He pushed that thought away and stared out the tinted window. If he didn’t feed tonight, he was going to have to take himself off the work rotation until he could replenish himself. Already he could feel the edginess clawing at him, whispering to him to jump from the vehicle and drain the first human who met his body’s needs. That whisper was going to increase in volume throughout the night until it was screaming at the ravenous animal he’d become.
Campbell hated the double-edged curse of having the rarest blood type before he’d been turned. Since vamps could only feed on humans who had the same blood type the vampire had before being turned, he had fewer sources of sustenance. Campbell and all the other AB-negative vampires were less likely to walk into a blood bank and find an adequate supply of blood, especially after the Bokor die-off culled the human herd. The irony? When he did feed, he experienced a huge rush and came out the other side with greater strength than other vampires.
He noticed Kaja staring out the window with an odd look on her face, almost like longing. That was strange for Kaja, who more than any of them liked being a vampire because it meant she’d never get old or lose her beauty. Well, she didn’t particularly like drinking blood, but she took the bad with the good. He should probably ask her what was bothering her, make sure it wouldn’t impair her ability to do her job, but asking a woman a question like that was a potential minefield. He ended up not having to since she noticed him staring.
“You ever go see a show before you were turned?” she asked.
He looked out the window at the darkened marquees and shrugged. “A couple of times, on dates. Wasn’t really my thing. I much preferred a good Yankees game.”
“At least you can still see that.”
“On TV isn’t the same as sitting in the stands drinking beer and eating a giant hot dog.”
“Ugh.”
He laughed at the look of disgust on her flawless face. He very much doubted Kaja Belyakova had ever deigned to eat a hot dog.
“What’s wrong, princess?” Colin asked from the driver’s seat. “Hot dog not on the model diet?”
“Shouldn’t have been on anyone’s diet. Gross.” She shuddered with her normal amount of drama, eliciting laughs from most of the team and an eye roll from Len McBride. He was a former ironworker, and his life experience had been about as far from Kaja’s parade of fashion shoots as a person’s could get.
“You ever been to the Damask?” Sophia asked Kaja, referring to the former Broadway theater vamps had appropriated for their own, the only one to still stage productions at night.
“Once. The acting was terrible, so I never went back. You’d think vampires could put together a decent drama.”
Things outside the truck remained pretty quiet until they passed into Tribeca. Almost as one, they all sensed it. Fear. The air was ripe with pulse-pounding, raw human fear.
Olivia knew she was in trouble the moment she looked over her shoulder and saw the pale blue eyes in the dark. Her heart rate picked up even more as she launched herself onto another stoop and banged on a final door in a last-ditch effort to save her life. She knocked with one hand while slipping a knife out of her pocket with the other.
Please don’t let anyone look out and see those vampire eyes. If they did, she had no hope.
“Help me!” She pulled back her fist to bang again, but cold hands latched on to her wrist and pulled her off the steps as if she weighed no more than a string of spaghetti.
“Careful,” one of the vampires hissed. “We need her alive if we hope to get paid.”
Olivia slashed at the vampire holding her, but he was too fast and her knife went flying across the street.
A blinding panic exploded inside Olivia and she struggled in vain to free herself, even knowing her mere human strength was no match for one vampire, let alone two. These vamps weren’t going to feed, didn’t need her type of blood, but she was smart enough to know she was a valuable commodity on the vampire black market. With the cut on her finger, they could smell her blood and thus tell her blood type. She didn’t understand how it worked, but it must be like a human being able to tell the difference between the scent of grilling meat and fresh cookies. Even if she didn’t have exposed blood, it wouldn’t be difficult for a vampire to determine what type of blood she had. All they would have to do is break into a blood bank and access the records then target their victims.
She’d heard the stories about the vampires’ black market. Part of her had wondered if they were true or simply a product of fearful minds. As she stared the possibility of becoming a blood slave in the face, she no longer doubted.
She’d rather be bled dry and left in the street than endure what they no doubt had planned for her. At least then it’d be over in a matter of moments. Her agony wouldn’t be stretched out possibly for the rest of her natural life.
She kicked and wriggled, scratched and screamed against the viselike grips of her two abductors. She had to get away somehow, and she racked her brain for some miracle of a solution.
“I’ll donate more blood. Just please let me go.”
One of the vamps laughed at her, and she had the impression that his breath would be hot and foul if he were still alive.
“Why would we do that when you’re our ticket to a life of leisure?”
She bucked like a wild horse determined to be free. Though it likely made no difference, she clawed at the vampires’ cold skin and did her best to kick them. She would fight until her last breath. If she died tonight, she wasn’t going quietly or easily.
“Let me go!” she screamed, then spit at the taller of the two vamps. She eyed his mouth and imagined head-butting him so hard his fangs would fall out.
One of the vamps clamped down harder on her arm, causing her to scream. She’d swear her bone was on the verge of breaking.
“Stop making so much damn noise,” he said.
That was when she noticed dark shapes coming out of the alleyways, more vampires who’d scented her and planned to take her off her abductors’ hands for their own profit—or their dinner. God, she was going to be the prize in a vampire fight.
Despite the white-hot pain in her arm, she struggled even more, desperate to get loose, to run as fast as her feet would carry her while these vamps fought over her. She jerked her body, writhed like a snake, made every movement she thought might make even the slightest difference in the state of her capture. Panic welled in her so much that she feared her heart would simply burst with it.
“See what you’ve done,” the bigger of her two captors said with disgust.
He tossed her aside so quickly that she didn’t have time to process that she was free before her back slammed into something hard and unyielding. She cried out as she realized she’d hit a fire hydrant. She tried to draw in a breath, but the pain caused her to stop and her eyesight threatened to abandon her. Pain radiated out from the spot on her back where she’d hit. Her vision blurred so much that she had to close her eyes to keep from vomiting. If she’d broken any bones, that would lessen the minuscule likelihood that she could slip away while the vampires fought among themselves.
She swallowed and tasted the salty, coppery taste of blood. She must have bitten her lip or the inside of her mouth in the struggle. Her stomach revolted at the idea of swallowing blood. The very idea of being turned frightened her a million times more than being killed. Being like these beasts, feeding on the lives of humans, was a horror beyond comprehension.
She did her best to take slow, deep breaths and blinked to clear her vision. Neither tactic was working very well, and she couldn’t get her body to obey her mind’s command to get up and move.