The Jaded Hunter

by Michelle M. Pillow

  A fur rug covered part of the stone floor, a matching white pelt on the large rectangular bed. Jaden bit her lip. There was only one bed.

  A writing table was situated against the far wall. Books lined a shelf above it. The room was smaller than his cave, but still very luxuriant in style. Turning, Jaden noticed a large tiled bathtub, minus the nozzles for water. She swallowed, spinning quietly away to watch Tyr.

  “You are here because you are mine,” he said quietly, answering her question from the hall. Jaden glanced up to study his face. His jaw lowered possessively. His head cocked to the side. “I made you. I am responsible for you.”

  “Oh,” she whispered for lack of a better word. A dim hope tried to light within her, but she was no fool as to fan that flame.

  Tyr lifted a hand to her skeletal chin. His thumb stroked her sunken face. He felt the loneliness inside of her, knew her fears. He also knew this might be her last night. Gently, he said, “You did well in there.”

  “I did?” Jaden he closed her eyes, drawing comfort from his large hand.

  A part of Tyr’s iron control crumbled. It had been so hard to deny the feelings he had for her. Now that they were alone, perhaps for the last time, he couldn’t hold himself completely back. “I’m sorry I was forced to treat you harshly, but it was the only way. They needed to see you were being punished. They needed to see you suffering, as something to be pitied rather than hated. If I brought you before them strong and willful they would have resented you for it and punished you out of spite.”

  “You could have told me,” she whispered.

  “No. They might have read it in you if you tried to fake it. I shouldn’t be telling you now.” As he looked into her jade eyes, her past didn’t matter. He didn’t want her dead. He didn’t want this to be it. Even if he could never forgive her, maybe he could forget. “Character and strength matter to the elders. And despite your condition you showed much of both.”

  “No,” she mumbled, unable to take his touch, feeling dirty and ugly in her grimy clothes. She pulled back, putting distance between them. She didn’t want him to look at her. She didn’t want him to see her broken and lost. “I was weak and scared and they know that. I felt them looking inside of me. I felt them searching me, violating me.”

  “That is part of the test.”

  “Then I failed it,” she whispered. “I know I did.”

  “Not everyone can stand before them. I have seen the oldest of vampires brought low by the mere sight of them.” Tyr kept his distance. He heard her heart fluttering like the beating wings of a hummingbird. “I have seen men cry out with fear and run themselves headlong into the stone walls trying to escape. You stood before them bravely, even in your weakened physical state.”

  “They have already found me guilty,” Jaden said. “I could feel their anger.”

  Tyr said nothing. He had felt it too.

  “You think I am guilty, too, don’t you?” Her mournful tone tore at him. Her lips quivered. “I can feel it in you. You think I’m capable of what is in that f—”

  “Don’t,” he growled. His gaze darkened in anguish. “Let us not speak of it.”

  Tyr couldn’t stand to think of her sins. He couldn’t consider them, wanted to forget them. Even as a vampire, in his centuries of taking life, he had never performed such cruel experiments on humans or immortals. It sickened him that she could’ve been a part of it. Even in the days when war was all the land knew, the warlords had been merciful enough to let their enemies die.

  Was she involved in her uncle’s business, watching rapes and murders, catering to sick mortal fetishes? By the evidence in the folder, that was only the beginning. It could’ve been her hand sawing into flesh countless times, tearing off limbs that would never grow back, torturing vampires and humans on devices meant to kill, not prolong agony. It could’ve been her finger taking the memento photographs of what was done. It made Tyr sick to think on it.

  Only the sickest of minds could perform such atrocities. Only the basest of all creatures would keep the photographs with them. He knew what she was connected to, but when he looked at her, felt inside her, he didn’t see it, and that baffled him. Jaden was a talented dhampir, which could account for the deceitfulness. He wanted to hate her, tried his damnedest to. But faced with only one night, it was more than he could do.

  “Tell me you had nothing to do with it,” he begged.

  “Why?” she answered weakly. “You wouldn’t be able to trust my answer.”

