Vampires Need Not…Apply? (Accidentally Yours #4)(20)
Author: Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

“What doctor,” he grumbled, still immobile on the floor.

“There’s a magnet on your fridge. Didn’t you see it?” Helena had mentioned in their last phone call that she’d put them in all the apartments for the newly undead. “Move!”

She looked back down at Antonio, feeling mesmerized by the intertwining of their souls and by his exquisite male beauty. She brushed back his dark brown hair. “Don’t die on me, Klaus Van Mad Scientist. Don’t you dare die on me.” Gods be damned she didn’t know what was happening, but she’d never touched a mortal like this. She wasn’t draining his darkness or killing him. They were simply… touching.

She sighed and soaked him in. His eyelashes—so thick and dark—the masculine dip in his chin, the strong stubble-covered jaw. “You need to help us save the world,” she whispered in his ear. Perhaps you will save me, too…

Again she glanced over her shoulder. Kinich wasn’t in the kitchen. He was standing in the open window, readying to jump.

No! Dammit! She’d dosed him with darkness. He was trying to kill himself.

She bolted across the room just as Kinich launched.

“Nooo!” She leaped forward and caught him by one thick ankle. Her entire body jerked violently outside with Kinich’s weight. She caught the ledge with her shellacked pink fingernails and dug in hard, her body dangling precariously from the frosty ledge. Damn, her brother was heavy.

Ixtab grunted as a few onlookers from the street below screamed. Thank the gods it was nighttime and the building had few exterior lights or the entire city would be able to see him.

“Let me go.” He fought and squirmed.

Oh, hell. This was not happening. She clenched her eyes shut. Reverse for f**k sake. Reverse! She needed Kinich to want to live. Antonio was bleeding to death, and if forced to choose between him or her brother, it would be Antonio. Didn’t matter that her brother meant everything to her, that besides Francisco, Kinich was the only being on the planet who’d treated her like someone important or that Kinich had never turned his back on her. Not even after she nearly lost her mind from killing the man she’d loved so deeply that it had left her soul twisted and mangled.

But that water had flowed past the dreary-goddess bridge thousands of moons ago. This water had yet to pass and was coming fast and furious and its name was Antonio Acero, the keystone to opening the portal. And her bond with the Universe would always dictate she put humanity first.

Goddammit. The tears squeezed from her body like a lemon in a press as her muscles strained under his weight. She’d been given many gifts, but the gift of strength? Not a chance.

I hate you, Universe! Don’t do this to me! Don’t you dare make me choose! she mentally scorned with every flicker of her immortal soul. Please, please, reverse.

“Aaah!!Teen uk’al k’iinam. Teen uk’al yah. Teen uk’al k’iinam. Teen uk’al yah. Teen uk’al k’iinam. Teen uk’al yah…”

Kinich’s body went limp. Had it worked?

Ixtab gritted her teeth and pulled up, but two hundred and fifty–plus pounds of pure ex–Sun God was more than her frame could support.

His heel slipped a centimeter. She flexed her nails and penetrated his skin, but she was losing her grip. How long could she hold on? And every second lost was another ounce of blood loss closer to death for Antonio.

Her eyes flipped down. Would a vampire survive the fall? She had seen them survive far worse over thousands of years. She’d also seen a few die from lesser injuries.

“Kinich, can you hear me? Goddammit, you have to grab on to something.” There was a small ledge below that led to a window in the downstairs apartment.

Kinich didn’t respond.

She yanked one more time, but it was useless, too heavy. “Kinich, I don’t know if you can hear me, brother, but I love you. You’re the only family I’ve ever had, and for this I will never forget you. But if I don’t save Antonio, the portal will not open, Guy and Niccolo will remain trapped, and the Maaskab will exterminate us all—your precious Penelope and baby included. I have to choose. I have to. And my heart chooses you, but my duty chooses…”

Sobbing, she clenched her eyes shut and released his ankle.

“Nooo!”

At that exact moment, Ixtab looked up only to see Penelope’s face witness Kinich’s fall to earth.

Oh, Gods. No. No…

There simply weren’t enough souls, evil or good, to cleanse the pain and darkness she witnessed in Penelope’s eyes.

Chapter Once

“Please, Viktor.” Ixtab paced across Kinich’s living room. “Don’t tell me this is a cluster. I know it—”

“Well, it is,” he replied. “The biggest cluster I’ve ever seen.” Seven feet of pure angry Nordic vampire crossed his leather-clad arms over his chest. He wore a deep blue turtleneck sweater and black leather pants that matched his black leather duster. His long blond hair was elaborately braided down his back with strips of brown leather woven in.

“Honey, don’t dwell on the things we cannot change,” said the petite blonde woman with wide hazel eyes at his side, better known as Julie, Penelope’s mother and—well, fallen angel recently turned vampire. Confusing? Oh yeah. Someone might have even written a book about it.

Viktor beamed down at Julie with his cobalt-blue eyes and then patted her cheek. “Yes, my angel. As usual, you are right.”

Pacing frantically across Kinich’s living room, Penelope glanced at them both with a directness that emphasized this was the end of her rope. “Please, Mom. Viktor. Do something fast. Please? For me?”

“What a cluster.” Viktor turned toward the heap of twisted muscles and broken bones on the couch. “Fine. I will give Kinich my blood to keep him alive, but he will require massive amounts of human blood to heal—if he’s going to heal. Unfortunately, he’s unable to feed so I suggest we start an IV.” He looked at Penelope. “Please retrieve the blood bags from the refrigerator and bring me the emergency kit from Helena’s kitchen upstairs.”

“Thank you, Viktor. Thank you,” Penelope said and scrambled out the door.

“And keep him out of the sun! It will weaken him!” Viktor yelled toward the door.

“What about the physicist?” Ixtab asked.

Viktor gave her a stern look. “Turning a mortal into a vampire isn’t something we do simply because the person is dying.”