Barbie- The Vampire Hunter Boxset

by Lucinda Dark

  Satrina! I screamed for my demon even as I fought against my bonds. My parents had believed strong, older vampires to have certain abilities—it should have occurred to me that Arrius Priest would be one of them. Satrina pushed power into my bloodstream, keeping me conscious as blood rushed down my skin, pumping from me in the same rhythm of my still beating heart, coating the ground beneath me in a thin layer of red. That layer grew thicker and thicker the more I struggled, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. Even as my vision grew hazy and my breaths grew harder and harder to take, I grappled with the shadows pinning me down.

  I’m sorry, Satrina said. There’s something wrong … it’s so hard to hear you.

  I need your power, I gasped back. Please, I have to kill him. He’s—I have to—he’s so close.

  Barbie… Her voice was weighed down with sorrow, not even a hint of her usual sarcasm and wit showing through. There is a pressure against me. Something’s holding me back, but I don’t know what it is. It is unnatural. Unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. Even with my help, I’m not sure you can.

  I refused to believe that. I shook my head and did as she’d asked earlier. I closed my eyes and delved deep, reaching out my arms—stretching them until I could just feel the edge of her core brush against my fingertips. I grabbed onto it and pulled it towards me.

  What do I have to do? I asked her. Please tell me what I have to do to kill him. I’ll do anything. Wasn’t it a demon’s desire to control a human? Why was she hesitating? I was willing to do what it took, to give her anything—everything—as long as it meant I could kill him.

  You could die, she warned.

  I don’t care. I had never cared if I lived or died. I’d always known this endeavor would likely kill me. I’d been prepared for it. Do it.

  There was a moment of silence and then, Very well then.

  Relief flooded my veins. Thank you… I said.

  Just remember, Barbie, she replied. Some powers, once given, cannot always be taken away. I will not trick or mislead you into this. This is your choice. I will do what I can.

  I can accept that.

  Then so it shall be, she said.

  “I do apologize.” Arrius’ voice was like a bell being rung in my head as Satrina’s power began to infuse my body. He was too loud, an echo in my skull as my veins were being drowned in demonic essence. “My son simply doesn’t seem to know his manners anymore, and it’s a father’s duty to correct the misbehavior in their offspring. You understand, don’t you? I’m sure your parents had to do the same for you and … there was a second Steele sibling, correct? Your brother?”

  I didn’t reply. The chaos wreaking havoc beneath my flesh had captured all of my attention. The only thing that snapped me out of my distraction was the pain of my wrists snapping and breaking as the shadow chains tightened around my arms. I screamed, crying out in sharp, startling torment as my bones cracked under the pressure and were severed completely. That action seemed to offset another break.

  My mind cleared.

  Do you feel it? Satrina asked, her voice ringing in my ears—far closer than she’d ever felt before. Though it was louder, however, it was not as strong as I had expected it to be. Almost as if she was putting everything she had into merely speaking with me.

  Feel it? I thought. I didn’t feel anything. In fact … I looked down at my hands and flexed my fingers. I could see where my wrists were crushed beneath the shadows. It shouldn’t have been possible to try and flex anything without inviting more pain.

  Look up, Barbie, Satrina’s voice urged. I tilted my head back as a pair of long legs stopped in front of me. Red eyes stared down at me, a soft puckering of his brow signifying the man’s confusion. He opened his mouth, words spilling from his lips. But I heard none of it. My ears were filled with the rushing sound of nothing. No air. No words. No sounds reached me. All I heard was the hard, repetitive pounding of my heart racing in my chest and Satrina’s voice.

  Kill him, she ordered. Hurry. Before it’s too late. I can only maintain this level of power for so long.

  I smiled, blood coating my teeth as I did so. With pleasure, I replied.

  I ripped my limbs free from the shadows and dove forward. The man with the blood-red eyes stepped to the side as I flew past him. I landed against the ground, crouched low as my hands brushed the stone floor, grime raking my skin and coating my still bleeding wounds. That couldn’t have been healthy, but at the moment, I was more concerned with murdering the psychopath in front of me. My back arched forward. A rippling of pinpricks ricocheted down my spine. There was movement beneath the skin—as if something wanted to break free, but couldn’t quite get there.

