Page 16 of Suck This

CHAPTER 5

Stake to the heart, and you’re too late.

-Things you shouldn’t sing when a man dies after defending you

ACADIA

“I don’t fucking care how dangerous the man is!” I screamed. “He saved me from being raped, Weasel.”

“Don’t call me Weasel here, Acadia. You know my name. Use it.”

I narrowed my eyes at my jerk of a brother, Corbin—the one that was on the total opposite end of the spectrum compared to Nash, my other brother—and crossed my arms over my chest.

“I’m serious. The man didn’t do anything wrong but save me. He had my pants lowered, and his hand on his fly. There was nothing else he could’ve done at that point,” I explained.

He moaned. “I can’t. He’s a vampire. Things don’t work with them the same as they work for you or me.”

“I know that I’m going to throw the biggest hissy fit right now if you don’t get him into a windowless cell and find him something to eat.” I slammed my hand down on the book resting on top of his desk. “It says right here in the Vampire Articles of the Confederation that if they’re to stay over six hours in a cell, that they have to be fed. It’s been eight. You owe him that, by law. Not to mention it’s only an hour until dawn.”

My brother gave me a look reserved for meddling little sisters.

“I know how to do my job, Acadia.”

I growled.

“If you knew how to do your job, your trigger-happy cop butt-muncher wouldn’t have stabbed Constantine with a stake in the first place,” I informed him. “Not to mention if he hadn’t moved, it would’ve gone into my chest better than it went into his… not that it went into his really well.”

And it hadn’t.

I’d had an up-close and personal view of the entire debacle, and it was definitely one that I didn’t want to repeat. Or hear ever again.

I could still hear the grate of wood on bone, and it was enough to make my stomach heave for not the first time that night.

The entire thing, however, was a lesson in learning.

Meaning that if I ever needed to kill a vampire, trying to shove a stake through his heart wasn’t the most efficient way. Mostly because the chest was a hard cavity to penetrate, even when you had the correct tools needed to do so.

For a woman like me, with no muscle whatsoever in my arms, I’d have to do some serious research if I ever wanted or needed to kill a vampire in the future.

“The cop has been reprimanded for his overreaction,” my brother said tiredly. “That fact, however, doesn’t negate the fact that he did kill someone.”

“Someone that had his cock in his hand and ready to stick it into our sister by using force,” my other brother, Nash, snarled as he walked into the room.

Corbin growled in frustration and dropped to his seat. It was the first time I’d seen him sit down in well over the hour that I’d been here. The rest of the time I’d been waiting to speak to him while he divvied out directions to every single person that happened to walk by.

Even his secretary had gotten directions—though those directions had been to go get him and me lunch.

Which she arrived with only half a minute later.

“Here you go, Chief.”

“Thank you, Marcy,” Corbin said tiredly. “Have you eaten yet?”

Corbin’s concerned voice had me freezing, and I looked at him. Then I moved my gaze over to Marcy, his ‘secretary.’

How had I not seen that before? Did my big brother have a crush?

“I bought myself a sandwich as well, sir,” Marcy said softly.