Arctic Fire Read online

  “They almost castrated me,” he muttered as he stared woefully at his groin.

  She held the steam mop out to him. “And you deserved it for pushing me to the side like that. Those spermies don’t work anyway.”

  His hand wrapped around the plastic handle of the steam mop. His white-blond hair hung against the corner of an eye as blue as the arctic ice. His broad cheekbones, square jaw, and magnificent features made her stomach do summersaults; her deadened heart gave a little leap when her gaze fell to his mouth.

  Stop it, she scolded herself. You can’t be thinking about kissing him when you should be yelling at him.

  “Everything else still works, something you’re going to learn one of these days,” he replied.

  Her mouth went completely dry at his words; she felt she should be pissed about the confidence behind his statement, but how could she be when it was the truth? She intended to learn every inch of his firm body, when she was ready. Most likely, it would be someday soon, when he wasn’t acting like such an asshat. It took all she had to sniff at him before turning away.

  “Admit it, that just got you all hot and bothered,” he coaxed.

  She forced herself to scowl at him over her shoulder, even though she loved the playfulness in his eyes. He was right, but she’d never admit it. “You’re incorrigible.”

  “And proud of it. I did all the work with these guys, and you expect me to clean up the mess?”

  “They were only here because of you. I’m pretty sure their exact words after walking into the bar were, ‘If it isn’t Julian, the betrayer of our kind.’ Last I checked, that’s not my name.”

  “Women, you all have minds like a steel trap when it comes to things we don’t want you to remember,” he muttered.

  She planted her hands on her hips as she glared at him. “It sounds like you’re speaking from experience with a lot of women.”

  Realizing he’d stepped into a steaming pile of shit, his mouth clamped shut. Quinn bit her inner lip to keep from laughing as he placed the mop against the wall and bent to lift one of the bodies over his shoulder. She walked over to one of the others.

  “I’d prefer it if you’d let me take them,” he said to her.

  “And I’d prefer it if you’d stop trying to coddle me, but you won’t.”

  He grabbed hold of her hand when she bent to grab the man’s arm. “I’m not coddling you,” he said quietly, his eyes burning into hers. The paler blue band encircling his pupils darkened in color. The turquoise flecks in that band danced in the light.

  She released the dead man’s hand and stood. “You can’t keep treating me like a child. I’ve survived bigger threats before—”

  “No, you haven’t.”

  “Yes, I have. I spent my entire life in hiding from Hunters, Guardians, The Commission, and vampires. Now, I only have the vampires to worry about; I think those are much better odds.”

  His gaze never wavered from hers. “Desperate vampires who believe you could be their only hope at regaining the power they once enjoyed. There is nothing more lethal than a desperate vamp.”

  She despised that damn prophecy the vampires were spreading about her. She wasn’t anyone’s savior, and she especially wasn’t the vampires’ savior. She may be a vampire, but it hadn’t been by choice. Having been born a half-vampire and a Hunter, she’d had enough vampire blood within her to undergo the change on the night she and her family were attacked and killed by vamps.

  “These guys seemed pretty desperate, and there’s not much left to them,” she said with a wave at the bodies.

  A muscle in his jaw jumped. “Vampires en masse, Quinn. What if a horde of them comes at us?”

  “Then we will fight them, but there has never been a horde of vampires searching for me. They have no idea where I am, what I look like, or that I’m with you.”

  “That doesn’t mean they couldn’t find out.”

  She threw her hands up in the air. “We will deal with it then! But I can’t have you constantly prowling around me like an irritable bear ready to lash out at anyone who comes too close. It’s exhausting!”

  “I couldn’t stand it if something were to happen to you.” Damn him, he could always make her melt, even when she was trying to get her tirade on. “What if you had used your ability to drain the life from one of them while fighting, and one of the others took off before we could stop him? He could have told everyone he came across about you. The vampires would then know exactly where you are and what you look like.”

  “I understand, but you have to ease up. I’m a fighter, and if you try to take that away from me, I’m only going to end up resenting you for it. And you definitely cannot order me around like that again, or I may stake you myself. If you want to be with me, then we are going to be equals. If you don’t want to be with me, then tell me to go sit in the corner again. It will be a surefire way for whatever this is between us to come to a halt.”

  His head lifted; the smile quirking his mouth didn’t light his eyes. Strain radiated from his compressed lips and the lines that etched his mouth. “Anything for you.”

  The rest of her ire faded away with those words. There had been many women in his past, most of whom he barely remembered, but those three words were the complete truth. He cared for her, she knew that, and he had no idea how to handle it. That was something she completely understood as she felt the same way, but she wouldn’t be locked away or ordered about by him.

  She forced a smile as she bent to grab the dead vamp’s hand again. “Next time, I promise to help if they try to castrate you.”

  A bark of laughter erupted from him. “I’d appreciate that.” He pulled out his cellphone and hit a button. Lifting it to his ear, he juggled the dead guy on his shoulder as he held the phone. “Come to the bar,” he said in a clipped tone before hanging up and sliding the phone into his pocket. “Do you mind waiting here for Chris?” he asked her.

