by Laken Cane
He didn’t hesitate, another trait of the young. An older vampire would have died to keep his secrets, not because the secrets were worth keeping, but because he was a vampire. Vampires didn’t give in to human torture.
“The demon killed her,” he said. “We watched him. When he finished, we fed. She was already dead. We didn’t do anything wrong.”
Simple, quick, and to the point. And exactly as I’d expected. I leaned closer. “Where does the demon live?” Because that was the information I really needed.
He coughed, and blood spurted from his mouth, splattering my face.
I recoiled and wiped my face on my sleeve, but the blood seemed to burn my skin. “Tell me. Where is he? I know you know.”
And when he hesitated, I put my palm on the chain and pressed. I cringed, but I did it.
He would have screamed if he’d had the strength. “I don’t know,” he said, finally, wheezing. “I would tell you if I did. Ask the country vampires.”
I stared at him, silent, considering.
“I swear I don’t know,” he said, into my silence. “I could have lied but you’d know, wouldn’t you? Being a hunter.”
And hurt as he was, young as he was, there was still hatred and resentment in his tortured voice.
I wouldn’t have known, but I nodded. Maybe being able to tell the difference between a vampire’s lie and his truth would come with experience. The young vampire wasn’t the only baby there that night. “Gordon Gray, then,” I threw in. “He’s in the woods off Raeven’s Road?”
“Yes. Different spots every day.”
“What do you know about him?” I asked, not sure where I was going with the questioning. Gray was guilty of killing Lucy. The captain wanted him. I didn’t need to know anything else.
“He’s worried.” His voice was croaky and broken but determined. “He’s knows he’s being blamed for her.”
“Shouldn’t he be?” I asked. “He killed her, after all.”
He hesitated. Then, “I guess.”
I glanced at Clayton, who stood like a watchful statue. There was nothing else to ask. I dropped my stare reluctantly to the vampire.
“Let me go now?” But he was only a little hopeful. Deep down, he knew I wouldn’t let him go.
“No,” I murmured. “I can’t do that.”
Crawford wanted him, and if it came down to a choice between the vampire and the supernaturals, I was choosing the supernaturals.
But I could ease his pain.
The chain had seared its way deep into his flesh, and I dug it out, almost unable to bear it. But at the same time, I took a grim satisfaction from my pain, because I should have pain. I was sympathizing with a vampire. After everything they’d done, I was feeling sorry for one. What did that make me?
Still, I was about to hand him over to people who would hurt him even more than I had.
And that was saying something.
When I’d finally dug the chain free, I slipped it into the vampire’s pocket. With his current damage, the power of the silver would render him too weak to fight or escape, but it wouldn’t burn holes in his body.
He’d heal, but it wouldn’t do him a lot of good, because he wouldn’t heal until after Crawford had him in a place from which he couldn’t escape.
“I don’t want to die,” he said.
“They won’t kill you,” I told him. “But they might make you wish you were dead.” And I turned away, because I couldn’t continue to look at him.
It was Clayton who called the station and requested a car.
It came too soon.
Clayton dragged the vampire to his feet, then slung him over his shoulder and carried him to the police car.
“Get in the front seat,” he told me. “I’ll ride in the back with the vampire.”
The ride to the station took only six minutes, and in that time, no one spoke. Something hung in the air, something heavy, and I finally realized I was the only one who felt it. There wasn’t anything in the air. There was something inside me.
I’d changed. Not that night, but earlier, when I’d thrown myself in front of Amias Sato to protect him from the silver of Shane’s gun.
What a laugh. I was a vampire hunter who sympathized with the vampires. That should make for some interesting hunts.
I was fine with killing them. I was not fine with torture. I would never be—but there’d be a lot of times when I had to hand the vampires over to people who were going to hurt them. There’d be times when I hurt them. And I would harden. I didn’t have to enjoy torture to do my job.
When I realized that, when I accepted it, something eased inside me.
I wasn’t a monster, even if I had to play one sometimes.
The captain was waiting. He had some men take the silvered vampire to a cell in the basement, one in which the sunlight couldn’t penetrate, and then Clayton and I followed him to his office.
“He’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” I said.
“Good. Good. What did he tell you?”
“The vampires are feeding from the bodies. They’re just waiting for the incubus to finish, then they’re taking the blood. Their tracks were all over her.”
He shuddered, his lip curling. “The vampires are drinking from corpses.”
“Yes. They’re not killing these women, but they’re…”
“Eating the dead,” he finished, when I trailed off.
“Yeah.” That was somehow much worse than sipping from a living being.
“I have a press conference in twenty minutes,” he said. “I’ll put the word out.”
I sighed. Even though the vampires weren’t killing the women, they were drinking their blood. They were drinking the blood of human corpses.
That story was going to make things just a little rougher for the vampires.
Maybe it would be enough to keep the supernaturals safe.
I didn’t break down until Clayton and I were once again ensconced inside my battered car. Clayton let me cry—he didn’t touch me or offer meaningless words of comfort. He was just there, patient, quiet, nonjudgmental.
Finally, I stared out the windshield, drained. “I’m a horrible, vicious person.”
