by Opal Carew
Then her thoughts shifted to her uncle’s house. What if she couldn’t get into the house before someone found out she had left? Perspiration trickled down her forehead. Danai. She couldn’t be found out either.
Turning the ignition on, she shuddered as it seemed the whole world would hear the start of the vehicle’s engine. Then she rolled out of the parking area and once she was on the road, sped off, her thoughts shifting from being hopeful that Adonis could handle Piaras sufficiently, to concern about Danai’s plight.
Rachael couldn’t help feeling sorry for the woman, who had no choice but to live the life as a huntress turned. If she could, Rachael would show her the kindness and friendship the woman deserved. She couldn’t even imagine not having another woman to share confidences with. Although come to think of it, Rachael couldn’t with Mary or Trish about the mess she’d become involved in of late either.
Rachael tore down the road, intent on arriving before anything bad could happen to Danai. The poor woman had already been to hell and back. Rachael had to ensure nothing else bad happened to her now.
But when a man stepped into the path of her car in the distance, his action forced her to slow down. Not a drunk, or a nut case.
A cool breeze flipped his long black hair across his face, the full sleeves of his silky ebony shirt billowing, his hands spread out as if he was welcoming her embrace. And then he smiled, his canines fully extended, his smile malicious, deadly.
Piaras.
Chapter 10
Adonis explored around the buildings for a few minutes, delaying the inevitable, giving Rachael a chance to get far enough away before Piaras left the warehouse.
When he didn’t think he could prolong the unavoidable any longer, he returned to the warehouse, thankful that Piaras couldn’t read his thoughts. Why in the world had Piaras decided to come here of all places and at this time of night? Adonis’s gut tightened when he thought Piaras might have grabbed Rachael so easily, but a guarded relief washed over him to know she was safely away.
When he saw no sign of Piaras down below, he quickly ensured the dogs were still sleeping, then returned to the walkway up above. Piaras stood with his arms folded, staring at the bodies of his blood-bonded relations, his expression dark. His long black hair hung loosely about his narrow shoulders, and Adonis wondered if Piaras had left his estate in a hurry as untidy as he looked. Had Sirces or Julia warned him about the huntress? What had made him come here, tonight of all nights?
Knowing Rachael could have so easily fallen into Piaras’s grasp, Adonis still couldn’t shake loose of the chill pervading his soul. When he’d seen the devil vampire himself loitering outside the building, checking out Adonis’s Suburban, he’d gone out to greet him, to stall for time, worried sick that Rachael might die at the fangs of the vampires without his help. Yet he could do nothing for her, not with Piaras here also. Nothing had gone as planned... except that she’d managed to kill the vampires and escaped relatively unscathed.
But she’d had a struggle, and been bitten, which indicated she wasn’t ready to take Piaras on yet. The smell of her blood stirred his bloodlust even now. She was just too vulnerable, but somehow he had to help her learn to take down another ancient, quickly.
Piaras crouched and touched Julia’s wizened chest, his ebony eyes studying her more closely. “The hunter was an amateur.” He motioned to the stab wounds. “Look at the number of times he had to strike Julia to kill her.” He glanced back at Sirces. “He must have caught Sirces unaware somehow.”
Adonis considered the dead vampires, his gut clenching with dread that Rachael had struggled so with Julia. He’d never have left Rachael alone to fend for herself if it weren’t for the fact he’d been distracted in another part of the warehouse, investigating what he thought was Julia and Sirces’s arrival. But seeing Piaras through the window had caused him even more concern. When Julia and Sirces arrived, they must have sensed Rachael nearby and had targeted her first instead of the dogs.
Piaras rubbed his pointed chin. “And yet if the hunter had just reached adulthood, why in the world did others not come with him to ensure he wasn’t overwhelmed with his mission?” He shook his head. “And how did he know about our people being here in the first place?”
He glared at Adonis. Tall and thin, Piaras didn’t appear to have the strength Adonis knew he could wield with that lethal body.
