Scorched Ice

by Erica Stevens

  Seeming to sense his gaze, Quinn turned to him and gave a little wave. He smiled and waved back at her, his eyes briefly falling to the scar on her sternum. He believed if the scars ever faded from her again, she wouldn’t reopen them now. They showed no signs of vanishing from her ivory skin though, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t see them as imperfections or find them unattractive. To him, they marked her as the warrior she was.

  Quinn turned away again as he ended the call.

  “You should probably just record a message,” Devon said. “Pretty sure those were the same questions you were asked last time.”

  “Or set up a website with FAQs,” Luther suggested.

  “Both could work,” Julian replied. “I’m sure Lou could do it.”

  “Imagine what the humans who stumble across that site would think,” Devon chuckled.

  Julian dropped his feet onto the floor and turned in the lounge chair. “Humans are all batshit crazy to begin with. They’ll probably think it’s some kind of a weird club or dating site.”

  “They’d think it was a dating site,” Devon said.

  Rising to his feet, Julian stretched his back. The aching muscles there eased somewhat as Dani squealed. A rush of water came over the side of the pool when she plummeted beneath the surface. On the other side of the net, Cassie, Melissa, and Chris slapped hands. Dani came up sputtering water and wiping it away from her eyes.

  “Maybe you could electrify the water,” Quinn suggested to her. “And knock them on their asses.”

  “Tempting,” Dani muttered as she waded through the water to retrieve the ball.

  “That would be cheating!” Chris declared from the other side of the net.

  “Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure Cassie used some telekinesis or something on that last ball,” Dani retorted.

  Cassie smiled sweetly. “Who, me?”

  “Yes, you!” Lou accused as he took the ball from Dani and tossed it over the net to Melissa.

  The door on the other side of the room opened, and a man entered the pool area. Julian watched him as he strolled toward one of the lounge chairs across the way. The man draped his towel over the back of the chair before kicking off his sandals. His eyes skimmed over the pool; they landed on Lou who stood motionless in the pool, his gaze locked on the man. The color drained from Lou’s face so fast Julian thought he might pass out.

  Julian frowned at Lou, but he didn’t have time to try to puzzle it out before the ball smacked Lou in the face and blood exploded from his nose.

  CHAPTER 10

  “Lou!” Quinn cried and dove toward him. “Are you okay?”

  She struggled to ignore the tantalizing scent of his blood as Lou clasped his nose and looked at her from watery eyes. Quinn’s fangs pricked as hunger blazed through her body, searing her veins. With everything that had happened, it had been a few days since she’d fed and her body reminded her of that now. She took a step away from Lou.

  She never saw Julian wade into the pool, jeans and all, until his hands slid under Lou’s armpits and Julian plucked him from the water. Turning, he handed him off to Devon who knelt outside of the pool. Devon helped him over to a chair while Luther shoved a towel at Lou. Taking the towel, Lou pressed it against his nose to try to halt the flow of blood.

  Quinn hurried to get away from the blood spreading through the water and rushed up the steps after Dani. Once out of the pool, Quinn hung back from the scent of Lou’s blood, unwilling to get any closer.

  “I’m sorry!” Melissa said as she waded through the water and climbed out of the pool behind Quinn. “I didn’t realize you weren’t looking.”

  Lou grasped Devon’s wrist when he knelt to examine him. “That man,” he said in a stuffy voice, “Commission. He was Commission.”

  Beside Devon, Julian went completely still. Ice crept down Quinn’s spine when the full implication of Lou’s words sank in. A member of The Commission was here.

  Julian snarled and spun away from Lou. He was halfway across the poolroom and the door the man had entered through before she blinked. The man must have fled already as he was no longer in the room with them.

  “No!” Quinn gasped, knowing he would have no care for himself, not if he could destroy more of those who had imprisoned him.

  Quinn didn’t look back at the others as she raced across the cool, gritty floor after him. She was halfway to the door, still swinging shut from Julian passing through it, when Devon overtook her and flew out the door after Julian.

  Endless seconds crept by before Quinn crashed into the door. She shoved it away from her when she plunged into the hallway beyond. Her eyes flew over the hallways as she searched for any hint of Julian or Devon within the hall, but they were nowhere to be seen. The eerie silence that greeted her made her want to scream just so she could hear something amid the walls stretching out to her right and left.

  “Where are they?” Cassie asked from behind her.

  She glanced at Cassie over her shoulder. “I don’t know.”

  Quinn scented the air, but the stringent chlorine odor of the pool clinging to her blocked out any hint of Julian. Following her instincts, she turned and raced down the hall on her left. Cassie’s feet didn’t make a sound on the carpet, but Quinn sensed her behind her as they ran down the hall.

  “Please don’t let him do anything stupid,” Quinn pleaded to no one in particular when she turned a corner. She had a feeling that might be like asking the world to stop spinning.

  She came to a halt when she realized the hall split off into four different directions. One hall led to the main entranceway, the others toward more rooms. “That man was fleeing Devon and Julian. He’ll most likely try to get out of this hotel or toward people,” Cassie said.

