Blood Betrayal (Deathless Night Series Book 4) Read online

  Staying low within the trees, he ran towards her voice. His passage was completely silent, not even a crackling leaf giving any indication that he was there. When he arrived where she was, the scene spread out before him left no room for thought as to what he would have to do.

  Vampires surrounded his female. They were hurting her. And they were about to die.

  Taking out the two bystanders, he was about to pull the other one off of her when he popped up off the ground with her. He barely heard what he was saying, the buzzing in his head was so loud. Christian said something back to him. The vampire mauled her breast. And Christian lost it.

  A red haze slammed down over Christian’s vision as he watched the dark-skinned vampire rip into the girl’s throat. So red, the color of her freshly flowing blood blended with the color of her shirt, forming nothing more than a wet stain.

  With a roar of agony, he tore the young vampire off of her and threw him off to the side. Catching the girl before she hit the ground, he gently laid her down on the grass. Her eyes were wide with shock as they stared up at him for a brief second, and then the haze of unconsciousness crept over them and her lids closed.

  Christian was on his feet and giving chase to the bastard who had hurt her before her body had settled on the ground. Rounding the gazebo, he stopped, torn between killing the son of a bitch and helping the girl. His need for revenge warred with his instincts to stay with her as he watched the vampire run off, but he let him go. Then he hauled back his fist and punched one of the thick supports so hard his hand went completely through it. Crumpled stone drifted slowly to the ground at his feet. He didn’t feel any better.

  Returning to the girl, he knelt beside her and pulled his shirt up over his mouth and nose to try to block her blood scent somewhat. He was afraid to touch her. She was bleeding profusely from the side of her throat, and her scent was so strong his makeshift mask was no help whatsoever. His fangs ached and his throat burned as he tried to pull himself together. His body was strung so tight he felt like he would shatter if anyone touched him. He was so hungry. And he wanted her. Then he felt like a son of a bitch for even thinking those thoughts in the condition she was in. But her sweet blood was a draw he didn’t know if he could resist.

  Distinct fang punctures and large, ragged tears marked her fair skin, and the urge to replace those marks with his own bite was so strong he was reeling with it. He needed to get her to a doctor. He couldn’t handle this by himself, not without hurting her more.

  Ripping a strip off of the bottom of his shirt, he wadded it up and pressed it over the wound. Keeping one hand on the makeshift compress, he slid his other arm underneath her and gently pulled her up into a sitting position while leaning her against him for support. The fiery hair on the top of her head was soft on his jaw, and without thinking he buried his nose in it and inhaled deeply. The red haze faded from his vision as every muscle in his body responded, tightening up with need. Gods, she smelled so good. Now that he had her with him, he didn’t want to give her up.

  You can fix her.

  The thought came out of nowhere. No. He shook his head at himself. No, he needed to take her to a doctor. There had to be an emergency clinic or something around here somewhere.

  She would bleed out before then.

  No, she’d be okay. He’d make sure she was okay until he got her to a doctor. If he fixed her he’d be creating a bond between them, and he never did that. He liked clean breaks with the females he was with, and never offered them his blood. To do so would link them to him for months, for it would take that long for the bond to wear off. Of course, he’d never had a female dying in his arms before.

  Christian debated with himself, his vampire brain going over every pro and con he could possibly think of for what he was considering at a speed unreachable by humans. All of this took less than a few seconds from the time he knelt down beside her. He needed to make a decision, or she wasn’t going to be around to fret about.

  Take her to the doctor and let someone else fix her, or take matters into his own hands and do something worthwhile with this mystical blood of his. In the end, it was the thought of another man’s hands on her that decided him. Lifting his wrist to his mouth, he sank his fangs into his own vein, opening up a decent size wound. The compress fell off her neck, but she wouldn’t need it in a few seconds. He let her head fall back over his arm, and pressed his wrist to her lips. “Come on, she’ashil. Swallow for me. It’ll help you.” His life saving blood dripped into her mouth, but she was too out of it to respond. Biting his arm again, he re-opened the wound and tried again. This time, her mouth moved slightly as his life force hit her tongue. “That’s it. Drink for me. That’s it.”

  She started sucking on his arm now, moaning quietly though her eyes were still closed. Christian threw his head back as his fangs tightened, aching to sink them into her supple flesh, and his cock jerked in his jeans. He had to fight the compulsion to adjust her on his lap and slide into her tight warmth.

  She took a strong pull, and a flash bomb went off inside of him, the force of it nearly knocking him over.

  MINE.

  He needed to distract himself, so he leaned over her to check out her throat. The bleeding had stopped and the skin was fusing back together little by little. Another few seconds and she’d be good as new.

  He was so engrossed in watching his own healing powers that he didn’t notice at first that her eyes had opened. By the time he did, she was struggling in his arms, pushing his wrist away with a cry of alarm.

  “What are you doing?” she cried in English.

  He let her go, allowing her to struggle to her feet. Frantically, she wiped at her mouth with the backs of her hands and then spit out what was left in her mouth.

