Ravaged (Vampire Awakenings, Book 7) Read online

  The Savages were still out there, most likely hunting him. Her blood would be an irresistible beacon to them, and he needed her stronger. Shifting his hold on her, he lifted his wrist to his mouth and bit into it. She might be mad at him for this, but it was necessary, and after watching her tonight, he knew this woman did what it took to survive.

  He rested his wrist against her parted lips and allowed his blood to flow into her. He wouldn’t give her much, and she hadn’t lost enough blood for this to start the change in her. His blood would only close her wounds while strengthening her.

  Maggie sighed when the delicious liquid hit her tongue. She’d never drunk anything like it, yet she felt as if she’d spent her whole life searching for it. The taste and the sensation of it sliding down her throat made her feel as if she’d suddenly found the answer to a question she hadn’t known she’d been asking. The warm, clove-spiced liquid pooled in the back of her throat before she swallowed it.

  As if she’d taken five shots of espresso, energy infused her body. Her muscles, which had been rigid and sore, relaxed. Her tongue flickered out and tasted something warm, solid, and salty. When she recognized it as flesh, she couldn’t suppress a mewl of need as instinctively she realized who she tasted. Like in the ambulance, her body reacted to his with desire.

  Feeling stronger, her fingers curled around his thickly muscled wrist as she consumed more of what he offered her. Wait…

  Something wasn’t right. Her eyes flew open when she realized she wasn’t drinking from a cup but straight from his wrist. She was consuming his blood.

  Holy shit!

  As if his flesh scorched her lips, she threw his wrist aside and bolted upright. Aiden caught her before she could fling herself out of his arms.

  “It’s okay,” he soothed as he set her on her feet. Disappointment filled him when she gazed distrustfully at him while backing away.

  “You were giving me your blood!” she accused.

  “It was necessary to stop your bleeding.”

  The calmness of his reply set her teeth on edge. “Bandage the wound then!”

  He smiled at her. “That’s your area of expertise.”

  “And yours is blood?”

  “One of them.”

  Maggie glanced around as she tried to figure out where they were and which was the best way for her to bolt.

  “I’m not going to let you go,” he said.

  Her head snapped back around to him as indignation filled her. “You’re kidnapping me?”

  “No. I’m keeping you safe. The Savages have smelled your blood, one of them has tasted you, and they’ll want you as much as me now. They’re out there hunting for us right now. I won’t let you go while they remain free and alive.”

  “I didn’t do anything to them!” Maggie protested.

  “They don’t care about that.”

  She took a calming breath before she started screaming over the injustice of it all or kicked him in the nuts again. She’d simply done her job, and now she was being hunted by some weird-ass vampires, and this crazy-ass vamp was telling her he wasn’t going to let her go.

  Yep, life sucks, so get a helmet, Maggie. There’s a lot worse happening to someone else in the world right now; suck it up.

  That reminder helped to embolden her a little. Hitting and yelling might make her feel better, but it would accomplish nothing other than tiring her out. She suspected she would need all her energy to survive this night and escape this guy. She had to remain calm and learn as much as she could, knowledge was power.

  CHAPTER 11

  “What are Savages?” she asked.

  “Killers.”

  “I’m pretty sure you did your fair share of killing back there!”

  Bricks pressed against her when she backed herself into a wall. She immediately sprang away from it and started edging away again. He followed her with measured steps while he idly pulled off the electrodes from the EKG machine still attached to his chest and tossed them aside.

  She couldn’t stop herself from drinking in the sight of his bare chest and chiseled abdomen. Black hair ran across his chest and encircled his nipples, but he wasn’t overly hairy and his stomach was mostly bare of it. She nearly licked her lips when her eyes fell to the ridges carving the ten pack of his stomach before dropping lower.

  The jeans he wore hung low on his hips to reveal the solid V of muscle there and the black trail of hair leading from his belly button to his waistband. Every inch of him was as finely honed as a knight’s sword. She’d never seen a man as large or solidly built, at least not in real life.

  “I should have said that, unlike me, the Savages are killers of innocents,” Aiden said. “They slaughter humans or other vampires who live in peace. They’re monsters who must be hunted and destroyed. That’s what I do.”

  And you can keep me from becoming one of them. Aiden kept that thought to himself. She looked panicked enough right now without him throwing more wood on the fire.

  His words tore her away from her intense and ridiculous perusal of his body. She should be plotting her escape and staying as far from this creature as she could. She should not be wondering what it would feel like to have that body pressed against hers as he thrust into her.

  “Well, good for you,” Maggie replied. “Is that why they’re after you?”

  Aiden ran a hand through his hair. He didn’t see how the Savages could have known he was a purebred or working with Ronan, but maybe they’d somehow discovered that. They’d come after him with enough numbers to make him suspect they knew who and what he was.

  “I’m not sure why they’re after me,” he admitted.

  This was all way too much to deal with right now, Maggie decided as she stared at the man before her. All she wanted was a long, hot soak in her tub, a giant glass of whiskey, and to forget any of this had happened.

  She’d especially prefer to forget the delicious taste of his blood on her tongue. She couldn’t stop herself from licking her lips before she jerked her gaze away from the frozen trickle of blood on his wrist.

