Touch If You Dare Read Online Free PDF Page A

his hate and set off a frenzy among the vamps. How had that happened? Yeah, his skin could be toxic if he wasn’t paying attention, but he always kept it under rigid control and he never, ever lost his shit enough to infect people unlucky enough to simply be in his presence. What the hell was going on?
    “Nigel!” Jarvis barked the command. “Get over here! Take Pascal. I can’t touch him.” His fingers flexed with the need to shut the kid down, but contact with him would make it worse. He hated feeling impotent. And he detested knowing that he was poison to those he wanted to keep safe.
    “Take care of the bloodsuckers, Hate Boy.” Nigel was already running toward Pascal. “I’ll get the newbie.”
    Jarvis whipped out his sword, set his weapon to a notch below dead as a doornail, then hit a vamp right in the chest. The undead dropped like a load of cement.
    Jarvis took out another one as Damien raced over to check on his downed comrade, but apparently the thing was still alive, because Damien nodded, then went off to start taking down the others. Excellent. Team effort, everyone.
    Thirty seconds later, it was nap time. Clean-shaven ghouls were unconscious and bleeding all over the floor, and Damien was breathing hard (who knew vampires even breathed? Learn something new every day). Nigel had knocked out Pascal so he couldn’t throw spines anymore, and the place was ready for tea and brunch. Pascal was still in his stuff-of-nightmares form, and his body was twitching, but he was sleeping like a man who’d just serviced a dozen women and a flock of angels.
    “Well, I’m impressed, Jarvis.” Nigel slowly stood up, stretching his back. “Didn’t think you could infect an unconscious man with enough hate to wake up him from a coma and put him in full attack mode. You’re kinda like LSD for the uninitiated.”
    Jarvis eyed his friend, searching for a sign that his buddy was about to get on the hate train. “You feeling okay?”
    Nigel pulled out a sketch pad and a pen. “Give me two minutes, and I’ll be as good as a pansy in a patch of sunshine.” He glanced at a nearby bed, visibly stiffened, then chose to sit on the cement floor instead. He crossed his legs and began to draw.
    Lucky son of a bitch. Right now Jarvis would give his left arm for five minutes of the kind of peace that Nigel found in his art. Maybe he’d try knitting one more time. Worth it to take the edge off the adrenaline racing through him right now… then he scowled at the fury that rose deep inside him, as it always did when he thought about taking on the most hellaciously frustrating pastime ever created. Knitting was the last thing he needed right now.
    He rolled his neck, trying to ease the restlessness in his body. “You okay, Damien?”
    The bloodsucker was on his knees, his eyes were red, and his fangs were out. “Give me a sec.”
    Damn. If he’d even gotten to an emotionally vacant bloodsucker with a thousand years of self-control… impressive, as Nigel has said. But not in a good way.
    Nigel’s pen was flying across the page. “So, I’m guessing that the fact you accidentally caused this brouhaha isn’t a good thing?”
    “Yeah.” The stream of blood gushing from Pascal’s side had gotten stronger. Nothing like turning into drooling dragon-boy to interfere with healing. “But as long as it’s only leaking outward, we’re okay. It’s when it starts to affect my own sanity, that’s when we really have a problem.”
    Nigel shoved his sketch pad into his back pocket and gave Jarvis a long look as he began to pick up the warriors again. “What’s the deal? You going down? You need my help?” He set the warriors back down and took root in the place they’d been so desperate to leave. “I’ll heal you. Right now. Right here. I’m not letting you detonate.”
    Jarvis shook out his shoulders. “All I need is ten minutes with my brother, and he can clean it up.” Yeah, he hadn’t seen his brother since Jarvis