Eve breathed deep to attempt to catch the man’s scent as he drew closer from the other end of the street, past the church, the stores and eateries, and the harlots.
It was faint, but she caught his scent. It was definitely Adam. If her heart had still beat, it would have been racing now. As it was, her hands shook and she had to fight to hold down the growl curling up her throat, wanting to break free and make her anger and anguish known to her calm, silent partner.
Eve nudged Tor and pointed. “Adam is here.”
Tor’s focus immediately locked on him and his ice-blue eyes narrowed, his mouth settling in a grim line.
“He’s not alone,” Tor said, his voice scraping gravel, little more than a growl. “I’ve spotted at least three other weaklings roaming the streets, scoping for prey.”
“They’re just hunting?” She kept her gaze locked on Adam, unwilling to let him slip her grasp.
She wanted to leap off the roof, race across the canal and attack the bastard. Every instinct she had pressed her to do it. To go down and tear him to shreds. To introduce him to the pain she had suffered at his hands and pay it back tenfold. She clutched the carved stone in front of her instead, keeping herself pinned to the spot. Payback was going to have to wait. Tor had her drinking animal blood by the quart but she still wasn’t strong enough for an open confrontation with Adam or the others he was working with.
“No.” Tor’s smooth deep voice anchored her, calming her rampant emotions, making them settle far quicker than she ever could have alone. “I get the feeling they’re not hunting human prey at least.”
He jerked his chin towards a tall slim man dressed in a long black coat walking a few metres ahead of Adam along the canal. Her senses said that he wasn’t human. Another vampire. This one stronger than Adam.
Her betrayer tailed the man through the crowd, keeping his distance but constantly drawing closer, and then he halted beneath a tree and allowed the man to move on ahead. Eve frowned. Why?
The answer became apparent when Adam signalled and she spotted the other weakling vampires. They converged on the man, moving through the crowd like the predators they were, only the humans were safe tonight.
Before the man could turn on them, Adam moved from behind his hiding place and brushed against his back and he stumbled. The men working with Adam swiftly closed in, grabbing the man as he collapsed and slinging his arms around their shoulders. Their raised voices rang out above the crowd, easily reaching her where she perched on the rooftop across the canal from them, a raucous mix of laughter and crude banter, and comments about their friend not being able to handle his booze or his women. Noise designed to make the humans think nothing of what they were seeing.
Eve watched on in curiosity as they hauled the man off into the shadows close to the church, where the trees were taller and the crowds thinner.
She lost track of them and turned to Tor, expecting him to make a move. He remained still, his blue eyes fixed on the church, a growing sense of menace flowing around him.
Minutes dragged by and eventually Adam and the weaklings emerged and dispersed into the crowd. Eve watched Adam until he had moved out of sight at the opposite end of the street and then switched to her senses, keeping tabs on him until he had gone too far for her to track anymore.
She looked back at the church. They must have all gone inside, but the other vampire hadn’t come out.
Tor swiftly stood, caught her arm and pulled her onto her feet. “Stay close.”
His hand locked around her wrist and he pulled her with him, leading her to the back of the building and down the metal fire escape. She fell into step beside him as they walked down a narrow alley between two buildings and came out onto the busy street that lined the canal.
Tor shifted his grip, slipping his hand into hers, sending a hot shiver coursing up her arm and down her spine. Heat radiated from the point where they touched and only increased as he moved again, linking his fingers with hers, twining them together.
She tried to keep her focus on the street as they walked along it, heading right towards the bridge that spanned the canal and would bring them to the church but it kept gravitating back to his face, kept studying him together with her senses in an attempt to grasp whether he felt anything like she did. Did he not feel the heat between them?
Eve stared up at his profile, flashbacks of every day she had fallen asleep beside him only to wake with him gone from the bed careening through her mind, interspersed with glimpses of him looking at her, watching her when he thought she wasn’t watching him.
She couldn’t understand him.
