Eternal Flame Bundle with Eternal Hunter & I'll Be Slaying You

by Cynthia Eden

  “Hell, no,” Simon said immediately. “I don’t give a shit what they see. I know my future.” His stare could have burned a lesser woman. It just made her blood heat. “I’m looking right at her.” He jerked his thumb toward the door. “Once these assholes out here are gone, I’ll be taking her again, too.”

  That sounded like one fine plan. Now if the fear in her belly would just go away.

  “Forever, Dee. Forever starts now.”

  He yanked open the door.

  No one waited outside. Just the odor of the vamps, drifting on the wind. A warning? Had they been trying to scare her?

  She stalked to Simon’s side. In the distance, she could just make out the faint pink rays of dawn.

  I’m not going to die tonight. “What’s happening?”

  Simon crept out of the room. The parking lot waited to the right. It looked deserted.

  Like she didn’t know how very deceiving looks could be.

  “Grim’s men?” she asked. He’d know. He had a better lock on them than she did. Sure, the link to the master was severed, but there was still a connection between his Taken.

  And the guy had grown a whole freaking army.

  Will they all come after me? Is this just the beginning?

  The men stepped from the waning shadows. Two. Three.

  A woman rose from the darkness. Another stalked to her side.

  Or is this the end?

  A hot wind blew against Dee’s face as she stood in the doorway. These weren’t Born vampires. All were Taken. She was stronger, even if she was newer to the Undead world. She could handle them.

  Simon’s shoulder brushed hers. No, they could handle them.

  Her fingers tightened around the stake.

  Two more vampires appeared.

  What the hell was this? Some kind of vamp convention? A human was going to look out one of those dirty windows and see them, and the local deputies would swarm this place.

  It wasn’t so easy to keep things quiet when the sirens started blaring.

  “You came after the wrong woman,” Dee told them, letting her voice ring out. I was so close to being happy.

  Stupid. She couldn’t even have a minute’s worth of happiness. They were always going to hunt her, just as she’d hunted them. Always.

  The vampires bowed their heads and turned their hands out, showing her their empty palms. Right, like vamps needed weapons to kill.

  “We’re not here to fight you,” one of the women called out, not lifting her head.

  “Of course. You’re just here to wish me a good freaking morning.” Hurry up, sun, rise. Stupid prediction.

  “Born.”

  “Slayed Grim.”

  The whispers drifted to her.

  Dee inched forward. Simon stayed right beside her.

  “Your good old leader Grim deserved the death he got.” Actually, he’d probably deserved a much more painful death, but she didn’t exactly have the do-over option. “He was a sick freak and he needed to be put down.” Probably not what these vamps were looking to hear.

  Tough. She wasn’t going to sugarcoat. Her eyes scanned the lot. Okay, that made seven total. She and Simon could take them.

  “We’re not here to kill you.” The vampire still didn’t look up. Dee realized the vamps had formed a semicircle around her room. She tensed.

  Simon has my back. And he did. He stood with her, strong and steady.

  “Good,” she told them, determination firing her blood. “Because I’m not dying today.” No, she wouldn’t. She’d just found something to live for and she wasn’t about to give it up.

  Screw off, Catalina.

  “Are we?” The quiet question floated in the air.

  Her brows snapped together and Dee glanced at Simon. A quick, fast glance.

  Surrounded. It hit her then. Vampires surrounded her.

  But Simon was one of those vamps, and she trusted him. With her life and her heart.

  “Are you going to kill us?” the woman asked, still not looking Dee’s way. Her long blond hair covered her face. Dee stared at her, a chill skating its way down her spine.

  “That depends.” Let’s try for some honesty. “If you’re twisted like Grim and you get off on hurting humans, then, yeah, I’ll come after you. It’s what I do.” That wouldn’t change. She’d seen too many innocents die. No way would she let a killer walk.

  “And you think some vampires can live…without hurting others?”

