some of them. He placed his hand against the wall and rose. He braced his legs apart when dizziness assailed him. They had to get out of here, but he wasn’t sure he could make it far.
Swaying toward Callie on wobbly legs, he leaned against the doorframe beside her and clasped her elbow. She was rigid but didn’t fight him as he drew her closer.
The feel of her silken skin beneath his palm caused a thrill to course through him. He hadn’t experienced this sizzle of excitement before, but then, he’d been too lost in his need to get away, keep her safe, and feed to notice anything else.
Now, rational thought was returning, and so was a feeling beyond starvation. Or at least he was processing as much rational thought as he could while drugs and alcohol were still battering his mind and body.
Chapter Twelve
“We have to go,” he said, the words coming out slurred. He tried to repeat them normally, but his tongue felt swollen and heavy in his mouth, so it came out worse.
“Are you okay?” Callie asked.
She hadn’t considered it possible, but he looked worse than before. His ruby-colored eyes were heavy-lidded, his words slurred, and he swayed as he led her toward the door. They were almost to the door when he lurched to the side and bounced off the wall. The impact caused broken bits of plaster to rain down from the ceiling.
“I’m fine,” he muttered.
“No, you’re not.”
The last thing she wanted was to be in the company of a vampire losing control of his bodily functions. Being cut open and tossed into shark-infested waters was probably the safer option.
“Too much… too many… drugs… and alcohol,” he said. “Normally, it wouldn’t. Normally….”
He couldn’t find the right words. Talking took too much concentration, and he focused on getting them somewhere safe because he wasn’t going to make it far.
“Normally?” Callie prodded, but Lucien didn’t reply as he led her out of the house.
Like Frankenstein’s monster, he lurched his way down the sidewalk. By the time they arrived at the end, she had to wrap her arm around his waist to help keep him steady. She should let him go and run; he’d never catch her in this condition, but even as she pondered it, she knew she couldn’t abandon him in such a way.
He’d hurt her, the fact he was a vampire was unnerving, but she was alive because of him. She couldn’t repay him by abandoning him while he was weak and drugged out of his mind. Her mind reeled at the complete insanity of helping a drugged-out vampire walk down the street. Shit did not get more surreal than that.
Then another possibility hit her. Maybe she was the one hallucinating all this. Maybe they’d given her something when they took her, and she was on some kind of trip that made Wonderland look sane. Or maybe she’d hallucinated her capture and she was really at home, passed out in bed, and dreaming this.
However, no matter how vivid some of her dreams had been, she’d never experienced anything this real. And she was pretty sure she would have woken up the second he bit her.
“We have to…. We have to find someplace to stay… to… to hide,” Lucien said and hoped she understood his words.
His vision was getting smaller and smaller. He could barely see more than ten feet in front of him. The final woman’s blood helped dilute the drugs and alcohol in his system, but not enough to keep him going. His head kept falling before jerking up as he struggled against the pull of unconsciousness.
At the end of the road, he turned to the right, but he had no idea why. Blinking rapidly, he tried to push aside the effects of the drugs as he searched the street. He was no good to her right now. In fact, he was more of a detriment to her safety than a help, but he couldn’t tell her to run and hide. They would find her, and without him, she didn’t stand a chance.
She didn’t stand much of a chance with him either, but at least he could offer her some protection, and he had experience with what they were facing. She was like a babe in the woods when it came to the Savages.
He needed to sleep off the drugs; when he woke, he would be stronger, but until then, they were both extremely vulnerable. And soon, the Savages would start hunting them again.
They