Hunting His Vampire Mate (Blood Bonded Mates #4)

CHAPTER TWENTY || MICHAEL

T he next two hours passed in a blur. We left the mine. Danny was nowhere to be found. We returned to the abandoned farmhouse. I barely remembered the car ride.

Bryan and Tobias didn’t say much, but they held hands in the back seat, with Bryan staring out the passenger window, tears streaming freely down his cheeks.

Thierry didn’t say a word. But when we arrived back at the abandoned farmhouse, he laid the body of the young man out on the floor in the living room. He would awaken in a few hours. And when he did, he would be after blood. Just like Danny. Would he become something dark and dangerous? Or would he be luckier than Danny had been?

I sensed nothing at all through the bond. As though Danny had somehow managed to close his mind to me. Tobias had mentioned once, in passing, that he’d taught Bryan how to do it.

Had I told Danny that at some point?

I couldn’t remember.

The worst part about it was that I couldn’t think. I could hardly even breathe. My heart felt like it had been torn from my chest, leaving behind a gaping wound, filled with agony. But my whole body felt like it had been turned to stone, just like the female vamp in the cavern.

Like any movement at all might shatter me into a million tiny fragments.

And what had happened in the cavern was playing on a loop in my mind. I wanted it to stop, but it wouldn’t. I kept re-living it over and over, horror on repeat. It was like my mind was trying to make sense of it.

Trying to make it end differently, even though it wouldn’t.

Danny, with the bleeding man in his arms. The sheer instinct taking over his mind, blotting out the man I loved completely as he sank his fangs in, tore out the young man’s throat, and fed upon him until nothing was left . And the rush of carnal pleasure that shot through the connection, the inhuman animalistic ecstasy and frenzy that overtook him—I couldn’t unfeel that either, no matter how much I wanted to. And then afterward, when he dropped the body to his feet without a single speck of remorse, nothing of him remaining behind.

Except, of course, for icy reason and logic.

Mentally, he was still Danny. He was still the same calculated and rational person, with an encyclopedic knowledge of the occult, monsters, weapons, and battle tactics. He had all of Danny’s memories.

Emotionally, though, he was empty.

Blank.

Like an invisible tide had swept away everything good in him and replaced it with cold reason and never-ending hunger.

He was gone.

I hadn’t been able to stop it.

The same as it had been with Joshua, I was useless.

Powerless.

And most damning of all, he had considered turning me.

And then—

“The boy is going to awaken soon,” Thierry said, coming to sit next to me on the couch. “We will need to get him to a safe place, so that he can adjust to his new condition.”

“Right,” I agreed dully, hardly even aware of what I was saying. “That makes sense. That’s important.”

“I had to,” Bryan whispered from where he was sitting on the floor, beside the young man. His face was still stained with tears. Since we’d gotten back to the farmhouse, he hadn’t left the man’s side. “I had to save him. I didn’t have a choice.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Tobias said soothingly. The warlock sat next to Bryan, with his arm around his mate’s shoulders. But his expression didn’t match his tone. There was a grim look in his eyes as he gazed at the boy on the floor next to him. Bryan had closed his eyes to make it look like he was sleeping. “You saved his life. He might actually get to have one because of you. You did the right thing. He’ll understand that, eventually. Just like you did.”

Brokenly, Bryan nodded. More tears flowed down his cheeks.

I shot up from the couch, hardly even aware of what I was doing. But I couldn’t listen to this anymore.

Tobias looked up at me and grimaced. “Michael, wait—”

“Sorry,” I muttered, forcing one foot in front of the other until I reached the front door.

I shoved it open.

The harsh light of day washed over me, causing me to blink rapidly.

I closed the door behind me and lurched out onto the porch, where I dropped onto the sun-baked and peeling wooden steps leading down to the long gravel driveway.

I couldn’t be in the house anymore.

I couldn’t look at what Danny had done for a second longer.

I couldn’t hear the others talk about how they had been forced to save the young man by turning him into a vampire. I couldn’t stand to look at Bryan’s broken expression, filled with guilt and fear, knowing that Danny had put it there.

Because his humanity was gone now.

