Heart pounding so hard she was sure every vampire in the place could hear it, she followed a cool draft of fresh air around a corner and bumped so hard into someone that she oof ed and careened into the earthen wall. The person she’d collided with, a small female wearing cutoff Daisy Duke denim shorts and an orange wool sweater, slammed against a log support beam.
The crack of the girl’s skull on the hard wood reverberated through the tunnel.
Nicole watched in horror as the other female crumpled to the ground, blood streaming from her temple.
“Shit,” Nicole breathed. She hurried over to the girl and crouched next to her. “Are you okay?” She dug into her pants pocket for a tissue. “Just hold still, and let me put some pressure on that wound.”
For a long heartbeat, the girl, who must have been no more than sixteen, didn’t move or even open her eyes. And in that brief moment, as Nicole pressed the tissue against the wound, she realized she was trying to help a vampire. While trying to escape from these same vampires.
Stupid.
The girl’s eyes popped open. Confusion lurked in the silver-gray depths. Then, in a wild flailing of limbs, she scrambled to her feet and stared at Nicole like a cat eyeing a mouse.
Oh, God. Nicole was dead.
Very slowly, with her feet rooted to the ground as if she were part of the warren’s structure, Nicole stood.
Her fingers trembled as she casually reached behind her for the dagger she’d taken from Riker.
“Human?” The female got right up in Nicole’s face, apparently oblivious of the fact that she had a tissue stuck to her temple. “You have candy?”
Nicole’s hand froze on the dagger’s hilt. “I—what?”
The vampire’s broad smile revealed a perfect, gleaming set of fangs. “I like chocolate. And hard candies. Riker brings me candy sometimes. You know
Riker? He likes chocolate, too.” In an abrupt shift of mood, she reached up to wrap her orange-streaked brown ponytail around her fist, a pout turning down the corners of her mouth. “Hunter says candy is no good for my teeth. It’s always blood, blood, blood. All the time, blood.” She stomped her bare foot like a petulant child. “I hate blood.”
Well, that could only be good news.
“So,” the vampire said brightly. “You have candy for Lucy?”
It was pretty clear the vampire wasn’t playing with a full deck, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t as dangerous as a vampire who held all the cards. Best to be nice and see what Nicole could learn.
“Lucy? Is that your name?”
Lucy nodded. “Who are you? Humans aren’t allowed here. Not never.” She appeared to think about what she’d just said. “Well, only for food.” She wrinkled her nose. “Blood. Yuck. Do you have candy?”
Right. Okay, she could work this. “I’m sorry, Lucy, no candy. But I can get some if you tell me how to get out of here.”
Lucy’s eyes narrowed. “Are you tricking me? Humans aren’t allowed to leave.”
Raised voices echoed from somewhere in the maze of tunnels, and Nicole’s pulse went into overdrive. “I can’t get you candy if I don’t get out.”
“Humans aren’t allowed to leave,” she repeated with such conviction that Nicole’s heart sank. “Hunter would kill them. But you helped me. I can help you get candy.” Lucy clapped her hands, and guilt pricked
Nicole’s conscience at Lucy’s pure, ecstatic joy. “I can show you a way out.”
“Lucy, I don’t want anyone to see me leave. Is that possible?”
“Uh-huh.” She cocked her head to study Nicole for a moment. “I don’t want Hunter to kill you. So you can see my secret entrance.”
Smiling, Nicole gently plucked the tissue from Lucy’s temple. “I’d like that. I don’t want Hunter to kill me, either.”
Lucy immediately ducked into a darkened, dusty hallway and led Nicole through a series of tunnels that grew progressively smaller and less used, until Nicole felt like Alice down the rabbit hole. Damned good thing she wasn’t claustrophobic, because they were eventually crawling in pitch blackness. Rocks bruised her knees, and her hair kept catching on dangling roots, but they finally broke out of the tunnel and into a thick copse of prickly bushes.
Nicole stood, grateful for the fresh—but cold—air and weak afternoon sunlight that permeated the green canopy overhead. She’d been inside the vampire compound all night and for most of the day. Damn, she was going to need food and meds soon.
