Page 6

Chapter 5

Adeline

B lurred faces and watered-down images plagued her unconscious mind, which was odd since she hadn’t dreamt much of anything since she had turned.

Part of her loathed it, the languidness with which memories, feelings, and desires blended in her mind. There was a reason she had enjoyed the dreamless sleep that came with being a vampire. It made everything slightly more tolerable when you were immortal if your sleep was a void—a calm numbness instead of wrought with the pendulum of human emotions. It certainly made what she did for her coven endurable.

The hazy pictures played out in her head, as if she watched her countless past lives from a distance. Memories hovered just out of reach—reminders of what it meant to pass as a mortal century after century and remain unchanging.

Then it was a warm summer evening, and she was walking arm in arm with a faceless person who smelled like… smelled like what? She couldn’t tell, but she knew it was familiar, comfortable. Each time she turned her head to see who it was, the face would blur and the details would blend, like an artist swiping away at their canvas. The faceless person disappeared, replaced with the muted sounds of crowds chanting as soldiers returned home. But none of them had the face she searched for. None of them was the human she longed for.

Even while asleep, frustration built up inside her chest like a pebble in her shoe, uncomfortable and unwilling to be shaken out. She tossed and turned, her body refusing to relax until the sun went down. Even then, she could not wake until well into the evening hours from sheer exhaustion and lack of sustenance.The calm, distant beat of a heart finally roused her from her repose.A tiny voice whispered in the back of her head that there was warm blood within her reach, and she could easily feed for days off the hulking mass of the woodsman’s muscle.

Her ears prickled with the other sounds that filtered through her haze.A shuffling in a chair. The soft chhh-chhh-chhh of a knife scraping against wood.The crackling of logs on a fire, the deep, even breathing of the strange man from the night before.

Her eyes flew open. She was staring at a rough-hewn log, thin shavings of the bark still clinging to the surface. Her eyes traced the crisscross pattern of wooden logs stacked one upon the other, up to where the ceiling met the wall.

“Good evening, vampire.”

She froze. How did he…?

“I trust you slept well.” His voice cascaded down her back, crawling along her spine. It spread warmth down her toes.

Adeline rolled over, letting some of the blankets fall surreptitiously from her chest. Well practiced in the art of seduction, she would have him wrapped around her finger in no time. And then maybe she would get some answers. But the man’s eyes stayed firmly on the piece of wood as he whittled away, unbothered by her movements. Either he was extremely daft to be so careless in front of her, or…

“I did, thank you,” she finally replied. Her throat was sore, and she swallowed a few times to remove the raspiness beneath her tone. She opened her mouth to speak again, but he cut her off.

“You’re thirsty.” It was a statement, a gruff one at that. And still, his eyes did not meet hers. “You need blood.”

He had already called her out for what she was. Who was she to evade the truth? Well, part of it anyway.

“Yes,” she answered. She sat up and looked around the room. Her clothes hung from a rack attached to the ceiling, freshly washed and dried. Her boots had been cleaned and polished and rested near the fireplace. The man had changedfrom his thick wool outer clothing to plain cotton trousers and a relaxed linen shirt.She ran her tongue along the edges of her teeth, eager to sink them into some flesh. Her eyes flicked to his neck and then his forearms. He flexed, and the veins in his arms pulsed, tempting her to lose the very fine hold she had on her control. “I will not ask you to offer any. You’ve been far too kind as it is.”

He snorted. His dark honey-colored eyes flashed with some unknown emotion that warmbloods feel. And even though her heart typically beat slowly, she felt it thump against her chest a little more rapidly.

“I was not going to offer it, vampire.”

She nodded. “Understood.”

Adeline swung her legs over the side of the bed, and her feet touched the cool floor. She shivered, despite her best efforts to appear reserved, and wrapped her arms around her middle. Outside, the snow piled ever higher. Perhaps it was her imagination, but the wall of snow that fell from the sky made it feel like she was being crushed to death.

Her borrowed time was running out. She had used every last resource she could to find the were-shifter before the sanguine full moon, but had ended up here instead. She almost cursed out loud at the ridiculousness of it all.

An intense snowstorm was enough to get her off track? With mere days left before her bargain ended, Adeline could have sworn the gods were working against her. Again.

The thought of her coven—or even her maker—being concerned almost had her running out the door without any form of sustenance. They were used to not hearing from her for weeks or months, but this time around? Yes, they would be looking, especially since she was supposed to come back with the prized were-shifter.

