Blood of an Angel

His muscles and mind protesting the movement, Charlie pushed off from the ground and launched himself at the woman with an anguished roar. She cried out in surprise, as he slammed full-force into her midsection, driving them both back into the door of a garage behind them. A hot slickness coated his stomach and chest and it took him a moment to realize it was his own blood. She struggled against him, waving that hawthorn stake dangerously close to his back.

Hawthorn wood was highly toxic to the Embraced. The wound made by a hawthorn stake not only poisoned their blood, it wouldn’t close up. Ironically, most Embraced died of blood loss if someone staked them. So the fact that the hawthorn was now scraping his shoulder didn’t make Charlie feel exactly warm and fuzzy.

He shifted to the side and grabbed the wrist of the hand wielding the stake. His whole body screamed from whatever it was she’d done to him. The wound made him weak and she was exceptionally strong. Way too strong for a human female. The result made them almost evenly matched in a fight. Almost. He suspected he was still the stronger one.

There was something off here. What was it?

With single-minded intensity, he pushed her down the garage door to the pavement. She shrieked in rage, but she couldn’t stop him from pressing that wrist down to the ground. The woman might be faster than him, but it turned out that, even injured, he was still stronger. He wrested the stake from her grasp and threw it to the side. It ended up behind a row of trashcans that stood nearby.

She kicked, coming dangerously close to his balls with her knee, and slammed her fist into his jaw. His head snapped to the side under the force of the punch. Pain blossomed through his skull.

Damn, she was strong. She couldn’t be human, but she didn’t feel like an Embraced.

What the hell was she?

He needed to further control the woman, and he needed to do it fast. Using his inner thighs, he pressed in, pinning her legs together. He also grabbed her other flailing arm at the wrist and pressed it down to the ground.

She shrieked again and Charlie wondered when someone in one of these nearby houses would call the cops. They didn’t need that. The police would call in the local SPAVA unit—Squad for Paranormal and Vampiric Activity—and they’d give both Charlie and Anlon absolute hell. Any conflict between a human and an Embraced—if human really was what this woman was—got extra special attention from the local law enforcement, always at the expense of the Embraced, no matter which party was truly at fault. Prejudice against the Embraced was alive and well in the United States.

But more important than avoiding SPAVA was finding out if Vincent was all right. He hadn’t moved or made a sound since the woman had knelt over him with the stake in her hand. The fact that Charlie had wrested the hawthorn away from her before she’d had a chance to strike Vincent gave him hope that he was probably okay.

The woman went limp beneath him. Charlie was thankful, since the blood he’d lost was making him feel weak and the sacyr was rising hard and fast as a result. Plus, the closeness of his peculiar woman and her violet scent, combined with his own rage, was fueling his blood hunger.

She stared up with him with complete and utter animosity in her eyes.

Gone were the glasses. Gone was the illusion of bookishness and fragility. Completely gone was the impression that this woman was angelic. She felt delicate beneath him, but the way she’d kicked his ass contradicted that image.

“You should have let me kill him. He deserves to die,” she spat.

Charlie’s brow furrowed. Vincent was harmless. He was one of the most harmless Embraced he’d ever met. Vincent was almost naive. What could Vincent have done to gain this woman’s wrath? The question posed on his lips was why in the moment the woman suddenly pushed up hard. Caught off-guard by the jolt of inhuman strength, Charlie toppled to the side.

The woman sprang to her feet, eyeing the dark corner behind the row of trashcans where Charlie had thrown the stake. She lunged in that direction, but he stretched out quick as a striking snake and caught her by the ankle. He toppled her to the ground face-first and pushed to his feet.

The sacyr roared within him, overwhelming his weakness. It screamed in his head. He needed to feed. He needed to feed now.

Too bad for the woman in front him. She was about to become a meal.

With an intense gaze, he watched her flip to her back and spot him. He was the predator now. He might be injured. He might be weak. The rising sacyr didn’t care about any of that. It just wanted the blood of this woman. Her gray eyes widened as she realized the tables had suddenly turned. Charlie watched her crab-walk back a few paces, then lurch to her feet.

Charlie lunged.

The woman spun to the side, kicking her booted foot up and around in a roundhouse kick. Her heel caught him hard in the solar plexus, right where she’d wounded him. He grunted, but the sacyr held him upright, made him push through the intense pain. The sacyr was unstoppable now. He had no say in his actions and was a slave to its whims. She threw a punch, but he blocked it. He took a step forward; she took a step back. It was like a dance, but one wholly without romance.

She turned to run, but he grabbed her by her upper arms and dragged her back flush up against his chest.

He lowered his head to her ear, scenting the violet in her hair and the blood that ran through those delicate veins under her pale, soft skin. He inhaled and closed his eyes, letting her aroma infuse him. His breath left him in a groan of ecstasy. “All the gentleman’s been beaten right out of me,” he murmured into her ear. “You’re in trouble now, angel.”

She stilled. Her breathing sounded harsh in the suddenly quiet air. It was as if the whole world had fallen away and only this alley, only he and this mysterious woman, remained.

Charlie dipped his head to the place where her shoulder met her throat and rubbed his lips against her skin. The woman shivered. From fear? He didn’t know. He didn’t smell any fear on her, but by rights she should’ve been afraid. Charlie only knew that her shudder increased the pull and strength of the sacyr.

He had to have her…now.

He flicked his tongue out and tasted her skin, tasted the hard pulse under her earlobe. So sweet. So soft. So perfect. He stifled a groan. His fangs extended and he brushed them across her vulnerable throat. At the same, he readied his glamour. Charlie was exceptionally good with glamour. The woman would feel nothing but pleasure when he bit her.

It was far more than she deserved.

The sudden scent of arousal filled the air, delicately musky. The woman whimpered in her throat. She relaxed against him and the tang of her sex, plumped with excitement, teased him.

That sound, along with the fragrance of her, gripped him and wouldn’t let him free. Feeling drugged, he grazed his fangs along her shoulder. He felt the skin slice open in a thin, neat line and tasted just a drop of her blood on his tongue.

Somewhere in the sacyr-controlled, pain-fogged back of his mind, Charlie noted that she didn’t taste like a human. Her blood was smoother, silkier on his tongue. It reminded him of milk flavored with a bit of sugar.

So, delicious…. He lowered his mouth to take another taste.

Suddenly, the woman thrust her elbows up hard and twisted to the side. Charlie tried to maintain his grip on her, but she was gone in a blur of speed.

An angelic tinkle of laughter was all he heard from the mouth of the alley. Then, nothing.

The sacyr wailed within him at being denied sustenance. His wound overwhelmed him. Charlie groaned, dropped to his knees and knew nothing more.