Nathan looked about to deny it, but then he held his hands up before him and shrugged. “They may have wanted to keep such a thing hidden, but I think they would have preferred us prepared if we ever came across something like that.”
“They might have been ashamed or refused to believe it themselves and decided to hide it,” Vicky said.
“I’ll ask Roland and the other elders if they’ve ever heard of such a thing to make sure, but I doubt they’ll know anything either. If this is a hunter turned vampire, then it is most likely someone the other hunters believed dead all these years, but who was instead turned and has been in hiding.”
“That’s a frightening thought,” Kadence said. “But maybe Killean was mistaken about what he saw in there.”
“Or maybe he’s feeding us lies,” Lucien said.
“That’s possible,” Ronan murmured as he draped his arm around Kadence’s shoulder and drew her against his side.
“What does he plan to do with Simone?” Nathan asked.
“He’s trying to get her away from them,” Saxon said. “After that, I don’t know.”
“I can’t believe Simone is his mate,” Nathan muttered as he ran a hand through his black hair. “That won’t end well.”
“Why not?” Vicky demanded. “It’s worked out well enough for you and Kadence.”
“It did,” Nathan agreed as he took her hand. “But Simone is so proper, and Killean is so…”
“Rude,” Declan supplied when Nathan’s words trailed off.
“Yes.”
“Opposites do attract,” Vicky said. “And now that she’s a vampire, she’ll feel the pull of the mating bond more intensely than you and Kadence did while you were hunters.”
“And it was still strong for us,” Kadence said. “We have to help them.”
“He wouldn’t tell me where they are,” Saxon said.
“Convenient,” Lucien muttered.
“I’ve got it,” Declan said as he rose from his chair and walked over to the bar. He set the computer on the bar and turned it to face everyone. “Ninety-five dead in a fire in Norton, Vermont. The police say all exits were blocked and they’re looking for who could have started it. There are no witnesses. Due to the extent of the fire, identification will take a while, but they believe all wedding guests, including the bride and groom, perished in the blaze.”
“Okay, so he was telling the truth about that, so what?” Lucien asked.
“So, it gives us an idea of the things Joseph is targeting. Remote areas and groups of people who aren’t huge but aren’t small either. If we keep an eye out for more fires or accidents matching those criteria, we might get a better idea of where Joseph is centered,” Ronan replied. “Where in Vermont is Norton located?”
“Near the border of Canada and New Hampshire. Not much of a population,” Declan said.
“And Joseph took the hunters from a stronghold in New Hampshire,” Kadence murmured.
“Declan, do a search of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine for anything similar to what happened at this wedding,” Ronan commanded. “Check back three months, and if you find things that match, go back further.”
“He’s changing his MO,” Nathan said. “Before he was using the sewers and the homeless to create Savages, but once we discovered that he changed things.”
“He might have been doing this all along,” Ronan said. “But since it doesn’t fit the normal criteria of what we expect from a Savage, which is to hunt clubs, bars, and the homeless, we weren’t looking for it. We were also expecting smaller-scale attacks and not ones of this magnitude.”
Declan’s fingers flew across the keys before he stopped typing and lifted his head. “I’ve got three fires and two gas explosions that have gone unexplained with no known perpetrators throughout those states in the past three months. Fifteen people died in the first fire, twenty in the second, thirty-five in a gas explosion, thirty-seven in the next explosion, and sixty-two in the last fire.”
“So, the death toll is going up as he’s gathering and creating more Savages,” Ronan said.
“Shit,” Lucien muttered.
“If Joseph and Killean were working together, Joseph wouldn’t willingly let Killean feed us this info about the wedding,” Saxon said. “He’d know we would discover these other incidents once we learned about the wedding.”
“Maybe,” Ronan murmured. “If you pinpoint the locations of those events on a map, are they centered around anything?”
Declan worked at the computer for a minute before replying. “No, they’re all scattered across different states and towns.”
“But we know the pattern to look for now because of Killean,” Saxon said.
He had no idea why he was pushing so much for them to trust Killean on this. The two of them were Defenders together for a century and a half, there was a bond there, but he knew very little about Killean. Still, they’d saved each other’s lives more times than he could count, and Killean deserved some faith because of that.
But he didn’t think that was the reason he was pulling so staunchly for Killean. No, he could admit it was because he needed someone to come back from the line Killean crossed because he was so damn close to going over it himself.
Saxon lifted the bottle and drank half of it. When he lowered the bottle, he found Declan staring at him in that maddeningly penetrating way of his. Saxon grinned at him as he set the bottle on the bar.
“So what do I tell Killean?” Saxon asked.
“I’d like to speak with him,” Ronan said.
CHAPTER 27
Simone watched Killean as he ran a hand through his brown hair and tugged on the ends of it. When he released it, it fell in a tussled wave about his handsome face. Her fingers twitched with the impulse to run her finger over the sharp blade of his cheekbone before pressing her lips to his.
“Who was that?” she inquired to distract herself from the idea of kissing him.
“Saxon. He’s going to speak with the others.”
