Hunted, The Complete Edition: A Full-length Steamy Vampire Romance (New England Nightwalkers) (17 page)

“Sit,” Fenton ordered.

Zara, following her plan to go along with her captors until she could see a good way to escape, pulled out a chair and sunk down onto it. When she looked up, Fenton stood over her, pulling a small bottle of peroxide, a rag and bandages from his suit pocket.

“Stick out your leg,” he ordered. “We can’t have Gabriel exposed to your bleeding ankle.” He drew two fingers through the bloody mess and brought it to his nose, inhaling deeply. “Yes,” he murmured with his eyes half-lidded. “Delicious.”

Zara turned away, sickened by the exhibition of this creature’s bloodlust. He shook his head as if waking from a trance. “But I suppose Gabriel would take exception to me even tasting your blood from a wound. It’s like that, you know, between a Necessary and a Master.”

“A what?”

“Necessary,” he said, his tone matter of fact. “It’s a very old concept, and relegated to nightwalker folklore, but it is the only thing that fits.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Of course, you wouldn’t.” His lips were curved in a wry smile. “You tell yourself you love a vampire and you don’t know the first thing about us.”

“I don’t--ouch!”

Fenton applied the peroxide-soaked rag to her ankle and the astringent painfully collided with raw and wounded flesh. He
tsk
ed at her apparent discomfort.

“Humans. So weak. Gabriel suffered far more pain tonight than what you sit there gasping from, Helen of Troy.”

Zara’s resolve to play along was rapidly melting in the face of Fenton’s remarks. She sucked in a deep breath as he wrapped her ankle in a layer of cotton wrap and then a putty-colored bandage.

“That’s too tight,” she said with a sharp intake of breath.

“Sorry,” he said in a voice that said he actually didn’t care much either way, but he unwrapped and then wrapped her ankle less tightly.

“Ah, speak of the devil, here he is,” said Fenton.

“Where?” asked Zara. She didn’t see anyone at all.

“Can’t you hear him move toward us? I can.”

“Of course you can,” said Zara. “I’m--”

“Only human?” Fenton finished the sentence, looking in her eyes. He seemed to dare her to respond.

“Yes,” she hissed as Gabriel filled the entrance of the dining room.

“What did you bring us for dinner, Fenton?” asked Gabriel.

“Chicken alfredo and shrimp scampi.”

Zara studied Gabriel as he stood in the doorway. His face was drawn and pinched looking and very pale. But he moved forward with his usual grace, disappearing into the kitchen and returning with plates and silverware in hand.

“You needn’t set a place for me, old man,” said Fenton as he reached for one from a set of wine glasses sitting on a highboy against the outside wall. “I’ve brought my own.”

Fenton produced a bag of deep red liquid from his jacket pocket and nipped off a corner with his incisors, then squeezed the contents in the glass.

Gabriel was unfazed by this display as he loaded the plates with helpings of scampi, chicken and salad. He put a plate before her. “Go ahead, eat,” he said.

Zara didn’t know if she could manage eating while watching Fenton sip the blood in obvious satisfaction.

“Do you want some?” he said, holding his glass to Gabriel who shook his head. In fact, Gabriel’s complexion turned slightly green.

Gabriel lifted his fork and took a mouthful of the chicken alfredo but had trouble swallowing it.

“Really, Gabriel,” persisted Fenton. “I understand why you let yourself get weak, but you need some real food. If you want, I’ll bleed her for you and put it in a glass. That way--”

Gabriel clutched at his stomach and turned even more pasty white. Almost overturning his chair he bolted from the table headed toward the bathroom. The sounds of Gabriel retching reached Zara’s ears and she flinched.

Fenton shook his head slowly and pursed his lips.

“Well, that’s not good,” he said. “Spoils dinner altogether.”

She didn’t care about Gabriel. Not anymore, but Fenton’s blasé attitude toward his own brethren’s suffering irritated her, and she couldn’t hold her tongue.