If I had known how fragile it really was, we would have just left. I never would have untied him in the first place. What had I been thinking?

How could fate shove us together—five years ago and then again and again, every day since—only to rip us apart like this?

The door creaked open behind me. It was followed by footsteps on the wooden porch. Then Thierry settled down beside me on the stairs, even though it meant he was bathed in sunlight.

“How is your arm?” Thierry asked. “And your other injuries?”

“I feel fine.”

I dragged in a shuddering breath, feeling afraid I might lose it at any moment in front of Thierry.

“That’s good,” he said, sounding awkward.

Silence fell between us.

“I lost my twin brother the same way.” Thierry said at last. He spoke the words simply, but I couldn’t help but hear the raw pain in his voice. “He was the kindest person I’d ever met. Innocent. Na?ve. And so dedicated to the church that he was planning on going into seminary. He was nothing like me. Then he got turned into a vampire.”

“Sorry,” I muttered again. By which, I meant fuck off and leave me alone.

Thierry didn’t take the hint. He added, “Our maker forced him to kill. He did it because I wouldn’t cooperate with what he wanted. He was very interested in the idea of twins, you see.” Thierry paused and something went thicker in his voice, and I understood: centuries hadn’t blotted out the pain for him. He added, “And he made me watch it happen.”

I scowled at the driveway rather than look at him. I found myself grappling for something to say, but there was nothing.

“Nathaniel was going to send someone else tonight,” Thierry told me, after silence had stretched between us for a long time. “Simone, perhaps. She’s the oldest vampire on the western seaboard and she could have controlled Danny without a second thought. Or Pierce, maybe. His own progeny. But I offered to come instead.”

That caused me to glance over at him sharply. I blinked a few times, feeling confusion wash over me. I’d gotten the impression he had been forced to be here.

Thierry gave me a pained smile. Here in the light of the too-bright day, his eerie blue eyes were so pale they were almost white. And they were filled with sadness. His sharp edges were entirely gone. His defenses, for the first time since I had met him, were completely down.

“No one really understands what it’s like to love someone with everything you have, and for them to be in a state that’s far worse than death. For a monster to be walking around, wearing their skin. It’s a pain I wouldn’t wish upon anyone.”

“Right.” Something clenched shut in my chest at his words. It hit me all over again: Danny was gone. He wasn’t coming back.

“Nicolas was gone. I could see it in his eyes.”

“Please, just stop. I can’t hear this.”

“Michael—”

“Oh, it’s not hunter anymore, is it?” I demanded, desperate for any foothold I could find to push him away, so I wouldn’t have to hear any of this. My words came out harsh and scathing. “Gee, wonder why? Is it because we’re such good friends now?”

Thierry let out a bark of laughter, like I’d said something funny. “You know what, I think I do like you. As strange as that is. I have a rather fellow-feeling for you, it seems.”

“Speak English,” I muttered, but without any heat.

It shouldn’t have helped that he understood my pain. But it did, a little.

I didn’t want it to, though.

The endless empty days yawned ahead of me, spent without Danny. I didn’t want anything to make that even a little more tolerable. It should hurt.

“Michael, there was nothing human left in Nicolas.” Thierry paused. I could feel his eyes on me. “Just like there isn’t in Danny, anymore. He’s not who you loved any longer. The monster inside of him snuffed that man out.”

“How?” I demanded, my voice coming out raw. I met his gaze, feeling something in my resolve crumple and the agony was white-hot and searing, all over again. “I don’t understand how one fuck-up could do this to him!”

“We don’t know for sure why it works this way,” Thierry said, his tone mild. “No one does. But we do know that there is often a moment of anguish at realizing you’ve taken the life of another to satisfy your own hunger. When the totality of what you’ve done overwhelms you.”

He paused and the memory crashed back through me, of that awful moment of despair, when Danny had looked down at the young man at his feet and realized what he had just done. And I knew that Thierry was right.

He went on, “The vampiric instincts likely take over in that instant of weakness, when your ego has just fractured, and they override all of the human ones. The deepest most predatory part of being a vampire isn’t quite a separate entity in its own right, but it’s close enough.” He paused again, his words growing far softer. “I imagine it’s different for vampires who were cold and callous enough as humans to not mind killing someone else whenever it suited their needs. But for the rest of us, it’s no small thing to take a life. The first time you do it, it always breaks something deep inside of you. Something that can never quite be fixed.”

