Falling from the Light (The Night Runner Series Book 3) (11 page)

“How was work?” Malcolm asked as he entered, a layer of cheer forced over tightly wound tension.

“Very safety-conscious.” I backed up against a wall, trying to stay out of the way.

“Maybe I should have sent these guys with you. What do you say, Vesta? Think you could stand a little safety training?” He guided the soldier to the floor where she all but collapsed when he released her.

One of her arms was shredded to the bone, the fingers curled up tight. I raised two bags of blood and Malcolm pointed toward the males who’d slumped together on the plastic just inside the closed door.

“Start with them. They don’t require needles. Then see if you can find a stand for Vesta. There should be one in the bottom of the bag. Metal, collapsible.” He helped Soraya to lay her unconscious charge on the table, then turned to Petr when he came back into the room carrying a case in one hand and a box of large bandages in the other. “Donovan is the priority. We’re going to slough the burned tissue. Have you done this before?”

“It’s been a while.” Petr’s face was quickly turning green, but his jaw set as he leaned over the table.

Turning my back to whatever they were doing, I fished the metal stand out of the bag, then clumsily snapped the pieces together. Soraya took it from me, hanging a bag of blood and efficiently inserting the needle into Vesta’s good arm.

“Can I do anything else?” I asked.

Malcolm took my hand and smiled grimly while I sucked air through my teeth. Beneath a layer of soot and dust his lips and eyes were red. Fresh pink scars ran vertically from his lower lip almost to his chin, torn by his fangs.

“One cleft isn’t enough?” I asked hoarsely.

“I get greedy. Get the water steaming hot and soak all of the smaller towels. We need to get everyone patched up, cleaned up, and downstairs before Chev finds out I’ve brought unauthorized vampires to her human floor.”

I’d put good money on her already knowing.

“Right.” I dodged into the bathroom and pulled all the hand towels and washcloths out of the cabinet. The bathtub didn’t have one of those temperature guards that a human hotel would have installed, and the water heated quickly. A series of whimpers came from the other room, semiconscious and pained.

“What happened?” I asked, knowing he could hear me over the running water. Steam climbed my skin and made my hair curl. My pulse chugged steadily throughout my entire body.

“We were checking the older addresses. You were right about Abel setting up safe houses. He left a number of interesting things behind at them.”

“Like what?” I wrung out a cloth and set it on the side of the tub. Malcolm murmured, too low for me to hear, and Petr’s answering tone didn’t sound good. The room pulsed with energy—pain and hunger from the soldiers, the slick, angry beat of Soraya, and a steady flood from Malcolm, warm and soothing despite his aggravated state.

“Traps,” Soraya answered. “Two dead feeders.”

“Where?” I asked.

“Near Yuma.”

LA allowed regulated feeding but Arizona and most of California prohibited it, and Abel had spent a lot of time in both. My stomach turned, and my hands burned as I carried out the hot, dripping cloths.

The guy on the table was naked, but that wasn’t the strangest thing about him. His body, from hips to shoulders, was full of holes. Not pinpricks but actual, honest-to-God holes, some of them several inches in diameter. There was no blood. Maybe his gray skin, the color of low-tide clay, had something to do with that.

“Sydney,” Soraya said, holding her hand out from where she knelt on the floor. “Here.”

I crouched beside her and she snatched up a hand towel and used it to scrub the female soldier’s arm. Vesta was propped against the wooden coffee table, both legs straight out in front of her. Well, one leg was straight. The other had a kind of S-curve shape to it. I handed her the washcloth she was staring blearily at and she ran it over her face with none of the precise grace I’d come to expect of vampires. Maybe she was a lefty, and Soraya wasn’t about to release the arm she was now punching a new IV into. I found some medical tape and tore off a piece to keep the needle in place.

Tape, I could concentrate on. Hot towels were also doable. The way that Malcolm and Petr were sawing at and tearing away pieces of the male on the table? Not acceptable. The male soldiers slumped with their backs to the door, alternately cursing and grunting rough laughter. A slick of blood crept away from them and down the plastic, turning black and grainy as it lost contact with their energy.

“So what happened?” I asked, my voice quavering with fear, with anger. “Was he there?”

