by Laken Cane
I glanced at Clayton. He stood frozen and pale, but he was staring at me, and the look in his eyes was vast and dark and hot and so very, very hungry.
“Yes,” I murmured, and put my attention back on her. “He was brutal. But brutal was what I needed at that moment.”
She let go of my hand and threw herself back in her chair. “Oh,” she said. “God, I am so jealous of you right now.” She blew out a long breath. “I may try again with our Shane. He is so very fuckable. I’ll wear him down eventually.” Then she sat up, a hand to her chest. “I am going hunting with you tonight.”
“What?” I said. “No!”
“Oh, yes. The only thing I’d like better than catching Shane full of death and sex would be catching Shane and you full of death and sex. We would have a wild, wild time, Trinity.” Her eyes shone, matched by her smile. She clapped her hands. “Clayton!”
“Yes?” His voice was hoarse.
I kept my stare firmly and determinedly on Miriam.
“Would you like to watch me with Shane and Trinity?”
“I’d rather not say.”
She dropped her smile. “Clayton! Answer the question.”
Finally, I looked at him, unable not to.
He closed his eyes in a long, slow blink, then answered her question. “No.”
She gaped at him. “What?”
“No,” he repeated. “I would not.”
She tilted her head, then nodded, slowly. “I understand. Would a starving man like to watch another feast if all he could do was smell the food?” She stood and walked back to her desk. “That would be very difficult for you. Torturous, even.” She smiled, happy. “We must make it happen.”
And once again, the hope bled out of Clayton’s eyes.
I stood. “You’re not going hunting with us, Miriam, and I am not going to lose control if I have to battle the vampires again tonight. There’s going to be no…” I waved my hands as I headed for the door. “No orgy. So forget it.” I yanked open the door, then turned to face her. “And please, please don’t tell Shane that I told you about all the crazy hot sex.”
She put her little hands over her mouth and burst into laughter. Genuine laughter.
I stared at her, confused. “What’d I say?”
“It’s not what you said.” She wiped her eyes, smiling. “It’s who you said it to. I won’t have to tell Shane, darling. You just told him yourself.”
And when I jerked my head around, dread filling my heart, I found Shane standing just outside the doorway, watching me.
“Oh hell,” I said. Then I added, for good measure, because I was just that uncomfortable, “Sneaky bastard.”
I brushed past him and stomped away, Miriam’s bubbly, delighted laughter following me all the way to Stark’s Pizza.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“When are you coming back to work?” Derry asked, after giving me a hug. “I never see you anymore.”
“I live with you,” I told her, though that was about to change.
“Yeah but you’re never there. And you’re never here, either.” She scowled.
“You look so much like your father,” I told her, grinning. “Especially when you frown like that.”
“Then I’ll smile from now on.” She flounced away.
The place smelled so good I thought about sitting down and having a meal, but decided I’d talk to Angus first. If I still had an appetite afterward, I’d get an early dinner before Shane and I hit Raeven’s Road on our quest to track down Gordon Gray.
Captain Crawford had called me to offer up a few of his uniforms to help with the search, but I turned him down flat. Not only would the cops likely be killed by vampires, they’d only get in my way. And if I got excited afterward and jumped Shane again—not that I would—and they witnessed that…
I shuddered.
No. Just no.
I pecked on Angus’s office door, then pushed it open and stuck my head in. “Do you have a minute, Angus?”
“Trin,” Angus roared, as though he hadn’t seen me for a year. He half stood and waved me in. “Come. Sit.”
But I didn’t want to sit. I paced around his office. “Angus, I’m moving out. Rhys is going to show me some houses.” I stopped walking and looked at him. “I wanted to thank you for taking me in.”
He nodded. “What can I help you with? Furniture? Extra cash?”
“No, nothing.” I hesitated and looked around the room. “I won’t be coming back to work, either. I’m…” I shrugged. It felt strange saying aloud what I’d decided to do. To become.
