Blackthorn [3] Blood Torn (36 page)

Perspiration coated her forehead, her palms and her back, despite the chill in the air.

She couldn’t lose him. She couldn’t
bear
to lose him.

She stumbled to an abrupt standstill.

There was something on the ground twenty or thirty feet ahead. Something still. But something that wasn’t like any debris that she had passed.

She caught her breath as she stared at it, expecting it to move.

It didn’t.

She looked across both shoulders. Checked behind her. There was no movement anywhere.

She looked back at the mound, headed slowly and cautiously towards it, all the time checking every angle within her visible field.

It was a figure. A hunched-up figure. A motionless, hunched up figure.

Her heart pounded, her legs leaden.

Jask.

Jask.

She stumbled forward, barely able to breathe. She
was moments away from throwing herself to her knees to turn him over.

But as she drew closer, her stomach flipped. The clothing was wrong. It wasn’t him.

The vampire lay dead, his neck at an impossible angle, clearly broken sharply and efficiently.

She stumbled past him, noticed movement against the building off to her right.

She hurried towards the scuffle. Heard a cry of pain. Heard the crack of bones.

Jask lifted the vampire off the ground and slammed him against the wall single-handedly in one swift and powerful move.

This was the warfare that was always potential between the species. This was what they were trying to avoid. This was how it would be if they were pitched against each other. This was lycan versus vampire.

She had no doubt he’d been responsible for the other vampire, probably the third one too. And he seemed to be planning exactly the same fate for this one.

Her relief to see he was okay was intense.

Her instinctive reaction after that was immoral. More than that, she knew it was unjustly immoral under the circumstances. The vampire was still a living, breathing creature, however she felt about them. A creature on the cusp of being throttled. But all she could do was trace her gaze slowly up the back of Jask’s jeans, where his stance tightened the otherwise loose fabric around his strong thighs, to where it also now pulled tighter over his solid, pert arse. The narrow but masculine tautness of his waist was partially exposed by his slightly uplifted shirt. The power in his shoulders, the strain of his biceps against the sleeve of his extended muscular arm that effortlessly held the vampire against the wall.

The vampire almost surely equated Jask in height and weight, but that seemed to make no difference. Jask was angry. Angry enough that when he glanced across his shoulder, obviously having sensed her presence, even she took a wary step back.

‘I
told
you to stay put,’ he said.

And the impatient edge to his voice, the command in his tone, did nothing to abate her flutter of arousal.

She closed the gap between them. ‘I thought you might need my help,’ she said, folding her arms. ‘Which clearly you do.’

He exhaled tersely at her attempt at humour. ‘I’ll let you know,’ he said, before returning his attention back to the vampire struggling for breath.

He tightened the grip on the vampire’s throat, Sophia watching on as she saw the brute determination in Jask’s eyes.

‘Enough time wasted,’ Jask said. ‘I want to know who has put the bounty on her and why.’

‘A bounty?’ Sophia echoed. This was why the vampire wasn’t dead yet. Jask was after information.

‘We were being spied on,’ Jask said, his glare not flinching from the vampire who was turning a peculiar shade even in the shadows.

But the vampire was staying silent. Moments from his own potential death, it was obvious that whoever he was working for wasn’t anyone he wanted to grass on – further confirmation that this was someone big.

‘Is it Caleb Dehain?’ Sophia asked.

Jask glowered back across at her for her interruption.

But Sophia took a step closer anyway. ‘Is it?’ she demanded of the vampire.

The vampire licked his dry lips. His attention shot back to Jask.

‘No,’ Sophia snapped. She dropped her hands to her sides, clenched and unclenched them, her proximity to the vampire already sending her hazy. ‘Don’t look at him – look at me. You think he’s the bad cop in this? I haven’t even started. He can snap your neck in seconds. I can let this take hours. Did whoever’s paying you tell you you’re hunting a serryn?’

The vampire frowned. He looked confused, disbelief evident in his eyes.

‘No, I didn’t think so,’ she said. She looked back at Jask. ‘We’ve got a little bit of time to play with, haven’t we? I could start feeding him my blood now. Or dawn will be here in a couple of hours. We could wait until then. And when the sun’s properly up, we could strap him to one of the rust buckets of a car back there – bake him for a little while until he’s ready to speak.’

