Kitabı oku: «The Vampire Hunter»

Chapter 1

The vamps were fast, and he—well, he wasn’t much faster, but he was skilled. A human matched against a vampire must wield some mean martial-arts skills or he had better be a track star. Kaspar Rothstein possessed the former, but right now he was contemplating the run.

Yep, best to go for the run.

The sickening heat of a vampire’s breath skimmed the back of his neck as he raced down an alleyway in the eighteenth arrondissement near Paris’s shadowed Montmartre Cemetery. His goal: to lure the four vamps far away from humans and curious eyes. Rushing into an open cobbled courtyard behind closed businesses far from any tourists, Kaz stopped abruptly, planting his steel-toed boots.

With a confident grin teasing his mouth, he swung around, catching one of the vamps in the chest with a titanium stake. The vamp ashed before him, forming the shape of a person out of fried vampire flesh, bone and clothing.

“Happy birthday to me,” he muttered his victory claim. Wasn’t his birthday, but who needed cake to celebrate?

The three remaining vamps grinned at him. Kaz had expected the idiot longtooths to actually share a brain among them and run for their lives. But if they wanted to stick around for the party games...

“Come on,” Kaz encouraged. He tucked away the stake and put up his fists. He hadn’t gotten in a workout this morning. Time for some fun.

The first vampire charged him. Kaz managed to grab him by the scruff of the neck, and swung the gangly tormentor toward another of his rag-tag pack. Their skulls cracked, both swore, and they collapsed on the cobblestones.

The leader swung around with a punch that Kaz stopped with his open palm. “Nice to meet you. I’m Kaz. Vampire hunter. I’ll be ashing you this evening.”

“Wiseass,” the vampire cracked.

Kaz gripped the miscreant’s fist, twisted, and with a swing from the waist, rocketed up a high sidekick to his jaw. The heavy boots delivered damage by breaking jawbone. The attacker dropped, growling and spitting blood. The other two charged him with fists. Kaz immediately dropped the one on the left with a wince-inducing gut punch.

A female scream alerted him. A woman clung to the limestone wall not thirty feet from their little soiree.

“Get out of here!” he yelled at her, and caught a punch across the jaw. He tasted his own blood, and shook his head to chase away the bluebirds spinning about his skull. That one could have led to his death had it been a knockout.

Enough play. Best to stake them before they beat him to a pulp. But—hell, not in front of an innocent.

Frozen in fear, the woman watched their antics with wide eyes. Chills scurried up Kaz’s spine. He delivered another kick and landed a vamp at the hip, sending it stumbling backward. He had to keep the vampires busy and away from her until she grasped her senses and ran. Only then could he ash these idiots.

Out the corner of his eye, Kaz alternated his attention between fight and female. Was she scared—or interested? She leaned forward from her position against the wall, her bright eyes following the action. A vampire charged him; he landed a kick to a particularly vulnerable part of its anatomy, bringing it down.

Licking her lips, the woman seemed to marvel over the show.

“Go!” Kaz shouted at her, but too late he realized the command had alerted one of the vampires to their audience.

He swung a fist at an attacking vamp and took him out cleanly. The other vampire raced toward the woman and pinned her to the wall by her wrists. She didn’t scream. That was good and bad. A scream would call attention to this altercation and alert other innocents.

But why didn’t she scream?

Must be scared voiceless.

Wishing he could stake the attacker from behind, Kaz left the stake clipped at his hip. He ran toward the vamp, grabbed him by the head and shoulder and peeled him away from the woman.

“Wow,” he thought he heard her say, as he landed on his back on the cobbles, bringing the vamp down with him.

Twisting to straddle the vamp, Kaz punched him repeatedly until the longtooth’s lights went out, his hand sprawling across the toe of the woman’s lace-up boot.

Springing up to stand in the center of the fallen vamps, Kaz looked over his mayhem. Fists still coiled at his sides, brows drawn and serious, he was ready for another four, or even a whole gang.

But the vampires were only out, not dead. They wouldn’t stay down long. He had to get rid of the girl.

Lifting her chin, the woman looked up at Kaz with wide and wondering eyes. He had rescued her from a bite, surely. But the less she knew, the better. And if he could contain this slaying then he wouldn’t have to call in Tor to do spin.

“Impressive.” She stepped over the sprawled vampire and slowly approached him. Strangely, she clapped, giving him due reward. “Like a knight who fights for his mistress’s favor.”

