Barbie- The Vampire Hunter Boxset

by Lucinda Dark

  I covered my mouth with my hand. The meaning behind Torin’s existence was one soaked in blood and horror. Death and suffering. His mother hadn’t simply given more than her life, she’d given her very existence to create him. It was a wonder what a mother would do for her child.

  And his father … Arrius Priest. He lived on even after convincing several women to make such a sacrifice. It wasn’t right.

  Torin lifted his head once more and this time, when he met my gaze, I didn’t look away. His lips parted, his voice croaking through a throat that sounded as though it’d been put through a shredder. “I want to kill him,” he confessed, the words ringing in my ears with a certain definitiveness. “I’m willing to help you, Barbie, but not at the risk to your life. Or Maverick’s. There’s been too much done already. He’s killed too many to be redeemable.”

  “What makes him so powerful?” Maverick’s question echoed between us, but my gaze remained centered on Torin’s.

  “He’s nearly impossible to predict,” Torin answered. “Everything he does has some sort of meaning. Every step he makes is carefully planned. Even me—his creation of me means something, I know that, but I don’t know what.”

  I couldn’t imagine what that must have felt like. Perhaps like being swept along into a vast ocean. You knew there were sharks, but you could never be certain if they were near or far.

  “I’m truly sorry, Barbie,” Torin said, interrupting my thoughts. “I swear to you, I will help you, but I knew that once you knew, you wouldn’t want to stand still. You wouldn’t be content to sit back and wait, and taking someone like my father down will require precision and careful planning.”

  I nodded. The anger, the rush of wrath that was directed at him seemed to disperse, leaving my limbs feeling loose with languorous energy. At the same time, though, a determined weight settled on my shoulders. Arrius Priest would die and we would be the ones to kill him. A son against his father, forbidden existence and all.

  “How?” I asked.

  The whole room felt smaller as Torin dropped his hands and rose to his feet. As one, Maverick and I did too. “He’s summoned me to Italy,” Torin said.

  My lips parted. “The school trip,” I whispered.

  He nodded. “He knows about Esperanza and I’m pretty sure he knows about you and Maverick.” Torin’s gaze slid to the side.

  “What does that mean for me?” Mav asked, meeting his stare head on.

  “I’m not sure,” Torin answered. “But it can’t be anything good.”

  “Well, if you’re thinking about asking me to stay behind, you can go fuck yourself,” Maverick said with a scowl.

  “Of course you’d say that,” Torin deadpanned. “It would be far too simple and easy if you wanted to live.”

  “The fuck is that supposed to mean, asshole?” Maverick stepped forward, but I put a staying hand on his chest.

  “Torin’s right,” I said. “You’re human, Mav. You wouldn’t stand a chance against someone like Arrius Priest. You can’t come with us.”

  Warm fingers wrapped around my wrist, Maverick glared down at me, slowly lifting my arm up and out until he was pulling me into his chest. With a frown, I let him. His other hand came up and wrapped around the back of my neck as he leaned close. My spine locked up as he moved closer and for the briefest of moments, I thought he’d kiss me again. In front of Torin. But instead, he merely dropped his lips down to graze my earlobe—sending a shiver cascading down my spine—as he spoke in a low, dangerous voice. “I think you’ll find, Princess,” he whispered as his face neared mine. “I can do whatever the fuck I want when I put my fucking mind to it.” The synapses in my body revolted as he pulled his face away again and dropped my hand. Maverick lifted his head. “I’m going.”

  I turned, putting some distance between the two of us even as I swallowed around an unexpectedly dry throat. “Take him,” Esperanza said before either Torin or I could say anything else. All of us turned to the old woman. She stared back at us through her unseeing eyes.

  “Esperanza?” Torin frowned as the woman lifted her cane and brought it back down with a resounding crack against the hardwood floor.

  “You will need him,” she said. “If your friend doesn’t go, I see a loss neither of you can come back from. Heed my warning, children. It is either the three of you or none at all.”