Sometimes she could swear he desired her, that she hadn’t read the signals wrongly and this powerful male was as drawn to her as she was to him. Other times she swore he felt nothing behind his icy eyes and she had imagined every emotion she had detected in him, and all the desire and need that echoed within her.
Someone bumped her as they crossed the bridge and she almost growled at them for interrupting her perusal of Tor and her confusing line of thought. The young man grinned at her, cocksure and charming, and possibly a little drunk judging by how he leaned precariously on the balustrade of the bridge for support. He said something to her in a language she didn’t recognise and stepped closer.
Tor pulled her against him, angling his body at the same time so it created a barrier between her and the man. He tossed a dark, deadly glare at the man, a look that promised only pain, and snarled something in the same language.
The man backed away, almost falling over the railing into the water in his haste to place some distance between them.
Tor slung his arm around her shoulders, hauled her into his side, and began walking with her again. She looked over her shoulder, her gaze tracking the man, concerned that he was going to end up falling into the canal and would drown if it happened.
Tor’s grip on her shoulder tightened and he growled at her, a threat her instincts read clearly and she immediately responded to by facing forwards, tearing her eyes away from the human.
Now she felt more confused than ever. The growl had been territorial. She had felt it deep in her gut as a command her vampire instincts understood, a warning not to look at other men.
Did Tor desire her as strongly as she wanted him?
She lifted her gaze back to his face and didn’t flinch away when he swung his glacial eyes her way, pinning her with a black look that revealed the depth of feeling that had been behind his growl. He looked over her head, towards the man, and crimson bled into the blue around the rim of his irises. His pale eyebrows dipped low above those beautiful dangerous eyes and his firm lips thinned as his jaw clenched.
Eve could sense the darkness in him rising, the anger and the hunger for violence. She could sense the man’s eyes on her still, lingering on her body, threatening to set light to Tor’s fury and send him on a warpath that would end in bloodshed and death.
She did the only thing she could to defuse the situation before it exploded.
She turned into Tor and pressed her hands against his broad chest, her stomach somersaulting at the feel of his hard muscles flexing beneath her palms.
His attention immediately dropped to her, his tempting sensual lips parting to reveal the tips of his fangs and his eyes clearing, the blue winning in its battle against the scarlet of their bloodline. His body was still beneath her touch, a perfect statue that she wanted to run her hands over, to explore with her fingers and mouth. She heated in response to the images flowing through her mind, taunting her and increasing her awareness of Tor.
He swept his fingers down her arms, the light caress igniting a cascade of feelings, a sensory overload that wiped out her awareness of the world around them, leaving only him behind. She stared up into his eyes, her breathing coming quicker as his hands closed around her arms. The tightness of his grip thrilled her. It was powerful. Possessive.
A glimmer of heat broke through the ice in his gaze, warming the blue until it burned, a mirror of the inferno inside her that threatened to blaze out of control as she waited to see what he would do.
She had only meant to stop him from attacking the human, but now she wanted so much more than that.
She wanted him to kiss her.
Seconds drifted by, the distant chatter of the crowd and misty rain going unnoticed by her. She couldn’t have torn her focus away from Tor if a bomb had gone off.
Tor didn’t seem to have that problem.
He stepped back and released her, his gaze falling to his boots. He stood there for a moment, a handful of seconds in which Eve fought to conceal her disappointment and hurt, and the temptation to kiss him instead.
He didn’t give her the chance. He took hold of her wrist and pulled her through the crowd, his pace quicker now, his stride determined as the church loomed ahead of them. She stumbled along behind him and cursed herself for being weak around him, letting him dictate how everything should be and being unsure of herself. She was stronger than that.
She pulled her arm free of his bruising grip and ignored the low growl that curled from him. She was perfectly capable of walking to the church without his assistance. She was through letting him order her around. This was her revenge mission and she was going to be the one in charge. Tor could carry out her orders. He could damn well do as she said for a change.
