“Is that supposed to be helpful? I already know there’s evil here,” Jake snapped. “There’s a damned killer on the loose.”
Seta laughed. “I sense forces of darkness in a manner similar to how you sense vampires, but I can use my abilities at will to home in on specific areas. While you can sense danger coming at you, I can often locate it before it has a chance to attack. Your abilities work more like gut instinct, kicking in when necessary.”
Jake’s forehead crinkled, indicating he was in deep thought. Nyla wondered what was going through his mind, if he knew he had a psychic ability and that he was a true slayer, not just an average vampire hunter. He shrugged, as if to say “whatever,” and Nyla realized either he didn’t know or he wouldn’t accept it. He hated anyone who wasn’t a “regular” mortal, and having a psychic ability wasn’t a normal mortal’s trait.
“Whatever, just do whatever you have to do to find the missing vampire—if there is a missing vampire—but don’t kill or endanger any humans in the process.”
“I prefer the term mortals,” Seta said, slightly growling the word. “And, unlike some, I don’t kill for sport.”
“And you’re saying I do?”
“Don’t you? The last time we met, I believe you said killing me would be a twofer. Tell me, Jacob, how many points would you score for killing me?”
“That was just a smart-assed remark, and you know it,” Jake snapped. “If you recall, I was pissed off at that time, and rightfully so, after being tied up and . . .” Jake stopped abruptly, glancing at Nyla for the briefest of seconds before returning his attention to Seta. “I said whatever I knew would irk you.”
“Why didn’t you finish your statement, Jacob?” Seta asked with the sly smile of a Cheshire cat. “You don’t want your girlfriend to know Christian—”
Jake made an abrupt move toward Seta. “Shut your—”
“Stop it, both of you!” Nyla stepped in between the hot-tempered enemies, halting Jake from what looked like a physical attack. She shot a warning glare at him and then looked at the vampire-witch. “Seta, we would greatly appreciate your help. And on behalf of us both, I thank you.”
Seta nodded politely, still wearing her sly, amused grin.
“And as for you, Jake,” Nyla continued, focusing on him, “try to act a bit more thankful for the help.”
Behind her, Seta snorted, but it didn’t do anything to alleviate the tension in the room. Jake’s gaze bore through her like a laser, his eyes all but screaming incredulity. Nyla couldn’t help feeling a little traitorous, but she wasn’t going to just stand by and watch the two fight because Jake didn’t want her to know he’d been bitten.
“Oh, I like her,” Seta said on the tail end of laughter. “I like her very much.”
“So you’ll help us?” she asked.
Seta nodded, her laughter dying out as she looked at them seriously. “I think I have to.”
Nyla looked at Jake, his expression conveying the same confusion she felt, but before either could ask what the vampire-witch had meant, she was gone.
“Whoa,” Nyla said, letting out a startled little yelp as the woman literally vanished in the blink of an eye. Nyla could evaporate into mist, but she’d never seen anyone do what Seta had just done. “How did she do that?”
“She’s a witch, a powerful one,” Jake said gruffly.
Anger still simmered in his voice, and Nyla took a deep breath and turned to face him, ready for yet another confrontation. She wasn’t ready, however, for the way his eyes wouldn’t meet hers.
“You all right, Jake?”
“Fine,” he snapped. “Now that you’re awake, and I have the roof of the car patched, can we leave?”
He still wasn’t looking at her. He kept himself busy pulling up the directions to Hicksville on his laptop.
“Fine,” Nyla said, no longer having a reason to delay the trip since she could go out in the daylight. She was, however, a little anxious about walking out into the sunlight in her human form. “Just as long as you don’t try to kill me again.”
“Don’t give me reason to, and it won’t be a problem.”
“I didn’t give you reason to the last time,” she shot back.
She grabbed the bag of clothes and toiletries he’d brought in for her earlier, put his gun on the table and headed for the door. “Come on, Porter. Since you’re so anxious to get to Hicksville, let’s put a move on it.”
She walked out the door, chuckling at the barrage of curse words she heard him muttering beneath his breath. She wanted to correct him by stating she was not a female dog but a cat; however, they were already on shaky ground, so she left it alone.
She walked out into the sun for the first time in sixteen years, not counting the times she was covered in fur, and smiled. From behind her eyes, tears built up and threatened to fall. Free. She was free of the darkness which had plagued her for so long, free to walk in the light.
“Are you all right?” Jake asked, coming to a stop beside her. She’d been so enraptured by the glowing orb in the sky, she hadn’t heard him approach.
“Perfect,” she said, averting her eyes to hide the wetness glistening there. “Let’s go to Hicksville.”
CURTIS SNEAKED A glance at Demarcus, making sure the vamp was deeply asleep before he attempted to feed the girl the vampire had captured. Unlike the other vampires in the house, Demarcus was the only one who actually slept in a coffin. He left it open, probably to shock the victims he’d captured.
“Are you hungry?” Curtis asked the teenager. She was shackled to the metal table in the basement of the house Demarcus had acquired. Her eyes were wide and red-rimmed from crying. She couldn’t speak because of the gag in her mouth, but she could have nodded or shook her head. She did neither, obviously paralyzed by fear. “I have some food for you,” Curtis tried again, showing her the breakfast bar he’d unwrapped.
