The Vampire Hunter

by Lisa Childs

Her? The woman his brother had loved so obsessively that he’d died looking for her? Liam didn’t deserve the life that should have been Bryan’s. “I have to do this.”

  “Not now,” she said. “Stay here…with me…for just a little while longer….”

  “What about your sister?” he asked. He had used Eve, but he hadn’t wanted any harm to come to her. “Don’t you want to check on her?”

  “I believe she’s safe with the professor,” she insisted. “He’s not a killer. He’s not the one who hurt Bryan.”

  “But can you think of any member of the society who would have killed him?”

  She shook her head and yawned. “I’ll think about it….” she murmured sleepily.

  He’d kept her out after sunrise; he’d risked her life and sapped her strength then he’d made love to her. He could let her sleep now. He even found himself drifting off, his eyes closing as consciousness slipped away from him.

  But he had been a soldier too long to sleep too deeply. So he awoke the minute he heard the noise, the faint scratching at the front door as someone jimmied the lock. Then the hinges whispered as the door opened. A floorboard creaked in the living room. Another creaked in the hall. Then there was the faint shift of air of someone else breathing as the intruder entered the bedroom.

  Someone had gone to a great deal of effort to break into Jennifer’s home. It could have been the professor or even her sister, coming to check on her. But Liam’s instincts, the ones that had kept him alive during several deployments, warned him otherwise. Whoever had broken into the apartment didn’t intend to protect anyone; he intended to kill.

  Maybe Liam wouldn’t have to look any further for Bryan’s killer. Maybe the murderer had found him.

  Chapter Four

  The quickening of his heartbeat beneath her cheek awoke Jennifer. Something was wrong. Bad dream? A while ago, he had drifted off to sleep, his breathing deep and even like hers as she’d slept in his arms. “What’s the—”

  His hand covered her mouth. Then he wrapped an arm around her and rolled her off the side of the bed. While it was only a couple of feet to the floor, she landed hard, her elbow, hip and thigh striking the cold wood. “What the hell—”

  Then all hell broke loose. Something, dressed all in black, separated from the shadows and flew at the bed. Curses and grunts filled the air, as blows connected. Liam fought, his sculpted muscles rippling beneath naked skin. But even as a soldier, he was no match for the vampire who attacked him.

  Jennifer sprang to her feet. “Stop! Stop it!” she pleaded. She climbed onto the bed, grabbing at hands, trying to stop the blows. But a flailing fist struck her cheek, knocking her back onto the floor. From the force of the blow, it had to have been the vampire who’d hit her. It wasn’t the professor coming to her aid; this vampire was attacking, not defending. Her breath escaped in a gasp of pain and shock; she struggled to regain it and struggled to regain the strength to help Liam.

  But she was too late.

  She saw fangs bared, glittering in the darkness like the dark, soulless eyes of the vampire.

  “No! Look out!” She screamed a warning to Liam, but she drew the attention of his attacker instead.

  The vampire, who had ghostly pale skin and hair with those flat black eyes, turned toward her. She shuddered in recognition and revulsion. Roger Milliken. If not for the threat to her lover, she would have grabbed up her clothes or the sheet. Anything to cover herself.

  But while she distracted Roger, Liam reached down beside the bed to where he’d dropped his clothes. “Leave her alone!” he shouted. And when the vampire whirled back toward him, Liam plunged a stake into the heart of the intruder.

  With an animalistic shriek, the vampire flew back. Roger’s lanky body struck the wall and slid down to the floor, blood smearing the ivory brocade wallpaper.

  “You son of a bitch!” Liam yelled. “Stay down. Die!” He jumped out of the bed and rushed forward, but the vampire surged to his feet.

  Jennifer jumped, too, in front of Liam to protect him. No matter how much he’d studied the secret society, he had no idea of the danger he faced. But instead of fighting her, Roger—his dark eyes glowing eerily from his pale face—turned away from her. Then, with another shriek, he flew out of the bedroom and out of the apartment.

