The Vampire Awakenings Bundle: Books 1-5

by Davies, Brenda K.

  She folded her hands in her lap and lifted her head to look up at him. A million witty retorts went through her mind, but in the end she responded with the simple truth. “I have nowhere to go.”

  He stood, torn between washing the blood off of himself or comforting her. She looked so lost and confused. A part of her world, something she’d believed strongly in, had been taken away from her today and he didn’t know how to make it any better for her. “The hunters aren’t bad either. They simply have it wrong,” he told her.

  “What is it they have wrong?”

  “Like I’ve told you, we’re not all monsters. They don’t realize that just as you didn’t. The ones of us who are killers should be stopped, the rest of us only want peace and to be with our families.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “You kept trying to tell me that, but I wouldn’t listen to you.”

  Walking over, he knelt before her and took hold of her hands. “There are always things we never want to hear; things we have a difficult time believing.”

  She squeezed his hands then released them. She’d believed him to be a murdering, heartless bastard, but he was the kindest man she’d ever met, far kinder and more selfless than her. “Yes, there are. Will they come looking for us here?”

  “Not if they plan to live.” A shiver went down Paige’s spine when his eyes became the color of rubies. “Who is it that keeps coming after you?”

  Paige opened her mouth to blurt out everything, but the words stuck in her throat. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him; she simply couldn’t bring herself to reveal that horror to him.

  She stared up at him helplessly; her eyes shimmering with uncertainty. Ian sighed as she remained mute and broken before him. Anger festered in him, but he kept his face impassive so that she wouldn’t see it. He’d mistakenly believed he’d been making headway with her. “I have to shower.”

  She gave a brief nod, but her eyes remained haunted. The idea of leaving her there, looking so vulnerable, tore at him but he didn’t have a choice, he had to get this blood off of his body. Walking into the bathroom, he turned the water in the small shower on as hot as he could stand it before stepping into the driving spray. He’d believed her when she’d said she would stay, but he kept his senses honed on the other room just in case. He’d have no qualms about dragging her to safety kicking and screaming if it became necessary.

  Resting his hands against the shower wall, he bowed his head as he let the water wash over his aching muscles and knotted back. The wounds may have healed already, but his muscles were still sore from the pounding they’d taken today.

  He stared down at the pink water running down the drain as the blood washed away from him. He tried not to picture her out there sitting on that bed looking so lost. What was he going to do with her? He couldn’t simply let her go out into this world, unprotected, with everything she knew? The idea of letting her go caused his fingers to curl into the tiling and he had to fight the impulse to drive his fist into it. She hadn’t flat out told him no; she’d actually seemed to contemplate what he’d told her, but he refused to get his hopes up. She’d hated vampires for far longer than she’d known him.

  She was a walking bull’s eye, and she would be alone in the world if she refused him. He knew what she was to him, but he couldn’t force her into something she wasn’t ready for, not when she was trying to sort out her life and everything she believed in. If she would only open up to him, maybe he could better understand what drove her obsession. Maybe he could help her. It was getting her to open up that would be the tricky part. She was one of the most private people he’d ever come across.

  He grabbed the small motel bar of soap and scrubbed his skin as the water began to run clean. When he was done, he turned the now warm water off and stepped out of the shower. He toweled himself off, slipped on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. When he exited the room, Paige slipped by him and into the shower beyond. He listened as she moved about and the water turned on, but he sat on his hands as he fought the urge to go to her.

  Steam followed her when she re-emerged in a pair of loose fitting sweats and a baggy blue tee. He watched as she mutely brushed out her hair before crawling onto the other bed. The news she’d turned on before going into the shower, barely registered as he watched her simple, mundane movements.

  “Paige…”

  “I need to sleep,” she murmured.

  Though she doubted she’d be getting any sleep tonight, not after the events of this day, and the revelations that had unfolded. She’d believed in the hunters, believed she could carry out her mission, and now she had nothing. He believed she was meant to be with him for an eternity. She wanted more than anything to trust in him, but all she’d ever known was disappointment and betrayal.

  She watched him walk over to the other bed, pull back the comforter, and climb in. The sound of his breathing drifted to her, if she stretched her hand across the two feet separating them, he would take hold of hers, she was certain of it. Instead, she forced herself not to think about him being so close to her. Rolling over, she focused on the opposite wall. He switched off the light and changed the channel on the TV.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It took her a few minutes to figure out where she was when she woke in the middle of the night. Nothing around her looked familiar; there had been no light or power in the cabin, but images flickered across a TV screen. Then, the happenings of the day crashed over her. Her father had found her again, somehow, and now he was recruiting vampires to help him. Terror curdled in her belly like month old milk. She didn’t know how he always managed to locate her, but she knew now she’d never escape him. She’d been living under a false sense of security with the hunters; she’d allowed herself to believe she had the upper hand and that when she encountered her father again it would all be over, and she would walk away the winner.

  She’d been delusional and lucky she hadn’t gotten herself killed.