Jask looked back at her, his eyebrows slightly raised. She couldn’t tell if he was genuinely surprised by her suggestion, but he seemed to be willing to play along. ‘That’s quite the imagination you’ve got there, honey. Remind me never to cross you.’

She shrugged. ‘I have more invasive procedures for situations like that.’

He smirked. A genuine smirk. But then he looked back at the vampire. ‘So do I,’ he said, yanking the vampire away from the wall. He glanced back over his shoulder at Sophia. ‘And this time, you
stay
here,’ he commanded, before dragging the vampire over to the nearest door, kicking it open and forcing him inside.

Sophia checked over her shoulder at the desolate housing estate behind her, listened to the distant sounds of Blackthorn caught on the night breeze.

She looked back at where Jask had disappeared. She flinched when she heard the first of the gut-wrenching yells, more intermittent ones soon echoing from inside the derelict apartment.

Nervous of someone else hearing and coming to investigate, she looked over her shoulder again as the minutes passed, as the yells kept coming. Until, placing one foot in front of the other against her better judgement, she stepped up to the window to peer inside.

Moonlight from the temporarily dispersed clouds created a seamless shower through the broken roof of the abandoned apartment. Jask stood in the shadows to the right of it, the vampire splayed on his back on top of a kitchen table.

She squinted but couldn’t see exactly what he was doing – only the shudders of the vampire’s body as Jask loomed over him. She flinched again as the vampire jolted.

A conversation was happening – a conversation she felt she had the right to hear.

She pushed open the door and stepped inside, approaching the table just in time to hear the vampire splutter, ‘Caleb. It
is
Caleb. He’s the one who wants her.’

Sophia’s heart skipped a beat.

‘Why?’ Jask demanded.

But, for Sophia, whether it was confirmation that he knew what The Alliance had done to Jake or whether it was because he knew there was a serryn loose in Blackthorn, it was irrelevant – Caleb was coming for her.

‘I don’t know,’ the vampire gasped. ‘He… he put a call out on the streets. Anyone who sees her is to report back.’

‘He wants her alive?’ Jask asked.

‘Yes,’ the vampire said.

Jask withdrew his left hand, the one nearest to her, from the vampire’s throat. A split second later, he rammed it into the vampire’s side, up under his ribcage. The vampire jolted violently, the shock transparent in his eyes.

Sophia jolted too. She instinctively took a step back as she stared at Jask’s now retracted bloodied hand, at the mound of muscle that he held there – the vampire’s torn out heart black in the moonlight.

She held her breath waiting for Jask to acknowledge her. Waiting for something, anything, to happen next.

But he didn’t look at her. He didn’t speak as he dropped the now defunct organ to the floor, as he walked into the moonlight shower.

Instead he turned his back on her, crouched down, dunked his hand in the water-filled bucket, shaking off the excess water like some ritualistic cleansing as he stood again.

She looked across at the vampire corpse that now resembled a limp and abandoned macabre toy. Proof of what the lycan leader was capable of.

And she
had
to take a closer look.

Her hand shot to her mouth as she stared at the purposeful bloodletting, at the severed and torn tendons and muscles that demonstrated Jask knew all the vampire weaknesses. That he no doubt knew a human’s too. The torture had been the work of a craftsman – a swift, efficient and experienced craftsman.

This
was why Jask was the alpha in his pack.
This
was why Jask could be the alpha anywhere he chose to be. Because when it came to it, Jask did what he had to do. He’d done exactly what he’d once warned lycans do – he had torn in
all
the right places.

And had succeeded in getting what he wanted as result.

The heat inside, the heat building inches below her stomach, scorched. The blood spilling had incited something in her just as much as it had incited the wolf in him. The serryn was resurfacing again – summoned by the scent of vampire blood in the air, her survival instincts kicking in at witnessing the slaughter. She felt herself become hazy, felt the dark room closing in on her so all she could focus on was Jask and his moonlit backdrop.

