NOT DEAD YET: A Lucy Hart, DEATHDEALER Novel (Book Two) (2 page)

Lucy just stared at him, and she felt the heat lick up through her.

Micah shook her off.  Then he moved in behind her and wrapped his arms around her, holding her in a vise just this side of crushing the breath from her.  “One...  two...  three... ”

Lucy pushed her hips back, yet felt no give at all.  Then she snapped her head back and felt Micah’s jaw crack against the back of her skull. 

He didn’t even wince
. 

After the room stopped spinning she tried pulling free of his grasp.  But nothing happed.  She tried and tried to get free, but it was like he was carved out of stone; immovable.

“You know you’re not going to hurt me if you go all out.”  Micah muttered.  “I promise.”

I
was
going all out!
  Lucy really had tried to bloody his nose at least .  But obviously from the searing pain radiating through her noggin, his chin had hurt her head far more.

“We should just stop for the night,” Micah sounded worried and weary.  Maybe pummeling her into the mat hadn’t been as much fun as he’d let on.

“No...  one more time.” 
Because I really want to wipe that grin off your face!

“Okay, once more.”  He took a deep breath and nearly crushed Lucy against his massive chest.  “But if you knock yourself out, I’m not responsible.”

“Fair enough.”

“One...  two—”

“Three!”  Lucy growled as she jumped ahead of the three-count, butting her hips back against him as hard as she could, and smacking her head back with everything she had.

“Owww!”  Her head suddenly felt like it was about to split open, and her vision turned all green and cloudy.  Yet through that cloudiness she felt something pull at her, something familiar and powerful, and full of want and need. 

Her vision cleared immediately and her gaze shot straight to the other side of the gymnasium.  Walking side by side was her beloved Gabriel, and the vampire Vin Tokar, brother to Delia, Gabriel’s vampire ex-girlfriend who’d tried to kill, and then turn Lucy into a vampire. 

Vin had helped save her, and in a way he had saved her life.  She’d lost a lot of blood, and Vin had fed her some of his own to keep her from dying.  And it had worked.  Lucy felt fit as a fiddle before the night was out, but by doing so he’d forged a blood tie between the two of them.  He could speak to her telepathically, which royally creeped Lucy out.  But just being around him seemed to make her feel better—a little too good.  The kind of good that should only be reserved for her actual fiancé.

Because of this Lucy had gone out of her way to stay away from the blond haired vampire.  She didn’t even want to speculate whether she could send him mental messages. Though his looks were very close to his psychopathic sister’s, those clear blue eyes, and that short blond hair made her feel more lustful than afraid... which left her filled with an even worse fear. 

Did the vampire have some sort of control over her?

What did they call it, thrall?  Being able to push a human’s mind, to bespell, to glamour?  She’d read about it in novels, but was there really any truth to that?  Probably, since there were really vampires and werewolves, and you could really bring the dead back to life—which was yucky!—and the vampire had really, truly communicated with only his mind.

But right that moment all Lucy felt was that now familiar surge of happiness, not because her Gabriel was there, and she’d so been missing him, but because the vampire was near.  Not only did her vision clear, but so did her mind.  A strength that burned hot and cold all at once rushed through her body like a flash flood.

What happened next took only an instant.  She snapped back her head with a thudding crack, eliciting a grunt of pain from Micah.  She threw out her arms, wrenching herself free of Micah’s burly embrace, and with a move so graceful and quick, a move Lucy had never even imagined could be done, she jumped straight up in the air, whirling around and kicked Micah full in the chest. 

And just like that the two hundred and fifty pound werewolf flew through the air twenty feet and smacked with a crunch against the blessedly padded gymnasium wall.  He seemed to stick to the wall for a split second before his body crumpled to the floor.

Lucy stood there, listening to her heart beat, slow and strong, as she stared coolly at Micah’s limp body.

She heard Paul say, “Holy shit!” from across the room, and heard Gabriel gasp in surprise. 

