Trish Milburn: Out of the Night

She’d heard the stories about the vampires’ black market. Part of her had wondered if they were true or simply a product of fearful minds. As she stared the possibility of becoming a blood slave in the face, she no longer doubted.

She’d rather be bled dry and left in the street than endure what they no doubt had planned for her. At least then it’d be over in a matter of moments. Her agony wouldn’t be stretched out possibly for the rest of her natural life.

She kicked and wriggled, scratched and screamed against the viselike grips of her two abductors. She had to get away somehow, and she racked her brain for some miracle of a solution.

“I’ll donate more blood. Just please let me go.”

One of the vamps laughed at her, and she had the impression that his breath would be hot and foul if he were still alive.

“Why would we do that when you’re our ticket to a life of leisure?”

She bucked like a wild horse determined to be free. Though it likely made no difference, she clawed at the vampires’ cold skin and did her best to kick them. She would fight until her last breath. If she died tonight, she wasn’t going quietly or easily.

“Let me go!” she screamed, then spit at the taller of the two vamps. She eyed his mouth and imagined head-butting him so hard his fangs would fall out.

One of the vamps clamped down harder on her arm, causing her to scream. She’d swear her bone was on the verge of breaking.

“Stop making so much damn noise,” he said.

That was when she noticed dark shapes coming out of the alleyways, more vampires who’d scented her and planned to take her off her abductors’ hands for their own profit—or their dinner. God, she was going to be the prize in a vampire fight.

Despite the white-hot pain in her arm, she struggled even more, desperate to get loose, to run as fast as her feet would carry her while these vamps fought over her. She jerked her body, writhed like a snake, made every movement she thought might make even the slightest difference in the state of her capture. Panic welled in her so much that she feared her heart would simply burst with it.

“See what you’ve done,” the bigger of her two captors said with disgust.

He tossed her aside so quickly that she didn’t have time to process that she was free before her back slammed into something hard and unyielding. She cried out as she realized she’d hit a fire hydrant. She tried to draw in a breath, but the pain caused her to stop and her eyesight threatened to abandon her. Pain radiated out from the spot on her back where she’d hit. Her vision blurred so much that she had to close her eyes to keep from vomiting. If she’d broken any bones, that would lessen the minuscule likelihood that she could slip away while the vampires fought among themselves.

She swallowed and tasted the salty, coppery taste of blood. She must have bitten her lip or the inside of her mouth in the struggle. Her stomach revolted at the idea of swallowing blood. The very idea of being turned frightened her a million times more than being killed. Being like these beasts, feeding on the lives of humans, was a horror beyond comprehension.

She did her best to take slow, deep breaths and blinked to clear her vision. Neither tactic was working very well, and she couldn’t get her body to obey her mind’s command to get up and move.

The sound of brakes, slamming doors and boots on pavement broke into the melee of curses and rock-hard fists doing battle. Her brain must have been rattled loose, because she’d swear black-clad soldiers had jumped into the fray.

She watched as they broke apart the warring parties as if they were separating snapping dogs, only to be jumped by even more. Grunts and the thuds of fists hitting flesh rose up out of the melee. The vamps reminded her of an anthill with an endless line of ants filing out of the darkness. Or maybe she was seeing double or triple.

A tall blond guy wrenched the hands of a smaller vamp behind his back and slapped handcuffs on him. She squinted, wondering if she was really seeing what she thought she was. How could handcuffs possibly hold a vampire?

Why was she sitting here asking herself questions when now might be her only chance to get away and find safety? It’d take a miracle, but she had to try. She winced as she finally dragged herself to her feet and attempted to run, only to realize her ankle had gotten badly twisted sometime during her struggle. Still, she moved as fast as she could, biting her lip against the pain so hard she drew more blood. Even if her foot came off, she was going to keep running.

“Campbell, no!”

Olivia heard the woman’s voice on the cold wind a moment before another iron grip latched on to her arm. The vamp spun her toward him.

She thought she’d known fear before. But that was before she’d stared into the red eyes of a vampire in the unrelenting grip of bloodlust.

Campbell shook with the effort not to bite the woman in his grasp, to not totally give in to the vampire. To the outside world, he would appear to be nothing but a vampire, but he stubbornly held on to the scrap of humanity he still possessed. Though it was never harder than at moments like this, when the animal inside him roared with need and threatened to wipe out the man he’d been once and for all.

He pressed his teeth together, his fangs digging into his lip, as he tried to focus on the sound of his team’s voices, on the expression of abject terror on the woman’s face. He could tell she knew in the deepest part of her instinct that she was about to die. He was her worst nightmare, the worst nightmare of all of humanity.

Saliva pooled in his mouth. He could already taste her, imagine the sweet, warm richness of her blood as it coursed over his tongue, filling him with the closest thing to life he’d ever have again. He leaned toward the racing pulse in her neck, losing the battle with himself.

Len and Colin yanked him backward with all their strength, and Billy snapped a pair of blessed cuffs on his wrists behind his back. He growled and jerked against them as his fangs retracted, anger hammering inside him that he’d been denied the thing he desired most. His eyes met those of the woman whose body held what he needed. The thought that he’d never seen eyes that wide managed to push its way through all the ones based on pure instinct that said simply, “Take. Feed.”

If he’d been alone, she’d be dead. And he’d be no better than the Soulless vampires who never gave the miracle of life a second thought.

“Damn, Camp,” Colin said next to him. “Why the hell didn’t you tell us you were so far gone?”

He said nothing. Too much of the animal still had possession of him. He wasn’t sure he could form human words if he tried. Instead he concentrated on taking slow, unnecessary breaths.

Gradually his bloodlust dimmed. The red tint to everything didn’t disappear, but it lessened enough for him to feel marginally sane. He became more aware of the stares of his team and the harsh reality that he’d failed them by going out when he was too close to the edge. If he’d killed the woman, they would have had no choice but to eliminate him, friend or not. And the way things were going lately, V Force couldn’t afford to lose anyone. They needed boots on the ground to combat the rising tide of vampire crime, to keep humans safe from the blood slavers—for everyone’s sake. Each person lost to a slaver was one less who could donate to the blood banks. One less person available to help rebuild the human population, to live a life now denied to vampires like Campbell.

Sophia stooped next to where the woman had fallen onto the sidewalk when he’d been jerked away from her. “Are you okay?”