by Lyn Gala
Hunter went up to the side porch and carefully placed the second knapsack near a second door and Paige got that gut-deep feeling of apprehension. Moving slow, Hunter retreated through the low-level vamps.
One of them had retrieved at least one of the balls and he was kneeling in the grass with it clutched to his chest, his head tilting one way and then the other. Someone needed to sue Bram Stoker for false advertising. Paige looked up to see if the woman on the second story would react to the vamps playing with toys, but she was gone. A tattered curtain flapped, slapping the edge of the door. Paige had no idea if that was a good or bad sign. She could only hope that Hunter really knew his shit.
Hunter watched the rocking vamp, moving only when his head was turned the other way. It made his retreat painfully slow. Eventually though, he reached a spot downhill of Paige and clambered to the top of a rock. She hadn’t noticed it before, but there was camouflage netting already laid out. Hunter slipped under it so that he became a moving lump before he finally settled down, invisible in the shadow of the trees and moonlight.
Paige frowned. There hadn’t been any killing so far and she was getting a very bad feeling. She started sliding backward through the weeds, her body crushing the plants so the heavy smell of swamp weeds rose around her. She hadn’t slid more than six feet before a huge explosion made her throw herself to her stomach. The night turned orange and Paige didn’t need to look up to know what happened. Hunter had set off fucking explosives.
Without looking back, Paige took off running for the cars.
A half second after her body started fleeing, her brain reminded her that she should have stayed perfectly still and waited. Of course, the fire might have gotten her, but at least the vamps wouldn’t be chasing her. Behind her, gunfire as regular as the ticking of a clock suggested that Hunter had found something to shoot at. Personally, Paige just wanted to get the hell out of Dodge.
The walk up had seemed fairly short, but even running, Paige was painfully aware of how far away the cars were. She ran, dodging trees and fallen logs and clumps of tangled loosestrife.
Her foot slipped on a patch of mud and she tumbled several feet, her heart pounding as she cursed her own clumsiness. When she came up, a reddened face was thrust in hers, yellow teeth visible as the creature snarled at her.
She threw herself backward and a shot cracked out. The right side of the creature’s head exploded, but the left eye narrowed into a nasty glare and the left hand still reached for her. Bracing her back against the hill, Paige kicked the thing in the chest, sending it tumbling. A second shot rang out, but Paige had her own weapon out.
She put two bullets into the left side of the creature’s head and then ran without waiting to see how effective she’d been in killing her first vampire.
She could hear crashing behind her and Paige threw herself down the hill at reckless speeds. She was going to fall and break her neck at this rate, and with her gun drawn, she’d shoot herself as she did it. However, if it was that or get eaten, she was oddly okay with broken necks and gunshot wounds.
Something brushed against her left arm and Paige brought up her weapon, shying to the right. A vampire was there, his face full of fury as he reached for her, but his head exploded right as his mouth came open to either yell at her or bite her. Paige put two more bullets in his head for good measure, but that slowed her down, and now that she’d partially turned, she could see a half dozen more vamps headed her way. Cody vamp was one of them and he was moving pretty fast now, his feet ripping up the weeds as he ran.
Paige turned back toward the car and forced her burning legs to move faster. Shots continued to ring out behind her and her lungs burned, but she didn’t dare stop or even look behind her. Her foot slipped on a patch of loose shale and she slid down the hill on her hip, twisting around to fire two shots at the closest vamp. It was the Cody vamp and he spun around as one of her bullets caught him in the shoulder. A Glock 22 carried some power, but Paige didn’t trust a shoulder injury to slow it down much.
She was scrambling to her feet when something caught her ankle. Paige swung around, already firing her weapon before her brain registered the dark hair and the familiar body.
“Shit, Paige.”
“Sorry. God, sorry,” she said as she realized Brady was here.
“You should be. You shot me,” he complained, but he already had her by the wrist, pulling her deeper into the trees and away from the cars.
