by Laken Cane
Too impatient to wait for the tub to fill, I settled for a shower. As the hot water cascaded over me, my thoughts went to the one person in the world I truly hated. The one person I truly feared.
Amias Sato.
Apparently I’d been in that backseat all night and part of the next day. Angus had gone to work and saw my car. According to the small clock on the bathroom wall, it was now seven p.m. and though a good chunk of time had passed, I realized a normal person would have been in the hospital getting a blood transfusion.
I was not a normal person. No one was disputing that. And if I hadn’t gone after that vampire, I still wouldn’t know what I was.
But neither would the vampires.
Not yet. But eventually, if I really started hunting them, word would spread. Then the vampires would come.
At least that was what I believed.
Reality was that they were vampires. What I believed might happen didn’t really matter. There were too many variables.
Amias, for one.
He hadn’t helped me when the vampire had nearly killed me, but afterward, he’d taken me to the supernaturals.
He hadn’t left me for animals, humans, or other vampires to find. He hadn’t left me to die. He’d put me in the car, he’d driven me to Bay Town, and I’d healed because I had something of Sato inside me.
I still didn’t know why he’d attacked us that grim Thanksgiving night.
And I would never stop trying to kill him.
I began soaping my body, slowly, as my muscles groaned when I moved. If I was going to become a hunter, I’d have to join a gym. I was a little too weak and scrawny to make killing vampires my life’s work.
At the thought, my stomach muscles clenched, my heart rate picked up, and shivers chased each other up my spine. I grabbed the knob to turn to hot water down, because suddenly I was hot. Too hot.
Excited.
The thought of killing vampires was turning me on.
I leaned against the wall and let the cooling water beat against my back, ignoring the throbbing between my thighs and forcing my thoughts elsewhere until the feeling passed.
“Well that’s new,” I muttered.
I squirted shampoo onto my hair and scrubbed my scalp a little too hard. By the time I’d rinsed and stepped out of the shower, my thoughts were once again under control.
I found bandages in a cabinet, and examined my bite wound before slapping a fresh bandage on. The wound was tender and raw, but the pain was less and it was healing nicely. No pus or angry red streaks. I figured I was good.
I wrapped a thick towel around me and left the bathroom in search of some clean clothes I might borrow. I needed to go home and prepare for the night ahead. For the life ahead.
There were vampires to hunt, and apparently, I was just the woman for the job.
Lucky me.
Chapter Six
I’d become a part of the supernatural world on Thanksgiving six years earlier, the very second Amias, injured and hungry, had touched me. Had hurt me.
After I’d healed, I’d immersed myself in Bay Town’s supernatural community—a community I’d barely been aware of until Miriam Crow had invited me in.
She’d taken me to Angus, and he’d given me a job.
I’d had no one else. My sister had pretty much raised me during our mother’s struggle with the cancer that had eventually taken her, and my father had left when I was two. I didn’t remember him and had no idea where he was, or if he were still alive. And I couldn’t have cared less.
For a long time, I’d closed myself off from everyone. Everyone except the Bay Town supernaturals.
They’d accepted me without reservation—mostly—and it hadn’t occurred to me to question their acceptance. I was truly one of them, even if they hadn’t known what I was when they’d welcomed me into their world.
But I was human, and I was part of the human world as well. I worked in the supernatural world, but lived in the human world. And that hadn’t really complicated my life.
Until now.
I arrived at my apartment in the center of the city of Red Valley, wondering, as I rode the elevator up to the fourth floor, whether I really wanted to continue living in the city.
I wanted to hunt and kill vampires. Could I live amongst the humans while hunting? Come home covered in blood, likely most of it mine, wounded, and reeking of death? Would I pull the humans into the supernatural community? Bay Town wouldn’t like that.
It was bad enough with me just working there. People didn’t forget the lone survivor of a horrific slaughter. Every year, they dragged it out of the shadows and made it into something a little more fantastical, if that were possible.
At any rate, the Red Valley Thanksgiving Day Massacre was becoming somewhat legendary, and though I was not exactly hounded by the media, each year when November rolled around, I was recognized, questioned, and occasionally asked for my autograph.
Infuriating but true.
And I drew more unwanted attention to the supernaturals with whom I associated.
Bay Town, full of supernaturals, was comforting in its quaint sweetness. The city, full of humans, was forbidding with its shadows and secrets and pain. One would think it would have been the opposite.
It wasn’t.
I’d found my belongings in the nightstand drawer and had shoved the stakes, belt, and blades into a bag, then slipped down the stairs and out the front door without anyone but a two-year-old named Annabelle seeing me. Soon enough, someone would discover I’d fled the house and call to tattle to Angus, but I didn’t care. He could roar and rage all he wanted, and I could ignore him like I always did.
I hurried down the hallway to my apartment, trying to look more like I belonged there and less like a battered thug, but from the couple of narrow-eyed glances I received, I wasn’t sure I succeeded.
My neighbor across the hall opened her door the exact second I shoved my key into my lock.
“Trinity,” she called. “I’m glad to see you. I was beginning to worry.”
“No need, Mrs. Watson. I’m fine.” I turned to face her when I felt her at my back, and sighed when her eyes widened.
