Hunger (28 page)

Tor flipped him over with his boot, pressed it against his chin and shoved upwards, snapping his neck.

He stumbled left and leaned against the wall as pain ricocheted through him, coming back stronger than ever now his mission was done and the fight was over.

He stared off to his right at Adam where he lay in a pool of blood that slowly spread across the dusty floor.

He should have brought the bastard to Eve and let her kill him. She needed her vengeance and he had taken it from her. He only hoped he had done enough to convince her that life as a vampire was one worth living, with him.

He shoved his gun down the back of his black jeans and held his ribs, pinning his wounded right arm to them this time, wincing with each step he took back towards the room.

Vincent was finishing off the vampires as he arrived, decapitating them with a little too much enthusiasm. Blood sprayed up his body, splattering across his face. Tor had considered becoming a Law Keeper once, when he had grown weary of his bloodline and the way they treated him. Now he was glad he had remained a hunter.

His reward for years of service, for endless pain and loneliness, was waiting for him aboveground.

“We think there’s an exit this way.” Vincent wiped his blade on a dead vampire and sheathed it. He pointed towards a corridor filled with rubble and smoke, opposite the room.

Tor hoped the man was certain they were heading towards freedom and not their doom. He didn’t have any choice but to follow him as he led the way. Serge and Daemon brought up the rear, silent and wary, on high alert. Tor was too. It was hard to quieten the ache in his heart as he moved further away from Eve. Each step he took across the uneven ground, scrambling over the chunks of concrete and the decomposing bodies of vampires, took more effort, filling him with weariness as his strength began to fade.

He would see her soon. He kept telling himself it to soothe his need, the compulsion to turn back and go the other way, towards her. He was going towards her, just in a roundabout manner. It was easier to tell himself that than to convince himself to believe it. He wished again that they had completed a mating, sealing their bond with the ultimate connection that would have allowed him to tell her telepathically that he was safe.

He could still feel her hurt and it wasn’t a physical pain. It was emotional and it was ripping her apart from the inside. She was suffering because she thought he was trapped in the blazing warehouse, or worse.

She thought he was dead.

The knowledge that she might think such a thing increased his need to reach her, driving him to keep moving despite his pain and weakness, to keep putting one foot in front of the other. He had to take her pain away. He had to show her that he was still here and that he wasn’t going anywhere.

Fire consumed the corridor ahead, filling his mind with replays of his nightmares. He squeezed his eyes shut and fought them. She wasn’t in the building. She was outside. She was safe. He would see that with his own eyes soon enough. His senses weren’t lying to him. She was out and she was safe.

Daemon shoved him in the back. “Keep moving. I do not like that noise.”

What noise? Tor focused and frowned at the deep grumbling coming from below them. He moved faster, his senses screaming in warning. He knew that sound and the building couldn’t take another explosion. The whole thing would collapse with them in it.

“You should like it,” Tor said in an attempt to lighten the mood and shove his fears away as he pulled himself up a rocky incline, following Vincent. Vincent grunted, or it might have been a chuckle, and hauled himself up a seven foot high wall to the floor above. Tor grinned. “You make enough explosions. It should be like music to your ears.”

Daemon huffed and scrambled up behind him as Tor hefted himself onto the next floor with Vincent’s help, gritting his teeth against the pain. Tor reached over, grabbed Daemon’s hand and pulled him up. Serge sprang up onto the ledge as if it had been a mere two feet above the end of the rubble.

Vincent picked up pace, the red lights flickering over him, making him stutter in Tor’s vision. Tor gripped his side, pinning his arm in place, and started off at a jog that quickly became a sprint as the ground shook and buckled beneath their feet. Daemon growled something in German and Serge answered. They both ran harder. Fresh cool air swept past them.

Tor’s heart lifted and he pushed himself to run faster, keeping up with Vincent. Vincent rushed up a set of metal steps and Tor followed him, breaking out into another warehouse. The weaklings had a back entrance. It made sense. Having two warehouses would have drawn less attention to their activities, giving the humans less reason to become suspicious and making it easier to ferry victims into the buildings and come and go.