  Satrina? For the first time, I sought my demon’s advice. What do you think?

  I think the witch sees things you cannot, she answered. If she believes you should take the human, I would take him.

  “Okay,” I said with a weary sigh.

  “No.” Torin shook his head.

  “Yes,” I replied as I turned away. I strode around them towards the entrance to the living room and paused to look over my shoulder. “He’s coming,” I said.

  “Barbie, he could very well die,” Torin argued.

  Maverick clenched his fists and growled low in his throat just before his lips parted as if he would say something. I intervened before he could. “We all could,” I countered sharply. “Any one of us could die at any moment. Our lives are no reason to ignore Esperanza’s advice. My demon agrees. Maverick goes. I guess it’ll be up to us to make sure we come back alive.”

  With that, I turned and left the room, feeling the resounding echo of my footsteps down the hallway like the slow thump of a dying heartbeat. What a fool I’d been.

  Chapter 33

  Barbie

  In the weeks following the night at Esperanza’s something had slithered its way between the three of us. It hovered on the fringes of our relationship, not yet inside—an enigmatic feeling that waited patiently as if it were only a matter of time before we would come to recognize it for what it was. Change. For the most part, Torin and Maverick were back to normal, but we hadn’t talked further about what had happened. It rankled. They appeared normal, and it consumed my waking—and sometimes sleeping—thoughts.

  I grumbled and rolled over in bed, punching my pillow with a grunt of frustration as the clock on my nightstand clicked past 2 a.m. It wasn’t a school night, but I hadn’t been able to fall asleep until late like this for days. There was nothing in the room to give me the passage of time—the minutes I spent turning from my back to my front, staring at the ceiling. No old clock ticking—since my electronic clock made no noise. No whistling of wind outside my bedroom window. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

  Leveraging up on my elbows, I took another look at the clock. Great... A whole five minutes had passed and somehow the endless silence made it feel like I’d been laying there for another three hours. With nothing else to distract me, I got out of bed and ambled through the room, pulling on a pair of sweats over my underwear before sneaking into the hallway.

  I passed the workout room, pausing briefly to look inside, but unlike the last time I’d gotten up in the middle of the night, it was empty. It was probably for the best that he wasn’t there. Early morning darkness always felt like a vulnerable time to me. Perhaps that was why vampires preferred the dark—other than the serious aversion to burning to a crisp in the sunlight that is. With Torin around so much, I sometimes forgot that other vampires weren’t like him.

  My feet touched the floor at the end of the staircase and I froze as a small sound echoed down the hall to the left. I peeked around the railing, cursing myself for not bringing a weapon along. Then again, as I inched down the hall towards the sound emanating from the kitchen on silent feet, if it was Beth or Jon, I’d have a hard time explaining a sword to their throat.

  The hiss of something followed by a quiet, but familiar, masculine curse gave me relief. Pushing through the doorway of the kitchen, I paused and rested against the door’s frame. Maverick still hadn’t noticed me as he removed the tea kettle from the back burner on the stove and shook his hand as if he’d burned himself. He flexed and stretched one arm as he moved to the cabinets, reaching up and retrieving a mug and a blue can.

  “Hot chocolate?” I piped up. “I didn’t peg yo
u for the type.”

  He jumped, slicing me a glare before reaching up and retrieving a second mug. “How long have you been standing there?” he asked.

  “Not long,” I replied, coming fully into the kitchen and taking a seat at the island.

  “Do you want one?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “I’d rather have coffee.”

  “If you can’t sleep, coffee isn’t going to help.”

  “No, probably not, but I like the taste better.”

  He didn’t reply as he bustled around the room, scooping cocoa mix into the mugs, moving back to the tea kettle and pouring hot water over the mixture, and mixing it with a spoon. Maverick put everything back and then brought me a mug, setting it down before me as he sipped his drink. It wasn’t even that cold outside anymore, but there was something to be said for drinking hot chocolate in the quiet of early morning.

  By this time next week, we’d be in Rome, Italy. At least there I’d get some damn coffee any time I wanted. I chuckled at the thought.

