Blood and Buttercups (A Vampire’s Guide to Gardening #1)

Chapter 19

19

My eyes move to the porch, where Ethan is on the swing.

But wait…no. It’s not Ethan. And it’s not just one man.

“Stay here.” Noah reaches into the back and grabs a stake from his duffel bag. Then he slides out of the car and locks the door.

A stupid girl would follow him. And, I admit, I’m having stupid girl impulses. But nothing good can come of me exiting the safety of this vehicle and getting in Noah’s way.

I want to hear, though. So I roll down the window a touch. It’s barely cracked, but I can make out the conversation.

“We don’t want any trouble,” one of the men says.

He’s big, as a thug should be, with a thick neck that I’m sure makes him the envy of his thug friends. The other is almost as stout, but not as tall. His neck isn’t as wide, either, which makes me think he probably has inferiority issues.

“What do you want?” Noah asks coolly.

“Our boss sent us to pick up the girl. He’s aware you’re holding her hostage. He’d hoped you’d be reasonable and back off as soon as he had you moved to a different pre-vamp, but it seems you’re persistent.”

The guy with the thick neck is the one who gets to talk, proving my theory about thugs and their power dynamics.

“I’m not holding her hostage,” Noah says. “Piper is renting me a room, so I live here now. And if you attempt to remove her from this residence, I will remove you .”

Noah sounds so calm, so authoritative.

So hot.

Get a grip, Piper. Now isn’t the time to drool all over the hunter.

“The boss said you’d resist, and that’s why he’s prepared to make you an offer,” Big Neck says.

“There’s nothing he can offer that I want.”

The silent thug lifts a briefcase, flipping open the latches and revealing a whole lot of cash.

I gasp a little, realizing I’ve landed back in the mobster movie. How much money is in the briefcase?

“Two hundred thousand,” the head thug says, as if answering me. “Or the car. The boss said you could have either.”

Oh. My. Goodness.

“Both are an insult, and you know it,” Noah responds. “I’m not handing over Piper, and I certainly wouldn’t do it for that.”

“You drive a hard bargain, Mr. York,” the man says. “How about you take the cash and the car?”

I almost expect him to be talking in a Jersey accent, but we’re in Colorado, so he has no accent whatsoever. Which is disappointing, frankly.

“No deal,” Noah says. “Please leave.”

“Our boss doesn’t want us to resort to violence,” the lead thug says. “So, I’d like you to reconsider our offer.”

“Piper,” a voice urgently whispers from the window.

I jump in my seat, barely holding back a scream. My heart hammering against my ribs, I twist under the seatbelt and find my brother crouched just outside my door, blocked from the porch’s view by the thick shadows.

“What the heck is going on?” Max demands.

Except, you know, he doesn’t say heck.

“My vampire stalker sent those two guys to collect me,” I hiss quietly. “They’re trying to pay Noah off with two hundred thousand dollars and Ethan’s Lamborghini.”

He stares at me blankly, incredulous, and then the briefest flicker of humor passes over his face. “Can I turn you in instead?”

“Max!”

“I’m joking . Come on, get out,” he says urgently. “I’m parked around the side, and I don’t think they know I’m here.”

“What about Noah?”

The words are barely out of my mouth before I hear a muffled yell and then a gunshot .

“Piper, now ,” Max hisses. “You have to get out of here!”

“But Noah?—”

I nearly scream again when I see Noah wrestle the gun from Silent Vampire and then slam a stake into his chest.

A stake into his chest .

Max swears again, all traces of amusement gone, whisper-yelling at me to get out of the car. But I’m transfixed by my ex-conservator.

Big-neck Thug is on his knees seconds later, staring up at Noah and begging for his life. Noah has the gun pointed at the man’s head.

“Piper,” Noah says calmly, raising his voice to be sure it will carry to me. “Please call the police.”

I hit the unlock button and push Max out of the way with my door. Hurrying over, nearly tripping in the gravel drive thanks to my heels and shaking legs, I fumble to unlock my phone. “Like, 911? Or the non-emergency sheriff’s number?”