She almost asked if they would take him back, but the question died in her throat. She doubted he knew the answer.
After everything he’d done for her, they had to take him back.
Her gaze fell to the faint, white scar on his chest again, and without thinking, she leaned across the distance separating them. “Where did you get this?”
Killean recoiled and threw his hand up to knock her fingers away the second they brushed across the circular mark. Memories of that hideous night crashed through him, a snarl curled his lip before he launched to his feet. Only one man had ever asked him about the events surrounding his acquisition of it. That man was dead.
“That’s not for little dollies to know,” he growled as he stalked over to the bags at the end of the bed. Opening one of the bags, he dug through the clothes and pulled out a maroon T-shirt.
Simone’s hand remained hanging in the space between them before she lowered it. He hadn’t bruised her when he knocked her hand aside, but the volatility of his reaction stunned her.
She watched as he tugged on a shirt with jerky movements so different than the fluid grace he usually possessed. She had no idea what she’d done, but once her shock over his reaction wore off, anger replaced it.
“Stop calling me dolly. I’m not a fragile, breakable thing. I survived what many wouldn’t, and I have suffered!” Simone somehow managed to hide her astonishment over her raised voice. She’d never done that before.
Killean lifted his head to glare at her. “You endured two weeks of Hell, but I’ve been roasting in the pits for over four hundred years.”
“Oh, you poor, tormented vampire, you. Everyone endures adversity, some more than others, but the strong ones choose not to let it turn them into miserable…” she tried to think of the best way to describe him before blurting, “jerks!”
“We really have to teach you how to swear, dolly.”
Simone lost the composure she always carefully maintained as she launched to her feet. “J
ust because I’m not some classless barbarian like you, doesn’t make me a doll!”
“Barbarian, you’re upping your word game with that one.”
Her fingers hooked into claws as she contemplated tearing his face to shreds. “Maybe I’ve led a sheltered life and haven’t endured the suffering you claim you have, but at least I’m not a coward hiding behind my misfortune to keep from getting close to others like you!”
She knew she’d struck a nerve when his eyes flared red and a vein in his forehead throbbed to life. The murderous look on his face should have petrified her; instead, she found her back straightening while she held his infuriated gaze.
Killean stalked toward her until they stood toe to toe. Simone lifted her chin, and her white-blue eyes blazed with defiance when they met his. She infuriated him, but he enjoyed this sign of strength from her.
“I can handle anything you or anyone else throws at me,” she said.
“Can you, dolly?”
“Yes!” she practically shouted and almost kicked him in the shin. “I’m not fragile, and I’ve seen the worst of what the evil in this world has to offer!”
“You haven’t scratched the surface of the evil in this world. It’s not just vampires who are capable of committing atrocities.”
“I know that!”
“Do you?” He lowered his head until their noses were almost touching. “Do you think it’s only vampires and humans?”
An uneasy chill slid down Simone’s spine as she stared into his red eyes. He wasn’t just angry, and not just being cruel; there was something else in his gaze, something so lost and damaged it made her yearn to hug him as much as it frightened her. But she also didn’t understand who else he could be talking about.
Then she recalled his wrath toward her on the beach, his aversion of her kind, and she decided she didn’t want to hear anything else he had to say. But only a dolly would hide from the cold truths of their world; she refused to be a sheltered, frightened woman anymore.
Besides, she already knew that before hunters learned not all vampires were evil, hunters had indiscriminately killed them. It wasn’t something the hunters were proud of, but they hadn’t known the truth.
“I know my kind killed innocents in the past when they didn’t know any better!” she retorted.
“And some hunters are going against Nathan and probably continue to do so while knowing the truth.”
She couldn’t argue with that.
“I’ve watched countless vampires die at the hands of your kind over the years. My entire family was slaughtered by your kind. My mother, my father, my two little sisters, and my older brother were all killed in one night, and I was left with this!” He pointed to the scar on his face. “The only reason I still have an eye is because they wanted me to see everything they did to my loved ones; the man who cut me laughed as he told me this.”
He tore his shirt open to reveal the circle near his heart. “When they decided I’d seen enough, they plunged a stake into me. They missed my heart by centimeters but assumed I was dead. That is the only reason I’m standing before you now. I was able to leave the Defenders, the only family I’ve known these past four hundred years, to find you because your ancestors fucked up and failed to kill me when I was seven years old!”
Killean pulled away from her as the knowledge of what he’d revealed rocked him back a step. For centuries, he’d kept the details of that night to himself. When his uncle asked him what happened, Killean revealed most of it, but his uncle was dead.
“Compared to that, yes, you are a little doll,” he continued with less vehemence as the devastated look on her face robbed him of some of his antagonism. “One who has been sheltered for her entire life. There are things about me, and things I’ve done, that you could never comprehend. So much blood has stained my hands that it’s seeped into my soul and become a part of me, especially the innocent blood I’ve shed. If you think you’re strong enough to handle that, then welcome to the dark side, dolly; it only gets more twisted from here.”
