What had happened to real music like Beethoven and Chopin? He’d even take some Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra, or Billy Joel over this. This crap was enough to drive the best of vampires over the edge, and he was far from the best. But the humans liked it as they ground against each other with a frenzy the equivalent of foreplay.
Movement behind him drew his attention to Killean and Saxon as they approached from the shadows. The few humans who had been standing nearby shrank away from Killean and vanished down the stairs.
“Anything?” Ronan demanded of them.
Killean shook his head as his golden-tiger eyes went past Ronan to the dance floor. A scar sliced straight down from his deep brown hairline and over his right eye before ending halfway down his cheek. Killean had come to work with Ronan when he was fifty-two, that had been four hundred years ago, and Ronan still had no idea what had caused that scar or who had given it to him. He knew it had been inflicted on Killean before he’d become a fully mature vampire only because it remained.
Next to Killean, Saxon folded his arms over his chest and his hazel eyes drifted toward the ceiling. His dark blond hair stood up in spikes around his head. “Something else might have attracted him away from here,” Saxon said. “There may be another club or bar or something we missed nearby.”
Or Joseph had managed to elude them again. Ronan’s teeth ground together as he released the railing. He wasn’t looking forward to killing the vampire he’d once considered an ally, but he wanted this over with. With Joseph’s purebred status, knowledge of the way they worked, and complete disregard of human and vampire life, he was far more lethal than many of the other Savages they’d dealt with. It had been centuries since one of their own had given in to their savage nature.
As far as Ronan could tell, going by the increased amount of disappearances, people who’d had their throats cut, and animal attacks since Joseph had given in, he’d killed over a hundred people and was averaging at least one a day. That didn’t include the amount of vampires he’d slaughtered too.
With every human death, Joseph grew in power, but he also became weaker. By now, Ronan knew his old ally couldn’t tolerate the sun anymore. Holy water and crucifixes would affect him, and soon enough, he wouldn’t be able to cross large bodies of water, if he still could now.
Movement on the dance floor drew his attention as a tall man with black hair glided through the crowd with ease. Some of the women stopped dancing to flirt with him and the three men trailing him. All the men continued through the crowd as if they didn’t see the women.
Ronan grasped the rail again as he watched the four of them. Judging by the way they carried themselves and the thick coats they wore when the humans had all checked theirs, Ronan knew what they really were…
“Hunters,” he murmured. “And not human hunters, but born ones.”
The born vampire hunters sometimes took in humans who knew of the existence of vampires. The hunters trained these humans how to kill vampires, but often those human hunters were bait for vampires. The hunters believed vampires were the monsters, but the practice of using the humans as bait was more ruthless than anything Ronan had ever done to a human.
“Bastards,” Killean hissed so low that Ronan barely heard him.
“Well, that made this night a lot less fun,” Declan said and leaned his hip against the rail.
“Do you think they’re tracking Joseph?” Saxon inquired.
“I don’t know,” Ronan replied as he watched the four men disappear beneath the balcony. “Watch the stairs. If they come this way, be prepared to fight.”
Saxon and Killean slipped back toward the stairs, moving through the few humans gathered in the shadows. Most of the mortals were entangled with someone else, or multiple someone elses. A few were huddling together, seeking a fix from their drug of choice.
Ronan had come here to destroy Joseph, but now they may also have to take out an enemy they hadn’t expected—an enemy that didn’t have to be an enemy, if the hunters weren’t so fucking stupid. But throughout the history of vampires and hunters, and despite their common ancestors, the hunters had always believed all vamps were bad. There was no reasoning with them; there was only surviving them.
He’d done what he had to do to survive before and killed a couple of hunters in his lifetime. If it became necessary, he would do it again tonight.
CHAPTER 2
Kadence watched from the shadows as her brother, Nathan, disappeared down the stairs to the club with her fellow hunters, Asher, Logan, and Jayce, following him. Nathan would kill her if he knew she was here, or more likely lecture her for hours on end, but she wasn’t going to sit this hunt out. She was forced to sit out most of her life; she wouldn’t miss this.
She just had no idea how to get into that club. Her gaze ran over the line of people snaking around the side of the building and waiting to get inside. The man at the front of the line held a red rope. He’d let her brother in as soon as Nathan approached him. Kadence had never met the man before, and if she had to wait in line, she would never make it inside in time. She didn’t know how or why, but she’d always somehow known things over the years, and her instincts were telling her this would be the night and she had to get inside now.
Just as her instincts had told her when her father was killed. She shuddered at the memory of the sweeping, empty feeling that had descended over her the second her father left this world. Hours later his death was confirmed, but it had been no surprise to her when she saw his body. Her fingers dug into her palms at the reminder of how ineffective she’d been. Yes, she’d known when he died, but she hadn’t known in time to try to prevent that death.
Now she knew that tonight was the night they would find the vamp who had murdered her father. She’d been working on trying to break out of the stronghold for a while, but she’d known tonight was the night she had to go. She’d buried her anxiety over the prospect of being on the other side of the walls that had encompassed her for most of her life, and put her escape plan into motion.
As a hunter, she’d been trained on how to kill a vamp, but as a female hunter, she’d never been allowed to actually fight a vamp or to mingle with humans. This was the first time she’d been out of the hunter stronghold in twenty years, and the last time was only because they’d relocated from Virginia to Massachusetts when an upswing of vampire activity drew them to the area.
Most times, she understood why she was kept so sheltered, but she resented it all the time. There was so much of the world to see, so much to explore and learn outside of the thousands of books she’d poured through in her lifetime. She knew hunters were vital to keeping the human population safe from the monsters that came out at night, but did that mean her life had to be sacrificed?
Kadence sighed and her shoulders hunched forward. Yes, that’s exactly what it meant.
As her dad had always told her, one life was nothing compared to the billions of lives relying on the hunter race to continue. Yes, they could recruit humans, and they did, but it was necessary to continue the pure hunter line as well. However, it was often difficult for a female hunter to conceive so the women were protected and the men fought.
She’d been privileged to be born into her role as a future wife and mother—or at least that’s what she’d been told, repeatedly, over the years. She didn’t think being locked away to the point of claustrophobia and already betrothed to Logan was all that lucky, but her opinion didn’t matter.