Her eyes skirted the room, and it wasn’t until she saw a tiny cage in the back of the cabin, with a cloth draped over the top, that she picked up on the faintest pulsing of a tiny heart.

A rabbit?

“A rabbit,” he said at the same time the image danced in her head.

Don’t be a fool.

He wasn’t reading her mind.

Adeline frowned and looked at him skeptically.He wouldn’t offer his blood, but he would offer up a helpless creature?

“An old one,” he continued. “With a broken leg. Certainly not long for this world. He would not make it home in the storm that is currently raging outside.”

She tilted her head, her brow still creased in disbelief. “For me?”

“For you.” He nodded his head over his shoulder at the cage.

She didn’t know why, but her stomach flipped at the thought of him providing her fresh blood. Though it was only a rabbit, and nothing close to what she could have if she just. Bit. His. Neck. She was, oddly, grateful and figured she could at least tell him so.

But then she eyed the wooden spear and wondered if he planned to use it on her.

He can try…

She smirked inwardly. An ancient one such as herself didn’t need much to get her strength up. All she needed was enough for her vampiric magic to filter in, and then if he tried anything, at all, the man would be dead before he blinked an eye.

“Before you feast…” His voice had a low timbre that shot straight down to the center of her belly. “You should know that he may have eaten something not so agreeable to your kind.”

Adeline stopped at the man’s back and turned. The vein in his neck pulsed, but his heart rate didn’t increase. It took great fortitude to remain unbothered by a vampire like her. This man was either much more daft than she initially thought, or he was exceedingly clever. She crossed her arms, glaring at the back of his head, and opted for the fact that he was clever. “Oh?”

The ends of his black hair curled around his ears, and she could tell he hadn’t shaved in a while, for the shadow of a beard around his jawline made his profile look far more severe than before. “Yes, I believe he may have been fed a little bit of garlic greens.”

Garlic greens. She chuckled. Yes, he was clever, but the greens would only slow her cognition. “That old wives’ tale? You think?—”

The stranger shrugged. “He is dizzy and weak and close to death, hence why he is in the cage, waiting for you to help him on his way. It does not matter to me whether you take from him now, or after he has passed.”

She looked at the cage again, and her teeth elongated with the promise of blood. This time, she listened more intently with her immortal ears.

There.

The heartbeat was getting fainter. Soon, the creature would pass, and though the blood would still satiate her, it would not give her the strength she needed to feel completely revived.

With a sigh, she stalked over to the cage. Reaching her hand into the contraption, she grabbed the poor creature around the scruff of its neck and pulled it from its enclosure.As she did before she bit into any life source, she thanked it. Though she was a killer, she never took her food for granted. It was the willingness with which her food let her drink that kept her grounded. Her maker had always scoffed, and so had the other vampires, but this was one part of her humanity that had stayed with her after she had been turned.

When she was a young vampire, it hadn’t been so easy. The first few kills had been impulsive, filled with craving — something Erik told her was called bloodlust . But as she grew into her vampiric talents, it was easier and easier to control her urges. Still, the guilt consumed her, so she made a concentrated effort to always thank her food for its willingness to feed a creature of death, like her.

It was the one thing that she felt made her an excellent assassin. Her control. She had a strict moral code when it came to killing, too. Erik had made her kill time and time again for him, and she worried she would become numb to the feeling. She recoiled at most human emotion, she maintained that they all had something redeemable. And if not, well, then she didn’t mind too much when their flesh met her blade, and they screamed in terror.

Before she was able to eat the creature, he said, “You should know this comes with a caveat.”

“A caveat,” she repeated, hunger gnawing on her stomach. She was in no position to bargain.

“You feed, then you leave.” He gestured from the rabbit to the door with the wooden spear in his hand. She looked out the window, unable to see anything beyond the blanket of white outside. He must have sensed her hesitation because he added, “You can take whatever supplies you need to get to the villages below, but I will not have a vampire under this roof for any longer than necessary.”

As much as it pained Adeline to agree to this, she was left without any options. She was tempted to glamour him into submission, but she still needed sustenance in order to overtake unsuspecting prey. She was far too weak to even try.

Even still, she needed her answers, and so far, this man was the closest thing she had to getting them. The were-shifter should be close by, according to the last map she had consulted before she headed this way. Maybe since the man was eager to get rid of her, he could point her in the right direction.

“Deal,” she said, knowing how quickly time could waste away. The full moon crept ever closer, and she was determined to get her prey.