  “What?” Maverick set his mug down on the counter.

  I shook my head, sipping my drink. “It’s nothing.” His muscles bunched beneath his white cotton shirt, flexing as he sighed and reached for his cup again, lifting it and downing the contents in one swift swallow. Easy to do now that the heat had cooled considerably. I tracked him as he moved to the kitchen sink, landing particularly low on his back where his shirt rode up to reveal a glorious view of the twin dimples above his ass as he bent beneath the sink to get a new sponge. My mouth watered. I clamped my lips shut, turning my reddening face away as he finished up and moved back to the island.

  “So, what brought you down here so early?” he asked.

  “I could ask the same of you,” I shot back.

  He sighed. “Always so defensive,” he chastised.

  With him? Always. Though I couldn’t say why. I shrugged and continued sipping. When my mug was empty, he took it from me and set it in the sink. “Thanks,” I offered lamely as I got off the stool. Maverick reached out and grasped my wrist, stopping me from leaving. I looked down at where he touched me and then back up into his burning sunset gaze.

  “Just gonna run off then?” he asked.

  “Um … well, I was going to go back to bed.”

  “You and I both know you’re not going to get any sleep,” he said.

  Irritation skittered down my spine. I tugged at my wrist, but instead of releasing it, Maverick used his hold on me to draw me closer against his chest. He turned so that my back was placed against the lip of the counter and I had to crane my neck back to keep my eyes locked with his.

  “Not with you holding me hostage, I’m not.” The corner of his lips quirked at my words. Sweat began to bead at the base of my spine and I swallowed around a dry throat. Lashes lowering over my eyes, I broke his gaze and fixed my attention on where his fingers gripped my wrist. Against him, I was pale. Small. His fingers overlapped around my limb, reminding me just how much bigger he was. A wall of muscle against my chest.

  “How else am I supposed to get you to talk to me?” he whispered, leaning down as his other hand edged closer to my waist, his hand clasping the counter as he bent towards me.

  “Talk to you? A-about what?” I asked, coughing as I tried to force nonchalance in my tone. It was hard when every nerve ending was firing off at his nearness. Flashes of us naked and twined around each other assaulted me, stealing the air from my lungs.

  “What happened,” he said, the warmth of his breath against my cheek and then my neck as he moved lower. “Between you and me. I’m tired of acting like it didn’t happen.”

  “It wasn’t—I mean, it didn’t mean anything. You were there. I needed help. You provided. We don’t have to—”

  “What?” Maverick’s head shot up as his hand left the counter and gripped my chin, tilting my skull back. He glared down at me. “You wanted to act like nothing happened, then? Why would you want to do that? You liked it.”

  His lips were barely a few inches away. They consumed my entire vision. Of course, I knew we were still in the kitchen, but for a brief moment the rest of the room disappeared and all that was left was him and me. “This…” I panted, dragging oxygen into my lungs like it was going out of style—or I’d run out. “This can’t happen, Maverick.”

  “What can’t happen, Barbie?” His fingers released my wrist, wrapping around my back and dragging me even closer.

  Why the fuck did he have to make this so hard? “You and … me,” I clarified. “We—this—it can’t happen.”

  “Because of Torin?”

  I shook my head. Torin was another matter and he certainly didn’t make things easy, but it was for more than that. I jerked my chin out of his hold and licked my lips, trying to restore some semblance of control.

  “It’s just you and me in here, Princess.” Maverick’s words slid over my skin, causing pinpricks of awareness to assault me. “What are you going to do about it? Are you going to run away again, like you always do? Or are you going to stay and give me a real answer?”

  For a moment, I couldn’t find the words to respond. They were locked inside my throat, unable to break free. “Why?” The question was hoarse as it escaped. “Why do you even like me?” I asked. “For all intents and purposes, I used you, Mav. I’m a complete and utter bitch to you. I’m the reason you can’t really live a normal life anymore. You should hate me.”

