Born In Blood (Born Hunter Book 1) (15 page)

Twenty-Three

             
T
he next night Cara zoomed through narrow Medellín streets straddled atop a sleek Kawasaki Ninja. The bike was not as powerful as her precious Ducati, but she could not deny its sweetness. Its engine quietly purred like a baby kitten beneath her. Bikes were her other weakness. She loved the rush of the ride and the feel of the wind battering against her body. Aiden rode in sync beside her. He claimed the bikes were more inconspicuous than a sedan or armored SUV. Medellín, Colombia was home to the largest drug cartel in the world and they were trying not to attract unwanted attention. Having to deal with drug dealers would be a pain in the ass.

The Colombian Viceroy’s estate was nestled in the middle of Medellín’s mountainous highlands region. Despite having a reputation steeped in blood and drugs, it was a beautiful city. It boasted a mix of old world architecture and modern sky rises set against a backdrop of lush, green rolling hills. Cara noticed they’d picked up a tail about twelve miles outside of the city limits. The annoyed look on his face confirmed that Aiden noticed it too. He motioned for her to bring her bike to a halt as he did the same.

“Do you have blades on you?” He shouted to her over the noise of two other motorcycles growling to a stop around them.

“I never leave home without a set.” She grinned as she brandished a pair of kunai customized with serrated edges she was dying to try out.

“Medellín is a dangerous place for tourists,” one of the cyclists called out to them as he dismounted his bike.

“Especially tourists with obvious money to blow. I hear people go missing around these parts and turn up without their heads days later when their families don’t pay their ransoms quick enough, ” another one felt the need to add his two scents in.

“I’ll tell you what,” the first one held out his hands in a placating gesture, “why don’t you give us the number to your closest family member. We can call them, give them an account number, they can make a deposit of let’s say twenty grand and then we can let you nice couple go on your way. I promise.”

Awesome. Moron One and Moron Two decided to play good cop, bad cop
.
Cara rolled her eyes.

              “I’ll tell you what,” she said mimicking the same falsely placating tone he used with them. “Why don’t you and jackass over there get back on your bikes and ride off to do whatever it is drug dealers do with their spare time. I promise the night will end much better for you if you do.”

              “Bitch, who you think you are?” Bad cop started toward her. He took two steps then Aiden was lifting him into the air by the throat.  He intentionally lengthened his fangs and let his eyes glow a dim gold. The smell of urine scented the air as the drug dealer realized he was in the crosshairs of a predator greater than himself.

             
So much for the bad cop act,
Cara thought.              “We, we don’t want any problems,” he stammered in fear.

              Aiden squeezed his hand tighter around his throat cutting off any remaining pleas. “Too late. You should have listened to the lady instead of insulting her when you had the chance.”  His tone remained free of inflection. As if the effort he expended to extinguish his life was no more than one might use to squash a small bug.

The dealer’s body crumpled to the ground. Good Cop stupidly pulled his gun and aimed it at Aiden. Cara’s reflexes were quicker than his trigger finger. The gun was never a threat. He could have emptied the entire clip into Aiden and he would have swiftly recovered. To take out a vampire you needed to decapitate them or irrevocably maim their heart beyond repair. Still, Cara was not about to stand by and let him get shot. One of her kunai’s embedded itself in the man’s jugular at the same time the other one embedded itself between his eyes. Blood spurted from the nicked carotid artery.

“Overkill much?” Aiden drawled as he retrieved her knives for her and wiped them clean on his leather jacket

She took the knives he held out to her then pointedly looked at Bad Cop laying beside his bike. “Look who is talking.”

They made their way to the Viceroy’s estate. His staff that remained behind to look after it could tell them about as much as Rochelle and Nikolas. When Aiden took her to the site where his body was found, it was also the same case as in Brazil. She picked up the smell of musk and sandalwood, but the scent was too old for her to follow. She left Colombia frustrated beyond reason. She was no closer to finding her father’s murderer than she was when she left Manhattan.

Twenty-Four

"G
ive me silence, water, hope. Give me struggle, iron, volcanos," Cara reverently recited as the helicopter they rode in flew over the mountain top made famous by Pablo Neruda himself.

"I didn't know you were a fan of poetry." Aiden

looked at her bemused.

"I didn't know you read," she quipped.

He covered his heart with his hand in mock insult. "You wound me, Hunter. I am not as uncivilized as you think."

"Ha! Tell that to the man you killed with your bare hands in Medellín."

"Says the hunter who buried a blade in his partner's jugular. What's that old adage about the pot calling the kettle black?"

In the days since their encounter they had fallen back into an easy rhythm of light banter. They had not slept together again, nor would they Cara mentally reminded herself. Their physical coupling made things too complicated between them. It laid bare the things she felt for Aiden that she could never have with him.

Their chopper landed at the home of the third murdered Viceroy. Unlike the Brazilian and Colombian Viceroys, the Peruvian Viceroy called a modest cottage nestled in a little village along the base of the Andean mountain range home. Cara was not prepared for the human woman that invited them into her home or the small child that peeped from behind her leg, curious about their visitors.