He remained with his back to her, his interlinked hands holding the back of his head, his talons, still partially extended, caught by the moonlight. His legs were apart in a soldier-type stance, his sleeves still rolled up and revealing his powerful forearms, his breaths slow and laboured as if he were calming himself.

Or trying to.

Because he was
trying
to be a soldier; his acts had been those of a soldier looking out for his pack. And she now felt a part of that pack – in his purpose for her at least.

His clinical act to get what he needed from the vampire gave her a sense of belonging she hadn’t felt in a long time. The comfort of a family unit she had felt she had no place being a part of ever since she had been responsible for tearing her own apart.

Only now she sensed she was on the cusp of losing it again.

Her pulse raced, perspiration coating her palms.

Hearing that Caleb wanted her had changed things. Jask knew they were both in way over their heads now that the notorious vampire’s involvement had been confirmed. That it was only a matter of time before they were cornered – no doubt a catalyst to Jask’s anger. And from the way he ignored her, she guessed he was holding her responsible for the raised odds.

But if this was his rejection, if he’d resolved Caleb wasn’t worth tackling, then he was going to tell her to her face. Because they had become a team in those past few hours and she wasn’t walking away from that yet.

Because now Caleb was after her, she needed Jask more than ever. More to the point, her sisters needed him. They needed the lycan she had just caught a glimpse of.

And she was going to fight her corner to keep him.

‘You’re angry, I get it,’ she said, her mouth dry, her numb hands clenched. ‘But if you want to back out on me now, whatever plan you had for me, then you turn and you tell me to my face. Because I did warn you, Jask. I did tell you this could involve Caleb. It’s not like–’

She detected his curt exhale in the silence. He dropped his arms to his sides and turned to face her.

A spark of electricity shot through her – something visceral, something instinctive, something too evocative awakened right then. Her stomach curdled, his eyes as hypnotic as they were fatal.

This was the monster.
This
was what they all feared. This was Jask on the cusp of unleashing his true temperament.

His eyes, from what she could see from the few feet away, were consumed by his opal pupils. His canines glimmered behind the gap in his sensual lips. Lips that had gone down on her, tasting her shamelessly, taking her beyond what she thought possible in the cell.

And he most definitely
was
trying to calm himself. His still-laboured breathing told her that much – his hard chest, revealed even more by the top buttons lost from his shirt in the struggle, rising and falling non-rhythmically.

Despite the coolness of the night air, she felt hot, flustered as those eyes remained mesmerizingly locked on hers.

She didn’t know if she was consenting to suicide, staring right back at him – every instinct compelling her to pull away.

Because Ellen came to mind. That this was how she had met her end. That for some reason Jask had lost it – killed her by accident, not murdered her as he claimed.

But she remained rooted to the spot – armed only with the hope he was still focused enough to remember that he
did
need her alive.

And rooted to the spot because she wanted him. Stood there oozing all that was powerful, the untamed glint in his eyes, she
wanted
him. Badly.

And he sensed it.

As his eyes narrowed, her instincts took over.
Her
instincts, those of the serryn suppressed in the wake of what could be about to happen.

She dropped his jacket and took a wary step back.

He turned his head slightly, watching her out of the corner of her eye.

She snapped back a breath. Realising her nerves were inciting him further, she froze.

Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.

He closed in on her in seconds.

He pushed her forward over the dilapidated kitchen counter nearby and kicked her legs apart with ease.

Her breaths became short gasps as his fingers coiled in her hair, as his powerful legs pressed against the backs of her thighs, his arm across her shoulder blades holding her down in the submissive pose he clearly craved.

* * *

All he could see was her – Phia bent forward over the counter, ready for his taking, her futile attempt at a struggle only inflaming him more.

All he could smell was the scent of vampire blood in the air mingled with her arousal. His heart pounded, the fast-flowing blood in his veins setting every nerve alight. He was breathless, the sense of liberation more powerful than he had felt even since their encounter in the cell – the liberation he had felt when, instead of withdrawing, he had succumbed to the thrill of spilling inside her, her serryn womb enticingly ineffectual at any semblance of creating life. Ineffectual of condemning him.