Page 76 of Vampire's Choice
She pivoted and went after Parva.
Parva’s face had gone blank with shock. Ruth only had seconds to take advantage of it. She stabbed the knife into Parva’s heart as many times as her vampire speed would allow her, which was about eight before Trinidad was back on her.
He yanked her away from his blood-soaked comrade and disarmed Ruth again. His arms locked around her throat and upper body as he lifted her off her feet.
“You’re going to die, little bitch. No one is going to miss you.”
“That…is…not…true.” She caught a glimpse of his gleaming fangs, extended to full length. Her struggles increased, but to no avail. His fangs tore into her throat, and blood gushed as he ripped open the carotid and shredded the muscle and tissue around it. Then he dropped her, shoving her to the ground onto her hands and knees.
She’d made a good accounting of herself. Gideon would be proud of her.
The fuck he would. He’d say, “You’re not dead. Why aren’t you still fighting?” She wasn’t done until she had no other options. She could still move, so she had them.
Ruth scrambled across the ground, headed for the knife. When she grabbed it and turned, she tried to keep pressure on her neck with her other hand.
She’d assumed Trinidad was fucking with her again, giving her a moment to let her think she could win, but then she saw he had bigger concerns.
His feet were off the floor, Merc’s ruthless grip on his throat. Her incubus’s black and white wings were spread, showing her all those lightning bolts. They matched the hellfire in his eyes.
Despite the stabbing, Parva was back up. Ruth gave the female vampire props for loyalty as she made a clumsy attempt to rush Merc. Merc lifted a hand in her direction. Magic crackled from his fingers, spinning out like a thrown net. It covered Parva and dropped her to the ground, where she writhed in agony. Ruth smelled burning flesh.
She also heard the crunch when Trinidad’s cervical vertebrae broke under Merc’s grip. When he dropped the male, both vampires could barely move, but they were doing their best to crawl away.
Merc moved to Ruth, who was still on her ass, trying to contain the wound in her throat. Removing her destroyed shirt, he tore it into strips and tied them around the damage, then cupped his hand over the makeshift pressure bandage.
“You should not have gone off on your own.” His expression was cold as a glacier.
“Story of my life,” was what she felt like saying. Instead she rasped, “Need blood. Human. Not Circus. Not…them.”
She dipped her head toward the couple. They’d already had too much taken from them. She also didn’t want anyone at the Circus to see her like this. She was fighting anger, shame, a whole trashcan of emotions, all bad.
Merc picked her up. That toxic mix made her angry about that, too, but his arms tightened, and he gave her a look that settled her. Then he was aloft. He must have cloaked both of them somehow, because no one freaked as he passed over the riverfront. It took her thirty long seconds to find what she wanted. She pointed with a trembling, bloodstained finger.
He landed in the alley next to the Dumpster where a homeless man slept by himself, camouflaged by blankets and shadows. His blood was going to be a little boozy, but he would do, and he was sleeping deep. Merc eased her down to the ground next to him.
“This first.” Though she made a noise of protest, Merc wasn’t tolerating any refusal. He sliced open his wrist and put it to her mouth.
“My blood rejuvenated you last time. Let it do so again, then you can use this man to supplement it.”
The allure of it was too much to resist. She latched on, trying not to use her fangs on him, and swallowed several rich gulps. Thank heavens Trinidad hadn’t damaged her throat so badly she couldn’t swallow. Great Father, what was it in Merc’s blood? She could feel it rushing through her within the first few seconds, telling her its healing properties were going to get right to work.
She made herself stop. “Please go…move humans.” She didn’t want Parva and Trinidad to recover and take it out on them. Reading his face, she added, “Don’t kill…vampires.”
“I can do as I please.” He touched her bent knee. “I’ve not wanted to kill someone so much in a very long time. It’s difficult to resist.”
He meant it. With the least word of encouragement from her, they’d be gone. It would be nothing to him. But he’d told her the dangers of that to his control.
She also understood it. Over and above the annual kill, the Vampire Council allowed a vampire to take up to twelve human lives a year—geographically dispersed and with a reasonable time lapse between kills. It was considered a compromise between a vampire’s “natural” urges and the need to keep a low profile in the human world.
At territory meetings at Lord Marshall’s, she’d met vampires who took full advantage of that rule, and she understood why her father had taught her to be wary of them. When lives were treated like the number of cookies one could indulge from the cookie jar, something got broken in the head.
One annual kill was more than enough for her. She dreaded it every year.
“What they did was not…prohibited.” A whisper was the best she could do right now, but he could hear her. “Me defending myself, you helping me, also okay. Killing them, not okay. Yvette has to tell overlord…then Region Master. It’s a whole thing. Merc…please. Take care of the humans.”
“I will be back.” He brushed his knuckles along her cheek, then took off, his wingbeats sending a welcome breeze across her clammy forehead.
She put her hand on the homeless man’s shoulder, summoning as much of a push as she could to keep him asleep. She went right for the throat, because she needed the rush of blood into her mouth, the gulping swallows. She felt his heartbeat accelerate as his brain registered the threat. She soothed it with her compulsion. I won’t cause lasting harm. I just need a meal…