means of escape.
The voices echoed in her head, so strong and clear, as if it had been just yesterday that she’d descended into that hell-hole prison.
“YOU CAN’TJUST leave us.” Cruz held Molly’s hand in one of his and a buck knife he’d taken off the guard in his other.
The man’s body slumped in a nearby corner. He was out cold. For now.
“They’ll track us down,” Cruz went on. “They will.” He nodded frantically. His eyes glittered with the horrific memories of being beaten and locked up and humiliated. He’d watched the woman he loved being raped. Over and over. And he’d been powerless to stop it.
He still was.
The truth burned inside of him, feeding the desperation and fear coiling his body tight.
“You have to help us,” he added, his gaze as pleading as his words.
“Leave now,” Viv told him. She couldn’t do what he asked. She wouldn’t doom anyone else to the darkness. Never again.
“You’ll have a good head start,” Viv continued. “Take Molly and go. I’ll stall them for you.”
“Kill them?”
But she couldn’t do that either. While she’d made her fair share of vampires, she’d never actually caused anyone’s death. No, she’d saved them from it.
Or so she’d always thought.
“I can’t do that.” She shook her head. “But I’ll slow them down. That’s all I can do.”
“It won’t be enough,” came Molly’s small, hollow voice. She shook her head, her eyes wide and vacant, as if the men had stolen her spirit right along with her innocence. “They’ll find us.”
“They won’t,” Viv reassured them. “But you have to go.” She motioned toward the rickety steps leading to the dark, cold night. “Now.”
“You don’t know them.” Cruz shook his head, a strange look in his eyes. He let go of Molly’s hand and lifted the knife. “They’ll catch us and make us pay. And I won’t be able to stop them. I can’t. Not like this.”
The blade flashed and before Viv could blink, he sliced through his left wrist clear to the bone. Blood gushed, spurting out onto the floor at an alarming rate.
“Please,” he mouthed, and then he sank to his knees as his life slipped away.
VIV BLINKED AGAINST the sudden burning in her eyes at the vivid memory. She hadn’t been able to stand by and watch him die. Not after the suffering he’d already endured. And so she’d turned him.
And he’d turned Molly.
And then the two newly made vampires had doled out revenge.
But what they’d first seen as their salvation, they’d come to realize was more a curse.
One they now meant to break.
They’d finally figured out that if they killed her, they could free themselves from the chains of darkness that bound them, silence the hunger that ruled their existence and become human again.
It had been eight days since Viviana had crawled into that closet and faced her mortality. She had no doubt that Cruz and Molly knew that they’d failed by now.
They would come for her again. To do the job right this time. And she would let them.
Because along with fear, she’d felt something else, as well, while she’d been holed up in that closet. As her body had healed, her mind had relived the past. She’d spent three days hiding, healing and thinking about her life, about all those people she’d tried to save from death.
She’d finally admitted the truth to herself—despite her intentions, she hadn’t really saved anyone. No, she’d doomed them to a fate worse than death.
The darkness.
The hunger.
No more.
She figured she only had a few days before Molly and Cruz caught up with her again. When they did, she had no intention of fighting them. Rather, she would face her mistakes this time, and set things right. She would give them back their humanity.
But before she submitted to her own death, she wanted to feel truly alive one more time.
One last time.
She retrieved the medallion she’d left hanging from the rearview mirror, slid the gold chain over her head and tucked the warm metal deep in her cleavage. Gunning the engine, she put the car in gear and headed back to the motel.
Chapter 3
SHE WAS PERFECT.
Garret watched the redhead make her way across the sawdust floor. His nostrils flared. The faint scent of strawberry shampoo drifted through the fog of beer and cigarette smoke. Her breaths came quick, her lips parting ever so slightly. Her small breasts bounced with each draw of oxygen.
It had been an hour since Viv had left the bar.
An hour spent thinking and wondering and fantasizing.
He drop-kicked the last thought as soon as it waltzed into his head and focused on the hunger gnawing at his gut. His stomach clenched, and his muscles bunched. Heat clawed low and deep. His throat tightened.
His gaze narrowed, and he fixated on the woman again. He noticed everything about her—from the way her eyes glittered with excitement and fear to the slight sway of her walk, as if she hadn’t pulled out the high heels in a really long time.
And then he noticed that no one else seemed to notice her.
The other men didn’t stare or drool or eat her up with their eyes the way they’d done Viv.
Because there was nothing supernatural about this woman.
She was real.
Ordinary.
And so the men kept drinking and shooting the shit while the woman slid onto a bar stool and crossed her legs.
As if she felt his attention, she turned. Her green gaze collided with his, and the truth echoed in his head.
This was the last place she wanted to be, but she was sick and tired of sitting home alone, mourning over a recent break-up with her long-term boyfriend. She needed to ease her sexual frustration, get over him once and for all and get on with her life.
She needed rebound sex.
And Garret needed the energy bubbling inside of her, especially now that Viv was back in his life. If he meant to keep his head on straight and his dick in his pants, he needed every ounce of strength when he faced her tomorrow night.
He needed to suppress the hunger.
