Bound by Vengeance

by Brenda K. Davies

  Never before had he run from a vampire, but this wasn’t one or two or even ten Savages. He would have battled those numbers, he might not have survived it, but he would have faced them.

  There’d been more than that back there though, and they’d been going for her. If Nathan took them on now, he didn’t know if he could keep her safe against so many.

  He’d only ever seen Vicky twice before, and despite having first glimpsed her with her identical twin, Abby, he knew it was Vicky he led and not her twin. He couldn’t detect a difference in their appearances when he saw them together, but Abby wouldn’t be wandering the streets alone. She would be with her mate, Brian.

  Also, from their first encounter, something about Vicky inexplicably drew him to her. He couldn’t put his finger on what it was, but since the day he’d agreed to ally his hunters with Ronan’s vampires and first seen Vicky, she’d intrigued him. Vicky had scowled at him during that brief encounter.

  The second time he saw her, he’d been visiting his sister, Kadence, in her new home. Vicky was in the gym with her brother, Aiden, at the time. She’d slipped from the gym without looking at him.

  Curious about her, he’d asked Kadence what her name was, and his sister had told him Victoria, but she preferred Vicky.

  Vicky was pretty with her pale blonde hair and striking emerald eyes, but he’d seen more beautiful women before. However, since first encountering her, Vicky played a starring role in many of his dreams and waking fantasies, but it seemed he only annoyed her.

  He’d seen her hesitate before taking his hand. It was as if she would prefer the Savages to him, but he didn’t detect the odor of rot on her, and she was residing with Ronan and the others, so she wasn’t a Savage. For some reason, most likely because he was a hunter, she didn’t like him.

  He almost reached for her hand again but refrained from doing so as he sprinted across a busy intersection with Vicky at his heels. This area of the city was still active with those looking to celebrate their Friday night. As he darted across the road, taxi horns blared, someone shouted at them, and brakes squealed.

  Nathan twisted to avoid taking the full impact of a cab, but the bumper caught his leg and staggered him to the side. His hand banged down on the hood before he regained his balance and raced forward again. The people on the sidewalk stepped hastily out of their way when they left the intersection behind.

  Vicky ignored the startled looks people gave them when they raced by. A woman exiting a bar had the misfortune of doing so as Vicky ran past the door. Vicky’s shoulder caught the woman’s and staggered her back.

  “Sorry!” she called back when the woman fell against a brick wall.

  Vicky dodged the next pedestrian and plunged into the middle of another street behind Nathan. They dashed in and out of screeching cars before fleeing down a quieter road. They left the busier business areas behind for neighborhoods that became increasingly decrepit with every block they traversed. She had no idea where they were in the city anymore, but she didn’t dare slow.

  She was about to plunge onto another street when Nathan grabbed her arm and pulled her toward a seedy-looking building with plywood nailed over two of the bottom windows. Chunks of brick missing from the building’s façade looked like they’d been torn away by bullets peppering it.

  He tugged her onward, but Vicky dug her heels in and refused to go any further. It wasn’t the building unnerving her; it was the man. The closer she got to him, the worse it would be for her long-term sanity and chances of survival.

  Her heart thundered when he turned back and his azure eyes met hers. Emphasized by his coal black hair and his bronzed skin, those eyes were dazzling. Lean in build, his shoulders were broad, his waist tapered, and she guessed him to be six four as he stood a good ten inches above her.

  She didn’t feel intimidated by his height, his stance, or the knowledge he was a hunter who only months ago would have staked her without question. Instead, she fisted her hands to keep herself from running her fingers over one of his high cheekbones before tracing his stiff upper lip and full bottom one.

  His black eyebrows drew together over the bridge of his aquiline nose. His hair was cut short enough to keep it from getting in his face, but it was long enough Vicky could grip it to pull him to her for a kiss.

  Ugh, as soon as she thought it, she hated herself for it, but she’d imagined doing much more than kissing this man since first meeting him.

  She was so fucked and absolutely 100 percent not in a good way.

  Since their first short meeting, she’d suspected this man was her mate. Never in her life had she experienced the kind of visceral reaction to another that Nathan brought out in her. She dreamed of him nightly, found her thoughts traveling to him throughout the day, and couldn’t get him out of her head.

  But this man was a hunter, a race of mortals who had been the enemy of all vampires for thousands of years. That enemy status had only changed recently and could end tomorrow. The truce was tenuous as vampires and hunters still had a difficult time working together.

  Not only had he been her enemy just a few short months ago, but Nathan was the leader of all hunters. He had a duty to his people, and she was certain that duty did not include being the mate of a vampire. In fact, Kadence had told her that one day Nathan would have a bride chosen for him. His fate belonged to another woman.

  Which was fine for him. Living without a mate most likely wouldn’t kill him; it would eventually destroy her. If she kept her distance from him, she’d be able to handle the bond between them not being completed better, but the more time they spent together, the more she risked the mate bond deepening, and that could never end well for her. A vampire needed to complete the bond with their mate; if not they went insane or died, and she doubted Nathan would willingly hand his throat, and his life, over to her.

  His hand on her arm tightened when something down the street clattered. “Inside!”