Ice lanced through me at his words. Something about the final note in his words at that last part. And another explanation for why he had followed me out here slid into place.

Thierry wasn’t really here to comfort me, was he?

“What are you saying?”

“I failed Danny,” Thierry whispered. “And there’s only one kindness we can do for him now.”

I had killed dozens of monsters—hundreds, probably—but what he was suggesting still sent raw horror careening through me.

I shot to my feet without even thinking through what I was about to do next, already going for the gun in my holster. “No!”

I would stop him. I wouldn’t let him hurt Danny. I would—

The sun didn’t seem to have much effect on Thierry’s speed, because lightning-fast, he stood before me, his hands on my arms, pinning them to the sides of my body.

I practically snarled at him, meeting his too-blue eyes in defiance.

“Are you going to shoot me, Michael?” Thierry whispered, his voice going soft and dangerous. “You understand better than anyone what he has become.”

“No!” I hissed again, attempting to step backward, out of Thierry’s grip. But it was like trying to escape an iron vise. I couldn’t move. “I won’t let you kill him!”

“If Danny was still himself, I have no doubt that he would want us to ensure he couldn’t hurt any innocent people. And I suspect you know that. I swear to you, he will feel no pain. I will be very quick.” Thierry paused long enough for me to see the sadness in his eyes and register the complete lack of hostility in his words. “Think what you wish of me, but I will be merciful to him. You have my word. I’ve already failed him once. I will not do so again.”

The memory of what happened in the mines shot through me again.

Danny, with his face dripping blood.

The body at his feet.

The coldest and most unfeeling part of him now fully in control. Icy rationality and logic. Hunger. And he had known that, unless I became just like him, I would stop him from having his fun.

He had been ready to finish me off, no longer seeing me as someone he loved. Instead, he saw me as a threat. He would have killed me, too, or else turned me into something just like him.

Except—

My brain finally finished the memory. And relief crashed through me, so sudden and sharp that I felt something wrench free in my chest.

Except that there was a small sliver of him—a speck of the man I loved—that hadn’t allowed his body to obey him. Even though there would never be anything more dangerous to his plans than me. Not unless I was just like him.

Not him. Never Michael.

It had been Danny’s voice, still fighting against the darkness that had taken him over. And the creature wearing Danny’s face had felt alarm at the sound of it. It had expected Danny to be completely gone.

But he wasn’t.

“I heard him through the bond,” I said, fixing Thierry with my gaze. “Right before he took off. He was thinking about turning me. But Danny stopped him.”

“Impossible,” Thierry breathed, taken aback.

“I’d stake my life on it. His, too.”

And I realized, like a crack of thunder, what I could do about it.

“The situation with your brother was different,” I said slowly, still staring him down. “Because he hadn’t met his fated mate. He wasn’t tethered to a person who still had their humanity. He didn’t have anyone who could bring him back.”

Thierry’s eyebrows slammed together at that.

Blinking rapidly, he released me.

I staggered backward but remained on my feet. Shock flooded through me as I realized I was right: Danny was still there. A flicker of his old self had forced the monster to let me go.

There was a speck of Danny— my Danny—remaining, still buried somewhere deep inside of him. It had been eclipsed in my memories by the horror of seeing what had happened to him. Of feeling the horrible change in him through the bond. But I knew it was real. Because I had felt the way it resisted the impulse to hurt me.

I had felt the fear that had filled Danny— all of Danny—at the idea of something awful happening to me.

“Oh fuck,” I whispered. I let out a sharp bark of laughter. “Oh fuck, he’s still in there. He’s still fighting.”

“You’re not making any sense,” Thierry replied, sounding uneasy. His eyebrows were still knitted together as he watched me in mounting alarm. “And you would say anything you had to in order to stop any harm from coming to him. You wouldn’t have any choice. It’s understandable, but you mustn’t—”

“Listen to my heartbeat and tell me I’m lying!” I snapped, practically spitting the words at him. “Danny is still fucking in there, Thierry! I heard him!”

