The Hunted (67 page)

‘Just get me out of here!’ she screamed again. ‘What have I done to deserve this?’

I cringed.
Nothing.

The door to the outer passage slammed open, light spilling out and illuminating the corridor. ‘Shut up!’ The one called Adam yelled at her as they entered the passage again.

‘It hurts!’ she cried. ‘Please, let me out of here. I won’t tell anybody what’s happened. Please, I beg you, just let me go.’

‘I said shut up!’ Adam rasped as he hit something hard against the metal of her door. The reverberation was particularly noisy in the small area, with nothing but the ground to help absorb the fierce sound.

‘Leave her be,’ the other one said, cutting through the clang of metal on metal. ‘It isn’t going to work anyway, you know that. Let’s just get the half breed and take her upstairs to see John. He’s hungry.’

Is anyone ever going to look at me just like an ordinary girl instead of an entree?

I scrambled away from the back of the door and over into the corner behind the cot. They were making their way up the corridor towards me. There was the familiar sound of keys jangling just outside the cell door which swung open, groaning in protest. Two
very
naked vânâtors in human form stepped into my cell and I was pretty sure I hadn’t seen these two before.

God, haven’t these creatures heard of clothes?

One of them was in his mid-thirties, with short blonde hair and brown eyes. The other one looked like a child, no more than fourteen or fifteen years old with short, curly brown hair and a smattering of freckles across his nose. ‘Careful, she’s strong,’ the older male said to the little boy.

I recognised the voice. It belonged to the one called Adam. The one that had found me out in the woods and brought me back here.

Wherever here is.

Both of them approached me slowly, cautiously coming around either side of me, their hands stretched out in front of them and ready to grab me should I consider running. If I hadn’t known what they were capable of then, I truly would have considered it.

I kept looking from one to the other. I knew that the young one was a werewolf, but I still couldn’t shake how badly the idea of hurting him bothered me. I knew that I was being ridiculous, and that this was only his human form until he found his next meal, but, still, a child? I couldn’t beat up a kid.

I focused on Adam instead. After all, he’d been the one to throw me against a tree and break my spine. He deserved a little reprisal.

They both stepped towards me at the same time. I instinctively lashed out, hitting Adam square in the face with a solid punch to his lower jaw. My hand objected to the sharp pain shooting through my knuckles and wrist, but as he reeled backwards and yelped, it seemed totally worth it.

The younger one came forward a second later, trying to land a punch to my face. I ducked quickly to the right, using the cot as a barrier between us. He missed, but it didn’t stop them both from trying to come at me again.

I scuttled backwards further into the corner, trying to put as much distance between us as possible. It was futile.

They grabbed me roughly by the shoulders and arms, spinning me around on the spot, and shoving me face first into the wall, tying my hands together with rope. ‘I told you she was strong,’ Adam said as he flicked me on the ear.

‘Looks like she healed quite nicely, though,’ the young one said. ‘John will be quite pleased.’

They both forcibly walked me out of the damp cell, down the short passage and up a set of rickety homemade stairs that led to a badly painted red timber door. I counted exactly twenty seven steps to the bottom of the stairs, and then another seven steps leading up to the red door.

I squinted briefly in the light now surrounding me. While my eyes struggled to acclimatise to the light, they threw me roughly down onto an old armchair and started to tie me up with extremely thick rope. I assumed they were concerned about me escaping and looked like they weren’t taking any chances, either way.

Smart.

I thrashed around a couple of times, trying to escape from their grasp, but all I got for my efforts was a gut-wrenching punch to the stomach. They secured the rest of the ropes with little resistance.

‘And there’s more where that came from,’ Adam said, rubbing at the purple bruise that was already starting to well up on his jaw. ‘If you move again, I won’t just hit you, I’ll make it count.’

‘And I’ll make sure that next time I hit you, you won’t get up again,’ I spat out. Adam growled. At least I knew I had hurt him.

Good.

The young one came and sat down in front of me, on a dirty white ottoman that was ripped at the corners. Adam leant up against the wall, still rubbing at his chin. I smiled.

‘What’s she smiling about?’ Adam ventured, taking an angry step forward. I let them bicker about whether or not I should be smiling while I discreetly surveyed the area.

I was in a house. That much was obvious now. The lower level I had just come from was either a basement or the makings of a fallout shelter, as I had first suspected. Judging by the state of the house around me and the unfinished nature of my cell, stairs and passage, the owners had vacated a long time ago. The furniture around me was old, musty and caked with dust. An ugly blue brocade sofa sat to the left of me, and was pushed up against old lace curtains that hung in tattered shreds from the small square window in the wall. In front of that was an antique-looking nineteen sixties era coffee table with uneven legs and scratches all through the surface.

