On the Hunt

by Alexandra Ivy

  Cold steel cut through the flesh of the arm the vamp raised to aim what appeared to be a handgun at Stan.

  The gun tumbled to the ground with a clatter as crimson liquid poured forth from the vamp’s brachial artery.

  Yuri breathed a quick sigh of relief. Immortal Guardians rarely carried guns, the loud reports of which tended to draw unwanted attention to their battles. Vampires usually didn’t carry them either, having heard rumors of this or that careless vamp experiencing an excruciating death in a sunlit cell after being taken into custody by law enforcement officials.

  Rumors Immortal Guardians had spawned. Such had served them well thus far.

  But vampires weren’t always the brightest bulbs in the box.

  Had this vampire fired his weapon, campus security would have swarmed toward them. Police would’ve joined them as residents nearby called 911 to report gunshots. And Yuri and Stan would’ve been up to their ears in chaos.

  The large vampire roared with rage as he clutched his injured arm and struggled to stanch the flow of blood from the severed artery. It was a fatal wound. Both knew it. Unlike immortals, vampires died if they lost too much blood.

  But this vampire wasn’t ready to throw in the towel. Swirling around, he delivered a roundhouse kick that sent Yuri flying through the air.

  Dust and mortar exploded around Yuri in a cloud as he struck the side of the building. Landing on his feet, Yuri raced forward, leapt over the two lesser vampires Stanislav had already slain, and swung hard at Vampire #6 before that one could retrieve the gun.

  The vampire stumbled backward and drew two short swords.

  The expertise with which the vamp wielded those swords astonished Yuri. He fought as though he had been trained by an Immortal Guardian.

  Yuri pressed forward, keeping the vampire on the defensive. The vampire countered Yuri’s every strike until blood loss slowed the vamp to near-mortal speeds.

  Yuri struck a second killing blow, slicing the vamp’s carotid artery.

  Vampire #6 dropped to his knees. His weapons fell from lax fingers as he wavered, then pitched forward.

  A blade parted the material of Yuri’s coat and sliced through his hamstrings.

  Hissing in pain, Yuri swore and spun around.

  The two vampires Stan had taken out had begun to shrivel up like mummies as the virus they housed devoured them from the inside out in a desperate bid to continue living. Stan now battled two others and held his own very well. The last vampire had snuck up behind Yuri with two big-ass Bowie knives, thinking to slay Yuri while the sixth vampire had distracted him.

  Yuri parried a blow that otherwise would have severed a limb, then countered it with a strike that broke the blade of the other’s Bowie knife.

  The vampire gaped at what remained of the jagged blade, then started swinging wildly as fury and fear battled for dominance in his glowing silver gaze.

  Trained by a master swordsman, Yuri defeated this one easily.

  The vampire’s body dropped to the ground, then began to shrivel up like the others. Yuri started to step over him, then stopped when the two vampires Stanislav fought fell limply to the pavement.

  Stanislav looked at Yuri. “You okay?”

  Yuri nodded and pointed to the big vamp. “This one actually had some skills.”

  Vampires rarely had any real training with regard to fighting or swordplay. Most were college students who had spent much of their time prior to being transformed in sedentary pursuits like gaming or surfing the Internet. So they tended to take the easy route, aiming for the hamstrings to bring their opponent to his knees, then falling on him like jackals.

  “Reminded me a bit of the fencing-instructor-turned-vampire we encountered back in 1843,” Yuri continued.

  Stanislav laughed. “I remember him.” He nodded to Vampire #6. “Did I see him pull a gun?”

  Yuri nodded and glanced around, but didn’t see it. “He must have fallen on it.”

  “Dumbass,” Stanislav muttered. “Good thing you kept him from firing it.”

  Yuri laughed. “I know. What about you? Are you injured?” His friend glanced down at his left arm, then shrugged. “A few cuts. Nothing more.”

  Stanislav had an impressively high tolerance for pain, thanks to the sadistic vampire who had turned him. So a few cuts could refer to anything from shallow slices that didn’t need stitches to deep gashes that left his arm barely attached.

