Masquerade (Vampires Realm Series Book 7) (Reading Sample) by Felicity Heaton (reading fiction txt) 📕

“I do not know. They found me there and spoke to me about it... they are young and when you were injured they spent a great deal of time with members of my squad. I presume they just prefer the way I do things.”

She snorted. “Like returning to the mansion when you should have remained at your position and waited for Seth so you could file your reports together? And how is it you patrolled half the grounds so quickly? Eager to get back to the mansion? Did you even go out at all?”

She wasn’t going to let that one go. She must have met Seth during her search for her men and he must have told her what had happened. It irked him that she believed Seth rather than him, that she was willing to believe he hadn’t done his duty tonight and patrolled, but what irritated him most of all was that she was so damned friendly with Seth.

When had that happened?

When she had been in training with him, she had never favoured Seth’s opinion over his own, or sought the man out to spend time relaxing with him in the reception room. He knew that she did that now. She would sit there in that room, discussing patrol and books with Seth, smiling at him as though they were friends. When had everything changed?

Vivek’s gaze fell to her stomach, to a spot above her left hip where her black jacket and shirt concealed a thick scar.

Had it all changed that night a decade ago?

His stomach clenched with the memory and he couldn’t tear his gaze away, couldn’t stop the images from flooding his mind and dragging pain and fear in their wake. Sophis with a dagger in her gut, poisoned blood pouring from the wound and covering his thighs as he held her in the middle of the cemetery surrounded by graves that stank of death and waited for the medical team to arrive, praying they would make it in time.

Tears had streaked her pale cheeks, her ashen lips working silently to tell him things he couldn’t hear because the ringing in his ears had obliterated them.

He had known it then, sitting there with her, watching her die from an encounter that never should have happened because he never should have signed off on her training and allowed her to join the ranks. He should have put an end to it then, told their former commander that she wasn’t cut out for the guard and that she should remain a civilian.

Why hadn’t he?

Vivek closed his eyes.

Because she had been young enough at the time that her sire would have whisked her away.

She would have left Saint Petersburg.

“This isn’t like you.” Her softly spoken words wounded him and desire to defend his actions leapt into his heart but he couldn’t put voice to it. He kept his eyes closed, hiding in the dark and pretending that he hadn’t heard those words leaving her lips and felt them cutting into his heart.

That he hadn’t just had an epiphany.

“Seth was right... Ella has gone to your head and—”

“Now wait a minute.” His head shot up and he fixed her with a glare. Ella was nothing to him. The woman had come into the room and sat on his lap. She had been chasing him, not the other way around. He had tried to make her get off, had known that Sophis would come and see her best friend close to him, and that it would wound her worse than any cruel words he might have said or anything he might have done to her.

Sophis swept her hand out to silence him. “I’m taking the lead. If you don’t like it, deal with it. When we get back to the mansion, I’m going to file a report and then you’re going to speak to my men and tell them the truth. If I see them with you again, I’m reporting you to Commander Tynan. We’ll see who drops a few ranks then.”

The steely edge to her eyes screamed that she would go through with that threat. She turned on her heel and strode on ahead through the haloes of the lights on the quiet pedestrian street.

There was no imminent threat on his senses but Vivek followed her anyway, remaining a few steps behind her to give her some space. He could still feel her anger and knew that if he dared to walk any closer that she would unleash it on him again. Instinct told him to move closer, whispering insidious words about not being able to protect her should she come under attack. He tamped down his need to take the lead in order to keep her safe and swept the area with his senses, trying to remain alert even as his focus kept flicking back to Sophis.

If vampire hunters attacked, he could easily move in front of her and take them head on. She would hate him for it, but at this point her opinion of him couldn’t get much worse. He would rather take the hit on her dire view of him than have her injured again. She might not want to admit it, but he had seen it in her eyes enough times in the past to know that she was aware that he was stronger than her and faster, and better skilled at fighting.

Sophis stopped at a crossroads ahead.

Vivek came up beside her, risking her wrath. She jerked her chin left, towards the broad glittering swath of river at the end of a gently sloping road. He nodded and she turned and walked on, taking the lead once more. The world around them was still, all of the windows in the buildings that edged the pavement dark and not a single car moving nearby. A chill wind carried the hum of distant vehicles in the busier city centre across the river. Finding hunters was always difficult in a city as large as Saint Petersburg but not many humans roamed the streets this late at night. Normally their only occupants were dealers, thieves, vampire hunters and unfortunate souls in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He trailed behind Sophis as she continued down the incline to the river, his gaze scanning the parked cars that lined the residential street. The lights hanging above the middle of the road were brighter here, punctuating the darkness at intervals and even reaching the pavement. A breeze swept up from the river, pungent with the scent of the water, but carrying a familiar undertone.

