Her Vampire Husband (13 page)

“I don’t want your bite!” She stood and slid up her dress to cover the rosy dark nipples. “I thought you understood that.”

“I do. It’s just…” Hard to control? He’d always had a handle on it before.

“I’m sorry.” She looked about, at the chocolate-smeared plate, her wig. “I uh…lost the mood. I’m going to shower.”

“Blu, don’t do this. It was an accident. I—It just happens with you. I can’t explain it.”

She double-stepped it up the stairs.

Unwilling to chase her, after her tale of abuse at the hands of her father’s men, Creed remained on the couch. Staring at the ceiling, he cursed this bizarre inability to control what he’d mastered centuries ago.

Why was this happening now?

Was it really Blu who stirred his teeth to descend? And did that mean he needed her blood more than he could imagine?

C
REED RECEIVED THE CALL
from Alexandre just before midnight. With Wolfsbane in hand, he slipped from the house undetected. Blu was in the theater room listening to some music video station. Volume cranked, his secretive getaway was ensured.

Pealing the BMW from the driveway, he made the contact point with Alexandre in less than fifteen minutes. Creed hopped in the unmarked black van already rolling across the tarmac. From the passenger seat, he leaned over to nod to the three vampires in the back.

Revin, Fresno and Merce nodded solemnly. All were outfitted with combat gear and weaponry.

“My information was incorrect,” Alexandre said as he navigated toward the warehouse district in Minneapolis. “I think the fight’s already in progress. We may not get there until after.”

“Damn it.”

They always tried to show up before the blood match occurred. The goal was to waylay the transport van en route to the fight warehouse. That way they could rescue two vampires.

Arriving after meant only one survivor.

“The new snitch is still getting the hang of things.”

“At least we’ve a new one. Good job, Alexandre.” He slapped him across the back. “We got darts?” he called to the back, where the atmosphere was strung like a bowstring.

Revin cocked a dart gun. “Check. Silver-nitrate bombs, too. You going in, Saint-Pierre?”

He tapped Wolfsbane. “I’ll lead the way.”

T
HE MOST DANGEROUS PLACE
for a vampire to venture was a blood match. They were held in privately owned warehouses in the suburbs and sometimes abandoned barns in the countryside. The fights were attended by dozens of werewolves, both from packs, and those lone wolves who were secure enough to stand next to a pack wolf without being intimidated.

The aggression and blood scent frenzied the wolves to their beastly werewolf shapes. Even as the fighters went at each other, the wolves clashed amongst themselves.

Creed had witnessed a match years ago, from behind
the safety of protective chain-link fencing. It had been an exposition of sorts, offered to the various tribe leaders by the pack principals to show them what they could do to their kind if they did not return the lands the wolves accused them of stealing.

Scare tactics never worked against Creed.

The matches were a vile form of blood entertainment. A horrific punishment to the innocent vampire who fell onto the path of a werewolf. The wolves strictly stalked those independent vampires who hadn’t aligned themselves to a tribe. It was safer that way for the wolves, less risk of bringing an angry tribe upon them.

What they did was chain the vampire up for weeks in a cell lit by UV bulbs, starving it of blood and driving it mad with UV sickness. After about a month, the vampire was literally insane for blood. But usually after two or three weeks, the vamp—depending on his age—was in agony for blood. When two starving vampires were put in a cage together they went after each other, biting and draining, and finally punching their fists through muscle and bone to claim the greatest cache of blood—the heart.

It meant survival to the winning vampire. If only for a few more months of captivity.

They’d kept Rachel only three weeks before she’d succumbed. She hadn’t been strong enough. The first fight had been her last.

That day Creed had vowed to take down all the sporting warehouses he could find, and make the werewolves suffer for their cruelty.

“They expect us to come to terms of peace?” Creed eyed the warehouse as Alexandre pulled up a block away. “They should burn every sporting warehouse in the country. Then, and only then…”

He didn’t finish the statement. It sounded too hypocritical now with him married to a werewolf.
And nearly fucking her.

What in hell had he been thinking lately? Mooning after a werewolf? It was idiotic. No vampire in his right mind would succumb to such foolishness.

He tightened his grip on Wolfsbane. Vengeance against the wolves he’d only buried shallowly upon accepting the marriage agreement now surfaced. Tonight he was going to take some wolf heads.