Kaz arched a brow. He was a knight. But he couldn’t tell her that. Why hadn’t she screamed and run? That was the normal MO for unknowing humans who stumbled onto a slaying.

Something wrong with this chick?

As he looked her over, he took a long stroll over her black hair, streaked on one side with white. Her heart-shaped face was shadowed by the night. A soft gray blouse rippled with her movements, hugging a narrow figure. Black, high-waisted slacks emphasized long legs that ended in heeled boots. Sexy, in a business kind of way. If her lips hadn’t been thick and plush and so pink, Kaz would have marked her off as just another accountant or pencil pusher.

But that mouth. All pink and partly open and—he swallowed—kissable. That mouth distracted him.

“Generally,” she said, unaware of his distraction, “when the knight defeats the bad guys, his mistress grants him a favor, such as a ribbon or piece of her clothing for him to proudly display.”

He rubbed his jaw and chuckled softly. “I’m not much for ribbons.” But the moment jumped on him like a blood-hungry vampire and he went with the next move. “Guess that means I’ll have to take something more fitting.”

Kaz wrapped his hand about her neck and curved his fingers against her silken hair as he bent to kiss her distracting mouth there, in the mysterious shadows of a city he would never feel comfortable calling home. About them, the vampires showed no sign of coming to, yet he remained aware.

Two magnets, he thought, as their lips crushed, compelled to one another. Soft and wanting. The burn of her mouth against his flamed his tongue with the sweetest fire. The connection gushed through his veins and swirled in and out of his being. Made him feel alive, more so than even battling vamps did.

As well, this kiss claimed a certain void within him that suddenly breathed in, wanting to capture it all. To experience it all.

Really? Why had he suddenly started thinking like some kind of romance hero? It was just a kiss. He’d kissed lots of women. He’d admired many a pretty mouth, had shared breath with— Hell.

He’d never kissed a woman who felt quite so...right.

She wobbled on her tiptoes, and Kaz gripped her shoulder to steady her. And when he pulled from the kiss to dart a look back and forth between her blue eyes, he suddenly knew. He had never sensed such immediate connection before. Destined? No, he wasn’t tumbling completely over the edge. But there were no coincidences in this world. People didn’t just stumble into another person’s life randomly. He’d believed that since the night Tor had found him behind Madame du Monde’s.

Everything happened for a reason.

She fluttered her lashes and looked aside. “Nice.”

Nice? It had been more than nice. That kiss had been...transcendent. Yet maybe she was too shy to wax as poetically as his brain was right now. No, not shy, but flustered. Her cheeks had pinkened and her lashes fluttered as she tapped her mouth. Kaz liked that he’d disturbed her with a kiss.

“Once more?” he asked on an aching tone.

This time when she tilted up her face to meet him, he hooked his thumb along her jaw, his fingers spreading over her cheek. His calloused fingertips touched a raised line of skin. Felt like a scar. She didn’t flinch. Perhaps it was merely makeup or his rough fingers.

She moaned into the kiss and wrapped both hands about his waist beneath the long leather coat he wore. A greedy touch that he felt honored to receive. She wasn’t like any other woman who had selfishly clung and groped at him while seeking to satisfy her desires. Kaz pulled her tight against his body. This woman fit there as no other woman had fit before. She felt right. Felt different.

Felt dangerous.

Right, man. Don’t forget: vampires surround you. Get rid of her now if you want her to live long enough for another kiss.

Kaz broke the kiss. She nodded and smiled sweetly. Stepping back, she deftly navigated through the fallen men over to the backpack she’d dropped by the wall. She picked it up and hooked it over a shoulder. Kaz watched her, his lips parted, his eyes following her every move.

“I...” she began. A sweet smile struggled with uncertainty. She raked her fingers through her loose sweep of hair. “Suddenly, I don’t know how to walk away from you.” Her brows pulled together as she wondered about that confession.

The statement reached in and clutched Kaz’s gut. It was so intimate. She didn’t want to walk away? He could get behind that sentiment. He’d like to wrap her in his arms and take her home with him and leave the world behind. Unfortunately, the real world had begun to groan near his feet.

“Just put one foot in front of the other,” he said, regretting the dire need to send her off.

The woman chuckled and touched her lips, as if testing to see if his warmth was still there. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“Kaspar Rothstein.” He walked around the circle of vampires starting to come to. “Kaz to friends and those I tend to kiss. And you?”

