Out of the Night (Harlequin Nocturne) (2 page)

Please don’t let anyone look out and see those vampire eyes.
If they did, she had no hope.

“Help me!” She pulled back her fist to bang again, but cold hands latched on to her wrist and pulled her off the steps as if she weighed no more than a string of spaghetti.

“Careful,” one of the vampires hissed. “We need her alive if we hope to get paid.”

Olivia slashed at the vampire holding her, but he was too fast and her knife went flying across the street.

A blinding panic exploded inside Olivia and she struggled in vain to free herself, even knowing her mere human strength was no match for one vampire, let alone two. These vamps weren’t going to feed, didn’t need her type of blood, but she was smart enough to know she was a valuable commodity on the vampire black market. With the cut on her finger, they could smell her blood and thus tell her blood type. She didn’t understand how it worked, but it must be like a human being able to tell the difference between the scent of grilling meat and fresh cookies. Even if she didn’t have exposed blood, it wouldn’t be difficult for a vampire to determine what type of blood she had. All they would have to do is break into a blood bank and access the records then target their victims.

She’d heard the stories about the vampires’ black market. Part of her had wondered if they were true or simply a product of fearful minds. As she stared the possibility of becoming a blood slave in the face, she no longer doubted.

She’d rather be bled dry and left in the street than endure what they no doubt had planned for her. At least then it’d be over in a matter of moments. Her agony wouldn’t be stretched out possibly for the rest of her natural life.

She kicked and wriggled, scratched and screamed against the viselike grips of her two abductors. She had to get away somehow, and she racked her brain for some miracle of a solution.

“I’ll donate more blood. Just please let me go.”

One of the vamps laughed at her, and she had the impression that his breath would be hot and foul if he were still alive.

“Why would we do that when you’re our ticket to a life of leisure?”

She bucked like a wild horse determined to be free. Though it likely made no difference, she clawed at the vampires’ cold skin and did her best to kick them. She would fight until her last breath. If she died tonight, she wasn’t going quietly or easily.

“Let me go!” she screamed, then spit at the taller of the two vamps. She eyed his mouth and imagined head-butting him so hard his fangs would fall out.

One of the vamps clamped down harder on her arm, causing her to scream. She’d swear her bone was on the verge of breaking.

“Stop making so much damn noise,” he said.

That was when she noticed dark shapes coming out of the alleyways, more vampires who’d scented her and planned to take her off her abductors’ hands for their own profit—or their dinner. God, she was going to be the prize in a vampire fight.

Despite the white-hot pain in her arm, she struggled even more, desperate to get loose, to run as fast as her feet would carry her while these vamps fought over her. She jerked her body, writhed like a snake, made every movement she thought might make even the slightest difference in the state of her capture. Panic welled in her so much that she feared her heart would simply burst with it.

“See what you’ve done,” the bigger of her two captors said with disgust.

He tossed her aside so quickly that she didn’t have time to process that she was free before her back slammed into something hard and unyielding. She cried out as she realized she’d hit a fire hydrant. She tried to draw in a breath, but the pain caused her to stop and her eyesight threatened to abandon her. Pain radiated out from the spot on her back where she’d hit. Her vision blurred so much that she had to close her eyes to keep from vomiting. If she’d broken any bones, that would lessen the minuscule likelihood that she could slip away while the vampires fought among themselves.

She swallowed and tasted the salty, coppery taste of blood. She must have bitten her lip or the inside of her mouth in the struggle. Her stomach revolted at the idea of swallowing blood. The very idea of being turned frightened her a million times more than being killed. Being like these beasts, feeding on the lives of humans, was a horror beyond comprehension.

She did her best to take slow, deep breaths and blinked to clear her vision. Neither tactic was working very well, and she couldn’t get her body to obey her mind’s command to get up and move.

The sound of brakes, slamming doors and boots on pavement broke into the melee of curses and rock-hard fists doing battle. Her brain must have been rattled loose, because she’d swear black-clad soldiers had jumped into the fray.

She watched as they broke apart the warring parties as if they were separating snapping dogs, only to be jumped by even more. Grunts and the thuds of fists hitting flesh rose up out of the melee. The vamps reminded her of an anthill with an endless line of ants filing out of the darkness. Or maybe she was seeing double or triple.

