Hunted (The Tinder Chronicles)

by Land, Alexa

  “A team of my people are looking for the vampires that came after you, but they don’t seem to be making any progress. I should get back out there and keep digging. I just stopped by to check on you and decided to do some research while I was here.”

  “You have a team of people?”

  “I do.”

  “What, like minions?”

  That earned me a smirk. “Like employees.”

  “Uh huh.” I got up from the table and stood beside him. “Ok, let’s go.”

  “You’re staying here, Tinder. I thought I made that clear.”

  “No, I’m coming with you to hunt those vamps.”

  “Like hell you are.”

  “Try and stop me.” That was an idiotic thing to say. Bane was at least four or five inches taller than me and maybe sixty pounds heavier – all solid muscle. And, of course, he was a damn vampire, which automatically made him much stronger than I was. We both knew he could stop me with no effort whatsoever.

  Still though, when he headed for the front door, I went with him, saying, “Don’t do this, Bane. Don’t lock me in here. All that’s going to accomplish is pissing me off.”

  “It’s for your own good.”

  “I’m going to do whatever it takes to escape, so you might as well save me a lot of trouble and just let me go.”

  When he opened the front door, I tried to slip out with him, and he picked me up and put me back in the apartment like an errant puppy. After we did this a couple times, I ended up fighting wildly, trying to get out the door. He scooped me up suddenly, tossing me over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, and took me to the bedroom. As he deposited me on the mattress, I misinterpreted his actions and growled, “I don’t want to sleep with you, Bane.”

  “Oh, don’t flatter yourself, love,” he said, grabbing a pillow and tugging off the pillowcase. “Last time we had sex, you ended up pulling a gun on me afterwards. I believe you told me you’d rather blow your brains out than ever let me back inside you. Do you really think I’m in a hurry to bed you again after that?” Bane was ripping up the pillowcase as he spoke, and the expression on his face made me pause. He looked hurt, and for some reason that surprised me. Why had I thought he was incapable of that?

  My sympathy was short-lived, though, canceled out by the fact that he grabbed one of my wrists and quickly bound it to the slatted headboard with a strip of fabric. “Oh, hell no,” I exclaimed, and began struggling like a man possessed. This made it only slightly harder for Bane to tie me to the bed, spread-eagled and cussing at him for all I was worth.

  When he finished (that had taken him all of about ninety seconds, even with me fighting him with all my strength), he sat beside me for a few moments and watched me. I was sweaty and panting, totally spent. He wasn’t even slightly affected. “I’ll be back in a few hours to untie you,” he said, “though you’ll probably free yourself before then. I didn’t bind you very tightly. Once you do get free, please try not to hurt yourself in your futile attempt to break out of this apartment. It was built by a drug lord, a man even more paranoid than I am. All the walls are reinforced with concrete, and you already learned about the windows the hard way.”

  “Damn it, Bane, don’t leave me like this. What if that vamp gang tracks me down here? I can’t even defend myself.”

  “It’s absolutely impossible for them to find you here.”

  “No it’s not. They found me on top of a random building in the warehouse district, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I have so many wards and spells surrounding this building that there’s not a chance in hell of them tracking you here.” He tilted his head slightly as he reached out and brushed my overgrown hair back from my face. His touch was oddly gentle, for a man that had just forcibly tied me up.

  “What if my nose itches? Or what if I have to pee?”

  “You probably should have thought of that before trying to defy me and slip out the front door.”

  “I love how you make everything my fault,” I grumbled.

  He smiled at me, then stood up and headed for the door. “Everything is your fault, Tinder. It’s your own stubbornness that gets you in all these situations.”

  I yelled and swore at him as he left the apartment, only stopping when I heard the front door click shut behind him. Asshole. I turned my attention to my right wrist, and went to work on my bindings.

  Chapter Seven

  “I see you made good use of your time,” Bane said, leaning against the kitchen doorway.

  I was seated at the table, scrolling through yet another document that he’d scanned into his laptop. His collection of books on alchemy and witchcraft was truly astonishing, better than any I’d ever seen. I’d found a pen and paper in a drawer, and had been taking notes feverishly, filling two legal pads and starting on a third. I’d learned more useful spells and wards in the past few hours than I had in the last five years combined.

  But before I’d resigned myself to my imprisonment and sat down with the computer, I’d practically destroyed the apartment. I’d ripped off drywall (there really was concrete behind it), torn up floorboards, dismantled window frames and attempted to pry open the plexiglass windows. Despite all that demolition, I’d obviously failed to escape. But at least I found the surveillance system, which I’d torn out of each room and heaped in a big pile on the kitchen counter, right where Bane would be sure to see it.

  “Can I leave yet?” I muttered, not looking up from the PC.

  “No.”

  I knit my brows and picked up a pen, quickly sketching an ancient Phoenician protection symbol. He came up beside me and flipped through my notes. “You know,” he said, “you’re going about this all wrong.”

  “Go to hell.”

  He ignored that and told me, “Every tattoo on your body and all the wards protecting your home concentrate on defense, not offense. Instead of merely making yourself immune to, say, being compelled, or impossible to detect with a locator spell, why not employ some spells and symbols that make you stronger? That way, you wouldn’t be totally outgunned by your enemies.”

