Chapter 3
CHAPTER
THREE
“I should have just let them kill her. Why did I stick out my neck for some lost-born?” A familiar male voice growled across the room.
The words cut through the darkness before the pain did. Sound came first. Then pressure. Then the dull, sickening ache that pulsed in time with my heartbeat at the base of my skull.
I groaned, peeling open my eyes to see Asher frantically rifling through a pillbox. I reached up to touch the dull throb at the base of my skull where he’d hit me and hissed.
My vision swam, the ceiling above me nothing but a blur of nicotine-stained white and flickering shadows. My tongue felt thick in my mouth, dry and bitter, like I had bitten down on copper. Every breath felt difficult in my lungs as awareness slowly clawed its way back into my body.
I had moved onto my side to attack Asher when his gaze snapped up to mine as the tip of his sword pressed to my neck.
“Draw blood on me again and I’ll cut your head off.
I am trying to save your life, you idiot.
” He looked serious and injured. The scratches I’d made on his cheek were deep and freely bleeding.
The cold kiss of steel anchored me in place. One inch. That was the distance between my throat and death. My muscles locked, instinct screaming at me to fight, to roll, to strike first. But the look in his eyes stopped me cold. Not rage, not fear, but survival and pain.
“Do you have a clotting disorder or something?” I asked.
The words came out rougher than I intended, my voice scraped raw from unconsciousness and adrenaline.
He shot me a glare that had my next retort dying in my throat, but he also lowered his weapon.
I sat up slowly, head throbbing as I reached up to rub it and scanned the room for exit points.
I was in a dingy motel room with one bed and orange shag carpet.
The navy-blue drapes were pulled shut, and the clock read twenty-five minutes past midnight.
I’d been unconscious for over an hour by my guess.
The room smelled like old smoke and industrial cleaner.
The kind of place that charged by the hour and never replaced the blankets.
My back pressed against the cheap headboard, the mattress sagging beneath my weight.
The single lamp cast a jaundiced glow over peeling wallpaper and a battered dresser with one crooked drawer.
I stood slowly, and my pulse raced as I cataloged the space. One door. One window. Both bad options.
Asher was fully involved with searching through the metal pill case, and it was a perfect time to bolt from the bed of the hotel room to the door.
I steeled myself, ready to make a run for the door, when I saw him pull out a small pill.
But it wasn’t a pill. It was more like a flat circle wafer, thin and translucent with a pearl sheen.
But that wasn’t what stopped me in my tracks.
The symbol on the wafer was. My heart hammered in my chest as I looked at the X with a thick line going through the middle.
The world narrowed to that shape. My breath hitched, lungs locking as recognition slammed into me with more force than the blow to my head ever had.
I’d seen it before. Carved onto the arms of my infant body.
The memory rose unbidden. Pale fresh skin marred in dark black circles and dots and triangles with lines. I had spent my entire life pretending they were meaningless.
He went to put it into his mouth when my hand snaked out and grasped his wrist.
My fingers closed around him before my brain caught up, grip desperate and unthinking. His skin was warm. Solid.
My eyes met his, and I knew if I didn’t play this right, he would kill me. He looked absolutely pissed off.
The air between us felt charged, stretched thin as wire. His jaw clenched, muscles jumping beneath my hand.
“What’s that symbol?” I asked. “I’ve seen it before.”
His expression shifted. Not shock. Not confusion. Something different. Something guarded.
He frowned, yanking his wrist from my grasp, and dropped the wafer on his tongue. I waited for him to zone out, pass out, get high, but instead, the bloody scratches on his face?—
They knit together before my eyes.
Skin sealed. Flesh smoothed. The scabs vanished like they had never been there at all.
My breath caught in my throat as the last trace of injury disappeared, leaving behind unmarked skin and a truth I was not ready to face.
I blinked.
I blinked again.
I rubbed my eyes, holding them closed for five seconds, and opened them.
The scratches were gone.
The skin on his cheek was smooth, unbroken, like I had never clawed at him at all. No scar. No torn flesh. Nothing.
“Basic stitch mender rune.” He made it sound like I should know that.
Rune. That word… It was written in my file. The thought sent a chill racing through me. I rubbed my arms, trying to ground myself, but the room felt like it was tilting. I felt lost, hollowed out, sick to my stomach as panic rose sharp and fast.
