Blood Born: Cora's Choice #2 (10 page)

“
Talk to you later.”

“
You’d better.” She hung up.

I
set the absurd little stuffed animal on the coffee table so that it was looking back at me as I finished my cereal. Then I cleaned up my bowl and took Nibbler to my room, where I propped it on my dresser in front of the big cardboard box that took up most of the space.

And then my mind returned, full force, to the one thing I didn’t want to think about:
Dorian.

I
wanted him. I barely knew him, but I missed him like a part of myself that I’d accidentally left behind. It was stronger than the sense that I’d had yesterday. Maybe it got more powerful with the longer I was apart from him. Whatever the cause, I felt his absence as an ache that wouldn’t go away.

But it had to go away, one way or another.
A vampire didn’t belong in this life of mine, the one I’d just gotten back. I couldn’t let him into it. I had to do everything I could to preserve whatever integrity it had left.

I
turned restlessly in the room and spotted my tennis shoes peeking out of the closet. I had to think, and to think, I had to move. I grabbed some socks and shoved my feet into the shoes, dragging my UMD hoodie over my head and shoving my keys in one pocket and the phone in the other even though I wasn’t in the mood for music anymore.

I grabbed the
Chanel sunglasses as I headed out the door, then took the stairs down and shoved through the front door and out into the brilliant morning. The sunlight hit me like a wall. I shoved the glasses on, pulled the hoodie low, and started to run, the only thing moving in the chill air that hung dead around me.

I hadn’
t run in months. My thighs were still a little tired from—
oh, God, don’t think about it
—and my legs were slow and weak from months of sickness, but I could feel a strength, an energy that I hadn’t felt for nearly half a year.

I really was healed.

I jogged along the empty sidewalks, my breath frosting the air, moving between the buildings that were so familiar to me but made strange, almost post-apocalyptic in this almost-peopleless world. Everyone was celebrating Christmas with family or friends.

I ran past the
McKeldin Library, but even the good-luck offerings in front of the turtle mascot statue had been swept away after finals. I saw someone else, far across one of the greens, and waved just to try to make a connection with another human being. He didn’t see me.

What I felt for Dorian
scared me. It wasn’t normal. It wasn’t okay. And it definitely wasn’t right that I had ended up in bed with him so quickly...and that the very thought of it still made my blood race and my body heat all over again.

He really had done something to me, gotten inside my head.
And I still didn’t know what I was going to do about it.

I stopped running, gasping for air,
my hands on my knees. I’d only gone a mile at most, and I was wrung out. I caught my breath, turned around, and walked slowly back toward the apartment building.

This bond must be some kind of infatuation, I decided.
It felt a bit like the crush I’d had on the captain of the debate team when I was a sophomore in high school. Multiplied by about a thousand. I’d ignored that crush, and that had gone away eventually. This would, too, or at least it would get better. I just needed a little time and a little space, and this would become something I could deal with. It had to.

Because m
y life was still the same. It had been here on campus all along, waiting for me to come back. That was the important thing, wasn’t it? Nothing had changed. Not really. Whatever Dorian had done to me, it wasn’t really like the cancer, which would have taken everything. I could deal with anything as long as it was just in my head.

Couldn’t I?

As I walked back toward my apartment, I caught a glimpse of motion out of the corner of my eye, drawing my attention in the flat winter stillness. I jerked my head around, but it was already gone. I was certain I hadn’t imagined it, and whatever it was, it jangled my senses with the sense that it didn’t belong. I slowed my walk, keeping my head fixed straight ahead as I strained my peripheral vision around the edges of the sunglasses to spot it again.

There it was—in a gap between two buildings a hund
red yards away: A flash of dark fabric, gone as quickly as it had appeared.

I walked faster
, trying to appear casual, my eyes watering with the effort of peering along the buildings.

There, again—
several buildings away. It was gone in an instant, but I was certain it was the same person, and whoever it was definitely was following me. But it wasn’t possible. No one could travel so fast.

No human
, at any rate.

T
he hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I was being stalked by a vampire—or something else that was more than human. And even from a glimpse, I could tell that it wasn’t Dorian. Already, I would know him anywhere.

My phone was in the pocket of my hoodie.
Walking quickly, I pulled it out and paged through my contacts until Dorian’s appeared. My fingers were shaking so badly that I had to thumb the listing twice before it registered and started to ring. I held my breath.

“Yes, Cora?”

A wave of relief hit me as I recognized Dorian’s voice.

“Hi.”
The word came out as a squeak. “Did you send someone to follow me?”

There was a pause.
“I assigned a team. It’s just a precaution. I didn’t see the need to frighten you.”

I wasn’t reassured.
Precaution
indicated that the danger might be real. “This team. Are they vampires, too? Or something else that moves that fast?”

“
Where are you?
” His voice crackled through the phone loud enough to make me wince.

Damn.
Shit just got real.

“On campus—”

“I know.
Where?
”

“Walking back to my
apartment.” I stepped into the student parking lot. I could see the cluster of orange brick buildings now.

“Get inside,” he ordered.
“
Now.
”

I threw a glance over my shoulder.
The stalker was behind me now, not bothering to hide anymore. It had the features of a woman, but in the shadow under the hood of her long black coat, her eyes glowed a piercing yellow, visible even from this distance.

