Night Series Collection: Books 1 and 2 (8 page)

Clearly red head was the leader, which meant if she went down the others would likely flee. I’d kill her first.

I stretched my senses trying to feel that shiver of paras. Trying to make certain what I saw in front of me was all there was. I frowned. I felt the shiver all right, but my gut told me something was off. I didn’t know what it was and I didn’t have time to dwell on it longer. I just hoped whatever it was didn’t come back and bite me in the ass later.

Red head grabbed the blade and held it high over her head. The stance dramatic and theatrical.

The girl groaned.

I threw the knife at the redhead but at the final second the bald vamp shifted to the side of the alter just enough for the blade to find him instead. His knees buckled and he crumpled to the ground.

“Dammit.” I reached for another knife, but it was too late. Rather than run, which is what I would have expected the pathetic excuses for life forms should have done, the red head sank her blade into the girl’s chest.

The unholy scream shivered down my spine. I ran, the time for stealth was over.

The other robed vamp came at me, throwing its body into mine, dragging me to the ground with a strength belying the small frame. It punched me; its green eyes glowed with satisfaction. I rolled, still taking the punches to my face and chest, but was somehow able to hook my leg around the vamps waist and pin it beneath me. In the scuffle I’d lost my knife.

Thankfully I had plenty more.

The red head rushed me.

“Sick, perverted freaks,” I snarled, reaching into the leather at my cleavage and pulled out another blade.

She screamed, her nails clawing at my face. The body beneath me bucked. Does anyone have a clue how hard it is to fight sitting down? This was ridiculous. Angry, I tightened my thighs on the vamp below me and punched red. I didn’t have much momentum, thank God I was strong.

It only diverted her attention for a second though. She shook her head and then dived at me again. This time though I was able to snap open the blade and bury it in her neck. Hot blood sprayed my face.

She grabbed her neck, sick gurgling sounds fell from her lips.

My eyes burned from the salt. I wiped at it, trying to clear my vision. My distraction almost cost me.

The vamp beneath me shoved me and I had to put a hand out to steady myself, freeing it just enough that it could wrap its hand around my neck.

I gasped for air.

I punched at its temple; knocking the hood back and revealing the baby smooth skin of an adolescent boy. Twelve, no older than thirteen.

I reached into my other boot and grabbed my black razor fan, snapping it open.

In one fluid movement I sliced the fan through the kid’s neck. He blinked twice, hand on my throat relaxing. I took greedy gulps of sweet fresh air, ignoring the ache I felt in doing so. My stomach heaved and I looked away, I’d done what I had to do, regardless if I liked it or not.

I reached for the blade at my back and then shoved it like a stake through the boy’s chest. He grabbed at the knife with blood soaked hands, fingers futilely trying to pull it out. I ground my jaw, and pushed it deeper. Until finally, the light left his eyes.

The red head still twitched beside me. I yanked the knife out of her oozing throat and repeated the same process I’d done to the boy. After several seconds she too lay still. I cleaned my knives as best I could on the fallen leaves and shoved them back where they belonged.

I pushed away from the bodies and stood. I had an hour before they reanimated. The only true way to kill a vamp was to take out its heart. I swallowed the bile lodged in my throat. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t take out the kid’s heart. But I knew someone who could.

My legs shook as I walked toward the girl. She was still as death. I glanced at the bald vamp to see if there was any movement, there wasn’t. My aim had been true.

I returned my attention back to the girl. Her gray sweater was no more. It was black in the light of the moon. I grabbed her by the shoulders and she moaned. It was a small sound, whispery thin.

I pulled her off the altar which only made her whimper worse. I was sorry to cause her pain, but no one deserved to die this way. I would not let her die alone.

I hugged her to my chest and sat.

She gripped my hand, blue eyes alive and shimmering with pain. “Pl...please.”

“Ssh.” I shook my head, rubbing her mangled cheek in a soothing gesture. Her cheek shifted like the skin sat on sand instead of bone. “Don’t talk. Ssh.”

Her chest heaved, every breath labored. Awful to hear. I rocked with her, humming under my breath, wishing I had the type of glamour to bring peace in death, but demons don’t do peace. We’re vengeance, destruction, wrath, fury; in us you’ll find no rest.

