“Aylin, run!” They’d prepared for this scenario, but now that it was real, Aylin froze, paralyzed with terror and pain. “Dammit, Aylin, go!”
Blood dripped down her leg from the shallow cut Rasha had made – again, part of their contingency plan. Aylin was a decoy, the cut intended to explain her limp and fool anyone who captured her into thinking she was Rasha, injured by an enemy blade.
Spurred by a series of gunshots and screams, Aylin ran as fast as she could in the opposite direction.
Tree branches slapped at her face and arms. The ground slipped out from under her as she scrambled up the hillside. The sounds of fighting seemed to be right on her heels, but when she glanced behind her, there was nothing but forest. Relief that no one was chasing her veered sharply into terror when a man wielding a steel pipe topped the ridge just a few yards ahead.
Cursing, she fumbled for one of the two throwing knives at her hip. Her hand closed on the hilt, but before she could set her stance to throw the blade, a burly human male burst out from the trees to her right. He swung his crossbow up, training it on her chest.
She let the dagger fly. Thanks to countless hours of training when she was a child, she could hit a wasp in the air at thirty yards, but this guy’s eye was a much better target. He went down with a grunt.
“Vampire bitch!” The pipe-wielding maniac dived at her, smashing the pipe into the backs of her legs.
Agony shot through her, and she crashed to the ground. The bastard kicked her in the ribs, knocking her onto her back. The air exploded from her lungs in a painful burst. His boot came down on her throat, pinning her to the ground.
His ugly, gray-bearded face stared down at her as she clutched at his ankle in a futile attempt to dislodge his foot. What little air she could suck in felt like whips of searing fire.
“Aren’t you a pretty one?” he said. “And going by those blue peepers, you’re purebred, too. You’ll fetch a fortune in the sex-slave market.”
Terror made her clumsy, but by some miracle, her fingers found the second blade at her hip. Hurry… hurry…
The knife slipped out of her hand. Dammit!
The pipe man’s foot crunched down with more pressure, and black spots floated in her field of vision.
Concentrate. You know how to handle a blade.
Forcing herself to stay calm, she palmed the knife. With as much strength as she could muster with the crappy leverage she had, she stabbed the dagger deep into his denim-clad calf. The man screamed and fell back, but as she struggled to her hands and knees, something pierced her shoulder, and instant sizzling cramps seized every muscle in her body.
Shock dart.
Her fuzzy thoughts understood what he’d nailed her with, but her body no longer functioned, and as she lay on the ground, seizing and shaking, she could only pray that Rasha had gotten away and would come for her.
Please, please, save me, Rasha.
Because, spirits knew, no one else would.
3
The prisoner was defiant. Hunter might have appreciated that quality in a vampire, but from a human… it just proved how stupid they were.
“You’re in a vampire stronghold, chained in a prey room, and you still can’t say anything except ‘Fuck you’ and ‘Fuck off’?”
“Fuck you,” the human snarled. “I ain’t afraid of you.”
“Your scent says otherwise.”
The human, stripped down to his Harley-Davidson boxers, spit a bloody wad onto the dirt floor. “I said I ain’t scared.”
So. Damned. Stupid.
“You ain’t scared?” Aiden, whose usual mild manner and surfer-dude good looks concealed a dark talent for torture, ran his thumb over the sharp edge of his favorite skinning blade. “We’ll see what we can do about that.”
Hunter stomped on the chain looped around the human’s wrists, yanking his arms hard behind his back and wrenching this shoulders in their sockets. The scumbag gritted his teeth but didn’t make a sound.
“How many Stake Reapers are there?” Hunter asked. “Who’s hiring you to poach us?”
The gang member, whose black leather jacket’s name tag read “Chem,” bared his red-streaked teeth. “We don’t need no f**king money. We’d string up your kind for free.”
Hunter kicked at the bag they’d found slung over his shoulder beneath the jacket. “So the vampire fangs and scalps in here weren’t going to be sold?”
Chem’s lip curled. “Didn’t say we don’t make money doing what we love.”
