The Hunters Series

by Shiloh Walker

  The heat that had sizzled in his eyes faded and he simply nodded, baring his throat to her, and Tori had the oddest image, of young, strong males, all lined up and baring their necks, while she went around sniffing them like vintage wines. She stifled the giggle, which was part hysteria, as she stepped closer. Casting Declan a nervous look, she trailed a hesitant hand down the throbbing vein in the man’s arched neck.

  Then her hand fell away.

  “I can’t,” she whispered weakly. Near tears, she turned her head away and said louder, “I can’t.”

  Declan wrapped his arms tighter and forced her closer to the man who still stood, patiently waiting, with his neck arched. Underneath his golden skin, the vein pulsed and throbbed and beckoned, and Tori was half mad with hunger.

  “I can’t.”

  “Then you will die,” a voice said softly.

  Lifting her eyes, she stared into Eli’s, so close to hers. He had gotten out of his chair and approached them while she was being squeamish. “He’s a human being, a person. I can’t treat him like food.”

  “He is offering,” he said urgently. “It isn’t wicked, or evil. It’s just necessary. He is offering, and that is a fine gift. And I warn you, if you do not feed, completely, and fully, and soon, your sire will summon you, and you will surrender. Either that or he will kill you. And I fear that death would be a sweet release compared to what he would do.”

  “Feed, Torrance McAdams.”

  That low, ancient, wise voice was starting to whisper in her head again. Tori whimpered against it, against the compelling urge to bite through the lovely golden skin, and feed. She fought against the urge, the hunger. Fought that voice that rose again to whisper in her mind. “Only a fool refuses a gift offered freely. Take what is being given.”

  “The hunger can drive a vampire insane,” Declan whispered. His hands—smooth and human—came around her and his voice was his own—soft, low, crooning music in her ear that sounded of Ireland, that made her think of green valleys and staggering rock walls and tumbled circles of stone. He had shifted back to his human form and his naked heat was pressed against her. “It will drive you mad, unless your sire manages to bring you to him first. If it drives you mad, you will fall upon the first person you see like a ravening beast, be it man, woman or child, and you will feed until that fire in your belly is extinguished.

  “Will you risk that?” he asked against her ear, holding her tightly when she started to struggle.

  She had to get away from that lovely source of blood. She had to.

  “Do you hear, girl?” Declan snarled, whirling her around to face him.

  “It will drive you insane and you will go feral, dying slowly inside from the guilt, while you prey night after night after night on innocents, killing them. Will you control this? Or let it control you?”

  His face was livid and his eyes were full of rage and helplessness. “Ferals die quickly, Torrance. We cannot allow them to roam the streets. Will you be one of those we have to hunt? Do you know what that will do to me?”

  The firelight lit his face, half in shadow, the other half painted a soft gold, his eyes stark and desperate, his hands digging into her arms tightly. He shook her slightly and she broke. Jerking away from him, she grabbed James and dove for his neck.

  Instinct took over and her fangs burst from their sheaths and she struck, like a snake on a rabbit, latching on to the man’s neck, her fangs sliding through the golden, warm skin while her mouth latched on, suckling and swallowing. Distantly, she was aware of a hand on her head, of the low, humming moan that vibrated through James’ chest and up his throat. She was distantly aware of the erection that was pressed against her belly, distantly aware that the man who fed her was finding pleasure in this.

  She was itching.

  Deep inside.

  And aching. Her hand fell back and she grabbed Declan’s hips while she swallowed more, feeling the hot blood fill her belly, feeling the glorious burst of strength. With a jerk, she pulled Declan forward until his hips cupped her bottom and she could pump her ass against him. Her nipples burned and her breasts ached. Her womb felt empty.

  She wanted to fuck.

  Badly.

  Badly enough to do it right in front of everybody while she fed. Declan’s scent flooded her mind and she whimpered with need as a picture filled her mind’s eye, her feeding like this, while he shuttled his cock in and out of her bottom, while she rode the cock that was pressed against her belly.