“Pl...mom,” she gasped, “dad, sis...” She closed her eyes. Her grip on my hand loosened, her breathing came slower and slower. “Lo...ve.” With that final word, she gave up the ghost.

I hung my head. I’ve never cried, don’t know if I can’t or I won’t, but if I’d had any tears I think I could have then.

My skin prickled with static. Forced to drop the girl I swiveled, reached for my knife and two things happened at once.

First, a cloaked figure stabbed both my arms—a vamp I hadn’t seen before and flippin' should have sensed.

And second, I heard a metallic whiz of a knife whistle through the air before it buried itself in the figure before me. The vamp crumpled to the ground. The hilt of a knife poked from its back.

I rolled the body over and found a needle clutched in his hand, droplets of blood rolling off the tip. I frowned, and looked at my arm. One had clearly been sliced by a knife, but the other hadn’t been stabbed as I’d first assumed, he’d tried to use that needle on me.

I snatched up the needle and crushed it in the palm of my hand. Why had the vamp run the risk of death for a sample of my blood?

I peered into the forest, trying to scout for the source of the knife. The eerie sounds of hooting owls and rustling leaves made me shiver. I dematerialized, jumping from tree to tree searching and watching, but whoever had thrown the knife was long gone.

H
olding onto my arm, I squeezed tight to stem the blood and ported back to the carnival. My Ferris wheel sat empty. Kemen leaned against the fence, head resting on his fist with eyes half closed.

“Kemen,” I snapped, more from the burn of the wound than any true anger.

He took one look at me and then was by my side, moving faster than I’d ever seen him move before. “Is that?” He pointed at my face; at the blood I was sure was a muddy brown color by now.

“Not all mine.” I shrugged off his grip on my elbow.

“Let me take a look at that, Pandora.” His liquid amber eyes pleaded, he licked his lips, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. He was always nervous around blood. So un-demon like.

“It’s fine.” I hugged my arm to my chest, not wanting to be touched and have Lust stir to life. I wanted to think, not rut like some wild animal.

“Here.” He grabbed the hem of his shirt and yanked, tearing a long strip out of the bottom and handed me the cloth. “At least tie that around it.”

I grabbed it, neon green stenciling of
Ozzy
standing out in bold relief as I wrapped it around my arm in a tight pressure hold. “Thanks,” I said between clenched teeth, sucking in a breath against the sharp pain. “Where’s Luc?”

Kemen hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Last I saw him he was walking the perimeter with a piece of tail on his arm.”

Stupid vamp must have cut a vein, because within seconds the swath was soaked clear through and blood was seeping down my arm. In another five minutes, the vein would mend so that the bleeding stopped, but I couldn’t walk around looking like some axe murderers latest victim.

“I don’t care if he’s got his little friend hanging out, you tell him to come here or I’ll snap it off,” I said, walking toward the gears where I kept a first aid kit stashed.

He grabbed my shoulder and turned me to face him. “Pandora, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I shook my head.

He cocked his brow. “This is not, nothing.” There was genuine concern in his voice.

I dabbed at the blood with a cotton swab soaked in a saline cleaning solution, the seepage was already beginning to slow. It touched me to hear him worry. I was a big girl and this really was nothing, but it was still nice to be fretted over. Made a girl feel special.

I pressed my hand to his chest and very gently said, “I really need to speak with Luc.”

A muscle in his jaw ticked, I could tell he wanted to say more, but finally his shoulders slumped and he gave a swift nod, then vanished.

I hung up a sign on the fence:
Ferris ride down for repairs
, so I wouldn’t be bothered and finished cleaning up.

I removed the bandage, noticing that the blood was now clotting and grabbed gauze dressing and then reached for the tape. All I had was two almost empty spools of green and pink tape with smiley faces on them.

“Ugh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” I groaned, remembering the inordinate amount of pleasure Luc had taken when he’d bought it for me over a year ago. Each and every awful method of torture ran through my head and I vowed to take revenge as I taped it on.

I smelled the faint odor of sulfur. I turned. Luc’s zipper was undone; his shirt half open, clearly Kemen had taken my words at face value. I smiled; I do so love that lazy sloth.

His eyes were huge with worry until they settled over the bandage on my arm and his lips quirked.

I narrowed my eyes. “You laugh and I’ll cut your tongue out.”

