Blood Born (21 page)

“Is he gone?” she asked.

“For now. We need to get our story together, now, before the police get here.”

Chloe glance down at Valerie to check on her; she had passed out, but was breathing slowly and regularly. “You called the police?” she asked in surprise.

Luca’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “No. I thought you did.”

She had certainly considered doing so, but what the hell was she supposed to say?
Help! Two vampires are brawling in my front yard!?
She didn’t think Valerie was in any immediate danger, unless the vampire’s bite carried some sort of disease that no hospital could help her with.

Her dazed mind kept going back and forth between being relieved that she wasn’t crazy, and being stunned to discover that beings she’d always thought of as fictional actually existed. It wasn’t as if she could deny what she’d seen with her own eyes. Maybe tomorrow she’d think this was all a dream; maybe Luca would use some vampire woowoo on her to make her forget.

She hoped so. She didn’t much like having her world
turned upside down. Forgetting would be very, very good. On the other hand—there was always that other hand, dammit—how could she protect herself against something if she didn’t know the danger existed?

Outside, the sirens grew louder, closer, then passed on the connecting street, on their way to some other destination. Lucky cops, she thought; whatever had happened at that destination, it couldn’t possibly be as interesting as what had happened here. Ignorance was bliss.

First things first. “Will Valerie be all right?”

Luca walked closer, looked down. He studied Valerie as if she were an inanimate object—with curiosity but no concern. He made a sort of put-upon noise, then moved so quickly Chloe didn’t have a chance to tell him to stop, or ask him what he was doing. He scooped Valerie up into his arms and carried her to the sofa, where earlier in the evening Chloe and Valerie had talked and watched television as if the world wasn’t about to change.

He went down on one knee beside the couch and bent to put his mouth to Valerie’s throat. Chloe cried out, darting forward. “No!” she yelled, grabbing his shoulder and pulling at him.

He covered her hand with his, lacing his fingers through hers a little as he looked up at her. “It’s all right. I’m going to lick the wound. My saliva will make her heal much faster than she would on her own.”

Despite herself, Chloe was a little disarmed by his touch, the intertwining of their fingers. Fiercely she tried to remind herself that if he was a vampire, he could play all sorts of mind games with her and that made her more determined to hold on to her instinctive hostility. She’d been bowled over by him from the moment she first saw him, and now … now she didn’t know what to think. “You aren’t going to bite
her?” she demanded suspiciously. “You don’t want a taste?”

Was that a sparkle in his eyes? Maybe, because he almost smiled. “You know what I am.”

“Not being blind or stupid, yeah, I do.”

“Good,” he said softly. “Then you know that if I want to feed from her, there’s nothing you can do to stop me. But I’m not hungry, and she doesn’t appeal to me on any other basis. I’ll heal her, and I’ll make her forget everything that happened tonight. On the other hand, I’d very much like another taste of
you
, if you offer.”

Chloe’s heart lurched, then began racing from a tangled combination of fear, anger, and excitement. Taste her
again
? When had he tasted her the first time? She felt that odd shimmer in her brain, behind her eyes, and abruptly she had a vague memory of him hunkered in front of her with her skirt pushed up and his tongue gently licking over her leg. Her knee … yes, her leg had been scraped, and he’d taken care of her. You’d think she’d been leaking chocolate, the way he’d seemed to savor her blood. Oh, God. Her legs turned to spaghetti as the memory brought a rush of physical longing that rattled her with its intensity. Level-headed Chloe simply didn’t get lost in lust, but with Luca, she was afraid that might actually be possible.

She took a deep breath, forcing her thoughts away from that direction. Valerie was what was most important here, that and the sudden sea change her world had just undergone. “Can you make
me
forget?” she asked with a tinge of bitterness, because what she wanted most was for all this weird shit to just go away.

Luca shook his head. “In your case, forgetting could be deadly. You have to be on guard, and you can’t be if you don’t remember.”

“What if I don’t want to know what I know?”

“You don’t have that option. Chloe …” He paused, squeezed her fingers before releasing them. “You’re different.”

