Hunted (The Tinder Chronicles) (5 page)

Despite being in almost
unbearable agony, I reached deep within myself and gathered my strength, then
whipped my head back as hard as I could. The vamp wasn’t expecting me to fight
back, and when my skull shattered his nose, he yelled and let go of me. I flung
myself forward and barrel-rolled across the rooftop, knocking down two vamps
before leaping to my feet. I was near the edge of the roof, and I didn’t even
think about it. I just jumped off.

I was ten stories up.
The fall would kill me, I was sure of that. But it would be a quick death, so
much better than slow torture at the hands of those bloodthirsty vampires.

The moment before
impact moved in slow-motion, the only sound the rush of wind past my ears. I
wasn’t afraid to die. I’d never been afraid of that. I actually found myself
letting go, accepting the end.

I was at peace.

Chapter
Four

Strong arms caught me effortlessly three feet above
the ground, and my eyelids flew open. Bane was staring at me incredulously, his
green eyes troubled. Without a word, he took off running, moving faster than
any vampire I’d ever seen as he cradled me carefully in his arms. In less than
a minute, he’d put several blocks between us and the other vampires, loaded me
into the passenger seat of his flashy Aston Martin, and gotten behind the
wheel. The car took off like a shot, and then the warehouse district was behind
us.

Bane slowed down when
he reached city streets, and wound smoothly through traffic. I glanced at his
profile as he drove. He was angry about something, a muscle in his jaw working
as he ground his teeth, and he still hadn’t said anything. Normally, I would
have had an arsenal of sarcasm ready to hurl at him. But since I was in excruciating
pain, all I could really muster were quick, shallow breaths.

Abruptly, he swerved into
the driveway of a high-rise apartment building and punched in a code on a
keypad, which raised a security gate. The silver sports car slid into an empty underground
garage. After he parked, he retrieved me from the passenger seat, again lifting
me into his arms. I didn’t have it in me to protest.

We rode the elevator to
a huge apartment on the top floor of the twelve-story building. Bane carried me
through to the bedroom, where he placed me gently on the mattress. He sat
beside me and stared at me for a long moment, and his silence was so unnerving
that I whispered, “Say something,” my voice thin and scratchy.

Instead of replying, he
used his fangs to tear open his wrist. I flinched, both at the sight of those
teeth and at what he’d just done. Almost all vamps filed their fangs down so
they could blend in with the human population, leaving only hunters’ second
sight as a way to identify them. Not Bane, though. Apparently, he was out and
proud.

 I pulled back
reflexively when he stuck his wrist in front of my mouth, and he demanded, his
voice dangerously low, “Drink my blood, Tinder. It’ll heal you.”

“No.”

“Do it, or so help me
God, I will hold you down and force-feed you.”

It was a well-known
fact that vampire blood had the power to heal humans, but that was a line I
really didn’t want to cross. “No,” I said again, trying to sound firm. “I don’t
want this. I don’t want anything from you.”

A low growl rumbled in
his throat as he climbed on top of me, straddling my thighs, and held his
slashed wrist right above my mouth. Even though he was furious, he was being
really careful, arching over me so he didn’t put any pressure on my broken
ribs. “Stop being so stubborn, Tinder. You’re minutes from going into shock,
and I think you may be bleeding internally. Surely you must know I’m not
bluffing about force-feeding you.” Bane’s English accent was normally slightly
diluted from living in the States, but when he was angry it ratcheted right
back up again, overshooting the Queen’s English and teetering on the brink of
Cockney.

I watched him for a
long moment, the rage in his green eyes churning like a storm at sea. “Why are
you so angry?” I asked.

“Because you fucking
wanted
to die!
” He yelled it, then launched himself off the bed and stood over
me. “I saw your face a moment before you thought you were going to hit the
ground. And you bloody well looked happier than I’ve ever seen you! It makes me
wonder why I’ve spent so much time trying to keep you alive when you’re
completely suicidal!”

“I’m not suicidal,” I
said quietly, the words punctuated by my fast, shallow breathing. “I’ve just
always known this job is going to kill me. I accepted that a long time ago. So
when I thought my number was up…I guess I was at peace. I felt like I’d done
all I was supposed to do and could just let go. If I looked happy, that was why.”

