16. SIXTEEN #3
“Traitor!” The final living hunter makes a lunge for me.
It’s the light-haired man I’d wounded earlier.
With his good arm useless, he swings his axe wildly with his left one.
His blade skims my shoulder, drawing blood—and I return the favor at once with a slice at his outer abdomen. Can’t he see I’m trying to spare him?
He cries out in pain, clutching the wound, but his vicious gaze remains fixed upon me. “You fucking freak! Look upon the bloodshed you have cursed us with! Damn you, bitch—you will burn for all eternity—”
Before he can make another swipe at me, Dante has seized him from behind. One hand wrapped around the hunter’s throat, Dante uses the other to squeeze the man’s wrist, making him relinquish his weapon. The man screams as the bones of his hand splitter and snap within Dante’s grip.
Lips twitching hungrily, Dante leans closer to his captive’s neck.
His slow, measured inhale seems to fill the room.
The desperation painting Dante’s expression is almost mesmerizing.
I expect he’ll rip into the hunter at once—but to my surprise, Dante’s eyes slide over to me.
He considers the raised blade in my hand, how I’m prepared to give the hunter a swift end.
“Please,” Dante says huskily. “May I?”
I lower my blade from sheer astonishment. Of all things, I never expected him to care what I thought. Perhaps he is attempting to stay true to his word about only drinking from me—even so, his plea for my permission renders me useless against denying him.
“You may,” I all but whisper.
“No!” the hunter chokes out, desperately fighting Dante’s grip. “Please, no! Don’t—” But Dante tightens his grip enough to silence him without snapping his neck entirely.
Dante eases forward slowly, as though relishing the man’s last moments of abject terror—and then bares his fangs and snaps forward.
I despise myself for the flustered prickle of gooseflesh along my arms as I witness Dante unleash himself in this way.
His eyes purge of color into milky white.
His face contorts in a way that is completely detached from the intimate swallows he’s taken of my blood.
This is animalistic. I should turn away.
I have no reason to see this. But I can’t.
In a room piled with death, I cannot help but watch as he ushers in more of it.
I have seen this before. Seen poor souls drained on group assignments before they could be rescued. But this is different. Why is it different when it’s him?
No—there’s no way in hell you’re attracted to him right now.
Just before the man perishes, Dante stops drinking.
He lets the body thud to the floor. He’s dripping with crimson, his white shirt soaked with it.
Eyes still blanched, he is a harrowing and unholy sight as he slowly steps over the body to approach me.
I lift one blade halfway, wondering if he’s too far gone—that he wants more and will have me, too.
But his eyes return to their usual stormy blue, and his sinister expression brightens as he comes back into himself and beholds me.
A fleshy sound permeates the air. The feeding is already running its course—his wounds are stitching up in seconds as he’s reinvigorated.
“Hm.” He reaches up to brush some gore from my cheek.
“This is a wonderful look on you,” he purrs.
He finds the fresh wound on my shoulder from the final hunter and gently touches the edge before proceeding to suck my blood off his thumb.
His voice lowers a decibel as he leans closer. “Can’t say no to dessert.”
“Are you seriously aroused right now?” I ask, tethering back a low, skeptical scoff of laughter.
He lifts his eyebrows. “You’re not?”
I nearly smile back, our earlier argument somehow softened by this temporary alliance.
My gaze travels the corpses around us until I find the only headless one. I wince. “About your brother…”
“If you apologize, I will end you. Please. You did the world a favor. He was a dickhead and an idiot—but I suppose I shouldn’t expect much more of an Englishman. I thought of murdering him countless times back home, Alessandro’s wrath be damned.”
His chuckle dissolves into a hiss. He turns urgently toward the window—the sun has risen higher, the shaft of light brightening and filling more of the room. He brushes past me, cowering into the only shadowed corner.
Shit. Under other circumstances, we could patch the curtains to give him darkness, but the fact is that we cannot stay any longer.
A scream rings from the ground outside—someone must have found the body Thomas had thrown from the window. There is further clamoring through the inn, and it won’t be long before the whole damn village is upon us.
“We have to get out of here,” I say.
“It’s too late for that,” Dante snaps, sounding more distressed than I’d ever heard him. He stares at the window, chest heaving.
A knock at the door makes us both jump.
It has to be the innkeeper—or another hunter. The door is broken, barely hanging on. There is no need to be so polite about requesting to come in—and a second knock sends a chill down my spine.
“I’m afraid we’re indecent!” Dante calls, voice cracking. “Sorry about the noise—newlyweds, you know!”
There is no time to hide the bodies on the floor or the weapons in my hands before the door creaks open.