“I don’t like your attitude. I didn’t ask to be brought here and chained to my bed. I didn’t ask to be lied to by one of you nightwalkers, spied on and seduced. I was living my life perfectly fine before Gabriel stepped in front of my car and started this whole mess. If it were possible, I’d wind the clock back to the time before I met him. But
you
are here because you want to be. Gabriel is one of
your
kind. Surely a little compassion wouldn’t be remiss.”

Fenton studied Zara as if he were seeing her for the first time.

“That’s an absolutely stunning declaration, my dear. And one that makes me question whether you’re being honest with yourself about just how badly you want to get out of here.”

She should’ve kept her mouth shut. Now, she folded her arms over her chest and tried to shut his smooth tones out as he continued.

“Do you know how many humans choose to stay with Masters once they’re made aware of their position and given the choice?”

She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of admitting she didn’t, so she stayed mulishly silent.

“All of them. We’re the flame to your moth. We represent power, and lust and life everlasting. But not you, oh no. You chose him when he didn’t force you to…when you had no idea of his worth, and would walk away from him now, even knowing his power and the power he can bestow upon you. How strange. How quaint. How rare. Maybe he was right after all, Helen of Troy.”

Fenton closed his eyes again, sniffed, and cocked his head toward the bathroom. When he opened his eyes he looked at her more intently. His gaze had gone from gold to a deep, emerald green and if Zara didn’t know what he was, she could have gotten lost in them.

“Perhaps…” he said cryptically. He pulled his chair closer to her and spoke in an urgent whisper, the smooth, cavalier front dropping away like a curtain. “Do you know why Gabriel is so sick?”

“He said something about treatments. That he was doing something to make himself less detectable to his Master?”

“No.” His eyes blazed. “Not just that. We are working on a serum to kill the vampire virus in his blood so he can be human again. But the very quality of the virus that makes it possible for us to heal quickly makes it a very difficult strain to kill. I’ve had to up the dosage on some very dangerous substances to the point of toxicity. So far we’ve reduced the viral load temporarily for a longer period each time, with each increase in dosage, which means it’s working. But you see what it is doing to him. If I end up killing the virus, I could end up killing him too.”

A cold shiver snaked down Zara’s spine. Killing him?

“Does he know the risk?” she asked.

“Oh, yes.”

“Then why would he risk his life?” Zara’s whisper came out anguished and at that moment she was a woman torn between two worlds. These men weren’t men at all. They were abominations like the one that murdered her father brutally. The ones who were responsible for the Bonfire Massacre. Innocents had been slaughtered. She had lost her last connection to flesh and blood family because the nightwalkers wouldn’t allow him to live.

But watching Gabriel trying to wrench his humanity back through a painful and life-threatening process affected Zara in some deep way she couldn’t explain. Her insides twisted as she recalled the tortured screams she heard earlier in the evening.

She should hate him for lying to her, and she supposed she did. But another very real part of her hated those screams down to her very marrow.

The vampire studied her again for long moments, measuring his reply. She got the distinct impression he was deciding what to tell her and what to hold back, which had her blood boiling again.

“I’m sick to death of secrets, just say it, god damn it!”

Fenton opened his mouth to reply, but Gabriel stepped into the room, shooting a puzzled glance between them.

“You two getting along?” he said, eyeing Fenton hard.

“We’re just having a little ‘getting to know you’ chat,” said Fenton cheerily, the curtain firmly back in place.

“Good, then,” said Gabriel.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to go back to my room and get some sleep,” she said, pushing her chair away from the table to stand.

“Go ahead,” said Gabriel, pointing wearily to the stairs, his gorgeous face etched with a combination of pain and defeat that tore at her insides.

She left the room and climbed the stairs, her heart aching all the while. She should be stoking the fury, looking for ways to escape and, eventually, get even with Gabriel. But seeing his pain was slowly chipping that away, leaving behind confusion, fear and despair.

When she finally closed her eyes, hoarse, agonized screams filled her head.

Sleep was a long time coming.

G
abriel woke
from the sleep of the dead. Through the slatted window blinds of the darkened room, faint stabs of light sliced through. They cast long, thin lines on the comforter he lay under and he blinked, trying to remember where he was.

The cabin in the woods just over the Massachusetts border in Connecticut.

