The Dark-Hunters (135 page)

He wasn’t the kind of man that anyone held, nor did he want it.

Not really.

He only wanted …

“This is deep,” she said quietly, her voice enchanting him even more.

He looked down, but instead of his hand, all he could see was the deep valley between her breasts that was bared by the V of her sweater. He would only have to move his hand a few inches to sink it down between the soft mounds. To push her sweater aside a little bit until he could cup her with his hand.

“What happened?” she asked.

Zarek blinked to dispel the image that caused his groin to ache and throb as it demanded satisfaction. “Nothing.”

“Is that the only word you know?” She grimaced at him as she held his hand with hers and reached up to pull a bottle of peroxide out of the cabinet over the sink. He was amazed that she knew which container it was, but then, everything in the cabinet appeared to be deliberately and carefully placed.

He hissed again as she poured the liquid over his cut. The coldness of it stung as much as the disinfectant.

Still, he was stunned by her caring actions, by the gentleness of her hand on his.

She patted around with her hand for the dish towel by the sink. Once she found it, she wrapped it around his hand. “Keep it elevated. I’ll call a doc—”

“No,” he said harshly, interrupting her. “No doctor.”

“But you’re hurt.”

“Believe me, this is nothing.”

Astrid noted the catch in his voice as he said that. More than ever before, she wished she could see him as he spoke. “Were you cut because I bumped into you?”

He didn’t answer.

Astrid tried to reach out to him with her senses and found nothing. She couldn’t tell if he was with her or if she was completely alone.

Her senses had never failed her before.

It was scary to have no ability to “feel” him.

“Zarek?”

“What?”

She actually jumped at the sound of his deep, accented voice so close to her ear. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“Yeah, so what? It’s not like you care how I got hurt anyway.”

His voice faded as if he were moving away from her.

“Sasha, where is he?”

“He’s headed back toward the den.”

She heard Sasha growling in the hallway.

“Back at you,” Zarek grumbled.

“You know,” he said louder. “I hear dogs live longer when they’re neutered. And they’re friendlier, too.”

“Oh, yeah, let’s neuter you and see if it affects you, you—”

“Sasha!”

“What? He’s obnoxious. And I am not a dog.”

She walked down the hallway to pat Sasha’s head.
“I know.”

Zarek ignored the wolf and the woman as he went to the window and pulled the curtains back. It was just after one
A.M.
and the blizzard was as fierce as it had been earlier.

Damn. He was never going to get out of here. He only hoped the weather broke long enough to allow him to make it back to his woods. No doubt the Squires, Jess, and Thanatos were waiting for him at his cabin, but he had several more “safe” areas none of them knew about. Places where he could get weapons and supplies.

But he had to be on his land to reach it.

“Zarek?”

He expelled an aggravated breath.

“What?” he snapped.

“Don’t use that tone with me,” she said with a sharp note in her voice that caused him to arch a brow at her audacity. “I like to know where people are in my house. Be nice, or I’ll make you wear a cowbell.”

He felt a strange urge to laugh. But laughter and he were strangers.

“I’d like to see you try it.”

“Are you always this cranky or did you just wake up on the wrong side of the bed?”

“This is it, baby, get used to it.”

She came to stand right beside him and he had a feeling that she purposely did it just to irk him. “And if I don’t want to get used to it?”

He turned to face her. “Don’t push me, princess.”

“Oooo,” she said in a less than impressed voice. “Next thing you’ll be talking like the Incredible Hulk. ‘Don’t make me angry, you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.’” She cast a haughty look in his general direction. “You’re not scary to me, Mr. Zarek. So you can just check the attitude at the door and play nice while you’re here.”

Disbelief racked him. No one in the past two thousand years had dismissed him so easily and it angered him that she would dare discount him now. It reminded him of too many bad memories of people who saw through him. People who held no regard for him whatsoever.

The first vow he had made to himself as a Dark-Hunter was that he would never again worry about trying to earn other people’s respect or kindness.