  Holding both hands up with his palms out in front of him, he tried to look as unthreatening as possible. He knew he must look a sight: A vampire in full blown feeding and fucking mode. He was actually surprised she hadn’t run off screaming yet. But he couldn’t help the way he responded to her, and that being what it was, she would’ve ended up seeing him like this again eventually. “It’s okay. I won’t hurt you. I swear it!” Lowering his hands he backed away a step. “Please, don’t run. Please. I won’t hurt you,” he repeated.

  “What were you doing to me?” she repeated. She was standing with her weight on the balls of her feet, her body half-turned away from him, tensed to take off at the slightest provocation.

  “I was helping you,” he told her. He kept his voice low and easy, like he was talking to a skittish animal. “My name is Christian. Christian Moore.”

  Her turquoise blue eyes swept over him from his head to his feet and back again.

  “I’m…” What? What did he say?

  I’m a vampire and I was giving you my blood to heal you after another vampire ripped your throat open.

  Somehow he didn’t think that was gonna go over very well.

  Chapter 16

  Grace set her glass down on the end table next to her chair and listened to the two sisters gabbing away on the couch. They weren’t talking about anything of consequence really, just throwing ideas around for some stuff they could do to keep busy now that they’d relocated to Seattle.

  “I really, really, don’t want to go back to accounting,” Emma told her sister. “I don’t know how I did that job for so long.”

  Besides the fact that accounting offices normally kept an 8am-5pm schedule, the girls had all transitioned to the nocturnal hours kept by their males, and there was no way, no how, any of them would let their females roam the streets of the city all day while they were confined inside until the sun went down. Their protective natures wouldn’t allow it.

  “You could start your own organizational company,” Keira suggested. “Or be a virtual assistant. Like the ones celebrities hire to keep their lives organized. You’ve always been a damn freak about stuff like that.”

  Emma laughed. “I am not!”

  “You are so! Nothing can ever
be strewn about. Everything is either in a file or a box. Even on the computer. Remember when you completely re-organized my room when I was gone that one Saturday? It took me weeks to find my Playgirl magazines that I stole off of that one bitch cheerleader at school.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t have had them anyway. Mom would’ve freaked out if she’d ever found them. I was just trying to hide them better for you.”

  “If it wasn’t for those magazines, you’d have never seen a real penis until you met Nik.”

  Emma sputtered, the sip of tea she’d just taken flying from her mouth, somewhere between being offended and laughing her ass off.

  Keira pulled her long dark hair around and started braiding it out of the way. “I’m just saying you’d be a good organizer is all. You’d just have to use virtual boxes instead of real ones.”

  The box!

  “Oh, hey!” Grace interrupted. “I like, totally forgot! Be right back.” Jumping up off her chair, she ran down to her apartment and came back less then five minutes later with the jewelry box she’d brought with her from Dalian. Plopping back down in the large chair, she handed it to Emma. “I took this from the Suits that were working with the vampires in Dalian. The ones that took Mojo.”

  Emma turned it over in her hands, tracing the symbol etched into the lid with her fingertip before handing it to Keira to look at.

  “Why would they have a jewelry box? What’s so important about it?” Keira asked. Opening the lid, she peeked inside and then promptly closed it again when she saw that it was empty.

  “I’m not sure exactly. But there’s an etching of a dagoba in the bottom, under the red felt.”

  Keira opened the box again and lifted the material from the bottom. She studied the picture for a minute before showing it to Emma.

  “What is this?” Emma asked. “A dagoba. What is that?”

  Grace held her hand out for the box. “A dagoba is like a tall tombstone. There’s a place in China called the Forest of the Dagobas of Shaolin Temple, among others. Each one is different and has a different design etched into it, depending on who the monk was that is buried there.”

  “Why would it be hidden in the bottom of a jewelry box?” Keira wondered.

  Grace shrugged. “Maybe it’s a clue?”

  “For what?” Emma curled her legs up to the side of her and tugged on the long sleeves of her light, cotton shirt.

  “I don’t know,” Grace told her. “But Brock seemed to know something about it. It was the fact that I had the box that made him realize they would be coming after me, both the humans I took it from and the vampires they were supposed to give it to. He never said anything else about it though. He was too busy canoodling with my best friend on the plane over, and before that we were running for our lives. It didn’t really come up. I’d forgotten about it until just now.”

  “We need to call the Kincaid pack,” Keira stated. “Em, will you call Cedric if I get you the number?”

  Emma frowned at her sister. “Why do I need to call him?”

  “He likes you. They all like you. You’re very likeable. And you weren’t the one that helped torture their friend for seven long years.”

  Her voice was teasing, but Grace could see the pain in her eyes at the thought of what she had done to the man she loved. She didn’t know how Keira lived with it. It had been no fault of her own, and if the tables were turned, Grace thought she would’ve done the same thing if she had a sister whose life was being threatened.

  “All right. Fine.” Emma held out her hand for the phone and waited for Keira to run to the office for the number. Taking the piece of paper, she punched in the number and tapped the screen to put it on speaker. After the fourth ring, Cedric picked up the phone.

  “What th’ hell dae ye want?” he answered in his heavy Scottish brogue. In spite of the harsh words, he sounded genuinely glad to hear from them.