It was far enough away from the Cape and the nightwalkers so that Ezekiel couldn’t locate him easily, but close enough he could be at the club within an hour or so if things blew up in his face and he needed to take the impending war to them in order to protect Zara.

What had happened last night?

He shivered when the memory of intense pain hit him. Fucking Fenton. Each “cure” was worse than the last. Gabriel was beginning to think that there was no cure to his curse at all and that all this pain was only going to succeed in getting his hopes up and lining Fenton’s pockets.

Unlike other nightwalkers, he did consider vampirism a curse. He didn’t exult in the superhuman strength of body, his practical immortality, or the magnetic powers he could hold over the minds of humans. Instead, he mourned the loss of compassion that made humanity worthwhile.

Maybe it was because he was made unwillingly. Maybe because of what he’d witnessed with his mother’s turning. He let the memories wash over him. His mother’s frantic cries, urging him to run, then her unnatural calm as her attacker molded her will to his own. Had he not run that day, maybe things would’ve been different. Maybe the vampire would’ve killed him. Instead, he escaped, but when he’d returned, mother had been different. Forever changed. A prisoner, locked in her own mind, as her nightwalker lover came and took from her.

He was too young to know what he was seeing, too young to understand. When he was seventeen, she finally told him the truth. And, in a rare moment of clarity, asked him to let her turn him so she wouldn’t need to live and watch his death some day. He ran again. But he hadn’t run far enough.

It had taken a few years, but they’d caught up to him. He was a loose string. A potential leak that they needed to plug, and Ezekiel had been the enforcer. He could’ve killed him that day, but instead he turned him, thinking he was being merciful.

Gabriel still remembered his first taste of human blood. The young woman struggling under him, more than a century past. He was sure he had lost something more important to him than life that day.

He had lost his immortal soul.

But from that day to this, he’d done his best to stick to his own twisted code. The same code that had him resisting Irena’s demands to follow Zara and coerce information from her.

And now? She was his prisoner.

So much for his code.

He shoved back the rush of self-hatred and focused on the goal. He simply could not remain as he was. Painful or not, this cure would work.

It had to.

Gabriel stretched his muscles and was relieved that the agony of the night before had faded, leaving only a twinge of discomfort. This was progress. Each time prior, he’d been left feeling weak and wrung out for days.

He stood tentatively and waited for the lightheadedness to overtake him, but it never came.

This was very good.

He flexed his hands and forced an unneeded breath of air into his lungs. As the oxygen coursed through him, something else rippled through his body. A hum of some kind…

He couldn’t explain it, but it felt as if his body buzzed with energy.

A shudder rocked him back on his heels as he tried to curb his excitement. He tugged on his jeans and a clean t-shirt and jogged down the stairs. When he entered the kitchen, Fenton sat at the table drinking a cup of coffee. The beverage smelled remarkably good and he poured himself a cup.

“Morning,” said Fenton drolly.

“It is a good morning, actually,” said Gabriel, staring out of the kitchen window to the woods beyond. The shaded light that filtered in from the canopied back porch didn’t make him flinch, or even blink to adjust. Instead he marveled at the sunlight dancing between the needles of the jack pines at the edge of the backyard.

“How are you feeling?” asked Fenton.

“Different.”

“How?” Fenton demanded, setting down his mug with a
thump
.

“It’s hard to describe.”

“Uh, your doctor, here,” Fenton said, his tone laced with impatience now. “I need some information, so give it a whirl, would you?”

Gabriel tried to think of a way to explain the almost intangible sensation running through him. “Sort of like I’m waking from a deep sleep, but haven’t quite reached full consciousness yet.”

“Well, that’s poetic. I was looking more for if you have a headache, pain anywhere, numbness, or tingling in the limbs.”

Gabriel shook his head. “Tingling, but not like the numb kind. More like an altered awareness.” He squashed the nerves using his stomach as a punching bag, faced Fenton and pinned him with a gaze. “Like Frankenstein slowly coming to life.” He searched the other man’s face for his reaction as he spoke. “Fenton, I think you just might have done it.”

Fenton drew back and shook his head slowly. “Oh, Gabriel, that’s surely a very premature assumption.”

