The Jaded Hunter

by Michelle M. Pillow

  “Rick,” Mack warned. “It’s important you realize what they’ll do to her. She knows all the locations of the safe houses. She knows how we do things, where we hide, who the men are.”

  “She won’t tell,” Rick said.

  “Once they get inside her head, she won’t have to tell. Promise me they won’t take her alive. It’s what she’d want.”

  “Yes.” Rick understood the order perfectly. “I promise.”

  “Very well,” Mack answered, sure the man knew what had to be done. Jaden couldn’t be allowed to go before the tribal elders. Mack had no way of knowing how much she really knew about his business. If the council could get inside her head and dig out all her secrets, his whole organization—his whole plan—would be lost. “Now go and get some rest. You look like crap. I’ll meet you in my room an hour before dusk.”

  Rick stood. Walking slowly back to his room, he knew there was nothing else he could do at the moment but go to sleep and wait for another night to fall.

  Chapter Twelve

  Jotunheimen Mountain Range, Norway

  Jaden’s fingernail split into two jagged pieces, as she withdrew her pinkie from her mouth. She spit the broken nail onto the floor. Paying no mind to the ripped edge left, she began chewing nervously on the next one. Guilt plagued her, gnawing her stomach raw. She couldn’t eat, could barely sleep, and had scarcely enough inclination to keep the fire burning hot.

  Tyr hadn’t lied. The cave that extended out past the wooden door was as dark as it had to be long. It twisted and curled in strange erratic patterns, a virtual maze of underground tunnel systems. Had she been trying to escape, it wouldn’t have worked.

  She had taken a candle and lighted it in the fireplace before braving the darkness. The candle glow reflected eerie patterns onto the jagged rock walls and uneven floors. She managed to find a small room with Tyr’s blood supply stored coolly inside and even some fruit for herself. But whenever she tried to move past it, a breeze would blow the candle out and she would be trapped in a tomb of darkness, forced to crawl her way back into Tyr’s home.

  Working a third fingernail the same as she had the first two, Jaden stared at the iron door. Restlessness came from within, the strange psychic link unbreakable between her and her prisoner.

  She tapped her bare feet silently on the edge of the bed. She couldn’t rest, knowing Tyr was in there. He was so quiet, never speaking to her when she called. If not for the link of emotion between them and the steady stream of animosity that flooded her from behind the door, she would’ve thought him dead.

  Days passed with him locked inside the prison. After hours of worry, she finally relaxed enough to believe he couldn’t escape the stone. Her bag was trapped with him. She knew he must have already dug through it, finding the file she hid from him. After careful deliberation, she decided it didn’t matter. If he read it, it would only fuel his anger and help her cause. Once she dared to ask him to pass her clothing through the food bin in exchange for some of his own. She was rewarded with a snort and silence.

  Purposefully, she hadn’t fed him, letting the blood hunger settle deep within him, making him ravenous with need until the red rage overtook him and he couldn’t think straight. Already she felt him pacing the length of his prison like a madman. She starved herself as well, thinking it only fair.

  It is only right that it should end this way, Jaden thought. She remembered her father, helplessly brought low by her doing. Justice will be done.

  Jaden heard the scraping of nails against the iron door. That must’ve been what awakened her from sleep. She swallowed nervously. The sound became more insistent, fevered. She crawled from the bed, tugging anxiously at the hem of her white T-shirt. Chills ran up her spine and she hesitated. Her course was set and she wouldn’t back down.

  Closing her eyes, she stepped forward. The scratching stopped. She felt the beast within. Gone were all coherent thoughts, leaving nothing but the hungry monster. This is what she waited for—the point when instinct would take over reason. This was the tipping point, where his hunger would start to hurt him if not satisfied. She reached out. Her hand touched the cold iron. Smack! Tyr hit the door from behind, making Jaden jump back with a start. The door vibrated loudly but didn’t open.

  Calming her racing heart, she again moved forward. Coming close to the door, she refused to touch it. Lightly, she called, “Tyr?”

  Nothing.

  Again, she tried, “Tyr, are you listening? Are you hungry?”

  A paper slid from underneath the door. Jaden picked it up. The frightened brown eyes were very familiar. Quietly, she whispered without reading the back, “Sydney, 103, 1984.”

