Eve Langlais - Toxic

“Run,” I gasped, some stupid sentimental part of me not willing to see him killed.

“Shh, it’s okay.” He stayed on his knees as he checked me, shining a pen light into my eyes and palpating me for injury.

“I’m healing,” I grumbled as I struggled to sit, hard to do with his surprisingly strong hands holding me down.

“You need blood,” Rafe replied in a tight voice.

“My people will have emergency blood bags in the van. Have they secured the daemons?”

Rafe looked away from me. “Um, well, see-.”

His explanation was cut off by the shouts of my people as they poured into the area and surrounded the daemon which I could now clearly see as my body healed the damage. The black beast lay on the ground, a hole from its side pouring blood. Only the gentle rise of its chest let me know it lived. Of the other daemon, only a black sludge remained. Someone or something had killed it and I wished I could take the credit.

I frowned. Wait, if they just arrived then who saved me? I looked at my benign doctor with suspicious eyes. Dressed in black and definitely not carrying a sword, he obviously wasn’t the blurry white figure I’d seen saving my ass. Then again, given my mental state at the time, I could have possibly hallucinated.

Questions would have to wait. I had more important things to deal with. I picked myself off the ground and brushed off the dirt as I gave my crew directions for taking in the daemon. A big fucking bastard compared to the punier ones we’d fought with before. I hoped it wasn’t a harbinger of the hordes to come. If I, one of the stronger more vicious vampires, couldn’t handle one of them alone, then how would the puny humans fight them?

I hoped that Rafe would find the answers. Find a way to save us all from the sure death approaching. And if he didn’t, then just maybe I would take the pleasure to be found with the good doctor before the daemonic hordes arrived.

We put the daemon in the wine cellar, the thick stone great against possible scrying and mind games. The chains I’d had installed as a just-in-case were sturdy enough to hold the creature. The magical wards the witches set around the place were added as an extra precaution. And for a last security measure, tubes from a pair of IV drips were inserted into its arms. All of the action was being monitored from a control room lined in lead. At my signal, those who manned the drip would either crank up the tranquilizers on the left or the undiluted cyanide on the right. We weren’t sure the cyanide would work, but I was willing to try anything.

I stood across the room, my hand on my dagger in case I needed to go medieval on the daemon’s ass. In other words decapitate it. All the precautions in the world didn’t mean squat if the daemon was more powerful than we expected.

Rafe walked around the still slumbering daemon, measuring and taking notes. I’d had time while we drove back to think-me on my bike and him in the van with the daemon which he found more fascinating than me. I narrowed my eyes as I watched Rafe at work.

Something or someone had helped me when I’d lost the upper hand to the daemons. It still galled me that I’d needed help in the first place. Losing did not sit well with me, and I vowed to go on a feeding binge to increase my strength. But I put thoughts of a more rigorous feeding regime aside to return to the fact that my team weren’t the ones to save me from the daemons. Everything pointed-illogical as it seemed-to Rafe. Human doctor or something else?

I looked at him, really looked at him. He still wore the baggy clothes, but I remembered well the feel of his body against mine, and even with his bulky clothes, I recognized a body shaped by muscle, not fat. The fact he could resist my personal brand of charm, something unheard of among humans. The strength he kept displaying. How he was the only thing around when I came to after the attack. I kept staring at him, noting his glasses, one of the reasons he appeared so harmless. I acted on a theory.

Quicker than the human eye could follow, I swiped his lenses and dropped them onto the floor. My feet, encased in shitkicker boots, ground them into shards and bent metal. “Oops,” I said.

Rafe’s lips tightened and his eyes flashed, not with anger, but with light. Now that definitely wasn’t a reflection off his glasses that time.

“What did you do that for?” he asked.

“You don’t need them,” I stated baldly.

He rubbed the bridge of his nose and sighed.

“What? Aren’t you going to deny it?” I taunted.

“No, you’re right. I don’t.”

I couldn’t believe he so readily admitted the ruse. “So, why the disguise?”

“Would you believe people tend to take me more seriously with them?” He gazed at me, and, without the barrier of his lenses, I got the full impact of his eyes. It took my breath away and I found myself unable to look away. Sure, I’d found him handsome before, but now, with his jaw hard and his eyes glinting, he was beyond delicious. He looked dangerous, and not at all the shy and awkward doctor I’d taken him for. How could I have been so blind?

I didn’t fall for his obvious lie. “Whatever you say, Clark Kent,” I quipped. “Care to tell me what else you’re hiding?”

He turned from me, but I wasn’t letting him escape that easily.

“I’m onto you,” I warned as I pressed myself up against his back. I craned on tiptoe to lick his neck. I enjoyed his shudder and felt an answering warmth flood through me.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said, his voice low and thick.

I ran my hands around his waist and up the hard planes of the stomach he hid. His body tensed and I placed a soft kiss on his nape. “Whatever,” I murmured. What started out as a teasing game for me to get him to talk or let something slip rapidly devolved into desire.

My hands brushed up over the fabric of his shirt and rubbed across the hard nubs of his nipples. His breath caught and quicker than a human could move, he’d turned and pinned me against the wall. I had a moment to see his eyes blazing with light before his lips came down hard on mine.

Unlike his previous gentle kiss, this one screamed possession, and strength. I squirmed as he ground his body against mine, liquid heat pooling in my sex. I moaned as his tongue slickly stroked mine. Never before had a man kissed me so passionately. Nor had I ever responded so wildly. I clutched at his broad shoulders through the fabric hiding them and moaned into his mouth.

I almost cried when he moved away.

“The creature wakes,” he announced. He’d slipped his usual placid face back on, but he couldn’t hide the glitter in his eyes or the gruffness of his voice. The insane attraction I had for him reciprocated.

I raised trembling fingers to my lips. Human my ass. What on earth is he? And an even better question, am I toxic to his kind?

I planned on finding out soon. Right now, though, I had an ugly snarling daemon to deal with.

“Hi handsome,” I drawled moving to stand protectively in front of Rafe. Call it instinct in case my doctor-contrary to my belief-ended up being breakable.

The daemon snarled at me, its fangs dripping and its eyes glowing red.

I rolled mine in reply. “Oh, drop the theatrics, big boy. I’m not a gullible human. Who are you and why are you here?”

The daemon snapped its teeth. I bared mine right back. The creature’s wet, throaty chuckle, I’m ashamed to say, made shivers dance up my spine, and not the good kind. “What are you?” he asked in a scratchy voice pleasant like nails on a chalkboard.

I winced. “Ooh, I’d hate to hear you singing Christmas carols. As for what I am, I am a vampire and unlike the humans, I won’t be pushed around. So start talking.”