If they never slept together, never exchanged blood, and never went any further with the mating bond, she still fully expected he would be the end of her. Spending an eternity knowing she’d found her mate, and lost him, would destroy her.
And what would happen when Nathan inevitably died? She shuddered and refused to think about it further.
She focused on Duke again. One obstacle at a time.
“I cared for you as much as you did me,” she replied. “You say you owed them money, yet they gave you money when they came for me. I saw it, Duke, before they took me out of your apartment, I saw the money they handed you.”
“No, I… no,” Duke whimpered.
“How much did they pay you for me?”
“Nooooo,” Duke whined.
A creak drew Nathan’s gaze to the basement stairs. Slipping out of the dark, he raced across the basement before someone could enter. Stepping into the stairwell, he discovered two bedraggled children huddling together on the steps. They recoiled when they spotted him.
“It’s okay,” he said, but they hugged each other as their eyes fell on the bloody stake in his hand. Beads of blood plopped onto the floor from both his hands.
Vicky glanced over at Nathan when he spoke, and she realized someone had come to explore the noise.
“Don’t you remember how good it was between us?” Duke murmured. “How good I made you feel, how often you came. It can be that good again between us.”
“You must think I’m an idiot, and believe me, it wasn’t that good. I’m outstanding at faking it.” She faked almost everything in her life.
She’d had enough of this; she’d never wanted to torture him, only wanted him dead, and she didn’t have to know how much they paid for her. It might make her feel worse to learn how much Duke believed her life was worth.
Lifting the stake over her head, she gripped it in both hands before driving it down, through his back, and into his heart. Duke jerked, his mouth parted, and his round eyes met hers before the life slipped out of them and he slumped to the ground.
Rising, she wiped off her hands and walked over to help Nathan.
Nathan stepped toward the children but stopped when they clutched each other tighter.
“Shh, it’s fine,” Vicky soothed the children when she appeared beside him.
The blood streaking her face seemed offensive on her pretty features, and he resisted wiping it away as she stepped so close her arm brushed his. When she focused on the children, the swell of her power rippled against his skin.
“There’s nothing to see here,” she murmured to them. “You heard nothing and saw nothing. You’re perfectly safe.”
A glazed look came into the children’s eyes as Vicky used her power to change their memories and compel them to do what she commanded. At one time, this show of vampire power would have infuriated him. Hunters were immune to a vampire’s mind control abilities, but he despised that they could do this to others.
Now, he welcomed her calming these kids.
“Go on home now,” Vicky said.
The children leapt to their feet and raced up the stairs. Nathan watched them go before turning to her. “Duke?”
“Dead.”
He intended to find out who and what Duke had turned her over to, but first, they had to clean up this mess.
CHAPTER 6
Vicky remained by the basement stairs to stop and change the memories of anyone else who might come to investigate. She listened for any hint of a distant siren, but all she detected was the raised volume on a lot of TVs. Apparently, the residents preferred going deaf over getting involved.
Nathan left the basement out the door the Savages used to enter. He returned a few minutes later and started removing the dead. It only took him half an hour to haul out the bodies, but Vicky’s nerves felt stretched tauter than a bowstring by the time he finished.
“I have to get the one in my apartment,” he told her when he rejoined her at the bottom of the steps. “I’ll be right back.”
When he vanished from view, she crept up the stairs after him and stood in the dirty front hall. Only one time in her life had she ever felt this lonely, and then she’d been a chained, vampire Happy Meal.
In the warehouse, she at least had hope her family would somehow find her, but now she had nothing.
These past seven months, she’d focused on one thing: killing Duke. She’d succeeded. He was dead; she should be celebrating, yet somehow, she felt emptier than before. Her revenge had propelled her every day. It kept her going through the nightmares, cold sweats, and flashbacks of her imprisonment haunting her days and nights.
What do I do now? She rubbed at the scar on her wrist as she contemplated a question she couldn’t answer. She’d believed killing Duke would somehow cleanse her, but she only felt… lost.
A creaking step drew her attention to Nathan as he stepped off the stairs leading up to his apartment and turned the corner toward her. Grim resolve had settled over his features, but he couldn’t hide his weariness or the bedsheet-enshrouded body tossed over his shoulder.
“Did anyone see you?” she whispered.
“No.”
Vicky turned and led the way back into the basement. Once off the stairs, she stepped aside to follow him over to the exit and outside. A dented and rusting pickup was parked next to the door. Vicky cringed when she saw the bodies heaped into the back like some death cart from the bubonic plague. All they needed was to start ringing a bell and calling for people to bring out their dead. In this neighborhood, they might get some takers.
No one moved on the city streets, and if someone did walk by the alley, the truck was positioned so the bed faced a brick wall. Still, she felt antsy to get out of there.
The truck’s springs creaked when Nathan tossed the body into the bed and walked to the cab of the pickup. Opening the driver’s door, he reached behind the seat and removed a large, blue tarp. Nathan lifted himself into the bed, hooked the tarp to the latches there, and pulled the material across the bodies. So many vamps packed the truck that the tarp bowed up in the middle, and he could see the perfect imprint of hands, faces, and legs.
With a sigh, he walked back to the truck, removed two more tarps and started stuffing them around the bodies, so it looked more like debris instead of corpses piled into the back. With his adrenaline and the thrill of the fight easing, he started to feel his bruises and exhaustion as he worked.
Vicky went back inside, retrieved their weapons, and erased as much evidence of their fight as she could before rejoining him.
“All set inside?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He jumped out of the back of the truck and walked to the driver’s side door. “Get in.”
The passenger door squeaked when she pulled it open and slid onto the bench seat. Yellow stuffing poked through the black vinyl interior in small patches; in other areas, silver duct tape covered the holes in the seat and dashboard.
Exhausted, Vicky’s head fell against the window behind her as Nathan shifted the truck into first and pulled out of the alley.
“I’m sorry I got you involved in this,” she murmured.
“I got myself involved,” he replied as he steered through the quiet neighborhood streets. “I could have left you there.”