Bitten by Darkness (22 page)

“Are you
ready?” he asked Sienna, kissing her again
..

She
nodded hesitantly. He growled and bit her neck, no warning. He didn’t want her
to tense up, so he tried to be gentle, but she didn’t make a sound, just melted
into his arms as though they were at home in his bedroom. Her hot, sweet blood
was intoxicating. He swallowed it down, savoring the essence of his mate. She
tasted like nirvana. Sienna arched her back, keening, and Jasper knew she was
suddenly, shockingly close to orgasm.
Thank
fuck
, he thought. He lifted his head and licked his lips. Her eyes were
almost entirely black.

“How will
they know if I climax?” she whispered, squirming against him.

He
shuddered, rocking into her. “We have a superior sense of smell and hearing.
The way your heart beats, the coursing of your blood through your veins—it is
as if your orgasm is written in the air.”

She
trembled.
“Seriously?”

He
nodded, licking her neck. Blood trickled down her skin, shocking against her
pale beauty, but it would heal soon enough. Every time her heart beat, a small
bead of it welled up in the puncture wounds. He groaned at the sight.

“God,
Sienna,” he said harshly, lowering his head again. He closed his mouth around
the bite and sucked hard.

She
gasped, slinging a leg around his hips. “Closer. I want to get closer to you.”
She bucked against him, running her hands under his sweater.

He pulled
away and swiftly shucked his sweater, tossing it to the floor carelessly. He
watched her eyes go to his chest, then down to his groin and had to clench a
fist to get
himself
under control. Her face was pink,
her mouth open and wet. The blood on her neck beaded up again and trickled down
into her blouse. She lifted a shaky hand and began to unbutton the silky
fabric. Behind him, a harsh groan broke the silence and Jasper knew
Alucard
and his sons were getting off on the display. He
moved closer to her, stilling her hands.

“No,
don't bother,” he whispered against her cheek.

She
shuddered, turning her face to kiss him. “Jasper, I'm burning up.”

He
nodded. “You need my blood.” Just as he was about to open his wrist for her,
Alucard
interrupted.

“She
should already be naked!”

Jasper
snarled, whirling around and pressing back against Sienna. “Shut up.”

Alucard
was trying to stand, but his sons kept him in the chair, hands on his shoulders.
“Anyone can make a slave. I don't see a true mating,”
Alucard
sneered.

Deliberately,
Jasper brought his wrist to his mouth and cut the skin with his incisors. Blood
poured out, hot and thick. With one last glare at his enemy, he turned back to
Sienna. She latched onto his hand with more-than-human strength, bringing his
blood to her lips. He thought she'd fall on him, ravenous, but instead she
licked at him delicately. He stared at her, watching her pupils expand. As she
licked again, he lowered his head to her neck. As soon as her blood hit his
tongue, he grunted. Fire raced up his spine and Sienna grabbed him tighter. He
tried to control it, keep it from overwhelming them, but he couldn't stop
himself. Drinking her blood while she consumed his was like completing a
circuit. He gathered her close and rolled his hips into her as his orgasm
rolled over him. She cried out, head going back and he lifted away to watch as
she climaxed, soft and sweet and beautiful in his arms.

When he
came back to himself, he realized he’d just come in his pants for the first
time in centuries. He leaned into her, using the column to hold
himself
upright, and tried not to look as bemused as he
felt. He locked his legs and hung on until his body began to listen to him
again. “Sienna, are you okay?” he asked quietly. She nodded, but startled when
loud clapping broke the silence. Jasper whipped his head around.
Alucard
.
The old man was struggling again, but his son Sebastian
had his arm locked in an iron grip, preventing the old man from rising.

“I
believe that satisfies the protocols.” Jasper wanted nothing more than to grab
Sienna and go home.

“It
does,” Nicholas
Alucard
said, bowing slightly.

“Don't be
ridiculous! This means nothing.”
Alucard
shrugged off
his son's hand. “If you think I'm going to accept that pathetic display—”

The
windows shattered. Jasper glanced at the floor just in time to see a thousand
shards of glass scatter and then the lights went out. As Jasper shoved himself
against Sienna, protecting her with his body, a dozen black-clad men flew into
the room, knives glittering in the light from the city. He cursed,
instinctively ducking and taking Sienna with him as one of them attacked. A
chuck of plaster came out of the pillar, but Jasper already had his hands on
the man, cracking his neck. One more jerk and the head came off the body. Ash
sifted around him as he grabbed the falling blade.
Not men, monsters
, he thought, parrying the slashing frenzy of
another attacker. He was trapped here, needing to protect Sienna. He stabbed
this one in the heart and the creature fell. Another swipe and the head rolled.
Sienna darted under his arm.

“Sienna!
No, what—” he yelled, too busy fending off another one to keep her safe.

“I'm
good, don't worry,” she cried, snatching up a blade.

It was a
good thing she had, because she got one trying to stab him in the spine. More
ash slithered into the air as she set her spine against his. Jasper twisted his
head around. Her hair was undone, moving with her body in the darkness as she
guarded his back.

“What the
fuck just happened?” she growled, slashing expertly at two of the vampires.

He
wondered where she'd learned to do that then whipped back around just in time
to behead another one.

“Revenants.”
He stabbed another. Dimly he heard the
thwop-thowp
of a helicopter taking off. Jasper had a split-second to watch the creature's
eyes in front of him widen in the horrified realization of death before it
faded into dust. Jasper frowned: the look in the revenant’s eyes before it died
wasn't entirely sane. The realization of what he'd seen hit him just as another
took the dead one's place.

“They're
controlled by someone else. Possessed,” he gasped, lunging and catching the new
monster in the side. It stumbled and he beheaded it, ignoring the ash residue.