“Of course you won’t be coming back to make pizza,” he said. “You’re a hunter, my girl. That job will be more than you can handle.”
“Thanks,” I said, dryly. “You have such confidence in me.”
He studied me soberly. “I do, honey.” He grinned and shrugged. “I don’t want you to stop needing me, though.”
Finally, I sat down. “I’m not one of your kids, Angus.”
His chair creaked ominously when he leaned back in it. “I told you I don’t think of you as one of my kids.” His eyes darkened, just the tiniest bit. “And when you’re ready, I’ll prove it to you.”
My face heated and I silently damned my tendency to blush at his slightest sexual innuendo. And Angus, who seemed to not so secretly delight in provoking such a reaction, wasn’t quite finished.
“I hear Shane Copas bent you over a pile of vampire corpses and had his way with you.” His grin was huge but the look in his eyes was just a little…heated.
I stood. “Okay, that’s just great. Goodbye, Angus.”
“Trin, wait. I have something for you.”
I stopped at the door, curious despite myself. “What?”
He opened his desk drawer, pulled out a small box, and then tossed it to me. I caught it automatically.
“Condoms,” he said, as though I wouldn’t know, and roared with laughter.
“Thanks, Angus. I needed these.” I stuffed the box into my coat pocket. “You know. For all the sex I’ll be having.”
He traded his smile for a scowl, and with a bounce in my step and a grin on my face, I left his office.
Putting a scowl on Angus’s face always buoyed my mood. But I remembered something I needed to do, and I slipped into a corner of the hall to make an appointment with my OBGYN.
I ate my dinner surrounded by Angus’s kids and a few regulars, relaxed and happier than I could remember being in a good long while. I didn’t know why, but I didn’t want to question it too hard.
Maybe it was the calm before the storm.
Shane came into the restaurant and sat down across from me, and just like that, my moment of peace ended.
“You want something to eat?” I asked him.
He eyed the two remaining slices of my fourteen inch pizza. “You eat a lot for someone so skinny.”
I shrugged. “Fast metabolism.”
“Enjoy it while you can, honey,” said a chunky, middle aged human sitting across the aisle. “It doesn’t last. I used to be almost as skinny as you, once upon a time.” Her gaze touched upon my chopped, uneven hair and my scars and she pursed her lips. “Or…are you sick, sweetie?”
The two women sitting with her leaned forward to get a look at me, and suddenly, it was like I had the attention of everyone in the place.
Two young women behind me giggled. “Ouch,” one of them murmured.
Embarrassed, I lifted my hand to self-consciously cover the scars on my face, but Shane leaned across the table and grabbed my wrist. Gently, he pushed my hand back down to the table.
“Fuck no,” he said.
Derry hurried toward me. “You okay, Trin?”
“I’m fine.” And I was. “But Shane needs a really big sandwich. My treat.”
Derry peered at him. “You want to order, Mr. Copas?”
“No.” He didn’t look away from me.
I was caught for a moment in the deep mystery of his eyes, in the gruffness of his vo
ice. And I was caught also in the memory of his body, of the way his smooth flesh had felt beneath my fingertips, the way his skin had tasted, the way his lips had moved against mine. The way he’d grabbed my hips and shoved himself inside me, the way he’d scraped his teeth against the side of my neck, the way he’d hoarsely whispered my name when he’d orgasmed.
I drew a ragged breath, and when the look in his eyes went from slightly blank to knowing and hot, I jumped up from my seat, gave the surprised Derry a quick hug, then told Shane I’d meet him in a couple of hours. “We need to get Gray tonight,” I said.
It wouldn’t be full dark yet, but by the time we reached the woods, dark wouldn’t be long in coming.
I climbed into my car. The evening air was fresh and cold, but I didn’t bother with my heater. I needed the cold air to cool the heat in my cheeks. I squirmed in my seat. And not just the heat in my face.
