Primal Kill (The Order of Vampires #5)

Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

C erberus awoke with a jerk, every muscle contracting tightly as he braced for pain that did not come. Reflexively, a frantic panic pulsed through his veins as his body prepared for suffering. When no capillaries burst in his skull, the haunting memories of endless trauma eased, and a sense of safety settled in.

No explosion of chaos ripped through his chest.

His limbs were intact.

His clothing was clean, and not a speck of dirt covered his skin.

He could breathe.

He was not trapped underground.

Those telling moments upon waking always gave away how deeply his centuries entombed still disturbed him. He lived and died a million times, buried alive through that infinite loop of suffocation and agony. Trauma like that didn’t fade upon escape, so his mind didn’t easily differentiate those insufferable moments of waking up in a living tomb from waking up in a fucking tree.

Breathing a deep breath of fresh air, he savored how easily oxygen filled his lungs. Nothing like the stale, shallow gasps that killed him countless times before.

Glancing over the busy freeway, he monitored the traffic, calculating the time of day by the placement of the sun in the sky. It looked to be just after four.

Withdrawing his phone, he checked the clock and grinned at his impressive accuracy. Four o’ six. Not long ago, he’d only had the rotting stench of his decaying limbs to track the passing time.

A tingle of excitement invigorated him as he stretched and refocused on his purpose.

I’m coming for you, girl…

He fanned out his senses but, once again, to his infinite fury, found no trace of her. He would eventually have her in his grip, and he couldn’t wait to watch the life seep from her eyes as she begged for mercy—over and over and over again. He would show her the same mercy the cold earth showed him as he lay trapped in a deafened tomb of endless suffering.

During those centuries underground, his fractured mind became the only escape he had. Some days, he could not bear the gradual passing of time, so he distracted himself with thoughts of the past, forgetting the girl and thinking back to a time long before she ever existed.

He shamelessly found comfort in the hidden corners of his mind where his deepest secrets lived. Those tender emotions of his youth had been siphoned away by time and battle, but in his darkest moments of despair, he found great relief in the presence of such memories.

In the presence of her.

Lilias.

Beautiful, majestic, enchanting Lilias…

He had loved her selflessly and completely. To think, she saw the purest side of him, and it still wasn’t enough to sway her. She ultimately left him for someone else.

During those wretched moments of his darkest despair, he did not think of her betrayal, only her beauty. He sometimes preferred the lie and found sanctuary in the memory of her artificial kindness. Those lies were the only comfort he could find in the cold, dark, silent earth.

Now, those delicate recollections crumbled under the heavy weight of his deep-seated resentment. Despite his ever-present, unrequited desire to have her, he sincerely wished he’d killed her. Stealing her first born and murdering her children was not nearly enough to punish her. Lilias was the catalyst behind his centuries of suffering.

No matter how many times he died or how many years passed, the pain of her abandonment remained the greatest injury of his life. He’d fought in hundreds of battles and died repetitively underground as he wasted away in his own dismembered despair, but nothing compared to the excruciating misery he’d discovered through love.

His foolish affection was his highest regret. Lilias was his first and his last. His only. And she paid dearly for her deceitful choices.

Today, he reveled not in the tender recollections of a love-sick boy but in the memory of the inescapable pain. The agony he’d suffered shaped him into a hardened male. When he was underground, he welcomed the madness. His mind became his only escape and he found hidden corners that were so dark a lesser immortal would have flinched and shied away.

But Cerberus welcomed the darkness inside of him.

Behind the mask of a modern businessman lived a monster. His duality served him well, and he’d adapted quickly to the ease of modern living, finding great comfort in wealth and luxury but never forgetting his purpose.

The polite grins and tiresome nods were all lies. Years of suffering had shredded any remnants of his moral fiber. He plainly saw what he was and accepted his true self without shame.

Human entanglements only confused the simplicity of his nature. Mortals were food. Unlike before, they served him now.

His lack of empathy and his innate hunger for living flesh and carnal pleasures lived at the base of his needs. He was a predator. He did not lower himself to consider the pitiful feelings of his prey the way he once had.

Accepting his dark nature unleashed the full extent of his potential. No longer bound by propriety or restricted by social expectations, Cerberus worried about one thing and one thing only—surviving long enough to have his revenge.

He chuckled. To think, the bitch had been hiding on an Amish farm living a life of self-imposed discipline when she could have done anything. Pathetic.

He rejected any suggestion that immortals required social order. The lion did not cower to the rabbit or the jackal, so why should immortals limit themselves by the laws of mortals?

As a draugr , he was top of the food chain, the son of a snake-shifter, and king of whatever he claimed. In all of his misery, he’d made peace with the unsavory parts of himself, and once he escaped the constraints of morality, he never pretended to be anything less than the rogue, vicious barbarian they created.

His time entombed only sharpened his need for revenge. Other times, he embraced the excruciating repetition of suffering and death with silent calm, surrendering to his lack of control and testing how composed he could remain in the face of fear.

His hatred anchored his mind in fury and gave him a place to bide his time. He blamed the girl, Adriel. He blamed her mother, Lilias. He blamed the males who put him into the ground and Lilias’s mate, Lazarus, for taking her away. He even blamed King Charles, the sniveling weakling, for bringing her into his life and creating discontent where Cerberus had once been satisfied with next to nothing.

No matter what he felt over those long, torturous centuries, immortality always saved him in the end. The certainty that he would one day have his revenge comforted him through the darkest times. Very few knew how to finish a draugr and, be it a comfort or a curse, his true end would not happen buried in the earth.

