled down toward her jaw.

A tiny scar.
Unlike mine
, Nikolaus thought, with a stroke along his neck where the convoluted flesh ever reminded him of his survival.

Even unconscious the witch looked imposing, ready to strike. Must be the black jeans jealously hugging her narrow hips, and the T-shirt stained with blood. No bra beneath, for the pebbled texture of her erect nipples formed clearly in the thin cotton shirt.

Nikolaus licked his lips. The sight of her breasts, full and high, stirred a need that the taste of her blood had pushed to the surface. He hovered a palm over the points of her nipples. But not to touch.

She is poison!

No, he possessed immunity to her blood; in proof, he’d survived the extraction that now saw her unconscious.

Tracing his lower lip with his tongue, Nikolaus scanned the room, lit by the white shadow beaming from a small halogen lamp. It had been just after midnight when he’d arrived. Less than an hour had passed. Safe yet, for the sun wouldn’t peek over the horizon until five-thirty. He’d walked here, but he may need to call his driver for a fast dash into a dark vehicle and a secure ride home.

The room was large and stark. But the bed and a few pieces of clothing were scattered across the whitewashed hardwood floor. A huge plant with leaves the size of elephant’s ears sat near what must be the bathroom door.

One entire wall was fashioned of bookshelves—also whitewashed—stuffed from ceiling to floor with volumes that varied from ancient, gilt-embossed spines, to glossy, colorful paperbacks.

The north wall was lined with windows, the shades pulled against streetlights.

No matter what trials Nikolaus had overcome and survived, give him but a minute or two in direct sunlight and his flesh would begin to sizzle. Though, even as a phoenix, he’d not yet summoned the sanguine carelessness to test his still-healing flesh against the sun.

Compelled to stare upon the witch, Nikolaus rubbed his jaw. Should he leave her here alone to wake wondering what had happened to her? Would she know?

He’d not used persuasion to erase the memory of his bite, yet he had licked the wound. The vampire’s saliva was necessary to heal the bite and to prevent the vampire taint from transforming his victims to vampires themselves.

He couldn’t abandon her. He…he cared about her.

Impossible! She is a witch.

Difficult to argue with his rational inner voice. And yet, Nikolaus knew, heart-deep, that he did feel genuine concern. Ravin Crosse was…why, she was
his
.

Yes, to claim her felt right. He rubbed a hand across his chest and stopped over the pounding beat within. This woman belonged to him for he felt her in his heart. It was as though she occupied him. Her mysterious scent lived in his nostrils and her taste filled his mouth and body. Instinctually, he wanted her.

And yet, did she return the sentiment?

He wasn’t sure about her feelings toward him. It was as if she’d just appeared in his life, and yet he’d known her even before he’d been born. A stupid notion. Nikolaus did not believe in reincarnation or soul mates. Man had but one life to live, though certainly that life could be drastically altered and lure him to encounter a strange new world of creatures he’d not once imagined to be true.

Like werewolves and vampires and witches.

“Do I know you, Ravin Crosse?” He traced the fringed darkness of her hair. “Of course I do. How can a man
not
know someone they care about?”

Where was it? The confidence of soul he had always felt when leading his men, or the utterly intoxicating power when he’d once held a surgical blade in hand. This new, strange feeling encompassing his being, so opposite—it was the absence of control—rendered him helpless. Unsure.

Nikolaus had always clung to love, grasped for it, and embraced it whenever it had come to him. It had been…so long. He’d not loved a woman since before he’d been transformed.

Dare he believe love was once again his?

The world had changed and that was never a good thing. Everything felt…horizontal. And it smelled different. Not a repulsive smell, but an untamed scent that should set up her hackles.

Danger. Predator.

Ravin realized the low, murmuring sound she heard was actually herself. She moaned. She ached. Her neck hurt.

A pair of deep blue eyes hovered above her. Getting closer. As if…he was going to kiss her.

Instincts kicked in, and Ravin smashed her fist into the creep’s jaw.

He reeled upright, smoothing a palm along his face. But instead of the expected anger, he leaned back over her and grinned a rogue’s saucy smirk. “I love it when you play rough, sweetness.”

The second punch cracked his nose. Ravin scrambled to sit upon the thick comforter.

