Chosen by Blood by Virna Depaul Page A

she’d wanted him. Wanted him enough to consider sharing him.
    And sharing him would kill her.
    It would take her love and slowly strangle it, leaving behind nothing but bitterness and regret, as well as the inescapable knowledge that she had allowed it to happen.
    So no, she didn’t know if she could resist him again. But resisting was all she’d ever done and all she could ever do.

SIX
    FBI ACADEMY
QUANTICO, VIRGINIA
    W raith barely reached Quantico without losing it. Even with the private jet and driver that Mahone had provided, she was jittery. Out of her element. She’d long ago left the reservation and the protection of her kind to walk among the living, but she’d confined her walking to a small area of Los Angeles that she was familiar with. Here, nothing was familiar. No one had touched her—Mahone had made sure of that—but her fear of even an accidental touch had made her so tense that the stares of those around her, human and Other alike, pierced her like arrows.
    Of course, she didn’t let anyone see that.
    Popping her gum, Wraith walked behind her escort while readjusting her headphones and resuming the playlist on her iPod. The rousing chorus of “Dancing Queen” played softly, relaxing her without interfering with either her hearing or awareness. She might look unaware to others, even distracted, but Wraith knew exactly how many people they passed, what they were wearing, how they smelled, and whether they’d looked at her with disdain or simply avid curiosity. Most did both.
    She shrugged. It was hard not to be curious about a woman with short, spiked, shockingly white hair à la Billy Idol, especially when her skin and lips had a slight blue tinge that she didn’t bother to hide with makeup anymore. The fact that she wore complementary electric blue four-inch stilettos and tight black leather wouldn’t help her meld into a crowd, either, but that wasn’t what she wanted. She’d learned to use her appearance to keep people rattled. That way, she kept them from seeing how much rattling her own knees were doing.
    “Please wait in here.”
    Nodding at the somber-faced man who’d silently escorted her inside the winding corridors of the FBI Academy’s lesserknown sister facility, Wraith stepped into the room. She deliberately kept her gaze off the death mark pulsing on the man’s chest, then took a deep breath when he closed the door, shutting her inside the large sterile conference room.
    She’d smelled the man’s illness as soon as she’d gotten into the car. The sickly stench had almost made her gag before she’d managed to control herself, so she took the opportunity to suck in as much clean air as she could.
    It wasn’t long before Mahone arrived.
    “I trust everything went smoothly?”
    “Not a fucking problem,” she clipped, suppressing her smile at Mahone’s instinctive wince. People, men in particular, were so predictable. Having breasts and a filthy mouth unnerved them every time.
    “Devereaux is here and ready to meet the team. As you’re the first one to arrive, I thought you might want to ...”
    She saw the moment Mahone stumbled.
    She might want to what? Eat? Rest? He’d obviously forgotten wraiths did neither, but he recovered quickly.
    “Read up on the other members.” He held out a stack of files.
    Wraith took them even though she’d done her own research on the team members. She pierced Mahone with a gaze he couldn’t see behind her dark glasses.
    “I’m assuming my file contains only the information we agreed upon?” Again, based on her research, she already suspected it did. She couldn’t be certain, however, that Mahone hadn’t supplemented the files he’d created on his computer, or that those files hadn’t been shadow files designed to throw her off.
    Trust no one; it was her motto for a reason.
    Mahone nodded. “That’s right.”
    “No mention about my vision?” she clarified. “Or the . . .” She swallowed audibly as dark memories pressed