The Feeder Page 10

  “There’s some sort of building up ahead,” Trent said as he started grabbing weapons from the back of the truck and passing them through the small window to me. “Looks like a building site.”

  It was a building site. In the distance concrete stuck up out of the ground at different locations on the site, like massive concrete pillars. Each was covered in graffiti tags, not an inch of space left clear. What someone had been trying to build here I had no idea, but from the state of the place it was obvious that it had been some time since any work had been done.

  “Any sign of them?” Trent whispered through the window as we pulled to a stop.

  “None yet,” Reese replied. “But... Hold on, do you smell that?”

  Drawing in a large breath, I moaned as my throat burned with thirst, the scent of Eve’s tantalising blood thick in the air. “She's here.” Jumping down from the truck, I cast my senses out, trying to get a hold of her location, but got nothing. Was she unconscious… or dead? Fuck, I hoped it wasn't the latter.

  The place was a mess. Remains of the many fires and drink cans were evidence of the human partying that had taken place here, though, again it seemed to have been a while since anyone had bothered to come out here.

  “What was in that picture?” I asked when it became obvious that there was no one in sight. “Apart from the body, what was there?”

  “From what I could tell,” Reese said, “it looked like some kind of room. It wasn't outside; that's for sure.”

  “Okay, look for an opening. A door. Anything.”

  Trent and Chad went one way, Reese and I the other. I tried once again to follow the scent of her blood, but it seemed to be coming from so many directions that there was no chance in hell of following it. After a good few minutes, we still hadn’t found anything.

  This cannot be happening. Not just after I found her.

  Never once in my existence had I been lonely, craved the companionship of another, except for the last decade or so. Seeing one of my friends, a fellow assassin, find happiness and love had made me realise how empty my existence was. I’d never thought that I would find someone I would want to keep around for longer than one night. Never thought that someone could draw my attention so completely… until now. In only a matter of a few weeks, Eve had turned my existence upside down. No longer did I care about my work, about the job that I’d been asked to do. I still wanted to find out what Gideon’s secret was – and I would happily sit there smiling when Sabrina ripped his fucking heart out – but only because of the way he treated Eve.

  “Over here.”

  “What is it? What have you found?” I yelled as I sprinted in the direction of Trent’s voice.

  “A door,” he answered as we came across him and Chad kneeling among a pile of rubble, gazing down into a dark ditch. “Down there.”

  At the bottom of the ditch was a steel door, the metal starting to rust with the grit that had no doubt been washed down there during times of rain. Though the ground at the base was swept clean, showing that it had been opened recently, and the scent of Eve’s blood was strong. “Come on.”

  When no one moved to follow me, I looked back. Each of them looked pained, hunger bright in their eyes. “I don’t think I can go down there,” Reese said shaking his head. “I don’t know what it is Thayne, but Eve’s blood is more tempting than anything I’ve ever scented before. If I walk into that room and see it, I’m not sure I can withhold from feeding.”

  I should be mad, angry that he would not have my back, but I understood. I wasn’t sure that I could survive going down there either if I was honest, but I was grateful that he wasn’t going to take the risk. There was something about her blood. It called to you. Made your mouth water and throat burn.

  Fuck I wanted a taste of that sweet nectar.

  “You guys too?”

  “Yeah. Sorry man. We'll stay up here and grab the fucker if he comes out alive, but I’m not willing to risk going in there where that scent will be strongest. It’s too tempting.”

  Nodding, I agreed. “Okay. Watch my back,” I said as I scrambled down into the ditch and placed my hands upon the old rusting door that I was sure separated me from Eve.

  I’d thought that I was prepared for what I was about to head into, but there was no way to prepare for the sight that met my eyes the moment I slid through the door and into the dark, damp concrete room below the building.

  Bound and chained, hanging suspended from the ceiling was Eve, her naked body limp and drenched in blood. My throat burned with thirst, my fangs elongating and piercing my lip, spilling my own blood.