Muscle cars, Jeeps and SUVs pulled from the lot before the warehouse. Beer cans littered the tarmac and raucous rock music blared from speakers.

“They’re dispersing,” Alexandre reported. “Fight’s done. The containment truck is being loaded. We’ll have to take them on the road.”

The truck would hold the winning vampire, sated for now. Blood drunk, surely. But no less a prisoner in chains.

“It’ll be easier,” Creed stated. “There are only two
wolves in the driver’s cab. I don’t think they keep a guard on the vamp after the fight. Unnecessary.”

They watched the white truck pass by, and Alexandre spun the wheel to follow two blocks behind. The wolves would return to the pack’s compound. Having no idea which pack had mastered this evening’s blood sport, Creed and his men did not know where they were headed.

When the van took the 35E exit, Alexandre said, “I bet they’re headed east toward Wisconsin. Might be the River pack.”

“Overtake them now,” Creed ordered. “As they enter the freeway.”

He gestured to the men in the back, who prepared rappelling hooks, masks and dart guns.

The four-lane freeway wasn’t abandoned this late at night, but they drove on a clear stretch for a few miles. The black van pulled aside the white truck. Alexandre was an expert behind the wheel, having spent some time working as a getaway driver during an armed robbery stint a few decades earlier.

Creed was handed a dart gun from over his shoulder. He rolled down the window.

The truck driver saw him, gaped—and took a dart to the neck.

“Now!”

At Creed’s command, the back doors of the van
opened, securing to the vehicle sides with hydraulic latches. Revin speared the truck’s steel wall high on the back quarter panel and attached a rappelling hook. Fresno followed him as Alexandre kept the vehicles parallel.

They’d honed this operation to a well-oiled mission that took less than three minutes. It was dangerous to do it on the freeway, where mortals cruised by in the opposite lanes. As long as no one tried to pass in the third lane, they were good.

The wolf driver struggled to keep the truck on the road. The dart wouldn’t knock him out, but it would make him lethargic and blur his vision. Creed would not risk killing him—and a resultant crash—when the vampire was yet unclaimed in the back.

The other werewolf appeared from the passenger window and crawled on top of the truck’s cab.

Expecting this, Creed levered himself up through his window and jumped atop their van. He snatched a row bar. His combat boots gripped firmly. A rappel hook would secure him to the van, but he didn’t want to risk becoming entangled. His sense of balance was impeccable.

At the back, the vampires had already secured the fight’s winner.

The werewolf, perched on the top of the truck, shot
Creed in the shoulder. It was a wooden bullet, he knew from the dull, piercing entrance. It wouldn’t put him down.

Creed fired a dart that managed to skim the wolf’s shoulder. The impact didn’t even make the wolf jerk. Without a thought, Creed blew hard, utilizing his air magic. The incredible gust of wind sent the wolf stumbling backward. He toppled, but caught his fingers on the edge of the truck. He’d dropped the weapon.

Suddenly the werewolf, having shifted to beastly shape, lunged up and sprang for Creed. The hairy beast stretched through the air, momentarily suspended in an attack lunge between the two vehicles.

Creed did not vacillate between life and death. One sweep of Wolfsbane severed the werewolf’s head and upper shoulders from the body. Both halves dropped onto the tarmac and tumbled toward the ditch.

The hooks were released from the back of the truck. The opponent’s truck spun out into the ditch. Gripping the edge of the passenger door and sliding headfirst into the front seat, Creed righted himself. He swiped away blood from his face. Revolting to consider tasting it.

In the back, the captive vampire lolled, lethargic from a blood overdose. He reeked of sweat, fear and blood.

“Good job,” Creed said to the team. He pressed two fingers below the wooden bullet stuck in his shoulder and
eased it slowly from his flesh. “I’ll call for cleanup to clear the body and debris from the road.”

He flicked the bullet out the window. If it had landed in his heart it may have dropped him long enough for the wolf to plunge a thick stake into his heart, which could have killed him.

Vampires: one. Werewolves: zero.

B
LU STUDIED THE WIGS
she’d pulled from boxes this morning. The violet was Creed’s favorite. She liked the green one. The white reminded her of that romantic night when they’d walked in the park surrounded by the heady scent of peonies.

And she’d thought to never have romance.

“Silly princess, some dreams do come true.”