I should leave. I should run out that door and call the cops on this guy for kidnapping me and never look back.
He stepped closer to me, and I flinched, but he cast me an annoyed look.
“I’m not going to hurt you. I’ve been trying to save your life.
” He growled, stomping to the sink at the back wall of the room and scrubbing his face.
He used a bar of soap to get every last drop of blood off his face and hands.
When he was done, he ripped off his shirt and shoved it into a plastic bag, tying it off tightly.
He stood now in a tight white tank top, and the muscles were definitely muscling.
My gaze betrayed me, tracking the movement of his shoulders, the way his arms flexed as he worked. It was absurd to notice. Absurd and deeply inconvenient how good looking he was.
Stockholm syndrome was surprisingly pleasant.
“Wash your neck,” he barked to me, “and take off your shirt. You can wear mine.”
I cocked my head to the side. “Take off my shirt?” I eyed the door.
Asher rolled his eyes. “You need to wash all the blood off where the vampire bit you. We have to move. The bloodsuckers will be here any minute. I’m sure they’re tracking our scent.”
The words hit like a starting gun. Fear snapped clean through me, sharp and electric, as adrenaline flooded my veins. I flew off the bed and crossed the room in seconds, palms slapping against the sink as I leaned over it.
I began to furiously scrub at my neck with the soap.
“The neck biters are coming back?” I confirmed. “Did you buy the drugs from them? I have money. I can?—”
“ Vampires. They’re vampires. I don’t do drugs, and you’re a hunter.
I don’t have time for your emotional breakdown right now, so I need you to get on board,” he told me while he pulled off his white tank top and dragged out a hoodie from his backpack, slipping it on.
“As much as I want to just leave you here, you’re clearly a lost-born, and it’s against the codex to leave you behind. ”
My hands slowed as I stared at my reflection in the mirror, breath shallow, pulse roaring in my ears. Two pinprick marks stared back at me from my neck, dark and precise.
What the hell? They weren’t like human teeth marks I would expect from a bite that drew blood.
“Vampires?” I asked, playing into his delusion.
“Yes.”
“Well, it bit me. So that means I’ll…become one?” I stared at his reflection in the mirror, and he chuckled.
“A two-second bite from a drinker? No way. Only sires can change you, and you better hope you never meet one, because they love changing hunters.”
The words sent ice crawling up my arms. My stomach dropped, something ancient and instinctive recoiling at the thought. I opened my mouth to ask another question when he cut me off.
“Scrub your nails. I don’t need you wafting my blood all down the street.”
My fingers curled into the porcelain edge of the sink.
I swallowed hard. Wash off the DNA evidence that showed he was my kidnapper? No way.
He saw me falter and reached up to rub his temples. “This woman.” He mumbled to the room. “Fine, you’re on your own. Here.” He pulled out a steel stake and rolled it across the ground until it stopped when it hit my boot. “Right in the heart and you might survive the night. Good luck.”
The metal clink echoed too loudly in the small room.
He had turned to leave when my eyes fell to the stake.
More runes.
Ones from my baby photo.
My chest tightened, breath catching as everything slammed together in my head.
“Wait,” I breathed.
He looked back at me, and I turned the water to scorching heat, rubbing my nails with the soap until they were clean.
The burn grounded me, steadied my shaking hands.
Picking up the stake, I stashed it in my boot, the top four inches sticking out so I could easily grab it.
Then I grabbed the tank top he’d given me and slipped into the bathroom, taking off my red silky top, which was spattered with dried blood, and replaced it with his white tank.
The scent of some unknown sexy cologne washed over me, and I cleared my throat.
Leaving the bathroom, I tossed him my bunched-up bloody shirt, which he stashed in his plastic bag.
“I’ve seen these runes before,” I told him, pointing to the stake in my boot. “They were…on my body when I was given up at the hospital as a baby.”
There. My dark secret was out. I’d never told another soul. Only Linda knew and whoever else had access to my file.
I was a ritualistic sacrifice baby apparently.
He nodded, looking nonplussed by my admission.
“Probably protective runes. All hunter parents put them on babies so that vampires can’t smell us, but they eventually wear off.”
The words landed heavily, shattering something fundamental inside me.
And just like that, my whole world slipped upside down.
“What?”
He froze, going very still. “I can’t tell if I’m sensing a vamp or?—”