He ran so fast that she felt like her shoulder was being pulled out of its socket and all she could do was try to keep her feet under her as he essentially dragged her into the woods that lined the swamp. Her hand sweated, making her grip on her gun tenuous at best, but when she saw a movement through the trees, she raised her gun and fired three shots that probably didn’t hit anything.
With one last yank, Brady pulled her behind a rock and trapped her between the boulder and his back. Paige gulped air, her heart threatening to give out at any time. About the only thing keeping her upright was Brady’s back pinning her to the rock, but that also made it hard to get the deep breaths she wanted and she clutched his shirt, struggling to push him away. Anticlimactic. She thought the night was fucking anticlimactic. She’d never been more wrong in her life.
Paige couldn’t manage more than a breathy moan as she tried to get her body back under control. When a vampire dropped down off the rock in front of Brady and turned to snarl at them, Paige managed a small scream. She would have embarrassed herself with a full-on horror movie scream, but she didn’t have enough air to manage it.
She brought her weapon up, but Brady caught her wrist and pushed her hand down. “Go away,” Brady snarled, and his voice had an inhuman coldness to it.
“She attacked. She’s mine.” The creature had bad eighties hair, but his voice made a tremor go through Paige’s spine. These were demons. These were definitely demons.
“She’s mine. I’ll rip you apart if you touch her,” Brady said, and then he gave a low growl that made the hairs stand up on her arms.
“She’s human.”
“She’s mine,” Brady repeated even louder.
The other vampire shook his head like a dog coming up out of water and backed up a step. “She’s human,” he repeated, but this time he sounded more confused than confrontational.
“She’s human and she’s mine.” Brady took a step forward. That gave Paige enough room to actually breathe, but now her legs had to hold her own weight and they really weren’t up to the job. Either lack of oxygen or terror had turned to muscles to rubber, and Paige couldn’t even say for sure which one. Paige wasn’t in any shape to shoot anyone, so she carefully holstered her gun before she could shoot herself in the foot.
The eighties vamp ducked his head—this one wasn’t prepared to fight Brady for the right to kill her. That should be comforting. It might be more comforting if Paige wasn’t worrying about the fact that Brady was sounding more and more like a demon himself.
“She killed.” Eighties vamp snarled at her again without raising his head. Unlike Cody vamp, this one had at least a few logic circuits running.
“She watched, unaware, while the other human used her as a distraction. Kill the other human.”
“What other human?” Eighties boy looked really confused now.
“The one who shot at you while she ran. She couldn’t run from you and shoot you from behind.” Brady pointed out with a low rumbling growl. Either Brady didn’t like this vamp or he really didn’t like Hunter. Both were possible. “There was another human…one who calls himself Jim Hunter. He was on the rock, hidden,” Brady said.
“Brady,” Paige whispered a warning. Yeah, she was ready to kill Jim herself, but that didn’t mean she wanted him to get eaten. Brady’s only answer was a low growl that made his whole body vibrate. Clearly he didn’t care about Paige’s moral objections.
“The other human.” The vamp tilted his head and looked past Brady and Paige, back to where the house had been. Even now,
Paige could smell the fire. The land around here was wet and muddy, but the fire could still travel a long way and endanger a lot of people. Jim was a madman. He was a dangerous madman. Even if she didn’t kill him, she was going to shoot him in the knee for this. “I’ll go kill the other human.” He turned and leaped into the air with the sort of power that Paige normally associated with big cats like tigers. It wasn’t a comforting thought.
“Oh shit.” Paige sank to the ground as her knees went on strike and her thighs decided to join them. “Shit.”
Brady knelt down on one knee. “Are you okay?” His voice was almost calm, but the dark undertones were still there.
“Maybe. Probably not.”
“I’m going to kill him. Slowly.” The growl was back and Brady went to stand up, but Paige reached out and caught his arm.