Lucy stood up next to her. “You bring me candy now?”
“I’ll do my best.” A gust of wind rattled the tree branches and pierced the thin fabric of Nicole’s torn turtleneck. Shivering, she surveyed the landscape.
“Lucy, do you know which way I need to go to get to the nearest city?”
Lucy pointed at a pile of rocks in the distance.
“Follow the river.”
“I appreciate this.” Nicole touched the vampire’s arm lightly, part gesture of thanks, part apology for lying about the candy.
Lucy leaped at her so fast that by the time Nicole could open her mouth to scream, Lucy was engulfing her in a rib-crushing hug. “I like helping. I don’t get to help much ’cause I always mess up.” She pulled away, her lean frame going rigid, alertness screaming from every pore, reminding Nicole that Lucy might have the mind of a child, but she was still a vampire capable of things humans could only dream of. “You better go.
I think you better go quick.”
Oh, shit. “Why?”
“Because I hear trouble.” Lucy’s expression became pinched with worry. “Shouts. Calls to capture the human. They’re hunting for you, Candy Lady. Run.”
Lucy pushed Nicole in the direction she’d indicated.
“Run as fast as you can. I hate blood.”
Chapter 7
Riker burst out of the clan’s main entrance, Hunter and Myne on his heels.
“She’s mine,” he snarled. “When we get her, she’s f**king mine.”
He inhaled a breath that burned but was nothing like what he’d felt in the prey room. But how long would that last? Did he have forty-eight hours of excruciating pain to look forward to? And how the ever-living f**k had Nicole gotten Terese’s ring?
Myne sniffed the air, doing his bloodhound thing.
“I’m not catching her scent.” Frustration laced his tone. Myne hated failing at anything he considered Born Vampire . “Which way do you want me to go?”
“South,” Riker said. “If she’s looking for an easy path, that’s where she’ll go.” Total bullshit. The thinning forest to the south would make sense for a runner, but the city was to the west, and if Nicole had any sense of direction, she’d head that way. Which meant no one but Riker was taking that route. “I’ll roll west.”
Hunter spoke up. “You’re sure you’re okay? No one gets the drop on you like that.”
“I appreciate the humiliating reminder, chief,” Riker drawled. “But yeah, I’m fine.”
If Hunter knew Nicole had dosed Riker with a lethal agent, he’d drag Riker to Grant, their mad-scientist-slash-closest-thing-they-had-to-a-doctor and chain
Riker down if he had to. All Hunter and Myne knew was that she’d knocked him out somehow, and that’s how it was going to stay.
Hunter probably saw through Riker’s BS, but he didn’t press. “I’ll get a couple of your teams together to go wide on a search, and I’ll have everyone in the clan scouring the warren.”
There were miles of tunnels where Nicole could hide, but Riker’s gut said she was in the forest. “She’s out here.”
Hunter’s obsidian eyes narrowed to slits. “You fed from her? You can track her?”
Nicole’s heady wine flavor lingered on his tongue, but a large amount of ingested blood was needed to track the donor. “I didn’t feed, but I tasted enough to get a general feel for her.”
The leather thong around Hunter’s temples held his midnight hair out of his eyes, emphasizing his Cherokee ancestry as he inclined his head in acknowledgment. “Good hunting.”
Riker took off, his adrenaline surging hotly through his veins. He loved a good chase and takedown, and this one was going to be especially gratifying.
He smelled her before he saw her, two miles from clan headquarters. Her pear-and-ginger scent made his mouth water . . . until he caught more scents. Human.
Male. At least ten. And from the unwashed stench of them, they were poachers, the worst kind of vampire killing scum.
He went balls to the wall in a massive burst of speed, leaping fallen logs and cornering hard by pushing off trees. Nicole was ahead, making enough noise to alert a deaf man to her presence.
A flash of strawberry-blond hair between a pair of firs put Riker at thirty yards from his prey. But the stink of a couple of poachers came from maybe a hundred.
They were close. Too close.
