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

Vivek lingered.

He looked at his hand where it cupped her soft cool cheek and the dark thread of blood just above his thumb. Temptation to sweep the pad of his thumb over it, to tell her that he hadn’t meant to draw blood and that it hadn’t just been because he knew the scent of it would distract him during their fight, overwhelmed him but he battled it. Sophis would never believe him capable of the feeling behind his desire to protect her. Not tonight anyway. With their fight and the sight of him with Ella so fresh in her mind, she would deny him if he foolishly tried to give her even the most miniscule clue as to his newly discovered feelings for her.

It was a risk he wasn’t willing to take, not when he wasn’t sure of his feelings himself. The fight had worked him up and the scent of her blood had driven him wild with need, and neither feeling had faded completely. He was still on edge, still hungry for blood and a battle to the death. There was a chance that anything he thought and anything he felt were just a result of that.

He didn’t believe himself capable of that sort of feeling either, at least not for Sophis.

He didn’t want to believe.

Vivek let his hand drop from her face, turned away from her and crossed the road to the other side. She remained leaning against the back of the white van for long seconds before pushing away from it. When she joined him, she wouldn’t look at him. Her now dark eyes darted around the street, touching everywhere but on him, and eventually settled on the river.

Sophis motioned for him to follow and he did, remaining close to her this time, no longer willing to risk even a few metres between them. It wasn’t only because Aleksis was a threat to Sophis, and himself. It was because he could still feel the lingering beat of fear in Sophis’s blood. She was putting on a brave face by resuming the lead but she wasn’t fooling him. Her recent ordeal with another vampire hunter hadn’t been enough to have her thinking twice about being out in the city, but the presence of Aleksis certainly was. It was only duty that kept her feet moving forwards rather than retreating to the mansion. If his presence at her side would boost her confidence and give her the strength to continue their mission, then he would stay there, close to her, and he would keep his promise to protect her.

Aleksis would never lay a finger on her again.

He would go against his bloodline’s orders to only track the hunter and gather information on him and would kill him, would watch him bleed out from a dagger in his gut, before he allowed Aleksis to even step within thirty metres of Sophis.

She must have felt his anger again because she glanced back over her slender shoulder at him, rogue strands of her long dark hair obscuring part of her face, and her near-black eyes meeting his for the barest of seconds before she dropped them to rest on the pavement and then turned away again.

His fingers burned with the memory of how soft her skin had felt beneath them.

Did her cheek burn too? Did it ache with the need to have him touch it again, just as he ached with a need to touch her?

Vivek shook his head to dislodge those thoughts and focused on tracking Aleksis. Sophis turned the corner ahead of him and Vivek switched his focus to her until he could see her again, even though he knew that Aleksis was over four hundred metres ahead of them. He wouldn’t leave anything to chance. Not tonight. Not while Sophis was still recovering.

Not ever again.

Aleksis strode on, a shadowy distant figure. His heavy footfalls told Vivek that some things hadn’t changed in their decade apart. The hunter still wore sturdy black leather army boots that could disorientate a vampire for a few seconds if a kick connected with their head. Vivek used his senses to track the hunter whenever he turned down a road or alley, leading them deeper into the outskirts of the city. The wind picked up, chill against his skin, carrying with it a sharp metallic scent that Vivek hoped didn’t mean snow. Snow made tracking difficult. It exposed footprints and swamped everything in the same overpowering scent. If their routine counts of the hunters were going to become nightly affairs until the ball had passed, then they could do without a change in the weather. It was almost impossible to remain hidden during a hunt when fresh snow fell between the time when most humans retired and the time when his kind and the vampire hunters came out.

He had even resorted to using the rooftops in the past and sometimes the river, anything to stop himself from becoming the hunted rather than the hunter.

The residential area gave way to commercial buildings, a mixture of old brick factories and modern metal constructions. The roads widened and the number of cars parked along them dwindled. Not good. If Aleksis looked back, he would easily spot them and it was late enough at night that their presence in the area would arouse suspicion. Vivek signalled Sophis and she nodded, and followed him down a street that ran parallel to the one Aleksis had taken.

Sophis remained in line with him this time.

