“Follow me. Don’t get lost,” she instructed her too-willing prey. It was amazing how much smoother Brigit’s speech ran when she was out for the feed. There were no halting nonsense words. No likes or ya knows. Every word was purposeful, like she couldn’t spare any extras and still enthrall someone.
Brigit got to her feet and took the man’s hand, which I was thrilled to have off my leg. I brushed the skin of my thigh with my bone-dry palm, trying to get the smell off me. It was no use. Desmond would know the second I got home.
My vampire protégée weaved gracefully across the dance floor with her midnight snack in tow. He was less capable of dodging the flailing dancers and kept getting jostled and elbowed in his attempt to follow Brigit.
Shadowing them, I managed to escape the dance floor unscathed, though one brave soul did grab my hand and try to force me to dance with him.
“Don’t,” I growled, bracing myself to put up a bit of a fight, but the guy raised his hands palms out in a gesture of surrender.
Smart man.
Outside I found my odd couple in the alley adjacent to the club. The music had been whittled down until only the bass notes remained, pounding in the night like a woodpecker on a mite-infested maple.
My boots announced my arrival with a sharp clicking on the concrete. Breath hung around my head, as it did around the man Brigit was pressed against. Only she remained breathless. She’d caged him between her arms and was leaning her full weight into the front of his body to make sure he stayed put.
Judging by his glassy-eyed lack of focus, I was pretty sure running was the last thing on his mind.
“Okay, Bri, are you ready for this?”
Instead of verbalizing her reply she licked his neck, eliciting a low moan from him, then she fixed her jet-black gaze on me. It was a little too erotic for my taste, but that’s vampires for you.
I tucked my hands in the back pockets of my shorts and nodded to her quarry. “No time like the present. ”
Her fangs were already out, and she was close to diving for his throat when I coughed to regain her attention. It was a testament to her control she was able to stop herself.
“What?”
“Not the neck. Too risky. ” I held up my arm and waved at her, pointing to my wrist.
She groaned and I think she rolled her eyes, but it was hard to say without any visible white.
When she grabbed his hand and tore open the vein with fierce precision, it was clear she wouldn’t let me interrupt again. All I could think was, I wonder if I looked like that when I fed from Lucas.
Brigit’s victim let out a yip of pain, but soon after, his eyes rolled backwards and his noises took on a more euphoric quality.
No fair. Whenever I got bitten by a vampire it hurt like a sonofabitch. I had to give Brigit credit, though. She’d enthralled him properly and as long as she stopped feeding after an appropriate withdrawal had been made, I’d be willing to say she was ready to hunt alone.
A human could only lose so much blood before a feeding became a murder, and as a good rule of thumb there was a one-minute time frame between the opening of a vein and the end of the meal. I was counting off the seconds in my head.
Fifty-eight. Fifty-nine…
Brigit gasped and drew her head back, her lips and chin smeared with blood. She looked grisly, but she’d done it. Licking his wound clean, she resisted the urge to take another sip, and her saliva started to work its creepy vampire magic.
On humans, at least living ones, saliva or blood from the undead worked to heal wounds made by the undead. Once a human had been killed, those wounds could no longer be fixed, so it was often possible to see a sire’s bite mark on a baby vamp after it had risen.
The jelly-kneed man was slumped against the building, panting like he’d had the greatest orgasm of his life. Brigit, his blood still on her face, grabbed his chin and smiled at him. He didn’t fight or seem at all alarmed.
“You got a quickie behind the bar,” she purred. “It was good, wasn’t it?”
“Y-yes. ”
“When you get
home you won’t remember my face or my friend. And you’ll stop being a douche to girls at the bar, ’kay?”
“Okay. ”
“Oh, and you’ll never wear that cologne again. It’s gross. ”