Enraptured, p.3
Enraptured, page 3
part #4 of Vampire Awakenings Series
Just as he cursed himself, her heart gave a stuttering beat. Ian pulled up sharply to stare down at the bundle in his arms. The blood flowing from the gash on her neck had slowed, as had her pulse. A hitching, rattling breath escaped her. Shifting her in his arms, he bit into his wrist. He stared down at the blood beading on his skin before glancing at the girl again. He’d never shared his blood with another before, but as her heart gave another lurching beat, he knew it was either this, or she died.
“Shit.” Before he could think too much about it, he shoved his wrist against her mouth.
At first the girl didn’t respond, but then she began to reflexively swallow the blood trickling into the back of her throat. He stared down at her, marveling at the paleness of her skin that made the freckles dusting her nose and cheeks appear darker and more obvious. As the healing ability of his blood seeped into her system, color began to return to her cheeks, her pulse picked up and started to smooth out. She still required medical attention, but the jagged tears in her neck were knitting closed before his eyes.
He shut his mind down to the pathways opening between them due to the sharing of his blood. He never allowed himself to see into another. She may be unconscious, but he couldn’t take the chance she might learn anything detrimental about him. Besides, it was a habit of his to stifle the feelings of others; he didn’t really care what someone else experienced when he fed from them.
He knew he didn’t harm them, and he made sure they weren’t frightened while he fed by taking control of their mind and soothing them. Afterward, he erased all memory of what had transpired between them. Even still, a glimmer of heartache and suffering slipped from her mind into his that pulled at his heart inexplicably. He didn’t know what she’d experienced in her lifetime, but he sensed enough to know it hadn’t been good.
As the wounds faded more rapidly away, they left behind two diagonal scars on the right side of her neck that ran from the center of her neck toward her collarbone. At first he assumed they would heal too, but as the fresh marks vanished, he realized these scars wouldn’t heal. They were at least a couple of years older and located to the left of the deep wounds she’d sustained tonight.
A different vampire attack, he realized. What had this girl gone through, and what was she mixed up in?
Pulling his wrist away from her mouth, he stared down at her as he listened to the increased beat of her heart and tried to figure out what to do with her. Adjusting his hold on her, he dug his phone out of his pocket. Flipping through the numbers, he pulled up Ethan’s and hit send. He would have preferred to keep his older brother out of this, would have called his younger brother Aiden instead, as he had no wife, but Aiden still hadn’t reached maturity and lacked strength. Aiden was powerful, but he was no match for Ethan’s capabilities. Ian knew he required as much strength as he could get right now. On the third ring a groggy voice answered the phone. “Someone better be dying,” Ethan grumbled.
“It’s a possibility,” Ian replied.
He could hear the rustle of sheets as his brother sat up and the thud of his feet hitting the floor. “What happened?” he demanded. Ian hurriedly filled him in on the events that had unfolded tonight. “Where are you?”
“In the woods, by the campus.”
“Get out of there. Stay hidden and stay in touch.”
“Ethan, that man knew what I was, and this girl was with him earlier tonight. I also don’t know where the other vampire is. I think I lost him, but you could be walking into a trap.”
“I’m on my way.”
Before Ian could respond the line went dead.
***
Ian ran out of the woods when he saw the headlights entering the back parking lot. He’d traveled more than thirty miles away from his school, a school he didn’t think he’d ever see again after this night. The Jeep pulled to a stop fifty feet away; before the headlights could turn off, he pulled the back door open. His eyes landed on his brother-in-law, Stefan, sitting in the backseat, a resigned expression on his face.
“You shouldn’t have come,” Ian told him as he slid into the car with the woman still curled unconsciously in his arms.
The inside light of the SUV caused Stefan’s dark eyes to shine like onyx; his black hair stood in disheveled spikes around his face. “Was it a hunter?” Stefan demanded.