  Her breath shuddered out not only with relief, but also with apprehension. Just because the intruder had left for now didn’t mean he wouldn’t come back. Having recognized him, Jennifer realized now that Roger had never left her alone. Since her transformation, he had always been around; he had always been watching her no matter how hard she’d tried to hide from him.

  Revulsion lifted goose bumps on her bare skin. She’d always been uncomfortable around him. She’d never had any doubt that he wanted more than friendship from her.

  “Don’t let him get away!” Strong hands closed over her shoulders, and Liam tried moving her aside.

  But she planted her feet and tensed her body, refusing to budge. “You can’t chase after him!” Because as much as Liam might want to kill him, Roger Milliken probably wanted to kill Liam more out of jealousy. She’d rejected Roger for years, but she’d given herself freely to Liam.

  Heat flushed her face at how easily she’d succumbed to desire. But she’d never felt as intense a connection before in her life—not even to Bryan. Maybe it was because they shared Bryan—loving him, missing him—that they had that connection, though.

  “I have to get him!” Liam replied, his voice rough with desperation. “I have to make sure he’s dead!” His hands grasped her shoulders harder, although not painfully so, and Liam shoved harder.

  But Jennifer didn’t even sway. Underground and out of the sun, she’d regained her strength. Whirling around, she planted her hands on his muscular chest, which heaved with pants for breath. Blood streaked his skin. She gasped, concern gripping her. “You’re hurt! Are you all right?”

  “Hell, no!” he yelled, his handsome face flushing with anger. “He’s getting away! You’re letting my brother’s killer get away.”

  “He could have killed you, too. Are you hurt?” she asked, running her palms over his chest. The blood smeared but revealed no wounds.

  He shook his head. “I’m not hurt. I’m pissed.”

  He was bruised, but his skin wasn’t broken. He had no scratch or puncture wound. The blood wasn’t his. She sighed again with relief only, and she continued to stroke her fingers over his chest and shoulders.

  He caught her wrists in his hands. Although she was strong now, so was he. His grasp was so tight; it was just short of painful. “That was really him, then? That was my brother’s killer?”

  Her throat filling with emotion, she could only nod. Her realization was too awful to voice. As Liam had said, it was still her fault that Bryan had died.

  “You knew all along who killed him?” He released her, dropping her wrists almost as if he were repulsed by her touch.

  “No,” she assured him. “I couldn’t think of anyone who would hurt Bryan.” Because she never thought of Roger—without a shudder of unease—so she always made a point to put him far out of her mind. And she’d tried to put him far behind her. But he always found her, just as he had tonight. “Until now…”

  “So you do know who he is?”

  “Roger Milliken. He’s the one who told me about the secret society,” she admitted. “He attended Professor Vossimer’s lecture the same night I did.”

  “Isn’t it breaking the rules to tell?”

  “Yes. But he knew I was sick.” She swallowed hard, choking on her own fear. “He knew I was dying anyway….”

  “He wanted to turn you?”

  “Yes.” And the reasons he’d given her had convinced her that it was her only option…to live. But the reasons he’d left unsaid, that had glittered in his eerily flat black eyes, had made her uneasy. “But I didn’t want to give him the wrong idea. I didn’t want to be indebted to him.”

  Or tied to Roger for eternity. Sh
e’d known the professor wouldn’t hold her to that society rule, that the human had to vow to stay forever with the vampire who turned her. In fact many members of the society had abandoned that rule over the past few years; with no thought to a relationship, they’d turned humans who learned the secret. They’d preferred it to killing them.

  “You knew he was dangerous?”

  “I didn’t think he was dangerous. I just didn’t trust that he only wanted friendship from me.” She resisted the urge to shudder again at the thought of being with Roger, like she’d been with Liam. She’d never suspected she could be with anyone the way she’d been with Liam, though. Passionate. Adventurous. Then she remembered the adventure they’d just shared. “I never thought he could hurt someone…until tonight….” Until he had broken into her apartment and attacked her lover.

  “He won’t ever hurt anyone again,” he promised, trying again to move her aside.