  The photograph slipped out of her shaking fingers. Shame welled within her, thick and choking. Her entire body quivered. Tyr would be good and mad with only those photographs as company the last week. And his bloodlust should be near the point of insanity. It was time.

  Jaden stood, taking a deep breath. She lifted her chin with a bravery she didn’t feel inside. Her eyes closed, her hand lifted to the latch. The wild pounding she felt in Tyr’s heart heightened her own. She wavered with all the jittering of a leaf ready to fall dead from the tree, clinging to one last moment.

  “Forgive me,” she whispered as the latch slid out of place.

  * * *

  Tyr’s eyes wildly rolled about in his head. Hunger chewed at his insides. His body started to turn on itself as his skin grayed and sank into his frame. He was too proud to beg Jaden for blood, too proud to ask for release. He’d held off longer than most of his kind, of that he was certain. An uncanny sense of betrayal and deceit kept him focused in the first days until the need for blood became so strong he was reduced to a pacing animal.

  His jaw worked violently, the tempting perfume of Jaden’s blood moving outside his door to torment him, along with the soft rhythm of her deceitful heart. The hated memory of her gentle emotions—all of them a lie—was cold comfort in a barren cell. And her declaration of love, so taunting and tormenting to his damned soul, was unforgivable.

  He found the files hidden in her bag the first night. She didn’t give him light, but he didn’t need it to see the words clearly. Her having the files only proved that she knew the contents within—every damning word. Endless faces haunted him, vampires tortured before being done to death, experimented on like lab rats. Tyr knew she never intended for him to have the files. She’d been hiding them with Rick. Only chance, and a momentary jealousy, caused him to grab the bag and bring it with him. Where did she think to hide them from him? And did she really think drugging herself would mask her location from his senses? The bloodstalker had sorely underestimated her foe.

  Tyr thought bitterly, I sorely underestimated her.

  Obviously Jaden’s inherent talents as a dhampir were greater than any had ever expected. She masked her emotions, putting out just the right amount of pain and hatred at just the right time, and forcing vulnerability and lust and desire to seep at the most poignant moments. She was good, he’d give her that. But he wouldn’t be fooled by her again.

  Tyr grunted, slamming his fist on the door in disquiet, wishing he could strike her instead of metal. He felt the deceitful dhampir everywhere.

  The woman he thought to have found inside her was a figment of her doing and his hopeful imagination. But now her true nature was known. She was a manipulative, hateful, deceitful, lying bitch and she would pay for her crimes. The council sent him to gather information and that’s exactly what he had done. It might have been a sloppy investigation, one highly unworthy of a Dark Knight of his age and skill. But it was done and now so was Jaden. He wouldn’t let this embarrassment haunt his perfect record. He wouldn’t let her haunt anymore of his nights.

  Tyr?

  Tyr froze in his frantic thoughts. He scratched his hair back from his face, noticing he had been scratching at the iron door, as if he could gouge her eyes from the unforgiving metal. He eyed the claw marks and then his hands, not remembering having
done it. But the metal shards beneath his nail beds said otherwise. His fingertips bled, not healing as quickly in his weakened state. Putting his ear to the door, his eyes shot wildly around in the darkness. His lips parted. He listened.

  “Tyr, are you listening? Are you hungry?”

  That time the words were clear. Was she taunting him? Angrily, he grabbed a photograph from the floor, sliding it under the door’s edge. That would be his answer. Let her be reminded of her deeds. Let her know he would come for her soon. The demon inside him would grow. Soon he’d rip through the iron door.

  Sydney, 103, 1984.

  What? What was that? Tyr leaned to the door again, sniffing the air like a feral dog. He caught her aromatic scent, her warm blood. His mouth parted, baring fangs in an insatiable effort to bite her with his mind. He couldn’t control it. His hands flexed and fidgeted. The bloodlust took over him. His heart pounded and his hands shook in anticipation. He licked his dry lips. He felt her moving, standing, coming. He tensed, waiting to strike.

  Forgive me.

  The whisper was lost on Tyr. He’d been reduced to a beast, stripped naked, trapped, starved. The latch moved, the agonizing slowness of it suspended by his need to pounce, to seek life, to drink.

