Bloodhunter Read online

  I drove my blade through his shoulder and he screamed, and all the sounds of hell were in that scream.

  “I need to go home,” he cried, and I was so stunned I hesitated.

  But Silverlight didn’t. She drove herself through his ribs even as he bore me to the ground, his mouth open, his eyes like tortured bits of glass, trying desperately to latch on to my essence so he could feed.

  Even through his weakness, his cracking façade, and his desperation, I felt his sexual pull. He had to use the foam to make it irresistible, but it was there.

  I turned my face to the side and thrust my blade in more deeply, twisting it as I pushed. I heard bones grind and crack, and I kicked my way out from under him, realizing only then that the supernaturals and the hunter stood around us, none of them knowing what to do with the demon so close to me.

  I didn’t need them.

  At least I thought I didn’t. I thought I had the situation under control.

  I grinned. “No demon is getting into my pants.”

  But then the incubus, as though drawing on everything he had, did something none of us expected. He didn’t use sex to feed.

  He grabbed my head, slammed his mouth against mine, and latched on. And then, he began to suck, and I began to die.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  When his mouth created the seal around mine and he drew that first breath from me, Silverlight went dark.

  It was as though she died—and only later would I understand it was a defense to save herself. While she was attached to me, she was me, and he would have stolen her power and her life had she not fallen away.

  Still, for one second, while I could still think, I felt alone.

  But then, as the demon grew stronger, the thing that made him an incubus came to life. Just that suddenly, his allure was so strong that my terror began to dim beneath my desire. I wanted him. I wanted him more than I’d ever wanted anything or anyone in my entire life.

  That feeling, that ecstasy, it was indescribable.

  And I clutched him to me, moaning into his mouth. His tongue slid against mine, and it was enough to make me climax. Just the slide of his tongue.

  My entire body climaxed.

  Then everything was chaos.

  The others attacked—I could distantly hear them there, trying to kill the demon, to get him off me, but with the incubus’s second inhalation, I was floating in a sea of bliss.

  The demon grew in power as I grew weaker.

  Seconds, that’s all. Just a couple of brief seconds, and then Miriam put her switchblades through the demon’s head. He paused in his sucking kiss, but not even silver in a demon’s brain would kill him, and not even the hunter and the golem hacking him to pieces would drag him from his long-awaited feast.

  And I didn’t want it to.

  But then, Amias Sato came.

  The master came.

  The vampire who’d once tried to kill me would now try to save me.

  I couldn’t kill Amias, but Shane could have. Still, he understood the master was trying to save my life, and not even Shane Copas was going to interfere with that.

  And Amias did something none of the others could do—he ripped the demon off me. I felt the disconnect, and it was agonizing, like my lips were being pulled from my face, my insides were being wrenched from my body, and I couldn’t breathe through so much pain.

  So much despair.

  Surely I would die from it.

  But finally the connection was severed completely, and I lay on the ground trying to remember how to breathe as the demon and the master fought.

  They rolled through the night, screaming and growling and bleeding, like two wild, rabid animals.

  And then there was only silence and the pungent, ripe scent of pain and blood.

  I lay on the ground and stared up into the starlit sky, bereft. Black depression had descended when the incubus left me, and I hadn’t the will to move.

  “Clayton,” Miriam said. “Get her off the ground!”

  Clayton lifted me into his arms and Miriam grabbed my hand, her eyes a little too wide. “Trinity,” she cried.

  I was alive, but I was swimming in black water, drowning it in, and I didn’t have the will to reassure her.

  Shane got in my face. “It will pass, Trinity.”

  And I clung to his gaze with a desperation that rivaled the demon’s nearly unbreakable connection to my mouth. And then even the desperation passed.

  “It will pass,” he repeated. And there was no doubt in his face. Only a calm certainty. “You won’t feel this way forever.”

  I didn’t believe him. There was no belief left inside me. It was as though the incubus had taken every drop of joy, hope, and love I’d possessed, and had left only darkness.

  Was that how the vampires felt? When they’d died, had they faced this gaping empty endlessness? Had they retained that memory, that knowledge? Was that why they feared death so violently and needed beyond anything else to kill me, the one who could toss them back into that nightmare?

  Was this their afterlife?

  It was. I knew it as well as they knew it.

  And I could not blame them for wanting to end the hunters.

  Amias had chased the incubus away, but the desperate demon would be back. He’d had a taste, but in order to regain full strength, he would need all of me. And now he was strong enough to take it.

  But what he wanted to do, what he needed to do, those were secret things that one should do in darkness.

  And in darkness he would wait. He would wait for the right moment, because no longer was he quite as desperate. No longer would he have to take such risks to get a taste of healing power.

  I was too dejected to even shudder at the notion.

  Because worse than the fear that he would return was the fear that he wouldn’t.

  Miriam grabbed my face. “I don’t like that look in your eyes, Trinity. That’s not who you are.”

  “It’ll take a while to restore what the incubus took,” Clayton said. And maybe he didn’t mean to, but he tightened his arms protectively around me. “She’ll heal.”

  “I don’t like it,” Miriam spat. “She looks like you. Emotionless and unreachable. Fucking…I don’t like it.”