“I don’t know,” Ian admitted. He went to close the door when something poked him in the thigh. Reaching down, he tugged a stake from a holster tied around her waist. He hadn’t bothered to search her while he’d been trying to keep her hidden; she wasn’t exactly capable of trying to kill him right now anyway. The stake was confirmation that whoever had left the original scars on her neck hadn’t bothered to erase their existence from her mind, he realized as he lifted it before him and then flung it out the door.
“Nice,” Stefan muttered and shook his head.
Ian gave her a quick pat down search. He uncovered two more stakes he threw out the door, before closing it. He glanced nervously back at the woods; he’d caught no hint of anyone else amongst them in the hour he’d been out there, but he wasn’t about to take any chances with the safety of his family.
In the front passenger seat, Ethan’s wife, Emma turned to look at the woman. “Is she ok?”
“I gave her some of my blood to keep her alive, but I didn’t want to give her too much. She needs medical attention. Unfortunately, she hasn’t woken up, so I can’t alter her memories.”
“I called Mandy to help. David and Mike went to pick her and Jill up. They’re going to meet us,” Emma told him. Her gaze fell on the girl again before she turned around in her seat.
He briefly met Ethan’s emerald eyes in the rearview mirror before his brother shifted into drive and pulled out of the parking lot. “Where are we going?”
“A cabin Brian and I own in the Cascades. I haven’t been there in years, but Brian said he still uses it once in a while,” Stefan answered.
Ian lifted an eyebrow at the mention of Stefan’s old, sort of friend, Brian. He knew his brother-in-law and Ethan weren’t fans of Brian. Stefan must have been more troubled than he was letting on, if he’d been willing to involve Brian. “Is Brian going to be there?”
“No. He knows we’ll be using it, but he’s on the East coast right now.”
“What’s he doing there?”
“I didn’t ask and I don’t care.”
Ian may not mind Brian as much as the others, but he also didn’t care to know what the vampire did in his free time. He glanced down at the woman in his arms. The creamy color of her skin and the black lashes curled against her cheeks intrigued him. A primal urge he didn’t understand, caused him to run his finger over her silky cheek. Her lids fluttered but didn’t open.
“How did you get Isabelle to stay behind?” Ian asked Stefan as a way to distract himself from the warmth of her body.
“I didn’t wake her before I left,” Stefan replied.
Ian released a snort of laughter. “She’s going to be pissed.”
“Fortunately for me, she’s not as fast as she used to be, now that she’s six months pregnant.”
“She’s still going to kick your ass.”
Stefan ran a hand through his hair. “She probably will, but she has no business being here. Not if it was a hunter you encountered, and not while she’s carrying our child.” Ian agreed with him, but he would never admit that to his sister. Pregnant or not she could probably kick all their asses. “Is anyone following us?”
At Stefan’s question, Ian realized Ethan’s eyes kept darting to the rearview mirror and Emma was focused on the side mirror. “Not that I can tell,” Emma answered. “There’s not much traffic at this time of night.”
Ian turned in the seat to look behind him. “I think if either of them had found me in the woods, they would have attacked me before I made it to the car.”
“Or they could have been waiting to see where you would go,” Stefan murmured.
“Maybe we shouldn’t involve Mandy and Jill,” Emma worried.
Ethan took hold of her hand and squeezed it. “They’ll be fine. Ian lost whoever shot at him and the vampire that attacked her.”
Stefan turned sideways in his seat to stare out the window. “You were lucky.”
“Luck had nothing to do with it,” Ian scoffed.
“It was only one hunter, if there had been more it could have been a different outcome.”
“They hunt in packs?” Emma inquired.
Stefan rubbed at the stubble lining his chin. “Humans, who sometimes learn of our existence, usually hunt in packs. So do the true hunters, but they’re braver and stronger and will come at you one-on-one. However, sometimes you will find hunters and humans working together to rid the world of what they perceive as evil. I think they use the humans as bait, but that’s my own personal theory.”
