Blood Candy (2 page)

Candy was convinced she hadn’t ever wanted
anything more. She ran her hands over the toned skin beneath his
open shirt. A thought occurred to her, a thought society had
conditioned into her mind, a thought she had been waiting through
countless worthless guys to say.

“Do you have protection?”

“What, like a jimmy coat?” Rupert laughed
softly. “I assure we won’t need that.”

He pressed against her body again. She weaved
one of her legs behind his as if she had some clue of what she
meant to do. Teeth nibbled her ear, breath teased her skin. When he
kissed her neck she sucked in a breath—it wasn’t supposed to happen
like this, was it? Her heart threatened to pound through her
chest.

A sudden flash of pain ignited in her neck.
Candy gasped, wanting to scream. Instead, she took a handful of his
hair, unsure if she meant to push him away or pull him in to keep
the pain that felt so good from ending. Warmth filled her abdomen
as their hearts beat together as one. With each hammer in her
chest, the pain lanced further through her body. Candy didn’t have
the energy to protest even if she wanted. Her body was on fire.
Every muscle surrendered. Rupert pulled away and stared into her
eyes, his lips and teeth gleaming red.

“Bloody hell, you taste good!”

His mouth was on hers again, briefly, their
tongues dancing to the frenetic song of their beating hearts. He
left behind a metallic taste in her mouth as he went back down to
her neck. The surging pain began all over again.

Candy couldn’t think. She couldn’t move. She
wanted to sleep, but she didn’t want this to end. Her back was
against the soft ground, the grass was cool against her legs.
Electric pain seared through her neck, through her chest, through
every cell in her body. She wanted more; if only she could control
this dream she drifted upon. Everything loomed out of reach in a
dark haze. A harsh voice called out from the wilderness.

“I warned you, vampire. Leave now.”

A detestable British accent rang out into the
night. “I told you to piss off! Think you can take me, yank? Let’s
have a go.”

Candy watched through a mist, through
uncontrollable eyes that didn’t seem her own. She wasn’t surprised
when two wolves prowled from one drifting shadow to another. She
wasn’t afraid of the predatory eyes gleaming against the moonlight.
In her dream, it was all beautiful. The whole night had to be a
dream. Fangs stained red flashed in the darkness—only a
dream.

“You’ve overstepped your boundaries,
vampire.”

The call of wolves seemed like something that
should have been heard and feared from a distance rather than from
such an uncomfortable closeness. Eyes and teeth streaked through
the dark. Rupert’s panicked voice faded into the night.

The hobo from the bar stood over Candy. What
an odd dream; he didn’t have on any clothes and his body was
covered in black fur streaked with silver. His voice seemed to come
from far away, not matching his position.

“How bad is it?”

Candy tried to move, to sit up, but she was
exhausted. She hadn’t realized she was rubbing at the pain on her
neck until she felt something slick and warm. The eyes of a wolf
appeared at her feet.

“Are we in time?”

The wolf sniffed close to the hem of her dress
and then nodded before bounding away. Candy looked at her hand.
Blood
. The world went black.

Chapter Two

Candy opened her eyes and grimaced. Her head
hurt and she felt nauseous. And she didn’t know where she
was.

For a moment, she thought someone was shaking
her bed, but then she realized her bed didn’t smell like armpits
and motor oil. She rubbed her eyes and tried to get her brain
working properly. When she opened her eyes again, she was staring
at the back of a car seat directly in front of her face.

“This is getting bad, Jimmy,” the man in the
driver seat said. “Real bad.”

Candy recognized the voice as the hobo from
the bar. She didn’t dare move; the smelly, old pervert kidnapped
her. Her friends had warned her of this day. “The games you play
are going to catch up to you one day, Candy. It’s dangerous to
dangle a piece of meat in front of a starving man and then snatch
it away.”

“What do you think we should do?” said the
other man, presumably Jimmy, who was sitting in the passenger
seat.

Candy took a chance and lifted her head to get
a look at where she was. It was dark outside, but she could tell
they were on the interstate. Unable to think, and just when she
needed to the most, she closed her eyes and took deep breaths to
stave off panic.

“I don’t know,” said the driver. “I’ve never
seen one of them act like that before. He looked insane, like he
had lost his mind. It took all three of us to scare him
away.”

Memories of what happened came flooding back.
Candy blanched at the thought of Rupert and she mentally berated
herself. He had been without a doubt one of the biggest dorks she
had ever met and hearing his accent in her mind reminded her of
nails on a chalkboard. She didn’t think she could ever forgive
herself for leaving the bar with someone like him. Even his name
made her cringe.

Hadn’t the smelly old hobo called him a
vampire? She hoped she hadn’t gotten herself mixed up with freaks
pretending to be vampires.

Then she remembered the wolves, which had
seemed so real. She didn’t know what was going on. She had almost
done improper things with the world’s biggest, poorly dressed loser
and then a hobo kidnapped her. She didn’t want to think about
wolves and . . . vampires.

“Can’t we get help from the council? I don’t
see any other choice,” Jimmy said.

“Maybe,” the driver said. He added more
grimly, and more to himself, “The world would be a better place
without vampires, that’s for sure.”

There he went talking about vampires again.
Candy wasn’t sure which aspect of the current situation terrified
her most. They all did equally, she supposed. A knot grew in her
chest, threatening to send her into tears. She should have listened
to her friends. She should have listened to her mother.

Jimmy peeked around his seat. Candy snapped
her eyes shut. From the brief glance of his profile, he looked much
younger than the hobo, perhaps her own age. She wasn’t sure if it
mattered that they weren’t both old and creepy.

