Authors: Jennifer Knight

Tags: #Social Issues, #Love & Romance, #Vampires, #College Students, #Juvenile Fiction, #Paranormal, #General, #Romance, #Werewolves, #Dating & Sex, #Fiction, #Occult & Supernatural

Blood Crave 2 (12 page)

BOOK: Blood Crave 2

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“Look,” I said firmly. “Rolf has straight-up refused to believe that there’s an uprising, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. We’ve risked our lives to try and make him believe and all he does is resist us. What more are you going to do without the help of the other packs, Lucas? We don’t know where the lair is, we don’t know how to find it without more clues, and we don’t know where the vampires will strike next. I’m just as upset as you are about the murders. I want to stop them. But there is
nothing
we can do.” I leaned in and held his gaze, making sure that he grasped the magnitude of what I was about to say. “And honestly, babe, if I don’t get out of this place and around some normal people soon? I. Will. Lose it.”

To my surprise, a small, almost impressed, smile turned his lips up at the corners and he said, “You convinced me.”

I did? Score.

I rounded on Derek, fixing him with the same menacing stare.

“Okay,” he said, relenting.

I relaxed. “Thank you.”

“But I don’t think I’ll be visiting the parents,” Derek said. “They’ll definitely notice I’m different. I wonder what they’ll say when they find out I’m off the football team.” His expression darkened. “Do you think they’ll kick me out of school? I don’t have the money to afford it without my scholarship.”

I opened my mouth to spew some comforting bull, when Lucas spoke up.

“I’ll take care of it,” he said.

“What?” I asked. “Take care of what?”

Lucas’s eyes met mine and they were kind, but laced with something sour, maybe sadness. “I’ll pay for his classes for the next four years,” he said. “He won’t get kicked out.”

My heart just about melted onto the tile as I gazed at Lucas. I entwined my fingers with his under the table and squeezed his hand. “Thank you,” I whispered.

“Yeah,” Derek said. “Thanks, man. I don’t know what to say. I wish I could pay you back, I just—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Lucas cut him off. “I got more money than I know what to do with. But you
are
off the football team. Rolf’s gonna call the school and explain that you got sick. Leukemia. You can use that as your cover if you ever get stuck. We’ll forge all the documentation you’ll need to back it up. I’ll give everything to you when we get to campus.”

Derek’s mouth had parted slightly. “You guys are good at this, huh?”

Lucas shrugged. “We do it a lot for the runts.”

“Well, thanks. Really.”

I squeezed Lucas’s hand again, loving like crazy that he was doing this for me, even though I could sense how much it was killing him.

O
h, the heat, how I missed you.

I was baking in the sun and loving every glorious second of it.

I lay on my big hibiscus-print beach towel and shaded my eyes as I watched Lucas play Frisbee with some of my friends from high school. The beach was exactly what I needed. It was hot, full of life, full of regular people doing regular things. Nobody was changing into wolves, trying to suck anybody’s blood, or running for their lives. The sand, the warm breeze, Lucas smiling, my old friends chatting next to me.

I was in heaven.

The only thing missing was Derek. He was sleeping—dead to the world until the night woke him. I had him stashed in an abandoned fallout shelter not too far from our old high school. It was underground, which was perfect. Lucas and Derek had spent the first night fixing it so that it was lightless. Lucas even went to some expensive home security store and bought a high-tech-lock thingy that only he and I had the keys to. It locked from the inside too, so Derek could get out if need be, and also lock himself in when I left him. It was safe. Derek was safe.

But, boy I wished he could see this sun with me.

It had been such a perfect vacation thus far. I hadn’t realized how much I’d been missing my mom until I saw her face, bright with awe, as we greeted each other. She was totally stunned when I showed up at her door at eleven o’clock at night, with a pale Derek on one side, and a tall devastatingly sexy—okay, and somewhat scary—boy on my other side. She was wild with happiness once she got over the shock, but I could tell she was thrown by Derek’s new look. We told her that he was getting over the flu, since we couldn’t use the leukemia spiel. She’d obviously call Derek’s parents to send her condolences, and they didn’t know about this yet.

Surprisingly, my mom really liked Lucas. My mom’s a lawyer, and she’s one of those overly opinionated people that’s sometimes hard to get along with, but she and Lucas seemed to have the same views on pretty much everything. They spent hours griping over politics and global warming and other stuff that put me to sleep.

I was glad that my mom liked Lucas so much. She was kind of my moral compass when it came to life and if she approved, I approved.

The deal was officially sealed.

Lucas jogged toward me from the surf, the sun glancing off his damp, caramel skin in the most enticing way. The girls lying next to me, Nicole and Alexis, suddenly stopped talking. I looked over and had to smother a laugh. They were staring at Lucas with their mouths hanging open. Yeah, he was cute when he was happy.

Lucas crashed in the sand next to me, spinning the Frisbee on his finger.

“Wanna play?” he asked.