A tall blond guy wrenched the hands of a smaller vamp behind his back and slapped handcuffs on him. She squinted, wondering if she was really seeing what she thought she was. How could handcuffs possibly hold a vampire?

Why was she sitting here asking herself questions when now might be her only chance to get away and find safety? It’d take a miracle, but she had to try. She winced as she finally dragged herself to her feet and attempted to run, only to realize her ankle had gotten badly twisted sometime during her struggle. Still, she moved as fast as she could, biting her lip against the pain so hard she drew more blood. Even if her foot came off, she was going to keep running.

“Campbell, no!”

Olivia heard the woman’s voice on the cold wind a moment before another iron grip latched on to her arm. The vamp spun her toward him.

She thought she’d known fear before. But that was before she’d stared into the red eyes of a vampire in the unrelenting grip of bloodlust.

Chapter 2

C
ampbell shook with the effort not to bite the woman in his grasp, to not totally give in to the vampire. To the outside world, he would appear to be nothing but a vampire, but he stubbornly held on to the scrap of humanity he still possessed. Though it was never harder than at moments like this, when the animal inside him roared with need and threatened to wipe out the man he’d been once and for all.

He pressed his teeth together, his fangs digging into his lip, as he tried to focus on the sound of his team’s voices, on the expression of abject terror on the woman’s face. He could tell she knew in the deepest part of her instinct that she was about to die. He was her worst nightmare, the worst nightmare of all of humanity.

Saliva pooled in his mouth. He could already taste her, imagine the sweet, warm richness of her blood as it coursed over his tongue, filling him with the closest thing to life he’d ever have again. He leaned toward the racing pulse in her neck, losing the battle with himself.

Len and Colin yanked him backward with all their strength, and Billy snapped a pair of blessed cuffs on his wrists behind his back. He growled and jerked against them as his fangs retracted, anger hammering inside him that he’d been denied the thing he desired most. His eyes met those of the woman whose body held what he needed. The thought that he’d never seen eyes that wide managed to push its way through all the ones based on pure instinct that said simply, “Take. Feed.”

If he’d been alone, she’d be dead. And he’d be no better than the Soulless vampires who never gave the miracle of life a second thought.

“Damn, Camp,” Colin said next to him. “Why the hell didn’t you tell us you were so far gone?”

He said nothing. Too much of the animal still had possession of him. He wasn’t sure he could form human words if he tried. Instead he concentrated on taking slow, unnecessary breaths.

Gradually his bloodlust dimmed. The red tint to everything didn’t disappear, but it lessened enough for him to feel marginally sane. He became more aware of the stares of his team and the harsh reality that he’d failed them by going out when he was too close to the edge. If he’d killed the woman, they would have had no choice but to eliminate him, friend or not. And the way things were going lately, V Force couldn’t afford to lose anyone. They needed boots on the ground to combat the rising tide of vampire crime, to keep humans safe from the blood slavers—for everyone’s sake. Each person lost to a slaver was one less who could donate to the blood banks. One less person available to help rebuild the human population, to live a life now denied to vampires like Campbell.

Sophia stooped next to where the woman had fallen onto the sidewalk when he’d been jerked away from her. “Are you okay?”

Though it didn’t seem possible, the woman’s eyes grew even wider. She tried to scoot backward, as if she could ever move fast enough to get away from even the weakest vampire. Even so, he saw her scan her surroundings for a weapon. She might be human, but she was a fighter. But she must be injured, because she winced and drew in a sharp breath. The animal in him stirred again, instinct pushing him to dive on the injured prey.

He forced himself to refocus his gaze on Sophia. The young African-American woman, the team member with the softest heart, held up her hands, palms out. “You’re okay. None of the rest of us has your blood type. And Campbell is under control.”

If he weren’t aware of every heartbeat in the woman’s chest, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to tell she was breathing. It was as if she’d forgotten how, as if she’d been frozen by a fear so intense that even her body’s fight-or-flight response had ceased to function. He strained against the cuffs, and his fangs ached with the need to descend.

“I need to feed,” Campbell said past his gritted teeth, his voice gravelly and deeper than normal.

Kaja sauntered into his line of sight. “Well, you’re not feeding from her.”

“Blood bank. Now.”