Piaras rose and met Adonis eye to eye. “I thought Sirces could handle this job. Julia was to ensure he took care of the dogs sufficiently.” He narrowed his eyes. “What were you doing here, by the way?”
“I didn’t know you’d be here. I wanted to make sure they handled the job all right. Julia doesn’t... didn’t like dogs at all. And Sirces seemed nervous about the job.”
Piaras stared at him and Adonis knew he attempted to find out the truth through a mind probe. Adonis could feel the gentle nudging at his temple, but wouldn’t let Piaras see into his thoughts.
Piaras finally nodded. “Apparently, they couldn’t handle the job. You saw no sign of the hunter?” The incredulous tone of his voice made Adonis wonder if Piaras thought maybe Adonis had seen the hunter and let him escape.
“No, he must have had some other way out of the building.” Adonis wasn’t afraid of Piaras. Lying to the vampire had become a way of business, but he was certain Piaras didn’t entirely trust him.
Adonis still wondered if there was some other reason Piaras had arrived so unexpectedly, but he couldn’t think of a way to ask without arousing suspicion.
“The hunters are conducting a raid on one of my homes as we speak. Did you know?”
“I’m not privy to hunter plans as I’m sure you are well aware,” Adonis said, his tone sarcastic.
“Yes, well, they’ll find plenty of vampires to kill, newly turned just for them. And none that were of any consequence to me.” Piaras looked down at the vampires’ decimated bodies. “But Sirces and Julia were different. Special.” He faced Adonis. “Bring Rachael to me by week’s end. I’ll wait no longer than that.”
Adonis bowed slightly, hating to even pretend to acquiesce to Piaras’s commands.
“And turn the dogs.”
Then Piaras vanished.
Adonis returned to the first floor and walked over to the sleeping guard dogs. Piaras wanted the dogs turned so when the workers arrived at the warehouse to their jobs the next morning, they’d rip the employees to shreds. That’s how Piaras worked. Then he’d use human hosts to confiscate any merchandise he wanted. He could have taken the merchandise tonight, while the dogs slept, but it wasn’t his way.
The police had listed Piaras amongst the top vampires they’d pay premium bounties to have terminated because of the terror hold they had on the city. But Adonis would kill Piaras for nothing, if he only could.
Adonis woke the dogs. The dogs suddenly scrambled to their feet, growling fiercely. When the human hosts arrived at the warehouse ready to steal the next morning and found the employees alive and well, how would he explain his actions to Piaras? Piaras would learn he should never have turned a hunter and his huntress sister.
Time to check on Rachael and his sister and make the next of their plans and hope to hell there weren’t any foul ups the next time.
***
As soon as Piaras realized that Rachael had no intention of pulling the Suburban over for a chat and would have run him right over with the vehicle that had to have weighed a ton, he bowed with an extravagant flourish, then vanished. Was Adonis already back at her uncle’s house? Or still at the warehouse?
Still shaken from the encounter with Piaras, and now that the adrenaline in her veins was fading away, her shoulder burned where the vamp had bitten her as if it was on fire. She gritted her teeth and tried to ignore the pain, hoping Adonis was safe wherever he was at the moment, and that she wasn’t missed or that Danai was found out.
When Rachael arrived at Uncle Tobias’s house, two of the five hunter vehicles were now parked in the driveway again at her
uncle’s home. Hell. They would know then that the Suburban had been gone.
She took a steadying breath and climbed out of the car. Had anyone checked on her to see if she was all right? Found Danai but no Rachael in the room?
She shut the vehicle door as quietly as she could. Her hand clasped tightly over her wound, she headed for her bedroom window and looked up. Closed, probably locked, and no way to get inside, unless she knocked on the front door.
Not an option. Not with her shirt torn and bloody, her lip bleeding and swollen, and the fact she was outside of the house…not easily explained. Any more lies would get her another dose of that truth serum, she bet.