“My goodness, honey. What on earth?” Her faded blue eyes darted, and her head tilted like a little bird as she studied me. The mass of wrinkles on her face deepened. “Your face is bruised!”
“I was jumped last night while delivering a pizza,” I lied. “But I’m not hurt.”
“Not hurt!” She pursed her lips and reached up to touch my face, withdrawing immediately when I recoiled. “You’re bruised and…” She shook her head but her tightly coifed hair never moved. “Haggard. At your age. Can I do anything for you? Would you like some soup? Can I call someone to come sit with you?” Before I could so much as open my mouth she continued. “Shall I sit with you? I’ll get my—”
“No,” I interrupted, gently. “I’m going to run a bath and then go to bed. I’m fine, I promise.”
“You saw a doctor, of course,” she said.
“Of course,” I agreed. “All I need is some rest.”
She tsk tsk’d. “Well, if you’re sure.”
“Absolutely. Goodnight, Mrs. Watson.”
I slipped inside and closed my door. The woman was sweet as she could be, but dear lord was she nosy.
She could tell me who visited the residents in any room on our floor—even if she couldn’t see their doors—and she knew the very instant a stranger stepped off the elevator. She called the manager’s office with sightings of ruffians and imagined murderers at least once a week, and was always ready with an old broom with which she might sweep out the garbage she felt didn’t belong there.
She was funny at times, but her paranoia, intrusiveness, and suspicion had gotten old fast.
She saw everything.
But she hadn’t seen the vampire who waited silently in the shadows of my living room.
“I have something for you,” Amias murmured. “Listen to me, Trinity.”
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“I can’t,” I told him. And I couldn’t. I was helpless against the bloodlust and rage that sprang to life inside me every time I saw him.
I dropped the bag and knelt to retrieve one of the stakes that rolled free, then snarling with something close to madness, I sprang at him.
Pain dug into my brain and roared through my body.
I didn’t care.
He was there, and I had to kill him, no matter what that did to me.
And for the first time, I realized that not even my home was off limits to him. Vampires couldn’t go into a human’s house without an invitation. Something stopped them—gave them, from what we humans understood, unbearable pain if they tried—but nothing stopped Amias. He was in my home.
I attacked him with everything I had, just as I always did. My mind was on only one thing—getting that stake into his heart. Killing him. Destroying him. Hurting him.
Avenging my family.
But Amias was ready for me, and he wanted to talk. It didn’t matter if I needed to kill him—his strength was enormous, and I was, no matter what grew inside me, human. A puny human.
He grabbed me, held me against him with one arm, then ripped the stake out of my grip. He flung it at the wall with such force the sharpened point lodged in the plaster.
“No more.” His voice was quiet, but the power inside it blasted my eardrums and exploded into my brain. “You will never make me kill you, Trinity Sinclair.”
As though that was what I was after. My death.
And he was done playing.
He couldn’t mesmerize me—he’d tried before—but he could subdue me with his vampire strength. It wrapped around my body, my mind, my soul, and held me fast.
I stiffened against him, my mind screaming at me to attack, to relax, to fight, surrender, to hate, to love. I warred with myself with such violence that in the end, all I could do was sink to the floor, caught in his arms, and wail.
“You are mine,” he whispered, the vampire I hated above all things, and that whisper seemed to reverberate throughout the room. “You belong to me now.”
And I knew it was the truth. He could have proven it years earlier, but he hadn’t. He’d stalked me, watched me, waiting for the time to be right to force me to understand one indisputable fact of my life.
I was a master vampire’s servant.
His servant.
Amias Sato was my master.
Chapter Seven
He shuddered against me, as though the words he’d spoken were a release, and tightened his arms around me as I struggled.
“Accept it,” he said. “Accept me. You have work to do.”
“I will kill you,” I swore. “That’s what I accept. You are physically stronger than I am, but one day, I will find a way to end your life.”
“You could,” he said, his voice smooth and dark, “were you not mine. Death lay dormant inside you and I activated it when I bit you.”
“When you murdered my family and nearly killed me,” I said. I wanted to rip out his heart with my teeth. The desire to hurt him was stronger than the pain I felt when I tried.
I slammed my head back and heard his nose crunch, but he never made a sound. Pain shot through me, stealing my breath, and as nausea rose into my throat, I had to pause for a moment to concentrate on something even more intense than the hatred I felt for the vampire.
Pain.
It was like I was covered with raw, bloody wounds and someone shoved a hot, sharp piece of metal into each one. Slowly and deeply.
“Stop fighting,” he murmured, his lips moving against my ear. “Don’t fight it.”
But I couldn’t help it. When he was near, rage exploded inside me. Pure, black rage.
“I need to tell you the truth about that night,” he continued, when I remained silent. “But first, I will tell you this. Servants cannot kill their masters. The harder you try, the more agonizing the pain. That pain can destroy you, Trinity.”
“I will never allow you to be my master.” I was still a little breathless, but better. “You’re a fucking bloodsucking piece of dead garbage. You are the master of nothing.”
“If you consider yourself nothing.” There was a thread of anger in his voice.
