Hunting His Vampire Mate (Blood Bonded Mates #4)

CHAPTER FIVE || DANNY

I t was everything I was afraid of.

In the middle of the alleyway, there was a large black van. The back doors were open and three humans—two men and a woman—were sitting in the back, doors open, staring into space with glazed, happy expressions on their faces. I’d seen it plenty of times before. I knew exactly what it was at first glance. They’d been put under a vampire’s hypnotic spell. I could’ve probably lit the van on fire with all of them still in it and they wouldn’t have moved a muscle.

The vampire following me had clearly read way too many Anne Rice novels or something, because he was literally dressed in a waist-length black frock jacket with frilly lace cuffs. I mean, could you be more stereotypical? He might as well have been wearing a cape.

But I had clearly misjudged the situation horribly.

Because apart from him, there were two others. One of them—a red-headed female dressed head-to-toe in shiny black vinyl—was obviously focused on maintaining the hypnotic spell. She was standing by the doors to the van, staring at the humans they’d captured, apparently completely focused on what she was doing because she didn’t even bother to look up at me as I approached.

The other vamp—a male—was in the driver’s seat, obviously the getaway driver. He didn’t pay us any mind either. He was too busy playing with his phone to look our way. They must have all been pretty confident that three vamps against one human stacked the odds pretty squarely in their favor.

Foolish of them.

Their plan was blindingly obvious: lure their victims away from the club and into the van, then take them to the nest, feed on them, and dump the bodies in the streets afterward.

It would’ve even been pretty smart, actually. Except for the body-dumping part, of course. If they’d just buried their kills afterward, they probably wouldn’t have ever attracted our attention in the first place. They might not have attracted the attention of the local law enforcement, either, for that matter.

Well, smart or not, at least that made things morally simple for me—these vamps were not the cuddly kind. They were very much the murdering-innocent-people-with-their-fangs kind.

Still, the van was alarming.

They were obviously more well-organized than most nests we’d encountered so far. They weren’t just impulsively snatching folks from the club, feeding, and then dumping the bodies, after all. They were luring their victims away and taking them elsewhere. They wouldn’t be doing that unless they had a damn good reason for it. As in, they were clearly the meal delivery team for their nest. That meant the nest was probably way bigger than we’d originally thought.

A large, organized, murderous nest of vamps. Pretty much never the ingredients you need for a fun time.

We’d planned to take on three, maybe four vamps, tops.

Yeah, I should’ve gotten Michael’s attention.

And why hadn’t I?

Oh, right. Because I’m a jealous fucking idiot. That’s why.

I’d spotted the female vamp luring one of the victims—the dumber looking of the two guys in the van—out of the club. He’d fallen under her hypnotic spell immediately, without putting up any fuss at all. And watching Michael dancing with the blond twink had filled every single goddamn part of my soul with rage. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to go and tap my partner on the shoulder and loop him in that we needed to go slay some monsters, like I should have. Like I’ve done dozens of times before. Instead, I had stormed out after the vamp all on my own. And I had been followed. And now I was outnumbered.

Yup, I was a fucking idiot.

“Hey there, handsome,” the vamp behind me drawled in a thick southern accent. “Stop for moment, would ya?”

With pleasure.

I stuck my hands in my pockets, which were filled with powdered silver.

Then, plastering a confused expression onto my face, I turned to face him. Not only was he wearing a waistcoat, he was also pale as hell, with his black hair slicked back from his face. Seriously, all the guy was missing was a widow’s peak and a cape, maybe a dab of blood on his mouth.

“Can I help you?”

The vamp already had his fangs out, though. Cocky bastard. “Sure can,” he replied, looking me dead in the eye. “You want to do whatever I say.”

I felt the power wash over me, causing goosebumps to break out on my forearms and on the black of my neck. Vamp hypnosis works mainly through the power of speech, but from what Michael and I have been able to gather, eye contact seems to help too. If I’d been an everyday sort of guy, getting a full dose of uninterrupted eye contact and hypnotic power carried on his words, I would have been immediately under his spell.

But the power wasn’t able to actually work on me. Courtesy of the hideous kiln-fired clay talisman I wore—Michael had one just like it—the compulsive spell just washed over and away from me, like water bouncing off a duck.

Still, he didn’t need to know that just yet.

I made my face as blank as I could manage. “Yeah, okay,” I replied, letting my eyes focus on the point just beyond his shoulder. “I should do whatever you say.”

Inwardly, I rolled my eyes at that. It felt so cheesy. But he seemed to buy it well enough, so there was that.

“You’re damn right you should,” he told me, smirking. He added, “Oh, right. Yeah, you don’t want to run.”

“No,” I agreed softly, still not quite looking directly at him. It was true. I definitely didn’t want to go anywhere. My urge to punch him in the face, however, was increasing with each passing moment. “I won’t run.”

“Good boy,” he replied, giving me a once-over, his gaze lingering on my body a moment longer than it should have. I fought the urge to shudder. He added, sounding mostly like he was talking to himself, “It’s a shame, really. A handsome thing like you—they’ll tear you apart.” He paused, cocking his head to the side as he studied me. “Maybe I ought to talk to the others. See if we can keep you for a while. Or maybe for longer than that.”

Now, there was a fun and exciting idea. Spend an eternity with a murderous vampire who thought fussy waist coasts were appropriate clubwear? Gee, how tempting.

“How ‘bout it, handsome? Would you like to stay young and handsome forever?”

My gaze slid from the point over his left shoulder to meet his directly. “I don’t know. Do I?”

Unease flickered across his expression for an instant. Then, an instant later, he let out a bray of laughter. “Oh, hell. I’m a thick one tonight, aren’t I? You see, I just told you that you have to do whatever I say! And now you’re all kinds of confused, ain’t you? You need me to tell you what you want, don’t you, boy?”

