Kaida blended seamlessly into the darkness of the night, making sure to keep to the shadows. As a nightwalker, she was one of the few beings that easily hid herself amongst the darkness.
Not too long ago, night had fallen and she didn’t want to waste a single moment of it not hunting. It’d been nearly three weeks since she’d last been out to hunt, and it may very well be three more weeks, maybe more, before Dioses let her back out to feed.
While he usually let her out around every two weeks, he had a tendency to find some sort of reason to be angry with her and, as a result, he would keep her locked away in her lair longer than that. It was a tool he used to keep her pliant, but more often than not, she still managed to find ways to piss him off.
It sucked, but until she was freed from his evil clutches, or somebody staked the bastard in his dead heart, what could she do?
The latter was merely an enticing fantasy, however. A well respected, or well-feared, vampire clan chief, there weren’t many who would dare attack the brute. She was a young nightwalker that only his clan knew existed and they certainly weren’t making a move to help her anytime soon. Either they were too scared of Dioses or just didn’t give a damn about what happened to her.
To be honest, she suspected the latter of the two. If Dioses was using her as a scapegoat for his frustrations instead of them, what did it truly matter?
Damn all their rotten souls to the deepest bowels of hell, or she would damn their souls, if vampires had souls to damn.
Sighing, Kaida paused to close her eyes. Clearing her mind of all thoughts, she allowed the predator within her to take control. When she opened her eyes again, the silvery blue of her eyes shimmered with a deadly light. She’d already wasted enough time with her thoughts.
It was time to hunt.
She continued moving forward again with a liquid grace inherent in all her species, or so she thought was inherent in all her species. Being the only nightwalker you knew still alive today could really fuck with your sense of knowledge about your own race.
Almost immediately, the scent of Silverfyn blood flooded her nostrils.
As silent as a wraith, she followed the scent trail until she came across three full grown adult male Silverfyn demons taking a breather in what she knew to be a no flashing zone that belonged to the Shatal demon clan nearby. To flash in or out of this zone was to declare war on them.
They were obviously injured. She guessed from some sort of scuffle with some of the Shatal, a nasty race of demon who were extraordinarily territorial and even gave Dioses a run for his money.
She couldn’t believe her luck, though.
The silver blood that flowed through the veins of the Silverfyns was an aphrodisiac to not only vampires, but her kind as well. It was amazing curative abilities that could heal wounds caused by iron or even wood, so long as it wasn’t directly through the heart.
She licked her lips, her fangs elongating.
She was definitely going to feed well tonight, damn the consequences.
A cold wind swept over Keene’s skin, sending chills down his spine despite the fact that he was wearing a heavy knee-length coat. He closed his eyes briefly, opening his senses to his surroundings. They snapped open after a short few seconds; something was watching them.
Damn it, he didn’t need this right now. He had a wound in his side that needed tending to and Chasen and Liam were in worse shape than he was. They needed to get back to the island where they’d be protected.
He may be considered young, but he wasn’t stupid.
“Keene?” Liam rasped.
“I know, let’s – ” Keene’s sentence was cut short as Liam let out a strangled gurgle before falling to the ground, his pale eyes lifeless. A few drops of blood trickled from a bite wound in his neck. Keene and Chasen whirled around, eyes wide and searching for the culprit.
All Keene could sense was a whole lot of nothing.
Fuck…
“Who’s there?” he demanded sharply.
“No one, Silverfyn. Now let’s play,” came a dark female voice that flowed through Keene like silk an instant before Chasen cried out as a woman attacked him.
He tried to move to help Chasen, but something held him frozen in place and he was forced to watch the macabre scene as she drained the blood from his body and dropped him to the ground. She wiped off her mouth before turning to face him.
Keene’s breath caught as he got a full view of a being he’d never thought to see again.
As with all the nightwalkers he’d come across, she was absolutely beautiful. She looked almost like a fallen angel with alabaster skin that contrasted sharply against the silvery eyes and the dark hair that was pulled away from her face, revealing her sharp, almost cat-like features.
What drew his attention most, however, was the deep emotion swimming in those shimmering eyes of hers. Anger, loneliness, despair…
It was all there and it captivated him more than he would ever admit.
“You’re a nightwalker?” he rasped as she drew nearer to him, in no hurry to finish him off since he was still bound by whatever magic she’d put on him.
“Yes, what does it matter?” she inquired as she stepped closer.
“Nightwalkers are supposed to be extinct.” She stopped to stand directly in front of him, close enough that he could feel the coolness of her skin.
The living version of a vampire, nightwalkers had at one time been at war with their undead counterparts and amongst themselves. The violent brutality that had plagued their race had finally brought an end to them. There hadn’t been a nightwalker sighting in nearly half a century.
A frown twisted her lips severely as she glowered at him. “Yeah, I’m aware of that,” she gritted, “Now shut up, Silverfyn. It’s time for you to die.”
