Beauty Bites (24 page)

Anesthetize me with a mallet. She was only helping me push the fantasy deeper. I had to escape. I jumped to my feet. “Ric Holiday is not The One. Look, I’m sorry I didn’t win us the campaign, but I’ve done what I can.”

“You haven’t—”

“I have. I’m done. And in the morning I’m heading home.”

Chapter Seventeen

Twyla watched me with big, dark, concerned eyes. Those eyes guilted me harder than a verbal scolding. She’d learned too much from her silent significant other Nikos.

It didn’t help that my heart was on her side.

Needing to be away from those
eyes
, I headed into my bedroom and shut the door. Spent some time with my ereader, scanning words without really absorbing. Gradually my Irish cream buzz wore off and I realized what an ass I’d been. Twyla was only trying to help. In a codependent, not very helpful way.

A little after sunset the scuff of movement and murmur of deep voices said the guys were up. A little later sizzling sounded faintly through the door, and the stinging waft of frying onion. Safety in numbers coupled with my growling stomach convinced me to swallow my idiotic exit lines and join them.

Elena was making dinner, something with tomatoes and tangy spices. Bo worked a whetstone along the edge of a wicked-looking switchblade. I scanned the area for Twyla but she was nowhere in sight. Nikos wasn’t either. All the bedroom doors were open.

I gave up and asked. “Where are Twyla and Nikos?”

“Taking a ‘walk’.” Elena raised her eyebrows significantly. It was a euphemism for something, but she didn’t say, and with that scary grind-grind going on, I didn’t ask.

Instead I got out a bowl, found leaf lettuce, tomatoes, green and red peppers, and a can of black olives, and tossed together a salad.

Supper was on the table when Twyla and Nikos got back. She greeted me like our heated discussion had never happened—thank God for lasting friendships—and sat down to eat while Nikos built a fire.

After dinner, the five of us sat around the crackling logs, roasting marshmallows and playing Sheepshead for a nickel a point. My head wasn’t in it so Twyla cleaned up.

It was after midnight when Bo and Elena disappeared out the lakeside door. Nikos, Twyla and I sat silently in front of the fireplace. I brooded, Twyla shot concerned little glances at me, and Nikos was just Nikos, big, silent and still. We sat that way for over an hour, until sometime after one in the morning.

Suddenly Nikos leaped to his feet, a dormant volcano erupting. His skin hardened like concrete, tusk-sized fangs exploded from his mouth, and his eyes boiled blood red.

My heart kicked into my throat at the sight.

“What?” Twyla was on her feet too.

“Vampire,” he snarled. “Coming—”

The lakeside door slammed open, but it wasn’t Bo. An unknown vampire filled the opening, chest pumping like bellows, face plated. Firelight glinted off shining fangs. Red eyes burned above them, eyes which flew immediately to me.

“Sshynnoffa—”

Nikos blurred. He snapped solid at the door with huge talons and slashed the vampire.

The vampire’s jacketed arm shot up in a block. Nikos’s talons tore through black leather, skin and meat. With a twist of the arm, the vampire snared Nikos’s claws in the material of the jacket and jerked down. Nikos tipped forward. The vampire launched an uppercut at his jaw.

Nikos simultaneously stepped forward to catch his balance and snatched the vampire’s wrist before the punch could land. Fluidly, the vampire ripped his jacket loose and turned Nikos’s hold to seize his forearm. Tugging sharply down, the vampire fired a knee into Nikos’s solar plexus. Only a lightning twist kept Nikos from a goring.

All this happened in a split second. The vampires’ battle was almost too fast to see.

My heart knew the new vampire’s identity before my brain recognized the face under the plating. “Ric!” I ran forward.

Twyla grabbed for me. I dodged and ran for Ric.

Ric and Nikos’s fight had turned them and brought them slightly into the room. My leap sent me right in the middle of them.

I plowed into grappling vampires, my brain sending me frantic signals—many, many vampire ends are dangerously pointy. Sure enough, Nikos speared huge talons toward Ric as I hit between them.

