10. Chapter Eight
Chapter Eight
Felix
I smell blood again.
Blood and death, stronger and fresher than last time.
And that’s concerning as hell.
Especially since I’m so damn hungry.
My stomach rumbles at the thought, and I know I’m closer to losing the hold I currently have on my behavior. Once I get over the hump of passing out right and left, that’s when it gets bad.
I can tell I’m there.
Teetering right on the edge, a new level of energy starting to wiggle inside just before it rushes to the surface. I can feel it, I’m right on the cusp. As my eyes slowly open, I know the only reason I’m not frothing at the mouth is because of the death I smell.
Blood without a life-source isn’t appealing, and it can make vampires pretty sick if they ingest it.
It’s like food poisoning for us.
I look around the room, searching for any sign of Zia or the woman she brought in before, only to come up empty, and I sigh in relief.
That was too close.
Too close for so many reasons, and even though I absolutely cannot feed from living, breathing humans, I sort of appreciate the gesture.
Which is fucked up, I’m sure.
But Zia was just trying to help me. She didn’t know any better. How could she?
It’s kind of amazing that she knew what I am so quickly, and how to make sure I didn’t die, but there’s no way she could know what feeding from a human would do.
What sort of consequences it would bring.
Or… could she?
It’s obvious Zia isn’t a human or vampire. There’s her scent, for one. I definitely know it from somewhere, but I can’t quite place it. The reflectiveness in her eyes, that’s not a characteristic of either species and since she’s not a cat, she has to be something else. Then you throw in the fact that she immediately knew what I was and how to feed me, the bare minimum basics of my kind, and that could mean…
No.
No, it isn’t possible, is it? That Zia is working for Davina and that’s why she kidnapped me? And why she was trying to force-feed me fresh blood?
I shake my head with a frown.
The look on Zia’s face, there was a level of genuineness there that can’t be faked. She isn’t working for that she-devil, and she’s not a vampire, so it wouldn’t benefit Zia to help Davina out anyway. Not to mention, I have no idea what purpose kidnapping me would serve for Davina. Exiling me here was as far as she was willing to barter for, and she made that clear. The bitch screamed it at me while she implanted that thing.
All of which confirms nothing but the fact that Zia is some crazed fan of The Word Nerd, and she took me because of it.
Leaving me with far more questions than answers.
With a groan, I roll to my side and push myself up to somewhat sitting, my entire body aching with hunger.
I’m not sure coconut water is going to cut it, but I’m stuck here and probably will be for a while. Since I won’t have a choice, I’m going to have to ask Zia to get me some unless she wants me to do one of two things I won’t be very proud of. Because dying of starvation isn’t really the way I’d like to go out, and feeding from whatever the hell Zia is until I drain her dry—while most likely trying to fuck her—isn’t a good idea.
Probably.
Who knows at this point?
I shrug to myself as I swing my feet over the edge of the bed, lifting my hands to my face to rub my eyes before pushing my fingers through my disheveled hair.
Which is the exact moment I realize I’m no longer cuffed and shackled to the bed.
I bring my hands back in front of me, turning them over to look at my palms before noticing the slowly healing marks around my wrists. I rub them gingerly, knowing damn well they should have healed by now but haven’t because I haven’t eaten in god knows how long.
My stomach growls again and just when I go to stand, a voice from behind me makes me jump sky high.
“I’m surprised your stomach didn’t wake you up sooner.”
I go ass over elbow right off the edge of the mattress as I turn to face Zia, no fucking clue how I didn’t know she was laying in bed with me until she spoke.
Scrambling backward, I try to get my bearings again, blinking rapidly as I take a deep breath. “Where the hell did you come from?”
Zia smiles wide in the low light of the room, her full lips curled up at the corners while her dark eyes sparkle. “I’ve been here the whole time.”
“Okay…” I watch her stretch her arms above her head, then sit up and scoot forward until she’s sitting where I was a moment ago. “You’ve been lying next to me for…”
“A while,” Zia says with a tilt of her head. “Ever since you rejected the dinner I brought you.”