  “…enough… “

  “…let go…”

  “Tori!”

  She was pulled away rather roughly and Declan held her pinned against his chest, his cock hot as a brand against her blue jean covered rear. Eli had caught James up in his arms, pulling him further back as the man lifted his hand toward her.

  “Enough,” Eli said softly, taking his man to the couch.

  “I want to finish it with her,” James said mournfully, staring at her with eyes that were still hot, but heavy with fatigue and blood loss.

  “Finish it?” Tori whispered in horror as her sanity started to return. “Finish it?”

  “He means he wants to have sex,” Declan whispered soothingly, stroking her head with his hand. “Sex, not death. This is why he does it. A vampire exudes a sexual call while he feeds, it’s like an aphrodisiac and a drug combined.”

  “Finish,” James said petulantly, trying to shrug off Eli’s restraining hands.

  A low whisper of something slithered through the air, and the hair on Tori’s arms stood up. Power. Magic. Something. It slithered through the air while Eli caught James’ chin in his hand and said, “Enough.” His voice was as silent as a whisper, but seemed to boom through the room.

  “Enough,” he repeated, as James’ eyes started to clear and soften, while his lids drifted closed. “Sleep.”

  And then he rose, eyeing Tori appraisingly. “They aren’t accustomed to feeding without sex, you see,” he said softly, lifting his shoulders in a shrug. “Nina let them know you were newly changed. The new ones tend to be brutal, and rough, and unsure how to make it more enjoyable. This should have not been a pleasant task for him. No sex, a new vamp cutting her teeth, so to speak, on him. Yet he craves more.

  “I wonder how you knew to make it like that,” Eli mused, eyeing Declan and Tori. Then he turned his eyes to the other man, a slender towering blond who probably stood taller than Tori by a good two feet. “Are you ready, Caleb?”

  The hot pulse of strength seemed to fill her and Tori was almost painfully aware of how much more vivid things had become. Caleb had dropped to his knees to offer his neck and it put him on level with her breasts, forcing her to bend over a little to get to his neck.

  It hadn’t been quite so intense, and she had pulled away on her own, squelching the urge to turn and wrap her legs around Declan’s hips and demand sex right there.

  But she wasn’t sure how much longer she could suppress it.

  * * * * *

  He was covered now, at least.

  He had a low slung pair of jeans and a cotton shirt that he had yet to button, his sculpted chest and belly catching her eye every time he moved. His bare feet padded over the forest floor in silence—next to her—his hand linked with hers as they followed Eli.

  They were walking now.

  Eli had ushered them into a car after assisting Caleb, almost lovingly, like a parent, to lie down. Tori had heard his hushed orders to Nina to see them fed, to see that they drank, and that they rested. She had forced herself to approach them, even though she was still embarrassed, so uncomfortable with what she had done. But she had looked Caleb in the eye, James was still sleeping. “Thank you,” she said stiffly before turning and stalking away, her arms crossed over her pleasantly full tummy.

  Shocking though, as they walked through a scraggly stand of trees, her belly was already seeming to empty.

  “It’s because you haven’t gorged.”

  She slid Eli a sidelong glance and lifted an eyeb
row. He said, “You have to feed heavily at first. You’re developing your strength and building reserves. In time, you can learn to go a week or more between feedings. But you must first fully sate that hunger.”

  His eyes flicked to the hand she had pressed against her belly, and then to the fangs that had yet to retract. “I know the signs of hunger, as I suffer them myself. And I know confusion and frustration when I see them,” he said, his voice soft with sympathy.

  “I imagine, once you see what I have to show you, this feeding will be easier. After this, we can simply let you feed from a number of my people, but—”

  Tori froze as a weak, pitiful whimper sounded through the dark trees, so far away, but so very clear.

  Eli sighed, his handsome face grim, as he slid his eyes in the direction of the cry. “I hate the suffering of innocents. But the monsters who cause it…” His eyes started to glow and his fangs slid out, an unworldly power sliding over him.