Daemon and Serge climbed the stairs and didn’t stop. Tor looked back down at the corridor as the earth shifted violently beneath his boots and then ran after them, following them out into the clear night air with Vincent bringing up his rear.

The other warehouse blazed directly in front of them, nothing more than a mass of twisted metal. They sprinted as one off to the right, out of the path of the impending explosion. It came hard and fast, jolting and fracturing the tarmac between the two buildings. Flames shot up out of the cracks and threw debris in all directions. Tor dodged all of it, moving further from the scene as the other warehouse went up in an inferno and sank into the collapsing earth.

Tor left the Law Keepers behind and raced around another warehouse, using it as a shield against the metal and concrete erupting from the explosions. The ground settled, the rumbling ceasing, but he didn’t slow down. He sprinted around the front of the warehouse and spotted Eve ahead, sitting on her knees with her hands hanging limp in her lap and her wide eyes locked on the buildings going up in flames before her.

He slowed to a walk.

Tears streamed down her dirty face, cutting through the blood and the grime.

His beautiful Eve.

She was alive.

He limped towards her, clutching his arm to his side, unwilling to give into the weariness invading him or the pain, not now that he was so close to holding her again, to feeling her in his arms where she belonged.

Her head slowly turned towards him and her eyes grew impossibly wide. She was on her feet a second later, running to him as she held her left arm to her chest. Tor gritted his teeth, released his injured arm and held his out to her.

She raced into them and buried her face against his chest, her slender body shaking with the sobs that wracked her. Her good arm went around his waist as he wrapped his around her. She squeezed him hard, pulling a grunt of pain from him as she came close to breaking more of his ribs.

“I thought you were dead.” Her muffled words hit him hard and he sighed and stroked her tangled dark hair with his left hand.

He lowered his head and pressed a long kiss to the top of hers, lingering there and absorbing how good it felt to have her in his arms and know that she was safe. It was no longer an alien and strange feeling.

It was heavenly, like coming home.

She moved nearer to him, as if she couldn’t get close enough, as if she wanted to become one with him. He wrapped his arms back around her and held her as the Law Keepers caught up with them. It was only when they reached him that he reluctantly released her. He wanted to hold her all night.

He wanted to hold her forever, and never let her go.

“We should get away from this place before the human authorities come,” Tor said and the three men nodded. Serge broke away from them and helped Angelica onto her feet.

Eve drew back and rubbed the tears from her face before any of the Law Keepers could notice, using his arms and body to shield her from their sight.

When all signs of weakness were gone, she looked up at him. “Is it over?”

He nodded and held her cheeks in his palms, savouring how good it felt to touch her again and know that she was safe now. He pressed a light kiss to her forehead and then placed his good arm around her, holding her close to him as they started walking.

“I took care of Adam personally… I’m sorry you couldn’t have your revenge with your own hands.”

Eve shook her head, took hold of his hand that dangled over her shoulder and pressed a kiss to his knuckles. “I don’t care. I was going about this all wrong.”

He frowned, not understanding.

She looked up at him again. “I was so blinded by vengeance and hatred that I forgot how to live… I had lost my way and lost myself… and then you came along. You showed me that I was still the same woman I had always been. That I hadn’t changed that night I had become a vampire. You showed me the path and how to walk it, and you made me feel alive for the first time in forever. You made me realise that revenge couldn’t take away my pain or make me happy.”

She slipped out from under his arm and faced him. Her fingers closed around his, the touch sending a thousand volts shooting up his arm and increasing his awareness of her. He fell into her rich dark eyes, right into her soul and the heart she was showing him.

“Tor… you took away my pain… you made me happy.” She smiled and a laugh bubbled free of her lips. “You made me find my ability to trust again… and to love.”

He stared at her, needing a moment to comprehend what she had just said to him.

