Half Blood (6 page)

His uncle gave him a meaningful look. Right. So leaving Sabel alone with him wasn’t such a good idea. He was being babysat. Rhett opened his mouth to protest, but a stern look from his alpha closed it for him. ‘I want you to be careful Rhett. It’s not just your life you have in your hands now. Remember that.’

Twenty minutes later, Rhett parked in Hell one block away from where the body had been found. Vaile had called in the pack to dispose of the body as soon as it was discovered and found to be a supernatural kill. Humans didn’t need to know about that stuff.

‘It was down this alleyway,’ Vaile said, leading the way down the dark, dank space. To Rhett, all he could smell was death; the scent of the vampire an aftertaste to that. ‘Rhett, shift so you can pick up the scent a little more strongly,’ Vaile added.

‘No. I’m going to Change. Rhett’ll probably fuck this up for us,’ Sabel snarled, pushing past him as he pulled his t-shirt over his head and unbuttoned his jeans.

‘This isn’t some kind of pissing contest Sabel,’ Rhett said. ‘But go for it. I haven’t got a hard on to get killed tonight.’

Sabel’s lip curled away from his lip, but he said nothing. Vaile and Rhett turned around when the alleyway filled with the wet sucking sounds of the Change. Shifting into a wolf wasn’t a pretty thing. When Sabel growled softly, them both turned around to face the huge chocolate-brown wolf that shared Sabel’s body. Dropping his head to the ground, Sabel sniffed around the alleyway and picked up the scent a minute later. He charged out of the alleyway with Vaile and Rhett on his tail.

They didn’t get very far before Sabel stopped and growled down a dark backstreet. By the looks of it, the streetlights overhead had been broken and never bothered to be replaced. Sabel disappeared into the swallowing darkness, leaving Vaile and Rhett to cautiously slide in after him. The sound of suckling was faint, but Rhett honed in on that one sound, navigating himself to the other side of a dumpster.

The vampire hadn’t heard them or smelled them yet; too engrossed in feeding than worrying about its safety. Sabel crouched down to hide and after a nod from Vaile, Rhett stepped away from the dumpster; his arms crossed his broad chest. ‘And what do we have here?’ he asked, staring into the dirty-brown eyes of the vampire. Shocked, the vamp disengaged its fangs and let the human drop. She was female and probably no older than nineteen or twenty. Her clothes told him that he had picked her up from “The Imp and Impaler”, an underground Goth club not too far from here. She made no attempt to move, the euphoria on her face enough to tell Rhett that the vamp’s saliva was doing exactly what it was supposed to be doing.

The vampire bent down to pick up the girl again, but Rhett had him around the throat before he could lay another hand on her. He tutted condescendingly. ‘Didn’t your mother tell you not to eat off the floor?’

The vampire snarled at him; its fangs and mouth stained with blood. Rhett bared his own teeth at the vampire and slammed him against the wall. He couldn’t see any tattoos on its neck, so it wasn’t a Sicarii. Regular run-of-the-mill vampires were still dangerous, but not as dangerous as a Sicarii. Rhett studied its chalky face, looking for any other signs of ownership, but found none.

The vamp began making soft mewling sounds when Rhett cranked his fingers tighter around its throat, hoping to get more of a fight out of it, but it was weak from excessive consumption of human blood. Vamps could drink human blood, but it wasn’t their normal form of sustenance. In fact, from what he understood, it was like drinking motor oil compared to the normal diet of their mate’s blood. Vampires without a mate were either forced to buy it from
immara—
unbranded vampires—who whored it out, or forcibly take it from a female or male. Drinking human blood was the absolute last resort because, eventually, it would kill them.

