Trish Milburn: Out of the Night

“Why were you out on the street?”

Olivia jerked at the question and redirected her attention to the petite dark-skinned woman who sat across from her, the one who’d approached her before. Despite those spooky pale blue eyes, she looked...kind. She’d done nothing so far to indicate she planned to cause Olivia any harm, had sworn the exact opposite. Olivia found herself wondering about the woman she’d been before she’d been turned. Was she a recent turn or had she been walking the earth for hundreds of years? You could never tell a vampire’s age by looking at them. Strange as it might seem, that was one of the creepiest things about vampires, the end of aging. It seemed even more unnatural than the thirst for blood.

Whether it was nerves, insanity, a need to fill the tense quiet or even an insane sense that this vampire wasn’t so bad, Olivia found herself answering the other woman’s question. “I... Someone stole my car, and I couldn’t find shelter.”

“What kind?” The question came from the dark-haired guy who rode in the front passenger seat. He caught her gaze in the rearview mirror. “Your car, what kind is it?”

Olivia felt as if she’d fallen into a darker and creepier version of Oz. “A silver Versa.”

“Get me the VIN and we’ll look for it.”

Olivia simply stared at the back of the guy’s head, wondering if maybe she was having the world’s weirdest nightmare. Why would a vampire care anything about her missing car?

“Travis is good at finding stolen stuff,” said the vampire sitting next to the woman who’d been talking to her. He looked maybe twenty with blond hair down to his chin. Before the world went to hell, she could imagine seeing him performing tricks at a skate park. Now he was an animal just like the rest of them, no matter how harmless he looked.

“I think I have it at home,” she finally managed to say in answer to the other vamp’s request.

The driver, a tall guy with curly dark blond hair, pulled over onto the side of the street. He glanced back at the five vampires in the back with her. “I don’t want to go any closer,” he said, then nodded toward Olivia. “Not with living, breathing AB-neg in the truck.”

The big blue-collar-looking guy in the back who hadn’t spoken yet nodded. He and the tall, stunning brunette unlocked the hungry vampire. Olivia shrank against the wall, wishing she could fade into it, as they guided him out. He met her eyes, and for a moment the fact that he was a vampire faded and she saw the man he’d been before. A gorgeous man with dark hair and a toned, sculpted body who made something stir in her that had been dormant so long she’d assumed it was dead. Her reaction frightened and fascinated her at the same time.

He glanced over his shoulder. “Take her home.”

The authority in his voice brooked no argument and left no doubt who was in charge of this odd band of vampires. Nothing about tonight made sense, but she was still alive and for that she was immeasurably thankful. Even if it made no sense that she had vampires to thank for that fact.

Her attacker’s eyes met hers again, stared so deeply she had to force herself not to squirm. “I’m sorry,” he said.

She couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d admitted to being Dracula.

* * *

By the time Kaja and Len dragged Campbell into the blood bank, his veins felt like a lit fuse. When some of the curses from the vampires waiting their turn to feed made it past the haze covering his brain, he turned his head toward them and growled. If he hadn’t been cuffed, he would have bared his fangs, perhaps ripped out a few throats.

Len jerked him toward the door to the back and Kaja pushed him from behind. Once they got him inside the feeding room, they shoved him down in a chair and held him there. He shot every vile word he knew at them.

Kaja slapped him on the back of his head. “Behave yourself, potty mouth. You’re the one who allowed yourself to get in this state.”

He bit down on another curse because despite how far gone he was he realized she was right. He was so dangerous at the moment, in fact, that it wasn’t one of the nurses who came in but Ethan Ferris.

“Hey, Doc,” Len said. “We’ve got a hungry moron for you.”

“So I see. And I’m not a doctor.” He’d said the same thing to the various members of V Force’s Team 1 a thousand times if he’d said it once, but for some reason Len and Colin refused to call Ethan anything else. Though he had been on the verge of getting his medical degree when he’d been turned.

Ethan went to a refrigerator in the corner and pulled out three bags of blood. “We’re running low on AB-neg, but I think we have enough to give you a full feeding.”

The moment Kaja uncuffed him, Campbell grabbed the first two bags and downed them in a handful of gulps. The red clouding his vision began to lessen.

The radios hanging from Len’s and Kaja’s belts crackled to life.

“Guys, we just got a call about the movement of a blood slave,” Colin said.

Campbell started to stand, but Ethan pushed him back down. “Oh, no, you don’t. You still need more before I’m letting you out of here.”

Campbell met Len’s gaze. “Go, both of you. I’ll catch up.”

They didn’t look convinced that was a good idea.

“That’s an order.”

Ethan motioned that it was okay, so Len and Kaja hurried out the door.

“Don’t let the bastards get away!” Campbell yelled after them.

It was all he could do to sit still long enough to feed. Ethan, being a smart man, didn’t comment on his agitation or the fact that he’d made a colossal mistake in letting himself get so hungry.

When he finally sated his craving, draining a good half of the blood bank’s AB-negative supply, Campbell stood and pitched the last empty blood bag in the trash. He shook the kinks out of his arms and rotated his wrists where the cuffs had dug into his skin as he’d pulled against them. Renewed power surged through him, and new urges took over—to fight and have sex, but not with the same person.

A picture of the woman he’d nearly killed popped into his head, quickly followed by an image of pushing her against a wall and having hot, sweaty sex with her. He’d always had a healthy sex drive, but when he’d been turned, it had ratcheted up a few hundred notches. Seemed that was part of the vampire prize pack.

So the last thing he needed to do was be anywhere near a human woman, one he could break in half with two fingers. Humans were too fragile. He’d seen that firsthand, beginning on the night he was turned.

With a curse, he stalked toward the door.

“You okay?” Ethan asked.

“Peachy.”

Ethan gave him a disbelieving look.

“Nothing some ass-kicking won’t cure.”

That and shoving those long-ago memories of Bridget Jameson back down to the dark depths of his brain where they belonged.

Olivia held on to one of the metal rings on the truck’s wall as Colin, the vampires’ driver, careened around a corner.

“Sorry, looks as if it’ll be a little longer than we anticipated before we can take you home,” the female vampire said.

She’d heard the others call the vampire woman Sophia. The other female was Kaja, and she looked familiar for some reason.

“Just let me out anywhere,” Olivia said, about at the end of what her nerves could take.

Kaja stared at her. “Are you stupid?”

“Kaja!” Sophia gave her a scolding stare.

“Well, she can’t be that bright if we save her from the streets crawling with vampires and she wants to go right back to that.”

“You’re vampires,” Olivia said, wondering if maybe she was indeed stupid the moment after the words left her mouth.