“Why don’t you try calling it to you? Perhaps it will come. It came to you before.”
“No, it didn’t come to me. Lane left it for me in a Laundromat.” He shook his head no, that blond hair falling into his eye. I wanted to berate him for his lack of product again and then realized how stupid it would sound based on the current situation.
“It came to you.” I shook my head in denial. “Yes, it did. It is a thing of legend, an ancient weapon. Ancient weapons that belong to our race sometimes gain a mind of their own, much like your own magic. If it was in that dryer and you found it there, it is because it chose to be there. Even deities cannot control our magical weapons. Call it.”
“How? How do I call to something that can’t talk? It doesn’t have ears, you know? So it can’t hear me. Oh, and let’s not forget that I sent my magic on a field trip.”
“It will hear you. If it chooses to respond it will come. If not…” He rubbed his thumb over the back of my hand and sat down next to me cross-legged. “And not all of your magic is gone. You possess other gifts as well.”
“I feel stupid.”
“Close your eyes and call it.”
“Out loud or like, with my brain?”
He shrugged. Ugh. He knew I hated non-committal answers. My hands trembled like crazy so I clasped them tightly then shook them out.
“Ah, hello knife. Um, could you please come back? I’m supposed to take you with me today to kill some bad vampires? The Goddess Babd told me to. And I don’t want her to kill me, so it would be great if you could help me out here.”
Nothing happened. Daniel’s face was impassive except for a tight muscle in his left cheek. He masked his panic with a mask of calm, but I could detect his emotions. It was sort of worse, because if he could freak out, then I could too.
“Call it by name.”
“It has a name?” I brushed some sage out from under my knee.
“Yes. Use its name.”
“I don’t know the name.” Obviously. Duh.
“You must. Search yourself. Relax enough to use your gifts.” A thread of annoyance crept into his speech.
What is it with people telling me to relax when it is obvious that there is no relaxing? A good head shake later, I closed my eyes and stared at the blank whiteness that existed on the inside of my head when I tried to meditate. Then words appeared in tall black letters.
“Oblivion’s Kiss, return to my side. I ask with humility for your assistance with the task that has been set before me. Your payment will be the powerful blood of the vampire.”
I had no idea where the words came from, what inspired them to roll off my tongue. But a cold burning sensation crept into my thigh moments later. The blade had returned. It rested in the sheath and glowed dully with blue and orange flame before returning to its innocuous state.
Daniel smiled at me with pride pouring off him in waves. His aura snapped and crackled around him in a nimbus of lightning. He was gearing up for the fight, his blood beginning to run hot at the prospect of battle. I could sense his excitement through our bond. I guess it was good one of us was happy.
“What now?”
“I must gather my weaponry. Gregory should be back soon. And then we will hunt.”
He stood and helped me to my feet. I wrapped my arms around his waist and let my head rest against his chest. It was warm, firm, and the steady beat of his heart thumped against my ear. My life was on a collision course with fate. After seven years of relative quiet—it hadn’t been normal by any stretch, but it had been manageable and comfortable in its way—I was about to jump into a quest given by a goddess with a magical knife strapped to my leg, backed up by two vampires who had served as warriors to the ruling political body of the vampire world for centuries. There was a good chance we’d die in a few hours. A cuddle seemed to be a good idea. Everybody knew how crap like this had turned out for Jason and the Argonauts. Hercules. It was total crap for mortals when gods noticed them.
But for now I could cuddle the man I loved. My Bloodsworn mate. The thought gave me hope.
It looked like sending my Hunger on a field trip had been worth it. She returned with the sound of the door slamming loud enough to send me rooting for ibuprofen. I gulped down three pills with a glass of water.
“Find anything?”
“Tunnel in the house you grew up in leads right to the basement.” She kicked off a pair of heels and they dissolved into nothing as they flew through the air.
Huh. This was unexpected. “Oh. Cool. Good job.”
