“Please,” she whispered, not knowing what else to say.
“Please what?” he asked, pulling her further into the darkness of the cave. She stumbled after him, her gaze trapped in his. In the dark, his eyes glowed more starkly, filling her with an anticipation that very nearly bordered on fear.
“I…” She didn’t know what to say.
“Do you still think I killed your father, Katherine?” he asked, his grip on her arms lessening now that they were well away from the cave entrance.
Katherine digested his question and then shook her head. It was true. She didn’t believe it any longer. Not at all. She knew, in her heart, that he was innocent. And she knew that the warlock king was not.
“Do you fear me?” he asked next.
Yes, she thought without hesitation. That, too, was true. Byron Caige scared the hell out of her. Everything about him screamed danger. He was big, he was strong, he was powerful. He could send the city into a blackout if he wanted to; of that she had little doubt. He had glowing eyes and razor sharp fangs and he smelled like the most delicious sex in the world just waiting to happen. Byron Caige represented everything a mother ever warned her daughter about.
And he was standing over her now, his hands wrapped lightly around her wrists, his smooth, deep voice sending rivulets of pleasure across her skin. “Yes, you scare me,” she told him.
“Good,” he replied. There was no hesitation on his part either. His smile broadened, ever so slightly, and he leaned in. “I’ll let you in on a secret,” he said. He was so close, she felt his words whisper across her lips. “I can smell just how very much I scare you.”
A hard, hot embarrassment ramrodded through her at those words. She knew exactly what he was referring to. His kiss on her wrist, his nearness right now – they were making her wet. And he could scent it on her.
With her humiliation returned just a spark of her former anger. Her fire. It straightened her spine and she felt the resulting tightening of his grip on her wrists. Clearly, he sensed the fight in her coming back and was readying for it.
“Whatever it is you plan to do to me, Caige, do it now. Just get it over with.” She wasn’t stupid. He’d told her she was a dormant and then as much as promised that she was his. He was planning to turn her. She had no weapons on her and even if she managed to miraculously escape his clutches and knock him out, there was the sun to contend with.
And she didn’t want to hurt him anyway. The softer part of her – the part that had been more or less buried for twenty years – recognized the pain he’d already suffered for the last five decades and didn’t want to add to it.
But she didn’t like being toyed with either.
“I would love nothing more, Kat,” he told her frankly. “But the vampires are on their way. I can sense them now. I carry a part of their race in my veins.”
Katherine blinked. The vampires were coming? For them?
“Wraythe must have cut a deal with them,” he told her, his gaze flicking to her lips and then back up again. He looked the very image of hunger, deep and unforgiving. His fingers clenched and unclenched where they held her wrists. “They can move in the daylight; they always have. We don’t have that benefit, little Huntress.” He shook his head, just once. “We’re sitting ducks.”
Oh God, Katherine thought. “No,” she said. “We have to get out of here!”
“It’s too late.” Byron closed his eyes, only for a moment. “They’re near.”
“Byron!” Katherine cried. Her voice shook. She tried to turn toward the cave entrance, wondering if when she did she would find a line of vampire silhouettes blocking the exit. “There has to be something we can do!”
*****
Byron could think of only one thing. It had always worked among his people; a mark prevented another male wolf from touching an alpha’s intended mate. But would it work against an Offspring’s bite?
Because he knew that’s what would happen. No vampire in his right mind would pass up a chance to have dormant for supper. The precious women were so rare, their blood so sweet, they were like drugs and sex and candy and alcohol on the tongue all at once. Dormant blood running through a werewolf’s system was pure ecstasy. Byron knew that it would be no different for a vampire; he was a part of them now. He could feel what they would feel. And Katherine Dare was a prize that was calling to him in a really, really bad way.
The vampires were coming. She needed to be protected.
“Just this,” he said before his grip on her tightened once more. Her head snapped back around, her white-blonde hair flying about her lovely face as he pulled her into his arms and released her right wrist so that he could slide his hand around her waist.
She tensed in his embrace. “What are you doing?” she asked through gritted teeth. Fear was sending her into fight mode and no doubt her training was kicking in as well.
His hold on her left wrist, he maintained. “I’m going to mark you,” he told her, and as he’d suspected she would, she instantly tried to pull out of his embrace. Of course, she failed. “You’ll be fodder for the Offspring who take us otherwise, Katherine,” he told her over her struggles. And I want to do this, his wolf growled inside of him. Almost more than anything I’ve ever wanted to do.
Desperation tilted her tone when she cried, “You can’t do this!”
It was a useless thing to say to him at that moment, and they both knew it was patently false as well. He could do what he was about to do. And he was going to do it.
“You have ten seconds to pick a place, Kat,” he told her, feeling his gums ache and his dick throb with the very idea of sinking his teeth into her sweet flesh. “And then I pick for you.”
Katherine’s harsh, ragged breaths punctuated the silence of the cave, joined only by the tiny grunts she made as she tried to pull away and the crackling of the fire. Her beautiful blue eyes had lightened into a near violet; fear brought out the purple in them, apparently. High emotion.
