But where she should have seen ordinary teeth, she saw his fangs. And the murderous look in his eyes.
“Ty?” she whispered.
“Puta,” she heard Louis groan out. He’d hit the ground and lay moaning, his legs immobile but his head whipping back and forth between her and Ty. His body seemed paralyzed.
Not entirely. Ana noticed movement, and realized Louis still held his gun. He lifted it up and pointed it at her.
This is it, she thought.
She was dead.
She’d never get to prove anything to Ty or kiss him again.
Never get to see Gloria again.
She was going to die in a back alley and—
The shot cracked and she closed her eyes.
Waited.
And waited.
And opened her eyes to a horror far more bloody than anything she’d ever seen. Animalistic. Ferocious.
She saw Ty, bent over a struggling Louis, tearing into the man’s neck with his fangs.
She stifled a raw, rough scream, but it blasted through the alley anyway.
The sound hadn’t come from her. It wasn’t Louis. It had come from within the nightclub. People had heard the gunshot and were shouting as they ran down the hallway to the back entrance toward them.
“Leave! Now!” She flinched at Ty’s raw command. Her gaze snapped back to him and focused on his blood-soaked clothes and face. Her knees gave out but before she hit the ground, Ty was there, sweeping her up into his arms before she had time to react.
“Stop!” a male voice commanded.
A woman, maybe two, shrieked without stopping.
But though she looked, Ana couldn’t identify any of them. Ty, with her in his arms, was moving too fast, so inhumanly fast she knew no one would have clearly seen them, even if they had been able to take their eyes off Louis’s gruesome corpse.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
Ana was as scared as she’d ever been. Considering the path her life had taken, that was saying something. Her heart thudded in her chest and her breaths came far too fast. In her mind, she could still see Louis and the man who’d killed him. Violently. Viciously. But not, it would seem, easily.
After carrying her away from the nightclub for what had to be miles, Ty had finally stopped in what appeared to be a deserted parking garage adjacent to the local mall. He’d set her down—gently, oh so gently—then scrambled away from her.
Crouched down on his heels, his arms wrapped around his head as if to hide or protect himself, his face turned away from her to the wall next to him, he looked … tortured. Even from where she huddled herself, she could see he was shaking.
Like a wild animal who’d fought past a herd of predators, he’d collapsed right when he was about to reach safety. As if he’d given up. As if the same horror she’d felt at watching what he’d done was eating him alive. He was whispering something she couldn’t hear, clearly in tremendous pain.
It had nothing to do with the bullet Louis had shot him with.
The thought of him suffering so made her feel as if her own heart was being ripped out. All she wanted to do was hold and comfort him.
Hesitantly, she started crawling toward him.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m sorry.”
He was saying the words over and over again, until she was right beside him, calling his name.
“Ty! Ty!”
He seemed oblivious to her presence.
Gritting her teeth, she reached out and touched his arm. “Ty.”
His head snapped up at her touch. His mouth was closed and she couldn’t see his fangs, but the lower part of his face was still smeared with blood. Louis’s blood. The feral look in Ty’s eyes terrified her. But as she stared at him, she saw the intensity of his regret. She saw his humanity.
Her fear and panic didn’t go away but it did subside.
Swallowing hard, she felt him shake even harder. She squeezed his arm in what she hoped he’d interpret as a reassuring gesture. “Ty, está bien,” she said. “It’s okay.”
“No,” he choked out. “This is what I am now. A monster. A freak.”
It was exactly what she’d thought about him, but she protested anyway. “You’re not a monster. Louis came after us. And you saved me. You saved both of us.”
He didn’t say anything more. Turning his face toward the wall again, he shook and shook. Somehow, before she knew what she was doing, she had her arms around him to comfort him.
And he let her.
Slowly, his shaking lessened.
She started to pull away. In response, Ty wrapped his own arms around her, pulling her even closer into his embrace. “No. Please. Don’t go.”
He sounded so vulnerable, though he wasn’t. Still, his raw plea awakened long-ago emotions in her, ones she had never wanted to relive. The memories were unbearable.
Gloria had clung to her when she’d crawled into Ana’s bed at night, begging her to keep her safe from the monsters—the ones in the closet, the ones on the street, the ones that their mother brought home with her.
She’d always told Gloria she’d protect her. That she’d keep the monsters away. She wanted to tell Ty the same thing, but she couldn’t. In the end, she hadn’t been able to protect Gloria. Ty knew that. He would come to his senses, ashamed of his moment of weakness.
He was the strong one. Not her. She pulled away again.
“I have to go,” she insisted. “Debemos ir, Ty. Back to Belladonna.”
Ty heard what Ana was saying and forced himself to release her. Together, they stood up. Every barrier that had come between them, plus a few new ones, crashed back into place.
Taking a deep breath, accepting what she’d said about having to leave, he fought for self-control.
“I need to call Carly. Explain what happened so she can do damage control. Listen to the police radios.”
She nodded. “Tell her to send a car for us,” she said.
Right. Because they couldn’t very well go back to the nightclub to retrieve the car they’d driven there. Police would be all over the place, doing what they could to find the man’s murderer.
Him.
Revulsion crawled up his spine and he fought back waves of self-hatred.
His actions as a vampire sickened and infuriated him. Why couldn’t he control what he was? How he acted? He’d been proud of his position in the FBI, proud of serving a country that wasn’t even his. He could lose it all.
Quickly, he called Carly and explained what had happened. As always, she was cool. Calm. Detached.
“The car will be here shortly,” he said after hanging up, then forced himself to look Ana in the eye.
To his surprise, she stepped closer to him.
She smelled good, musky and real, but underlying that was the scent of … what? Disgust? Fear?
At least she wasn’t running from him or fighting him off. Ana was strong, he’d give her that.
“Why did you attack him?” she asked, her voice tremulous.
“I heard you screaming.”
She shook her head. “No. You couldn’t have. I definitely wasn’t screaming. I was letting him kiss me. I was trying to get information about Miguel from him.”
He noticed spatters of dried blood across her face and raised his hand as if he could wipe them away, then dropped it. “I lost sight of you on the dance floor.”
She winced. “It all happened so fast. He pulled me outside, but I was making progress. I was close, so close to getting him to talk—”
“I heard you scream,” he said, his eyes haunted. “You kept crying out the word no, over and over again.”