Ashe.
Uh, what the fuck just happened? One minute, I was lying on my lumpy bed in my cell, listening to the fading sounds of some huge fight somewhere in the jail, and the next, I was getting punched in the chest by the most stunningly beautiful woman I’d ever seen. And she looked familiar, like Queen Bronwen. But Queen Bronwen was dead, and I was here in part because the police thought I killed her with a silver net. So this couldn’t be Bronwen.
But as soon as I saw her, the painful, sizzling heat on my wrist morphed into a warm tingle that took over my entire body like a steady hum. Need, sharper than any thirst I’d ever felt, coursed through me, as well as a powerful urge to protect her.
I threw her on the bed because I…well, I needed to see her underneath me. My dick made me do strange things sometimes, especially right now, pressed against her inner thigh, harder than I’d ever been. She stared up at me through the messy bangs of her short, very blonde hair, her eyes a pale green even though she moved like a vampire. Contacts, I guessed later, because right then I was thinking about wild monkey sex.
Heat grew between her legs as she shifted, her body fitting to mine perfectly. My hips twitched forward on their own to feel her soft curves wrap around me a little tighter, and her full lips parted. A vixen-like grin spread across her mouth as she brought her hand to my ass and squeezed.
“How about you let me finish rescuing you before we get to that, inmate,” she said, her voice like whiskey and smoke.
Someone cleared their throat behind us. “Best idea I’ve heard yet,” an irritated male voice said.
As if I’d been dunked headfirst into a holy-water-filled bathtub, I tore myself off of her and stumbled into the opposite wall of my cell. Sweet Vampire Jesus, that whole encounter on the cot must’ve only lasted about five seconds, but I’d been humping the hot girl while some guy—a DBD from the smell of him—with dark hair, red eyes that appeared to be contacts, a chin dimple, and a big-ass gun looked on, while I was still in jail. Not my best day ever.
Loud voices sounded from down the hall. The three of us stared at each other in the panicked split-second it took before we sprang into action. I dove for the bed, volunteering myself to hide the woman with my whole body. But she rolled from the mattress and slid underneath the bed in a way that made me think she did this kind of thing every day. The guy was already closing the door of my cell and then folded himself into the corner.
Quick footsteps echoed closer. For someone who’d been accused of two murders, who’d actually planned a murder from beginning to end, funny that I didn’t know if I could stomach witnessing a bloody one in the confines of my cell.
More shouts. More footsteps. Even closer.
As long as I protected the woman underneath my bed, I would do what I had to do though.
Metal clanged as the footsteps came closer. It sounded like they were beating on the cell doors and likely peering inside the glass windows at the top. If they did, we were screwed. I wrenched the scratchy blanket out from under me and threw part of it over the edge of the bed to cover the woman.
Bang. Bang. Pause. “What the fuck?”
My jail cell exploded with action, a thousand moving parts at once. The door burst open. A flood of guards poured in, guns drawn and loaded with silver-tipped bullets. The chin-dimple guy in the corner rounded on them, a distraction that would last only seconds.
I lunged off the bed to stand in front of it, but the woman had already shot out from underneath it. Her pale green eyes narrowed into lethal slits as she flashed toward the guards. Shots rang out. Bullets zinged between the metal walls, sparking as they made contact. My confused-as-hell body screamed at me to simultaneously run, to drop to the ground, to stand perfectly still. We had to get out of this deathtrap.
But the woman… She kicked and punched with expert skill, each strike perfectly placed and timed. Enough to incapacitate before she delivered the final blow—a broken neck. Bodies piled up around her, most from her doing, but the guy swung the butt of his big-ass gun to drop several too.
Until no one was left standing except them. And me, staring like a jackass with my mouth hanging to my shins.
“Who are you?” I asked.
The woman turned and grinned. “Your new best friends. Ready to get out of here?”
There was no way I could say no. If they wanted me dead, they wouldn’t be offering to bust me out. At least, I hoped.
“Melody. Ashe,” the chin-dimple guy behind her said gruffly, kneeling by one of the dropped guards. “Get a guard’s uniform on. It’ll help us get out of here faster.”
“And put this on,” the woman—Melody—said and threw something furry and alive at me.