  Yuri studied his friend’s movements as Stanislav sheathed his shoto swords and bent to retrieve the weapons the vampires had dropped. Satisfied that Stanislav’s wounds indeed posed no threat, Yuri sheathed his own swords, drew his cell phone from a back pocket, and made a quick call.

  “Reordon,” Chris Reordon, who headed the East Coast division of the human network that aided immortals, answered.

  “It’s Yuri. Stanislav and I just took out six vampires at Duke.”

  Chris grunted. “Any human casualties?”

  “Two. Both slain before we arrived.”

  “Where are you?”

  Stanislav, whose preternaturally sharp hearing enabled him to hear both sides of the conversation, identified the building for Yuri.

  Yuri passed it along to Reordon.

  “I’ll have a crew there in five minutes,” Chris vowed.

  Yuri pocketed his phone, then pursed his lips and looked at Stanislav. “I should’ve asked him what to do with the gun.”

  Stanislav shrugged. “Just toss it in a Dumpster with the rest of the weapons. I’m sure anything a vampire would carry would be far inferior to the arsenal of weapons the network keeps at its disposal.”

  True.

  Yuri waited another minute for Vampire #6 to finish disintegrating, then gathered his clothing and weapons together with that of a couple of the other vampires in one fell swoop and deposited it all in the nearest Dumpster.

  Stanislav did the same while they waited for Chris’s crew to arrive and collect the human victims.

  Cat entered the home of David, the second eldest and second most powerful immortal on the planet. Located in the North Carolinian countryside with no nearby neighbors who might panic upon seeing powerful warriors come and go with bloodstained clothing (hunting insane vampires was a violent, messy business), this sprawling one-story home appeared to be the hub of the Immortal Guardians’ world here on the East Coast.

  Cat had been drawn to this place—and to these people, these warriors—ever since her brother Bastien had raised a vampire army and done his damnedest to bring the immortals down.

  What a terrifying time that had been. Terrifying and frustrating and heartbreaking. She had known Bastien was in the wrong, that he had focused his quest for revenge upon the wrong man, but had had no way to convey it to him.

  And she had feared every day that it would be his downfall.

  Had Seth, the Immortal Guardians’ leader, not been so forgiving, she knew her brother would be dead now, killed in that final battle between his vampire army and the Immortal Guardians.

  American and British immortals Ethan and Edward entered David’s home behind her and strolled past, their long black coats glistening with the blood of the vampires they had slain.

  Krysta and Étienne, still newly wed, called greetings and offered the duo smiles.

  Étienne’s twin, Richart, and Richart’s wife Jenna added their own hellos.

  Yes, Cat thought, as she watched the immortals smile and trade jests, it was the people who drew her here time and time again. They were different. And not just because they were infected with the same virus that afflicted vampires. No, these men and women, these immortals, had been born like Cat—with special gifts no humans or vampires possessed.

  Krysta could see auras. Étienne and his sister Lisette were both telepathic. Richart could teleport. Jenna, as the descendant of a healer, had been born with far greater regenerative capabilities than ordinary humans enjoyed.

  Roland, considered the antisocial one of the group, and his wife Sarah enter
ed from the hallway on the opposite side of the room. Roland could heal with his hands and bore some telekinetic abilities. Sarah had prophetic dreams.

  Bastien, Cat’s brother, could discern one’s emotions through touch and determine truth from falsehood. His wife, Dr. Melanie Lipton, had minor precognitive abilities.

  And Cat? Cat had always been able to see an object’s history, glimpse those who had held it and the like, by touching it. She just hadn’t understood why she could until she had begun haunting David’s home after David and Seth had captured her brother and pretty much forced him to join the Immortal Guardians’ ranks.

  Every immortal, or gifted one, as they had called themselves before being infected with the vampiric virus, had been born with advanced DNA, the origins of which Cat still didn’t understand.

