The Vampire Hunter
Автор
Lisa Childs
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Chapter One
The splintered stake gouged her palm, drawing blood. Despite the pain, Jennifer Williams breathed a sigh of relief that her sister was gone now, whisked away in the arms of her lover. Professor Vossimer would protect Eve. It was Jennifer, standing alone in the alley with the man intent on murdering her, who had no one to protect her.
But herself…
She was all she needed, though. Jennifer wasn’t the sickly girl she’d been twenty years ago; she was strong now. She was a vampiress.
Becoming a vampire had saved Jennifer from the cancer that had returned to claim her life. She hadn’t become a vampire just to save herself, though. She’d done it to protect her sister from the invasive medical procedures their parents would have forced her to endure in order to help Jennifer. But once Jennifer had become a vampire, she’d joined the Secret Vampire Society and had had to obey their rules, which included never letting a human learn of their existence. To protect the society, no human was allowed to learn that vampires existed and live. So Eve had thought Jennifer dead for the past twenty years. She’d only come out of hiding now to protect her sister again. From this man.
Wrapping her fingers around the jagged piece of wood, she lifted it above her head. Then she stepped over the man lying on the asphalt at her feet. Before she could brandish the weapon at him, he swung the beam of his flashlight toward her. And her strength ebbed. This was no artificial light he trained on her face; it held the same UV rays of the sun. The sun that Jennifer hadn’t seen since she’d been turned because it was the only thing, besides a stake through the heart, that could kill her.
And this man had brought both to the alley where he’d lured Jennifer. He had sent Eve after Professor Vossimer with the lie that the professor had killed Jennifer. His guest lecture on vampires being myths had been the last place she’d been seen. Professor Vossimer gave the lecture in order to protect the secret society, but he’d broken their main rule when he’d seen how sick she’d been. By turning her into a vampire like himself, he had actually been the one to save her.
So Jennifer hadn’t been able to stay in the shadows and let her sister blame the wrong person for her disappearance. But before she’d been able to explain, this man had showed up. First he’d threatened her sister and then he’d attacked the professor when the vampire had leaped to her defense. If Jennifer had had any doubt as to his intentions before, she had none now. He was a vampire hunter, and he was going to kill her.
Unless she fought back. Rallying the remnants of the strength he hadn’t stolen from her yet, she kicked the flashlight from his bruised hand. The metal clattered across the asphalt, his beam swinging around the alley like an out-of-control spotlight. It glanced off the weathered brick walls of the buildings between which they stood. One of those buildings housed an underground club that vampires patronized. If she yelled loudly enough, she could summon someone to her aid. But Jennifer had stopped needing to be rescued when she’d stopped being human.
Fueled with fear and anger, she launched herself at the strange man, throwing her body on top of his while she swung the stake toward his face. He knocked the splintered wood from her hand, so she swung her fists instead. His features looked, and felt, as if they’d been chiseled from stone. While his auburn hair glowed like fire in the flashlight beam, his pale blue eyes chilled like ice. He caught her flailing fists, holding her wrists tight in his grasp. He’d already taken a beaten, had been nearly strangled by the hands of the professor who’d come to Eve’s defense before Jennifer had. But still this man was strong. Superhumanly strong? Was he a vampire as well as a vampire hunter?
“Who are you?” she asked. “And what do you want with my sister?”
“I don’t want your sister,” he confirmed her suspicion, his voice as deep as gravel. His body was as hard as rock, too, every muscle rippling as he rolled her over, toward where the beam lit the asphalt. “I want you!”
She shivered at the intensity of his declaration. But she wasn’t arrogant or foolish enough to think that he desired her. So she continued to fight. Tangling her legs with his long ones, she locked her arms around him and rolled them away from the light. “Why?”
“You shouldn’t ask why,” he advised, groaning as her arms tightened around his probably bruised ribs. His gaze focused on her lips, and he pushed his hard thigh between her legs and rolled them across the asphalt again. “You should ask how.”
She gasped as his arms tightened around her, his heavily muscled chest pushing down against her breasts. Only able to whisper between pants for breath, she asked, “How do you want me?”
