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  “A Hunter, Miss Moore. A Hunter that is responsible for killing the rogue, devolved vampires. The revenants.” Do I laugh? Do I run screaming? He looked so serious I could almost believe he was telling the truth.

  “Vampires? Seriously?” I gave a weak, nervous laugh. He didn’t appear to be a man that would tell jokes or make up stories about mythical creatures. Why would he say these things? “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “Miss Moore, I never joke. You are a Hunter and I am assuming that your mother left you before she could train you properly or you would never have run from those revenants tonight. You were perfectly capable of taking care of them yourself instead of running away like a scared little girl.” He took a large drink of his glass, setting it on a side table before leaning forward once again. He stared me in the eyes as he said, “I have no use for a Hunter like you that is incapable of protecting herself let alone the entire territory that I oversee.”

  I was strangely insulted, and hurt, by his words. He had no use for me? It hit too close to home for me. I have spent the last three years trying to take care of my sister, pay the bills, keep a roof, and food on the table. I have struggled and done a poor job of it. My sister reminded me daily of what a failure I was. And now, this handsome stranger who was confusing me with his talk of Hunters, revenants, vampires, and sovereigns was telling me that I am incapable. I stood on shaky legs, stuck my chin out and as carefully as I could, pulled myself together and started walking towards the door. I couldn’t stay here and be insulted any longer, I’ll leave in this robe. I’d had enough and needed to go home.

  “I don’t know who you are, but I don’t need your approval. I need to get home to check on my sister and I must get some sleep. I have work tomorrow.” I pressed my trembling lips together, determined not to let out the sob that was wanting to escape my chest. Why me? The world’s most desirable man tells me that I am a failure. Will I never be good enough for anyone? Will I ever have someone want me and find me good enough to love? Pity party for one, I inwardly sighed. I didn’t even know the man. Why his opinion should bother me so much was a mystery. I didn’t like it one bit.

  “Miss Moore.” I heard him call out just as I made it to the door. I had my hand on the knob and sighed, hanging my head in defeat. I couldn’t take any more insults from this man. I turned around to see what he wanted.

  “What?” I grumbled and turned to face the man I now hated. He was the first man I found myself attracted to and the first man that I feared and hated in equal measure. What a confusing night it had been. I sighed but when I looked back at him my whole world slowed to a near stop as I focused on what was happening. A knife was suddenly flying towards me, the thin silver blade sharp and deadly. I let out a shrill scream and instinctively threw my hand up as if to block the blow. I felt the knife slice through the palm of my hand and felt time catch up to me as I stared, trying to comprehend what had just happened.

  A blade was a fraction from my eyeball, the knife sticking through my hand that I had thrown up to ward off the attack like the idiot I now knew I most definitely was. My entire body started shaking as I continued to stare at the point of the blade that had nearly gone through my head.

  I heard his soft footsteps walking towards me over the steady drip, drip, drip of my blood falling to the wooden floor. I finally tore my gaze away from the knife and looked at him in disbelief. I couldn’t speak, I was so stunned. He threw a knife at my head, why?

  “Why didn’t you try to catch it Miss Moore?” I looked back at my hand, at the one-inch hole the knife made through the back of my hand.

  “Catch it? How could I have caught it? I should have ducked or something, but catch it?” I shook my head trying to clear the haze of adrenalin from my brain. He threw a knife at me! “What the hell is wrong with you?” I snarled at him, finally kicking off some of the fear, leaving room for a righteous indignation to start filling me. He threw a KNIFE at me!

  He reached over and yanked the knife out of my hand like it was nothing and I squealed embarrassingly. He took a cloth handkerchief (who keeps cloth handkerchiefs?) out of his pocket and with one hand holding mine, used the other to wipe at the blood that was already starting to slow. I wanted to yank my hand away from his, but I was mesmerized by the intense concentration on his face and the subtle flaring of his nose as if he was scenting something. Scenting me.

  “I think a lesson about our world is well overdue Miss Moore. And I believe you need to be taught what you need to know of your heritage. Your mother did you a terrible injustice I’m afraid. If you are to be of any use to me at all, you need to learn much in a short amount of time.” That familiar anger bubbled up inside me once more and I tried to yank my hand away, but he held on tight. “May I heal your wound Miss Moore?”

  I scoffed, “The wound you inflicted you mean?”

  I was surprised, shocked speechless when his mouth lifted slightly on one side in an almost smile. “I had to see if you truly had the reflexes of a Hunter.”

  My mouth dropped open. “You were testing my reflexes?” I gasped in outrage. “What if I hadn’t caught it?”

  “For one, you didn’t exactly catch it, Miss Moore, as much as let it impale you to keep from being killed by it. For another,” he shrugged, “had you missed, you missed.”

  “But I would have died!”

  “As I said, you are of no use to me if you can not defend yourself or others.”

  He was heartless. And cruel. How could he so nonchalantly discuss allowing me to die?

  “This doesn’t prove anything,” I whispered, staring at the bloodied handkerchief. “I didn’t catch it, you’re right, I only allowed it to impale me.”

