by L. E. Wilson
Someone’s phone vibrated, and they all turned to look at Shea, cautiously hopeful. The Hunters were all here in this room, who else would be calling her but Dante? And she was his favorite, after all. If he reached out to anyone other than Luukas, it would be her.
Glancing briefly down at her cell, she refused the call. “Wrong number,” she told them when she looked up again.
Luukas noticed that she wouldn’t quite look at him as she shoved her phone back into the pocket of her jeans. Instead, her green eyes touched on him only briefly and then skittered away. An unusual behavior for his only female Hunter, and one that did not go unnoticed.
Before he could question her, however, Christian broke the silence. “So, what’s the next move? Do we concentrate on the search for Dante? Or on trying to figure out what’s going on with Leeha’s monsters?” As an afterthought he added, “And what about Cedric and his bunch? I bet the wolves would help us. Has anyone asked them?”
“Our werewolf buddies have their own problems to worry about at the moment,” Nik said. “So it’s just us for this one. As Luukas mentioned when we all came in for this meeting, we already have some of our people in Dalian, ones that knew his vampires before Leeha possessed them,” he clarified. “We sent them over right after Aiden and Grace came home. They’ll keep us updated on anything they find out.”
“Okay,” Christian said. “Anyone have any idea what it is they’re looking for?”
“I think I might,” a female voice said from the doorway.
“She’ashil.” Christian jumped up from his chair to greet his mate. Taking Ryan’s face in his hands, he kissed her until Nik rolled his eyes, leaned his chair backwards, and smacked him on the ass.
Luukas waited patiently for Christian to release her before he spoke. He understood the need a male had for his mate. “Come in, Ryan. Please sit down.” He indicated Christian’s vacated chair. With a nervous glance over her shoulder at the empty apartment, she did as he asked, arranging her navy and white tie-dye dress neatly around her legs. Christian took a place standing behind her. He moved her long red hair out of the way and put his hands on her bare shoulders.
Shea made a sound of disgust, but quickly tried to mask it as a cough at a look from Luukas.
“Don’t be jealous, love,” Aiden teased her.
“I’m not jealous,” Shea responded in a sugar-sweet voice. “I just don’t like her.”
“Enough,” Luukas told them sternly. At times, he felt like he was the teacher leading a class full of hormonal teenagers. Turning to Ryan, he asked, “What is it that you think they’re looking for?”
She took a shaky breath, her hands twisting nervously in her lap. Christian bent down and whispered something in her ear. Something they all heard, of course, because they were vampires and had excellent hearing.
“She’ashil, if you think you know something, you need to tell Luukas.”
Ryan nodded. Looking straight at Luukas, she said, “I overheard the other girls say something about a box.”
“You interrupted this meeting to tell us about a box?” Shea’s snide voice interjected.
“Shea! ENOUGH,” Luukas ordered.
“Sorry,” she told him. With a sarcastic flip of her hand, she indicated for Ryan to continue.
Ryan narrowed her eyes at the other female, but otherwise continued speaking as if she hadn’t been interrupted. “Grace apparently has a box that she brought with her from China, and I heard the other girls arguing over whether or not to tell you about it.”
Aiden smacked himself on the forehead. “Bloody hell! I completely forgot about the box!” He looked over at Nik. “Remember, mate? The box I told you about? It has an etching of a dagoba in the bottom of it. Grace took it with the bag that Mojo was in. It’s how we met.” He grinned broadly.
“What about the etching in the box?” Luukas asked. “What is it there for?” He directed his question at Ryan, as she seemed to be the only one there able to speak sensibly.
“They were saying something about a clue, but they didn’t know for what. Just that the demons and the humans were both after it, and that’s why they were chasing Grace when she took it.” She shrugged.
“So we are now at risk because we are in possession of that item,” Luukas mused, mostly to himself.
Ryan shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. I think Keira put some kind of protective ward around it.”