  But she clutched at him, holding him back. Keeping him with her and safe. “You can’t fight him and win,” she cautioned. “He’s too powerful for a human.”

  Liam uttered the bitter chuckle that she’d actually begun to grow fond of. “He’s not too powerful for me. I shoved a stake in his heart.” He laughed again and stepped back. “It’s over. He’s dead.”

  “It’s over,” she repeated, as she realized he’d brought that stake to her bed. To protect himself from her? Or kill her? Until Roger had attacked him, he had probably still held her responsible for Bryan’s death. She ached inside at the loss of what could have been between them, if he would have let himself care about her. For too many years, she’d been so alone. So isolated. She hadn’t died, but she hadn’t been living, either. Until tonight. But whatever she’d begun to feel for him—she couldn’t identify what she’d never before experienced—he had killed like he believed he’d killed the intruder.

  Instead of rejoicing over his long-sought revenge, Liam tensed with foreboding. He didn’t regret the kill; it hadn’t been an act of vigilante justice. He’d acted in self-defense—and to protect Jennifer.

  But right now she seemed as determined to protect herself as she had when she’d first encountered him in the alley. She wrapped her arms tightly around herself as she had her robe, closing herself off from him. Were they, and the passion they’d shared, what she had just pronounced over?

  As his gut knotted, he worried that their intimacy was over. And that troubled him. Tonight, and their making love, had been a moment of weakness. Not something he’d ever planned or would ever consider repeating. Making love with her had betrayed Bryan. He shouldn’t have been able to experience what his brother had been denied. Because of the killer…

  “It’s over,” he reminded himself. If only avenging Bryan’s murder could absolve him of his guilt.

  She shook her head, her blond hair tangling around the shoulders of her pink robe. “Roger may not be dead.”

  His guilt turned to anger and unease. Despite the stake Liam had plunged into the vampire’s heart, Roger had had the strength to fly from the apartment. Had Liam missed? “No,” he answered his own doubts. “I know that I got the stake in…”

  Deep enough to do the damage required to end the life of an immortal monster? The doubts nagged, knotting his stomach muscles.

  “If you’d done that in any other city, it might have been enough. But here in Zantrax the society has a special surgeon.” Her eyes brightened with awe. “A brilliant surgeon. He knows how to reverse the damage of a stake through the heart. He can cure what used to be incurable.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “That’s not possible.”

  “I guess your intel on the society wasn’t as thorough as you’d thought.”

  Tension gripped him harder and not just over the possibility that Bryan’s killer would survive his injury, but because of her tone. She wasn’t just closed off; she was pissed off.

  “Are you mad?” he asked. “Would you rather that I hadn’t hurt him?”

  “How could you even ask me that?” she asked, her voice cracking as she took obvious offense. “You think that I would rather he had hurt you?” Tears dampened her eyes, but she laughed, echoing his bitterness. “You will never trust me.”

  “I spent years thinking you’d killed my brother,” Liam reminded her. “It’s not easy to put aside all that anger and suspicion.”

  She nodded and sent one of the tears over the rim of her lower lid; it streaked down her cheek. “You still hate me.”

  “No,” he assured her. If only he did, he wouldn’t have betrayed his brother.

  “But you blame me for his death.”

  “I shouldn’t have done that, either,” he admitted. It wasn’t her fault that she was so damned beautiful that his brother had loved her too much to let her go.

  “Why not?” she asked. “You were actually right about that. It is my fault. I should have known that Bryan would look for me. He was always such a good friend.”

  “He wanted to be more than your friend.”

  “You said that earlier, but I didn’t believe you then and I don’t believe you now. He never told me that. Never showed me. He was only ever my friend.” Her throat moved as she swallowed down emotion. “But Roger wasn’t. I should have known that he might be dangerous—should have known that Bryan might be in danger. It was my fault. He was my friend, and I failed him.” The tears fell harder now as she wept for the loss Liam had solely borne.