  Quinn nodded her agreement before turning and running toward the main entranceway of the hotel. Before she could step onto the white tile floor marking the entrance, she stopped abruptly. She stepped back from the sun spilling through the glass doors to her right. The people in the lobby turned to look at her, but she ignored the disapproving and lecherous stares from some of them as they inspected her and Cassie in their bathing suits.

  “They didn’t go outside,” Quinn said. “Julian would have followed him into the sun if he had. Our bathing suits are getting enough attention; imagine what the smoking man running across the parking lot would get.”

  “You’re right, and I feel them somewhere in here.”

  Quinn closed her eyes as she drew on her honed vampire senses and their bond to pick up some hint of Julian. Gradually, she was able to shut out the overwhelming scents of perfume, chlorine, cologne, cigarette smoke, and cooking meat from the restaurant across the lobby from them. The chatter of the humans checking into the hotel faded away.

  Her eyes flew open when a bus boy clearing a table dropped the bucket he’d been holding. So focused on trying to tune into Julian, the piercing sound of the breaking dishes caused her to wince. She could feel him somewhere in this hotel, but with the numerous people within, she couldn’t figure out where he was exactly. Turning away from the main lobby, she raced back the way they’d come with Cassie at her side.

  Chris, Melissa, and Dani were running toward them when they came around the corner again. They didn’t say a word as they turned to follow Cassie and her back down the hall toward the poolroom. When they returned to the split, Quinn stood and looked helplessly back and forth down the other three halls.

  “Can you pick up anything on them?” she asked Cassie, who had far more abilities than she did.

  “They’re inside, but they’re moving too fast for me to get a good sense of where they are. The presence of so many others isn’t helping.”

  “No, it’s not,” Quinn agreed. “We have to separate.”

  A crushing sense of doom descended over Quinn as she said these words. They had to find Julian soon. Devon may be able to keep him from doing something completely stupid, but she didn’t know if he could keep Julian from killing an innocent in order to g
et at the man he hunted.

  “Chris, Melissa, and Dani go that way.” She pointed to the right hall. “Cassie take that hall, and I’ll take this one.”

  Without waiting to see if they agreed or not, she broke off to the left. She almost bolted as fast as she could down the hall, but she forced herself to take her time and keep her senses alert for anything unusual. If she was closer to Julian, she would be able to find him.

  Outside of a door near her, one of the maids had a cleaning cart in the hall while they vacuumed a room. Quinn stopped to snatch a folded white robe from the second shelf of the cart and tugged it on. The fluffy fabric settling over her made her feel a little less conspicuous than roaming the halls in her bathing suit did. She rolled the ends of the sleeves up and snugged them into place before belting the robe around her waist.

  Snatching a butter knife from a plate on top of the dishes piled on the cart, she wrapped her hand around the handle. She kept the knife at her side while she continued down the hall. The butter knife was nowhere near as reassuring in her hand as one of her stakes or one of the knives she usually wore strapped to her would be, but it was better than nothing. Maybe the knife wouldn’t pierce through bone, but it would certainly take out an eye or a jugular.

  By now, Julian might have returned to the pool, but she didn’t dare double back to check in case he was still hunting the man from The Commission. Arriving at the end of the hall, she stood and stared up the stairs to her right before looking at the emergency exit a few feet before her. The sun filtering through the window in the door danced across the red carpet centimeters away from her bare toes. They hadn’t gone through this door as the sign beside it read: Alarmed.

  She gazed up the stairs again before turning to look down the hall behind her. No one was coming to retrieve her, and aside from the dull hum of the vacuum cleaner, she heard nothing else. She adjusted her hold on the knife, lifted the end of her robe, and placed her foot on the first step. As she climbed, she kept her back against the wall and her eyes focused on the stairs above her.

  The Commission here. She didn’t know what to make of that. Her aunt and uncle had faked their deaths in order to keep her hidden from The Commission. Clint’s family had fled from them years ago in order to keep themselves alive. They had done things to Julian that still haunted him. They had no care or value for any life; human, Hunter, and vampire alike were something to be experimented on.

  She’d hoped to never come across the sick organization that had created the Hunter line, but now she realized it had been inevitable. Her world had been as sheltered as possible for as long as she could remember, but it was a small world after all.

  Now that one of the members of The Commission had walked into their lives, Julian wouldn’t be stopped until he destroyed every one of them. Her stomach twisted at the possibility of him in danger as she reached the landing of the second floor. A humming sound coming from a room set off to the right of the landing drew her toward it. Poking her head around the corner, she discovered a small room housing an ice machine, two soda machines, and a couple of vending machines.

  On her right, another room branched off from it. She moved cautiously toward that room until she found herself standing at the edge of the arcade she’d seen advertised at the front desk when they’d checked in. She nearly jumped out of her skin when the pinball machine made a strange sound before it lit up across the back and the flippers flicked loudly back and forth. Perhaps the noise and lights were supposed to lure her into playing the machine, but all she wanted was to drive her knife through the glass to make it stop.