  Quinn shook her head and dropped the dead hand yet again. The thumping sound it made on the wood floor made her cringe. “No.”

  He nodded before turning and heading for the kitchen doors down the hall. Her heart swelled when she realized this was his first concession to her request. He never would have left her alone here just hours ago.

  She grabbed a trash bag and began to clean up the mess while she waited for Chris and whomever else he brought with him to arrive.

  CHAPTER 2

  Julian forced himself to keep putting one foot in front of the other, out of the bar and across the desert. The idea of leaving Quinn alone and unprotected made him want to kill the vamp draped over his shoulder all over again. Thankfully, these vamps had come for him, but if they’d heard the prophecy and realized she was the vampire of the prophecy, they would have gone for her too.

  She was tough; he knew it. She was one of the toughest women he’d ever met, but she could be killed. He could lose her. His hands tightened on the dead man, the wintry night air blew through his hair and over his skin as he raced across the desert toward an outcropping of rocks.

  Dumping the body behind the rocks, he turned and fled back across the shifting sand toward the bar. He heard voices when he entered through the kitchen and walked toward the bar. Quinn, Chris, Zach, and Melissa were inside, working to clean up the mess. Just two years ago, the idea of being in a room with three Hunters, four if he counted Quinn, would have delighted him as he planned to tear the throats out of every one of them. Now he considered them amongst his best friends, minus Zach.

  Created by twisted humans, known as The Commission, the Hunters had been forged by a series of experiments that had tortured many humans and vampires before a line was created of humans who shared the vampire’s attributes and would be able to fight them. Most of the Hunter line had been wiped out years ago, during The Slaughter unleashed by the Elder vampires, but he now worked with them to help find what remained of the scattered survivors.

  Julian’s eyes went to Quinn, his shoulders relaxed as he drank in the s
ight of her. Her honey-hued eyes gleamed in the dim light filtering from the lamp over the bar. She stood, her lithe body moving with easy grace as she bent and picked up another dead vamp.

  Mine, he thought as he watched her move. He’d yet to tell her he loved her, but he did. He wanted to mark her as his, to feast on her blood and body, and make it clear to everyone she was off limits to anyone but him. The idea she was his mate had been growing inside him with every passing minute. He’d tried to deny it, tried to brush it off and not acknowledge it, but the truth of it niggled at his mind, refusing to be denied.

  And if he didn’t back off and give her some space, he would drive her away.

  Clenching his hands, he fought against the impulse to toss her over his shoulder and drag her all the way to Antarctica if that was what it took to keep her safe. She’d be pissed; he’d be miserable in the cold snow and ice, but it wouldn’t matter if it kept her alive and away from anyone who could associate her with the newest vampire prophecy.

  He could still clearly hear Seanix’s words to Quinn in his head… “The prophecy is spreading through the vampire community like wildfire. Whoever finds you is going to have a lot of power to force those to do their will.” The memory of those words caused a chill to press against his neck.

  Then Seanix had actually revealed the prophecy, and Julian had known it could only be about Quinn. “A vampire, not born of vampire blood, will burn like the sun the life from anyone she touches. If used correctly, she will become our greatest ally, our savior.”

  Our greatest ally and savior. The younger, disorganized and scattered vamps would latch onto those words. The nonexistent promise within the vague prophecy would have the vampires still floundering, since most of the Elders were killed while scrambling to find her. They were trying to seize hold of something stable, and they would see Quinn as their chance to reclaim their old life. He’d tear the throat out of anyone who so much as left a scratch on her, never mind trying to take her and bend her to their will.

  “If you’re going to kill everyone who doesn’t like you, a lot of bodies are going to add up,” Chris said to him.

  Chris wiped the back of his arm across his forehead as he stood up from where he’d been tossing broken barstool bits into a trash can. His shaggy, sandy-blond hair clung to the sheen of sweat beading across his brow. Amusement filled his sapphire eyes when he smiled at Julian.

  “They started it,” Julian replied.

  “I’m sure they had a good reason,” Melissa said as she dumped a heart into the trash bag Quinn held open for her.

  “Funny,” he muttered.

  The grin Melissa flashed him caused her onyx eyes to sparkle. She’d pulled her short black hair into a small ponytail that fell against her neck and emphasized her olive complexion and the refined features of her Egyptian heritage. Behind her, her sort of boyfriend, Zach, lifted another heart from the floor using only his thumb and index finger. Zach’s upper lip curled in revulsion, he held the heart away from him like it was a tiger ready to bite. He already didn’t exactly like Zach, but seeing this squeamish side of him caused Julian to shake his head.

  “You can do better,” he said to Melissa.

  She glanced over at Zach and bit on her bottom lip to keep from laughing. “He’s not used to your tendency of leaving insides on the outside. Besides, we’re not really together.” Julian gave her a questioning look; she lifted a delicate shoulder. “Some things just don’t work out.”

  “I’ll kill him for you.”

  “They didn’t work out on my part. The chemistry wasn’t there, you know?”

  “I do.”