Rage swept in, swift and hot, and Hunter’s hand snapped out to catch the f**ker around the throat. “Listen to me, you piece of shit. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Aiden prefers the hard way. He has an unholy love for his knives. Me? I’ve got better things to do.” Like prepare for his mate to arrive in the morning. “So why don’t you save us both a lot of time and pain and tell me what you know? Because you will talk eventually. I promise you that.”
“Fuck. You.” Chem grinned, his lips pulling back from yellowed, chipped teeth. “You leeches have no idea what’s coming, do you? A storm, man. A f**king slaughter, and by the time it’s over, you parasites will be extinct in the wild. The rest of you will be slaves… just like the pretty young thing we pass around in our clubhouse.”
How did people who despised vampires justify using them for sex? Fucking ass**les.
A low growl boiled up from Hunter’s chest, and his hand tightened on Chem’s throat. Deep inside, the desire not just to kill the thug but to do it in the cruelest way imaginable writhed like a demon trying to break out. Hunter’s father would have displayed Chem in the common room and let everyone watch as he jammed sharp objects into sensitive orifices. Then he’d spend days divesting him of body parts, starting with his balls and cock.
A surge of excitement rolled over Hunter as that evil demon thrashed at its restraints.
No.
Sweat broke out on his brow, and beneath his palm, his fingers squeezed harder. Chem’s face turned a brilliant shade of purple, made even more colorful by the veil of crimson that formed across the field of Hunter’s vision.
No!
Hunter refused to turn into his father, but the darkness ran through his veins like a malevolent sludge, infecting his thoughts. Do it. Cut him. Open him from crotch to sternum, and let the clan’s children play with his innards. Do it!
Nausea churned in his stomach. Releasing the human, he stepped back and forced himself to calm down.
“Jesus Christ,” Chem rasped, his bloodshot eyes wide as he gaped at Hunter. Wetness bloomed across the front of his boxers. “Jesus… the f**k?”
Aiden was staring as intently as the human, but in an instant, he blinked, collected himself, and slammed his fist into the human’s jaw. “What, never seen a pureblood vampire rage out? The red eyes and four-inch fangs are just the beginning, ass**le.”
“You goddamned freaks!” The stench of Chem’s terror burned Hunter’s nostrils and got his inner monster excited again. “Die, all of you!”
Hunter needed to get out of there before two hundred years of self-control, of carefully distancing himself from the male his father had been, went out the window. No way was this smelly, vile poacher going to be the one to undo a lifetime of restraint.
“He’s all yours, Aiden.” Hunter tapped on the cell door, and Katina opened it, her silver eyes glittering with bloodlust at the sight of the poacher all strung up like a side of beef. “Find out what he knows. I don’t care how you do it or how long it takes. I’ll send in Baddon to help.” Baddon was their resident expert in all things gang or motorcycle-club related, and he no doubt knew more than Chem would like.
Plus, Baddon got off on torture as much as Aiden did. He just didn’t hide it as well.
Aiden’s cold smile dropped the temperature in the cell. “Yes, sir. Don’t worry, I’ll have this bastard singing like a canary in no time.”
Hunter didn’t say another word, afraid that if he did, he’d tell Aiden to get the hell out… and then there’d be nothing to stop Hunter from giving in to the desires his father had encouraged.
Desires that, once released, could never again be controlled.
4
Today was doomsday.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t as bad as that, but if Hunter had to list his top five most dreaded things, mating with a female he hated would be near the top. Right behind losing a child and being forced into slavery. And if bringing his future mate and current enemy into his clan’s home today wasn’t enough, there was another tempest racing in on the heels of last night’s blizzard. He felt it as a deep buzz in his bones and a weight on his soul.
This storm was going to be about more than the weather, and he wondered if it had something to do with the humans, as their prisoner had suggested. As soon as he’d checked up on Jaggar, he would pay Aiden a visit, hoping he’d gotten something useful out of the scumbag.
Cursing to himself, he shoved open the door to the infirmary, a newly expanded room off the lab. Grant, a salt-and-pepper-haired male who had been a microbiologist in his human life, looked up from where he stood at Jaggar’s bedside. Nicole, a vampire physiologist and the closest thing they had to a medical doctor, had worked late into the night to repair Jag’s broken tibia, and now the injured vampire was sitting up, his lower leg wrapped in bandages, his scowl more than hinting at his irritation at being immobile.