  “I’m not hurt,” I said, dully. “Put me down, Clayton. I have a vampire to track.”

  He hesitated, and only when Miriam turned her glare on him did he let me slide to the ground.

  I stood beside Shane, who looked at me with maybe the tiniest spark of admiration.

  “Trinity,” Miriam said.

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t come to see me until you’ve lost that shit. I can’t deal with it.”

  “You realize none of this matters,” I said. “Don’t you?”

  She frowned. “What doesn’t matter?”

  “Anything.” They didn’t understand, but I did. I got it. Nothing mattered. Nothing mattered because we were going to die.

  So why even bother to fight? To live?

  Shane rested his shotgun on his shoulder. “There are two things that can drag you out of the darkness.”

  I didn’t ask what those two things were, but he told me anyway.

  “Blood,” he said. “Killing. Fighting.”

  “And sex.” I looked at him. “It’s always going to be sex.”

  He nodded. “But not with me. That wouldn’t bring you back. You need someone almost taboo. Someone who will make you feel something I can’t.”

  “Who?” Miriam took a step closer to us, putting herself between me and Clayton. Maybe that was an accident, maybe it wasn’t.

  Shane noticed, as well. “Don’t worry,” he told her. “Not even Clayton could pull her out of this. At least not as fast as she needs out.”

  “Then who?” Miriam tilted her head. “Who can drag her out of there? Because I’ll go get him.” For a second she perked up, and if I hadn’t been so wretched I’d have laughed. “Me?” she asked, and took another step toward us. “Is it
me? Because I’m willing to take one for the team.”

  Shane stared down his nose at her. “Full of sex and nightmares,” he murmured. “Aren’t you, Miriam?”

  She shrugged. “Yeah. So? I do what makes me feel good.” She pointed her chin at me. “She could make me feel good.”

  “You’re not the one,” Shane said. He looked at me. “She knows who it is.”

  And suddenly, I did know.

  Even the thought of him made a sprout of something red and obsessive and violent burst through the crust of darkness.

  “I am the one,” someone said, and we all turned at the voice.

  Amias Sato slid from the shadows.

  He was covered with blood, and I wanted to add to it.

  “Oh,” Miriam breathed. “Angus will kill us all if we let that happen.”

  Revulsion rose inside me, turned to anger, morphed into rage, and God, how I welcomed that rage. It was bigger than the darkness. More consuming than the despair. I grabbed it with both hands. Then I ripped Silverlight from her sheath, and I leapt at the vampire.

  I thought I saw him smile before he turned and flew away, his long, silky hair flowing behind him like a teasing, enticing, irresistible song of seduction, and I could only follow with my sweet rage and my need and my desperation.

  Clayton, Miriam, and Shane slipped away, leaving me to the master.

  To my master.

  For better, for worse.

  So help me God.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Oh, the pain.

  The agony that came from my desire to hurt him was sharp and immediate, and I embraced it. I bathed in it, rolled in it, grabbed it with both hands and stuffed it down my throat.

  That pain was preferable to the gaping chasm of despair the incubus had left behind when he’d stolen everything else.

  So I chased him. I chased the master.

  Amias was trying to wear me out. He made sure I never lost sight of him, but he stayed just out of reach. He began to help me defeat the incubus, and he hadn’t even had to touch me to do it.

  Yet.

  I kept the thought of him touching me in the forefront of my mind. If I concentrated on the horror of the master’s touch, I could almost forget the darkness of the demon’s kiss.

  When three vampires rushed out to attack me, Amias stood back and laughed as I killed them. They weren’t infecteds, but neither of us cared.

  Blood exploded from the vampires and showered me in scarlet rain, and I cried because I felt something other than desolation.

  The moonlit ground swirled with colors so thick it was an effort to slog through them, but that was only in my mind. I chased Amias deeper and deeper into the woods, until those colors painted the night air and shone like delicate beams all around me.

  I was in the midst of a terrible, savage beauty. I was in the midst of the vampires.

  Amias led me, and I followed with the knowledge that when I caught him, I would not be the one in control. It should have made me run screaming into the night.

  It didn’t.

  There were worse things than facing the master. There were worse things than fear.

  Worse things, even, than allowing the one who’d killed my family to save me now.

  He stepped suddenly out in front of me, and unable to stop my wild rush, I careened into him. He wrapped me in his arms.

  “Fight if you will,” he whispered, “but this is where you belong.”

  Oh, did I fight.

  I fought him. I fought the darkness the demon had left inside me. I fought the memories of dead people, people I’d loved, strewn broken and bleeding around me.

  Silverlight brightened so fiercely we were cocooned in a silver spotlight, but I didn’t care about the dangers of being so visible and distracted. The influence of the incubus left no room for fear of death, and I cared about only one thing at that moment—defeating the horrific despair. Amias reached down inside me and ripped emotions up through the blackness. He freed the rage.

  So I fought, because Amias made sure I could.

  He didn’t simply stand there and take my assault—Silverlight would have slashed him to ribbons. He was strong, and he was fast, and he was vicious.

