The vampire behind her shrieked and staggered backwards, tugging her with him as he tripped across the courtyard. Heat bloomed on her neck and shoulder, the sickening stench of blood filling her nostrils and the bubbling hiss telling her what had happened.
The warrior had better aim than she had expected.
She wrenched free of the vampire and spared him a glance as he went down, clutching the knife protruding from his forehead.
The dark-haired warrior grabbed her arm and shoved her backwards, behind him. He planted a heavy boot against the fallen vampire’s chest, gripped the hilt of his weapon and pulled it free, the sucking sound sending bile blazing up Caterina’s throat.
“Keep back.” The warrior’s gravelly voice rolled over her, a pleasant belly-heating timbre to it as he moved to face the final vampire.
It distracted her enough that it took her a moment to realise something.
He was shielding her from the vampire, and he meant to fight the bastard alone.
She rallied and shirked his grip, because she was damned if that was happening. This was her nest of vampires.
The final kill was hers to make.
And if he stood in her way, she would cut him down too.
Chapter 3
The last thing Marek expected as he stared down the brunet vampire was the woman wrenching free of his grip and storming past him.
It surprised him enough that it took him a moment to realise what she was doing.
She spat a vicious curse in the Catalan tongue and raised her sword as she bore down on the vampire. Marek couldn’t blame the male for looking as stunned as he felt. Blood flecked her face and drenched her sword, rolled from the places where she had been caught by more than one set of claws, and her hazel eyes were bright with the high of battle.
She was a formidable sight for such a slender, petite creature.
The vampire shook himself out of his stupor just as the woman reached him and dodged left, leaving her on a collision course with one of the pillars supporting the overhanging floors above the courtyard. She slammed her left hand into it and pivoted, using the momentum to her advantage as she pushed off, muscles flexing beneath her golden skin.
Marek leaped into the fray with her, partly because she needed his assistance with this vampire because Marek could sense he was stronger than the others she had managed to dispatch, and partly because he wasn’t about to let her steal his quarry.
The vampire spotted him and put on a burst of speed, appearing behind Marek. Closer to the door. He meant to escape. It wasn’t going to happen.
The woman noticed his intent too and turned on a pinhead to track the vampire, almost losing her footing in the process. Marek beat her to the male, using his own preternatural speed to cut him off before he could reach the door. The vampire almost barrelled into him, saving himself at the last second by back-peddling hard, his arms flailing as he fought for balance.
A flash of victory shone in the woman’s eyes as she came up behind the vampire and Marek couldn’t contain the growl that rolled up his throat as he realised he had driven the vampire right into her arms.
She gripped her sword with both hands and brought it up in a fast, brutal arc. The vampire bellowed as he arched forwards, blood spraying from above his shoulder as the blade swept upwards, delivering a vicious blow that was sure to be his end.
She swore again in Catalan, a not very complimentary curse about the vampire’s mother, and spun on her heel as Marek watched, too enthralled by the bewitching beauty to move as she sang a siren’s song to his heart.
It was hard not to find her alluring when she was doing his favourite pastime with so much grace and fire.
It was hard not to find her arousing.
The heat of battle was no place to be feeling pleasure from anything other than breaking bones, severing arteries and claiming heads, but it was hard not to feel it as he watched her decapitate the vampire.
Blood splattered over Marek’s chest but he didn’t notice, was too enchanted by how fire lit her eyes as she came to a halt, breathing hard, that delicious high of victory painted all over her face so vibrantly that he swore he could feel it, knew exactly what she was experiencing as she held her blade out at her side and watched the final vampire fall.
Gods, damn, she was incredible.
But also infuriating.
“That was my vampire,” he said, voice a low growl that hid none of his fury as he looked down at the bubbling, smoking corpse between them. “This whole nest was mine.”
She was swift to ready herself for a fight, bringing her sword down in front of her and bracing her feet apart. His heart beat a little harder, that wicked sort of heat she stirred in his veins burning hotter as she faced him, looking for all the world as if he was next on her dance card.
He wanted to be next on it, but the sort of dancing his body wanted wasn’t the kind she had dealt these vampires.
He wanted to tangle with her.
Ached for it.
He had seen strong women before, Valen’s beloved Eva being one of them, but they were rare and this female was a jewel among them, shining brightly and beckoning him. He wanted to possess her, and that made her infinitely more dangerous than the rest of her kind.
“So what?” she spat in heavily accented English, her chin jerking up as her features set hard, soft pink lips flattening and fine eyebrows drawing down over her bright hazel eyes. “You should have beat me to them then. Don’t cry to me because you weren’t quick enough and I bested you.”
He raised an eyebrow at her as his blood heated another ten degrees. “Bested me?”
He almost growled, but then the irritating voice of reason chimed that she had beaten him to the kills.
He wasn’t going to let it slide that easily though.
“There were a dozen vampires in this nest.” He cast a glance around the bloodbath in the courtyard. Carnage that the woman stood in the middle of, a vision of crimson-splattered beauty. He tried to ignore the fresh bolt of hot lust that rushed through him on looking back at her. “I count only five bodies.”
She swept her blade to her right, sending the remaining blood on it flying to the pavement, and slipped it into the sheath he had noticed strapped to her back. Did she no longer consider him a threat? Her second mistake of the evening.
Just because she was human, didn’t mean she was safe from his wrath.
“I’ll find the rest,” she snarled as her pretty face darkened. “I’ll scour the damned city until every last one of them is like that.”
She nodded her head towards the vampire decaying between them, now little more than a bubbling pile on the paving slabs.
“I don’t think so.” Marek flexed his fingers around the worn leather hilt of his blade and her gaze flickered there. Her right hand inched behind her hip, edging towards the grip of her sword. She didn’t need to worry. He wasn’t going to attack her, but he wasn’t going to let her have her way either. “You already killed enough of my vampires.”
And the hunger he had hoped to sate was still riding him hard, unsatisfied by the single kill he had managed. He needed to find the others and deal with them, needed the high of battle that she was experiencing. The high she had stolen from him.
She huffed and planted her hands on her hips. “I didn’t see your name carved on them. They’re mine and you need to back off.”