Noah snorts out a morbid laugh, but he doesn’t look away from the guy he has at gunpoint. “Usually when death and guns are involved, you go right to 911.”

Max stares at the lifeless guy bleeding onto my front porch. “Grandpa won’t be happy if that stains.”

I laugh at the absurd image of me scrubbing blood off the painted wood…and then I’m choking back tears, which is annoying. But there’s no stopping them.

“Are you okay?” I ask Noah, and then I see the hole in his sleeve and the blood oozing through the leather. “You were shot .”

“It grazed me.”

“If by graze, you mean it embedded itself in your flesh! There’s a hole in your jacket.”

“It’s just my arm.”

“We have a situation at 1234 West Chokecherry Lane,” my brother says into his cell, beating me to it. “Two guys attacked my sister’s boyfriend.”

Boyfriend .

“He’s been shot in the arm. One of the guys appears to be dead, and the other is…contained.”

“Tell them they’re vampires so the officers will be prepared,” Noah says. “And let them know a hunter is on the scene and has one of the attackers subdued at gunpoint.”

“I can’t tell her that!” Max hisses, pressing the face of the phone into his stomach to muffle the words.

“You can, and you need to.”

Scowling at Noah, Max lifts the phone up to his ear and reluctantly says, “This is going to sound insane, but my sister’s boyfriend says he’s a hunter and that these are vampires . He’s subdued one with a gun.” His face goes blank. “I said vampires. You…got that? The vampire part?”

I don’t know how she responds, but Max looks like he’s one uttered “vampire” away from losing his cool.

The operator must have told him to stay on the line because he doesn’t hang up. We stand here for what feels like an eternity. But in reality, it’s probably only been a couple of minutes.

The vampire thug is edgy, too. He shifts, his knees probably beginning to ache on the hard wooden porch deck. Sweat beads on his temples in the glow of the porch lights. “Listen, if you let me go, I’ll?—”

“Shut up,” Noah says impatiently. “Tell me about your boss. Why isn’t he in the system?”

“Do you want me to talk or shut up?” the thug asks. “Make up your mind.”

“Do I need to remind you brains don’t regenerate?” Noah says. “You’re not coming back from a bullet to the head.”

The man swallows, and a trail of sweat makes its way down the side of his face. “He paid a vampire to bite him. He knew what he was getting into, so he didn’t go to a doctor.”

“He hasn’t seen a doctor at all? What about his prescriptions?”

“He goes to Mexico for medical stuff—checkups and whatnot—and comes back with all the drugs he needs.”

“Who bit him?”

“I don’t know.”

Noah presses the gun to the man’s forehead. “ Who bit him? ”

“I don’t know!” the man practically blubbers.

Finally, the distant sound of sirens wails in the night, growing closer.

“They’re here,” Max tells the woman on the phone when several cop cars fly into the drive. “Okay, thanks.”

He hangs up, looking shell-shocked.

Blue and red lights illuminate the night, the commotion probably making every neighbor within half-a-mile press their faces to their windows. Several officers leap from their cars and rush forward, pistols drawn.

Once they have us surrounded, Noah lowers his weapon and steps back.

“You’re with NIHA?” an officer says to the hunter, his eyes cutting toward the entrance of the drive when an ambulance pulls in. “Do you have your identification?”

Bleeding, Noah grunts as he pulls his wallet from his back pocket and then hands the man his driver’s license and another ID.

“Were you injured?” a female officer asks me, pulling my attention from Noah.

“No,” I say numbly, trying to process the situation. I’m no longer crying, but I feel the drying tear stains, and I don’t doubt my mascara is halfway down my cheeks.

“We’re going to need you to come to the station.” She nods toward Max. “You too.”

“What about Noah?” I ask. “He was shot.”

“We’ll get him to the ER.”