Thierry paused, considering me. Then, after a long moment had passed, his whole expression filled with a mixture of disbelief and shock. “That proves nothing.”

But I could tell from the way he stared at me, the calculation slowly but surely replacing the surprise and disbelief on his face, that they were just words. Noises of refusal he was making out of habit.

My heart raced in my chest as I considered what this realization meant.

My brain whirled into action, racing ahead to what I was going to do about it. And there was only one possibility in front of me, clear and sharp-edged.

I turned my back on Thierry, oddly certain he wouldn’t act to harm me, and screwed my eyes shut, trying to blot out the world so I could think.

Could I give up everything for Danny?

Or would I remain frozen in fear, unable to bring myself to act in order to save him?

No, I couldn’t do that.

I wouldn’t do that.

Because I wasn’t the same man anymore, was I? I wasn’t the helpless mundane mechanic who had been frozen in fear, watching monsters destroy the only thing I loved. I was a hunter. A fighter. And Danny was the only thing in my whole world that was worth fighting for.

I had already lost him twice. First when he had been turned. And then this time. And there had been nothing I could do either time. But I could do something now. And if there was anything—anything at all—I could do to at least try to save him from the darkness, I would. I couldn’t lose him a third time.

But what about lazy days spent in the sun?

I enjoyed them, sure.

But that was back when I had been a completely different person. A person I could never quite be again. Back then, I had craved a simple life filled with Mexican food in to-go containers, engines that needed to be rebuilt, cold beer, backyard barbeques, and singing classic rock songs totally off-key. And, if I was being honest, I still craved the possibility of having a modest house, a white picket fence, and growing old with the man I loved.

A simple, well-lived life.

Not one filled with darkness and blood and monsters.

Now that I understood what I would be giving up, I found that I could finally admit to myself that I still wanted it. I still wanted the ease and simplicity of it. I wanted to stop the relentless violence of hunting. I wanted to escape the perpetual homesickness of never having a place that belonged to me, where I could put down roots.

And I would be giving all of it up if I did this, wouldn’t I?

But was it more important than him?

Did my craving for a simple human life matter more than Danny?

Once I had put it into those terms for myself, the answer wasn’t hard to find. Because what I would be giving up was nothing in comparison to what I would be losing if I didn’t at least try.

But what if it didn’t work?

I would be trusting—praying—that I could somehow tap into the part of Danny that was still a real person if I did this. But it might not mean anything. I might be condemning myself to an eternity of loneliness and pain, spent as the kind of creature I had dedicated years of my life to fighting. A creature I had hated and feared in equal measure.

And what then?

What if it was all for nothing?

Well, then I would still love Danny enough to stop him, wouldn’t I?

I couldn’t ever hurt him, of course. That was off the table, no matter what. But I could be there, every single time he wanted to hurt someone. I could ruin every single one of his nights in order to honor the man I’d loved and lost, the version of him who never would have harmed a single innocent soul. I could make this new, monstrous version of him hate me, no problem.

I would follow him to the ends of the earth for an eternity, if I had to. But only if I was strong enough. And only if I lived as long as he did. Only if I was like him.

One way or another, I wouldn’t ever let Danny go all the way into the dark.

Not if there was a single thing left that I could do to stop it.

I had promised him, after all.

Deciding, I turned to face Thierry. The movement felt surreal, like I was in a dream. I was breathing harder than I should have been, but my mind was filled with a clear, sharp-edged clarity. I could do this. I would do this, for him.

My gaze locked onto Thierry’s. There was a mixture of wariness and speculation on the vampire’s face as he stared at me.

I could just shoot myself, I realized. Right in the heart. Theirry had given me his blood back in the cavern. That had been hours ago, though. And it had already healed all of my wounds? Did you need to ingest vampire blood immediately before dying in order to come back? Did the magic in the blood exhaust itself when it healed your injuries?

And what if I missed the heart? What if the wound wasn’t enough to kill me? What if I wasn’t strong enough or lucid enough to finish the job?

It was too many unknowns. I couldn’t risk it.

Without a word, I marched past him and back into the house.

Bryan and Tobias were still on the floor, next to the young man who would soon wake up as an inhuman, immortal creature.

