"Oh, Jesus!" he cried as she came to stand before him. He put his hands up, face slack with fear. "Oh, Jesus! Please don't kill me!"
"I won't," Renata answered, then shot him in the thigh with the tranq.
With both males down, she ran back to get Nikolai. Ignoring the screaming pain in her shoulder, she hurried him into the receiving bay and shoved him into the back of the supply truck where he'd be safe from daylight outside.
"Find something to hold onto," she told him. "Things are going to get bumpy now."
She didn't give him a chance to say anything. Working quickly, she slammed the doors and threw the latch, sealing him inside. Then she jumped into the idling cab and threw the vehicle into gear.
As she crashed the truck through the receiving bay's door and sped up the drive toward escape, she had to wonder if she'd just saved Nikolai's life or condemned them both.
Chapter Sixteen
His head was beating like a drum. The constant, rhythmic pounding filled his ears, so deafening it dragged him toward consciousness after what seemed like an endless, fitful sleep. His body ached. Was he lying on the floor somewhere? He felt cold metal underneath his na**d body, the heavy bulk of cardboard shipping crates jabbing into his spine and shoulder. A sheet of plastic covered him like a makeshift blanket.
He tried to lift his head but hardly had the strength. His skin felt livid, pulsating from head to toe. Every inch of him felt wrung out, stretched tight, hot with fever. His mouth was dry, his throat parched and raw.
He thirsted.
That need was all he could focus on, the only coherent thought swimming through his banging skull.
Blood.
Christ, he starved for it.
He could taste the hunger - the black, consuming madness - in every shallow breath that sifted through his teeth. His fangs filled his mouth. His gums throbbed where the huge canines descended, as though his fangs had been there for hours. Some distant, sober part of his logic noted the misfire on that calculation; a Breed vampire 's fangs normally displayed only in moments of heightened physical response, whether reacting to prey or passion or pure animal rage.
The drum still banging away in his head only made the throb of his fangs deepen. It was the pounding that woke him. The pounding that would not let him sleep now.
Something was wrong with him, he thought, even as he peeled his burning eyes open and took in the too -sharp, amber- washed details of his surroundings.
Small, confined space. Lightless. A box filled with more boxes.
And a woman.
All else faded once his gaze found her. Dressed in a long-sleeved black shirt and dark jeans, she lay in a fetal ball across from him, arms and legs tucked hard into the curve of her torso. A lot of her chin-length inky hair had fallen over the side of her face, concealing her features.
He knew her...or felt that he should.
A less cognizant part of him knew only that she was warm and healthy, defenseless. The air was tinged with the merest trace of sandalwood and rain. Her blood scent, some dim instinct roused to tell him. He knew it - and her - with a certainty that seemed etched in his own marrow. His dry mouth was suddenly wet in anticipation of feeding. Need coupled with opportunity lent him a strength he didn't have a moment ago.
Quietly he levered himself up off the floor and moved into a low crouch. Sitting on his haunches, he cocked his head, watching the female sleep. He crept closer, a predatory crawl that brought him right on top of her. The amber glow of his irises bathed her in golden light as he let his starving gaze roam over her body.
And that ceaseless drumming was louder here, the vibration so clear he could feel it in the soles of his bare feet. It banged in his head, commanding all of his attention. Drawing him closer, then closer still.
It was her pulse. Staring down at her, he could see the soft tick of her heartbeat fluttering at the side of her neck. Steady, strong.
The very spot he meant to catch between his fangs.
A low rumble - a growl emanating from his own throat - rolled through the stillness of the place.
The female stirred under him.
Her eyelids flipped open, startled, then went wider. "Nikolai."
At first the name hardly registered to him. The fog in his mind was so thick, his thirst so total, he knew nothing else but the urge to feed. It was more than an urge - it was insatiable compulsion. Certain damnation.
Bloodlust.
The word traveled through his hunger-swamped mind like a phantom. He heard it, knew instinctively to fear it. But before he could fully grasp what the word meant, it was ghosting away from him, back to the shadows.
"Nikolai," the woman said again. "How long have you been awake?"
Her voice was familiar to him somehow, a peculiar comfort to him, but he couldn't quite place her. Nothing seemed to make sense to him. All that made sense was that tempting thud of her carotid and the deep hunger that compelled him to reach out and take what he needed.
"You're safe here," she told him. "We're in the back of the supply truck I took from the containment facility. I had to stop and rest for a while, but I'm good to go now. It's going to be dark soon. We should keep moving before we're spotted." As she spoke, images flashed through his memory. The containment facility. Pain. Torture. Questions. A Breed male called Fabien. A male he wanted to kill. And this brave woman...she was there too. Incredibly, she had helped him to escape. Renata.
Yes. He knew her name after all. He didn't know why she had come for him, or why she would try to save him. Didn't matter.
She was too late.
"They forced me," he croaked, his voice sounding detached from his body, rough as gravel. "Too much blood. They forced me to drink it..."