  I wanted a taste so badly… just one small taste. But I had made Eve a promise never to take from her without permission. And I would keep my promise no matter how much I wanted to sink my fangs into her precious neck and taste her succulent nectar.

  Vince kneeled on the floor, face covered in Eve’s precious blood. Even after almost draining her his eyes were still black with hunger.

  I could hear her heart beating, but it was weak and irregular. I needed to get her out of here, quickly, if she was to survive.

  “More. I have to have more,” he rambled. “She's so tasty. So succulent. I can feel the power flowing through my veins.”

  He’d lost it. Well and truly lost it.

  Holding my breath in case her scent overwhelmed me, I took a step forward, only for the sound of my foot coming down upon a piece broken glass to draw Vince’s attention to me.

  Head snapping up, he hissed. “Stay away from her. She is mine. Mine I tell you! I have to have more. Need more… Need more… Need… Need.” He kept screaming it over and over again before rising to his feet and flying across the room at me, his hands going for my neck.

  He had no weapons, nothing but his own strength and speed in which to attack me with. It should have been easy, a quick flick of the knife at my belt and one quick jab to pierce his heart with the silver blade… but no. Moving faster than I had ever seen him move before, he grabbed my wrist, stopping me before I could make the plunge. I wasn’t prepared for the strength of his attack as he yanked the blade from my hand and slammed his fist into my face.

  When and how had he gotten so fucking strong? I’d sparred with him once or twice on the occasions I could actually get him to show up before the club opened and never before had he bested me. But right here, right now, with the power he was showing, we were evenly matched.

  Okay, so maybe he was a little bit stronger than me, but I wouldn't give in for anything. Hopefully, his uncontrollable rage would give me an up on him.

  As his fist flew towards me again I spun to the right, breaking his hold upon my wrist, his fist just missing me and coming into contact with the concrete wall behind. He threw hit after hit at me, his anger and madness making him uncoordinated, causing him to miss almost every time, for which I was highly grateful. My jaw was still aching from the first hit he had landed upon it.

  I needed another weapon, one that would take him down quick and easy. My blade was a no go as it was currently on the far side of the room, kicked out of the way in the scuffle. I had another slightly larger blade in my boot but currently had no way of getting it. There were also numerous handguns upon my body. One strapped to my calf and two more in the holster under my jacket. If only I could get to one of them.

  “Just let her go,” I gasped as I narrowly avoided a fist to the stomach and took a hit to the hip.

  “You can’t have her!” he roared. “She’s mine. Her blood is mine.”

  “I don’t think so.” If anything, she was mine. Mine to care for. Mine to love. Because by God, did I love her.

  Her heart was slowing, growing weaker by the second. I needed to end this now.

  Using all of my strength I gripped his arms and pushed him away. Not expecting the move he stumbled, taking enough steps back to give me room to manoeuvre and wrap my hand around a gun. The sound of the bullet leaving the chamber echoed around the room as Vince’s eyes widened in shock. When
it came to guns, I had a perfect aim; never missed.

  Vince crumbled to the floor as the now tainted blood he had stolen from Eve flowed out of his body through the hole I had shot into his un-beating heart. He wasn’t dead, yet, but it wouldn’t be long. Silver affected us differently from other metals. It wouldn’t kill us but an injury caused from silver took a long time to heal. Meaning that Vince would bleed out before he could heal enough to survive the wound.

  ‘But just in case,’ I thought as I removed the dagger from my boot and stalked towards him. Fisting my hand in his blood soaked hair, I pulled his head back and placed the blade to his throat. Lowering my head, I whispered in his ear, “She belongs to me now,” before I removed his head clean from his body.

