Blood Reunited

by Amber Belldene

  She went to look for him, to announce she was going to pick up a sandwich and go home.

  “Have you seen Ethan?” she asked another yellow-eyed twenty-something. A month in the office, and she still wasn’t used to those unusual irises in every face.

  “In the conference room, I think,” offered a helpful initiate, which seemed to mean something like intern. They all treated her with enormous respect because of her ability to interpret their artifacts. Ethan had intimated that otherwise, with her gray-blue eyes, she would not have been accepted, even as his girlfriend, or lieutenant, or love slave, or whatever she was.

  What they didn’t know was that after weeks of offering her body up on the altar that was Ethan, he had chosen to trust her. At work he gave the impression that she was not privy to his secrets, but in private she was his sole confidant. She alone knew that Ethan had, the day before, offered his own people up at that same altar. Their slaughter set a precedent, and exactly as he’d hoped, the vampires took the bait, perpetrating massacres on a far grander scale.

  She strode down the hallway toward the conference room with an assurance she did not feel. Over the last month, Bennett Public Relations had transformed into global Hunter headquarters, all because of Gwen’s translation of The Book of the Day, which had earned Ethan ever increasing prominence among his fellow Hunters.

  “Good evening, Ms. Evans,” two fresh faced, attractive young men called out to her in the hallway. The Hunters were secretive but also friendly and appealing, like she imagined missionaries for a cult might be. Or maybe Ethan had just recruited the cream of the crop. She got the feeling people in the office were often frustrated with the Hunters in the field.

  The place was like a campaign office, full of intelligent young interns who worshipped their charismatic leader. The work never stopped. Some of the Hunters were managing Ethan’s public image, some of them were investigating the whereabouts of vampires, and still others were overseeing operations against the hateful creatures. Gwen’s job, for which she had her own staff of Hunters, was to research artifacts and reconstruct as much of their history as possible. She never saw what Ethan did with her research, but it clearly gave him a great deal of credibility with the interns and presumably with the Hunters around the world.

  “Ah, hello, Ms. Evans.” Ethan’s assistant Justine stood guard at the door to the conference room.

  “Hello. I just wanted to tell Ethan I’m heading home for the night.” The wall of the conference room was glass, and inside Gwen could see the same horrifying images she’d been fucked to that morning, still flashing on cable news. Lovely. Apparently nothing else cataclysmic had happened today to replace them in the twenty-four-hour news cycle.

  Ethan spoke animatedly on the other side of the glass.

  Justine pressed an intercom button, which beeped loudly. “Mr. Bennett, Ms. Evans is here to see you.”

  He came out, rather than inviting her in, as if mission-control were the Holy of Holies. That might just make him the Ark, God’s vessel on earth. He would like the comparison, but it twisted her gut.

  “Going home?” He sounded almost friendly, not like a man who delighted in the slaughter of innocents and wanted to turn her into a monster like him.

  “Yes. But first can I ask you a question?”

  “Of course.” He steered her down the hall where they could speak semi-privately. Her scalp tingled under the curious gazes of the onlooking interns. They were probably wondering what he was doing with someone like her. She could tell them hurting me for fun while I have unceasing orgasms. Blurting it out might earn her a punishment to look forward to.

  “I was re-reading The Book of the Day and I found myself curious. Have any vampires been seen in the sun since the attacks?”

  His eyes shone. “Not a one. I rather doubt they will have the nerve to try it.”

  “Do you believe Hunter blood will give them this power?”

  He pressed all his fingertips together to form a steeple. “I hold it as possible, but unlikely. What do you think, based on your knowledge of the texts?”

  “I am not sure what to believe. I’ve experienced so many things I thought impossible.”

  “My poor Gwen.” He stroked her hair.

  She stepped back. “I’m going to pick up dinner. Shall I get you something?”

  “No, thank you. But before you go, there is something I want to tell you. I have good news. At midday, my men located the entrance to a tunnel a quarter mile from the estate. It must be the way through Marasović’s shield. We are going in.” The tendons in his neck flexed.

