Masquerade (Vampires Realm Romance Series Book 10) (7 page)

Aleksis would never lay a finger on her again.

He would go against his bloodline’s orders to only track the hunter and gather information on him and would kill him, would watch him bleed out from a dagger in his gut, before he allowed Aleksis to even step within thirty metres of Sophis.

She must have felt his anger again because she glanced back over her slender shoulder at him, rogue strands of her long dark hair obscuring part of her face, and her near-black eyes meeting his for the barest of seconds before she dropped them to rest on the pavement and then turned away again.

His fingers burned with the memory of how soft her skin had felt beneath them.

Did her cheek burn too? Did it ache with the need to have him touch it again, just as he ached with a need to touch her?

Vivek shook his head to dislodge those thoughts and focused on tracking Aleksis. Sophis turned the corner ahead of him and Vivek switched his focus to her until he could see her again, even though he knew that Aleksis was over four hundred metres ahead of them. He wouldn’t leave anything to chance. Not tonight. Not while Sophis was still recovering.

Not ever again.

Aleksis strode on, a shadowy distant figure. His heavy footfalls told Vivek that some things hadn’t changed in their decade apart. The hunter still wore sturdy black leather army boots that could disorientate a vampire for a few seconds if a kick connected with their head. Vivek used his senses to track the hunter whenever he turned down a road or alley, leading them deeper into the outskirts of the city. The wind picked up, chill against his skin, carrying with it a sharp metallic scent that Vivek hoped didn’t mean snow. Snow made tracking difficult. It exposed footprints and swamped everything in the same overpowering scent. If their routine counts of the hunters were going to become nightly affairs until the ball had passed, then they could do without a change in the weather. It was almost impossible to remain hidden during a hunt when fresh snow fell between the time when most humans retired and the time when his kind and the vampire hunters came out.

He had even resorted to using the rooftops in the past and sometimes the river, anything to stop himself from becoming the hunted rather than the hunter.

The residential area gave way to commercial buildings, a mixture of old brick factories and modern metal constructions. The roads widened and the number of cars parked along them dwindled. Not good. If Aleksis looked back, he would easily spot them and it was late enough at night that their presence in the area would arouse suspicion. Vivek signalled Sophis and she nodded, and followed him down a street that ran parallel to the one Aleksis had taken.

Sophis remained in line with him this time.

When they came to the end of the road, Vivek signalled her to stay in the shadows of the long brick factory at their backs and peered around the corner. Aleksis quickly ascended a set of stone steps that led up a hillock to a row of tall brick buildings at the top. The three spacious warehouses had seen better days. Several of the windows were broken and the door of the one on the left looked as though someone had kicked it in. Tramps most likely. The disused buildings would draw them like flies, especially during the bitter winter months.

Aleksis knocked on the door of the middle one. It opened, revealing a pitch-black interior that concealed the person on the other side, and Aleksis stepped inside. Just as the door was about to close, two more men hurried up the stone steps, dressed in long heavy black coats ideal for hiding weapons from the local police and prying eyes and not out of place at this time of year in Russia. The dark haired one on the right held his hand up and the door opened again.

This time, the hunter who had opened the door stepped out into the light.

A female with wavy black shoulder-length hair dressed in a dark sweater and jeans.

She embraced the fair haired male, smoothed her hand over his cheek and then kissed him.

Vivek growled. Female hunters were more dangerous than their male counterparts. A female could breed with a strong male hunter and bear children to bring into their ranks. A report filed by Lady Lilith of the Vehemens bloodline stated that it was possible for a genetically modified hunter to pass on the mutations in their DNA to their offspring. The bloodlines trusted her word on this. She had once been a hunter for Section Seven, and was the product of mutated DNA, a merging of human and vampire DNA requested by her mother before Lilith and her sister Eve had been conceived. Lady Lilith was the source, the seed from which the idea of enhancing hunters had sprung.

Records had since been siphoned from the Section Seven database using her login and they had uncovered several breeding programs and the results.

