The Vampire's Release, A Paranormal Romance (Undead in Brown County #4) (10 page)

I nodded quickly and we left.
  Only later would that point be put to a test.

CHAPTER 13 – Michael

Alex
was waiting for us.  He was behind the wheel of Victoria’s car and looked annoyed.  I opened the back door for Sarah and gestured towards the bag on the seat.  “Clean clothes.”

“Thanks.”  She smiled at me in a tender sort of way before she got in.  All I could think about was ordering Alex out of the car and having my way with her in the back seat.  Not the smartest idea, but quite pleasant to contemplate. 

I slid into the front passenger seat and glanced back at Sarah, who was already pulling off her stained sweater.  The undergarment she wore beneath it was nearly as tempting as her bare flesh.  I believe Victoria called it a “bra”.  It seemed woefully inadequate to hide Sarah’s beautiful curves, but I hadn’t spent much time perusing ladies’ undergarments since the 1800’s.  What did I know?

When I looked back over at Alex, his gaze was locked on the rectangular mirror attached to the glass in front of him.  Sarah wasn’t aware of his ogling, but I certainly was. 
I wanted to shake him until his eyes rolled out of his skull.

With a growl of warning, I smacked the back of his head.  “Shame!”

“For Christ’s sake, Michael.  How am I
not
supposed to notice that?” he replied, rubbing the back of his head and glaring daggers at me.
 

“What’s wrong?” Sarah asked in alarm.

“Nothing.”  Alex and I answered at the same time. 

To his credit, he did not look at the mirror ag
ain until much later. 

We had to stop at the perimeter for Sarah to give permission for me to leave.  It was becoming quite inconvenient.  As the car pulled away from the farm, I could still hear the groans of the vampires who had woken up when Jackson killed Kenneth.  They were all hungry and desperate for sustenance.  Jackson was locked up in the house with Jones and Victoria standing guard, but I worried that they may not be able to hold off the others.

Alex maneuvered the vehicle onto the interstate and fiddled with the radio.

Sarah had been quiet in the back.  When I looked at her over my shoulder, she appeared withdrawn and troubled.  She was staring out into the dark night with the tip of one thumb in between her lips.  Yet again, I had to push back the lust that threatened to rise
inside me.  If I had any notion of how intensely making love to her would affect me afterwards, I may not have followed through with it. 

Trying to focus my thoughts elsewhere, I concentrated on what had happened with Amanda and Meekah and what dangers that alliance might pose.  Between the two of them, Amanda was the pitiless one who still carried some disturbing feelings for me.  Perha
ps if I had never grown to know
Sarah, those feelings would have been returned by me. 

I knew that if Meekah was telling Amanda about all her visions, we were doomed. 
My fiery ex-lover would be sure to eliminate Sarah as soon as the opportunity presented itself.  But if Meekah were holding back for some reason or if her visions had become fewer and less relevant to our situation, we had a chance of getting through it all.
  It was that remote possibility that gave me some sense of hope.

As for Katie, I had a few ideas about how to bring her around but none of that could be attempted until after the hearing.  I also had a suspicion that Katie might prove to be something more than just an ordinary creature of the night.  There was something truly enthralling about the blood that ran through the
veins of the two Wood sisters, and combining that element with the supernatural powers inherent in the undead might have given rise to a creature far different than what I knew myself to be.

My jaw began to ache with the urge to
release
my canines when I thought about Sarah’s blood.
 
The rich, thick powerful flavor of it remained
vivid
in my memory. 
I had to fight the desire rising through me once again. 
It gripped me like the vision of a rising red tide
in some demonic landscape
, guaranteed to overwhelm and drown me if I didn’t succumb. 

“Fuck,” I swore.  “Alex,
stop the vehicle
.”

Sarah leaned forward over the back of my seat and touched my shoulder.  “What’s wrong?”

The dreaded blood lust surged through me relentlessly.  There was no stopping it when she was that close.  The growl of hunger ripped through me and came out as a low snarl.  I felt
the shock of sudden fear go through her fingers. 
Sarah’
s hand fe
ll away.

“I’m pulli
ng over.  Just keep it together,” Alex muttered.

But there was no earthly way he could stop in time.  I had to get out of there.

When I glanced desperately over at him, he
looked shell shocked.  I can imagine he was probably remembering his own moments of weakness with Sarah and how impossible it seemed to push the urges back.
He was probably remembering how guilty he felt afterwards.  But all I could think about was getting the hell out of that car.
  If my mind would have strayed
towards anything
other than warm blood
or the exquisite softness of Sarah’s inner thighs
, I may have been able to prevent the violent accident that happened next.

Sarah was not wearing he
r seatbelt.  She should have been.  I should have insisted on fastening it for her myself.  My mind had been so entrenched in the memory of her skin against mine that I had neg
lected to consider her safety. 
So when the collision occurred, I wasn’t prepared at all.

I had never been in an automobile crash.  There’s really no way to describe the shock of that amount of force being
expended in the span of a half second of time.  The sound itself was wretched—a clashing of metallic surfaces that echoed through me like a wave of electrical power.  For the first time since I was a child, I wanted to cover my ears with my hands.