  I stood up, blood sluicing down my body as I strode forward.

  Inhale, I thought, taking another step.

  Consume, I continued.

  Devour.

  The words poured through my mind until it was all that I was, all that I had ever been, all that I would ever be.

  Inhale. Consume. Devour.

  Inhale. Consume. Devour.

  Inhale. Consume. Devour.

  Inhale. Consume. Devour.

  Inhale. Consume. Devour.

  Inhale. Consume. Devour.

  I wanted to take this monster and destroy him. Erase him from existence. A storm rose within me, a typhoon of rage and wrath. All of it—everything I’d done or sacrificed came to this. To him. His death would make it all worth it. I could feel the vibrancy in my movements, the sheer bone-numbing power. It was mine for the moment. I surrendered myself to Satrina’s abilities and let it lead me. The craving to take and consume the man before me riding me far harder than even my vengeance. It didn’t matter to me what happened after. So long as the end result was the same: his demise.

  “Stop.”

  And just like that, my power came crashing down around me. I froze. Red eyes met mine and when I tried to force my way through the control, I found that I couldn’t.

  Satrina? Panic settled in my gut; before she could respond, however, Arrius was in front of me.

  “I think I’ve gotten quite tired of this,” he said quietly, his hand wrapping around my throat. My feet were lifted from the ground and even though I urged my limbs to fight back, to do something—any-fucking-thing—they didn’t. “It was my intention to toy with you a bit more, but it seems that my informants failed to tell me that you had something so dangerous within you.” He turned his head and looked back at a stunned-looking Torin, who was being held back by a wide-eyed Eloise. “A demon-possessed hunter? Truly?” He sighed, turning back to me. “How pathetic. As if I wouldn’t be protected from that. Let me guess…” Arrius leaned forward and pressed his nose to my throat, inhaling deeply. “A succubus.”

  How the fuck could he know? I started to lose it. Shaking all over, my inner self clawing at my insides in a bid to get out—to get the fuck away.

  Satrina!

  Barbie… Her voice, unlike before, now felt like it was being screamed over a long distance. She couldn’t reach me and I couldn’t reach her. Even as the power she’d given me raced in my veins, I could feel it leaking away. Drying up. Dispersing and leaving me. True fear attacked my core, sliding long tentacles up through my limbs and holding me captive before the very beast who had ordered the death of everyone I’d ever cared about.

  And as if he could read my mind, he leaned back and tilted his head down at me. “Calling for your demon?” he asked with a shake of his head. “I’m afraid that’s not possible anymore. Do you not realize where you are?” Arrius nodded his head to the side as if I could see the rest of the underground stone room. I hadn’t even stopped to look at it as Eloise had dragged me in here to begin her torture. “These catacombs are ancient, filled to the brim with the bones of the dead. Much blood has been spilt here. More than that, it was once the site of many a demon’s demise. It’s an exorcism room. How interesting that you would have a demon within you for this moment. Perhaps we should rip the creature from your body while you live
. I’ve been told it’s quite painful.”

  He paused, waiting for a response, but nothing could escape my lips. I could hardly breathe, let alone speak. Arrius lifted a brow and frowned. “When someone asks you a question, you should answer,” he chastised lightly, a moment before my body exploded backwards as he threw me clear across the room. My back slammed into the wall. Even through the minute power still lingering in my veins, I felt something inside me splintered apart. My head hit the ground at an awkward angle, and I found that once it was down, I couldn’t seem to move it again. I couldn’t even feel my legs anymore. My spine. It was severed. I blinked, shocked more than anything else.

  “Eloise,” Arrius barked.

  “M-my Lord?” I heard the woman reply shakily.

  “Finish this,” Arrius ordered. “I tire of the chore. Once she’s dead, the demon will be gone as well. Make sure you burn the body, though, to be safe.”

