Page 28 of Bullets and Blood (Hunting Hearts #1)

Chapter Twenty-Four

Nix thought it was the nightmare. The whistle of a silenced bullet as it hit its target. But he was awake for the second shot, and his mattress was well and truly dead.

The black-clad man stood over the bed with his back to Nix, and in that split-second, Nix knew the man had just realized the bed was empty. He had maybe half a second before the man turned and finished the job. Which was to kill him, not the furniture.

His grip on the knife loosened. This wasn’t a dream he couldn’t change the ending of. He lifted his hand as the man turned, and the blade left his fingers and struck the man’s shoulder. The gun clattered to the floor as he staggered back.

Blood perfumed the air. Vampire. Orlan.

Which one of the dishonorable bastards was it?

Nix rose out of the chair, his blood like ice. Fingers in a loose fist, he noted how far away his weapons were and the way the man held himself. The man pulled the knife free with a grunt and grinned, his fangs catching in the moonlight.

The granny flat he’d rented wasn’t big—one lunge and they’d be locked into a fight until death. But only one of them was walking out; the other would be left for the dawn—or in his case, dragged back to Melbourne for torture.

He could drop his guard, and it would be over…

but his will to live was too strong, and he’d be twice damned if he was taken down before the truce was over.

He would not be cheated out of time—not that he could tell this man about the truce because that would be damning Lance. His lips twisted into a bitter smile.

“Come on, oath-breaker. Want another Hadley notch on your belt?” Nix beckoned the man closer with a curl of his fingers as if he were pleasuring a lover.

The man was dressed in black from head to toe, no doubt Kevlar jeans and some kind of body armor beneath his shirt. He’d dressed as though expecting a fully armed hitman, not an insomniac in his boxers.

The man slashed with the knife, and Nix dodged to the side, sweeping the man’s arm out of the way and kicking him across the ribs with his shin.

An elbow to Nix’s thigh followed, then another slash with the blade, one that opened a line of red along his upper arm.

But he didn’t feel the sting, only smelled his fresh blood.

He shoved Nix into the TV. The screen cracked. Nix ducked the fist and grabbed the knife from behind the TV, evening up the fight.

The man was shorter, but heavier. His muscles slowing him down, while Nix had flexibility and speed and was fighting to live not following an order.

They danced trading blows, keeping an eye on where the gun was.

The longer this went on the quicker he’d weaken.

He hadn’t fed on human blood in months—the little tastes of Lance didn’t count.

Nix wanted this over before the man got a feel for how he fought and used it against him.

He was going to have to make a sacrifice.

He gritted his teeth, knowing what was coming.

He slipped in close, kneed the man in the balls, and sliced his belly, the knife skittering off the body armor.

A knife slid between Nix’s ribs. Heat filled his lung, but it was nothing that wouldn’t heal if he survived.

He followed up with an elbow to the man’s throat and a backfist to the nose, which broke with a satisfying crunch and spurt of hot blood that made his fangs ache for a taste. The man dropped to his knees.

Nix left the knife embedded in his flesh, keeping the puncture closed as he took the man to the floor, pinning his arms beneath his knees and gripping his ears.

It was then the fury solidified into cold anger as he realized who his attacker was. Scott Orlan. Lance’s contact. The bastard who’d broken the peace talks and then blamed him.

Scott struggled, bucking his hips like he was having a good time, but Nix held on. He used Scott’s ears to slam his head against the floor hard enough that Scott’s teeth rattled.

“Why are you here?”

“To put you down.” Scott spat; the glob hit Nix’s cheek. Nix slammed Scott’s head into the floor again, his ears tearing away from his scalp with the force.

“Why did you blame me for ruining the peace talks? I wasn’t even there.”

“Because we knew you’d try to ensorcell the runt, and he needed to hate you.”

Nix released one ear and smashed his fist into Scott’s cheekbone. Bone snapped, and he screamed. Nix put his hand over Scott’s mouth and got bitten for his efforts. He headbutted him, and Scott pulled his fangs out of his palm.

“Don’t call him a runt.” His breathing was tight, and his lung was filling with blood. “I want out. I don’t want to play this game.”

“Too bad.” Scott got his arm free and reached for the gun.