The children born of the union between two enhanced humans were stronger and showed signs of being more in tune with their vampire traits. They were a danger.

If the male in this pair of hunters was enhanced and their offspring allowed to mature, they would become a deadly threat to his bloodline.

Vivek already knew that this female was enhanced. Her name was in the register.

Sophis shifted closer to him, her side brushing his back, and looked past him to the building.

She growled low in her throat.

“What is she doing here?” The words left her lips on a second snarl.

The woman looked towards them, as though she could see them where they stood shrouded by darkness, revealing the scarred left side of her face. The two men walked past her into the building but she lingered and Vivek moved further into the shadows.

Vivek could understand Sophis’s anger. Aleksis Romanov hadn’t been alone the night he had almost killed Sophis.

His twin sister Izabella had been with him.

She had almost cost Vivek his life.

S
ophis’s hand gently coming to rest against his back startled Vivek into tearing his eyes away from the vampire hunter who had nearly claimed him as her prize. He hadn’t told Sophis about what had happened that night over ten years ago as she had lain in his arms, sick from blood loss and poison, but the concern that shone brightly in her brown eyes said that she knew, as did the place where her hand rested.

Izabella Romanov had used his distraction against him. He had been so concerned with Sophis that he had lost track of his surroundings. Aleksis and Izabella had taken flight into the shadows of the cemetery after the initial attack, leaving him alone with Sophis, but they must have only gone out of range of his senses and waited for him to drop his guard before striking again. She had come at him so fast that he hadn’t even had the chance to turn fully before her holy wood stake had penetrated his back to the left of his spine, shattering his ribs.

He was lucky he had sensed her at all and had started to turn. If he hadn’t, her aim would have been true and the stake would have hit his heart, killing him. He would have died that night and Sophis would have died too. Izabella would have killed her before help could arrive.

Vivek had dropped Sophis and launched himself at Izabella, but the pain of the holy wood burning into his flesh had slowed him down and he had only managed to scratch the left side of her face, cutting her with three of his claws from her temple to her nose and lips. She had evaded his fumbled second attack by ducking behind a large stone cross on a grave, tossed a vicious look in his direction as she held her bleeding face, and then fled to join her brother at the top of a grassy embankment. They had stood there a moment, watching him waver as the pain became too much to bear and he collapsed to his knees on the wet grass, desperately trying to reach the stake in his back to remove it. Taunting him with the fact that they were within his reach yet beyond it at the same time.

The sound of the warehouse door closing snapped Vivek back to the present but the dull throb in his back wouldn’t allow him to forget the pain in his past.

Izabella would die too.

He would sever both her head and her brother’s as vengeance for that night.

She wouldn’t be coming back as one of his kind and death by any means other than decapitation would allow that because of her mutated DNA. The vampire hunters were fated to become the very creature they loathed on death. It triggered the immortality part of their new genes. Vivek called that justice for daring to steal the precious abilities of his kind.

How many of them would be brave enough to kill themselves and end their life as a vampire?

The one that Marise, the Law Keeper of the Venia bloodline, had tracked in Saint Petersburg after he had attacked Lord Timur and come close to killing him had taken poison to protect the hunters’ secrets but that hadn’t stopped them discovering the genetic manipulation the hunters were undergoing. Marise had taken the body to the Law Keepers’ stronghold outside the city of Vilnius and the Vehemens vampire Eduard had examined it, revealing that the DNA sequence had changed from human to something closer to a vampire. Several days later, the dead hunter had awoken. When faced with the revelation of what he had become on death, he had tried to kill himself with a surgical knife. When that had failed and he had succumbed to the Law Keepers’ questioning, surrendering information about the locations of several Section Seven bases, he had sought death through a desperate and grim method.

He had escaped and fled into the sunlight.

Holy wood touching vampire skin was painful enough. Vivek couldn’t imagine how terrifying and agonising death by sunlight would be.

