Drink Deep - Chloe Neill [5]
I looked over at him, ready to “Roger” my agreement. But before I could open my mouth, he winked and took a step, pulling me along with him. Before I could protest, we were airborne.
The first step was bone-chillingly awful—the sudden sensation of the ground—and our security—disappearing beneath us, a sickening lurch that flipped my stomach and shuddered through my entire body. My heart jumped into my throat, although that at least kept me from screaming out a bubble of fear.
But that’s when it got good.
After the nasty initial drop (really nasty—I can’t stress that enough), the rest of the journey wasn’t much like falling at all. It felt more like hopping down a staircase—if the distance between each tread was a lot longer. I couldn’t have been in the air for more than three or four seconds, but time actually seemed to slow down, the city decelerating around me as I took a step to the ground. I hit the ground in a crouch, one hand on the sidewalk, with no more impact than if I’d simply jumped up.
My transition to vampire had been scattershot, and my abilities had come “online” slowly enough that it still surprised me when I was able to do something the first time around. This move would have killed me a year ago, but now it left me feeling kind of invigorated. Jumping nine stories to the ground without a broken bone or bruise? That was a home run in my book.
“You’ve got hops,” Jonah said.
I glanced over at him through my bangs. “That was phenomenal.”
“I told you it would be.”
I stood up and straightened the hem of my leather jacket. “You did tell me. But the next time you throw me off a building, I will bring the pain.”
He smiled teasingly, which made my heart flutter uncomfortably. “In that case, I think we have a deal.”
“You ‘think’? You couldn’t just agree not to throw me off a building?”
“What fun would that be?” Jonah asked, then turned and headed down the street. I let him get a few paces ahead before following behind, that teasing look he’d given me still in mind.
And I’d thought the first step off the roof had been nerve-wracking.
Cadogan House was located in Hyde Park, a subdivision south of downtown Chicago. It was also home to the University of Chicago, whose grad school I’d been attending when I’d been made a vampire. Ethan had changed me, beginning my transformation only seconds after I’d been attacked by a rogue vamp—one not tied to a particular House—sent by Celina Desaulniers. She was the narcissistic vamp I’d staked just moments after Ethan had been killed; she’d sent the rogue to kill me to piss off my father. As I’d later discovered, my real estate–peddling father had offered Ethan money to make me a vampire. Ethan declined the offer, and Celina had been miffed by my father’s refusal to make the same offer to her.
The girl was a piece of work.
Anywho, Ethan named me Sentinel of the House. To help protect the House, and to avoid listening to Mallory’s midnight (and noon . . . and six a.m. . . . and six p.m.) romantic escapades with Catcher, I moved into Cadogan.
The House had all the basics—kitchen, workout room, an Operations Room where guards kept an eye on the House, and dormlike rooms for about ninety of the three hundred Cadogan vampires. My room was on the second floor. It wasn’t huge and it wasn’t lush, but it was a respite from the drama of being a vampire in Chicago. It had a bed, bookcase, closet, and small bathroom. Plus, it was just down the hall from a kitchen loaded with junk food and bagged blood provided by our awfully named delivery service, Blood4You.
I parked my orange Volvo a few blocks up, then hiked back to the House. It glowed in the darkness of Hyde Park, new security floodlights—installed when the House was renovated after an attack by growly shape-shifters—pouring across the grounds. The neighbors groused about the floodlights until they considered the consequences of not having them—the protection darkness would afford supernatural trespassers.
The House was relatively quiet tonight, a band of protesters snuggled into blankets on the grass between