She’d never forget the expression on her instructor’s face when her parents brought her back to class the next day. Miss Dodd looked like she was staring at a ghost before she schooled her face into the calm façade she always wore during class.
Charlie was by far the most talented dancer in her class, but it was apparent she was only going through the motions and hated being there. What her parents refused to understand was that without a passion for ballet, she would never be the dancer they wanted. Never be the prima ballerina her father’s mother had been.
Miss Dodd told them this once. She’d only been trying to help her and meant well, but it made things much worse for Charlie. Her parents became convinced they could instill the passion in Charlie, and if not, they could install a barre in their basement, and her mother would teach Charlie to love ballet no matter what it took.
After that, Charlie found no reprieve from ballet as she went to classes five days a week but was forced to dance six days a week. At home, no teacher was calling an end to the lesson; there was only her mother pushing her onward. Charlie often danced an hour before her homeschooling and two hours afterward on the weekdays.
Sometimes, she endured seven hours of ballet on Saturdays. Sunday, which used to be her least favorite day of the week, quickly became her favorite as even God took Sunday off, which meant she could too. Her family spent five hours at church every Sunday, but at least she didn’t have to dance.
Sorry, Mom and Dad, no Nutcracker ballet for this girl. But then, they stopped expecting anything from her years ago.
The vamp turned on Charlie with his fangs bared and his eyes a blistering red color. Charlie smiled at him when he charged.
Jack kept one eye on the behemoth stalking him and the other on the woman as she danced out of the way of the vamp she fought. He didn’t think he’d ever seen such grace in someone before, not even a purebred vampire, but for all he knew, she could be a pureblood.
She spun out of the vamp’s way, and when he passed her, she planted her foot in his back before shoving him forward. The vampire staggered forward and indented the dirt wall with his face. The woman used the opportunity to leap on his back and drive her stake into his heart.
When the massive Savage raced at Jack, he adjusted the grip on his stake and braced his legs apart. He didn’t move until the last second, and when the giant swung his arms forward, Jack threw himself on the ground. The vamp’s sausage-sized fingers skimmed his back but didn’t grasp his shirt. Jack came up on the other side of the vamp and discovered the woman kneeling with her knife in hand.
“Duck,” she said.
Jack went down as a whistle sliced the air. A breeze ruffled his hair before a guttural grunt sounded behind him. Jack turned to find the knife embedded in the Savage’s throat. The beast clawed at the blade before he focused on Jack and fury blazed to life in his red eyes before the vamp charged him again.
Jack didn’t throw himself to the ground this time but smashed his hand into the knife handle, shoving it further into the vamp’s throat. The knife embedded so deeply that if it had been a normal-sized vamp, the blade would have come out the other side, but this monster had a neck the size of Jack’s thigh. The blade slowed him as his eyes bulged out of his head, and he started making sounds like a duck choking on a golf ball when he came back at Jack.
The beast seized Jack’s arms and lifted him off the ground at the same time Jack used his forehead to batter the vamp’s face. The Savage’s eye socket shattered beneath the blow, and his right eye bulged out completely. The vamp’s hands tightened, and he started pulling on Jack’s arms like he was a wishbone.
Lifting his legs, Jack wedged them onto the Savage’s thighs and shoved back while the vamp continued trying to tear off his arms. No matter how hard he pushed, he couldn’t break free of the bastard’s hold. His shoulder joints screamed a protest as his arms were pulled further away from his body.
Realizing this wasn’t working, Jack lowered his legs and threw himself forward. Something tore in his shoulder, but he was able to hit the Savage and throw him off balance. They staggered into the dirt wall.
The Savage’s grip on him loosened enough that Jack jerked his right arm free, and lifting the stake, he plunged it into the vamp’s chest. When the Savage continued to batter the side of Jack’s face, he had the unsettling notion the flesh and bone of this monster were so thick the stake hadn’t pierced the heart.
But then the Savage’s movements became more sluggish, and his gurgled, choking sounds decreased. The hand gripping his other arm eased, and jerking himself free of the slackening hold, Jack dropped to the ground.
Staggering back, the vamp clawed at the stake protruding from his chest as his eyes rolled. Then, the beast slumped against the wall and fell to the ground.
Chapter Four
Charlie stalked across the pit and bent to pull the knife from the Savage’s throat. She felt Jack’s eyes burning into her as she yanked it free and wiped the blood on her jeans. Searching the vamp for weapons, she found two stakes tucked into his waistband. This bastard had relied on his size and strength to destroy his enemies; in the end, it got him killed.
When she finished searching him, she stripped his clothes. No one would be able to wear anything that fit this guy, but they could use his clothes for blankets or something else. They never left any resources behind after a kill if they could help it. She rolled his clothes into a ball and used his belt to bind it.
Turning to the second vamp, she found Jack already stripping weapons from the body. He pocketed two stakes and a small crossbow that caused her hand to fall to her knife. It wouldn’t kill him, but she could hit him with it and slow him down as she had with the massive vampire.
