Fate of a Blood Moon (The Hades Blood Moon #2)

Chapter 28

Valentina

A s we sped south down the quiet Italian countryside, my hands kept curling into fists—fury and blood-soaked rage burned in my chest. My anger roared at me to return to the villa and unleash my wrath on those men, but I couldn’t. If we delayed any further, I’d lose Rachel forever. Andrei was determined to find her by any means necessary, and for the first time in thousands of years, there was someone stronger than me—Liam—and I didn’t know how a mortal could be so powerful.

What the hell is he?

The night seemed to swallow the world around us as we drove, with only a sliver of the crescent moon casting a faint glow over the hilltops. Since we fled the villa, there had been an uncomfortable silence between Darius and me. I knew him well, but Rachel and I disrupted his clan’s lives four months ago, and now, because of us, he’d lost everything.

Before we headed south, Luka, Gio, and Ava were ordered to head to Rome, where Darius had a contact who would take and keep them safe. Luka and Gio had bowed to me, and Ava threw her arms around us both before the three vanished into the night. The hug made my chest tight.

I was clinging to the hope that once we found Rachel, we could reunite with them and resume our agenda of destroying Black Onyx. Until then, we had to be cautious and wise in our next move.

I turned slightly left to glance at Darius, shifting in my seat. His jaw was tense, the muscles there ticking, while his entire focus remained on the road. He gripped the steering wheel so tightly I could see the metal beneath it bowing. Despite having suffered heavy blood loss from the fighting and the villa’s collapse, Darius’s wounds had already healed. Still, the hollowness of his eyes and the gaunt forming under his cheekbones told me he wasn’t as whole as he appeared. I knew the desperation to feed well, lurking beneath our bones like a starved beast.

It was there for me, too—the gnawing hunger in the pit of my stomach, the scorch in my throat. It would have to wait for now. The task at hand was more important. Retrieving my little rebellious daughter, who fled with the ring that didn’t belong to her, along with her fated mate who she had no clue about.

Jase cannot be the one to tell her.

“Do you think Rachel’s alright?” I asked quietly, breaking the thin, icy silence between us. “She’s never fought with me like that before, and the cave she’s headed to … I’m familiar with it. There’s a power there that will destroy us all.”

I wondered why Jase would even take her there.

What is he up to?

Darius didn’t look at me, but he pressed his lips into a tight line before saying, “She has a head start, and it’s pretty clear she’s smart enough not to get caught. Let’s just hope she keeps the ring on because we’ll need your powers to keep us safe until we catch up.”

It grew quiet in the car for a while, with only the engine’s hum to fill the void. Given the late hour, there was only the occasional flicker of other headlights or distant houses. My mind drifted back to the villa—to the chaos, Tati and Alessandro, the dhampirs—that fucking witch.

Darius’s voice pulled me out. “My head … is spinning. I know we have to keep moving, but if I don’t feed, I’m going to crash this fucking car.”

My head snapped to look at him. His face was paler than an hour ago, and there was a slight tremor in his white-knuckled grip. The hunger was weakening him too quickly.

“Pull over. I can give you some blood—”

“No!” he snapped. “You can’t force me to do that anymore. That includes what you’ve been doing to me. We could lose control.”

“I’d never allow that,” I assured him. “But we have to get as south as possible to make it to Athens. We don’t have the means to fly there, so driving is our only option. Once we’re on the boat, we’ll be safe, and we can find a lonely soul to feed from together . I won’t force you.”

He looked hesitant but answered with a quick nod.

As the miles passed, I watched Darius’s hunger grow to a near-fever pitch. Suddenly, his spine stiffened, and the steering wheel screeched under the stress of his grip.

He’s not going to last without something.

His dark eyes slid to mine, and there was a fierceness in that gaze—he wasn’t hungry for just blood. His heated gaze roamed lower, hovering over my thighs. I clenched them together, tingles flaring to life in my core. When vampires were hungry, it awakened the beast-like primal side, and it would become a frenzy of bloodlust and arousal. The craving to kill and fuck was the only driving force for my kind; it was what made us feel “alive.”

The car suddenly felt like it had shrunk, drawing our growing desire together. We needed to find a blood source before we crashed. I shifted away and looked ahead. Up ahead, about a hundred yards from us was a maroon-colored sedan parked on the side of the road. My suppressed cravings surged and wrapped around my throat like a rope.

“Right there,” I said. “We feed, get back in the car, and go. No more stops.”

He didn’t need me to tell him twice.

Darius pulled the car over a few feet behind the stopped vehicle and cut the lights and engine. Our enhanced vision showed a young man with dark-brown hair and tanned skin stepping away from the lifted hood. He wore a simple plaid T-shirt and jeans with a ball cap over his long, wavy hair. He didn’t seem afraid of us, just frustrated. Smoke rose from the exposed engine—he was stranded.

I gracefully slid out of the car, Darius following close behind. Hearing our approach, the man lifted his head, eyes widening in surprise. Hopefully, the shadows would conceal our dirty and slightly torn clothes.

“Buonasera, signore. Ha bisogno di aiuto con la sua macchina?” I asked him if he needed help with his car, keeping my voice smooth and friendly. I didn’t want to reveal my eagerness to snare this prey, so a playful, warm smile crossed my lips. “Uh, English?”

The man’s eyes examined the two of us and nodded, yet he looked momentarily confused. “Eh, sì … yes,” he gestured to the raised hood. “Do you know anything about Nissans?” He threw his arms up in defeat. “I’ve tried everything. And Soccorso Stradale won’t be here until almost dawn.”

The sound of his heart rate quickened as he closed the lid over the smoking engine. The stranger didn’t know, but I was already inside his head, slowly increasing his fear. It made the hunt so much more exciting.