As immortals, Alex and I had not bothered with the safety devices either.  We are not impervious to the laws of physics, however.  So he and I were catapulted
into
the glass in front of us.  The steering wheel stopped his forward motion
, while I was thrown completely through the glass and into the air above the truck that had hit us.

I landed painfully on my left side on the pavement of the interstate about thirty yards from the two vehicles.
  Somewhere in the mass of twisted, smoking wreckage lay Sarah.  I rose awkwardly from the surface of the road and briefly assessed my injuries.  I was bleeding from a deep gash in my left bicep and numerous small cuts over my arms which had already begun the intricate process of cellular
regener
ation bestowed on the undead.

Alex, if he had been injured at all, was already pulling Sarah from the b
ackseat of the crushed sedan.  He
appeared to be fine
, although it was more likely that his self-healing process was even faster than my own given his unique physical powers
.  It
was Sarah that concerned me. 
Her head was bleeding profusely and she
appeared to be
unconscious. 

After delivering her to me,
Alex
made a
point of checking the occupant
of the truck that had swerved across the grassy median and slammed into us.  The driver, a white male
human of middle age, was
dead.
 
Already there were other vehicles slowing down on both sides of the highway, which didn’t worry me nearly as much as Sarah’s condition, but Alex urged me to get her hidden.

“The cops will be here, Michael.  We have to leave.”
  His clothes were smeared with Sarah’s blood and probably some of his own.  Some
of it
was also matted in his hair right above his forehead.

Sarah’s blood was on my hands fro
m her head wound.  Despite her condition and my love for her fragile human soul, I desperately wanted to latch onto that wound with my
relentless
mouth and draw every single drop of that precious fluid into myself.
  The urge to do it right there, in front of Alex and the growing population of human
witnesses, was so distinctly
unlike
me
.

“Take her,” I growled.
  The timbre of my own voice sounded off, as if were coming from someone else—a stranger.

“Michael?”  It was a little whisper of sound that came from her mouth that ne
arly undid me.

“Damn it, Michael!  What the hell is wrong with you?” Alex demanded sharply.  He pulled her out of my arms.  “Get out of here.  Just meet us in Chicago.  Keep your cell phone on.”

He moved away quickly, and I saw only a flash of her confused expression before they completely disappeared into the trees at the side of the road. 
With the hunger inside
me rising, I started after them, only making it a few feet before a voice stopped me cold.

“Sir, are you okay?”

I turned and saw a group of three young men approach me.  They seemed too young to even be driving a vehicle.  Their unlined, fresh faces expressed a measure of disbelief and shock
that I’
d seen dozens of times throughout my long
unnatural life—whenever mortals were witness to the supernatural abilities of the truly undead.  They had, undoubtedly
,
seen Alex with a delicate human form wrapped in his
arms and then watched in awe as he shot out of their field of vision. 

I recognized the look on their faces and noted that one of them, a young man of some Spanish descent, had his cell phone out.  But instead of holding it to his ear, he was holding it up and away from him.  I had seen the technique before, but didn’t feel a need at the time to think about
what it meant
.
  I was far too hungry to contemplate the risks I was taking.
 

I
n the space of a few seconds, I deliberated on their fate.
  Then I attacked.

Sharp t
eeth, breathtaking strength in all four limbs, desperati
on, speed.  It was all me. 
I had spent
fifteen
minutes in a car with a woman whose blood made me feel like I was finally home
, yet at the same time left me incredibly desperate for sustenance
. 

I had been
hesitant to attempt t
he conversion of humans to serve a specific purpose. 
Up until that night on the side of a dark highway in Indiana,
I
’d
chose
n
not to take the opportunity.  Or perhaps the thought of doing it no longer filled me with dread.  I wanted to do it right.
 
Creating my own undead personal protection
squad
probably should have taken place at a more convenient time.  But it seemed that my life after waking
from the caves had become increasingly dangerous, and while Victoria and Jones represented irreplaceable friendship and mutual respect, they were always free to do as they liked. 
All these were flimsy excuses at the time, but they raced through my consciousness in an effort to deny what was happening to my long-held belief that essentially, humans were to be regarded with a certain amount of respect. 

To be completely candid, I was ravenous and the three of them were the closest humans available.
  I did take the precaution of luring the three of them into the tree line at the side of the road b
efore drinking their blood.
  Unfortu
nately, more people had stopped along the side of the road and were rapidly making their way not only to the two wrecked vehicles, but also to the place where I was feeding.
 

The Spaniard was whining incessantly by that time, and it was with effort that I forced myself to leave him alive.  The other two were closer to death, but still held several pints each of the blood I needed.  Warm blood.
  So I dropped the Spaniard onto the forest floor, grabbed the other two by the back of their shirts and left the scene of the crime.

CHAPTER 14 - Sarah

I don’t know exactly how long I was out. 
When I woke up, I was lying in a large bed in an unfamiliar room.  There was a window, but the heavy drapes
were closed.  I
didn’t
have
any indication of the time of day.  My head hurt, and when I lifted my hand to touch it, I felt cloth and a sharper pain at my scalp.