Page 70 of Bad Luck Vampire

“He lied,” Ludan snarled.

Alasdair cast a glare his way, and peered back at Sophie to add, “Only so you wouldn’t worry.”

Sophie frowned slightly, and then asked, “How badly were you hurt?” But even as she asked the question, she wasn’t sure what to believe. Could he have been hurt? He’d been in the SUV when she got down there. He couldn’t have been hurt that bad, and he hadn’t looked hurt at all. Although, it had been dark.

“Lass,” Inan said, “his right knee was nothin’ but bone fragments, his fibula was snapped and stickin’ out o’ his left leg, his pelvis was shattered, his right arm was broken in three places, and his skull was caved in both on the right side o’ his head from hittin’ the windshield and the top back from when he came down on the pavement.” He nodded solemnly. “Were he human, he would ha’e died there on the street. But because he’s immortal, he dragged his sorry arse to the SUV and got in, then waited fer ye to reach him so he could reassure ye he was fine before makin’ his way back to the Enforcer house for the blood he needed.”

“Blood?” she asked with a start.

“Got it!” Tybo breezed into the kitchen with a cooler in hand and set it down on the counter to open. “I didn’t think to grab your apartment keys on the way out. Fortunately, someone was entering as I returned so I just convinced them to hold the door for me.”

Pulling out a bag of what looked to her like blood, Ludan turned and walked over to crouch on the other side of Alasdair.

“Open yer mouth,” Ludan ordered.

“Uncle,” Alasdair got out between clenched teeth. “Let me handle this.”

“Allie, lad. I’ve been alive four hundred years longer than ye. Will ye just trust me? Marguerite is right, the lass needs to ken ye’re no’ goin’ to die and break her heart. Open up and show her yer damned fangs.”

Alasdair hesitated, his gaze locked with his uncle’s for a minute, and then he sighed and opened his mouth.

As Sophie watched, his upper incisors shifted and slid down to become fangs, and Tybo popped the bag of blood onto them with one quick flick.

Dropping back onto her haunches, she stared silently as the bag began to shrink, pulling upward as the blood disappeared, apparently into his fangs.

“Vampires,” Sophie whispered.

“Och, no!” Ludan barked. “Do no’ even say that word in me presence. We’re immortals, no’ vampires.”

Sophie turned to eye the man dubiously. “Which would be another word for vampires?”

“Lass, vampires are dead, soulless beings,” Connor told her patiently. “They’re also fictional characters. Immortals, however, are alive and we definitely have our souls.”

When Sophie stared at him, unspeaking, Connor said, “Now, I ken it’ll take a minute fer ye to accept this and understand, but the fact o’ the matter is we’re people just like you.”

“Oh right. Except I don’t have fangs and drink blood,” she said sarcastically, and stood up to back a step away from Alasdair, and really all of them.

Ludan scowled and said, “She’s frightened, Alasdair. Explain matters to her.”

When Alasdair eyed the man with disbelief over the bag at his mouth, it was Colle who said, “I don’t know that he should have to. After all, you started this by stabbing him and making him bring out his fangs.”

Mention of Alasdair’s fangs made Sophie glance his way to see that the blood was nearly gone, the bag a shriveled mass at his mouth with a lollipop-sized portion of blood still in it. She watched that quickly disappear with fascination and suddenly thought that this gave a whole new meaning to her earlier notion that Alasdair had an issue with sucking. Her next thought, though, was to worry over whether he’d ever sucked her blood. Were the hickeys hiding fang holes? She hadn’t really looked at them too closely. She’d just acknowledged them and done her best to cover them up or hide them. But they were all over her body. Dear God, was that why she was fainting? Were all of those hickeys covering her body, hiding bite marks?

It was possible, Sophie realized. She hadn’t really examined them closely, mostly because she’d been embarrassed. Now she stood up abruptly and rushed from the room, muttering, “I need to use the bathroom.”

Twenty-Four

“Well?” Uncle Ludan barked.

“Well what?” Alasdair growled.

“Are ye no’ goin’ to chase after the lass?” he demanded with exasperation.

“She’s going to the bathroom. I’m pretty sure she does not want company for that,” he pointed out testily.

“Lad, I realize you can’y read her so I’ll just tell ye, she’s goin’ to the bathroom so she can check to make sure that she hasn’y got bite marks hidden in all those hickeys ye’ve given her.”

“Speakin’ o’ which,” Connor interjected, “from readin’ her mind, it would seem that ye tried to make a map on her body o’ all countries in the world using hickeys.”

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