Gabriel refused to let the doctor’s doubts dampen his excitement. “Let’s test it out, then.” He strode to the backdoor and reached for the doorknob.

“Jesus Christ, Gabe, wait--”

But Gabriel was already out the door and heading out from beneath the protective cover of the porch.

For the first time in more than a century, he felt the full sunlight touch his face, and he gloried in its warm caress. He took two more steps and put his feet on the green grass and raised his arms, feeling triumphant.

Awesome.

Amazing.

Perfect.

In that surreal moment, all the pain, the sickness, all the suffering he endured from Fenton’s treatments had come full circle.

He was human again.

Gabriel’s first instinct was to get Zara and show her that he was free of his terrible affliction. But the moment her face flickered into his mind, his brain went haywire. The lushness of her body, the heat, the fire.

Sexual hunger burst into desperate, bone-crushing bloodlust as images of a naked Zara under him filled his brain. His fangs descended, and he forcibly stepped back as grating hunger…no, starvation for her blood gripped him.

He stared up into the beauty of the cloudless sky as rage flooded through every cell in his cursed body.

Quaking from head to toe, he tamped down the awful need intent on defeating his will. In time, he was able to calm his thirst to a dull roar, but his anger didn’t subside.

His steps into the house were a fearsome march, and he slammed the door so hard it sounded like a thunderclap, rattling the dishes in their cupboards.

He gripped Fenton’s shirt, and he hauled the doctor to his feet roughly.

Fenton gave him a wry smile.

“I tried to warn you. It won’t be that easy, Gabriel. What we’re doing here is--”

“Is this all a game to you,” snapped Gabriel. “Do you not understand what’s at stake? After all the agony, all this work…all I can do is stand in the sun. I’m still a fucking vampire, Fenton. If Ezekiel gets within fifty miles of me, both me and Zara are dead meat. But hey, at least now, I can hide out on a beach somewhere for the twelve hours between sunrise and sunset before he murders us both.”

Fenton looked at him with a bored expression, which infuriated Gabriel even more. The doctor pulled Gabriel’s hands away with his own and stepped back. He smoothed his jacket before fixing his lips into a cool smile.

“Seems like I’m getting it from all sides today, hmm? Look, I don’t know what you expect. I told you from the outset that we are fighting against the odds on this one. Be thankful you can walk into the sunlight. You joke, but it’s an advantage that Ezekiel does not have and a major step forward. It tells me we are on the right path. Now,” Fenton said, spreading his hands, “if you aren’t satisfied with my services, perhaps you should find another doctor.”

“Fuck,” Gabriel swore softly, shaking his head. Fenton was right. The sudden letdown when he realized he was still a nightwalker shook him hard, but he was definitely shooting the messenger here. “I apologize. I know you’re doing your best, but we’re running out of time.”

“I’m aware, Gabriel. I just don’t let my emotions rule my responses. Feelings slow down the work. And that, as you know, is one of the two things I’m about.”

The sound of wood scraping against the hardwood floors filled the little room as Gabriel pulled a chair to sit.

“I still don’t understand why you want to give up being a nightwalker.”

“Because I can’t love her the way I am.”

“Your little human
is
interesting, I’ll grant you that. But it seems like you’re throwing a lot away for her.”

Gabriel slapped his hand hard on the table.

“You’ve been a nightwalker too long. You’ve forgotten what it’s like, I think. What you see as weakness I see as strength. It takes great bravery to love someone with your whole heart the way humans do, all the while knowing you will eventually lose them.”

“That’s true,” admitted Fenton. “But when I was made, the kind of love you’re talking about was rarer than dragon’s teeth. People married for money, or social position. Even the lower class married because of an unfortunate pregnancy or because the man needed someone to do his laundry and bake his bread. At least, that’s what I assume. I can’t say I know much about the lower class.”

“You’re dating yourself here. And,” said Gabriel, holding up his coffee in a salute, “outing yourself as a snob as well as a cynic.”

Fenton shrugged. “I won’t argue there. Proud to be both,” he said, and then took a sip of his coffee.

“Besides,” continued Gabriel, “I think you’re wrong. Love isn’t new. Shakespeare wrote about it quite a lot.”