  Tyr knew the instant the door was released. He charged forward, hitting the metal with his arm. His flesh scraped on the jagged edge, ripping open a bloody wound. Tyr ignored it, beyond pain. Seeing flesh, warm and waiting before him, he instinctively seized upon it.

  Jaden screamed in terror as the naked vampire leapt out of the darkness onto her thin frame. She instinctively lifted her hands in a feeble effort to stop him from pouncing, but nothing could’ve stopped him. Her body slammed into the ground. She squirmed but his strength overpowered her weaker protest.

  Tyr crouched above her, pawing her shoulders with his claws, digging restlessly into her shoulders. Leaning over, he sniffed her neck, her breasts. His mouth opened, ready to bite. Then he saw her jade eyes, frightened, terrified of him. A last thread of sanity stopped him. He looked over to the living room, his body tensing to take off for the blood supply.

  “It’s gone,” Jaden whispered. Tyr’s head snapped back to hers. “All of it—gone. I smashed your stock pile and it has long dried on the stone. Mine is the only blood for miles. Kill me, Tyr. You have no choice.”

  She was right. His animal self knew it and took over. Viciously, he growled, slashing at her throat with his bared teeth, tearing the flesh like a wolf on his prey.

  Jaden’s eyes widened, the agony worse than she’d imagined. Tyr’s skeletal gray flesh appeared to be covered with a white, powder-like decay. His eyes were filled with the reddish cast of hell. Pain shot though her like a white fire blazing a sticky trail through her neck and shoulder. His bite was not the gentle kiss of the lover she remembered. There was no longing or passion in his touch—only pain and need and torment.

  Jaden’s throat constricted. Tyr sucked hungrily against her. A gurgle escaped her opened mouth. Blood trailed from her lips, leaving a crimson trail over her fast paling skin. Weakly, she hit Tyr’s shoulders in a last, natural defense. Her fist bounced off him, only to land with open palm. Her fingers slid over his muscular arm in a strangely forgiving caress. Her finger pulled lightly at his elbow, soaking in one last feel of him.

  Tears rolled silently out of Jaden’s listless eyes. Her body jerked. Her hands fell to the ground. Her fingers twitched. Her mouth gaped open and she wheezed. Her heartbeat slowed with nothing to pump. This was it. She was dying. Then, unexpectedly, the pain was gone and there was nothing but the oddest sensation of warmth.

  Tyr pulled back with a howl, pleasure rippling throughout him as potent as an orgasm. Sanity was once more his. His eyes cleared back to white, ringed with blood. His flesh filled in, growing young and handsome, hiding the outlines of his bones. Blood dripped over his chin, down his naked chest. The sweetness of Jaden flowed through him, saving him.

  Sweetness? Jaden!

  Realization hit. Tyr looked down at what he had done. Jaden’s chest didn’t move. Her eyes stared lifelessly at the ceiling, the green orbs faded and dull. Below her slack, blue lips he saw the horror of his attack. Her throat stuck out of her flesh, ripped free, the skin peeled back to expose the inside strings of veins and arteries. Her body lay cold and lifeless beneath his heated one. Panic rose inside him, outweighed by the outrage of what she’d forced him to do. She’d forced his hand, taken the choice away from him, and he had killed her.

  “You are not going to win!” he growled, willing her to cling to the last bit of life swirling her body.

  Biting his wrist, he gashed it open. Jaden’s essence flowed out of him. Grabbing her roughly by the hair, he tilted her head back. Blood gushed from him to her tattered throat, dripping onto her chin and cheeks. He forced her lips to his wound.

  “Drink, damn you!” he yelled at her, following his words by a string of black curses, damning her, coercing her, daring her to be reborn. His heart nearly stopped beating as he waited, suspended in time and agony. He couldn’t lose her. Not like this. Not yet. Not yet.

  At first there was no change, but slowly the skin on her neck began to heal itself, closing little by little. Then her lips faded from blue to a cherry, the color seeping in from the sides in aimless swirling paths across her face. Gradually, her mouth moved against him, swallowing what he forced down her, moaning ever so lightly into his bleeding skin. Tyr relaxed, growing weak as he gave her back what he so viciously took.