Sophia eased toward the woman, talking to her in soothing tones that grated on Campbell’s nerves. “Shh, it’s okay. I swear no one here will hurt you. We just want to get you to safety.”

The woman made a final attempt to scramble away, grabbing a discarded beer bottle to defend herself, and Sophia let her. She made no sudden moves. She’d probably been a damn fine nurse before she’d lost that life forever, the queen of bedside manner.

A little cry escaped the woman again, as if she’d hurt whatever injury she’d sustained. Sophia smiled at her, and with her fangs hidden she looked just like any other normal human woman.

Sophia stood, lifting the woman to her feet with next to no effort. “We need to get this one home before any more of the less-than-desirables crawl out of the muck.”

Campbell’s body vibrated with need, as if a raging fire were about to consume him, as if giant metal claws were raking at him from the inside out. “Blood blank. Now!” he repeated, with more force this time. He had no idea what he sounded like to the woman or the rest of the team, but inside his head his voice sounded like a lion’s roar.

“Okay, Thirsty McThirsty,” Colin said. “Don’t get your knickers in a bunch.”

Team 2 of V Force pulled up to transport the arrested vamps to Detention, leaving Campbell’s team free to take the human woman home and him to the blood bank.

Despite the hated instinct within him, Campbell didn’t fight as the guys dragged him back to the truck, tossed him inside and used his cuffs to lock him to one of the thick metal rings on the wall. He concentrated on slowing his breathing. Vampires didn’t have to breathe anymore, but old habits died hard.

He might not have struggled, but the human woman remembered she should as Sophia and Kaja pushed her inside the truck. The woman brandished the bottle as if it would do her any good, even after the back door latched and any tiny hope for escape was extinguished.

“Please, let me go.” The panic in her voice only served to toss more fuel on the fire within him, making him want to take her vein even more, to drink from her until there was nothing left and she was no more than an empty shell.

And the sane part of him loathed himself for that thought and for how he strained against the cuffs.

“We can’t do that,” Sophia said. “It’s more dangerous out there than in here, trust me.”

Campbell almost laughed. How in the world did Sophia expect a human to trust a vampire when vampires looked at humans and saw lunch? When all vampires were little more than single-minded beasts when they weren’t well fed?

He saw the woman’s lean muscles bunch as if she was going to bolt for the door. He growled and stared hard at her, then roared a single command. “Stop!”

She froze, an animal caught in the crosshairs of her most feared predator, her eyes so wide that he could see white all the way around her irises. With his vision still tinged with red, he couldn’t tell what color they were. He forced himself to take a long, deep breath before he spoke again, reminding himself that he was more than an animal bent on slaking his thirst with no regard for the cost.

“The sooner I can feed, the sooner you get to go home.” He was never, ever going to let himself get this hungry again.

Though he told himself to stop looking at her, to stop staring at his biggest temptation, he couldn’t. And it wasn’t just because of the bloodlust scorching his entire body. Enough of the man who lived side by side with the vampire was present to suddenly realize she was beautiful as only a living, breathing woman with color in her cheeks could be. He wondered how much more beautiful she might be if she weren’t scared to within an inch of her life.

Scared of him.

Sophia tried to soothe the woman by patting her lower arm, but she flinched and scooted as far away on the bench seat as she possibly could. He wouldn’t put it past her to start clawing at the thick metal of the back door in an attempt to get away. If the tables were turned, he’d do the same thing.

But they weren’t. No matter how much he might want it to be otherwise, there was no going back. Like every other vampire roaming the world, he had exactly two choices—remain a vampire for eternity and deal with all that entailed or end his existence forever. Most days he lived with what he was without much second thought because he told himself he was still doing good in the world, protecting the members of the species he’d once called his own.

And then there were the other days, the ones when he wanted to take out as many vampires as he could before ending himself once and for all.

With more effort than he would’ve liked to admit, he ripped his gaze from hers and forced himself to stare at the floor between his feet. He stared so hard that he wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if the metal had started to melt, allowing him to see the surface of the street below.

A street he’d once patrolled as part of the NYPD back when he was human. Before the Bokor virus began its rapid spread in Haiti. Back when a beautiful woman would have generated a much different reaction from him.

* * *

Olivia didn’t dare breathe as the vampire driver raced through the dark streets of New York. She didn’t want to do anything to draw any more attention to herself. Instead she tried to focus on the sliver of the outside world she could see through the windshield. Buildings slid by in an inky blur.