It took decades for his limbs to regenerate without the aid of mortal blood and centuries to escape the ground. Time lost all meaning as his muscles wilted away and his sanity liquified. The unforgettable pain of new skin glacially regrowing over bone just as maggots rapidly ate it away was enough to drive the soundest immortal mad.

Shaking off the memory, not wanting to trigger old fears, he fanned out his senses again, pushing further than he had the last time.

Girl… Where are you, girl? You do not want to anger your mate… Answer me.

Leaping from one tree to the next, he continued to search for her but found nothing. He preferred to be outdoors after centuries of confinement and took pleasure in his hunt.

Looking out from the trees at the mortal chaos that filled the roads, he grinned. The meaningless lives and routines of mortals were about as entertaining as ants moving grains of sand. But their cars and technology fascinated him.

For ages, he’d wondered at the curious rumbles coming from above ground. Gentle vibrations of unrecognizable sounds changed over the years, from hoofbeats and wooden wheels to water-cooled car engines and the unknown.

Those endless rumblings were a welcomed disruption to the darkness. Curiosity could be a great distraction from pain. While trapped underground, he’d thought the noises above to be many things. Gods smiting the earth, floods, or even earthquakes. But in the end, the technology of motor vehicles went far beyond his limited imagination.

The shock of seeing motor vehicles rushing over roads once terrified him. Now, he owned several. But nothing beat the thrill of hunting by foot.

Dropping from the elevated branches to the earth, Cerberus landed in an agile crouch. He brushed a hand over his tailored pants and grimaced at the scent of smoke still clinging to his clothes.

Moving toward the rumbling road, he scanned the traffic for a victim to join him for this evening’s meal. Cars swerved, and horns blared as he walked directly into rushing traffic. One quick mental command and an SUV pulled over .

He knocked on the glass window and pointed to the mechanism in the door. “Unlock it.”

The small knob clicked upward, and the mortal female stared at him, her adrenaline pumping wildly through her veins as her body remained hypnotized but not anesthetized under his compulsion.

He preferred them frightened because nothing sweetened the blood of prey like the spike of adrenaline. The door closed as he slid into the passenger seat, buffeting the noise from the highway and stifling the air.

“Drive.”

He lowered the window as she turned her attention to the road and eased back into traffic. The delicious pounding of her heart triggered his hunger, but he needed to get her somewhere isolated.

Seeing her purse on the ground, he lifted it to his lap and sifted through the contents. The cash went into his pocket while her phone and the rest of the useless junk went out the window.

“You won’t need that anymore.”

A tear rolled down her cheek as the color bleached from her fingers gripping the wheel. Her chaotic thoughts rushed into gibberish as her mouth remained locked shut. If she could talk, she’d be blabbering through negotiations that would not work, begging for him to spare her pathetic life and bargaining with things that did not interest him. He didn’t care about her children, husband, or pets dependent on her, so he compelled her silence.

Her chin trembled, desperation fracturing her thoughts as she entertained silent ways to appeal to his compassionate side. People would do anything to escape their worst fears. How unfortunate for her that he became incapable of empathy long ago. Only hedonistic emotions associated with hunger and his unsatisfied need for revenge interested him now.

“Turn there into that parking lot. Pull around to the back.”

She had no choice but to follow his command, and when she could drive no further, he ordered her to stop beneath the shade of the trees.

Pushing the gear shift to park, he unclipped her safety belt. “Get out of the car.”

She waited by the door as he walked around the vehicle. Despite his compulsion, she trembled violently.

“Come.” He led her into the woods, stopping when they were far from civilization.

Jerking her forward, he pushed her back against the trunk of a tree and tugged at her clothes. Her breathing accelerated, and more tears fell as he ripped open her blouse and clawed away her bra.

When she whimpered, he paused to study her out of sheer curiosity. The scent of her fear perfumed the air, and her rushing heartbeat called to him like a tribal drum lured the rain .

“Hush, now,” he soothed, lowering his voice and tracing his elongated claw delicately over her cheek as her breath punched past her teeth in petrified puffs. “I’m not going to ravish you.”

Nostrils flaring rapidly and breath skipping, she met his stare with terrified relief.

Cerberus grinned, exposing the full length of his viper-like fangs, which enhanced her fear even more. Humans were so stupid.

“I’m going to eat your heart.”

A strangled gasp escaped her throat as his clawed fist punched through her chest, tearing through the flesh, piercing the muscle, and yanking the organ free from the surrounding capillaries and bone.

Her body dropped to the forest floor like a useless bag of flesh as he bit into the tender tissue, still warm from beating. Closing his eyes, he savored the delicious delicacy.

Unfortunately, not long ago, his diet consisted of much smaller game—millipedes, beetles, arachnids, and whatever other insects he could compel into his mouth. Those tiny night crawlers had been his only sustenance for centuries, sustaining his atrophied body as much as the effort to compel them depleted his withered strength.

He’d since become somewhat of a foodie, as the mortals would say. He went to great lengths to find the most organically fresh nutrition to maintain a proper diet that kept him at the peak of his strength.

Gnawing into the cooling heart, he licked at the blood that trickled down his fingers to his wrist. He could have just fed from her vein. He could have even let her live. But why limit himself?

He was hungry, and she was a weak, nothing of a mortal. Just as simple humans thought nothing of the animals they slaughtered, he wasted no time considering the irrelevant feelings of his food.