The house had gone quiet after the hunter left.
I sat in the wreckage of the front room, the air still tasting like dust and anger. My arm ached where he’d slammed me into the wall.
A normal man would have broken something, but I only felt the dull throb that came with a body that refused to heal properly.
I should’ve run. Hunters didn’t change their minds. They regrouped and came back sharper. Yet something in the way he’d punched the wall, instead of me, kept me rooted.
His face had been a blur of fury and something else. Then the quiet shifted. A scrape against wood. Too heavy to be the wind.
I froze. The sound came again, closer this time. A dragging step, nails scraping plaster. My stomach turned cold. I knew that sound.
When my sire changed me, he’d called me and others he had changed his experiments. He told me some didn’t take the blood right. They turned wrong. Feral, half-rotted, their minds eaten by hunger.
One of them had followed us after he changed me. They moved in a distinct matter. Slow, then fast, like a stutter in the dark. A shape filled the doorway.
Pale, blistered skin, cloudy eyes, mouth slick with dried red. The smell hit first. Stale blood and rot.
“Oh no,” I whispered.
It lifted its head, sniffed. Its lips peeled back in a hiss. I could almost hear my sire’s voice.If you ever see one of them, run. They’ll kill you.
My back hit the far wall before I realized I’d moved. The thing crouched, ready to spring, and a shadow crossed the threshold behind it. The hunter.
He looked worse than before. Hair disheveled, blood streaked down one arm, but his knife gleamed steady in his hand. His eyes locked on the creature, then flicked to me.
I expected him to finish what he’d started. Instead, he lunged past me.
The feral met him halfway. The impact cracked through the room, sending plaster raining from the ceiling. The hunter moved with brutal precision.
He slashed across the creature’s chest, ducking when it swung. The feral’s claws tore his jacket open anyway, blood blooming down his ribs.
I grabbed the broken leg of a chair. It felt pathetic compared to his blade, but it was something. When the vampire shoved him backward, I swung.
Wood splintered against undead flesh. The creature roared, backhanding me across the floor. Pain flared in my jaw. The hunter was on it again before I hit the ground.
He stabbed upward, silver knife flashing. The feral vampire shrieked, the sound ripping through me like glass. For a heartbeat I thought it was over. Then the creature twisted, dragged the hunter down with it.
They hit the floor hard, rolling. The knife skittered away.
I forced myself up, blood pounding in my ears. The chair leg was still in my hand. The feral had the hunter pinned, its fangs inches from his throat.
I drove the jagged wood through its ribs. Once. Twice. It howled, convulsed. The hunter shot his hand up, catching his knife, and together we pushed until the point pierced its heart.
The body jerked, then went limp.
The hunter rolled onto his side, gasping. The wound at his shoulder leaked down his arm in dark streaks. The smell hit me full force. He smelled warm, metallic, alive.
My throat burned. Every instinct screamed at me to feed. I should’ve stepped back, ran out the door. Instead, I stayed and I wasn’t sure why.
4
KIT
Pain came first,hot, sharp, and alive. It tore through my ribs like a red-hot wire, dragging my breath out in ragged bursts. For a moment, I thought the bastard had ripped me open.
My fingers pressed against the side of my shirt, came away wet. Blood. Mine. Not the first time, not even close, but somehow it felt worse this time.
Maybe because the one standing over me wasn’t an enemy I could bring myself to hate. Simon was still standing next to where the feral had fallen, his chest heaving, eyes wild and silver-bright.
