Trish Milburn: Out of the Night

Though it didn’t seem possible, the woman’s eyes grew even wider. She tried to scoot backward, as if she could ever move fast enough to get away from even the weakest vampire. Even so, he saw her scan her surroundings for a weapon. She might be human, but she was a fighter. But she must be injured, because she winced and drew in a sharp breath. The animal in him stirred again, instinct pushing him to dive on the injured prey.

He forced himself to refocus his gaze on Sophia. The young African-American woman, the team member with the softest heart, held up her hands, palms out. “You’re okay. None of the rest of us has your blood type. And Campbell is under control.”

If he weren’t aware of every heartbeat in the woman’s chest, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to tell she was breathing. It was as if she’d forgotten how, as if she’d been frozen by a fear so intense that even her body’s fight-or-flight response had ceased to function. He strained against the cuffs, and his fangs ached with the need to descend.

“I need to feed,” Campbell said past his gritted teeth, his voice gravelly and deeper than normal.

Kaja sauntered into his line of sight. “Well, you’re not feeding from her.”

“Blood bank. Now.”

Sophia eased toward the woman, talking to her in soothing tones that grated on Campbell’s nerves. “Shh, it’s okay. I swear no one here will hurt you. We just want to get you to safety.”

The woman made a final attempt to scramble away, grabbing a discarded beer bottle to defend herself, and Sophia let her. She made no sudden moves. She’d probably been a damn fine nurse before she’d lost that life forever, the queen of bedside manner.

A little cry escaped the woman again, as if she’d hurt whatever injury she’d sustained. Sophia smiled at her, and with her fangs hidden she looked just like any other normal human woman.

Sophia stood, lifting the woman to her feet with next to no effort. “We need to get this one home before any more of the less-than-desirables crawl out of the muck.”

Campbell’s body vibrated with need, as if a raging fire were about to consume him, as if giant metal claws were raking at him from the inside out. “Blood blank. Now!” he repeated, with more force this time. He had no idea what he sounded like to the woman or the rest of the team, but inside his head his voice sounded like a lion’s roar.

“Okay, Thirsty McThirsty,” Colin said. “Don’t get your knickers in a bunch.”

Team 2 of V Force pulled up to transport the arrested vamps to Detention, leaving Campbell’s team free to take the human woman home and him to the blood bank.

Despite the hated instinct within him, Campbell didn’t fight as the guys dragged him back to the truck, tossed him inside and used his cuffs to lock him to one of the thick metal rings on the wall. He concentrated on slowing his breathing. Vampires didn’t have to breathe anymore, but old habits died hard.

He might not have struggled, but the human woman remembered she should as Sophia and Kaja pushed her inside the truck. The woman brandished the bottle as if it would do her any good, even after the back door latched and any tiny hope for escape was extinguished.

“Please, let me go.” The panic in her voice only served to toss more fuel on the fire within him, making him want to take her vein even more, to drink from her until there was nothing left and she was no more than an empty shell.

And the sane part of him loathed himself for that thought and for how he strained against the cuffs.

“We can’t do that,” Sophia said. “It’s more dangerous out there than in here, trust me.”

Campbell almost laughed. How in the world did Sophia expect a human to trust a vampire when vampires looked at humans and saw lunch? When all vampires were little more than single-minded beasts when they weren’t well fed?

He saw the woman’s lean muscles bunch as if she was going to bolt for the door. He growled and stared hard at her, then roared a single command. “Stop!”

She froze, an animal caught in the crosshairs of her most feared predator, her eyes so wide that he could see white all the way around her irises. With his vision still tinged with red, he couldn’t tell what color they were. He forced himself to take a long, deep breath before he spoke again, reminding himself that he was more than an animal bent on slaking his thirst with no regard for the cost.

“The sooner I can feed, the sooner you get to go home.” He was never, ever going to let himself get this hungry again.

Though he told himself to stop looking at her, to stop staring at his biggest temptation, he couldn’t. And it wasn’t just because of the bloodlust scorching his entire body. Enough of the man who lived side by side with the vampire was present to suddenly realize she was beautiful as only a living, breathing woman with color in her cheeks could be. He wondered how much more beautiful she might be if she weren’t scared to within an inch of her life.

Scared of him.

Sophia tried to soothe the woman by patting her lower arm, but she flinched and scooted as far away on the bench seat as she possibly could. He wouldn’t put it past her to start clawing at the thick metal of the back door in an attempt to get away. If the tables were turned, he’d do the same thing.

But they weren’t. No matter how much he might want it to be otherwise, there was no going back. Like every other vampire roaming the world, he had exactly two choices—remain a vampire for eternity and deal with all that entailed or end his existence forever. Most days he lived with what he was without much second thought because he told himself he was still doing good in the world, protecting the members of the species he’d once called his own.

And then there were the other days, the ones when he wanted to take out as many vampires as he could before ending himself once and for all.

With more effort than he would’ve liked to admit, he ripped his gaze from hers and forced himself to stare at the floor between his feet. He stared so hard that he wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if the metal had started to melt, allowing him to see the surface of the street below.

A street he’d once patrolled as part of the NYPD back when he was human. Before the Bokor virus began its rapid spread in Haiti. Back when a beautiful woman would have generated a much different reaction from him.

* * *

Olivia didn’t dare breathe as the vampire driver raced through the dark streets of New York. She didn’t want to do anything to draw any more attention to herself. Instead she tried to focus on the sliver of the outside world she could see through the windshield. Buildings slid by in an inky blur.

Not so many years ago, covering this much ground so quickly wouldn’t have been possible. Back then, honking cabs, people on bicycles and countless pedestrians would have filled the night with activity. Amazing what a 75 percent decrease in the population and deadly predators roaming the streets could do for gridlock.

When nausea threatened, she ripped her gaze from the window. It landed on the big vampire who’d attacked her. Thank God he’d stopped looking at her as if she were a fat juicy steak. Now he kept his head down, seeming to stare a hole in the floor of the armored truck. Even confined, he radiated power. He frightened every inch of her, but there was a scary magnetism about him, too. The kind that made you do crazy things against your better judgment. As she stared at his big hard body, she got the oddest feeling he was feeling guilty. Something about the way his shoulders hung off his large frame.

But that was crazy, wasn’t it? Could vampires even feel human emotions such as guilt? She considered how the female had approached her carefully and with empathy in her expression. Olivia dared to close her eyes. The more she thought, the more confused she grew.