  “You?” Her empty stomach twisted.

  “If the opportunity arises, I want to be there to slay the vampire myself.”

  Strange that he had achieved success on a grand scale, but a single household still vexed him. Why did he care so much about Marasović? It must have to do with the woman, Zoey. Justine had gossiped all about Ethan’s former lover to Gwen, appalled that Zoey would have chosen life among vampires over allying with a powerful Hunter like Ethan. Did he want revenge, or did he want her back?

  “I would like you to come.” He smiled at Gwen with the same tenderness she’d seen after breakfast.

  The monster liked her, a chilling turn of events. He slid his hand down her spine gently and grabbed her ass, igniting her raw skin.

  “We can find dinner on the way,” he said.

  She pressed into him, in spite of—no, because of the pain. The truth was, in spite of her uneasy response to him, she would do whatever he asked. “Of course. I look forward to witnessing your victory.”

  A group of the Hunters gathered down the hall, murmuring. One of them ushered a young woman through, her wrists handcuffed in front of her.

  “Who is that?” Gwen asked.

  “The bait.”

  The wasting vampire sat on a stool, his emaciated forearm turned up and resting on the long stainless steel table of the workroom at Kaštel. His thin skin had puckered into goose bumps, but short of curing him, Bel couldn’t do a thing to make him warmer. The last drops of hemoaurum drained from the bag and into the clear plastic tube feeding into his vein. Bel pulled out the needle, and only the tiniest drop of blood oozed from the wound before it healed. Done—the final infusion.

  Through the early morning hours of darkness, a dozen vampires had received the new, potentially therapeutic doses. He’d chosen the fittest of the test subjects to receive this last sample without any of the isolates they’d extracted from Blood Vine. The control dose, identical to the first round of treatment, would have no effect. Sloppy scientific method—but the best he could do under the circumstances. And if just one of them showed improvement, he would have a new direction to pursue.

  He took the frail creature’s elbow and steered him to the door. The healthiest of the group and still the male was essentially a sack of bones encased in loose, papery skin. The vampire’s householder met Bel at the loading ramp and helped his employer into the car.

  Bel should have offered the same optimistic words he had to all the others, but his tongue faltered on the lie. He ran it over his teeth instead. “Drive safe. Call me right away if you see any improvement. Otherwise, I’ll monitor your progress in three days.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Maras,” he said, in the Dalmatian dialect.

  After Bel closed the door and they drove off, he whispered, “You can call me Bel.”

  The early morning smelled sweet and leafy, without a trace of burned chemicals in the air. Bel considered a walk, though his muscles ached with rare fatigue. He didn’t require much sleep, but it had been nearly seventy-two hours since he’d caught any shut eye. The sky glittered with a million stars—a sight he never saw from London’s bright streets. It was too gorgeous to abandon, and so he leaned against the outer wall of the workroom and gazed upward.

  For a moment, déjà vu carried him away to the beach on Šolta. He could almost feel Uta by his side. An owl hooted, bringing him back to the present moment.


  The same stars, but so many years later. Each one of those lights, shining from so far away. Each particle, sent from its star ages ago, before he had been bonded to Uta, before Hunters hated vampires, perhaps before there were Hunters and vampires. As a kid, the night sky had made his problems feel insignificant, but now, not even the glimmer of stars could make him forget the violent attacks on Hunters.

  Slowly, the sun illuminated a band of blue sky along the horizon, and the stars began to fade. He pushed off the wall, intending to hit the sheets. His muscles had grown stiff in the cool morning air, and he stretched his arms overhead, twisting to loosen the tension in his spine.

  A knock sounded on the other side of the door, mere inches from his head. His heart leaped into his throat.

  “Yeah?” he called out a reply.

  “Boss, problem. A big one.”

  When Bel swung the door open, Omar danced back into the shadows.

  “What is it?”

  “We’ve got an army of Hunters in the tunnel.”

  Inside already? That meant they were right below him. “And the shield?”

