A Hunter's Heart [The Hunters 1] (Siren Publishing Classic)

by Suzy Shearer

  With one nail, he cut across his wrist again and as the blood began to flow pressed it to her mouth. He felt her resist so he reinforced the compulsion on her. She began to drink and despite the urgency of the situation, this time Matei felt his groin tighten. Usually the exchange of blood between partners was something that was done during lovemaking and even though this time it was done to save Charlotte’s life, Matei could not prevent his arousal.

  When he felt she had taken enough to replace part of what had been lost he gave her the order to stop but did not release her from her thrall. He took the wrist that the vampire had torn and sank his fangs into it, drinking just enough blood for an exchange. Then he carefully licked her wrist for a few seconds to remove all trace of the wound the vampire had made and his own mark. The wound closed quickly, leaving a faint red mark that would soon fade. He spent a little time licking her ankle where the vicious claws had entered and torn her flesh.

  Finally, Matei entered her mind and searched out the marker, destroying it before the strigoi could track her.

  “Wake, my beloved, wake,” he ordered her.

  * * * *

  “I don’t know if I can do this, Matei, just let me die. I can’t drink your blood,” she softly cried.

  Matei crooned as he rocked her back and forth, “Hush, my love, it is done. Soon you will be strong.”

  His words did not make sense for a moment then Charlotte realised what they meant.

  “You did it, you made me drink blood!” She wasn’t sure if she was angry or pleased, but at least she was alive. For a while, she was sure she would not survive and judging from Matei’s face, she thought she was correct.

  “The poison from the strigoi is gone from your blood, your wrist and ankle are also healed, so there is no more pain.”

  “The burning, it is gone!” Charlotte gasped in wonder. “I feel no more pain.” Charlotte lifted her hand and was amazed at the pink scar. She had expected to see a ragged angry wound.

  “My saliva has healing properties, the scar will be gone by morning.”

  “Is that why it stopped bleeding when that thing licked it?” Charlotte shivered from the memory of filthy hands and fangs on her.

  “Yes, licking will close the wound and if we continue it will close up and heal swiftly. It is how we heal ourselves.”

  “Will he come for me now? Am I going to go to him if he calls?” she whispered into his chest.

  “Every trace of him is gone. He will not be able to control from any distance but he, or any other vampire, can still reach out to you.”

  She felt her body tense. “Cara, it is the same as it was yesterday, or a year ago or even ten years ago. Any vampire could still find you but this one cannot call to you to do its bidding, because I have removed its foulness from your blood and there is no marker for him to follow. Do you understand?”

  “I guess so, it’s just that before I really didn’t know about vampires and now…I have never been so terrified in my life, I could feel my life draining away. Matei, the things he filled my head with!” She began to cry in earnest and thankfully he let her.

  All he did was murmur, stroking her hair in comfort as she cried. It was better for her to cleanse her mind than to keep the hideous thoughts inside. She knew he had shared her mind and knew what horrors had been projected to her. Nevertheless, he knew she still had not faced all that happened.

  “You are safe, Cara, I am with you and never again will you be so far that my thoughts cannot reach you.”

  For a moment Charlotte’s sobbing continued then suddenly stopped. Once more she tensed. She tried to push herself out of the safety of his arms but he held her firm.

  “You did it!” she screamed, “You took my blood!”

  She pounded on his chest with her fists.

  “You didn’t even ask, you just took! Now I am a vampire!”

  She knew he could feel waves of anger pouring off her as well as fear.

  * * * *

  “Cara, I need to protect you. You are not a vampire,” he patiently said. “You are basically the same as before but now we can touch each other’s mind no matter the distance.”

  He tilted her face. “Remember I told you there were five blood exchanges. This is only one and if you wish there will be no more. Cara, forgive me but I felt so helpless not be with you, not to be able to touch you with my mind. Perhaps I was selfish but I would do the same again to protect you. I could not bear to live if anything to happen to you, dragostea mea.”

  Charlotte looked amazed to see his eyes fill with tears as he pulled her into his arms once more. “You are my life, Iubită, I could not bear to let you go. Forgive me.”

  He risked a quick glance into her mind—she was still angry and upset but understood his reasoning.

  “Just promise you will not take my blood without my consent no matter what is happening, Matei.”

  Charlotte’s voice was firm with resolve and Matei nodded his head in agreement.

  “I have to wash his stench off me, Matei, I can still smell him, still hear his voice and I am so cold.” Her voice raised, he thought she was slightly hysterical but he knew she had to get clean again. He understood she needed to feel normal again, not so soiled and dirty.

  “Of course, Iubită, come let me help.” With that, he sat her on the edge of the bed and began to remove her clothing.

  “Your face is scratched from the branches,” Matei stated and leant forward to lick her face.

  Charlotte shied away at first, then relaxed as the stinging of the cuts and scratches disappeared as his tongue worked more magic on her body. He lifted her to her feet to remove her torn jeans and dipped his head to lave across the grazes on her knees.

