Demon Night

throat. She was still fighting.
    Taking unwilling blood was painful for a vampire, and judging by the tightness of the skin, the strain around his mouth, Charlie was resisting awful hard. But the bastard was trying to overcome it, using the pleasure of the feeding against her, trying to make her succumb. His hand moved beneath her shirt, covered her breast.
    She couldn’t have heard Ethan shouting her name, or the horns honking around him. He blasted his Gift at the spell, felt the lock there but nothing to move, no magnetic connection to break, no tumblers to push.
    He didn’t know how it worked. He had to know how it worked.
    Still, he pushed harder. Harder , until his Gift was erupting through his mind and darkness edged the center of his consciousness. Around them, doors and trunks unlocked and popped open, spilling items across the road. Brakes screeched and cars swerved, tires squealing. A crash of metal, then another. Blood dripped from his nose; he’d busted something in his brain pushing so hard, but the Gift was still there and he kept at it.
    The spell protected the wheels, but he called in his guns and scrambled across the roof, firing two clips at each tire, praying for any hole in the shield, that his Gift had weakened it, that something would give.
    His prayer wasn’t answered. The bridge stretched out ahead of them. Sirens sounded in the distance.
    His chest heaving, Ethan hung over the side and looked in through the window. Charlie was laid out on the seat, kicking weakly at the opposite door. The vampire was on her, his hand slipping beneath her waistband, his mouth at her neck forcing her chin back, and she was looking at Ethan upside down.
    Her eyes locked with Ethan’s, pleading.
    “Charlie.” His throat was raw from shouting her name, salted and scraped by fear. “Charlie, please hold on.”
    Her eyelids drifted shut.

CHAPTER 12
    “Mr. Henderson, I told you not to…”
    It faded. She couldn’t really hear Dylan now, just that awful sucking sound, the slow throb of her heart in her ears. Her legs and arms were heavy; her body had forsaken her. Weak…and reacting to the vampire’s frigid touch as if he was a lover.
    But Ethan was out there. His face pale and tormented when he’d looked in at her, his eyes feral, desperate.
    Jane, smiling and her ponytails swinging, a unicorn rearing in her outstretched palm…
    Charlie didn’t realize she’d had any breath until Henderson jarred back, then fell heavily against her, knocking it from her lungs.
    “He’s going to push us over the edge!” Dylan’s laughter was a rollicking study in sharps. “He must care for you, Charlie. This just gets better and better.”
    “Charlotte, you will never improve if you do not practice.” Her mother runs the scale on the piano, a key to each syllable. “You cannot rely on your voice, no more than a woman can rely on beauty or health. It can go at any time.”
    Her father, grinning over the top of his paper. “Jane’s brains won’t go.”
    Jane, rolling her eyes and making a face behind their parents’ backs.
    The seat rose up beneath her, tipping her upright before she fell against the ceiling, her legs tangling with Henderson’s. She slammed back down to the seat. Lights flashed, red and white. Rolling again.
    Spinning. Going too fast. The scream of metal. The broken windshield, the broken window with its iron bars. Glass in her throat. Blood. So much blood.
    “It’s unfortunate that you didn’t listen to me, Mr. Henderson, and you touched her, because I could have helped you. When I lower this shield, he’ll have an instant to decide which one of us to go after—but he’ll be in such a tear to save her, he won’t even look at me. His choice is already made, and I’ll let him make it.”
    Staggering into the apartment she shared with Jane, finding the contents of her bedroom stacked by the door in boxes and trash bags. Her fingers clenching on the arm of a grunge musician whose name she could barely remember. But Jane’s face still so clear — tormented, and as white as the powder in the little plastic bag on the table next to her.
    “I can’t do this anymore, Charlie. You’re going to have to make a choice.”
    Sound slowly filtered in: the lap of water. A male’s panicked plea, a demon’s cold reply.
    And Ethan, calling her name.

    Ethan had lifted objects heavier than the SUV, but not moving as fast as the vehicle had been…and he’d never caught one midair.
    Even