InsistentHunger (15 page)

Instead, Hunter was just walking up to the front door. A
fifth vampire—the shadow that had reminded Paige of Cody Williams—hadn’t even
figured out there was anyone on the property. He seemed to be fascinated with
the tilting remains of an old hand-crank well. He pushed the handle a few
inches and then let it slide back with gravity. And then he repeated the same
movement over and over. These guys weren’t too bright.

Hunter got to the porch and he was moving slower now. If the
higher-level vamps were faster and smarter, he was going to get himself killed
taking on a house of them. Paige shook her head. If he was willing to commit
suicide, she wasn’t going to go running to his rescue. Not this time.

A window opened on the second floor and a woman looked out.
She pushed open the doors that led to the second-story porch, but didn’t step
out onto it, which was good because Paige was guessing that thing wasn’t going
to hold anyone’s weight for long. In the moonlight, Paige couldn’t see many
details, just the hair pulled back into a bun with a few shadowy wisps blowing
around her face, a seriously hourglass figure and a tight dress. She wasn’t
screaming in fear, so Paige figured she wasn’t a victim, but she sure didn’t
move like the other vamps.

Worse, Hunter didn’t seem to react to her presence on the
porch above him. Paige could feel a cold desperation to help, but she was too
far away and if she called out, she might alert the vamps in the house.

Lowering a knapsack to the ground near the door, Hunter
backed away from the door and off the porch. He had a second knapsack over his
shoulder and Paige frowned. He’d given her all sorts of advice for handling the
low-level vamps, but now that she thought about it, he hadn’t told her how he
planned to handle a house full of smarter, faster demons.

The Cody vamp turned to watch Hunter, and for a second, he
seemed to debate whether this interesting new movement was worth giving up his
toy. He lingered near the well mechanics, but then he did start walking toward
Hunter with that curious head tilt. Hunter froze and waved his arm in a wide
arc before letting go of more balls. Cody vamp happily wandered off to the side
and dropped to his knees in the grass in search of the baubles. Yeah, Paige
would have to be in a pretty shitty situation before she’d even consider
killing one of those vamps.

Hunter went up to the side porch and carefully placed the
second knapsack near a second door and Paige got that gut-deep feeling of
apprehension. Moving slow, Hunter retreated through the low-level vamps.

One of them had retrieved at least one of the balls and he
was kneeling in the grass with it clutched to his chest, his head tilting one
way and then the other. Someone needed to sue Bram Stoker for false
advertising. Paige looked up to see if the woman on the second story would
react to the vamps playing with toys, but she was gone. A tattered curtain
flapped, slapping the edge of the door. Paige had no idea if that was a good or
bad sign. She could only hope that Hunter really knew his shit.

Hunter watched the rocking vamp, moving only when his head
was turned the other way. It made his retreat painfully slow. Eventually
though, he reached a spot downhill of Paige and clambered to the top of a rock.
She hadn’t noticed it before, but there was camouflage netting already laid
out. Hunter slipped under it so that he became a moving lump before he finally
settled down, invisible in the shadow of the trees and moonlight.

Paige frowned. There hadn’t been any killing so far and she
was getting a very bad feeling. She started sliding backward through the weeds,
her body crushing the plants so the heavy smell of swamp weeds rose around her.
She hadn’t slid more than six feet before a huge explosion made her throw
herself to her stomach. The night turned orange and Paige didn’t need to look
up to know what happened. Hunter had set off fucking explosives.

Without looking back, Paige took off running for the cars.

A half second after her body started fleeing, her brain
reminded her that she should have stayed perfectly still and waited. Of course,
the fire might have gotten her, but at least the vamps wouldn’t be chasing her.
Behind her, gunfire as regular as the ticking of a clock suggested that Hunter
had found something to shoot at. Personally, Paige just wanted to get the hell
out of Dodge.

The walk up had seemed fairly short, but even running, Paige
was painfully aware of how far away the cars were. She ran, dodging trees and
fallen logs and clumps of tangled loosestrife.

Her foot slipped on a patch of mud and she tumbled several
feet, her heart pounding as she cursed her own clumsiness. When she came up, a
reddened face was thrust in hers, yellow teeth visible as the creature snarled
at her.

