His cheeks turn red. “She’s just a friend.”
I smirk. “None of her other friends are constantly checking out her ass.”
His blush deepens. “I don’t. But, I mean, do you think I’d ever have a shot with her?”
I take a long drawl of my beer. I wasn’t going to reveal what Lucy had told me, but both men had a good chance of becoming her next boyfriends. “It doesn’t hurt to try.”
“It hurt when we tried to ask you out,” Payton mutters.
I freeze. “We were like eight.”
“Yeah, but Emory had such a thing for you that when he found out he kicked our asses.”
Keith laughs, crinkles forming at the corners of his eyes. “Just be glad he hadn’t hit puberty. Can you imagine that beating in his berserker form?”
The two go off about the fight, but suddenly the night seems a little less fun. Every time I think of Emory, it’s like a face full of cold water. He’d been my best friend. We’d decided, as innocent, young children, that we’d get married someday. We were too young to really know what that meant, but the connection between us had been real. Deep.
And then, he’d just disappeared.
“He had it so bad for you,” Keith suddenly tells me, breaking into my thoughts.
I wince. “Nah, if he liked me that much, he would’ve taken the time to say goodbye when he left.”
“Yeah, that was kind of weird,” Payton says softly, and I think the assholes finally just remembered that I don’t like it when they talk about him.
There’s an awkward silence for half a second before Keith suddenly straightens. “Has Lucy been gone for a while?”
I frown. I wouldn’t say she’d been gone that long. But when I think back to the strange group of men, I find myself standing. “I’ll go look for her.”
“Want us to come with you?” Keith asks, starting to rise.
I shake my head. “I think you two in the women’s room might be a problem.”
He grins and salutes me with his drink.
“I’ll be fast,” I say. “She probably just got distracted by some hottie.”
“Better not have,” I hear Keith mumble under his breath.
I would’ve laughed if I wasn’t feeling so on edge. It kind of bugs me that I’d been so troubled by some strange men that I might actually be letting them ruin my night. So I promise myself the second I see Lucy safe and sound, I’d push them out of my thoughts.
Making my way through the club, I shoot down four men and shove aside a fifth as I wind my way to the bathrooms in the back. All along, my gaze sweeps the club for any sign of Lucy safely flirting with a sexy human, and in the back of my mind, any sign of the men.
But when I don’t see her or them, I start to worry more.
Rushing to the bathroom, I push past the line of angry women as they shout after me and then search all the stalls, despite the protests of a few surprised women. When I realize she isn’t here, I go back out into the hall, feeling nervous. She wasn’t in the club, on the dance floor, on the balcony, or in the bathroom. Where could she be?
Looking down to the end of the hall, my heart thuds as I stare at the two security guards flanking both sides of a door that says “VIP.” There’s no way in hell Lucy would just take off to the room, not without at least shooting us a text if some rich asshole had invited her in. But it was either the VIP room or outside, and I knew she wouldn’t have just left.
Making my way to the door, the two security guys stiffen at my approach.
“Only VIPs allowed,” one of them barks.
I lift a brow. “I’m just looking for a friend. She’s, as she’d put it, a dark goddess with the kind of hair any woman would die for. You seen her?”
“No,” he says, but I don’t like how quickly he responds.
Oh hell, the hairs on the back of my neck are standing on end again.
“Well, maybe I’ll just take a look to be sure.” I take a step closer.
The big guy moves to block my path. “Only VIPs allowed.”
I flash him a smile that’s all teeth. Both of them are easily double my size, but they’re only human. “Get out of my way and this doesn’t have to hurt.”
He leans down so that his hot breath is on my face. “Back away.”
I’m debating about the wisdom of beating up a couple of humans when I hear Lucy scream beyond the door. My vision goes black, and I move without thinking, slamming my fist into one guard’s face, then spinning to kick the other one in the junk.
When the guy grabs his nose, blood spurting out between his fingertips, I sweep his legs out from under him and watch as he hits the ground, hard. Not hesitating a second longer, I kick open the door and race inside.
And there in the back of a darkened room I see my Lucy bound and bleeding, her face a swollen mess, and the strange men from earlier surrounding her. They turn, flashing their fangs, and something inside of me goes cold.
There’s no damned way that I can fight seven vampires and survive, but I sure as hell am going to die trying.
Chapter Two
Kiera
Lucy says something around the gag in her mouth, and a vampire turns and punches her in the face, knocking her back so hard on the ground that she lays there, unmoving. My heart stops as I stare at her, and I’m shocked when I realize she isn’t breathing.
No, this isn’t possible.
But no matter how long I stare, her chest doesn’t rise and fall.
Something terrible awakens inside of me. Something born of anger and rage.
The vampires rush toward me, and I fully expect them to attack. I expect them to use their incredible strength against my small body, and break me piece by piece.
But when they get closer, they skid to a stop.
My view of them turns red and hazy. My thoughts race away. I realize that I’m swelling, growing, changing, but it’s like my brain doesn’t care. All it sees is them.
And what it wants to do.