“He didn’t seem to be enthusiastic about it,” Fenton said with a snort. “Either he killed off the lovers or transformed them into donkeys.”

“There were originally two endings to Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare couldn’t help it if the more tragic one caught the imagination of the public.”

“My point exactly,” said Fenton. “Humans find quite a bit of pain in this ‘love’ you seem to be so fond of.”

“But that’s the problem with us. With nightwalkers,” replied Gabriel. “We’re so used to getting what we want, being invincible, steeping ourselves in pleasure and excess. If we don’t know pain, can we truly know joy?”

“And are you finding ‘joy’ with Zara?”

Gabriel was silent.

“Don’t you think Ezekiel and Irena are experiencing pain due to Melissande’s passing?”

He felt a twinge of pity for both at the reminder. “I know they are. But that’s a rare case, Fenton.”

“One that would be made rarer still if we rid the world of potential vampire hunters,” he said with a grim smile. “Look, I’m here to do a job. And, partly because I like you, and partly because I’m vain and like to be the best at what I do, I want this to work. But don’t confuse that to mean I agree with your politics here. Have you stopped to consider if this human is causing more pain than she’s worth?”

“No,” said Gabriel hoarsely. “Her safety is worth any price.”

Fenton shook his head. “I had a feeling you would say that.” He sighed. “But as long as you keep paying me, I guess it’s not my concern.”

“Nice to know there is one constant in the universe.”

Fenton’s phone trilled and he pulled it out and looked at the incoming number dispassionately.

“Or maybe not.” He drummed his fingers on the table thoughtfully. “Seems like the jig is up, my friend. I haven’t had cause to speak to Irena in over a decade, but here she is, calling me. Which means she’s made the connection between the two of us. If I don’t respond, it’s only a matter of time until they start looking for me.”

Fenton flicked the screen to answer the call.

“Hello, darling. To what do I owe the pleasure of your call?”

With his nightwalker hearing, Gabriel had no trouble catching Irena’s end of the conversation.

“You know damn well why I’m calling, Phineas. If you don’t deliver Gabriel to me I’ll gut you myself, put you outside in the midday sun and then let the buzzards feast on your entrails.”

“Charming as ever,” said Fenton in a mocking tone. “You sound a bit tense. Tell me, are you getting laid, Irena? Because if not, I would fall on the sword and offer to…well, let
you
fall on the sword, if you catch my drift.”

Irena was worked up in a state and the good doctor certainly wasn’t helping the situation. She was near point break. Ezekiel must be putting a lot of pressure on his second-in-command to deliver. Irena in a state of panic was an unpleasant prospect. She was cunning and ruthless in a normal state of mind. Enraged, she was a force of nature. Ezekiel counted on this quality, and the fear she could generate because of it. It was why she was his second.

Cunning. Ruthlessness. Yet more of fine qualities their kind had to offer.

Gabriel’s stomach lurched.

“God damn you, Phineas,” Irena snarled.

“Now, now,” said Fenton, “you know in the matters of the Almighty, I’m a confirmed atheist. So you’ll need a better curse if you want to hurt my feelings, Irena.”

Fenton was playing this to the hilt, but Gabriel couldn’t tell what his end game was.

“You fucking bastard,” she hissed. “I know you know where he is.”

Fenton eyed Gabriel. “And if I do, what good does it do me to tell you, eh?”

“Because if you don’t, I’ll make sure you suffer the rest of your unnaturally long life.”

Fenton studied his fingernails casually.

“I think you have things turned around, Irena. If something happens to me, all the drugs and serums I produce to make all our lives easier would disappear. I write nothing down, so the compounds die with me.”

“I
like
being a nightwalker, so I couldn’t care less about your compounds,” she sniffed. “You know I’ll start with your feet. First, I’ll pull out your toenails one by one, then I’ll flay your soles into little ribbons of flesh. You know how long it takes for that to regenerate. It’s a painful regeneration. I should know. And it’s such a delicious thing to watch that kind of unrelenting pain being served up to one as deserving as you. In fact, I may have you watch while I fuck one of my Familiars. So sad for you that you can’t join in, but you’ll be, shall we say, tied up.”