  Their father hadn’t had much to do with Bryan before he died, so he hadn’t missed him much when he was gone. Neither had Bryan’s mother, who’d just used his loss as another excuse to lose herself in a bottle. Liam had thought he was the only one who’d really cared about Bryan.

  He closed his arms around her and pulled her tight against his chest. “I failed him. Not you. I did.”

  She pulled back and stared up at him. “How? You were just a kid then.”

  “Just a couple years younger than he was,” he reminded her. “I could have done more. Should have done more.”

  “Liam…”

  “I’ve carried that guilt for twenty years,” he admitted. “As much as I blamed you, I blamed myself for not stopping him from looking for you. I blamed myself for his death.”

  She shook her head. “No. You couldn’t have known the danger he was in. I should have. I’m the one who failed him. And if I were you, if it was my sister who’d been killed, I’d probably hate you.”

  “I could never hate you,” he said. “Knowing now how wrong I was about you, I understand what Bryan saw in you. I see it, too, in your paintings—in the way you made love with me.” His body hardened in remembrance of exactly how she’d moved, how she’d met his every thrust…and how she’d touched him as no one else ever had. “Hell, I even understand the vampire’s obsession with you.”

  In his own way, Liam had been obsessed with her, too. But he’d wanted to kill her, not fall in love with her. He worried that he was doing just that, though—falling for her.

  “You don’t hate me,” she agreed, blinking back the tears she’d wept for his brother. “But you don’t trust me, either, or you wouldn’t have brought the stake in here, wouldn’t have stashed it next to the bed….”

  “As a marine, I’m trained to always be prepared for anything.” He’d also learned to trust no one. Her seduction could have been a trap, a way to lower his defenses before she attacked. He hadn’t had enough control to not make love with her, but he’d had enough sense left to bring a weapon in case he’d needed it.

  “There are some things you can’t be prepared for,” she said, and as she studied him through narrowed eyes, he suspected he was one of those things.

  He hadn’t been prepared for her, either. Even if she’d threatened him, he doubted he would have been able to plunge the stake in her heart. He regretted just having to push her out of the bed, so she wouldn’t get caught in the middle of his battle with the vampire. He couldn’t hurt her. Physically. But he’d hurt her emotionally with his mistrus
t of her.

  “Roger will be coming back,” she warned him, “and he won’t come alone. He’ll tell the others that you know about the society. You can’t fight them all.”

  Just like he couldn’t fight his feelings for her, no matter how much he betrayed his brother’s memory by falling for the woman who was the love of Bryan’s life.

  “You have to leave,” she said, scooping up his clothes from the floor. “You need to get as far away from Zantrax as you can.”

  “They can fly,” he pointed out. “You think I can outrun them?”

  “No. But if you’re gone when they come here, I can explain. I can tell them what Roger did. I may be able to get them to make an exception for you.”

  “And let me live?”

  “Yes.”

  “And if they won’t?”

  “You have to hide.”

  He shook his head. “I won’t hide. I won’t live my life that way.” There’s another way,” he reminded her, and he couldn’t believe that he’d even consider it. But since meeting her in the alley, she’d turned his world upside down. Everything he’d believed she’d proven false, so maybe this idea wasn’t that crazy. Because the only way for him to become strong enough to fight them off was to become one of them. “Turn me.”

  Chapter Five

  “Turn you?” Jennifer asked, incredulous that he would even consider it. She must have heard him wrong.

  “Is there any other way to keep the entire society from coming after me?”

  “I’ll explain about what Roger did to Bryan. They may make an exception.”

  “For a man whose rage turned him into a vampire hunter? For a man who turned your sister into a vampire hunter?”

  “But she didn’t kill anyone,” Jennifer reminded him. “And I don’t think you have either.”

  “I doubt that’ll matter,” he replied. “You think they’ll let me live, knowing what I do? I just don’t know about their existence. I know how to end their existence.”

  She shuddered as she conceded the logic in his thinking. There was no way the society would make an exception for him. “Maybe it won’t come to that. Maybe you really did kill Roger.”