From Tonight Until Forever:

SACRIFICED

By

Sydney Somers

 

© May 2007, Sydney Somers

Cover art by Jenny Dixon , © May 2007

ISBN 978-1-60394-031-3

New Concepts Publishing

Lake Park, GA 31636

www.newconceptspublishing.com

 

This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s

imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or

events is merely coincidence.

 

 

Chapter One

“How many more of you are there?”

The blonde hunter planted face-first between the damp grass and the knee Julia pressed into the middle of his back, squirmed weakly to get away from her. He murmured something into the ground, his long hair hiding his face as bucked his hips in vain to shake her off.

She wrenched harder on the arm she’d already pulled back and jammed against his spine. His body jerked in response, a grunt of pain breaking past his lips. The movement instinctively brought his head up, exposing the smooth column of his neck. Rivulets of blood snaked down his skin where she’d punctured his flesh with her fangs moments ago.

The heady taste of the hunter’s blood still lingered on her tongue, the added strength from the powerful creature humming through her system.

Julia dragged her fangs across his neck, wanted to grin when the coward shuddered. For a hunter, he hadn’t put up much of a fight. Not that she was complaining, but hunters usually excelled at neutralizing vampires in most situations. This one hadn’t even landed a solid blow before she’d taken him down.

She tried not to be disappointed at the implication of that. If Brody were here, would the rogue hunters have been so stupid as to put such a weak link on security detail?

“How many?” Julia repeated, pushing at the barrier shielding his thoughts from hers, and found her answer.

Four.

A sharp cry of alarm pierced the crisp night air from the opposite side of the compound. Julia rolled her eyes. So much for Brynn playing it stealthy.

She pressed her mouth to the hunter’s neck, the earlier rush from his blood making it easy to hold him in place as she drained him further. The blood pumped through her, fusing with the rush of adrenaline pushing thick and hot through her veins.

The weaker she left the hunter, the least likely he’d be able to interfere.

A moment later, Julia released her hold on him and he fell back to the grass, unconscious.

Another one down.

Brynn’s thoughts echoed through Julia’s mind as she stood and surveyed the compound’s main building a few meters in front of her. The fence surrounding the compound had been a joke. While it might deter curious humans, it was no more than an inconvenience to Julia and Brynn, and an annoying one at that.

Julia kept to the shadows, her senses attuned for the two remaining hunters. By now they could be outside in search of them, or inside, guarding the vampire they might very well have in their custody.

Part of her wanted to leave Brody Atherton to his fate. It wasn’t half the punishment he deserved for deserting her, but she wouldn’t be able to have a clear conscious if she willingly let him remain a captive of the hunters. He might have broken her heart when he left, but she wouldn’t see him suffer like a caged animal for as long as his captors needed him alive.

No one deserved that.

A gust of wind pulled at the long dark hair that had come loose from the meager struggle the hunter had put up, and carried on the breeze came the scent of an enemy. Her heightened senses picked up on the light footfalls approaching from her right.

Tucked in the shadows of the building’s corner alcove, she waited.

“You don’t do this often, do you?” Brynn’s voice preceded her appearance around the corner. With one hand propped on her hip, her black hair caught in the wind that gusted, her golden hunter eyes surveyed Julia the way she would a Wall Street businesswoman playing bounty hunter.

Brynn tipped her head towards the south entrance. “This way.” She opened the door, and they moved quickly down the long dimly lit corridor.

They passed numerous darkened doorways, but every step deeper into the compound only confirmed Julia’s growing certainty.

Brody wasn’t here.

Brynn flashed a grim smile over her shoulder. “We won’t stop looking until we find him.”

She knew it was Brynn’s vampire half that allowed her easier access to Julia’s thoughts. For a creature, half vampire and half hunter, one who shouldn’t even exist at all, her senses were extraordinarily developed. So much so that it took considerably more effort on Julia’s part to keep Brynn from picking up on stray thoughts.

Brynn snorted. “Honey, I’ve been reading you like a book since the day you tried to take me down.”

Julia arched a brow. “I seem to recall knocking you off your feet a time or two.”

“Except the time--”

“Save it,” Julia growled, concentrating hard to keep her mind shut tight.

