Blood Candy (4 page)

“Get her to the car!”

“Wrong choice,” Rupert said, nodding to
Vivian. “Kill them both. Make it painful.”

Candy didn’t see what happened next. Jimmy
went sprawling over the table, knocking her back into one of the
booths. Rupert’s eyes grew wide and he ran his tongue over his
fangs when he got a look up her dress. He let go of the waitress
and started towards her. The wound on her neck throbbed, both
tempting and terrifying.

Tinch came out of nowhere and punched Rupert
so hard Candy flinched from the sickening crack of bare knuckles on
bone. Rupert fell back a single step and then his hand went up to
his jaw. His wild eyes remained on Candy.

“Get her out of here!” Tinch yelled. “I have
to shift!”

Jimmy grabbed Candy and pulled her through the
broken window. She saw Tinch move inside and then she lost sight of
him behind the brick wall between the windows. Jimmy held her
beneath her arms, trying to get her to move, to run across the
parking lot. She looked back. A black wolf streaked with gray fur
lunged forward and tore Vivian’s arm.

“Holy shit! He’s a wolf!”

Jimmy wrapped an arm around her waist and
pulled her along.

“Come on! Run to the car!”

Candy didn’t think. She turned and ran, trying
to keep pace while screams mixed with vicious snarls filled the
diner. She lost her heels somewhere along the way and the abrasive
pavement tore her feet. They reached the rusted Pinto and scrambled
into it. As Jimmy struggled to get the car started, she glanced
back at the diner. Blood dripped from the counter. The waitress
wasn’t there anymore. The black wolf jumped through the broken
window with Vivian and his bloodied arm in pursuit. They
disappeared across a dark field.

Jimmy hit the gas and peeled the Pinto out
onto the road.

“What the fuck?” Candy shouted. “He’s a
werewolf!”

“Stop yelling!”

“He’s a fucking
werewolf
!”

“I know!”

Rupert dashed out onto the road in front of
the Pinto. Candy screamed like only a terrified girl could. So did
Jimmy. A black wolf pounced on Rupert knocking him off the road.
Candy’s scream reached an ear shattering pitch as the car barreled
towards them. Jimmy swerved in the opposite direction, ramming into
Vivian.

Jimmy jerked on the steering wheel again.
“Fuck!”

Vivian hit the hood, rolled up the windshield
and over the car. Jimmy checked his rearview and Candy looked back
to see the vampire skipping along the pavement like a ragdoll.
Maybe they killed him.

They both struggled to catch their breath.
Jimmy took the ramp to the interstate so fast Candy slammed against
the door. He pushed the petal all the way to the floor and the
Pinto revved in protest, the engine struggling until the gears
caught up.

“Put your seatbelt on,” he said.

Candy did as she was told. Then she gawked at
him, her wide eyes halfway between fear and wild excitement. Her
pounding heart sent waves of exhilaration throughout her
body.

“This is insane,” she said. “This is
awesome!”

Jimmy looked at her as if she might actually
be insane, and then he smiled. When his attention lingered on her a
little too long she warned that he should watch the road or slow
down.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Are . . . ?” Candy started, but she had to
catch her breath. “Are you one too?”

“Yeah,” he said. Candy laughed, not believing
it. Her reaction made him grin. “Yeah, I’m a
lycanthrope.”

“A what?”

“It pretty much means the same
thing.”

“Oh my God. My heart is pounding.” She noticed
Jimmy’s hands shaking on the steering wheel. She put her hand on
his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’ve just never seen two of
them at once before and never like that. You know, ready to fight
and all. They usually stay away from us.”

“I can’t believe he turned into a
wolf.”

She held Jimmy in her gaze, imagining him as a
wolf. He pushed the old car close to eighty miles per hour. After
ten minutes he slowed down and took an exit onto a country highway.
Not long later he pulled into an isolated motel.

“Why are we here?” Candy said.

“This is the closest safe house, a place we
can go in an emergency. Tinch will meet up with us here and we can
try to get in touch with the others.”

He parked in front of room fifteen, told Candy
to stay in the car, and then he went to the front office. A few
minutes later he returned with a key and motioned her to come out.
Once she had run over to his side, he opened the door, shut and
locked it behind them, and then flipped on the light
switch.

Jimmy closed the curtains on the two windows.
The room was small, containing little more than a single size bed,
an old television, and a nightstand with a telephone. The bathroom
at the back had a shower that barely looked big enough for half a
person. He sat on the edge of the bed and huffed out a sigh of
relief while running his fingers through his thick hair.

“So what now? We just wait?” Candy
said.

“Yes.”

“What if Tinch is in trouble? Should you call
someone?”

“If there was anyone to call. If he doesn’t
show up in about an hour we’ll need to move on.” He seemed
confident Tinch would be fine against the two vampires.

Candy watched him for a moment, gazing into
his brown eyes while her heart wound down from all of the
excitement. He was attractive in his own way, and he was a
werewolf
. She had never felt this alive in her life. Jimmy
gazed up at her, looking somewhere between lost and like a kid
presented with the toy he had wanted all of his life. Now she
understood those scenes in movies—the adrenaline combined with the
excitement, her pounding heart and his handsome features. She
reached down and grabbed hold of his shirt, pulling him up off the
bed. He offered no resistance. Candy locked her lips onto his while
he stood there awkwardly with his hands hanging down at his sides.
His mouth had to be pried open with her tongue to get in
there.

Candy wasn’t sure how much kissing experience
he had; he was certainly no good at it. But it was still right up
there with some of the best kisses she had ever experienced once
his tongue joined in with hers. Excitement and adrenaline made a
world of difference.