I caught it. A cat? Nope. And not alive either. It was a curly brown wig. “Good plan.”
“I thought so.” Nodding, she began unbuttoning a guard’s bloodied shirt.
They knew my name. Knew I was in trouble and needed to get out. “Why me?” I asked them. “Why are you here for me?”
Melody stood with the guard’s shirt and shrugged into it, hiding all of her plentiful curves tucked inside her black tank top and black pants. She had a rose vine tattoo that climbed all the way up one shoulder and another tattoo on her wrist. A circle with a single diamond shape stretching from the center outward. Just like mine. Well, that was weird. That must have been where the tingling had come from, and the tattoo had just...appeared.
Her mouth opened and shut a few times as her agile fingers worked the shirt buttons shut, as if maybe she wasn’t quite sure what she was doing here. “We’re here for you because you have answers?”
“I have questions.”
Chin Dimple threw me a shirt and pants with a no-nonsense, I-will-stake-you-with-a-toothpick look. “You have one second to put those on.”
The blood donor had balls, I’d give him that. He’d waltzed into a vampire jail as tonight’s buffet and didn’t seem to give a fuck. But again, why? And why for me?
Melody threw him a wig with longer dark hair than he already had. Then she put on a sandy brown one over her platinum hair. She looked like she’d blend in with her disguise, but she was still just as gorgeous as before.
I dressed quickly and wigged myself, seeing that the other two were already done, then bent to retrieve one of the fallen weapons.
“You ever shot one of those before?” Dimple asked, peering out the cell door.
The gun felt heavy and strange in my hands. “Never.”
“Just don’t shoot me or Melody, and you’ll be good.” Another glance down the hallway, and then, “Let’s go.”
The three of us strode out the open door. The other two flanked me as if I were as valuable as gold or something. The other inmates had their faces pressed to the windows in their doors to see what was going on.
“What’s happening out there?” one demanded.
“Hey, talk to us, assholes,” another shouted.
The three of us kept our gazes stuck to the floor. As soon as we could, we swung left down a different hallway, leaving the other inmates behind. We walked at a steady clip, but I itched to run as fast as I could.
“Ashe.” Melody’s wrist bumped into mine, and a wild energy crashed through my skin at the contact. “If we see someone coming, you can’t look like that.”
“Like what?”
She grinned. “Like you’re about to taste freedom. Look pissed or something.”
Out of nowhere, Dimple’s gun smacked me in the back of the head. “There,” he growled. “Now he looks pissed.”
“The fuck?” Before I could throat punch him, the doors at the end of the hallway banged open.
Vampire guards poured through. One of them eyed us and then pointed in the direction he was heading.
“With me,” he barked. “Now.”
He swept next to Dimple, grabbed his sleeve, and shoved him in the direction he wanted him to go. Dimple looked back and met our gazes, his “oh” expression connecting with Melody’s hissed “shit.”
The guy grabbed the back of Dimple’s neck and shoved him again. “Move it! Security breach 0204. One man, one woman. Let’s act like we care.”
The other guards moved in behind them, but the rough guy was starting to look back in our direction, likely to yell at us to join in the fun too. Melody was already taking my hand and steering us through a stairway door, just in time.
“It’s okay. He knows the plan. He’ll be there.” Melody’s grip tightened in mine as we descended the stairs.
“Be where?”
“In a getaway van outside.”
I glanced at the shaded windows as we passed them, at the soft light slipping underneath the cracks. It would be daylight soon, the perfect time for a break from vampire jail since vampires couldn’t run out into the sun to give chase. But not so perfect if you didn’t have a getaway driver.
“As in a getaway van outside in the sun?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“And where will we be?”
“Waiting for him to come to pick us up.”
I guessed that the van wasn’t parked at the curb, then. Too obvious. Too suspicious. “And if he doesn’t?”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.
One of us was going to have to go outside and get the van. And I’d be damned if I let it be her.
So I did what I always did in these types of situations. Well, not this situation exactly since this was my first jail break, but I blended into the role of desperate, innocent vampire who needed out. Not terribly hard, and for the details I needed to do that, I would fake it until I made it.
“Where’s the van?” I asked.