  Rolling to the side, her gaze fell on the clock on the table next to the bed. Two thirty blazed back at her in vivid red numbers. She’d actually managed to sleep for four hours straight; she must have been far more tired than she’d realized. It was rare she slept more than two or three hours at a time. Sleep meant being vulnerable, and that was one thing she couldn’t afford to be.

  Beyond the clock, Ian’s azure eyes met hers in the dim light. Her breath caught in her throat as he gazed at her. Her fingers curled into the pillow. He hadn’t moved, hadn’t made any sound, but there was something so magnificent and sensual about him that heat pooled within her belly and spread lower through her limbs. This man was brutal, fierce. He was everything she’d been trying to fight, yet all she wanted was to run her hands over his flesh and feel his body against hers, inside of hers.

  The yearning was so strong she almost threw back the covers, slipped out of her bed, and crawled into his. She wanted to feel anything other than this extreme sense of hopelessness. She knew he was the only one who could do that for her.

  “Why were you with them, Paige?” he inquired.

  “Who?” she asked.

  He could smell the heightened lust drifting from her body; the increased beat of her heart sounded in his ears. Blood flooded his cock causing it to harden and lengthen against his stomach. He forced himself to stay in his bed. He’d already been rebuked enough by her; he didn’t feel like getting his pride stomped on again tonight.

  “The hunters, how did you know they existed?”

  She pulled the worn bedspread closer against her shoulders. “I didn’t. Not until a couple of years ago, and then it took me a while to find them.”

  “Who is it that keeps coming after you?”

  His question caused memories to tumble through her mind. She shuddered and pulled the blanket closer against her. She could keep fighting him, keep trying to hide her past from him, but she didn’t see the point anymore. And she was so tired of fighting, so tired of keeping him at ar
m’s length. So tired of bearing this cross all by herself. The last person she’d revealed her secret to, Nabel, had promised to help her and guide her, but he’d only told her lies. Ian didn’t offer her those promises, he didn’t have to; he would be there for her for as long as she needed him. This man across from her was many things, but a liar wasn’t one of them.

  “My father,” she admitted in a whisper. She held her breath as she braced herself for his response.

  His eyes didn’t flicker, his breathing didn’t change, but she sensed a subtle stiffening of his body. “How did he become a vampire?”

  “I don’t know how. I don’t know when. My mother and I fled from him when I was seven, and he was still human. He was a vicious, drunken bastard who often mistook my mother for his punching bag. One night, he came home and I had colored on the wall with a marker. He cracked three of my ribs, and broke my arm before my mother succeeded in pulling him off of me. The next day she packed a small bag for me and we fled to a battered woman’s shelter. We spent a couple of years moving around before she finally felt safe enough to settle down in a small town in Vermont. I was nine.”

  Anger festered inside Ian’s chest; his teeth grated together. He forced himself to remain outwardly relaxed around her. “What happened after that?”

  “I got a life,” she said with a small laugh. “At first it was difficult because I kept waiting for it to fall apart, and for us to have to run again. But after a couple of years I began to settle in, relax, and I made friends. Good friends. I had fun. I had a boyfriend, I went to prom, I graduated, and I was going to college. It was all so good and then…”

  “And then what?” he prodded when her voice trailed off and her eyes focused on the far wall.

  “He found us,” she whispered. The tone of her voice tore at his heart, but he remained unmoving on the bed. “And he accomplished what he’d set out to do years before. I was working with my mom as a volunteer at the hospital where she worked. We were going to drive in together that morning. The sun hadn’t come up yet. He attacked us before we made it to the car. He killed my mom, and then he came after me again.”

  “How did you get away?”

  “He tore out my throat and left me for dead.” Her fingers instinctively drifted to the scars on her neck. “I’m only alive because the sun began to rise, and some neighbors had emerged from their houses. The attack was swift, but my screams still drew them out. I also think he believed I was dead or as good as dead anyway.

  “The only reason I’m still alive is one of my neighbors was a paramedic and somehow managed to keep me alive while his wife drove to the hospital. No one mentioned vampires; I think maybe some of them thought it, but no one said the word and neither did I. The last thing I wanted was to end up in the looney bin, and to tell the truth I believed I might be a little insane at that point. The police wrote it off as a random act of violence.”

  Her eyes darted away from his. Tears pooled on the pillow beneath her. She didn’t bother to wipe them away as she stared at the wall behind his bed. No wonder she hated vampires so much and had been so unwilling to trust him in the beginning. He couldn’t imagine what she’d endured over the years, couldn’t begin to relate to it. His family hadn’t been normal by human standards, but it had been a loving, open environment. One where he’d never known fear and definitely never known abuse.

  The tears sliding down her face now, the trembling of her lower lip drove him from the bed before he could think about what he was doing. Covering the distance between them in one long stride, he sat on the bed beside her and reached out to touch her cheek. She didn’t shrink away from him, but turned her head into his touch. His fingers slid over her silken cheek, wiping away the wetness on her skin.