The Thanksgiving Day Massacre memories weren’t the only things I’d suppressed. I’d had sex once in six years—an unsatisfying and juvenile fumbling in the living room of my date’s house. I’d closed down my physical needs because I hadn’t felt like I’d deserved the pleasure. I hadn’t even realized that fact at the time.
But now, those urges were rising up and taking over, and if I were being honest with myself, I liked it. I liked it a lot.
I was healing. There’d been times when I wasn’t sure I ever would.
I clutched the steering wheel, closed my eyes, and conjured an image of Amias Sato’s face. I found the cold lump of familiar, waiting hatred, and I watched it begin to warm, to send rising tendrils of rage into my mind, my heart.
Deliberately and methodically, I forced the rage to soften. It would always be there. I’d always hate Amias Sato. But it would not take me over. It would not own me.
Not anymore.
I started the car and drove to Angus’s house to prepare for the night of hunting ahead, and when the excitement came, I welcomed it. I was a bloodthirsty hunter filled with not only cold death, but hot desire.
I could live with that.
Part Three
Chapter Thirty
Shane and I crept through the woods unchallenged, and I began to think Clayton’s prediction about the vampires leaving me alone was going to happen a lot sooner than he’d thought.
“Anything yet?” Shane asked.
I lifted my nose to the air. “No.”
There was an awkwardness between us that hadn’t been there before we’d had sex. He remained quiet and slightly grumpy as always, though, so probably it wasn’t on his mind the way it was on mine. It loomed in the background, the sex, and the possibility that it could happen again.
Oh, that possibility.
I’d tossed the box of condoms into my nightstand, but not before taking a couple of them out and slipping them into my pocket. I didn’t want a baby or an STD. Not that supernaturals could carry human diseases, but there was Shane, who was human and apparently very fuckable, and what did I really know about him?
So I slipped a couple of condoms into my pocket along with the holy water and an extra silver crucifix.
It was smart to be prepared.
I cleared my throat. “What I told Miriam—”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“She’s persuasive,” I said.
“You’re weak.”
“I’m not weak,” I snapped. “I told her because I wanted to tell her.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Why?”
“I don’t know.” God, why did I always have to sound like a dimwit around him?
He glanced at me. “She’ll devour you if you let her. She has a warped need and not just with the golem.”
“She wants to devour you,” I told him.
He grunted, which told me nothing.
“Is there a—”
“Trinity,” he interrupted. “Less talking, more hunting.”
I fell into silence, then realized he might have been right to rebuke me when I gave the air a quick, searching sniff and pulled in the faint perfume of Gordon Gray’s scent.
“Got you,” I whispered.
But then, there was something else.
Shane turned, bringing up Betty the Shotgun, and I immediately pulled Silverlight. She glowed, but her light was dim, as though the vampires weren’t quite close enough to excite her.
Still, I could feel a change in the air. Something was stalking us. “The demon,” I realized, suddenly terrified. I’d rather have been devoured by the necromancer than the incubus.
I stood back to back with Shane and searched the shadows of the woods with a narrowed gaze, watching for detaching shadows and listening for the furtive rustle of feet across dry undergrowth.
My heart pounded, my stomach tossed, and I felt slightly dizzy with the onrush of adrenaline. I needed to run, to fight, to do something.
But we waited, silent in the heaviness.
“Do you feel him?” I whispered, finally.
“Quiet,” he hissed.
He was weak, the demon, so it wasn’t like he could rush out and suck the life from us. Still…
The click of my dry throat was loud when I swallowed, and I forced myself to take in a deep breath and release it slowly, calming myself before I became a blubbering mess.
The vampires and the fight got me eager and excited. The dark unseen, the unknown threat, and the foam-throwing demon scared the absolute crap out of me.
But then, something that very well might have been worse than the demon strode out of the darkness.
Miriam and Clayton.
“What the actual fuck,” Shane yelled, lowering his shotgun.