Nix pulled the knife out of his side and slit Scott’s throat. For several seconds, he didn’t move, just watched the blood spill on the linoleum floor. The gnawing hunger in his belly became a growl.

“Fuck it.” He tore into Scott’s neck, feeding on the rich blood, gulping it down, gathering the strength he needed so he could heal and run. As he drank, his body healed.

He sat back and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

Scott stared sightlessly up at the stained ceiling.

The Orlans knew where he was, and like cockroaches, where there was one there’d be more.

A cough shook Nix’s body and sent a ribbon of fire through his side.

He leaned over as the cough took over, his lung trying to rid itself of the blood.

He hacked up the fist sized clot and breathed a little easier.

That wasn’t the first time he’d sacrificed a lung.

The first time, he’d thought he would die.

He got off Scott and wiped his unsteady hands on a tea towel, then he went through the vampire’s pockets. He pulled out the phone and used Scott’s thumbprint to unlock it. Then he changed the password with shaking hands, so he’d have access to the phone and its records.

The room looked like a crime scene. The spilled blood was dark in the ambient light. He had scars that were still forming and blood drying on his lips.

He needed a cleanup crew.

The number that he’d memorized the day after he’d been blooded was the first in his mind, but there was no Hadley cleanup crew anymore.

He swore. Then he grabbed his own phone and called his Reid contact. They didn’t want to help him, but they wouldn’t want humans to realize vampires were real either.

“Hello.” The man on the end of the line sounded cranky and tired.

“I need a cleanup.” He gave the address of the place he was renting.

“Who is this?”

“Hadley. There’s a dead Orlan on my floor.”

The man gasped.

“I didn’t break any rules. I’ve killed no humans, and he attacked me. When will you get here?” He didn’t want to wait around for back-up to arrive.

How long had Scott been watching him? Or had Lance called in reinforcements? He dropped the phone, and it landed in the tacky blood before he could catch it. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking. He needed to get out of there.

“This is your mess, Hadley.”

“No, you don’t understand. The humans will see this as murder.”

“And the agreement was no help, no hinder.” The man hung up.

“But it’s a cleanup,” he said to the dead line, fear biting him hard and making it impossible to think.

For a few hours, the Orlans would believe he was dead. But they’d realize it was Scott who was dead when they tried to call him. Nix had time to clean up and put some distance between here and him, though. While he’d never been on clean up, he’d been taught the basics.

If put out for the dawn, Scott would burn up in the sun. If he could get sunlight on the bloodied floor, that blood would turn to ash too. Scott’s clothes wouldn’t. He’d always taken for granted the work that went into clean up. He placed a call, and it happened.

Now it was his problem.

And he couldn’t move.

Another Orlan would come. How many others were waiting close by? Worry flickered. How many had seen Lance and him together? How closely was Lance being monitored?

If Lance was in trouble, there was nothing Nix could do about it.

If he was caught sitting there, covered in blood with a body at his feet, he was going down for murder, or at the very least, manslaughter.

He glanced at the teeth marks in Scott’s neck.

If he ranted about vampires, he’d be deemed unfit to face trial and popped into a comfy white room with plenty of meds until a friendly orderly who worked for the Orlan’s knocked him off.

There were worse ways to go, but he didn’t like knowing that everything would be out of his hands and beyond his control. It was his goddamn life, and he wasn’t ready to surrender it to anyone.

He forced himself up, feeling far older than twenty-seven. None of his brothers had lived past thirty-three, so he wasn’t doing too badly. The old anger that the peace talks had been deliberately ended burned in his gut. Killing Scott hadn’t changed the past and fixed his future.

That he’d been listed as the cause in Lance’s files…

He stared at Scott’s body, his gut churning and his wounds burning. They blamed him for something they had done. They wanted Lance to hate him when, for possibly the first time in his life, he was innocent of the crime he was accused of.

His fingers curled to stop the shaking of his hands.

He’d gotten soft while on the run, feeding on livestock and avoiding fights.

He’d made a damn truce with an Orlan, and worse.

But he wanted to call Lance for help if only so he didn’t need to clean this up on his own.

But that would only endanger Lance, assuming he wasn’t in the middle of his own fight.

Is that all he had to look forward to? Hurting those he cared about?

All because of who his mother had been?

He kicked Scott’s head.

Then he did it again. Bone crunched.