  “Ahh, but Miss Moore, you are missing the bigger picture.”

  I was confused once again. What bigger picture could he be talking about? Gah! I felt like an incompetent child when speaking to him. Like he was miles above me in intelligence and I was barely keeping up with a simple conversation.

  He must have been able to easily read the confusion on my face because he started to explain. “Had you not had the speed and reflexes of a Hunter you would have died. You need the training to use the abilities that are your birthright. You will gain the skills needed so, in the future, instead of standing there like a simpleton, you would have been able to pluck the knife from the air and hurl it back at my head.”

  “I don’t understand, what do you mean? How do you know I have the speed and reflexes of a Hunter?”

  “Miss Moore, when I want to, I can move faster than a human eye can see. If you were merely human you would never have had the time to stop the blow, you would never have known what was coming before you were just dead. Trust me,” he said gruffly while staring down into my eyes, “you are most definitely a Hunter.”

  I became aware of the heat of his hand and the intensity of his gaze. My cheeks flushed with embarrassment and something else I wasn’t sure I wanted to identify.

  “May I heal your wound?” He asked again, sounding very proper. It almost made me want to laugh at the whole situation. “After all, I am the one that caused it.”

  “How will you heal it? It will heal soon on its own.” I was curious.

  “My saliva and my blood have healing properties, it’s what allows me to live for such a great length of time. What continuously heals my body will allow me to heal others when needed.” He was looking at me so intensely that I couldn’t take my eyes off his even though staring up at his height so far above my own was giving me a horrible crick in my neck. All I could do was nod numbly.

  I watched as he took the now bloody cloth off the wound on my hand that was already showing signs of healing. He slowly lowered his mouth to my hand as he raised my hand to meet his mouth halfway. He kept his eyes on my face and slid his tongue from his mouth and slowly licked the blood from my palm. I heard that hum come from him again, though it sounded much louder than before, but couldn’t even compute it in my brain as I watched him close his eyes and
then lick along the short length of the cut.

  When he was done he slowly turned my hand over and began the process all over again. The soft rasp of his tongue and the healing properties of his saliva had me tingling from head to toe. By the time he was done, I was resisting the urge to squirm all over while I was slightly panting and trembling. He looked me in the eyes, glowing silver to my own blue ones. His gaze was so intense I was about to pass out.

  He abruptly dropped my hand and stepped back, that mask firmly back in place. I felt like crying.

  “Miss Moore, please have a seat, we have more to discuss and then I will call a car to take you home.”

  Chapter 4

  *****

  Crispin had to mentally shake his head. He couldn’t remember a time when he felt so out of control. This woman seemed to do something to him that he was sure he didn’t like. He would never allow a woman control of his emotions or actions. Never again. After tasting her blood, he had to rein in his beast and his lust. He kept his fangs hidden while healing her hand since he knew that she was still unknowledgeable about his world and needed to break her in slowly. Break her in? His inner beast was quite ready to begin the breaking in process, though the term held two distinct differences for both man and beast. Well, it was time to reveal the world of vampires to his little Hunter. His, the beast silently agreed.

  *****

  “Let’s begin at the beginning, shall we?”

  I was sitting back on the same couch I had woken up on, holding a glass of water. I stared into the eyes of the large man several feet away, once again looking relaxed and at ease in his armchair. His voice was mesmerizing even if his eyes weren’t already doing a perfectly good job of holding me captivated.

  “I’m sure you’ve heard of the legend of Kane and Abel, yes?” At my nod, he continued. “Some of what your scripture reads is the truth – in a way – much as a rumor being told has some truth to it but is twisted or different from the origins. Kane did kill his brother, yes. He did it out of jealousy and rage and it was the first murder of its kind. You see, Kane was in love with the most beautiful girl in the village, a beautiful blond-haired, blue-eyed woman… that belonged to his brother. It is believed that the girl was playing brother against brother for amusement.” I watched his jaw clench and grind for a moment. He seemed lost in thought before he blinked and was back in the moment with me.

  “The girl laid with both brothers in secret and taunted Kane while she was with him over this fact while she held Abel’s hand during the light of day. When the truth came out that the girl was pregnant she told Abel it was his while telling Kane that he was the father. When they both came forward to marry her she denied, in front of their entire village, that she had been intimate with Kane. So, she married Abel while Kane watched, broken, the woman he loved grow heavy with child.” He stopped and took a drink of the amber liquor while watching me closely. The stare made a shiver run up and down my spine.

  “While Kane was in his fields working the girl gave birth. When he came back to the village after being gone for days he found out that she and the child had died. You see, Kane had taken after his mother in coloring, he had dark hair and green eyes. His brother, on the other hand took after their father, he had red hair and brown eyes. When the babe came out with dark hair and light-colored eyes Abel knew the truth. He led the girl to the caves near the village and disavowed her as his wife. While alone and frightened the girl knew she was to remain an outcast, unable to care for her newborn child. So, she threw herself over a cliff while holding the babe.” He tilted his head slightly and stared at my face. I then realized that I had been crying. I quickly swiped at my cheeks. The story was so heartbreaking. He went back to the story after a moment as if he were waiting for me to pull myself together before continuing.