When the first two attack, I’m not thinking or planning. Usually fighting against bigger opponents requires strategy, but it’s like my brain doesn’t work. Instead, my body seems to react without thought. And to my shock, it works in a way I never imagined.
My hand reaches out and snaps the neck of a vampire, tossing him aside like a rag doll.
A roar fills my head, a roar I realize might be coming from me, and I grab two vampires and slam them together, over and over again until they collapse, unmoving. I continue toward the three remaining vampires that stand between me and Lucy, my steps seem too slow, and the ground seems to shake beneath my feet.
“Stop,” one of the vampires says. “Do you know who I am?”
One of them rushes at me. I grab his arms as he tries to attack and pull until his eyes go wide and blood gurgles out of his mouth, his body stretching past its limit. When he stops breathing, I let him drop to the ground. My gaze snaps to the other one that had approached. He tries to run around me, to escape, but I wrap my hands around his head and crush his skull in.
When the final vampire cowers back from me, I stomp toward him.
“I am a vampire prince, a pure breed, a leader of my people. If you kill me, there will be no place you can go. There will be—“
I punch him in the face. He smashes back onto the ground, and I leap on top of him. My fists pummel him, and I see nothing through the red of my anger. Nothing at all. But I feel the blood as it coats my fists. I hear the sounds of him screaming, and then a terrible gurgling, and then nothing.
Finally, I stop. I’m breathing hard. Overwhelmed by emotion.
My gaze moves and lands on Lucy where she lies still on the ground. I move away from the dead vampire and kneel down beside her. I touch her throat, searching for a pulse, and find none. I shake her gently. I listen for a heartbeat.
There’s nothing.
My rage fades away, replaced by a horrifying sadness.
I feel my body shrink. I feel my muscles grow smaller, and
then the haze of red fades away, and it’s only me. Kneeling before a girl I grew up with. A woman I played with as a baby, walked with as a toddler, and enjoyed life with as an adult.
And the vampires had killed her…for what?
Tears rain down my cheeks, splattering on her still body. None of this made any sense. Why would vampires come here just to beat the shit out of one of our people? They were assholes, but this was just violence, for no reason.
Something subtle changes in the air. I turn and realize that red sparks are drifting into the air from my berserker branding. Something I’ve never seen before. Something I’ve never heard of before. They float about the room like glowing embers, then settle on Lucy. Her skin is illuminated for a moment, like a nephilim, and then the sparks fade into nothing.
I watch my best friend through my tears, hoping, praying that the magic in the air this night might save her. But whatever that was, it didn’t matter. Lucy was still dead.
I’m so overcome by grief that I don’t realize that someone has entered the room until I hear a curse spoken from the doorway. My head jerks around, and I stiffen, staring at a massive man.
His hair is dark brown, his matching beard wild and untamed, and his eyes are the same blue as the purest waters. He wears a grey t-shirt that strains across his muscled chest, arms swirling with black tattoos are clenched at his sides. Almost hidden amongst the tattoos is his berserker branding, and on his back he carries a sword.
At his side, both the guards stand, glaring at me. The massive man draws a sword from his back, and to my shock, cuts the heads off both the men beside him. Then he slams the door closed. Stalking toward me, he cuts the head off every vampire on his way to me like a professional executioner.
Holy hell. I reach for my axes, then remember they’re still lying on my bed at home. Fuck.
“What do you want?” I say, intending to sound threatening, and instead sounding lost.
“You…you went berserk,” he responds, his voice barely louder than a whisper.
“No.” I shake my head. “I’m a woman…I can’t…that’s not—“
“You went berserk, and the guards told people. More people than me.” This time his words sound tense, almost frightened.
I shake my head again. No, I didn’t. I don’t know what I did, but women don’t go berserk. At least, there are only a few stories about female berserkers, and there’s no way I’m one of them.
I was just trying to help Lucy.
“Kiera, we have to go. Now!”
“What? No.” I look from Lucy then back to him. “How did you know my name?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he rushes out, then reaches his hand out to me. “If we don’t leave now, you’re going to be in more trouble than you can imagine. These vampires are important. If they find out what you did it, you’re dead.”
His words send ice through my blood. I reach for his hand and let him pull me to my feet. Suddenly, he’s just a massive man, towering over me, his frame almost surrounding me. A tremble moves through me, and I look back at Lucy’s still body.
Suddenly, he begins to tug me to a back door.
“But I don’t understand—“
“We’ll talk later,” he rushes out, resheathing his sword. “Right now we need to run.”
I hear something crash behind us. Turning, I spot a group of men in suits in the open doorway. They look between the room full of dead people and us, their eyes wide.
The big man scoops me into his arms and starts to run for the back door.
“Stop!” someone shouts, but he only speeds up.
I flinch at the sound of a gun going off, and the steps of the man who holds me falter before he’s running once more. We explode out the door and into the night. He holds me close as we run for the end of the alley, but just as I think we might make it, more men in suits step in front of us.
He doesn’t miss a beat, spinning on his heel and running back the way we came.
But the men that were inside pile out, blocking our view.
All of them have guns pointed at him.