“Christ, Tinder,” Bane
muttered, pushing his dark brown hair back from his face with both hands. After
a few moments, he sat beside me, the mattress dipping under his weight.

My breathing was
becoming more labored, and the relentless pain was really starting to wear me
down. “Take me to a hospital,” I whispered. Hunters almost never went to
hospitals, because we wanted to avoid drawing the attention of the police with
our usually suspicious-looking injuries. But I knew it was my only alternative,
aside from Bane.

“No. Stop being so damn
pig-headed and drink from me. You can’t possibly spend weeks with both arms in
casts, it would leave you completely defenseless.”

He kind of had a point
there. I stared at him for a while, brows knit as I weighed my options.
Eventually, the pain wore me down, and I relented. “Let’s do this quickly,
before I change my mind.”

His wrist had completely
healed by now, so he tore it open again and held it out to me. “I can’t believe
I’m doing this,” I muttered, then fought back my gag reflex and experimentally
ran the tip of my tongue over his wrist.

The moment I swallowed,
warmth and energy flooded me. It was an absolute rush, more powerful than any
drug, and I found myself lunging for his wrist. He pressed it gently to my lips
and I drank deeply, hungrily, my eyes sliding shut. It was so good, so
nourishing and healing, its taste surprisingly palatable.

Bane let me do this for
a long time, the pain easing and my body beginning to mend itself as I drank.
When I finally ended it, he stood up and said, “You’re going to need to stay in
bed and rest. It’ll take some time for my blood to fully heal you.”

I felt slightly buzzed,
and mumbled, “Where are we?”

“One of my safe-houses,
it’s the best place for you right now. The wards on your house aren’t
sufficient to keep out that vamp gang if they track you there.”

“My wards are perfectly
sufficient. They keep everyone out except you. And I’d like to know how you
manage to get around all my protections.”

“I was a full-blooded
warlock before being turned into a vampire. My powers are a bit unpredictable
now, but they’re still more than enough to get around your piecemeal spells.”

I frowned and said,
“That’s impossible. Warlocks can’t be turned into vampires.”

“It’s not impossible,
merely unusual. I meant what I said about getting some rest, Tinder. Your body
needs time to mend.” With that, he turned and started to leave the bedroom.

“Where are you going?”

He paused and glanced
over his shoulder at me. “Far away from you.”

“Why?”

“Because any minute now,
you’re going to have a powerful reaction to all that blood you consumed, and I don’t
want to be here when that happens.”

I raised an eyebrow at
him. “Define
powerful reaction
.”

“Vampire blood is an
aphrodisiac. Any moment now, you’re going to be begging me to have sex with
you.”

“And…you
don’t
want to be around when that happens?” I blinked a few times to clear my vision,
feeling a bit dizzy.

“In some ways, drinking
my blood is like drinking alcohol, it clouds your judgment. I’d never take
advantage of you in that state.”

I tried to roll my eyes
at him, which just made the room spin. I leaned back against the pillow and
muttered, “Oh no, of course not. But when I’m horny as hell in an empty
warehouse,
then
it’s ok to take advantage.”

Bane grinned a little.
“Entirely different situation.”

He turned and started
to leave, and I said quietly, “They were hunting me, Bane. It wasn’t just
random. Those vamps knew my name, they came after me deliberately.”

Again he paused, just
inside the doorway. “I know.”

“But vampires don’t do
that. They don’t hunt in packs. It’s just not how they operate.”

“Not normally, no.”

“Why are the vamps
changing their behavior? What’s going on?”

“Don’t worry, I’m
taking care of it. Get some rest.” He left the room, and I leapt out of bed and
ran after him.

“Come on, Bane! Why can’t
you just clue me in?”

“For fuck’s sake,
Tinder, I told you to rest!”

I put myself between
him and the front door. “I know what you told me, and I don’t give a shit.
Everything’s been changing, and I need to know what’s going on. What are the
vampires up to? Why are they hunting in packs? And what was up with that warehouse?
Who went in and totally emptied that place? Was it you?” The room spun again,
and I flung a hand out to steady myself against the front door, which made me
cry out in pain. My arm was healing, but it was nowhere near back to normal.