  Before, she hadn’t. But she’d been blinded by her own rage then. She was finally starting to see straight now; it had just taken dying to open her eyes. “Yeah, I do.” Her fingers were wrapped so tightly around the stake that the wood bit into her flesh.

  She stared at the line of bodies and wondered who would move first. Who would attack.

  Dee wouldn’t draw first blood, but she would make sure she drew the last drops.

  “We waited for you.” The woman looked at her then. A long scar cut across her cheek. A scar she must have gotten long ago. In another life. “Waiting was so hard…”

  “We’ve been waiting for you, Sandra Dee…” Words from that terrible night. Grim’s men. Waiting for her death.

  But these vampires had been waiting, too—for what? Her eyes narrowed as she watched them.

  Born.

  They’d been waiting for her to free them.

  The vampires began to drift away.

  Simon’s hands settled on her shoulders. “I told you, Dee. Sometimes, monsters are made.”

  And sometimes they were Taken.

  A tear tracked down the woman’s cheek. “My son…”

  That was all she had to say. Dee understood. Grim had played his twisted games with everyone.

  “You won’t see me again,” the vampiress told her. “Not any of us.” Her chin lifted. Pride there. Strength. “We’re more than the evil that people think.”

  But people had been fearing vampires for centuries.

  And forgetting that once upon a time, vampires were people, too. She’d forgotten that. No, she hadn’t wanted to remember.

  The vampires faded as the sun rose. Dee watched them, silent.

  Simon stood with her as the sun inched across the sky. Dawn was such a beautiful thing. Pity she hadn’t enjoyed the sunrises more.

  “We should go inside. Get some rest.”

  Because another night would come. Another. Always another.

  With more darkness to fight.

  Dee reached for him and rubbed her fingers over the hard line of his jaw. She wouldn’t be fighting alone anymore. No, her vamp would be at her side.

  She’d be at his.

  The darkness could come. They’d be ready.

  They’d kick ass.

  Make love.

  And live for-damn-ever.

  Death hadn’t come for her. Catalina had been wrong.

  No, maybe she’d been right. As she stared at Simon in the growing morning light, Dee knew her old life had ended. But a new life…

  It waited for her.

  All she had to do was reach out and take it.

  She kept the stake in her right hand and curled her arm around Simon’s neck.

  Then she kissed him in the sunlight. Just as she’d kiss him in the moonlight.

  Sometimes, a woman had to make her own happy ending.

  And, sometimes, she had to leave room for a little bit of hunting on the side.

  Because you had to keep life interesting, and after all, someone had to stop the bad guys.

  She’d slay them all, soon enough.

  But first, she’d take her vampire and, as he’d promised, he’d take her.

  For-damn-ever.

  If you liked this book, go out and get Emma Lang’s

  RUTHLESS HEART, out now…

  Grady had never met a woman like Eliza, if that was even really her name. She talked like a professor, rode around with twenty pounds of books, and could build a campfire like nobody’s business. Yet she was as innocent as a chil
d, had a sad story about a dead husband he didn’t believe for a second, and seemed to be waiting for him to invite her along for his hunt.

  He snorted at the thought. Grady worked alone, always and for good. There sure as hell was no room for anyone, much less a woman like Eliza.

  He had damn well tried his best to shake the woman, but the blue-eyed raven-haired fool wouldn’t budge. Truth be told, he was impressed by her bravado, but disgusted by his inability to shake her off his tail the night before. Rather than risk having her do the same thing again, he decided to ride like hell and leave her behind. He should have felt guilty, but he’d left that emotion behind, along with most every other, a long time go. Grady had a job to complete and that was all that mattered to him.

  The only thing he was concerned about was finding the two wayward wives he’d been hired to hunt and making sure they regretted leaving their husband, at least for the five seconds they lived after he found them.

  Grady learned as a young man just how much he couldn’t trust the fairer sex. His mother had been his teacher, and he’d been a very astute pupil. No doubt if she hadn’t drunk herself to death, she’d still be out there somewhere taking advantage of and using men as she saw fit.

