Heat . Amy Blankenship

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СКАЧАТЬ she balled the covers up until they were like a long body pillow then rolled on her side, hugging it and throwing one leg over it. She started rocking against the blanket, liking the feel of it between her thighs and hugged it even tighter.

      Alicia’s eyes snapped open when she suddenly recognized the symptoms of what she was going through. She’d read about it and seen one of her friends at school go through it.

      “No…” she whispered feeling fear slice through her at the mere thought. “Please don’t let me be going into heat.”

      *****

      Damon raced through the shadows across the city, heading toward the darkest slums in the search for something or someone that needed killing. He tried to block Alicia from his mind but it seemed every minute he spent close to her, the deeper she crawled under his skin. The strangest part was… he liked her there.

      He’d built his life around not caring about anything… or anyone. He’d also prided himself for making it a rule to take what he wanted. He wanted her and she needed to stop tempting the devil. When he’d fallen from the balcony, he’d prayed she was smart enough not to follow him. Luckily, the girl knew a little about self-preservation.

      He finally reached his goal: a rundown area of Los Angeles. Damon kept to the dark edge of the sidewalk, smirking when the police cars drove by and everyone would vanish. As soon as the cops were out of sight, the scum of the earth would come back out of hiding and it was back to business as usual.

      Damon sneered at two scantily-clad women and kept walking when they tried to entice him with their bodies. Perhaps a few weeks ago he might have vaguely considered it, but now… he wanted nothing to do with the opposite sex. The thought of drinking from either of them left him feeling slightly sick.

      Rounding a corner, Damon noticed two thugs up ahead and that they both looked his way as he approached. Now this was more what he was in the mood for.

      “How’s it going,” one of them asked in a deep voice. He had his hands deep in his coat pockets expecting a sale of drugs. When he caught a glimpse of the man’s wild eyes, he decided to drop it figuring this guy had already gotten his drugs elsewhere.

      Damon didn’t answer and kept walking. He knew what was coming and was looking forward to it. These two guys were probably kings on this street with their bulging muscles and dark flat eyes. He could smell the old blood on their clothing and see the scarred knuckles bullies always carried. Yep, they were probably legends within their own minds.

      “Hey,” the second one yelled, “my friend asked you a question.”

      “And my silence should have warned him I wasn’t in the mood.” Damon warned then turned his head to look at them. He gave an evil smirk, his fangs gleaming in the dim glow of the street lamp when they saw the red irises of his eyes. “However, a dinner date with both of you sounds good.”

      Damon moved fast, grabbing the first one and draining him dry in less than a minute. He broke out in a sweat from the pain when more bullets started pushing out faster and landed on the ground with audible metallic clinks. Tilting his head back, he laughed breathlessly before dropping the dead man at his feet.

      The echo of the second man running away drew his attention and Damon ran after him, once more pulling the shadows close to disguise his pursuit. Pain and adrenalin held its own high.

      He caught up with the oversized punk and stalked him for a few moments, enjoying the smell of fear. When the man started to slow down, Damon merely chuckled in the darkness making the human start running faster again. Yes, this is what he needed… to rid the world of a couple low-life human scum while taking the blood he needed to heal.

      Quickly growing bored with the chase, Damon closed in on the man and jerked him into an alley. The human’s struggles were valiant to say the least, but when matched against Damon’s superior strength… the outcome was inevitable.

      Finally, the man’s struggles ceased and Damon dropped him to the dirty concrete. During the struggle, small packets of white powder had fallen from the man’s pockets along with a good-sized wad of money and a hand gun. Damon knelt down next to the corpse and, using a corner of its shirt, wiped his face clean of any evidence before taking up the money and tucking it into his back pocket then walking away.

      Reaching the mouth of the alley, Damon shoved his hands in his pockets and started walking down the sidewalk like he didn’t have a care in the world. Now that his need to kill and feed had been partially satisfied, he could pick his next victim with a choosier taste.

      Misery watched the entire exchange between the vampire and the two humans he’d chosen as his victims. She wanted to approach him but was too weak to do so. Instead, she satisfied herself by feeding off the fear the two humans exhibited as the vampire bled them dry. Their death thralls had been delicious.

      Her encounter with Kane earlier that evening had forced her to use up all the power she’d had stored away since escaping the cave. When she’d combined her power with Kane’s blood, it had used up almost everything she had. Creating cracks in the dimensional walls of this world was a tedious process and would take a lot more power than she had at the moment. She could feel the evil heartbeat of this area and knew she’d awakened some of the weaker demons that slept here.

      She would need to be stronger to thin the walls enough for the demons on the other side to sense it and take advantage. If the demons were powerful enough… they could finish the rip from the other side and join her in this world.

      While her demonstration hadn’t been enough to do what she wanted, the evil in this city was breeding and it wouldn’t take long for her to build her power up to the necessary level. Once that level was reached… she would try to breach the walls of this dimension again. This vampire’s aura wasn’t as tasty as Kane's but the similarity and potential of the blood ritual was definitely there.

      This vampire... though he did show a sadistic side that appealed to Misery… his power was completely different from Kane's. She already knew how to tap into Kane's real power but the more she stared into this one’s soul, the more she saw the dangerous truth. The power this one possessed could only be released while protecting something he loved. It was a worthless power since the creature suppressed such emotion.

      After studying the vampire for a few more moments, Misery decided it was best if this one remained loveless because if he ever tapped into such emotion… his power would be limitless.

      Damon could smell soulless vampires flitting all around him and down the darker alleyways. He thought briefly about ridding the city of a few of them but decided he’d already done his good deed for the day. If they wanted to feed off the low-lives in this area, then who was he to stop them? It wasn’t like he hadn’t just done the same thing. As he continued to walk, more bullets fell out of his shirt and hit the ground, tinkling on the sidewalk like forgotten memories.

      The small hairs on the back of Damon’s neck stood up and he stopped walking, turning his head from one side to the other… he was being watched. Finally jerking his head back, his eyes narrowed when he saw a shapeless silhouette lurking on the roof of the building beside him.

      Stepping back into the shadows, Damon wrapped the darkness around him hating how this city had no privacy with all the fucking paranormal breeds running around. Before coming here, he’d never been around shifters or the fallen. In his country, shifters had been purged back in the dark ages and been smart enough not to return. He’d never realized just how territorial he was while in a land he’d kept clean.

      He’d СКАЧАТЬ