The sound of rushed footsteps outside the house followed. She was certain more hosts had arrived. Pasha and her family were doomed. In the next instant, men shoved in through the windows that Danai had broken when she couldn’t open them by conventional means. The men unsheathed their swords and targeted the vampires, not Pasha and her parents.
Were they local hunters? They had to be!
Pasha’s heart leapt with joy.
Utter chaos ensued as the new men fought the vampires, the bigger threat.
Ear shattering screams from the vampires, whose hearts were pierced by the ancient hunter swords or knives, filled the air.
Then a blue-eyed, blond hunter caught her eye. He hesitated for a second as his gaze shifted to her, his eyes darkening in an instant. He rushed forward, killing the host who attempted to attack her. Rashly, and without regard to his own safety, he slaughtered another host, then swung around to meet a vampire’s threat, thrusting his sword into the bloodsucker’s heart.
The hunter’s long hair had fallen free of its leather binding and fell across his broad shoulders in a golden mass of corn silk kissed by the sun. His hunter skill with the sword and graceful hunter movements entranced her. Or was it the lack of food she’d had, the constant threat of being killed or worse...of being turned, that made her mind drift so?
“Zachary, behind you!” a man shouted to him.
Zachary, the hunter who fought so valiantly for her, whipped around, but too late. A vampire swooped down on him, seized his throat with his hand, and flew him out of the room.
Pasha attempted to move through the bodies fighting in her path to reach the door. But she was blocked in and couldn’t get to it or to the hunter she felt compelled to save.
The hunter who’d yelled to Zachary, grabbed her by the waist and ran her across the room. Quickly, he shoved her through the window to the safety of the sun-drenched yard. The sunlight warmed her all at once. But she couldn’t leave the fight. She had to rescue Zachary. He had saved her, and she needed to aid him in his fight with the ancient vampire.
Another hunter deposited her mother outside. Instantly, a shudder of relief wracked her body. Instead of returning to the madcap fighting, Pasha grabbed her mother to keep her from going back into the fracas. Her heart was torn between preserving her mother’s safety and helping Zachary. Her own body was so drained, she suspected she’d never save anyone but become a vampire’s next meal.
“We’re too weak, Momma,” she pleaded. “Come away. We’re safe out here in the sunlight. Safe from the vampires.”
“Papa, Danai, Adonis...,” her mother wailed.
“They’ll be with us shortly.” In Pasha’s heart, she knew Danai and Adonis would be better off dead than living life as a turned hunter and huntress.
Danai was barely eating, as upset as she was about having been turned. Adonis, well, she couldn’t tell what he was feeling. Anxious, short tempered. That’s how he’d appeared to her when she’d seem him briefly during their captivity.
She hugged her mother to her breast. “They’ll be fine, Momma.” But she couldn’t help thinking about the hunter who had attempted to save her. The way his muscled arms wielded his sword, the form of his broad shoulders as the silk shirt rippled over them while he moved...her savior. She wiped away tears that dared to dribble down her cheeks while her mother leaned against her, exhausted.
Her father was helped out through the window, fighting the whole time against being removed from the brawl. But he too, was much weaker than he should be to fight vampires. Despite his protests, the hunters knew his safety mattered more than his pride.
To her surprise, the one who had set her outside grabbed her sister, Danai, and rushed her to the window. Had she been injured? Despite feeling that Danai would be better off dead, the thought she’d been injured sliced through Pasha’s heart.
“No, Michael. Let me fight!” Danai objected.
Michael’s blond hair was tied in a tail, his blue eyes narrowed. “You protect your family, should hosts attack you outside. I have to find my brother.”
She nodded.
His next action confounded Pasha. The hunter kissed Danai’s lips.
Didn’t he know what she was? Damned forever as a vampire? Pasha stared at the hunter as he hurried back in through the window. He didn’t know. He couldn’t have known.
She turned to Danai. “You can’t keep the secret from him, Danai. You can’t live a lie like that! Aren’t you going to tell him?”
But then hosts fled the house through the windows and Danai was busy killing them as Pasha and her father took up the fight.
Zachary, unable to use his sword on the vampire as close as they were to one another, dropped his weapon.
The bloodsucker held Zachary’s throat in a death grip against a bedroom wall and smiled, his wicked canines ready for the bite. “Like Adonis couldn’t kill Piaras once he turned him, you won’t be able to kill me once I turn you. You’ll be mine forever to do as I say. A hunter-turned slave. Piaras had the right idea in turning the others.”
Zachary struggled to pull the vampire’s hands from his throat. He knew he shouldn’t have allowed the huntress to steal his attention away from the threat, no matter how much she had intrigued him.
The vampire yanked out a dagger, still pinning Zachary by the throat against the wall and stabbed him in the shoulder. Zachary’s mind blackened with the pain, but he fought passing out, and opened his eyes to see the vampire’s teeth extended. Zachary struggled further against the inevitable. The vampire tightened his grip on his throat. The dark-haired woman, Pasha, her almond-shaped brown eyes studying him back, filled his thoughts.
She would be his. He had to return to her side and protect her. At all costs he had to defend her. She’d fought so valiantly, but she was so weak. So very weak. He had to save her.
He struggled to extend his wrist knife. Once it snapped into place, he thrust the ten-inch ancient blade into the vampire’s chest. It missed penetrating the vampire’s heart. In anger, the bloodsucker dug his canines into Zachary’s bloodied shoulder.
Zachary’s eyes watered from the pain streaking through his shoulder, all the way down his arm, and through his chest. The vampire forced Zachary’s mouth open and smeared his own blood inside, attempting to bond Zachary to him, to force the exchange.
Zachary fought swallowing, but the transfer had been made, though it hadn’t turned him completely. In one last effort, he struck the vampire again with the rest of his strength dwindling rapidly, before the blood exchange stopped him from doing the job right.
The vampire screamed out as the blade sank deep, the vampire’s heart having been pierced. Instantly, the vampire shriveled up, collapsing to the floor in a dehydrated mass of skin, bones, and loose clothing.
“Zachary!” Michael shouted.
With belated satisfaction at killing the bloodsucker, Zachary slid to the floor. The room spun around him in darkness as if he were riding a spinning teacup at an amusement park at night. He tried to concentrate on the vision of...Pasha, her petite form fighting against the hosts, and then the vampires. Long dark hair had whipped about her shoulders as she swung around to fight the menace as if in slow motion, her movements sluggish. If he didn’t get to her soon, she’d perish. She couldn’t fight them all off, not as weak as she was.