Eve weaved her way through the throng and broke out into a clearing close to the church. She tracked Adam’s scent, using it as a guide to find what he had done with the vampire he had attacked. The trail ended at a small wooden door in the side of the church.
She pointed to it. “Open it.”
Tor frowned at her but did as instructed. He scanned their surroundings, ensuring no one was watching, and then carefully opened the door. He entered first and held the door for her. His chivalry melted a fraction of her anger and it was hard to stoke it back up again, especially when he closed the door and she went to venture deeper into the church.
He caught her arm in a gentle grip. “Wait. I’ll scout ahead, just in case they left someone behind or the vampire they brought in isn’t dead.”
Eve considered protesting on principle but he was already moving into the darkness. She allowed her vampire side to emerge.
Everything sharpened as her eyes changed and the darkness lifted, leaving the church looking as it would in daylight. She scanned the expansive cold stone room.
Twin rows of pews followed the stone columns that supported the wooden roof. A lone candle flickered in front of one of the chapels, the weak light almost blinding while her eyes were changed. Light filtered through the stained glass panels from outside too and she stared at them, taking in all the colours. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been in a church.
She looked off to her left, towards the dais and the curved end of the church. Tor crouched there.
She risked his anger and walked down one line of pews and along the main aisle. Tor lifted his head as she approached, settling back on his haunches and revealing the man laying prone on the stone floor.
Tor went back to inspecting the man. He lifted the vampire’s eyelids and she frowned, moving closer as she saw his eyes were completely black.
“Tranquilized,” Tor explained and she crouched beside the man. “There’s a drug that can knock even our kind out for hours, even days at a time. Weaklings shouldn’t know about it.”
He cursed, vile and low, in several languages, as if just one wasn’t enough to convey his anger and disgust in a satisfactory manner. Eve had the impression that this sedative was taboo among their kind, something a vampire with a shred of nobility wouldn’t consider using unless the situation was dire.
Tor didn’t possess anything resembling a drug in his array of weapons.
Eve wished he did. It would make taking out Adam a lot easier. She scratched that thought. Adam had used the drug on another vampire, and she didn’t want to be like him in even the smallest way.
“I can’t see what they wanted with him. Why just knock a man out for a few hours?” Tor leaned back and rested his elbows on his knees, his black hooded sweatshirt blending with his jeans.
Eve checked the unconscious vampire over. There were no wounds on his neck. She couldn’t even pinpoint where they had jabbed him to tranquilize him, but she suspected it would be on his back. Adam must have administered the dose when he had brushed against the man while his cohorts had been distracting him.
She frowned at the man’s hands. One of the cuffs of his black shirt was undone and pulled back to reveal his wrist. There hadn’t been a struggle, so it couldn’t have happened by accident, and this man didn’t look like the sort who forgot to button a cuff. His clothing was impeccable, a fine black shirt paired with tailored trousers, and a very expensive looking long black wool coat.
Eve tugged the sleeve on her side back even more. She kept going until she had reached his elbow and found a small dark dot on the inside of it.
Tor reached across and inspected the puncture wound. “They took his blood.”
He sounded as incredulous as he looked, and she shook her head as it dawned on her. He frowned at her, his blue eyes intense as he stared across the prone man’s body.
“You know something. What’s going on here, Eve?”
She couldn’t be sure, but she had a dreadful feeling that she knew exactly what Adam was up to, why the other weaklings were working for him, and why they had left this vampire alive.
She held Tor’s gaze as the gravity of what they had discovered hit her. “It’s Midnight.”
His frown hardened. “What’s Midnight?”
Eve lowered her gaze to the wound in the man’s arm, one that could only have been caused by a needle and she knew had nothing to do with drugging him.
“They took his blood.” She fingered the mark, causing a dark bead to break to the surface and tremble there. “Just before I was born, weakling vampires attempted to turn humans into a more powerful form of weakling. They mixed weakling blood with some from a pureblood vampire, and then added a lethal dose of poison that would take time to kill whoever drank the cocktail.”