Enthralled: Paranormal Diversions (Wicked Lovely 5.50)

Bradley hesitated. “My body is my temple,” he said eventually. “Glowing and gorgeous inside and out.”

Lucille tensed. Bradley was already a bit tense. Christian wondered what the hell he should do, and as he wondered he moved between them, shielding Bradley.

Josh came in through the door, saw the hungry look Lucille had fixed on Bradley, and backpedaled so fast he hit the door with a bang.

“No,” he almost shouted, his breath coming too quickly. Christian opened the cupboard and started rummaging around for Josh’s emergency inhaler, but Josh took a few more fast breaths and repeated, “No. Having one of you things around is bad enough—”

“Hey, don’t talk about Chris that way!” Bradley snapped.

“Having a wild one that bites people—”

“I’m not a tame dog,” Christian snarled. He saw the flicker of fear on Josh’s face, and stepped back, the inhaler pressed hard against his palm.

Lucille stood, still a little shaky. “And we don’t think of you as people.”

Christian put the inhaler on the counter and seized her arm. The way Lucille stiffened and looked at him, her lip curled back from her razor-sharp teeth, he knew it would have been suicide any other time.

Fortunately, right now she was debilitated enough that turning around rendered her so disoriented she swayed and had to hold on to Christian’s arm.

She dug her pointed nails into his arm as she did so, and he swept her out of the room, safely away from Bradley and Josh, then faced a dilemma: she was a vampire preying on his band-mates and had to be eliminated, and yet she was also a lady in distress.

He called her a cab.

When he got back, Pez was sitting at a table being lectured by Josh and Bradley both at once.

“You’ve got to be safe, dude,” Bradley told him. “Next time you sleep with a vampire, you’ve got to make her wear a gum shield.”

“Or you could not consort with vampires!” Josh screeched.

“Josh, I swear to God,” Bradley began.

“I didn’t mean Chris,” Josh said, somewhat to Christian’s surprise. But then

he assumed Josh meant “consorting” in a certain way, and despite the allegations of certain tabloids, Christian was not in the habit of consorting with his band-mates all night long.

“Wait,” Pez said slowly. “That girl was a vampire?”

Christian had only been out of the coffin for half an hour, and he already had a migraine.

“What did you think was going on?” Bradley asked after a while.

He’d stopped looking frustrated, and now looked a little bit like he wanted to laugh. On the whole, Christian was glad: if the stress had given Bradley worry lines, Faye would have made them all suffer for it.

“I just thought she was a little rough-and-tumble,” Pez said dreamily. “I went with it. I mean, whatever you’re into, am I right? Don’t be a hater.”

Bradley really did laugh then, collapsing backward into a chair with his yogurt in one hand and his other hand held palm up.

“All right, then,” he said. “Liverpool down, and the band scored a vampire groupie. High five.”

“I don’t think she counts as a—,” Christian began.

“Hey,” said Bradley. “She came, she saw, she sampled. She counts. High five.”

Christian gave him the high five, and not too long after that they were in a tour bus trundling along the Mersey River, leaving Liverpool, city of the Beatles and their vampire groupie, far behind.

Birmingham was their third stop, and time for Christian’s surprise. He had been surreptitiously collecting supplies behind Faye’s back for weeks.

He still felt scared and sure that she was watching him, even though he’d used vampire vision and speed to take out the spy cameras on the tour bus and every hotel they’d stopped in. He found himself looking wildly around the hotel room as he slipped what he needed out from behind the lining of his coffin.