Perhaps he wouldn’t decapitate Izabella and Aleksis Romanov. Perhaps he would snap their necks and then stake them out in the sunlight and wait for them to turn and burn.

He smiled grimly, amused by his thoughts, and Sophis frowned at him, her gaze questioning.

He wasn’t about to tell her the dark imaginings crossing his mind. She thought he was cruel as it was.

Instead, he motioned towards the buildings, intimating the one on the left. It was close enough for them to be able to sense the hunters, count them, and even judge their strength. Aleksis and Izabella were strong, and the enhancements they had undergone were so successful that they had even slowed their aging, so they still looked as young as they had all those years ago, barely thirty in appearance. Not many of the documented hunters displayed such a trait.

Sophis led the way, stealthily crossing the open expanse of road, running up the grassy incline, and then heading straight into the building on the left without disturbing the broken door. Vivek followed close behind her, his senses sweeping the area while hers remained fixed ahead, monitoring all three buildings.

As they entered the darkness, Vivek allowed his eyes to change. His senses sharpened with them and his fangs extended. The blackness faded to reveal the room and silver highlights touched the broken furniture and rubble that littered the floor, outlining it for him. He moved swiftly through the building, taking the lead because his vision was better than Sophis’s. She brought up the rear, her senses now sweeping outwards, scouring their surroundings and outside the building too, searching for signs of more hunters.

When they worked together as harmoniously as they were now, Vivek could almost believe that Tynan was right about them and that they were a good pairing. Tynan had spoken to him in the past about what would happen should he prove himself worthy of promotion to the position of elite guard, a role in which he would work only with other elite guards. It was Vivek’s dream but it came with a catch. Tynan had mentioned that he would want to elevate Sophis at the same time and match him with her. Vivek had been against the idea solely because Sophis wasn’t ready for such a leap in rank. She was still too young and too rash, and had proven that the other week.

His chest tightened and he rubbed the spot over his heart to ease it. Coming around that city street corner to see Sophis fighting a vampire hunter alone, her squad watching on from a distance as though she had told them to stay out of the way, had been one of the most heart-stopping moments of his life. He had sensed the shooter on the rooftop, had spotted him bare seconds before he had fired on her, and her scream had chilled Vivek’s blood, freezing it in his veins. Instinct had seized control, a fierce need to protect her beating deep in his bones as he had sprinted across the distance between them. Everything had been a blur after that. There had been blood, the feel of flesh rending under his claws, the bitter taste of fury, and the sweet pleasure of pain. He had come to his senses to find himself almost a mile away from where he had started and with the shooter’s butchered corpse at his feet. He had left it there and run back to her, back to where she lay on bloodstained concrete sick from poison.

That was the most heart-stopping moment he had ever experienced.

It had robbed him of his strength, filling his mind with twisted flashbacks to that night ten years ago, causing her to flicker between looking as she had then, soaked in blood with a dagger protruding from her side, and as she had in the present moment.

He had snarled his commands, needing to be alone with her, to be the one to tend to her and ensure she would live. He had needed to save her.

Sophis touched his back again, shattering the memories clouding his heart and mind, and he looked over his shoulder at her. The sight of her in one piece, watching him in the darkness with curious eyes that he felt could see straight through him, soothed the raging beast within him and his focus slowly returned to the present. Her hand dropped to the spot on his back where Izabella had staked him and her look softened. Let her think that his mind was on that night ten years ago and his own close encounter with death. It was easier than trying to explain what was really going on in his mind and his heart.

He eased up the rickety staircase to the first level of the dark building and then made his way across the patchy broken wooden floor to the crumbling brick wall that separated the building from the one where the hunters were.

Vivek turned and pressed his back against the dusty wall. Sophis carefully crossed the room, stepping around the holes in the floor and the detritus left by whoever had previously occupied the building. She eyed the wall with distaste and placed her hand against it rather than leaning into it. Such a small area of contact would hinder her senses but he wasn’t about to get into an argument about the correct manner in which to use a structure as an amplifier.