  He moved closer until the heat of him felt like it would burn right through our clothes. “If that’s what you consider using me, Barbie,” he whispered back as he found the skin beneath my pajama top and moved over it, distracting my wayward thoughts. “Then I hope you have a reason to use me like that again and again.”

  I shook my head. “I’m being serious, Mav—”

  “So am I,” he snapped, interrupting me with a growl. I glanced up, frowning. “I’ve never been more serious in my fucking life,” he said. “So tell me what I have to do to get you to see me.”

  “I do see you—”

  “Not like him you don’t.”

  “Like … Torin?” My heart pounded against my ribcage, fighting to get out—racing like a scared rabbit.

  He closed his eyes. “You look at him like—fuck—” He broke off, dipping his head as he hissed out a breath between clenched teeth. “I just want you to look at me like you want me.”

  “You think I don’t want you?” I blinked. We’d had sex. How could he say that? Unconsciously, my arm lifted, my fingers grazing his side. His whole body jerked at the touch and then relaxed as if the mere brush of my fingers was the key to his salvation. He rested his forehead against my collarbone as I touched him more, letting my fingers drift up and over his shoulder until I had wrapped my arm around him. So trusting.

  “I do want you,” I whispered the confession. “I trust you, Mav. You were quite possibly the first one I trusted. Don’t think you’re less than. Please.”

  “I want you to need me,” he said, his words muffled against my shirt.

  “I don’t want to need you,” I countered. “I want you to be happy, I want you to stay away from me. I want you to live a normal life. I want to take back all of your knowledge of vampires and murder and give you a life I always wished I’d had.”

  Silence coiled around us, light and easy. Slowly, Maverick lifted his head. When his gaze found mine, he dipped down until our mouths brushed. “I don’t regret anything,” he whispered against my mouth. The kiss left me trembling, yearning—needy as he wanted me to be. I closed my eyes and sank into the feel of his tongue against mine. My lips parted and I pushed up into his embrace, wrapping my other arm around him until I was plastered against his chest. His hands moved to my thighs, gripping them and lifting me up until I was seated on the counter. He pushed against me, the length of him hard in his pants and even harder against my core.

  “I’m done,” he breathed against me, his mouth finding my throat. “I’ve never begged for anything in my fucking life, but I�
��ll do it if you need me too.”

  I didn’t want him to beg, but at the same time, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted. There was something about Maverick McKnight that made me feel far more alive and far less lost than I had been before him. It was dangerous. He was dangerous. If I let him, he could convince me to let go of all of my vengeance and I wasn’t ready to do that.

  I pulled away first, pushing him back lightly. “Ask me again after I kill Torin’s father,” I said. “I’ll have an answer then.”

  Maverick let me down from the counter, but I could still feel his gaze following me as I left the kitchen and went back to my bedroom. When I crawled back into bed, I almost wished I could’ve brought him with me and that only served to prove that I’d made the right choice. I’d get justice for my family and then … maybe I could have something for myself. I thought of Torin as I curled around my pillow. Maybe I could have a few somethings for myself.

  Chapter 34

  Maverick

  Cold, recycled air smacked me in the face as I moved along the tiny ass aisle of the airplane. The seats, each squished together as close as fucking possible, were filling up fast. Ahead of me, Barbie's blonde head bobbed up and down as she wove in and out of people filling the aisle. Unfortunately, with my bulk, I couldn't do the same. I scowled as a man stopped in front of me and jammed his luggage up into the overhead compartment.

  Once he was done and had taken his seat, Barbie had already reached our seats. I followed after, scowling down at anyone who even looked like they wanted to get up and start moving around the cabin. We had another eight to thirteen hours in this fucking rattling deathtrap, and we hadn't even taken off yet. I was going to lose my shit.

  An aggravated presence beneath my skin began to move through me, irritation and discomfort tightening my muscles. I paused by Barbie and waited for her to move over so that I could slide into my seat by the window. I settled in and closed my eyes as the rest of the travelers found their seats and proceeded to get ready for the long, overnight trip to Rome.