One of the many things she’d learned since arriving on this island was that she had an extraordinary talent for throwing knives. It didn’t matter if her target possessed the speed of a vampire, ninety-nine out of a hundred times, she was going to hit it. Mal taught her how, but the student quickly surpassed the teacher in the skill.
“What do you plan to do with those?” she asked as she shifted her grip on the knife.
Jack glanced at her over his shoulder. When she shifted subtly, he knew she’d switched her grip on the knife and was prepared to launch it at him if she deemed it necessary. After watching her with these vamps, he had no doubt she could hit him with it.
“I plan to use them to help me survive,” he said. “Are you going to throw that knife?”
“Are you going to give me a reason to throw it?”
“No.”
With that, Jack turned his back on her. He didn’t think she’d try to attack him again; she would have done so already if that were her intention, and he decided to show her that he had some trust in her.
The scrape of her boot against the dirt floor alerted him that she’d risen instead of trying to knife him. Finished with the Savage, Jack rose and stepped back to stare at the hole over his head. Unlike the room he found himself in, the hole was only three feet in diameter. It would be difficult for them to get out of here.
And then… it hit him.
She’d already been in the pit when he fell into it.
Where had she come from? Or did she live in this hole, feeding off whatever fell into her trap? She couldn’t be one of the vamps who broke out of the barn with him if that was the case. So how long had she been here and what was she doing here?
Turning, he surveyed the pit until his eyes landed on the tunnel leading out of it. Three feet wide and six feet tall, it wasn’t large, but it was an exit.
“Where does the tunnel go?” he asked as she knelt at the second Savage’s feet.
Charlie patted the Savage’s body to make sure Jack hadn’t missed anything before examining his clothes. The shirt was ruined and useless, but the pants would work for Mal, and the boots might work for someone else. She undid the belt and tugged the brown pants down the vamp’s thighs.
“What are you doing?” Jack d
emanded as he realized she’d stripped the other vamp too.
“Scavenging,” she muttered. “If it offends your delicate sensibilities, then I suggest turning away.”
Jack scowled at her. “Nothing offends me.”
“Good for you.”
He chose to ignore her hostile tone in favor of answers. “Do you live down here?”
Charlie didn’t answer him as she paused to untie the boots before tugging them off. At one time in her life, her face would have been on fire with mortification over what she was doing. Now, her cheeks didn’t so much as pinken as she shoved the vamp’s socks into his boots and set them aside.
She pulled the pants the rest of the way off, rolled them into a ball, and placed them next to the boots. When they came back to remove the bodies, she could retrieve the supplies.
As Jack watched her, he couldn’t decide if she was the most coldblooded woman he’d ever encountered or desperate. She pulled a flashlight off the man and turned it on before placing it in the small shoulder bag she wore.
“Does he have batteries on him too?” Jack asked sarcastically.
“Their flashlights are solar powered, which is fortunate for us.”
Did that mean she did live down here? “Why is that?” he asked.
She stared at him as if she were trying to decide if he was stupid or being difficult. She seemed to settle on stupid as she spoke her answer slowly.
“Because batteries don’t grow on trees and sunlight is a lot easier to come by. These assholes may not be UV fans, but they don’t deal with dead batteries. Or at least that’s what I assume, but they could have chosen solar power because they’re environmentally friendly murderers.”
Jack had no idea how to respond to her, mostly because her reply was so similar to one he would have given. He was back to wanting to throttle her while having a grudging respect for her use of sarcasm.
“We have to get out of here,” she said.
“Where does the tunnel go?” he asked.
“We can’t take it out of here.”
“Why not?” he demanded.
“Because we need to cover up the hole you uncovered.” She couldn’t be too annoyed with him for that; she’d done the same thing once and nearly died because of it. “If we leave the hole exposed, then more of those assholes will get in here, and we can’t allow that.”
“Oh, we can’t?”
Malice glimmered in her narrowed eyes. “No, we can’t. If you try going down that tunnel without me, I guarantee you won’t make it. There are traps everywhere, and since I have to cover this hole up, I will not be going with you.”
Jack studied her and then the tunnel behind her; he contemplated accepting her challenge, but he wasn’t exactly up for fighting his way through traps right now. Plus, he didn’t like the idea of leaving her behind. She irritated him more than a sock sliding down into his shoe, but he had the irrational urge to make sure she was okay.
Despite his annoyance with her, Jack couldn’t help admiring the sway of her hips as she glided toward him with mesmerizing grace. It was as if she floated across the ground when she walked.
Stopping beside him, she removed the rope and small grappling hook free of her canvas shoulder bag. When she first started wearing the bag, she’d felt like Indiana Jones. Now, she just felt tired. She rarely used the hook, but it was something Mal insisted they carry with them when patrolling the tunnels and something they would regret not having if the needed it, like now.
Jack shoved aside his frustration with the woman when she didn’t reply to him. She was more distrustful than he was. “Are you a purebred?” he inquired. “If so, you can smell I’m not a Savage, and you can trust me.”
“I’m not a purebred,” she said as she unraveled the rope. “And even if you’re not a Savage that doesn’t mean you’re trustworthy. I knew plenty of humans who were giant pieces of shit too.”