“Dead. I want you dead.”
Liam McKiernan wished like hell that was the only way he wanted her. But his body had begun to betray him, hardening at the closeness to her soft curves and erotic heat. He’d always thought she’d be as cold as her heart, but he’d been wrong. Jennifer Williams was warm and alive.
But because of her, his brother was not.
“Why?” she asked again. “Why do you hate me so much that you want me dead?”
He hadn’t expected her to recognize him. He’d only met her once, what seemed like a lifetime ago, and he looked nothing like his older half brother. “I want you the same way you left Bryan Truman.”
Her body tensed beneath his, and her green eyes warmed with affection. “Bryan. I haven’t seen Bryan in twenty years.”
“Not since the night you drained him of all his blood and left him for dead,” he said.
A cry of pain slipped through her lips. He studied her face, which had drained of all color. He could see her clearly now, as the darkness lightened with dawn’s approach.
“Bryan’s dead?” she asked, her full lower lip trembling slightly.
Damn. She was beautiful. It wasn’t just the golden blond hair and those mesmerizing green eyes; it was the vulnerability about her that drew a man to her, that made him want to protect her. While she was physically stronger now than the sickly girl he remembered from their meeting so long ago, her sensitivity belied an ethereal fragility. Those eyes shimmered with tears that softened him until he realized that it had to be an act. “Don’t pretend you don’t know.”
She shook her head. “He can’t be dead.” Her voice cracked with what seemed like genuine distress. “Not Bryan…”
“Did you think you could do that to him and he’d live? There’s no way a human could survive that. But then you might have forgotten…since you’re not human any longer.”
A breath shuddered out of those trembling lips. “I don’t know what you’re talking about….”
“Yeah, I know all about your damn secret society of vampires.” And he wasn’t dead even though he’d been warned any human who learned of its existence would be killed.
“I wasn’t talking about the society,” she murmured, her voice growing fainter as the sky lightened. “Bryan…” Tears shimmered in her eyes. “He can’t be dead….”
“How could you not know that he died?” Liam asked. Even though two decades had passed since his brother’s death, Liam still missed him. With only three years separating the half brothers, they’d been more like friends than siblings—even though they’d lived in separate homes.
“I—I had to give up everything from my old life,” she explained. “My family. My friends. I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t keep in touch with them.”
Bitterness overwhelming him, he released it in a short chuckle. “But yet you’re here for your sister.”
“I haven’t been there for my sister,” she said, guilt dimming the brightness of her eyes. “I haven’t seen her in twenty years…until tonight, until you put her in danger to draw me out. Why?”
“You know why.” Or at least he had been convinced she would know, but her confusion and surprise over his brother’s death seemed genuine. “For Bryan…”
“Bryan wouldn’t want you to hurt me,” she pointed out. Correctly.
“You’re doing this for yourself,” she said. “For revenge for something I didn’t do—for something I never could have done. I couldn’t have hurt Bryan. He was my friend.” Her voice cracked again with undeniable pain. “My best friend…”
Liam’s head pounded, maybe from the fight with the professor. The vampire had nearly strangled the life from Liam. If not for this woman’s interference, the professor probably would have killed Liam. Despite his boot-camp training and sixteen-year career in the marines, Liam hadn’t been able to match the monster’s strength. While he’d made a point of learning everything about the secret society, he wasn’t one of them. He was a vampire hunter, but the only vampire he’d ever sought to kill was her.
Maybe his head also pounded because of the doubt now plaguing him. What if she spoke the truth? What if she knew nothing about Bryan’s murder?
Her body went limp beneath his, her face paling as the sky grew lighter. He could kill her easily now. He wouldn’t even need the special weapon he’d made to fire the stake into her heart. He could impale her chest with his bare hands. Then he would finally have the revenge that had driven his life for the past twenty years.
Unless she was innocent…
Then he would become the cold-blooded killer he’d thought he had been hunting for two decades. He would be just as much a monster as a member of the Secret Vampire Society.