  Behind her, Declan paced alongside their back trail, his bare feet soundless on the forest floor. “This is a just thing you will do, Tori,” he murmured, his hands flexing and clenching, while his eyes gleamed with fury. “Do you smell her fear? Her blood? This is a bad one you’ve found for us, Eli.”

  “What’s going on?” Tori asked.

  But then that fading whimper was replaced by a scream. Next to her, Eli said coldly, “Run. And find her.”

  Chapter Six

  Tori ran.

  The scent of blood and fear filled the air, but it brought no pleasure. Her belly roiled and rolled and clenched as she grew closer.

  She ran.

  And she found her.

  A slim girl who would have been lovely except her face was marked with bruises and stained with blood as she crawled across the yard in a shredded T-shirt. One man stood in the door laughing, while the other stalked her, kicking at her side, and laughing when she cried out.

  Eli laughed with pleasure. Dimly, she heard him say something like, “Two for one.”

  But it barely made sense to her.

  Instinct took her over yet again, and she lunged, not for the man who had frozen in mid-kick. But instinctively for the man who stood laughing in the door. A man who shared the girl’s soft brown eyes. A man who had her scent, the scent of her body and her blood, all over him.

  He barely seemed to see her until she was sitting atop him and his struggles felt like those of a freshly hatched chick, weak and useless and pitiful. His blood filled her mouth in a hot wash of pleasure and she held his struggling body as he bucked and strained.

  There was no pleasure for him.

  It hurt him, and frightened him, and this gave her pleasure. His body reeked with the smells of blood, fear, and sperm. He’d raped that girl, that girl who looked like him. And passed her off to another man to do the same. Both had beaten her.

  The rage inside her grew and she clutched his body harder, her hands shattering the fragile-feeling bones in his arms as he continued to struggle.

  She knew there were noises in the background, a scream, a low soothing murmur, the sound of a body being taken down, and the sound of one being lifted gently. She filtered all this information and filed it away, while she savored the weakening struggles and the salty taste of blood on her tongue.

  It seemed to last forever, and no time at all.

  She knew instinctively when his life faded away, even without the telltale slowing of his heart. She pulled away from his body and settled back on her heels, her head spinning, her senses almost painfully heightened. Her breath sawed in and out of her lungs and Tori stifled another hysterical giggle, as she thought of the B horror movies that showed the heroine, standing in a corner, her tits half-hanging out of her bra, wearing that bra, panties and nothing else while she breathed raggedly, her breaths so loud it brought the killer to her.

  Only Tori was the killer.

  She dropped heavy-lidded eyes to stare at the lifeless man before her, feelingly sated and satisfied. He had been the monster, not she. She had taken pieces of his mind, unable to block the images that had filled his mind, old memories, favorite songs, the porno flick he had watched the night before.

  The money he had taken from the bastard who wanted to fuck his sister.

  He had taken the money and stashed it, planning to buy coke with it. He had planned to use blood money to get high while his sister was raped. He hadn’t planned to actually rape her, but when she walked out of her room in just a T- shirt, he figured the slut was just as good as any other, blood or no.

  She rose, the buzzing in her ears and the swirling sensation in her head making her feel drunk.

  Declan was nowhere to be seen, but she could hear him, soft shushing noises while he calmed the distraught teen. Running water, a murmured apology before the girl gasped. Cleaning her wounds, Tori imagined, while she searched the yard.

  Eli had the other man, the one who had been beating the girl when they arrived. He dropped his limp body to the ground when he felt Tori’s eyes on him. Her eyes landed on the feebly moving man, a question forming in her mind. But her thought processes felt so damned slow, Tori felt like she was trying to see her way through mud, putting together a question in her fogged mind.

  Eli smiled, a tiny bit of blood at the corner of his mouth, but otherwise he looked as if he had just risen from the chair he had been sprawling in earlier. His golden eyes were glowing, though, with an unholy, feral light. “I do not need to drain a person any more. It is something that comes in time.”

  “He doesn’t deserve to live,” she whispered, her tongue feeling thick and awkward. Pressing a palm to her brow, she asked, “Why do I feel so strange?”

