Diana's Hound: Bloodhounds, Book 4 (16 page)

Nate swore and dragged her back, slamming her against the wall as another bullet narrowly missed her. “Vance!” he roared. “I know it’s you. I’ve known you since I was a boy, but I never knew you to be a traitor.”

“Nathaniel Powell.” The voice boomed off the walls and water. “I never knew you to be a vampire, either.”

“Do you know many vampires who walk under the sun with impunity?”

“Now he knows one.” A dark-haired man in a long duster walked out of the shadows across the bridge, straight up to the highest point in the middle.

The man’s face was unremarkable, wouldn’t have been familiar at all without the recollection of the sketch Emmett had shown her. No, it was the voice that robbed Diana of breath, snuck icy fingers up her spine and into the base of her skull, rendering her motionless. Paralyzed. She’d heard that voice before—in the blind terror of her nightmares, and on one fateful, horrific night in the forest.

Shh. It only hurts for a minute.

The bloodhound stood between them and their only hope of escape. Nate tensed, but not because of the hound’s appearance. He was staring at her, and the hand that came up to cup her shoulder was gentle. “It’s him, isn’t it?”

She shook away Nate’s hand. She couldn’t stand to have him touching her, not with the memories slamming into her with the force of a locomotive, ripping away a blankness that had had years to settle into her mind.

“Sweet. That’s what I remember about you.” The rogue hound smiled slowly and uncocked the hammer of his revolver as he held it up. “You want to fight?”

Any possible reply was swallowed up by the
rage
. It burst forth from a place inside her she hadn’t known existed, a dark place still filled with claws and teeth, broken screams and wicked laughter.

Her hands were steady as she squeezed her fingers tight around the hilts of her knives and slid them into their sheaths. Her voice, though—oh, that trembled like a sapling in a storm. “I want to fight.”

Chapter Nine

The bloodhound bolted, and Nate realized what was happening a second too late. His fingers closed on empty air as Diana raced after him, human sense lost beneath the gleam of a hunter.

No, a huntress. Ephraim Phillips’s last joke against the Guild, his goddess of the hunt come into her own. Nate was only vaguely worried about her physical safety—the arrogant hound who thought he was drawing Diana into a trap would discover his mistake quickly enough—but her sanity, her
spirit
—

She was facing the monster of her nightmares, and Nate wouldn’t be there to help her. Because they were being drawn apart, split up, which could only mean one thing.

Boots scraped against cobblestones, and Nate spun to face a man he hadn’t seen in decades. Eugene Vance was older, his beard nearly as white as his hair and his face had been carved by stress. This was a bloodhound not so many years younger than Emmett himself, a respected hero of legend whose voice had carried weight even with presidents.

And he was standing in the heart of the vampire’s most cherished city. Then again, so was Nate. “This is not the reunion I would have imagined for us.”

“No, I suppose not.” Curiosity curved the man’s mouth, but a steely determination straightened it. “I do wish you hadn’t come here, Nate.”

Diana’s blood still pulsed in his veins, a double-edged sword that gave him strength but made the sun’s punishing light weigh on him that much more heavily. He felt feverish, as if his skin was slowly heating, a long build to the sort of flames that could consume a vampire. He didn’t know if they would, but either way, he knew there wasn’t time to find out.

Luckily, the strength came with something else. Vance’s mind was a humming buzz just beyond Nate’s awareness. Stretching his mental senses outward, he tried to distract the bloodhound with idle words. “I wish I hadn’t had to come. I may be no creation of the Guild’s, Vance, but I still do their work. I was chasing rumors of a rogue hound. Did I find him?”

“The Guild?” Vance echoed. “What in hell could you possibly know about the Guild’s work, Powell? You’ve spent the last God-knows-how-many years stuck in your backwoods laboratory, cut off from everything.”

“You’re right,” he agreed. The bloodhound’s thoughts were blurry, protected, but Nate poured more strength into pushing into the other man’s mind. Sweat beaded his skin, but he didn’t waver. “I’m doing
good
work. Protecting people from vampires. That used to be the Guild’s work.”

“That’s what you tell yourself, I’m sure.” Vance shook his head, disgusted. “History forgets weak men who chose the easy way and told themselves they did it because it was right. History forgets them because they’re all dead.”

Nate’s skin might be hot, but his heart was frozen. “What’s the hard way, then? Selling girls to vampires as toys? The daughter of one of our own? One of
your
own?”

Vance arched an eyebrow and waved his pistol. “These cost money, Nate. Coal and copper, they cost money too. Food, clothing,
women
—everything the Guild provides costs plenty of goddamn money. Where do you think it comes from?”

“And the rogue hound? How much did he cost?” The senior bloodhound was spilling truth over the cobblestones, but Nate didn’t want words. He wanted plans. He wanted everything. So he pushed harder, and wondered if he was imagining the scent of his own skin burning. “Or is he just another thing you’re selling to the highest bidder?”

Vance clenched his teeth as he aimed the revolver square at Nate. “He’s the ticket to winning this—”

The thoughts hit Nate in a rush as the hound’s mind yielded, drowning out his words and flooding him with images and snatches of words. A dozen conversations and a hundred moments slammed into Nate, scattering his own sense of self for a dizzying moment. He
was
Eugene Vance, he lived and breathed his life, knew his hopes and fears. It faded in the space of a heartbeat, leaving memories Nate would have to untangle later. If there was a later.

But one thing didn’t fade. A single, resounding thought.
“Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”

Nate tasted resignation in the space between them and wrenched his body out of the way before he realized why. A bullet whipped through the empty space he’d left behind, and Nate realized he had something else born of their lingering connection, something that might keep an untrained scientist alive against a warrior with decades of experience.

He knew what Vance would do next.

The bastard was trying to get away.