  The colored squares of the dancing machine next to her lit up in a wash of reds and blues before going still once more. All the other machines remained silent as they waited for someone to insert tokens into them. The stale aroma of sweat and the metallic ting of computer chips permeated the air. There was nothing sinister about the room, but something about the waiting machines gave her the creeps.

  She took a step back to leave when the hair on her nape rose. She detected no new scent, but her instincts screamed that she wasn’t alone. Over her time with Julian and the others, she’d become attuned to their presences. It wasn’t one of them coming up behind her now.

  Ever since Earl had first walked into her life and torn it apart when she was eighteen, she’d always been ready for a fight. Always been loaded down with weapons so well concealed many wouldn’t know they were there. Now, she was standing in a freaking robe and bikini with none of the weapons she’d become so adept with over the years.

  For the first time in six years, she’d let her guard down, allowed herself to pretend to live a “normal” life for a vampire, and she was about to pay for that.

  The faintest hint of a step behind had her spinning and swinging the butter knife out. She’d twisted it within her grip so the blade was pointed to the side in her fist. Despite its dull blade, she swung the knife with enough force that it whizzed past the nose of the man standing there and drove deep into the wall next to him. Plaster filtered over her hand as blood trickled from the thin slice the blade had left across the tip of the man’s nose.

  His blue eyes widened on her before narrowing. Quinn yanked the knife from the wall at the same time he pulled out two stakes. Her fangs tingled as realization sank in.

  Hunter! Not Commission, she faced a Hunter, and he was far better prepared to kill her than she was him.

  She danced back a few steps, cursing the cumbersome robe swaying about her feet as she moved, but she didn’t dare shed it and reveal to him how woefully unprepared for this battle she was.

  The man’s agile body moved around her with the flowing grace all Hunters and vampires possessed. With the faint lines around his eyes and mouth and a hint of gray in his brunet hair, he appeared to be in his mid to late thirties. His eyes were assessing as he tried to gauge how deadly of an opponent she may be—something she wasn’t sure of herself right now.

  She’d never fought a Hunter, one of her own kind. She’d killed Zach, but that had been to save Julian. Could she kill another Hunter again now?

  Yes. If push came to shove, she would kill him in order to stay alive. She would do everything she could to keep it from coming to that point first though.

  “I don’t want to fight you,” she said.

  The man wiped the back of his hand across his nose, removing the trickle of blood from it. “You don’t have a choice.”

  “I’m not a killer.”

  He snorted as he shifted the stakes in his hands. Quinn recognized the move as him readying to throw one at her. “I suppose those fangs are only for show.”

  “Oh no, I’m perfectly capable of tearing the throat out of something. I simply refrain from doing so,” she replied, moving with him in order to keep from being cornered against one of the machines.

  He chuckled and moved so rapidly that Quinn barely saw his hand pull back before he threw the stake at her. Darting to the side, she plucked the stake from the air. Before he could get a chance to realize what she’d done, she whipped the weapon back at him. He wasn’t fast enough to completely dodge it as the stake embedded in his shoulder, knocking him into the wall.

  “That could have been your heart!” she hissed at him. “I chose not to make it so. I don’t want to kill you.”

  Wrath blazed in his eyes when he tore the stake from his shoulder. The scent of his blood caused saliva to fill her mouth as her earlier hunger surged back to the forefront.

  “Your eyes,” the man murmured.

  Quinn glared at him as she realized she’d lost control of her hunger enough for her eyes to change. She’d worked her entire life to keep herself restrained from allowing that to happen. There was no denying she was different when her eyes changed. Unlike other vampires, whose irises became red when out of control, her irises became a molten gold color and red danced around the outer rims of her pupils. Like flames, that red actually seemed to leap and burn. The whites of her eyes turned completely red to empha
size the striking anomaly of her irises.

  He twisted the stake around in his good hand. Despite his years of training, she heard the increased beat of his heart, and a thin sheen of sweat beaded his brow. He’d been completely composed when he first encountered her, but her eyes had rattled him.

  “What are you?” he asked.

  “I’m not your enemy,” she replied.

  “All vampires are my enemy.”

  “That’s not true. You’ve been taught wrong all these years. The Commission has taught you wrong. You have to believe me.”

  “Lies,” he murmured, but his gaze never left hers. “Vampires spew lies.”

  “If I was your enemy, I’d be on you by now.”

  He chuckled as he changed his stance. She may have injured his right shoulder, and most likely the dominant side of his body, but she had no doubt he’d be as capable of handling a weapon with his left hand as he was with his right. Most Hunters were; she was.

  “You’re simply not as stupid as most vampires,” he replied. “You’ve learned to hang back and gauge your enemy. A sign of your age and the power I feel coming from you.”

  “I was only turned into a vampire six years ago. I’m twenty-four.”

  “More lies.”

  “The truth.”

  “Not possible. I can feel the strength in you.”

  “I’m not a normal vampire. I’m a friend.”

  “Who hangs out with the enemy. You think we didn’t see you all in the pool. You think we don’t know who Julian and Devon are; you think we didn’t recognize some of our own. The traitors amongst our own kind!” he spat at her. “There’s been a standing kill order on all of them for two years. We may not know who you are, but we’ll figure it out.”