“Surprised? I can manage simple tasks on my own.” She flopped onto an old-style fainting couch and covered her eyes with her forearm. “Shit, I’m tired. Not easy to do that.”
“Do what? Be out on a walk?”
The Hunger sat upright and huffed. “It’s more than being on a walk. Don’t trouble yourself. I’ll be fine soon.”
“No worries. I won’t. So, how many vamps are there?”
She lay back down. “No idea. Now, leave me alone.”
“You were gone for a long time. What else were you doing?”
“Having a mani-pedi. Go away.”
She was hiding something from me, but I didn’t have time to interrogate her. I lacked the ability to pry into her head like she could mine.
I spent my time waiting for Gregory to come back and Daniel to finish suiting up by cleaning up what I could of the living room. In a few hours we’d be heading in to take out the coven.
A knock sounded on the door.
I stood to answer it, but Daniel intercepted me from the bedroom. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction he’d come from. I crossed my arms over my chest.
“No effing way, T.T.B.”
“Yes effing way. Go now.”
“No. I’m not a child.”
“You are my mate. I will protect you. Your protection spell has left me unable to detect who is outside. Go now.”
I sulked and walked past him, accepting his logic. I wasn’t a warrior woman. “We’ll talk about this later.”
“Fine.”
I stopped on the very inside of the door and stood with my arms crossed over my chest. I knew he wanted to tell me to shut the door, but I raised my eyebrow. He pinched the bridge of his nose and opened the door so that the majority of his body remained behind the panel.
“What are you doing here?”
His voice was glacial, and I shivered, feeling his fury at the person in the hall.
“I have come for my queen. Release her. Now.”
Adrian’s voice. The asshole.
“She is not yours. Leave now or face my wrath.” Daniel stepped out from behind the door.
“She is mine, and I have the contract to prove it. Forgotten yourself, Guardian? Grown tired of being the Council’s errand boy?”
Daniel hissed and bared his fangs. I shrank back into the bedroom, my heart skipping beats. He appeared feral, his magic whipping around him in a dangerous razor-sharp nimbus.
“What, a few good fucks and you’re addicted to her pussy? Please, I’ve had better.”
Oh, that was a low blow. I stomped down the hall to give the jerk a piece of my mind, but Daniel launched through the door before I got there.
The crash of crumbling drywall reverberated through the room, and the floor vibrated. I ran the last few feet and stood inside the apartment, transfixed.
My mate had twisted Adrian’s arm behind his back, and I watched as he wrenched it so high bones snapped. The Incubi’s face smashed into the wall, his lips misshapen from the pressure.
Blood ran over Adrian’s chin. “Is that the best you can do?”
Daniel gripped the back of Adrian’s head and rammed his face into the wall, creating a hole next to the body sized one a foot away. “Touch her again and I’ll crush every one of your fingers.”
“Fool. You’re digging your grave, and I don’t have to do anything but let you abuse me. I’ll be healed in minutes. All this over some cunt?”
“Refer to her as that again, and I’ll kill you. Understood? Think you’ve got protection? Think again.”
“I need her.”
“Too bad.” Daniel whispered the words in his ear and stepped away, letting the other vampire crumple to the floor.
Adrian looked at me and spit on the floor. “You’ve forced my hand, Miranda. I tried to give you time to come freely.”
Daniel put his foot on Adrian’s cheek and pressed down. “Do not address her. Ever.” He moved toward me, blood on his hands and his shirt torn. A healing bruise marred his left eye. Adrian had gotten in some blows of his own.
I couldn’t look away from his knuckles. When he was close to the threshold, I moved back to let him in and glimpsed Adrian reaching into his pocket.
A muscle flexed in my head, and the Hunger lashed out, attaching itself to his aura and sucking. The energy flowed into me, an endless river of candlelight, sex, and pain blended with pleasure. I drew on him until his mouth gaped in a silent scream.
“Stop, cara. We kill him now, and it will draw too much attention. You are not Transitioned yet. The Council could easily enslave you on some convoluted law.”
