Chapter Eight
Jonathan hadn’t truly expected Felicity to be correct in her assumption about a roaming fledgling.
So, for the first few seconds of the attack, all he could do was watch as she struggled with the crazed, snarling creature.
The vampire was unlike any he’d ever seen, with completely black eyes and a mouthful of ragged teeth.
Beneath the tattered remains of his burgundy jacket, his skin was covered in cuts that oozed a viscous, black liquid.
Felicity managed to get herself free and scrambled to her feet, placing herself between him and her attacker.
The damned woman was putting herself in mortal danger.
A newly made vampire could tear a human limb from limb with ease.
He reached out to grab her and whisk her out of danger before halting.
What was he thinking? If he interceded in the fight and showed his strength, he would certainly reveal himself.
She was a hunter. She could likely handle herself.
So rather than assist her, he behaved the way he assumed a human would and fled screaming into the nearest alley.
From there, he watched the two figures circle each other for several seconds until the fledgling leaped, teeth bared.
He tensed, expecting the creature to grab her, but she whipped out a sword and slashed in an arc.
A twitching hand splattered to the ground.
The creature stared at the stump, as if not understanding what had happened.
Felicity raised her weapon again, but the fledgling was too fast. He dodged her swing and tackled her to the ground. She let out a sharp cry and dropped her sword. It slid out of her reach.
Watching the fight drew him back to the night after Marguerite had abandoned the nest. He distinctly remembered stumbling through Cheapside, desperate to purge the anger from his veins.
Because he had been looking for a fight, he had found one in a group of drunken sailors.
He’d attacked them with a desperation similar to that of the vampire currently assaulting Felicity.
The fight had not been fair, but Jonathan had not cared.
All he had wanted was for someone to end his suffering.
It hadn’t worked.
He blinked and returned his attention to the two figures grappling in front of the fountain.
They weren’t making much noise, aside from the occasional grunt and the snap of teeth.
He stepped out of the shadows. Felicity might have started off strong, but her eyes were bloodshot, the arms of her linen shirt were torn to shreds, and her hands on the forehead and lower jaw of the fledgling trembled with the effort of keeping him from biting her.
He sighed, then jogged over to the pair. With one hand, he grasped the vampire by the back of the neck and flung him across the courtyard. Felicity looked up, panting heavily, her eyes wide.
“How did you…?” she whispered, before shaking her head. “It doesn’t matter.” She grabbed her sword, struggled to her feet, and stumbled to the fledgling.
“What are you doing?” he asked. He had intended to speak lightly, but there was a noticeable growl to his words.
She severed the vampire’s head then grabbed the thing’s arms and looked over her shoulder. “Don’t just stand there. Help me!”
The absurdity of a hunter demanding he assist her in disposing of the remains of a kill almost made him laugh. The fledgling twitched, alive despite the decapitation. The creature would remain so until killed by sunlight or wood thrust through his heart.
Sigh.
He had put himself in this position, and there was no easy way to get himself out of it. He reluctantly grabbed the creature’s other arm and helped her flip the vampire onto his back. Instead of staking the thing, she was scrutinizing its body like a constable at the scene of a crime.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Checking its neck.” She unbuttoned what remained of the fledgling’s burgundy jacket and inspected his flesh.
At that moment, the cloying aroma of incense wreathed around him. He dismissed it at first, assuming a nearby church had opened its doors and let the smoke that had built up inside burst free. But then he caught a subtler smell. Burning candles.
Incense and beeswax. The two scents he associated with his maker. He whipped around, expecting Marguerite to be standing nearby, but there was no one.
“What’s wrong?” Felicity asked.
He shook his head. “It’s nothing.” The courtyard was still. He must have imagined it.
She shrugged, then removed a wooden stake from her cloak and stabbed the fledgling. He immediately turned to dust.
With the danger gone, Jonathan remembered what she’d said earlier.
If there was a maker allowing fledglings to roam unchecked, then he needed to tell his nest. The hunters might eventually capture the perpetrator, but it would be better for his kind to handle the situation rather than allow a vampire to fall into the hands of the enemy.