Great. The one time in her life she wouldn’t mind being perfectly ordinary, and he tells her she’s different. She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you going to explain that a little further? Because, frankly, that doesn’t tell me squat.”

“Later. Let me take care of your friend first.”

He’d even distracted her from Valerie. Chloe felt as if she should smack herself in the head. Yes, what had happened had her rattled, but it hadn’t made her stupid, she hoped. “Yes, of course. Valerie first, then … explanations. Lots of them.”

He gave her a quick, wry look before leaning forward again; he slowly began licking the two puncture wounds in Valerie’s slender throat. The tip of his tongue danced repeatedly over the twin wounds. His long hair fell across his face, obscuring her view, and that gave her the strength to look away, to suck in a long, calming breath.

And it struck her that for the first time in a while, the whispering, tormenting voice had gone silent.

Valerie briefly regained consciousness, but was agitated and confused until Luca said in a quietly compelling tone, “Valerie, everything is all right. You drank too many margaritas and decided not to drive home. You won’t remember anything about being attacked. You’re very sleepy now, and you’ll sleep until the middle of the afternoon.”

“I’m so sleepy,” Valerie had murmured, the words slurred, then she’d dropped right off to sleep.

“Holy crap,” Chloe blurted, her gaze ping-ponging from Luca to Valerie, then back to Luca. “What did you do, hypnotize her?”

“In a way. It isn’t exactly hypnotism.”

“What is it then, exactly?”

“It’s called glamouring.” He slanted a cool gray look up at her. “Don’t ask me how it’s different from hypnotism, because I can’t give you a textbook answer. For all I know, it’s the same thing, except faster—instantaneous to be exact.”

“Can you do that to me?” she asked suspiciously, because she didn’t like the idea of not being in complete control of herself.

“I
have
done it to you,” he’d replied, which left her terrified, outraged, and momentarily speechless as he effortlessly lifted Valerie and indicated to Chloe to lead the way to her guest room.

She hastily cleared off the bed, then Luca deposited Valerie on it and stepped back while Chloe eased off Val’s shoes, removed the bloodstained blouse so she could wash it, then pulled the sheet over her friend. Valerie never roused. When a vampire voodooed someone to sleep, they stayed asleep. Even if Valerie had been lying on a concrete slab, she was evidently going to sleep until midafternoon.

Luca stood back, watching. Chloe could feel his presence behind her like a human (maybe) thunderstorm looming in the room. She was all but choking on her sense of ill-usage. He’d done … whatever it was he did … to her! The worst part of it was, she didn’t know what he’d done or when he’d done it, so for all she knew he could be lying to her and making her feel like a fool for no good reason. This could either be some sort of con, or the government was involved. She couldn’t think why the government would be involved, but in this town anything was possible. All she knew for certain was that she was pissed, and she couldn’t even trust her own eyes, much less anything that Luca had said or was about to say.

She
thought
the wounds on Valerie’s throat were almost completely healed, marked only by red spots, and even the spots seemed to be fading. But if Luca had hypnotized her, or whatever, was she really seeing what she was seeing or did she only think she saw it?

The possibilities made her head hurt. “Aaargh!” she said furiously, and punched him in the stomach before stomping out of the room. Granted, it wasn’t much of a punch because she’d never learned how to really put some power behind it, but it was the thought that counted—and in this case, the thought was that she was completely pissed off at him. He stood frozen for a second, an expression of utter surprise
on that chiseled face, then he strode in her wake.

“What was that for?” he demanded, what sounded like indignation in his deep voice. What right did he have to be indignant? She was the one who was being jerked around like a pull-toy.

She stopped in her tracks and whirled on him, planting her hands on her hips as she glared at him. “What do you mean ‘What was that for?’ It was for everything! For telling me you’ve hypnotized me so now I don’t know if anything I’ve seen is real and I’ve just made a fool of myself for even thinking I’ve seen it, and if it
is
real, then for being here at all! What the
hell
is going on?” She wanted to shake her hand, because his stomach was as hard as a rock, but she was damned if she’d let him know that she’d hurt herself when he hadn’t even had the courtesy to give a small “oof.” Instead she turned around and resumed her stomping. The kitchen seemed like the best destination, because at least there were knives there, in case she needed to defend herself.