Thick Neck is now cuffed and being hauled off to one of the waiting cars. Others are swarming around the dead vampire, one man warning people not to move the body. They’re putting up crime scene tape on the porch rail where Grandpa always strings Christmas lights, and my stomach lurches.

A familiar officer joins us, smiling when he sees me. “Hey, Trouble.”

I don’t remember being on close enough terms with Officer Kerrington to have earned a nickname, but I give him a weak greeting nod.

“Want me to drive you to the station?” he asks.

“I’ll drive her,” Max says. “Is that all right?”

Officer Kerrington hesitates and then nods, walking toward the body. “Give me five minutes.”

I move toward Noah, needing a moment with him, but a paramedic joins us. She nods toward Noah’s bleeding arm. “Gunshot wound?”

Noah’s eyes lock on mine, and I can tell he wants to talk to me, too. But then he sighs, nodding at the woman.

“Let’s take a look at it.” The paramedic gestures for him to follow her to the ambulance.

Officer Kerrington returns and says to me, “I got the okay to let you drive to the police station. I’ll follow you.”

“I need to talk to Noah before we go,” I tell him and Max. “Can I have a few minutes?”

When Officer Kerrington agrees, I walk toward the ambulance, feeling a little wobbly. Everything happened so quickly, and I haven’t come to terms with any of it yet.

Ethan sent thugs to collect me. He offered Noah his wildly expensive car. He’s not in the system because he goes to Mexico for healthcare. He paid someone to infect him. But when? How old is he really?

And how does this relate to Kevin’s murder?

Noah’s sitting on a stool outside the ambulance when I reach him. His leather jacket rests in his lap, and the paramedic is looking at his arm. He holds up his hand when he sees me coming, looking like he’s shushing the woman, probably because he doesn’t want me to know that the bullet did a lot more than graze his arm.

“Max and I have to go to the police station,” I tell him, keeping my eyes averted from the bleeding wound.

“I’ll be right behind you,” he promises.

“We need to get you to the ER,” the paramedic says. “If we don’t remove the bullet, your body will start healing around it.”

“Then dig it out,” he says impatiently.

“ Noah ,” I exclaim.

His worried eyes meet mine, and he softens his voice, “I don’t want to send you alone.”

“I’ll stay with Max, and Officer Kerrington is going to follow us.”

He still doesn’t like it, but he finally agrees. “I’ll meet you there, all right?”

I want to tell him he can’t hurry the doctors at the ER, but the look on his face says he won’t listen.

“If we finish before you leave the hospital, I’ll have Max bring me there,” I tell him.

He nods, mollified but not happy.

“Will you be okay alone?” I ask him. “Should I see if I can go with you and give my statement later?”

“No,” he says immediately, his abrupt tone making me jump a little.

He winces, his expression softening, and reaches for me with his good arm, taking my hand. “You don’t want to sit around the ER while they deal with this.”

“But I could hold your hand.” I smile. “Like you did during my blood draw.”

The paramedic clears her throat and says she needs something in the ambulance.

Once she’s gone and we have a little space to ourselves, Noah drops my hand and loops his arm around my waist, pulling me close. “I’ll be fine.”

I wrap my arm around his neck, careful not to jostle his hurt arm, and lean into him.

We’ve never hugged before. Earlier, when we were close, it was a prelude to an almost-kiss. This is different. It’s holding each other just to be close. It’s offering comfort and getting comfort in return.

“Are you sure you’re okay to go to the hospital alone?” I ask.

“I’m fine—I’ve been through worse, believe me.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better.”

“Stay with Max,” he says. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

I nod, reluctant to leave.

“We need to get going,” the paramedic says to Noah, returning.

And that’s my cue. I step out of Noah’s embrace, missing him immediately.

“You ready?” Max asks when I join him and Officer Kerrington.

I glance back at Noah. He’s sitting on a gurney in the ambulance, chatting with the paramedics. They close the doors, and my heart lurches.

“Piper?” Max says, drawing my attention back.

I sigh, wishing this night was over. “Yeah, I’m ready.”