Tempted by Blood. Laurie London

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СКАЧАТЬ up to see Krystal stepping onto the porch. The teen waved goodbye to her friend, slung her backpack over one shoulder and skipped down the steps.

      Finally.

      Arianna reached over to unlock the passenger door then opened her camera phone. She couldn’t wait to show Krystal that one picture of Blake. Would she think he looked like—

      Movement behind Krystal drew her attention. Two shadows she hadn’t seen before seemed to separate from the darkness alongside the building. Confused, she scanned the area, but saw no one. Just shadows.

      Was the fog playing tricks on her? She blinked rapidly, trying to clear her vision. Then the shadows began to advance. Straight toward her cousin.

      Arianna’s throat tightened, strangling her airways. She wanted to scream at Krystal, tell her to run, but the sound was stuck in her throat. Just like what happened with her mother twenty-two years ago when the shadows had come alive. But she couldn’t move a muscle—she was frozen. Just like that stupid cat in the road.

      The dark forms got to the minivan parked in the driveway and split up, with one going around to the other side. Then, at precisely the same time, they took shape. Gone were the shapeless, shadowy figures. These were flesh-and-blood men.

      With their hands in their pockets concealing God knows what, they wore long, dark trench coats that grazed the tops of their boots and although the muted light from a streetlamp cast angular shadows on their faces, their identical expressions were devoid of any emotion. A pair of macabre robots on a mission, just like the two who took her mother.

      Something inside her snapped, jerking her to action, and Arianna jumped from the car. “Run, Krystal!” Her voice cracked like a prepubescent frog’s.

      “What are you talking about?” Her cousin had been about to step off the curb, but instead, she skittered sideways, looking at her feet as if expecting to see a snake.

      “Those men. Behind you. Come on.”

      Krystal spun around, dropping her backpack in the process. “What men? Ari, you’re freaking me out.”

      How could she not see them? They were less than twenty feet away, coming toward her from both sides of that van.

      Arianna felt helpless again. That same little girl hiding under a skirted table at the street fair.

      One of the men spun a finger in the air, signifying a wrap-up, and the other nodded. They’d obviously done this sort of thing before. In a flash, they were on Krystal like a pair of jackals, lifting her off her feet and whisking her down the sidewalk.

      Arianna tried to scream—surely someone would hear and come help—but she couldn’t catch her breath. It felt as if she’d been punched in the gut. They moved faster than humanly possible, their trench coats billowing behind them. Her cousin struggled, arched her back, but it was no use. A ninety-pound girl was no match against two men.

       And neither was a five-year-old girl.

      Something stirred inside. She couldn’t just stand here and watch her cousin being taken away by the men from shadows the way she had with her mother. “Put her down!”

      In unison, they snapped their heads in her direction as if they were just now noticing they had a witness, but it didn’t halt their stride. She fumbled with her phone, attempted to dial 911, but the picture app was still displayed on the screen, and she ended up pressing the wrong buttons. Shit, shit, shit.

      They rounded the corner and disappeared behind a sprawling cedar, its lower branches stretching out across the sidewalk.

      Without thinking, she sprinted down her side of the street, past a few parked cars. She thought about going for help, but she didn’t want Krystal out of her sight. If she waited for the police to come or banged on the doors of any of the buildings on this block to get help, no one would believe her when she told them what happened, and her cousin would be long gone. Her only hope was to get some photographic evidence of the vehicle and license plate then call for help. When she got to the corner, she saw them trying to stuff Krystal into the back of the Jeep.

      Her cousin managed to kick the shorter one in the face. Arianna heard him grunt. Krystal braced both hands on the door frame, but the other one came up behind her and easily pushed her inside.

      She couldn’t just let them take Krystal away without doing a single thing to stop them. Though she’d taken a few martial-arts classes, she now realized, she’d focused too much on self-defense. She’d never thought she’d need to know how to attack someone.

      Standing from her crouched position, she wished she had a gun or something. She cursed herself for being too afraid to even hold one, let alone learn to fire one. If she could, she’d step into the roadway right now and shoot them. Just like in the movies.

       Bam, bam, bam!

      It was what she’d have done if she had the chance twenty-two years ago. She’d replayed it in her mind hundreds of times. Like a gunfighter, she’d stand unafraid in the middle of the road as the crowd of people scrambled to get away from her. They’d hide behind lampposts, cars. Duck into doorways and shops. She’d jerk the gun from her holster, boldly take aim and fire. Two quick shots that would echo off the buildings and change the course of her future. The shadowy men would crumple to the ground and her mother would be safe.

      Instead, as the Jeep’s engine fired to life, she aimed her camera and snapped a few quick photos before switching it to video mode. Seeing things through that tiny screen made real life seem a little less real. She stepped out into the road to get a better view of the license plate and was so focused that she almost didn’t see the movement to her left.

      She snapped her head up just in time to see another man emerge from the shadows.

      Ten feet away.

      The overhead streetlight illuminated bronze hair that reached to his chin, the top portion held back away from his face by a small ponytail. He was big—much bigger than the other two men. At well over six feet tall, he had linebacker shoulders underneath his leather coat and a formidable presence that seemed to suck the oxygen from the air.

      His gaze burned into her before he made a noise that sounded like a growl. He covered the distance between them in two commanding steps.

      She wanted to pinch her eyes shut, block out the nightmare, but for some reason, she didn’t. Up this close, she noticed that his hair was streaked with green and blue highlights. She was vaguely disturbed that she noticed this innocuous detail about him when the thing that should be first and foremost on her mind was that he’d stepped from the shadows.

      Obsidian irises were ringed by an iridescent green color so captivating that if she had any breath left to gasp with, she would have. Her legs could no longer support her weight and she felt herself slip. An energy charge snapped in the air when he steadied her, snaking invisible fingers around her body. She caught the faint smell of alcohol on his breath and noted that his square jaw was peppered with stubble. A small scar interrupted the slash of his dark eyebrow, similar to one she had from hitting her chin on the windowsill as a child.

      All very humanlike—yes—but she knew what she’d seen. He’d morphed from a shadow, just like those men in the Jeep and just like the men who took her mother.

      She staggered backward and caught herself on the hood of a car, setting off a high-pitched СКАЧАТЬ