“They can
do that? Shit. We can't hold out like this,” Sienna said, panting. “Where is
Alucard
?”

Jasper
took a quick look around. Now he knew what the helicopter was for.
Alucard
and his sons probably couldn't risk a ship in the
heart of the city. “He's gone. Fuck!” He grabbed her and made a dash for the
elevator doors. “We have to get out of here.”

The
snarling monsters weren't making it easy. Two of them were clumped up by the
doors, waiting. One of them got a slash in and Jasper jerked back, cursing as
his left arm flopped uselessly to his side.

“Jasper!”
Sienna cried.

“I'm ok.
It'll heal.” He feinted up, then down, and more ash danced around them. “Are
those elevators coming?”

She shook
her head. “The power is gone.”

He
nodded, expecting that. “Can you pry the doors open?”

She
stared at him, eyes wide. “You're joking, right?”

He didn't
have time to answer her as another vampire came at them from the left. The only
thing making their attack any less fatal was that he and Sienna now had a wall
at their back. He fought the creature off, one more nameless casualty to this
ridiculous insistence on power and cruelty and Jasper wished he could close his
eyes and make it all disappear. He'd come back to Earth with such hope… He
shook his head sharply. Now was not the time.

“We need
to get out of here. I can get us down the cables.” He jerked his arm, watching
as the
ash from the latest monster sift
along the
sharp blade until it dissipated into the air.

Sienna
pushed her hair out of her eyes and shoved her sword right at the doors. She
managed to get the point into the crack and sawed up and down, enough for her
to get her fingers in and pull.

Jasper
grinned fiercely and dispatched another revenant just as she shoved open the
doors wide enough to squeeze through.

“Hang
on,” he said, throwing his sword across the room. It went into one of the
creatures with a thud. He grabbed her around the waist. “Keep your blade.”

She
nodded, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Just for the record, this is
insane.”

He laughed.
“Yeah.
It is.” Then he stepped out of the room and
into thin air.

****

Sienna
clutched at him, awkwardly holding her confiscated blade with one hand. He had
left his shirt behind and his skin was slick with sweat. She wrapped her legs
around his waist tightly as he reached for the cables, clearly no longer
hampered by his injured arm.

“Don't
worry,” he said, voice strained. He grabbed onto the wires and began lowering
them, hand over hand. He locked his ankles around the wires to steady their
descent.

“Your
arm?” she asked, breathlessly.

“Healed.
I told you not to worry,” he said, grunting with exertion.

She
snorted. “Uh-huh. Whatever.” She sensed more than heard his amusement. If she
hadn't been dangling from him in an elevator shaft almost fifty stories above
ground—
She
looked down. “Oh shit!”

Jasper
froze, his muscles quivering. “What?”

She
swallowed,
eyes wide as she saw how fast they moved. “There
are more of them below us. They have
wings
. What the fuck?” She stared
down, trying to figure out if what she was seeing was real. The creatures
flapped up toward them, night-black wings twice the length of their bodies.
They flew in complete silence.

Jasper
cursed, looking down briefly. “We need to get out of this shaft.” He began
climbing down faster.

“Jasper,
they're coming faster. Shit,” Sienna said, fear sliding through her. She didn't
see any way out of this.

“The next floor down.
Look.” Jasper's arms bunched under her as he kept going.

“Oh
Jesus,” Sienna breathed, struggling with the idea that they had to move
toward
the monsters to escape them.
“We'll have to break through those planks tacked over the entrance.” The
elevator shaft had emergency lights every few floors, enough for her to make
out the wood haphazardly covering the opening. She craned her head further. The
monsters were only about twenty stories below now, close enough for her to see
their faces. They all had black hair and their eyes—.

“They
have red eyes, Jasper.” She tried not to shudder, knowing it might throw him
off balance.

He grunted.
“Genetically modified soldiers.
Someone's been
experimenting illegally on
Dekcol
.”

She
grimaced. “Awesome. Not.”

Jasper
snorted as he halted. “We're here. You need to swing through feet first,”
Jasper said, his voice low and determined.

Sienna's
hands went cold, thinking about how much open space stretched out below them.
Of course, the monsters were below them, too. No choice. “Yeah, okay,” she
said, letting her legs fall. “I've
gotta
swing out.”

Jasper
nodded,
every muscle in his body hard as a rock.
“Hurry.”

She
gritted her teeth and grabbed the cables just above Jasper's hands. “Here goes
nothing,” she muttered, swinging her body out and then toward the door, hard.
She angled her feet so they would hit what looked like the weakest board, then
let go of the cables. Her body flew through and she instinctively tucked into a
ball. Jasper came flying in after her, landing heavily.

“Fall
back, away from the elevators,” he said, taking her hand and pulling her up.

Sienna
didn't even have a chance to look around before he hauled her away from the
gaping black hole they came through. Wait, why was the hole suddenly dark?
There were emergency lights in the shaft…

She
turned her back and hurried away, trying not to trip on electrical equipment.
It was dark on the floor, but thanks to her enhanced vision, she could see
pretty well. She knocked her ankle on a piece of wood and cursed, but Jasper
grabbed her arm and urged her forward. There were some exposed girder columns
and some half-finished walls, but it wasn't until they found a set of doors
leading into a fully furnished conference room that she felt like she could get
her bearings. They were on the opposite side of the building from the
elevators. What were they going to do now?

She
paused, but Jasper dragged her into the room, locking the doors behind them. He
didn't stop there. He pushed her out onto a balcony. It curved away from the
building in an elegant half-moon shape. There were a few metal lounge chairs
and a table off to one side. The lights of the city winked at her. It wasn't
until Jasper stopped in the clear area that she realized the darkness of the
elevator shaft was from the monsters filling up doorway and blocking out the
light.