Born In Blood
~
Born Hunter Series
Nia Davenport
Copyright © 2015 Nia Davenport
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0692382569
ISBN-13: 978-0692382569
One
Cara waited in the shadows in the dark alley behind Sin City. The vampire she hunted finally stepped out of the backdoor of the nightclub.
He smiled crookedly and crooned, “I know you’re there, Hunter. Why don’t you come out and play?”
Shit! There goes the element of surprise, she thought. She was trying to do things the easy way, but the hard way was always fun too. Returning the vampire’s smile in kind, Cara stepped out of the shadows, brandishing a dagger in one hand and a serrated short sword in the other. The steel anxiously gleamed under the moonlight. She crouched low in a defensive stance and waited for the vampire to attack. He came at her in a blur. She allowed him to get close enough to wrap his hands around her neck. His fangs lowered toward her jugular but then like all sadistic bastards he paused, taking a moment to wallow in the fear of his victim. Cara gripped the dagger her left hand held and drove it into the vampire’s chest cavity, piercing his heart. Destruction of the vital organ or decapitation were the only ways to kill a vampire. The vampire released her and dropped to his knees. She brought the serrated blade down on his head and swept it from his neck in one clean, fluid motion. She was nothing if not thorough.
Damn that was sexy, Aiden thought as he watched the fight from a distance. He felt his mind come abuzz with more than a few ideas of things he would like to do to the hunter. None of which were appropriate given the reason he was in New York in the first place. He had come to this wretched city to accomplish one specific task. The sooner he completed it, the sooner he could leave. Aiden steeled his mind against the invading thoughts of sacrilege. He dropped the shadows that were concealing him and chided himself that his objective was to kill the hunter not screw her.
Cara’s eyes zeroed in on Aiden the moment he stepped from the shadows. Her hunter instincts screamed at her to run. They warned her that the creature standing before her was by far the most dangerous being she had ever encountered. All the while, Cara the woman, could not help but to notice that the man she looked upon was possibly the most breathtaking specimen she had ever seen. He towered over her at about 6 foot four and eyes a brilliant shade of emerald green bore into her. His cheekbones were chiseled to perfection and set against a backdrop of tanned skin that appeared to be kissed by the sun. For as bright as his eyes appeared, a terrifying and merciless darkness lay visibly beneath the surface. Somehow Cara knew that observation applied as much to the man as it did to the weight of his stare. He was darkness and light rolled into one and he radiated them both in equal in amounts. Every self-preserving bone in Cara’s body shrieked at her to turn and run, even if the attempt was futile. However, Cara did not have too many self-preserving bones to begin with, so it was easy to ignore the impulse. She made up her mind long ago, when her innocence was stripped away on the sandy beaches of her childhood home, that she would never turn tail and run from anything. Resolving she would rather stand as a hunter than die as a coward, Cara steeled her spine against the looming threat and let daggers drop into each of her palms.
Aiden was momentarily taken aback at Cara’s display of courage. It was easy to stand strong when the odds were in your favor. The true test of courage came when the odds were stacked against you and you knew without a shred of doubt there was no way you could possibly come out on top. Cara stared down sudden death with an unwavering gaze that promised she would fight until her last breath. Aiden decided he both admired and respected her for it. He would make her death as swift as possible.
Cara noticed the moment the vampire decided to attack. His muscles tensed almost imperceptibly a moment before his body actually moved. Fear was replaced by instinct and years of harsh training. Cara delayed any movement until the vampire came in for the kill. She dropped to her knees a split second before his fangs would have torn into her jugular. She swiped a dagger upward in a hard arch and buried it in his gut. She would have rather it been his heart, but at the moment she would take what she could get. The vampire let out a furious growl and yanked the dagger free. Cara took the moment to jump to her feet and put a foot of distance between her and her attacker. The vampire cast the dagger aside. Eyes aflame in gold and vowing no mercy, the vampire advanced on her once more. Cara landed a roundhouse kick to his rib cage. She used her opposite hand to drive her remaining dagger toward the carotid artery in his neck. He was too fast and too agile for her to successfully land a blow to his heart. She would have to settle for inflicting as much damage as quickly as possible instead. Vampires healed at surreal speeds, but the more severe the wound the longer it took to heal. If Cara managed to inflict several severe wounds in a relatively short amount of time the effect could be just as debilitating though not as permanent as a dagger to the heart. It could provide her enough of a distraction to escape. The vampire crushed her hand in a punishing grip seconds before her dagger would have torn into his throat. The bastard used his free hand to pluck the dagger from her grasp as easily as one might pluck a flower from the ground. He cast it beside the first one with an arrogant sneer. Cara panicked. She was out of daggers and did not have enough range of motion to unsheathe the blade at her back. The vampire’s right hand still gripped her left and his free hand now locked around her neck. He pulled her body closer to his, sealing the distance between them. His fangs elongated just a fraction more and his body pressed against hers in way too intimate of a manner. Cara felt her death just a hairsbreadth away. But she was stubborn at the best of times and downright tenacious at the worst. This unquestionably counted as a worst. In a last ditch effort Cara’s right hand snaked up her side to the Glock 22 still in its holster. Guns had never been her weapon of choice. She preferred the up close and personal feel of a blade slicing through flesh and muscle. However, beggars could not be choosy and it was the only weapon at her disposal. Cara did not have enough room to maneuver it free so she simply placed her finger on the trigger, prayed it was angled upward and to the left enough and squeezed. The bullet did not hit the vampire’s heart but it punctured his lung and that was enough for her. Vampires may have been able to go longer than humans without taking in air but they still needed to breathe, which was next to impossible with a collapsed lung. The vampire dropped his hold on Cara as he gasped for air and willed his cells to quickly repair themselves. Cara thought about unsheathing her longer blade and moving in for a kill while the vampire hunched over before her gasping for air, but she had no idea how long or how fast it would take him to heal and regain his strength. Cara decided to listen to the few self-preserving bones she did have for once and get the hell out of there.