Diana’s blood pounded in her ears, and her vision reddened as she stumbled around yet another corner in the labyrinthine streets. The hound was
toying
with her, playing as he would with wounded prey.

It made her jaw ache with fury, the audacity. The condescension. He would die with her hands around his bleeding throat, with her husband’s name ringing in his ears.

His voice came from somewhere to her left, laughing and oddly proud. “I thought you’d be tired by now, girl. You must come from good stock.”

She swung around with a hiss. “I don’t think so, since you’re scared to face me.”

The jab worked. She heard a warning scrape above her before he dropped into the narrow alley a few feet away, his duster flying out behind him like a pair of demonic wings. “I’m not scared of anything.”

“That makes you stupid, then.”

“It makes me a bloodhound, honey. You’d know that, if you were a man.”

“If I were a man, you wouldn’t assume this would be an easy fight.” Diana took a step back, toward a wider part of the alley, where two facing porticos formed a clearing. “That’s your second mistake.”

He advanced on her easily, almost lazily, as if he didn’t want to spook her into running again. “Second, huh? I expect I’m to ask what the first was?”

“That’s simple.” She had her knives, along with a few little surprises Nate had made her tuck into her corset, so she stood her ground. “Leaving me alive last time.”

His smile turned what should have been a handsome face into something terrifying. Or maybe it was his eyes. Crazed with sick enjoyment. “An oversight I don’t plan to repeat. It’s a pity you ain’t more appealing. For such a fine-looking woman, you stink of bloodhound.”

Thanks to him—literally. Diana pulled one knife and lunged, spinning instead of stabbing, and caught him in the throat with her elbow. He grunted and staggered back a step, and the first hint of worry filled his eyes as he reached for a knife.

Yes.
Out of all the weapons, the blades were
hers
. She was good with them, and fast too. As long as she managed to stay out of range until she was ready to strike, he didn’t stand a chance.

His fingers closed around the hilt, but when he pulled the knife, he didn’t hold it like someone accustomed to the feel of the blade. The amusement might be gone, but arrogance still choked him as he circled her, his gaze darting from her hands to her shoulders to her eyes, searching for a hint to her next movement. “I was gonna kill you quick, you know. Make it a mercy, for not finishing you off last time. Not anymore.”

“Good. Because I’m going to make you hurt.” She shot forward, slashing her knife across the inside of his blade arm.

This time she earned a yelp before he spun around, swinging at her fast and hard—but not fast enough. She was used to dodging Hunter, who shared this man’s lethal bulk but lacked her speed. And just like Hunter, he growled when she ducked away.

Unlike Hunter, he didn’t pause to regroup or think. He lunged again, lips pulled back in a snarl.

Big men tired fast when every effort was a full-bore attack, and all Diana had to do was wait him out. But the urge to spill blood, maybe even to taste it between her teeth, made her impatient. Her skin prickled from the inside out, each breath a struggle as her pulse pounded a heavy, eager refrain.

She got clumsy. One ill-timed strike left him the opportunity to come in under her guard, deep enough to slice through her corset and leave a line of fire across her ribs.

Don’t waste it.
Wilder’s voice, of all things, echoed in her mind. She lashed out through the pain, felt her knife sink into flesh, and the hound staggered back, clutching his side.

Don’t waste it.

Nate still had four rounds, and one pissed-off bloodhound.

Maybe Vance was too irritated to realize Nate was trying to maneuver the fight toward Diana. Surely the hound couldn’t feel her the way Nate could, as if her blood had strung a bond out between them. He could close his eyes and spin and come up facing Diana every time.

It was a pity a maze of alleys, bridges and buildings stood between her and him.

The only blessing was that no one had spilled into the streets to help. Nate imagined that grace would end if either of them fell. Vampires who were willing to lurk in dark buildings and watch the Guild eat itself from within would surely venture forth to pick over the bones of the winner.

Vance spun around with the agility of a man half his age and kicked Nate in the stomach. The air left him in a whoosh, but Nate clung to the odd pre-echo, the whisper of what was to come, and wrenched his body out of the way of the next blow. It put the bloodhound off balance, body extended, and Nate risked a precious bullet by aiming for the hound’s leg.

He cursed himself for stupid even as the shot went wide. A knee was a small target. He should have taken his chance and gone for the chest or the gut, but some part of him still rebelled at the very notion, even with his life on the line. Some lingering respect for a man he’d grown up in awe of, some hope that the tangle of thoughts had been
wrong
.

“There has to be another way,” he grated out as he scrambled back out of reach. “A way that doesn’t involve selling the people you’re meant to protect to the enemies you were made to fight.”

“You’re still not thinking in the long term,” Vance snapped, sounding more irritated than anything. “First, we learn them, inside and out,
then
we fight them. The Guild leaders finally realized it has to be that way.”

Horror clenched tight in his gut. “And the border? The hounds who are fighting and dying on their own to protect bits of land you’re all but giving away? Acceptable losses as well, I imagine?”

Vance halted in his advance. “We have men who die every day simply trying to become bloodhounds. You know how dangerous the transformation is, the attrition rates. Volunteers are getting scarce.” He held out his arms to take in the buildings around them. “But the vampires, they have humans flocking to them. It’s a numbers game, Nate, and we can’t win it.”

Nate had heard those words before. They’d been thrown at him time and time again, first as a plea, then a threat. When he’d been banished to the border to rethink his lack of commitment to the Guild’s cause, it had been with those words ringing in his ears.
It’s a numbers game, and we can’t win it.

We can’t win it—yet.

If Vance had moved to strike him down in that moment, he might not have had the wherewithal to stop him. “The wraith project. They’ve restarted it, haven’t they?”

“I would tell Nathaniel Powell, Guild inventor,” Vance ground out. “But according to all reports, he’s dead.”