  With Vince taken care of, it was time to get Eve fixed up and moved out of here. It took all of my control to ignore the fragrance of her blood and the burning thirst it created to get her bonds cut and lowered to the ground. Her wounds were bad. The flesh of her neck was severely damaged where Vince had fed from her, obviously, with little if no control over his thirst. She had a few more bite marks, but none as severe as that. There were bruises on her hips and breasts. Noticing the pattern to them – a pattern that looked very much like finger marks – I longed to kill Vince all over again, more painfully too.

  “Thayne?” Trent called through a small gap in the door. “You still alive?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And Eve?”

  She was alive… for now. But she wouldn’t be for long if we didn’t get her some help. “I need you to get the truck as close as you can. And I'm going to need the first aid kit, along with any coats, jackets or blankets you’ve got in there.”

  “On it.”

  Just a few minutes later I had as much blood as possible washed off her body and all her wounds cleaned and bandaged. Wrapping her tightly in the blanket Reese had passed me through the door I lifted her up into my arms and carried her out to the truck. The guys were already enclosed in the front of the truck, leaving the back for Eve and I. Even after cleaning up her body, the scent of her blood was strong in the air, and none of us wanted to risk any of them losing control.

  As soon as I had her settled on my lap, we sped down the dirt road back towards the club. The night would be ending soon, and we needed to move fast if we were to get back before the sun came up. “Has anyone let Gideon know that we’ve found her?” I asked, knowing that they would hear me even though the window at the back was closed.

  “Err… No,” Chad answered, looking a little uncomfortable.

  “Why not?”

  “Well, Reese overheard him telling Eve that he would take his fed from her tonight, so we thought it best that we do not warn him in case he decided to wait on at the club for her.”

  “She’s injured,” I snapped. Surely Gideon wouldn’t expect her to feed him when she was in this state? Scarily close to deaths door?

  “We’re not saying that he would,” Chad explained. “It’s just that we wouldn’t put it past him. It’s better to be safe than sorry.”

  He was right. Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I sent a quick text to a contact nearby. The reply I had hoped for came through only a moment later. “We’re not taking her back to the club.”

  “Then where are we going?” Trent asked, looking worriedly through the small window at me. “The sun will be up real soon, Thayne. Wherever it is, I hope it is close.”

  “It is,” I promised, quickly giving them the address.

  Ten minutes later we arrive at the house. A house that I had owned for years but usually let out to friends when they were in the area. I could have easily stayed here myself when I’d arrived but thought it was in my best interest to remain in the club – easier to keep an eye on a certain useless Master vampire. Now with everything I had learnt in the past few hours, there was no way I was letting Eve stay at the club. And where Eve went, so did I.

  Gideon wasn’t going to get his fangs anywhere near her anytime soon. Or ever if I had any say about the matter.

  Entering the old townhouse I made my way straight upstairs to the bedroom on the top floor. The sun was about to rise, but I didn’t need to worry about checking the windows and bordering them up like I would any other place. This house had been fixed up especially for vampires; all the windows UV tinted with electronic shutters set on a timer just to be safe.

  “How are you guys doing?” I asked as I placed Eve upon the bed. She looked so small and fragile upon the large king-sized bed.

  “Better,” Reese said, keeping his distance.

  “Chad, go down to the kitchen and grab some blood bags. There should also be IV kits in the cupboard next to the sink.” Though it may be too late for that. I didn’t want to say it, but I knew the truth. Eve was in a bad way.

  When Chad returned, he was carrying more blood bags than Eve would need, way more. “The others are for us,” he explained when I raised a brow at him in question. “I think all of us are hungry right now, and better to have these than to partake in sampling Eve.”

  Good point.

  After a quick drink of bagged blood, a delicacy I had promised myself I would never partake in – it was vile – I decided to check upon Eve’s wounds again. When I lifted the blanket and removed the bandage from near the top of her right thigh, I was shocked. What had earlier been a nasty bite was now nothing more than a red mark upon her pale skin. What the fuck?

  “It’s healed,” I muttered. “This wound was deep when I wrapped it; now it’s nothing more than a mark, a blemish. I doubt there will even be a scar.”

