Bound by Danger (The Alliance #6) - Brenda K. Davies Page 0,13

didn’t stop fast enough; a bumper grazed his leg and knocked him back a couple of steps.

The woman cried out, but Lucien continued running as behind him footsteps rebounded off the pavement. He raced between more buildings and out into another street. This time, he managed to avoid the cars screeching to a halt around him as horns blared.

He didn’t stop to get a good look at his surroundings, but the tall buildings and the amount of traffic at this time of the morning made him realize he was in a city. Hundreds, if not thousands of people, could see him.

There were probably dozens of cameras on him, but he didn’t stop running. There was nothing he could do about the cameras, and the buildings and traffic had already slowed him enough.

Most humans couldn’t run as fast as he was, especially with a woman slung over their shoulder, but many of them wouldn’t guess anything supernatural. And they certainly wouldn’t think it was vampires running across the road.

They would most likely think his dealers or gang members were chasing him after a drug deal went wrong. If he was high on something, it could give him added strength and speed. He didn’t know how they would explain the chains rattling with every step he took, and he didn’t care. Humans were good at making up lies or burying their heads in the sand instead of facing reality.

They would have his face on camera, but there were no files on him, so they wouldn’t know who he was. Despite that, when he reached the shadows of more buildings, he tried to stay hidden by them instead of exposing himself to more cars and people.

However, the buildings probably had security cameras on them, and he had to get rid of his pursuers before they were joined by more Savages who hadn’t killed so much that they couldn’t tolerate at least a little sunshine.

As he tried to plot his escape, madness seeped in to cloud the edges of his mind. His fangs throbbed, and the scent of the woman’s tantalizing blood did little to help his increasingly incoherent thoughts.

His hands tightened on her legs as his mind returned to the past and his battle with Yannis. His brother had taken everything from him.

But even as the past was surging around him, a match ignited his arid veins. Like a long-smoldering blaze denied oxygen, the inferno of his hunger flared to life. It burned through his body until every breath became torture.

Callie pushed herself up to take in her surroundings. She studied the buildings and then the new street they merged onto, but none of it looked familiar. Were they in Trenton or Newark? Or maybe she wasn’t in New Jersey anymore. Her kidnappers could have taken her to New York City.

She didn’t recognize any of her surroundings, but that didn’t mean anything; she’d rarely gone into New York City, and she’d only ever been to Newark to catch a plane. She could whittle her combined time in both cities down to a total of two days, and that was being generous.

Her eyes widened when two creatures rounded the corner of one of the buildings. Did they realize they had smoke coiling off their heads? If they did, it wasn’t slowing them.

She glanced at the back of the man to see if he was starting to smolder, but he didn’t have any smoke trailing from him. Wasn’t he the same thing as those monsters? How come they looked as if they were about to combust, while she saw no sign of that from him?

Confused, she inspected her captor more closely for a sign he was about to erupt into flames, and take her with him, but there was nothing.

Whatever was wrong with their pursuers didn’t affect him, but how was that possible if they were all vampires?

How is any of this possible? You’re hanging over the back of a guy with red eyes while being chased by two smoking vampires. The reality train pulled out of this station a long time ago.

Lucien sprinted around the corner as he searched the buildings for someplace where he could get away from human view and cameras. He loathed leaving the sun behind, but he couldn’t kill the Savages out in the open.

He turned another corner and raced into a seedier section of the city. Abandoned buildings, rats, and the downtrodden populated this area. He ran past the sagging door of a home that looked about to crumble