I called the Hunger back.
“Get the fuck out of the building. You’re not welcome here.” I slammed the door on his gray, waxy face.
Holy shit. I’d nearly eaten him. And I’d done it without sex.
* * *
Three hours later, Gregory and I stood in front of a door cleverly concealed to look like nothing but flat drywall. It even had one of those secret latches where you pushed in a certain spot and the door popped open. Gregory made me wait plastered against one side while he stood and listened and then opened the door, flinging himself to one side and out of the way in case there was someone else on the other side. It was like being on an episode of Cops, without the crazy drunk people. And hotter law enforcement.
Daniel was already upstairs. I felt him moving around through the connection in our auras.
The guys looked incredible—normal hotness factor aside—bristling with weapons, heavy leather pants, and boots. Gregory was shirtless, but had on some kind of heavy leather bracelet that covered his whole forearm. He had a long knife stuck in the top of one boot and a crossbow hanging on a strap that criss-crossed his chest and currently rested against his back. I’d asked him why he was half naked, and his reply had been he didn’t have any shirts he wanted ruined. Either he was overly confident or resigned to death. I still wasn’t sure which.
Daniel had a huge sword hanging from one hip by a wide studded belt and a shirt covered with a heavy leather vest. The sword was rather plain. The pommel had a simple guard, and the handle was wrapped in some kind of black leather or cloth. There was no ornamentation, only nicks and scars in the metal and a wickedly sharp edge to both sides of the business end. It was a weapon, not jewelry.
There were throwing knives tucked into sheaths all over the vest. He’d slicked his hair back with something that made it look wet. Scary delicious.
I had braided my hair tight to my head—one thing I’d learned in self-defense was that long hair equals a great handle for someone to drag you around by. Oblivion’s Kiss was a cold thrum on my right thigh. Daniel had wanted to load me down with more weapons, but I didn’t know how to use them, so they’d just be a great way for a vamp to have something nice and handy to stab me with. I had a feeling if we survived this, he’d be taking me to Weapons R Us and getting me outfitted for protective gear and then drilling me until I couldn’t take anymore. Wrestling had some definite possibilities.
Gregory knelt to one side of the tunnel, peering into the darkness with the crossbow ready. The lights in the basement were off so that we weren’t perfect targets. A small amount of light filtered through the tall glass-block windows at ground level. I couldn’t believe how much my night vision had improved. I would have been essentially blind before, but I could make out dark shapes and the walls of the tunnel pretty well. Perhaps being a full-blood vampire wasn’t going to be all bad. Well, not one hundred percent bad, that is. I still had to deal with too many powerful fools who wanted to mess with my life, but this was better than feeling like a cross between a sex toy and a blood bank. At least I could be mostly in the driver’s seat with my magic now.
Gregory shuffled into the tunnel military guy style, low and close to the ground until all I could see was a black lump I assumed was him. He made a low whistling sound, and I stepped into the tunnel, pulling the door shut behind me until only a sliver of light remained. Now I was mostly blind. Even vampires need a little light to see.
My hand clenched reflexively on the handle of the blade. Something was wrong in here. There was a charge to the air, a feeling…and a smell I couldn’t identify. It reminded me of sour sweat. Nasty sheets left on a bed after a sex marathon. That was it. My fangs ran out and into my bottom lip, and I couldn’t resist touching my tongue to them, slicing it open on them. How did Daniel manage to talk around his?
The tunnel was wide enough for two of us to stand side by side, but it would be tight, especially with Gregory’s wide shoulders. He started forward in that strange side stepping way of soldiers and cops who are trying to make a small target. I could just make him out a few feet ahead of me. I wondered if he could sense the wrongness that I did. A smell didn’t mean much to me. My nose hadn’t been operating like this for long, so I wasn’t sure how to interpret what it told me.
“Miranda, there is something in here with us. It feels wrong somehow.”