I smiled. “Careful, I think your tail is wagging.”

Lucas flicked the Frisbee at my stomach, and I grimaced, acting injured.

“Play for just five minutes,” Lucas wheedled.

“Fine, but don’t laugh at me when I trip over myself.”

His smile widened. “Never.” He tugged me up and ran down the beach, holding his arms over his head for me to throw.

I threw it and he returned the thing with lightning speed. I fell over in the water trying to catch it and Lucas laughed at me. He laughed at me big time. Not that I cared much. I was just enjoying having fun with him instead of trying to evade death. I think he liked it too.

N
ew Year’s Eve was the following day, and Lucas and I decided to do something special together since we’d had little time to ourselves lately.

It wasn’t the warmest, but I took Lucas surfing anyway. He admitted to trying it once, a couple decades ago, but gave up quickly because salt water didn’t gel with him. Apparently, it tasted too much like blood for his liking.

“You’re not supposed to drink it,” I said. “Don’t be a grump. Just roll with it.”

He turned out being better at it than I had ever been. Which was expected. And annoying. He actually ended up helping
me
improve, something he teased me about to no end. After we were spent, we ate lunch on the pier and fed the pelicans our scraps as we talked about school and what classes we wanted to take this semester.

Later Lucas took me to a club where they throw glowing paint on the crowd, and we spent the night dancing. I expected Lucas to refuse to dance with me—he didn’t seem the dancing type. More the brood-in-a-corner type—but he’d astounded me by refusing to actually
stop
. At twenty seconds to midnight, I was panting and exhausted, but Lucas had never looked more alive. Or happy. As the music blared and the countdown began, he pulled me close, pressing his hips against mine.

I heard his rough voice in my ear, sending my heart flying.

“Three . . . two . . . one . . .”

And then his lips consumed me. I threw my arms around his neck, peeking only to see the crowd around us going insane and people knocking into each other as they scrambled to find someone to kiss. I closed my eyes tight again, thanking everything I knew that I’d never have to find someone to kiss again. Lucas would always be right here.

N
ot long after that, we drove back home, ears buzzing—mine anyway—and hearts still throbbing erratically.

“That was fun,” Lucas said.

Actually it sounded more like
zz zzz zzzz
, but I got the gist. I nodded at him, and suddenly he got this funny look on his face. A spark in his vibe told me he’d just decided something, but I couldn’t tell what. I was also a little tipsy, which affected my power.

“What is it?” I asked.

I heard the hissing sound of his laugh. “Loud much?”

“I can’t hear,” I admitted, knowing I must still be yelling.

“In that case . . .” He started moving his mouth as though speaking, but I couldn’t hear a word.

I swatted his arm playfully and he laughed.

“I wanna show you something,” he said, checking to see if I’d heard.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Something I painted. It’s ah . . . kind of big.”

“Cool. Where is it?”

“On the back wall of your mom’s building.”

I stared as he pulled into the overhang of my mom’s apartment and got out. He came around and opened the door for me in an uncharacteristically gentlemanly gesture. “You coming?” he asked, offering a hand.

I took it warily. “Suck up,” I accused.

“As long as you don’t rat me out to your mom.”

I wouldn’t have done that anyway, but I liked the special treatment. “Keep it up or I just might.”

The tip of his mouth curved upward as we walked around the alley between the two apartment complexes and around to the back of my mom’s building. It was a narrow space with a chain-linked fence on one side and some Dumpsters in the distance. Five back doors punctuated the brick wall at intervals, the third one being my mom’s place. We walked down the alley, but I stopped when the bright white moonlight hit the wall and illuminated Lucas’s piece.

It was a building, like a skyscraper. Silver and blue paint melded to create the metal structure and what seemed like hundreds of windows. Inside each pane was a picture; it looked like a film strip had been laid down to depict someone’s life. There were people, animals, houses, cars, eyes, and ... was that me? I moved in closer. Yes, I was in some of them. Lucas was in others. I recognized Julian in wolf form and some other werewolves I couldn’t tag. It was really, really cool.

But I couldn’t truly appreciate the beauty of his work. Mostly because the building which housed these precious scenes was on fire. Yellow, orange, and blue flames licked the building, the colors moving and undulating so flawlessly I could swear the fire was real.

I felt Lucas come to stand beside me as he looked up and up at the painting. It actually went about halfway up the wall, which made me wonder how he reached so high.

“When did you do this?” I whispered. I was equal parts amazed and horrified by the piece.

“Over a couple of nights. While you hung out with Derek.”

“I thought you watched the news with my mom.”

“She goes to bed at nine. And you’re out till two or three, usually, so there’s a lot of downtime. It’s a good distraction when I can’t stop thinking about you.”

I could almost hear the words
with him
tacked onto the end of that sentence, but he kept it in.

I turned to look at his profile.

“So . . . I make you think of a burning building?”

BOOK: Blood Crave 2

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