Keene swallowed hard as she leaned in close, inhaling his scent before ripping a section of the T-shirt he wore beneath his coat. Her fangs nicked the skin, causing a pleasure shock to course through him while a few drops of blood welled up from the wound.
She trailed her tongue over the wound, gathering the blood on her tongue and sending a jolt of awareness through the both of them.
Damn it, Keene, do something!
But it was futile. No matter how hard Keene struggled to break free of her hold, the magic simply wouldn’t budge.
He was about to get drained by a nightwalker that, despite himself, took his breath away.
He gasped when she slid her fangs into his neck, another jolt of pleasure surging through him, breaking whatever had held him. There’d been no pain; nothing more than a cool, slight pressure before an erotic pulling that had him moaning and gripping at her slender arms as she drank his blood.
All too soon, though, she was jerking back with a furious hiss. Eyes flashing in cold fury, she vanished from sight.
Keene gulped down a mouthful of air before sliding to his knees, shaking violently as he struggled not to pass out.
Fuck…
∞∞∞
“What the hell do you want?” Kaida snarled as she appeared in Dioses lair. “You interrupted my feeding!”
“A feeding that would have brought a war upon my clan’s heads had I not stopped you!” Dioses bellowed as he grabbed her by her hair and forced her to her painfully down on her knees. “What in devil’s name were you thinking? Or were you not thinking at all, you stupid nightwalker?”
Kaida gritted her teeth and tried to pry untangle his fingers from her hair. “Apparently not,” she ground out as she struggled with him. Truth was, she hadn’t really cared what the consequences of her actions would have been; might still be.
She’d been imprisoned by Dioses for so long that she’d ceased to care at all whether she lived or died. If it brought a war down upon Dioses head and he was killed, she would be a free nightwalker for the first time in fifty-something years.
She would die, but she’d be free.
“Ungrateful bitch!” Dioses bellowed in rage, his fingers twisting so hard in her hair, she felt the sting of the strands ripping out of her scalp. “You’ll pay for your insolence!” He released his hold in her hair and backhanded her so hard, it split her lip and sent her careening into the back wall of his lair.
Kaida hissed in pain as her body collided roughly with the wall. She wiped the blood dripping from her mouth off with her hand and cast Dioses a glower that would have shriveled any man but the vampire bastard that approached her slowly with that insane, wicked glint in his gold eyes.
When he stopped in front of her, he wrenched her up by her hair with one hand while using his other hand to unzip the tight fitting leather jacket she always wore that was customized just for her to wear as a top. For some off reason, Dioses had allowed her that small luxury.
Then again, she never wore anything but the leather jacket she noted ruefully as her breasts were bared to his sight. Revulsion slithered through her at Dioses’s beady-hungry gaze settled on them. She tried to cover them, but he merely laughed and slung her away from him, tearing the jacket off her body in the process. She landed with a thud on the hard floor. Bracing her hands against the cold stone, she turned her head to see Dioses approaching her with a whip in hand.
Her eyes widened as a sharp jab of fear stabbed her belly. It was the whip he reserved solely for her. Throughout it, Dioses had inserted small chips of wood that would cause a simple lash wound to be excruciatingly painful and last longer than an average wound.
These wounds would take weeks to heal and if he restricted her from hunting, they’d take even longer.
Dioses cackled at the fear flashing in her eyes as he snapped the whip through the air an instant before he brought it down on her back.
Kaida gnashed her teeth together, her fingers clenching tightly as she tried not to cry out in pain, her back burning as if the skin had caught on fire. He brought it down again and again, but still, she wouldn’t scream out.
She refused to give Dioses that tiny fraction of satisfaction in his putrid life.
About thirty or more lashes later (she’d lost count after the fifteenth one), Dioses finally stopped with a final kick to her hip that forced her to partially roll over on her back. She gasped sharply as the cold stone floor scraped against her sliced, bleeding back.
With a smug smirk, Dioses tossed her leather jacket on top of her. “You’re free to go now, Kaida. And before you even think about leaving your lair in search of blood to heal this, I would pause to take a second to think about how, if I sense you leave those wards until I otherwise give permission, your punishment will be far worse than the one you just received. Don’t EVER do something so stupid as to try to bring a war on my clan.”
Kaida didn’t even respond, the pain was so great. With a weak nod, she flashed from Dioses’s lair to her own underground one. While Dioses had allowed her her own lair, he’d made sure wards had been placed around it so he knew when she left and when she didn’t, and when others came in and out of her lair.
Not that anybody other than him came here.
Even so, she was somewhat grateful that she had some form of privacy.
It wasn’t any consolation, though, as she struggled to breathe and struggled to pull the remainder of her clothes off so she could stumble towards the hot spring her whole lair had been designed around.
Gasping and panting for breath, she slid into the hot water and finally allowed herself to cry out as the hot water seared her ravaged skin.