He licked his lips in a lazy, half taunting way—calling my bluff. “So what was so urgent that you made Kemen haul my ass out the tent with threat of pain to my...”

“I followed a pack of vamps tonight...”

He went from sexual teasing to ferocious predator between the span of a breath. “You what?” he asked, voice nearly a scream. “Alone!”

“Down kitty, you’re frothing at the mouth.”

Luc grabbed my shoulders, shaking me forcefully. “What were you thinking?” He didn’t give me time to answer. “You weren’t, that’s what.”

I flicked his hands off me. “Spare me your lectures, Luc, we have bigger fish to fry. The vamps killed a girl.”

He finally seemed to be hearing me, his agitated jerky movements stopped and his lips thinned. “How many?” He’d gone frost bitten. Face shuttered and breathing those slow, deep breaths that meant he was on the verge of turning homicidal.

I licked my lips. If he hadn’t liked what I’d said, then he was really not gonna like this. “There were four.”

He narrowed his eyes, planted his hand on the fence over my shoulder, leaned in and sniffed me, his nose running along my hair. I really hated that nose of his. He was a walking lie detector, able to scent out a lie—or an omission—through the pheromones a body secreted. Yeah, seriously.

“Did you kill them all?”

Hmm, to tell the truth or not to tell the truth, that is the question.

“Dora,” he said low, and I could hear him growing impatient.

“Three,” I finally admitted, though reluctantly.

“What happened to the fourth vamp?” His voice was silky, deadly.

Hair the shade of liquid gold framed his head like a halo, eyes the color of purest indigo stared back at me through a face carved for sin. He pressed his heated body along the length of mine. Every hard line trembling with suppressed rage. As mad as he clearly was I could still feel his thickness growing against my thigh. He looked like some avenging angel. But this angel had fangs that wouldn’t hesitate to rip someone’s throat out. Namely mine.

“It’s dead,” I whispered.

“Who...killed...it...Pandora?” He ran his sharp teeth along the curve of my ear, warm breath fanning my neck, making me shiver. I was as turned on as I was scared.

I debated how best to put it.

He grabbed my bandaged arm, thumb digging into the wound that had finally begun to close. I felt a rush of heat and knew he’d torn me open again.

“That bloody hurt. You bastard.”

“I will not ask again.”

I twisted my lips, wanting to spite him, but knowing it served no purpose other than my own greedy need to make him beg for it. “I don’t know, okay. I don’t have a clue.”

He cocked his head to the side, hand relaxing. “What do you mean you don’t know?”

“Would you like me to spell it out for you? I D-o-n-’t know. Clear enough?”

Luc snarled, and I laughed, which startled him. I’m sure he’d been expecting me to pounce, not giggle.

“You know, you’re really cute when you show me your fangs. Show me again,” I teased him, running my hands up his bare chest.

“You’re sick, you know that, right?” He shook his head, mouth tilting at the corner.

I breathed a small sigh of relief, my joke cutting through the thick fog of tension. I don’t mind admitting, having Luc’s entire focus fixed on you is creepy and not in a creepy cool kinda way either.

He combed his fingers through his hair, shoulders slumping. He looked tired and I wasn’t sure if it was this situation, the carnival, or something else. I wasn’t going to ask either.

“The bodies still out there?”

I nodded. “I’ve got the clearing warded so no one stumbles across it.”

“Did you cut out the hearts yet?”

I thought about the kid and swallowed hard. Someday I will deal with all the things I’ve done and maybe even mourn the necessity of it. I wasn’t usually squeamish, but his death had unnerved me. What could have made a thirteen-year-old boy choose the life he’d chosen? A real waste of a promising life. “No.”

Luc hooked my chin. “What’s wrong?” His voice was soft, soothing.

I moved away from him, turned my back and hugged my arms to my chest, feeling cold inside. There wasn’t much humanity left in me, I was more demon than human, but I cherished what little bit there was. I knew Luc didn’t want me to admit to having feelings, but I did. So what if it made me weaker than the others? Or less neph than I should be? Maybe I didn’t want to embrace my darkness the way the others did, and I knew that if I cut the kid’s heart out I’d step completely over the gray line I’d always towed. I couldn’t bear the thought of giving up that last piece of me.