  He removed the last of her clothing. Looking at her body, he saw her back and buttocks covered in red angry bruises. He laid her across the bed to lick wherever her body was red. Then he swept her into his arms and carried her into the bathroom. She laid her head on his shoulder and allowed him to care for her.

  “Bath or shower?”

  “Shower, I don’t want to sit in his filth.” She whispered, “I want it to wash off me, wash it all away.” She was starting to sound detached and Matei knew she had the beginnings of shock now that she was safe and could think again.

  He stood her in the shower stall and turned on the water, quickly stripping off his clothing to enter with her. With infinite tenderness, he slowly washed her body. He whispered words of love to her in his native Romanian, not caring that she could not understand them, his eyes filled with tears when he thought of the punishment she had suffered. She began to shiver and Matei turned her to face him.

  “It is over, Cara, I am here with you.” She looked so forlorn, so lost.

  * * * *

  “Please, Iubită.” His voice broke with emotion as he tried to express all he felt with those two words.

  Charlotte slowly felt the warmth coming back into her body. Since the horror of the past few hours she had felt so cold and frozen, but now with the warmth of the water and Matei’s gentle hands she was beginning to feel almost normal. Slowly she stopped shaking and she took a deep breath.

  Determined not to let the vampire win by spending the rest of her life jumping at shadows, she tried to put the events to one side. One day when she felt strong she would look at them but for now they could be shut away. In her heart, Charlotte knew she would never be the same. Always there would be knowledge now of the true vampire, but if she lived with the fear then she may just as well have let him kill her.

  She looked at Matei as he stood before her. She could feel his pain at not being able to prevent her from harm. This tall, strong man felt helpless. She could barely imagine how it must have been for him. To know she had been taken and not knowing if she would survive. How he must have felt when he found her covered in blood?

  She leant forward to rest her head on his chest and heard his intake of breath, his arms wrapped around her, and they stood together with the warm water wash
ing the pain from her. After a few minutes she looked up into his face and he grinned weakly. They had survived.

  “My Cara, you feel a little better?”

  “I need to lie down or I will fall,” she thought to him. “You look almost as bad as I feel.”

  He planted a kiss on her head then reached around to turn the water off. Grabbing a big towel, he wrapped her in its softness before wrapping another around himself. He lifted her once again and carried her into the bedroom.

  Still with those gentle hands, he dried her off and picked up her nightie that had fallen to the ground the previous night. Carefully he drew it over her body then sat on the bed, pulling her onto his lap her while he rubbed her hair dry. Somehow, she knew he had to do this and she allowed him. It was his way of showing how frightened he had been and how much she meant to him.

  It was calming for the both of them. When he finished he tucked her up in the middle of the bed, blankets cozily arranged around her, then he sat on the edge and used her towel to take the worst of the water from his hair.

  “There is a dryer in the bathroom if you need it,” Charlotte murmured.

  To her surprised he gave a cheeky grin and shook his head. Instantly his hair was dry and falling in a rich curtain around his face and over his shoulders.

  She laughed weakly in delight. “Now that is some trick.”

  Chapter Ten

  Matei took the towels back into the bathroom and padded back into the bedroom. He waved his hand down his body and a pair of loose drawstring pants hung from his hips.

  Charlotte’s eyes opened wide. “How did you do that?”

  “We can provide for ourselves any natural resources. When you are converted, you too will be able to do this.”

  She glared at Matei over his assumption that she would agree to be converted but it had no effect on him. Rather than go down that conversation route she said, “Tell me how that thing knew you. I thought I heard him say he could smell your scent on me and call you by name.”

  “Are you sure you want to speak about him now, Iubită?” Matei sounded worried. “I do not want you upset.”

  “I don’t want to talk about what happened yet but I do want to know how he knew you.”

  He peered into her eyes to reassure himself and then settled in alongside her. Once more, he pulled her to his side and she settled into the safety of his arms.

  “As I mentioned there are about fifteen hundred Hunters in the world, no one knows exactly how many strigoi there are. When they are young, they are easy to kill as they have no experience, filled with arrogance, thinking to control a Hunter with their voice, but they have no power of us. It is the same with us actually. When our children reach maturity if they accept the burden of becoming a Hunter then they, too, are inexperienced and overconfident. With age comes wisdom.

  “Those that manage to elude us grow stronger as the years go by. They gain experience as we do. We are aware of certain individuals, master vampires who have managed to evade the Hunters over the centuries. They have grown strong and do not fall prey to the foibles of the young.”

  “The one tonight was one such as this. To the Hunters he is well known. I thought him killed about fifty years ago in Europe. He fought with two Hunters but they were young and inexperienced. They thought they had incinerated him but now it is obvious he escaped.”

  “But how did he know you personally?”

  “Older vampires often recruit the young and inexperienced to do their dirty work. They put aside their hatred of each other—the young to learn, the master to control. They would rather throw a young one to the Hunters than risk themselves. About one hundred years ago, I ran into him with three of his…protégées. I killed two and seriously wounded him but he escaped as I fought the third and killed it.”

  “I will have to let the Council know he is still alive and where he is. He has not been heard of since the fight in Europe.”

  “Council? You have a Council?”

