Then the moment is broken when a cold, disgruntled female voice declares, “Well now, what have we got here?”
I practically jump off Ethan. Delilah, Lucas and Eliza are standing in the doorway. Delilah looks bored, Lucas highly amused, and Eliza, well, she looks like she just about wants to rip my head off. Being almost two hundred years old and a vampire, I’m sure that she could. I should definitely be afraid of this cold, beautiful creature. I remind myself to avoid ever being alone with her. I quickly pick my top up off the floor and put it back on.
Eliza’s arms are folded tightly over her chest. She’s got those muscular but feminine arms; I can see them clearly because she’s only wearing a sleeveless brown top.
Ethan doesn’t seem too fazed by our intruders. “What are you all doing here?” he asks, running a hand through his hair, which is now quite messy as a result of our encounter.
“I was driving Delilah home,” says Lucas. “She insisted on coming to see you,” he continues, gesturing to Eliza.
“Yes,” says Eliza. “But I hadn’t realised you were scheduled for a feeding tonight.” Her voice cuts into me, as do her honey golden eyes, and they remind me too much of her father’s. It’s unsettling. I feel like telling her that Ethan had no intention of feeding from me, but thankfully I have enough of a sense of self-preservation to keep my mouth shut.
Ethan gets up from the couch and stalks toward me, while saying to Eliza, “No harm, no foul,” but his eyes are still on mine. He steps in close to me and uses his expert fingers to languorously close the top button of my trousers, which he had previously undone. His eyes are hooded and they promise me something, sending me a message that says, we’re not done here, not by a long shot.
“Well,” says Lucas with an overly dramatic sigh. “I’d better be getting back to the club.”
“I’ll be in my room,” Delilah adds.
Oh no, they’re not going to leave me alone with just Ethan and Eliza, I have no inclination of being the recipient of whatever kind of attack Eliza is so clearly planning in her head. I briefly wonder if there really is something between her and Ethan, but he seems so bemused by her obvious possessiveness that it must be all one sided. Or so I hope. I latch onto Lucas as an escape route.
“If you’re going back to the club then you can give me a lift,” I say to him.
“Of course,” he replies happily, eyes wandering from Ethan to Eliza and then back to me.
“No, Tegan stays. Lucas you can bring Eliza back to the club with you,” says Ethan in disagreement.
I place a hand on Ethan’s arm, and even though I’m not looking at Eliza, I can see her visibly tense up, her posture as still and hard as stone.
“I have to be getting back soon, anyway,” I tell him quietly.
Ethan’s eyes roam over me, but he seems to accept that I have to go. “I will see you tomorrow then,” he replies, without even a hint of a question in his voice, no room for negotiation. All I can do is nod. He places a gentle kiss on my lips before showing me out of his house with Lucas walking ahead of us. I notice that Eliza hasn’t made any move to leave, and I can’t help the sense of annoyance that provokes in me.
Inside the car, I sit in the back behind Lucas and strap on my seat belt. We don’t say a word as we exit Ethan’s driveway and he watches us leave from the doorstep. Lucas glances at me in his overhead mirror. My arms are folded and I do my best to put as much cold, hard strength into my eyes as I possibly can. I need to show him that just because I’m a human, it doesn’t mean I can’t take him.
He grins perversely. “Something you want to say to me, Tegan?” The way he pronounces my name makes me want to punch him in the face.
“You’re not even worth my attention you fucking low life.” I reply, able to truly speak my mind now that Ethan isn’t present.
“And why is that?” he says, as he abruptly manoeuvres the car around a sharp corner and I crash into the side door.
“You turned one of my best friends into your own personal blood bank, made her addicted to your bite. I told you I’d hurt you if you ever hurt her.”
Lucas’ smile is like a razor blade, shiny and lethal. “I never inflicted pain,” he replies. “In fact, quite the opposite.” Now he looks at me again in the mirror, and I nearly jump out of the car when his eyes flash red.
“You don’t scare me, I’ve survived worse monsters than you,” I say, as images of Theodore and Antonia flit through my brain.
“Do you want me to show you how scary I can be?” We’re now in the car park at the back of Crimson, and the tension in the small space between myself and Lucas is almost suffocating. Yeah, maybe I shouldn’t have provoked him. But I need to find a way to help Amanda.
“Why don’t you just move on already, get yourself a new blood donor and let Amanda get back to being the girl she was before you came into her life?”
“It’s not that simple,” says Lucas. “She’s become too addicted to my bite now, if I stopped at this point she would die from the withdrawal.”
Oh God. This is so much worse than I’d thought. “Isn’t there some way to make her better?” I ask, my voice now small and quiet – sad.
Lucas has lost some of the cocky confidence he’d had a moment ago. “The only way is for her to continue as my blood donor.” He seems resigned.
I don’t know what to say to that. Instead I silently button up my coat, get out of the car and slam the door shut. I can’t help wondering where it is that Ethan gets his blood from, and whether or not his donors are like Amanda, empty and helplessly addicted. I step out onto the street in search of a cab.
When I get to Finn’s I sense that something bad has happened before I’ve even gone through the front door. But that’s probably because there’s a pool of fresh blood covering the doorstep. In the kitchen Wolf is emitting a high pitched whine and Finn is spread out on top of the counter, his leg gushing blood that is dripping down onto the floor. There’s a young man standing in front of Finn, trying frantically to slow the bleeding. I drop my bag onto the floor and rush over to them.