Hunger Embraced (The Hunger Series) (19 page)

Oh no. This is bad.

“No!” Her scream cut off when she struck the juncture of my neck and shoulder, burrowing her fangs into my flesh.

I bucked my hips, trying to get her off, but even half-starved and emaciated, her strength overpowered me. The pain from her bite arced through my body, and tears ran down the sides of my nose. It hurt. Bad.

Her fingers plowed into my cunt from behind and I cried out, pushing up from the floor with my hands and knees. She snarled and worried at my neck, continued to finger-fuck me. Her Hunger for sex beat a tattoo on my temples and the inside of my skull. I belly flopped back down and smashed my nose on the carpet.

My Hunger began to rise, a tightening in my lower abdomen that curled up and expanded out into a tornado of magical energy.

“Daniel, please! Help me!”
I tried to shout the words, but all I managed was a croak. The sharp snap of gristle and bone sounded behind me, and blood poured over my upper chest and neck. Dominique’s weight was lifted from my back, and a
thud
reverberated through the room.

Warm hands rolled me onto my back, and the rush of ocean waves crashing on the beach during a storm sounded in my ears. The smell of salt mixed with sunshine, briny water, and seaweed invaded my nose. Daniel.

He lay down on top of me, his warm weight reassuring. He gathered me close and kissed me, blood gushing from his tongue into my mouth. I choked on the flow, spitting some of it back out, but he only withdrew long enough for me to swallow. The bite continued to bleed, but the flow began to slow.

When he withdrew, I yanked him in closer, snaked my legs around his thighs, and clamped down. The Hunger needed to be fed. Now.

It drove me, rode me, and controlled every action.

I grappled with his pants and underwear, stripped them down low enough to free his cock. Stroked it rough and fast and cupped his balls with my free hand. He groaned then moved up my torso high enough to slide his length between my thighs. My legs were still trapped by my jeans, so he rubbed his shaft through my drenched slit. The friction on my clit was delicious and the underside of his shaft dragged against the place the tops of my thighs touched. T.T.B. sucked on my breast until my nipple peaked, then made two tiny holes with his fangs. He retreated and instead of sucking at the wound he licked the oozing blood in leisurely strokes.

I thrust my hips against him, craving the life force swirling through his aura and in his cum. The Hunger coiled tighter, pushed me to piston with more force.

The head of his shaft rubbed over my clit once, twice, and on the third pass orgasm claimed me, and the Hunger burst free.

It fed on him, drinking him down as Dominique had done to me. The back of my head thumped into the floor, and every ache and pain in my body dissipated. The Hunger consumed, filling me up with his essence: the serious deadly warrior trapped in secrets, intrigue, and service, and the gentle, laughing lover who spilled his seed on my thighs in jerking spurts.

His forearms hit the floor on either side of my head, and a barrier slammed between us, shoving the Hunger back into my body.

I gasped for breath, chest heaving. He licked the last of the blood off my breast and kissed the place his fangs had breached my skin. Then he dragged his thumb over my lips and cradled my head, bringing it off the floor and giving me a soft, sweet kiss.

“Are you OK?” Daniel turned my head from side to side, touching the place Dominique had bitten me to check the wound. I flinched away; even though it no longer bled, the area was sore and ached. I nodded and rubbed one hand over my face. He then surged to his feet and grabbed my hands to drag me up with him.

“Hurry. Guards approach.”

I shimmied my underwear and pants back up, then located my bra and put it on. My shirt lay soaked in the pool of greenish black blood spreading from Christophe’s body.

The Feeler’s head lay a few feet away from his torso with the kitchen knife still protruding from the forehead.

“I thought you said most older vampires moved too fast to hit them with a throwing weapon.” I chafed my upper arms with my palms.

“He was distracted.” Daniel brushed past me, carrying bed linens, and plucked the knife out before he shucked the head into a pillowcase. He thrust the macabre package at me, and I accepted it without thought.

He tossed the rest of the body onto a sheet and made short work of tying a large knot then tossed the whole thing over his shoulder. I tied a knot in the pillowcase as well. Daniel crossed to the far end of the fireplace and ran his hands down a panel until he pushed with both hands and it popped open.

