Hunting His Vampire Mate (Blood Bonded Mates #4)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN || MICHAEL

T he entrance of the mine vanished down a long, narrow corridor that terminated into inky blackness. Because the darkness was nearly total and we couldn’t use flashlights, the vampires went first. Thierry took the lead, with Danny right behind him. Bryan, of course, stayed with Tobias, and I ended up in the back.

It smelled of damp earth and I could feel the crunch of gravel and hard earth beneath my shoes, but Tobias’s earlier spell had silenced the sound of our approach, so I heard nothing, save for the sound of my own breathing. The darkness swallowed us up before we’d taken more than ten steps into the mine.

Instinctive panic began to bubble up from deep within me. Anything at all could have been lurking up ahead, waiting to devour us whole.

I was familiar with the feeling. It was something that occurred on nearly every hunt—fighting monsters meant going into dangerous places with limited visibility to battle the many predatory beings that lurked on the fringes of the human world. It was an instinctive reaction, deep and primal. I had learned long ago that trying to shove it away only made it worse. Instead, I leaned into the sensation, acknowledging the fear and letting it put all of my senses on high alert. I forced myself to keep going, keenly aware of the weight of the earth overhead as we went deeper and deeper.

But warring with my instinctive, human fears, were the other feelings that surged up. Those ones were harder to fight through.

Because how could Danny have said no to me? Hadn’t he understood how difficult it was for me to ask him to give me his blood before walking into battle, knowing full well what it would have meant if I had died? I understood better than anyone what I would have come back as, and I had asked him anyway.

How could he have told me no?

It was a rhetorical question: I understood his reasoning on a purely intellectual level. The blood bond had given me the excruciating blow-by-blow details of how he’d arrived at the final destination. But having a front-row seat to the inside of his mind made it worse, not better. He had chosen his fears over believing in me.

In us.

Eventually, the ground began sloping downward, gradually at first, and then more sharply. How long had we been walking? Minutes? Hours? An eternity? It was just pitch black here, with no beginning or end, and Tobias’s spell meant that I couldn’t even hear the telltale soft crunch of earth crushed beneath the soles of our shoes. I might have been alone here, walking deeper and deeper into an endless abyss.

Empty. Abandoned. Useless.

Michael, we’re slowing down. Danny’s mental voice cut across my thoughts. The moment his mind connected with mine, I felt a flash of anguish tinged with guilt burst between us like the flash of a dying star. I knew immediately that he’d sensed the dark nature of my thoughts, and he hated causing me pain. Too bad he was so fucking good at it. He added, There’s a light up ahead. It’s probably them. Thierry is going to go cause a distraction. We’ll bring up the rear and clean up after him. Wait for my signal.

Right. Got it. Thanks.

Michael…

Now isn’t the time, Danny.

I felt him mentally turn away from me, pulling back in some way I couldn’t quite explain, given that I had never been in possession of a telepathic bond with anyone before. But it felt like he had decided to take a step back and give me space.

This was idiotic, wasn’t it? I had spent years single-mindedly driven by hatred and fear of the supernatural. That had lessened, gradually at first, after meeting Bryan. And then all at once, when Danny had become a vampire. But he was probably still trying to mentally catch up to everything that had changed, both within me, and between us. Everything was different now.

And I wasn’t being especially fair to him.

I suddenly wanted to go to him, to wrap him in my arms, and apologize. To reassure myself that he was still real. Still okay. Still there, close enough to touch, to cherish.

Michael, it’s time.

At his signal, I forced myself into a dead run. I couldn’t help but put my arms out in front of me—another completely human reaction to sprinting full-tilt into darkness—but after a few dozen steps, I saw what Danny had been talking about earlier. There, up ahead on the left, was a flicker of light. It grew brighter as I ran toward it.

As I approached, I heard yelling.

Adrenaline flooded through me, and time seemed to slow down to a crawl. My earlier storm of emotions evaporated into nothing. All I felt was the icy clarity of the hunt.

I pulled my machete out of its holster as I neared the light.

I burst around the corner and nearly tripped over one of the vampires. It had been a female. It was already dead. I stepped over it and took in my surroundings.

This part of the mine wasn’t a shaft any longer.

Instead, it was a cavernous space, complete with ghostly grey-white stalactites hanging from the ceiling and stalagmites jutting up from the floor, like the razor-sharp jaws of some deep-earth monster. The space looked like it had never been mined before. Perhaps the folks digging into the mountain had accidentally uncovered it in their search for gold—or whatever else they’d been digging for.