“It’s the first ugly gold one in the southeast lot. Looks like some kind of 1970s rape van. Can’t miss it. Keys are in the ignition, but you can’t be thinking—”
A door below us slammed open, and Melody immediately released my hand. A guard ran up the stairs and right past us as if his ass were on fire.
As soon as he was out of earshot, I said, “We need to get to the roof.”
She stared hard at me as we rounded the landing onto another set of stairs. “You are thinking about going out there. No. No way. We need to get to security and see if we can find Zac on the working cameras. We’re not leaving here without him.”
“He’s important to you?” Yeah, bad timing, but there it was.
“Well…” She took my hand again and squeezed. “He got me in here to rescue you.”
“So I’m important?”
“You have to feel it.” She moved our clasped hands in front of us and pointed at our wrists. “Right here.”
“Yeah, I feel it.” There, and other places. “Where’s security?”
“First floor.”
“And they’ll just let us in to have a peek at their cameras, will they?”
She grinned, one that made my whole body react. “I don’t see why not.”
On the first floor, we found the door marked Security. The hallway was empty except for a vampire in silver cuffs around his ankles and two guards quickly escorting him into a room.
I tried the door. “Locked,” I muttered.
She held out a ring of keys and twirled them around her finger. “I wonder if these will come in handy.”
I snatched them from her, unable to keep the smile from my face. She was having entirely too much fun. Once the door was unlocked, we slid in one body part at a time in case we weren’t alone. Voices sounded from an adjoining room behind a closed door. We needed to be silent and quick.
Melody scanned the monitors along the wall while I searched the desk drawers. If I was going to be the getaway driver, I needed distractions to keep the focus off of me. The more the better. I found a lighter, a mostly empty glass bottle of Jack Daniels, and someone’s smelly sock. That would do. I also found a map of the jail and how to access the roof.
“There he is,” Melody muttered, pointing at one of the screens. “Third floo-- What the hell?”
I turned in time to see Chin Dimple fling something at the feet of the vampire guards surrounding him and then take off running. It exploded into a flash of violent monochrome light, followed by a dense cloud of thick black ashes. A UV bomb? Damn.
Quickly, I took Melody’s hand and led her out of the security room, my skin buzzing at the contact. “Go. Intercept him. Then get to the front door.”
She looked at me with big yellow eyes. She must’ve taken out her green contacts to better blend in, and I couldn’t decide which I liked better, a detail that didn’t matter right now.
“You’ll be there?” she asked. “At the front door too?”
“I’ll be there.”
She looked behind her at the empty hallway and then back at me with a wicked smile. “Look at the balls on you.”
I winked. “They’re not nearly as impressive as the rest of me.”
Grinning, she stepped away from me, her fingertips hooking around mine. “Go. Fast. Or I’ll have to come rescue you again.”
I nodded. “Let’s try not to make that a habit.”
I turned and left her behind, hating every inch of myself for doing so. This was insanity, fueled by an intoxicating promise of freedom. The sun would be up soon, and I was about to hurl myself out into it for a little daytime, rooftop picnic. Even worse, Melody depended on me not to fail. So I couldn’t. Yeah, I’d just met her, but still. She’d risked her life to break me out for no reason I could guess other than this weird connection. But it felt right. She felt right.
I stuck to the stairs, acting like I had every right to be there in my guard’s uniform. Groups of them flew past me without a glance as they shouted orders back and forth, totally oblivious to Inmate 204 running by.
On the top floor, a ladder stretched up the wall to the rooftop, and once I opened the door that led out, the orange streak in the sky slammed into me like a wall, bouncing me back inside. That would’ve been the smart thing to do. Instead, my legs weighted to the max with doubt, I stepped outside.
I had just minutes, tops, before sunrise.
In the distance, a helicopter whirred, not visible yet, but I had a feeling that was about to change.
I sprinted for the southeast corner of the building, pouring on my vampire speed and whatever other kinds of speeds I happened to have. Before the edge, I slowed, spotted an open dumpster below to my right, and jumped. Damn. And shot out of that stink like I’d just sat on a blowtorch. But not before setting the inside of the dumpster on fire with a splash of Jack from the bottle and the lighter I’d taken.