  “Um, Cedric?” Emma asked in confusion. “It’s Emma.”

  “Emma! My wee lass. I’m sae sorry! I didna ken it was you.”

  She smiled. “Yeah, I figured that part out. So, I was calling to see if Brock was there? Grace has a box with her that she brought over from China, and she thinks Brock might know something about it. You’re on speakerphone by the way. Keira and Grace are here too.”

  “Och. A roomful of witchery.”

  Grace could practically see him shudder, and she exchanged an amused grin with Keira. Werewolves did not like magic. It totally spooked them.

  “It sae happens that the pup is here. I’ll get him for ya.”

  The girls listened to some shuffling of the phone, and then Brock’s deep timbre came across the line. “Grace?”

  “Hey, Brock. Is Heather there too?”

  “No, she’s back at the hotel.”

  Shortly after arriving in Seattle, Heather had had an abrupt change of heart about the guy after finding out he was, in reality, a werewolf. But Brock had followed her, and a week later, Grace had gotten a call from her friend saying she’d decided to stay here after all. She’d spoken little to her ever since, and had seen her even less. When she did talk to her best friend, however, she’d sounded ridiculously happy.

  “Oh, ok. I’ll try to call her later or something.” Keira waved the box at her and she got to the subject at hand. “So, do you remember that jewelry box? The wooden one with the strange symbol etched into the lid?”

  “Shit! The box! I’d forgotten all about it.” He became deadly serious. “Grace, you need to get rid of that thing.”

  “Um, well, I was kind of hoping you’d tell me what the hell it is first.”

  “I told you in the car before we left China. I don’t know why they’re after it.”

  “I think you do know, and unless you want me to call Heather right now and tell her I saw you hitting on another girl, you’ll tell me the truth.”

  “Pfft. She’d never believe you.”

  “Want to test that out?” When he remained quiet, she said, “Okay…here I go…I’m calling…” They waited to see if he’d call her bluff.

  There was a brief pause, and then they heard him take a deep breath and curse quietly. “Yeah, okay. But you need to promise you’ll get rid of it. At the very least, hide it somewhere no where near where you are.”

  Keira spoke up then. “Brock, please just tell us what it is.”

  “All right, all right. I think the box is a clue. Or rather, the picture inside of the box. I’d been following those demon things for a while before I came across you and Aiden. At first I was just going to kill them on sight, but they were up to something, and I decided to try to find out what it was. They’ve got two more of those boxes already. I don’t know if that’s the last one or if there’s more. But I definitely think they’re clues. I just don’t know to what.”

  Grace thought about what he’d said. “But what could they be searching for that would have anything to do with the dagobas?”

  “I have no idea, Gracie. I’m sorry.”

  One side of her mouth twisted up at his use of Heather’s nickname for her, but she left it alone for now. She still thought this guy was trouble.

  Or maybe she was just being overprotective of her best friend.

  “I wish I had more I could tell you,” he continued. “But all I know is that I’ve seen people get slaughtered without a moment’s regret so they could get their hands on those boxes. And the ones they killed? They were Shaolin monks. I assume they’re the ‘keepers’ of these boxes, or clues, or whatever they are.”

  “Probably for good reason if demons are so determined to find whatever they’re hiding.”

  “I agree. Now keep your part of our deal and get rid of that thing. Hide it. Burn it. Whatever.”

  “They know I have it. They’ll come after me anyway.”

  The stony silence on the other end of the line wasn’t reassuring.

  “Well, thanks for the info Brock.”

  “If I think of anything else, I’ll call you.”

&
nbsp; “Sounds good. Tell Heather she’s ignored me long enough and she needs to come over. And bring pizza.”

  He laughed. “Will do. Talk to you later.”

  The line went dead. “Well, that told us absolutely nothing,” Grace said as she set the phone down on the table. She looked up at Keira. “Sorry. I should’ve found out more from the men I stole it from.”

  But Keira just gave her a warm smile. “It’s okay. We found out enough. We’ll figure out the rest ourselves.”

  Emma looked back and forth between the other two women. “We need to tell the guys. They’re gonna go bat shit crazy at the thought of those things coming after the box, but they need to know so they can take precautions.”

  Keira stood up and smoothed her hands down the front of her jeans. “We can take our own precautions.”

  “What do you mean?” Grace asked.

  “I mean, that we may as well put this ‘witchy’ stuff of ours to good use. We can put a ward on the box. It will hide it from them if there’s anything about it that’s calling to the demons that will tell them where it is. And there’s no need to worry Luukas or the others.”

  Emma sank back against the cushions. “I don’t know, sis. I can’t even make Nikulas immobile at will.” Then she grinned. “However, as you know, I’m really good at making things move around on their own.”

  “And all I can do is heal myself. Oh, and Aiden when he’s on his deathbed, apparently,” Grace added.

  “It’s okay. You both still have magic. I’ll do the spell. I just need you to link with me to strengthen it.”

  Grace looked at Emma, and then they both stood up too. “Okay then,” she said. “What do we need?”

  Chapter 17