His grip tightens around me, and I swear he’s going to charge through them, but then one man shouts, “Aim for the girl!” And all their guns point at me.
It’s strange how fast he stops then. Almost instantly. So fast that I look up into his face, trying to figure out what just happened.
His crystal blues eyes look down on me. “Tell them I did it. Do you understand?”
“Like hell.” I didn’t care what he said. I attacked the vampires, and they damned well deserved it. I wasn’t going to let this mysterious stranger take the fall for me.
“Don’t be a fool,” he hisses. “Do as I—“
The men surround us. I’m wrenched from his grip, and a growl tears from his lips.
They remove his sword from his back and handcuff him roughly. His face is a mask of tension, but he doesn’t fight back.
“No!” finally drops from my lips, but everyone ignores me as they wrestle him to the ground. “No,” I say, louder this time. “It wasn’t him. It was me!”
The man behind me chuckles. “There’s no way you killed those men.”
“I did!”
“A group of pure breed fucking vampires,” he huffs. “I don’t think so.”
“I did,” I say again. “I—I went berserk.”
The alley goes silent. Then the stranger who rescues me swears. “She didn’t go berserk. She’s my fucking lover, and she’s fucking trying to protect me.”
“I’m not!” I tell them. “I killed them! They tortured Lucy! They killed her—“ Tears choke my throat. “They deserved what they got.”
“What do we do?” one of the men asks.
The man behind me sighs and jerks my hands, suddenly slamming handcuffs around them. “Take them both. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”
For the first time, the strange man starts to fight them. But within seconds, a needle is shoved into his neck, and he goes limp. Already I can see the four gunshot wounds in his back, and the pools of blood growing beneath his shirt. What more had they done to him? Bile rises in the back of my throat. Is he okay?
We’re dragged to a black van that waits for us at the end of the alley. The men in suits are all around us, creating a circle as if to hide us from the sight of the humans.
When I look up at the end of the alley, I see Keith and Payton staring down at us from the balcony, mouths gaping open.
“The vampires killed Lucy!” I shout at them. “So I went berserk and killed them all!”
Keith’s face goes white.
Peyton shakes his head as if nothing I say can be true.
I open my mouth to say more, but I’m tossed into the back of the van alongside the strange man, and the doors close. My heart pounds wildly. Yeah, I knew I should never talk about going berserk in front of humans, but I needed to tell them. They needed to know so they could tell my family.
Because I was pretty sure wherever I was going, I might not see them again.
It was probably my imagination, but I swear I hear the spirits laughing at us in the darkness.
Chapter Three
Kiera
In the back of the van I instinctually move closer to the strange man and away from the guards who sit by the door. My hands are cuffed behind my back, but I surprise myself by lying against him. I had no idea who he was. I had no idea why he’d tried to help me. But in this van, he was my only ally.
Tears roll down my cheeks as I think of Lucy, and the events of that room roll through my mind. Female berserkers weren’t nearly as strong as their male counterparts, but one punch shouldn’t have killed her.
But then, if that vampire had been an alpha vampire, a first of his kind, that would explain why he was so powerful. And if he was a vampire prince, in all likelihood he could’ve been an alpha. So maybe that explained why he was so strong, but it didn’t explain why I was able to kill him so easily.
I think of the haze of red, of
my slow steps and my powerful movements. Yes, I’d publicly declared that I’d gone berserk, but some part of me had never believed it. I was twenty-three. Most berserker males lost control as soon as they hit puberty. If I had the ability, wouldn’t it have awakened sooner than now?
And what did I know about female berserkers with the ability? Only that they were more legend than reality. And something about a prophecy that I can’t seem to remember.
I press my face against the strange man’s chest and breathe in his scent. It’s surprisingly…pleasant, almost comforting, like warm caramel and vanilla. Some unexpected awareness inside of me realizes that it’s his natural scent, and it makes something inside of me tighten. I look up into his face, the lights from the street lamps illuminating us where we lay every so often.
In slumber, his face is peaceful. Nice. More than nice. He’s easily the most handsome man I’ve ever seen. His cheekbones are high for a man’s, and his lashes are long and dark. His beard is wild, but there’s something interesting about it, like it hides the face of a remarkably beautiful man. Everything about him seems normal, and yet he’s lying beside me bleeding from bullet wounds he took to protect me.
It made no sense.
They killed Lucy, so I killed them. That was all I understood.
More tears roll down my cheeks and fill my eyes. I don’t understand what I’m doing when I press my face to his neck. I just…I feel so lost. So afraid.
“Kiera?” My name comes out groggy.
I stiffen and pull back from the man. His eyes are open, and he stares down at me as if he thinks I might be a dream.
“How do you know my name?”
His eyes close again, and I swear I can hear his heart racing. Is he refusing to tell me? Or is the medicine or the pain keeping him from explaining himself clearly?
“What are you?” I ask instead.
He answers, his face twisted in pain. “A berserker.”
“The bullets—“
“I’ll be fine,” he says.
One of the men in suits kicks at my leg. “Quiet, you two!”
Untamed- House of Berserkers Page 2
