When Wicked Craves (35 page)

She pushed the curtains aside and looked out, taking in the lights and the bustle of the amazing city. Below them, crowds surged, a river of humanity that she could join now, whenever she wanted to.

Nick came up behind her and slid his hands around her waist. “Want to go down and rub shoulders with the masses?”

She laughed and turned in his arms, the feeling of unease fading against the glow of the man.

“Absolutely not,” she said, tilting her face up for a kiss. “Right now, I only want you.”

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Zermatt, Switzerland

The bar was dark, so dark that it was hard to see the faces of the men and women huddled around tall tables or leaning against the centuries-old bar, looking for a drink or a good time or both.

Caris stood in deepest shadows, back in the far corner, beyond the dartboard and the karaoke stage where a Teutonic male croaked out the Beatles’ “Help!” in broken English.

He spread his arms wide, gyrated his hips, and mangled the chorus. Caris cringed, and in a moment of rare charity hoped that he hadn’t come to get laid, because no woman in the bar looked drunk enough to take him home. And that said a lot, since most of the people in the small bar smelled of sex and lust and pure animal heat. So much so, in fact, that the power of their passion seemed to cling to her, making her skin burn and her hunger build.

But she hadn’t come for sex. She’d come for something entirely different.

Caris had come to kill.

Slowly, she scoured the faces of the men in the bar, the darkness no hindrance to her vampiric vision. She’d never seen his face, and during her captivity he’d taken care to mask his scent, yet she knew exactly who she was looking for. His description was set out in excruciating detail in the dossier she’d received that morning from a particularly resourceful PI she’d retained in Zurich.

She sighed. For decades she’d followed so many leads, only to find that she’d been stalking the wrong prey.

This time though …

By the gods, this time she had to be right. One more false lead and she feared she would snap. Orion had told her over and over she should simply quit. Pack it in. Throw in the towel and all those other cutesy sayings for giving up. But she couldn’t. She
wouldn’t.
That would mean that
he
would have won. That he’d taken her perfect life and ripped it into tiny pieces.

And that was unacceptable. There was a price for pain.

Tonight, he’d learn just how heavy a price her pain had borne.

One by one, she examined the faces in the bar, ignoring the two blond male vampires hunched in a corner. She wasn’t interested in other vamps. Not tonight.

She let her eyes pass over the females, focusing only on the men. The breadth of their chests. The cut of their shoulders. Searching for a man with a bulky frame and the same dark hair and thin mustache reflected in the dossier picture.

He wasn’t there.

Goddamn it all, he wasn’t there.

With a series of curses burning her tongue, she whirled around. Maybe he was in another bar. Maybe he was hiking the damn Matterhorn. Maybe the universe was playing one big nasty trick on her.

Didn’t matter. Ultimately, she’d find him. Ultimately, she’d—

Tiberius?

It wasn’t him, of course. Not the man she’d once loved with every breath in her body. But the midnight-black hair and infinite eyes had caught her attention as surely as Tiberius’s had that first night when he’d strode into her father’s court, a stranger offering his services as a warrior and a strategist. The resemblance was striking, and for the briefest of moments, her throat tightened and her pulse burned, violent anger warring with the deepest of desire.

It wasn’t her father who had held the stranger’s interest. It was her. He’d walked with her in the moonlight, his touch making her blood simmer and her pulse quicken.

She’d looked out over her father’s land and seen nothing but Tiberius, wanted nothing but him. His touch. His kiss. His everything.

And eventually, he had told her his secret. Had told her about the dark kiss. About the shadows.

He’d told her what he was.

His gaze had never left her as he spoke, searching her eyes for fear or loathing. He hadn’t found it. How could she ever be scared of him? Instead, she’d been intrigued, certain that she was looking destiny in the face. That
he
was her destiny.

Tiberius. Her mate. Her love.

“Buy you a drink?” the man in front of her asked, and when he spoke the illusion faded. His was the voice of a man who picked up women in bars. Definitely not Tiberius.