  Spending more time with Nathan was at the bottom of her list of things to do, but she suspected a fate worse than death awaited her if she remained on this street.

  Reluctantly, she followed him up the cracked, concrete steps. He pulled open the sagging, wood door of the building and gestured for her to enter before closing the door behind them.

  Vicky stopped when she saw the hallway. Over the years, the dirt from people’s hands, cigarette smoke, and other assorted things had smudged the gray walls a dirty brown. The stench of stale smoke, alcohol, and the acrid scent of drugs mingled with cooking human food and body odor in such a way that she’d rather smell the Savages than this place.

  Cigarette butts, nip bottles, needles, baggies, food wrappers, numerous other garbage, and rodent droppings littered the torn gray carpet. Closed doors lined the hall, and a set of stairs rose to her left.

  From behind one of the doors, a TV blared so loudly it made her eardrums ache. Behind another, she heard people screwing, and inside another apartment, a man berated his wife. If she had the time, she would teach that guy a thing or two about respect for others, but the poor woman was on her own tonight.

  Over the years, she’d been in worse places than this. The warehouse had been ten levels below a sty, but Nathan seemed too refined or classy or something to even know a place like this existed. Perhaps this hunter had more layers than she realized.

  She mentally slapped herself when she briefly contemplated peeling those layers away to learn more about him.

  “This way,” Nathan said and tugged on her arm.

  “If the Savages are still close, Duke will be able to smell me. He’ll follow me here.”

  “Who is Duke?” Nathan asked as he led her to the chipped, garbage strewn, wooden steps. He nudged her when she hesitated at the bottom.

  “A big-time prick who I am going to kill.”

  He’d been around many human women over the years, but it still surprised him to hear a woman curse or be so vehement about anything. Hunter women were composed above all else. They kept c
ontrol of their emotions, remained demure at all times, and never spoke so bluntly.

  Part of him inwardly cringed at such candid talk from a woman, but in Vicky’s words and tone, he sensed the same hatred propelling him in his relentless hunt for Joseph, the vampire who murdered his father.

  What did Duke do to engender that kind of loathing from her?

  “I see,” Nathan murmured as they reached the second floor and he led her down the hall toward his apartment. “You’ll be safe here.”

  “How…?”

  Her question trailed off when he stopped in front of one of the closed doors. He pulled out a set of keys, unlocked the door, and pushed it open.

  “Come in,” he invited as he flicked on a switch while entering the apartment.

  Vicky followed him inside and froze when the single, bare bulb hanging from the cracked ceiling revealed what lay within. What the room lacked in furniture, it made up for in weapons stockpiled against the walls of what she assumed would be the living room in a normal person’s apartment.

  There were so many weapons that, in some areas, they were stacked five feet high and spread out from the wall to cover a couple of feet of the brown, industrial carpet. The one trunk in the room was closed, but Vicky would bet money it contained an arsenal. From what she could see, every one of the weapons was explicitly designed to end a vampire’s life.

  Delightful. Rolling her eyes, Vicky wondered if she would be better off hightailing it out of here and taking her chances with the Savages. Nathan’s sister may be a vampire now, the hunters might have allied with Ronan, but they’d been the enemies of vampires for millennia.

  Just because she experienced wicked fantasies about the things she yearned to do to him didn’t mean he wouldn’t try to lop off her head. After Duke, she’d had enough of bedmates who turned out to be praying mantises in disguise.

  Then she realized that Nathan wouldn’t risk the fragile truce he’d established with Ronan by assaulting her when she’d done nothing to warrant it. Besides, if Nathan wanted her dead, he would have left her on the street with the Savages.

  Stepping further into the apartment, Vicky frowned at the newspaper clippings tacked to the dingy, white wall across from her. The articles covered a ten-foot square section of space; a pinned map of the Northeast hung next to the newspapers. Red thumbtacks pinpointed different locations throughout the map.

  Swallowing, she glanced at Nathan as he closed the door behind her and locked it. “So, what’s with all the weapons? Are you preparing to become the next Dexter?” she asked.

  “I don’t know who that is.”

  She blinked at him. “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a TV show. He’s a serial killer, but you know, kind of a good guy, in a weird sort of way.”

  “When I have the time for it, the only TV I watch is the news,” he replied.

  “The news is depressing.”

  “And a TV show about a serial killer is uplifting?”

  “Dexter is misunderstood; most of the people on the news are just flat-out assholes.” Vicky pointed at the newspaper clippings. “But I can tell you’re fascinated by daily events.”

  “I’m not a serial killer.”

  “How many vampires have you killed?” she inquired.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Guess.”

  He shrugged out of his leather bomber jacket, removed a stake from an inner pocket, and tossed the jacket onto the counter dividing the galley kitchen from the living/murder room. If he broke plastic tarps out from somewhere, she would be out of here faster than a mechanical rabbit outrunning a greyhound.

  Vicky’s hand went to one of her stakes as she eyed the weapon in the hands of a man trained to kill her. Nathan had agreed to work with Ronan against the Savages Joseph was gathering, but he’d been born and raised with only one purpose, destroying her kind. And until his sister became Ronan’s mate, Nathan hadn’t been discerning about the vampires he destroyed, good or bad. Judging by the power she sensed emanating from him, he’d excelled at killing too.

