Chapter Eight
Though I’ve never been in a room full of wolves, these seemed slightly larger than the normal kind. I wasn’t sure what to make of them, especially considering the intelligent way they eyed each of us.
I heard Shirley shriek in fright while many of the men, including Nik, stepped forward as if to defend the women. Gallant, yet stupid.
“What are you doing in my home?” Nikolai growled. The rage in his voice made me shiver, though the words he used seemed far from adequate considering the situation.
“Give us the girl and we'll leave your humans alive,” said the centermost man. He was beefy, in a body builder sort of way. The others, though well-muscled, didn’t look like they used steroids. Nikolai glanced at me before shaking his head. I breathed an instinctual sigh of relief. I'd worried he would give in, knowing what he thought about my continued existence. Perhaps I imagined it, but it looked as though his shoulders slumped in defeat.
Did he know what was about to happen? I sure didn't.
The bulky spokesperson shrugged as if he hadn't expected any other response. With a motion of his hand, his followers attacked. Shirley shrieked again. Without thinking, I pushed her back and placed myself between her and the attackers. Unsurprisingly, Nikolai was trying to do the same thing to me—push me back to protect me. His male humans, on the other hand, were charging forward to defend him.
“Get back, Ash!” he ordered. Why was he protecting me while his humans were left defenseless? Though Josh had made it clear that vamps could be killed, we had to be more durable than humans. “Use silver,” he added a second too late.
One of his humans, Nathan I believe, went down first, his neck snapped by one of the attackers. Ian was grappling with one of the enormous wolves. Liam was doing a far sight better. He had pulled a switchblade from his pocket and had already punctured his opponent's stomach. Mark joined Ian in that battle.
The sudden smell of blood had me gasping for breath, hoping to maintain control. Suddenly the women standing behind me seemed more like targets than victims. I breathed through my mouth, hoping to eliminate the smell. A gust of wind that smelled of rotting foliage and salt water blew in from the broken window, giving me a chance to clear my head.
The other men had rushed forward to defend their home and vampire. Parker and Ian were fighting with one of the wolves. Parker's left arm hung uselessly from his body while blood dripped off his fingertips. I turned my attention away, determined not to think of it as food. This meant all the men were in the battle, leaving the leader, one wolf and two human attackers unchallenged. Nik moved forward, forced to go on the offensive. He grabbed Logan's attacker and rammed his hand into the man's chest, tearing out his heart. Nik dropped it on the floor and moved his attention to the leader, who had tried to sneak past him.
Despite Liam and Mark's early advantage, their attacker quickly had Mark lying on the floor and Liam limping toward the grand piano nestled in the corner. This left Charlotte unprotected. A wolf jumped forward, launching over a chair and charging at her. For a split second, Charlotte looked as though she were going to fight. At the last moment, though, she bolted for the sliding glass doors on the other side of the enormous formal dining room table.
I lunged into the path of the wolf, figuring I had a better chance of killing it than any of the humans. I grabbed it by the cuff of the neck. It yelped in surprise and tried to turn on me, but I was just strong enough to keep my grip. I tried to use Nikolai's technique and punched the wolf in the rib, expecting my fist to slide through its torso, but evidently, I was too weak to pull it off. The wolf yelped again, I heard the faint sound of cracking ribs, but my fist stopped short of his heart by a long shot. I hit it again and again with my free hand until it collapsed, blood gurgling out of its mouth.
The sounds of the continuing battle kept me from getting too distracted by the wolf's blood and just how much I wanted to suck him dry. It smelled different from the humans. I was intrigued.
By this time, Liam had been killed and his attacker had slipped by me. Shirley lay by my feet, her body broken and bleeding. One of the strange men had Charlotte cornered on the other side of the dinner table. I jumped onto the mahogany table and pounced on him just as he snapped Charlotte's neck. I dropped him to the ground, my knee digging into his back. I didn't know what else to do, so I took hold of one of his arms and pulled with all my might. It dislocated with my first effort and the man screamed. Instead of repeating the effort with his other arm, I grabbed his head and twisted it as I had seen people do in movies. It complied with my efforts and the man went limp.
When I stood back up, the battle was fairly well over. One of the attackers, long cuts marring his back, was escaping out the window. The rest of our opponents lay dead on the floor, intermixed with the bodies of Nikolai's humans. None of them had made it through the unexpected battle. Before I could feel pity or any form of sadness, the desire I had been able to ignore until now came surging back. I gasped. My gums exploded in pain again, my canines extending from somewhere in my head. I grabbed someone that lay at my feet and sank my teeth into it.
The flow of warm blood seeped down my throat. Rather than soothing me, my inhuman desire built until I thought I would explode. It was agony and ecstasy all intermingled. I wanted it to stop, and yet I didn’t. I ripped into the flesh, reveling in the way my sharp teeth shredded it. When I had drunk the body dry, I looked up long enough to see Nikolai watching me. I couldn't define the look in his eyes. It was a strange mix of disgust, anger, sadness, and hatred. It cut through the haze of longing still burning through my veins. I looked down to see Charlotte's black hair draping over the shoulder I had bitten into, some of the hair stuck to the blood on my face. What had I done?
Without thinking further, I released her limp body and escaped through the sliding glass door stationed behind me. Now, when I say through, I don't mean I opened it and ran away. Oh no, that was not dramatic enough of an exit. I went straight through the glass, receiving numerous cuts along my face and arms, and charged forward.
The salty breeze told me the house was stationed near the Puget Sound. I ran toward the lapping water and dove in, ignoring the sting of salt water in my cuts. With trembling hands, I scrubbed at the blood—a mixture of mine and Charlotte’s most likely—as salty tears streamed down to mix with the ocean water. My crying grew until I was shaking with each sob. I couldn't scrub anymore.
Before I could even consider Nikolai or what he might be doing, I felt a pair of hands grab my shoulders and pull me to my feet. The water continued to lap against us as a cold breeze added a shiver to my trembling. Strange. I thought vampires had skin like stone—the type that couldn't be cut by anything or frozen by sea breezes. I guess I really don't know anything about vampires.
“I'm sorry,” I said, pulling away from his touch.
“Ashley, look at me. In there, with all that blood, even I had trouble controlling myself… and after three hundred years, my control is nearly perfect. You were turned yesterday. I would never have expected you to maintain your cool. The fact you managed to fight at all is very impressive.” He sounded condescending to my ears, and the irritation I felt toward him allowed me to forget the massacre inside his house. He continued in a more businesslike tone. “We need to get out of here.”
“I can't go back in there!”
“We need to get ourselves cleaned up. Mikhail will send someone else to deal with that, but we can't go around town covered in blood and wolf bits.”
“Please don't make me go back in there,” I begged, completely out of pride. Tears streamed down my face again and I began to shake. Nik slapped me again, though not nearly as hard as when he had slapped me in the library.
“Pull it together,” he demanded. “Go round to the garage, I'll meet you there.” Before I could respond, he was gone. How did he move so quickly? If I had more energy, I would have tried to copy it. But I didn't.