Dead Heat (Taz Bell Book 1) Read online

  "It might be a good idea if we headed back to the motel now," Eric murmured as I blinked to clear my vision of spots. "Tonight is ours even if you decide not to know me tomorrow."

  Leaving now was a very good idea, so I nodded, left a tip for the bartender by taking back only some of my change from the drink, then got off the stool. Eric was already standing behind his own stool making no effort to touch me again, which was a damned good thing. One more touch and I would have attacked him on the spot, putting on a show that would have outdone the Country band and its singer.

  Outside, the night was a little cooler than it had been earlier, and the parking lot lights were downright bright compared to the dimness we'd just come out of. There was a good chance it had rained earlier, but there was no sign of rain right now.

  "I'm parked over there," Eric said, pointing in the direction my own car was parked. He'd stopped in the clear space near the bar, just short of the first of the cars in the lot. "If you're not sure how to get back to the motel from here, feel free to follow me."

  "I can probably figure it out, but I don't mind doing things the easy way," I said. "And I'm also - "

  I was about to say I was also parked in that direction when we were suddenly interrupted. The wannabe biker and his friends had been gone from their table when Eric and I left, but when the three fools popped up around us it was clear they hadn't gone far.

  "Well, lookee here, boys, it's the little bitch and the scum who picked her up," the biker said with a really bright smile. He and one of his friends had closed up on Eric, while the third friend stood right behind me. "You made a bad mistake tonight, scum, and now you're goin' to be payin' for it. And while you're rollin' around hurtin,' you can think about us havin' lots of fun with the bitch."

  "You men are the ones making a mistake here," Eric said with an odd kind of smile. "Take my advice and turn around and walk away while you still can."

  "Hey, the scum's a hero," the fool nearest the biker said with a laugh. All three of the men were bigger than Eric and me, but they should have known that size doesn't always matter. The three were also human, and the strength of a shapeshifter is two or three times that of a human. Someone with a mind would have hesitated over what Eric had said, but these three had no minds.

  "I always wanted to pound on a hero," the biker said with his own laugh as the one behind me wrapped big hands around my arms and pulled me back a couple of steps. "Let's see if it's any different than poundin' on scum."

  The biker's friend had moved behind Eric to grab his arms in the same way I was being held, and only then did the biker wannabe feel safe enough to throw the first punch. His fist went all the way back before coming forward again, but it wasn't Eric's face the fist smashed into the way it was supposed to. The fist didn't smash into anything at all because Eric had pulled his left arm free to block the punch. Then he pulled his right arm free to throw an easy punch into the biker's middle that doubled the man over.

  The biker's two friends shouted at the same time, the one behind Eric throwing an elbow around Eric's throat this time. He obviously expected the biker to straighten up and use Eric as a punching bag, and the one behind me tried to shove me to one side so he'd be free to go and help his buddies. Instead of straightening up, the biker had gone down to one knee before folding up on the ground against the pain. That left no one but the one near me to try for Eric again, but I saw no reason to let that happen.

  Grabbing the shirt of the fool in the middle of passing me turned him back in my direction. His face twisted as his fist came up, but when I picked him up off the ground he turned pale even before I threw him away. His scream cut off when he hit the ground, an echo of the scream from the one who had been trying to hold onto Eric. They were finally getting the message, and I hadn't even had to use anything fancy.

  When I turned back toward Eric I saw that the third fool was down on the ground next to the biker. I didn't know what Eric had done to him, but he was barely moving while he moaned. The biker was the only one left who was still fully conscious, and Eric crouched next to him before closing his fist in the biker's long, greasy hair.

  "If you gang up on people trying to prove how tough you are, you only prove the exact opposite," Eric said softly while the man whose hair he held whimpered. "This time you and your friends got away with nothing but a few bruises, but the next time you could end up dead. If that's what you want, just keep going like this."

  I didn't say it out loud, but if the three had tried to jump me alone they would have ended up with more than just a few bruises. I can feel sorry for wannabes from a distance, but once they try to get up close and personal I don't feel anything but the decision to defend myself.

  The biker was trying to say something through the pitiful whimpering. He was probably swearing he'd never do anything like this again, but Eric didn't bother listening. He seemed to know as well as I did that the biker and his friends would probably start carrying weapons instead of giving up their bad habits, so why waste time listening to lies? He let go of the biker and straightened instead, then came over to where I stood.

  "As I started to say a few minutes ago, I'm parked over there," he said, pointing the way he had the first time. "How about you?"

  "I'm also parked down that way," I said, looking up into very light gray eyes. "Are you sure you don't want to call the cops? The next people these idiots jump on may not be able to take care of themselves as well as we can."

  "Or their next victims may blow their heads off," Eric said with a shrug. "I've learned not to interfere with other people's lives, and having these three locked up will only delay what happens to them, not stop it. If you see things differently, I'll be glad to wait with you until the police get here."