Nik spun around in his chair to face her. “How is it that you know so much about this, and I don’t?”
“Because I’m better at eavesdropping than you are?” she guessed.
“Where are the witches?” Luukas gritted out.
“Emma and Grace are downstairs playing with Mojo. I don’t know where Keira is,” Ryan told him.
Luukas stood and strode over to the office doorway. Ah yes, his mate was nearby. He could feel her. His teeth ached and he realized he was clenching his jaw, his fangs protruding in his anger. His little witch thought to hide things from him, did she? Did she think him not male enough to handle what was going on? Not sane enough? Or was this just another of her little tricks?
“KEIRA!”
Turning back to his desk, he attempted to silence the doubts running through his mind as he sat down and waited for his mate. His Keira had done nothing but care for him and make him happy since his brother had rescued them both from Leeha’s hellish prison. He had no reason to think she meant any malicious intent by not telling him about this piece of information. She was probably just trying to protect him, as usual.
A few seconds later, his raven-haired witch—his angel—came running from the other room. When she saw them all sitting there in the office, obviously waiting for her, she slowed. Her hazel eyes lighted on Ryan and her forehead creased with confusion. “What’s wrong?” she asked Luukas. “What’s going on?”
Luukas laced his fingers on top of his desk and held her in his steady gaze. “Tell me about the box,” he ordered.
Placing her hands on her voluptuous hips, she scowled at Ryan. “You ratted us out?” Then she gazed off to the side, her lovely face scrunched up with confusion. “Wait. How did you even know?”
“I’m sorry,” Ryan told her sincerely. “They told me I needed to come here and tell Luukas.” She looked seriously upset. Christian leaned over and whispered to her again, and she sniffed and nodded.
“Well, that explains why I didn’t know.” Nik leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest with a satisfied smile.
“Ah. The voices,” Keira reasoned. “Why didn’t you just tell them to shove it?”
“Keira!” The only thing Luukas wanted to hear was what she knew about the box, and where she’d hidden it. “Tell me about the box, witch. Now.”
She quirked an eyebrow at his tone, but dropped her arms to her sides and sauntered over to his desk. Coming around to his side, she hopped up right on top of his papers so that her hip touched his arm. She did this on purpose to distract him, knowing how her very nearness affected him.
And he liked it.
Catching his eyes with hers, she said, “I was only trying to protect us. Not hide anything from you. Please don’t be angry with me.”
Pulling away from her and sitting back in his chair, he repeated, “Tell me about the box.”
With a sigh, she conceded, lacing her fingers together in her lap. “Grace just told us about it right before Christian, Ryan, and Shea got home. She’d honestly forgotten about it.”
“What. Is. It,” he demanded between clenched teeth.
“It looks like an everyday wooden jewelry box with a red felt lining. But if you lift the felt, there’s a design carved into the wood—a dagoba, Grace said. Do you know what—”
“I know what a dagoba is,” he interrupted. “Go on. What else do you know?”
“When Grace showed us the box, we called Brock. She said he’d freaked out when she’d asked him about it in China, and as soon as he saw it, he knew the demons would be coming
“A clue to what?”
“He didn’t know. Just that when he’d been following the possessed vampires back in China, he had seen them find other boxes like it.”
“Is there anything else?”
“No. That’s all I know.”
“Where is the box now?” Nik asked.
Luukas had nearly forgotten there were others in the room. It was like that when he was anywhere near his witch. She made him forget everything else, even the most horrible memories….
She smiled her sultry smile at him. The vixen knew exactly what she did to him, and she reveled in it. “It’s hidden here, in our apartment,” she answered Nikulas without taking her eyes from Luukas. “I placed protective wards around it to prevent it from being found.”
Aiden stood. “I’ll go find Grace and see if we can remember anything else that may have been said when we stole it.”
“I’ll come with you,” Nik told him. Then turned to Luukas. “Are we done here, bro?”
