Zachary assumed they would have a fight as soon as Adonis said so. But he could also understand how Adonis would feel about losing their home to the vampires and then pretending he had no claim to it. Zachary would have said something similar.
“Crichton owns it and every home along a stretch of beach here,” the vampire said, looking a little uneasy, glancing from one to the other.
He knew Zachary and he were vampires, unless they’d had teeth work done, but they had extended their canines and that couldn’t be faked with dental work. So Zachary assumed the vampire feared some new vampires had come into the area and were thinking of taking over from Crichton now that he had killed off the hunter families.
“That’s where you are deadly mistaken,” Adonis said in a smoothly dark and vampiric way. Or maybe a hunter’s way. Both could sound ominous and chilling enough to convey the threat.
Then someone burst in through the front door, and three hosts screamed. Pasha led the charge.
“Hunters!” someone yelled. It had to be a female host as vampires would have used telepathic communication.
What bothered Zachary the most was that Danai wasn’t here and he feared Michael would run off to search for her alone when they all needed to be here to fight the vampires.
“Hunters,” Zachary said with a sneer. “Easily taken care of.”
The hosts quickly fled the house. But the rogue vampires left congregated in the living room to fight Michael, Rachael, and Pasha. With Adonis and Zachary fighting the vampires from behind, that made only five hunters. They needed Danai.
Michael was a little distracted, looking around for Danai.
Until she suddenly appeared in the room and began to hunt the vampires like a good huntress would.
A male vampire attacked Michael, catching him off-guard because he was so shocked to see Danai suddenly appear as a vampire would. Zachary felt sorry for his brother as he turned his attention to the vampire who had left the couch and questioned him about the hunter’s sword.
“You are killing our own kind,” the vampire hissed at him.
“No, I’m killing rogues, like I have always done. You are not my kind and never will be.” And then Zachary swung his sword and beheaded the vampire, hoping that none of them had telepathically communicated to the others about the hunter trouble they now faced.
There would be more here before long if so. But vampires could be so arrogant, and he suspected they might figure with their significant numbers, they’d defeat the hunters here and then crow about it to Crichton afterward.
Several of the vampires they killed had been newly turned, and they didn’t fade away to wizened skin clinging to bones or turn to dust like the ancients did. Two were ancients, the woman Zachary had killed, and the one who had questioned him. The two ancients had taken over the house in Crichton’s name.
Pasha skewered another ancient. Pasha looked like one angry huntress—almost ballet-like as she shoved her sword into a newly turned vampire, then pirouetted to face a new threat. She was amazing to watch, now that she seemed to have her full strength back. She glanced up and saw Zachary watching her, scowled at him, and motioned for him to watch his back. He turned and pushed his sword into another vampire’s heart before the bastard ripped out his throat.
Hell, would Zachary always be this distracted when he was in her presence? He realized how much the adrenaline surged through his veins, hunter or vampire, it didn’t matter. He was born for the hunt, lived for it. And he was damned good at it, if he could keep his focus where it needed to be.
Chapter 7
As soon as she heard the vampire scream in her death throes in her parents’ home, Pasha had to rush in and help fight the rogues. She couldn’t wait for Adonis to tell her and the others to join the fight and she didn’t think he’d have time to ask for her help either. She wasn’t about to let the vampires get the best of her brother and Zachary.
She was right too. They were fighting already, and they’d needed her and the others’ help. Michael and Rachael were holding their own against the vampires. All the hunters were outnumbered, but they were fighting the threat with heart and sword.
Two vampires attacked Danai and Pasha quickly moved to help her. She prayed Zachary was watching his own back and not observing her fight like he’d been doing before he was nearly killed. It was foolhardiness, yet she couldn’t help but appreciate the unbridled look of admiration on his face while he watched her fight the bloodsuckers.
Her sword clanged as she caught the edge of the vampire’s blade, but he suddenly dropped the sword and lunged at her. A newly turned vampire, she suspected, who didn’t have the control of an ancient. They could fight for hours, enjoying the combat with a hunter, taking their time, toying with them. She stabbed her sword into the new vampire’s heart, and he dropped to the floor, dead. Feeling some remorse, she wished she could convince the newly turned ones to leave here and find a clan that wasn’t causing trouble for anyone. What if he’d been turned against his will like Zachary and her brother and sister had?
She saw Michael destroy an ancient and quickly turn to fight another vampire, his hair as long as the first, another ancient.
She kept expecting Crichton and more vampires to join the fight, but the number of ones they were dealing with now were dwindling, and no one else came to the house to aid them. Thankfully.
A vampire flew across the room, intending to fight Zachary and she jumped over a footstool to reach it and stabbed the vampire in the back. She pulled her sword free and the new vampire collapsed on the floor in death. Zachary turned and Pasha’s and his gazes collided. He inclined his head briefly and whipped around to take on another vampire. She sliced at the vampire’s arm when he tried to grab for Zachary’s throat.
The vampire screamed and both Pasha and Zachary killed the beast.
Three other vampires left to go. Danai was handling one, Adonis another. She admired the way they could move, disappear, reappear, and stake the vampires. Michael took care of the other. And then they were done.
With the vampires dead, they had no hunter clean-up crew to handle the bodies. Adonis said to Pasha, “Call the police for a vampire pick-up. I don’t want them to know I’m in charge here. It’s better if it sounds like we only have a couple of hunters who arrived to deal with this scourge.”
“All right.” Pasha called the police then. “I’m calling for a vampire pick up. You still handle those, don’t you?”
Sometimes when a city was overrun by vampires, the police were also corrupted and would call the head of the vampires to tell him or her what had happened. If that happened, the hunters would be in real trouble.
Even the hosts could alert Crichton, but if they were afraid the hunters would win back the territory and the head of the vampires would die, they might wait it out to see who came out on top.
Pasha put the phone on speaker so everyone could hear what the police said.
“Crichton has taken over that area of the beachfront properties,” the police sergeant said. “The hunter families that kept them in check are dead. We had to pick up their bodies,” Sergeant Hammerstein said.
“Right. But I’ve returned to put the situation to right. I’m Pasha, head of the family for now.”