  What is wrong with me?

  Her heart beat faster in her chest, and her knees quaked. She’d only ever backed away from one other, and she’d vowed never to do so again, yet she continued to edge away from him. She didn’t think he’d kill her. His bite had only been a pinprick of pain compared to what that other bastard had done to her. This man could have drained her dry by now if he intended to kill her.

  She was fast, tough, and fully prepared to claw the eyes out of someone if necessary for survival, but she’d never encountered an aura of power like the one emanating from him. If this man chose to be the windshield, she would be the splattered bug.

  No, she didn’t continue to back away from him because she feared he would attack her, but because of the way he made her feel all disconcerted yet strangely whole in a way she’d never known she could be. She’d never been normal, but until this man rode her ambulance, she hadn’t realized she’d been missing something.

  “Roger!” she blurted as the reminder he’d been in her ambulance made her recall the events of earlier. Forgetting her uneasiness of this man, she rushed toward him. “We have to go back to Roger! We have to help him! Those things were everywhere!”

  Aiden caught her around her waist before she could bolt past him. “He’s fine,” he assured her as he pulled her back. “The arrival of the police and more ambulances chased off the Savages.”

  She flailed in his grasp for a minute before going still. “Then I have to go to the hospital to see him.”

  “Not tonight. The Savages are hunting us.”

  “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

  “You’ll have to trust me.”

  “Trust you!” She snorted. “I don’t even know your name!”

  “I wouldn’t lie about Roger’s safety; you would only learn the truth eventually. If you’d like, you can call whatever hospital they took him to and find out how he is. My name is Aiden Byrne
, and you are… Maggie May?” he asked, uncertain if that was her name or a nickname.

  “Maggie May is a song. Roger calls me that sometimes.” Lifting her hand, she rubbed it over her heart as she recalled that thing sitting on Roger’s chest, feeding on him. “Are you sure he’s okay?”

  “He was still conscious when I last saw him, and the humans were with him when we left. I think he’ll survive what happened to him.”

  She glanced longingly at the end of the road. “Let me go.”

  Knowing that it would be a small step toward gaining her trust, Aiden reluctantly released her. “If you’re not Maggie May then you are?” he prodded when her attention remained elsewhere.

  “Magdalene Doe,” she murmured absently, more focused on her concern for Roger than Aiden.

  “As in Mary Magdalene?” he asked as he pulled the last electrode off his chest and tossed it aside.

  Her eyes shot toward him. “It was never proven she was a prostitute. Just because someone writes it down or states it at some point in history doesn’t make it true!”

  It surprised her how easily she slipped back into a defensive stance about her name. Some of the numerous schools she’d attended had been far less fun once the kids learned who Mary Magdalene was in history. Many of those kids chose to forget Mary Magdalene was also a saint and focused on her possible sordid past when it came time to tormenting Maggie.

  She’d spent most of middle school denying she was a prostitute, and part of high school throwing dollar bills back at asshole teen boys who asked her for lap dances. Then, during her junior year and at her final school, she’d realized she was throwing back perfectly good money and pocketed it.

  They’d stopped throwing the bills afterward and started waving them in her face. One day, having had enough, she’d knocked Ray Jessup on his ass with a roundhouse punch to the face. She’d bashed out two of his teeth and taken the ten he’d been waving at her.

  Afterward, there had been no more catcalls, and the boys in that school had given her a wide berth when they saw her in the halls. She’d never had a lot of friends, but after that incident, almost everyone avoided her. She may have been a sickly baby and child, but she’d outgrown that period of her life to become strong and unruly enough, so the kids in most of the schools she attended became scared of her.

  Aiden grinned at her, pleased to see the fire back in her eyes instead of uneasiness as Magdalene glowered at him. “I never said anything about her being a prostitute, and I like the name Magdalene,” he told her.

  “I don’t care,” she retorted.

  His eyes shot beyond her when something cracked behind them. He stepped forward to clasp her elbow and draw her closer. “We have to keep moving,” he said briskly.

  Maggie tugged at her arm, and he released her as he stalked deeper into the shadows. He searched around them as he scented the air, but all he detected was the briny smell of the ocean and the feral aroma of nearby rats.

  “Are you a vampire?” Maggie blurted as she walked beside him.

  “What do you think?”

  “I think you bit me! And it was a dickhead move!”

  Aiden winced. That never should have been the way he first tasted her blood. He could take the memory from her, but the idea of messing with her mind in such a way made his gut clench. He would have to make it up to her, somehow, once he got them out of this mess.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “But I was weakened by their first attack on me, and I needed blood to fight them again. Without it, we’d be dead.”

  Maggie frowned at him before leaning back on her heels to inspect his injury. Her breath hissed in through her teeth. His flesh was still raw and bloody, but where a human would have been on the ground, unable to move, and crying, he strode relentlessly forward. Not only would a human be in the fetal position, but their spine would also still be visible. However, Aiden’s muscle had already knitted closed to cover the bone.

  “How is that possible?” she whispered.

  Aiden didn’t have to ask what she was talking about; he knew what she meant. “I heal fast, and your blood helped speed up the process.”

