Page 7 of Craving Darkness

Vampires were in the club, and they were causing mayhem. I looked back at Syn with an accusing glare. She knew better. Vampires were nothing but troublemakers who wreaked havoc everywhere they went. I would be demanding answers as to why she would put her club and all the people in it at risk so recklessly.

I stalked over to the blond vamp who had just torn the heart out of the guy who’d been standing by the front door when I’d arrived. I grabbed him by the back of the neck with one hand and shot my fist into his ugly face. The moment I had entered the room, I felt a pull unlike anything I could have imagined. That draw was keeping me from concentrating fully on the vampire in my grasp, allowing him to turn and bite the shit out of my arm.

With a curse, I pulled him closer, ready to rip his head off his scrawny shoulders. I had my hands wrapped around his neck and prepared to tear it off when I was suddenly stopped by a scream from Syn. She placed her hand on my arm and tugged it as she yelled into my ear.

“Valen! You can’t!”

I turned to glance down at her with an incredulous look. “Why the fuck not? Did you see what he did?”

She gave me a pleading look. “I know, Valen, but you don’t understand. You just can’t, okay?”

With disgust, I reared back my fist and punched the asshole in the face hard enough to knock out one of his fangs and dropped him to the floor. I turned to see the other two vamps backing away with wary expressions, one holding a struggling brunette dressed provocatively in what looked like a serving outfit that Syn would require her girls to wear. The girl was crying and covered in blood.

In two strides, I was in front of the greasy-looking vampire holding her to his chest. He hissed at me like a fucking cat, as if that were any deterrent. I reached out and grasped the terrified girl by the arm and pulled her toward me, somehow finding myself in a strange tug-of-war with the guy, the girl in the middle. He didn’t appear to be ready to let go any time soon.

“Valen, stop! Just let them go!”

I ignored Syn’s pleas, knowing that if this girl went with them, she would never walk away alive.

“Val, if they want her, there’s nothing we can do. They will hunt her down until they get her. It’s okay. Just let her go.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. There was nothing inside of me that could have let the girl go with those monsters. With a snarl, I did what I hadn’t allowed myself to do in over two hundred years, and I let my power out.

In seconds, the man holding tight to the woman I was trying to save began to visibly show signs of what could only be described as melting. His face turned a sickly yellow as the flesh began to sag around his eyes. He didn’t seem to notice right away that he was dying until his grip loosened enough that I was finally able to pull the woman into my chest. With a sob, she leaned her weight into me, and I had to wrap an arm around her to keep her from falling to the floor.

I continued to glare at the vampire and watched as the flesh pulled downward, hanging around his chin and exposing the wet, pink flesh around the bottom of his eyeballs. I would have kept going until he was nothing but wet flesh puddled on the floor, but Syn punched me in the arm, jarring me.

“Stop it! You’re going to get us all killed!”

I turned my glare to her, but before I could say anything, she shoved my shoulder. “You need to get out of here. Now! Before he finds out.”

I shook my head, not wanting to leave her to face the vampires alone, but at a second command for me to go, I gave a stiff nod and began striding quickly toward the entrance, the young woman still held firmly to my chest. If Syn was right, and these guys would hunt her down, I was going to keep her with me. I’d be damned if I allowed an innocent to be taken by fucking vampires.

Chapter 5

Kallista

My mind was spinning, and it felt as though I were wading through a hazy fog as the man who had been with Syn in her office practically carried me through the now empty strip club. The only people who hadn’t run away screaming were the six of us. Well, I suppose I had been screaming. I certainly would have been running if that guy, that vampire, hadn’t been holding me so tight it felt as if my bones were bruised.

I wasn’t screaming anymore, though. Instead, I was silent, with only the occasional hiccup escaping from my chest as my breathing slowly came back under control. I was still in the same disbelieving daze as I had been as I watched Tiny’s blood spread across the wooden floor.

The door slammed shut behind us as we moved quickly through the cool evening air, making my body jerk at the sudden noise. The man who was ushering me further away from the gruesome scene murmured softly as if to reassure me. I barely heard a word of it, though.

We stopped in front of a huge Harley-Davidson motorcycle. At any other time, in any other place, I probably would have been awed by the sheer masculine beauty of the metallic beast. I couldn’t help but admire its matte black paint and shiny chrome appearance.

I must have been standing there staring down at the motorcycle for too long because the next thing I knew, I was being lifted and sat astride the narrow back seat—not that there was much of one. The main seat was leather, wide for comfort, and long. Leather saddlebags framed the back part where I was sitting, which I assumed carried his belongings. A helmet much too big for me was plunked down over my head, and his hand tilted my chin up with two long fingers.

For a brief second, our eyes met, startling me from my horrified stupor, but the moment he looked down at the clasp he held in his hand, breaking eye contact, I went right back to the vision of all that blood. A shiver wracked my whole body at the memory. He probably took it as revulsion because he yanked his hands away as soon as the clasp clicked together. Without a word spoken between us, he swung his leg over the motorcycle and revved the engine.

As soon as the bike began to move, my hands flew around the man to grip tightly to his leather jacket. We quickly rolled out of the parking lot and out onto the highway, gaining speed. My shivers increased with the night air rushing past us. His body was giving off so much heat that I couldn’t help but snuggle closer, using his large body to block as much of the wind as possible.

The helmet slipped down over my eyes somewhere between leaving the parking lot and the miles it took to reach our destination. I was at a loss as to where we were going. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was screaming at myself at the stupidity of being on the back of a stranger’s motorcycle. He was taking me to an unknown destination, and no one would know where to look for me. Perhaps my boss knew; she seemed to be very friendly with the stranger, though that offered little comfort.

Another part of me, though, knew I was safer than I had ever been in my entire life. A small part of me that was trying to push through was telling me I was where I was meant to be. I did my best to shut the door on that voice. Just because the man invoked feelings of calm and rightness didn’t mean anything. My life taught me that nothing was ever what it seemed, so I kept a firm grasp on my trust.

While fighting memories of what happened at the bar, I also battled the demons inside of me. I needed to find a way to get far away from this man. I didn’t know why I was here, with him on his bike. I didn’t know if he was protecting me or if he was taking me somewhere in order to harm me. I couldn’t trust anything.

The bike slowed as we turned a corner. The air had gotten noticeably colder, and my shivers had turned violent. Every part of me was freezing, and no wonder. I was still wearing the outfit all the servers were expected to wear, which was practically nothing, though obviously much more than the dancers did. I shifted my feet and groaned audibly at the pain that movement induced. My bare foot turned on the peg under me, and I realized for the first time that I lost one of my stiletto heels. It was part of my minuscule uniform, and it was going to come out of my tips, an expense I couldn’t afford. But then, did I even still have a job after tonight?