But it was Vin’s internal voice that snapped her out of the cool, quiet place in her head. The vampire thought, she
moves like vampire...  she is exquisite.
  And worst of all, she could feel his hunger for her.

It burned.

That snapped her back to the here and now, out of the cold, calm place and back to the fact that she’d just kicked her fiancé’s brother across a room and knocked him out. 
How the hell did that happen?

She ran over to his side.  Gabriel and Paul were both already there, gently shaking Micah’s big, muscular shoulder.  She didn’t hear what they were saying, her heart was now thudding like a caged thing in her chest, in her ears, but she did see Micah hold up his hand as he shook his head. 

She fell to the tiled floor and looked down into Micah’s golden brown eyes.  They were unfocused and more than a little bloodshot, but when he looked up at her and smiled his crooked, golden-boy smile, she let out a relieved breath.

He was okay
.  Only Micah could get knocked out one minute and be smiling the next.

“Cut that out!  You scared me!”  She had no idea how she’d done what she’d just done, but she found it unbelievable that she had actually knocked Micah out...  not to mention across a freaking room.  He was over six foot three, he weighed over twice as much as she did, and he was a freaking werewolf.

“Hey, I’m not the one holding out on us.”  He shook his head and sat up, the smile still in place, but there was uneasiness in his eyes. 

Is he actually afraid of me?  Nah, couldn’t be.

“I didn’t do that.”  She really couldn’t fathom how she could have.

Gabriel looked up from his brother to Lucy.  He looked spooked too.  He was shaking his head as he gazed at her, finally saying, “Must’ve been a lucky shot.”

Micah barked with laughter.  “You mean a lucky flying, spinning snap kick to the solar plexus?” 

Lucy felt her eyes widen in their sockets.  Had she really done all that?

“Sorry guys.” He coughed as he leaned back against the padded wall behind him.  “But that move takes years of training, and that kick also took some preternatural strength too.”  His weary gaze moved back to Vin.  “Vampire strength, I’d say.”

Gabriel looked back at Vin, too, and then they both stared at Lucy.  She felt her face burn.  What were they looking at her like that for?   And did they know what thoughts, what unwanted feelings she had every time the vampire was near her?

She shook the thought out of her head.  They were werewolves, not clairvoyants.  And anyways, what was there for them to know?  So what if she suddenly kicked big, dumb Micah across a room.  She’d wanted to do that exact thing all week.  And so what if she seemed to have some...  well, downright disturbing mental connection to Vin Tokar?  He was a vampire, so no one should’ve been all that surprised the blood he’d fed her would link them somehow.

Okay, maybe I’m over rationalizing this, and I should be as freaked out as the werewolves seem to be.  Hell, I should be somewhere shrieking my head off, pulling my hair out at the very thought that I was psychically linked to a freaking vampire.
 

But truthfully, all the preternatural stuff was so new to Lucy, that she halfway still expected to wake up from whatever kind of dream it all was.  And it would be so much simpler if it was just a dream, wouldn’t it? 

Perfectly natural. 

One moment she had everyone’s dream teen-life.  The next she was reduced to flipping burgers just to put sales-rack clothes on her back.  So why not have a dream where she got all the money and hope back in her life, a real future, and just to spice it up
a la Twilight
, she had both a werewolf and a vampire vying for her attentions.

Perfectly understandable.  Yeah, perfectly...   

But why was she feeling so guilty?  Shouldn’t there at least be a few weeks where she got to feel nothing but sleazily happy, engulfed and besotted with the thrill of having two super hot, preternaturally powerful guys fighting over her?

But they weren’t, were they?  They had been talking and walking, both in GQ worthy business suits—Burberry and Prada, to be specific—just like two perfectly civilized business men going to a working lunch.  Except it was night and the vampire would only be having the blood of the waitress. At least Gabriel ate human food.  But then the question of what Gabriel ate when he was in wolf-form occurred to her. 

She didn’t want to know.