Just like I would.

Their gazes both snapped to me as I stepped into the room.

Thierry followed behind me, pausing in the doorway, his shadow falling over me, covering me in darkness.

“I need you to turn me,” I said. I wasn’t sure if I was talking to Thierry or Bryan.

Tobias and Bryan both wore matching expressions of alarm at my words. It would have been funny if the situation didn’t feel so deadly serious. They exchanged a startled, bewildered look.

“That’s hardly an option, hunter!” Thierry hissed, stepping further into the room. “What you’re suggesting is pure insanity.” He gestured to the young man on the floor. “Then I will have two hungry newborn vampires to control.”

“When this guy wakes up, I can put him under a sleeping spell until we get him back to Seattle.” Tobias paused, then lifted his gaze to meet mine. And I saw from the grim set of his expression that he understood exactly what I intended. “I know a spell that can suppress your feeding instincts long enough to talk to him. I’d need to maintain line of sight and there’s an incantation I’ll need to chant, but it’ll buy you enough time to talk to him.”

I nodded. That was good.

Thierry gritted his teeth at that. He shot Tobias a dark look before turning back to me. “You’re talking about trading away your humanity on the insane belief that there’s anything you can do. But there’s not.”

“There’s still a chance,” I shot back, digging in my heels. “The thing wearing Danny’s face thought about turning me, back in the mines. And I heard Danny tell it no. Danny wouldn’t let it hurt me.” I turned away from him, fixing Bryan with a hard look. “He’s still in there. Please help me.”

“Michael, are you sure ?” Bryan asked.

“I’m going to spend every single day of eternity fighting for him. It’s not even a question.” I flashed him a smile that felt ghastly, with broken jagged edges. “It’s hard to believe, after the way you and I first met, that it’s going to go this way. But on the plus side, we’ll have a shit-ton more in common now.”

Tobias joined Bryan on his feet. He exchanged a long look with Bryan before turning back to me. “This is permanent. There’s no coming back from this.”

“I know,” I said. And somehow, in that moment, I had never been more certain of anything in my entire life.

Tobias seemed to see that written all over my face, because he nodded.

I turned back to Thierry, who was still watching me steadily, his expression now unreadable. And I said, “Do the right thing, Thierry. Turn me. Make me into a vampire. Help me. Because I’m not done fighting for Danny and I never will be. I know you understand that.”

“What if you lose your humanity too, hunter? What if your mate convinces you to kill, so you can join him fully?” He paused. “You’ll still be a newborn vampire, with the same instincts as his. The warlock will only be able to suppress your urges for so long. You might end up sharing Danny’s fate, rather than undoing it.”

I understood what he was driving at. What if I gambled away my mortality, only to become a monster every bit as dark as the creatures I had spent half of the last decade killing? I could become just as bad, if not worse, than the creatures who had murdered Joshua in front of me.

“If that happens, I suppose you’ll need to kill us both,” I said firmly. “But I won’t walk another day on this earth as a mortal man. And if you won’t do it, I’ll find someone who will.”

“You truly mean that,” Thierry stated, frowning. But there was a grudging sort of respect on his face. And something else, too. Something that looked almost like the first glimmering edges of hope.

Swallowing hard, I nodded.

“Well, fate always wins out in the end, doesn’t she?” Thierry said, still considering me. “She’ll get her way eventually.”

“What does that mean?” I demanded.

Thierry gave me a thin smile. “A friend once told me that a fated connection will be whatever it needs to be, in order to draw two souls together. And I pray she was right.”

Before I could reply, Thierry’s fangs dropped, and he bit into his own wrist lightning quick.

When he held his arm out to me, the wound was dripping black blood. His strange blue eyes were impossible to read. He paused, then raised his eyebrows and added, “It means I’m going to help you, hunter. Obviously.”

I blinked at him, my jaw dropping open.

Belatedly, I realized I had expected him to say no.

And though the situation wasn’t remotely funny, I still couldn’t help the startled laugh that escaped my lips. “Deep down, you’re actually kind of a nice person, aren’t you?”

Thierry scowled at me. “Drink up, hunter. Before I change my mind.”