‘Sabel,’ Rhett called. Sabel’s huge, brown frame skulked out from behind the dumpster; his top lip curled up from his canines. Rhett threw the vamp down to the ground, and although he struggled a little, he was no match for Sabel. He had decapitated the leech before Vaile even had a chance to get the girl away. With any luck, the high she was still riding would have fogged her little Goth mind up enough that she wouldn’t remember any of it. When Rhett turned back to check on Sabel’s progress, he was sitting on his haunches, cleaning his paws. The vampire’s face was still twitching—baring its fangs and hissing—but its body remained still. Pulling a knife from the small of his back, Rhett cut open the vamp’s chest cavity and took out its heart.

The body began to flake away soon after, the cold air swirling through the backstreet and picking it up in one, powerful gust. ‘Let’s get back home,’ Vaile said, returning from leaving the girl somewhere she’d be seen soon. If she talked about what had happened to her, nobody was going to believe her. Vampires weren’t real, right?

After retrieving Sabel’s clothes from the alleyway he’d changed in, they piled into Rhett’s Jetta and drove back to the farmhouse.

Nox’s feral diamond eyes swept over the street he’d tracked the half blood to once more. From his vantage point, he could see the entire length of the main street of this hell forsaken human city. He sucked in a hiss when the tattoo that ran along his chest, back and neck burned with his queen’s need. The blood bond he’d submitted to made his blood heat with her desires to suck and fuck, calling him to her—tormenting him because he couldn’t leave yet. His cock hardened with her need for sexual gratification, but he had to ignore it. He had been tracking the half blood—this abomination of the species—for too long. He needed to end her parasitic life before he could return to the sithen and his queen.

The cold wind whipped past his still form perched on the edge of the roof as the first snowflakes of the season fell around him. His hunger stabbed at him like a rusty knife in his gut, making his fangs ache and his bloodlust bubble dangerously close to the surface. He hadn’t fed properly in three months now. He’d held out for as long as he could, but a couple of nights ago his need to feed had won over.

He’d found a Goth bar named “The Imp and Impaler.” It was tacky as fuck, but there were a lot of Renfields willing to believe that he was only pretending to be a vampire until his fangs pierced their skin. The little mind-fuck after made them forget he had even been there.

The only drawback to feeding on humans was that too much of their blood weakened him, and he had gorged himself when he really shouldn’t have. Their blood was still in his system, dulling his abilities like a strung-out junkie. Out of habit, he touched the throwing knives that criss-crossed his chest, fingering the handle of one of them softly. A soft curse carried on the wind brought his attention back to the street below. Another icy gust blew up into his nostrils and he caught the scent––the scent he had been tracking for so long. It was the scent of the half blood.

*

Indi’s boots pounded against the pavement as she walked back towards her apartment after waving Beth off in her father’s Mercedes. Beth had wanted to drive her home, but she’d received another check-up call and a hurry-up text message from her mother while in the store. Beth’s mother would start foaming at the mouth if she was late, so Indi sent her on her way reassuring her that she would be okay on her own.

Rounding a corner, a blast of arctic air seized her muscles, forcing her to hug her arms around her torso a little more securely. She cursed, watching the first snow of the season fall softly to the ground around her and melt.

Darkness arced over Indi’s head, stretching its long fingers over her skin as she passed under the huge rail bridge that marked the entrance to Hell. The welcome mat of used syringes and broken liquor bottles littered the gutters, adding to the overall feeling of revulsion that prickled over Indi’s skin every time she went home.

Walking further and further down the dark streets, whispers of drugs deals and sexual favours were exchanged in the shadows between the buildings. The already dark shadows that lurked at the mouths of the alleyways shifted as she walked by; retreating deeper into the black maws that spawned sex and drug overdoses.

Indi’s fighting instincts kicked up a notch when she heard a popping noise coming from down one of the backstreets. Glancing around the corner of the alleyway, she saw the lick of flame from a barrel fire about half way down the length of the dank space; four vagrants were huddled around the warmth from the fire. She walked past them without any of them noticing.

