Hunted, The Complete Edition: A Full-length Steamy Vampire Romance (New England Nightwalkers) (20 page)

Z
ara paced back
and forth in her bedroom in the cabin, her feet nearly making ruts in the wood floor. She felt sick to her stomach, knowing deep in her heart that Gabriel was going to do something terribly stupid to protect her.

“Damn, impulsive, reckless, foolish vampire!” she spouted in her frustration. Why couldn’t she have woken up when Gabriel slipped from her bed? She would have begged him to stay. To skip the meeting altogether, and run away with her. They could find another way.

Her fertile mind conjured all sort of horrible things that Ezekiel might do to him. Would he torture his renegade subject? Would he force Gabriel to do some horrible thing to prove his loyalty?

She only hoped she got the chance to tell him that she loved him and was willing to run away with him, no matter how far they had to go. Sure, she would miss her job and her friends, especially Steph, but she would adjust. She had to.

And eventually Ezekiel would give up on them, wouldn’t he?

Her door slammed open, and she nearly shot to the ceiling.

“Jesus! What’s going on?” she demanded, holding a hand to her galloping heart.

Fenton stood in the doorway, every muscle in his body tense. This was the first time that Zara had seen him being anything but cool, calm and collected. He looked like he had the devil nipping at his heels.

“We’ve got to go,” he barked.

“Wait, what?” Zara said frozen in her steps, her brain whirring.

“No time for questions. Move.”

“Fenton, please tell me what is going on…where is Gabriel?”

With a growl he stalked forward and with one motion tossed her up like a sack of potatoes. She hit his shoulder with a solid
oomph
coming from deep in her gut. Momentarily the air was knocked out of her, but when she started breathing she kicked her legs and struck his back with her fists as hard as she could.

“Put me down. Where’s Gabriel, god damn it!”

It did nothing to stop him. He only gripped her tighter in the vise of his arm and took the steps with terrifying speed.

“Please,” Zara screeched, tears streaming down her face as terror gripped her insides. “What happened? I need to know…is he--”

“He’s gone, human.”

“Gone?” she whispered, the single word reverberating through her like a shot.

“Yes,” gritted out Fenton. “And we’ll be following shortly unless I get you out of here. Don’t make his sacrifice worthless.”

He rushed out of the cabin, not even bothering to lock the door. Tearing open the door of an SUV he threw her inside, her teeth clacking together as she hit the seat with a
thud
.

Deftly the half-crazed doctor drew the seatbelt on her, and then sprinted to the driver’s side. The vehicle roared to life and Fenton tore down a gravel road cut through a stand of trees. Gears ground under his hand as he shifted to drive even faster down the bumpy road. It was dark, no moon shone and the only light was the headlights of the truck.

“Where are we going?” she murmured, a strange and prevailing sense of numbness settling over her, no matter how hard she fought it.

Fenton. She could feel his will wrapping around hers. Not forcefully, but like a blanket, swaddling her like a cocoon.

No
.

She wanted to feel. She needed to feel…to see if he was lying. If she could still sense Gabriel’s presence in the world. Surely she would know if he were gone. Surely she could feel it.

Fenton’s eyes were locked on the gloomy road and she tried to reach for him. To implore him to tell her what had happened. But her arms felt like lead.

“Tell me,” she managed, pulling weakly at his shirtsleeve. “I need to know.”

Fenton took his eyes off the road for a second and the vehicle flew up after hitting something too close to the trees.

“Shit,” he declared as the SUV hit the ground again. He jerked the wheel to place it back on the rutted road, jerking Zara against the seatbelt strap.

“And I need you to shut the fuck up,” he snapped. He bared his fangs and issued a low, warning growl at they tore down what was barely a road.

Did something really happen to Gabriel? Or had Fenton turned on them and decided to bring her to Ezekiel and Irena?

With a couple of shocking bumps that sent Zara’s head into the canopy of the truck they were on a paved road. She had no idea in which direction they were heading, safety or danger.

“Please. I-I need you to stop whatever it is you’re doing to keep me from feeling, Fenton.” She used every ounce of her strength to fight it away enough to sit up straight and speak clearly. “If Gabriel is dead, I need to feel that. Please.”

Fenton let out a muttered curse, and suddenly her senses returned in full force. The fear came in like a tidal wave. The adrenaline coursed through her. And then, the pain.