  “I would if I could, Captain Obvious,” I murmured, putting the finishing touches on the symbol I was copying. “But I’ve never seen anything that can do that. I’m not even sure symbols like that exist.”

  He pivoted the computer to face him. I protested and tried to take it back, but he caught my flailing hand by the wrist as he clicked a few keys. “Oh, they exist. You just haven’t had access to the right resources.” He swung the laptop in my direction as he let go of me.

  The symbol on the screen made me catch my breath. It was totally unique and beyond intricate, written in a language I’d never even seen before – and given how many ancient texts I’d perused over the course of my life, that was pretty remarkable. The closest thing I could compare it to was a Celtic knot, the lines of text interwoven in elegant arcs and swirls, the whole thing coming together into a roughly oval shape.

  Since the writing was tiny, I tried to zoom in as much as I could, then ended up having to cursor left and right, up and down, looking for patterns in the symbols. “Definitely more than twenty six letters in this alphabet,” I murmured.

  “There are thirty,” Bane said.

  “What language is this?”

  The guttural sound he made was something like, “Varsrescht.”

  I turned to him and raised an eyebrow. “What the hell was that, Klingon?”

  He grinned a little. “Not exactly.”

  I looked at the symbol again, running my fingers over the screen, getting frustrated because it was so hard to follow the twisting and turning lines of text. “Damn, I wish I could get a better look at this,” I muttered, mostly to myself.

  Bane considered that for a moment, then said, “Well, you can if you want to.” He began to unbutton his shirt.

  “What are you doing?” I asked suspiciously.

  “You’ll see.”

  He stripped himself to the waist, tossing his dark blue shir
t onto the tabletop. Desire spiked in me immediately at the sight of his muscular chest and huge shoulders and arms. That earned me a smirk. “You forgot to tell your body that you never want to sleep with me again,” he said. “I can smell it the moment you become aroused, you know. Don’t think I failed to notice your arousal when I pinned you down earlier, either.”

  “You’re such an ass.”

  “I’m merely pointing out the obvious, love.”

  “So am I.”

  Bane grinned at me, then said, “Bear with me for a moment, please.” He closed his eyes and began speaking quietly, in what had to be that same rough language. It almost seemed like he was praying, though most likely he was reciting some sort of incantation. When he opened his eyes, he took both my hands in his and said something else. It felt as though a mild electrical current passed between us.

  I pulled my hands back and asked, “What are you doing?”

  “Giving you an all-access pass.”

  “Huh?”

  “Taking down a few of my wards,” he said, then spun around in his chair, turning his back to me. “Run your hands over my skin and you’ll see what I mean.”

  That request sounded odd as hell, but I gave it a shot anyway. I swiped my palm quickly down his back, and for just a moment, his skin lit up like a Christmas tree. Something big and dark appeared and then disappeared in the wake of that light show. I gasped in surprise as he said, “Slower, Tinder.”

  I lined up both hands, fingertip-to-fingertip, and ran them very slowly down the expanse of his skin from shoulder to waist, light spilling out between my fingers. A huge tattoo became visible in their path, the exact symbol I’d been studying on the computer. “Oh wow,” I murmured, running my fingertips along the lines of text. “Where does it start?”

  “Try to find dead center, and trace it to the left.”

  I looked closely, then touched my index finger to a spot on his spine. I traced the pattern a few inches, then returned to the center and said, “Can you please tell me what it says, so I can get a feel for the language?”

  He began to speak, slowly and distinctly, and I followed along for a few minutes, learning which sounds to assign to the letters. After a while, I asked him to start over in English, and began to get a sense of how the language translated. I sounded out a few words under my breath, and he chuckled a little and said, “I feel like the Rosetta Stone. And you really do have an amazing gift for language, I can’t believe how quickly you’re assimilating it.”

  “How can there be a language I’ve never heard of?” I asked. “Well, unless it’s a dorky made-up one, like Esperanto or something.”

  He glanced over his shoulder at me. “Oh, it isn’t made up. It’s part of a rich culture dating back many, many centuries.”

  “A rich, never-heard-of culture. Why can you speak it?”

  “Because it’s the language of my people.”

  “Your people? I wasn’t aware that East-Enders had started speaking Klingon.”

  He chuckled at that. “Not the culture I was born into, the culture into which I was reborn.”

  “The culture…wait a minute, is this some kind of vampire language?”

  “It is exactly that.”

  “There’s no way,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “If there was such a thing, I would have heard of it before now.”

  “No offense, dearest, but all you really know about vampires is where to shove the stake. We were a grand society, once upon a time. We not only had our own language, but also many beautiful customs, traditions, and celebrations. They’re almost all forgotten now.”

  “A vampire society is pretty hard to believe, given how solitary they are.”

  “When my kind became hunted and our numbers dwindled, we disappeared, scattered to the far corners of the earth to avoid total extinction. That became the norm after a while, never gathering in groups to avoid attracting attention, blending in with the human population so we wouldn’t be slaughtered. We wiped out every written record of our history, tried to be forgotten. To some extent, it worked. Most humans don’t even think we exist these days. Only hunters remember, since their history is woven with ours.”