“You’re not vicious. You’re fierce. There’s a difference.”
“What difference?”
“The first makes you a brute. The second makes you a warrior.”
Ah, the power of those words.
I straightened my shoulders and started the car.
“Going home?” he asked.
“No. I have to track Gray. Also, we need to find the demon before he finds us. Someone has to know where he’s hiding. And we need to find a priest or someone to help us get rid of him when we do find him.”
He took his cell phone from his pocket. “I might know a man.”
And as he murmured into his phone, making plans to meet with the aforementioned man, I drove us to the country.
Gordon Gray was waiting, and I had a feeling he wasn’t the only one.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I stood once again on Raeven’s Road, my nose to the wind, concentrating on picking up the thread of Gray’s scent. It danced teasingly right in front of me, but just as I grabbed for it, we got company.
A truck pulled in behind my car.
Shane Copas’s truck.
I stiffened immediately, but Clayton remained relaxed—for Clayton—as we waited for Shane to leave his truck and join us.
Shane grabbed his shotgun, slammed his door, then strode by me. “Catch his scent, Sinclair, and let’s get going.”
I traded mystified looks with Clayton, then shrugged and closed my eyes, shutting out the sounds as I pulled in the scents.
“Got him,” I said, a few seconds later, then hurried to catch up with Shane. He wanted to ignore what had happened at the last hunt, and I wasn’t about to argue with that.
“How’d you know where I was?” I asked him.
“Didn’t.”
“Oh
.” I resisted the urge to grab his arm to make him slow down. “So you just came here to track Gray on your own?”
“Yeah.”
“But…you don’t have his scent. You can track a group but one single vampire? You can’t do that.”
He grunted, his head swiveling as he played his flashlight along the ground.
“So you’re just tracking vampires then,” I said. “All of them.”
“Yeah.”
I was a little shocked at the surge of possessiveness I’d felt when I’d realized Copas had come to hunt alone. In my territory.
Without me.
“Red Valley is mine,” I blurted.
He laughed. It wasn’t a nice laugh, but a nasty, harsh little laugh.
I wanted to tell him he was an asshole. I said nothing, just put my mind to finding Gray. I didn’t need Shane Copas to be my friend.
I turned to glance at Clayton and saw him a few yards back, his phone to his ear. I stopped walking. “Clayton?”
“She has him on a short leash,” Shane said. He stood with me, watching Clayton, his face a mask of contempt.
“He has no choice,” I said.
“He has a choice,” he replied. “Even if that choice kicks his ass.”
“Such as?”
He stared down his nose at me. “He could ask me to kill him.”
I shivered as his coldness touched my bones. “Would you?”
“Absolutely.”
“Miriam…” I cleared my throat. “Miriam says he can’t die.”
His smile was dark, his voice like gravel. “I can make him die.”
I stared toward Clayton, who’d turned his back to us and was muttering into his phone. “She’d just bring him back.”
When Shane didn’t answer I turned to look at him, and caught a glimpse of him disappearing into the silver and black woods. He wasn’t going to wait for me.
“Clayton,” I urged. “Let’s go.”
But he slid his phone into his pocket and began walking back the way we’d come.
“Clayton! Where are you going?”
He didn’t stop, just strode on, his back stiff. Miriam had called him home. I sighed, and hoped she’d let him call a car. It was a long, cold walk back to Bay Town.
I turned and hurried to catch up to Shane, my flashlight bobbing. Miriam and Clayton’s relationship would drive me crazy if I’d let it, so I concentrated instead on doing my job.
“This time,” Shane told me, a few minutes later, “if Amias shows up and you throw yourself between him and my gun, I will shoot you down.”
“All right.” My voice was calm but my stomach was tossing. “I’m sorry about that, Shane.”
He just grunted.
I wouldn’t let him get to me. At least, I wouldn’t let him know he was getting to me. I reached down to touch Silverlight’s warm hilt and got in front of him. “You’re going the wrong way. Follow me.”
Gray’s scent grew stronger the farther we walked, and I began to wade through colorful fog to my knees. Many vampires called those woods home.
With any luck, we’d kill a few dozen of them that night.
And finally, the hunter’s excitement flared to life.
“There you are,” I whispered. “Welcome back.”
“Talking to yourself, Sinclair?”
“Yup.” Then, after a few minutes, I said, “I’m glad you stopped calling me baby hunter. That was annoying.”
He shrugged. “I realized you’re not a baby hunter.”
I glanced at him, surprised. “Thanks, Copas.”
“You have a lot to learn before you can call yourself a baby hunter,” he continued. “Right now you’re just a pitiful girl with a powerful sword.”
Asshole.
Then I stiffened as the air changed. “Feel that? They’re close. If we find Gray, I need him alive.”
“Good luck with that.”
Because he was a hunter, weapons held by Shane would give the vampires their true death, just as mine would—as long as those weapons hit the bloodsucker’s heart. All weapons but Silverlight. She could do whatever she wanted.
It was not going to be easy keeping one of the bloodsuckers alive, especially if we were converged upon by dozens of them. In the heat of battle, they were all the same.