  That advanced DNA lent immortals their gifts and, thankfully, offered some protection from the more corrosive aspects of the virus that infected them. Immortals didn’t suffer brain damage the way humans did and, thus, weren’t driven insane. This enabled them to live . . . well . . . forever, unless their heads were stricken from their bodies. The older the immortal, the more powerful and plentiful his or her gifts, because their bloodlines had been less diluted by ordinary human DNA.

  David, who had lived thousands of years, was such a powerful healer that he could reattach severed limbs. He could also shapeshift, among other things, and could withstand several hours of exposure to daylight before he began to suffer the consequences younger immortals suffered immediately.

  Seth . . .

  Well, she’d yet to find anything the immensely powerful Immortal Guardians’ leader couldn’t do.

  Bastien and Melanie entered, laughing and holding hands like teenagers.

  Dawn must be approaching.

  Many of the immortals in the area congregated here at David’s after each night’s hunt. Some spent the days there, too.

  Frowning at the bay window, Cat wondered how the two Russian immortals she had followed earlier had fared in their battle.

  For a moment, when she had knelt down to address the stray cat, the taller one—Yuri—had seemed to look right at her.

  Excitement had skittered through her.

  Then she had heard the vampires coming.

  After spending two hundred years with Bastien and his psychotic vampire friends, Cat could no longer abide being near the fiends. And when the immortals inevitably defeated the vampires in battle, setting their spirits free . . .

  Cat shuddered.

  No. She’d had to leave.

  The front door opened once more and, as though conjured by her thoughts, Yuri and Stanislav entered.

  A little thrill darted through her as it always did in Yuri’s presence. She wasn’t sure why. There was just something about him that drew her to him and always compelled her to single him out with her gaze, even when a host of other warriors surrounded him.

  She didn’t think it was because he was handsome. They were all handsome.

  Although Yuri did seem to be even easier on the eye, as she’d heard one of the female Seconds say, than the others.

  He stood about six foot four, just under a foot taller than her own five foot five. He kept his black hair short in back and on the sides, but long enough on top to reveal a tendency to wave. Dark brows hovered over piercing brown eyes that seemed to miss nothing. She’d once heard him tell Bastien that his patrician nose used to be crooked from being broken in a brawl in his youth, but had straightened when he had transformed. His lips were a little fuller than most men’s, but were by no means feminine. A perpetual five o’clock shadow hugged his strong jaw.

  Broad shoulders. A slender, yet muscular build. A smooth stroll that did odd things to her insides.

  Cat drifted into a corner and watched the other immortals call greetings and trade gibes with him before Yuri headed down the hallway toward the basement stairs. No doubt he intended to wash the night’s hunt off him in the bedroom he’d claimed when Seth had transferred him to North Carolina a couple of years ago. Just before he turned into the basement stairwell, Yuri glanced over his shoulder and looked in her direction.

  Perhaps, Cat thought, her attraction to him simply resulted from times like this when he almost seemed to acknowledge her presence.

  The others never did. Except for Marcus, who had only done so once. He had bellowed at her to get out when he had been arguing with Ami and Cat had inadvertently intruded.

  Speaking of whom . . .

  Marcus and Ami passed Yuri in the hallway and joined the others in the living room. Ami was about a foot shorter than her husband, with slender arms and legs and a huge protruding belly that turned her walk into a waddle.

  The couple sank onto a cushy sofa and began to chat with Roland and Sarah.

  Cat eased forward, her eyes on the petite redhead.

  Ami shifted, as though the babe in her belly wouldn’t allow her to get comfortable.

  Cat claimed the empty space beside Ami and lowered her eyes to Ami’s round tummy.

  A few minutes later, her careful scrutiny was rewarded when the babe shifted. What appeared to be the faint shape of a knee slid across the knit shirt that molded itself to Ami’s torso.

  Ami absently placed a hand over the knee and gave it a pat.

  Pleasure and pain warred within Cat.

