Enthralled: Paranormal Diversions (Wicked Lovely 5.50)

He could hear the hiss of breath from everyone in their little cell who could breathe. He could hear the thump of Josh’s heart, clearer than ever, as he drew the collar of Josh’s button-down shirt away from his throat and saw the darker thread of a vein against his pale skin.

Christian bowed his head to that tracing, like a line on a map leading Christian to life

, and bit.

Blood filled his mouth and then was gone. He gulped again, heat running down his throat, lacing its way through and through his body. His skin was tingling, waking back up, and all he wanted was more.

Then he felt Bradley’s hands on his arm, on the back of his neck, tugging gently. Bradley was so warm it burned.

“Chris,” he whispered. “Oh, Christian. Come on, please. Let go.”

That vampire Lucille drank from humans. She couldn’t go a year without killing one.

Christian swallowed one last hot, sweet mouthful of blood— not enough—and let Bradley pull him back.

“Get your hands off me,” Christian whispered, “or I’ll kill you.”

It was strange to say something like that, to be something like this, and to mean every word.

He retreated from them all, watching them, drawing the line between him and them for their own protection. Bradley looked ready to advance and comfort him at any time. Pez was frowning worriedly. Even Josh was sitting up, glasses askew, and squinting at him in what looked like concern. There were two small holes on his throat, but they were barely bleeding; Christian listened to his heartbeat, and it was strong.

He’d bitten one of them, and it almost seemed as if they understood.

But he knew he would need blood again, and he had to protect them from that.

“Thank you,” he said, and shut his eyes.

“Maybe they left us down here with Chris on purpose,” Josh whispered, some time later. “Maybe they’re some sort of anti-vampire hate group, and they want us all dead and for Chris to get the blame.”

“Well, Chris hasn’t hurt us,” Bradley said sharply.

“I know,” Josh whispered back, to Christian’s faint surprise. “But what will they do to us, when they see he hasn’t?”

Pez spoke, in an unexpectedly clear voice. “I calculate that our chances of dying are approximately ninety-eight percent,” he said, and then, “What? Sometimes I like to do mathematics in my head for fun. I find statistics fascinating.”

“No you don’t, you eat dishwasher powder,” Josh said.

Pez asked, “I can’t have depths?”

Everyone was lying flat on their backs in the dust, telling secrets. Christian thought vaguely that it was supposed to be a show of solidarity for him.

“I’ve never loved another woman like I love Faye,” Bradley said dreamily, and that was when the door swung inward.

And Christian could move after all, move using all the strength given to him by Josh’s blood, a promise of death launched at the throat of their enemy, and he snarled, “Leave my nest alone!”

His survival instinct stopped him with his fangs an inch from her throat, because he caught the scent of chrysanthemum perfume and evil. It was Faye.

It was Faye, as if Bradley had conjured her like a genie by speaking her name, and as she applied her sharp wooden heel to his kneecap in an almost affectionate way, Christian collapsed onto the floor with a sense of overwhelming relief.

It wasn’t an antivampire hate group. It wasn’t a crazed fan who wanted to marry one or all of them. It was just some guy—a rumpled, ordinary-looking guy—who blinked at them as if he didn’t recognize them and managed to drawl out, “I wanted to be on TV.”

When the colonel—because somehow Faye had managed to come to their rescue with the army at her back—asked him why he had left a vampire in a room with three humans and no other sustenance, he said, “Oh,” in a dismayed voice. “I just forgot that one was a vampire. Gee, I’m real glad nothing bad happened.” He paused for a moment, and then added, “If something bad had happened . . . would there be more cameras?”

And there it was, as banal and ridiculous as that, some guy who did not care about them at all but only about the insubstantial and strange notion of fame, which had barged in on Christian like an uninvited and confusing guest, leaving glitter in the air and his eyes half blinded by the snapping glare of those cameras.

A lot of what seemed to be about them was about the fame, really.

Christian had drunk three bags full of blood—and sweeter than the cold, viscous liquid was the crackle of plastic under his fingers, the knowledge this was not a human being—and then they had put him in his coffin.