“Don’t leave. Not now. There are vampires in the woods. And my car is back there. Damn. Jim tried to get me killed and I’m having that freak-out now. So just don’t leave, okay? You’re freaking me out, but suddenly a whole lot of other things are freaking me out way worse.”
Brady looked at her, the demon slipped away and what was left was the look of utter despair when Brady had faced his first rape victim. Paige punched him in the leg.
“What?” he yelped and that was a normal Brady voice.
“I’m freaking out, I’m not some victim.”
“You’re a victim of Hunter’s stupidity,” Brady disagreed with an expression like he had bit a lemon. Settling in next to her, he pulled her close and Paige let herself be tugged until she was leaning into him. Her heart was still pounding painfully fast, but she wasn’t sure if that was from the chase or from the fact that Brady’s arm was holding her close as she leaned into his side. “He wasn’t trying to get you killed. He damn near did, but he was picking off the vampires as they came after you. He was covering your retreat.”
“And hoping that I would distract them from looking for him,” Paige guessed. She’d been the sacrificial lamb he’d staked out to distract the wolf while the hunter worked. He’d picked her vantage point. He’d set off the explosives on the far side of the house to drive the vamps her way and he’d picked them off while she did a nice job of giving them someone to chase. Oh yeah, she was going to hurt him so very much.
“Yeah.” Brady didn’t sound amused. “I’m still going to kill him.”
“Can we postpone this debate until I can think of one good reason why you shouldn’t?” Paige asked. Brady looked down at her, curiosity and dismay in his expression. “And can we go get my car before I have to explain to the fire department why it’s parked at the scene of an arson?”
“Do you get the feeling that we’re missing something?” Brady asked softly.
“Hell yes. We’re definitely missing something—like allies with a moral code.” Paige sighed because they were missing more than that and she knew it just as well as Brady did. Something was going on and they were so busy looking at the small picture that they were missing something big, and she knew it. However, she was too damn tired to care right now. Right now she only cared about collapsing in her own bed for the next twelve hours.
“Let’s get you home,” Brady said. He stood up, helping her to her feet. Paige looked down and Brady’s bare feet were caked in mud. His only shirt was torn. They definitely needed to make a Walmart trip at some point. Right now, though, she just wanted her bed.
“Let’s get us home,” Paige said. She knew a couple of things. If Brady went wandering off on his own, he was definitely going to eat Hunter, and when push came to shove, Brady was on her side.
He looked at her for a long time before he nodded. “Okay, then. Let’s get us home.” He slipped an arm around her waist and urged her toward the dull orange glow in the distance. Hopefully they would get to her car before the fire did, but the way her night was going, Paige wasn’t going to bet on it.
Chapter Eleven
Paige shifted in her sleep and a hand landed on her hip, kneading the muscle for a second before the owner moaned and fell silent again. Keeping her eyes closed, Paige sent up a prayer that she was imagining things.
Sometimes she liked to wake up before the alarm and indulge in a little fantasy. She’d slip her hand between her legs and work her clit until she was wet and then she’d let her imagination run wild. However, the form behind her was too solid for fantasy. Not unless she’d managed to slide over into full delusional psychosis overnight. That was possible.
Paige opened an eye and Brady’s shirt was in a heap on her floor, the bloodstain from where her bullet had creased the top of his shoulder carefully placed on top so it wouldn’t get on her carpet. They were going to have to get him some new clothes or he was going to be running around naked pretty soon.
Paige could feel the blush start. She’d let Brady drive her home and carefully undress her. She hadn’t protested once when he’d slowly climbed in bed with her, his hopeful expression focused on her face as he waited for her to kick him out. She never did. It might have been shock. Maybe she’d just hit the utter limit of weirdness and fear for one week and her brain shut down. Either way, she’d definitely had a little moment of weakness last night.
Okay, so she had a right to be a little freaked out with the near-death experience, but that didn’t mean she needed to fold up like some fucking orchid and let the big, strong man take care of her. She hated women like that.
