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An Excerpt From: BLOOD OF AN ANGEL
© Copyright
ANYA BAST, 2005.
All Rights Reserved, Ellora's Cave, Inc.
His muscles and mind protesting the movement, Charlie
pushed off from the ground and launched himself at the woman with an
anguished roar. She cried out in surprise, as he slammed full-force into
her midsection, driving them both back into the door of a garage behind
them. A hot slickness coated his stomach and chest and it took him a moment
to realize it was his own blood. She struggled against him, waving that
hawthorn stake dangerously close to his back.
Hawthorn wood was highly toxic to the Embraced. The
wound made by a hawthorn stake not only poisoned their blood, it wouldn’t
close up. Ironically, most Embraced died of blood loss if someone staked
them. So the fact that the hawthorn was now scraping his shoulder didn’t
make Charlie feel exactly warm and fuzzy.
He shifted to the side and grabbed the wrist of the hand
wielding the stake. His whole body screamed from whatever it was she’d done
to him. The wound made him weak and she was exceptionally strong. Way
too strong for a human female. The result made them almost evenly matched
in a fight. Almost. He suspected he was still the stronger one.
There was something off here. What was it?
With single-minded intensity, he pushed her down the
garage door to the pavement. She shrieked in rage, but she couldn’t stop
him from pressing that wrist down to the ground. The woman might be faster
than him, but it turned out that, even injured, he was still stronger. He
wrested the stake from her grasp and threw it to the side. It ended up
behind a row of trashcans that stood nearby.
She kicked, coming dangerously close to his balls with
her knee, and slammed her fist into his jaw. His head snapped to the side
under the force of the punch. Pain blossomed through his skull.
Damn, she was strong. She couldn’t be human, but
she didn’t feel like an Embraced.
What the hell was she?
He needed to further control the woman, and he needed to
do it fast. Using his inner thighs, he pressed in, pinning her legs together.
He also grabbed her other flailing arm at the wrist and pressed it down to
the ground.
She shrieked again and Charlie wondered when someone in
one of these nearby houses would call the cops. They didn’t need that. The
police would call in the local SPAVA unit—Squad for Paranormal and Vampiric
Activity—and they’d give both Charlie and Anlon absolute hell. Any conflict
between a human and an Embraced—if human really was what this woman
was—got extra special attention from the local law enforcement, always at
the expense of the Embraced, no matter which party was truly at fault.
Prejudice against the Embraced was alive and well in the United States.
But more important than avoiding SPAVA was finding out
if Vincent was all right. He hadn’t moved or made a sound since the woman
had knelt over him with the stake in her hand. The fact that Charlie had
wrested the hawthorn away from her before she’d had a chance to strike
Vincent gave him hope that he was probably okay.
The woman went limp beneath him. Charlie was thankful,
since the blood he’d lost was making him feel weak and the sacyr was
rising hard and fast as a result. Plus, the closeness of his peculiar woman
and her violet scent, combined with his own rage, was fueling his blood
hunger.
She stared up with him with complete and utter animosity
in her eyes.
Gone were the glasses. Gone was the illusion of
bookishness and fragility. Completely gone was the impression that this
woman was angelic. She felt delicate beneath him, but the way she’d
kicked his ass contradicted that image.
“You should have let me kill him. He deserves to die,”
she spat.
Charlie’s brow furrowed. Vincent was harmless. He was
one of the most harmless Embraced he’d ever met. Vincent was almost naive.
What could Vincent have done to gain this woman’s wrath? The question posed
on his lips was why in the moment the woman suddenly pushed up hard.
Caught off-guard by the jolt of inhuman strength, Charlie toppled to the
side.
The woman sprang to her feet, eyeing the dark corner
behind the row of trashcans where Charlie had thrown the stake. She lunged
in that direction, but he stretched out quick as a striking snake and
caught her by the ankle. He toppled her to the ground face-first and pushed
to his feet.
The sacyr roared within him, overwhelming his
weakness. It screamed in his head. He needed to feed. He needed to feed now.
Too bad for the woman in front him. She was about to
become a meal.
With an intense gaze, he watched her flip to her back
and spot him. He was the predator now. He might be injured. He might be
weak. The rising sacyr didn’t care about any of that. It just wanted
the blood of this woman. Her gray eyes widened as she realized the tables
had suddenly turned. Charlie watched her crab-walk back a few paces, then
lurch to her feet.
Charlie lunged.
The woman spun to the side, kicking her booted foot up
and around in a roundhouse kick. Her heel caught him hard in the solar
plexus, right where she’d wounded him. He grunted, but the sacyr
held him upright, made him push through the intense pain. The sacyr
was unstoppable now. He had no say in his actions and was a slave to its
whims. She threw a punch, but he blocked it. He took a step forward; she
took a step back. It was like a dance, but one wholly without romance.
She turned to run, but he grabbed her by her upper arms
and dragged her back flush up against his chest.
He lowered his head to her ear, scenting the violet in
her hair and the blood that ran through those delicate veins under her
pale, soft skin. He inhaled and closed his eyes, letting her aroma infuse
him. His breath left him in a groan of ecstasy. “All the gentleman’s been
beaten right out of me,” he murmured into her ear. “You’re in trouble now,
angel.”
She stilled. Her breathing sounded harsh in the suddenly
quiet air. It was as if the whole world had fallen away and only this
alley, only he and this mysterious woman, remained.
Charlie dipped his head to the place where her shoulder
met her throat and rubbed his lips against her skin. The woman shivered.
From fear? He didn’t know. He didn’t smell any fear on her, but by rights
she should’ve been afraid. Charlie only knew that her shudder
increased the pull and strength of the sacyr.
He had to have her…now.
He flicked his tongue out and tasted her skin, tasted
the hard pulse under her earlobe. So sweet. So soft. So perfect. He stifled
a groan. His fangs extended and he brushed them across her vulnerable
throat. At the same, he readied his glamour. Charlie was exceptionally good
with glamour. The woman would feel nothing but pleasure when he bit her.
It was far more than she deserved.
The sudden scent of arousal filled the air, delicately
musky. The woman whimpered in her throat. She relaxed against him and the
tang of her sex, plumped with excitement, teased him.
That sound, along with the fragrance of her, gripped him
and wouldn’t let him free. Feeling drugged, he grazed his fangs along her
shoulder. He felt the skin slice open in a thin, neat line and tasted just
a drop of her blood on his tongue.
Somewhere in the sacyr-controlled, pain-fogged
back of his mind, Charlie noted that she didn’t taste like a human. Her
blood was smoother, silkier on his tongue. It reminded him of milk flavored
with a bit of sugar.
So, delicious…. He lowered his mouth to take another
taste.
Suddenly, the woman thrust her elbows up hard and
twisted to the side. Charlie tried to maintain his grip on her, but she was
gone in a blur of speed.
An angelic tinkle of laughter was all he heard from the
mouth of the alley. Then, nothing.
The sacyr wailed within him at being denied
sustenance. His wound overwhelmed him. Charlie groaned, dropped to his
knees and knew nothing more.
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