Bitter Blood (Blood and Moonlight Book 3)(25)

Garrison blinked at him in confusion.

“You talk about Paris in the past tense.”

Garrison’s Adam’s apple bobbed.

“Why?” Aidan growled. Vivian was lying to me. I could sense it…

“Y-you should speak to V-Vivian…” Garrison had paled.

“I’m speaking to you. Why are you sorry about Paris?”

Garrison licked his lips.

Aidan grabbed the guy’s shoulders and jerked him up so that they were nose to nose. “Why are you sorry?”

“B-because I saw him being zipped into the body bag! He didn’t make it…he…he died before his ambulance ever had a chance to leave the scene.”





Chapter Six


Paris lunged up, his fangs snapping toward Jane’s throat.

Behind her, Dr. Bob let out a very high pitched scream. She heard his footsteps scurrying away.

Way to help out, Dr. Bob.

Right before Paris could plunge his new teeth into her, Jane drove her fist right into his face—the face that had not repaired itself since the fire. Paris’s head slammed back onto the exam table with a clang, but he was only down a second before he came lunging up again.

This time, Jane threw him against the nearest wall. He growled at the impact, shook his head, and stared at her with the feral intensity of a beast.

Or of a starving vampire.

“See,” Dr. Bob hissed from his hiding spot a few feet away—a spot that put him under his desk. “Vampires wake up wrong. Filled with bloodlust. All they want to do is attack and feed. They don’t care who they have to kill in order to get their fill of blood!”

Jane made sure to keep her body between Paris and the hiding ME. “Knowing that he was going to wake up as a vamp would really have helped us out here,” she threw at him. “Aren’t you supposed to be the one who checks the dead bodies for things like this?”

“I didn’t know! I didn’t realize you’d bitten him!”

“I didn’t!”

“Well, somebody did,” Dr. Bob yelled right back.

Paris lunged toward her, teeth snapping.

Those snapping teeth caught her shoulder. “Ow!” Jane screamed. She elbowed him, and then, for good measure, she head-butted him. “Paris, I’m not on your menu!”

“He has to be put down!” Dr. Bob called. “Stop playing with him. Just end this!”

Playing? Playing! “It’s Paris,” she snarled. “I’m not ending anything.” But she could sure use some help. “Get me something to knock him out with! Don’t you have some kind of drugs here?” Sure, the main ME building had burned the night she’d woken up as a vampire and they were in “temporary” quarters—another building that was a block away from the original medical examiner’s office. But the place looked pretty well stocked to her.

So give me something to knock out Paris!

Paris charged at her again. She dodged his attack, barely. “I don’t want to hurt you,” Jane said. She felt guilty enough for breaking the guy’s neck. After all, that broken neck must have come courtesy of her second-story toss. “You’re Aidan’s best friend—”

His fangs snapped at her.

“But you are not making a meal of me!” She kicked him in the stomach, then grabbed the exam table he’d been on. Her vamp strength was in full effect as she lifted that table up into the air. “Stay away from me, Paris!”

He wasn’t speaking. His eyes were wild. Saliva dripped from his teeth. He wasn’t the Paris she’d known. He was— Attacking.

She tightened her hold on the table, preparing to swing it at him like a bat.

And—

Bam. Bam. Bam.

The bullets blasted into Paris, one after the other. They sank into his chest and he blinked, seemingly confused as blood began to ooze from his new wounds. Then he staggered, falling to his knees.

“About time you helped out,” Jane snapped to Dr. Bob as she swung her gaze toward the shooter. Only…Dr. Bob wasn’t the one who’d fired.

Someone else had slipped into the temporary lab during the chaos. A woman with smooth chocolate skin, long, dark hair, and a light brown gaze that was locked on Paris as he bled out on the floor. Tears glimmered in that gaze even as magic seemed to pulse in the air around the woman.

Annette Benoit. Voodoo queen extraordinaire.

Jane lowered the table. Paris’s eyes had rolled back into his head and he’d slumped against the floor. “You have…really good timing,” Jane said.

“I saw the fire in my mirror.”

Goosebumps rose on Jane’s arms. Yes, okay, she was a vampire. She knew all about the paranormal, but the fact that Annette could look into a black scrying mirror and see things—past, present, future—that still unnerved her.

“When I scried tonight, I saw him die,” Annette said. She inched closer to Paris. A tear slid down her cheek. “I just came to tell him goodbye. I-I didn’t know he’d rise.”

Jane took the gun from Annette’s hand and checked the weapon. Silver bullets. Silver, not wood.

“A woman needs protection.” Annette barely glanced her way. “I always carry that gun with me…well, I do ever since my last werewolf lover tried to kill me.” The words were said as an aside. Her focus was on Paris. There was so much pain on her face.