Knee-buckling, nauseating pain.

She let out a howl and bent over at the waist, sucking in long breaths through her nose in an attempt to manage it.

“You asked for it,” he said over the roar of the engine. “He told me beforehand you’d be in agony at his passing. He asked me to try to shield you from some of it if I could, but you’re a stubborn little bag of flesh, aren’t you?”

Fenton’s words barely penetrated the haze of suffering, but one thing stuck.

His passing.

Gabriel was not dead. She knew it as surely as she knew her own name. He was hurt. Near death, certainly. But she could feel his very essence, a weak flicker of light in a sea of writhing blackness. She fought through the pain and clung to it, like a buoy in a raging sea.

The chime of a cell phone filled the cabin of the truck. Fenton pulled it out, looked at it, and then threw it on the dash.

But the phone kept ringing and ringing as they flew down the road. The insistent noise seemed louder with each passing call but Fenton kept his preternatural eyes on the road.

Zara finally reached out to pick it up, but Fenton snatched it out of her hand so quickly she only felt the slap of his flesh against her fingers as a sharp sting.

“Fine. I’ll throw it out the fucking window as soon as she lets me hang up.” He pressed Accept and held the phone to his ear.

“What?” he barked. She could vaguely make out the female voice on the other end, and she strained to hear, to no avail.

He listened for what seemed like forever. “You know I can’t do that. I made a promise, Irena. A promise I was very well compensated for. My word is my bond and my bond is my livelihood. Sorry.”

Fenton rolled down the window, tossed the phone out, and then set his eyes grimly on the road before them again.

“What did she say? Where is Gabriel?”

“You really want to know?” He shrugged his shoulders, threw up one hand in disgust. “The fucking idiot staked himself in the heart.”

“What?”

“You heard me, human.”

“No. No,” said Zara, refusing to give in to the rising tide of panic. She wouldn’t question her gut. Not this time. “I would know if he were dead. I would have felt it.”

Fenton tapped his fingers on the steering wheel before tipping his head in a grudging nod. “According to Irena, you’re right about that part. Apparently, he’s not dead yet, but as good as. The stake should have killed him instantly. I can only assume that the treatments we’ve been doing slowed the process. He’s stuck in some strange no man’s land between human and vampire, able to survive the stake to the chest like a hearty human with immediate care might, but unable to heal like a vampire quickly enough to save him. In any case, Ezekiel stormed out of the bar to find the rogues who apparently killed a bunch of churchgoers. He left Irena to deal with Gabriel before the police arrived.”

“Police?”

“Yes. Everything is very, very messy right now. For all of us, including me.” He banged a hand on the wheel. “I hope he’s happy with all the havoc his love for you is wreaking.”

Fenton said the word “love” like it was a nasty slur.

“Take me to him, Fenton.”

“Nope. Not going to happen,” he said with a shake of his head. “It’s not safe. I promised Gabriel I would make you safe.” He stared stubbornly into the darkness.

“That’s what Irena wanted, isn’t it? She wanted me to go to him?”

Fenton ignored her so she reached over and yanked on the steering wheel, hard. Her sudden movement caught the vampire off guard, and the truck veered into a spin out.

Fenton, with lightning reflexes, steered into the spin and brought the truck under control, but now they were facing the opposite direction on the road and Fenton was staring at her through blazing eyes.

“Fuck!” spit Fenton. “Are you trying to kill yourself, woman?”

“Take me to Gabriel now. If he’s going to die, I need to be with him when he does. I don’t care what happens to me after that. If Irena wants me, she can have me.”

“Stubborn human,” he spit. But he glanced at her again, seeming surprised at her unabashed tears.

“I don’t think I can survive without him. And if I could, his death would be like a gaping open wound that will never heal, so what’s the difference?”

“You really feel that way? Like you can’t survive his death?”

“I do,” she whispered even as the truth of it registered deep within her.

“A Necessary,” he muttered. “Son of a bitch, I was right. Okay. Gabriel can’t kill me if he dies anyway, so I’ll take you to him. But I’m not responsible for what happens. We could walk in and Irena could decapitate you on the spot for all I know.”

They drove for two hours but it seemed like forever before Fenton turned off onto a lonely private road and drove to a house that stood tall in the darkness.