We had underestimated the size of the nest. There were at least a dozen vamps. And everyone else was already there. Fighting.

Danny squared off with a burly looking vamp ten feet ahead of me. I started toward him, my heart in my throat. He was my size. Big enough to break Danny in half.

He was slow and unskilled, though. And Danny wasn’t.

Before I had made it five feet, Danny zipped around the guy, so fast he was nearly a blur, ducked under the outstretched arms that surely would have crushed him, and sank his wooden stake deep into the vamp’s back.

The burly vampire’s eyes widened in disbelief. Then they glazed over. His skin began to wither. He fell forward, hitting the ground with a sick thud.

Danny looked up, meeting my gaze with an impish smile, and flashed me a thumbs up.

I felt myself relax.

Two vamps, both of them males with their faces crusted in dried blood and insanity burning in their eyes, rushed me.

I readied my machete, a dangerous smile twisting itself into place on my lips.

After that, the chaos of battle overtook me. I destroyed three of them in quick succession, swinging my machete in an ugly, macabre dance of death. The grim satisfaction of their overconfidence becoming stunned disbelief in the instant before I destroyed them didn’t come this time. Instead, I felt every life I took. The fact that they had murdered innocent people, destroyed countless lives, and would do it again and again was little comfort this time.

The hatred I had felt made it easier to kill. Now that the last threads of it had vanished from my heart, taking life—even monstrous life—was far harder to stomach.

It was worse that they were new. I could tell they were. They hadn’t picked up any finesse yet. They were used to using their brutal strength and speed. They weren’t used to having to use any level of skill in combat. They weren’t used to their prey, who looked like a big dumb jock, suddenly tumbling into an acrobatic somersault, just under their outstretched hands, popping up behind them, and swinging his razor-sharp machete with murderous precision.

And I couldn’t stop, even for an instant.

Because if I did, they wouldn’t hesitate to snap my neck. Or tear out my throat. They were monsters, but they had been people once. They were victims, too. If Thierry had been telling us the truth about how these kinds of nests operated, they hadn’t stood a chance to be anything else.

There were three people locked in a massive iron cage in the back of the cavern—human captives, presumably—and they’d helpfully signaled their presence by screaming and yelling bloody murder once the fighting had started. Neither Bryan nor Tobias attempted to kill any of the vampires. Instead, they went right for the humans, clearly intent on rescuing them. Though, when a scraggly-haired female vamp got too close to Tobias, clearly intent on stopping him from performing his spell to unlock the cage—or any other spells ever, for that matter—Bryan zipped behind her and snapped her neck without any hesitation at all.

But even that didn’t kill her for good, of course.

However, the young vampire and the warlock didn’t need to kill any vampires.

Because when it came to killing, Thierry was a true artist and death was his medium.

Vamps get much stronger and faster, the older they get. And he tore through the younger vampires like they were made of wet paper, without hesitation. His body rippled with lithe grace, his blows almost like a dance, armed with only a simple wooden stake and absolutely lethal.

Then, when I caught sight of a vamp backhanding Danny with a sickening crunch, causing him to go spinning into a stalagmite as large as a person, I got distracted.

The vamp I fought—a guy about my age who probably would have been handsome if there hadn’t been a grotesque mess of blood all over his face—grinned at me and reared back his fist.

I dropped to the ground like dead weight.

His fist swung into the empty air I’d just been occupying an instant before.

Startled, he looked down at me and growled.

But I made the mistake of looking up at him and seeing a person. Or, rather, the person he had once been. And I didn’t reach for my gun the way that I should have. Instead, I hesitated for a split second.

He reared me up by my lapels one-handed, my feet dangling uselessly off the ground.

His grin seemed to widen even further, like it was in danger of splitting his face. But there was nothing human at all left in his eyes. It was like looking into the cold black eyes of a great white shark, right before it bites you in half.

Devoid of emotion. Empty. Merciless.

A stream of profanity poured out of my mouth, and I brought my machete up. With his free hand, the vamp struck my upper arm with enough force to fracture bone.

I heard it before I felt it. The sickening wet snapping sound.

Then pain.

I sucked in a breath and had to grit my teeth to avoid screaming out loud. Nausea swept through me. Sweat beaded on my brow in an instant. The moments seemed to drag, drawn out by the white-hot pain radiating through my entire arm. My body felt abruptly too cold, which was impossible, because the pain burned through me like fire.

“No screaming?” The vamp sounded disappointed. “Usually, they try screaming first.”

Then he lunged forward to bite me.