“Sshynnoffa, no!” Ric snatched me, wrapped himself around me and whirled.

Pain skewered my back. Damn, Nikos’s sharp claws had nearly broken skin, and definitely had bruised me.

Ric pushed me away. I spun to yell at everyone and anyone.

White claws protruded from Ric’s belly.

Nikos had impaled him. Only the tips of those lethal talons had reached me.

I covered my mouth with both hands. “Oh, no. No, no.”

Nikos ignored me, growling like a really pissed lion. He raised his other hand high, talons glinting like knives, aimed at Ric’s vulnerable neck.

“No!” I ran two steps and hit Nikos’s shoulder with everything I had.

Maybe he let me shove him off, but all I remember is the sound. Nikos’s talons came out of Ric’s flesh with an unnerving set of
thwucks
.

Ric groaned.

Crisis Time. I clicked off my emotion and ejected my nausea to spin toward Ric and shove his jacket off his shoulders. Holes in his black T-shirt were seeping blood. “I need to pack those wounds. Then we have to get you to a hospital.”

“No hospitals,” Twyla said.

Nikos was still growling.

“I’m…I’m all right.” Ric’s fangs were gone. His eyes were no longer red but a dulled gray, his face was drawn, and he was panting. “The big guy…is strong. One of yours?”

“My cousin’s. Don’t be a testosterone ass, Ric. A hospital is—”

“Not…necessary.” He raised his shirt.

My eyes were drawn to his rapidly rising and falling six-pack. He’d stopped bleeding. And if I wasn’t mistaken, the holes were already closing.

In fact, before my very eyes, they closed entirely. They even began to lose their pinkness. I stared in amazement. Sure, his burned face and bullet wound had healed quickly day before yesterday, but this was the first time I
saw
it, watched the miracle real-time.

“Sorry for the scare.” His voice was stronger now, and steadier. “I smelled you with a vampire and just reacted.” He lowered his shirt and turned to Nikos. “I’m Ric Holiday.”

Twyla answered because Nikos was still growling. “Nice to meet you in person. I’m Twyla Tafel.” She elbowed Nikos hard in the ribs. The growling cut, though he didn’t budge a millimeter. “This is Nikos.” Twyla held out her hand. “Synnove has told us so much about you.”

“Any of it good?” Ric glanced at Nikos before taking Twyla’s hand.

“Nope.” Twyla grinned.

Ric’s eyebrow rose, and his eyes shuttled between Twyla and me. “You’re Synnove’s cousin, aren’t you?”

Both of us stiffened. Now he’d ask if one of us was adopted. Unintentionally hurtful, but it would bite anyway. So much for my fairy tale prince.

Ric smiled, a child-like grin of discovery. “So Synnove is African as well as Scandinavian, how fascinating. Who else is in your family tree?”

Something inside me eased. “I’m German,” I admitted. “Mom was a Brandt.”

He nodded. “I don’t know what I am. Some woodpile combination of French and English, I think. I take it the meeting didn’t go well.”

Well, hell. I thought I’d imagined his whole knowing-me-better-than-I-knew-myself thing, but here he was doing it again. I gaped at him. “How did you—?”

“You glow when you’re happy. You’re distinctly not glowing.”

My stomach flipped. For a story I’d imagined, for a relationship that didn’t exist, it felt pretty damn real. “It could have gone better.”

“I’m sorry. Normally I’d have stepped in right away. But with Camille in the picture it will take more subtle handling—”

Bang
.

A sharp report from outside stopped him. Fireworks.

Or a gun.

It was followed by a shout, far off. The voice was dark with pain, guttural and deep.

And definitely female.

“
Elena
.” Nikos spun, swept Twyla into his arms and dashed out the door.

“Elena?” I started to follow. “She must be having her baby—”

My voice jarred as Ric swept me up and followed them. He said, “That’s not childbirth pain.”

“It isn’t?”

“No. That dark? That’s something worse.”

I’ve studied medicine for years. I’ve dissected cadavers. I’ve watched surgeries on living humans, and later assisted.