He sprinted the final distance, catching Nicole as she tried to navigate a gully lined by thick ferns and gnarled berry bushes.
“Riker.” She gasped, as he swept her up and over the gully, taking them both to the forest floor on theother side.
“Disappointed to see me alive?” He rolled with her, pushing her beneath him as a bullet sailed over their heads. “You might get your wish soon enough.”
“What the—”
“Poachers.” A spark of hope lit her pretty wide greens, but he was about to dash it. “Chill, Sunshine. They’ll only chop me up for body parts. If I’m lucky, I’ll be dead when they start. But you? It’ll be a while before they put you down.”
“But I’m human.” Her dry swallow made the wound he’d sealed on her throat writhe. “I’ll tell them who I am. That they’ll get a reward if they return me safely.”
“You can try that tactic.” He yanked her to her feet and dragged her behind a massive tree. “But more likely, they’ll say they found you dead and ransom your body. What they’re doing is illegal, and they won’t want you alive to tell anyone what they did to you or what they were out here for.”
“I don’t believe you,” she ground out.
Two shots rang out at the same moment that three men in camouflage burst from the brush. Nicole, the slippery minx, took advantage and wrenched away from him to dart toward them.
“Nicole, no!”
Riker ducked the swing of a machete, only to be nearly laid out by a baseball bat from behind. The blow smashed into his lower back, knocking him off balance.
Gnashing his teeth against the pain, he palmed two daggers and struck out at the nearest poacher with a devastating one-two slice that took both sides of the man’s neck down to the spine. As the human’s spasming body hit the ground, Riker dodged more gunfire in an effort to catch Nicole, who had tripped and was scrambling to her feet.
“Help me!” Nicole reached for a burly, black— bearded dude who held an ax like a lumberjack.
Lumberjack’s smile was psychotic, as if he’d just struck gold and was going to take out everyone who knew about it. He put out his hand . . . and slammed his fist into Nicole’s face.
Riker snarled, his anger sparking to insanely dangerous levels. With a roar, he dived into Lumberjack, not caring that several other ass**les were closing in.
His focus had narrowed to a needle-thin pinpoint that would only end in the ax-wielding poacher’s bloody death.
The man grunted as he hit the ground with Riker on top of him. Riker plowed his fist into the human’s throat, but as he reared up to deliver the death blow, pain lanced Riker’s chest, nearly as intense as what he’d experienced back at the den. Exhaling on a curse, he looked down at the hilt of a throwing knife vibrating between his ribs.
Riker spared the thrower a glance, judged him to be a lesser threat than the poacher beneath him, and prepared to finish him off. In a single powerful motion, Riker drilled his fist through Lumberjack’s breastbone and ripped his beating heart from his chest.
“Riker!”
Nicole’s breathless shout for help came from a distance. Riker burst to his feet, barely avoiding a crossbow bolt aimed at his head and another chop of a machete.
“Enough with the f**king machete!” Twisting, he ripped the blade from his attacker’s hands and spun, turning the machete into a blender that sliced into two men. Both fell. One wasn’t going to get up. The other would be lucky if he ever ate solid food again.
Holding his ribs, Riker lurched in the direction Nicole had gone. Slowed by his injury but still faster than the humans, he loped through the woods. As he closed in on the ass**le chasing Nicole, he wrapped his blood-slick fingers around the hilt of the knife in his chest and yanked the blade free. The poacher was nearly on her when Riker pitched the weapon into the bastard’s spine, dropping him like a rock.
Riker didn’t have time to stop. A hail of gunfire rained down on them, chewing up leaves, tree trunks, and clumps of dirt.
“Son of a—!” He grabbed Nicole by the hand.
“Come on.” He half dragged, half carried her through the forest at a blind, desperate run in the general direction of their only hope: caves.
There was a series of caves to the north, built and later abandoned by one of the first colonies of vampires in the area. Now they served as both overgrown lairs for wild animals and temporary hideouts for any vampire needing a place to evade enemies, be those human or other vampires.
“You were right,” Nicole said between labored breaths. “They weren’t going to help me.”