“I saw a glimpse, and what I saw horrified me. Does it get worse?” she asks, her voice begging me for the truth.
“Yes, it gets worse, Bella. I feel a stain on my soul just from seeing it,” I admit. I have seen the worst of the world and people through the years. Acts and senseless violence that would make others cower, but what I just saw in this woman’s memories has carved its own mark in my brain, stamping it there forever to remind me just how dangerous our kind can be.
“Taking them won’t affect her?” she queries, worried for the stranger she barely knows.
“No, she just won’t remember a week of her life. She will go back to her reading and her child at home none the wiser.”
I hear her sigh. It’s so filled with sadness that my heart aches for my mate. “Take them, don’t let them infect her mind with evil.”
She summed it up so well. The darkness was lingering, seeping into the poor human’s mind. Decision made, I wipe away the memories, leaving no trace before pulling out of her subconscious. She sags into my arms and I stroke her hair.
“Shh, you’re okay. You will finish your shift, read your book, and go home to Keen. You will have a good life,” I whisper to her and she nods. I let her go and she straightens, flashing a smile.
“Sorry, did you need something?” she asks.
“No, thank you.” I nod and she turns and heads back to her book, oblivious to what happened. I turn to Bella to see tears in her eyes. I reach out and grab her hand and squeeze, and this time she doesn’t flinch, she just looks at me with such anger. She’s so fragile, not in the way that humanity is, but in the way a weapon is.
“We need to make them pay, we need to kill them,” she whispers.
I nod. “We do, fancy a hunt?”
Bella
“What did you see in her memories that will be useful?” I ask, needing to know how we’re hunting the bastards. What I glimpsed was horrifying enough, but what he must have seen? No wonder he wants blood.
“I saw where they were and which ones touched her,” he tells me, still holding my hand, but I don’t bother pulling away.
“Good, tell me everything,” I demand, needing to know. My own thirst for blood is rising after seeing what that poor woman went through.
“It’s a blood house, not common, but it happens. Usually the sheep, humans, want to be turned at some point or like the pleasure from the bites and sex. Most nightwalkers have their own stable or find a willing victim, but some places have blood houses for the...darker side of it. This is one, but not a legal one, the victims aren’t willing. They are kidnapping women, using them for a week, and then wiping them and tossing them back if they survive. Some don’t, based on her memories. They force them with their control, or charm, to be good little blood slaves, but it doesn’t take away their consciousness.”
“So, they feel it all and they are trapped in their minds, unable to control what happens to their own body,” I summarise, disgust and anger lacing my tone.
“Yes, nothing more than a blood bag and a hole to fuck,” he says darkly, and I flinch.
“Is that what you really think of them?” I snap.
He looks at me then, his eyes dark and dangerous, and I realise what kind of monster I’m playing with. I can feel the years of his power pressing down on me without him even meaning to. “No, I don’t, they do. What we will find there will sicken you. Humans aren’t sheep, they aren’t just a food source. They are their own species with their own rights.” His voice is sinister and threatening, but I shiver from it, and my pussy clenches from all that raw power and strength and the risk of violence hanging around him. Until now he’s been sophisticated, cocky, and flirtatious, but now he’s showing me the darkness, the monster inside, and I want to play with it.
I know my eyes flare gold, my power rising to meet his. “You know the place? Then let’s go.”
The location, as it turns out, is a house on the edge of a cul-de-sac. The two on either side are empty with ‘for sale’ signs. The houses themselves are huge, detached, and at least forty feet from the next one. Not a place I would have thought for a blood house, as Ciar calls it, but I guess it makes sense. Who would look here?
The house Ciar has led us to is a three-story, modern build comprised of red bricks, cute white windows, and an attached garage to the right. It even has a fucking mailbox at the end of the driveaway. I can feel the music from here, with pumping bass rising from the ground up to my feet and matching my heartbeat. As we creep closer, using the dark, I can taste the blood and sex on the air. My heightened senses pick up moans, screams, and laughter from inside and the stink of nightwalker.
I can assure you, Bella, I do not stink, come and smell though if you aren’t sure, he purrs inside my head.
I ignore him, concentrating on the house. “How do we get in?” I whisper quietly, barely above the wind, but I know he can hear me.
We could play master and blood slave? he teases, but I roll my eyes.
“Only if you’re the blood slave, I ain’t anyone’s slave. I say we kick down the door and kill everyone. Just think of all the blood and shocked faces,” I murmur.
And people say I’m crazy. Subtly isn’t your strong suit, is it, Bella?
“I prefer a shock and awe tactic to subtly.” I grin. Both of us are perched behind a neighbour’s fence, watching the show. “I’ll show you subtle, blood sucker,” I tease before standing up and striding right to the house.
I hear him growl and then hurry after me. “Keep up if you can,” I call over my shoulder, as I hop up the steps and pound on the front door.
“Who’s there?” a deep voice calls from the other side.
“Box of puppies,” I deadpan.
I hear Ciar laugh as the door swings open, showing me a frowning vamp, his fangs hanging over his lower lip, which are small in comparison to Ciar’s.
So glad you noticed. Let me show you what else is bigger than everyone else’s.
“Who the fuck—” The sucker starts with a growl, his eyes leering at me as he runs them down my body, but I just dart forward and smash my fist into his mouth.
Motherfucker!
Pain explodes in my hand, the bastard cut up my knuckles with his fucking fangs. Reminder, never punch a nightwalker in the face.
“I would think that was obvious,” Ciar drawls, before stepping around the growling blood sucker. Ignoring him, Ciar takes my hand and examines it. Seeing my blood, his eyes narrow and he flashes fang. “He tasted you,” he snarls.
He leans down, his eyes on me as he licks the blood from my knuckles, groaning and closing his eyes before he straightens, lets go, and turns to the man. “You really shouldn’t have done that.”
“She fucking attacked me, the stupid—” Ciar grabs him by the throat and effortlessly holds him in the air, cutting off whatever word he was about to call me.
“Not the smartest tool in the shed, are you?” Ciar sighs before his other hand shoots forward and he rips the man’s throat out. Next, he grabs his heart from his chest, tossing them both into a pile in the corner, and then he looks at me. “Leave yours with mine there, we will torch them after,” he suggests before, with a swipe of his now sharp nails, he cuts off the man’s head, which topples to the floor and rolls until it hits the body parts stacked into the corner.