by Stella Blaze
“A serial-murdering vampire. Sounds…like your usual vampire.”
Günter’s face hardened then fell. “She killed Marina.”
Min’s heart thudded in her chest. Marina…Günter’s little sister. She’d been tough and talented, and trained to be as deadly as a cobra. And Günter loved her more than the waking world. They’d both survived the same attack. Günter had killed the beast that made them werewolves with an axe, managing to sever its head, and then having the presence of mind to burn the body before he carried his sister three miles from their farm home to safety and a hospital. Their parents hadn’t survived.
“I’m so sorry.”
“The vampire gutted Marina’s mate, Christopher, and when she went after her she led her to a dead end and somehow…”
The moments of silence ticked by painfully slow. Min put her hand over his and he closed his eyes. He shook his head and pulled his hand from hers. “So be careful,” he said, his voice shifting back to its usual tone. “This one’s treacherous.”
He got this look on his face, and then looked her in the eye again. “The vamp you offed tonight, it wasn’t a female, black hair, bone white skin, black eyes…” Min was about to say no, her imaginary vampire kill had been a male, but then he said, “Goes by the name of Elaina?” And the bottom fell out of her stomach.
Elaina. The image of Luca’s maker flickered in her mind’s eye: jet black hair, bone white skin, and those scary black eyes. Shit!
And then she felt a stab of fear. She knew from Luca’s memories that Elaina could control him. She’d let him escape and then called him back to her. She pretty much owned him body and soul, when she wanted to. It wasn’t a freaking coincidence she was in town. She’d come here for him. It had to be why. But why had she drawn the werewolves into it?
Is she here to recruit Luca’s help in fighting off the werewolves? No, she could’ve zigzagged and left them still hunting for her. She’d led them in a straight line straight to him. She’d wanted them to follow her. And she wanted them out for vengeance. Why else take the effort to kill the pack leader’s sister? The murdering vampire had a plan.
But what was it?
She’d ask Luca, tell him what she knew before sending him away. He had to go, he just had to. But then again, why hadn’t Elaina just called for him if she wanted him? A flash of Luca’s memories entered her mind. She had chained him with silver, had burned crosses into his chest, and then slit him open with a silver dagger. She’d pushed her hand into his stomach and was reaching up through his ribcage, toward his heart.
“I’m going to crush it,” she said in the horrific memory. “Like you crushed my heart when you left me.”
Oh god... She was more than just a monster. She was crazy. Like serial killer, Jeffrey Dahmer, crazy.
“Min?” Günter was looking at her with worried eyes. “What’s wrong? You haven’t run into this vampire, have you?”
Min couldn’t seem to take in a breath to answer him.
He grabbed her hand. “We can protect you. We’ll put you and your…” he stopped, a strange look floating, almost glowing in his eyes, then he said, “family…somewhere safe until we hunt down this bitch.”
No, no, she couldn’t have Günter and his wolves nosing around her until she’d sent Luca away to safety. He had the wolves and his maker to hide from. And if Elaina had brought them to the city where she knew Luca was, then she had plans for them all.
God, things are going to hell.
Finally Min took a deep breath, and somehow made her body relax and her expression turn light. But that wasn’t the right expression either. It wasn’t what she would have felt during that moment, and she knew it. She had to figure out a reason she would have become so upset.
“No. The vampire I killed was male, blonde, young looking. And though it was a close one,” she took a deliberate gulp of her drink, “I left nothing of him. And he didn’t have anyone else with him.”
His face wore a worried look as Min continued. “And I think I’m just…I can’t believe Marina is dead.” That was the truth, it felt like a bad dream to her.
“Good,” he said, laying his hand on her shoulder. “I’d hate to think…even though we’re not anymore…I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you, too.”
Min stood up and kissed him gently on the lips. “Thank you for caring. But I’m careful, and I’ll just stay inside for the next couple of weeks. You’ll tell me when you get her, right?”
He looked a little taken aback. “I’ll leave word at your shop.”
