Reunion by Felicity Heaton (e book reader free .TXT) 📕

“No, nothing coherent.” He hesitated a moment and looked at her. She knew that look. It was about what had happened between her and Jascha. He was scared of bringing up things from the past. “He mentioned your name.”

She froze, feeling as though he had just hit her in the stomach and knocked the wind from her. She hadn’t expected that, but then, when she had gone into the room, Jascha had known it was her and he had called her by her old nickname. He had thought about her all these years too. It wasn’t a ridiculous idea in the slightest. He had been the one willing to reconcile after all.

“Nothing else?” she said, regaining her focus and pushing away from the dark, sharp thoughts trying to creep in at the corners of her mind. She didn’t want to remember that night. She didn’t want to remember how painful it had been and how it had felt to leave him.

“Nothing.”

Marise stared at him, hating how much he looked like his brother. It brought images of Jascha back, lying in that bed, covered in cuts and blood. Stinking like death.

Turning her back on Tynan, she straightened her cuffs and lightly ran her fingers over the marks on her wrist. He had been so gentle with her, even in his dire state. She had expected him to be rough if anything, greedy with hunger, but he had taken barely a sip. It spoke volumes to her, pages about how he didn’t want to hurt her. In a way, it had felt like an apology. She wished she could accept it.

“I have to call this in.” She went to leave but stopped herself and looked at Tynan again. “Jascha needs fresh, strong blood. Hunt for your brother.”

She was about to turn around again when he spoke.

“Did you find out anything from him?” His voice trembled the tiniest amount and his eyes showed her that he wasn’t just worried about his brother—he was worried about her too.

It had felt horrible to see Jascha like that. It still felt horrible. She couldn’t erase the sight of him from her mind and couldn’t imagine how Tynan had felt on seeing him beaten and broken. It must have been worse for him than the night Jascha had been turned and killed, reborn into his world.

She shook her head and gave him an apologetic look, wishing she could bring herself to shrug off the restraints of her position and comfort him.

“He was in too much pain,” she said and then smiled. “He’s speaking Russian at me. The boy still hasn’t learned that I don’t speak the language.”

Tynan smiled but she could see the sadness in it.

“Be careful tonight, Tynan. Whoever did this is still out there.”

Leaving him, she walked along the corridor and up the stairs to the ground floor of the expansive mansion. She tried to gather all the evidence in her head and thought about what she was going to tell the others. She couldn’t leave here without finding out more about this vampire hunter.

She couldn’t leave until she knew Jascha was well again.

The graveyard didn’t look much different to the last time she was here and the biting spring weather was exactly as she had remembered it. She wrapped her arms about herself, wishing she had brought her long black coat with her and wondering how she could’ve forgotten how cold it was. She had known that her time here would’ve been spent partly outside hunting whatever did this to her family. In the few brief hours after receiving the call and before her departure, her head had been in a spin and in a way it wasn’t surprising that she had forgotten to bring such things with her. She hadn’t even changed into her best uniform. Everything had passed in a blur.

Taking a deep breath of the freezing air, she listened to the silent cemetery. It was only a small place, but it was one of her favourites. She had always come here to be alone and think, and that was exactly what she needed right now—space to make sense of everything that had happened over the past twenty-four hours.

Seeing Jascha again had thrown her world off balance in a way she hadn’t expected. She had always known that if they were to meet again that things would be awkward to a degree but she had always thought she would be able to keep it together and remain detached from things, from him. Only she couldn’t. Her first sight of him had rocked her, shaken her to the core and brought all her old feelings back to the surface. She had forgotten how strong they were. The years apart had dulled them, easing her pain and leaving her free to focus on her duty. The instant she had laid eyes on him, everything had come back, not only her feelings, but the memories of that night.

Today, she had foolishly compounded those emotions and given them a stronger hold over her heart. They were impossible to shake now. She must have been insane to think she could walk in there and tend to Jascha’s wounds without her feelings getting involved. If she was honest with herself, that was what today had been all about. It was purely her love for him driving her, not a need to get him healthy again so she could get answers. She’d had to see that he was on his way to being healed so she could focus on her work by eliminating her worry about his condition.

Her head jerked up when a twig snapped in the distance.