A vampire hunter he knew well.

Aleksis Romanov.

When had he returned to Saint Petersburg?

Vivek focused all his senses on Sophis, using the intensity of them to silently signal her. She slowed to a halt and looked back over her shoulder at him. He motioned for her to remain there and swept his senses out again. The man was on the move and not far from them. Vivek studied his surroundings, looking for possible avenues of escape or hiding places. Few and far between. The river was barely two hundred metres away and the edge of the road that lined it was even closer still. If Aleksis had his wits about him, he would be aware of them the moment he crossed the road to continue along the river. Even with their preternatural speed, they wouldn’t reach the crossroads behind them before Aleksis came into view.

Vivek caught Sophis’s arm and ran down the sloping street with her, heading towards the hunter. His senses screamed a warning at him but he kept running, silent and fast, aiming for the rear of a white van less than one hundred metres from the intersection.

Sophis gasped behind him as the dark haired man appeared in view at the bottom of the road, his hands tucked into the front pockets of his thick black wool coat and the upturned collar obscuring the lower half of his face. Vivek tugged her to one side, behind the large parked van, and pressed her against the doors. He held her there, his senses locked on the vampire hunter, monitoring him in case he had spotted them. The feel of Sophis against him, her chest rising and falling with her rapid breathing, threatened to bring back their fight and how intoxicating it had felt to have her pinned beneath him. He shoved the feelings away, locking them out of his mind along with his earlier epiphany about why he wanted Sophis off the guard, and forced himself to remain focused on the vampire hunter.

He drew a slow deep breath through his nose, catching the man’s scent. It held an underlying note of vampire. Not a weakling vampire either. It was Venia this man smelt like. Had he been fighting one of the city patrols this evening? Aleksis was foolish enough to go after Vivek’s kind, the pureblood vampires.

Back when Vivek had first encountered the man, the pure bloodlines hadn’t known of the existence of enhanced hunters. The fact that he had survived their first battle had only added to the suspicion the bloodlines had about the hunters after the sudden increase in the numbers of those capable of fighting purebloods around thirty years ago. It was only recently that they had discovered why vampire hunters had become so strong.

Someone had been playing God, tampering with their DNA to include genetic code taken from vampires. The result of the mutation didn’t give him the strength of a pureblood, but it did elevate the human to a level similar to a weakling vampire and made him more of a threat to Vivek’s kind.

When the Law Keepers had discovered this, they had created a database and given all seven pure bloodlines access so they could add information as they gathered it. It detailed known abilities and skills, marked the hunter as an enhanced or normal human, and provided locations they had been spotted. Aleksis’s name was on that register. It was proving useful even in its infancy. They had even granted the werewolves permission to use it and the dogs had provided some extremely useful information about hunters they had encountered. Allied in this war against the new threat of the vampire hunters, his kind were armed with the knowledge and the power to eradicate them before they became a danger.

Aleksis Romanov would die but not until his traits had been documented and his allies exposed.

Vivek wanted that mission.

He wanted vengeance.

Sophis stared beyond his shoulder with wide ice-blue eyes, her body trembling against his, betraying the fact that she had sensed the vampire hunter now disappearing from view behind the set of buildings to Vivek’s right and she feared him.

Aleksis Romanov would die by Vivek’s hand with the dagger he kept locked in a box in his quarters.

The same dagger the vampire hunter had used on Sophis over a decade ago.

Her shaking hand brushed Vivek’s hip as she brought it to rest over the left side of her stomach. Her skin drained of colour.

Without considering the consequences, Vivek placed his hand against her cheek and brought her head around so she faced him. Her pale eyes met his and the look in them compelled him to fulfil her silent request. It was strange to see her so afraid, so weak, and even stranger to have her relying on his strength.

“I will not let him near you,” Vivek whispered, so low it was barely audible even to their heightened hearing. “He will lead us to his fellow hunters. We must follow him. Are you able to proceed?”

She was still for a few seconds, the look in her eyes and her feelings on his senses