He couldn’t argue with that.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
Charlie didn’t trust him, but at this point, it didn’t matter if he knew her name or not. Plus, she planned to learn more about him before bringing him to the others, and she couldn’t do that without at least talking to him a little.
“Charlie,” she said.
“Charlie,” he repeated. “And what’s that short for?”
“It’s short for Charlie,” she replied crisply.
It wasn’t, but she stopped using the name her parents gave her the day they threw her out of their house. She’d been terrified and all alone, and she’d vowed never to be that girl again.
“How did you end up on this island, Jack?” she asked.
Her words knocked some of his annoyance with her away. “This is an island?”
Charlie lowered the rope when she saw the full horror of what she revealed sink into him. He definitely couldn’t be one of them. No one could fake that reaction; she’d seen it on a few other faces when they learned the awful truth. She probably had the same flabbergasted look on her face when Mal dropped the island bomb on her too.
“Yes,” she said with more kindness than before.
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve been here for three years; I’m sure.”
“Three years?”
“That’s what I said,” she replied as she returned her attention to the grapple and started swinging the rope.
“We have to find a way off this island.”
“Why didn’t I think of that?” she muttered sarcastically.
She would give anything to get off this Godforsaken chunk of land with Dylan and return to their lives. Well, return to her life as much as she could, given she wasn’t human anymore. Okay, her old life was over, but she would love to be somewhere vampires didn’t hunt them for sport.
“You’ll be shocked to learn escaping an island isn’t as easy as you would think, considering I’m not a boat,” she said as she threw the hook out of the hole.
Jack found himself glowering at her again as she tugged on the rope. The woman could push a saint to murder. “Where is this island located?”
“As far as I know, off the coast of Canada.”
“As far as you know?”
Satisfied the hook had caught on something that would support them, she turned her attention back to Jack. “Are you hard of hearing? Is that why you keep repeating everything I tell you?”
Jack ground his teeth together. “No.”
“Okay then, let’s get out of here; after you.”
Jack grasped the rope and pulled himself up. Kneeling outside the hole, he scented the air while he listened for anyone who might be a threat to them, but he didn’t hear or smell anyone out there.
The hook, caught on a rock buried by the debris, jiggled when Charlie grasped the rope and started up behind him. He took her hand and helped her from the hole. As soon as she was free, she tugged her hand away from him and bowed her head as she blinked rapidly.
Able to get a better look at her now, Jack admired the bridge of her narrow nose, high cheekbones, and enticing, wide mouth. Blood and dirt streaked her pale skin, and strands of her chestnut brown hair had straggled free of the knot resting against her nape. The loose hair fell to the middle of her back, and she brushed some of it aside before leaning back to undo the knot and retie her hair.
Jack’s fangs pricked when his gaze fell to the column of her pale, delicate throat. The chirp of the birds and the squirrels scurrying through the trees all faded away as he became focused on her pulse, and all he heard was the steady thump of her heart.
Yearning coiled within him as he imagined resting his mouth against that pulse and sinking his fangs into her while thrusting deep inside her. The image was so vivid he could almost taste her blood in his mouth and hear her exquisite moans as she moved beneath him.
Jack shook his head to clear it of the image and realized his fangs had lengthened, and his erection pressed against his jeans.
Get it together. This was not the time to make
a return trip to his horny teen years, but there was something about this woman that made him feel like a fifteen-year-old boy again. Except that teenager hadn’t been stuck on an island with a bunch of vampires looking to kill him.
Annoyed with himself, Jack launched to his feet and walked around the small clearing. “Stay here,” he whispered. Pulling the branches carefully aside, he stepped out of the copse of trees.
Chapter Five
Jack circled the trees, scenting the air and straining to hear anything abnormal, but all the birds continued to sing, and the squirrels scampered through the branches. If anything threatening was out here, the animals wouldn’t be so active.
Feeling satisfied it would be okay to move, he returned to the clearing. Charlie was still kneeling with her head bowed, but she’d started gathering some of the broken sticks from the ground.
“You don’t see the sun much,” Jack whispered.
“No,” Charlie admitted as she placed the larger sticks over the hole.
“How long have you been living underground?”
“Since my hunt began.”
Jack almost asked, Your hunt? But recalling that she’d asked if he was hard of hearing, he bit the question back and rephrased it. “What do you mean by, your hunt?”
Charlie hated being the bearer of more bad news, she still recalled how upset she was when Mal revealed everything to her and Dylan, but Jack had to know what he was facing.
“This island is an inescapable place for rich Savages to hunt the humans and vamps they capture and bring here for their entertainment. Those security vamps are here to make sure the prisoners are taken care of while in their cages and that no one breaks out. Sometimes they hunt with the rich pricks who are afraid to hunt by themselves. This island is a game for the Savages who pay for it.”
“Delightful,” he muttered.
“Look, I don’t think you’re one of them, but the hunt isn’t supposed to start for another week. What are you doing here?”
“My friends and I were taken from a bar by these Savages and put in cages in a barn.”
Unforeseen: The Vampire Awakenings, Book 9 Page 3