  “You’ve been starving, and suddenly, you gorged yourself,” Eli said with a shrug, stepping over the inert body at his feet as if it were a pile of dog shit. “Your body has started to accustom itself and now it is suddenly full and satisfied. You are satisfied, are you not?”

  Her lids drooped and she pressed a hand to her belly, which felt warm and golden. “Yes,” she drawled. “Hmm, yes.”

  She was aware that Declan had moved through the house and left the girl resting on the couch. How he had gotten her to sleep, Tori couldn’t fathom, but she could hear the soft gentle snores coming from the couch.

  “She sleeps,” Declan said needlessly, moving to stare out at the yard. He turned his eyes to study Tori. “You have his blood on your mouth, Tori.”

  She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth and studied the red smear it came away with. Now that her belly was full, and that man was dead, the blood smelled and looked distasteful and she wiped it away with her shirt sleeve. She cast the corpse an evil look and echoed Declan’s words.

  “Some people deserve death.”

  Eli took the girl.

  One moment he was by her side, lifting her up and then Tori felt a cool rush of air whip by her and he was gone.

  “What—”

  “He’ll be finding someone to look after her,” Declan promised. “And since he left so suddenly, we will have to do some housecleaning.”

  “Housecleaning?”

  He flicked a glance to the corpse in the yard and then the man who lay unconscious a little further out. “Can’t go leaving them to lie about in the sun all day, now can we? Pesky cops and their infernal questions,” he said with a grin.

  “And who better than to erase the evidence?” she mocked lightly, looping an arm with his.

  “Not erasing. Rearranging,” he corrected. “Too clean and it’ll look even more suspicious. Eli has hit this type before. The man you took had a record a mile long, I imagine. And I smell drugs. Cocaine, methadone, marijuana. I figure a little sleight of hand, so to speak, and this will look like a drug deal gone wrong.”

  When she asked exactly what kind of sleighting he was talking of, he flashed a toothy smile. “Darlin’ girl, I’m not certain you’ve the stomach for what I am planning.”

  “I just killed a man in cold blood,” she reminded him.r />
  “That was heat, sweet. Not cold. Fueled by anger and hunger. Not necessity or planning.” And with that, he left her standing on the porch. She watched as he used a kerchief from his back pocket to wrap around his hand as he rummaged through the dead man’s clothes. Moments later, he pulled out a butterfly knife with a wicked six inch blade.

  Tori was fast. But not fast enough.

  By the time she had leaped across the porch and reached Declan’s side, he had slashed the neat puncture wounds on the wounded man’s neck and widened it. Drastically.

  She knew what a killing neck wound looked like. She had seen several, well, three to be exact.

  Apparently Declan knew as well.

  Because he had recreated one, taken two neat puncture holes and ripped them wide, ripping the throat open until blood gushed out. It looked like Eli hadn’t taken much blood at all, because it splattered out in a fountain of deep red, forceful and pulsing. It would have been a weaker flow if he had been low on blood.

  Tori instinctively stepped away as the blood flowed, eyeing Declan apprehensively.

  Declan hurled the knife away, watching where it fell with satisfaction before he stood and faced Tori. “He paid her brother money so he could rape her. Rape, Tori. They both knew it was rape.” He surveyed the bloody mess at his feet before he leaped out of it, crossing a distance of ten feet with one bound, leaving the blood pattern undisturbed. “And neither of them cared. He was a monster, and we both know it. If he had lived, he would have walked away from this. Well, after spending a few days in the hospital and getting some O positive. Would you have wanted it that way?”

  Reluctantly, she shook her head. “You’re a cop, Declan,” she said, her voice rusty with shock.

  “Second. A cop second. I’m a Hunter first. That’s one of the things we’ll be talking about. Eli and I are both Hunters. Hunters of those who can prey on the weak, human or…not. Being a cop lets me do things the legal way, but they don’t always stay put away, Tori,” he said. “Their deaths, while definitely vigilantism, are final.”