Finally, his hands went to her hips. She
wrapped her arms around his neck and let her weight push him down
onto the bed. He groaned when she landed on top of him and Candy
laughed before going back in for another kiss. He wasn’t a terrible
kisser now that he was warmed up, she supposed, and he had become
more brazen with his hands.

“I can’t believe you’re a werewolf,” she
whispered near his ear.

“Uh,” he said. “A lycan—”

“Whatever.”

Candy ran her hand beneath his shirt. His
chest was boney, undefined, but she didn’t care. His bravery
increased even more; he put a hand behind her head and pulled her
mouth to his.

The door sprang open and Tinch roared, “Jesus,
Jimmy!”

Chapter Four

Candy sat on the end of the bed with her face
glowing red while Jimmy lingered near the bathroom door with his
eyes on the floor. Tinch had used the phone and now waited
impatiently for a return call. No one had said a word to each other
since he came in. The sky outside had long ago changed from
twilight to the full glow of the morning sun. Candy was so tired
she wanted to curl up and fall asleep. All of the night’s
excitement and adrenaline had been quickly replaced with
exhaustion.

“Nothing happened,” Jimmy said.

“I’m not judging you,” Tinch said, looking
more worried than upset. He had on a pair of jeans and a flannel
shirt he hadn’t been wearing before. He also didn’t reek anymore,
instead smelling like he had been dunked in a barrel of
cologne.

“Hell, I remember what it was like at your
age,” Tinch went on. “But what if I had been someone else, like
Rupert? Times like these a man needs to be thinking with his right
head.”

Candy glared at him and thought about telling
him to mind his own business, but when he met her gaze she decided
it would be best to join Jimmy in staring at the floor. The phone
rang and Tinch snatched it up. He was quiet for a moment while he
listened to whoever was on the other end.

“We have a problem here,” he said. “No, a real
problem.” He listened for a few seconds. “Listen, if you were up to
your neck in shit like we are you wouldn’t be questioning me.” He
listened again, his face growing grimmer. “I
understand.”

Tinch put the phone on the receiver and then
stared at the wall.

“What’s the word?” Jimmy asked him.

Tinch rubbed the scruff on his neck and then
went to pace near the door. “The same as always. I’ll have to
persuade the council in person.”

Jimmy cursed. Candy didn’t know what was going
on. The tense mood in the room infected her, pitching her voice
into a worried squeal.

“What’s that mean? What’s going
on?”

Judging by the agitated look on Tinch’s face,
she thought he might say what she dreaded most. She repeated it in
her head over and over again—
I can’t go home!

“I need to go to the reservation in New York,”
Tinch said. “Last night proved the vampires are moving on us and
they’re not doing it because they’re bored. There’s nothing for
them out here other than us.”

“But why? What about the treaty?” Jimmy
said.

Tinch shrugged his shoulders. “Candy is in
danger. I’ve never seen a vampire track someone down like that
before. I’ve never seen them stirred up like this outside of the
cities.”

“Why are they chasing us?” Candy
said.

“They didn’t chase
us
to that diner,”
Tinch said.

“What?” Candy looked to Jimmy. He didn’t seem
to know either.

“Rupert’s after
you
. I don’t know why.
Vampires do what they want nowadays and those Brits are the worst.
I don’t know why he’s after you and I’ve never seen one act like
that before. Did he tell you anything?”

Candy shook her head. She’d rather not think
about what had happened between her and Rupert, but she did for
Tinch.

“Not anything I can remember,” she said. “He
hit on me. . . .”

Tinch filled her in. “He glamoured you. You
may have thought you wanted to leave with him, but he made you do
it against your will. It’s one of the oldest vampire tricks and
most effective on young minds.”

“Glamoured?” Candy remembered Tinch saying
that at the diner. She remembered the way the waitress and cook had
reacted to Rupert, as if they would do anything he told them to do.
As if they loved him.

“No time for explanations right now,” Tinch
said.

A silent moment passed, during which time he
brooded and rubbed the short growth of beard on his face. Candy
closed her eyes for a second and nearly toppled asleep off the
bed.

Tinch stood up and said, “Everyone to the
car.”

“Where are we going?” Jimmy asked before Candy
could.

“The Kennel. She needs a safe place to stay.
I’ll drive first, Jimmy. I should be fine the whole way but if I
start to nod off I’ll need you to take over.” He opened the door
and looked around outside for a minute. Then he held the door open.
Candy followed behind Jimmy.

“What’s the Kennel?” she said. It sounded
strange, almost ominous. “Is that another safe house?”

“Kind of. There are more of us
there.”

The thought of more werewolves didn’t exactly
sit well with her. Sure, they were kind of awesome and had saved
her life, but they were
werewolves
, and she had seen plenty
of movies where werewolves ate people. She waited nervously for
Jimmy to open the car door for her while Tinch started it up. She
stuck her handbag down on the floorboard and then looked at her
cell phone. There was a charger for it in the handbag with a
lighter attachment, but she was too tired to worry about it. She
leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

* * * * *

“It’s a beautiful day, love.”

Hand in hand, Rupert led Candy down a row of
tall hedges trimmed into various life size forms; a horse and
rider; an elephant; a couple connected at their outstretched hands.
Candy had on a light pink summer dress with red bows weaved into
the hems. Her feet were bare in the plush grass and the sun blazed
directly overhead. A breeze from a pond in the distance cooled the
sweat on her face and neck.

They walked past a fountain where water
streamed down into a basin from the trumpets of white marble
statues in the likeness of boys with little angel wings. “That’s
very pretty,” Candy said. “Do you throw coins into it?”

“If you’d like,” Rupert said. “What would you
wish for?”