Luukas ran his eyes down the front of his witch, suddenly fascinated with the tiny buttons on her red shirt. A shirt that barely contained her full breasts. “Yes, we’re done. Everyone leave, now.”
They were still filing out of the apartment when he took the neckline of Keira’s shirt and yanked, tearing it down the middle and scattering tiny buttons everywhere.
“I missed you tonight,” she told him.
“I missed you, too, witch.” Grabbing her by the hips, he pulled her off the desk and onto his lap, groaning when she eagerly settled over his erection.
“You owe me a shirt,” she told him with a smile.
Sliding his fingers into the top of her bra, he tore that off her, too.
Chapter 5
Laney woke to scratching at the door. She tried to open her eyes, but it felt like someone had tied barbells to her eyelashes and applied some Superglue for good measure.
Deciding she was still way too tired to get up and feed Fraidy, she sighed and let herself sink into the firm warmth beneath her. The silly cat would live a few more minutes without his breakfast. He had enough extra body fat to survive the apocalypse.
Her mattress rose and fell beneath her, cuddling her deeper within its folds, the blanket tightening around her middle. Laney froze, suddenly wide-awake and wondering why the hell her bed was hugging her. Maybe she was dreaming. She pried her eyelids open and found herself staring at the tiles above the bathtub.
She was right. It must have been a dream. The events of the previous evening came crashing back into her skull, and a small cry of fright escaped her lips before she could stop it. She tried to slap her hand over her mouth, but she was all twisted up in her comforter.
Heart beating frantically against her ribs, she tried to calm herself.
I’m home. And I’m still here. Still alive. It’s okay. That thing can’t get me here.
She vaguely remembered leaving the bathroom last night and making her way into the kitchen to get some juice and something to eat. She didn’t recall coming back in here, but she must have. Maybe she came in to pee and passed out before she could get to bed.
But then why did I bring my comforter with me?
She must have been cold from the blood loss.
Her bed rose and fell underneath her again, and warm breath stirred her hair. Laney’s heart started beating so hard her ears began to ring, blocking out any other sounds. It wasn’t any kind of bed that was lying beneath her. It was something alive, and since she didn’t have a significant other, and she and her roommate barely spoke, never mind sleep together, the situation she found herself in was raising all kinds of alarms within her.
The vampire from the night before came into her head just as the thing moved beneath her again. A monster stirring from its slumber, perhaps?
With a scream, Laney fought her way from beneath the heavy blanket and kicked it away. Scrambling to her knees, she spun around to find herself face to face with her deepest fear. The monster staring back at her in surprise looked horrifyingly familiar.
It launched itself upright from the mound of pillows and blanket, like a demon rising from the lowest depths of hell, landing on its feet to tower over her. It had to be at least six and a half feet tall. A sound that was somewhere between anger and surprise hissed from its mouth, and it flung its arms out, legs bent in a defensive stance. Its bloodshot eyes shot around the room, searching out the source of danger before landing on her. It glanced around once more and then slowly straightened. Calmer now, it tilted its head to the side and watched her with a guarded expression.
Laney held perfectly still. Her eyes were glued to the thing’s face. A face that, although still a bit harsh on the eyes with its blood-reddened eyes and jutting bones, was not as ghastly as she remembered from the night before. When it continued to just watch her without moving, she let her eyes drop, briefly taking in a dusty black T-shirt and black pants that hung from its emaciated frame before she quickly lifted them back up to its bald head. No, not bald, shaved. She could see the hint of dark stubble underneath the layer of grime that covered it.
She was very close to the bathroom door. Her left hand began to inch toward it before she was aware of what she was doing.
When it spoke, its voice was deep and low and sounded like it had swallowed shards of glass. “Do not open that door, human.”
Her hand froze mere inches from the doorknob, then dropped back down to her lap.
A dog barked from the other room.
Laney didn’t have a dog, and for a moment, the noise distracted her. But any random thoughts were chased away by the monster’s next words.
