Page 13 of Bloodhunter

His death was undramatic. He was gone immediately. Onesecond he was chomping on my flesh, pulling my blood into his mouth, and thenext he just stopped moving. But as I shoved him off me, trembling like afeather caught in a fan, his body began to shrivel.

I struggled to sit up and then scooted back against thewall, slapping my pockets for my flashlight. By the time I found it and clickedit on, the vampire resembled an enormous earthworm that had been left in thesun, shriveled and gray.

I pressed my good hand against my mouth, holding back drysobs, unsure now that it was done. I’d killed the killer. Now what?

Then my light flashed over a figure crouched not six feetaway, and I screamed. Because the vampire I’d killed wasn’t the horror. Thevampire I’d killed wasn’t the terror.

But Amias crouched in the darkness, studying me, andtherewas the fear.

There was the nightmare.

Chapter Four

I hadn’t learned Amias’s name for eight months after theThanksgiving Day attack. One night he’d simply appeared and stood in front ofme, shuddering and sick, and told me who he was.

“I am Amias,” he’d said. “I am your master.”

I’d lost my shock beneath the fury of my rage, and that hadbeen the first time I’d discovered that trying to hurt Amias would hurtme.

But right now, I was too spent to fight. Too hurt by thefangs of the vampire I’d just killed.

“Shhh,” Amias said, as though I were screaming. “You mustlisten to me now. I need you.”

But all I could see was my sister’s blood-spattered face,and all I could hear were her screams before she died.

I welcomed the rage that grew inside me, and I leapt like amad thing, an unthinking animal, clawing the air with empty hands. He movedalmost casually, but still too fast for my depleted body, and I fell to a heapupon the ground where he’d sat a second earlier, watching as a young vampirenearly killed me.

I jumped to my feet, agony streaking through every part ofmy body, panting with rage as I sniffed the air and found him, then leapt athim once again.

He didn’t move that time. He grabbed me, spun me around,then pulled me against his body. His arms fastened around me like a vice,squeezing the breath from my lungs. He bore me to the ground, and as I sat uponhis lap, caught in his arms, he wrapped his legs over mine and I could notmove.

I gave voice to weak howls of rage, terror, and pain, and Icouldn’t remember how it’d felt before he’d created those emotions inside me.

The vampire I hated above all else held me in his arms.

And I couldn’t do a thing about it.

My heart distended with a sort of terror and dread I’d neverfelt before—not even when he’d attacked me, not even when he’d killed myfamily. This was something more.

Something worse.

Because beneath the hatred, beneath the agony, and beneaththe sorrow an unthinkable sort of joy sprang to life. I belonged there,somehow, restricted, taught, and mastered by the vampire.

That vampire.

“No,” I screamed, but my denial was a wheeze of expelledbreath, loud only in my mind.

“I made you.” His murmured explanation slid into my ear,through my brain, and down into my soul and finally, I understood.

He’d made me.

“I’m a vampire?” I cried. “I’m avampire?”

“No, Trinity.” And his voice comforted me because it wasimpatient and irritated. “Not a vampire.”

I’m not a vampire. Of course I’m not a vampire. I don’tneed blood. I’m not a parasite. I don’t have vampire strength and speed and—

“You are just not the same. You carry some of me inside you,and that gives you certain…advantages.”