The girl jerked her head away as he offered her the food, seemingly terrified of it. “There’s nothing wrong with it,” he said, realizing she must have thought he’d poisoned it. “Eat while you have the chance. He won’t let me feed you when he’s awake.”
Her eyes grew wider, coated with wetness. Tears slid down the sides of her face as strangled garbles erupted from behind the gag. Although he couldn’t make out the actual words, he knew she was pleading with him to release her. But he couldn’t.
“I’m sorry,” he said, knowing his apology would not make up for what he was going to do to the poor girl. “I would let you go if I could, but I’m too weak to fight Demarcus. Please eat before your hunger pains become unbearable.”
The girl shook her head vehemently as he reached for the gag, and Curtis realized he couldn’t ungag her, not even to feed her. She would scream if given the chance. Fortunately, she was too panicked to have thought to play along until he’d removed the rag.
“I am sorry,” he apologized again, helpless to do anything else. He took a bite of the breakfast bar, felt it slide down to his stomach. It landed with a nauseating thud, and he discarded the rest in a nearby receptacle.
The basement was small, dark and cold, the air soured with the scent of mildew and dampness. The girl lay before him on a large metal table. To his left a vampire was shackled to the wall. His head hung down, his body weak and thin.
Cabinets and tables sat in various places, and a couple of old couches and chairs sat off to his right. They’d taken the house from an old couple. Demarcus had satisfied his blood lust by killing the pair, and they’d moved in, using the basement as a makeshift lab.
They’d left the first body in Louisville, knowing a body found there would garner more attention than if it were left in this small backwoods community. They’d strategically placed the second and third bodies so that they were a trail leading straight to them. The next body, the body of the blonde on t
he table, would be left here in Hicksville.
Demarcus’s plan was working. Nyla and her man had killed the vampires in Louisville, which meant the pair would come to Hicksville to investigate this girl’s body too. Maybe they’d already figured it out. Maybe they knew Hicksville was the next dumping site and would arrive sooner than expected.
Curtis studied the vampire shackled to the wall. He wasn’t an old vampire. An older vampire could take the abuse he was suffering through, but this vamp was fading fast. He would die soon, and Demarcus would have to capture another vampire to replace him. A small voice inside Curtis’s head squealed with glee. The death of a vampire was something to be celebrated in Alfred Dunn’s mind.
Curtis swallowed down the bile threatening to rise in his throat. Every time he cut into the vampire’s flesh and collected his blood, draining the creature of his energy, Alfred grew stronger. Curtis struggled to fight off the hateful old man, but Alfred was too strong.
And the two of them were duking it out inside Curtis’s head.
“Come soon,” he whispered, sending out a desperate plea to the cat-woman and her man. “Come before Alfred destroys me.”
JAKE GLANCED AT Nyla, briefly observing her in her sleep before returning his gaze to the road stretching out before them. She’d been quiet since they left the motel, but she’d made it clear she hadn’t forgotten his earlier actions. Before she’d fallen asleep, she’d repeatedly flexed her hand outside the window, seeming to rotate it toward the direct rays of the sun, as if needing to absorb its warmth. She’d acted as if she were the first person to discover the feel of the sun—or someone who’d been away from it for a long time.
She’d reminded him of a movie he’d seen in school about a girl who’d lived on another planet or in another dimension, a place where the sun never shone. Then one day it did, but only for a few minutes, and she’d missed it because her classmates had locked her in a room while they enjoyed it themselves.
Jake shook his head, wondering why he was thinking of movies he’d seen in grade school when there were so many more important thoughts to fill his head right now. Questions in need of answers.
He pulled his cell phone from the charger he kept in the car and punched the autodial button for his brother’s number, sneaking another glance at Nyla in the process. If she’d wanted to annoy him with her “I’m so enraptured by the feel of the sun against my skin” routine, she’d succeeded. He couldn’t possibly feel any more like an ass.
“Where the hell have you been?” Jonah’s voice growled through the phone after the first ring. “I called for an hour after you hung up on me!”
“I had something to take care of,” Jake muttered. “You find out anything else about the attack at the LMPD?”
“I thought it was this Nyla woman.”
“She’s not a vamp.”
“Are you sure?”
“She’s been in direct contact with the sun, and nothing has happened. She’s not a vamp. She’s a hell of a fighter though, despite her small packaging. She probably beat the crap out of the cop, and he decided to make up a story so the boys wouldn’t laugh him out of the station.”
“Did you actually ask her what happened?”
“I already told you what she said. Maybe the guy was attacked by a real vampire, and he got Nyla and the vamp mixed up. Blood loss can make you woozy.”
“It sounds like you’re grasping at straws, bro.”
“I know,” Jake conceded, letting out a breath of frustration. Man, he was tired. It’d be nice to switch places with Nyla and take a snooze while they traveled. “I just know she’s one of the good guys.”
“Man, you are sprung.”
“I am not sprung,” he growled, despising the thought, especially since his brother might be right. “Just call me if you find out anything about . . . anything.”