The enemy.
And it was kill or be killed.
The captain would be happier with an animated Gray, but as long as he had proof of the vampire’s death, he’d pay up. Of course, if I hit Gray with Silverlight, I wouldn’t have proof—but with a crowd of vampires trying to tear my head off, I wasn’t leaving her sheathed.
Oh, the complicated life of a vampire hunter.
“Regular or infecteds,” I murmured. “That is the question.”
Shane stopped walking abruptly and lifted his shotgun. “Here they come,” he said. “Full of death for the hunters who can end them.” And he smiled, his face shadowed with sharp hills and deep valleys in the moonlight.
I drew Silverlight and she screamed to life, lighting up the night with a silver light that seemed to grow stronger every time she came out to play.
Then I swung her through the air as the first of the vampires converged upon us. I added my screams of rage to theirs, and the killing began.
The supernaturals had predicted vampires would converge upon Red Valley—upon me—when they got a whiff of my hunter status. And there were two of us. Two hunters. Apparently that meant twice the number of vampires, because they seemed unending. Perhaps they thought they could overpower us by sheer numbers alone, and I began to believe they were right.
It was as if every vampire in every neighboring city had decided to show up and party. Before everything had changed, I hadn’t even been aware so many vampires existed—just like nearly every other regular human in the world.
But I was no longer a regular human, and the vampires were not shy about opening up their world to me. They were everywhere. They were countless.
At least that was how it appeared at that moment.
Shane depleted their numbers with his shotgun, and I with my Silverlight, but they just kept coming. When he finally emptied his gun, he had no time to reload. He slung her over his back and pulled a wicked blade from the holster at his side, and a long stake from his belt.
And we killed vampires.
Inside me, fear began to join the excitement and rage. Adrenalin made me faster, stronger, and angrier, but fear kept poking me in the ribs, demanding to be noticed.
And there was a sound. A terrible sound.
It was a sound like no other, because it was the sound death made when it came to claim so many.
It wasn’t often that death visited the vampires.
It visited now.
It howled and shrieked like a demented wind filled with eerie, doomed voices, carrying judgment day in its chaotic, swirling midst.
I was not in life. I was in death.
Oh, it was dark.
I didn’t want to live there. I didn’t even want to visit.
But I was swept along, my choices taken away, and I became a fighting, killing nonbeing, somehow. I didn’t fight with death. I was death.
And there was no worse feeling. No worse knowledge.
When the vampires lay empty around us, piles and piles of them, mouths gaping, eyes empty, body parts scattered, Silverlight dropped from my nerveless grip and I fell with her to the ground, my breath escaping in pants and whistles, huge spurts of mad energy still churning inside me.
Shane dropped to his knees beside me, his eyes dark and shining, his horrible smile wide. He was in his element, as I should have been.
But I had seen myself, and I was hideous. I’d seen the rest of my life, and it was unspeakable. I’d seen death, and she was terrifying.
Shane threw back his head and roared, so covered with blood he was unrecognizable, and barbaric, and brutal.
I needed his badness.
I launched myself at him, opened my mouth over his,
swallowed his victory. I barely felt it when he slammed me to the ground and covered my body with his, because all I could feel was numb horror. All I could see was darkness, and I was afraid it would never leave.
If I wasn’t able to fling that away, to rid myself of it, I would not survive it. I needed something else.
Shane gave it to me.
He understood. He’d felt it himself, back when he’d first become a hunter.
I wasn’t sure why the realness of it was just now affecting me—maybe because the first time there was no real victory. I’d saved Amias and sacrificed Shane. I’d not felt the win. But this time, this time I drowned in it.
He ripped off the clothes that were plastered to my body, soaked in enemy blood, and my blood, and his blood, and he hurt me with hard fingers and a demanding mouth, with fierce bites and kisses and need, and only when the Foam of Aphrodite had been soaking into my flesh had I felt such soul-shattering lust.
I was bursting with emotions. The wind I’d been inside of was now inside me, and I was too small to contain it. I would explode.
I matched Shane’s crazed passion with my own, gripping, biting, clawing, trying to climb inside him as he climbed inside me.
We fucked. Atop hills of dead vampires we fucked. We touched, kissed, cried, celebrated the victory, and fought off the blackness.
Two hunters who’d created an irreversible and unassailable bond then sealed that bond with blood and sex and fate and something older and more mysterious than life.
It had no name.
It didn’t need one.
It just was.
It existed. I existed.
Maybe I was death, but I was also life.
And life was just beginning.
“Bloodhunter,” he whispered, in my ear, and I smiled to hear it.
I’d become the storm, fought the storm, and finally, I embraced the storm.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I couldn’t have been filthier.
I reeked. My boots squelched when I walked. Semen ran down my thighs, sticky and wet. Blood dried on my skin, crusted inside my nostrils, and welled from cuts, scrapes, and bites I didn’t remember getting. Vampire blood and guts had mixed with the dirt upon which I’d lain, creating a smelly mud that coated the entire back of my body, lodged beneath my fingernails, and caught in my hair.