The three Law Keepers watched him. He snarled at them, flashing fangs, and they moved on, giving them some privacy.

She loved him.

Deep in his heart, he had known that she did, that she had to in order to create a bond with him, but hearing her say it stole his voice and left him dumb.

Her smile widened and another laugh escaped her. “I think I need to spell it out to you.”

She moved closer, pressing the full length of her body against his, and wrapped her right arm around his neck. She drew him down to her and kissed him softly, slowly, warming him inside. He clutched her with his left hand on her hip and deepened the kiss, refusing to let her go now that he had her.

Now that he had caught his bright star.

“I love you, Tor,” she whispered against his lips and he groaned and kissed her harder before breaking away and pressing his forehead against hers.

“I love you, too.” Words he had never thought he would say to anyone but that felt so right as they left his lips. “Are you ready to go home now?”

She nodded.

“I’m ready to go home with you.”

E
ve took a deep breath as the black limousine pulled up to the elegant palatial mansion. The large moon cast pale blue light down onto the dark roof, highlighting the tiles and the creamy stone walls supporting it.

Tor placed his hand over hers on the leather bench seat and squeezed gently. She looked across at him and his smile hit her hard, easing away her tension and some of her nerves. He was right here with her and she knew he wouldn’t leave her side. He had promised to remain right beside her the whole time.

She nodded and his hand slipped from hers as he opened the door and exited the vehicle. She shuffled across the seat, took the hand he offered, and stepped out onto the gravel drive. Several vampires stood near the entrance of the building, dressed head to toe in black, watching her with intense crimson eyes.

She swallowed. Tor frowned and tracked her gaze.

He said something in his dark language and the three men moved away, strolling towards the right side of the building where the grounds opened out into a huge expanse of grass.

“Guards,” Tor said to her in English and laced their fingers together. “They were just curious.”

She nodded again and expelled a breath. She couldn’t go getting jittery about every vampire. There were too many. She would probably fray her nerves and go insane. The mansion was buzzing with signatures on her senses, all of them varying in strength. They blurred together in places where larger numbers gathered.

The largest gathering was just beyond the doors ahead of her.

They were waiting for her.

Tor went to move and stopped when she didn’t follow him.

He turned back to her and she looked herself over. What would they make of her? She wore one of Tor’s black sweatshirts over her jeans, and had a white sling supporting her left arm. Tor had bandaged it but it was still healing, the bone slow to mend. That white sling felt like a sign of weakness, a signal to the waiting vampires that she was vulnerable.

Easy prey.

Unable to defend herself.

Her heart clenched, her stomach turning with it, and she almost backed off a step.

A slight increase in the pressure of Tor’s grip stopped her.

Eve looked up at him, seeing in his steady ice-blue gaze that he had been reading her feelings through their bond and wanted to reassure her. He drew her towards him and she didn’t resist. She settled her head against the cool hard wall of his broad chest and let all of her tension flow from her, all of the stress and the fear, focusing on him instead.

He wouldn’t let these vampires hurt her.

She suspected that if they so much as frightened her by mistake they would pay with their lives.

Tor settled his strong arms around her, shielding her with them in a way that pushed the world away, leaving only him and her behind. She settled more heavily against him, seeking the comfort and strength he offered silently to her, finding her feet and her balance again in his embrace.

He pressed a kiss to the top of her head and she nodded to let him know that she was ready at last.

He released her and took her right hand again, his fingers locked between hers, his grip steady and strong.

Eve took her first step towards the mansion she would call home from the moment she set foot in it.

A mansion where her sister waited for her.

Her steps became easier as she drew closer to it, her heart growing lighter, beginning to fill with positive emotions as she thought about seeing Lilith again after all their years apart.

Someone opened the doors for them and Tor entered ahead of her, blocking her view of most of the large beautiful foyer. When he moved back in line with her, the waiting crowd of vampires closed in, all speaking at once and threatening to overwhelm her.