  He moved to walk away as if I were nothing to him. Just a broken pile of bones. My revenge shattered into a thousand tiny little pieces at his feet and I was … the truth hit me. I was going to die. And the bastard wouldn’t even do the task himself. I was nothing to him. My life was a mere nuisance in the long span of his existence. A chore, as he’d said.

  “No,” I gasped, my lungs seizing.

  He paused, looking down at me. “What was that, little one?” he inquired.

  “I can’t die,” I said more to myself than to him. “I can’t die…” I had to kill him. I couldn’t die until I killed him.

  A soft smile lifted his masculine lips and it shook me down to my very soul, like a wave of ice was encasing me as he stared down at his dying prey. “Don’t you know, dear?” he asked. “You were dead the moment my son set his sights on your pretty little face.”

  Chapter 44

  Maverick

  I followed Torin and the man who had taken him from the hotel through the city to a cemetery in a dimly lit section of the less tourist-traveled area of Rome. Not wanting to alert Torin’s driver or anyone else of my presence, I had the car I was in stop just outside the entrance. The taxi driver waited nervously for me to hand over the fare for the ride, his gaze skittering to the cemetery and hand shaking as he stretched it through the side window for his payment. As soon as I had both feet firmly on the sidewalk and the door was shut, he peeled off like the hounds of hell were on his heels.

  “Well, that’s not a good sign,” I commented aloud.

  With a sigh, I turned and headed into the gated interior of the graveyard. Cursingly silently, I climbed over the hill and stopped at the top. Several yards away, the little black car that Torin had gotten into stopped in front of the Mausoleum. I ducked down as the backdoor opened and Torin got out. He said something to the man inside the car and whatever the driver responded with was obviously not something he wanted to hear because, in response, Torin slammed the door with a scowl and stormed away.

  The car whirled around again, speeding back the same way it came. “Shit!” I dove down behind a line of headstones as the lights flashed across where I’d been. Any hope that I’d been missed, however, was cut short when the car immediately stopped and reversed, the red backlights flashing in the darkness.

  The black car stopped completely and a moment later, the sharp sound of a car door being shut and footsteps on gravel reached my ears. I crawled away from the noise, trying to keep my entire body out of sight. I’d only managed to get a few feet away when the man’s voice interrupted me.

  “You may stand up, I can smell your presence,” he called. “I would rather not have to kill an intruder with his face in the dirt and his back turned away from me.”

  With my chest against the ground, I paused. There was only one reason this man would want to kill me. I got to my feet and turned, meeting the man’s red gaze with my own. “Kill me?” The weight of my gun—taken from my room just before I’d rushed out to follow Torin—against the small of my back was substantial—a burden to bear.

  A loud ringtone echoed between us, interrupting the man’s answer. “Hello? Yes, sir. He should be on his way down now.” The man’s gaze never left mine even as he spoke on the phone. I took a step back and he shook his head. “Of course not, sir. But I did find a rather interesting tagalong … yes, sir. I do believe he is the human friend.” There was a pause. “The situation will be dealt with post haste. I understand, sir. Thank you for your faith in me.”

  He hung up, slipping the phone back into his pocket. Before he could react, I summoned all of the speed I could muster and unlatched my gun from my back holster, pointing it towards him. I squeezed off multiple rounds one after the other.

  A choked breath escaped the vampire a split second before dark cracks began to work their way up his neck and face, crawling from the holes I’d put in his chest. More specifically—his heart.

  “You—holy … water?”

  “Bullets,” I answered with a nod, taking a step back. “With holy water in them.”

  “How … fascinating…” Strange, it seemed, to me that those were his last words as his eyes caked over with ash and the rest of his body disintegrated before me. But there was little time to dwell on it.

  I headed for the car and got into the front seat, frowning when I noticed that I’d gotten into the passenger side. “Europeans,” I muttered absently as I got out and raced around to the other side. Thankfully, the car was an automatic—driving on a different side I could work with, a stick shift, I could not. I drove the vehicle around the side of the building, parked it, and killed the lights before sneaking back to the front of the building. Ash in the road could be missed, an abandoned car—not so much.

