Annihilate (Hive Trilogy #3)(61)

“Tess?” I said, barely more than a whisper. What the fuck was Tessa doing out in the middle of downtown Portland during the war?

The only reply was a low whimper. My heart was pounding heavily, my breathing doing something weird. I couldn’t seem to get enough oxygen. This alley was long and narrow. Multiple doorways led off it, and even a few other small alleys. I was about halfway along when I heard her cry out and realized she was to the left, down a side access. I took off, gun still held firmly.

It was stupid of me to come here alone. I knew that the moment I entered the alley. But there was no time to turn back. Tessa needed me. My boots slammed against the pavement, and as the end of the alley came into sight, the rapid pulsing of my heart increased.

WTAF? Tessa was pinned up against the wall by a vampire. A vampire I thought was long dead.

“Hello, Charlene, so nice of you to join us.” Blake had the full creepy stare going on, and I was sure he’d been feeding from my bestie. I could see the blood on his chin and on her throat.

Think, Charlie, you need to defuse this situation right now.

“What are you doing, Blake? You love Tessa. You promised me you’d never hurt her.”

He threw back his head and laughed, this stupid chuckle which was irritating enough that my finger flexed on the trigger. He must have noticed, shaking his head twice at me.

“I wouldn’t do that, Charlie. I have a knife right at the base of Tess’s neck. Even if your bullet hits me, I’ll have enough time to insert the blade.”

Tessa whimpered again, and I could see the flash of blade that Blake was talking about.

“What do you want then?” I said, my tone hard as I took a step closer, about ten feet from them.

Blake’s silver eyes were dead, flat of color and life. The silver actually looked really faded … almost like he’d been...

“Have you been injected with the cure?” I asked him.

The smile fell, and he was less like a blond Cabbage Patch Doll now and more like a psycho serial killer. “Your best friend here forgot to tell me the cure stays in a human’s system for days, and that she was dosed to her eyeballs.”

Tessa’s eyes narrowed; some of her fear fled as dark anger crossed her face. It was definitely only the knife in her spine keeping her from smacking him in the face. “I thought you were dead, you stupid motherfucker. You broke into my safe house and fed from me without my permission. You’ve gotten everything you deserve.”

Blake tightened the grip he had in her hair, his knife-wielding hand sliding closer, and I knew the blade was starting to cut Tessa. I could see her pain, smell the blood.

“I was Allistair’s favorite. He knew he could trust me right from the start, that you would be a weakness he could utilize against Charlie.” His eyes flicked up to me. “He suspected you would be all of our downfall, and he had so many plans in place to make sure you didn’t succeed, but then somehow you always had someone powerful on your side keeping you safe. In the culling it was Lucas and Ryder. They manipulated everything to make sure you would get through. After that you were so deeply involved with the enforcers it was impossible to touch you. So Allistair figured Tessa was our next bet. I was sent in to cultivate her love of vampires. To put her in a position to be used against you.”

Tessa was crying now, and I could see guilt clear across her beautiful features. While Blake was monologuing, I was creeping closer, in the smallest of increments, but there was only about six feet between us now. I could almost reach out and touch my oldest friend.

“You tried to grab my mom too, didn’t you?” Everything was starting to make sense now. The way Blake had come out of nowhere and “loved” Tessa so much. The council allowed her change so easily.

The curly-headed asswipe nodded. “Yep, more than once, actually. Then she disappeared, and so did you, just when things were getting interesting.”

I noticed movement then, on the side of the building above his head. Was someone up there?

Hoping they were friend and not another vampire douche, I started talking to keep Blake’s focus on me.

“I’m here now, and I’ll do whatever you want if you let Tessa go. She’s human now. She had nothing to do with any of this.”

Blake growled, but his fangs looked quite small now, almost like regular human incisors. The flat gray was fading to blue in his eyes. The cure was starting to work. I wondered if the human version of him was fast enough to stab her before I shot him. Clearly the oxytocin wasn’t pumping out yet, or it never would. Some people were just born dicks.

“Do whatever I want? I want you dead!” he seethed, “I want my old life back, before there was a cure.”

His arm shifted, the one which had been wrapped in Tessa’s hair. He pulled a gun, sliding his arm around Tessa, and pointed it right at me. Fuck. One shot to the head and I was gone. He must have seen the fear in my eyes because he flexed his fingers on the trigger, his creepy grin kicking up a few notches.

The next sixty seconds happened so fast, there was no time for me to do anything but shout his name. Blake’s finger squeezed the trigger as a streak of white dropped from the dark alley, landing right in front of me. Multiple shots sounded, the deafening noise echoing off the brick walls.

“No!” I screamed as the person in front of me took three bullets.

Tessa spurred into action while Blake was distracted. She managed to spin in a whirl of grace and knee him right in the balls.