Lucy snapped out of her long-lived little reverie to find all eyes on her still...  even the vampire’s... 
especially the vampire’s
. 

Lucy glanced at the clock on the gymnasium wall and sighed with relief.   She looked straight at Gabriel.  “We’re going to be late for dinner with the parents.  Let me shower and change, and I’ll be out in ten minutes.”

Micah smiled, and Gabriel got this look on his face.  Something she’d said was strange enough to get his mind off what had just transpired on the gym mat.  “Ten minutes...  really?”

Lucy frowned at him, making him wince and clear his throat. 

“What I mean is...  you don’t need to hurry.  We don’t have a reservation anywhere.”

It was Lucy’s turn to look surprised.  “What do you mean?”

“We’re all meeting at your grandmother’s house.  She insisted on cooking.”

Lucy gasped.  “Your mom and dad are coming to dinner at my house!  What the hell were you thinking?”

“I’ve had dinner with you and your grandmother.  I’ve even eaten with your mom and brother.  Why would this be any different?”

Lucy sighed, her irritation with Gabriel not holding up.  “Because you’re not a snob.  But your parents...  especially your—” Lucy stopped herself before she said something she would definitely regret.  No matter how condescending the woman was, or how much of a bitch she kept on being—a very polite, cultured bitch at that—she was still Gabriel’s mom.  Lucy couldn’t just trash talk her...  even if she really,
really
deserved it.

Gabriel smiled knowingly.  “Especially my mother.  That’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it?”

“Guilty,” she answered.

“We have nothing to be worried about.  Mother assured me she’d be on her best behavior around your family.”

“She said that? 
Exactly those words?
”

“Yes... why?”

Lucy shot Micah a worried glance, which he returned, shaking his head.  And then she turned and marched away in a huff. 

“What?”  Gabriel said.

Micah laughed.  “Mom’s playing you, bro.  She’s going to be merciless.”

“Oh.”  God love him, but he really was gullible when it came to his mother’s motives.

Why hadn’t they just run off and eloped?  She’d asked him that not even a week ago.  Gabriel had said that his family would never forgive him for denying them the chance to be there.  That his family was very important to him...  as was hers.  But now she knew that it wasn’t going to be some special, heartbreakingly beautiful journey to the altar.  No, it would be heartbreaking, but not beautiful or joyous at all. 

It was going to be torture.

Her eyes opened to nothing but blue.  It was a surprise for Delia, seeing anything after the sunrise.  That’s when every vampire in the world died, literally.  No thoughts, no dreams, nothing.  Once the sun rose whatever it was that animated them—be it a soul or magicks—departed, leaving them lifeless and vulnerable.  Nothingness was all the day brought for a vampire.  Even in her sleep imposed prison it was always the same.  When the sun rose she became nothingness.  But once the darkness came her mind would awaken, and she would plot her revenge against her lying, cheating ex-love and his blood-sack of a whore.

Over and over she would imagine her vengeance, plotting how she would abduct them both, how she would torture them, making the other watch as she did truly terrible things to them both. 

Nothing that they didn’t deserve. 

And if she wasn’t trapped in the little blood-sack’s necromantic spell, she’d have had her fill of revenge.  But that’s the thing, if you can only
think
of vengeance, but can’t actually inflict it, the hunger, the need for it becomes all the more powerful. 

She would see them both dead and bloody.  That much she knew.

But sometimes, no matter how hard she tried, Delia would fall asleep and dream.  It wasn’t like she’d never slept.  She enjoyed the languorous lounging about that sleep could offer.  But this sleep was not a bit restive.  It was horrifying.  Every time Delia would dream, she dreamed the same thing.  About Lucy Hart chasing her with that damned silver dagger.  The one Delia was certain Gabriel had given her; faerie forged and wickedly sharp.  It had slid into her like she was butter.  And if the little blood-sack had had the guts, or the strength, she could’ve inflicted so much more harm than she had.