Silverlight brightened, just barely, and I watched stunned—but a little relieved—as the necromancer walked toward us.
When she got close enough for me to see her eyes, I understood a sad fact. She didn’t want to just bang Shane Copas. She loved him.
That was why she’d called in the hunter. Not to help me, to teach or guide me, but because she wanted him near her.
“No one tells me I can’t hunt.” Her voice was cold, but her stare was so fierce and hot I wondered how Shane’s face didn’t burst into flame.
Clayton stood just behind her, guarding her back, and he only shook his head when I looked at him. He hadn’t wanted to come. He’d had no choice.
Shane was raging. He grabbed her arm and shook her, hard, then shoved her away from him. “Get the fuck out of here,” he said. Then he turned on Clayton, his voice full of contempt. “Get her out of here, bitch.”
Clayton didn’t react at all to Shane calling him a bitch—but one day, Clayton was going to explode, and the unlikely person in his path would die.
Miriam got in Shane’s face—not literally, since she was shorter than him by about a foot—but she stepped up to him and poked him in the chest, her face tight with anger. “I will not stay at home like a good little girl,” she told him. “I’m more than capable of killing vampires.” She pointed at Clayton. “So is he. Your reluctance is just a little fucking strange, Shane. Just a little fucking strange.”
“You are not a hunter,” he told her, through clenched teeth. “You cannot kill vampires. You can only get in my way and fuck up everything by making me have to take care of you. Go home, Miriam.”
Her face paled further, but she stood her ground. “I’m going to help you.”
He threw his head back and yelled his frustration to the dark sky and the watching moon.
I took her hand. “We can’t protect you, Miriam. In the heat of battle, we can’t protect anyone. We can only kill, and you will die.”
She looked up at me, but there was no anger in her eyes. Only despair. “I want to be included,” she said, confused. Like a child.
And it broke my heart.
Shane had no such tender feelings. He slung his shotgun over his shoulder and glared down at her. “You raise the dead—you don’t hunt. You’re a burden I don’t want to—”
“Shut your mout
h,” I told him, and my voice was as calm and cold as it had ever been.
He jerked his head around to look at me, but he shut his mouth.
Miriam squeezed my fingers. “Thank you, darling, but he’s right. I wasn’t thinking.” She let go of my hand and turned to Clayton. “Take me home. We’re not needed here.”
But even as they turned away, the incubus, with a dozen vampires at his back, charged into the clearing.
Silverlight attached with an enthusiasm that hurt my arm—the pain traveled over my shoulder, through my chest, and down my spine, but there was no time to think about it.
Even if Shane hadn’t felt him, I had. I’d known the demon was near. I had to start listening to my gut. Perhaps if I had, I wouldn’t have let my guard down with the arrival of Miriam and Clayton.
The demon led the posse of undead like a nightmare scene from a fictitious horrorscape. And just that quickly, Miriam and Clayton went from being unwelcome liabilities to powerful, supernatural allies—despite what Shane and I thought.
Our only allies in the woods that night.
Seemingly from thin air, Miriam produced two wicked looking switchblades, and holding one in each hand, she ran to meet the vampires—and the demon.
“Miriam,” Shane roared, and raced after her, firing his shotgun just before he reached her. The crowd of vampires scattered—some died, some kept coming, and I knew they were infecteds before I could properly see them.
From the other side of her, Clayton, his pistol in his right hand, stake in the left, coolly picked off one vampire at a time. He’d said he was no longer a hunter, so I’d have to give them the true death later, but that was okay. Shot up with silver—I assumed—they’d stay down and out of the way for a good long while.
The infecteds fought and died behind the silver wall of my supernatural friends, but the incubus shot past them, and he came for me.
After all, there was nothing tastier than a bloodhunter.
Silverlight shook with eagerness and nearly took off my arm when the demon threw himself at me. He was well past the point of caution, and I could see in the rot and cracks in his face that his condition was critical.
And he was not thinking straight.