“Michael!” Danny shouted, from the other side of the cavern. I didn’t look at him, but the bond told me that he had sensed the danger I was in, glanced over, and registered what was happening.

I froze, disbelieving that this could happen to me.

The vamp’s lips were rough, but I only felt them for an instant, because then his fangs pierced the tender flesh of my throat. It wasn’t like it had been with Danny, a flash of pain followed by sheer pleasure. Gentle, ecstatic, and good. Instead, it was sharp teeth tearing through my flesh, followed by agony unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. Like every cell of my body had been dipped in gasoline and set ablaze.

Michael! Danny’s silent scream was awful. Wretched. But it seemed to come from far away. It mattered, but I couldn’t quite remember why. Red haze filled my vision. An iron grip held me. Distantly, I heard a loud noise and realized I was probably screaming.

The vamp wanted me to suffer.

Then he broke away with a gasp. No longer suspended by a viselike grip, I dropped to the ground. The red haze vanished from my field of vision, but I could still feel the blood pouring out of me, coming much too fast.

The vamp dropped to the ground, his skin already going greyish-blue.

Relief flooded through the bond, causing me to smile. Danny wasn’t afraid for me anymore. That was good.

Thierry dropped to his knees beside me.

I barely registered his presence there. Not enough to summon even a flicker of hostility toward him. Or to wonder what he was doing there. Or why I was lying on my back, on the uneven ground of the cavern. Or why there was hot wetness pooling all around me, soaking through my jacket.

I shivered, cold like ice seeped under my skin, but I barely noticed it. The red haze had been replaced by a greyish-black murkiness. I couldn’t focus on anything. But without that awful pain, all I could feel was numb bliss, like I was floating away on an endless sea of relief.

I let my eyes drift shut. I could just let go. The pain would just be gone, if I did. It was hard to remember why I shouldn’t. It was hard to remember what mattered. The darkness was like a hug, its arms wrapped around me, soothing me after the suffering I had just endured. I could sleep for a million years. If only it weren’t for…

Huh. I couldn’t quite remember. Something important. I couldn’t go yet. Not without—

Danny.

My eyes snapped open, but my surroundings were still so dim. Hard to focus on.

No. Not yet. Not ever . I couldn’t leave Danny behind. I couldn’t let him be alone again. Left behind. Never.

Fear rushed through me. It beat back the soothing relief of nothingness that had crept into me. I couldn’t let go. I wanted to live. I wanted to live for him.

Panic rushed through the bond. It had been there all along, but I had been too far gone to notice it. Danny. He was still on the other side of the cavern, still locked in combat. I couldn’t see him, but I knew he was battling two vamps at the same time, and they were going to win—because he couldn’t focus on anything except what was happening to me. And if I was gone, he’d let them win.

Danny, no.

I fought to turn my head, so that I could look at him.

But it was getting harder to breathe.

Harder to focus on anything at all. Everything around me was just dim and murky, fading away, even though I didn’t want to let it. And that blissful numbness stole back through me, whispering to me that it would be okay for me to just relax. To sleep.

Except, this time, I recognized what it was. I fought it tooth and nail, desperate to cling to life. I knew that Danny could feel it through the bond.

But each breath was more of a struggle than the last. I knew I should feel panicked, but I didn’t. I couldn’t feel anything at all. Like all of this was happening from very far away. Like I was drifting on an endless sea of—

“Oh, no, I think not, hunter,” a silken voice whispered from above me. “You see, I’ve grown rather fond of you two. I’m afraid that there will be no dying on my watch.”

I couldn’t quite make sense of the words. I heard them fine, but my brain felt sluggish, unable to extract any meaning from them. Dimly, I heard a soft hiss of pain. Then, suddenly, skin pressed up against my lips. And then thick, syrupy-sweet copper filled my mouth.

Thierry, I realized.

I had forgotten he was there. Why was he there? Did it matter?

But I didn’t even try to fight him. I swallowed immediately. One gulp. Then two.

Electricity surged through me, bringing me back to life, filling me with vitality and strength. The wound I had sustained began to close up on my neck. The cavern swam back into focus. I could feel the ground beneath me. The rapidly-cooling wetness pooled around me, soaking my jacket.

I could have cried with relief. I didn’t have to leave. I never had to leave Danny.

Michael. Michael. Michael. Relief and anguish flooded through the bond, mixed with joy. Danny knew that I wasn’t going to die. That Thierry had saved me.

The moment that Thierry pulled his wrist away from my lips, I looked over at Danny. At my mate. At the man I loved.