“OK, that tells me nothing other than I should have worn Depends down here. And I can kinda feel that myself. It would be too good to be true if Stephan left everything unlocked without some kind of trap though, wouldn’t it?”
“Stop with your bullshit remarks. Can’t you feel it? It is like us, but not.”
A scratching clatter sounded up ahead. I stopped and dropped into a crouch. I hadn’t learned much at the three-night self-defense course I’d taken years ago, but one thing had stuck. If you’re scared, there’s probably a good reason. So run away.
I couldn’t run away, but I could pull out a huge ass knife and stab the fuck out of anything that moved too close.
When it first came into view, my stomach fell to my knees and then heaved itself into my chest cavity. The vampire was a horrible mixture of what my Hunger had looked like in my vision before I had fed from Daniel and a human man. It wore the remains of an expensive suit and tie, but no shoes. I imagined the shoes had fallen off or been ripped off to accommodate its feet. Impossibly long toes tipped with claws spread out on the ground, and the fingers appeared to have extra knuckles as well. Oversize black eyes fixed on Gregory and it hissed, fangs dripping spittle and chunks of what might have been flesh. Gregory raised his crossbow and shot it right between the eyes before it had a chance to charge.
The shot may have been a mistake, because it flung itself at him in a single thrusting leap from the floor. With its arms wide to each side and a horrible shriek, the monster tried to grab him and latch on. If he was surprised that it didn’t drop from the arrow, he didn’t show it. Gregory was a blur of motion, stepping in closer to the flying vampire and punching it with a fierce right hook that took it back down to the ground. There was a snap and crunch, and then he stood on its chest with one boot and yanked its head off with his bare hands. I was really glad I hadn’t had any food in the last few hours or I’d have thrown up on myself. He dropped the head and kicked it to the side of the tunnel with all the care of a man punting a soccer ball and then dragged the body over to the side as well.
I must have made a sound because he smiled grimly at me and pulled the strap to the cross bow over his head. I guess he could use it as a club if he needed to. The strap would really kill range of motion. I’d known we had to kill other vampires, other living beings, but I guess I’d pushed how brutal and bloody it w
ould be out of my mind. It is one thing to think about killing in the abstract, quite another to participate in it.
I jogged ahead and joined Gregory.
That feeling of wrongness was still there, riding the stale air of the tunnel in spidery electrical currents up my arms. There were more of them, lots more. Maybe my father’s entire coven. If the Goddess had known that this was down here and hadn’t warned me, I was so going to kick her ass.
“Can you feel them?”
“Yes, lass.” Gregory moved in front of me. “Back up a bit.”
“Have you ever seen this before?”
“No. Perhaps Stephan has bred a new bloodline.”
“No, this is not a new strain.” A set of eerie, yellow eyes swung around to meet mine. I could see them because they reflected what little light managed to spill into the tunnel. “I think this is what happens when you starve the Incubi. I’ve seen something similar before.”
The clattering scrapes grew louder, and I realized I’d been hearing it for awhile and hadn’t known it wasn’t background noise. Daniel continued to tug at my subconscious as he moved about the upstairs. So far nothing had happened that changed the low-level thrum of his energy. It relieved me to know he was safe—for now.
When the vampires emerged into the weak light from the crack in the door, I almost peed myself. They crawled on the ceiling, walls, and floor in a moving wall of gray-toned flesh and long, spindly limbs. Some of them had the remnants of clothing on, but most were naked. It occurred to me that there might be something worse than having them bite me or beat me to death.
I reached out to my Hunger. “Why are they naked?”
“They’re hungry, and they sense food. There doesn’t seem to be any real sentience there. Only the magic riding a body it cannot get free of.”
“So if we don’t kill them…” I didn’t want to complete the thought.
“They will kill you by feeding. And it will take awhile. A vampire makes for a very good meal, not like humans. Humans look good, but there’s not much there. More an appetizer.”
Hunger Embraced (The Hunger Series) Page 26