Well, he wasn’t wrong about being thick. He truly wasn’t very bright. Or very experienced at being a vampire, clearly.

“I’m not sure I understand,” I told him dreamily. “But I feel a little wobbly. Maybe I had too much to drink.”

He frowned, his brow furrowing with concentration. “You can stand just fine, boy. Don’t ruin our nice chat by talking out of turn, or I’ll change my mind.”

“What if I need you to hold me?” I said sweetly.

He actually took a step forward, preening a little. Then he froze, just outside of arm’s reach, as my words seemed to register for him.

“Show me your hands,” he said, losing his smile.

“Happy to,” I replied, yanking my hands out of my pockets and clapping them to the sides of his head. An explosion of powdered silver cascaded down the front of his fussy waistcoat.

The vamp staggered back, staring at me with a mix of outrage and confusion on his face. Clearly, it had never crossed his mind that one of his victims could ever fight back. “What the fuck?”

I flashed him my sweetest smile, pulling a wooden stake from my coat pocket. It was made from ironwood, one of the hardest woods in the world. “It wouldn’t have worked out anyhow.”

I didn’t wait for him to reply. Instead, I turned my back to him and went for the female.

Unlike her friend, she clearly wasn’t dumb. She took one look at me and zipped a good ten feet away, around the other side of the van, before I could douse her with powdered silver.

I turned to face waistcoat. He glared at me, murder written all over his face. “Fuck it,” he told me. “I’ll tear you apart myself.”

Then he took a very human-speed step forward and stopped abruptly. His eyes widened.

“What the hell?” he muttered, his voice rising, like he quite didn’t understand what was going on. “What did you do to me?”

“Not as blurry with speed as usual, are you?” I asked innocently. “Bet you’re not as strong, either. What do you think?”

“Fuck you,” he snarled, lurching forward with his arms outstretched like a classic movie monster. With the powdered silver sapping his strength and speed, he was about as powerful as the average human. I was betting he’d never bothered to learn how to fight properly, either. Most vamps didn’t. They always thought they were invincible, right up until they very much weren’t.

I rolled my eyes, sidestepped his attempt to grab me, and ended up behind him.

Years of training as a hunter kicked in and I swept his feet out from under him. He hit the ground with a thud.

I wrenched the waistcoat open, popping buttons in the process, and plunged the stake up into his chest, going underneath the ribcage to pierce the heart. My father had taught me that—why try to shatter the breastbone, if you didn’t have to? My dad hadn’t been good for much, as far as parenting was concerned, but he’d been a damn good hunter.

The vamp gasped once, then twice, his body convulsing each time, before it finally went limp. He stared at me, totally bewildered, as though he hadn’t quite registered the fact that he could die—for real, this time. Then, an instant later, his eyes went blank and staring. All the tension left his expression. A thin rivulet of black blood—vampire blood—trickled out of his mouth and down his chin.

In a matter of moments, his skin turned greyish blue and began to wither, collapsing in on itself. Whatever animates vampires and lets them lead unnaturally long lives, it doesn’t stick around long after they’ve been slain. Their bodies return to whatever state they would’ve been if they’d been dead all along. And yes, in the case of newly turned vamps, that’s every bit as unappealing as it sounds.

My stomach turned. It never had before, but since meeting Bryan and realizing that some vamps were still people, it had gotten harder to kill even the bad ones.

I didn’t even hear the female until she slammed into me, sending me sprawling onto my back.

Her face contorted with rage as she grabbed me by the lapels. “You killed Jake!”

The vampire’s name had been Jake? Somehow, that didn’t surprise me.

I brought my hand up—still coated with silver—and tried to smear some onto her face.

She dropped me so fast that the back of my head bounced on the concrete, causing my teeth to slam together. I tasted blood in my mouth.

Then someone in the van screamed—which meant that her compulsion spell had finally broken—and I heard the sound of three helpless and abruptly terrified humans attempting to flee to safety.

I heard the female swear under her breath.

“Lenny, get them!” she called, clearly talking to the driver, who hadn’t seemed to realize anything was amiss. “I’ll deal with the boy.”

What the fuck was up with everyone calling me boy tonight? Sure, I was a year younger than Michael, but I was twenty- seven . That was pushing thirty, for fuck’s sake.

I tried to shove myself up, but the female was too fast.

In a blur of speed, she launched herself back to me and held me down with one hand. I brought my hands up again, trying to get the silver on her, but she batted them away.

I expected her to try to bite me. Instead, she shoved her wrist against my mouth. Sweet copper tang filled my mouth, and I felt my eyes widen as they locked with hers, shock tearing through me. She had bitten her own wrist. She was trying to force me to drink her blood.

“You hate vampires, little boy?” she hissed, her face cold and merciless. Her dark eyes locked with mine, nothing human in them at all. Not even anger—not really. Just pure, unadulterated malice. “You want to hunt us? Kill us? Well, you’ll change your fucking mind soon enough, won’t you?”

I tried to move my head, but she held me still. And I couldn’t breathe. Blood poured out of my mouth as I tried to cough it up, to fight her. But her grip was like iron. And the instinctive panic of a drowning man took over, causing me to thrash uselessly against her.

And then, against my will, I swallowed some of her blood.

Horror flooded through me.

No. No, no, no, no—

“Good,” she muttered. “Find us when you wake up. Or we’ll find you.”

I heard footsteps approaching. Cautiously, at first. And then at a run.

The female hissed. Her inhumanly strong hands darted up, grabbed both sides of my head, and there was a split second where I heard Michael scream out my name, his voice hoarse and ragged with panic. My heart shattered inside my chest as I realized this was really happening and there was nothing that I could do to stop it.

And then there was only darkness.