  “I spent a week in the hospital and then I was sent home, but I was too afraid to stay there. L.J. and I had already broken up, and most of my friends had already left for college. I grabbed my mom’s ashes, spread them in the sea, packed up some of my belongings, and set out on my own. After what I’d witnessed, I knew there had to be others out there who were aware vampires existed. I was determined to find them. I was also determined to find my father.

  “I spent a couple of years searching for another survivor. I spent most of that time training to fight, taking martial arts classes, self-defense classes, running, and learning how to protect myself. Apparently all for nothing,” she murmured and shook her head. “But once I finally found another survivor, I discovered there was a whole different world out there, and a powerful group who fought against the beasts like my father.

  “It took me over a year to infiltrate the hunters, and for them to trust me enough to take me in. I never saw where they lived, or really got to know much about them. I met with the handler they assigned me to every day, Nabel, and he taught me more about vampires. He told me your weaknesses. I think they believe none of you can go out in the daylight, so they don’t know as much as they think they do.”

  She couldn’t keep the bitterness from her tone, but she couldn’t help it, she still felt deeply betrayed by people she’d trusted with her life. A life they hadn’t considered all that valuable. “I was told if I proved myself, I’d get to learn more. I don’t think they ever intended to teach me anything truly helpful.”

  “Probably not. Where did you meet with Nabel?”

  “At an old warehouse they’d converted into an exercise and training facility. Some days there were two or three other people in there with me, usually it was the two of us.”

  “I see.”

  “Ian?”

  “Hmm,” he murmured as he mulled over her words.

  “The hunters aren’t entirely human either.”

  “I’ve heard rumors of that.”

  “I’m not sure what they are, or what they’re capable of. I was allowed to know more than most humans, but they didn’t reveal much to me. I didn’t care either, all I wanted was to find my father and make him pay for what he did to my mother. She was everything to me, my best friend. She never got over what he did to her and slept with a gun in her nightstand for years. She never realized a gun would be useless against some things.”

  “She never could have.”

  “Ian, the vampire in the alley, the one you saved me from…” her words drifted off. She didn’t know how to open up this much to someone. It wasn’t something she’d ever done before.

  “What about him?” Ian inquired as he brushed the hair back from her face.

  “That was my father.”

  “I’d figured as much.” She tilted her head back to look up at him. Her eyes were filled with torment and her lower lip trembled. “You were searching for him in the bar?”

  “Yes. Nabel had gotten a tip he was in the area and we went to look for him.”

  She would have been the perfect bait for her father. The realization caused his teeth to clamp down and his fangs to slide free. He took a minute to steady himself before speaking again. “Where were you before?”

  “California, and that’s all I’m telling you about that. The hunters may have considered me chum in the water, but I’m still not revealing anymore about them. They may be wrong, but they still try to do good in this world.”

  “I’m not going to ask you to tell me anything you don’t want to.”

  “I’d planned to find him before he found me again,” Paige murmured and lowered her head to stare at the unfamiliar images on the TV screen.

  “How did he find you?”

  “He discovered I survived his first attack and came for me. The newspapers printed my story. I always assumed that’s how he knew I’d survived. But what do I know? Maybe he’d kept me alive so he could torment me, haunt me, stalk me until he finally put me out of my misery, or drove me completely insane. I guess it wasn’t difficult for him to find me after, not in the beginning anyway, I didn’t know where to go. I moved to New York, got a job and searched for anyone who could help me, but I had no idea how to go about doing that.”

  T
remors wracked her body when she pressed closer against him. “What did he do when he found you?”

  “He came at me again. This time when he attacked me, he left no doubt he meant to keep me alive. He beat me, he broke my ribs again, and he fed from me, but I was still conscious when he left. I fled New York after, went to Florida and established a whole new life. One year later, he found me again and did the same thing. I don’t know if he’d always known where I was, or if he’d just stumbled across me. After that I didn’t know what to do, who to turn to, or where to go. I was convinced he’d find me no matter where I went; he told me he would and that he’d see me again soon.

  “I’d been trying to get into better fighting condition, but I knew I needed more. I fled Florida for Kansas, and then I went to Missouri. From there I went to New Mexico. It was there I found some other people who had survived vampire attacks.”

  “How did you find them?”

  “The internet.”

  “Oh God,” he groaned. “You’re lucky you didn’t get killed. And what did you type in to find these other vampire attack survivors?”

  “Survivors of vampire attacks.”

  “Of course you did,” he replied dryly.

  “I met a lot of loonies.”

  “Of course you did.”

  She rolled her eyes at him and shook her head. “But I finally came across a survivor who seemed legitimate enough to meet in person, Franco.”

  “I hope you met in a public place.”

  “Of course we did, I’m not a complete idiot, no matter what you think. He was also a survivor, and he had the scars to prove it.” Her hand pressed against the scars on her neck before falling into her lap again. “After a few months we began to trust one another enough that he introduced me to Nabel, and I let him know where I lived. Franco was one of the people I would train with once in a while.”

  “What happened after you met Nabel?” He ran his hands up and down her arms, rubbing away the goose bumps forming there.