Rachael searched on the ground for a pebble to throw at the glass to get Danai’s attention, if she was even there still. Voices spoken in the dark on the eastern side of the house caught her ear. She paused, then crouched in amongst the boxwood, thankful they were soft leafed, not prickly like the holly on the back side of the house. Her skin crawled as the men grew closer, the pain in her shoulder shrieking through her nerves.
“Tobias said it was as if Piaras knew we were coming. Not one of the vampires was difficult to kill. Our own teens could have easily done the job,” Brent growled.
She tightened her grip on her bloody shoulder, a shiver of anxiety trickling down her spine. They’d been misled. Her family had never miscalculated an attack before. She attempted to quash the concern that Piaras and his bloodsuckers would get the best of her family.
“So what happened? I thought Michael had it on good authority that Piaras would be there tonight,” Brent’s brother, Curt, replied.
“Don’t know. It was like we’d been set up. Either Piaras went somewhere else to strike at humans or perhaps at our hunters who were on other jobs tonight, or he stayed home. Now that we’ve brought Rachael to Tobias’s house for safekeeping, we assume Piaras will attempt to push us to our limit until we’re exhausted. Then he’ll get her when our guard is down.”
Great. And he’d inflict more damage on her own people, too. She just had to get to him soon. Killing the two human vampires hadn’t been too difficult. Plus, she didn’t feel she had the time to waste in practicing on terminating any more. Besides, she had killed two ancients. She had to go after Piaras.
“That’s what I was thinking,” Curt said.
“We can’t let it happen. Tobias has never gotten over her parent’s death. He thinks if he hadn’t had them over for dinner that night, they might not have died.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“You know how he is. He’s taken it pretty personally.”
Disheartened that Uncle Tobias would feel responsible for her parents’ deaths, Rachael wished she could reassure him that it wasn’t his fault.
The window to her bedroom slid open. She ducked deeper into the shadows of the evergreen shrubs landscaping the front of the house, her heart thundering wildly. She glanced up at the window.
A hand touched her shoulder, but just as quickly, another clamped over her mouth to suppress her scream.
“Shhh,” Danai cautioned. She slipped her arm around Rachael’s waist and lifted her to the windowsill.
After Danai helped her inside, she gave her a half-hearted smile... the same kind of look she had given when Michael was with her, pursuing her as a male would who was interested in mating her. Sad and distant. But then she lifted her nose a little, her eyes focused on Rachael’s shoulder. Her gaze shifted quickly to Rachael’s, and Rachael knew the look. That Rachael couldn’t manage Piaras. That they were all doomed.
“I must leave,” Danai whispered. “Do you have some bandaging I can use on your wound? And your lip. You’ll need some ice.”
“Downstairs in the clinic the doctor uses for patching up hunters, but I couldn’t go there now. I’d be seen.”
“Do you have anything else?”
“Nothing but tissues I can wad up to use to stop the bleeding. But all the bandaging is either in the clinic or in the bathroom.”
“No one checked on you while you were away, thank heavens.” Danai folded a bunch of tissues and applied it with pressure on the bite mark. “It’s not too deep, penetrated cleanly, and should heal quickly.” Her touch was firm but gentle. “Some of the men returned, and the women, of course, wished to hear all of what happened. So they’ve been preoccupied. Your uncle hasn’t returned yet with Michael or your other cousins. But I think it’s best for me to leave and not remain here.”
Rachael was half worried that Danai would be found out or that Michael would grow too attached to her so she was relieved in part Danai wished to go. On the other hand, Michael would be upset Danai had left without word, and Rachael figured he’d question her mercilessly so he could locate Danai again.
“Did anyone say anything about your SUV being gone when we took it, Danai?”
“No one said a word about it. I listened from the top of the stairs. I think the men were so mad about the hunt tonight, their minds focused on that.”
Rachael took a deep breath. She’d been self-centered not to have understood how important her family felt she was to have tried to go after Piaras tonight to keep her safe and how angry they were that they’d failed. But then again, hunters rarely showed their feelings and how could she have known that’s what it was all about and not just some arrogant hunter pride?
