Kiss Me Deadly Read Online Free Page A

he’d been with Kila.
    With a whistle, Nikolaus called the nine vampires who had accompanied him and Truvin into a circle in the middle of the dark alley. They would regroup and disperse.
    Too late, he realized the bad tactical move. He’d drawn them into a tight target.
    The first cry of “Witch!” froze Nikolaus’s blood.
    Two of his cohorts went down in a flash of sizzling flesh and blood. Their cries were unreal, choking screams as their bodies were destroyed by the surprise attack. It could only be a vigilante witch, armed with blood bullets—the death cocktail.
    “Bitch,” Nikolaus swore, and sought the direction of the attack, while calling out to the others. “Retreat!”
    Another comrade—a friend for fifteen years—exploded before Nikolaus. He caught bits of flesh and blood against his palms.
    So quickly they were taken down. Not right. How to stop it?
    Truvin caught his gaze and nodded. He was on his way out—every vampire for himself, and woe to the fool who did not flee.
    Nikolaus turned and spied a glint of silver in the narrow alley between two brick buildings but fifty strides away. The witch. She stalked the shadows, sure and relentless.
    There were two vampires left standing besides himself. Panicked, they raced toward the approaching menace.
    Nikolaus caught Cory in his arms. The man had been hit, but he would not be reduced to ash like the others, for he was a mortal supplicant to the tribe, one who sought immortality, but first must prove his dedication to the dark . He dragged his dying body behind a rusted Dumpster.
    A bullet shrilled past Nikolaus’s head and hit the brick wall right above his shoulder. A glass-tipped bullet that contained witch’s blood.
    A scout had once obtained one of the bullets for the tribe’s study. But a drop of witch’s blood, infused into a vampire’s bloodstream, took a manic trip through his body and ate him from the inside out. It proved a quick yet excruciating death.
    Something stung his shoulder. Fiery bites ate along his neck and cheek. Nikolaus dropped Cory onto the tarmac and slapped at the incredible pain. It sizzled down his torso and up, under and along his left arm, eating into his leather clothing and gnawing at flesh.
    “No.” He’d been splattered from the bullet that had hit the wall.
    Staggering against the unreal pain, Nikolaus dropped to his knees, landing beside Cory’s body. The death cocktail sizzled into his torso. His heart pumped furiously, as if trying to outrun the inevitable. He slapped at the burning flesh, rolled over it to make it stop, but did not cry out. He was dead to the witch.
    And in a moment of clarity, he knew what had to be done. He needed blood. Lots of it.
    Even as his flesh fell away from his bones, Nikolaus ripped into Cory’s throat, drinking his blood and slapping his hands over the mortal’s gaping chest wound to coat them in blood. He bathed himself in Cory’s fleeting life, but it didn’t seem as if he could ever stop the burn.
    Listening, keen for the intruder, he realized his own pulse beats ceased. His heart—
    He gripped his chest but felt his insides. Blood. Ribs. Organs.
    His vision blurred. Breath stopped.
    Drink!
    Or die at the hands of a witch.

Chapter 5
    The Present
    H e laid the witch on the end of a king-size bed that mastered the whitewashed floorboards in the bedroom. A thick white comforter cradled her as if she were an angel resting on a cloud. A bloody angel that he’d…not killed.
    Nikolaus straightened abruptly. He smoothed a palm over his face and drew it down his chin. You almost killed her .
    But he hadn’t.
    Why didn’t you kill her?
    Ravin Crosse, this…witch? Vampires and witches were enemies.
    What the hell?
    Fists formed. Nikolaus hissed through his teeth. Rage emerged and flooded his system. Stalking the floor from door to wall, he resisted the urge to growl, to howl out his frustration.
    She lay there, inert, her hair splayed, black curls across white. Silent.