He disconnected the call without going through their normal name-calling goodbye routine. He was not only irritated by his brother’s words but by the memory of standing over Nyla with the UV blanket in his hands. He’d stood there for forty minutes before lowering the blanket over her body—forty minutes of debating with himself about how he would deal with what he’d done if her flesh started to burn when the blanket touched her skin.
If he’d suspected anyone else of being a vampire he’d have killed them without hesitation, but the thought of watching Nyla writhe in pain, watching her life seep away, killed him inside. And the thought of him being her killer . . .
Jake shook his head, struggling to control his emotions. He’d just met the damned woman. Yes, she was beautiful and had a great body. And yes, she could hold her own in a fight and was clearly in great shape. It was a given that she’d be an amazing lover, and that was all he should care about.
But to his dismay, he cared about her more than just getting her into the sack. His stomach did some weird flipping thing when she smiled at him, and he worried about her when she seemed ill. He’d found himself imagining her at his side during future hunts. His brother was right. He was sprung.
He tightened his hands around the steering wheel, longing for something to crush, something to help release his anger. How could he be so stupid? When you cared for someone, they could die. He already had Jonah to worry about. He did not need another person in his life to care about, another person who could break him if he lost them. He was already barely holding the pieces together.
“I don’t love you,” he said, his voice soft but stern. To his horror, it was also laced with an edge of panic. “I will not love you. You’re just an ordinary woman.”
Except there was nothing ordinary about Nyla.
Thankfully, the sign announcing entry to Hicksville came into view, and Jake breathed a little easier. Now that they were here, he had something else to focus on. The last body had been found just outside of town. Logic said the next one would be in this same area. He had a woman out there to save.
As for the woman next to him . . . well, he didn’t quite know what to do with her, and thank heavens he didn’t have to make any decisions about her right now.
“NYLA, WAKE UP. You’ve gotta see this.”
Nyla opened her eyes and lifted her head from her arm, which rested against the car door. She must have fallen asleep shortly after she and Jake left the motel. She really hadn’t lied to him earlier in the day when she’d told him she was tired.
She raised herself to a full sitting position so she could see what Jake was telling her she needed to look at, but she was assaulted by the Heat before she could focus her eyes.
“This town is aptly named, that’s for sure,” she heard him say, laughter in his voice, but she couldn’t see him. She couldn’t see anything. Her body felt as though it barely contained a raging fire, a fire formed from need and want—of unadulterated lust. The feeling was so strong she was sure she’d burst into flame at any moment.
“Nyla, you all right?”
“Yeah,” she managed to say evenly, although she wanted to scream in agony. True to the beast inside her, she felt like an animal in heat, desperate for the release of pressure building up inside her. All it would take was one sexual encounter to make it go away.
Dammit! She never should have allowed herself to fall asleep, she thought angrily. It was always worse after sleep.
“Do you see them?”
She strained her eyes until the blur she saw sharpened into a clear picture. They were in Hicksville, she realized, seeing the sign for the Hicksville general store. The town was filled with small buildings and long wide streets, and it looked as if everyone in town drove a pickup truck since those were the only vehicles she saw parked along the streets.
And the town was aptly named, she agreed with Jake, noticing the people on the street. A barefoot man sat outside the general store in an old rocking chair, playing a tune on his banjo. He
had a long salt-and-pepper beard, a piece of buckwheat hanging out his mouth, and wore old faded overalls. A woman walked up the sidewalk in low slung blue jeans, a thin rope tied around her waist instead of a belt, and she wore a cutoff top that barely covered anything. Her mousy brown hair was bisected into two low braids, and when she smiled at a man passing by, she revealed a large space where two teeth should have been.
“Wow,” Nyla murmured, noticing more people dressed in similar fashion, either wearing boots or no shoes at all. And they were all looking at Jake’s car as if the two people inside were the oddballs. “It’s not Halloween. Do you think they’re actors? Maybe we’re close to the town theater.”
Jake shook his head, laughing. “I’ve been driving around this town for a good five minutes, and they all look like this. This should definitely be interesting,” he added before opening his door and exiting the car. “I’ll be right back.” He shut the door and walked around the front of the car toward the general store, nodding at a few people as they eyed him curiously.
Thankful Jake was gone and she’d have an opportunity to get herself under control, Nyla closed her eyes and tried to focus on breathing. But deep breathing seemed to make her hornier. Dammit! She balled her hands into fists, letting her nails sink into her palms, but the small pain didn’t distract her. She wanted sex as badly as a starving man wanted food. She opened her eyes again, and her gaze immediately fell on a short, portly man dressed in frayed overalls that barely covered his enormous belly and a used-to-be-white T-shirt, stained yellow at the armpits. He wore an old, ragged John Deere trucker cap and work boots with a hole in one of the toes. The lower half of his face was covered in stubble, and a thick cigar hung from his stubby fingers. He waved a greeting to the man playing the banjo and smiled, displaying several gaps where teeth should have been. Nyla’s need for sex was so great that she tightened her hand around the door handle, ready to pop the door open and grab him the minute he was close.
Slayer's Prey Page 14