Rachael squeezed Danai’s hand before she left. “What did you say to my family to get them to let you in?”
“I said we met in town, grocery shopping one day. We compared hunter daggers.” Danai showed hers to Rachael. Rachael touched the silkiness of the handle. “Pearl handle with gold trim. My father was the head of a family, too.” A smidgen of a smile returned to Danai’s lips as though the memory was precious to her. “The fact that my father served as the head of a hunter family seemed to impress your uncle.”
Rachael quickly snapped her gaping jaw shut. First, Danai didn’t have the superior attitude that some huntresses did whose fathers were the head of the League in their area. So she’d had no inkling that Danai’s father was the head of a family. Most hunter families had a real pecking order. Uncle Tobias’s sons’ positions were definitely elevated based on their close relationship to him. The same with Uncle Tobias’s brothers and the rest of Rachael’s cousins.
Although, Rachael had never told Danai or her brother that Uncle Tobias was the head of the family here either. She’d never put much stock in one’s place in hunter society. Who anyone was related to didn’t make any difference to her. But how could Danai and her family get into such a mess when their father had been the leader back home?
“I told him you and I had some things in common, like being the same age, and not wanting to settle down right away. I said my father tried to force me to marry a hunter that I despised, and I left. Once I arrived here, I never tried to hook up with a hunter family, because I didn’t hunt any longer. Breaking protocol with my own family would make me an outcast and unacceptable anyway in most hunter circles.”
“Did your father really try to force you to marry a hunter you didn’t care for?”
“Oh yes. I knew he only wanted to marry me because of my father’s position. He was professing he loved me all the while he was seeing someone else behind my back. From what I could gather, he intended to continue to see her after we were married. My father didn’t believe the hunter was capable of such a deception. I knew better. But I…well, I truly didn’t leave Florida for the reason I told your uncle however. When our younger sister took off after her best friend, my family followed, to locate both women and protect them. But of course, nothing went as planned.”
No, and if they had succeeded in returning the women unharmed, would Rachael have ever met Danai and her brother? Probably not. They would have left for Florida and never have crossed paths. “Do…do you still want to hunt?”
Her expression sad and distant, Danai shook her head.
But Rachael wondered if she was telling the truth. Maybe after the change, she couldn
’t deal with it, not alone. On the other hand, what if they could hunt together? Possibly she could help Danai be more of herself again, if she liked to hunt. Or perhaps it was only wishful thinking. Even so, Rachael would love to have a friend like Danai to hunt with, if she was receptive. “Maybe…maybe we could hunt together?”
A flicker of interest crossed Danai’s face, but she quickly banked the look.
Still, if Danai was willing, the two of them hunting as a team might even be more effective. If they practiced together, they could probably perfect their skills and be as formidable as some of the males. She sighed. Maybe in the future, if they had a future. “Uncle Tobias believed everything you told him?”
“Yes. He said he was glad you had made a new huntress friend.” Danai sighed deeply. “Unfortunately, Michael was at once intrigued with me. I understand he was a renegade hunter. He sees me as a rogue also, unattached and totally available. And I believe your uncle approves if we begin…seeing each other socially.” She looked up at Rachael. “He wants me. His actions to impress me and show any others to stay away who might make the effort to pursue me were clear. I can’t ever see him again.”
Rachael wrapped her arms around Danai and gave her a warm embrace. “I would love to have you as a sister, if you’d let me.”
To Rachael’s surprise and distress, Danai sniffled.
“I’m sorry, Danai, I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Danai’s expression changed swiftly to foreboding. “I wanted more than anything to have the life you have if the recent past could be changed in a flash. Marry a hunter and have children. Live your life fully with your huntress family. Give up this notion of avenging your parents’ deaths. And give up all thoughts of Adonis. He will lead you both to your deaths.”
Goosebumps trailed Rachael’s arms. Piaras had to die both to avenge her parents’ deaths and to free herself from him forever. She had no choice. And as for her feelings for Adonis, forgetting him was not an alternative either.