Harlequin Nocturne January 2014 Bundle: The Vampire HunterMoon Rising

by Michele Hauf

Kaz’s gaze traveled to the end of the couch where his Order coat hung over the arm. There were two more stakes inside the pockets.

  “You drink blood lately, buddy?”

  “Why? You think I’m jonesing for your neck right now?”

  “Are you?”

  “I could use a bite, but I wouldn’t bite any of Zoë’s friends. You are her friend, aren’t you?”

  “Wouldn’t have allowed a vamp in my home if I was anything but.”

  “Are you two...involved?”

  “Yes.”

  Luc nodded and leaned forward, eyeing the cat down the hallway, who peeked out of Kaz’s bedroom. “She’s special. You’d better not hurt her like...”

  “Like what? Like that insane vampire who gave her that scar hurt her?”

  Luc’s head shot up, meeting Kaz’s eyes directly. Something in his pupils, growing so large and then instantly small, alerted Kaz. And he knew.

  “Did you...” Kaz began. “No. She would never...”

  The witch did have a weird tendency to forgive. But no, she could never forgive the vampire who had scarred her for life.

  Luc nodded, splaying his hands. “It’s a long story, man. One she apparently hasn’t told you.”

  He had given her the scar.

  Kaz lunged across the room, gripped the vampire by the throat and slammed him against the back of the chair. Ripping the stake from its holster at his hip, he held it against Luc’s chest, his fingers squeezing the paddles.

  “Kaz!”

  Zoë’s voice sounded at the same time the stake pinioned out from the titanium column.

  Chapter 21

  Zoë rushed toward Kaz and Luc. Kaz turned, saw her and thrust the stake across the room. He heaved out a frustrated grunt and fisted the air.

  A bead of blood dribbled from Luc’s chest.

  “He hurt you!” Kaz yelled accusingly at her.

  “I forgave him,” she said, but it sounded so stupid right now.

  “What? How the hell can you—?” Kaz swung toward Luc and shouted at him, “You enthralled her to forget!”

  “I didn’t! At the time I didn’t want her to forget.”

  “So you did it later, when you decided you wanted to be friends with her.”

  “No, Kaz....” Zoë caught her breath.

  The man she had fallen in love with had discovered the cruel secret behind her horrible scar. She should have trusted to tell him about it earlier.

  “Why didn’t you tell him?” Luc asked her as he inspected the blood on his chest. The stake hadn’t punctured more than skin. “He could have killed me!”

  “Two more seconds, man,” Kaz muttered. “Just two freakin’ seconds.”

  If she had been two seconds later... Her world would have shattered because of her inability to speak her truths.

  Having spent an amazing afternoon with Dasha and Ian, Zoë had not been prepared to return to find her boyfriend trying to kill her best friend. A vampire, who had, indeed, hurt her badly. For reasons that had been so wrong at the time.

  Kaz gripped her arm and forced her to turn and look at him.

  “He did this to you?”

  She stroked her cheek and nodded. She wanted to go to Luc and give him a hug to show him she still forgave him, but Kaz tightened his grip.

  “You are not going near him,” he warned. “Not until I hear the whole story. And it had better be damned good, or that vampire will leave this place as a pile of ash.”

  “Tough hunter,” Luc said as he stood.

  “Luc, he’s every right to be angry. I should have told him. We’ve been through so much lately. Just—could you leave us?”

  Luc looked to the door.

  “No, you can’t leave the apartment,” she corrected.

  “You don’t trust me out there?”

  Kaz slapped his arms across his chest, defying her to answer the vampire truthfully.

  “I don’t,” Zoë said honestly. “Do you trust yourself?”

  The vampire backed toward the hallway and headed to the room with the chains. And Zoë twisted her arm from Kaz’s tight grip. “You could ask me how it went with Ian.”

  “I don’t care what two warlocks do when they get together.”

  “Kaz!”

