Free Should There Be (Vampire Assassin League) by Jackie Ivie Page B

it.”
    “Why?”
    He slid the hair-band off and combed through long locks, looking even sexier in a wild man sort of way. His hair was glossy and black. Thick. Near mid-back length. Much longer than hers. She watched the muscles moving about on his upper chest and arms as he refastened his queue. She cleared her throat.
    “Because narcissistic men need mirrors. They have to look at themselves. In every position. All day. All night. All the time. You probably have your walls and ceilings plastered with mirrors. Tell me I’m wrong.”
    The look he gave her was indescribable. Dark. Angered. Creating trills all along her arms and then shoulders at solid menace. He took a step toward her and the next second an explosion rocked the room, sending her into the back wall. Rafaele disappeared upward, jettisoned by the blast right through the ceiling. The hole he made enlarged as she watched, adding dust and debris onto the scene. Acrid smoke filled the room, making her eyes water, adding to the blur, and making her head hurt.
    The lights still worked. How was that possible?
    The smoke wafted into tendrils by bits of raining ceiling. Lenna forced herself upright. She touched her forehead, came back with blood. She’d hit her head. Not enough for a concussion, but she wouldn’t turn down an acetaminophen. Her left thigh hurt. Probably bruised. She’d scuffed her knees, and had a skinned knuckle, but everything else seemed fine. She had to move. Rafaele needed help. She had to get help! Her heart felt like a huge hand held it and was squeezing. Hard. Cruelly. Worse than when she’d left home. She couldn’t feel such a sense of loss. She’d just met him. He wasn’t her type. And he was delusional. Thinking she was his mate.
    Ridiculous.
    Shit . Her head hurt. She could hardly think around it. And barely see. Figures stirred the fog, moving at each other’s heels. Lenna watched as one of them turned into a vivid red light and then sent a blast of air right at her. That air turned into thousands of tiny spikes, stinging as they propelled her backward, and then stuck her to the wall like an insect. Her face wasn’t even spared the pressure of tiny, interlaced threads, the whole making a net that was impossible to move against. She tried. Yanking and twisting only made the netting tighter. And then it started to cut. Lenna stopped moving.
    “Damn it! Missed!”
    “Son of a bitch!”
    The figures joined, grouping together in a mass of six. Maybe seven. Each one a carbon copy of the next. It was hard to tell with the way the net had flattened her head to one side. She had to look at them through the corner of her eye. Nobody was in yellow. Or red. They were dressed in some sort of black and gray colored camouflage outfit, wore eerie-looking goggles, and carried all sorts of weird-looking weaponry. Compound bow-things. Short spears with nasty-looking spikes atop them. Large guns equipped with laser-sights. At least, that’s what the red lights intersecting the smoke had to be if movies were correct.
    The smoke smelled terrible. She was getting dizzy. Nauseous. And this netting wasn’t just painful, it was dripping wet, saturating her clothes, and making the minute cuts sting worse.
    “Six point four seconds, everyone!”
    Someone yelled it, and then one of them approached, held up a can of something to her face and sprayed, fogging her with choking fumes.
    Rafaele!
    Her mind cried the name just before it went black.

 
    CHAPTER EIGHT
    Rafaele!
    The moment she was cognizant the name screamed through her mind, bringing total recall and with it, pain. Lenna scrunched into a little ball with her arms wrapped tightly about her knees, and rocked in place, just like she’d done ever since she was little. Insanity wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Wasn’t mental illness supposed to be a mindless, happy state? Huh? There wasn’t supposed to be sorrow and hurt, and especially not this anguish getting pumped through her body with