She threw herself backward and a shot cracked out. The right
side of the creature’s head exploded, but the left eye narrowed into a nasty glare
and the left hand still reached for her. Bracing her back against the hill,
Paige kicked the thing in the chest, sending it tumbling. A second shot rang
out, but Paige had her own weapon out.

She put two bullets into the left side of the creature’s head
and then ran without waiting to see how effective she’d been in killing her
first vampire.

She could hear crashing behind her and Paige threw herself
down the hill at reckless speeds. She was going to fall and break her neck at
this rate, and with her gun drawn, she’d shoot herself as she did it. However,
if it was that or get eaten, she was oddly okay with broken necks and gunshot
wounds.

Something brushed against her left arm and Paige brought up
her weapon, shying to the right. A vampire was there, his face full of fury as
he reached for her, but his head exploded right as his mouth came open to
either yell at her or bite her. Paige put two more bullets in his head for good
measure, but that slowed her down, and now that she’d partially turned, she could
see a half dozen more vamps headed her way. Cody vamp was one of them and he
was moving pretty fast now, his feet ripping up the weeds as he ran.

Paige turned back toward the car and forced her burning legs
to move faster. Shots continued to ring out behind her and her lungs burned,
but she didn’t dare stop or even look behind her. Her foot slipped on a patch
of loose shale and she slid down the hill on her hip, twisting around to fire
two shots at the closest vamp. It was the Cody vamp and he spun around as one
of her bullets caught him in the shoulder. A Glock 22 carried some power, but
Paige didn’t trust a shoulder injury to slow it down much.

She was scrambling to her feet when something caught her
ankle. Paige swung around, already firing her weapon before her brain
registered the dark hair and the familiar body.

“Shit, Paige.”

“Sorry. God, sorry,” she said as she realized Brady was
here.

“You should be. You shot me,” he complained, but he already
had her by the wrist, pulling her deeper into the trees and away from the cars.

He ran so fast that she felt like her shoulder was being
pulled out of its socket and all she could do was try to keep her feet under
her as he essentially dragged her into the woods that lined the swamp. Her hand
sweated, making her grip on her gun tenuous at best, but when she saw a
movement through the trees, she raised her gun and fired three shots that
probably didn’t hit anything.

With one last yank, Brady pulled her behind a rock and
trapped her between the boulder and his back. Paige gulped air, her heart
threatening to give out at any time. About the only thing keeping her upright
was Brady’s back pinning her to the rock, but that also made it hard to get the
deep breaths she wanted and she clutched his shirt, struggling to push him
away. Anticlimactic. She thought the night was fucking anticlimactic. She’d
never been more wrong in her life.

Paige couldn’t manage more than a breathy moan as she tried
to get her body back under control. When a vampire dropped down off the rock in
front of Brady and turned to snarl at them, Paige managed a small scream. She
would have embarrassed herself with a full-on horror movie scream, but she
didn’t have enough air to manage it.

She brought her weapon up, but Brady caught her wrist and
pushed her hand down. “Go away,” Brady snarled, and his voice had an inhuman
coldness to it.

“She attacked. She’s mine.” The creature had bad eighties
hair, but his voice made a tremor go through Paige’s spine. These were demons.
These were definitely demons.

“She’s mine. I’ll rip you apart if you touch her,” Brady
said, and then he gave a low growl that made the hairs stand up on her arms.

“She’s human.”

“She’s mine,” Brady repeated even louder.

The other vampire shook his head like a dog coming up out of
water and backed up a step. “She’s human,” he repeated, but this time he
sounded more confused than confrontational.

“She’s human and she’s mine.” Brady took a step forward.
That gave Paige enough room to actually breathe, but now her legs had to hold
her own weight and they really weren’t up to the job. Either lack of oxygen or
terror had turned to muscles to rubber, and Paige couldn’t even say for sure
which one. Paige wasn’t in any shape to shoot anyone, so she carefully
holstered her gun before she could shoot herself in the foot.