  He met her shock with a stoic defiance. “I want to know how a woman could befriend a man who did that to her.”

  She stroked her cheek. “It’s so horrible to you? Ghastly? Makes you want to look away from me?”

  “Zoë, you know what I mean. It hurt, didn’t it?”

  “It hurt like hell. But the pain is long gone, and I’ve learned to live with it.”

  “Why did he do it to you?” He studied her eyes. The heat of him was too cruel right now. She wanted his gentility and his arms around her. Not his painful distrust. “And why, in all God’s creation, could you forgive him for something so heinous?”

  He deserved the truth. So Zoë sat on the sofa, because her legs wanted to buckle.

  “I’ll tell you all. But I can’t do this with you standing over me like some kind of vicious guard dog. Please, Kaz, I need you to have an open mind right now.”

  “Oh, it’s wide-open.”

  “No, it’s not. You’re riding anger as if it’s your bitch.”

  Kaz sat on the sofa, exhibiting a less than open manner as he slammed his arms across his chest. She understood he could never accept anything she was going to tell him. He had been trained to destroy that which had almost destroyed her.

  She reached for his hand, and, thankfully, he took hers and held it firmly. She wanted him to accept her and not stop loving her. But this was only going to give him one more reason to hate himself for that love.

  “It was about ten years ago,” she started, “when the Great Protection Spell was still active and witches’ blood was poisonous to vampires. One evening, while walking home from the grocery, I was attacked by a vampire. She had no idea I was a witch, and I was so utterly taken by surprise, that I couldn’t blurt out a warning. She bit my neck.”

  Kaz wrapped his other hand about hers and held it to his mouth. His leg jittered, a nervous reaction.

  “Within moments she started to sizzle from the inside. It’s what happened when a vamp bit a witch during the Great Protection. Another vampire came running out of the shadows—who I quickly learned was her brother—and witnessed her death. She literally...exploded,” Zoë said on a whisper.

  “Let me guess,” Kaz said. “The brother was Luc?”

  Zoë nodded. “He cursed me for luring his sister to bite me. I tried to explain, but he was so aggressive, spitting at me and swiping punches, and at the same time his sister was this awful mess on the ground, so I ran off. But two days later he found me, and brought along his friends. They held me down while Luc cut my face with a poisoned blade. He wore gloves so my blood couldn’t harm him. Said he didn’t want to kill me but wanted to watch me suffer for killing his sister. And to always wear his mark.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Kaz protested with a hiss.

  “No, but it felt like murder to me. And Luc was grieving. He couldn’t think straight at the time. They left me there, bleeding and in pain. The blade had been dipped in hemlock, a poison that can’t kill witches but it does irreparable harm. It felt like needles piercing my soul. I went home and tried some healing spells, but as I’ve said, a witch can’t heal herself. I think I cried for two days. My father, who is also a warlock, had just gone under, so I had no one to turn to. The wound scarred. I decided it was a badge I must wear to forever remind me to be kind to others.”

  “But you didn’t provoke the vampire in the first place.” Kaz hugged her and swore softly as he rubbed her back. “That bastard—”

  “Was acting out of grief,�
� Zoë quickly interjected.

  “Oh, Zoë, you are too forgiving.”

  “Forgiveness is good for the soul, Kaz. And if I intend to live many centuries... Forgiveness is crucial for me.”

  “Says the chick who was responsible for— Sorry. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  He’d been about to lay the blame on her for killing innocent humans. And it wasn’t a lie. Her soul had been muddied, and now Zoë wasn’t sure how it could ever come clean. Had she thought to find a home for such a dark and cruel soul?

  “Hell,” he muttered.

  “What?”

  “I just remembered what it is about witches that creeps me out. You plan to live for centuries?”

  She nodded, sniffing back a tear.

  “You going to eat a vampire heart to achieve that?”

  Again, she nodded. Once a century, a witch must consume a live, beating vampire heart to maintain immortality. It wasn’t a pretty act, but necessary. It was something she had yet to face, but she would have to in another decade or so.

