Bound by Night(112)

Heart aching, grief leaving her frozen to the cold ground, she waited a long time before she went inside . . . but to what, she had no idea.
 
 
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After making sure his surviving warriors were being cared for, Hunter made a beeline for his quarters. He hit the wet bar before his door even gave the soft
whoosh of air that signaled it was halfway closed. In a single, fluid motion, he grabbed a bottle of vodka and a glass in one hand and then sank down onto the couch.
Blindly, he splashed liquor into the highball and knocked back three huge gulps. The powerful burn didn’t even come close to scouring away the echoes of the dead.
He’d lost six warriors today. Six more were seriously wounded. More than a dozen would spend a couple of miserable days recovering.
Then there was the conversation he’d had with ShadowSpawn’s leader as he bargained to get Nicole back.
Hunter had made a deal with the devil, and payment would be due soon.
Fitting, he supposed, since a pact with a demon was what led to the creation of vampires in the first place.
Hunter sprawled against the cushions, legs spread, eyes closed. He hadn’t spoken the ancient language of the Elders in almost a century, since the last time he’d traveled through mystical vortexes to Boynton Canyon to meet with said Elders. Every time he spoke the inherent language that he, and every first-and second-generation vampire, had been born with, it rattled him.
Drained him. Reminded him that he was very different from everyone else in the clan.
He wondered if kars was right now feeling the same way. Not that Hunter gave a rat’s ass if kars was as drained as he was. It would just be cool to know Hunter wasn’t alone.
There were times when Hunter liked being one of the special few who knew the true history of vampires, but this wasn’t one of them. How lucky those like
Grant, Riker, Taggart, and Myne were, to attribute the vampire curse to a scientifically explained virus or two tribal chiefs who were bled on by a raven and a crow.
Very few vampires knew the truth, thanks to carefully crafted legends and half-truths fabricated by the first-and second-generation vampires, all of whom had sworn an oath of silence to the demon that had be— stowed the gift of vampirism on them.
As a second-gen, Hunter was sworn to secrecy, but every time he drank, he wondered why he bothered.
Why anyone bothered. All but two of the Originals were dead, and more than half of the first-generation vampires were gone. At this point, no one would believe the truth, anyway.
Demons? Even Hunter wasn’t convinced. At least, he wasn’t convinced that they still existed. Maybe the demons of the Native American beliefs had faded away, victims of a lack of education of the old ways and gods. If no one believed, how could demons exist?
He started to pour more vodka into the glass, but screw it. A bottle was glass, right?
Tossing the glass aside, he put the bottle to his lips and chugged. Ancient curses and oaths, demons and devils, none of it was important. What was important was the deal he’d made today. A deal that saved Riker from going mad with need for the female he’d imprinted on and that might have saved the life of Nicole and her unborn child.
But it was also a deal that would tie MoonBound and ShadowSpawn together forever. kars was finally getting what he’d wanted, what he’d been pressuring
Hunter to do for decades.
Nuh-hun esu . . . vedi.
I’ll mate your daughter.
 

Chapter 34
Something was wrong. Nicole didn’t know what it was, exactly, but something was making her chest hurt. She’d gone to Grant for a checkup, but he was useless. He could perform advanced fi rst aid, but when it came to examining the female body, he got all fl ustered and fi dgety. He could barely listen to her heart through a stethoscope without hyperventilating. And it only got worse after she told him she was pregnant.
He’d fi nally fetched katina, but all Nicole and the other female had done was drink Grant’s kool-Aid concoctions. Nicole decided she liked whatever fl avor blue and purple made.
“So.” katina sat back in the rolling desk chair she’d planted herself in. “You broke up with Riker, and your chest hurts.” She shrugged. “I’m no rocket scientist, but even I can see that those two things are related.”
Nicole huffed. “It’s not a broken heart.” Yes, she had that, too, but the ache in her chest was physical.#p#分页标题#e#
“There’s something . . . weird. Maybe it’s the pregnancy?” katina’s placating smile had Nicole bracing for the other female’s sarcasm. “Honey, I know you’re some sort of vampire physiologist, but you must have missed the class about babies growing in your belly, not your chest.”