PROLOGUE
Rural Indiana, 1947
The hunter swung his dagger with a wild impulse, but the despair in his eyes said he already knew his struggle was futile.
Blood dripped off his chin and coated Roger’s shirt. Other splatters made his shirt stick to his arms, his abdomen, some trailing to his pants. He’d gotten sloppy while eating. The middle of combat was no time for a careful feast.
This hunter would be his third meal of the night.
Roger couldn’t wait.
Easily, he dodged the hunter’s swing. The hunter attempted another, but Roger caught his wrist and snapped it. With a sharp, pained cry, the hunter yanked free, and Roger released him. The fight in the living room where they were had moved into the kitchen and beyond. The other vampires had routed the hunters. He had the time and space to have some fun; the complete defeat of this hunter base was imminent.
The sooner it was wiped from the Earth, the better. The hunters had taken a farmhouse and converted it. Secretive locations were common in supernatural circles. Operating inplain sight was often the easiest way to disguise oneself. However, the base had been chosen for its isolation and deep basement. These hunters weren’t merely coordinating their attacks and research; they were experimenting on supernaturals.
On living shifters.
On living vampires.
They’d even had a fey locked in an iron cage. The poor Unseelie had been left out for days in the summer sun. They’d been near dead when Roger broke open the cage at the beginning of the raid.
And hunters have the audacity to think they’re righteous. Roger snarled at the man in front of him, enjoying how he cowered farther into the corner. A noxious odor of fear permeated the air.
Desire was Roger’s usual playground, but his vampiric powers worked equally well on fear. He raised his hand, palm up, fingers forming a claw, and uncorked the hunter’s fear from what little self-control he had left.
He dropped to his knees with a cry and pissed himself.
Roger snatched the hunter by his hair and dragged him upward. He ripped into the hunter’s throat with his fangs. Hot blood hit his mouth again, but there was no sweetness to it. The taste wasn’t worth the effort of drinking it; the fear had spoiled him. Roger dropped the man to the floor. Blood continued to spurt from the wound, and the man put his hands on it, attempting to stop the loss. He was pitifully sprawled on the floor and not even delaying the inevitable that well.
Fear was different than suffering. In the heat of the moment, Roger had wanted the man to feel every ounce of terror, but as his victim lay there dying, he couldn’t help the tender strings plucked in his heart.
But he couldn’t afford to show sympathy for the enemy. Seamus was somewhere in the house, and his orders had been clear.No mercy.
There were subtle ways of circumventing that. Roger had to act as if he wasn’t doing the man any favors. So he grinned and glared down at the man. “Let me help you with that.”
Then he put his heel on the hunter’s throat and pressed down, down, down untilsnap.
A rustle and shot of movement caught Roger’s eye, and he pivoted toward the source. Unlike the other dangers he’d encountered in the house, this one wasn’t coming at him. Instead, someone was escaping through the front door.
Seamus had had one other order.
Kill every human.
Roger caught the hunter a dozen feet from the door. She screamed as he grabbed her by the arm and spun to face him. Wind blew her hair out of her face, and the grass under their feet cracked from dryness.
The hunter’s stomach bumped into Roger. The sensation was disorienting enough that Roger looked down. His sense of hearing caught up to his consciousness, pushing past the obvious external sounds and zoning into the heartbeat in front of him.
Thetwoheartbeats, actually.
With a primal scream, she clocked Roger across the jaw with her fist.
She was fighting for two lives with the conviction of survival. Despite the hellish retribution striking down the hunter base, she managed to keep her fear far beneath the surface of her thoughts. The desire to protect was wrapped around her like a suit of armor.
What is that kind of love like? To feel it? To be the object of it?
Roger released her.
She bolted for a car. As she hurried into the driver’s seat, he slowly retreated toward the front door. The car tires spewed rocks from the country road, and the taillights glowed a ruddy color.