“Here’s your stop,” Fenton said.

“Aren’t you coming?”

“I’m afraid not. I have some value to my kin, but Ezekiel and Irena might forget that in the heat of passion. I’ll give them some time to cool off before I show my face again.” He faced her and then bent his head in a regal bow. “That said, I do wish you good luck, human. You have more courage and heart than I gave you credit for.”

“Goodbye, then,” said Zara. “And thank you.” Whatever bad the golden-haired vamp had done, he’d given her a chance to see Gabriel one last time at the very least, and for that, he would be forever in her good graces.

Zara climbed out of the truck and walked up the tall stairs that swept to a high porch. The house was set on pylons, and in the dark, she could hear the crash of waves against the shore. There was no answer to the doorbell, but when she tried the handle, the door swung open.

A single row of inset lights shining on a stairway that led to the second floor were the only lights on in the house, so she climbed the steps cautiously. The quiet in the house was eerie, and, for the second time, she wondered if Fenton had pulled off the most nefarious of traps. What if Gabriel wasn’t here at all? What if she’d all but begged him to take her to her imminent doom?

A door to the right of the hallway was slightly ajar and she approached it cautiously. When she stepped a foot into the dimly lit room, an overwhelming sense of grief nearly brought her low.

"I was wondering if you'd come," a soft voice said from across the room, by the bed Zara could see silhouetted in the darkness.

Zara strained to see more clearly, but even in the dim light, she knew who the voice belonged to.

Irena.

They'd met only the once, back when she and Gabriel had been kissing in the stockroom at the club, but the woman had made quite an impression. Her voice, even now, was like fine whiskey, but despite the soothing almost hypnotic quality, Zara couldn't help shivering.

Gabriel had told her all about Irena. Badass, five-hundred-year-old vampire, second in strength only to their maker, Ezekiel. And, most importantly, sister to Melissande.

The woman Zara's father had killed right before his own death.

Zara swallowed the sudden lump in her throat and forced herself to take another step into the room. And then another. Soon, she was standing a few feet from Irena where she sat beside the bed, blocking Zara's view.

"If you hold ill will toward him, please go. I know this might be hard to believe, but he's punished himself enough for his crimes." The nightwalker female met Zara's eyes with her sherry-colored gaze and it was all Zara could do not to stumble backward. She was beautiful as ever, but her face was ravaged with grief.

No. Something deeper than grief. She looked like she was near death herself.

"Wha-what's going on, Irena?" she asked, stepping around the woman to peer down at the bed.

Gabriel lay, silent and motionless. His eyes were open but unseeing; his face was a mask of agony. He wore the same clothes she'd seen him in last, but he was shrunken inside them, like a dead beetle with only the husk of its shell left.

Bile rushed up to burn her throat and she reached for him.

“Oh, my God, no." She barely got the words out before her legs could no longer hold her and she dropped to her knees. A thousand emotions assailed her at once and the weight of them seemed to be choking her as she tried to squeeze words out.

She swallowed hard and turned her head to face Irena, who was studying her through glittering garnet eyes. "Fenton said he wasn’t…is he...dead?" she whispered. The ache inside at the very thought of it was so deep, she bowed her back and lay her head on the side of the bed as she reached for Gabriel's cold hand.
Please, God.

"No," Irena said, sliding her chair back to make more room for Zara to wedge herself closer to Gabriel. "Not yet. But it's only a matter of time. He has a few hours left, at most."

Zara lifted her head. "There is no way to undo this? There is no way to fix him?" Desperation clawed at her chest as the idea of facing a world without Gabriel in it began to close in on her like an ever-tightening fist. "That can't be. There has to be a way. What about Fenton?" she demanded, searching Irena's face for a clue. Someone to hate for this. Someone to blame. "Maybe if you give your word you won’t harm him, he could come and--"

“No.” Irena shook her head slowly and rose unsteadily to her feet. "This is beyond the doctor’s abilities. Maybe, had he been on the scene, there would've been one way. But now..." She shrugged her narrow shoulders, the bleak look in her eyes enough to send a trickle of dread down Zara's spine. "It's too late. He's too far-gone. You’d be best leaving here. I won’t stop you. You would have hours to get a head start before Ezekiel returns."