Hunger Revealed (2 page)

Whatever. People who didn't know her
could believe what they wanted. “Evelyn, was it?” She kept her
voice low, hoping no human around them would eavesdrop on what must
have been a bizarre conversation. After the woman nodded, Jasmine
said, “It's nice meeting you, but my husband's waiting outside. I
have to go.”

Evelyn moved closer to Jasmine, coming
at her with that creepy grin showing off the sharp edges of her
pointed teeth. “We just want to talk to you for a little while. To
discover and understand.”

Jasmine's jaw tightened. “There's
nothing to discover or understand.” She tried to sidestep the
woman. “Now, if you'll excuse me.”

“Only a few minutes,” Evelyn replied
sweetly. She reached for Jasmine's arm, her powerful grip betraying
her vampire heritage.

Stepping into the hold as Corin had
taught her, about to twist away in a calculated move, Jasmine cried
out instead when something sharp pricked her skin.
“Hey!”

“My lady, I am so sorry. So
sorry.”

Her vision immediately grew hazy, but
Jasmine recognized the little syringe in the woman's hand. Not more
than two seconds passed before her mouth fell slack, feeling as if
filled with cotton and sand. Her arms wrapped around her stomach as
the muscles in her legs gave way. Evelyn caught her before she hit
the ground completely, however, and Jasmine's eyes rolled,
unwilling to focus long enough to capture an image of the woman's
face again.

Jasmine tried to say
Corin's name. Nothing came out. She wanted to yell
stop
. Or
help
.

She wanted to beg Evelyn not to do
this because she was pregnant and needed to protect the
baby.

Instead, the world went
black.

Chapter Two

Corin stormed through the racks of
clothing, shoving them out of the way with brute force. He'd let
seven minutes pass with no sign of Jasmine. And that simply wasn't
like her.

His first thought had been that the
line to make her purchase held her up. When he strolled back to the
entrance of the lingerie store and didn't spot her, though, his
concern spiked. Without pause, he hurried in the direction of the
dressing room, the pitting feeling in his stomach growing with
every step.

“Sir? Sir, you can't go back
there!”

The lanky saleswoman rushing to meet
him before he barreled down the corridor almost met his full wrath.
Only the whispered warning of his conscience kept him from ripping
her throat out just to get to his wife. He'd never harmed an
innocent human before, but rational thought was becoming more and
more difficult to come by. “My wife,” he growled as he brusquely
brushed by her body. “Have you seen her? Petite. Blue eyes. Curly
brown hair.”

“If you'll let me…” She struggled to
make it around him and into the corridor first. “I'll look, if
you’ll wait out here.”

“Not a chance,” he said. Not after
their dealings with Sijourn Vartan, the billionaire vampire who’d
tortured Jasmine. Not after the Council, the vampire nation's
ruling body, had once ordered Corin to kill her.

Resigned, she called, “Ladies, please
stay inside your rooms for just a moment. We have an
emergency.”

At the same time, Corin yelled out,
“Jasmine!”

Inevitably, doors began to creak open
at the sound of his voice. So long as one of the women peering out
was his wife, it didn't much matter to him what the other women
thought.

“Jasmine!”

The area was too small for her not to
have heard him bellow both times. His heart kicked hard, fear and
adrenaline surging through his veins like molten fire.

If the Council had reneged
and finally come after her, there wouldn't be shelter enough for
any of them to hide. He
would
find and slaughter them all. It's what
executioners did.

Curling his hands into fists,
desperately fighting to regain some measure of calm, he moved to
the dressing room where he'd last seen her. Only two steps outside
of its doors, he paused. Tilting his head, he inhaled deeply, the
subtle crisp scent of blood greeting him. It was such a small
amount, he might have missed it. But a vampire who knew the taste
of his wife as well as Corin did honed in on it.

Based on the miniscule quantity he
scented, no real harm had probably come to her. Perhaps a nick of
skin. A slight scratch.

For each one visited upon her, he'd
return the wound a thousandfold.

“Take me to your security feed,” he
said to the saleswoman.

She folded her arms across her chest,
lifting her chin into the air. She seemed frozen with indecision.
“I don't know who you are, and—”

“I don't have time for this
shit,” Corin grumbled. He pushed past her, ignoring her squeak of
surprise. His sleeve snagged on something, a momentary pause
allowing him to realize he'd tangled somehow on her nametag.
“Look,
Moira
, some
very bad men have my wife. And I'm best equipped to get her back
safe and sound. I will do it with or without your help.”

She blinked up at him with those wide
eyes but said nothing. Disgusted by her unwillingness to assist
him, Corin made a low sound of dismissal. He stomped away, intent
on finding the back office where a security system with camera
monitoring must have been erected.

Fuck
. Where would they have taken her? Back to the Council? He
couldn't believe he'd allowed another executioner to get so close
to her, for surely only an executioner would have been so brazen as
to snatch her in broad daylight.

Broad daylight...

A thought struck him, and Corin slowly
turned to face Moira again. She hadn't moved from the spot, but the
way she looked at him now made him pause. Sketched onto her face
was a mixture of fear and…guilt. “How did they get her through the
front without others seeing?” he asked softly.

Corin began to walk toward her
again.

“A grown woman, probably unconscious,
wouldn't be missed by lots of shoppers.”

Moira began to back away slowly, fear
creeping up and overriding the guilt of her expression.

“Did he have help from the
inside?”