By the time they searched all three floors, it was apparent Brody wasn’t on the premises.

“Did he ever say anything to you?”

Julia didn’t need to ask for clarification. Brynn was thinking about Brody’s possible connection to the Key.

She shook her head. “It might have come up once.” And only to briefly explain the folklore surrounding the vampire equivalent to the Holy Grail.

Julia had been turning both over in her mind, looking for some connection as to why the hunters believed Brody could lead them to it, or why they sought the mythical object believed to point to the origins of the vampire race.

“Maybe it’s not a myth.”

“Okay, how in the hell are you doing that so damn easily?”

Brynn shrugged. “My curse.” She stopped in the middle of the hall. “Hopefully your friend will have something else for us to go on soon.”

“His name is Declan.”

Brynn snorted.

Julia gave her a sideways glance. “Since Declan is more vamp friendly than the average hunter, what’s your issue with him?”

“He’s an elder hunter.” Brynn’s glacier tone made it clear there was no love lost between them.

“You’re a hunter.” Not that Julia needed to point that out. No one but hunters possessed those piercing gold eyes or the ability to hone in on a vampire’s presence.

“No,” Brynn corrected in a flat tone. “I was a hunter.”

Julia wanted to press Brynn for more details beyond the same cryptic responses she’d been getting out her every time the subject came up. While their mutual trust had come a considerable ways, Brynn was still very much a closed book.

Brynn backtracked towards the door. “Let’s have a more in-depth chat with one of our friends outside.”

Julia trailed after her, hoping that at the very least one of the hunters would know something useful. They were running out of places to check, and it was impossible to know how long they planned on keeping Brody alive or even in the same country.

* * * *

“Seventy-nine bottles of blood on the wall, seventy-nine bottles of blood.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

Brody would have smiled if everything didn’t hurt so damn much. Hell, even his teeth throbbed from the last scuffle with the hunter elder on the opposite side of the bars. Singing didn’t feel good either, but it pissed off Chester who wasn’t allowed to leave his presence without being relieved. The elder loathed the nickname Brody had bestowed on him months ago because the hunter reminded him of a scrawny orange cat that had never been good for anything but licking his ass.

“Take one down and pass it around, seventy-eight bottles of blood on the wall.” He grimaced as his ribs burned under the strain. His cracked lips stung, his throat drier than a creek bed during a drought. The rank clothes he wore were stained with both his blood and some from the hunters he’d managed to hurt before they contained him the last time.

Brody wanted to get up from where he sat on the ground in the cell they kept him in, but he was too weak to hold himself up. They might have been slow on the uptake in the beginning, but had finally figured out it was best to keep him as weak as it took to barely keep him alive.

His keeper for the last six months strolled the length of the small hallway, but wisely kept out of reach, should Brody get a burst of energy and reach through the bars for him. In the last six months, they’d come to blows enough to prove to Chester that if Brody wasn’t weak from the limited blood supply, he’d have done more than just leave the hunter with a few new scars.

“Seventy-eight bottles of blood on the wall,” Brody taunted.

The elder stopped, smirked. “I don’t need much of a reason to come in there and finish what we started yesterday.”

Brody cocked his head and gestured towards the door to his cell with a sweep of his arm that made his muscles scream in protest. “By all means, come on in.”

The elder didn’t move.

“No?” Brody shrugged, finding the iron bars infinitely more interesting than the man who’d done everything in his power to keep him trapped here. “Just as well,” he sighed. “I’m fresh out of tea bags anyway.” He nodded towards the rusting sink and commode at the far end of his cell. “Plus the tap water here has a real aftertaste that I just can’t seem to get used to.”

“It’s the best you’re going to get for a very long time.”

Brody picked at the bars with his fingernail. “So you keep telling me.”

“Here’s something I haven’t told you.”

“I’m on the edge of my seat,” Brody drawled, watching Chester from lowered lids. The elder didn’t make a move without him following it. The darkness so much a part of him stirred restlessly inside Brody, watching, waiting for a moment to strike, even in a weakened state.

Probably because of it.

Chester crouched down, studying the concrete floor intently before finally lifting his gaze to Brody’s. “Your girlfriend has been looking for you.”