She paused, looked him slowly up and down, then continued toward the door.

He fell into step beside her despite the brush-off. Apparently, he was either stubborn or stupid.

“You’re alone,” he said.

“Your powers of perception are mind-boggling.” She kept on walking.

“A woman like you shouldn’t be alone.”

She stopped, then slowly turned to face him. “And what kind of woman is that?”

“A beautiful one.”

“Trust me,” she said. “It’s a deadly beauty.”

“I know.” He was looking at her hard, and she could smell the truth on him. He knew what she was, and damned if that didn’t excite him. The prospect of blood teased her daemon, the dark malevolence that lived deep inside every vampire, and her hunger grew.

The wolf stirred, too. The secret beast inside her.
He’d
made her this way, and she’d come to kill in payment for his dirty little tricks. For turning her into walking death. An outsider in her own damn world.

Can’t go there, Caris. Don’t even think it.

“I want what you can give.” He looked at her with eyes wide and wild, like a junkie staring into a candy jar filled with meth.

“Death?”

“The rush.” His chest rose and fell with his breath, the scent of desire wafting off him. He licked his lips and took a step toward her. “I know what you are,” he said, then tilted his head to the side. “Feed.”

Something raw and angry welled inside her. “You have no idea what I am,” she said. “You don’t have a goddamned clue.”

“You’re a vampire.”

The word hit her with the force of a slap, and she stepped closer, so close she could feel the heat of his excitement rising from his bone-pale skin. “I’m not,” she said. “Not anymore.” Not fully, anyway. If she were, Tiberius wouldn’t have kicked her out. Now she was something new. Something horrible.

She looked into those dark eyes and saw the fear growing, a fear that fed and fueled her, that primed her up and begged her to take, take,
take.
To get revenge. Against the man she hunted, yes. But more against the man who’d loved her up until the day he’d dumped her. She wanted to give Tiberius the big Fuck You. And right now … right now it was this guy standing in front of her. This guy, waiting for her to take his blood, his life …

She fought it down, fought it back.

Not now. Not when she was on the hunt.

“Go,” she said, pressing her palm against his chest and pushing him away from her. “Find yourself a less dangerous game to play.”

She left him gawking in her wake as she strode outside. She’d hit the next bar. She’d find her quarry. She’d come to this town with a purpose, and she didn’t intend to be distracted. Not even by the goddamned memories of Tiberius.

They’d ruled together for centuries—first in the human world until the rumors had begun, the people whispering about the king and the queen who lived in the night and never aged—and then in the shadow world. A dark warrior rising to power within the Alliance, working to strengthen the power of the vampire race. Fighting to defend their kind against the ancient enemies—the therians. Werewolves and other shifters. Shadowers, yes. But not of their kind.

She’d stood with him shoulder to shoulder. His woman, his confidante, his heart. And his secret weapon. A warrior as fierce as he, hiding beneath the soft curves of a woman.

Never once had she doubted Tiberius’s love or his admiration. His strong arms would always be around her. His soft words would always whisper to her. They could spend eternity walking the earth, filling the night with conversation and never tiring of each other. She was as certain of it as she was of the inevitable sunrise.

Until she’d been ambushed.

Jumped in the forest. Tied up. Tormented and tortured as a full moon leered overhead.

And bitten. The wolf had sunk his teeth into her, and the weren curse had poured into her veins.

She’d changed.

She’d changed and the nightmare had begun.

Her world had turned upside down, and her love had betrayed her.

She hated him, yes.

But she blamed the weren who’d stalked her.

Blamed him … and would kill him.

A scream ripped through the night as if echoing her own need to rend and tear. She told herself to ignore it—not her problem. But the smell of fear permeated the air. Whatever was happening, it was close. And, damn it all, she was already heading in that direction.