“Come. I need to feed.” It held out a thin hand to her like it was asking her to dance.
Shaking her head so hard she felt rather like a ragdoll, Laney scooted backward on her knees until her toes hit the bathtub. “No,” she whispered. Then louder, “No.” It wanted to feed on her, like a fucking parasite, and she was supposed to just let it?
I don’t fucking think so, asshole.
The bloodsucker, for that’s what it was, lifted its upper lip in a snarl to expose fangs as long as her little finger. Opening its mouth wider, it hissed in warning before speaking again. “I said, come.” It still held its hand out to her. The gentlemanly gesture oddly out of place with the wordless threats it was making and the predatory gleam in its eyes.
“And I said NO!” Laney told it. Reaching back into the tub, her fingers brushed against the plastic bottle of shampoo. It was full, and rather heavy. Before she could second-guess herself, she grabbed it around the neck and chucked it as hard as she could at the monster’s head. It moved to dodge it, momentarily taking its eyes from her, and she reached blindly for the doorknob. Flinging open the door, she was immediately covered in warm sunlight as it flooded in from the large window in the living area. Still on her knees, Laney threw her body forward, out into the light and out of the reach of the vampire. She landed hard on her stomach and froze, unable to make her limbs move so she could scramble completely out of the doorway.
Her roommate, Sasha, lay on the floor in the middle of the living room. Her dark skin strangely ashen, her head bent at an unnatural angle, and her eyes wide and unblinking in death. Fraidy Cat sat near her high-heeled foot washing his tail, unaffected by the corpse next to him.
Laney screamed, then screamed again as a strange dog started barking in her face, its teeth inches from her nose. An iron grip wrapped itself around her ankles. She caught a brief glance of a fuzzy brown face with a long pink tongue hanging out the side of its mouth before she was pulled back into the bathroom. Her nightshirt slid up around her breasts and the cheap carpet burned the front of her thighs and stomach until she reached the cool tiles of the bathroom. The door was slammed in her face and she was suddenly dangling in mid-air for a breath of time before she was again surrounded in steely warmth as the vampire wrapped its strong arms around her from behind.
“Do not do that again,” it hissed. And then it sank its fangs deep into the side of her throat.
It had all happened so fast that Laney hung there, limp with shock, for a good thirty seconds. She stared at the bath tiles in front of her without really seeing them as the thing fed on her. The memory of her roommate’s face, mouth slack and eyes at half-mast in death, overrode everything else that was happening. So it took a minute for the moaning in her ear and the tugging on her vein to sink in.
When it did, her heart began to thump behind her ribs, quickening her blood, and in response the vampire tightened its arms around her before backing up and sliding down the wall, taking her with it. It stretched out its long legs and settled her back on its lap. The movement jarred her out of her stupor, and Laney began to fight in earnest. Her erratic movements only seemed to excite the creature, however. It moaned with pleasure as it bit down harder, then with a grunt, it captured her arms to her sides to hold her still. Sliding its booted feet in toward her knees, it trapped her legs underneath its heavy thighs so she was well and truly caught.
Laney’s eyes burned as salty tears slid down her cheeks and into her mouth. Refusing to give up, she ground her teeth together in anger, and tossed her head back and forth, trying to shake it off her, uncaring that she was probably ripping up her neck in the process. When that didn’t work, she tried to reason with the thing. She tried begging it. And finally, she began to struggle in earnest again. It completely ignored all of her efforts. Laney started to feel woozy as she twisted and kicked, her strength quickly waning.
After what seemed an eternity, but in reality was probably just a flicker of time, it disengaged its fangs and lifted its head. Laney fought to stay conscious while it licked her wounds. She had to escape, had to find a way to get away, or she was going to die in her bathroom before the day was over.
The vampire’s arm appeared in front of her eyes. She wished it wouldn’t hold it there like that, or at the very least would hold it still. It was making her nauseous to watch it. Laney blinked. Its wrist was bleeding.
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