“Brady, time to get up,” she said as she pulled the covers back and grabbed her robe off the floor. “Brady,” she said again. It was dark, and the clock said it was just a bit after four-fifteen, but she wasn’t going to go back to sleep with Brady on the bed.
Groaning, Brady rolled over and threw the blanket off. His shoulder had a new scar—a straight line across the top of the arm in the same place where a doll would have a seam. Last night she’d shot him. She’d shot him, and this morning, the wound was a simple scar. When she reached out to run her fingertips over the raised ridge, his eyes came lazily open.
“Morning.” He groaned. “I think. God, Paige, the sun isn’t even up.”
“We should get up.” Paige swallowed, struggling to push back a rising awareness that she was in bed with a near naked Brady. Hell, he might even be naked. She could feel her body warm at the idea.
“Paige?”
She forced her feet out of bed and sat on the edge of the bed with her back to Brady. “When we’re researching, we might want to look for demons that affect sexual desire.”
“We…what?” Brady sounded confused. Either he didn’t know he affected her or he had more acting skills than Paige ever gave him credit for.
With closed eyes, Paige fought her body’s growing need for touch. The first time they’d ended up having sex, she’d thought she was just having a bad day. Now though…she was definitely channeling something hot and lusty. “I think you’re creating a little cloud of lust, Brady. In fact, I’m going to go take a very cold shower, so please think about something other than sex.”
“I wasn’t thinking about sex,” he defended himself.
“Then go eat a chicken or something.” Darting out of the room, Paige turned on the bathroom light and turned on the shower. Without waiting for it to warm up, she stepped under the spray and cried out as the cold shocked her body back into submission.
Shivering, she grabbed the wash cloth and soap and started washing as fast as she could. Washing her hair was the worst with the cold water cascading over her head. Even after she turned the shower off, the cold water dripped from her shoulder-length hair and her whole body was one ice cube. One very sexually uninterested ice cube.
She scrubbed her hair dry, not even caring about tangles, and then wrapped herself in her robe. She slowly opened the bathroom door and found the master bedroom empty. With a sigh of relief, she darted back toward the bed and sat cross-legged before pulling all the covers up over her lap. Brady was probably out eating a chicken, but as long as he cleaned up his own feathers, she was totall
y okay with that. She wasn’t as okay with having her sexuality hijacked.
“Sorry about that.”
Jumping, she twisted around to glare at Brady, who stood in the doorway. “Jesus! Don’t startle me like that. I thought you were going to eat a chicken.”
“I did. They aren’t very big.”
Paige closed her eyes and tried to come up with another excuse to keep him away. Luckily, he was sticking to the doorway.
“Are you sure?” he asked. His hands fluttered at his sides until he finally crossed his arms.
“About what?” Hopefully playing stupid would just let them both avoid a very awkward conversation.
“Are you sure that it’s the demon making you feel lust? Are you sure it couldn’t be that you just like me?” He looked up from the carpet, studying Paige’s face.
Paige opened her mouth, but before she could give a quick retort, she saw the raw pain in Brady’s eyes. He was standing there prepared to be hurt, and maybe it was self-preservation or maybe it was just that Paige had her heart torn out once or twice. Either way, she couldn’t bring herself to reject him outright. “Brady, I always did like you,” she admitted. “I didn’t want to because you were a trainee, but when you flirted with every woman in the station, I couldn’t help but think you were charming.”
Brady rolled his eyes. “Silver, I’m a lot of things, but I am not good at flirting. I suck at it. Women laugh more often than they swoon.”
Paige smiled as she remembered Brady in the middle of the station trying to hit on Cindy from records. He’d started off so well, and then Cindy had mentioned having a boyfriend. Brady had turned brilliant red and verbally bumbled through the conversation and had managed to look so adorably incompetent that Paige was pretty sure that Cindy at least considered going on a date with Brady just to save him from his own embarrassment. Paige hadn’t been immune to Brady’s unique charm.