  “Holding them back like a clogged up toilet.” They strode to the cellar door together.

  “Omar, have you ever even seen a clogged up toilet?”

  “No, but I grasp the concept.” The big vampire spun with his hand on the knob, facing Bel. “Ethan Bennett is down there, boss, and he wants to negotiate.”

  Bel paused to let that news sink in. He took a mental roll call of the people he cared about—could Bennett have any of them? Lexi was here, and his family. Could the son of a bitch have Uta?

  Did Bel care? Other than the pain worse than death part? His traitorous heart thumped out an answer he chose to ignore.

  He met up with Andre and Kos in the cellar.

  “Mind if I take this one?” Bel asked.

  “Be my guest, son. Kos and I botched the last round of negotiations, to our great peril.”

  Kos’s mouth pulled tight, and Bel knew his brother blamed himself for the destruction of their father’s vineyards, although Andre did not.

  “Ready?” Kos opened the door onto an astonishing scene.

  Twenty feet into the tunnel, a few members of Bel’s crew stood inside of the shield. Everyone else would be above ground in case this was some kind of diversion.

  Bennett occupied center stage on the other side of the sheild, his palm pressed against the unbudging, transparent barrier, testing. Six inches over his head, someone had sprayed paint on the shield to make it visible. Behind him, black-clad bodies filled the tunnel. Clogged toilet was bloody accurate.

  “I wish I had been here when the first guy walked into it,” Bel said.

  Bennett looked up. “I confess we were caught off guard.” His gaze swept over Bel. “You are not Marasović.”

  “I’m Lobel Maras.”

  Ethan’s focus settled somewhere behind Bel; he must have seen Andre. His predatory smile sent ice down Bel’s spine.

  “What do you want, Bennett? Or should I even bother asking before we start throwing grenades at you from the other end of the tunnel?”

  “I brought you a defector.”

  “Pardon?”

  A young, yellow-eyed woman was shoved forward between the Hunters. She almost fell face-first into the shield, but Bennett caught her. Good thing. She appeared to be unarmed, which meant she would have fallen straight through. Bel didn’t have a clue how Trys generated the force field, only that it kept out artillery of all sorts, and people carrying weapons. An unarmed Hunter could march right through, but he would pose minimal risk to a household of vampires. And the chances of that happening were slim, since the vermin never went anywhere without guns holstered in every orifice. Still, the illusion of impermeability provided a great deal of security. The less Hunters knew about the shield, the better.

  Bennett held her at arm’s length. “This pure-born Hunter has betrayed us by her love of vampires. She has come to join your household.” He jostled the girl. “Beg.”

  Her face was bruised, and through her dirty blond hair, one swollen yellow eye was visible.

  “Do you want to?” Bel asked.

  She shook her head, her shoulders trembling with fear.

  “Why did you bring her?”

  “An act of mercy.” Ethan’s eyes flicked upward to the white marks on the shield. A nearly imperceptible gesture, but Bel didn’t miss it.

  “So we accept her and show you how to cross the shield, or…”

  “I kill her, right here in front of you, for being a traitor and parasite lover.” He raised his voice, and from far back in the tunnel, cheers erupted. With a clean draw, he unholstered his weapon and aimed it at her head.

  If Trys lowered the shield for even a second, these Hunters would storm down the tunnel with their machine guns blasting at every vampire. Maybe they could keep them out, but too many people would get hurt.

  Bel locked eyes with the girl. Damn, she couldn’t be older than twenty. She trembled violently, the poor thing, and she began talking. “Please don’t hurt me. I’m so sorry.” She sniffed and tried to raise her hand to her nose, but dropped it again when the handcuffs gave her trouble.

  Ethan grabbed a fistful of her hair. “No talking.” He ran the gun up the girl’s hip and over her breast. “She is attractive enough. Surely you can take pity on her and enjoy her…blood.”

  The Hunters behind Ethan snickered like adolescents. Hell, most of them were only initiates, from what Bel could see.

  “Do you drink blood, halfling?”