Fear was a far more powerful tool.

He backed her up against a wall.

Astrid panicked as she felt Zarek pressing in on her while the wall behind her blocked her escape. She had nowhere to go. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move.

He was so large, so strong.

All she could sense was him. He surrounded her with power and danger. With the promise of lethal reflexes. He was trying to make her fear him, she knew it.

It was working very well.

He didn’t touch her, but then, he didn’t have to. His presence alone was terrifying.

Dark. Dangerous.

Deadly.

She felt him bend down to speak angrily into her ear. “If you want nice, baby, play with your fucking dog. When you’re ready to play with a man, then call me.”

Before she could respond, Sasha attacked.

Zarek stumbled away from her with a curse as the air around her stirred viciously with Sasha’s frantic movements.

Cringing instinctively, Astrid held her breath as she heard the sound of wolf and man fighting. She strained to see, but she was surrounded solely by darkness and overwhelming angry sounds.

“Sasha!” she shouted, wishing she could see what was happening between them.

All she heard was the mingling of hisses, growls, and curses.

Then something solid hit the wall next to her.

Sasha yelped.

Terrified of what Zarek had done to her companion, Astrid knelt on the floor and felt her way over to where Sasha was lying before the hearth.

“Sasha?” She ran her trembling hand through his fur, seeking wounds.

He didn’t move.

Her heart stopped beating as terror filled her. If anything had happened to Sasha, she would kill Zarek herself!

Please, please be all right …

“Sasha?” She held him close and reached out with her thoughts to his.

“I’ll kill him. So help me, I will.”

She shook in relief at Sasha’s anger. Thank Zeus he was alive!

*   *   *

Zarek pulled his torn shirt off and used it to contain the blood on his right arm, neck, and shoulder where the pooch had shredded his skin with its claws and teeth.

He barely contained his fury. He hadn’t been wounded this many times in a single hour since the day he’d died.

Snarling, he stared at the swollen red flesh. He hated to be wounded.

It was all he could do not to go back to the den and make sure that damned dog never attacked another living thing in its life.

He wanted blood. Wolf blood.

For that matter, he wanted human blood. One quick nip to calm his fury and remind him of what he was.

Just one taste of her …

Astrid came inside the bathroom and ran into him.

He growled at the warm sensation of her body slamming into his.

Without comment, she pushed him away from the sink and knelt down to retrieve a first-aid kit.

“You could have said ‘Excuse me.’”

“I’m not talking to you,” she snapped.

“Love you, too, babe.”

She froze at his sarcasm and glared in his general direction. “You really are an animal, aren’t you?”

Zarek ground his teeth at her words. It was all anyone had ever seen him as. He was too old now to change his ways. “Woof, woof.”

Huffing at him, she started to leave, then stopped. She turned back toward him with a snarl. “You know, I have no idea where you come from and I don’t really care. Nothing gives you the right to hurt other people or Sasha. He was only protecting me, while you … You’re nothing but a bully.”

Zarek stood immobile while vicious, horrid images tore through his memory. The sight of his village in flames.

Of bodies lying scattered all around.

The faint sounds of people screaming.

The fury inside his heart that demanded blood …

He winced as pain lacerated him. He hated his memories almost as much as he hated himself.

“One day someone needs to teach you some civility.” Astrid turned and headed back toward the den.

“Yeah,” he said, curling his lip. “Go tend your dog, princess.
He
needs you.”

Zarek, on the other hand, didn’t need anyone.

He never had.

With that thought in mind, he went to the room where he’d awakened.

Storm or no storm, it was time for him to leave.

He pulled his coat on over his bare chest and buttoned it. It too had been damaged by the gunshot and would leave his healing back exposed to the weather. So be it.

It wasn’t as if he could freeze to death anyway. There were some advantages to immortality.

The hole would just make for a nice cool breeze to run down his spine until he could find more clothes.