  Jaden knew he already condemned her. It tore at her heart to think he believed her capable of something so bad that it turned a hardened vampire’s blood to boiling. She’d seen the reaction of the council. She loved Tyr so desperately and he couldn’t even believe in her a little. She would’ve denied everything, fought everyone, if she thought he would believe her.

  “Your bath,” Tyr said.

  Jaden’s brows rose in question at the statement. The door to the room opened and a woman entered carrying a basket of towels, perfumed soaps and hair rinses. She was swathed in white from chest to toe. Jaden smelled the mortal woman’s blood. Her eyes leapt with hunger. She took an entranced step forward, her eyes greedily scanning over the smooth, brown skin of the woman’s neck and arms.

  Tyr’s hand shot out to stop her. He pulled Jaden to his chest. His arms wrapped about her from behind like a vice, hugging her close to his solid form. The feel of his skin broke through her mind’s lethargic hold. Leaning down, he whispered, “Look at her eyes.”

  Jaden looked at the woman’s eyes. They were glazed white and stared out over the room like a zombie. The woman didn’t see the two vampires as she set the items on the ledge next to the tub.

  “She is a servitor of the Vrykolatios.” Tyr kept Jaden at bay, as she strained to eat. He felt bad for having nearly starved her. At the time it had seemed a suitable punishment, one that would prevent the council from ordering a harsher treatment, but now it just seemed cruel. “She has traded years of her life to serve here in return for a gift.”

  “A gift?” Jaden said softly.

  “Yes,” Tyr said. “These servitors are saved from disease, usually death. In return they spend a portion of their youth, in the flower of their beauty, working willingly. They wait on Theophania. The time passes quickly for them for they are in a trance. They are protected from the bite. To drink from one without permission is to insult Theophania.”

  “I wouldn’t want to do that,” she admitted, licking her lips as the woman left.

  Tyr grinned. Touching her cheek, he eased her around to face him. Forgetting himself in her tinged gaze, he said, “The meals will be here soon. I can smell them coming.”

  “Do I…?” Jaden began weakly.

  “Yes, you drink from them,” Tyr said. For a heartless killer she seemed to struggle with the idea. “We don’t kill them. They too have protection from death. It is hard for the Vrykolatios to find food on this sacred island. The human officials get testy when too many tourists have unfortunate accidents at sea. We feed only. You see, not all vampires are ruthless killers. Some of us do let the victims live. In the old days it was different, the world was different. Like the humans we surrounded, we killed for survival. We hunted and sought to rule over an unforgiving land. Life was not valued on a whole as it is now. Now we have evolved as human’s have.”

  “I never knew,” she whispered, ashamed for all the times she threw his vampiric nature in his face. She held still as the door opened once more. A line of women carting steaming buckets trailed to the bath. They were dressed as the first, eyes all glazed with a white mist. Jaden sniffed, smelling their blood, but held back.

  “Don’t they knock?”

  “The barely see us,” Tyr said. “We are like a hazy dream to them.”

  The women left the same way they came, except for two who stood patiently on the side of the bath. They turned, zombie eyes looking forward as they waited. The women were beautiful, seductive.

  “What are the
y doing now?” Jaden asked, in awe over the strangeness of the council’s ways. Ever since she was a girl she had imagined a dark hole full of dust and skeletons, medieval torture devises and impaled humans dying a slow death for the entertainment of the elders.

  “That was the old way,” Tyr whispered in her ear.

  Jaden turned around to him, embarrassed that he read the thought.

  “And they are waiting for you,” he said.

  Jaden shivered at the seductive pull to his voice. The stress almost seemed to ease out of her at the words, to be replaced by longing. “I-I don’t need their help.”

  “Leave,” Tyr ordered in a strong, strict tone. His eyes didn’t leave hers.

  The women nodded, filing out of the room. Jaden swallowed, turning her back on him.

  “Did you want to spend this night with Rick?” he asked. The phrase your last night hung unspoken between them.

  Jaden shook her head in denial. “I tried to make him sleep like you’ve done to me. Maybe I should have killed him to spare him, but I couldn’t do it.”