She touched the violet wig. Now it reminded her of the other night when she’d been so close to giving herself completely to her husband. She’d shared a dark part of herself with him. The secret that wasn’t as much a secret amongst her father’s men as a shared badge of honor.

Some honor. Not.

Creed had been so gentle and understanding, listening without judgment. At that moment she’d never wanted her vampire husband so desperately.

Until his fangs had flashed and had slashed through the mood like fangs through flesh.

Though Creed pleaded an inability to control them in her presence, rationally, she knew she would be safe. Irrationally, she wanted to stay at arm’s distance from the potential threat of becoming forever marked.

She couldn’t believe her father had sent the message through Ridge that he expected her to take the vampire’s bite. He’d made it very clear before she set off on this adventure that she was merely to play the role, to convince the vampire she cared for him, but to never take his bite if she wished to return home.

Did Amandus no longer believe she would return to the pack at some point? And that if she were marked no wolf would ever have her?

Well, her father didn’t have to know everything.

Couldn’t the Council accept them having sex as a seal to the pact? It did represent an intimacy with one another no vampire or werewolf would take lightly.

Not that they’d completely had sex yet. They’d done everything but. She’d yet to take Creed inside her, to feel his thickness embody her. She wanted that. But not at the risk of being bitten.

Shouldn’t a vampire nearly a millennium old be able to control his fangs by now?

Shoving the three wigs aside, she stroked her real hair forward. It hung to her shoulders and was the color of her mother’s hair. A mother she missed with an aching soul.

Blu had been eleven when her mother, Persia Masterson, had disappeared from her life with no note, not even a goodbye. Her father had growled and said she’d gone off with another lover. That was the last he’d spoken of the enigma Blu wished was still in her life.

Was it true? Had her mother taken a lover? Why?

The
why not
was easy to rationalize. With a husband like Amandus, Blu suspected her mother had sought attention, perhaps even simple kindness from other men.

How could her mother abandon her like that? Truly, for a lover? And without word she was leaving? She tried not to think about her, because it simply brought tears.

They’d never been close, yet her mother had been the only other female werewolf in Blu’s life. Left the sole pack female following her mother’s disappearance, Blu had wanted to emulate her cool reserve around the males, but it hadn’t been easy once Amandus had started giving her to his men.

Had she still been around, would her mother have protected Blu from the cruel treatment? It had only started after her mother was gone. Amandus had taken out his frustrations on his daughter, the spitting image of her mother.

Save the one time Ridge had pulled a drunk wolf off her, no one had ever protected Blu, so she’d developed her own methods of defense. She twirled a finger around the end of her hair. Creed had been so gentle with her
hair. She’d wanted to cover him with it and linger in the safety of his embrace.

She did not hate the vampire. In fact, she might even…

She couldn’t go there. Yet. Even though he’d taken her phone away, that didn’t mean Ryan was not still on her mind.

“Rough, sexy werewolf that you are,” she said with a sigh. He’d tugged her hair more than a few times, but he’d been more protective than rough. Most of the time. “That wolf never knows when he’s gone too far.”

Bruises on her wrists and hips were a common find after having sex with Ryan. But that was simply the way wolves were. Right?

And even after sex, when she lay sated and tousled, she could forgive Ryan his roughness. Because he was the only lover she’d known who didn’t demand without then returning some kind of sexual favor. The other wolves had just taken and shoved her aside. And Ryan had promised to be her mate. To take her away from her father’s men to another pack.

The new pack would never dream to use her as her father had. Ryan had promised escape, so she took the bad with the hopes of good.

Some good had come already. Escape of a sort had been achieved through an unexpected means. She was now another man’s wife.

Ryan would rage if he were ever in the same room as Creed.

She wondered what Creed would do if approached by an angry werewolf who had been denied his mate? She’d never seen her husband in a fight. He was brawny and probably very capable. Hell, the way he’d controlled the sword had put her heart in her throat.

Could have been the name of it, too. Wolfsbane.

Blu shuddered.

But she thought of Creed more as a sensual lover than a fighter. And that kind of softer, yet still dominant, man was starting to appeal to her.

But come on, she wouldn’t know a good thing if it slapped her.

“Creed would never slap me.”

And instead of tears at the thought of her distant lover, she smiled a little. And then a lot. But the happiness was not because of Ryan.