The Hunted (2 page)

She had long, chocolate brown hair and creamy white skin. Her limbs were slender and perfectly proportioned. She had soft pink lips and a face so exquisite that his highly-developed senses found no imperfections. If he hadn’t have known better he would have assumed her Vampire, as it was typical for a born vampire to be exceptionally featured. Yet her scent still proclaimed her as human.

Her cheeks were slightly flushed from dancing and her veins throbbed under her skin like tiny strands of molten honey just begging for him to brush his teeth against the flesh of her neck and taste. She was the first person to evoke that insatiable hunger in him in over four hundred years and he wasn’t sure whether to be excited by the prospect or innately nervous.

He sniffed and tried to dismiss the thought. And yet despite his best efforts to push her from his mind, there was something about her that kept reeling him back in. It wasn’t just her blood or that she was sublime to look at, but more to do with the fact that she was oddly familiar.

A pity she’s only human.

He crossed his arms in front of his chest, immediately dismissing all thoughts of the hunt. He leaned back against the palm’s trunk, crossing his left ankle over his right, and watching her intently as she laughed and danced with the people around her.

It became immediately obvious that he was not her only admirer.

The men closest to her were closing in like hungry vultures circling their prey, waiting for the right moment in order to strike. That should have been his intentions towards the Vânâtor, but he couldn’t seem to find enough focus to pull away from her.

Her hips swayed seductively in time with the music, and her hair ruffled in the breeze, wafting strawberry scented shampoo in his direction. Watching the way that her lips curved into a smile as she closed her eyes and wiggled her toes in the sand made him forget why he was on the beach in the first place. She was downright distracting.

The blonde girl, assumedly a friend, had an enthusiasm for liquor and gritty dancing, judging by the bottle in her hand and her overly-sensuous moves. Her friend was caught in a world all of her own, oblivious. The blonde tried drawing her attention from across the crowd by waving and shouting, but William observed that once the girl’s eyes were closed, she was lost to the music and its beat. It was as if she danced only for her own pleasure, revelling in the serenity of such a simple activity, unaffected by the audience around her.

A growl sounded in the back of his throat as he watched one man rest his large, sweaty hands on her slim hips and gyrate suggestively against her rear.

William almost tore through the crowd right then to snap the guy’s fingers off, but he stopped himself, roughly pressing his back against the trunk of the palm tree, concluding that irrationality would get him nowhere. Besides, she’d halted the man’s advances, breaking contact by zigzagging through the crowd to talk to the boisterous blonde.

No need for dramatics.

He took a breath and calmed himself.

What am I thinking? Since when do I get possessive over a girl I don’t even know? And for that matter—a human!

He shook his head from side to side.

No need for dramatics, alright. I have enough of that hunting.

His eyes snapped back to her as she threw her head back and laughed as her friend whispered something rather impish in her ear.

William couldn’t help but smile at the crass comment. His sensitive ears heard the smallest of sounds—it sounded as if the blonde had meant the whispered comment especially for him, but he knew better. Instead, he focused his ability on ignoring the sounds of those around the girl, and listened to the heartiness of her laughter: slightly throaty, and sexy, just like the rest of her.

On an impulse that surprised even him, he flooded her with his scent, using his innate abilities to entice her toward him, to make her look up so he could see into her eyes.

What am I doing?

He almost cursed out loud. This wasn’t like him. He didn’t go around luring unknowing humans just to satisfy his own curiosities. Actually, for the most part, he tended to avoid humans at any time possible. Being around them made sticking to his oath very difficult to uphold. William had not indulged a drop of human blood since the night after his turning. The constant torment of dark memories from that night still battered his soul and fed his guilt, hence why he’d avoided all temptation…until now. But there was just something about her that was worth the momentary discomfort he felt in his throat, as hunger seared his skin and begged for reprieve—to taste her blood.

Besides the draw of her obvious beauty, the sense of familiarity he felt looking into her eyes was astounding, though he had no idea why. She was like a distant echo from his past, a calling to his spirit and a reminder of a life he had once had.

Strangely, through the oppressive fog of his growing thirst, he began to conjure alien images in his mind that showed her as a part of his life.

He thought about caressing her skin and tasting those soft pink lips with his, but the visual imagery of such acts was distorted by a greater urgency to devour blood. It was a burning reminder why he
should
ignore the feelings of desire he felt for the human stranger.

 He was a vampire and he was dangerous. The night still held promise for the capture and kill of an Alpha Vânâtor who seemed determined to populate the area with a new pack. At least that was a realistic prospect that he could really sink his teeth into. Killing was second nature to him.

Time to leave. But still …

A whisper in his mind told him not to walk away from her, told him that she was important, told him that she needed to be protected and taken to the ones with whom she belonged. He wasn’t crazy, but it was an odd sensation, an act of compulsion even stronger than his own abilities, an outside force turning the whisper into a pressure on his conscience. And the whispers filled him with the recognition that had previously evaded him. She wore an uncanny resemblance to someone he’d spent the last few centuries avoiding. She looked just like …

 No
. It couldn’t be true.

Yet it was hard to deny. The whisperer in his mind had guided him to this point in time, following the Vântor from London to Australian shores where he now stood on the beach directly across from the daughter of, from the daughter of …

He still couldn’t admit it. Not even in his head.