  Tyr came around her, forcing her to look up at him. “They won’t hurt him, not tonight. There is a chance they’ll let him go so that they may watch him.”

  His lips parted, his hands lifted to touch her cheek. There was a strangeness to his eyes when he looked at her. Suddenly, he withdrew.

  Striding over to the bed, Tyr sat on the end. His gaze turned to the door. Four women walked in. Their gowns were of the same white as the servitors, only golden bands wrapped around their waists and foreheads. Their eyes were glazed, but their bodies moved with more awareness and a seductive purpose.

  All four came to stand before Tyr. They were stunning in their vivid beauty. Upon closer examination, Jaden saw that the linen was almost as thin as gossamer, showing off the dusky tips of their nipples and the darkened valley of their womanhoods. She felt a ping of jealousy as the beautiful women lifted their hands to touch the sultry knight.

  The women’s fingers ran through the long, inviting strands of Tyr’s golden hair, skimmed across his beautiful skin in seductive caresses. They moved over his chest, massaging him with intimate promises of more, gliding over his shirt, crumpling the material with their searching fingers.

  Jaden’s mouth fell open at the blatant display. Tyr’s eyes closed briefly in what looked like pleasure. The hands continued to massage him, growing bolder as one kneeled before him on the ground. The woman’s long, tapering fingers ran over his calves, skimming thoroughly over his inner thighs to his strong hips. She pulled herself forward, rubbing her breast into his stomach.

  Then a wrist moved across his mouth, brushing over his lips softly, and held still. Tyr’s eyes opened at the woman’s offering. He raised his hand to take the woman to his lips as he opened his mouth to drink. For a moment, his eyes flickered across the chamber, seeing Jaden watching him. His eyes fluttered closed, rolling back in his head in pleasure. A wave of anguish accosted Jaden as she watched his lips close around another woman, sucking deep and slow against her warm flesh.

  She had no claim to him, could say nothing to stop it. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. If Tyr decided to pull these women into his bed, there would be nothing she could do but watch as they took turns riding him.

  Jaden backed away, nauseated. She couldn’t watch the temptresses any longer. Her eyes met with the tub. One of the women giggled. It was sultry sound of invitation and desire. With only the thought of escape in her mind, Jaden dove into the bath, clothes and all.

  Tyr’s head snapped up from his meal in time to see water sloshing over the edge of the bath. Gradually, he realized the hands that were all over him. He detected the bitter sting of jealousy on the air. An animalistic pleasure overwhelmed him. A smile came to his crimson lips, a masculine smile of domination and immense gratification.

  His eyes stayed on the tub as he stood. The woman whose wrist bled moved to the side to wait patiently for his return. Tyr grabbed a second woman. He motioned his hand by her face. Her head fell to the side, exposing her neck to him. He bent over to taste, drinking deeply. The mortal gasped as he bit her, feeling no pain, only pleasure. Her arms wrapped around him in invitation to the rest of her body. His eyes stayed focused on the bath. To him it was like a farmer taking milk from a cow. There was no passion in the intimate touch, though the women were exquisite.

  Letting his second meal go, he bit his finger and healed the wounds made by his teeth. The women who had been fed on left, leaving two behind. As he stood, the women’s hands followed him. Tyr heard Jaden moving beneath the water, but she didn’t rise from the tub. Walking over to the edge he looked down at her. Her deathlike features wavered in the rippling surface. A bubble escaped from her parted lips, floated to the surface, and popped. Her eyes stared out angrily, abnormally so in the veneer of a corpse. Seeing him, she stiffened. Her nose wrinkled defiantly.

  Unable to resist, Tyr reached a hand in and grabbed her about her jealous neck. He felt the tendons working in her slender throat. She was hungry. He could see the desperation pooling in her eyes even as she fought it. She was tough, tougher than other vampires he had come across, but he also knew that the beast within her was stronger. If she denied herself much longer she wouldn’t only disgrace herself but him as well. He couldn’t have her attacking, and most probably killing Theophania’s servitors in a fit of bloodlust. Such an affront to the vampiress wouldn’t be forgiven.

  Pulling her up by her neck, he raised a brow in forced amusement. A growl escaped her wet, parted lips. The dirt from her features had dissipated in the water, but her skin was still sunken and a ghastly shade of powdery white. Her fangs bared and slashed as if to bite him. Instantly, her claws swung forward into his flesh, drawing blood from his arms as she scratched pathetically at him. Her strength was too weak to fend off his hand.

  Tyr sighed, watching his blood run down his arm from beneath his sleeve. It slid silently into the bath water. “You must eat.”

  It wasn’t a request but a command. Jaden’s mouth twisted as she tried to pull back under the water. Her fingers released his arm. It healed instantly, leaving his sleeve soaked with blood. Tyr growled, his fingers slipping in the moisture from her throat. He caught her back up in a locked grip. Yanking her once again above the surface, his eyes met hers in a silent battle.

  “Do as I say,” he demanded in frustration. “Why must you always try to fight me?”

  Her mouth snarled in defiance. Challenge lit between them. Jaden’s eyes narrowed. Tyr’s matched her look with one of his own.

  “You have to eat,” he snapped. “You have to calm the bloodlust.”

  “The only blood I wish to draw is yours,” she growled. But seeing the mortal women standing behind Tyr, awaiting his command, she tensed. The stark smell of them overwhelmed her, and if not for the vice on her throat, she would’ve torn into them in a frenzy of ecstatic overindulgence. Their heartbeats filled Jaden’s head, calling to her. Their bodies looked so soft and warm and so full of blood.

  Tyr watched her expression change. Feeling her strain, Tyr shook her hard. “Not like that!”

  Still looking at the women, Jaden smiled a cruel and heartless smile. It was a look Tyr knew to be of the bloodlust’s making. It was no longer Jaden he held back, but a force inside them all.

  “No, damn you!” He shook her again, harder. Forcing his head before her eyes, he blocked the women from view. They stood quietly behind the vampires, completely unaware of the danger they were in. “You can’t hurt them. Don’t make things any harder on yourself.”

  “Let…me…go,” Jaden hissed.

  “Jaden, stop it,” Tyr commanded. In that moment, she controlled the beast within enough to see his face. It was hard and unforgiving. Blinking, she forgot all but what was between them. She forgot the helpless women standing so near. She forgot the bathwater that soaked uncomfortably into her tattered clothes. She even managed to forget her blood craving. But she couldn’t forget how she felt abou
t him and how he’d treated her. She couldn’t forget he believed the worst in her. And, in that instant, she couldn’t forgive him for delivering her into the depths of hell itself.

  Sneering, Jaden said, “Make me.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Jaden kept her glare on Tyr. A grimace etched her wan expression as she fought him. The wet, brown-red tresses of her hair fell in stark contrast against her pale flesh, but Tyr didn’t notice. He couldn’t see beyond the green beauty of her eyes as they flashed in hard defiance. He held back his grin, knowing she wouldn’t take kindly to his amusement. She was in no condition to fight him and yet, with the odds heavily against her, she was trying to anyway.

  “You’ll listen to me or I’ll make you listen,” Tyr stated softly. “Do you understand?”

  Insolently, Jaden shook her head. Tyr frowned. Forcing her head underwater to stem her retort, he waited only a second before letting her back up. Water splashed over the sides of the tub at the violent movement. When she surfaced, she spat up at him. The water splashed back down, hitting her in the face. Tyr smirked as her lids blinked in surprise. The two women remained silent and still behind him. They were not so mesmerized that they couldn’t report Jaden’s rebelliousness to the council.

  “I said eat,” he ordered under his breath. His icy-blue eyes glowed, begging her to obey him.

  “I want no part of that orgy,” she denied, nodding at the women on the bed. Fury seeped out of her pores. “You can’t make me.”

  “Jaden,” he warned, knowing her words to be an obvious lie. She was starving. Desperate, he wanted to make her drink while her head was still clear. If she slipped again, he would have to chain her down to calm her and such a stir would surely rouse the others.

  “No,” she cried. “If you’re going to kill me then do it, but do not torture me needlessly.”