Elle Jasper - Darklove

My mind is jumbled. Eli, the woman. She’s a vampire. I know that now. The Hush 51 patrons. Priority seizes my brain, and I push vampires out of my thoughts.

I focus on the human crowd.

Stop!

As if I’d pushed the PAUSE button on a DVD remote, everyone stops in their tracks. I waste no time in hurrying to the front doors. I kick open the props so they both stand wide. After a brief scan of the sidewalk and street, I notice people there have stopped, too. Amazing what a panicky human with tendencies can accomplish.

I run back inside, weaving through the stone-still patrons. Noah’s standing there, right where I left him. Not moving.

Oops.

I grasp his hand, and catch his gaze. Let’s go. I say that only to Noah.

His eyes immediately brighten, and then he scowls. “Yes, ma’am.” He leads the way out of Hush 51, and once we’re back outside, I glance at the patrons behind me, standing in a building that might not be so stable.

Everyone, fall into two single files and walk calmly out through the front doors.

As if a bunch of zombies being commanded by a voodoo priestess, the patrons all fall into two lines inside the club. Slowly, they start moving outside. I see now that they’re not running one another over, stampede-style, so I grasp Noah’s hand and pull.

“Let’s go,” I say.

Now he’s in front of me, pulling me by the hand. “Pretty impressive, Poe,” he says as we run side by side up the street, toward the river walk. “Not even sure I can pull something like that off.” He grins and faces the street. “Human shenanigans never cease to amaze me.”

We’re running down High Street now, and it’s a no-traffic, pedestrian-only road. Most of the businesses are closed for the night, but the streetlights illuminate the paved sidewalks, and the occasional open storefront beams its light’s hue, causing shadows to stretch from sidewalk to sidewalk. The road itself is cobbled, not as old as Edinburgh, I imagine, but still pretty damn old. I’m barely paying any attention to Noah’s comment as we hurry along. I’ve now got only one thing on my mind. Well, two.

Eli and that female vampire.

Who the hell was she? And why does it matter so much to her to see me suffer?

No words are spoken between me and Noah, yet we both know each other so well we’re simultaneously searching the streets, the shadows, for Eli and the female. I home in on movements, too. Shifts in the air. Off-key sound waves that belong to neither a rat, nor a human, nor a hedgehog. I sense nothing.

Not at first.

My mind is working so hard, trying to sense and make sense of what’s just happened, that I now realize we’re at the curving walkway of the river Ness. I stop and stare into the water, its black depths glimmering with shards of light casting down from the streetlamps holding my gaze as I try to ignore the images of Eli embracing, kissing the female. Pain sears my insides. I feel as if someone a lot larger and stronger than me has sucker-punched me in the gut. I physically hurt. It almost doubles me over. I can’t hear anything right now except the cries of my own self–pity party.

“Hey,” Noah says, and he drapes his arm over my shoulders and pulls me against him. His body is hard, not so warm, but not so cold, either. Kinda like Eli’s. It’s weird, getting used to that lukewarm skin. I can feel it through Noah’s clothes, even. Yet I take full comfort in it right now. I slip my arms around his waist and lay my head against his rock of a chest. “Don’t beat yourself up, Poe. Even I was overpowered.” He squeezes me. “That’s one strong bitch. Must be old as dirt.”

I lean back and look at him. “Do you think she’s controlling Eli?”

Noah’s jaw tightens. His eyes are murky in the shadows of the river. “I’m not convinced of that, darlin’. I wish I was.” He sighs and crosses his arms over his chest. “She rendered me powerless back there, along with you. When you stopped, I stopped.” He sighs. “But I could still see. Still hear. Still understand. And what I saw?” I look at him, and he looks down at me and shakes his head. “Damn, Riley. The grin on Dupré’s face, that look in his eye? Even gave me the fucking chills. She’s sick powerful if she can control you, me, and Eli, all at once.”

A wind gusts by, and it strikes my face and makes me squint. It’s chilly, maybe midthirties. I’m not uncomfortable, but I do notice the temperature. Sometimes I miss it, that very humanlike sensation of being frigidly cold and needing to bundle up and stamp my feet for warmth. Miss the absolute hell out of it.

“Something’s wrong, though,” Noah says out of the blue. “I can’t put a finger on it. But I feel like there’s something we’re not seeing.”

“With Eli?” I ask.

He glances at me. “With all of it.” He grabs me gently by my jaw, forcing me to hold his gaze. “I’ve not been dead so long that I don’t remember what it feels like to have your heart trudged on. Even if Dupré is being controlled by that bitch, it still pisses me off. And I’m sorry you have to suffer it. You’ve not been yourself since Edinburgh. Since it happened.” He pulls my face closer, lowers his almost until our noses touch. “I miss the old, sarcastic, mean-ass, smart-ass Riley Poe.”

I miss her, too. It’s something that I just can’t seem to help, though. Everything is darker now, since Edinburgh. Ugly dark. Coming from me, that’s bad, because I’ve seen the shittiest, ugliest dark there is. This tops it. But maybe I’ve let it get to me. In a way I shouldn’t have, I mean. Maybe that’s part of what’s blocking my abilities. I’m so blinded by grief and fury that I’m not using the extent of my tendencies. It’s why that female was able to control me so thoroughly.

Maybe Noah Miles is onto something.

He grins, still obscenely close to my face.

“How come you’ve not even once pulled that satchel off your neck and tried to seduce me?” I ask jokingly. I narrow my gaze and wait for Noah’s wiseass answer.

Instead, he widens his smile, turns my face loose, and fishes out his iPhone. After a few taps, he flips it around and lowers it. My eyes scan the picture fastened there.

Me. Noah. My mouth latched on to his, sucking his face off.

Then it hits me. I remember. The forest, after I’d dragged Eli and Vic out of the realm. Noah had used his oversensual vampire pheromones to lure me back to reality.

He’d saved my life by doing it.

Still. I glare at him, and punch him in the stomach. “Asshole. You had to take a pic of that?” I punch him again. Harder. “You literally took the time to take a pic? I was out of my mind.”

“Ow,” Noah says, ridiculously clutching his stomach. As if that had hurt him. “You don’t sincerely think I’d pass up a photo op like that, do you?”

“Give me that,” I say, and reach for it. He snatches it back. Lifts it out of my reach.

“Oh, hell no, Ms. Poe. Not on your life.” He grins and stuffs his iPhone deep into his pocket. “Technology is a wonderful thing. And I’ve saved it to my hard drive, so stop fretting about deleting it off my cell—”

A sound distracts me, and I hold up my hand to silence Noah. He’s listening now, too, and through the chilled night air, we both strain. I concentrate, breathe deeply, opening my senses. Closing my eyes, I zone out everything and envision my ear canal as a megaphone, siphoning all abstract noises and sharpening them. At once, I snap my gaze beyond the city lights. Up the river and higher. I strain so hard it almost hurts. Then I hear it. The slightest of sounds. It’s a groggy, faint groan. Female.

Human.

And it’s not a groan of pleasure.