Good. She left, feeling her heart thudding unpleasantly in her chest. She had to get home to Luca. He’d be there, waiting for her. She just knew it.
Chapter 16
When he woke, Luca had gone to Min’s house and waited inside for her. He wanted to see her, yearned to touch her. He felt so happy as he paced the hardwood floor of her living room, trying to envision the route she would take from the store to the house. But soon he began to worry. No matter what route he could propose, it was taking far too long. What if her injuries hadn’t healed, and what if they left her weak and ill, and…
What if they left her open to attack? Luca well knew he wasn’t the only dark, hungry creature in the city. Weakened, Min wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight.
Instantly Luca rushed out and scented the air of the city. He paced, moving through the city with inhuman speed, only stopping to scent the air again and again. He had gone straight to Min’s darkened, empty shop, and had worked his way out. Her scent had been strong, but for some reason when she deviated from what was obviously her usual path, she smelled not only fainter, but different. Not quite afraid, and not quite angry.
But just at that moment he felt real fear, her fear, spiking in a hellish wave. But no visions came to him, no muddled thoughts. Just fear.
Finally he tracked her dimming scent to a small bar and grille that was filled to capacity. He looked in through one of its comically large windows and found Min holding the hand of another man. A muscular, good-looking man, and she rose off her bar stool and kissed him on the lips, soft and chaste, but there was an intimacy to it that struck him hard. He felt a flicker of a memory, of the two of them together, naked and making love in Min’s bed. He pulled away from that thought, staggering from the window of the bar.
Was what he felt like a weight pulling down on his chest his heart breaking? Could a thing that hadn’t beat in three hundred years really have the ability to break? He turned, the memory of Min kissing the strange man burning in his head like acid. He took off into the night.
~*~
Min rushed home, dropping her keys in haste as she tried to get her front door open. She felt such panic. What if Günter had followed her home? It was an unlikely thing, but still, he was above all things a ruthless hunter. He might have believed her story about why she smelled of vampire. But he would still think to check up on the story, especially since he was hunting the murdering vampire that took his sister’s life. In honesty, if she had told herself the tale she’d told Günter, she would have followed her too…no question.
Min looked about at her surroundings, the street, the bushes, the other houses neighboring her home, before she stepped into the house, checking to see if she could spot Günter hiding in plain sight. He was tricky and a master at The Hunt. Did she really think he’d be so sloppy as to let her see him as he trailed her?
And she didn’t, finding the street both silent and abandoned.
Unfortunately, that is exactly how she found the inside of her house too: empty and silent. He should have been there, waiting for her. She had been so certain where he’d be. Certain he’d been there before she’d decided to stop at the bar and garner Günter’s notice. She waited, trying to keep calm. But the longer she waited, the worse she felt, the more her mind began to play cruel tricks on her. She kept imagining Luca being chased by the wolves. And though a vampire was more than a match for most single wolves, Günter wasn’t your average
wolf. He was alpha of his pack, and a highly trained assassin, hunter, and soldier. And that was another thing, he wasn’t a lone wolf, he was the master of a powerful and highly trained pack. He could fight and kill anything he came across, and had, until the elusive and maniacal Elaina.
Oh god, there was that too. Elaina was in the city, and Min knew from Luca’s memories that she was a monster, cruel and vicious, and insane. She had to warn him of her, too. He needed to hide, to leave the city.
But deep down Min knew that even if she could hide Luca from Günter and his pack, that she could never hide him from Elaina. She had lived his memory of her calling him from halfway across the known world. He hadn’t even been able to feed, only able to rest when the sun rose and his body forced him to dig and scrabble into the earth. He hadn’t been able to stop until he stood in front of her. And she’d laughed, and she’d tortured him for days, keeping him starved and broken until he had thought he would lose his mind.
