“Ambushed?” Riker snorted. “So much for the infamous ShadowSpawn stealth, eh?”
“Fuck off,” Fane spat. “We took ’em out. And we got a bonus.”
Otto jerked his head toward the forest. “The poachers had one of your females strung up like a fox in a snare, all jerking around and dislocating limbs.”
Oh, shit. “Who?”
“Your simpleton.”
Riker’s stomach clenched. “Lucy?” Next to him, Nicole inhaled a sharp breath.
“Do you have so many simpletons in your clan that you have to ask?” Fane’s warriors laughed at that.
“Easier to ask how many of their clan aren’t fucking retards,” one of them said.
“Enough,” Riker snapped. “Where is Lucy?”
Fane’s upper lip curled, and Riker hoped the ring piercing in it hurt. “We have her. Tell Hunter we’ll hold on to her until you return Neriya.”
“We told you we’d get her back,” Riker bit out. “You don’t need Lucy as leverage. We gave you our word.”
“The word of a MoonBound warrior is no better than the word of a human,” Fane said.
“Be careful,” Riker warned. “You’re calling a chief and a pureblood vampire a liar.”
A shadow of shame flickered in Fane’s expression but was quickly replaced by a superior sneer. “I know turned vampires who are worth ten born vampires.”
“And I know that Hunter is worth more than all of you combined.” Riker got nose-to-nose with Fane. “We will have Neriya returned to you by the deadline, and if Lucy has so much as a scratch on her body, every one of your scouting party is going to pay.”
Fane grinned, turned away, and strode off. His warriors joined him, and they melted into the forest.
Next to Riker, Nicole made a quiet sound of relief. He turned to her, expecting to find residual terror in her eyes. Instead, she was staring in the direction Fane had gone.
“That vampire,” she said firmly, “is a jackass.”
He barked out a laugh. “Look at that,” he said, starting off in the opposite direction. “Something we agree on.”
A FULL TEN minutes of traipsing through the forest had passed before Nicole gathered her thoughts enough to speak beyond calling Fane a jackass.
“What’s apish-wa?” she asked.
“A blood whore.” She nearly tripped over a broken branch that Riker had nimbly avoided. “Watch where you’re going,” he said, as if she had been trying to fall on her face.
“You called me a blood whore?”
“Not just any blood whore.” He sounded mildly insulted. “A personal blood whore whom, by vampire law, no one can drink from without permission.”
“Oh,” she said dryly. “That makes it better.”
“Did you want me to share with them?” He forged ahead, blazing a trail through the thick brush. “They’re probably within hearing distance if we shout.”
She glared at his back and decided not to respond to his sarcasm. “Where are we going, anyway?”
“To my clan.”
She’d had a feeling he’d say that. So now what? Did she go with him, or did she try to run away? Not that she’d get far. Even if she got past the hunters and poachers, she wouldn’t get past Riker.
Besides, after the night in the cave, her hatred for him was waning. She didn’t trust him, certainly. But she was starting to understand him and why he and his clan would go to such great lengths to save Neriya. Wouldn’t she do the same if the roles were reversed and his clan had captured someone she cared about?
Still, the idea of going back to the clan made her heart sink.
“The prey room again,” she whispered to herself, but Riker stopped, his boots crunching on old pine needles.
“I’m taking you to our lab. You can hang out with Grant. He’s our resident scientist. A little insane but mostly harmless. Given your background, I’m thinking you’ll be more comfortable there.”
Stunned, she opened her mouth to thank him, but he threw his hand out, stopping her in her tracks. Except for the flare of his nostrils, he’d frozen solid, and chills ran up her spine. What now? Another enemy clan? More poachers? A bear?
At this point, she’d be happy to see a bear. She was rapidly learning that four-legged animals were far less frightening than those on two legs.
Very slowly, Riker looked up. Nicole followed his gaze and barely suppressed a startled squeak. Above them, crouching on a thick tree branch, was a woman. Her crossbow sights were trained on Riker, but where the woman was looking, Nicole had no idea. Her eyes were hidden behind wraparound sunglasses, the camouflage-painted frames matching her skintight garb, which made her nearly invisible against the backdrop of trees and moss.