They tortured him, she realized with sick dread. Hunters weren’t perfect, but they’d tortured a child and taken joy in it. She wanted to deny his words, but looking into his anguished face, she knew she could never deny the truth.
“But hunters didn’t know vampires could have children until recently,” she said. “Why would they attack you?”
Killean shrugged. “Maybe they believed my parents changed us to create some sort of demented family. Whatever they believed, they didn’t care that we were only children when they attacked.”
Simone’s gaze returned to the scar on his chest. Now that she knew who caused it, she could tell a stake made it, and it had been so close! If it was a little further over, he wouldn’t be standing before her. That knowledge caused a chasm to open in her heart as the idea of a world without Killean left her cold.
She also understood his intense dislike of hunters. Understood the disgust she saw on his face after he kissed her and the hostility he emanated every time he said the word hunter. But she didn’t understand one thing…
“Why did you come for me?” she inquired.
Killean hadn’t known what to expect from her, but it wasn’t that. “I told you—”
“You’ve told me nothing!” she interrupted. “And I want an answer. Hunters killed your family, and it’s obvious you despise my kind, so why did you come for me?”
“I wasn’t going to leave you there.”
“Why not? You left all the others there. Why not me? What is so special about me?”
What isn’t special about you? He wondered as she kept her shoulders back and refused to step away from him.
“Are you going to refuse to tell me and continue to be the coward who uses his past as a shield against others?” Simone demanded when he didn’t reply. “Your family died over four hundred years ago; it’s time to move on! You can’t continue using them as an excuse to keep from opening up to others.”
Killean didn’t know if he wanted to kiss her or throttle her more. “I am not a coward.”
“Maybe not physically, but emotionally you are!” she insisted. “My father was killed by a vampire when I was seven too, and Savages tortured my friends and me for two weeks, but I don’t hold that against you or other vampires. Yet you continue to hate hunters for something that happened centuries ago!”
“You don’t hold that against vampires? You fled a safe stronghold to escape the Alliance,” he retorted, “and ended up being a prisoner because of your dislike of vampires.”
“I fled to escape my embarrassment over being tossed aside by Nathan for another woman!” she snapped.
“Oh, did he break your heart?” Killean taunted, but his hands fisting as he braced himself for her reply. He didn’t know how he would react if she said yes.
“No!” she cried. “I was never in love with Nathan. But the life I’d been expecting to live was ripped away from me in an instant, and it was humiliating. Everyone expected us to marry, but I was publicly thrown aside for another, so excuse me for needing to escape!”
“So, the dolly ran like a coward.”
Simone didn’t think before her hand flew up and connected with his face in a resonating blow that echoed through the room. With lightning speed, Killean snatched her wrist and held it between them. Simone gawked at her hand before her eyes slid to him. She expected to see rage in his gaze; there was only disbelief.
She braced herself for him to explode, but he only continued to stare at her as if she were an alien life-form. A trickle of shame ran through her at her actions; she never should have hit him, but she wouldn’t apologize for it either. She was done with hiding her emotions and apologizing for things.
“I. Am. Not. A. Doll,” she enunciated clearly.
“You have no concept of the real world,” he growled. “Or the creatures stalking it. Creatures like me.”
Simone refused to rise to his baiting anymore as she knew he was trying to draw her away from
the subject he wanted to avoid. “Why did you come for me?”
Killean tugged on the wrist he held to draw her a step closer, but she didn’t try to pull away as he’d anticipated. He couldn’t believe that, not only had she hit him, she refused to be intimidated by him. The woman was completely baffling and infuriating.
“Why did you come for me?” she asked.
“Do you really want to know?” he growled as his control over his temper started to fray.
“Yes.”
“Because you’re my mate.”
And somehow, deep inside, she’d already known that was the reason. “What does that mean?” she asked.
“It means, whether we like it or not, we’re at least partially tied to each other for the rest of our lives.”
“So, because of what I am to you, you gave up everything that meant anything to you, even though you don’t know me, not really?”
“Yes, but you have one thing wrong.”
“And what is that?” she asked.
“I didn’t become what I am now because of you; I did it for you. And I would do it again.”
Simone’s breath rushed out at those words. She never would have believed anything remotely sweet could come out of Killean’s mouth, but she’d been mistaken.
“So we’ll be mates now?” she asked, uncertain how she felt about that. No one could make her feel as alive as he did, but the whole mate thing was a pretty big commitment and he could be a pretty big jerk. They might kill each other if they were forced to live together for an eternity.
“Our bond won’t ever be completed,” he stated.
“Why not?” she demanded and realized her emotions were completely out of control. He’d thrown her off completely with all his revelations, and she had no idea how to react to all of them.
“Because I won’t condemn you by binding you to the thing I’ve become. You’ve consumed my blood, and if you’re feeling any pull from the mating bond, it will make things difficult for you to not have me in your life, but it’s best for you if I’m not.”
“I’m capable of handling more than you give me credit for.”
“Are you capable of handling the darkness I possess now that I’ve killed humans?”
Bound by Darkness (The Alliance, Book 3) Page 17