A wave of nausea
crashed into me all of a sudden. “I really don’t feel so good,” I murmured as I
dropped to my knees. In the next instant I was throwing up violently, my entire
body heaving. Given what I’d just consumed, it turned the entryway of the
apartment into a scene from a horror movie.

“What the hell?” Bane
exclaimed as he dropped to his knees on the tile floor and held on to me.

It felt like my body
was turning itself inside out. And it just went on and on, tears streaming down
my face as my body purged itself of every last drop of Bane’s blood and then
kept going and going and going. Throughout it all, Bane clutched me tightly,
and I clung to the big arm wrapped around my chest like it was a life line. I
shook violently as my body convulsed from the strain of what it was doing to
itself.

When I finally passed
out, it was such a relief.

Apparently, I’d fallen asleep at some point. When I
awoke, the room was dark, but a faint glow around the edges of the heavy
curtains told me it was daytime. Bane’s arms were around me. I burrowed deeper
into them, and he held me securely as he asked, “How do you feel?”

“Like shit.” My voice
sounded really raspy.

“No doubt.” He brushed
my hair back from my eyes and said, “You know, when I said you’d have a
powerful reaction to my blood, I was
not
expecting you to vomit your
guts out.”

“I know. Why did that
happen?”

“I have no idea, I’ve
never heard of a human rejecting vampire blood like that. I’m going to look it
up in my research library, right after I hunt down that vampire pack and tear
them to shreds. I’d already be on their trail, but I didn’t want to leave until
I knew you were ok.”

His hand slid down to
rub my bare back gently as he was talking, and I asked, “Why am I naked?”

“Because you were
covered in blood and vomit.”

“Pretty. Did you bathe
me?”

“I did.”

“It’s super weird that
you feel the need to take care of me,” I murmured, snuggling against him. My
only excuse for that was that I felt miserable, and was in desperate need of a
little comfort.

“Shame that it takes nearly
dying before you’ll let me.” He adjusted his hold on me, and said, “I’m sorry
you had such a violent reaction to my blood, but the good news is, it appears
you kept it down long enough to mend your broken bones.”

“Don’t know if it was
worth it,” I mumbled.

I was starting to drift
off again, and he said, “Since you’re doing better, I’m going to take off in a
few minutes, before the vampires’ trail gets cold. There’s water at your
bedside, and your clothes are in the dryer.”

“You did my laundry?”

“It was that or let you
go about looking like an extra in a slasher film.”

“Thanks, Bane.”

“You’re welcome,
Tyler.”

“I don’t like it when
you use my real name.”

“I know. But you’re too
incapacitated right now to do anything about it.”

I grinned at that
before sinking back into sleep.

Chapter
Five

The next time I awoke, I was groggy and disoriented,
and had no idea how long I’d been out. I took a couple deep breaths, and found
that the pain from the broken ribs was completely gone. As I sat up, I pushed my
hair out of my face and called Bane’s name. The apartment was perfectly still.
I grabbed the bottle of water he’d left on the nightstand and drank all of it
before swinging out of bed. Then I went in search of the dryer, which I
eventually found in a hall closet.

Getting dressed was far
more exhausting than it should have been. After I put my clothes on, I laid
down right where I was, on the area rug in front of the dryer. I kept my eyes
closed for a few minutes, then forced them open and took a look at my surroundings.
Bane had brought me to the Land of Beige. Beige, beige, beige, as far as the
eye could see. The walls were beige, the curtains were beige, the furniture was
beige (with dark wood accents, but still, the rest was beige). The rug I was
laying on had a pattern of squares, all in varying shades of beige. God. It was
enough to make me want to hurl again.

I pushed myself into a
seated position and tugged on my boots, then stood up tentatively. My leather
jacket was hanging from a hook in the little laundry closet, and when I put it
on, it was a bit damp. I tried to picture powerful and elegant Bane with his sleeves
rolled up, scrubbing the puke off my jacket, or for that matter mopping up the
entryway, and failed miserably.