  And not even Silverlight could kill the master. She couldn’t kill him because I held her. If she could have killed him, he’d have died a thousand deaths that night.

  That didn’t stop me from trying, though.

  And God, it hurt.

  I fought through the pain because the incubus lingered, but with each slash of Silverlight, each kick or punch or bite, the pain increased. The darkness of the incubus didn’t stand a chance. The weight of the pain and rage and grief and resolve was just too heavy.

  In the end, after I’d been savaged and broken and beaten and had nothing left but agony, I released the past.

  I was free.

  I opened my numb fingers and let Silverlight fall the ground, where she darkened regretfully without my touch. My legs gave out and I would have joined her, but Amias caught me, gathered me to his chest, and waited quietly for my surrender.

  Abruptly, we were no longer encircled by light or caught in a ring of viciousness, but surrounded by a heavy, silent darkness.

  Both of us were bloodied and battered and wounded, but he was the immortal undead.

  I was not.

  And I did not want to die.

  So I turned my head and bared my neck. He would give me back what I’d lost, and I would let him.

  “My love,” he murmured. “You are so very strong.”

  The second I gave up my need to hurt him, the pain stopped. Just…stopped. In its place grew a relief so profound it was almost as overwhelming as the agony had been.

  He encircled my throat with his fingers, then brushed my cheek with his lips in a barely there kiss before lowering me to the hard ground.

  Something changed in that instant.

  And even the moon dimmed, unable, perhaps, to watch.

  Part of me stood back and stared, aghast.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Life. I’m doing life.”

  I pulled the silver chain out of my shirt and ripped it from my neck, then tossed it away. “Help me,” I whispered.

  He took his time. “I’ve been waiting,” he murmured, his voice full and soft and filled with something I couldn’t name, “for such a very, very long time.”

  I didn’t think he was talking about the last six years, but I didn’t ask. I couldn’t.

  I had surrendered myself to the master, and I could only lie in my defeat, and in my victory, and let him bring me back to life.

  He reached for my bloody, tattered clothes, and I closed my eyes as he undressed me. It was perhaps even more erotic with my eyes closed, because I felt everything. Everything.

  When I was completely naked, he sat back on his heels and I opened my eyes to watch him watch me. His gaze was like a physical touch. Everywhere he looked, I felt the caress of his stare.

  “Mine,” he whispered. “My woman.”

  He leaned forward and grasped my bare feet, rubbing his thumbs over my sensitive soles, then running his hands slowly and with the barest of touches up my legs. He parted my thighs, and as I lay sprawled and exposed before him, my body began to awaken.

  I could barely move on my own. I was damaged and exhausted and heavy, but still, I tried to lift my hand to touch his face.

  He took my hand and lowered it back to the ground. “You have only to lie there and feel what I can do. I gave you pain. Now I will give you pleasure.”

  My heart began to thump.

  “Submit to me, Trinity.” His eyes glittered in the weak moonlight, and his face appeared carved and almost unreal.

  I nodded, and closed my eyes, but shot them open once again when I realized the rage had gone. I’d surrendered that to him, as well. But only for that night.

  Perhaps later I would beat myself up.

  Perhaps much later.

  It was b
rutal and depraved and forbidden. I should not allow a vampire—especially not that vampire—to touch me. But I would. And I would allow much, much more.

  “Mine,” he whispered, and for that moment, it was true.

  I was his.

  He parted the lips of my sex and ran his thumb over the soft bit of slowly swelling flesh he found waiting, and I shuddered and cried out.

  Pleasure? Oh yes.

  He stretched out on the ground between my legs, slid his hands beneath me, and lifted me to his mouth.

  The movements of his tongue were long and slow, languid and heavy as he lapped and played. He dipped the end of his tongue inside me, then ran it up over the sensitive nub of flesh, again and again.

  And I could have lain there like that forever.

  He pushed a finger inside me and began moving it in sync with his tongue, and I moaned as the pressure and the pleasure built with torturous, relentless slowness—when I wavered on the edge of orgasm, he stopped all movement until the orgasm receded. Then he began again. My body was his and he knew exactly what to do with it.

  “You may come for me once,” he said, “and then I will bite you before I fuck you. And you will understand true pleasure.”

  And finally, when I was throbbing and dripping and swollen and so close there was no going back, he allowed me to climax.

  The orgasm shook my entire body.

  Before it had faded away, he pierced me high on my inner thigh with his needle sharp teeth.

  The pain was immediate, but before I could open my mouth to shriek, he put his lips over the wounds, and he began to suck.

  It was as though his mouth was on my entire body. I couldn’t tell that his lips weren’t covering the center of me, the part that still throbbed and thudded like an urgent heartbeat.

  He pulled the blood from my veins and I felt him kissing my lips. He scraped his tongue over the punctures and I felt him sliding inside me.

  There was magic in the bite, and rapture in the feeding.

  No wonder they were so hated, so feared, and so very irresistible. Once a human had been taken, she would never want to be released.

  I floated in bliss and drowned in euphoria, and even after he stopped drinking me, I remained high. He slid into me and he filled me up, and I came again and again. Climaxes such as I’d never felt, never imagined, and never would have believed.