A Wicked Hunger (Creatures of Darkness 1) (7 page)

“For future reference, if it’s a choice between me dying and you giving me your blood, I’d rather die.”

Red coated his vision as he spoke through clenched teeth. “The offering of my blood was a gift not to be taken lightly. Think twice before you scoff at my benevolence.”

“Benevolence?” She dared a sardonic sneer and actually met his gaze head-on, which managed to deflate his anger. “Oh, you’re so magnanimous, aren’t you?” Then she crossed the space between them and slapped him on his chest. He took a step back, and his jaw went slack. “So gracious to let me live…?” She slapped him again. “To keep me alive…!” Her hands turned to fists, and she brought them against his torso again. “That it should be an honor for me to give you my blood?” Her fists slammed his chest several more times as she spoke, rocking him backward, but he held his ground. Tears started streaming down her cheeks. “I should be happy to let you take whatever you want?”

Her words sounded out of place, as though she were talking about something other than what had happened between them last night. He clamped his hands around her wrists when his chest began to sting from her attack, but the verbal assault continued.

“Are you to be my
master
now? Will you talk of benevolence when you take me to you clan and loan me out?”

“Whoa, what?”

She tried to rip out of his grasp, but he held firm.

“Let me go!”

He didn’t. Instead, he allowed her to exert herself till she finally stopped and surrendered to his authority, although her tears never ceased. Once more, her eyes went downward.

He wished he was one of those vampires who could read minds.

“What happened to you?” he finally asked.

She flinched, but didn’t respond.

“No one had ever acted so negatively toward a vampire’s bite, and it’s not because you’re a
Lurela
. You’ve been bit before, correct? So you should’ve known what to expect, but for some reason, I don’t think you did.”

She’d gone completely still, like an animal in the grips of a predator sensing death was imminent.

He released one of her wrists and hooked his forefinger under her chin to tilt her head up. When she reluctantly looked into his eyes, he said, “I have no intention of taking you anywhere besides a safe house, or sharing you with anyone. And as for master, I’m not one to claim lordship over unwilling women. But I won’t lie, I enjoyed giving you pleasure last night, and that’s all my bite was meant to do, nothing more.” He paused. “Now tell me what happened to you that has you reacting this strongly?”

Her shoulders hunched, and she looked away. She remained silent so long that if it weren’t for the open debate raging behind her eyes, he would think she had no intention of answering him at all.

She inhaled a sharp breath and raised her chin. “I was held captive by a vampire named Edgar when I was ten.”

With that simple revelation, white-hot anger flashed through every cell in his body with his imagination acting as fuel. What had she endured? In an instant, he’d shuffled through the memories of every vampire he ever met,
trying to recall any named Edgar, a death warrant already issued in his mind.

“Mason?” Cora came back into view. Her eyes were wide, her body shaking. He realized she was terrified…by him.

And for good reason. His fangs had emerged with his rage. His body had tensed. His expression? He could just imagine how ruthless he appeared now.

He released her and stepped away, focusing on
schooling his features.

Still wary, she fell back a couple paces. 

“Where is he now?” he hissed through his clenched fangs.

“He’s dead,” she replied, taking another step back.

“Don’t move,” he warned her.

She froze.

“Just give me a moment.” He’d never been driven to fury so quickly. If she ran from him now, it would only exacerbate his rage. “Tell me how he died.” Humans often assumed vampires were dead when they really weren’t.

“He was torn apart by his commanding officer right in front of me.”

“Commanding officer?”

“It was near the end of the last uprising when there were pockets of militant groups all over. I think Edgar was a low-level soldier. His commander found me in his quarters and ordered
him to release me. Edgar had refused.”

“The fucker must have been
really young, then.” Disobeying an order from a superior—which generally meant an older and much stronger vampire—was an amateur move.

“I wouldn’t know. He never revealed his age, just liked to divulge his future plans for me.”

“And what were these plans?”

She shrugged. “Things he would do to
me, or things he wanted to watch others do. He would ravage my neck and then try to make me beg for his blood. Stuff like that?”

Her flippant tone didn’t quite hide her obvious pain or the terror she’d endured.

He glanced at the delicate column of her neck. There were no scars, but that meant little. Winston had been giving her vamp blood for months. It had cleared her of any scars, making her skin flawless.

“Did Edgar
ever manage to give you any of his blood? When you were too weak to protest, maybe?” Jealousy turned Mason’s hands into tight, white-knuckled fists.

“No.
I’m sure of it.”

He wasn’t sure if he should be elated or more furious about that. Her wounds would have had to heal naturally. “What else did he do?”

“He just drank from me and told me horrid things.”

“He didn’t…touch you?”

“Not in a sexual way, if that’s what you mean. I think he got his rocks off by hurting me.”

Mace scrubbed a hand down his face, relief softening him further. “I’m sorry that happened to you. We aren’t all like that. Just like your human race, we have our share of criminals, too.”

She stared blankly at him, giving him the impression she didn’t quite believe him. He couldn’t blame her for that. It was no wonder she found it difficult to trust him, and how she had learned her near-perfect submission act.

It was born of necessity.

“If this Edgar were alive today, I would hunt him down and make him suffer horribly before I killed him.”

She canted her head. “Why
would you bother?”

“Because you deserve that much and more.”

His reply didn’t seem to alleviate her confusion. She looked at him now as if to figure out what manner of treachery he engaged in. He reached out for her shoulder, intending to reassure her.