“He’d rigged a house with incendiary devices.” Soraya tossed a couple of wet cloths toward the males. Whatever they’d done, she wasn’t happy with them.

“Did the bomb do that to him?” I gestured toward the male on the table. Empty blood bags surrounded him.

“Daylight burns,” Soraya said. “The device was rigged to—”

“It wasn’t that bad,” Malcolm interrupted. “The explosion was small.” He leaned on both hands, examining the soldier as Petr taped large bandages into place. He didn’t look happy, but judging by the small patches of scabbed skin exposed through a tear in his shirt, he’d been lucky. This time. Malcolm had been partially caught in a blast once. I’d barely known him then, but it had hurt to see the burns on his back. The idea of his body shredded past the point that his power could restore it made my body flash hot then cold.

He held his hands away from his body as he walked into the bathroom. Water splashed in the basin as he washed his hands, and I followed him in, closing the door behind me. I walked around him to see his face since there was no reflection in the mirror.

“You’re all right?” I asked quietly. He smiled through the tension his face still held.

“I’m ecstatic. Are you done at Goya?” He splashed water on his face and scrubbed it off with a towel.

“Soon. The labs are secured with key cards I don’t have access to and the records are encrypted on computers I can’t hack. I’m not even sure what I’m looking for.” I pulled the vial of Radia from my pocket. Mal scowled at it, then removed the cap.

He raised it and, in a moment of blind panic, I slapped it out of his hand. He caught it before it hit the wall.

“What was that?” he asked.

“That stuff’s poison. I don’t want it anywhere near you.”

“I’m only smelling it. I don’t think that’s going to result in immediate deterioration of mental faculties.” He frowned and raised the vial higher, passing it beneath his nose. “This isn’t right.”

“It might be old.” Some of the samples had been a little crusty. Except that Radia was a fairly new product. Surely its shelf life was longer than a year and a half.

“I’ll have it tested alongside the batch we confiscated in Chile.” He capped the vial and leaned toward me, speaking softly. “When the adrenaline wears off, are you still going to be mad at me?”

I glanced at him peripherally. I didn’t want to start up this conversation again, not here.

“Kelly?” Petr called from the other room. And not with life-and-death type interruptions.

“Let me check on Donovan, then we can leave.” Malcolm squeezed my hand as we went back into the sitting room.

The males by the door were pulling on clean sweatshirts. Soraya had a leg up on the couch and was leaned over, inspecting it. Near my feet, Vesta stirred.

“Thirsty,” she rasped.

The bag hanging from the IV stand was still half-full. I grabbed a bottle of water off the credenza and knelt beside her. She gripped my arm, fingers clamping down so quickly that I flinched.

She pulled and I shoved at her, belatedly realizing what she was doing. She was going to bite me. Holy shit, she was going to
bite
me.

Malcolm said, forcefully, “No, Vesta.”

She moaned, her eyes flaming, her lips peeling back from her fangs. Heart pounding, I tried to pry her fingers off my arm.

Malcolm’s power flooded the room, pressing against me and having a bizarre effect on the vampiress. She whined and her head started sweeping back and forth freakishly fast. Fighting her hunger or fighting his command. I held as still as I could, not wanting to provoke her in any way as Malcolm exerted his will over her. Except my heart was pounding wildly, and her fingers were matching the beat as they squeezed my arm.

Physically, I couldn’t hope to break away from her, but she was already weak. Her energy felt cracked. I opened to it, almost swiveling toward her as I aligned and caught hold. And then I pulled with all my strength. Cold crept into me, thin and brittle. Her eyes flashed before rolling back. She dropped against the coffee table, then listed to the side.

Malcolm caught me around the waist and jerked me upright. The male vampires scrambled away as he dragged me out the door.

“Hold on, hold on. Hold the hell on!” I was able to get my feet under me when he finally slowed halfway down the hall. “Thank you. Jesus. She didn’t bite me.”

“You shouldn’t have been that close to her.” His fangs pressed furrows into his lower lip and the light in his eyes fluctuated chaotically. “Bronson’s soldiers do not listen and they cannot. Fucking. Control. Themselves.”

“This isn’t the first thing they’ve done?” I asked. “Have they hurt anyone?”

He shook his head, but it wasn’t an answer. “Away from Bronson, away from someone more powerful exerting control, they’re like children. You shouldn’t be near them.”

