Forbidden by Leanna Ellis Page A

We’re not staying.”
    â€œWe’re not?” she asked, looking dazed and confused.
    He shook his head. “It’s too dangerous.”
    She tripped on a cord stretching from the wall socket to his stereo. “Dangerous?”
    â€œCome on.” He pulled her past the never-used kitchen toward the bedroom, which was where he kept pieces of his old life: his books about the authors he loved and their writing in novel and poetic forms, the Amish clothes he’d been wearing when Camille had changed him, and pictures he’d taken with a camera utilizing a telephoto lens. He’d returned to Promise after he’d been changed, simply to take photographs of Hannah: while she hung out the laundry on the line, rode in the buggy, carried eggs, and chased her little sister in the yard. He’d framed them around his bedroom, and he would lie on the bed, not needing sleep but aching for her and staring at those photos. This was where he had birthed the notion he would change her. The hope she would live with him throughout eternity. But it would not happen now. And he would not live without her.
    He slammed shut the door to the bedroom, closing off the rest of the apartment, and stalked across the room toward the dusty bookshelves. The books were there, although he could tell many had been moved or riffled through. Some reposed on their sides. Some lay open, their spines cracked, their pages ruffling in the breeze of the air conditioner.
    Akiva swerved toward the narrow closet and slid open the mirrored door. His black broadcloth coat, white shirt with dried bloodstains, suspenders, and straw hat were still inside. A fine layer of dust speckled the shoulders of the coat. Even his old, worn work boots remained on the floor.
    Turning back toward Rachel, who now sat on the edge of the bed, he noticed something…something missing. The photographs of Hannah were gone, the frames blank vistas of cardboard backing.
    He circled the room, staring at the tilted frames, stepping on broken glass under his feet. A growl rumbled in his throat and erupted as he knocked over a lamp.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” Rachel asked.
    â€œEverything!” He whirled toward her, and she cringed. But he stalked toward her. How could he explain? How could she understand what had been taken? Stolen! He kicked a foot at the bed and swore. Rachel only blinked at him. “Get up. We have to get out of here before—”
    â€œBefore what?” a high-pitched feminine voice asked.
    Both Akiva and Rachel turned. A waif of a girl stood in the partially opened doorway. She had a pixie haircut like Peter Pan and skinny arms and legs sticking out of blue-jean shorts, and a pale pink shirt. She looked to be about ten or twelve.
    â€œWho the hell are you?” Akiva asked.
    â€œJacob!” Rachel reached out to the child as if to protect her, when it was Rachel who needed protection from the black-eyed, pint-sized vampire.
    â€œDid you do this?” Akiva ripped an empty frame off the wall and hurled it straight at the girl, who shifted sideways a couple of inches and avoided the launched missile, which smashed into the wall. The broken frame and glass crashed to the floor. “Did you steal my pictures?”
    The young girl tipped her chin downward and shook her head. Innocence exuded from her, but those black eyes told Akiva she was anything but.
    He narrowed his gaze on her, unsure if he should believe her or not. If she’d tampered with his stuff and stolen the pictures of Hannah, he’d rip her head right off her swanlike neck. “You tell whoever did, they have twenty-four hours to bring my stuff back.”
    Then he grabbed Rachel’s hand, flung open the bedroom door, and whisked her out of the apartment and the building, well aware that several pairs of black eyes trailed them.

Chapter Eleven
    The good news: Roc knew what they were up against. The bad news: it was Akiva.
    Chasing vampires