She paced the rooms of the downstairs desperately, mentally calling out to him again and again, just about to go out into the city and start searching for him, when finally she heard the front door creak open. Had she left it unlocked? She couldn’t remember. She tensed, listening for footsteps. If she heard the steps it was Günter, and she had failed at subterfuge completely. But as she listened, she heard nothing at all. Luca came into view, staring with terrible, haunted eyes at her in the dim light of the parlor. His eyes were filled with red blood tears, and Min was taken aback by the idea that a vampire would cry bloody tears. He looked about the room, closed his eyes as if listening to something, and then inhaled deeply. At last he turned from her, saying nothing.
“Where have you been?” Min said as she moved to him. “It’s not safe for you—”
His face flashed with red-hot anger as he rounded on her. “Where have I been?” He moved until he was leaning down, his beautiful mouth a vicious snarl. “Where have you been?”
“What do you mean? I’ve been waiting here for you.”
He laughed snidely. “Oh yes, I’m sure you’ve been beside yourself with worry.” His eyes had cleared, and were now balls of green flame. “How long, may I ask, were you with the werewolf?”
Min stared up into his eyes, feeling the blood drain from her face, and from her hands, turning them cold.
“Were you in his bed, or did you two just go into the back of that shitty little bar and screw in the restroom…maybe the mop closet?”
Min felt her breath begin to speed, as well as her pulse. “You were there? You saw us?”
“Thank you for not trying to deny it. How forthright.”
Min reached out and grabbed him, looking to the windows in the room, relieved nothing was staring in at them. “Did he see you? Please tell me he didn’t see you.” Her voice sounded so very desperate to her.
“Not that it would have mattered, but no, I left before either of you could notice me.”
Relief flooded into her blood, cooling the burn of fear, and soothing the rasping in her lungs. “Oh, thank the goddess.”
Luca pulled away from Min, glaring at her with disgusted eyes. “What, don’t want your wolf lover to know you’ve been fucking a vampire?”
“Yes!” she said too quickly, with far too much relief. Then she shook her head, “I mean no. No, he isn’t my lover…not anymore…but yes, I don’t want him to know about you. He can’t know about you.”
Luca was about to scream at her when she reached out and grabbed him again. “Günter isn’t just some werewolf, or ex-lover, he’s the Lord of The Hunt!”
Luca’s eyes cleared of his disbelief, and widened at the realization of what she’d just said. “Hunt? You mean like The Hunt they tell of in the old country?”
“The very same. And the man you saw me with tonight is the leader of The Hunt in this country. He’s very powerful, and skilled to destroy anything that gets in his way.”
Luca shook his head. “I can take care of myself. A pack of ravening dogs won’t be the end of me.”
“They’ve been destroying your kind for centuries. And they travel en masse. Once they pick up your trail they won’t stop until you’re dead.”
“I’m already dead,” he said cruelly. “Or haven’t you noticed yet?”
“But that’s not all.” Min felt a terrible jolt as the image of Elaina laughing with blood-tinted fangs flashed involuntarily through her mind.
Luca jerked back from her, gasping. His eyes turned wide with fear. He’d seen it too.
“Elaina,” they said in concert.
Luca strode over to the window and looked out into the night in silence.
“Günter and his men tracked her here. She killed his sister, Marina, and then led them straight here, straight to you.”
Luca looked to Min, his expression riddled with fear. “Why hasn’t she called for me?”
She could feel his fear—so powerful that he was consumed by it. She looked up and then pulled his face to hers, kissing him, trying to give him some comfort, something else to concentrate on. And it worked. Slowly that fear died, and his hunger for her took over. And it wasn’t the coldness of his bloodlust; it had heat to it, as if nothing else was alive within him except his need for her.
They moved from deep, wet kisses to pulling each other’s clothes off. Min became naked first, and he licked and suckled every sensitive part of her body, from her breasts to her belly, from the backs of her knees to the softness of her inner things, and then her quivering sex. Slowly he lapped at her opening, one hand clasped on her inner thigh, the other running gently over her body. He looked up at her as she tried not to scream, but gasped and writhed instead. He finally came up between her legs, hard and long and ready, and she seized his mouth with hers, tasting herself on his soft, cool lips. He thrust into her mercilessly, and she threw back her head as she finally screamed his name. He nuzzled at the silky flesh of her throat as he pushed in and out of her, harder and faster, until he was battering himself into her. She opened up to him, so wet, so very hot.
