Seventeen
TJ looked around at Matt and Shooter and Sam, all of whom were waiting to hear what Pike had told her.
She told them about Morpheus’s plan and that Elijah had recommended that they leave town immediately.
She answered their questions as best she could, and then they went to their respective bedrooms to pack for their trip, having decided to leave at dawn and to head directly for Austin. Once there, they would call Pike back and decide whether to fly or to drive to their next location, depending on how far away he was. On the phone, he’d given her no indication of his present location.
Matt and Sam began to put the few belongings they’d brought with them into a small suitcase. Sam was trying to decide what she needed to buy to supplement the two outfits she’d packed when she began to feel an all too familiar urge. The Hunger was beginning to make itself known now that she’d stopped the treatments.
It began with a hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach, as if she hadn’t eaten for days, and proceeded to spread like wildfire though her entire body, making her twitch and burn with a desire to feed, to rend and tear with her teeth until she tasted the warm, coppery taste of someone else’s blood in her mouth. It had been so long since she’d felt the full effects of the Hunger that she’d almost forgotten how seductive the need to feed could be.
She sat on the bed, burying her face in her hands as her body ached with a need not unlike that of a heroin addict.
Matt noticed her look of distress and sat on the bed next to her, putting his arm around her shoulders and pulling her head against his neck.
“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” he asked, wondering if the stress of their predicament was making her edgy.
She turned her bloodshot, tortured eyes to his and sobbed. “I don’t know, Matt. It feels like I’m starving to death, and I have the most terrible urge to . . .” Unable to say the words, she just swallowed and buried her face against his shoulder again.
Matt’s eyes widened and he looked at his watch. It’d been almost seventy-two hours since Sam’s last antibiotic treatment. By now, he thought, the plasmids and viruses that make up the vampyre bug must be replicating and reproducing with amazing speed. Sam was beginning to change, and he knew what that meant.
He pulled her face up and stared into her pain-filled eyes. “You need to feed, don’t you?” he asked, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
She nodded, shame suffusing her face.
“Do we have time to go to the blood bank at the medical center and get you some plasma?”
She took a deep breath. “I don’t think so, Matt. I just don’t know how much longer I can hold out and control the horrible urges I’m feeling. It’s like my entire body is on fire and I can hardly breathe.”
Matt laid his palm on her face. She was burning up with a fever and her cheeks were flushed. He smiled and nodded. “Okay. That’s easily fixed,” he said.
“But, how? she asked.
He stood up and began to remove his shirt. “We’ll just have to give you a little snack to tide you over until we can get a supply of blood from the hospital.”
She shook her head, but he could see her tongue come out and lick her lips at the thought of drinking his blood.
He bent and jerked the covers back on the bed and lay down, opening his arms to her, offering himself up to her hunger.
She turned and tried to fight the urge, but it was too strong and the Hunger began to take control of her body. Against her will, she turned back to him and moved toward him, as if in a dream.
She lay next to him, and when he put his arms around her and drew her face down to his neck, she moaned deep in her throat and opened her mouth, new-grown fangs glistening in the light from the bedside lamp.
Forcing herself to go slowly and gently, she sank her teeth into the soft skin over his jugular vein and began to suck his blood into her mouth. At the first sweet taste, she relaxed and felt incredible warmth spread through her veins.
After a moment, her pheromones and hormones, stimulated by the act of feeding, suffused her body and she became instantly aroused. Her nipples hardened and began to burn and itch with the desire to be squeezed, and she became wet with desire.
She released her grip on his neck and sat back, her eyes flashing and her skin on fire. Staring into his eyes, she pulled her clothes off and then bent to his belt. Within seconds she had his trousers and underwear off.
As is always the case, her vampyre desire was transmitted though both her bite and her mind to him and his penis sprang erect and jumped and throbbed with transmitted desire.
She bent and took his swollen member into her mouth as he turned on the bed and buried his face between her legs, both of them moaning and grunting with a need so intense it would not be denied.
