Sweet Last Drop. Melody Johnson

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СКАЧАТЬ nodded. “I’d like to extend my gratitude. The rule of New York City’s coven is collapsing, and bless your heart, I’m grateful that my night blood had someone to rely on in my stead.”

      “Your night blood?” Walker asked. His voice was low and growled from somewhere deep and ugly inside of him.

      I winced from Bex’s opinion of the city. “I’m not sure ‘collapsing’ is an accurate assessment of Dominic’s rule.”

      “I am.”

      “You’re wrong,” I stated, and the depth of my feelings surprised me. It almost felt like loyalty. “Once Dominic survives the Leveling, the coven will once again be under his full reign.”

      Walker looked at me like I’d sprouted a wholly unwelcome second head.

      Bex raised her delicate, carefully sculpted eyebrows. “If he survives.”

      “When,” I corrected.

      “You sound so certain of Lysander’s abilities.”

      “And my own,” I said, nodding. I had my issues with Dominic, but he’d saved my human life when he could have easily taken advantage of my injuries and unconsciousness to have his way and transform me into a vampire. But knowing my preference to remain human, he hadn’t. For that, despite my misgivings, he’d earned a sliver of my trust. “We’ll weather the storm.”

      “We,” Bex murmured. “Your attitude is refreshing.”

      I laughed. I couldn’t help my reaction. It bubbled up from my gut in a swift burst.

      Bex narrowed her eyes.

      I raised a hand. “I’m sorry. It’s just that not many people qualify my attitude as ‘refreshing.’ I’m usually a little too outspoken for most people’s tastes.”

      Bex smiled, and this time, she let her fangs slip from between her lips. “I like the taste of you just fine.”

      “That’s enough,” Walker snapped. His face was boiling red, and it took me a moment to realize that he was embarrassed, like Bex had exposed something private. “Why did you stop us?”

      Her fangs were longer than any other vampire’s fangs I’d ever seen while still in human form, even longer than Dominic’s. Like a snake’s retractable bite, her fangs must slip into sockets in her lower gums. Otherwise, they couldn’t fit in her mouth.

      “To say hello, of course. It’d be rude to cross paths with y’all and not acknowledge one another,” Bex said, her fangs tucked neatly away, once again the dime-a-dozen country sweetheart.

      “Hello. So we’re done here then,” Walker said. He ushered me back toward the truck. “Have a good evening.”

      “But now that we’re all acquainted, it’d be rude not to extend an invitation. You protected Ian with your life, and I would be remiss not to extend my gratitude to such a loyal partner. Are you free tomorrow evening for dinner?”

      Walker snorted. “When was the last time you extended an invitation to Ronnie?”

      Bex’s eyes shifted like two lasers to target Walker. “Bring her as well.”

      Walker snapped his mouth shut. The muscles in his jaw flexed convulsively, and I wondered if he was chewing on his tongue.

      I cleared my throat. “Tomorrow evening works for me.”

      “No it doesn’t,” Walker growled.

      I glared at him. “Then you don’t have to come.”

      Walker stared at me, his eyes wide and searching, like he was desperate to find something he’d lost.

      I turned to face Bex again, and she was much closer, less than two feet away. The setting sun had begun to cast a longer shadow in the five minutes while we talked, and Bex had inched along its growing path toward us. This close, even wearing her human façade, she couldn’t pass as anything but the creature she truelly was. Her skin was too flawless, her features too sculpted, and her eyes, those glowing yellow-green swirling orbs, too animal. Looking into her eyes, I knew that her brain didn’t feel like ours. She had goals and desires, but when her motivations boiled down to their core, I suspected that she and Dominic and all the rest of the vampires, although capable of love or the memories of love from their human existence, now acted primarily on instinct.

      Bex lifted her hand up to my face, and I realized that the overpass angled toward me. I was centimeters shy of its shadow. She ran her fingertips down the line of sunlight between us, mere inches away, and I froze. A thin, rotting stream of twirling steam hissed from the pad of her pointer finger. I stared at that finger as it boiled, the skin beginning to bubble and ooze scant millimeters from touching my hair.

      I held my ground, determined not to flinch. Her thumbnail elongated into a claw, but her face remained beautiful. Dominic’s transformations were often a result of his emotions and maybe instinct, so when his fingernails elongated, his nose flattened, ears pointed, and brow furrowed. But Bex wasn’t losing control of her other features. She had deliberately only transformed her thumbnail.

      She sliced her claw-like nail across the lock of my hair. It clipped in half and fluttered to the ground.

      I stepped back into full sunlight and out of reach. Bex let my remaining lock of hair slide from between her scabbed fingers. Her hand dropped to her side.

      Walker’s gaze flicked back and forth between Bex and me, and I didn’t appreciate the calculation in his expression.

      “Until tomorrow,” Bex murmured.

      I blinked, and she was suddenly, inconceivably gone. Her reflective, otherworldly eyes had illuminated the shadows like twin halos, rendering the darkness a little deeper in her absence.

      I reached up and wearily tugged on the shortened lock of hair. Her swift departure reminded me of Dominic. Despite my growing experience with vampires, his abilities still awed me. It didn’t matter that he displayed inhuman physical and mental feats at least once a night. I doubted I’d ever consider his exceptional abilities anything but exceptional.

      “Get in the truck.”

      Walker pounded the gravel in three long strides to his driver’s side door. He didn’t seem awed by Bex’s abilities in the least, but I knew better than most the comfort and clarity of being downright pissed. I bit my tongue and got in the truck.

      Walker kicked the ignition, and I held my breath as we drove under the overpass and into the shadows. The cab dimmed for a heart-rending moment. The roar and hiccups of Walker’s truck and the squeaking grind of its wheels crunching over the pavement was the only noise between us. Walker didn’t offer any assurances about our safety now that Bex was gone, and I wondered if, despite knowing Bex longer than I knew Dominic, or perhaps because of his better acquaintance, he didn’t trust her not to double back and attack us.

      Light beamed through the windshield as we crossed over, and in the next moment, we were once again basked in the sun’s protection.

      I released a shuddering breath.

      “What does Dominic have on you?”

      I СКАЧАТЬ