It hadn’t occurred to me at this point, that there was still a battle going on between Micah’s vampires and us. I could however hear what was going on, but that was far from my mind as I started to loose feeling in my arm.
I was also starting to feel sick. That was a good thing though; it meant that my body was starting to regenerate.
Both Logan and I were sitting on the ally floor facing each other, my arm still extended between us, in his grip. For minutes no one said anything. The silence dragged on and all I could hear was my heart beat ringing in my ears. Finally it was too much.
“Why don’t you just let me die?” I blurted. My mind wasn’t making much sense at the moment and my head was spinning.
He said nothing, but his hold on my wrist tightened.
“It’s what you want, isn’t it? To kill vampires” I pushed.
“Yes, it is” he said quietly, so quietly that I wondered if he meant for me to hear it.
“So?”
“So what?” he snapped. “If I let you die now, here with so many other vampires around, not to mention hunters. How would that make me look?”
“Oh,” my head sagged, but I snapped it back up. “It isn’t convenient at the moment. Well then, just let me know when it is and I’ll just...”
“Shut up!” he cut me off.
“If you say so.” I felt like crap. My whole body ached and my wrist was starting to sting like hell. That meant it was healing which was good, too bad it hurt so much. I shifted so that even though Logan still held my arm, I could lie down. I laid my head back and shut my eyes.

He laughed.
My eyes shot open. He actually laughed, I thought, sure it was a short one, but it was still a laugh. “What?” I grumbled.
“I’m just surprised that’s all. It takes you to be dying to do a single thing I say” he quipped. “Maybe I should keep you in a constant state of injury, and then I can actually get things done.”
I snorted. “Not even then” I was beginning to feel better. I must admit, as gross as it sounds, the coolness of the ally floor actually helped my head. I sighed. “I’ll tell you what, I’ll be more cooperative if you tell me something.” There was something I needed to know, something that had been eating me up.
“That depends,” he said hesitantly “on what you want to know?”
I could feel his grip loosen on my wrist. Now that it was no longer bleeding, he didn’t have to hold so tight. “Why me?” I asked. “How was it that you found me at the school and that I led you to the covenant? I don’t remember doing anything that would draw your attention.”
He laughed again, a short laugh that was more a snort. “Oh that,” was all he said before he fell silent.
My eyes were open but I was still lying on the ally floor so I couldn’t see his face. I figured he was considering how much he could actually tell me. I wondered how desperately he craved my cooperation.
“You didn’t lead us to anyone,” he finally said. “We found you from your Succubus friend.”
“Huh?”
“The blonde.”
“Claudia,” I corrected him. If that was how he referred to her, I couldn’t imagine how he referred to me.
“Yeah, whatever. Actually it was here,” he gestured to BlackOut. “One of the guys she munched on is friends with a hunter,” he said coldly.
“Oh” was all I said. I didn’t know what to say.

While we were all content living off donated blood sometimes the craving for fresh blood was so strong a vampire had to satisfy it. A vampire could go mad ignoring it and the madness could drive a vampire to do something he or she would later regret. That was one of the reasons Claudia came here, to this club. She could always find young, attractive guys looking for a good time that satisfied her needs.
And drinking blood during sex isn’t painful on the human. The human simply forgets what happened. The only thing they feel is tired and fatigued for a few days later. Claudia never drank enough blood to kill a person and the guy never said no. The only tell tale signs were the two fang marks at the neck. People would dismiss them, only a hunter would recognise them.
Damn, Claudia. Why wasn’t she more careful?
If a vampire could drink from another vampire, I’m sure we would all the time. However, our bodies can’t handle it and it can make us sick, even kill us. Besides it’s considered as revolting.
“The hunter contacted our organisation when he realised that the vampire had friends. We took it from there,” he shrugged. There was venom in his voice although not as much as usual. He thinks its funny, I realised, how easily they discovered us. “We figured all we’d have to do was track, maybe capture a couple of her other succubus friends, and you’d lead us to your covenant. And you did” he said. “There, are you satisfied? You’ll listen to me now?”
I said nothing but shifting over the information he’d just told me, I could hardly believe how easy it had been for the. I couldn’t tell Claudia, if she knew she’d feel so bad. Lying on my back I could still remember being chased from my school.
Wait.
‘We figured all we’d have to do was track, maybe capture a couple of her other succubus friends, and you’d lead us to your covenant' was what he’d said.
I sat up, yanking my wrist out of his hand. I could feel that it was almost perfectly heeled and I didn’t need him to keep holding it. I didn’t need anything from him.

I think my sudden movement and my expression shocked him, because he leaned back. “What?” he asked.
“Succubus friends? You think I’m like that? That’s why you attacked me at my school!” I shouted into his face. I was furious. The guy was basically calling me a slut. Me! The girl who hadn’t been on a date in a year and was still a virgin, for Christ’s sake.
He eyed me pointedly. “You sound surprised. You’re trying to say you’re not like that?” His eyes trailed down to look at my short, grey dress that sat well above my knees. His eyes lingered on my legs, clearly making a point, and even though I was pissed off, I felt a shiver run down my spine.
I pushed myself up and jumped up, letting his shirt fall from my wrist. I looked and saw that it was perfectly healed. “No, I am not like that. Not at all. You’d know that if you knew anything about me, other than that I have fangs.” My voice was strong, angry.
He followed me to his feet, standing in front of me. “Yeah, right. All you vamp’s are the same.” His face had gone cold, all dry humour gone. “I’ve been around your kind my whole life, I know how you are. You can’t tell me that most vampires aren’t cold blooded killers.”
“Most,” I said “but not all.”
We stood facing each other. Any sense of a truce between us gone. Neither of us spoke until we heard voices coming down the ally and saw approaching shadows.
“I’m not gonna get into it with you now” he sighed. For the first time I saw how tired he looked. He must have been working on no sleep. He had dark circles under his eyes and his clothes were a mess, stained with my blood, and ripped. My eyes travelled to his grey shirt on the ground.
His followed and for a moment he seemed to think about what he was going to say. He cleared his throat. “You owe me a new shirt” he said it in the same cold, almost nasty tone that he always used. And yet, there was something else in his voice. It almost sounded teasing. His eyes then narrowed and I turned to see Claudia standing at the ally entrance giving us a look. “Filthy vampire” was what he muttered under his breath.
Then his eyes shot to me and they didn’t look as cold as they normally did, then he smiled a nasty, cocky yet surprisingly cheeky smile. “I want that shirt”
“I saved your life” I told him, wiping the smile off this face. His lips then went hard and flat. “I don’t owe you anything” I told him coldly, narrowing my eyes. Then I turned and walked off, leaving him standing in the ally.



With all the vampires dead it left us where we had started, with nothing. No new information, no clue.
I never did tell Claudia what I learned that night in the ally. I knew that if she found out that she was, if even only slightly, responsible for the mess that followed it would destroy her. Sometimes you have to keep secrets from the people you love. If it’s the only way to protect them. So like Logan, I kept my mouth shut about it. Although he hinted at it. He continued to be a pain in my rear, in more ways than one......