  I looked back at the wannabe biker and saw that he'd stopped whimpering and had started to cry. There are times when tears are the only response you can make to what's happening, but some people use tears to get themselves out of trouble. I would have bet that the biker was crying the second kind of tears, but I'd started not to care. As close as Eric was standing, all I could think about was reaching out and touching him. That would have been a very bad mistake, of course, but it was surprising I could still understand the point.

  "Let's forget about these idiots and just get back to the motel," I said, distantly wondering if he was feeling what I'd started to. "They aren't worth messing with for the rest of the night."

  "They sure as hell aren't," Eric murmured, and his eyes seemed to be even lighter somehow. He also started to raise one hand as if to touch my face, then the hand was pulled back to his side and curled into a fist. "Let's go right now, please."

  I appreciated his adding the please, but it wasn't in any way necessary. Seeing that he was feeling what I did made the feelings stronger, more demanding. Light chills were tingling up my back, and the same thing was happening between my legs only with heat. If we didn't get back to the motel soon we were going to put on a show right there in the parking lot.

  Eric turned and started hurrying toward his car, and I wasn't more than a couple of steps behind him. I was trying so hard to keep control of myself that I almost walked past the Saturn. I had to stop short and go back a couple of steps, but happily Eric never noticed. He continued on a few spaces to a dark green Jeep, the expensive kind of Jeep that cost more stripped than most cars did with extras.

  By the time I'd turned the car on and had backed out of the parking space, I was starting to feel a little more rational. Not coolly in control, just a little more able to breathe and think. Eric hadn't had to back out, not when he'd backed into the space, so his Jeep just stood waiting until I was in a position to follow him. Once I was, we headed for the road beyond the parking lot that would take us back to the highway.

  Following an SUV is usually annoying, but the road we were on was so dark that I wouldn't have been able to see much even without the big vehicle in front of me. I followed Eric's taillights into what I thought was a dip in the road,
but the dip kept going down for a time. When the road began to rise again, I saw that we were now on the other side of the highway and heading for a lighted entrance ramp. The ramp put us back onto the highway, but with the motel on the opposite side of the road we had to go the dip routine again when we took the motel's exit.

  It really wasn't very long before we were in the motel's parking lot, and I refused to notice how happy that made me. I'd had to concentrate on my driving to keep from thinking about jumping on Eric as soon as we were out of the cars, and I hated that I felt like this. Then I suddenly found something to hate even more. That I'd actually gone so far as to pick up a stranger in a bar was bad enough, but what if I found myself wanting to "mate" with him? The possibility was downright terrifying.

  There weren't two parking spaces together, so Eric left the one space close to the doors for me and drove off to find a space of his own. After pulling into the space I just sat there for a minute, trying to tell myself that I was worrying over nothing. Eric and I would just have sex, I would feel better and be less easily reached by intrusive vampires, and then the stranger and I would go our separate ways.

  Sure, of course we would. I rubbed my eyes with the fingers of both hands, feeling fear creep up and begin to cover the rest of what I'd been experiencing. I'd never been as attracted to any man as I was to Eric, and I didn't know if that was because we were alike or because he would turn out to be something special. The last thing I wanted was to meet someone special, someone who might not fit into or approve of the new life I'd made for myself. So how was I supposed to tell what I was really getting into?

  I took the key out of the ignition before opening the door, silently cursing myself for a fool. I'd been so desperate to ignore what I'd become that I'd made no effort to find out any details of what being a shapeshifter was all about. On the night of the full moon I always made sure to be in the woods somewhere with deer close enough to be hunted, but that was as far as it went. I still didn't want to know any real details, but that had to change if getting sandbagged wasn't to become my new way of life.

  It came to me that I was almost to the motel entrance, so I stopped short and turned back toward the parking lot. The panic and confusion I still felt was overriding the sexual need and telling me to run, not walk, back to the suite where I belonged. That sounded like a really good idea, but I couldn't just disappear without a word to Eric. I had to tell him the date was off, and then I needed to do some intensive research.

  I heard the soft sound of footsteps approaching a short way off as I put the car key in my pocket, but I couldn't see Eric yet. Most of the parking lot was dark with light poles here and there breaking up the inky black, only the pole closest to the entrance not doing its job. Noticing that made alarm bells suddenly go off in my head, mostly because this light had been working fine when I'd left the motel. And if the light closest to the motel entrance had gone out since then, the bulb would most likely already be replaced. Every minute the light stayed out was another invitation to a law suit in case of an accidental fall.

  Instead of clamping down on my senses to keep them as close to human as possible, I pulled all the restrictions off and sent my awareness out into the dark. Yes, that was definitely Eric walking this way, but we weren't the only ones out here. There was something else, something ugly, and that impression had nothing to do with appearance. I took one step away from the entrance in the direction Eric was coming from, and -

  - and the form appeared right in front of me like magic. But it wasn't magic, it was a vampire, his fangs showing clearly when he hissed at me. A dark bar of an arm swung toward me almost faster than I could follow, and then I was flying backward to hit the side of the building really hard.