Two
“I need intel, pronto,” Cara demanded of Reyes.
The resident tech geek at hunter headquarters turned around in his chair and cocked his left eyebrow at her. “What do I get for said info?”
Cara folded her arms over her chest to block his ogling. “Not what you have in mind.”
“So what you’re saying is you’re not willing to whore yourself out for information,” Reyes asked in a deadpan tone.
“Absolutely not.” Cara rolled her eyes.
Unable to hold his poker face any longer Reyes cracked into a grin and shrugged. “Guess you don’t want the intel that bad then.”
“Damn it Reyes this is serious,” Cara chided, but cracked into a grin of her own.
Their back and forth banter had become so common place over the years that any interaction with Reyes felt weird without it.
As sleazy as it may sound to outside ears, it was honestly facetious repartee. Cara mostly kept to herself, but Reyes was among the handful of hunters at headquarters she developed a familial bond with and considered a close friend. They met during the intake training that all new recruits undergo. The first words out of his mouth to her consisted of an outlandishly crude pickup line. Instead of smacking him senseless Cara doubled over with laughter. Regrettably, he had been throwing them at her ever since. Any sensible girl would have long ago forced Reyes to pony up and put his money where his mouth was. With a tall, athletic build, piercing azure eyes, and shoulder length blonde hair streaked with gold, he looked more like a runaway model than a computer whiz. But being more akin to a roguish sibling than a lover, Cara never thought of Reyes in a sexual or romantic sense.
“Wait, why do I smell freesias and vanilla?” Reyes sniffed the air.
“Oh because I showered in the locker room.”
Cara tried to shrug it off as it was no big deal but Reyes knew her too well to buy her bullshit. He eyed her suspiciously.
“Alright Miss I-don’t-do-public showers, spill the beans. What’s up with you? The only time you shower at headquarters after a hunt is when you’re not ready to go home alone.”
Cara allowed her shoulders to slump.
“I had a rough night,” she confessed as she sat her butt on top of a nearby desk.
“Trouble on the hunt?” Reyes asked sympathetically.
“You have no idea.”
“That’s what the intel is for?”
Cara shook her head.
“Say no more.”
Reyes expression became serious. He flipped his demeanor from impish friend to technological genius. He turned to his multiple computer monitors and began rapping away on a keyboard.
“Talk to me,” he demanded.
“I had my ass handed to me tonight by the most powerful sonofabitch I’ve ever encountered. Seriously, I did not even know vampires could be that fast or strong. He materialized in front of me out of nowhere and when he struck I barely saw it coming. A dagger buried in his stomach didn’t even faze him. I barely got away by collapsing a lung.”
Cara noticed Reyes had gone ghostly still.
“What exactly did this vampire look like,” he asked?
“Tall, dark, and deadly. Oh, and deplorably gorgeous.”
“Did he have a tan too good to be true and green eyes?”
“Why? Have you got a hit?”
“Unfortunately I do, and I may be talking to a ghost. Sweetie, you should be dead. You crossed paths with the Dark Prince himself tonight.”
Three
Pound! Cara delivered a sidekick to a punching bag. She was reeling from the news Reyes delivered and decided to work off the tension in the training room at headquarters. Thud! She delivered a knee thrust to the same bag. Crunch! She connected a left hook to the… face of her best friend? Cara pulled herself out of the daze as her vision blurred into focus.
“Shit, Reiya, I’m sorry,” Cara heaved.
“I’m okay,” she assured her. “And after your brush with death it is understandable.”
“Reyes told you?” It was a rhetorical statement. Of course Reyes told her.
“My beloved twin knows I will throttle him for withholding pertinent information.”
Reiya’s flippancy earned her the smile from her best friend she was searching for. Cara flopped down on the training mat and Reiya sat cross-legged beside her. She waited for Cara to speak. When words never came she decided to say them for her.
“I know you Cara. I have known you since we were green recruits at intake. The fact that you ran away from a fight tonight is eating away at you. You don’t back down or run scared from anything. Ever. Even when you should, and tonight you definitely should have. Jesus, Cara. You faced down the Crowned Prince to the vampire throne himself. He did not earn the moniker of the Dark Prince by being anything but a ruthless, bloodthirsty bastard. No one, human or vampire, goes up against him and lives through the experience. You did. That is badass enough. Besides, I’m glad you ran away from a fight for once. I might not have my best friend sitting beside me if you did not.”