Taking in a deep and calming breath was all
she could do to keep from freaking out. She had to remain patient
for an opportunity to escape. She refused to be this summer’s
missing girl. She had to concentrate to keep from imagining the
image of her most recent picture plastered over every news channel
across the country; her mother crying in front of the cameras as if
she cared.

“It’s a shame,” Jimmy said.

“What?”

“She looks so innocent. She didn’t deserve
this. It’s a good thing you were there, Tinch.”

“No, she didn’t deserve this,” Tinch agreed.
“No one does, especially not a young woman. It boils my
blood.”

“How long has she been out?”

“A few hours. That vampire bite did a real
number on her. Maybe we should wake her up.”

Candy slowly put her hand to her neck and felt
several band aids. Holy Mother of God, this was it. No more games.
She had finally attracted the worst of the worst. Her mother was
right: If she didn’t stop flaunting her goods, if she didn’t cover
up the little tramp stamp on the small of her back (what a mistake
that had been), then she would eventually attract the sadists and
the sinners.

“I’m starving,” Jimmy said. “Can we stop
somewhere?”

Tinch slowed the car down and took them onto
an exit ramp. They must have pulled into a town because the world
lit up in an incandescent glow beyond the car windows. Candy
wondered where the perverts were taking her as she lifted her head
to look. There was a gas station, and a diner Tinch pulled the car
into.

“She’s awake,” Jimmy said.

That was the trigger sending Candy into panic
mode. She bolted upright and tried for the door. It wouldn’t budge.
The interior lock had been broken off or filed down. She beat on
the window, screaming at the top of her lungs. The car was old
enough to have a window roller so she started pumping it. The
window went down at an odd angle, one side faster than the other,
and then it jammed. It was low enough for her screams to
escape.

She screamed for her life.

Tinch muttered beneath his breath and Jimmy
came halfway into the back seat, his face full of as much shock as
her own. Candy freaked out even more, not bothering to pause for a
breath. She expected Jimmy to cover her mouth, but he
didn’t.

“There’s no need to yell!” he said, wide eyed.
“You don’t need to be afraid of us.”

Candy continued screaming anyway. She didn’t
know what else to do. Tinch rolled the car through the parking lot
and then sped up towards the road. Candy rammed her shoulder into
the door, trying to keep as much distance between herself and Jimmy
as possible.

“Listen!” Jimmy was trying to say over her
screams. “We want to help you. We saved you!”

Candy took in a deep breath and stopped
screaming long enough to stare at him. He was definitely her age,
and he looked familiar. She stared at him for a moment while she
tried to catch her breath. She was sure she had seen his face
before.

“Calm down,” he said with his hands held up.
“We only want to help you. Are you hungry?”

“No I’m not fucking hungry! Let me out of the
car!”

Jimmy turned his head to Tinch and said, “I
think she’s fine now. Maybe we should let her go here because she’s
not going to cooperate.”

Tinch pulled back into the parking
lot.

“That’s up to her,” he said. He parked in one
of the spaces farthest from the diner, snatched the keys out of the
ignition and turned in his seat as much as he could to face Candy.
“You want us to drop you off here?”

Candy couldn’t believe it. She wondered why
they bothered bringing her all the way out here, wherever here was,
in the first place. She nodded vigorously.

“Okay,” Tinch said. “Me and Jimmy are going to
grab a bite to eat. You’re more than welcome to join
us.”

Jimmy pushed himself back into the passenger
seat to get out of the car and then he used a key to unlock the
back door for Candy. She stood there for a moment, unsure what to
do. She noticed her handbag on the back floorboard and grabbed it.
She couldn’t recall if she had left the bar with it, but she was
pretty sure she hadn’t. With her handbag in hand she was ready to
make a run for it. That seemed the most natural course of action.
She didn’t need to. Tinch and Jimmy sauntered over to the diner
entrance.

Candy dug out her cell phone and pressed down
the button to turn it on. The low battery display came up and it
shut itself back off. She cursed, having no idea where she was. She
dug around in her handbag again for her wallet and noticed Jimmy
standing at the door, holding it open and looking back at her. He
stepped into the diner and let the door close.

Candy opened up her wallet to find all of her
money gone.

“Shit!”

She could cross a dark field to the gas
station, but she figured there must be a phone in the diner. She
hurried inside and saw the two jerks that had brought her out here
sitting at a window booth. She ignored them. There wasn’t anyone
else inside she could see other than a waitress behind the pickup
window in the kitchen. Candy marched over to the counter and tried
to wait as patiently as possible.

“Care to join us?” Jimmy asked her.

Candy turned to glare at him. That should have
been answer enough. The waitress pushed through a door from the
kitchen and made her way to Jimmy and Tinch’s table. Candy tried to
catch her attention.

“Can I use your phone?”

The waitress walked on by as if Candy hadn’t
said anything, pulling an order pad out of the pouch on her apron.
Candy waited at the counter, but they were taking a ridiculously
long time. She went over to the waitress with the intention of
giving her a firm tap on the shoulder.

“I don’t like onions,” Jimmy was saying. “You
sure you can make it without onions?”

“No onions,” the waitress said in a bored
tone. She didn’t bother to write it down.

“Does it have peppers?” Jimmy said.

The waitress didn’t say anything. Tinch glared
across the table at the younger man.

“It doesn’t say it has peppers,” Jimmy went
on, “but I got the breakfast skillet once at this other place and
it had peppers. Can you make sure it has no peppers?”

“No peppers,” said the waitress.

“Do you fry the potatoes on the grill or in
one of those grease baskets?”

The waitress stared with blank
eyes.

“Jesus Christ!” Tinch roared. “Would you hurry
up already?”

“Fine,” Jimmy said. The waitress snatched the
menus, apparently unconcerned if her picky customer had given his
full order.