Not so many years ago, covering this much ground so quickly wouldn’t have been possible. Back then, honking cabs, people on bicycles and countless pedestrians would have filled the night with activity. Amazing what a 75 percent decrease in the population and deadly predators roaming the streets could do for gridlock.

When nausea threatened, she ripped her gaze from the window. It landed on the big vampire who’d attacked her. Thank God he’d stopped looking at her as if she were a fat juicy steak. Now he kept his head down, seeming to stare a hole in the floor of the armored truck. Even confined, he radiated power. He frightened every inch of her, but there was a scary magnetism about him, too. The kind that made you do crazy things against your better judgment. As she stared at his big hard body, she got the oddest feeling he was feeling guilty. Something about the way his shoulders hung off his large frame.

But that was crazy, wasn’t it? Could vampires even feel human emotions such as guilt? She considered how the female had approached her carefully and with empathy in her expression. Olivia dared to close her eyes. The more she thought, the more confused she grew.

“Why were you out on the street?”

Olivia jerked at the question and redirected her attention to the petite dark-skinned woman who sat across from her, the one who’d approached her before. Despite those spooky pale blue eyes, she looked...kind. She’d done nothing so far to indicate she planned to cause Olivia any harm, had sworn the exact opposite. Olivia found herself wondering about the woman she’d been before she’d been turned. Was she a recent turn or had she been walking the earth for hundreds of years? You could never tell a vampire’s age by looking at them. Strange as it might seem, that was one of the creepiest things about vampires, the end of aging. It seemed even more unnatural than the thirst for blood.

Whether it was nerves, insanity, a need to fill the tense quiet or even an insane sense that this vampire wasn’t so bad, Olivia found herself answering the other woman’s question. “I... Someone stole my car, and I couldn’t find shelter.”

“What kind?” The question came from the dark-haired guy who rode in the front passenger seat. He caught her gaze in the rearview mirror. “Your car, what kind is it?”

Olivia felt as if she’d fallen into a darker and creepier version of Oz. “A silver Versa.”

“Get me the VIN and we’ll look for it.”

Olivia simply stared at the back of the guy’s head, wondering if maybe she was having the world’s weirdest nightmare. Why would a vampire care anything about her missing car?

“Travis is good at finding stolen stuff,” said the vampire sitting next to the woman who’d been talking to her. He looked maybe twenty with blond hair down to his chin. Before the world went to hell, she could imagine seeing him performing tricks at a skate park. Now he was an animal just like the rest of them, no matter how harmless he looked.

“I think I have it at home,” she finally managed to say in answer to the other vamp’s request.

The driver, a tall guy with curly dark blond hair, pulled over onto the side of the street. He glanced back at the five vampires in the back with her. “I don’t want to go any closer,” he said, then nodded toward Olivia. “Not with living, breathing AB-neg in the truck.”

The big blue-collar-looking guy in the back who hadn’t spoken yet nodded. He and the tall, stunning brunette unlocked the hungry vampire. Olivia shrank against the wall, wishing she could fade into it, as they guided him out. He met her eyes, and for a moment the fact that he was a vampire faded and she saw the man he’d been before. A gorgeous man with dark hair and a toned, sculpted body who made something stir in her that had been dormant so long she’d assumed it was dead. Her reaction frightened and fascinated her at the same time.

He glanced over his shoulder. “Take her home.”

The authority in his voice brooked no argument and left no doubt who was in charge of this odd band of vampires. Nothing about tonight made sense, but she was still alive and for that she was immeasurably thankful. Even if it made no sense that she had vampires to thank for that fact.

Her attacker’s eyes met hers again, stared so deeply she had to force herself not to squirm. “I’m sorry,” he said.

She couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d admitted to being Dracula.

* * *

By the time Kaja and Len dragged Campbell into the blood bank, his veins felt like a lit fuse. When some of the curses from the vampires waiting their turn to feed made it past the haze covering his brain, he turned his head toward them and growled. If he hadn’t been cuffed, he would have bared his fangs, perhaps ripped out a few throats.

Len jerked him toward the door to the back and Kaja pushed him from behind. Once they got him inside the feeding room, they shoved him down in a chair and held him there. He shot every vile word he knew at them.