Blood Doll Read Online Free Page A

in the doorway. She curled her arms around her body, hugging herself for warmth and protection…not that she could do much to protect herself against a hungry vampire. “Thank you for getting me out of there,” she added, and noticed that she had unconsciously raised one hand and begun to fidget with her hair. She forced her hand down by her side. “I really hope you’re going to tell me what’s going on now.”
    “Come drink your tea. There isn’t much to eat, but I made you some toast.” He nodded to the plate sitting next to the steaming mug on the table. “I thought you could use the fortification.”
    “Thanks,” she said again, but still didn’t move from the doorway. She couldn’t bring herself to do it.
    “I’m not going to eat you, Lana.” This time the smirk on his face was accompanied by a chuckle. “Not unless you ask nicely.”
    “What is that,” she replied with a snort, “some sort of vampire humor?”
    “No,” he said. “That’s my warped sense of reality. Vampire humor would require me to put on a cape and tell you I wanted to suck your blood with a bad attempt at a Romanian accent.”
    “Thanks for the heads-up, Dracula.”
    “Anytime, sweetheart.” He took another sip of his beer, and Lana watched, enrapt, as his throat muscles worked to draw the liquid down his throat. Maybe it was the undead thing, but there was something very attractive about him…beyond the normal, physical prettiness.
    The ultimate predator, she thought.
    “Come get your tea before it gets cold, and I’ll tell you everything you want to know about the last six months of your sister’s life.”
    Tea…she wanted that tea. It was the desire for something warm to push away the chill that drove her into the kitchen and up to the table. She picked up the cup and sniffed—chamomile, an odd thing for a vamp to keep—then lowered herself to the chair and picked up a triangle of toast.
    “I haven’t talked to her in almost a month,” Lana said before biting into the toast. Her stomach growled in happy acceptance as she chewed.
    “Not many people have,” Christian said, his expression turning dark. “Unless you’re one of The Mausoleum’s elite, that is.” He finished off the drink and tossed the bottle into the trash can across the room. It hit the bottom of the empty can and shattered. Lana winced at the sound, unbelievably loud in the quiet house. “Remember the kid at the door of the club?”
    “There was something wrong with his eyes,” she replied, remembering the freakish sight of him, and sipped her tea.
    “That’s a side effect, and the easiest physical way to tell a scab from an addict.”
    “A scab?” Lana questioned. Christian sighed, and fixed her with a hard gaze.
    “Look at my eyes… what do you see?”
    “Lots of color. They don’t look normal.”
    “Exactly,” he said. “I was not lying when I said I’m a vampire. That’s how I tore the watcher’s head off. That’s how I leaped to the top of a seven-story building. That’s how I brought us to the woods outside Salem in less than fifteen minutes.”
    “So what do you mean by ‘scab’?”
    “A scab is a human—more or less—that is addicted to and completely dependent upon vampire blood. They are still human, but suffer from the vampiric bloodlust. They are not vulnerable to sunlight, they do not have vampiric strength, and once a person becomes a scab, there are two choices: turn or die.”
    All feeling left Lana’s fingers, and the teacup went crashing to the floor. Bits of ceramic skittered across the floor, radiating out from the puddle of liquid. In a moment, Christian was around the table, his hands on her shoulders to keep her from slumping to the floor behind the cup. A wave of nausea passed over her, followed quickly by a swirling blackness that threatened unconsciousness.
    When Lana was able to grasp her surroundings again, she was lying on the sofa in the main room, and Christian paced the floor in