For some reason, that makes me flinch, but I ignore it as I get to my feet. “I wasn’t rejecting her, Zia. I just… I’m, well, Silas calls me a vegan .”
“A vegan?”
I nod.
“What does that mean?”
“I…” I’ve never had to explain this before. Silas knows why I can’t feed the way we’re supposed to, it’s why he brings me the blood bags I never drink because Davina’s device won’t detect the processed shit and I still get nervous, but I’ve never had to break it down for anyone. Mainly because no one fucking knows. “I don’t drink blood.”
Zia blinks at me before she bursts into laughter, but when I don’t join her, her perfectly shaped eyebrows shoot up to her hairline. “You’re serious?”
I nod again as I cautiously walk over and sit with ample space between us. I’m lightheaded still, but I’m not going to pass out. “Very.”
“I thought that was how vampires survived.”
“It is.”
“But you don’t drink blood?” Zia asks as she scoots a little closer.
“I can’t.”
She frowns. “I saw your fangs, though. I can see them right now.” She points at them, almost so close she’s touching them.
God help us both if she touches them.
Barely fighting the urge to roll my lips over my teeth, I sigh. “I can physically feed. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I don’t understand,” Zia says as she scoots even closer. “How do you survive if you can’t drink blood? Why can’t you drink blood?”
“I drink coconut water by the gallon. It has qualities that are similar and it’s enough to keep me going. I—”
“You didn’t like what I brought you, did you?”
I blink at her as I discreetly put space between us again. “That’s not what I said.”
Zia shakes her head. “You didn’t like her, and now you’re telling me this just so I don’t chain you to the bed again.”
“That’s not it at all, Zia. I appreciate what you did for me, it was very thoughtful but—”
Before I can finish, she hops up off the bed and rushes toward the dresser. Zia grabs a mug from the top then spins toward me, quickly putting herself directly next to me on the bed again, our thighs touching and everything.
“Here.” She shoves the pea green-colored ceramic toward my chest. “If you don’t have a problem with what I brought you, drink this. It’s from her .”
I pull my stare away from her brown eyes and look down at the thick, dark liquid-like substance she’s offering me.
And immediately wretch at the coagulated and gnarly blood.
“I knew it!” Zia exclaims as she yanks the mug away and launches it across the room. It crashes against the wall in a mess of goopy blood and ceramic shards, creating the most morbid Rorschach test there ever was. I bet human psychiatrists would have a field day with that . “You don’t like what I brought you and—”
“Zia, stop,” I demand.
To my surprise, she does.
Zia stops dead in her tracks, stops moving completely, save for the rapid pumping of her chest, and she almost looks as though she’s waiting for me to give her a command .
So, I do.
“Come sit down.” She does as I say, albeit slowly, and sinks onto the mattress next to me. I lower my voice as I turn to face her, Zia’s pulse erratic enough for me to hear. “I appreciate what you did for me.”
She meets my eyes but doesn’t speak.
“I appreciate that you wanted to make sure I had something to eat while I was here, but I don’t feed like other vampires because I can't.” Not that I’m going to tell her why yet. Don’t need to reveal everything to my captor right away just because I’m ridiculously attracted to her. “I can’t feed from humans directly and even if I did feed from them, I couldn’t do it from a mug like that because the blood would make me sick. It has to come from a direct source.”
Zia nods slowly. “You weren’t rejecting what I brought you.”
“Right.”
“You just don’t drink blood.”
“Correct,” I say as I watch her try to make sense of my vague and bullshit explanation. I have to tread lightly with her, I can tell, but I’m compelled to give her something in the way of a reason. Because I’m more fucked up than I thought.
“And you definitely can’t have the blood from that dead lady because it’ll make you sick?”
“Right. I can’t have the dead lady’s bloo… did you say dead lady?”
Zia nods. “I couldn’t let her live, Felix! Not after she saw me trying to feed you. You had to eat, so I did what I needed to.”
“Oh, my god.” Now my pulse is pounding while my breathing picks up. “Oh my god, Zia, you killed her?”
“It’s really not a big deal, okay?”
Oh no.
Oh no.