Sh
e was walking only slightly faster than me—for now. I remembered the speed that Dorian could summon when he chose to, and I judged the distance between me and the apartment steps.

My heart started hammering in my chest.

I wasn’t going to make it. My legs shook with the need to run, but I knew that would just bring her down on me faster.

“That could be a problem,” I said.

“I’m coming to you.”

“You’d better hurry.”

“Stay on the line.”
Dorian’s voice got distant as he pulled the phone away from his ear and started snapping orders to his staff. I didn’t pay attention to them. I had far more pressing concerns.

Keep it together, Cor
a. I clenched my jaw until it hurt. The creature was in no hurry to catch up with me. As long as I kept my cool, she seemed content to play it out.

But t
here was nowhere to go, no escape—

I saw my
Ford Focus, just a few dozen yards away.

She
believes I’m going to the apartments,
I thought. She wouldn’t think about my car. She probably didn’t even know it was mine. The keys were in my pocket on my lanyard with apartment key, keycard, and student ID.

I’d need both hands.

“I’m putting up the phone now, but I’m not hanging up,” I told Dorian.

Under the pretense of putting
the phone back into my hoodie pocket, I wrapped my fingers around the key fob. I subtly changed my angle of approach so that I’d walk past the driver’s door on my path to the apartment.

I risked a glance.
The creature was still hanging back. Toying with me. I could see the cruel smile curving her elegant lips. She would let me get all the way to the apartment building door before rushing in to snatch me away.

But I wasn’
t going to the apartment.

I fixed my eyes on the car door.

Don’t run,
I told myself, even as my heart raced out of control.
Whatever you do, don’t run.

I was forty feet away.
Thirty. My fingers were sweaty on the key fob. Twenty. Fifteen. I bit my lip to keep from sprinting the last few feet.

Ten.
I was almost to the rear bumper.

Five.

Now.

I hit the unlock button on the fob an instant before I jerked the door open, flinging myself inside and shutting it behind me in the same motion.
I hit the lock button and fumbled with the key at the ignition, my hands shaking so hard they wouldn’t work right.

I saw
the creature in the rearview mirror for just an instant, so fast she was almost a blur. She hit the Focus just as I jammed the key home and turned it.

The rear window exploded in a shower of tempered glass.
I screamed as the creature lunged through, her body grown suddenly larger, the skin of her face turning to glittering, golden scales as her mouth stretched wide to reveal a row of jagged fangs.

I ducked her
swinging arms and slammed the car into reverse, throwing my weight onto the gas pedal. One clawed hand caught me across the back, slicing through my clothes and into my skin. Pain blasted into my brain as skin and muscle parted.

The car leaped back, hurtling across the parking lot aisl
e to smash into the SUV behind. The creature let out a shriek that split my skull as her legs were crushed between them. I stomped the brake, slapped the stick into drive, and floored it. The sedan’s tires screeched on the pavement, and it tore out of the parking lot, leaving the creature crumpled on the pavement behind.

I didn’t stop.
I’d seen evidence of how I could heal now—already, the pain in my back had subsided from blazing agony to a manageable throb. I had no doubt that a creature like that had powers far greater than mine. I wasn’t going to gamble my life on the chance that I’d crippled her for long.

Besides, she might not be alone.
I shuddered, my knuckles white on the steering wheel. There was no way I was stopping now.

I
blasted through two stop signs and a red light onto Baltimore Avenue, heading north out of town and away from the slow traffic of the city. I managed to talk myself into letting go of the steering wheel with one hand long enough to tentatively feel my back where the creature’s claws had slashed it. The skin was smooth and unbroken already, though my blood had soaked through my shredded shirt and hoodie.

I had to call Dorian.
Whatever he had done to me, he was the only one I knew who might be able to match the strength of the thing that attacked me.

And he was the only one who would possibly believe me—even though I was certain that the attack was somehow ultimately his fault.
I’d been alive for nearly twenty-two years, and supernatural creatures had never shown any special attention in me until I’d met him.

Merging into traffic
, I fumbled in my hoodie pocket for my phone.

I
t wasn’t there.

No.
Oh, hell,
no
.

I grabbed at my hoodie, squeez
ing the fabric frantically in one hand as the car hurtled down the overpass that crossed the Beltway.

It was empty.
The hoodie was empty.

My heart accelerating,
I dug around the seat, patting every part I could reach. I even bent to scrabble in the driver’s foot well.

Nothing.

The phone must have fallen out when I jumped into the car. It was gone.

It c
an’t be gone. It just can’t.
I risked a glance around the compartment, just in case I had somehow missed it in my blind groping. But it really wasn’t there.

I
looked up again just as I started to swerve out of my lane. Hastily, I jerked the wheel back.

I was completely and utterly alone.
What was I going to do now?

The wind sucked the warmth thr
ough the broken-out rear window. The Ford’s heat was on high, but still I shivered, my blood-soaked clothes chilling me to the bone.

And I had no idea what I was going to do.

Beyond the Beltway, Baltimore Avenue turned into a highway that led past shopping centers and apartment complexes, then swiftly gave way to cornfields and nature preserves. Already, I was in the middle of one of the long undeveloped stretches.