Reiya draped an arm comfortingly across Cara’s shoulder. Cara allowed herself to relax into the embrace.
“Thanks. I needed that,” she admitted.
“Anytime. It is what I’m here for.”
“Really?” Cara teased. “Here I was thinking it’s to boss me around and throw the weight of your fancy new title.”
“Nah,” Reiya shook her head. “That’s only when I am operating in the capacity of Field Director of the North American Division of Hunters. Lucky for you I am currently here in the capacity of best friend…”
“And pain in the ass know it all,” Cara cut Reiya off with a dazzling smile.
Reiya hit her with one back that was just as dazzling. “We can go for a round two of your little punch Reiya in the face session. But this time Reiya is punching back. I believe I owe you a few licks. One for my bruised cheekbone and at least three for your smartass comment.”
Cara jumped to her feet and extended a hand to help Reiya up. “Let’s do this,” she grinned even wider.
The sparring session with Reiya really helped to lighten her mood. When she left hunter headquarters for her apartment on the upper west side she felt considerably less broody. They shared a competitive nature and friendly competition between them was always fun. When they were both hunters in the field daily sparring sessions were something of a ritual between them. Since Reiya’s promotion to Field Director her scope of responsibilities had both changed and increased tremendously, leaving her with little time to enjoy what had become her and Cara’s norm. As Cara rode her bright yellow Ducati through the dead of night toward home her mind was given freedom and time to wander.
She contemplated what the Dark Prince could want with her. Was he traveling with the vampire she took out before he appeared, did he happen upon the scene by chance and decide he would not tolerate letting a hunter get away with murdering one of his own in front of him, or had he shown up and attacked for an entirely different reason? If the latter was the answer, how long had she been on his radar and how long had he been tracking her? She wasn’t use to being anyone’s prey and the prospect both frightened and enraged her. One fact she knew with every fiber of her being was that this thing between her and the Dark Prince was far from over and in the end only one of them would be left standing. Cara revved the engine of her bike and sped the rest of the way home. Damn it. She would not share her father’s fate.
---
Aiden made his way back across Manhattan to the Upper East Side residence of the New York coven house. By a law and custom more ancient than his father, vampires across the world were organized into the feudal-type system. A coven house existed in every major city to which every living vampire had to register with and belong to. It was left up to each individual vampire to decide if he or she actually wanted to reside in the coven house. Regardless of their decision, they still answered to the house and its Master when it came to operating within the laws of vampire society. Each House Master was presided over by whichever one of Viktor’s Council Lords governed the territory that their Coven House was in. There was one Lord for each of the seven continents. The seven Council Lords in turn answered to Aiden, whom as Crowned Prince acted as Enforcer of Vampire law. Viktor sat at the top of the hierarchy as the Sovereign Ruler. Even though he fancied having a Council of Lords, he ruled as a merciless tyrant. Viktor’s word was law. To go against or question it was to court death.
His wounds, as extensive as they were, were completely healed by the time he arrived at the coven house. His physical state appeared no worse for wear, but the state of his clothing told a different story. His black leather jacket hung in tatters and the black cotton shirt beneath was saturated in blood. He could not recall the last time he had been covered in his own blood instead of the blood of his opponent. Thinking of the hun
ter’s blood made him recall how it smelled like a wild summer storm wrapped in freesias. Hunger disconcertingly stirred to life at the memory.
Dorian met Aiden outside the coven house with a black leather duster long enough to conceal his battered clothing beneath. Aiden used the mental link he shared with each member of his Circle to fill Dorian in on the encounter with the hunter along with the need for the duster. If the others observed his disheveled state it would raise too many questions and speculations about the real reason he was in New York. Aiden would rather it be kept a secret for now.
Four
“Okay, okay I’ve got one,” Reiya mischievously grinned as she raised her shot glass into the air and motioned for Cara and Reyes to follow suit. “Our Repasado which art in bottles, hallowed be thy beverage. Thy will be drunk, at home as at a bar. Give us this day our daily libations, and forgive us our spillages, as we forgive those who spill against us. And lead us gladly into temptation, but deliver us from potential incarceration. For thine are tequila, the bitter and the smooth, for ever and ever, Amen."
Reyes doubled over in laughter as Cara scooted her chair back an inch from their table.
“I’m not sure if scooting away from the table is enough. I should migrate to the opposite end of the room. That way I am nowhere near you when lightning strikes you down,” Cara wheezed.
“It was a good one and you know it. That’s why both of you are in hysterics,” Reiya defended herself.
“More like sacrilegious,” Cara sputtered through waves of laughter that refused to fade.
“Downright blasphemous,” Reyes managed to croak out.
Cara forced her lungs to expand with air. “I am laughing so hard I can barely breath.”
She and Reyes finally wrestled control of their chortles long enough for the trio to raise their glasses in the air and down their fifth round of tequila. Then they broke out in cackles all over again.
Born In Blood (Born Hunter Book 1) Page 1