Hmm…just like in that old Harrison Ford movie. I hoped there weren’t all kinds of nasty bugs and slime in there.

The energy I’d stolen from him zipped through me, pinballing from my toes to my scalp.

I took one last look around the room before ducking into the pitch-black opening in the wall. The soul was gone.

Chapter Twelve

Daniel shut the wall and absolute darkness descended, leaving me blind. He grabbed my hand and towed me along in a stumbling shamble. He clipped along at a pace that even if I had been able to see, I still would have had trouble keeping up.

“Where are—”

He whipped around and clamped his hand over my mouth hard enough to bruise. I snorted when I saw his face. I shouldn’t have been able to, but bright blue light spilled from his eyes and across his cheeks like a demonic flashlight. The other hand squeezed mine, and when I nodded, he released my face. I could take a hint.

The pupils of his eyes were obliterated by the irises. The light glowed bright enough to illuminate the wall studs to my left and the smooth rock wall on my right. He turned back around and took off again, the torso bouncing off his back with his footsteps. The pillowcase jarred against my leg, and I threw it over my shoulder when it tangled in my legs and I tripped into Daniel. I didn’t like the idea of a dismembered head banging into the small of my back, but it wasn’t as bad as thinking about the one in my fridge at home.

I careened to the left as Daniel propelled us around a corner and cobwebs tangled in my hair. Damn spiders with their weird thread poop. The sticky morass of Dominique’s blood on my neck and in my hair combined with the spider silk into a disaster of clotted goo. My poor bra didn’t know it yet, but it was headed for the big lingerie heaven in the sky.

We continued to move in an arc that sloped to the right. I had no idea where we headed, but it was away from the house. That was a good thing. Anxiety clawed its way into my throat. Daniel was a Guardian, had been ordered by the leader of the coven to do something, and had then disobeyed. Not only disobeyed, but killed Christophe. I wanted to trust him, but ultimately he worked for the Vampire Council. Being with him now was safer than remaining in Stephan’s cozy little den of crazy, but I probably needed to skedaddle away from him at the first opportunity.

“You’re stupid.”

I coughed and shook my head. That damn voice again. If my insurance didn’t have such a massive co-pay, I’d have gone and gotten some kind of anti-depressant or something years ago to make it go away. The more I hung out with T.T.B., the stronger it grew. One more reason to leave him in the dust.

I hoped to God he knew where the hell he was headed. He abruptly stopped, and a low curse drifted back to me.

“Wow, you’re swearing a lot today,” I whispered to his back and cringed when he whirled to glare at me over his shoulder. Those eyes were creepy as hell.

I pushed up to his side to see why he’d stopped, figuring the flashlights coming out of his face like mini high-end headlights would let me see. A large rusty door set into a rock wall blocked our path. A huge old-fashioned padlock set into a latch held it closed.

“Can’t you just break the damned thing? It looks ancient.”

“I have already tried.” A muscled flexed in his jaw when he said the words, and my heart stuttered in fear. I’d thought he was strong enough to deal with something like this. It was just an old rusty lock. Not ten minutes ago he’d decapitated one vampire and ripped the jaw off another before launching her into the wall.

“They’re probably after us! What the fuck do we do now? Why can’t you break it?” I threw the pillowcase to the ground, grabbed the lock, and yanked on it, straining backward with all my weight.

He drew a deep breath and set the body on the ground, turning around to face the way we’d came.

“I think it is warded or protected with some kind of spell.” He took up a fighting stance and withdrew the knife from his back pocket. “And you’re right, they’re after us. I will protect you as long as I am able.”

Wait, what? He’d resigned himself to death when he’d just managed to bust me out of the horrible sex dungeon? My mind couldn’t wrap around everything that had happened in the last hour or so. My father’s court was definitely taken over by some kind of nasty ass mo-fo I was supposed to address as “my lord,” I’d gone to third base with a chick, I’d thought Daniel had betrayed me, but then he’d given me another mind bending orgasm, slammed the door on my Hunger, and killed Christophe. Now he knew about a secret passage and had crazy day-glow eyes, only to be thwarted by a fucking door?

