Page 69 of Bad Luck Vampire

But whether she loved him or not didn’t really matter. If someone thought she did and was trying to kill him because of it...

She needed to break up with him, Sophie realized. She had to end their relationship, kick him out of her life and make sure everyone knew it. She’d have to tell everyone at work and—and who else? All of her friends from university had kind of fallen by the wayside. Most had been from other towns and cities other than Toronto and had moved back to their hometowns. Others had chased jobs out to western Canada or the States. Her friends and family at work were pretty much the only people she knew. And among them, the Tomlinson family were the only people who had been in her life all the way back to the death of her parents.

Sophie did not like the direction her thoughts were taking. Megan, Bobby, and their parents were family. The only family she had. But they had been there when it had all started. Living right next door. They’d even had an emergency key to their house, and her parents had had an emergency key to the Tomlinsons’ too. It would have been easy to slip out, slink next door, creep inside, set the fire, and get back to their own home before the flames got big enough to draw attention.

Sophie ground her teeth together. She didn’t want to think about that right now. She would sort it out later, but of paramount importance right now was making sure Alasdair was safe. She’d never forgive herself if anything happened to him. In fact, Sophie didn’t think she could survive losing him like that. Her gaze focused on Alasdair as she tried to sort out how to go about it. She had just decided to simply tell the men to leave and ask Alasdair never to return, when Ludan suddenly spoke.

“Allie, lad. Ye need to tell the lass about us.”

Alasdair stopped arguing with Connor and Inan and turned to his uncle with surprise. “What?”

“Tell her what we are,” he growled.

Alasdair was shaking his head before Ludan had finished speaking. “She’s not ready.”

“Ye’ll lose her do ye no’ tell her,” Ludan insisted.

Alasdair shook his head again and turned back to the other men to say, “I just think we should consider that the deaths are not necessarily all connected. Some could have been actual accid—” His words died abruptly and Sophie screamed in shock when Ludan suddenly lunged to lean past her across the island top and stab Alasdair in the chest.

For a heartbeat, all Sophie could do was gape. She couldn’t believe Ludan had just stabbed his own nephew. But when he withdrew the knife and straightened to move away from the island, Sophie jumped from her chair and grabbed a dish towel off the counter, then wadded it up as she hurried back to press it against Alasdair’s wound.

Alasdair glanced at his uncle and roared, “What the hell?”

“I was doin’ ye a favor,” Ludan growled mildly, walking over to rinse the knife under the tap. “She was going to break up with ye, it’s why I told ye to tell her what ye are. But ye refused, so I decided to show her. Now she’ll no’ need to break up with ye.”

“I think we can all agree there was an easier way to handle it than stabbing Alasdair,” Tybo said with exasperation. Heading for the door, he added, “I’ll go get the cooler.”

Sophie stared after Tybo, amazed at his calm reaction to this. Then her gaze slid to the other men in the room. None of them seemed terribly upset. Like Tybo, Colle seemed more exasperated than anything, and the other three men, the uncles who hadn’t stabbed Alasdair, were just watching with interest. None of them were reacting as she would have expected.

Ludan had stabbed Alasdair, for God’s sake, and so damned close to his heart that the only reason she thought he’d missed it was because Alasdair was still alive.

“You were going to break up with me?” Alasdair asked, and she glanced to his face with amazement.

“Are you kidding me?” Sophie asked with disbelief. “Your uncle just stabbed you, and you’re worried about my possibly breaking up with you?”

“Were you?” Alasdair asked insistently.

Scowling, she pressed harder on his wound and growled, “Yes. To save your life. If we aren’t seeing each other, my murderous stalker won’t have any reason to kill you. I thought it would keep you safe. I had no idea your crazy uncle would stab you for it,” she added testily, and then suddenly stiffened. “Wait.” Glancing over her shoulder at Ludan, she demanded, “How did you know I was going to break up with him?”

Drying off what turned out to be her steak knife, Ludan shrugged. “I read yer thoughts.”

Sophie’s lips twisted with disgust. “Will you just tell me, please, and not make up nonsense stories.” Shifting her attention to the other men just standing around, she snapped, “Will one of you please call 911? Alasdair needs an ambulance and—” Her words ended on an alarmed gasp when Ludan returned to her side and jerked her hands off of Alasdair.

“What are you doing? I need to stop the bleeding,” she cried, trying to place her hands back over the cloth. But Ludan held both of her hands in one of his and used the other to whip the cloth away from Alasdair’s wound. Dropping the bloodstained cloth, he then used the same hand to jerk Alasdair’s shirt open to reveal the wound and ordered, “Look.”

Sophie scowled at the man and then turned a helpless gaze to Alasdair’s wound. A two-inch slit in his skin that must have stretched a good five inches deep since the knife had been in up to the hilt. Despite the depth of the wound, there was no longer any sign of blood. Not on or around the wound. For a heartbeat she assumed that it was because the blood had been wiped up by the cloth as he’d whipped it away, but then she realized that there was no new blood bubbling up to leak from the wound. In fact—was the wound getting smaller?

“He’s healin’,” Ludan said, his tone matter-of-fact. “He’s an immortal.”

“He’s a what?” Sophie asked on a disbelieving laugh as she turned to Ludan.

The man nodded, and growled, “We all are. And that makes us damned hard to kill,” he assured her. “I should ken. I’m more than seven hundred years old and can’y count how many men ha’e tried to kill me o’er the centuries. It just doesn’y take.”

When Sophie just stared at him, sure from both his words and actions that he was completely insane, Ludan caught her by the chin and turned her face back to Alasdair. “Look at his wound, lass. It’s already sealin’ up. That little stab I gave him was just a scratch for an immortal. Nothin’ like the injuries he took when he was run down in front o’ yer apartment. Those took hours to heal. But this here? It would ha’e killed you and any other mortal, but in an hour there won’y e’en be a scar on Alasdair’s chest. Because he’s immortal.”

Sophie frowned as she peered at the closing wound. But then Ludan’s words sank through and she shifted her gaze to Alasdair’s face and accused, “You said you weren’t hurt when the car hit you. That you saw it in time to hop on the hood and somersault safely away.”

“I—” Alasdair began.

---