  Kaz winced and caught his forehead against a palm. “What if...someone you loved asked you not to do such a heinous thing?”

  Zoë sucked in her breath. He wasn’t asking her right now. Or was he? “I suppose I’ll have to deal with that challenge if and when it is presented.”

  He nodded. Not the answer he had wanted to hear, but really? They had worse things to deal with right now.

  “My soul is tainted,” Zoë said. “I’ve harmed so many. Perhaps I should go to the Light and accept the status of warlock.”

  “Don’t say that, Zoë. Everyone makes mistakes.”

  “My mistake took the lives of others.”

  “That is between you and your god when you die.”

  “You mean my goddess?”

  He swallowed and nodded. Even if he could accept them as a scarred and imperfect couple, could he ever really accept a witch into his heart? And should it ever come to the point where they were still together and he asked her not to perform the immortality spell, could she refuse?

  Much as they were physically alike, their beliefs were so different.

  And it was all about belief, wasn’t it? What you believed in made you stronger. What you did not could never harm you.

  Kaz hugged her and melting into him, she was able to release some of the angst, but never the doubt. He genuinely cared for her, but he struggled between hunter and lover. And human and witch.

  “Years later, Luc and I ran into one another again. I was in a nightclub and some vampires were bothering me. The Protection Spell had been dropped, so they didn’t fear witches anymore. Luc punched one and told me to get out of there. I took it as a rescue. He didn’t say anything more to me.

  “Until a few months later, when I was sitting outside a coffee shop. He walked up to me and apologized, and explained how he knew now it was wrong what he had done because his sister had attacked me.

  “I forgave him, easily.”

  Zoë buried her head against Kaz’s chest and the soft trace of his thumb across her scar brought up tears. “Of course you did. God, I love you, Zoë. But I wonder if sometimes you need to be a little tougher. Is there anything you would find unforgivable?”

  “Of course there is. I cannot begin to understand those who take pleasure in giving others pain or harming children. They are the lowest of the low, and do not deserve forgiveness.”

  “We agree on that. But sometimes it’s the drug or booze doing the harm.” Kaz’s voice was distant, as if his thoughts were a thousand miles away. Or, most likely, years.

  “You’re thinking about your father. Have you ever forgiven him for blaming you for your mother’s death?”

  “I think so. Maybe. I don’t know. But I’ve not forgotten. Me and the old man will never be friends. That’s for sure.”

  He dug in his pocket and pulled out a key. It was an old brass key that Zoë had seen him pull out many times before.

  “Tell me about that. Why do you always pull it out before you leave a building?”

  He smirked and jiggled the key in his cupped palm. “It’s nothing.”

  “Must be something if you do it every time you walk through a door.”

  Kaz hugged her and kissed the top of her head. “He used to lock me out after he started drinking. First time, I was twelve. He was wasted, and probably didn’t even realize he had a kid and that the cries out on the front step should be tended to. It happened a few more times before I got smart and found an extra key. After that, I never left the house without checking to be sure I had this key. It means safety to me. Weird, isn’t it?”

  Zoë touched the key, warmed by his hand, and he let her take it and look it over. It was shiny, worn over the years by fingers stroking it, hoping upon hope it would always turn the lock to shelter.

  “I can feel your strength in this,” she said and pressed the key to his palm, holding hers over it. “You should never stop carrying this with you.”

  “Never will.” He shoved it back in his pocket, and with an abrupt, “So!” he changed the subject deftly. “You forgave Luc and the two of you became best friends, just like that,” he said flatly.

  “Not so quickly as that. It took years. Without his sister, he was suddenly alone and without a tribe, frightened to be facing the world on his own. We earned one another’s trust. He’s good, Kaz. He’s had a tough life. He wasn’t born vampire, but rather created by his father after he got involved with a nasty tribe. His father forced him to this life when he was—well, the same age as when you ran away.”