She found them in the alley behind the bar—the two vamps and the idiot patron with Tiberius’s eyes. One of the vamps leaned lazily against the rough-hewn wooden wall while the other held the human in a mockery of a lover’s embrace, his teeth sunk deep into the male’s flesh.

She started to turn away—she wasn’t the PEC. It wasn’t her job to arrest vamps who ran around feeding on humans, even dumb-ass ones who’d been begging for trouble. Especially not dumb-ass ones who reminded her of Tiberius. And wasn’t there some sort of sweet justice in seeing the life sucked out of him?

She watched for a second, breathing in the scent of fear, the aroma of death. She watched, and then she cursed.

Goddamn it all
.

Three long strides and she was right in front of them. “Funny,” she said, speaking to the one with his fangs buried in flesh. “He doesn’t look like a licensed faunt.”

“Not your business, little girl,” the one with his mouth free said. “Not unless you’re interested in sharing.”

She faced him, her hand going to her hip, pushing the leather of her coat back, revealing the knife she habitually wore there. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced,” she said. “I’m Caris.”

“Caris?”

She actually saw him swallow, and she had to bite back a smile. Apparently her reputation was worth something even up here on the Matterhorn.

“You should go if you want to live.”

She didn’t have to repeat herself. The one who’d been holding up the wall cut and ran. The other dropped the human, wiped the blood off his lips with the back of his hand, and then backed out of the alley, his eyes fixed on her as if she might just jump him for spite.

Any other night, and she might just have done that.

The human slumped to the ground, his cheek pressed against a slush of dirty snow. She could hear his pulse, weak but steady. She walked away, leaving him to the cold, but she pulled out her cellphone and called the pub. Told the bartender who answered that there was a man in his alley bleeding from the neck. Just her little charitable contribution for the day.

On the
bahnhofstrasse
, she paused to look up and down the street. She lifted her chin, sniffing the cold air out of habit. She expected nothing—so far her luck hadn’t exactly been stellar—and was surprised to catch a scent. Musky. Animal.

Weren.

Not necessarily the one she hunted, couldn’t get her hopes up yet. But she turned left, following the scent up the hill, through twisting streets, and finally out of the village and up a hiking path into the mountains.

The trail was stronger now, and she increased her pace, realizing she was gaining on him. The moon hung heavy in the sky—seventy percent waxing gibbous—and the animal within was relishing the hunt. The daemon—primed from the blood and charged from the memories—wanted nothing more than the kill.

Melting snow and fallen leaves littered the path, but she moved in silence, twisting around a copse of trees and then stopping short—he was there. And he hadn’t yet realized she was behind him.

Her hand went to her knife. She had a gun, too. A small revolver tucked in at the small of her back. Five silver bullets. They’d kill a werewolf dead enough, but this was one kill Caris wanted to make with her hands. Not her fangs—the thought of her mouth closing over this pile of flesh made her ill. But with a blade. One quick motion across his throat—face-to-face so she could see his expression, and watch as he understood that the time had come to pay for his sins.

She stepped forward, no longer caring about stealth. She wanted a fight. Craved it, in fact. Her daemon wanted to play. And so long as the weren ended up dead, she was more than happy to let her daemon get out and stretch its legs.

According to the dossier, the weren’s name was Cyrus Reinholdt. She didn’t much care—to her he was simply the enemy, the hated, the bastard who’d fucked her over. But right then, Reinholdt turned, and a flicker of joy passed through her as she saw the recognition—and the fear—in his eyes.

She tensed, but didn’t lunge. Didn’t move forward, didn’t attack, and for a split second she wondered at her hesitation. This was the weren she’d been looking for. The son of a bitch who’d destroyed her life, her love.

Inside, the daemon growled, wanting blood. Her body itched to leap, the wolf within wanting to rip this cousin to shreds.

Still, though, she didn’t move, and as the blood boiling in her head calmed, she realized why. It wasn’t the kill she wanted—not right away. It was answers.

Why the hell had he done this to her? Why the hell had he changed her into a goddamned leper?