  She remembered how that had felt. Her married friends had expounded upon the beauty of feeling a child move within them when they were breeding. But in the privacy of her bedchamber, when Cat had lowered the bedcovers and raised her nightgown to watch this limb or that shift and slide and press against her skin from inside her belly, she had thought it a strange combination of funny and creepy.

  Her chest tightened.

  How nervous she had been. Nervous and excited and afraid all at once. She had barely been more than a child herself and had had no idea what caring for a babe would entail. Nor had she known what childbirth would bring. Women had spoken of it only in the most generic of terms back then. She’d known it would be painful. That it would be messy. And that she might not survive it.

  But she had loved the baby within her so much that she had thought it well worth the risk.

  Ami gave her big belly one last stroke, then dropped her hand to her lap.

  Ami carried a baby girl.

  All of Cat’s friends—her mother, too—had thought Cat had carried a boy.

  Her eyes burned. How many times had she wondered, with something akin to panic, what she would do with a boy? If raising a son would be harder than raising a girl in the male-dominated world in which she had resided? How great a role she would be able to play in his life? If he would love her as much as she already adored him?

  Immortals continued to move about the room, but Cat paid them no heed.

  Eyes burning, she reached a hand out and rested it on Ami’s belly.

  Ami didn’t react, just kept chatting with Sarah.

  On Ami’s other side, Marcus frowned at Cat and looked—for a moment—as though he would shove her hand away from his wife and unborn babe.

  But he didn’t.

  It only made Cat want to weep more.

  She liked to think she would’ve been a good mother. That she would’ve raised a fine young man. As fine and honorable as the warriors in this room.

  How she regretted having been denied the chance to do so. How she hated her husband for murdering her before she could birth their child.

  Cat squeezed her eyes shut as memories of violence and death attempted to intrude. A tear slipped down her cheek. She couldn’t think of that tonight. Couldn’t bear it.

  Lifting her lashes, she withdrew her hand from Ami’s tummy, glanced away, and looked directly into Yuri’s warm brown eyes.

  Her breath caught. When had he seated himself across from her?

  Her heart did an odd trip-hammer thing in her chest as he continued to meet her gaze.

  Or appeared to meet her gaze. Did he see her?

  He couldn
’t possibly. Only Marcus could see her because the gift with which he had been born enabled him to see spirits and ghosts.

  Frowning, she glanced over her shoulder.

  Tracy and Nichole, two of the Seconds or human assistants who aided immortals, sat behind her, laughing and talking as they explored something on one of those electronic tablets.

  Ah. He must be looking at one of them.

  Cat turned back around, cursing herself for feeling so disappointed. For a moment . . .

  Again Yuri seemed to meet her gaze.

  No, it wasn’t just his looks that drew her, she thought. It was the uncanny way he had of appearing to look right at her.

  It happened with others from time to time. She would find herself standing between two people and one would seem to look her right in the eye. But it happened often enough with Yuri to make her wish it weren’t coincidence.

  She sighed.

  And now even more sadness afflicted her.

  Well, she didn’t want to stay here and watch Yuri admire whichever woman behind her had caught his attention.

  Rising, Cat strolled across the room and, passing through a few walls, looked in on the kittens snoozing in David’s study.

  Chapter Two

  Yuri had never been much of a talker.

  He wasn’t antisocial, like Roland. He just would rather listen and observe and toss in a word here or there than do the constant back-and-forth thing.

  Lounging on the sofa, he let the conversations of his brethren flow around him and tried to forget the tear that had slipped down the cheek of the beauty beside Ami.

  Who was the mysterious woman who haunted both David’s home and Yuri’s thoughts? Why did she linger here? Why did she follow Yuri on his hunts on occasion?

  Was she an Immortal Guardian who had been slain in the line of duty? Or a Second?

  He’d lost so many Seconds of his own over the centuries. Mortal men he had loved like brothers.

  “How did tonight’s hunt go?”

  Yuri looked around at the sound of his current Second’s inquiry.

  Dmitry stood next to him, munching an apple.