  Bel had no intention of giving Ethan any information. “She’s just a girl. How has she betrayed you?”

  “Tell him.”

  She sniffed and gasped for breath. “My friend from the Hunter compound in Canada was taken hostage. By vampires. She emailed me, told me they invited all the women and children in her compound to their household, if they wanted to. I told her she was lucky. I wished I could leave my family to join the vampires.”

  “Whore,” shouted one of the Hunters. More catcalls and boos followed. “Vampire trash.”

  “Quiet,” Ethan ordered. “She is a fool to believe in vampire mercy, and a traitor to wish for it.” Ethan backhanded her. Blood trickled from her lip.

  Here she was, facing her own death at the hands of her people for wanting to escape them, and there wasn’t a damn thing Bel could do about it.

  “Tell him your name.” Bennett pressed the barrel of the gun into her head.

  “L-Lindsay, sir.”

  “Lindsay, I’m sorry. If I let you in here, I put everyone in the household at risk.”

  Was that right? Was he making the right choice? He wanted to look to Kos and Andre for reassurance, but she deserved his unwavering attention.

  “Please,” she cried. Snot and tears ran down her face.

  Shite. Bel wanted to execute Ethan ten times over.

  Andre and Kos stepped alongside Bel, their shoulders brushing his in silent support.

  “Don’t do this to me,” she cried.

  “If there was any way, sweetheart…”

  Fuck Ethan. What a mastermind. He’d thoroughly tied Bel’s hands. This particular torture would stay with him as long as anything the son of a bitch had done to Pedro.

  Bel wanted to scream, to rail against the powerlessness of the situation, but he forced calm into his voice. “Leave her here, Bennett. We will see to her.”

  “Let her through the shield now, halfling, or I shoot her. In three…two…”

  “I’m sorry Lindsay,” Bel whispered.

  “I know.” She nodded, a gesture of forgiveness he would hold eternally dear.

  “We’ll see you in the homeland.” Kos spoke the old benediction under his breath.

  Bel wished it were true—that there were some kind of vampire Valhalla for martyrs on both sides. But there wasn’t. There was only the waste of a young life.

  The bullet went through her head and bounced off the shield. She fell sid
eways. Blood splattered, lower than the white paint, a red mist seeming to hover in space.

  “More blood on your hands, vampires.” Bennett raised his lip in disgust. “Retreat!”

  He was quite a showman. Bel had to hand it to him.

  The Hunters turned tail fast, a small one peeling out of the shadows at the back of the line to fall in step next to Ethan. They took their battery-powered lanterns with them and left the tunnel in darkness.

  Bel spun to see the silhouettes of Vania and Omar side by side, illuminated by the dim light of the cellar. “Intercept them at the exit?”

  “It’s broad daylight above ground,” Bel replied. “But you, me, and Arden could go. Pick as many of them off as we can. I’m sure Leo would like to come too.”

  Leo. He could have so easily been in this girl’s shoes. Might have known her, even.

  Bel shook his head. Without vampire speed, by the time the three arrived there the Hunters would be long gone. “Take Arden with you and clear the tunnel. Get the door fixed. And Vania, buy Trys the most expensive box of chocolates you can find.”

  “I’m on it.” She smiled tightly, until her eyes traveled to the dead Hunter and she spun, leaving in a hurry.

  “I will tend to the girl,” Andre said, passing through the shield to kneel at her side.

  “And me,” Kos said.

  Alone with his father and brother, Bel closed his eyes in relief. “Did I do the right thing?”

  “You had no choice, Bel. Do not let Bennett trick you into believing otherwise.”

  No choice. Bel trembled with the fury of it.

  “I am proud of you.” Andre looked up from where he crouched next to the girl, smoothing her hair.

  Words Bel craved, but all he could think was what a horrible world he lived in, when doing the right thing resulted in the murder of an innocent girl. And in a matter of hours, the other person who had stolen his choices would arrive. He kicked the brick wall of the cellar hard enough to jar his teeth.