Shaking his head and sliding her another roguish grin, the big brute of a vampire swiped blood from his upper lip and chuckled. “The left side next time, okay? Wouldn’t want you to knock a tooth loose. Might need it for breakfast later.”

So she wound up for punch number three—on the same side.

The vampire clamped a hand about her fist and wrangled her other wrist into a tight clasp. “That’s enough.” He slammed her backward and pinned her to the bed. Tension salted the air with a strong urgency. “Or you’ll get me thinking you’re as madly in love with me as I am with you.”

He crushed a kiss to her mouth. Brutal and forceful. He wasn’t going to let her beat him. It was all Ravin could do to twist her head aside. She felt him grin against her jaw.

Tall, Dark and Ruthless had developed a weird method of dispatching his vengeance. She slapped away his hand before the vampire could stroke her face.

Stroke her? As in
gently?
A vampire?

To his favor, the vampire didn’t react to her defensive move with another body slam or kiss, though he knelt on the bed, leaning over her body, hands above her shoulders, and that dark, pitiful expression but inches from her face. Yeah, it was more pitiful than predatory. Kind of a puppy dog stare, if she had to label it.

A vampire was in her home. On her bed. Close enough to—“What the hell? Aren’t you going to kill me?”

“Changed my mind,” he offered. Her attempts to knee him off her fortified his efforts to remain on top of her. “Obviously, when I first arrived here, my thoughts were clouded by our past encounter. Got a little carried away.”

“A little…? You came here to kill me. You’re supposed to get carried away! What the hell are you doing now—don’t you dare kiss me!”

“I…If it’s what you wish?” The imminent kiss aborted, he raked a hand over his mane of dark hair and sighed, looking as confused as Ravin felt. “Don’t know what got into me. I don’t normally attack those I care about.”

Enough of this.

Ravin kicked against the vampire’s chest with one foot. Yes, a freakin’ vampire! Care about her? What fruit salad of drugs had he sucked out of his last victim?

“Get away from me, you bloodsucking longtooth!”

As she scrambled backward across the bed, her head hit the wood headboard, stopping her cold.

Ravin cursed her need for sanctuary, a quiet room filled with things that calmed her, such as books and scented oils and luscious, nine-hundred-count sheets. No weapons in the room. Not even a lousy cross at hand!

The vampire sat on her bed—on her own quilt that she’d saved from granny’s belongings—as if they were chums or pals…

“Back off, vampire!” She lifted her wrist to her mouth, prepared to bite, but then the disaster that had just happened flashed in her thoughts.

The spilled love potion. (No wonder she smelled nasty.) The front door. Yeah, it lay on the floor, her home open to the world, or anyone who should walk down the hallway.

But the most vivid recollection was of the hulking vampire pinning her to the fridge—and biting her.

Ravin slapped a hand to her neck. “Ouch!”

He shrugged. “I rubbed my saliva into it, though it does seem to be healing rather slowly. Your blood doesn’t clot as quickly as a mortal—”

“You bit me?” she spat. “Who do you think you are? What are you doing? You’re—We’re—”

The world had tilted completely off its axis. Normally a vamp should be fleeing her for fear of a droplet of her blood splattering any portion of its flesh. But this one had
drunk
from her. A lot, to judge from the open wound on her neck and the still-woozy feeling that dizzied her brain.

“Feels as if I’ve been punctured by a nail gun. Get off my bed!”

“Don’t be so mouthy, woman. Can’t you see I—I just…” A heavy sigh. Two worry lines appeared on his forehead as he lifted his brows and delivered another sigh. “Love you, is all.”

From where had this vampire escaped? The Count’s Home for Wayward and Manic Vampires? When last she’d checked, all the insane ones had high-tailed it for New Orleans. He must have tallied numerous kills to his chart, for the
danse macabre
had driven him insane.

“You don’t love me.”

“I do. Damn me, but I do.” He delivered her a wink and a rogue’s grin that was beginning to irritate her more and more.

Ravin did not do flirtation. Most especially with a—

“I’m a witch. You’re a vampire. Do you get that? Don’t you remember you came here to kill me?” She recalled his impassioned speech just before he dug his teeth into her neck. “I…killed you?”

“Tried.” That smile kept sliding back onto his mouth. A triumphant, roguish grin that exuded sensuality and put Ravin on high alert.