That is so fucking bad. So bad for a million reasons but the top two on that list are now because Davina will find me in a house with a dead body and then I’ll be toast and that probably means Zia killed whoever owned this house and there could be two dead bodies.
We are so fucked.
And yeah, I guess we’re a we now because not only did she kidnap me, Zia accidentally made me an accessory to murder.
“Felix?”
“We have to get out of here,” I say as I get to my feet and start to pace. “We have to leave, Zia. I can’t be here, not at a crime scene. We have to go. Where’s Roger? We have to pack.”
I frantically dart around the room, my head pounding as my hunger takes a back seat to my panic. I go toward the closet and rummage through it, looking for what? I don’t know, but when I find a suitcase, I yank it out and toss it on the bed next to Zia.
“Felix, what are you going to do with that? We can’t leave here. You have to stay..”
I shake my head and throw a bunch of random shit into the dark blue suitcase. “You don’t understand. This isn’t good. I can’t be here, not if you’ve been killing people here. I—”
“Felix.” Zia says my name firmly, but I barely hear her because I’m seconds from a full-blown panic attack. “Felix.” She’s saying it louder, but I grab the alarm clock from the bedside table and toss it in. “Felix!”
Suddenly, I’m falling, my body cutting through the air backward until I land on the floor with a hard thud. Spots dance across my vision again before the weight on my body registers, and Zia’s pretty face becomes clearer in my line of sight.
“Am I going to have to keep knocking you out? I can tie you up again. Maybe lock you in the bathroom too?”
She plants her elbow on my chest before propping her chin in her hand, and I swallow hard as I look up at her. “No.”
“Good,” Zia says with a smile. “I like you better when you’re awake and talking to me.”
Licking my suddenly dry lips, I take a slow deep breath so I can inhale her scent, but that is a huge mistake.
I feel my pupils dilate, and my fangs start to throb.
“You don’t have to worry about the bodies, Felix,” she says as she relaxes against me. “I took care of them already.”
Goddamn, she smells good.
Good enough to eat.
My eyes drop to the steady pulse in Zia’s neck, watching intently as it bangs out a rhythm so close I can taste it.
“I won’t be able to do that again though, not the way I did before. So I have to try really hard to be good. To be a nice d—Uh, a nice girl.”
I absently nod as Zia keeps talking about dead people and cleanup, my stare locked on her throat, my hands moving by themselves up her thighs. Thighs that are straddling me tightly again, while the rest of her lithe little body is pressed close to mine.
“Felix, are you listening to me?”
“No,” I grunt as she wiggles a bit, my cock stiffening behind my fly in response to the movement. In response to her.
Her brows slam down over her eyes as her heart rate quickens, clearly pissed that I’ve been ignoring her words. “That’s rude.”
She goes to sit up, but I snatch her wrists and pull them to her thighs, holding them tightly so she’s off balance when she tries to move. And the little surprised whimper that escapes her, the way Zia tries to get free, it makes me even harder.
“Rude?” I grin as her surprised expression snaps to mine. I lift my hips as I push hers down, making sure she can feel my cock against her core. “Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black? All things considered, of course.”
“Felix?” Zia whispers in confusion, even though there’s a touch of heat in her words. “What are you doing?”
Lifting my head, I bring my mouth close to her throat, my lips ghosting over her jugular before I lick it in one slow drag of my tongue. “I’m hungry, Zia.”
She shudders when I do it again and just as I’m about to tug her down and take a bite, the goddamn doorbell rings and breaks the spell.
Zia’s head swivels toward the bedroom door as she pops up off my chest, my hands releasing her immediately as I let out a frustrated sigh.
“I didn’t order anything,” she says with a scowl. “Maybe Kiza forgot something?”
Then I’m watching her climb off my body and hurry toward the door, the crazy little female warning me not to go anywhere while she’s gone before my captor disappears into the hall.
Go anywhere?
I chuckle at the thought.
It’s not like I can fight her off in my weakened state, and I haven’t exactly been trying very hard to get out of here, but now that I’ve smelt her blood?
Not only will I not be going anywhere while she’s gone, I’m not sure I’ll be able to leave Zia without having at least a taste of her. And once I have a taste, I will definitely be eating my fill.