  Still mortal, he possessed demon DNA like vampires, was far stronger than a human, and moved with the lethal grace inherent of vamps. She could probably take him. As a purebred vampire, she was physically stronger than him, but he’d been training to kill for far longer than her. She wasn’t about to take any chances. Removing another stake from inside her coat, she clasped it at her side as she watched his every move.

  “I’ve been hunting since I was eighteen, so I guess I’ve killed around eighty vamps in five years,” Nathan replied as he pulled back the heavy blinds covering the window in the kitchen to reveal the metal fire escape. Nothing moved in the alley below or on what he could see of the street, but he didn’t think they’d lost the Savages. He set the blinds back into place and moved on to the next window.

  “I’m not sure what classifies as a serial killer, but I’m pretty sure that might be a super-level murderer,” Vicky said. “Like Ted Bundy is giving you a slow clap kudos from Hell kind of killer.”

  His eyes narrowed as he glanced at her over his shoulder. “I kill to protect others.”

  “And before Kadence met Ronan, you did it to every vampire you came across, whether they were innocent or not.”

  He winced at the reminder, and his eyes fell to the stake in her hand. He’d saved her tonight, yet he didn’t blame her for being wary of him.

  “We didn’t know better before then,” he stated. “If we had, things would have been different. Now that we know hunters can detect a Savage vamp by smell, we only hunt the vampires who kill.”

  “Good to know. What about the human collaborators you also use to hunt with? You don’t exactly treat them kindly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My sister-in-law, Paige, was a human who worked with hunters on the west coast before she became a vampire. The guy who trained her, Nabel, pretty much used her to lure in a vampire and almost got her killed.”

  “That’s unfortunate.”

  “It was more than unfortunate!” Vicky snapped, irritated by his blasé attitude.

  “Hunters aren’t perfect, and neither are vampires. My father put an end to the practice of using human collaborators a couple of years ago before he died. At one time, such partnerships were believed to be a big help. In the end, far too many humans were killed to justify the continuation of the practice.”

  “Hmm,” she grunted.

  “We’re not vicious; we only meant to keep people and our kind safe from vampires. We made mistakes in doing so, but we’ve also saved countless lives.”

  He didn’t tell her that he lay awake at night, rehashing his numerous kills and trying to figure out if some of them were innocent vampires caught in the crossfire. He suspected a few were. No matter how many times he told himself he hadn’t known how to tell the difference between Savages and other vamps, or that there even was a difference between them, the guilt still ate at him.

  “Are you going to attack me, Victoria?” he inquired.

  “Are you going to attack me, Nathan?” she retorted.

  “No.”

  CHAPTER 3

  He turned his back on her and walked over to another window in the kitchen. Her eyes ran over the bare Formica countertops, the cracked and chipped blue tiling, and the white cabinets sagging on their rusting hinges. There was no table or chairs.

  To her right, a small hallway ran to the open door of a bedroom. When she stepped back, she saw an air mattress with a blanket tossed over it inside the room.

  Keeping one eye on Nathan, she crept across the weapons room to examine the newspapers. There had to be hundreds of articles pinned to the wall. A yellow highlighter emphasized some sections of the papers; others had words, locations, or dates circled in them.

  The more she examined the circled words and highlighted sections, the more words—like brutal, neck wound, savage, blood loss, violent animal attack, police have no clues—jumped out at her. Many o
f the locations centered in Boston, but a fair amount were in surrounding towns. Some were in New Hampshire and a couple from Connecticut.

  On the map, countless thumbtacks were placed in the same locations as some of the articles. Vicky suspected a few more tacks had come from somewhere else, most likely fights Nathan had with Savages recently. A cluster of red pins were stuck into some woods in Plymouth.

  “Is this the location of the warehouse where Joseph was keeping his recruits?” she asked and pointed at the cluster.

  Nathan settled a blind back into place before looking at her. “Yes.”

  “All of this is because you’re tracking Joseph.”

  It hadn’t been a question, but he answered anyway. “Yes.”

  Vicky glanced around the apartment again. An apartment with the weaponry to go to war, but she suspected this was a one-man war.

  “Are you going after him on your own?” she asked, ignoring the twinge of anxiety the possibility gave her.

  “I plan to do whatever’s necessary to take him down.”

  “But you’re the leader of the hunters. You have numerous men who follow you; why aren’t they helping you with this?”

  He didn’t respond as he walked by her to the hallway. She stepped back to watch him turn a light on before disappearing into a small bathroom.

  When he reemerged, her breath caught and her heartbeat doubled. He’d washed his face and pushed his dampened black hair back from his forehead in a way that emphasized the planes of his handsome features and the black stubble lining his narrow jaw. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from him as he stalked toward her with a fluid, predatory grace.

  “My men are helping me with other things,” he said after another minute passed.

  “You’re working with Ronan to hunt Joseph.”

  “I am.”

  “Does he know about this?” she asked with a wave of her hand to the map and weapons.

  “No, and I’d prefer it if you didn’t tell him. This is my project.”