  “Still doesn’t excuse him hurting a woman out of revenge.”

  “You don’t have to forgive him,” Zoë said. “You just have to accept that I have. Can you do that?”

  “I’m not sure. It might be easier if he weren’t around me right now. I really want to stake him, Zoë. It’s an impulse. It is what I am. I protect others from his breed. And I wasn’t able to protect you.”

  His last words were uttered on a gasp, and Zoë turned to kiss him, to tender softness and let him know it was okay. “You’ve protected so many. And you’ve saved me many times. I think he’s good to leave and go home. But I was thinking we could use him to track Mauritius. And we need to find that lab.”

  “You may have an idea there. Just tell me one thing, Zoë.”

  “Anything.”

  “Do you trust Luc completely? To never go back on dust? And to always have your safety first and foremost?”

  She bowed her head and closed her eyes, but not for long, because she didn’t have to think about it overmuch. “I trust him to always have my back, but I don’t trust him not to be lured back to dust.”

  “And on dust, you can’t trust him to have your back. Right?”

  She nodded.

  “He’s dangerous to you.”

  “You want to stake him? Go stake him.”

  “Don’t do that, Zoë. Don’t make me choose between you and a vampire.”

  “Maybe that’s what needs to happen.”

  “No, it doesn’t. I will always choose you. But that includes seeing to your safety, so that choice may also include staking the vamp.”

  “A wicked dilemma.”

  He fisted the air and paced before her, his anxiety apparent in his inability to stand still.

  “I need some air,” he said. “Can we go out and walk? Maybe look for the lab? I...can’t be here with the guy so close.”

  “I’ll go anywhere with you, anytime, for whatever reason.”

  “I like the sound of that.”

  “Kiss me first. But only if you love me.”

  Kaz swept her into an immediate and dizzying kiss. He stole her breath but she didn’t need it. He filled her with life, vitality and hope. This knigh
t had truly come to rescue the damsel from herself.

  “You really do love me,” she said on a gasp.

  “He does.” Luc stood in the hallway.

  Kaz’s entire body tensed against Zoë.

  “I have to leave,” Luc said. He rapped the wall with his knuckles. “I have to find a bite, if you know what I mean. And I don’t want to intrude on the hunter’s life any longer. Thanks, hunter, for not killing me.”

  “I still have the stake.”

  “I’m aware. And if you come at me again, then I’ll know it’s because you’re doing your job. But know I appreciate how kind you’ve been to Zoë. You’re good for her. She needs you.”

  “To protect her from you?”

  Luc shrugged. “I hope not. But I can’t know what another day will bring.”

  “Yeah, I think you need to leave. It’s safer for both of you.”

  Zoë stood and only reluctantly did Kaz release her hand. She walked Luc to the door. “You can’t go near FaeryTown, Luc. Nor any of your dealers.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Can’t go home, either,” Kaz said. “Mauritius will be on the lookout for you.”

  Luc nodded. “If I can get some hot blood in my system, I’ll feel one hundred percent.”

  “Isn’t there like an AA for dust addicts?” Zoë wondered.

  On the couch, Kaz scoffed, and Zoë allowed him that disdain. But then he offered, “Check with Vaillant.”

  Luc looked at the hunter. “You know him?”

  “He’s a...friend.”

  Even Zoë raised an eyebrow at that confession.

  “The vampire was addicted to dust, and fights it every day,” Kaz explained. “He’s been clean for a long time. If anyone can help you, he can. I’ll give him a call—”

  “No, I know how to get hold of him,” Luc said. “Thanks, man.”

  “Tell him I sent you. And if he wants to complain, he knows my number.”

  Luc nodded, then hugged Zoë and kissed her on the forehead. “Can I come to your house tomorrow?”

  “I don’t have a house anymore. Mauritius had his henchmen burn it down.”

  “Zoë, I’m so sorry. Did you get your things? What about your mother’s necklace?”