  The cool morning air gave way to warm sunshine within a few hours. He refused to think about what the schoolmarm was doing, or if anything had been done to her. If she could take care of her horse and build a fire, she could take care of herself. Food could be gotten at any small town, but then again maybe she could hunt and fish too.

  Somehow it wouldn’t surprise him if she did. The woman seemed to have a library in her head. Against his will, the sight of her unbound black hair popped into his head. It had been long, past her waist to brush against the nicely curved backside. Grady preferred his women with some meat on their bones, better to hang onto when he had one beneath him, or riding him. He shifted in the saddle as his dick woke up at the thought of Eliza’s dark curtain of hair brushing his bare skin.

  Jesus Christ, he sure didn’t need to be thinking about fucking the wayward Miss Eliza. If she was a widow, no doubt she’d had experience in bed with a man. It wasn’t Grady’s business of course, so he needed to stop his brain from getting into her bloomers, or any parts of her anatomy.

  As the morning wore on, Grady’s mind returned to the contents of her bags. The woman didn’t have a lick of common sense and fell asleep, vulnerable and unprotected. Good thing he didn’t have any bad thoughts on his mind or she wouldn’t have been sleeping. She even snored a little, something he found highly amusing as he’d rifled through her things.

  Her smaller bag had contained a hodgepodge of clothes, each uglier and frumpier than the last, a hairbrush, half a dozen biscuits in a tattered napkin and some hairpins. A measly collection of a woman’s life, and quite pitiful if that was all she had. Perhaps she’d been at least partially truthful about taking everything she owned and hitting the trail. Her husband must have been a poor excuse for a provider if this collection of tags was all she had.

  The bag of books was just that, a bag stuffed full of scientific texts ranging from medical topics to some titles he couldn’t even pronounce. In the bottom of the bag was a battered copy of Wuthering Heights. He didn’t know what it was but it was much smaller than the other books, likely a novel. She obviously put the spectacles to good use judging by the two dozen tomes she had in her bag. He wondered how she’d gotten it up on the saddle in the first place.

  “Fool.” He had to stop thinking about Eliza and what she was doing and why. Grady would never see her again.

  As a child, Grady learned very early not to care or ask questions. It only bought him a cuff on the ear or a boot in the ass. A boy could only take so much of that before he kept his mouth shut and simply snuck around to find out what he needed to know.

  As a young man, it served him well and garnered the attention of the man who taught him how to hunt and kill people in the quickest, most efficient way. Grady had learned his lesson well, even better than his mentor expected. When the job was put before him to hunt and kill the very man who had taught him those very skills, Grady hesitated only a minute before he said yes.

  The devil rode on his back, a constant companion he’d come to accept. He didn’t need a woman riding there too.

  Try THE PIRATE, the latest in Katherine Garbera’s Savage

  Seven series, available now from Brava!

  “Excited about your trip?” he asked, stepping out of the shadows.

  He was a rough looking man but still attractive. A light beard shadowed his strong, square jaw. His dark hair was shorn close to his head, revealing a scar twisting up the left side of his neck.

  As a surgeon, she could tell that whoever had stitched up what she guessed to be a knife wound hadn’t been to medical school. As a woman she guessed that Laz hadn’t minded, since if the wound hadn’t been stitched up he probably would have died.

  She’d been single for almost two years now, but this man wasn’t like any of the men she’d dated. An aura of danger hovered about him. It might be due to the fact that he captained a crew of men who looked like they’d be better suited to crew Johnny Depp’s Black Pearl in Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean. Or maybe it was due to the fact that when he looked at her, she had the feeling that he looked past the confines of her profession and saw the woman underneath.

  “A little nervous, actually.”

  He laughed, a rough sound that carried on the wind. “Somalia—hell, all of Africa—has that effect on people.”

  The sea around the tanker seemed calm, and on this moonlit night with no one else on deck, she felt like…like they were alone in the world.