He’d finished taking care of the last vamp he’d been fighting. It tumbled to the ground, a wooden stake sticking out from its chest. The other one was on the ground at his feet, motionless.

Relief surged through me. Danny was okay. I was okay. We would be okay.

Danny started forward, his eyes wet with tears. He grinned at me broadly.

I was so scared.

Tears of gratitude prickled in my eyes. I owed Thierry my life. And I would thank him soon. But for right now, I just had eyes for Danny. I was about to tell him that he didn’t need to be afraid, ever again.

But that was when the red-headed vamp from the alleyway—the one who had turned Danny—materialized at my mate’s side. Her mouth was smeared red and contorted with malice. She was holding the limp body of a young man, supporting him the way you’d support someone who’d had too much to drink. His neck was already bleeding.

She shoved the young man at Danny with enough force to knock him off-balance. His hands darted out to catch the young man, so that he wouldn’t tumble to the ground.

I could feel how startled Danny was. His mind was pressed right up against mine. Why had the female vamp shoved this young man—who look barely old enough to vote—into his arms?

Then he smelled the blood. He froze, staring down at the young man’s neck.

Pain roared through the bond. It was white-hot and blinding, driving away all rational thought and replacing it with agony, with need . Like Danny was being torn apart from the inside. His throat was burning, like it had been dipped in fire. And the only thing that would put it out was right there.

Horror flooded through me as I realized what was about to happen.

If I could just get over there, I could stop this.

I tried to shove myself up, but Thierry put a gentle hand on my chest, pinning me in place. “Don’t try to move, Hunter. The blood hasn’t finished healing you yet.”

I batted his hand away. “Thierry, no . Look! ”

Thierry turned his head to follow my gaze.

Despair welled up from deep within me. Danny, no. Please don’t.

Danny didn’t listen to me. All rational thought had been driven from his mind. His eyes went flat and cold. And his fangs were impossibly sharp in the murky light of the cavern.

The young man in his arms didn’t even move when Danny sank his fangs into his jugular.

Sheer animalistic lust surged through the bond, blotting out everything about Danny that made him a person at all. He was reduced down to the desire to feed. To take and take and take until there was nothing left.

“No!” Thierry shouted.

He moved in a blur of speed, rocketing toward Danny.

The redhead vamp lunged forward, grabbed him, and threw him across the cavern. Thierry might’ve been far older than her, but that didn’t make him immune to the laws of gravity. He fell in a tangled heap of limbs, thirty feet away.

The redhead flashed a wicked grin in my direction, her eyes ablaze with sheer malice.

But I couldn’t tear my gaze from Danny.

The frenzy had set in. The same way it had with the blood bags. The same way it had when those vamps had killed Joshua.

Tears prickled in my eyes.

I could still sense Danny’s mind through the bond, but something animalistic and cold had taken it over. Disappointment flickered when he realized that the blood was nearly gone.

He’d need to find someone else… another warm body to open up and drink.

“That’s it,” the redhead crooned, watching Danny sucking the life out of the young man with a smile on her face. “Oh, that’s very good. That’s very good indeed. You might almost—”

She broke off suddenly, letting out a startled gasp. A flash of vivid light that filled the cavern in the same moment.

Her eyes went wide and she whipped her head to look at Tobias, who stood fifteen feet away, his expression darker than I had ever seen it. He lowered his hands.

She tensed her body, her hands splaying into claws, like she might rip the warlock apart.

But then her skin began to turn to stone.

Bryan watched the scene unfold with a grim expression. He exchanged a dark look with Tobias, who was still muttering the spell under his breath, and then he left the warlock’s side, moving to Danny.

The young man tumbled to Danny’s feet, causing Bryan to hesitate.

Danny stared down at the young man, his mind going blank with shock. With stunned horror at what he had just done. And then the moment of absolute, utter despair that ripped through him, the wordless grief that he had just snuffed out an innocent life to satisfy his own selfish hunger.

Danny, no. It wasn’t your fault. I practically screamed it, but it was like he didn’t hear me. You didn’t mean to—

I felt it in the exact moment that Danny’s mind went cold. Everything just shut off. Like flicking a light switch. The grief and agony, the awful realization that he had liked the violence, deep-down, all of it just… went away.

Danny blinked a few times. And his expression went perfectly neutral as he stared down at the person he had just killed.

Or, well, the young man wasn’t dead yet, was he? But he was certainly going to die, soon enough. Though the bond, I caught Danny wondering idly if perhaps he should break the young man’s neck and speed along the process. The gasping for air was getting on his nerves.

Horror flooded through me, that he could think such a thing.