  The tattoo had almost completely faded out by now, only faint traces of it remaining on his smooth, pale skin. He started to reach for his shirt, but I put my hands on his back, light immediately spilling out between my splayed fingers. “Wait. Please? Just a little longer.”

  “One more minute,” he said, and I ran my hands over his back, again making the tattoo visible. Starting at the beginning of the inscription, I repeated the incantation once more, quietly, trying to commit some of the language to memory.

  He actually let me do this for another five minutes before grabbing his shirt and pulling it on, saying, “Ok, enough of that.”

  “So, what exactly does this symbol do for you?” I asked.

  “It amplifies my strength and speed considerably. And I’m not suggesting this is the symbol for you, by the way. It only works on vampires. I just wanted to show you that symbols like this do in fact exist, and I know we can find you a human equivalent.”

  “Can you teach me more Varsrescht?”

  “Not now. We’re wasting too much time on this.”

  “It’s fascinating, though. Can I please have just a few more minutes to study that symbol?” I asked, lightly touching his chest. The skin beneath my fingers flared with white light, and when I pulled my hand away, a portion of a tattoo appeared and then began to disappear. “You have more,” I exclaimed. “Can I see them?”

  “No.” He turned his attention to the computer.

  “Why are your tattoos concealed from view?”

  “Because if my enemies can’t read my protections, they can’t counteract them. You should consider doing the same with your tattoos.”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure that kind of spell is beyond my pay grade.”

  “I can show you how to do it sometime.”

  I watched him for a few moments, then asked, “What are you doing?”

  He concentrated on the laptop, then said, “I don’t know where exactly you’ll find the right thing to make you stronger, but I have a few guesses and am pulling up some documents for you. Promise me, though, that before you start randomly inking symbols all over your body, you’ll check with me first. Half your existing tattoos are either unnecessary or completely redundant.”

  I sighed at that, then watched Bane’s profile for a few moments before saying, “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Just did.”

  “Don’t be an ass.”

  “Sorry. Go ahead.”

  “Why are you so willing to turn on your own kind?” I asked. “I mean, here you are, waving your vamp pride flag and going on about your race’s rich history and culture. But then you’re also helping me, aiding and abetting the vamps’ Public Enemy Number One.”

  “Number two, actually.”

  “What?”

  “Vampires are systematically targeting everyone in California that they consider a threat. Since you’re one of the few purebred hunters out there, and a bit of a legend, you’re near the top of their hit list. But you’re not quite in the number one position.”

  I raised an eyebrow at that. “There’s literally a hit list?”

  “There is indeed. It’s like the FBI’s ten most wanted, with photos, descriptions, various information. They’ve been distributing it all over the state.” That explained why the vamp in Santa Barbara seemed to recognize me, he must have seen my photo.

  “Is Lee on that list?”

  The question seemed to annoy him. “Why yes. Your big, dumb playmate is number seventeen.”

  “I need to see that list, so I can warn the other hunters that are on it,” I said. “Can you get it for me?” He clicked a few keys and pulled up a file, then turned the computer toward me. “Really? Is that it?” I asked.

  “It is.”

  The document was entitled ‘Seek and Destroy.’ Subtle. It beg
an with a brief paragraph explaining that the list included the biggest threats to the vampire race in California, and made it clear that everyone it named should be exterminated with extreme prejudice. I scrolled down, and revealed the photo of the person at the top of the list. It was a picture of Bane.

  “Oh my God,” I muttered, reading the physical description and the few facts about his known whereabouts that followed. When I scrolled a little further, a picture of me came up, the number ‘two’ beside it. It was actually my old driver’s license photo. It had been taken about four years ago, but I hadn’t changed much. Since I’d used a fake name and address, I really wondered how the vamps had identified that as me. I read what little information they had on me, then said, “I’m five-eleven, not five-ten.” Bane grinned, and I asked, “When did this list come out?”

  “A couple weeks ago. I’m not sure if it’s been very effective. Even with their photos and descriptions out there, hunters tend to slip under the radar.”

  “But we’re not used to being hunted, it caught me off guard when those vamps came after me. I need to figure out how to contact the people on this list and warn them.” I had no idea how I was going to do that, though.

  I went through the rest of the document quickly. The list included thirty-six names, not all of which had accompanying photos. I had either met, or at least heard of, almost all of them. The people at the top of the list, except for Bane, were all full-blooded hunters. Those farther down in the rankings were for the most part partially sighted, like Lee. Fortunately, his photo was grainy and out of focus, and his location was listed just as Southern California. “Now how on Earth do the vamps know who has the sight, and who doesn’t?” I murmured.

  “They don’t. The people on this list are ranked according to how big a threat they’re perceived to be. That just happens to correlate with the second-sight gift that true hunters have. A few people on that list aren’t natural-born hunters at all, just amateurs that have gotten good at killing vampires.”

  “So, why are you at the top of this list?”

  He said, “Because there’s only one thing vampires hate more than hunters.”