She barely shook her head, shattering the vertigo that had swept over her.
“Knowledge,” she said. “All I want is knowledge, and to make my own way. And look, I’m already doing that. So…yay me!”
“You have strength in you. Power. I feel it. Rich but delicate, like a handblown glass vase. It’s unique. Exquisite in every way. I must have you.” He took a step forward. “I can give you knowledge; I have much of it. Or I can pay for your schooling—it is expensive for you, is it not? You do not look wealthy. Do you wish to travel? I can have the best tutors in the world attend you and a private jet take you anywhere you wish to go. Whatever you can possibly need, I can provide. Lovers? Doting men? Easily done. I will share you; I am not possessive.”
“You are, quite possibly, the most out-of-touch guy I’ve ever spoken to. This come-on is an epic fail.”
He took another step closer, which seemed more like five, given how close it brought him. “I will have you for my own. Resistance is futile.”
“Now you’re showing your true colors. Well, I’m not the kind of girl to roll over and play dead because some rich, handsome jackass has a dominance complex.”
A smile spread across his perfect face. Her gut told her this was his version of coiling. An attack would come soon.
Charity gritted her teeth—although fear still boiled in her gut, it had been overridden by the need to survive. She reached for the weapons.
“A lovers’ spat. How engaging. I will win.”
He moved so fast that she lost sight of him. One moment he was standing a few yards away, and the next his delicate fingers had turned into bands wrapped around her upper arm, preparing to drag her away.
Fear rolled. Power surged. She snatched a knife, the closer weapon, turned, and stabbed all in one fluid movement. The blade plunged deep into his chest.
She missed his heart by three inches.
He sucked in a breath that sounded like a backward hiss and plucked the knife from his chest. With a flick, he threw it away. Mist hazed the air, and for one moment, his face of inhuman perfection turned to that of a monstrous beast.
She twisted and gouged. Her fist hit his throat. He barely moved.
Beneath his feral smile, his irises began expanding to fill his eyes. He bent to her, reaching for her body.
Her flash of dread turned into a gush of electricity.
She slapped her hand to his chest and let the inner power pour out. A zap turned into a sizzle. The air concussed. His body sailed up and back in an arc, his limbs weirdly still for a guy catapulting through the air. At the last second, he flipped and twisted…and landed perfectly on his feet, crouched and ready.
“Holy crap,” Charity breathed, blinking stupidly.
That perfect smile burned brighter as he straightened.
“What a rare treat,” he said, and slowly ran his hand down his chest. “I have underestimated you. You are not what you seem, yet…” He cocked his head. “Why are you familiar to me? So sweet. So soft. So brutal. I am in rapture. What are you? You are certainly not human…”
Charity dove for the gun, clutching it and pointing it at her target in a stance born of years of practice. He was moving again, straight at her. His human skin melted away like hot wax, revealing that disgusting thing beneath with huge white fangs and black lips.
Charity sighted, and breathed.
The gun jerked in her hand. The creature jerked as the bullet slammed into the center of its chest, an inch or two off target.
It kept coming.
She opened fire, squeezing over and over, aiming, re-aiming, keeping focus. He reached her a moment later, lifted her up, and tossed her across the SUV. She knew a second of weightlessness, the gun clutched tightly, before she was falling again. Her shoulder slammed off the hood and she toppled over the side, landing in a heap.
He was on her a second later, scooping her up like a child.
“I will have you as mine,” the creature hissed in her ear. The sound was like a hundred snakes slithering across a dirty wooden floor.
She twisted her body and shoved the gun against its heart. There was no way this bullet would miss.
Click.
The magazine was empty.Chapter Twenty-One“No fucking way!” she screamed.
Her head hit off the SUV again as the vampire snatched her up. Electricity welled within her. Dizzied but frantic, she pushed, and power surged out through her arms and into the creature’s body. The creature started to scream, a sizzling sound as her electricity ate away at its exposed, swampy skin.
She shoved back and opened herself up to the current, letting it run through her. The sky lit up overhead, the darkness cracking open, and light beat down on the writhing, squealing vampire. Steam, then smoke, billowed up from the being’s nasty skin as its mouth gaped open unnaturally wide.