My weapons were neatly
laid out on a (beige) towel on top of the washing machine. He’d arranged them
in order of size, subcategorized by function. OCD much? It took a while to get
all my weapons in place on my body, and when I finished, I needed to lay back
down on the area rug for a few more minutes. Man, that vomitfest had really
zapped my energy.

Eventually, I was back
on my feet and propelling myself toward the front door. There was a note stuck
to it, written in ornate cursive (that was such an old-vamp tipoff). It said
:
Get back in bed. You’re not well enough to be up yet.

What a control freak. I
opened the front door, which set off a piercing alarm. Ugh, great. I pulled the
door shut behind me, clamping my hands over my ears (for all the good it did)
as I hurried to the elevator. It also had a note stuck to it. It said:
NO.
Oh
my God!
Total
control freak. I pushed the elevator button…about a
hundred and forty-seven times. Nothing happened. The control freak had actually
disabled the elevator!

The horrible, shrieking
alarm was still going off. It was so loud that I felt like I was going to begin
bleeding from my ears soon. I hurried to the end of the hallway and tried the
handle on the big metal door leading to the stairs. Oh, here was a surprise: it
was locked. And yes, there was a note stuck to it. It said:
Definitely not.

“What the hell, Bane?”
I yelled over the alarm, as if he could hear me. “You have some serious control
issues, dude. Like, ‘keep a team of psychotherapists employed for decades’-type
issues.”

If the alarm didn’t
stop soon, I was going to go completely insane. I returned to the apartment,
and was surprised to find I hadn’t locked myself out. The control freak had probably
somehow controlled that as well. I stepped back inside, closing the door behind
me, and breathed a sigh of relief when the alarm stopped. I tried opening the
door again, and immediately the alarm began wailing. When I shut it from inside
the apartment, the alarm stopped. But when I was out in the hall and shut it,
the alarm kept going. Really?

A faint ringing was
coming from somewhere inside the apartment. Or maybe it was just the ringing in
my ears after that auditory assault. It stopped after a minute. And then it
started up again.

I followed the sound to
the kitchen, where I found a slim black phone on the (beige) kitchen counter.
God, even the kitchen was beige, who did that? The phone had a note stuck to
it. It said:
Answer me.
That was the second vaguely Alice in Wonderland
reference I’d gotten from Bane over the past few weeks. I wondered if it was
intentional.

The phone stopped
ringing. And then a few seconds later, it started up again. I sighed and
answered it by saying, “You know what I hate?”

“Vampires?” Bane
guessed.

“Obviously. But a very
close second is the color beige. What the hell were you thinking with this
place? It’s like a baby had diarrhea over every square inch of this apartment.”

“It came furnished, and
I never bothered to change it. That’s a delightful visual, by the way.”

“You need to get back
here and let me out, Bane.”

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

“With that gang of
vampires on the loose, it’s not safe for you out there right now.”

I busted out an
impressive level of maturity, and went with, “I can go home if I want to. You’re
not the boss of me.”

He chuckled at that and
said, “And you wonder why I treat you like a child.”

“Up yours.”

“You’re only reinforcing
my point for me.” He sounded smug.

“Where are you right
now?”

“Oxnard.”

“Bullshit.”

He laughed again. “Now
why on Earth would I make that up?”

“What the hell are you
doing in Oxnard?”

“Driving through on my
way back to Long Beach.”

“From where?”

“Points north,” he
said.

“Thanks for all that
information, Captain Vague.”

“I’ve been trying to
track down the vampires that targeted you. I followed a lead that took me up to
Pismo Beach, but it didn’t pan out. Now I’m backtracking. Crikey,” he said, and
there was a soft thudding sound. I could hear him swearing in the background.
After a few moments, he got back on the line and said, “Sorry ‘bout that. I
dropped the phone.”

“You know who says
crikey? Australians. Did you suddenly forget that you’re British?”

“I lived in Australia
for nearly three decades. Some of the speech rubbed off on me.”

“When was that?”

“Latter part of the
nineteenth century.”

“Wow, you actually
answered a question. Let’s see if you’ll answer another. How old are you,
Bane?”

“Really fucking old.”