"Bennett was my mate," she told Cara and Aiden as she poured them the coffee she insisted they accept. "I know it is unusual for a vampire and a human to marry but we loved each other dearly. We met shortly after I was married off by my father as a young woman to a brute of a man in our village. It was only days after I gave birth to my beautiful Lila here that he found my first husband beating me in our home because I was not yet able to return to my wifely duties. He probably would have beaten me to death that day if Bennett had not come upon our cottage. He killed the bastard and offered to take Lila and me with him. He promised to care for us and protect us. I had no reason to believe him but I did. I looked into his eyes and knew I would forever be safe with him. He dotted on and spoiled Lila as if she were his own. I know the myths. Humans who acknowledge they exist make vampires out to be monsters, and some of them probably are, but Bennett was the most compassionate man I have ever met. I cannot understand why someone would want to take him from us."

The fresh grief reflected in Freya's eyes made Cara think of her own. The woman and her young child reminded Cara of her and her own mother after her father's death. Her mother could not understand why someone would take her husband away either. Whereas Freya remained a strong and determined woman in the face of her grief, Cara's mother fell a part neglecting everything including her daughter in her grief-induced madness.

"What is your name?" Cara asked the little girl who now sat on her mother's lap.

"Gretchen," she responded with wide, innocent eyes.

Cara smiled at the child. "Gretchen my name is Cara. Why don't me and you go play and let your mother and Aiden finish talking?" The child did not need to hear the questions that would be asked of her mother.

"What would we play?" She asked Cara skeptically.

"Whatever you like."

"Even princess tea party?"

Cara had no idea what that meant but the child's hopeful expression left her no choice but to agree. Her surrogate father had just been stolen from her and her mother was grieving. Affording the girl a few minutes of happiness in the middle of her family's storm was the least Cara could do.

"Sure," She told her.

Lila hopped from her mother's lap and grabbed Cara by the hand. "Let's go, let's go," she squealed as she dragged her away.

"You look positively lovely," Aiden teased Cara. "Like a respectable lady."

She took off the floppy yellow hat Gretchen insisted she wear with the satin white gloves and flung it at him. Gretchen giggled from her seat at the table beside them.

"I think Aiden wants to play tea party too," she told the child conspiratorially. "Wouldn't it be fun to have a boy play?"

"It would. It would." She clapped her hands together.

Aiden tried to object but Gretchen would not hear of it. She needed one more guest to fill the empty seat at her tea party. The Prince of Darkness sitting in a flower garden at a child's table with a lilac hat on his head and a teacup in front of him was possibly the most hilarious thing Cara had ever seen. She doubled over in laughter.

Aiden scowled at her. "I look ridiculous. I will pay you back for this."

“Nonsense. You look like a respectable lady.” She pulled out her phone to snap a picture but his reflexes were quicker than hers. He snatched it from her hand and refused to give it back until they were back on the chopper and away from five-year-old little girls.

"I did not expect you to actually play with her back there?" Cara confessed still laughing every time she thought of the comical yet endearing image of him in the hat.

"I have a soft spot for kids. Especially ones who have lost a parent." Cara did not expect Aiden to say more but to her surprise he did. "I lost my mother when I was about Gretchen's age. My father was never capable of much love but he adored her. When she died what little compassion my father did have died with her."

He did not elaborate on how she died and Cara did not press him too. She never spoke the details of her father’s death out loud. The mere thought of doing so made her feel too vulnerable. As if she would be laying her soul bare and exposing the innermost parts of herself. The helicopter abruptly landed on top of a mountain in the middle of the Andes.

"Is everything okay?" Cara called over Asad's shoulder.

"Everything is fine Hunter. Aiden requested we make a stop on the way back to the island."

She looked at Aiden questioningly. He opened the helicopter's door and climbed out. He turned to her and held his hand out to help her do the same.

"Where are we going?" She asked him.

"Do you trust me?" He asked in return.

Cara turned the question over in her mind and came up with an answer. "Yes I do."

"Then come on and stop asking questions. You will spoil the surprise." Aiden held his hand out to her again and she took it.

Cara's eyes widened in disbelief that they were actually seeing the ancient Incan site immortalized in Neruda's
Heights of Macchu Picchu
.

"Stick bodies to me like magnets. Draw near to my veins and my mouth. Speak through my words and my blood," Aiden finished the poem she had started reciting midway through as they flew over the Andes.

"You are civilized!"

Aiden chuckled at her teasing. "When you live a millennia you pick up a thing or two. I can demonstrate a few other things when we get back to the island," he whispered the last part in her ear. His breath warmed the length of her neck and images of the night they spent together played across her vision. She forcibly pushed the memories away.

"You never returned my cell phone," she said abruptly changing the subject. "I cannot visit Macchu Picchu without leaving with pictures."

Cara lost herself in exploring the ancient ruins. She had been fascinated with visiting them since reading Neruda's work as a teenager. She'd been to the Andes dozens of times for various hunts but she had never taken the time to visit the mountain. She never took the time to do anything besides hunt vampires.