  Chapter Eight

  If you've never been backhanded by a vampire, you don't know what fun it can be. Just as shapeshifters are stronger than humans, older vampires are stronger than shapeshifters. By older I mean fifty to a hundred years old, depending on the individual vampire. Most new vampires take about twenty years before they stop falling into a coma at dawn, and then their powers begin to develop. By the time they reach fifty most of them are fairly strong, both physically and power-wise, but some take longer to develop all the way.

  The vampire who backhanded me into the wall wasn't the strongest I'd ever come across, but that didn't mean he was weak. The only thing that saved me from unconsciousness was that my back hit first, before my head did the same. Then I was down on the ground with bells ringing and pretty lights decorating the darkness, holding myself up on both arms and my knees. By now I could feel the pain from hitting, but at least the bells and lights were fading. When it comes to being slammed into a wall, there's no such thing as not feeling it. Unless, of course, you're hurt a lot worse than you ever want to think about.

  But I hadn't really passed out, only lost a minute or so to the shock of hitting, so raising my head showed me the vampire using the shadows to get as close to Eric as he could before attacking. I had no idea why a vampire would be after Eric, but being in the dark about a reason wasn't hard to understand. The man was a stranger, so for all I knew he was always being attacked by vampires.

  Yeah, right. Even I wasn't attacked on a regular basis, and I hunted rogues. I'd definitely have to ask why this was happening, but now wasn't the time. All I could do was shout, "Eric, look out!" and use one of the line of bushes near the wall to help me get myself back to my feet.

  The vampire's face showed a snarl as Eric stopped short and began to look around, and then the bloodsucker was on Eric and they were struggling. Standing up wasn't as hard as it might have been, not when my strength was coming back fairly fast, but I almost fell again when part of the bush I held to broke off from the rest. I was able to catch my balance before I ended up on my face a second time, and seeing that the bush section was almost completely severed gave me an idea.

  Pulling away the section of two branches and their leaves from the rest of the bush took only one hard yank, and then I was on my way toward the fight with a weapon in my hand. The wooden part had broken away from the rest of the bush with a sharp edge and something of a point, and I couldn't help smiling as I hurried. I'd never used a wooden stake on a vampire before, but it looks like there's a first time for everything.

  Eric had been bent backwards over a car trunk with the vampire on top, but even though I could smell blood the two were still struggling. Eric had locked his arms out straight trying to keep the vampire away from his throat, but even as I watched I could see Eric's arms starting to bend. Unless something was done to stop the attacker, the struggle would be all over in less than a minute.

  So I stopped behind the vampire and stabbed toward the middle of his back. Enough of my strength had come back that the branches would have gone all the way through to the vampire's heart, but at the last second the vampire moved just enough to throw off my aim. The branches stabbed through the vampire's body but not into his heart, and that made all the difference.

  The scream forced out of the vampire was absolutely hideous, horrible enough to freeze the blood in your veins even if you happened to be on fire. I started to flinch at the sound but then I was flying through the air again, this time to land about ten feet back along the parking lot. The blow had been only half a backhand, so although I landed kind of hard it wasn't as bad as slamming into a building.

  "What's going on out here?" a loud voice suddenly demanded as people hurried out of the motel. Two of the people had flashlights, but the extra light didn't help. The vampire had disappeared, and Eric had straightened up some and was holding a torn and bleeding shoulder. There was no sign of the branches I'd stabbed into the vampire, so he must have taken them with him.

  "We were attacked," Eric said in answer to the worried demand. "It was a vampire, but I have no idea why a vampire would come after me. As far as I know I haven't insulted anyone with fangs lately."

  "I'll have our house doctor take care of that shoulder and also have a look at th
e young lady," the man, who was probably the motel's night manager, said as I got to my feet again. His stare was glued to Eric's shoulder, and when he licked his lips nervously I got a glimpse of his fangs. The night manager was a vampire, and the smell of blood was getting to him. "I'll also call the police, of course."

  "Taz, are you all right?" Eric asked, the worry in his eyes easing once I was upright again. "I'm pretty sure I owe you my life, and I don't know how you thank someone for doing that. Just saying, 'Hey, thanks!' doesn't seem to be enough."

  "Next time you can do the same for me and we'll be even," I said, more relieved than I intended to show. Getting thrown around had not only dampened my interest in Eric, the lingering aches had chased away everything I'd been feeling. "Right now I need to go back to my room and soak in a bath for a while. Take care, Eric."

  He parted his lips as if to argue my leaving, but two of the motel people had gone over to help him and he seemed to need the help. His shoulder wasn't the only place he was bleeding, and if I hung around much longer my aches and pains would ease enough that I became just as aware of the blood as the night manager. Since I really didn't want that I turned away from them all and headed into the motel.

  I expected to find Freemont reading in bed or already asleep, but instead I walked in to find him sprawled in a chair in front of the television. He was watching some kind of movie, and only when I saw how relaxed he was did I realize that he shouldn't be relaxed.

  "I'd ask how it went, but you're back too early for it to have gone well," Freemont commented without turning, more sympathy than humor behind the words. "If you like I'll go through the phone book with you, something I should have done before you left earlier. We can - Taz! Why am I suddenly getting all kinds of strange vibes?"