In the Blood Read Online Free PDF

her apartment. There was no doubt in her mind that he could really do those things, make her scream with pleasure and beg for more. Chills raced over her skin at the thought of those elegant hands stroking her, her skin flushed and perspiring.
    She had to stop this. It was one thing to fantasize about a client, another to fantasize about the guy who’d broken into her place. How on earth had he gotten up to her second-floor window? Someone would have noticed a guy with a ladder on the street in the middle of the night, right? Briefly, she’d considered reporting the incident to 4-1-2. They’d make sure he stayed far, far away from her. She’d changed her mind when she thought about what might happen to him. Even if he had broken into her apartment, she couldn’t deal with any more blood on her hands.
    She couldn’t stay in her apartment forever, and she couldn’t call in to work forever. She made an appointment with one of her easiest-to-please clients, a nebbishy thirty-five-year-old who was set for life owing to the sale of the Internet search engine he’d created at twenty-four. He worked late—whatever someone worked on once they were independently wealthy—and wanted to meet after dinner. Fine by Cassie. The longer she stayed awake, the better.
    As if her retreat from life had provided respite for the weather, as well, Cassie stepped out onto a sidewalk wet with melting snow. The smell of spring rain in the city played tricks on her. Had she been cooped up for five days or five months? It should have been pleasant on the street, but her gaze was drawn away from the last, retreating dregs of winter to the sleek black car parked on the opposite curb. A Maybach 62 S. Cassandra was no stranger to expensive cars; this one didn’t belong in her neighborhood.
    She started to walk slowly, checking over her shoulder only once to see if the car moved. It did, a slow, menacing crawl. The glare from the street lights created an impenetrable reflection on the windshield. She could not see who drove, but she knew who would be in the back, watching her. Viktor.
    A thousand women’s self-defense classes came through her mind, but she couldn’t remember any tips for hiding from a vehicle that was clearly following you. Her first instinct was to duck into the narrow alley up ahead, and she followed that instinct.
    The moment she veered off the sidewalk, into the space between the two buildings like the walls of a coffin, she knew she had made the wrong choice. A shock of fear stiffened her spine, the kind that gripped her in her nightmares. Something moved in the darkness at the back of the alley. Nothing. It’s nothing. She rolled her neck, staring up at the patch of sky, tinged orange with light pollution, that she could see between the rooftops.
    A hiss, a flash of fangs, and the creatures from her nightmares were falling, teeth bared, to the pavement all around her.
    “I’m dreaming! I’m dreaming!” she shrieked over and over, sinking to her knees as the ring of them closed around her, their freakishly long arms and blank, white faces closing her in. She couldn’t watch, squeezed her eyes shut tight and covered her ears to block out the sound of their harsh, drooling respirations in her ears.
    It seemed years until one of them touched her, its talons scraping her wrist. She tried to scream, but the terror froze her lungs. This was how she would die, then: on her knees in an alley, out of her mind, killed by a hallucination that seemed so real it stopped her heart.
    Something growled beside her ear, but instinct told her it was not one of the creatures. It was an oddly familiar sound, and she stopped cowering long enough to catch sight of its source.
    Viktor, his white hair and skin glowing in the darkness, stood beside her, his hand at one of the creatures’ throats. It thrashed its arms and legs, snapped its strange, wide jaws. The other creatures stood back, defensive, their mouths stretched into eerie grimaces