Her steps faltered when a familiar sensation suddenly crept up on her, flushing her skin with goose bumps. She was being watched, and it was the same person who had been watching her since she moved into Hell. She ground her teeth together, agitated that she hadn’t figured out who it was and why they were going all Neighbourhood Watch on her. She spun around, searching the darkness through slitted eyes. A shadow shifted nervously about twenty feet away from her, straightening her back, sending an insignificant lick of fear up her spine and dumping adrenaline into her veins.

Without taking her eyes off the threat, she reached down for her knife, unclipping the metal snap and pulling on the handle. Holding the knife in front of her, she moved with stealthy grace towards the shivering shadow that had just slipped back into the darkness. Closing in soundlessly, quiet murmurs trickled out from the inky alleyway. She skirted a little closer to the entrance, peering around the corner to see a hooker with a john exchanging cash.

‘What do you want?’ the whore asked, blowing out a pink bubble from the gum in her mouth as she stuffed the green down into her bra.

Looking at her chest, the john licked his lips and said, ‘A rim job.’ The whore nodded and began unbuttoning his pants. He moaned and that was just about as much as Indi was willing to see. Turning on her heel, she walked away quickly, tucking the blade back into the sheath at her ankle. It was only when she stood up again that the familiar pain skewered through her entire body.

‘Not again,’ she groaned, dropping to the ground. She didn’t know why, but she’d recently started having attacks where she blacked out for a few minutes at a time. Right on cue, the edges of her vision grew dim and fuzzy. Shooting pain ricocheted around her body until she was reduced to a mess on the footpath, curled up in the foetal position. Every inch of her body was on fire like she’d had acid poured into her bloodstream.

For two long minutes she barely held onto consciousness as the agony travelled up and over her head in a searing wash of pain, her whole body aching with the torment. Another minute passed before the pounding began to recede. Every muscle and bone in her body throbbed, rendering her immobile. She swallowed down convulsively on the vomit that was threatening to come up her throat, hating what was coming next. Her eyelids grew heavy, drawing down over her eyes against her will until finally darkness swallowed her vision.

With a gasp, she came around suddenly. Her heart was tachy as she blinked the last of the darkness away, her teeth chattering violently. While she’d been out, winter’s bitterly cold fingers had wrapped around her, seeking out her exposed skin to steal her warmth. Her hearing was fuzzy, like her ears had been packed with cotton wool. Her body was reacting to a threat she was yet to realise was there; her heart hammering against her ribs as the sound of pounding footsteps registered through the black haze of her subconscious.

‘Fuck,’ she muttered. This was the last thing she needed, being laid out like some goddamn sacrificial offering. Her body was aching to the point where tears had started creeping from the corners of her eyes, debilitating her and leaving her armed yet defenceless.

‘Are you alright?’ a deep voice asked above her head. The hairs on her neck stood on end. She strained to see the man’s face; his features in shadows until a car sped by hastily—its headlights swinging onto his face like a strobe light. He was an ordinary looking man with a shock of oily-black hair and a pair of dark, brown eyes. He could have been anyone, but anyone walking around the streets of Hell after dark was not the kind of person you wanted to meet.

Her mind automatically skittered back to the news report she’d seen earlier that night. Could she be staring into the face of the Buxton rapist? It was possible. The most successful predators didn’t even look like they wanted to eat you alive until their jaws were around your jugular. She swallowed. Hard. She wanted to move, but her body protested painfully. As he crouched beside her, the heat from his body pushed against her skin.

‘I’m fine. Just don’t touch me,’ she said, trying to keep her voice even. She didn’t know how much longer the pain was going to go on for. She just hoped that it wouldn’t end up getting her killed. While she waited, she looked over the threat, taking stock of his potential weaknesses. He was probably a good five inches taller than her, built like Rhett through the shoulders, but much more solid around the midsection. She couldn’t see a weapon, but that didn’t mean that there wasn’t one. Underestimating your enemy was a sure way to get killed. She was just hoping that he was underestimating her.

The aching roll of pain stopped as suddenly as it started and she jumped up unsteadily, palming her knife and concealing it behind her thigh.