She began to search around her,
looking for somewhere to run presumably, but only doors to dressing
rooms surrounded them.

All of these things he said while
stalking her, the saleswoman whose eyes had grown as big as
saucers. Who looked like a trapped creature with no place to turn.
Whose fluttering heartbeat raced like a hummingbird's.

He wasn't for sure she was
involved—not yet—but when the first beads of sweat dotted along her
upper lip, Corin
knew
.

“Where is she?” he barked.

Moira jumped, then swallowed hard. The
guilt—a dead giveaway—intensified. She'd paled, and her lips all
but disappeared as she bit down on them. Shaking had already
started to take over her hands, and he'd bet money she was moments
away from peeing herself.

If she'd helped to kidnap
Jasmine, then she knew what he was. For her sake, he hoped she also
knew
who
he was
also.

A shudder rippled through her. “She's
safe,” she said barely above a whisper.

Corin's lip lifted,
revealing teeth growing larger with his agitation. An intimidation
act he had no problem utilizing. “You realize that
you're
not safe 'til I
see that for myself?”

Moira was human, and he didn't carry a
gun, but an ash stake through her heart would kill her just the
same. He'd face any judgment for murder necessary to get Jasmine
back.

Extenuating circumstances. Any judge,
human or vampire, would rule in his favor.

She must have decided to take his
malice seriously. Moira's hands shot into the air, signaling
surrender. “I'll take you to her, and you'll see that she's fine.
The Reverent Father wouldn't see her harmed for all the
world.”

Corin couldn't stop a frown from
forming.

Fuck, he did not need this shit. Did
not want this shit. His wife had been through so much already. They
hadn't made it a year. One year of not having to deal with someone
coming after either of them, looking for blood and
death.

“You take me to her,” he said, a snarl
rumbling through his words. “And you do it now.”

~ * ~

No one said a word to them as Moira
led the way through a ranch-style house not far from the shopping
plaza where Corin had last seen Jasmine. The place wasn't fancy and
thank the gods, not creepy either. If his wife had come here to
hang with friends, he wouldn't have given it a second
thought.

But the fact at least half a dozen
people milled around, looking a little too mellow to be anything
but riding chemicals set his nerves on edge. As it was, the twenty
minutes to get here had his teeth grinding.

“You'd better not be fucking with me.”
The hand holding Moira's upper arm as she led him toward a closed
door tightened. Didn't matter much that she winced at the
pressure.

Edgy, he waited for someone
to accost them. To talk some bullshit. To do
something
. The closer they got to a
black door at the end of a long hallway though, the more he
realized that danger didn't wander in a drugged daze on this side
of the door. His gut instinct, the one that kept him alive for
hundreds of years, screamed that the other side would be where he'd
need to keep his wits.

“She's in there,” Moira whispered. “Go
in.”

His fingers dug in deeper. “You
first.”

“Not allowed,” she said, shaking her
head.

“You first.”

“I-I can't.”

“You. First.”

A sigh of utter exasperation and
weariness escaped his human guide. “I'm not allowed without
permission, and nothing you say is going to get me to break that
rule. Nothing, get it?”

He searched her eyes and found the
resolution in them. Yeah, whatever awaited on the other side of the
door made her more fearful than Corin ever could.

And that concerned the shit out of
him.

She held the force of his stare for a
few seconds while Corin decided on the best way to proceed. Only
when she inclined her face away did he notice telltale bruising
along the line of her neck. Dots of twin scars in multiple places
near the rapidly beating pulse tattled on her activities when not
kidnapping unsuspecting women. “Who you feeding?”

“What?” Moira looked
startled.

“You don't get marks like those from
just one bite. Those took time. Multiple feedings, coming close
together.”

She had the decency to glance at him
before dropping her gaze. “Reverent Father. He…”

“He what?” Corin thought he already
knew the answer, but wanted to hear her say it, if she
would.

Moira shook her head.

He filled in the blanks for her.
“Makes you promises. Says he'll give you everlasting life. Promises
to make you a vampire one day.” A day that would never come. Never.
Not if the Council had anything to do about it.

Gods.
A cult. He was dealing with some sort of cult that worshiped
vampires. Preyed on humans. Preyed on the desperate. She probably
had some sort of story, some life she wanted to escape from, and
whoever this vampire—the Reverent Father—was, took advantage of
every little bit of it.

And now this fuckhead had
Jasmine.

Without another second spent on
speculating about the headstrong human in front of him, Corin
curled his hand around the doorknob. It twisted smoothly, and he
pushed open the door, eyes scanning the interior of the room before
the door had even swung completely open.

The vision before him stole his next
thoughts.

Jasmine lay stretched out in the
center of the room, piles upon piles of pillows surrounding and
supporting her. His dick hardened while he scanned her for any
marks or bruises. Any sign of injury at all.

His physical response in
this insane moment couldn't be helped. The little purple thing
they'd put her in would hide
nothing
. It was the skimpiest,
thinnest, and most see-through garment he'd ever had the pleasure
of seeing her in. And those little panties? Damn. They were the
things wet dreams were made of.

Tearing his gaze away took
an act of strength he didn't know he possessed. If he didn't fear
for her immediate welfare, things might have gone down differently.
“Jasmine…
mellita…
”

She didn't respond.

Corin edged closer, very aware of the
open door behind him. He remained tense, expecting someone to come
barreling through at any moment to attack them both. His nerves
scrambled while he willed them to calm so that he could scope out
the large room and take inventory.