When they came to the end of the road, Vivek signalled her to stay in the shadows of the long brick factory at their backs and peered around the corner. Aleksis quickly ascended a set of stone steps that led up a hillock to a row of tall brick buildings at the top. The three spacious warehouses had seen better days. Several of the windows were broken and the door of the one on the left looked as though someone had kicked it in. Tramps most likely. The disused buildings would draw them like flies, especially during the bitter winter months.

Aleksis knocked on the door of the middle one. It opened, revealing a pitch-black interior that concealed the person on the other side, and Aleksis stepped inside. Just as the door was about to close, two more men hurried up the stone steps, dressed in long heavy black coats ideal for hiding weapons from the local police and prying eyes and not out of place at this time of year in Russia. The dark haired one on the right held his hand up and the door opened again.

This time, the hunter who had opened the door stepped out into the light.

A female with wavy black shoulder-length hair dressed in a dark sweater and jeans.

She embraced the fair haired male, smoothed her hand over his cheek and then kissed him.

Vivek growled. Female hunters were more dangerous than their male counterparts. A female could breed with a strong male hunter and bear children to bring into their ranks. A report filed by Lady Lilith of the Vehemens bloodline stated that it was possible for a genetically modified hunter to pass on the mutations in their DNA to their offspring. The bloodlines trusted her word on this. She had once been a hunter for Section Seven, and was the product of mutated DNA, a merging of human and vampire DNA requested by her mother before Lilith and her sister Eve had been conceived. Lady Lilith was the source, the seed from which the idea of enhancing hunters had sprung.

Records had since been siphoned from the Section Seven database using her login and they had uncovered several breeding programs and the results.

The children born of the union between two enhanced humans were stronger and showed signs of being more in tune with their vampire traits. They were a danger.

If the male in this pair of hunters was enhanced and their offspring allowed to mature, they would become a deadly threat to his bloodline.

Vivek already knew that this female was enhanced. Her name was in the register.

Sophis shifted closer to him, her side brushing his back, and looked past him to the building.

She growled low in her throat.

“What is she doing here?” The words left her lips on a second snarl.

The woman looked towards them, as though she could see them where they stood shrouded by darkness, revealing the scarred left side of her face. The two men walked past her into the building but she lingered and Vivek moved further into the shadows.

Vivek could understand Sophis’s anger. Aleksis Romanov hadn’t been alone the night he had almost killed Sophis.

His twin sister Izabella had been with him.

She had almost cost Vivek his life.

Chapter 4

Sophis’s hand gently coming to rest against his back startled Vivek into tearing his eyes away from the vampire hunter who had nearly claimed him as her prize. He hadn’t told Sophis about what had happened that night over ten years ago as she had lain in his arms, sick from blood loss and poison, but the concern that shone brightly in her brown eyes said that she knew, as did the place where her hand rested.

Izabella Romanov had used his distraction against him. He had been so concerned with Sophis that he had lost track of his surroundings. Aleksis and Izabella had taken flight into the shadows of the cemetery after the initial attack, leaving him alone with Sophis, but they must have only gone out of range of his senses and waited for him to drop his guard before striking again. She had come at him so fast that he hadn’t even had the chance to turn fully before her holy wood stake had penetrated his back to the left of his spine, shattering his ribs.

He was lucky he had sensed her at all and had started to turn. If he hadn’t, her aim would have been true and the stake would have hit his heart, killing him. He would have died that night and Sophis would have died too. Izabella would have killed her before help could arrive.

Vivek had dropped Sophis and launched himself at Izabella, but the pain of the holy wood burning into his flesh had slowed him down and he had only managed to scratch the left side of her face, cutting her with three of his claws from her temple to her nose and lips. She had evaded his fumbled second attack by ducking behind a large stone cross on a grave, tossed a vicious look in his direction as she held her bleeding face, and then fled to join her brother at the top of a grassy embankment. They had stood there a moment, watching him waver as the pain became too much to bear and he collapsed to his knees on the wet grass, desperately trying to reach the stake in his back to remove it. Taunting him with the fact that they were within his reach yet beyond it at the same time.

The sound of the warehouse door closing snapped Vivek back to the present but the dull throb in his back wouldn’t allow him to forget the pain in his