“Zoë. Uh, Zoë to friends and those who tend to kiss me.”

At that moment, he fell, right into her stunning blue eyes and lush pink smile. Once again, his life had changed.

“Where do you live, Zoë? In case I feel the calling to beat up a second pack of idiots in order to claim another kiss from you.”

She smiled at the suggestion.

Kaz really did know about this one. Mine.

“Down the street.” She pointed in the direction she was headed. “Cerulean door. Can’t miss it. But don’t follow me. You’ve already been granted spoils this night for your heroic act.”

“As my lady wishes.” He bowed grandly, sweeping out an arm as if a knight genuflecting before his mistress.

Yeah, so he had his goofy moments.

The broad grin curling her lips matched his own as Zoë turned and strolled away, casting a look back over her shoulder.

She walked with a sensuous sway to her hips that he could imagine shifting side to side between his roaming hands as he danced with her. Kaz learned a lot about a person when dancing with them. It was safe, too, when surrounded by others on the dance floor and not all alone. Alone was fine, but only after he got to know the girl. Which, unfortunately, happened rarely due to his job. Ash in his hair and bloody stakes littering his apartment tended to turn them off.

A few groans alerted Kaz. He tugged out a stake with his right hand, and reached for another with his left—missing. He patted his hip where the stake was holstered—

No stake? He swung his gaze about, sweeping the tarmac, even as the first vampire rose to his feet. Had it fallen out when he’d been fighting? Had one of the vamps grabbed if off him?

The only one who had been close enough...

“Is that so?”

He chuckled and swung toward the vampire, a direct hit dusting the air with a fog of dark vamp ash. Before the other two could even rise, Kaz jumped over each one, planted the stake over their heart and finished them in succession. Four kills.

“But no closer to the prize,” he muttered. For he was on a specific mission that required he locate a one-fanged vampire who had murdered innocents.

A glance down the street didn’t spy Zoë. Kaz patted his back pocket, ensuring his wallet was still there.

“Interesting.”

She hadn’t gone for the cash, but instead for the one thing he should never allow to fall into the hands of the uninitiated. She’d called him her rescuing knight? The woman had no idea she’d gotten his title correct.

And the distraction of that kiss wasn’t putting him any closer to the vamp he needed to get his hands on. He hadn’t much to go on, but how many one-fanged vampires could there be in Paris?

Once he found the culprit, he needed to go deeper, to the source behind the vampire’s attack. Someone was trafficking in a dangerously addictive substance in the city of Paris. Similar to faery dust but more like faery dust times ten. Humans were not safe from the addicted vampires who went after them.

“I will put a stop to it,” he muttered, and strode down the street in Zoë’s wake. “First I need to get that stake back. But not until I figure out what cerulean is.”

* * *

Sid sat on the marble worktable, his big green eyes intent on every move Zoë made beneath the glass cupola capping her little tower in the sky. Purrs filled the room; the cat’s resonance harmonized with Zoë’s work.

The seventeenth-century mansion she lived in was narrow, yet high, soaring three stories. The third-floor tower room had confirmed her decision to buy the place five years ago. Perfect for a spell room. The curved, paned-glass roof let in the moonlight and opened the room to receive from the elements of air, earth and water.

She practiced all elemental magic, save for fire, a witch’s worst enemy. Though some witches were talented with fire magic, Zoë had decided to focus on a more powerful magic that could alter the molecules of any object, even living, breathing flesh. Such magic was her father’s specialty, and he’d taught her the basics before he’d had to go into hiding a decade earlier.

Because of his chosen study, the witches of the Light had declared her father, Pierre Guillebeaux, warlock. The Light did not approve of molecular magic. Witches must not alter living beings in any way beyond using magic to speed up the body’s natural healing process. Only shapeshifters and demons were sanctioned to physically alter their bodies. But Zoë’s father believed in the healing capabilities of his magic—that someone could heal himself or herself or otherwise alter their very being—something no witch was able to do. Instead of sacrificing the study of it, he had willingly become warlock.

She missed him. Though she hadn’t seen him in ten years, she knew, wherever he was, he was well, yet that didn’t dispel the emptiness in her heart. Since her mother’s death when she was thirteen, her father was her only family, and though she had many friends, she craved an intimate relationship.