  “Yes, some of our oldest and most experienced Hunters are elected to govern. It is a Hunters duty to report to the Council anything they feel will help in the war against the strigoi.”

  “How do you kill a vampire? I mean in the books and the movies they die if you throw holy water at them and they do not like garlic or hallowed ground. You have to drive a stake through their heart and cut off their head. I think shooting with silver bullets is in there too somewhere.”

  “Silver bullets are for werewolves.” Matei chuckled. “Yes, it is true they do not like holy water but unless you poured a bucket of it over them it would not kill them, only burn them. However, holy water is very useful because it stops the vampire from transforming into any shape other than human form. It also prevents them from dematerialising. That means they cannot vanish and must fight. But the only true way to destroy the vampire is to incinerate it.”

  “Werewolves? You mean there really are werewolves? No, wait, don’t tell me, I don’t think I want to know.”

  “What about Hunters,” she whispered, almost afraid to know the answer. “Can Hunters be killed?”

  “Yes, we can die. The same way we kill a vampire they can kill us, if they remove our heart, but we tend to try and avoid that.”

  She gave a quick glance to his face to determine if he was joking but he appeared serious, or maybe he had that dry humour that some people have.

  “How can you incinerate a vampire? Do you carry a flame thrower or something?”

  Laughing, Matei said, “No flamethrower. We have the ability to call down lightning to incinerate the strigoi.”

  “Is that what happened in the car park the other night? Is that when I saw the lightning flash?”

  “Yes, Cara. That was when I destroyed it.”

  Soberly she asked, “Is there any other way you can die?”

  “If we were to stay in the full sunlight we would also die. We can tolerate short amounts in the early and late hours of the day but if we were to stay in the sun, it would kill us. Strigoi cannot tolerate the sunlight or daylight hours at all.”

  Matei sighed and when she looked at him, he appeared tired and his eyes looked slightly dull.

  “You are tired,” she stated. “Didn’t you sleep today?”

  “Yes, Harley and I enjoyed our rest but I used much energy tonight.”

  He hesitated. “I must leave you for a short while, er…I must take blood again.”

  Charlotte had no answer. She glanced at the clock and saw it had passed four. It had been a long night for him as well, maybe more so because he had healed her.

  “I understand, I really do. Will you be away long?”

  Those few words meant a lot. By acknowledging his needs he knew she was fully accepting of what he was. It would have been hard for her.

  “No, not long. I used a lot of energy tonight to remove the poison, and gave you blood so I need to replenish again. You rest. You need to sleep and recover.”

  “Don’t you dare send me to sleep!”

  “No, Cara, I won’t but you must recover and rest.”

  He stood up alongside the bed, and Harley came over to him.

  “No, my friend, you stay here and guard our treasure.” Harley jumped up onto the bed alongside Charlotte. Matei reached out and patted the dog’s head. Leaning forward he kissed Charlotte passionately then before she could respond he was gone.

  “Nice one,” she giggled.

  She felt him tweak her hair and she snuggled down in the blankets. Sure, she would not sleep until he returned but within a minute or two, she drifted off.

  * * * *

  When Matei returned he saw Charlotte was asleep, so after watching her for a few minutes he walked out into the lounge. He needed to tell the other Council members Danŭt Vasilecu was still alive and what had occurred tonight. He would also have to tell them that it was his mate that was attacked tonight. How she had been targeted six years prior, and then there was the vampire he had killed in the car park.

  He hoped
it would be possible to find out what strigoi was in the area six years ago and who had killed it.

  It would be easier to contact his friend and business partner, Mihăiță Petran, who was in Europe now. He could report to the Council personally. He and Mihăiță ran a company together, had exchanged blood when injured, fought well together and more importantly, whenever they could, they spent time together. They were also distant cousins.

  Matei focused on his friend, telling him all that had occurred, told him his news about Charlotte and asked him to speak with the Council. He also asked him to inquire who had killed a vampire in the area six years ago.

  Mihăiță promised to find out what he could and pass on any information. He gave his friend a thump on the shoulder and offered his congratulations that Matei had finally found his One. Mihăiță had met his partner, Louisa, over one hundred and fifty years ago in England. They had a daughter, Dani who was now living with relatives in Italy, she was twenty-four and studying music.

  Matei promised he would bring Charlotte to meet them as soon as he could but Mihăiță said he was sure the Council would send him there. Especially once they knew it was Danŭt Vasilecu. He and Matei were a formidable team whom the Council often assigned to hunt together. It would also give Charlotte a chance to talk to Louisa. She would understand all the concerns of being converted and could reassure Charlotte. Matei agreed, asked after Dani, and then broke contact.

  He relaxed on the sofa. It felt good to talk with his friend after the horrific events. He was still unsettled, knowing how close he had come to losing Charlotte so soon after finding her.

  Tomorrow night he would go back to the area and see if he could find any scent trails. Vasilecu must have had a lair nearby and the carnage on the road would have drawn him. It made sense to find the lair and render it unusable. He must have been close by and come to the carnage of the accident. Then he must have been close for Charlotte to have felt her psychic energy and so been drawn to her.