After an impossibly fast detour into the hall bath—she heard the water running and thanked the heavens he was washing the blood from his face and arms—Luca steamed in her wake; she couldn’t hear him—his movements were absolutely silent, which was spooky as all hell—but she could
feel
him, all but breathing down her neck.

“In case you’ve forgotten,” he growled, “I’ve saved your life—twice, in fact. That should be worth a little respect, rather than a punch in the stomach.” He sounded rather put out by that measly little punch, when she knew she hadn’t hurt him at all.

“That’s what you say, but I don’t know whether you’ve saved my life or not. After all, you’ve hypnotized me, so I don’t know what’s real.”

“Glamoured. Not hypnotized.
Glamoured
.” Oh, he was definitely steamed. He sounded as if he were grinding his teeth together.

“Glamoured, schmamoured,” she scoffed. She stopped in the middle of her nice, normal kitchen, feeling as if she’d fallen down the rabbit hole. So much had happened since the knock on her door that she felt as if hours had passed, but when she picked up her abandoned cup of coffee she found it was still warm. Incredulous, she looked at the clock. Had fewer than twenty minutes passed? Honestly?

“I’ve glamoured you twice,” Luca said from behind her, ill-temper plain in his tone, as if he wasn’t used to explaining himself. “The first time was last night, because you were so upset and scared after being attacked. I calmed you down, told you to let me heal your leg, then I told you to forget the attack.”

She snorted. “I hate to tell you, but it didn’t work. I remember.” Except … the details were fuzzy, and wouldn’t something that traumatic be a razor-sharp memory? And she hadn’t remembered about him licking her leg until tonight. How could she forget something like that? Even now, after everything that had happened and how out of sorts she was, she felt a curl of warmth through her body at the memory, so shouldn’t she have been remembering it all along?

“I know,” he said curtly, sounding more than a little annoyed that his glamouring hadn’t worked. “You being a conduit may have something to do with that.”

Conduit?

She sighed, suddenly so exhausted she could barely stand. He kept throwing new things at her, not giving her time to get her mind around one incredulous detail before hitting her with another. “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s a conduit?”

Abruptly he was standing in front of her; she hadn’t been aware of him moving, but there he was, his expression grim. Startled, she fell back a step, and the cup of coffee began slipping from her hand. Had she blanked out for a second, just now?

He reached out and took the cup from her, the movement smooth but fast, too fast for her to really follow. “I don’t know if you’re making all these double entendres deliberately, or if you’re oblivious,” he muttered.

“I must be oblivious. I think.” She didn’t really know what she was, other than confused and angry.

“Before I explain what a conduit is, let’s get something nailed down. You said you know what I am.”

“I know what I thought before.” But that was before he’d said he hypnotized her—all right,
glamoured
—so now she didn’t know anything for certain. Maybe the safest course was to assume he was lying every time his lips moved.

“Then I’ll say it: I’m a vampire. So was the guy who attacked you last night, and so is Sorin.” He stood with his arms crossed, his pale eyes intent on her face as if it was somehow imperative that he convince her of something preposterous. Yet now that she’d had time to think about it, her earlier conclusion had to be the result of panic, not logic.

She made a skeptical sound in her throat. “Uh-uh. Right. I know there are vampire clubs around where people pretend to be vampires—”

His eyes narrowed. “I’m not pretending anything.”

“Prove it,” she shot back.

“Fine. Maybe this will convince you.” He put his arms around her and pulled her close, tucking her against his hard, warm body, and convincing her that he had a partial erection, though how that was supposed to relate to him maybe being a vampire, she didn’t know. On the other hand … wow. Her heart
gave a thump, and that curl of warmth started low in her mid-section again, so low that she might as well give up the pretense and admit it was between her legs.

She shouldn’t be having this response to him. She should be running for the hills; she did manage to brace her hands against his chest, preparatory to pushing him away, but instead temptation gnawed at her. The beat of his heart thumped under her palms; the heat of his skin burned through his shirt, warming her, luring her closer. She wanted more, more of everything: more touching, more heat, more
him
.