I was pissing him off.
Good.
Before I could blink, he shoved my head to the side, exposing the side of my neck, and pressed his fangs against my skin. He didn’t break through, but I felt his need to do so. He was only a heartbeat away from biting me.
I screamed and tried to jerk away, but it was like pushing against an iron vise. I could barely move. I imagined him laughing at my weakness, my helplessness, and his derision infuriated me further.
“Stop,” he ordered, sternly, and it took everything I possessed not to obey him.
I wanted to obey him.
“I enjoy your spirit,” he told me. “I appreciate your courage. The spark inside you is hot enough to burn a man.”
“How would you know?” I stopped struggling, exhausted. “You’re no man.”
His sigh was soft against my skin. “I assure you I am a man. I am not human, but I am a man.”
He rubbed my skin with his lips, a hint of a kiss, and chills raced over my body. I shuddered as my nipples stiffened and heat grew between my thighs. He’d sexually excited me with one barely there kiss.
“Let me go.” My voice was a raw murmur, and I was almost unable to get the words out. I was…horrified.
Beyond horrified. I was allowing the vampire I hated, the vampire who’d killed my family, to excite me.
He tightened his grip. “I have something for you, but first I will explain what has happened to you, and why.”
“Let me go,” I repeated. “I’ll listen.” I had to get away from him before the lust overcame the hate.
He hesitated, but must have believed me, because he opened his arms.
I scooted away from him, then sprang to my feet and went to stand against the wall, clenching my fists hard enough to bloody my palms. My legs trembled as I stood there, and finally, I pushed away from the wall and went to sit on the couch.
“Talk.” And I felt somewhat more in control when he actually did as I demanded.
He stood, then sat in the chair across from me. He crossed his legs, watching me with a sharp stare, probably waiting for me to bolt.
But I didn’t. He would have caught me and I did not want to be crushed against that body again.
Then I frowned. My rage was…less.
He was there, not five feet from me, and I was not bursting with rage. Why not?
Oh, I still hated him. I hated him with every fiber of my being. But the rage…it was softer.
Who would I be without my rage?
No one.
Nothing.
Because my rage was all I had.
“What did you do to me?” I whispered, devastated.
He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped away the blood from his busted nose, then folded the cloth carefully and pushed it back into his pocket. “I made you part of something that should never have touched you. I am sorry.”
There it was again, sorrow, truth, pain. It was in his eyes. He truly was sorry. And maybe my rage dimmed a little more.
But it didn’t disappear. It could never. I still wanted to see him dead, and I wanted to be the one to kill him. And I was comforted by that thought.
He tilted his head, frowning a little. “Why are you smiling?”
“Because I still need to kill you,” I said.
“Part of you will always hate me.”
“The biggest part.”
“Perhaps,” he murmured
My cell began to ring and I felt for it, pulling it from my pocket without taking my stare off the vampire. Then I glanced at the screen. “Angus,” I muttered.
“If he comes here, I will kill him,” Amias said. “I have resisted because he means something to you, and I would not hurt you further. But tonight, I will kill him.”
I believed him. I send the call to voicemail. Angus would not be surprised that I was avoiding him.
I wasn’t afraid. I felt Amias’s danger. It surrounded him like a swirling black mist filled with glittering, sharp debris. I felt it. But that danger…
It wasn’t for me.
Amias didn’t want to kill me.
But my terror didn’t stem from my potential death. My terror came from a place that remembered what it was like to be helpless beneath so much power. It came from a place that believed he would toss me into whatever putrid magic soup that created turned humans, and I would become something worse than dead.
I would become a vampire.
That was my terror. My nightmare. My rage.
Because he could, and I knew it.
He sighed. “Your emotions change as fast as a child’s.”
“Just tell me what you need to tell me, Sato, then get out of my house.” If my voice trembled, he was too polite to point it out.
He settled back into his chair and crossed his legs. “There is an infection that affects my kind. In my youth, this disease was seen only rarely. But now it is appearing more often, and is affecting more vampires. Those who fall ill pass this disease to other vampires when they bite them.”
“Vampires don’t bite other vampires,” I interrupted.
“Normal vampires,” he said, ignoring my scoff, “do not. These vampires are not normal vampires. They are sick. The disease creates creatures who become mindless and starving and…” He stopped for a second, remembering. He shuddered, then put his dark stare back on me. “Full of bloodlust. The vampire you killed behind the bar was recently infected. This is what I needed to tell you. Like the human flu, the vampire virus is active again and it is spreading quickly. Those are the vampires you need to hunt. The infected vampires have an uncontrollable desire to kill and an indescribable hunger. And it grows steadily worse the longer they’re sick. They grow worse.”
I swallowed, my heart beating fast. “So you contracted this virus and that’s why you attacked and killed my family.”
“Yes. I was newly infected when I…” He closed his mouth, opened it, then closed it again. Finally, he continued. “When I hurt you. I am a master, therefore I was able to stay slightly sane while it coursed through me. That virus still exists inside you. It is that virus that rages inside you when you see me. You would like me dead because of what I did to you and your people, but that black infection…it is the rage. It is what controls you. Do you understand?”