The eighties vamp ducked his head—this one wasn’t prepared
to fight Brady for the right to kill her. That should be comforting. It might
be more comforting if Paige wasn’t worrying about the fact that Brady was
sounding more and more like a demon himself.

“She killed.” Eighties vamp snarled at her again without
raising his head. Unlike Cody vamp, this one had at least a few logic circuits
running.

“She watched, unaware, while the other human used her as a
distraction. Kill the other human.”

“What other human?” Eighties boy looked really confused now.

“The one who shot at you while she ran. She couldn’t run
from you and shoot you from behind.” Brady pointed out with a low rumbling
growl. Either Brady didn’t like this vamp or he really didn’t like Hunter. Both
were possible. “There was another human…one who calls himself Jim Hunter. He
was on the rock, hidden,” Brady said.

“Brady,” Paige whispered a warning. Yeah, she was ready to
kill Jim herself, but that didn’t mean she wanted him to get eaten. Brady’s
only answer was a low growl that made his whole body vibrate. Clearly he didn’t
care about Paige’s moral objections.

“The other human.” The vamp tilted his head and looked past
Brady and Paige, back to where the house had been. Even now, Paige could smell
the fire. The land around here was wet and muddy, but the fire could still
travel a long way and endanger a lot of people. Jim was a madman. He was a
dangerous madman. Even if she didn’t kill him, she was going to shoot him in
the knee for this. “I’ll go kill the other human.” He turned and leaped into
the air with the sort of power that Paige normally associated with big cats
like tigers. It wasn’t a comforting thought.

“Oh shit.” Paige sank to the ground as her knees went on
strike and her thighs decided to join them. “Shit.”

Brady knelt down on one knee. “Are you okay?” His voice was
almost calm, but the dark undertones were still there.

“Maybe. Probably not.”

“I’m going to kill him. Slowly.” The growl was back and
Brady went to stand up, but Paige reached out and caught his arm.

“Don’t leave. Not now. There are vampires in the woods. And
my car is back there. Damn. Jim tried to get me killed and I’m having that
freak-out now. So just don’t leave, okay? You’re freaking me out, but suddenly
a whole lot of other things are freaking me out way worse.”

Brady looked at her, the demon slipped away and what was
left was the look of utter despair when Brady had faced his first rape victim.
Paige punched him in the leg.

“What?” he yelped and that was a normal Brady voice.

“I’m freaking out, I’m not some victim.”

“You’re a victim of Hunter’s stupidity,” Brady disagreed
with an expression like he had bit a lemon. Settling in next to her, he pulled
her close and Paige let herself be tugged until she was leaning into him. Her
heart was still pounding painfully fast, but she wasn’t sure if that was from
the chase or from the fact that Brady’s arm was holding her close as she leaned
into his side. “He wasn’t trying to get you killed. He damn near did, but he
was picking off the vampires as they came after you. He was covering your
retreat.”

“And hoping that I would distract them from looking for
him,” Paige guessed. She’d been the sacrificial lamb he’d staked out to
distract the wolf while the hunter worked. He’d picked her vantage point. He’d
set off the explosives on the far side of the house to drive the vamps her way
and he’d picked them off while she did a nice job of giving them someone to
chase. Oh yeah, she was going to hurt him so very much.

“Yeah.” Brady didn’t sound amused. “I’m still going to kill
him.”

“Can we postpone this debate until I can think of one good
reason why you shouldn’t?” Paige asked. Brady looked down at her, curiosity and
dismay in his expression. “And can we go get my car before I have to explain to
the fire department why it’s parked at the scene of an arson?”

“Do you get the feeling that we’re missing something?” Brady
asked softly.

“Hell yes. We’re definitely missing something—like allies
with a moral code.” Paige sighed because they were missing more than that and
she knew it just as well as Brady did. Something was going on and they were so
busy looking at the small picture that they were missing something big, and she
knew it. However, she was too damn tired to care right now. Right now she only
cared about collapsing in her own bed for the next twelve hours.

“Let’s get you home,” Brady said. He stood up, helping her
to her feet. Paige looked down and Brady’s bare feet were caked in mud. His
only shirt was torn. They definitely needed to make a Walmart trip at some
point. Right now, though, she just wanted her bed.