Of course, he couldn’t tell any of this to Felicity. He wasn’t entirely sure what to say to her, as for once, the clever quips that he had relied on failed him. Instead, he asked the first question that came to his mind. “Why do you hate vampires so much?”
She stared at him. “What kind of question is that?” She gestured at the pile of ash. “It attacked me. What is there not to hate?”
When she put it that way, he could understand, yet the furious way she’d fought suggested there was more. “Are they all like that?”
She chewed her lower lip. “No. Most people can’t recognize them on sight. One of my closest friends—” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. They are demons without consciences. For that alone, they deserve death.”
She certainly had strange ideas. He wished he didn’t have a conscience.
Then it would have been easier to ignore how much they had in common.
He followed her to the fountain but stood a fair distance back while she scrubbed the black sludge from her hands.
He’d already risked her figuring out his nature during the fight.
Having her discover his nature because of a lack of a reflection in the water would be just his luck.
“Surely, you haven’t always hated them,” he said. He wasn’t sure why. As a hunter, it was her duty to kill his kind. Expecting her to do anything else would be like getting angry at a house cat for chasing down a mouse.
She exhaled a cloud that vanished above their heads. “No. I didn’t even care about becoming a hunter once. I told my parents I wanted nothing to do with their mission.”
“What happened?” Curiosity would be the death of him.
She stared at the ground. “One of them came to my house. A woman. It killed my parents right in front of me.” Her lips thinned.
“If that weren’t bad enough, after Uncle Ethan took me in and helped me recover from the shock, he forbade me from tracking down my parents’ killer.
Not that it mattered. The demon left no trace. ”
So, a vampire had murdered her parents. He shouldn’t have cared.
Her family had slaughtered thousands of his kind.
But the hardness in her voice reminded him of how furious he’d been after Marcus had refused to let him chase after their maker.
Jonathan had hated his elder brother for years for that decision.
“They never knew,” she whispered. “They died thinking I wanted nothing to do with being a hunter.” She sniffled.
He rubbed his hands together. “Are you crying?”
Tears dripped down her cheeks. She dashed them away. “No.”
He’d never been able to handle a crying woman.
He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “If they were alive, I’m sure they would be proud.
After all, I don’t know many ladies who could wield a sword with such skill.
Who taught you? I can’t imagine you received lessons in swordsmanship from your governess. ”
She laughed weakly. “No. It was my uncle.”
A silence descended between them, and it was then that Jonathan realized how close they were. It would take only a slight movement of his head to reach the veins flowing through her neck.
God, how he wanted to taste her. He had never drunk from a hunter before. He could almost feel her bitter, metallic blood coating the inside of his mouth.
He leaned in just as she turned, and their lips met in an awkward kiss.
A heady sensation throbbed through him, which was definitely the only reason he tilted his mouth against hers.
She whimpered and curled her fingers in his shirt.
He shouldn’t have been doing this. She was the enemy. But the sluggish heat unfurling in his abdomen urged him on, as did the soft noises she made when he ran his tongue along her lower lip and the increasingly potent honeyed scent of her blood.
She opened her mouth. He surged inside, only for her to meet him stroke for stroke, a worthy opponent despite her obvious innocence.
He slid his hands down her sides. She tossed his hat away and dug her fingers into his hair. It was the sensation of her nails cutting into his scalp that caused his fangs to extend. He quickly withdrew and trailed kisses down her throat.
She shivered at his touch. “Oh, yes.”
His cock and fangs throbbed in unison. He reached the place where her pulse hammered and was about to bite when a familiar itching started inside his skull. He lifted his head and spotted a tall figure dressed in black standing in the alley across from the fountain, silhouetted by moonlight.
It was his eldest nest sister. Seraphina. Watching him, probably reporting his activities to Cordon and Marcus. Knowing she was watching dampened his desire. He forced his fangs to withdraw, clasped Felicity’s shoulders, and pushed her away.
“You should return home.”
“What?” She swayed slightly. “Why?”
He tightened his grip. “Because if we don’t stop, you might have another reason to use that sword.”