  Jaden coughed, spitting blood out of her mouth. It ran over her skin, streaking the new paleness with crimson rivers, matting her hair. Tyr tightened his grip on her scalp, pressing her more firmly so she couldn’t refuse to drink. She had started this madness. He would make sure she finished it.

  Suddenly, her eyes burst wide open, the jade and white completely done in with telltale scarlet. Her gaze darted in protest, warring through their ecstasy for him—begging him to stop, to never stop. She tried to fight it, but his will was too strong. She continued to swallow, drinking greedily against his flesh as she tingled with life.

  When he was satisfied she’d taken enough, Tyr let go and backed away. The pleasure stopped. Jaden wheezed violently. Her eyes shot around in blinding confusion. Her mouth worked angrily as her organs continued to die only to be reborn. She felt her body’s hard death. Her muscles tightened with newfound strength. The hair on her head grew about her face, falling into her eyes. She felt her nails growing, a strange sensation as her fingers strained against it.

  Looking frantically at Tyr’s blood-tainted face blurred by her unclear vision, Jaden gasped and gurgled and rasped. A resounding cry left her in a hoarse whisper, “No!”

  All of her scars from past battles prickled, smoothing and stretching themselves out as they disappeared beneath the surface. As her gaze began to clear, so did the smug countenance of Tyr as he watched her with unfeeling eyes.

  Jaden sat up with a groan. Again she cried out in despair, “No! Ty—”

  Her words ended abruptly as the contents of her stomach came rushing forward. Tyr reacted with the speed of a striking snake, sticking the water bucket under her head. Jaden puked into the pail. When she finished, she fell back to the floor. Her panting breath had left her. She lay as still as a corpse, except for the glaring accusation of her expression as she gaped disbelieving at Tyr.

  “I was finished,” she mumbled weakly, her lips barely moving as the dark rebirth took complete control. She knew what she’d become, what he’d done, and she hated him for it. Fangs grew out from her gums to match his, two longer on top, two smaller on bottom. They felt strange brushing up against her mouth, poking the sensitive skin of her inner lip, as she said, “Damn you.”

  “You begged for death so desperately. Well, now you have your wish. Welcome to death, m’lady. How do you like it?”

  “You bastard,” she swore, trying to sit up and failing. She stayed on the carpet, unable to force her limbs to move. “I never asked
for this!”

  “Tsk, tsk,” he sneered, “such a temper. Is that any way to treat your master?”

  “You’ll never be my master, Tyr,” she said, glad to have enough strength to put venom in her words. His face was so cruel, so unmoving. She still ached for what she couldn’t have—him. If he would but look at her with caring, touch her face with reassurance, then she could forgive him instantly. But he neither comforted nor touched her.

  “You are mistaken.” Crawling forward, he came above her. He looked down on her sullen, hate-filled face.

  Jaden saw his face clearer with her vampire eyes. She saw the texture of his skin, the firmness of his hard mouth, the stiff resolve of his expression. Her skin tingled with the nearness of his flesh, drawn to it as never before. Her eyes even detected each line of resentment in his shallow gaze.

  Coming down so his face was next to hers, he whispered into her ear, “I gave you the dark gift. You are mine until I let you go.”

  “Then you are letting me go right now.” She focused all her energy to push at him. Her arms lifted to strike his chest. It was a weak effort and he caught up her fingers easily. “Give me a stake. I’ll end this myself.”

  “So bloodthirsty,” he hissed. “Haven’t you had enough of death for one evening?”

  “End it!”

  “Never.” He forced her palm to feel his heart. He was warm from her blood. “I’ll never let you go.”

  “There is nothing you can teach me of your kind,” she said. “That is what a master does. He teaches the student.”

  “Our kind,” he interjected softly when she finished her raspy declaration. His eyes softened for an instant only to harden with her decree. “Your fate has been decided, dhampir. You are no longer human.”

  “I’ll never be one of you.”

  “You are like me! You were like me even before I gave you my blood. You hunt, you punish the guilty. You thrive on the blood and ash of others.” Tyr rose above her, gloating bitterly. Her hand flopped down on her chest, sliding to the floor. He continued, “Only that isn’t all you did, was it, little Jaden? You’ve been a very naughty mortal.”