“Hey.” I touched his cheek and tried to smile even though my nerves were shot and the cold of Vesta’s stolen energy had me shivering. “I’m fine.”

His gaze fixed on a point in the distance and his big body was still except for the hands roaming roughly over me. He probably meant it to be reassuring, but that touch and the solidity of his closeness was a specific kind of catalyst.

“I’m sure Chev wouldn’t want you bleeding in her hallway,” I said, though he appeared healed. “Let’s go to my room and get you cleaned up.”

“Give me a moment.”

“Come on,” I murmured, letting his touch press me into him. “Let’s go. You can play the patient and I’ll play the
really
helpful nurse.”

He edged me back until my heel bumped the wall. His eyes closed, but light leaked from beneath his lashes. His tongue flicked out to stroke a fang through its partial descent and my pulse began to throb lower.

“I’d rather you didn’t tease right now.” His voice was a rough warning.

It was impossible to be calm when he was so close, powerful, and hard, and all fired up. Unlike Bronson’s suckers, Malcolm knew a lot about control. Hell, sometimes when we were together it felt like he was so concerned with what he shouldn’t do that he wasn’t fully present for what we were actually doing. It was enough to give a girl a complex. Or make her reckless.

“Or what?” I asked, turning so that my hip slid across his front. His eyes snapped open and his hands closed around my waist, stopping me. I didn’t want him elsewhere. I wanted him wholly focused. I wanted him to prove to me that the conversations he might have in front of me with his shitty friends truly didn’t matter.

“Sydney.” It was little more than a growl, but it was honest. Not a game, not for show.

I raised my face toward him and ran my tongue along my teeth. “Yes?”

We were at my door in a matter of seconds. My shirt was halfway over my head when Malcolm said, “Go.” For a stunned instant I thought he was talking to me. Until Thurston brushed past us and out the door. And then I was on my back on the cold glass table, the spine of a book digging into my ribs as Malcolm pressed openmouthed kisses to my chest, my stomach.

I got my shirt the rest of the way off and sat up, colliding with him. His mouth closed over mine, hot and demanding, and I slid forward on the table until we were molded together. My tongue slicked along his fang and he drew back with a hiss.

The room was nearly dark. A lone candle burned in the corner and reflected off the picture frames. His hair was mussed, his lips red and swollen, and he was very, very present.

“Do not push me right now.” Despite the words, it sounded more like a request than a command. He was tense all over, the tendons in his neck standing out. But he wasn’t touching me, and that wasn’t acceptable.

“Would it help if I avoided the fangs?”

He nodded, relaxing a fraction, and took a step back. I smiled, then unbuttoned his pants and slid off the table to my knees.

“Syd.”

“I’m nowhere near your fangs.” His pants caught on his erection before falling. I wrapped my hand around him, but the second my tongue touched him, his hand caught in my hair.

“Be careful,” I murmured against the heat of his skin. “My hairdresser was good, but the extensions aren’t all that well attached.”

“You’re still teasing.” He swallowed hard, his expression raw.

“I think you can handle it.” I shrugged, then took him into my mouth. Digging my nails into the backs of his thighs, I urged him forward. He was still a man—despite the change—and he’d been fired up before we’d gotten to the room. I teased and coaxed, wanting to bring him to an edge I’d only glimpsed.

His hips bucked, thrusting him deep, and we moaned at the same time. And then he was lifting me, tearing my clothes away and tossing me onto the couch. Slapping a hand against the wall, I pushed myself upright, only to have him crash against me, caging me against the back of the couch. I parted my legs and flinched when his fingers dug into my shoulder, then cried out as he entered me. Held tight by the pin of his hand and the arm around my waist, I couldn’t arch against him, couldn’t grind back. Couldn’t get to any more of him.

He held me still, teasing with a shallow rocking motion that would have been sweet if it hadn’t been a devilish act of revenge. I swore at him and, when that didn’t work, shifted my legs wider and tilted my hips, showing him how welcome he was.

“Sydney.” He breathed my name, driving deeper until he found an angle that melted me. I tumbled into climax, clawing at the back of the couch just to keep from collapsing. He stilled for a moment while I tried to remember how breathing worked.