  “On you?” she asked. She couldn’t imagine this man being nervous in any situation, she thought. He radiated the calmness she always experienced when she was in the operating room. It was a calmness born of the fact that he knew what he was doing.

  “Nah. I’ve been around this part of the world for a long time.”

  “Why is that? You’re American, right?”

  “Yes I am. But I was never one for staying put. I wanted to see the world.” There was a note in his voice that she easily recognized. It said that he was searching for something that he hadn’t found. Something that he might never find. She understood that now.

  It was funny, but before her divorce she would have thought he was unfocused or didn’t know himself well. But now she understood that sometimes life threw a curve and dreams changed and your way was lost. Hers had been. She’d been drifting without a focus and she hoped this summer in Africa would help her to find her way back to who she had been.

  Did this rough looking man have dreams? Dreams that she’d be able to relate to? At one point in her not so distant past she would have seen Laz as a man she had nothing in common with. A man whose dreams would make absolutely no sense to her. She no longer looked at the world in the black and white terms as she used to and she guessed she had to thank Paul and his philandering ways for that.

  “Well, you are certainly seeing parts of it that are off the beaten path,” Daphne said.

  She’d spent all of her life taking the safe route. College followed by medical school. Marriage to an up-and-coming lawyer who morphed his successful career into a successful Senate bid. She’d had two children with Paul Maxwell and raised them to be very successful teenagers before Paul decided that it was time to trade her in for a newer model. A microbiologist named Cyndy who didn’t have stretch marks.

  She shook her head. She wasn’t bitter.

  Really.

  It was just that when Paul had walked away from their marriage he’d broken something that she’d always claimed was her destiny. He’d broken her dreams of a fifty-year wedding anniversary party. Her dreams of being married to the same man for her entire life. And she was still trying to figure out who she was if she wasn’t going to be Mrs. Paul Maxwell.

  She realized she’d let the conversation lag while she’d been lost in thoughts of he
r ruined marriage. She looked over at Laz.

  “Our group goes to the places that really need aid,” she said.

  He gave her a half-smile that showed her the dangerous looking man could also be sexy in a rough-hewn sort of way.

  “Good for you.”

  She glanced over at him; it was hard to see much of his features in the dim lighting. “Are you being sarcastic?”

  He shrugged. “Not really. I admire people who walk the walk.”

  She had no idea if he was sincere or not. But she’d always tried to be honest about who she was and what she wanted. She heard the sound of another engine. “Did you hear that?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I think you should go below,” Laz said, standing up straighter. He tossed his cigarette over the railing.

  “Why?”

  “Pirates operate in these waters, and Americans are some of their favorite targets. Go below where I know you’ll be safe.”

  She hesitated for a moment but then saw him draw out a handgun. Moonlight glinted off the well-polished steel of his weapon. His entire demeanor changed. He no longer wore an aura of danger. He was danger. She’d think twice about talking to this man if she saw him on the street back home. In fact she’d do her best to avoid him.

  Keep an eye out for BEDDING THE ENEMY

  by Mary Wine, coming next month…

  He was staring at her.

  Helena looked through her lowered eyelashes at him. He was a Scot and no mistake about it. Held in place around his waist was a great kilt. Folded into pleats that fell longer in the back, his plaid was made up in heather, tan and green. She knew little of the different clans and their tartans but she could see how proud he was. The nobles she passed among scoffed at him but she didn’t think he would even cringe if he were to hear their mutters. She didn’t think the gossip would make an impact. He looked impenetrable. Strength radiating from him. There was nothing pompous about him, only pure brawn.

  Her attention was captivated by him. She had seen other Scots wearing their kilts but there was something more about him. A warm ripple moved across her skin. His doublet had sleeves that were closed, making him look formal, in truth more formal than the brocade-clad men standing near her brother. There wasn’t a single gold or silver bead sewn to that doublet but he looked ready to meet his king. It was the slant of his chin, the way he stood.