“Oh look, we’re back to
vague again.”

“Go back to bed,
Tinder. You look like hell, and will probably topple over at any moment,” he
said.

I raised an eyebrow at
that. “Wait. Can you somehow
see me
right now?”

“Yes.”

“Nothing creepy about
that.” I looked all around the room for cameras, but they were well-concealed. “I’m
out of here. And it’s your call how I leave: the easy way, or the hard way.” I put
the phone on speaker and set it on the counter, then went over to the little
beige breakfast nook, where I picked up a chair. “Do you see what I’m doing?” I
asked him, carrying the chair over to a large window.

“That’s not going to
work.”

I hoisted the chair
over my head. “You know I’m not bluffing. Either tell me how to get out of this
apartment by way of the front door, or else I’m going out the window.”

“Don’t throw that
chair, Tinder. And when you fail to listen to me and throw it anyway, for God’s
sake, duck.”

I sighed dramatically
and swung the chair back despite the protests of both my sore arms, and launched
it at the window. It ricocheted right back to me, striking me in the left arm.
I cried out in pain and dropped to my knees, clutching my arm to my chest.

“Damn it!” Bane yelled.
“Why can’t you ever just
listen
when someone tries to tell you
something?”

“You could have
mentioned the windows were bulletproof, or whatever the hell they are,” I
ground out, taking a few deep breaths to manage the pain shooting through me.

“Did you break your arm
again?” he asked.

“I have no idea. God
that hurt,” I mumbled, rubbing my arm gingerly. All of that had been completely
exhausting, and I laid down on my side right there on the kitchen floor,
curling into myself a little.

“You’re not going to
convince me to let you out by getting in a fetal position and acting pathetic,”
Bane said.

“Fuck you.”

“Pithy comeback.”

“Eat shit and die,
vamp.”

“It’s cute how you
regress when you’re cross. And your temper always reminds me how you got your rather
apt nickname.” There was a smile in his voice.

I sat up and frowned at
the ceiling, where the cameras probably were. “What if there’s a fire? Did you
think of that? You’ve totally sealed me in on the top floor of a highly
flammable building. That’s pretty irresponsible for someone who’s allegedly
trying to look out for me.”

“There’s not going to
be a fire.”

“There will be if I
start one.”

“You can’t start a
fire.”

“Sure I can.”

“You can’t. I
confiscated your lighter.”

I patted my jacket
pocket and swore vividly, then said, “You really raise being a control freak to
a whole new level.”

“Thank you.”

“It wasn’t a
compliment.”

“I know,” he said. “But
it’s probably as close as I’ll ever come to getting one from you, so I decided
to embrace it.”

I sighed and got up off
the floor, scooped up the cell phone, and trudged back to the bedroom, where I
collapsed across the mattress. “Good boy,” he said, and I gave the ceiling the
finger.

“I hate you Bane. I
really, really hate you.”

“No you don’t. You want
to hate me, but you’re failing miserably at it.”

“Now why would you say
that?”

“Because you brought
the cell phone with you when you went to the bedroom.” I could practically hear
his smirk.

I smiled sweetly at the
ceiling and showed him the cell phone. Then I threw it as hard as I could
against the bedroom wall, grinning with satisfaction when it broke into a
hundred pieces. I flipped him off with both hands, then lounged against the
pillows.

A muffled ring came
from the nightstand. I sat up and pulled open the drawer. The cellphone was
inside it. I pushed the speaker button with wide-eyed amazement, and Bane said,
“Oh, come now. I’m not
that
good. It’s a second identical phone, not the
first one reincarnated.” I dragged my hand over my face, and he added, “By the
way, I’m glad to see you didn’t re-break your arm.”

“How do you know it’s
not broken?”

 “You were able to flip
me the bird with both hands.”

“That’s true. Let’s see
that again.” I gave him the double-finger one more time, then pried off the
back of the phone, removed the battery, and tossed it over my shoulder. I kind
of expected yet another phone to start ringing somewhere in the apartment, but
all was silent.

Too silent. After
sitting there in the quiet for a while, I actually regretted ending our conversation.
I was way too stubborn to put the battery back in the phone, though.