  “So, when Kane returned and found out that the girl and his child had been cast out, and subsequently found dead, he went into a quiet, simmering rage. He lured Abel out into one of his fields of crops with the promise of wanting to talk and rebuild their relationship. Once he had him alone in the dark he took a small tool he used to cut vegetables from the vine and slit his brother’s throat from ear to ear.” I let out a small gasp even though I already knew where the story was headed. But listening to this man tell the story was enthralling. His smooth, rich voice and his hypnotic gray eyes held me helplessly spellbound to the story.

  “He was so distraught at the whole turn of events, the years of living with the torment of watching the one you loved with another, her dying and finding out you had a son, he decided to run away from everything. Unfortunately, you can’t run away from the Divine. They decided he should be punished severely since this was the first crime of this sort and to dissuade anyone else from following his path. There had been accidental deaths in the time the earth had humans living on it but no murders where the person doing the killing had plotted and committed the deed.” He was talking about first-degree murder, the first ever to be committed by a human being. The whole story was heartbreaking and fascinating.

  “There were many determining factors to his punishment. Firstly, he did it in the dark, in secret, so they decided he should forever be rendered to the darkness. Second, he shed his brother’s blood, so it was decided that he should have to live off the blood of others for survival.” His eyes once again glowed for a moment that silver glow making my breath hitch in my throat before returning to their normal light grey color.

  Dark? Blood? The thoughts were swirling through my head.

  “Third, the whole deed was done over a woman that obviously was not his mate or else she would not have played him the way she did for fun. So, it was determined that he would only ever be able to bond to one mate his entire life and had to choose very wisely unless he were stuck with another liar and cheat. Finally, he had a child with this woman who was all wrong for him.” At this, he stopped, looked towards the huge fireplace across the room and drank slowly out of his glass. I watched his throat move as he drank in contemplative silence. I really wished I could hear what he was thinking. He cleared his throat and finally looked at me again. “So, the only way for him to ever have another child was for him to find his one True Mate.”

  “He became the first vampire?” I gave a shaky laugh, hardly able to bring myself to believe such an outrageous, dark tale.

  He smirked at me sardonically. “So, as I was saying, Kane left the village and traveled far and wide for years. It was sometime before he realized that he wasn’t aging. He also noticed that when he cut himself or otherwise was hurt, he healed rather quickly. He also found out that he needed blood as nourishment. He could feel the heartbeat of every living thing around him as the blood in their veins called to him. But none so much as human blood. He found that human blood made him stronger and faster, much like an undernourished person who is suddenly provided proper meals is suddenly more alert and has more energy, the same was true for Kane when he drank from a human. Over the years he discovered that licking the wound he drank from healed the wound immediately. He also discovered he could make the person forget that he had even been there. It was too late to stop the tales of the fanged man drinking maiden’s blood though.” Here he smirked again. “Thus, the legend of the vampire was born.”

  “A-a-are y-you a…” I couldn’t finish. What the hell had I stumbled into? I needed to get out of this madhouse and this gorgeous, deranged… vampire. Oh shit.

  “A vampire?” He flashed his fangs at me in a sarcastic smile.

  “H-how…” I had to clear my throat before continuing, “how did you become a vampire?”

  “Well, Miss Moore, we aren’t talking about my story right now.” He flexed his jaw again for a brief moment. “Kane was drinking from a girl and got carried away. He realized that he had taken way too much of her blood and was on the brink of death. In a panic, he ripped open his wrist and fed blood into her mouth thinking that his blood would be able to heal her. Turns out, he stumbled on the process of making more like
him. You see, we are not dead, we never actually die. In fact, if we die at all during, before, or after the process we just cease to exist. No, in order to be made a vampire you must be on the brink of death, nearly all your mortal blood drained from your body and then be replaced by vampire blood.”

  He suddenly became very serious and it made me sit up straighter in anticipation of important information that was coming.

  “This, my dear Hunter, is where you need to pay close attention. It is not certain, even after all this time, exactly how it happens but there are theories on why vampires devolve instead of becoming powerful and strong. It is thought, perhaps, that the vampire didn’t have enough Power to give the changeling enough to fully transform. Or, perhaps, the vampire who was doing the changing had already shared so much of his blood during other changes, or that his blood was simply not strong enough, to provide what was needed to process the change.”

  “Weak, diluted blood.” I mumbled to myself.

  “Precisely.” His small smile made me want to fidget in my seat with happiness that I impressed him. Pathetic. “As I said, there is no exact knowledge as to the why and how. It is sure, however, that a vampire with a significant amount of Power will be able to turn quite a few vampires in his or her time.”

  “What do you mean, power?” I asked, curious.

  “Power is considered a designate so, therefore, is capitalized as one would a title. Power is not something every vampire has and not every vampire with Power has a lot of it. But we will discuss Power another day. We are discussing what currently pertains directly to you at the moment Miss. Moore.”

  “Ivy.” Seriously, the ‘Miss Moore’s’ were getting on my nerves. I understand politeness but beat a dead horse into the ground, will you?