Brody didn’t so much as blink at the revelation. It took everything inside him not to betray the unexpected swell of emotion that rose up in his throat at the mention of Julia.

“Girlfriend?” Brody smirked. “Would you be referring to the blonde I was ready to screw before you found me six months ago, the redhead in Paris whose husband’s bullet came a little too close, or perhaps you mean the first girl whose dress I got under, oh, almost six hundred years ago now.”

“Julia Sanchez.”

Brody expelled a sigh of sheer boredom. “It’s getting old how you keep bringing her up when she meant nothing to me.”

“I doubt she’d be trying to track you down if she meant nothing.”

“Maybe she’s just horny. I was good in bed.”

The elder ventured closer, and on a yawn Brody shut his eyes, the only thing that could give him away at this point. He concentrated on keeping his heart rate under control, but the thought of Julia risking her foolish neck for him had already fired his insides.

“Maybe I should pay her a visit.”

Brody cracked open an eye. “Just remember to say hi for me.”

Chester tipped his head, considering. “Do you honestly expect me to believe you care nothing for the vampire you took as your life-mate?”

“An unfortunate mistake on my part, but then we’ve had this conversation before.”

The elder laughed.

“Seventy-seven bottles of blood on the wall,” Brody chanted. “Seventy-seven bottles of blood.”

Chester sneered, and on his feet again, ventured closer.

Brody only bobbed his head to the music in his mind. “Take one down and pass it around …”

Julia’s face burned behind his eyes, his system pushing hard to keep up with the news. She was looking for him. Damn her.

“Perhaps I should tell her hello for you--”

Brody moved faster than he had in weeks, catching enough of the hunter’s shirt in his fist to drag him against the cell. The change in rhythm of the elder’s pulse was like a homing beacon.

Turning the wrist he’d yanked through the bars upwards, Brody bit down, his fangs lengthening at the first taste of blood.

Chester cried out, pulled futilely at his arm.

Brody should have been too weak to hold the hunter still enough to drink, but he didn’t release the fierce grapple hold he had on the elder. Chester’s blood filled his senses, a hundred times more potent than the animal blood they’d been giving him. It was a wonder vampires the world over hadn’t made hunters their chosen prey, if only for the rich satisfaction that came from drinking from them. Of course, given that the sole purpose of the hunters was to make sure vampires steered clear of preying on innocent humans, most of his kind tended to avoid the other race wherever possible.

Something pierced his side, and Brody flicked his gaze down to the dart stuck in his thigh.

He didn’t let go, needing every drop he could get. Needing it to get out of here so he could tell Julia to leave her search for him the hell alone. This wasn’t the first time they’d caught him, and even when he got out of here, he knew they’d keep coming.

His thigh stung yet again as another dart was embedded deep, and he faintly registered the second hunter brave enough to drug him like an animal, instead of taking him down himself.

His vision swam, and he clung to the tenuous grip on his captor’s wrist.

The elder was already too dazed to do more than try to shake him off like he was a mosquito instead of the lethal creature that surfaced at the first drop of blood. While hunters might have the edge when it came to diffusing vampire threats at a distance, once a vampire got their fangs into them--literally--the odds changed fairly quickly.

Another dart struck, and his stomach jackknifed. His knees trembled before they gave out, pitching him to the floor. Heart thundering, Brody leaned against the bars, the strength from the hunter’s blood slipping through a fuzzy haze that clouded his mind.

His arms hung at his sides, growing heavier until he couldn’t keep himself upright anymore. His head struck the hard cement floor and pain radiated down the side of his face. Through one thunderous beat of his heart after another, Brody forced his heavy eyes open, fighting the drug.

If he could stay awake he might find an opportunity to get the hell out of here. The sleepy-time cocktail oozing through his system argued against the odds of that. Through blurred vision, he watched the armed hunter drag the elder clear of the cell before examining the deep puncture wounds that would probably heal faster on the bastard than it took time to stitch him up.

Colors swirled and danced behind Brody’s closed lids like a July 4th fireworks display set in fast forward. He fought through the thickening veil coming down over his mind to get a read on both hunters, but the drug pulled him under too quickly.

* * * *