Next to him on a rolling equipment tray was an untouched sandwich and a half-empty pouch of human blood. Chances were, it was Jaggar himself who had stolen the blood off a delivery truck bound for a vampire slave supply shop in Seattle.
Grant hung a clipboard at the foot of Jag’s bed. “Hey, chief. Your boy could use an attitude adjustment.”
He gestured to Jaggar, who snarled. “Tell Dr. Horrible to let me recover in my own chamber.” Jag shot Grant a nasty look. “He keeps trying to inject me with shit.”
Hunter crossed to Grant, his nostrils stinging from the harsh chemicals Nicole insisted on using to keep the lab and the infirmary clean. Not that Hunter was going to complain. Nicole’s obsession with cleanliness was far better than Grant’s clutter and disorder, which bordered on chaos.
“Are you trying to give him antibiotics?”
Grant shook his head. “Most antibiotics don’t work on us, something I discovered, quite tragically, a few years ago.” Clearing his throat, he jammed his hands into his lab coat’s pockets and pulled out a couple of syringes. “I want to test the effects of colloidal silver on broken bones. Analysis indicates that silver might make our bones heal faster and stronger.”
“Fuck that.” Jaggar ran his hand over his short-cropped brown hair with an angry jerk. “I’m not going to be the guy who gets turned into the Hulk because of a lab accident.”
“Please,” Grant drawled. “If anything, you’d end up like Wolverine. That would be cool. Stop whining.”
“That would be cool,” Hunter agreed. Jaggar muttered something under his breath and reached for his bag of blood. “What does Nicole say about your experimental treatment?”
Grant shrugged. “She doesn’t think the healing process will hurt.” He thought about that for a second. “Well, not for long. The injections are likely to be excruciating. I’d never try it on myself. That’s why I need volunteers.”
Jaggar cursed and then threw down with one of Myne’s favorite Nez Perce insults, calling Grant a crazy sack of elk balls.
“Yeah?” Grant grabbed his crotch through his khakis. “You can suck on my crazy sack of —”
The lab door slammed open hard enough to put a dent in the wall behind it. Myne burst into the room and zeroed in on Hunter. His dark eyes glinted as fiercely as his titanium fangs, and Hunter went on instant alert. By mutual unspoken agreement, Myne never dealt directly with Hunter if it wasn’t important.
“Humans are attacking ShadowSpawn’s bridal party.” Blood streaked Myne’s cheeks and neck, but it wasn’t his. Hunter picked out the stench of three different humans in the blood Myne was wearing like war paint. “They’re f**king everywhere. Takis and I took out a few, but we couldn’t help Rasha and her sister.”
Rasha had brought Aylin? Hunter had never seen Rasha’s twin, who was rumored to be hideously deformed. But Aylin had helped Riker and Nicole when they’d been held captive by ShadowSpawn, so Hunter didn’t care if she was a pox-ridden troll. MoonBound would get her back along with Rasha.
“Let’s go.” Hunter started toward the door, but Riker jogged inside, the thick layers of bandages from last night’s bullet wound visible beneath his black T-shirt.
“Stay here!” Riker barked from near the doorway. “We’ll handle it.”
“The hell you will,” Hunter growled as he pushed past both Myne and Riker. “This is my future mate the humans are f**king with.”
Riker caught up with him at the door to the clan’s armory. “It’s too dangerous.”
Hunter cast his second in command a pointed glance as he ripped weapons from their racks, the clang of metal against metal jacking him up even more. “Would it be too dangerous for you if it was your mate who had been captured by humans?”
It was a low blow, given that Riker had lost his first mate to humans who had captured and forced her into slavery decades ago, but Hunter wasn’t above reminding him how desperate the situation could be.
“Screw you, Hunt.” Riker loaded himself with even more weapons than he already had, shoving dozens of blades into sheaths all over his body. “This is different. I’m not a clan leader, and you aren’t imprinted on Rasha. This is hardly a love match.”