She turned in his direction, her body swaying seductively in time with the music while the wind that tousled her hair blew a fresh surge of pure blood scent in his direction. It was maddening, yet at the same time, enticing to the point where his earlier notions of disbanding interest in her and continuing with the hunt were once again put on hold.

He looked at the crowd of people who had once again begun pressing themselves in around her, distorting his view. Without thought or hesitation, he touched their minds gently, asking them to step aside so that he could see her and she could see him.

It worked.

The sea of people parted, and he immediately exuded another wave of his scent to bring her to him. Compulsion or ‘glamouring’ was not difficult for his kind. It was one of the many gifts of the born Vampire that helped implant suggestions in the humans around them. It was handy for acquiring things that required money, and good for covering tracks if humans had seen more than their frail minds should allow. Blending in was easy when you could make everyone around you turn a blind eye to your presence.

Surprisingly, she kept dancing. It appeared that she was immune to his compulsion, or at the very least, tolerant of its effects—an enigma in itself; no human had ever been immune to him. But undeniably he had indeed caught her attention, because then she looked right at him, staring with eyes that he had seen before—eyes that mirrored those of someone he now despised.

His breath caught in his throat and his muscles tightened in response, his jaw hardening as his teeth clenched together.

Though he could clearly see a definite resemblance, the longer he looked, the more he realised that her eyes
were
slightly different. They were a strange combination of green and brown that seemed to swirl haphazardly like a kaleidoscope, captivating anyone who looked into their depths. Or perhaps just him.

William swallowed, a lump rising in his throat, and hurtled another torrent of his essence in her direction.

She watched him with growing interest, but continued to weave her hands through the air and roll her hips in time with the music without moving any further towards him.

He smiled at her, keeping his lips pressed shut and hiding his canines which had begun to slowly extend thanks to her most appetising aroma. He just prayed that his eyes were still green instead of black. He didn’t want to scare her off by revealing his true form.

When the change begins, the extension of teeth comes first. They are easier to hide than the other changes—his eyes a prime example. They are usually emerald green, but once tainted by vampirism, they cloud over like a stormy sky, swirling the iris’s together until they are as black as pitch. It increases his vision and helps him to see at night, but the result for humans is terrifying, reminding them of demonic creatures that haunt their nightmares.

This is just the beginning.

Once the teeth extend and the eyes turn into empty pits of darkness, the talons grow. Fingernails morph into long black talons as tough as steel and sharp enough to slice through flesh like butter, but again, that is not all.

The final stage is the skin.

Though generally pale and milky, it almost becomes transparent, revealing the corded muscles underneath and the spidery veins of blood that pulse just beneath the surface. At this stage, vampires are at their fastest, strongest and deadliest.

William didn’t often reveal that side of himself. It meant that he had been pushed beyond his boundaries, and he hated the idea of losing control.

Tiny rivulets of pain teased at the edges of his mind before he felt the cord he had plugged into the minds of those around him finally snap. The crowds surged back in and around her, blocking her momentarily from his view.

Damn.

‘Hey, you found anything?’ Thomas asked, coming up beside him and looking out over the crowd.

‘I might have, but it’s not a vânâtor,’ William answered throwing his friend a smile.

Thomas cocked an eyebrow in interest. ‘Where is she then?’

William was amused. His friend’s mind was always on finding the next pretty skirt.

Thomas was nothing if not predictable in his efforts to bed every decent looking vampire that he laid his eyes upon. He reminded William of his own brother in that regard.

As William pointed through the crowd, Thomas looked back at him indignantly, his nose turning up at what William was proposing. ‘Trust you to be attracted to the one thing you spend your entire life avoiding. You do realise that delectable morsel is a human?’

William gave him a wry look and ignored him. He watched her making her way out of the pit and heading over to a bunch of teens profiteering from a lack of decent alcohol. Thomas tugged on his arm. ‘Are you ready to go?’ he asked urgently. ‘We need to keep hunting.’

William shook his head. ‘Not yet, I want to talk to her.’

‘Do you think that’s a good idea?’

‘Probably not,’ William agreed, ‘but I feel compelled to do it anyway. There’s something different about her, something intriguing me.’

Thomas grimaced and touched a concerned hand to his friend’s shoulder. ‘I hate to tell you this, Brother, but as much as their outer packaging varies in colour, height and size, they all still have the same, delicious, creamy red centres that
you
seem to want to avoid.’

‘She’s different. I can feel it.’

Thomas scoffed. ‘She’s human, William.’

William stood idle for a moment as he watched her, thinking about the uncanny resemblance. ‘Perhaps.’

Thomas frowned, looking more than confused as he glanced back and forth between William and the girl. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘I’ll tell you when I know for sure,’ William answered abruptly as he pushed himself off the tree, leaving his friend behind to ponder over his comment.

Thomas reached out to hold his friend back as he began to cross the sand, but something stopped him.

After all, she was the first woman in three hundred plus years that had actually piqued William’s curiosity, and Thomas was more than a little keen to see how this all played out. He just hoped that she wasn’t afraid of the dark or the creatures that preyed upon those that dared to stray into the shadows, because if she was, she was in for one hell of a shock.

CHAPTER ONE: