The beauty of it hit him hard in the way it always did, had him transfixed as he took in every nick in the razor-sharp blade and recounted all the vampires he had killed with it, using the silver it contained to send them to their final deaths.
The need to hunt condensed inside him, boiled and raged, pushed at him until he surrendered to it. He swiftly sheathed the blade and jammed it into the waist of his fatigues, and focusing on his destination, he summoned his ability to teleport.
Darkness whirled around him, consumed him as he took a single step forwards. Familiar sensation washed through him, his connection to the Underworld lasting only a heartbeat before he emerged from the teleport. It was comforting nonetheless, and the closest he had been to home in two hundred years.
He landed in a cobbled alley surrounded by old cream stone buildings. The air was thicker here in Barcelona than in Seville, heavy with moisture that made it hard to breathe as the stifling heat bore down on him. He gave himself a moment to adjust to the summer temperatures, and then silently moved along the alley, using the shadows as cover as he stealthily approached the arched entrance of the vampire nest.
His senses sharpened as he focused them ahead of him, eager to count the number of foes awaiting him.
Only it wasn’t twelve signatures that popped up on his internal radar.
It was only five.
Marek cursed and moved faster, drawing his blade from its sheath at the same time. He could still eliminate these five, taking the edge off his hunger, and then he would wait for the rest to return. He reached the entrance of the building and stopped dead as the scent of spilled vampire blood hit him together with a feminine grunt and a hiss.
There hadn’t been any females among the vampires.
Was it a vampire?
Or a victim?
He eased the heavy wooden doors open and slipped inside. His eyes rapidly adjusted to the darkness that clung to the ground floor of the building, revealing the courtyard.
And a woman.
She stood in the centre of the courtyard, the low lights reflecting off her caramel-coloured hair as it tumbled around her shoulder, shifting in waves as she turned her head left and then right, eyeing the four male vampires moving to flank her. If it hadn’t been for the fact that she was facing off against the vampires, he would have thought her one of them with her tight dark clothing. She matched their style perfectly, calf-height black leather boots showing over her tight navy jeans and a form-fitting black tank revealing her toned figure.
A thin cut slashed up her left arm, a crimson trail from it reaching her elbow.
Darkness stirred inside him as she took in the vampires, her wide luminous hazel eyes bright with what looked a lot like fear.
A startling new urge blasted through Marek in response.
A need to protect her.
The dark-haired vampire facing her licked his fangs.
Not on Marek’s watch.
Darkness rushed through him, sweet and addictive, dangerously seductive as it subdued his softer emotions, leaving only raw rage and a black hunger for violence behind. His nails sharpened into claws, canines lengthening to match those the vampire was flashing at the woman.
His would-be victim.
Marek leaned his weight forwards and readied his blade, his gaze locking onto the male; mind racing to calculate everything about him, from his weight and height, to which foot he favoured and any possible weapons he had concealed on his body.
Satisfied that the vampire wouldn’t stand a chance, Marek pressed down on his right foot, intending to launch at the male.
Only the woman picked that moment to yell a battle cry and spin on her heel, a silver blur shining around her as she gracefully pirouetted.
And stabbed the vampire nearest Marek right through his heart with a short sword.
Marek rocked back on his heels.
She wasn’t a victim.
She was a warrior.
Breathtaking as she ducked beneath the blow from the blond male behind her and lashed out with her leg in a fluid sweep that looked as if she had performed it a thousand times. She caught the male’s ankles, toppling him, and spun back up to her full height as she brought her blade around.
It sliced clean through the throat of the vampire she had stabbed, cleaving his head from his body as he frantically clutched at the bubbling wound in his chest. The vampire slumped to land by what appeared to be the fizzing remains of another vampire, giving Marek a better view of the warrior as she took on the remaining three.
Part of Marek growled at him to intervene, to protect her as he had intended.
The rest of him was struck dumb by how gracefully she moved as she twisted and turned, blocked and attacked, undeterred by the way the vampires evaded her blows.
He had never seen anything like her.
It wasn’t fear that flashed in her hazel eyes as she spun on her heel and jammed her blade into the gut of the blond vampire. It was excitement. Pleasure. The same thrill he felt as he watched her.
Who was she?
The hunger that had gone dormant inside him the moment he had set eyes on her returned with a vengeance, snarling a black demand in his head as he watched her fighting the vampires.
Fighting his vampires.
It didn’t matter who she was. She was intruding on his battle, had ruined his plans for the night. These vermin were his to kill.
The woman slashed her blade across the leg of the blond vampire, cutting deep into his thigh through his black jeans, delivering another deadly blow of silver judging by how the vampire she had managed to kill was slowly melting away to nothing.
She leaned over and grasped the male by his hair, stared into his eyes as the silver consumed him, tearing pained hisses from between his clenched teeth as he convulsed.
Her first mistake.
A fatal one.
She had taken her eyes off the remaining two.
The tall dark-haired male grabbed her from behind, fisted her fall of caramel hair and pulled her head back, ripping a pained cry from her lips.
The vampire’s eyes blazed red as he bent his head to pierce her delicate neck with his filthy fangs.
Marek growled from the shadows, the feral snarl pealing from him before he could contain it as the need to protect her roared back to the fore, stealing control of him again.
The woman tensed.
The vampires froze.
Their glowing scarlet eyes edged towards him.
Marek launched at them on a roar.
Chapter 2
Disgust rolled through Caterina and not for the first time that night. She stalked the streets, her blood on fire as she tailed two men, keeping her distance so she didn’t rouse suspicion. She blended with the tourists whenever they stopped, snapped pictures with her phone and played the innocent, admiring the cathedral that towered at the edge of the gothic quarter in her city.
Barcelona.
Out of the corner of her eye, the men moved on. She broke away from the group of twittering tourists gathered on the broad paved pedestrian area and headed towards the trees that lined the buildings opposite the cathedral, where there were fewer people. She reached the intersection with one of the main shopping avenues and paused to seek her prey, ignoring the street vendors as they tried to sell her everything from things that squeaked when you blew air through them to illuminated mini-helicopters launched into the air using rubber bands.
The two men took a left, heading deeper into the gothic quarter.
She glared at their backs.
Vampires.
In her city.