The walls, which I suspected were originally painted off-white, were now heavily covered in mould stains. The floor on this level, which I assumed was ground level, was constructed from roughly lain timber floor boards that butted against each other unevenly. Some corners were bent and had popped under the strain from years of being subjected to moisture and mildew. They were swollen so badly that, in some places, the boards were missing from the floor entirely.

But none of this was that important to me. What was most crucial, and what made me smile even wider than before, was that I could see the front door through the darkness of the other room.

‘She’s smiling again,’ Adam said and pointed at me.

‘So I see. Is something funny?’ the young one asked me.

‘Not especially.’

‘Then
why
are you smiling like that?’

‘Why do you care?’ I said, turning my attention back to the young one standing in front of me.

He frowned slightly and leaned forwards, his breath stinking. ‘We’d like to ask you some questions.’

‘I’m sure you would, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to answer any of them.’

He sneered. ‘Are you sure about that?’

I looked upwards as if genuinely searching out an answer. ‘Um, yep, pretty sure.’

‘And there’s nothing I can do to change your mind?’

‘A Tic Tac might help.’

He looked confused at that, so I helped him out. ‘Your
breath stinks.’

He growled loudly and leaned forward on the ottoman so that his face was within inches of mine.

Now he’s just being mean.

He eyed me momentarily, his glare icy. His fingers crept up the sides of my legs to rest on the top of my knees. He grabbed the ripped fabric of my jeans and tore them off so that everything from my thighs down was completely exposed.

I looked up at him, trying to hide my alarm.

Is this going where I think it might be going?

He gave me another vicious sneer, the corners of his lips curling into an evil kind of grin. He raised both hands in front of him and then slammed his fists down hard onto the top of my kneecaps. White hot pain lanced through my legs, as my eyes widened and my mouth involuntarily emitted an agonising scream.

‘Well, wasn’t that fun?’ the young one said impertinently, listening to me scream with barely concealed glee. ‘I could do that all night. I suppose I might if you decide to be disagreeable again and not answer my questions.’

I panted slightly from the pain. My body was already healing, but I was resolved to not make this easy for them. They could shatter my bones as often as they wanted to, but I would never reveal the secrets of the Vampires or The Protectors.

He raised an eyebrow at me and, when I didn’t answer him, he put his hand on my knee again, waiting for me to defy him.

I looked down at the hand that circled my kneecap. My knee was still trying to piece itself back together, and he kept digging his fingers in between the broken bones to prevent reconstruction. He stroked my nerves, and the pain was mind-numbingly awful.

‘Let’s start with an easy question, shall we? How is it that you have both Vampire and Vânâtor in your blood?’ He gave me a minute, but when I didn’t answer him his fists came down hard again on my knee cap, causing my head to swim, forcing a fierce scream out of me out in protest.

‘Do you want me to do that again?’

I shook my head at him, trying to swallow the lump of rising bile in my throat. My head felt dizzy from the pain.

‘Then answer the question.’

I looked up at him in angry defiance, my brow perspiring and my eyes narrowing. ‘Well it goes like this,’ I said, talking very slowly as if I was explaining to a three year old. ‘When a mummy and a daddy love each other very very much—’

He stopped me there by slapping me hard across the face and baring his teeth at me. ‘Do not test me, girl!’

I laughed. ‘Who are you calling, girl? You’re barely pubescent.’

He slapped me again, pain searing through the side of my face.

‘Look,’ I shouted, ‘why don’t you just tell me why I’m here? I’m never going to give you information so you might as well just get on with whatever your master plan is and stop slapping me like a little girl.’

‘Greg,’ Adam said, right before he hit me again, ‘why don’t you just go and get John?’

Greg gave Adam an angry look. ‘John told me to question her, so shut up and let me question her!’

‘But it’s not working.’

‘Don’t make me hurt you, Adam. I’m older and stronger, despite what she might think of my
current
physical appearance.’

I looked from one to other and then smiled again. God only knew where I was digging
that
bravado from.

‘What?’ Greg yelled at me. ‘Why must you keep smiling? Do you not realise how much shit you’re in?’

I attempted a shrug which was rather difficult considering I was bound with rope. ‘Hey, if you two want fight to death over who’s questioning me, then don’t let me stop you. I won’t have a chance to be too concerned by how much shit I’m in once one of you is dead. Besides, it just means one less of you I have to kill later on.’ I wiggled my fingers. ‘So please, continue.’

Warm, rich laughter sounded from the other room. ‘She does have some spunk, doesn’t she?’ a new, deeper voice said before its owner entered the room.

Greg bounded off the ottoman in an instant. He bowed his head as he walked backwards to stand next to Adam by the archway, kowtowing.

He must be the Alpha.

A tall, blond haired man in his late twenties, with more pectorals than body parts, entered the room. He had piecing green eyes and was sporting an angry red wound on his shoulder that had been roughly sewn together, as well as some stitches across the top of his nose.

I looked him over, from head to toe, sucking in a deep breath of the powerful scent surrounding him. Virility rolled off of him in waves.