“Move it!” Viktor hauled Blue off the ground and dove against the Lamborghini.
Kallisto ducked when Shepherd fired his gun to cover them. Raven did a fancy roll while Christian crawled over like a feeble mutt on his last legs.
“Blasted car!” Wyatt clambered toward them from the rear of the Lamborghini. “Can’t even crawl under it. They don’t make ’em like they used to.”
Christian coughed out more blood and wiped his mouth. “Look who’s talking, the man who drives a tinker toy.”
“We’ve gotta get outta here,” Wyatt said. “Can’t we call someone to open the gates?”
Viktor peered over the car. “Nyet. The locks are on a timer.”
Shepherd fired another shot. “Got him. I think.”
Christian swayed. His chest wounds had already closed, but the second arrow had severed an artery in his leg, dumping out several pints. He could feel the artery sealing up, but it wasn’t happening fast enough.
Raven crawled onto his lap and shoved her wrist against his mouth.
Christian pressed his lips shut and turned his head. “Fecking not.”
But then she sensually nuzzled against him and licked his neck. He hardened beneath her, unable to control the pulse of Vampiric eroticism. Her blood called to him like a siren song, and when his lips touched her sweet neck, he heard the rhythmic sound of her heart as the blood whooshed through her veins.
“Drink,” she whispered into his ear.
Raven’s skin was tantalizing against his lips, so deliciously warm. He muted Blue’s heavy breaths, Shepherd’s gun firing, Viktor shouting at Kallisto in Russian, and Wyatt’s incessant bickering with a ghost that no one could see.
The only sound he heard was Raven’s heartbeat. Her scent filled his nose, and the taste of her salty skin tempted his lips. His fangs descended slowly and sank deep before retracting. Raven’s blood was like no other, and he grew dizzy with desire as he drank. He gripped her waist as the beast within him drank her life and learned her sins. The leather pants turned him on, and he imagined stripping them off while she lay topless on his bed. When Raven rocked her hips to rub her pelvis against his cock, he tasted her desire on his tongue.
She wanted him.
Wanted to give and take.
She trusted him, felt protected by him. Even though she was in pain, she was willing to share her blood.
This was exactly how Vampires took blood sharing too far. The desire to learn led to just one more sip. One after another after another. Before it went too far, he licked her wound to seal it and turned his head away.
“Jaysus,” he breathed. He had been so caught up in the act that he’d almost forgotten the danger of having a Jumper on the loose. He swiped a drop of blood from her neck and licked his finger.
Wyatt shuddered. “Would you like a to-go box for that?”
Christian moved Raven off him and stood up. Now that he was pumped up with healing blood, it was time to show this bastard what it meant to fear a Vampire. “Blue, give me your axe.”
She removed it from her holster. “What are you gonna do with it?”
“Knock out the lights and have a party.” He took the axe and met eyes with Shepherd, who was crouched at the far end of the Lamborghini. “Cover me on three. One, two—”
“Three,” Blue finished, stealing the axe from his hand. “Back in a jiffy!”
She sprinted down the alley toward the gate. Shepherd fired his gun several times at the shadows. He couldn’t see Kallisto. None of them could.
Blue was deadly with an axe, her aim true. She tossed it up at the building and shattered a light. Shepherd was able to fire about fifteen rounds before he had to load another magazine. Christian glimpsed Claude on the roof, and he looked deadly.
Claude’s black eyes scanned the rear wall before he ran at Chitah speed toward the front of the building again. The poor bastard was going to wear himself out climbing up and down.
Blue caught her axe when it fell and then threw it at the second light, knocking it out. Kallisto drew back his bow. When she threw it at the third and final light, the bulb shattered. Kallisto fired his arrow.
And missed.
Christian rose in the newfound darkness that blanketed them. Now that he could shadow walk, he glided like liquid toward the gate. While shadow walking allowed him to move quickly through the shadows, he couldn’t scale a building that tall. Every gift had limitations, and he still needed something to grip and climb. A man can’t just float to the heavens like a fecking angel.
Each bar was four inches in diameter. Busting down steel doors with weak hinges was one thing, but Christian had never taken on anything this ambitious. He anchored his foot on a bar and gripped it with both hands. His biceps strained from the immense pressure as he pulled with all his strength. When nothing happened, he tried a different bar. And then another.
Vampire proof.
He turned around and looked at the team. They were trapped. Another arrow pierced the darkness and shattered a car window. Viktor and Shepherd were tossing rocks, trying to get Kallisto to waste his arrows firing at nothing. But Kallisto kept his eyes trained on the cars as if he could see them.
They needed to get out of there.
Christian shadow walked back to the group and crouched next to Blue. “Keep quiet,” he said under his breath. “He’s as blind as a bat.”
Wyatt’s eyes were locked on something. “You better sit your Vampy ass down. He’s getting our location coordinates from his ghosty friend.”
“Well, what are you sitting there for, eejit? Get up and perform an exorcism.”
Wyatt scowled. “This isn’t a case of possession. It’s a specter that doesn’t want to move on, and I can’t make him. That isn’t my area of expertise.”
Christian grabbed a fistful of his shirt. “Better start learning before I drain you and make you do it from the other side.”
Wyatt grabbed the broken arrow next to him and held it to Christian’s throat. “Try it, and I won’t be the only one with a hole in his neck.”
Raven got between them. “Will you two knock it off and come up with a solution? How can Kallisto see a ghost? He didn’t see him before, did he?”
Wyatt shifted his position and sat on one foot. “I guess their near-death experience changed something. I don’t think they were asleep. I think their souls were trapped in the second realm. Like limbo. But the living don’t belong there. Sometimes when people come back, they’re not the same. And they were in limbo for a long time.”
Raven slapped his knee. “Stop creeping me out with ghost stories. We need to think of a way to distract him. What confuses specters? You said they’re not always lucid.”
Wyatt’s dilated pupils eclipsed his green irises. Christian always found it amusing how people widened their eyes in the dark as if that could make them see better.
Wyatt stroked his chin. “Electricity confuses them sometimes. They don’t like it. But we’re not exactly at a power station.”
Christian grinned darkly and clapped Raven on the shoulder. “Don’t be so sure about that. Sparky here is our very own nuclear reactor.”
Blue light crackled on Raven’s fingertips. “Not a bad idea.”
When Christian glanced up at the empty rooftop, he shoved Raven against the Aston Martin. “Other side!” he shouted.