“Hunters aren’t human?” Ian questioned. Stefan and Brian had talked about the hunters before, but none of them had really asked much about them. None of his family were vicious killers; he’d believed their chances of ever encountering a hunter were slim to none. He’d been wrong.
“No,” Stefan answered flatly.
“What are they then?” Ethan demanded.
Stefan cracked his knuckles as he continued to watch the road behind them. “Only they know for sure. I can tell you the rumors I’ve heard about them, but their origin, existence, and capabilities are secrets they guard closely.”
Emma’s hazel eyes shimmered in the lights of the few other vehicles on the road when she turned in her seat to face him. “What are the rumors?”
“That they have the strength and ability of vampires, but don’t require blood. Some vampires believe they were conjured by witches during a time when magic used to be a central part of this world. The witches created them as a way to counteract the evil of vampires.”
“Witches?” Ian snorted in disbelief.
“There are many who don’t believe vampires walk this earth, but we are living proof that isn’t true. Why do you doubt witches could walk this earth, or that they used to walk it?” Stefan asked.
Ian frowned at him. “Do you believe they did?”
“No, I think it’s a lot of bull,” Stefan said with a laugh. “I’ve been here for two hundred and sixty-nine years, and I’ve never encountered a witch. But who knows, maybe they exist.”
Emma’s hand wrapped around the headrest of her seat as she leaned closer to them, “What other rumors are there?”
Stefan shrugged. “That hunters are stronger than normal humans because they keep vampires and drink their blood to gain strength. Others believe they were created by some force for good in the world, as a way to counteract the evil vampires can wreak upon this earth.”
“What do you believe?” Ethan asked.
“I tend to go with the theory of when demons mated with humans and created vampires, they also created humans who were stronger than normal humans and had some, but not all, of the traits of a vampire. They might not, and probably don’t have to drink blood. They aren’t as strong as we are, though they are powerful. They don’t realize that not all vampires are killers. Hunters age; they’re stronger and faster than humans, but they’re different than us.”
Silence descended over the vehicle, Ian glanced down at the sleeping woman in his arms. Who and what was she? She felt and looked entirely human, but the man she’d been with had definitely been a hunter. He’d been too fast with that crossbow to be entirely human; no human would have been able to come close to nicking him with an arrow.
“Are they going to be able to find us?” Emma asked nervously.
“No, if there’s no one following us now, we should be fine,” Stefan replied.
“Can they find out where Ian lives?”
“I didn’t use my real address for anything on my college forms,” Ian answered. “I used a lot of manipulation, and changed more than a few memories, to slide through. The few friends who came to visit me at our house don’t remember how to get there.”
“You won’t be able to go back school,” Stefan said.
“I’d already figured that out,” he muttered. He’d been looking forward to his last couple of months with his friends, but after what had happened tonight, never seeing them again was probably getting off easy. Both he and this woman could be dead right now.
“I still think the family should leave home and go somewhere else, just in case,” Ethan said. “At least for a little while. We can’t take any chances the hunter or vamp can somehow track them.”
Stefan nodded his agreement. “You’re right.”
The woman’s mouth pursed, she stirred in his arms before going still again. “How is she mixed up with the hunters?” he pondered aloud.
“Are you sure she’s not a hunter?” Emma asked.
He stroked her cheek again and inhaled the heady scent of her blood. He’d never encountered human blood quite like hers, but he didn’t get an inhuman or more than human vibe from her. He hadn’t gotten one from the man she was with either, while they’d been in the bar. “I don’t sense anything superhuman or witchy about her,” he said.
Stefan scowled at him before glancing at her. “Her blood smells different, but the blood of the hunter I killed didn’t smell like that.”
“It does,” Ian agreed. “What did the blood of the hunter you killed smell like?”
“Like blood. I didn’t know it until I tasted it, but there was power in the hunter’s blood. That’s why I believe they were most likely created the same way we were.”
“Well, we won’t know what she is until she wakes up; we’ll get our answers then,” Emma said.