Something slammed into his chest, knocking the air from hi
s lungs and tossing him back.

Pain stole his sight. He lost his footing over the cliff.

For a moment, Cora couldn’t understand what had just happened. Mason’s chest had…exploded!

He stumbled back, falling over the bluff.

Adrenaline spiked. She screamed. He had to have been shot, but by who?

She darted her gaze around, searching.

A mud-covered jeep sped over the dirt road toward her, screeching to a halt just behind the motorbike.

Three scruffy men in grungy clothes jumped out, all of them eyeing her
with cruel grins.

She rushed to the cliff face and leaned over. Mace lay face down at the bottom, about
twenty feet below, unmoving. “Mason!”

Boots crunched against rock, closing in on her from behind. She couldn’t take her eyes from Mace.

Callous fingers threaded through her hair, dragging her back toward the jeep. One of the men stepped to the edge where she had been, aimed a gun down, and fired twice, presumably at Mason’s corpse.

“No!” she screeched.

“Shut that banshee up!” one of the men yelled.

In the next instant, pain laced her cheek from the backhanded slap. As she tried to clear her jarred brain, her coat was ripped from her body. A disgusting string of appreciative noises came from her assailants, and she was slammed up against the burning hot side of the still running jeep.

“Is she the one?” the man near the cliff asked. His voice was odd, harsh and scratchy, like he’d been smoking since birth.

“Looks like it,” the man next to her replied. He was the youngest of the three. “We should bring her in, just in case.”

“We only need to bring in her head,” the third man laughed.

Cora gagged on a sob. Her eyes blurred from both horror and the pain that still stung her cheek.

“Shame to kill such a sweet ass,” Scratchy Voice said apathetically.

“Well, we don’t have to kill her right away. Is the vamp dead?”

“I shot him three times. What do you think?”

A pair of rough hands pulled her forward and pushed her toward Scratchy Voice. “You hold her. I call first crack.”

“No way. I’m the one who brought you in on this. I go first.” He shoved her aside.

“Screw that. I don’t do sloppy seconds,” the young man said.

“Fuck you.”

Fists swung between the two, while the third held a gun to her head and waited indifferently for the outcome.

Cora stood, shaking, heart thundering, as she contemplated what was sure to be the end of her life. What a sad, pathetic, useless end. How utterly unimportant her life turned out to be. Nothing but an ode to endurance with less than a few short months dedicated to happiness. Or as close to happiness as she would ever experience.

What was the point of life, anyway, if there was nothing but sorrow, heartache, and pain?
If everyone was nothing more than cruelty wrapped up in the facade of civility. Morality was a joke created by cynics and con artists. Evil reigned at every turn. Anything good decayed like fruit and turned sour, hateful, greedy, and selfish.

She wasn’t fit for this world.

A snarling roar made the men freeze mid-fight.

Cora looked up.

A mountain lion stood atop a pile of rocks, some fifty feet away, its fangs bared at them.

The men swore
and scrambled back.

The young one yelled, “Shoot it!”
and the man with the gun to her head turned it on the animal.

Three loud shots
echoed off the mountain ridges, but the sound hadn’t come from the directions she’d expected.

The three men
fell lifeless, blood oozing from each of their skulls, staining the gravel.

Heart slamming, Cora crumbled to the ground, gasping and sobbing uncontrollably.

She gathered herself enough to glance around and take stock. The humans were dead. The lion was gone, most likely scared by the gunfire. She spied Mason’s upper body slumped over the edge of the cliff, a pistol in his limp hand. It seemed he had managed to pull himself up, but looked to be unconscious again.

“Mason?” she called, her voice shaking.

He didn’t respond, didn’t move.

The space around her now seemed eerily quiet, except for the jeep’s engine, which had been left idling.

Her mind jumped into overdrive, still riding on the heels of adrenaline. The wisest course of action would be to take the jeep and put as much space between her, Mason, St. Stamsworth, and vampires in general. Drive till either the car died, or she did.

At the thought, numbness coated her. Run till she died? It sounded no better than going back to the streets. Besides, Mason had saved her life. What was it?
Three times now? She owed him for that at least.

Beating back her t
repidation, she rummaged through the pockets of the dead men, claiming whatever cash she found. It wasn’t much. For good measure, she kicked one of them twice in the stomach. As pointless as it was, it made her feel better.

“Mace?”
She knelt beside him and rocked his body. “Mace? Can you hear me?”

His eyes fluttered. “Cora…” He finished with an incoherent mutter.

“If you can make it into the jeep, I can drive us out of here and find help.”

Mace seemed to understand. His head tilted up to gauge the distance between them and the jeep. His arm moved to push against the gravel, slowly elevating his torso. She helped as much as she could, which was almost not at all. When he inched forward, she caught the sight of his back. One of the shots had probably penetrated his spine. She spotted another gory wound at his shoulder. That didn’t include the first that had gouged his chest. All three wounds oozed a foul-smelling green substance. She couldn’t imagine the kind of pain he was in.

As he lumbered forward, dragging himself along the ground on his hands and knees, she yanked him by the arm, urging more than helping him along. He paused, breathing heavily, then slumped down. His lungs heaved for air.

Her gaze darted over her surroundings. They were in trouble if those men had back up. Then she remembered that mountain lion. Any moment, it could
return, enticed by the fresh scent of death.