Take the time now
. She heard Aiden's voice in her head as clear as if he spoke the words.  She wasn't sure if it was her subconscious talking to her or the man beside her. She decided she would rather not know. She did not want to consider what it meant about the bond inevitably developing between them if he could speak into her mind so easily.

She did take the advice. She took time, hours in fact, to enjoy the famous ruins she longed to explore. Eventually, she found herself sitting beside a stone pillar with Aiden at her  back as she lounged against his chest between his legs. He absentmindedly played with a stray strand of her auburn curls.

"Did you always want to be a hunter," he asked her.

Cara shook her head no. "My dad was a surgeon. Before he died I wanted to be a doctor just like him. Fate is obviously a bitch with a sense of humor. I aspired to save lives and now it is my job to take them. Did you always want to be the heir to the vampire throne?" She teased him in good jest.

"Actually no," Aiden said surprising her in a rare moment of transparency. "Power in vampire society is attained and held by right of might. My father ascended to the throne by xmassacring the former Sovereign, his heir and all his supporters. Brute force and bloodshed is how he retains the throne. My father is enough of a cruel, merciless bastard that there are not many who would oppose him outright. If he even thinks someone has treasonous intent, he executes him or her on suspicion alone. It does not stop everyone around him, even those close to him, from lying in wait for a weakness they can exploit. I hate vampire politics. Everybody is always jockeying and scheming for more power behind closed doors. My Circle are the only three I can rely on not to take my head the minute I display a weakness. It's exhausting to think that as Viktor's heir, my existence will be marked by schemes and bloodshed for the rest of eternity. If I have children I will be condemning them to the same fate I recognized as a child. One of my father's council members tried to take his throne. At his execution he put a blade in my hand and directed me to carve out his heart. When I hesitated he thrust his hand into my chest and gripped mine. He told me that as his heir it was either kill or be killed. I could not afford to be merciful.  I needed to purge it from my system and drive the knife I held into the vampire's heart or he would kill me then and spare someone else the trouble of doing it later. The vampire was my first kill. Ever since that day I have wanted to be anything but the heir to my father's throne."

Cara turned her head to face Aiden. Her heart broke for the young boy he had once been who had his innocence stripped away in a moment of death. Their childhoods were similar in that respect. She wanted to say something to comfort him or show him she sympathized with him but she was terrible with words and even worse at expressing any feelings other than anger. So she did the only other thing she could think of. She placed her lips against his in a tender kiss. He locked his arms around her, holding her in a tight embrace. As their kiss deepened a mounting need to claim the hunter and make her his built inside Aiden. Until that point he made sure to keep his interactions with women light and casual. He would not drag a woman into the same ruthless existence his father dragged his mother. He was too afraid they would share the same fate. Whenever he was around Cara it was hard to maintain his rigid control. Whenever he touched her any intent to keep her at arm's length flew out the window. The hunter got under his skin and made him feel and want things he told himself an eon ago he would never allow himself to have. Both his mind and body craved her and wanted to be as close to her as possible. They screamed at him to possess her, wrap her in his arms and never let her go. He was tired of fighting against them. The last vestiges of his control slipped when she kissed him not in lust but in a display of compassion and empathy. He pulled her onto his lap and settled her legs around his waist. The need raged within him to claim her as his own. But he would not take her in a carnal rush of desire like last time. He would take his time and worship every inch of her body, claiming her mind along with it. He removed her cotton tank top then unhooked the satin bra that perfectly accentuated her breasts. He palmed them both, slowly rubbing the pads of his thumbs across her nipples. She shuddered beneath the attention. He sucked one nipple into his mouth and traced lazy circles around it until it was taut with desire. He did the same to its twin then shifted their position so that Cara was lying on her back. He unbuttoned her black leather pants and slid them down her waist. The satin thong she wore to match the bra left his mouth watering with the need to taste her. He removed the scrap of material and dipped his head between her supple thighs. He drew a soft breathy moan from Cara as he slowly delved between her folds.  When his tongue made its way to her sensitive bud her thighs clenched together, trapping his head between them. 

Don't stop," she whimpered into the gently blowing winds around them.

Moving with a greater sense of urgency he gripped her ass and lifted her slightly off the ground. He speared her with his tongue and thrust it in and out of her in a quick rhythmic motion. Cara writhed in ecstasy beneath the maddening onslaught.

"No more. Need you...inside of me," she begged.

Aiden quickly shed his own clothes and answered her pleas. He could refuse her nothing. If she asked him to lay the world at her feet, he would give her the universe and if she asked him to destroy it, he would raze it to the ground. He resettled himself between her thighs and slowly pushed into her core until he was buried inside of her. He stayed that way, unmoving, allowing her walls to stretch and form to the shape of his cock. He was remolding her from the inside out so that he was the only man she would ever desire again. When her body ached with desire and her core throbbed with need, it would be images of him thrusting into her that her mind conjured.

"Aiden please."  Cara ground her hips into him in a desperate attempt to feel the sensation of his cock sliding within her walls.