Gypsy's Blood (Page 46)

A noise startles me, and I spin back around to see the orange by the gate rolling to a stop near me. Quickly breaking away from the distraction, I whirl around again when I feel a cold breath blow against my neck. With my heart jack-hammering against my chest, I spin again, but once more there’s…nothing.

The drones pass over the area, pausing over the blackened earth, and when I glance back, the orange has gone missing.

“What the hell have I done?” I whisper under my breath as a sick feeling of betrayal inches up my spine.

Where the hell is Ace, and what did he just trick me into doing?

An angry tear rolls down my face as I fight the tremble in my jaw, and I turn to start racing away from the cemetery.

The only thing I can do now is tell the man who kills monsters that I’ve just unleashed something unnaturally fast with sharp claws and red glowing eyes.

Because I’m a stupid, gullible girl.

Only trust me or your father, Violet. Never anyone else. Never.

I should have listened to my mother.

Chapter 29

VIOLET

“But where is he?” I ask Margie after she informs me Mr. Valhinseng is gone.

“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” she says sweetly before simply shutting the door in my face.

I huff out a breath, and with hands that haven’t stopped shaking yet, I pick up my phone and call him, but it goes straight to voicemail.

Cursing, I jog to my van and hurriedly pull up my business phone contacts, finding Emit’s number.

“Hello?” a woman asks in a bored drawl.

“I really need to speak to Mr. Morrigan, please,” I tell her, trying to keep the panic from my tone.

“I’m afraid that’s impossible. Mr. Morrigan is currently busy with some of his…girls.”

“As in daughters?”

I didn’t know he had kids—

The abrupt, almost hysterical laughter over the phone lets me know that is a stupid question to ask. But…Ohhh. Gotcha.

Not sure why I’m bothered by the fact he’s a man slaking his needs. A wolf man. A monster. A very unimportant factor at the moment.

“It’s incredibly important that I speak to him,” I tell her a little angrily when she just continues to laugh.

“I’m sure it is. Don’t worry. He’s on a mission, as of this morning, so I’m sure you’ll get your turn, dearest. What’d you say your name was?”

I hang up, and angrily dial Damien’s number instead.

Every time it would come in handy to have a monster or monster hunter, I find myself on my own. The rest of the time they’re stalking me.

After ringing forever, it goes to voicemail, and I groan as I talk, “When you get this, please call me back. I’ve very likely done something impossibly stupid, and—” My voice cuts out when the mortifying reality of just how sickeningly gullible I really am sinks in bone-deep, and I exhale harshly. “Just call me. We’ll consider it the trade for the mirror. I’m sorry about your balls. I really hope you’re just angry and ignoring me.”

Hanging up, I quickly dial Vance again, and when voicemail starts talking, I leave another message. “I really want to be found by a Van Helsing right now. We can consider it an even trade for the pocket watch.”

“Anna, where are you?” I shout, wondering why she’s been missing most of the damn day as I hang up.

She pops into the passenger seat as if prompted, grinning at me. “Did you just scream my name or was I dreaming things?”

“I need you to find Damien and hurl his phone at his head.”

“That’d be using my ghostly powers.”

“I’m aware,” I bite out. “But just this once, I really need—”

Her scream erupts as my words cut out, because the brake pedal of the van randomly slam on as if there’s a phantom foot on it. My heart flutters in my chest as the van’s back end skitters sideways in a stomach-churning sensation. With all my strength, I use my foot and try to pry the brake up from the floor, but it’s no use.

Anna does that ridiculous thing where she flies out the window for no reason at all.

My eyes feel like they can’t get any wider, and I have no idea if I’m clenching my teeth or if my jaw is slack. However, I definitely know my ass is clenched, as the van completely slings around twice, miraculously not flipping.

Everything is rocked hard as the van comes up off its wheels for an eternity of a second, before slamming back down to a quiet rattle of a halt. Shera Ward is standing in front of me, red lips curved in an ominously dark grin, and her arms crossed in front of her chest.

