Heart and Soul

Table of Contents

 

 

 

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada
(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)
Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Mairangi Bay, Auckland 1311, New Zealand
(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196,
South Africa

 

Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

 

This is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Copyright © 2007 by Shiloh Walker, Inc.

 

All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without
permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of
the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
HEAT and the HEAT design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

 

eISBN : 978-1-440-67952-0

I. Title.
PS3623.A35958H86 2007
813’.6—dc22
2007001165

 

 

CHAPTER ONE

Leandra tossed on the mattress, her hair tangling around her upper body, sweat gleaming on dark flesh as she struggled with the nightmare . . . with the memories.

Your fault
. . . the voice echoed through her mind, and she muttered in her sleep, voicing her agreement. “My fault. Mine.” If she had just looked. Just
once
, if she had truly looked . . .

Blackness—all around. Then
them.
The Hunters—they wanted her blood. Many of them wanted her dead. But then there was Jonathan—“She saved the life of my mate. I’ll destroy any person who thinks to harm her . . .”

 

 

LEANDRA AWOKE WITH A SOB, JERKING UPRIGHT IN her bed and staring sightlessly at the wall in front of her.

Over—it was all over. More than five years had passed.

Five years since that day when she had been so horribly, painfully awakened.

She’d been sent out to do a job, sent to kidnap a child to use as bait, but part of her had felt like she had been rescuing Erica. Part of her had known something was wrong. Looking into Mike’s eyes as she pulled the trigger, it had felt like a betrayal. Not to him—she didn’t even know him. But to herself. She’d lived by certain rules. She didn’t kill innocent people. She didn’t kill decent people.

But shooting him, killing his friend—it had felt
wrong
. They couldn’t be innocent. Hunters were
not
innocent. She’d led her entire life with a clear purpose. The Hunters were evil. They had to die.

It had been devastating, painful, having the blinders she’d lived with her whole life ripped away. And ever since she had lived with the knowledge that she’d live the rest of her life trying to fix the wrongs she had unwittingly done.

It would be a damned long life, too. Reaching up, she touched her fingers to the ridged scar of flesh at her neck. It had long since healed over, but the mark was there, and she’d live with it. Most vampires didn’t have such an ugly physical reminder of the bite that Changed them, but the man who had bitten her hadn’t been worried about bringing her over.

He’d just wanted to feed. And he’d torn a nasty, gaping hole in her neck. In the short span of time between Pierre ripping her neck open and then Malachi feeding her, Leandra had nearly bled out.

Sometimes she wished the ancient vampire had just let her die instead of forcing his blood down her throat. So low on blood, that was all it had taken for the Change to start, the grueling transformation from mortal to vampire.

Hell, she
should
have died. Leandra was a born witch. Witches had stronger defenses against many paranormal creatures, but the vampire’s bite was just as deadly to a witch as it was to a mortal. Most witches didn’t survive the Change. Leandra really wished she hadn’t.

Lately, it seemed she was wishing that a lot.

Five years ago, death wasn’t something she would have longed for.

But a lot of things had changed in five years, and not just her becoming a vampire.

Five years ago, she would have looked at the people she now called comrade, and all she would have seen was
enemy
.
Threat
. She’d lived her life thinking the Hunters were nothing more than cold-blooded killers. Bitterness flooded her, lingering on her tongue like acid.

How long would she have continued to believe that lie if she hadn’t been forced to see the truth?

Her entire life, possibly. Leandra had been raised by the Scythe, a group of people that were little more than a cult, and the Scythe had committed too many wrongs.

It seemed like yesterday, and at the same time, it was like a whole other life. The memories of what she had done still tormented her. The wrongs she had committed.

The blood she’d shed out of blindness.

Very little bothered her as much as feeling like a fool, but she could have taken that. If only she hadn’t caused so much pain because of it.

Guilt could choke the life out of a person and usually, Leandra handled it a little bit better.

But being back at Eli’s, surrounded by people who remembered her, who knew what she had done, only made it harder. Being so close to Mike made it almost unbearable. Her hand shook a little as she wiped the tears from her face. “I have to get away from this place,” she whispered.

Leandra had run away from home nearly twenty years ago, but the rich, musical accent of Jamaica hadn’t faded. She barely heard it herself, unless she was talking to others.

Right now, it was her own voice that she heard, along with the erratic beat of her heart. She was alone. At least as alone as she could get when she was living in one of the Hunters’ strongholds. Elijah Crawford, the Master of this territory, had allowed her into his lands, welcomed her into his house, but she wished desperately he hadn’t.

Leandra would give damn near anything to do her training elsewhere.

Training . . . closing her eyes, she drew her knees to her chest and pressed her face against her legs. “Training.” Once more, Leandra was pupil to a more powerful creature than herself. Not for the magick, though. She’d long since passed the need to have somebody help her master the power that made her a witch.

No. Now she needed a trainer to teach her to control the bloodlust. It sounded so simple—learning how to resist the call of blood. It was anything but simple. Four years had passed since she had been Changed but instead of getting a little easier, it got a little harder. The bloodlust that came on a newly Changed vampire could easily rage out of control.

Leandra had thought it was getting better, though. Then that bastard Malachi had brought her
here
. He could choose any place in the world to finish her training and he chose the one place guaranteed to put her on edge.