The woman didn’t move a muscle until Riker started walking again. Even then, the woman dipped her head a mere fraction of an inch, but it was just enough for Nicole to catch a glimpse of silver-blond hair tucked under a black stocking cap.
When they were out of crossbow range—Nicole hoped—she tapped Riker on the shoulder. It was like tapping on a marble statue. “Who was that?”
“Sabbat. She’s a hunter.”
She lifted her brows at him. “You seem pretty nonchalant about a human who hunts your kind.”
Riker lifted her across a narrow but deep stream. “If she’d been hunting us, we’d have died before we knew she was there.”
“How . . . comforting.” What was comforting was his hands on her waist, holding her steady as he effortlessly lowered her on the far side of the water. When he released her, the warmth of his touch remained like a brand, and she had to resist the urge to smooth her fingers over the tingly sensation.
Nicole Martin, you’re an idiot.
His lips quirked into the barest semblance of a smile. “Sabbat only takes out problem vampires.”
“Problem vampires?”
Riker ducked a branch and then held it out of the way for her. He was being far more gentlemanly than he’d been yesterday. “Vampires your government has issued execution orders for.”
Just last week, a local news station had reported that hunters were looking for a vampire who had fallen into bloodlust. She wondered if Sabbat was one of those hired to handle the situation.
“And you’re okay with that?”
He shrugged, the stacked layers of muscle in his bare back shifting under the weapons harness. Nicole had never been attracted to warrior types, let alone vampire warrior types, but something about him had made her normal tastes in men go haywire.
“If a vampire is out of control and drawing attention to us, we want him or her gone,” he said, with another shrug of those magnificent shoulders. “Hell, we do it ourselves if we can. Sabbat goes after the worst of the worst, and as long as it stays that way, we don’t give her trouble.”
“Yeah, well, I think she needs to go after the jackass,” Nicole muttered as she brushed a pine needle off her cheek.
“I’d pay to see that.” Riker’s head swiveled back and forth as they walked, his keen gaze seeming to take in everything around them at once. Nicole tried to do the same, but if she looked away from the ground for more than three seconds, she tripped. Riker sighed, but he didn’t look back at her. “Are you having trouble walking?”
She clawed at a spiderweb stuck in her hair. “Excuse me for not having your super-duper vampire reflexes.”
“It’s not just vampire reflexes. I spent several years training in the military.”
Interesting. “When?”
“Are you asking how old I am?” he asked, amusement pitching his already deep voice even lower.
“I guess.”
He cast a glance at her from over his shoulder. God, he was handsome when he wasn’t scowling at her, and she shivered in feminine appreciation. “How old do you think I am?”
Turned vampires aged very slowly, nearly ten times more slowly than humans. Born vampires aged similarly to humans until they reached maturity, and then they aged even more slowly than turned va
mpires. Determining age was nearly impossible in both cases.
“If you were human, I’d say late twenties.”
“I was twenty-nine when I was turned sixty years ago.”
“Wow. You’re a geezer.” She suppressed a smile at the dirty look he gave her. “How did it happen?”
Sudden tension turned the supple muscles in his back to stone. “My Army unit was sent to Spokane for a joint operation with the Air Force. At least, we thought it was a joint operation. We found out too late that we were there to be turned into vampires.”
Nicole stumbled over a root. Only Riker’s catlike reflexes kept her from falling on her face. As he held her by her upper arms, steadying her against him, she swallowed. She knew this story from history classes.
“That’s when the use of vampires by the military became illegal,” she said. “There was some sort of accident at the base. The base commander and several of his staff were killed by rogue vampires—”
“Not rogues!” he snapped. “Created. We were created, and we broke free. The history you learned? It was fiction.” His eyes had become hard-edged blades that challenged her to deny his version of events. “They wanted supersoldiers. What they got was a pissed-off bunch of vampire soldiers who knew exactly how to strike back.”
