Blood Type (Blood Type #1)(13)

She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the screen as the city disappeared behind them and they rolled up to her neighborhood. It had only been a day and already it felt like a lifetime. The driver pulled up to the Warehouse District slowly…almost cautiously. Being away in Beckham’s immaculately clean apartment made a stark contrast to her home.

It was filthy.

Filthy was an understatement. It was black. Soot. Pollution.

It was the opposite of Visage.

Ironic that her home would be darker and more eerie than a place filled with vampires who had been known to crave the night, thrive in the night.

    “Fifty-four Boulevard East. What building?” the driver asked.

She pointed to a ramshackle apartment building five stories high. Half of the roof had blown off a couple of years back during a bad storm, and so it looked even more dilapidated than the surrounding buildings. Her brothers lived on the third floor in a drafty little hole in the wall.

“I’m just going to see if anyone is home. Will you wait?” she asked.

“Miss, I wouldn’t recommend someone like yourself going up there alone.”

One day away from home and already I don’t belong.

“I’ll be fine. Just wait for me right here.”

As she opened the door, she shivered slightly. Her nude wedges touched the sooty earth. For some reason, the first thought in her mind was that Beckham would never let her keep these shoes now.

She made it up to the third-floor landing uninterrupted. Not even crazy Mrs. Lowry was sitting with her door open ready to yell at anyone who passed. The door to her apartment was never locked, because there was nothing to steal, and she walked right inside.

“Brian! Drew!” she called.

No return reply came. She walked into the one bedroom and found it empty, just three sad pallets on the floor. Her brothers must be at work. She should have gone there first, but she’d wanted to check the apartment just in case.

Hurrying down the stairs, she nearly ran into Gary Forman, the resident pervert. He grabbed her arm roughly. “Can you spare some change? A pretty young thing like yourself is sure to have a little something extra for a poor man like myself.”

    “Gary, it’s me, Reyna. Let me go.”

“Reyna?” His eyes bulged, but he didn’t let go of her arm. “Nah. Reyna left yesterday. Her brothers are looking all over for her.”

“Well, I came back,” she snapped. “Will you tell them I’m going to the warehouses if they come looking for me here?”

She yanked her arm free and scurried away as fast as she could. When she sank down mercifully into the backseat again, her stomach was in knots. And she realized with a sigh that she had a black handprint on her otherwise clean skin. No wonder she had never felt clean before.

She directed the driver to the warehouses where her brothers worked and made him park around the corner so the cab wasn’t visible. He offered to come in with her, but she worried more about someone stealing his car than anything happening to her.

Reyna rounded the corner to the front of the warehouse just as a shift was getting out. Her heart stopped as at least a dozen hungry men stared at her. Never in her life had she been afraid of men in this neighborhood, but she didn’t look like a woman from the warehouses. She looked like a high-class city girl. Even she wouldn’t recognize herself here.

Then one of them stepped forward. Steven. She ground her teeth in frustration. This was not a good time for her to see her ex. She hadn’t spoken with him since he had left her to be with another woman, and she didn’t really want to talk to him right now. But she had to if she was going to find her brothers in a reasonable amount of time. The clock was ticking.

    “Hey, Steven,” she said, beelining toward him. The other guys dispersed when they saw that she was taken, but a few glanced over at her curiously as they passed.

“Hey, baby. What can I do for you?” His eyes crawled her body.

“I’m looking for my brothers,” she said impatiently.

“Do I know them?”

She gave him a disbelieving look. Holy shit! They had dated for over a year, and he couldn’t even recognize her in a change of clothes and a good long shower.

She snapped her fingers in his face, drawing his eyes up from her tits. “Steven, it’s me, Reyna.”

His eyes nearly popped out of his face. “Reyna Carpenter? Shit, woman!”

“Yeah. It’s different,” she said tonelessly. “Have you seen Brian or Drew?”

“Different? You look fucking amazing.”

“Thanks, but have you seen my brothers?” she asked. She couldn’t keep the impatience from her voice.

“They were out looking for you yesterday.” Steven whistled and ran his hand down her side boldly. “Little Reyna Carpenter all grown up and a woman underneath those jeans and T-shirt.”

“Cut it out, Steven.” She slapped his hand away. “You already know what I look like. I’m not here for you. I just need to see my brothers.”

“Don’t worry about them,” he said persuasively. He started walking her backward with this hungry look in his eye that she had seen before. It meant trouble.

    “Steven,” she warned.

“Come on, baby. Don’t you want another round?”