She almost fell at his feet.
Declan stumbled and caught the lean brunette who tumbled into his arms, out of the pouring rain, dead white and half unconscious.
It was Tori, who had been missing for a good week, and presumed dead after police discovered her office in a b.l.o.o.d.y mess, literally, blood and gore staining the walls, furniture smashed, filing cabinets overturned.
He hadn"t been in town last weekend. And he had cursed himself. If he had been around, he would have found her, maybe before it was too late. He would have been with her when it happened, and he could have stopped it. And he had suffered through night after sleepless night, suffered through a rage more terrible than any he had ever known.
Tori, who had a left a terse, "Call me," on his machine the night she was last seen by anybody. Followed by another, more urgent message. This is Tori. As soon as you get this, call me. Declan, I need you.
He had started l.u.s.ting for flesh and blood, to find that b.a.s.t.a.r.d who had done this, and rip his guts out.
But by the time he had gotten back to town and been informed of what had happened, it was too late. The trail nearly cold, and all the clues he could have used were demolished under the heels of his fellow officers.
But she was here now.
It was Tori, who had rebuffed him in every way imaginable. And now she was on his doorstep, lying listless in his arms. Listless, pale and still. Humans had more movement than that, made more sounds.
Sharp hearing detected something.
Or rather, a lack of something.
Declan hissed, his eyes narrowing as he carried her to the couch and jerked her shirt open. Laying his head on her chest between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, he listened. Lub-dub.
Thirty seconds pa.s.sed before he heard it again.
Lub-dub.
He leaned over, pushed her wet ringlets away from her neck.
Lub-dub.
He took a deep breath, forced himself to open his eyes and saw it.
The ragged wound, gaping and huge when fresh, now closing, remnants of bruising. She had fought.
Had she been drained?
Or changed?
Draining was generally slow business. One vamp alone wasn"t likely to have drained her to the point of killing her in one feeding. A new vamp could drain a person, fairly easily, because they were so starved, so hungry when the change first came. So a newly turned vamp?
That would make finding him a little easier.
Or maybe two or three different vamps, or one, feeding two or three different times, yeah, that would do it. The messy bite at her neck could have very well been made at separate times, separate feedings. Maybe two bites, not one.
But if she had been bled so much as to put her in this condition, she wouldn"t have been able to stumble to his door.
Changing usually took place over a period of time as well, the blood exchange taking place when the victim was near death, running so low on blood it gave a whole new twist on the term anemia.
His nostrils flared and he scented it along her skin now.
The subtle musk of vampire. Nausea and rage roiled in his gut. Throwing his head back, he drew air into his lungs and forced it out through his nose until the blinding rage cleared a bit.
Then he lowered his head, and crouched back over her.
The clothes she wore were filthy. They were covered in blood and dirt and grime, but, with the exception of missing b.u.t.tons on her shirt, relatively intact. Under her nails were tiny bits of flesh and blood-none of it her own. He blew a breath out between his teeth and tentatively reached for the zipper of her jeans. The heavy black cloth parted, revealing her ivory smooth skin, and lower, a small thatch of dark curls.
No blood there. No signs of bruising.
Then she probably hadn"t been raped prior to being bitten, which happened, unfortunately, all too often.
Most of the feral vamps he had known would have fed during the rape, or before.
Not after. It takes the fun out of it when your food lay there listless and broken. Ferals liked their s.e.x painful and rough and b.l.o.o.d.y. Of course, he had killed a good many of the ferals he had known, so he had an extensive knowledge of them. Not that all of the vamps were evil. A good number of them were decent people, like Tori had been. But the changing warped them, all too often, robbing them of what they needed to live happily. Some of them continued to live, unhappily. A few went on to live with some semblance of happiness.
Others ended their lives.
Others, while unhappy, were filled with a sense of purpose.
Suddenly her eyes flew open and her hands latched onto his shirt while she stared up at him wildly. Her fingers curled, clutched at his shirt for a brief second before she fell limply back on the couch.
She was weak, very weak.
"Declan?" she whispered. "He...bit me. He bit-"
Her eyes rolled back and her head started to jerk, her body convulsing. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth as her fangs started to emerge. Her heart rate started to kick up, erratic and broken sounding. Her skin seemed to burn.
She was dying, starving to death.
Changed, then.
She had been turned a good week, if Declan had figured right, and her fangs were just now coming? If her fangs were just now emerging, she hadn"t fed. No wonder she was starving.
He wondered if she knew how to feed.
Her eyes closed and her head went limp, rolling toward him. He hissed and fell back. Her fangs had cut through. Pearly sharp canines on top and bottom, canines that she would learn to retract somewhat and hide.
If she lived long enough.
Declan sighed, his head falling forward. Long, s.h.a.ggy, blond hair fell into his eyes as he tried to convince himself he was debating what the proper course of action was to be. But he was just trying to delay the inevitable.
He had been dying for a taste of her for months.
And now she was going to get a taste of him.
He grimaced wryly as he realized he was about to become a vamp"s first meal. Lifting his wrist to his mouth, he used his own fairly sharp canines to rip his flesh before he held the bleeding wound to her mouth.
She gagged and swallowed. Gagged, swallowed. Long seconds pa.s.sed when she did little else than gag and sputter and then Declan felt the sharp pain of her incisors cutting into his skin, felt her hands come up to hold his wrist greedily against her mouth. Her tongue lashed out, caressing his flesh. Her mouth felt like silk, hot wet silk, as she fed.