Then I spotted the gold van about fifteen yards away, past a dead lawn and the fenced-in work shed. Ugly was right. Not at all inconspicuous, but beggars can’t be choosers. I ran toward it, my skin prickling with heat. The orange streak in the sky had grown, now with bright yellow smudges. I gritted my teeth against my growing panic. No more looking at the sky. Ever.
When my feet hit the parking lot, the helicopter whirred closer, sounding almost right on top of me. I dropped and scooted underneath the van. The helicopter’s shadow crawled over the cement, a huge bug with rotating legs. I bet it was vampire proof.
Frustration burned into my hands until they clenched into fists. I didn’t have time for helicopters. The fact that I saw its shadow on the ground wasn’t a good sign. Eventually, after I bit down so hard on my teeth that I thought my eardrums had cracked, the whirring faded.
Time to move.
But first, a little fire. I fished out the glass bottle stuffed with the sock and lighter from my pockets, soaked the sock with the rest of the Jack Daniels, wedged it inside the bottle, and struck a flame to the cloth. Then I rolled the bottle across the ground as hard as I could. My troubled youth had taught me it wouldn’t actually explode any cars, but it would sure cause the pressurized struts and shock absorbers to fly around like bullets. Another distraction. Which was exactly what we needed.
I hauled ass out from underneath the van. Blinding light pummeled down on top of me. No time to think about it. I tried the driver’s side door of the gold van. Locked. Tried again. Still locked or stuck or holy fucking shit.
“You’re kidding me,” I hissed.
Heat ripped down my back. A faint sizzling started up my skin, growing louder.
Through the window, the keys were in the ignition. Locked inside the van. Smoke wafted up from underneath my collar, the tips of my ears, my whole body a match about to be lit.
I gripped the handle and tore the door clean off. A short-term solution since I still had to drive the damn thing. I threw myself inside, cranked the engine, and peeled out of there.
In the rearview mirror, the flames started from my sock cocktail caught on a tire of another car. Somewhere in the distance, over the roar of the engine, the helicopter whirred again.
Smoke still lifted off my body, though less now since the van had a tinted windshield. My hands were blistered and red, and my whole body felt like I’d thrown myself into an oven, but I was still alive.
I squealed to a stop in front of the jail. No sign of Melody or the other guy. I couldn’t wait for them. No, fuck that, I had to wait for them because they’d risked everything to break me out, a stranger neither of them knew. For all they knew, I was a killer. Who would do something like that for me? And what was with this crazy connection I felt to Melody?
So where was she? I was a sitting duck. A stupid sitting duck in a doorless van that would pour in sunlight as soon as I cleared the building.
The helicopter drew closer, but I didn’t dare peel my eyeballs away from the front door to look for it.
My wrist burned, rivalling the heat of the sun, and then she burst through the doors. Chin Dimple ran on her heels, and seconds later, a whole slew of pissed-off guards, guns drawn, but they weren’t brave enough to fling themselves out into the sun.
Brave. Stupid. It was all a matter of perception.
Bullets flew.
I dived out of the seat into the back so Melody and Dimple could fly in after me. Smoke wafted around Melody. Her face reddened. The sizzling started up and then intensified, and she still had about ten feet to go.
Guns kept firing.
“Run zigzag so you don’t get hit!” I shouted, but I could barely hear myself.
And then they were tumbling in, first Melody, then Dimple. The van shot forward with Dimple at the wheel, knocking Melody into me until we lay flat in the back. I held her close, the searing in my wrist fading into calm warmth.
“Are you all right?” she asked, her hand over my dead heart, staring down at me with big, beautiful yellow eyes.
She was asking me that. Me. Even while her own skin was smoking and blistering.
I laughed as bullets hit the back of the van, and we got the hell out of there. She laughed, too, as she melted into me with relief. Her body against mine caused all sorts of dirty thoughts to run through my head, even after a jailbreak. Especially after a jailbreak. But I was also aware that we’d both just stepped out into the sun and needed time to heal. Time to run.
Her chin trembled as her gorgeous eyes met mine again. “My real name is Wren.”
“It could be Bertha for all I care. Thank you.” I was free, all because of Wren and that other guy.
Whoever this Wren woman was, she was gorgeous and deadly, like silver poison in an unbreakable vial. And I desperately wanted a taste.