Blood Doll Read Online Free Page B

front of the fireplace. She stirred, causing him to pause and glance back at her.
    “Welcome back,” he said, and took a seat on the chair opposite the room. Lana muttered something in response, but even she wasn’t quite sure what it was, or if it was even a discernible language at all. Christian smiled again. “Think you’ll be okay to hear the rest?”
    The world spun around her as Lana sat up. She grunted and swiped a hand down her face. On the coffee table in front of her sat another cup of tea, still steaming. Christian was nothing if not thoughtful. She immediately threw her hand against her throat, searching for puncture wounds.
    “I didn’t bite you,” he said, chuckling.
    “Good to know.” She cleared her throat and reached for the cup. “You’re going to tell me that my sister is a scab,” she said, pausing to take a sip. “You said earlier that she was just like the guy at the door.” She took a second sip of the tea, and the world steadied a bit. “Now all you have to do is tell me how to get to her.”
    “Human?” he asked with a raised eyebrow. “You don’t. They’ll rip you limb from limb in half a second if you go back in there.”
    “I have to save her, Christian.”
    “I…uh…I don’t think you heard me right.”
    “You said that there are only two options.”
    “So you did hear me.”
    “There still has to be a way to get her out.”
    “Not until after she is turned, Lana.” Christian rose from the chair and crossed the room to sit next to her. “Sarah has gotten herself into a mess, and nobody can get her out of it but her.”
    With a frustrated whine, Lana rose from the couch, a bit wobbly at first, and paced across the room. She looked out the window at the white powder falling in thick sheets from the sky. The ground looked to have accumulated a foot or more already. The trees and shrubbery around the house were all capped in the powder, which gave the world outside that window an eerie luminescence. Fitting, considering the situation.
    The silence seemed to grow around her, dulling even the sound of the crackling fire. Awful thoughts ricocheted through her brain—Sarah was in trouble, and Lana was helpless to fix it. Since they were children, they had always looked out for one another. Yet here she was, a bystander on the sidelines at the worst moment in either of their lives. She could try, but if what Christian said was true, she would be dead before they ever saw each other.
    He had yet to steer her wrong or go back on his word, but the whole concept was still so foreign. He’d told her he was a vampire and she had taken it as the truth without question. That, she realized, was the most absurd part of the entire evening, worse even than seeing a man’s head snatched from his shoulders in one swipe.
    “How do you know I can’t help her?” Lana asked, turning away from the window. At some point, Christian had risen and gone back to pacing. She had never heard him.
    “Because I was in her position not too long ago.”
    “You were a scab?”
    “Most of us were at some point,” he confirmed, pausing to stare into the fire for a moment before resuming his track. “The addicts don’t really know how bad it is on the inside. They think they’re taking heroin.”
    “The needles…” Lana said, remembering. “If it isn’t heroin, then what is it?”
    “Blood,” Christian answered, his shoulders slumping as he said it, “drastically cut with saline. It dulls the potency.”
    “But keeps the euphoric effect.”
    “Precisely. It looks and smells like heroin. Addicts can’t tell the difference between heroin and blood, until…” He hesitated, still refusing to meet her gaze.
    “Until they’ve had too much,” Lana said, finishing his thought. Christian nodded. “What happens when they’ve had too much?”
    “The addiction becomes a disease. They move to a different level in the chain, because the watchers start denying the purchases. They essentially