  “How is that possible?” Reese asked, moving closer to get a better look, but not too close.

  “I have no idea.” Covering her back up, I instantly went to the horrifying wound on her neck. Unwrapping the bandage and removing the pressure dressing I had placed upon it, I prepared myself for the sight of her mangled and torn flesh, but there had been no need. It wasn’t as healed as the other wound on her thigh, but it was no way near the state in which it had been. The torn flesh was knitting back together. It now looked more like an ordinary vampire bite and less like the bite from a crazed psycho. “He had ripped her neck to pieces,” I explained. “How can she be healing this quickly, if at all?” Her wounds had been enough to kill her.

  “I think there may be more to our boss’s food source than meets the eye.”

  I didn’t like Reese calling her a food source, but I agreed with him a hundred percent. Something was off. Eve should be dead, if not close to it. She should be in need of a blood transfusion if she had any hope of surviving without being turned. But here she was, healing almost as quickly as a vampire.

  Once they knew that Eve would survive, the guys headed down to the next floor to crash for the night in the other bedrooms while I stayed upstairs to watch over her. When she awoke, I had a feeling we would have a lot to talk about.

  Eve

  I’d expected to see a bright light, maybe even pearly gates. Or in the worst case scenario, the fiery pits of Hell. But none of those things came into my sight when I finally forced my eyes open. Wooden beams were the first thing to meet me. Large, wooden, stained beams running the length of an unfamiliar ceiling.

  Where was I? The last thing I could remember was Vince biting down hard upon my thigh, drawing more blood from my body into his mouth. My head had felt light, my eyes heavy. I’d known at that moment that it was over, that I was going to die.

  Only here I was… alive. I was breathing, aching all over, but breathing, which was the most important thing. But how?

  “It feels like I have waited forever for you to open those beautiful eyes,” called a voice from the corner of the room. A voice I'd thought I would never hear again.

  My gaze landed on Thayne as I turned my head to the side and I couldn't have done anything to stop the well of emotion that bubbled up inside of me, the tears that sprang to my eyes and spilled down my cheeks.

  “Hey,” he said rushing over. “Don't cry,
sweetheart. You’re safe now. I promise.”

  “I thought I was going to die,” I rasped, my throat dry as I buried my face against his chest as he lay down beside me, pulling me into his arms.

  “Shush,” he urged, rubbing his hand soothingly up and down my bare back. I was still naked, but at least he had seen fit to cover me with a sheet. “I would never allow that to happen. No one will ever hurt you again. I'll protect you.”

  Looking up, I gazed into his eyes and saw the truth of his statement. He meant what he said. But he didn’t know the truth about me, about my blood. Would it still be true if he knew?”

  “You came for me.” That was the only explanation. I’d seen the madness in Vince’s eyes. There was no way he would have let me go if he was still alive. Thayne had found me and killed him. Saved me.

  “Of course I did. We all did. Trent, Reese, Chad and I set out to find you the moment we realised what Vince had done.”

  “What had he done? I remember Reese was outside my office. I knew you guys were watching me, no matter how much you lot tried to hide it.” I smiled. “But how did Vince get passed him?”

  “He attacked some girls in the crowd outside, then called us to report an incident and told us that the human services were approaching. I knew instantly when I saw that he was nowhere in sight that it had been him all along.” Guilt filled his face as he looked pleadingly down at me. “Can you ever forgive me?”

  “For what?”

  “For not realising sooner. I should have known, should have realised when I felt his emotions, his perverted lust and desire for you, that it was him all along.”

  “Felt?” Vampires had excellent senses that could pick up things like the scent of someone’s arousal or anger, but I had never heard of one feeling another’s emotions.

  “It’s my gift, my extra ability. I can feel the emotions of others when I concentrate on them, though, physical contact strengthens my senses. I picked up some of his feelings for you the other night while we were discussing your protection. That’s why I took him off the rota and had Reese watch you instead last night. But he still got you...”