Like the viper waiting in the grass, I struck first. The man didn’t have time to react before I was on him, grabbing his wrist and slamming him against the hood. He tried to struggle, and I felt his joints pop in my grip.

“Relax, handsome,” I purred, forcing him to look into my glowing eyes. My power seized him completely, and his eyes softened, body succumbing to the compulsion. Once he had gone completely limp, I pressed my body against his, with Darius looming over my shoulder like a hungry wolf.

I could already smell the blood beneath his skin, warm and coppery, and my stomach tightened. My fangs extended, sharp and ready, as I pulled the man’s collar down, exposing his throat. His eyes fluttered closed.

Darius didn’t hesitate. He moved to my right and sank his fangs into the man’s neck with a soft growl. I followed suit, taking my share from the other side. The man gasped and twitched, but it was no use. His blood was ours now.

The taste of his life force sent a pulsing sensation between my legs—rich and virile. His heat became mine as the steady rhythm of his pulse filled me with sharp, immediate satisfaction. But that wasn’t enough. I needed more, so much more.

My hand slid from the man’s chest, and my body pressed against him as I drank deep and rough. Darius growled softly. He, too, became lost in the sensation. There was a raw, animalistic energy between us—hunger and need .

When I heard the first stuttering beat of the man’s heart, I managed to withdraw my fangs. Darius followed, and the young man crashed into the dirt, barely conscious.

We didn’t kill him … yet.

I licked the last few drops of blood from my lips, savoring the taste, and Darius stepped away, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. I leaned against the car’s hood, my head tipping up to look at him.

“God, I need to fuck you,” Darius professed, his eyes skating down my body as I raised a brow at him. The feral, dark need was consuming him. He still had unfinished business with me.

I reached for his dirt-caked T-shirt, gripping the fabric and yanking him toward me. His blood-covered mouth collided hard with mine. The kiss was brutal, desperate—making my pussy throb and drip. His hands were everywhere, like he couldn’t touch me enough.

Darius grabbed the waistband of my jeans, quickly unzipped them, and pulled them down along with my underwear, leaving me exposed. He cupped my ass before lifting me higher on the car. I wrapped my legs around his waist, thighs hitching on his hips. With me caged, Darius unzipped his pants, pulled out his cock, and started pumping it. As my head tipped back, he slammed inside me with a vicious thrust.

“Oh, fuck!” I cried out as he stepped on our victim’s spine, cracking it while raising us even higher, hitting all the right spots.

Well, he’s dead now.

After hunting down prey, vampires’ senses became incredibly heightened, but to fuck right after a feeding … that was truly extraordinary. This was precisely what I needed to take the edge off of what happened. While I felt guilty for causing the young man’s death, it was all necessary to catch up to my daughter before my failed progeny did. My mind whirled with so much awareness as Darius continued to ram himself deep inside of me again and again. The fury in his movements felt like he wanted to wreck me, and I would have gladly let him.

“My God,” he moaned loudly, “you feel fucking divine.”

His pace quickened to a maddening beat that erupted euphoric ripples through my body. His cock filled me up completely, pulling back only enough to thrust back inside, harder and faster, with no intention of stopping. Frenzied sex like this made me feel so in tune with my body that I almost felt human again—in the most ironic way possible. He’d awakened every sense, every dark emotion.

Everything.

There was no affection for how we did this or a moment of tenderness. Darius’s grip on me would have cracked bones and ruptured organs had we not been vampires. I was his prisoner, surrendering to the surges of pleasure that thundered through me.

My cries echoed through the night, cutting through the stillness of the open fields surrounding us. Pleasure, sin, wickedness—all pooled together, filling my emptiness.

“Right there,” I pleaded, feeling the body of the car dent against my back from the force. My release was close, my throbbing core clenching more rapidly. My head tipped back as I bit into my bottom lip to contain my composure. If I let go now, the world would shatter. All that mattered was the fresh blood, the distraction, the depravity of it all.

I shook as Darius kept me pinned against that car, each thrust more brutal. The windshield started to crack, and the lid buckled and caved beneath me. My eyes fluttered closed, my breaths growing heavy despite not needing to draw air.

In a flash, Darius unhooked my legs from his waist, withdrew himself, and flipped me around before grabbing my hair and yanking my head back. He then drove back in with such force that the glass shattered, blue fragments littering the car and ground. It almost felt like a punishment for breaking our gaze. More cracking came from below as he shifted his stance atop the dead man’s body, bending me over.

His left hand grabbed my thigh and lifted my leg, perching it on the bumper for deeper access. I was coming undone with the filthy way he fucked me, and yet felt I was ascending to the heavens—even for a moment.

“Oh my God,” was all I could say as I parted my lips to draw another breath. His hand suddenly left my leg and wrapped around my throat, tightening its grip as he pushed me closer to the peak. “Don’t … don’t stop.”

Darius was now animalistic by how he rocked against me, glass and metal shattering around us. He was as close to the edge as I was. All I needed was—

“Oh, fuck!” the scream ripped from my throat as my head fell back, panting as I shuddered. Waves of endless bliss pounded through me, stealing every lingering rational thought. His pleasure followed a second later, and he groaned as he emptied himself deep inside me.

The high from our ecstasy seemed to drag on forever as Darius held me. As I regained my bearings, I realized that, though I was eager for another round, we had to go. There was a dead body and a smashed car, and we were wasting time. Pressing my palms against the car, I eased away, telling Darius to follow. He stepped off the man’s corpse, and we noticed a large pool of blood soaking into the ground.

“Unfortunate,” I mused as I rearranged my clothes. “Let’s move on before someone sees us.”