Dark Attraction

Chapter eighteen - Gage

The flash of fear jolted me from the sort of trance I'd gotten into, as I worked at my computer.

I sat up straighter, tilted my head and tried to listen. The bond between vampire and prey is stronger the longer the feeding goes on, and we hadn't done enough of that yet. I couldn't tune into his thoughts, or see through his eyes. In time, over years, I would be able to, but for now, I just got the sense of his most intense emotions. And this one was fear. Spiky, white hot fear of someone who is afraid for their life.

I got up so fast the chair tipped over and crashed on the floor. At the door I grabbed the oversized black hoodie and large dark sunglasses I needed to venture into the daytime world and was out the door, and running. True, it was coming onto dusk, but the sun could still burn me. I pulled them on as I closed the door behind me.

The elevator was slow, too slow. I took the stairs, moving at vampire speed. I slowed down just enough to not alarm the doorman as I left the building but as soon as I was out of sight of the security cameras I ran.

The link I had to Brandon wasn't as strong as I needed it to be, but I could still tell which direction he was in. Brandon's fear spiked again.

I feared the worst.

Had some of my enemies noticed him? That would have been very quick work, and I was relatively sure that I wasn't being watched at the moment.

Or perhaps some other supernatural creature had found him?

Was he simply the victim of a random crime?

It didn't matter, I was going to him anyway, but as I ran across campus, nothing more than a blur to the people I was passing, my mind provided horrible possibilities for what could have happened.

I saw images of Brandon bleeding out on the side of the road, moments from death, crying, breathing his last. Vivid pictures kept flashing in my mind. We hadn't known each other long but the connection couldn't be denied.

I was drawn to him, irresistibly as gravity pulled me to earth and the wind blew the trees.

I would turn him if I had to, to save him. I didn't care that it had only been a handful of days. Brandon had quickly become the center of my world, embarrassing as that was.

I was getting closer. The fear wasn't just a spike of panic in my chest now and again, it was a throbbing constant, aching in my frontal lobe and giving speed to my feet.

I slowed, sensing I was close. I was at the campus library, a huge lumbering building, which was surely closed now. I came to a stop and sniffed the air.

There, on the wind, Brandon's scent. My shampoo and his musky, sweaty jock-boy smell.

Around the back of the library, a small alleyway, and half obscured by a large dumpster, a knot of men. The one on the ground was Brandon. Two were holding him down and one was bent over him, his back curled. Feeding? My own heart didn't need to beat but I felt it thumping all the same.

I walked swiftly, but not with vampiric speed, making sure that my heels clicked on the pavement, alerting them to my presence. Giving them a chance to flee before I hurt them.

One of them looked up, a pale, frightened looking young man, who was kneeling on Brandon's arm.

"Leave him alone," I said. I spoke calmly, although my anger was almost making me vibrate. "And I won't kill you."

There was a choked sounding laugh. "Austin, there's someone here," the other man said.

The one bent over Brandon glanced over his shoulder, saw me and laughed, bending back to his work. Brandon's cry of pain erased any patience I might have had. These boys had been given fair warning.