He still hadn’t released her, but she didn’t fight him, kept her voice low and nonconfrontational. “How many of you escaped?”
“Out of thirty of us, I only know of seven who made it out alive. My two best friends died. One didn’t survive the turn. The other got away with me. We made our way to Seattle, where MoonBound found us. But Steve . . . he was never the same. He was violent. Insane. Eventually, he didn’t even recognize me anymore.”
One out of a hundred vampires came out of their turn with their wires crossed, but so far, no one in the scientific community had determined why that was.
She palmed Riker’s cheek, an automatic response that made no sense, but neither of them fought it. The contact, tentative as it was, grounded them in the here and now and pushed the past back where it belonged.
“I’m so sorry, Riker.” She skimmed her thumb over the sharp outline of his cheekbone. He watched her warily, his nostrils flaring. “And before you accuse me of lying, I want you to know that I’m sorry about Lucy, too.”
“You know her?” His wariness lingered, but at least he wasn’t angry anymore. “How?”
Nicole paused. She didn’t want to throw Lucy under the bus, but at this point, keeping secrets from Riker was only going to cause more distrust. “She helped me escape.”
“Let me guess. A secret tunnel?” When she didn’t answer, he cursed and stepped back. “I thought we found all of her passages. She’s like a damned gopher.” He looked up at a hawk sailing overhead, waiting until it disappeared in the treetops to ask, “Why did she help you?”
“I sort of knocked her over. It was an accident,” she added when Riker shot her a troubled look. “She was bleeding, and I helped her.” She thought about Lucy’s request and hoped the vampires who had taken her would treat her to something sweet. “And let’s just say I owe her some chocolate.”
She was surprised to see a genuinely fond smile playing on his lips, almost paternal. “She’s got a way of getting what she wants.”
“Was she always—”
“Simple?”
Taken aback by his curt, defensive tone, Nicole paused before saying, “I was going to ask if she was always so enthusiastic about candy.”
“Sorry.” Riker scrubbed his hand over his face. “I’m a little protective of her. We all are.”
“How long has she been with your clan?”
“About ten years.” He started moving again, his long legs eating up ground and forcing her to almost jog to keep up. “Katina found her in an alley. She was living like a rat in the sewers, doing her best to avoid humans and feeding on bums and drug addicts. We have no idea how she got there, when she was turned, how old she is . . . nothing. She won’t talk about her past.”
How horrible. “Who takes care of her?”
He glanced over his shoulder at her like she’d just asked the dumbest question in the history of dumb questions. “We all do.”
Of course they did. Judging by what Nicole knew about MoonBound so far, clan members were family. Really, she wasn’t seeing anything different from how humans lived.
Aside from diet. Which was a pretty big deal.
But still, they took care of their own and found compassion even for the children of adults they hated. Terese had taken care of Nicole as if she were Terese’s own child. She’d gone above and beyond what had been required of her even after everything humans had done to her.
Now it was time for Nicole to give back, to take the compassion Terese had taught her and use it to help the people Terese had cared about.
“Riker?” She seized his wrist and jerked him to a halt.
He swung around, his gaze hooded. Unreadable. So much distrust, and she couldn’t blame him. “Yeah?”
Squaring her shoulders, she said firmly, “Take me to your clan. Let’s get Neriya and Lucy back.”
HUNTER NEEDED TO get his head out of his ass.
At least, that was what the two drop-dead-gorgeous sisters, Danneca and Tena, were telling him. Problem was, he couldn’t concentrate on the naked females, and it didn’t seem to matter how much they touched him or touched themselves. His head—the one on his shoulders—was not in the game.
No, right now, his game was poker, and if he wasn’t careful, ShadowSpawn was going to realize that MoonBound had a shitty hand.
“C’mon, Hunter.” Tena sat up on the pallet, letting the plush fur coverlets fall to her hips. Her firm, high breasts, the opposite of her sister’s fuller, heavier ones, were a stark reminder of why he was here.