He knew the minute the monster inside her started to emerge. It called to the one inside of him, the animal that was part of him. His skin grew tight and itchy, his jaws started to ache. The skin along his spine started to ripple and pulse. If he had bothered to look, he would have seen the hair starting to grow thicker on his hands, his forearms and his face. He lifted his face upward, revealing that it was lengthening and stretching, as his hair started to flow more heavily down his back. Declan forced himself to breathe slowly, steadily, forcing his body and mind into a light state of meditation as the muscles in his shoulders and arms rippled and started to bulge.
His soft green eyes were swirling and shifting-alternating colors of green and gold, glowing with power and a shifte r"s magic as they grew larger in his face. Breathing slowly and evenly, he focused on Tori"s pale, still face.
Couldn"t change.
You have the control.
Wouldn"t change.
You have the power.
And he did. Declan was power, a primal, powerfully primitive force that walked around in human skin.
Well, human skin most of the time.
Slowly, the urge and the animal inside him faded and he opened eyes that gleamed only slightly in the dim room, to stare into Tori"s lovely alabaster face, once more alive and mobile.
Well, maybe alive wasn"t such a good word. And her lovely, sapphire blue eyes were empty still, full of nothing but monster and hunger and greed.
"Let go now, Tori," he said softly, tapping her cheek with his free hand.
A low, s.e.xy growl emerged from her throat. And her fangs slid a little deeper into his flesh. He blinked once, slowly, at that tiny, exquisite little pain.
"Let. Go." She"d drain him dry, if he let her. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d who did this had known d.a.m.n good and well what he had done. Either let her die, or the innocent she would finally feed on.
Of course, a shifter had a better chance than the average human. With a wrench, he tore his wrist from her and got to his feet quickly, moving a pace or two away, out of reach of her seeking hands, and grabbed a discarded shirt. Tearing a strip of fabric from it, he tied a makeshift bandage around his wrist and watched her.
She still reached for him, and started to slither in his direction.
"Tori."
Her eyes were glowing brightly; swirling pools of l.u.s.t and hunger and need. He felt his own hunger rising, felt his c.o.c.k hardening, felt the urge to mate, wildly, mindlessly, with her. Mate while she fed from him, and he fed off of her, until they simply couldn"t do it any more. Kinda made the idea of f.u.c.king to death sound rather appealing.
"Tori McAdams." Those slumberous, heavy lidded eyes blinked and her head c.o.c.ked.
"Tori!"
Her lids fluttered shut, then she shot to her feet, pressed her hands to her temples and started to scream.
Oh, G.o.d. Baby, what did he do? Declan thought helplessly, his feet moving in her direction, even though he knew it wasn"t really safe. Not yet. Then the screaming stopped.
"What did he do to me?" she rasped out, touching her fingers to her mouth and gathering the drying blood.
Staring at the red stain on her fingers, she keened, a low helpless sound.
"I"m sorry, Tori," Declan whispered.
"Sorry?"
"Sorry?"
"What the h.e.l.l has happened to me?" she shouted, her long, graceful hands clenched into tight fists.
"You"ve been bitten," he said softly.
Did she remember?
By the growing horror and disbelief in her eyes, most likely yes, she did remember.
"That man..." her voice trailed off and she swallowed, a loud audible sound in the silence of the room. "He was strong. Too strong. And his...he had...his eyes-" Her voice trailed off and she fell silent for long seconds.
"His eyes glowed. Almost red. He was going to hurt me. And, at first, I wanted it. I wanted it." Her voice fell to a low, awful rasp as she repeated, "I wanted it."
So he had lulled her. A true, full vamp then. Not one of the lesser vampires, the kind that was barely a step above an animal, one with only the instincts to hunt, to kill, to obey his Master.
This one had beguiled her.
"Tori, you did nothing wrong. He made you want it, hypnotism, if you will."
"He did something to my mind," she whispered, in a soft, almost singsong voice. "Made me afraid. Then he made me want it. Want whatever he wanted to do. And then I shot him."
"Shot him?" This wasn"t something he had expected to hear.
"I shot him and I ran and he found me. He found me and bit me and beat me and made me drink his blood."
She said each word slowly, as if it hurt, as if the words were pulled from her throat like gla.s.s.
"I am sorry, Tori. So very sorry," he whispered. She had shot a vamp? One who had beguiled her? Ran away and hid?
She whirled on him and shouted, "You just fed me your blood and you"re sorry?"
"Sorry this happened. Sorry it happened to you," he said quietly, deciding she was herself. Or as close to herself as she was likely to get for quite some time. So he moved a little closer. "Do you know what has happened?" It was no surprise, of course, that the vamp had found her after she ran. Vamps could track by scent almost as well as a wolf could.
But it was surprising that she had shot it. After it had beguiled her. Or tried to.
She hugged her arms tightly around her body, staring into the distance with blind eyes. "This isn"t possible,"
she whispered. "Not possible. I"m going crazy."
"No." Declan started to reach for her and then he let his hand fall. "You aren"t going crazy."
"What are you? Are you...like me?"
"I"m a wolf," he said quietly.
She laughed, a shrill painful laugh. "A wolf? The cop I"ve been l.u.s.ting after for months is a wolf? Talk about a wolf in sheep"s clothing." She whirled away and started pacing the room.
"A wolf," she continued to mutter under her breath.