But what happened next was so horrific that I wouldn’t blame you if you skipped it. I would have myself, except I didn’t know what we’d find when we dashed out of that cabin. I went through that hell because I had to.

Ric ran so fast the wind beat my face and tangled my hair as if I were in a sports car. What I could see of the trees in the near dark blurred by. If I hadn’t been worried about Elena, it would have been exhilarating.

Nikos ran abreast of us with Twyla in his arms, although at first all I could see were the red lights of his eyes. As my own sight adjusted, it was evident his face was bladed again.

“How can you tell it isn’t childbirth?” I shouted over the wind at Ric. “Elena’s due.”

“Blood.” Ric slurred it, his fangs lengthening.

“Blood is part of the process. That’s normal.”

Elena’s shout, dark with agony, came again.

“Just labor,” I repeated. My reassurances sounded desperate even to my own ears. “It hurts like hell, but it’s not deadly. Mostly.” But now even I could smell the metallic tang.

If it was labor, it wasn’t going well.

“No,” Nikos said. “There.”

A shaft of moonlight cut through the trees like a spotlight.

She lay on the ground of a small clearing, clutching her belly with one hand while she stabbed repeatedly with a knife at a sack scarecrow.

No. Not a scarecrow. A vampire in tattered clothes. He curled over her like a python, mouth wide and fangs dripping red blood.

A shriek stuck in my throat.

Elena’s knife hit home. The vampire flinched. It struck again and he batted ineffectually at it, a confused look on his face.

Nikos transferred Twyla into his left arm, leaped forward and slugged the creature.

The vampire, bare feet and arms trailing, flew into a tree, hitting bark with a sharp crack.

Nikos gently deposited Twyla on her feet. He thrust a hand into his back pocket and drew out a flat black case the size and shape of a bundle of dollar bills. A flick of his thumb and a half-foot leaf-shaped blade shot out, glinting sharply silver on both edges. It looked like a Spartan sword, if they were miniaturized into switchblades.

The vampire pushed erect. Nikos decapitated the monster with a single mighty whack. He swung so hard the blade embedded in the tree trunk behind the vamp like a headman’s axe into a stump.

The head tumbled to the forest floor, hitting with a sound like a watermelon thudding onto a cutting board. My stomach heaved. I’d never seen someone killed before, and the violence shocked me.

Elena moaned, her fingers stiffening over her belly.

Crisis Time. I flipped my switch to lock shock away. This one was personal; I’d have to deal with it later, but for now, I was a doctor. “Ric. Put me down.”

“No.” His arms tightened. “I smell—”

“Elena!” Bo shot into the clearing, naked, dripping dirt. “What the hell happened to my wife?”

“It’s Bo, Ric. Put me down.”

Bo’s red eyes widened. “My God. Elena!” He dropped to his knees next to her and started to grab her. “The blood…so much.” He turned to us. He looked lost and confused and scared, which frightened me. Bo Strongwell doesn’t confuse or scare easily.

“Ric.
Now
.” I struggled. Ric finally set me down. I ran to Elena and squatted on her other side. “There was a vampire…” I turned her chin. Scanned her neck. Not a mass of blood. A couple pinpricks, already closing.

But I smelled blood. Was it the baby coming? I checked her pants. Dry. Not the baby. What was causing that smell…?

She groaned again. Her hand clutched above the mound of her stomach.

Rivulets of blood ran from between her fingers.

I raised her hand.

Elena’s belly had been slit with a knife.

The laceration was deep enough to see into. Bad. But it was bleeding freely with no embedded objects. Good.

Immediately I put my hands on the wound and pressed. First step, stop the bleeding. Pack the wound and apply pressure. Infection was the least of my worries just then. “Ric—no, Nikos.” He had the blade. “Cut up your shirt. Several strips. Twyla. Call 911.”

I glanced at Elena’s face. Her eyes were glassy with shock.

I didn’t have much time.

Twyla pulled her cell from her pants pocket. Her voice murmured in the background.

“I need to heal her.” Bo’s eyes were brimming red liquid. “But I need to be clean first, right? An open wound risks infection?” He was seriously frazzled, the master out of his element.