She sucked and stroked him as his tongue caressed her most sensitive spot, until they could stand it no longer. With one swift movement she was on top of him, his penis buried to the hilt in her throbbing sex.
He bucked against her; his eyes shut as his hands took her swollen breasts and squeezed them, fingers rubbing her nipples.
She almost howled in delight as she bent and fastened her mouth on his neck once again and drank him in as they coupled wildly on the bed.
As he exploded inside her, pumping his semen into her, she came with him and released her hold on his neck long enough to fasten her lips to his, their tongues dancing together as they melded into one being.
Though they were not mates in the classical vampyre sense, Sam felt their minds touch and mingle as they came together and she felt his own release as he felt hers. It was the most incredible experience either of them had ever experienced and after a time they collapsed exhausted into each other’s arms and slept, the terrible Hunger at bay for a while.
* * *
Two hours later, Sam awoke, feeling remarkably refreshed. She felt as strong as a bull and every sense was alive as never before. Her eyes opened and she found she could see in the dark almost as well as if the room had been brightly lit.
She rolled to the side and kissed the sleeping Matt gently on the lips, and smiled when he moaned in his sleep and his penis moved under her hand. Even in sleep it seemed they maintained a deep mental bond.
She was about to doze off and go back to sleep when she heard her cell phone chirp. She’d left it in the sitting room when they’d come to bed.
Slipping slowly out of bed so as not to wake Matt, she padded silently into the next room and answered the phone.
“Hello, Sam,” a deep, husky voice said.
Her mind recoiled in horror. It was the voice of Michael Morpheus.
“How did you get this number?” she asked.
“What? No greetings for your lover, my dear?” he asked jokingly.
She didn’t answer. Her heart was racing and she looked wildly around the room as if he might be there with her.
Finally, when he found she wasn’t going to answer, Morpheus said, “I got your number from an old friend of yours, Sam. Here, I’ll let you speak to him.”
A second later, Dr. Sheldon Silver’s voice came on the line. “Sam, don’t come,” he blurted. “He’ll kill us anyway.”
She heard the sharp sound of a slap and a grunt of pain from Shelly, and then Morpheus was back on the phone. “He’s correct, Sam. Dr. Silver and his lovely wife are as good as dead. But we both know there are many ways to die, and I promise you the Silvers will experience the most horrible death imaginable if you are not here at their house within thirty minutes.”
“But . . .” she started.
“And, Sam dear, do come alone if you want to save your friends from a death most foul.”
The phone clicked off before she could reply and Sam sat there in the darkness of the room, sweating and shivering with fear, devastated that her past was putting two of her best friends in danger.
Though her mind was in chaos, she tried to reason out her best course of action. She knew if she showed up alone, Morpheus would overpower her, either physically or mentally, and then the Silvers and her friends would surely die.
If she took Matt and Shooter, they would not be able to overcome Morpheus, either, for vampyres were not easily killed, as she and TJ and Elijah Pike had found out.
Her only chance was to take TJ. Perhaps the two of them would be enough of a match for Morpheus, especially if he wasn’t expecting TJ to be along.
Her mind made up, she stood up and moved silently into the other bedroom.
TJ and Shooter were lying naked on the bed, covers thrown back, entwined in each other’s arms. There was a fresh wound on Shooter’s neck, and TJ’s skin was rosy and flushed.
Good, Sam thought. TJ had also fed. She would need all the strength a blood meal would provide for what Sam had planned.
Sam gave a low whistle, too low for Normals to hear, but TJ’s heightened senses brought her instantly awake, her eyes searching the darkness until she saw Sam standing naked in the doorway.
Sam put her finger to her lips and motioned TJ out into the sitting room.
TJ slipped out of Shooter’s arms and joined Sam in the outer room.
Sam hurriedly explained about the phone call from Morpheus and the danger the Silvers were in. TJ didn’t hesitate.
“Just let me get dressed and we’ll be on our way,” she said as she whirled around and reentered the bedroom.
Ten minutes later, they were in Matt’s car heading for the Silvers’ home. On the way, they discussed their plans for the upcoming confrontation.