She knew what it meant to be marked by a werewolf. There was no going back.
Ten seconds came and went and Caige raised her left wrist to his lips. Katherine froze in his grip, her breathing arrested, her wide-eyed gaze trapped in his. A beat passed between them, and he listened to her racing heart.
Something dark flashed in the depths of her beautiful eyes. It gave Byron pause.
Time was not on their side, but Byron couldn’t lose Kat to another seed of fear. Not if he could prevent its planting this time around.
In a split second decision that might make or break the one chance he had of protecting her, Byron lowered her wrist and instead took her head in his hands. He peered hard into her eyes – and then he claimed her mouth with his own. His kiss came hard and fast and the bliss it released within him was of a magnitude he’d never known possible.
It had been fifty years since he’d kissed a woman. The vampire princess had kissed him. She’d forced pleasure and need and dark desire into him with such fierce fury, it had left him breathless and spent and miserable. He’d never known happiness through her kisses.
He’d thought he never would again.
Until now.
Byron had intended to use his kiss to send Katherine to sleep and make this easier on her. He’d only wanted to see the fear in her eyes disappear. But he’d been a fool. To think that he could kiss his dormant – open her up beneath him and taste the sweetness she promised – and not react had been pure idiocy.
He felt her moan against him as he moved past her lips and teeth and delved deep. The tension left her arms, her body curled into his, and he realized that she did so of her own accord. He was not controlling her. She was reacting to him out of her own need. She wanted him as much as he wanted her.
His inner wolf growled and he spun with his dormant, shoving her up against the wall and pinning her there, his arm braced against the stone behind her. We’re doomed, he thought. They were doomed because he didn’t have enough
strength of will within himself to break the kiss.
So she broke it for him.
In one hard move, she placed her hands to his chest and pushed. He could have held on. He could have broken her will, brought her to orgasm, had her writhing beneath him. He could have taken it all the way – right up until the point that the Offspring crashed the party and the both of them kicked the bucket.
But he didn’t. Some semblance of humanity remained within the wolf and he let her go, knowing it was the only thing that would save their lives.
“Do it,” Katherine whispered, her breaths quick, short and ragged.
Byron hesitated, uncertain he’d heard her correctly.
“Just do it!” she cried then, and in a move that would forever change her life, she pulled her flaxen hair to the side and exposed the side of her neck.
That was all Byron needed. There was no hesitation in him now. The wolf reared its head and Byron exposed his fangs. With blinding speed, he thrust his hand through her hair and grabbed ahold of her waist, holding her in place.
And then he sank his teeth into her throat.
Katherine gasped and arched into him. He knew it hurt at first – teeth were teeth and they were hard and sharp and there was no escaping the very real pain they brought. But in the next instant, her sweet, precious blood was fueling his body and mind and Byron’s power was washing over her in return. It moved through her, a wave of liquid, molten magnificence that erased the discomfort from her body. All that was left in its receding wake was pleasure, need – and a burgeoning desire for more.
It was natural. Piercing the jugular for a wolf was normally accompanied by sex. The two combined would turn a dormant into a made wolf, and no dormant could withstand the very basic desire to move to this next step. No alpha could either.
It was the hardest thing Byron had ever had to do not to strip her down and take her then and there. Every fiber of his tall, strong being screamed that it be done. His muscles flexed taut, his grip became bruising, and he swallowed with a slow, languid abandon that made his already rock hard cock throb.
But he could feel the Offspring now; the vampires were right on top of them. They were out of time.
Very slowly, very carefully, Byron pulled his fangs from the side of Katherine’s neck. She sobbed, half in uncomfortably sharp pleasure, half in disappointment, as his teeth left her flesh completely. He had her pressed against the wall beneath him, pinned to within an inch of her life. And he didn’t move now.
Instead, he pierced his tongue with the tip of one fang and leaned back in. “You’re mine,” he whispered in her ear. She shivered against him and he growled. Everything about her was painfully tempting. But he knew what he had to do and he did it.
Byron closed his eyes and gently kissed the dual bite marks he had carved into her neck. And then he touched them with his tongue, once more tasting the sweet, sweet promise that was Katherine Dare. As he did, his blood entered her open wounds and mingled with her own.
He knew it was coming a split second before it came. He held onto her, nuzzling her neck as an orgasm racked through her body and a swirling, shimmering charcoal-gray mark began to etch itself across her perfect, healed skin.
Chapter Seventeen
“Loose the Hounds”
Manuel watched the red dot on the screen send out a single bleep of a signal and nodded to himself. Manuel Sanchez was a good man. He’d worked hard to get where he was and he deserved the respect and power that would come when he took over as the leader of the Hunters. God was on his side. He had plans for the organization.
Hunters claimed to be fighting for the good, but though they hunted the demons and wiped their filthy race from the Earth, there was so much more they could be doing. Demons didn’t only come wrapped in fur. There was so much evil in the world, tainting its Christian purity. This wasn’t the world God wanted. Where was the Church? Why wasn’t it involved in this? This was the single most important thing humans had ever done in the name of their Lord – and the Church was kept separate. It made no sense!