So not happening.

I jerked him back around to face the door. “I can’t see if you don’t look in the direction I’m looking. And right now, I’m looking at this door.”

He crowded me. “I’m trying to protect you, fool.”

I shuffled forward until my toes bumped into his and craned my neck to see his face. “You did
not
just call me that, T.T.B.! There’s no one in the room with us just yet, so you face this way while I try to figure a way out of this that doesn’t involve more severed heads and us being served up on a platter to My Lord Crypt Keeper.” I poked his chest, hard, and he finally nodded curtly after rolling his eyes and looked at the door with only one peek over his shoulder.

I studied the door, trying to discern any visible weaknesses, any chinks in the rock, or spots on the door that had rusted through—anything that looked like it could be exploited. The lock mocked me, I swear it. I kicked it halfheartedly and then jumped around holding the sole of my foot in pain. Daniel snorted and shook his head, but a smile tugged the corner of his mouth. He glanced over his shoulder again, and his lips became so thin with tension they almost disappeared. I couldn’t hear anyone coming yet, but he apparently could. Maybe that was good. Maybe we had some time before they got here.

The clenched muscles of his jaw stood out in the shadows of his face from the light cast by his eyes. He opened and closed his fists and bent his knees, putting all his weight on the balls of his feet. I needed to stop deluding myself and kicking things.

I rested my fists on my hips and glared. Something was keeping this metal door strong enough to hold vampires at bay in a place where it should have rusted to nothing from the damp air. My consciousness opened, and I used the ability that let me see auras to examine the door again. Perhaps someone had escaped this way once before so they’d closed it up. T.T.B. had been surprised not only by the door, but by the fact he couldn’t breach it. I added that little tidbit to my growing laundry list of questions for him.

The lock shimmered with a faint green glow interspersed with red streaks. Someone bound this spell with blood. Old magic. Druid magic. I didn’t know who had given their blood, but the green aura I’d recognize anywhere.

Lane had been here. Lane, who’d been my friend for years now and had left me the keys and a big-ass knife. Apparently, she played a larger part than I suspected in the puzzle my life had decided to become.

The gods were either feeling fickle or I’d become the star in a celestial reality show. See Miranda run. See Miranda fuck. See Miranda kick the shit outta this door.

I smacked myself in the head.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I reached down into my left boot and tried to get the keys out. Thank the gods I’d listened to my intuition for once. They caught on my pant leg. I tugged again, harder, and fell over when they came free.

Graceful, that’s me. I stood up and crossed my fingers.

The rusty iron key slid into the lock and turned easily even though I had thought it would stick in there and break off. I fished the shackle of the lock free, flipped the latch, and picked up the pillowcase. Christophe’s blackish-green Feeler goop spread across the bottom seam and seeped through to drip out on to the ground.

“You coming?” I didn’t bother to whisper; if enemy troops were close enough behind for Daniel to hear them they’d hear me anyway.

He recovered in a flash, picking up his own macabre bundle and yanking the metal slab open the rest of the way. It had a wheel like device on the other side, like on a ship’s door. I must not have moved fast enough, because he shoved me through the threshold, and I fell to my knees. The pillowcase bounced over the ground and disappeared from view when he turned to slam the door shut.

“What the hell is your problem?” A heavy thud hit the other side, and I watched the door creep open about six inches. Some grayish fingers appeared along the edge of the door, and Daniel grabbed a hold of one of the bars that slid into the rock to secure it. Every muscle stood out on his back as he grunted with the effort to keep it closed. “Oh, you’re forgiven.”

The door clanged shut.

The loose dirt and rocks on the floor made me scrabble around trying to get traction. I staggered to the wheel and started twisting it violently until it lurched to a stop. Daniel huffed, wiped his forehead on his shirt, and grabbed my hand, stopping only long enough for me to retrieve the head. I wished I could leave it behind. But what if I did and Christophe regenerated? I could picture him running after us all lurchy and melty.

The chilly atmosphere of the tunnel enclosed me except for the warmth of Daniel’s hand in mine. We continued on, the angle changing to slope upward, which meant we were leaving the mansion behind, and that was all that mattered to me.