After he was dressed, he headed for the door and did his best not to notice Astrid, who was on her knees in front of the warm fire, soothing and consoling her pet as she tended him.

The sight made him ache in a way he wouldn’t have thought possible.

Yeah, it was time he got the hell out of here.

*   *   *

“He
’s leaving.
”

Astrid started at the sound of Sasha in her head.
“What do you mean, he’s leaving?”

“He’s behind you right now, dressed and headed outside.”

“Zarek?”

She was answered by the slamming of her door.

5

Zarek froze outside the door. Literally and figuratively. The bite of the wind was so harsh that it took his breath and sent a fierce shiver down his entire body.

It was so cold outside that he could barely move. The snow was falling fast and furiously, and was so dense that he couldn’t see more than about an inch from the tip of his nose. Even his goggles had frozen.

No one sane would be out tonight.

So it was a good thing he was insane.

Grinding his teeth, he headed north. Damn, but it was going to be one long, miserable walk home. He only hoped he could make it to some kind of shelter before dawn.

If not, Artemis and Dionysus were going to be two happy gods in a few hours and old Acheron would have one less headache in his life.

“Zarek?”

He cursed as he heard Astrid’s voice over the howling winds.

Don’t answer.

Don’t look.

But it was compulsory. He glanced back before he could stop himself and there he saw her leaving the cabin with no coat on.

“Zarek!” She stumbled in the snow and fell.

Leave her. She should have stayed inside where she was safe.

He couldn’t.

She was helpless alone and he wouldn’t leave her outside to die.

Mumbling a fetid curse that would have made a sailor cringe, he went to her side. He picked her up roughly and pushed her toward her house. “Get inside before you freeze to death.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You can’t stay out here, either.”

“Believe me, princess, I’ve slept in worse conditions than this.”

“You’ll die out here.”

“I don’t care.”

“Well, I do.”

Zarek would have been far less stunned had she slapped him. At least
that
he would have expected.

For a full minute he couldn’t move as those words rang in his ears. The idea that anyone cared whether or not he lived or died was so alien to him that he wasn’t even sure how to respond.

“Get inside,” he snarled, shoving her gently back through her door.

The wolf growled at him.

“Shut up, Sasha,” she snapped before he had a chance to. “One more sound out of you and I’ll make
you
go outside.”

The wolf sniffed the air indignantly as if it understood her, then darted to the back of the house.

Zarek shut the door while Astrid trembled from the cold. The falling snow melted, making her instantly wet. He was wet too, not that he cared. He was used to physical discomfort.

She wasn’t.

“What were you thinking?” he yelled at her, sitting her down on the couch.

“Don’t you dare take that tone of voice with me.”

So he growled at her instead and stalked to the bathroom where he could grab a towel from the rack. Then he headed to her bedroom and grabbed a blanket.

He returned to her. “You’re soaked.”

“I noticed.”

Astrid was surprised by the sudden, unexpected warmth of a blanket covering her, especially given his angry, gravelly words that had all but called her an idiot for going after him.

Zarek wrapped her up tightly, then knelt before her. He pulled her fur-lined slippers from her feet and rubbed her frozen toes until she could again feel something other than the painful burn of cold.

She’d never experienced cold like this before and she wondered how many times Zarek must have suffered from it with no one there to warm him.

“That was a stupid thing for you to do,” he said harshly.

“Then why did
you
do it?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he dropped her foot and moved around her.

She didn’t know what he was going to do until she felt a towel covering her head. Tensing, she expected him to be rough.

He wasn’t. In fact, his touch was amazingly gentle as he toweled her hair dry.

How strange was this? Who would have thought he would take such tender care of her?

It was completely unexpected.

Perhaps there was more to him than there appeared …

Zarek gnashed his teeth at how soft her damp hair was as it fell against his hands. He tried to keep the towel between it and his skin, but it didn’t work. Strands of her hair continually brushed his flesh, making him burn.