I’m so confused about what just happened that I don’t even realize the door is being yanked open until someone is dragging me out by my hair. A hiss of a pained breath is all that escapes my lips as I remind myself not to struggle.

I barely manage to get my feet under me in time to keep from slamming into the hard man’s body as he roughly yanks me again.

Shera struts forward in skin tight clothing that looks like she’s a comic book nerd’s wet dream on her way to cut down zombies. Weapons are hanging from her belt, jingling as her high-heeled boots click against the pavement.

“Smart girl. Don’t struggle,” she says as the man holding my hair starts dragging me backwards.

Struggling leads to unnecessary pain, and my survival doesn’t start until they think they’ve killed me.

I doubt it’s a coincidence that I unleashed something less than twenty-five minutes ago, and now vampires are attacking me at twilight.

“He said not to hurt her,” Shera says in a singsong voice.

“She just needs to know the tone of this meeting,” the man still dragging me by my hair says as I stumble and fall to the ground.

A cry is dragged from my throat when he yanks harder, pulling me across the ground with his hold. It feels like he’s trying to rip my scalp away from my skull, and I try to crawl, roll, stand…anything to lift my head up just a little more.

I’m finally heaved up to my feet and shoved into a dark car so hard that my cheek slams into something hard.

“For fuck’s sake, he said not to hurt her,” Shera says, making the last part louder.

I scramble to curl into the corner when she steps into the back of the car with me. She grabs my chin, and I don’t fight her as she turns my head to get a better look at it.

“You’ll live,” she says as she releases me and shuts the door. “He, however, probably won’t,” she adds on a sigh that sounds as though she’s been terribly inconvenienced by that.

Swallowing thickly, I calmly buckle up, and she watches me with an amused smile as the car we’re in drives us slowly toward a destination that probably doesn’t end well for me.

“I’m guessing this elaborate kidnapping isn’t to force me into that tea I rudely turned down a while back, is it?” I ask, my shaky tone betraying my will to sound calm and composed.

She flashes me a fanged smile, but the fangs recede so quickly that I almost worry I simply imagined it.

“You’re awfully calm for a girl being abducted. This sort of thing happen to you very often?”

“It’s usually the start of a bad day. In this case, it’s just the exclamation mark to punctuate the bad day,” I state evenly, getting my voice under control.

She moves, and I startle a little. I see her grinning from her profile like my fear is pleasing to her. I knew she was crazy.

She pulls two glasses from a compartment, and then she pulls out liquor of some sort. Gin, I decide, when she removes the cap.

My nose wrinkles. It always feels like I’m swallowing pine needles when I drink gin. I focus on that instead of the vampire woman beside me.

“Not long ago, I was abducted by vampires,” I decide to tell her as she pours two glasses of the gin, treating this as though two girls are just having a fun drink in the back of a car.

“Oh?” she muses, though I can’t tell if she’s genuine in her oblivion or not.

“I was under the impression it was in no way related to the alpha house in Shadow Hills. However, I’ve recently learned I can’t really trust the source I’ve gotten the vast majority of my information from,” I say on a mostly steady breath, aside from one minor catch in my throat.

She just stares ahead, swirling her glass under her nose as she hands me mine. I take it and drink it without hesitation, swallowing down a liquefied Christmas tree like it’s great.

I’d rather be drunk if someone’s going to attempt murdering me soon.

She doesn’t offer to pour me another, however, as she takes a slow sip.

“Do I get a clue as to what’s going on?”

“You’re so adorably clueless, and I’ve been ordered to keep it that way,” she states patronizingly as she continues to sip her gin.

“So we ride around in silence until you take me somewhere for more vampires to kill me—”

“You’re not to be harmed, Violet. Don’t be so melodramatic,” she says like she’s already tired with my theatrics.

Exhaling heavily and observing the sort of crazy I’m dealing with, I decide I’m definitely screwed. Why can’t it ever be the bumbling first-timers instead of the cold, calculated ones who want to kill me?