Another mile down the road, he turned on the headlights. The beams hit the trees and only illuminated twenty feet of the windy road.
Simone spotted a few houses set back from the road, but no light shone from any of their windows. For a second, she had the unsettling feeling the world had ended and they were all that remained as they climbed hills before coasting back down them. Well, them and the Savages stalking them were all that remained.
She tore her attention away from the forest when her skin crawled and she became certain there were monsters out there, watching them from glowing red eyes. Her imagination had never been overly active. In fact, it had been ratherinactive for most of her life; now, it was making up for it with all sorts of horrible possibilities.
She held her breath and didn’t dare look out the window beside her as she became convinced she would find Joseph loping beside the vehicle or running straight at her with his fangs extended and his red eyes blazing.
“Do you know what happened to my mom?” she asked. “I lost sight of her when they raided our compound, and she wasn’t in that place with me.”
“No, I don’t,” he said.
“Oh,” she whispered, and her shoulders slumped.
“But I also don’t know who your mom is,” Killean said when he sensed the sorrow his words caused her.
His words helped to raise her spirits a little. If he didn’t know her mom, then he couldn’t know if she was alive or not. Until she learned differently, she would believe her mom was alive and safe with Nathan and the others.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
The crispness of his reply drew her attention to him. His knuckles had turned white on the steering wheel, and he sat so rigidly it seemed the next bump might shatter his bones. Her hearing and vision had remained the same after she transformed from a hunter into a monster, but she detected the steady beat of his heart now, whereas before she wouldn’t have noticed it.
Did she notice his heartbeat now because blood was how she survived, or was it the man she noticed more about? She didn’t know the answer, but she suspected it was the latter.
“Those things didn’t tell you where they were taking us tonight?” she asked.
“They didn’t tell me anything. They didn’t trust me enough for that.”
“Didn’t you see—”
“They kept me blindfolded,” he interjected. “And tonight was the first time I didn’t have to ride in the trunk when I went somewhere with them.”
“Why did they make you ride in the trunk?” she blurted.
His red eyes were the brightest thing about the night when they slid to her. “Because they didn’t trust me.”
The deliberate, enunciated way he said it caused her hackles to rise. Even when she’d still been a hunter, Killean had managed to infuriate her in ways no other ever had. As a hunter, she’d wanted to smack him; as a vampire, she imagined grabbing the back of his head and bouncing it off the steering wheel.
Instead, she smiled as she replied through her teeth, “I see.”
Killean focused on the road again as it twisted deeper into the woods and rose higher until he didn’t know if they would ever find their way out of here. Side streets broke off from the one they were on; he had no idea where they led, and more than a few times he was tempted to take one of them, but he decided to stay on the current one. For all he knew, one of those roads might loop back to the campground. This one had to lead somewhere eventually.
He glanced at the GPS screen in the center of the dash. He knew there was a way to look up nearby attractions, but he didn’t want to mess with it right now, and he wasn’t familiar enough with the things to have any confidence he could pull up the information he sought.
Then the road started to descend, and in the distance, he spotted the faintest hint of a light glimmering through the trees.
“Did Nathan send you to find us?” she asked.
Killean’s grip tightened on the wheel at the mention of the hunter leader. He knew Nathan and Simone had been expected to marry, but was Simone in love with him? And what did he care if she was?
“Nathan,” he snarled, “is a happily matedvampirenow.”
A jolt of surprise ran through Simone. Nathan had announced his intention to marry Vicky and become a vampire, but it still astounded her he’d actually gonethroughwith it. She couldn’t picture Nathan as a vampire, but she’dneverimagined herself as one either.
“Mated?” she asked. “What does that mean?”
“It’s an eternal, soul-deep bond between two vampires. When a vampire encounters their mate, they often complete the bond.”