Min lost herself. Somehow her touch had soothed his fears, as his touch soothed the lingering pains in her body. When he climaxed inside her he fell onto her, his body sweating, though still cold, his breaths coming in gasps, though she knew he didn’t need to breathe at all. For a long moment he stayed there, his face pressed against her breasts, so very still. He looked up into her eyes, his own glittering with happiness, his smile so very young.
Min smiled back, befuddled. Besides the obvious rush of sexual euphoria, why was he suddenly so happy? But with his next deep, long kiss, Min no longer wondered, she just gave herself to him, heart and soul, not caring about what might happen, not giving a damn about the consequences of giving her heart away. She could no longer keep it from him.
Sated and exhausted, Luca gathered Min up in his arms and carried her upstairs to her bedroom, holding her in his arms until she fell asleep.
Chapter 17
Through all his fear over hearing of Elaina’s return for him, he still couldn’t get over the fact that he could hear Min’s heart. It pounded in her chest, every beat calling to him, pounding out its every throb for him. He didn’t know what it meant, but somehow, something inside him told him that Min loved him, she finally loved him—like pulled to like.
When she finally rolled away from him in her usually fitful sleep, he moved gently out of her bed and sat in the darkness of the night, watching over her, waiting for the inevitable dawn. He’d pulled on his clothes and when he looked up to the bedroom window, there stood Elaina.
A moment later, as lightning streaked the rainless sky, summer lightning, she disappeared. She wasn’t using her power over him. But just seeing her had been pull enough. Fearful or not, impending pain or no, she was his maker, and he needed to find out exactly what she was doing there, what her intentions were, and what she wanted with him. He hadn’t needed Min to tell him that she’d led the werewolves to town because of him. She was the slyest, craftiest immortal he
’d ever met. If she hadn’t wanted the pack to follow her, they couldn’t have. So it had been her wish for them to.
And when he walked out of Min’s house and could still catch her scent in the air, it meant she was still close, and she was waiting for him. Oh god, it made him tremble. What would she do to him? Then the worst thought occurred to him. What would she force him to do?
That thought alone made him stop as he swept effortlessly over a ramshackle rooftop. If that was her game, to make him kill what…who was most important to him, then he could only do one thing. He had to run. And now.
But as he turned to go back the way he came, there she stood, beautiful, powerful, and still utterly insane. He could see it in the sparkle of those fearsome black eyes. She loved every moment of her twisted, tyrannical afterlife. The excitement in her eyes was unmistakable; whatever she’d been planning was about to be unleashed.
“You can’t run from me, my beautiful boy.” She drew closer, and he stood stock still, trying not to let her sense his fear, though he was sure she could smell it on him. She walked as if she were dancing to a tune only she could hear.
“I know.” His voice was harsh, the words clipped.
“Indeed you do.” She smiled that terrifying smile, the one she gave right before she’d strike, the one all her hapless victims saw right before their doom. The one he’d first seen the night she’d turned him, torturing him, taking him from god and life itself. “So, whatever deluded you enough to decide to run from me?”
“I wasn’t running.”
“Don’t lie to me, my beauty. It may have been a while, but I know you…I know that something has changed in you.”
Luca laughed. “Nothing has changed. I’m still the monster you made me into.”
“And since I made you, I know exactly how different you are now.” She stalked around him, her feet tapping lightly on the roof, her eyes never leaving his face. She reached out and touched him, and a shock of familiarity, of terror, struck Luca instantaneously. She laughed a good solid laugh that dissolved into maniacal giggles. “I can smell it on you…that, and I just saw it with my own eyes: you lying in a mortal’s bed, not fucking her, not feeding on her, but comforting her—taking comfort in her.” She stopped and looked up directly into his eyes. “Whatever are you thinking? As if there could ever be a happy ending between the two of you. She’s the heroine of the piece, and you’re the monster. Unless we’ve fallen into a Disney cartoon, the monster never gets the girl.”