Her senses immediately sharpened and she searched the area with them.

A tiny blip of movement grew into something big enough to be human.

She focused on the signature and slunk behind a tomb. They were walking towards her. She stilled, disappearing into the background, as silent as the grave at her back. They were definitely human. She sniffed. Definitely. Male. No trace of alcohol.

There was only one kind of sober human crazy enough to wander through a cemetery in the dead of night.

A vampire hunter.

Marise tracked their progress through the headstones and bided her time, making sure they were alone before she made a move. Maybe this hunter was the one that had hurt Jascha. Her blood burned with hunger for violence. If it wasn’t, then she could perhaps get a little information on who and where that particular hunter was.

The man neared.

The bones of her face shifted to allow her teeth to extend. Her eyes switched and the world came into sharp focus, everything around her becoming clear on her senses. She could smell the dew on the grass as it froze, could hear the tiny leaves rustling in the light breeze, barely more than a whisper, and could hear the heavy footfalls of the vampire hunter.

She closed her eyes, focusing everything on him.

Three.

Two.

One.

In a lightning quick movement, she had slipped from her hiding place, grabbed the hunter around the throat, disarmed him, and slammed him against the cold stone of the tomb. His breath left him on impact, the stake clattered onto the path, the world slowed to a more natural pace.

Her grip tightened.

He choked, his eyes going wide as though she was a vision of Death himself.

Satisfied that he knew not to try anything, she loosened her fingers and let him breathe. He gasped in air, tears streaming down his face. He very sensibly kept his hands up by his sides, as though she was about to arrest him.

She didn’t arrest humans, she arrested vampires.

She executed people.

“Keep calm, and you might walk away with your life,” she whispered close to his face, letting him get a good look at her fangs as she smiled.

His face was in shadow but the streetlamp shone on hers. His eyes locked with hers and she knew what he was thinking as he stared into them.

“You’re one of them,” he said in a trembling voice.

He had never met one from the seven pure bloodlines before. Not many hunters did, and those that were given the honour, usually didn’t live to tell the tale. Unless a hunter got in their way, most pureblood vampires allowed them to do their jobs because they were a good form of pest control, killing the weakling vampires and saving them from having to do it instead.

Now another hunter had dared challenge the purebloods, as though it wasn’t bad enough that her species had to deal with the likes of Caden and Nathaniel Rivers. Only this new hunter posed a real threat. The others were mostly an irritation rather than danger to her kind.

Marise stared at the man in front of her. He had a good build, probably strong enough to cope with hunting the weaklings, but the bastard bloodline had far less strength and skill than her species. His dark hair was cropped short, almost shaved, and his face bore the scars of his battles, claw marks and even a set of teeth marks on his neck. He had clearly had a few close calls in his time. It would be a shame to kill him, but duty dictated she get her answers from humans and eradicate them to avoid humans becoming aware of vampires.

“You are not like the one I am looking for,” she said, giving him a frown and acting coy so he would begin to believe that he was going to survive this. He wouldn’t talk as she needed him to if he thought his death was imminent. Humans had a way of going to pieces when faced with the realisation that this was it, the glorious end to their pointless little life.

Food for their superiors.

“Who are you looking for?” There it was, that spark of hope in his eyes that made her stomach warm with satisfaction. He thought that giving her information on someone else was going to convince her to spare him.

If she did, he would continue to hunt the weaklings and kill them, but he could also find this new hunter and tell them about what was happening. She couldn’t allow the new hunter to be warned about the fact they were looking for him.

“A vampire hunter, an elite, a monster.” She held his gaze.

A flicker of recognition crossed his face.

“You know them?” she said.

He nodded and she loosened her grip a little more, feeding his hope so he would speak. He was young. Probably no more than mid-thirties. What kind of young man had a death wish big enough to hunt vampires?

He cleared his throat and gave her a shaky smile.

“He’s not with me. I don’t even know the guy. I’ve just seen him around. I saw what he did to a group of vampires last night.” His accent was thick and definitely not European. American possibly. It wasn’t often an American knew about vampires. Most vampires had enough sense to remain on this side of the ocean in their homeland.

“What did he do?” She leaned in closer, eager to hear what the hunter was capable of and how he killed. The method would