  Maggie tore her gaze away from his back. The hair on her neck rose as some of her mother’s rambling words floated back across her mind. Monsters. Red eyes. Vampires. Monsters! Monsters! Monsters! Take your blood, take your body! VAMPIRE!!!!

  Maggie gulped as she recalled that last word being screamed at her while she’d hurried from the institute where her mother resided.

  CHAPTER 12

  “Vampire,” she whispered.

  Aiden became alarmed by the sudden pallor of her skin. She’d been apprehensive earlier, but she looked ready to pass out now. “Are you okay?” he inquired.

  Shaking her head, Maggie took a deep breath and focused on the now. She could sort out the mess with her mother later. She was walking with a vampire while being stalked by other, killer vampires. Those things took precedence over her mother’s insanity… or lack thereof.

  “I'm all right,” she said.

  “Can you tell me what happened before I woke in the ambulance?” he asked Maggie. “I thought they were going to kill me; how did I survive?”

  She gave him a brief rundown on what she’d seen and what Harding had told her about his arrival at the alley.

  “Do you have a phone?” Aiden asked when she finished.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know where mine is, and I have to call a friend. This mess has to be cleaned up. The humans saw too much tonight, and they can’t know about our existence. Those were dead Savages there with me; their bodies need to be removed from wherever they were taken. Probably the morgue.”

  “Hate to tell you this, but there’s countless books, movies, and legends about vampires and their existence. The word is out.”

  “The legend is out, the truth is not, and it has to remain that way.”

  “Oh!” Maggie’s hand flew to her mouth as she recalled that she hadn’t told him everything. “One of those Savages was still alive! Walt and Glenn were working on him! They took him in their ambulance!”

  “Fuck, that’s not good. Can I use your phone?”

  “It’s in the ambulance. I put it in the glovebox at the start of every shift, with my wallet.”

  Aiden’s teeth grated together as the splash of headlights illuminated the end of the road. “Maybe we can find a pay phone.”

  “Did you just crawl out of the coffin?” Maggie snorted.

  “What?”

  She rolled her eyes. “What century do you think this is? When was the last time you saw a pay phone?”

  “They’re still around, occasionally, and vampires don’t use coffins.”

  “We’d have a better chance of stumbling across gold on the street than a pay phone. And I’m glad coffins aren’t an option for the undead.”

  “I’m not undead. I have a heartbeat—”

  “I’m aware.”

  “I breathe,” he continued, “and I was born.”

  “You were born?” she asked incredulously and shut out her mother’s screaming words when they tried to squirm their way back into her brain.

  “Yes. Both my parents are turned vampires; those are vampires who were once human but were changed by another vamp. I’m a purebred vampire as I was born to two vampire parents, and so were my nine siblings.”

  “Nine siblings?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your poor mother.”

  His mouth quirked in a small smile. “We do torment her.”

  Maggie’s mind felt sluggish as she struggled to process the things he was telling her, but the harder she tried, the more lost she felt and the more her mother’s screams resonated in her head.

  “We’ll buy a cell phone,” Aiden stated.

  The phone situation was an easier problem to deal with, so she decided to focus on it. “With what money?”

  “I don’t need money.”

  “And why not?” she demanded.

 
; “Because I can get into their minds and make people do what I command.”

  She gawked at him and stuttered out some words before finally forming a sentence. “Well, isn’t that the cherry on top of this twisted sundae.”

  “I won’t do it to you, and I only do it when it’s necessary.”

  “Well, ah… yippee for me and the rest of humanity, I guess.”

  Unable to resist touching her again, he pushed back a loose strand of auburn hair and tucked it behind her ear. She watched him with fascinated eyes but didn’t try to pull away.

  Maggie had been contemplating running away as fast as she could before he touched her. After training for over a year to run the Boston Marathon with some of her coworkers next month, she’d gotten herself down to a sub six-minute mile. She could go faster for sprint distances. He may be an immortal, healing machine, but she could haul ass, and she could run for miles.

  That simple touch dissolved her impulse to flee. She didn’t know what it was about this blood-sucking creature, but she couldn’t resist him. Maybe it had something to do with the need she saw in his eyes. She sensed it was for her, but she didn’t understand why. Maybe it was the tender way he caressed her when she’d seen how vicious he could be. Or maybe it was because it had been so long since anyone touched her with any kindness, she couldn’t resist it now.

  You better start resisting, she told herself.

  “Even if you don’t need money,” she said, and stepped back so his hand slid away from her, “no one is going to let you enter their store looking like that. If your whole goal is to go incognito for the vampire race, walking around shirtless and with a gaping wound in your back won’t help your cause. Do you plan on taking out all the security cameras inside the store and along the way to the store too?”

  “You can go into the store and buy a phone.”

  “Hate to break it to you, Nosferatu, but I require money for purchases, or at least a credit card.”

  Aiden felt the pockets of his jeans, but he knew they would be empty. He’d tossed his cash onto Carha’s table. A sick feeling built within him at the reminder of Carha. He suddenly felt filthy standing next to Maggie, as well as ashamed of where he’d been earlier and the reason why he’d been weak enough for the Savages to take him down.