In the center of her spell room, before the round, marble-topped worktable, she carefully went about the process of alchemizing the faery ichor that was delivered once a week from an unnamed, but obnoxious source. Zoë didn’t have to like the delivery girl; she just had to take the ichor and in return hand over the finished product. It was a smooth system that had been working for the few weeks she’d been engaged in this endeavor.

The vampire Mauritius, leader of tribe Anière, had been buying her blend to distribute to his fellow vampires. He had seemed eager to spread it around, assuring her it would do well within the vampire community. He couldn’t seem to get enough of her blend—which was to be expected in this neighborhood that overlapped FaeryTown—so Zoë was kept fairly busy producing the concoction.

But it must be fresh, and only produced in small amounts. That ensured efficacy. The shelf life was about a week, she figured, though she hadn’t done field experiments to verify that, and had only her best friend’s usage report to judge how well it actually worked.

“I can’t wait to see Luc,” she whispered.

She leaned forward next to Sid to watch the ichor in the alembic dance and coruscate as if stars captured under glass.

It had been two weeks since her best friend, Luc, had been around for a visit. He had been her guinea pig for the dust blend. Luc mentioned her project to his tribe leader, and Mauritius had been very interested.

Zoë set the kitchen timer for four minutes. She had to let the dust formulate a short time before adding the key ingredient.

Noticing the backpack she’d hastily dropped beside the door, she spied the steel cylinder spilling out that she’d nicked from her rescuer. So she had a habit of snatching things. It was a better vice than drinking or practicing malefic magic, wasn’t it?

She retrieved the cylinder and looked it over. Was it some kind of weapon? On second thought, it might not be steel. It was light, almost like aluminum, but she suspected the metal was strong and wouldn’t dent. It didn’t have a product name or brand anywhere on it. On one end was impressed a symbol of four pointed bars crossed over one another in the center of a circle.

The opposite end showed a cross slit that might open if some kind of button were pushed. Narrow black pads about three inches long stretched each side of the cylinder, like grips, and when she squeezed—

A sharp tip pinioned out the end of the column with such force that Zoë let out a gasp and dropped it. The deadly thing skimmed her boots, cutting a scar in the aged black leather, and clattered onto the white tiled floor.

She bent to grab it—but didn’t touch it. Its apparent use grew obvious now that the tip was fully ejected.

“A stake?”

It looked like a weapon some kind of hunter might use to stake vampires. What other purpose would it serve?

“He had been a skilled fighter. Hmm...Kaz,” she whispered, her thoughts wandering.

He’d reminded her of an action-movie hero. He hadn’t looked vampire or werewolf, though she would expect as much only because of the crowd with whom she normally hung around. He must have been human, because the others who had fallen at his fist had looked like standard street thugs.

There were times Zoë preferred vampires to humans. At least with vampires she knew where she stood—either as a friend or lunch. Humans were a mixed bag of nothing but misplaced mischief and accidental danger. Humans generally didn’t appeal to her, yet never had one shown her such chivalry. In those moments after she had stumbled onto the fight, she had felt the damsel.

Standing amongst the men, Kaz had been outfitted in a sleek, black leather duster coat and dark clothing. Night shadows had concealed most of his face, save for bulletlike eyes that had homed in to Zoë as if there were no other place he could see. He’d tilted his head, catching the moonlight on his devastating smirk and then had shouted for her to leave. The hero protecting the damsel.

His voice had been rough and deep, yet had eased into Zoë’s pores with a soul-stirring tingle. He’d spoken English, though it had been accented with something other than her native French. German, to guess from his surname Rothstein. His brown eyes had moved over her face, landing on her lips, and then along the scar that curled across one cheek—yet hadn’t lingered there—till finally they’d locked onto her gaze.

If only the moonlight had been stronger, she may have seen much more, and might have gazed for endless hours at the sexy man who had defended her with muscle and might.

The timer dinged and Zoë shot upright, leaving the stake on the floor. The next part of the blend recipe must be enacted immediately.

“Now for the magic.”

She tapped the glass with her matte-black-polished fingernails that were tipped in white. A smidge of secret potion was added to the faery ichor from a long, narrow vial—tap, tap, the iridescent particles fluttered into the alembic—and then she recited the spell that she’d worked for months to perfect after dozens of hours studying the family grimoire.

“Feé substitutuary lente.”

This kind of molecular magic tended to zap her energy. All other magics barely taxed her system, though she did have difficulty wielding any magic in public. Call it a lack of confidence, or never having been taught to use her magic around others.