But Manuel planned to change all of that.
And an unwitting Katherine Dare was going to help him.
Something had happened to her. She’d gone after the “wolf with the gray eyes” that she’d been hunting since her inception into the organization, but somewhere along the way, she’d lost that fire that he’d always admired in her. Her conviction had kept her on the straight and narrow. Unfortunately, the wolf had gotten to her.
He could tell. He could always tell.
Now Dare was nothing but a trussed up hussy with a demonic problem or two of her own. She’d been unable to show her skin in daylight, and neither had her gray-eyed wolf. Manuel had never come across this particular demon disorder, however it made sense. If you were of the devil, you shouldn’t be allowed to show your face in the light of God’s day.
Manuel wanted to know more. This development held immense potential for the Hunters. Until now, they’d been resigned to fighting demons both day and night. If, however, the creatures could be relegated to moving about only at night, it would leave them vulnerable half the time. That was an incredible improvement and an opportunity he couldn’t afford to pass up.
Which was why he’d planted the tracking device on Katherine Dare. At the time he’d placed it on her, he’d simply gone for their smallest, newest one because he hadn’t wanted her to find it or notice it. It was lucky that he had.
She’d been so preoccupied with making sure no light touched her or her demon companion on their way out of the hotel, she hadn’t notice when he’d placed the nearly microscopic device on the inside collar of her leather jacket. It was so light, it would never be felt. It emitted no sound or flash and was the same color as the jacket.
He’d known she would try to escape.
What he hadn’t expected was that she would be lucky enough to find her way into the headquarters electrical system and wreak havoc on it the way she had. That piece of demon magic had obviously been the work of her incredibly powerful werewolf friend, and it not only surprised him, but made him incredibly grateful he’d gone with the organizations newest, tiniest tracking device for Katherine.
This electrical power the demon had was a matter he would look into. It held immense potential for the Hunters, but it also worried him. Manuel had instantly prayed that the demon wouldn’t find the bug on Dare; that it was small enough and gave off a minute enough electrical signal to evade detection. God had granted his wish.
He was right to know she would escape. Katherine was smart; he would give her that. It was another of the things he’d always admired about her. Female Hunters were rare, and Katherine had been, by far, the best among them. She was blessed with a mature sense of logic and deduction that had saved her life many times over.
It was unfortunate that it had to fail her now. But Manuel would see if he could do something about that. After all, Jesus wanted his followers to forgive others – especially if those others were topnotch Hunters and it would be a shame to lose them. Manuel was willing to forgive Dare these latest trespasses of hers under the right circumstances.
Manuel shut down the screen in front of him and turned to face his men. “Let’s head out,” he said. “Remember we need the demon’s blood.” There had to be a body left over for that, and too many Hunters were entirely too fond of destroying all trace of demon as quickly as possible. “And take Dare alive.”
*****
Katherine was seeing stars. The universe was swirling before her eyes, points of colored light that melted like a milky way and spiraled inward, deeper – deeper. Her bliss followed her down, sinking with her until she could go no further. It seemed to go on forever.
And then the stars faded and someone was brushing a lock of her hair from her forehead. The warmth of her orgasm ebbed and a strange chill of cold rode over her. She shivered, noticing the hardness of the cave stone beneath her body. She was laying on her sid
e.
She tried to open her eyes, but the lids felt heavy. The gentle fingers that had brushed her hair from her face now brushed a second lock of hair from her neck.
“He’s marked her,” said an unfamiliar voice.
Katherine tried again to open her eyes, this time succeeding in letting in a thin shaft of light. Someone was crouched down beside her. The dark figure felt familiar.
Oh no, she thought as reality sank in. A… vampire?
“You know us then, do you?” the voice said softly.
What? Kat felt as if he’d read her mind.
The vampire smiled, flashing fangs. “You must be the Hunter who helped make such a mess of the warlock king’s estate.” The voice was deep and melodic and despite the dire magnitude of the situation, Katherine found that the speaker’s tone held no malice. In fact, if anything, it held amusement.
Which made absolutely no sense.
“This was quick thinking on your part, wolf,” the voice said. Katherine watched as the blurry, dark figure beside her straightened and stood. She could tell that he turned away from her then. “Of course you realize that the mark disappears when you die.”
Kat felt very weak, but she’d never been one to lie down for a fight. With great effort, she was able to get an arm beneath her and prop herself up to look around.
As she did, her vision cleared and the rest of her surroundings came back into focus. It was a mixed blessing though, because what she saw filled her with a stark sense of mounting terror.
Byron was on the other side of the cave, surrounded by half a dozen very big, very strong men. For the most part, they wore jeans and t-shirts, all in dark colors. They had a familiar look about them; she’d seen their kind all over the warlock king’s grounds. And now she knew what they were. Vampires – all of them.
Also in the room were three other men: the man in black who stood over her now and two others. One of the others was dressed in a suit, its hues as subdued as everyone else’s. He looked like a lawyer to Katherine, which she knew was shortsighted and rather stereotypical of her, but she wasn’t firing on all cylinders at the moment.
The Hunt Page 13