This wasn’t about sex for the sake of pleasure; it was about sex to make baby vampires. Danneca had given birth three years ago, but the boy had died two days after his first birthday, leaving her heartbroken and the entire clan saddened. Children were rare for vampires, rarer still if the male wasn’t a born vampire or hadn’t imprinted on the female. Hell, that was an understatement. Hunter had been sowing his seed for more than two centuries, and only three females had gotten with child.
Two females had died during childbirth, his son and daughter with them. The third female had survived, but the child, a boy, hadn’t. Since then, he’d sworn to always have a midwife available, even if the midwife had to be borrowed from another clan because fucking poachers had killed MoonBound’s.
The memory brought a growl up from deep inside Hunter’s chest. He’d found the human poachers and torn them apart. Afterward, he’d burned their trophies—vampire fangs, organs, blood, and bones earmarked for sale on the black market.
Human scum.
Danneca swung her legs off the pallet and stood, her voluptuous body drawing his gaze. She wasn’t as pretty as her sister, but her curvy figure and quick mind more than made up for it.
“Come to bed,” she said, holding out her hand. “We’ll even help you out of those jeans.”
He looked down at the unbuttoned fly, behind which was a tool he put to frequent use but which didn’t want to play today. He couldn’t even care enough to be humiliated, and when a pounding on the door sent both females scurrying under the covers, he breathed a sigh of relief.
“Hunt.” Riker’s deep voice boomed from behind the heavy oak door. “We have trouble.”
“What else is new?” he muttered. He scooped up the females’ robes and tossed them to the bed. “Sorry, girls, we’ll have to do this another time. Let yourselves out the back way.”
Hunter shoved open the bedroom door, not bothering to throw on a shirt or shoes. Riker was in the office, shirtless, his body streaked with dirt, his jeans torn and bloody. In other words, it was business as usual for a guy who mixed it up with poachers and hunters whenever he could. What wasn’t business as usual was how Riker was splashing whiskey into two highball gla
sses. Rike was more of a beer guy.
“No, really,” Hunter said wryly, “help yourself.”
Riker tossed back the contents of one of the glasses and poured another. “Thanks.”
Hunter ambled over and snagged the second glass off the desk. He had a hunch he’d need it. “So what’s the trouble?” He swirled the liquor, letting the heady fumes scour away the lingering softer scent of the females. “Tell me you caught the human.”
“Of course I did.” Riker shoved his hand through his hair. “I also ran into a ShadowSpawn scout party. They have Lucy.”
An instant, hot rage sizzled through Hunter’s veins. Lucy might have the body of a teen and enough years on her to be an adult ten times over, but she had the wits and innocence of a child. He squeezed the glass so hard a crack popped under his palm. If anyone touched a hair on her head, Hunter would skin the bastard alive and leave the body to the scavengers.
“And?” he ground out.
“And they won’t give her back until their midwife is returned.”
“Son of a . . . fuck.” Hunter hurled his glass at the wall, shattering it into a million pieces that clinked on the floor as they fell. He gave himself to the count of three to calm down and stop wasting energy on impotent fury. He was a leader, and whether he liked it or not, he had to act like one. “Did the human give you any problems?”
“Nothing I couldn’t handle, and I got some interesting intel from her. New vampire weapon made of boric acid. Turns out that if we breathe it, we melt from the inside and explode.”
Hunter stared. “Seriously?”
“No,” Riker said with a shrug. “But it feels like it. It kills, and trust me, it’s some nasty shit.”
Just when Hunter thought humans couldn’t sink any lower. He really needed to stop underestimating their knack for cruelty. “I’ll call the senior warriors together. You can go over everything at the meeting. Where’s the human right now?”
“I left her in the lab with Grant. She’s got a doctorate in vampire physiology. Figured Grant might want to pick her brains.”
“When he’s done, I want her,” Hunter said, and he didn’t like the way Riker stiffened. “Don’t get attached, Rike. When we’ve gotten what we want from her, you need to get rid of her.”