  I ducked inside the entrance and found myself in a narrow space. It was a long room with plaques on the walls. Towards the center of it, a long stone coffin had been moved to reveal a set of stairs. I headed towards it and then descended the stairs without a second thought. It seemed the likeliest place for the others to have gone. My feet stopped on the third step down and my chest clenched.

  I reached over and set a hand on the wall as I doubled over.

  Go no further, human, if you don’t want to risk death, a voice snapped. The same voice from my dream. Sweat beads popped up along my brow and upper lip as I fought down a wave of nausea.

  “Stop it,” I said through gritted teeth.

  This place is cursed, the voice said. Nothing good can come from entering.

  “They’re down there,” I replied. Barbie is down there. “I have to go.” The medallion beneath my shirt burned hot, so hot that I could feel it sizzling my flesh. With a jerk, I yanked the thing up and off, though I still held the tie in my grasp as I gasped and rubbed at the spot on my chest where it had rested. “Don’t fuck with me,” I hissed. “I’m going.”

  Then you will need my power, the voice replied. Return the medallion to your chest and do not take it off. Even if it burns. I stared down at the thing uncertainly. Is what you told me before true? the creature asked when still I hadn’t slipped the medallion over my head once more.

  “What?” Suspicion coated my tone as I narrowed my eyes on the dangling bronze coin. Several paces down the dark stairwell, fires had been lit inside small alcoves in the walls and as the coin’s face swung around, the light hit it and revealed the full image of a creature having formed against its metal surface.

  Do you wish to protect your friends? he asked.

  I stared at the outline of two sharp eyes watching me from the medallion’s face. “I do.”

  Then take my medallion and put it over your head once more, he commanded. Let my emblem blaze against your chest and I will give you the power you sought before.

  Why now? I asked internally. What has changed?

  You are not afraid to kill, he said after a beat. And if you are willing to kill to protect them, perhaps, you will be worthy of my power.

  The vampire I had killed, I realized. He’d seen that. Somehow, that had convinced him. I didn’t dare question it again. I s
lipped the medallion back over my head and placed it underneath my shirt and started off down the stairs.

  The farther down I went, the hotter it burned. Every once in a while I had to stop and rest. The agony of being branded by the medallion made my palms itch to yank it off, but I knew I had to follow the creature’s commands if I wanted the power he offered. Esperanza had said there would be a sacrifice. This was nothing compared to what Barbie had offered. This was a bit of pain. I could take this. No fucking problem.

  It took twice as long as it should’ve for me to descend the staircase. By the time I had reached the end, I was soaked in my own sweat. My shirt clung to my form, the neckline dampened. Sharp, hard footfalls reached my ears a moment before the creature’s voice erupted in my head.

  Move! My body already was. I slammed my side into one of the many alcoves and stumbled as I fell to my knees behind a short stone statue. I looked up at it and wavered. Twin empty eye sockets stared back at me. The small statue wasn’t a statue at all, but a human skeleton resting against a low piece of stone jutting from the wall.

  The footsteps stopped nearby and I jerked my head away from the skeleton towards the mouth of the alcove. There was the sound of fabric moving—of someone donning a jacket—and then a sigh. “Constantine, please send another car to pick me up. My business is done. Eloise will finish the rest. Henry is not answering his cell.” I held my breath as the footsteps continued and a figure slipped by the opening of the alcove I hid inside. A cloud of calm descended over me—obviously not my own. It was the creature’s and it slowed my heartbeat, kept me from breathing too quickly, too loudly.

  The man continued farther and after several beats, only when I was sure he was truly gone did I climb out from behind the remains of human bones. I took a breath and coughed as dust assaulted me. Turning back the way the man had come from, I hurried along. Whatever the creature’s reason for protecting me, I hoped it would help me, too, when the time came to save the others.