I could hear the young man’s wheezing, rasping breaths too, from where I lay on my back. And if I could have saved him, I would have. Danny would have, too. He had spent his whole life helping people. He had dedicated everything he was to protecting people from—

From—

Nausea rolled through me and hot tears burned my eyes as it struck me that I was unable to stop any of this. Not even after five years as a hunter.

Nothing had really changed, had it?

I still couldn’t save the man I loved.

I could sense that Danny still knew what I was thinking, every bit as clearly as I understood his thoughts.

He gazed down at the young man, still idly thinking about snapping his neck. But he hardly saw him, not really. He wasn’t sure what the big deal was, why I was so upset. The need, though sated for the moment, had driven everything else from his mind. The world, through his eyes, had become clinical.

Encased in ice, with no feeling left at all.

He cocked his head to the side, frowning.

He was still hungry.

His gaze landed on me, lying on my back. Still helpless as the vampire blood worked its way through me, restoring me to health. But I wouldn’t be able to fight him off if he came after me now and he knew it.

I was the perfect prey.

And I was filled with vitality, wasn’t I? Another warm body for him to enjoy.

I could make the last of his pain go away for good.

He was about to move toward me, but something deeper than his hunger surged up within him, driving his need back down.

His body wouldn’t obey his command to drain me dry.

He frowned at that, startled. He considered me with new eyes. How odd, that he didn’t look at me and see food.

But I didn’t smell right, either, did I? Certainly not like prey. I smelled like… comfort. Safety. I belonged to him.

Danny abruptly remembered the mate bond between us. His lips curled into a wicked grin. The possibilities unfolding in his mind were enticing to him, but they turned my stomach.

This wasn’t Danny.

It couldn’t be him.

Interesting. He met my gaze directly, focusing on me and seeing me as Michael, rather than merely as a human. I felt a flash of cold, emotionless recognition. Very interesting. We could do anything we wanted, you know. No one could stop us. The two of us together would be… formidable.

His mental voice was icy and calculating. There was no emotion at all left in it.

Grief split my heart into two.

Bryan was on his knees at Danny’s feet, checking the young man’s pulse. Danny noted it. But it was unimportant, save that the other vampire was now his competition. But there was nothing left in the young man anyway. Bryan could have the last dregs if he wanted it. Already, the young man’s heart was slowing down, beating irregularly in a last desperate push to keep his body alive.

Bryan tore into his wrist with his fangs, but he hesitated for an instant. Regret split across his expression.

“Fuck,” he whispered. The sound of his voice was like a gunshot in the stillness of the cavern. He pressed his wrist against the young man’s lips. The young man’s eyes flew open, and his body went rigid, spasming. Bryan’s voice was strangled and thick with his emotion, his grief, when he added, “I’m sorry. I don’t have a choice.”

Danny ignored them both. Silly to turn the young man, but Bryan was a sentimental fool, wasn’t he?

Instead, his frown deepened as he assessed the situation. He needed to get away from everyone here, he decided. From me, especially.

For now.

After all, he knew that I would try to stop him. But he could come back for me later, perhaps. He could explore what the mate bond meant, especially once I had become just like him. He could turn me. I would fight him, of course, but that wouldn’t matter. Not if it got him what he wanted.

A deep part of him shifted, seeming to stir itself from a deep stupor, and I could almost sense a wordless mental voice whisper through his mind, a flicker of alarm, of fear. It was the first real emotion I’d sensed through the bond since he’d realized what he had done to the young man. Not him. Never Michael.

Danny scowled at that.

Tobias finished his spell. The redhead vampire was no longer flesh. He had turned her completely to stone with his magic. Her marble eyes were wide with disbelief. Her body was still frozen into a crouch, her fingers splayed into claws, her mouth open to reveal razor-sharp fangs.

Tobias doubled over after with a gasp, dropping to his knees. He looked far paler than before. Spent.

Bryan glanced up from the young man, giving Tobias an anguished look.

“Stay with him,” Tobias bit out. “I’m okay.”

Bryan bit his lip and nodded.

Thierry stirred on the ground, pushing himself up. How long had passed? Ten seconds? Twenty? A minute? Time didn’t quite make sense anymore.

But the movement seemed to galvanize Danny into motion. With a last look at me, he moved in a blur of speed toward the exit. And then he was gone.

Disbelief crashed through me.

This couldn’t be happening. I closed my eyes, abruptly wanting the darkness back.

We could have been so happy. But I had failed him. Just like I had failed Joshua. Useless. I had always been useless. And now the man I loved was lost to me for good.