Stefan eyed her carefully, and Emma leaned a little further away from her. Ethan’s eyes shone the strange reddish-green color they’d become before he and Emma had completed the mating ritual. If Ethan considered this woman a threat to his wife, he’d kill her and never look back. Ian shifted, instinctively pressing her closer against his chest. Ethan’s gaze slid away to focus on the road once more, but he gripped the shoulder of Emma’s seat, keeping his arm in between her and the woman.
The woman in his arms stirred briefly before going still once more. Ethan took an exit ramp and raced down it at speeds that probably would have petrified a human, but Ian found it tame. Stefan directed him up and down the hilly roads. They drove through a small town with a bus station, hardware store, diner, a bar and other small stores that were all shut down at this time of the night or actually early morning. Leaving the town behind, they climbed higher into the mountains.
“Turn here.” At Stefan’s instruction, Ethan pulled onto a bumpy dirt drive. It twisted through the trees and climbed steadily upward. Ian yawned. It had nothing to do with him being tired and everything to do with trying to ease the pressure on his ears. Beside him, Stefan did the same thing.
A circular driveway emerged at the top of the hill; Ethan pulled the Jeep up in front of the small cabin. He parked it next to David’s sleek black Camaro. Ian stared at the one story log cabin illuminated by the fading moonlight. The front porch sagged beneath the weight of its years. The simple design, and the logs used to build it, brought to mind the late eighteen hundreds and the pioneers. In the distance, the lonely howl of a coyote rang through the mountains and echoed across the clearing. If they weren’t sitting in this Jeep right now, he may have believed he’d taken a step back in time.
David and Mike stood outside the cabin, leaning against the wall beside the doorway. Light flickered in one of the windows; he couldn’t tell if it was from a lamp or if they were actually using candles and lanterns inside. As soon as Ethan turned the vehicle off, the front door opened to reveal one of Emma’s best friends, Jill. Ian pushed open the Jeep door and stepped into the cool breeze stirring the night. Mandy emerged in the doorway behind Jill as they approached the cabin.
“Is she ok?” Jill inquired, anxiously bouncing on her toes.
“I gave her some of my blood, but she still needs medical attention,” Ian answered.
He stopped outside the door as Stefan walked inside. “Come in,” Stefan said over his shoulder, allowing the vampires to finally enter the home.
Jill and Mandy stepped aside to let him inside. The lights flickering inside were from a lantern sitting on the glass topped, wagon wheel coffee table in the middle of the living room. To his right, a single candle burned on the counter in the kitchen. “Are you ok?” David demanded, his gaze resting on the blood staining Ian’s shirt and the tear in it.
“Only a scratch,” he assured the man who had been like an uncle to him his entire life.
“Did she do that?” Mike, his other adopted uncle, inquired.
“No,” Ian informed them. “Should I put her on the couch?”
“There’s a bedroom back here,” Mandy said.
She hurried down the hall. The slight hitch in her step wouldn’t have been noticeable to anyone with human eyesight and who didn’t know she had a prosthetic leg. The dim candlelight flickering in the room she led him into illuminated her mocha skin. Ian laid the woman carefully on the maroon quilt covering the full size bed.
Mandy opened a small medical bag and began to shuffle through it. “I have some needle and thread…”
“The punctures are already closed, but she needs blood.”
Mandy turned toward him, her deep brown eyes were filled with concern. She’d cut her black hair since he’d last seen her; it was now cropped close to her head and enhanced her high cheekbones and full mouth. “I’m only a med student,” she said. “I don’t have anything like that.”
“We can get some,” Stefan volunteered. “There’s a small emergency clinic in the next town.”
Ian’s hands lingered upon the girl; he forced himself to take a step away from her. “I’ll be the getaway.” Jill smiled after saying this, but her light words didn’t ease the tension in her sable eyes. The blond streaks she’d had when he’d first met her had faded from her mahogany, shoulder length hair.