  His gaze slid to Quinn. There had been many women in his past, and he could say the exact same thing about most of them, but he could never say it about her. She challenged him, stood up to him, and he desired her in a way he’d never desired another; loved her in a way he’d never known possible until her. He’d loved in the past, deeply, but never with every bit of himself like he did with her.

  “I’ll still kill him if you’d like,” he offered, only half-kidding.

  “Thanks for the offer, but no. Sometimes things are just…” She frowned as her words trailed off. “Just not what you were expecting.”

  “I understand.”

  “You would understand, perhaps better than anyone.” Her gaze flickered to Chris before she turned away and lifted another broken stool leg from the floor.

  Julian studied her for a minute, but he had a feeling that was all she was going to say on the subject right now. She was suddenly very focused on the pieces of splintered wood she picked off the floor.

  “That heart’s not going to bite you, Zachariah,” he said to Zach. “I already killed it for you.”

  Zach lifted his head to scowl at him. “It’s just Zach,” he said for probably the hundredth time. Julian had no idea why he kept bothering to correct him; he had to realize by now it was useless.

  Zach placed the heart into the trash bag and wiped his hands on the rag Quinn handed him. His dark-blond hair stood in spikes around his head; his brown eyes were red-rimmed from lack of sleep. Zach was the newest Hunter they’d discovered shortly before arriving in this Arizona town. Neither he nor Chris got any bad vibes from the young, surfer-looking kid, but Julian still didn’t like him.

  However, that wasn’t saying much as there were few people he did like.

  Walking across the room, Julian lifted another body and heaved it over his shoulder. As if determined to prove he wasn’t squeamish, Zach came alongside Julian, grabbed the arms of another, and lifted the body up. Julian caught a glimpse of the tree of life tattoo on the inside of the young Hunter’s right wrist when he swung the body over his shoulder.

  Chris grabbed hold of the last body and draped it around his shoulders. One of the dead guy’s hands fell down to slap him across the nose with a thwack. “I really hate our heritage sometimes,” he muttered.

  Julian laughed as he turned toward the swinging kitchen doors. Don’t look back; don’t tell her to be careful.

  Despite telling himself not to, he couldn’t stop himself from pausing at the doorway to take one last look at Quinn as she tied off the trash bag and dropped it on the floor. He hurried through the kitchen and back across the desert. He left Zach and Chris in his dust as he raced over to the boulders again and threw the new body on top of the other one. When the sun came up, it would burn away the remains, erasing all evidence the bodies had even been there. Chris and Zach caught up with him and added their bodies to the heap.

  Stepping back, his gaze scanned the shifting sand and dunes rolling out before him. Cactuses and rocks dotted the landscape, his eyes picked out the different hues of oranges and reds swirling throughout. In the distance, he saw a coyote hunting amongst the rocks, searching for its prey.

  The idea of hunting caused his fangs to tingle. He’d killed tonight. He’d unleashed some of the brutality he kept so restrained within him, but he hadn’t fed. The scent of all the blood and the rush of the kill had made him ravenous. He could go now, give Quinn more of the freedom and space she’d asked for, but he was already itching to be at her side again, and she would most likely have to feed too.

  Turning on his heel, he ran back across the desert and back into the bar. He paused before the swinging kitchen doors when he heard Quinn and Melissa giggling. “I can’t believe you ate a peanut butter cup while he fought off four vamps,” Melissa said.

  “He deserved it, with his caveman attitude,” Quinn replied.

  “Aw, he doesn’t know how to handle what he feels for you, and at least he hasn’t hit you over the head with a club.”

  “Yet!”

  The sound of Quinn’s heartwarming laughter melted his irritation over the two of them talking about him. He shoved his way through the swinging doors and into the main part of the bar. They both stopped speaking as they looked up at him.

  “I don’t have a club, but I could always get one if you’d like,” he said to Quinn.

>   Melissa chuckled and turned her head away. Quinn brushed back a strand of her that had worked free of her ponytail as she grinned at him. He wasn’t surprised she felt no shame over getting caught talking about him.

  “Just you try it,” she retorted.

  “Try what?” Chris asked as he shoved his way through the kitchen doors.

  “Nothing,” Julian said.

  He grabbed the trash bag from the floor and carried it across the desert to dump the contents on top of the bodies. They would also turn to ash with the first rays of the sun.

  CHAPTER 3

  Quinn leaned back in the tub and rested her head against the little pillow she’d bought for her baths. She stretched up her toes to turn the hot water on again, letting a fresh wave of heat pour into the basin.

  They should have fed before coming back to her apartment, but Julian had wanted to wash off the blood coating his skin and change into some clean clothes. While he was showering, she’d decided that after this night a quick soak in the tub was too tempting to resist. As soon as he was done and out of her bathroom, she’d told him she was taking a bath and would be out shortly, before slipping by him. She could get at least half an hour in the water and still do some hunting before the sun rose.

  She scooped up two handfuls of the thick bubbles floating on the surface. She blew the bubbles away, unable to suppress a smile as they floated through the air to stick against her white tiled wall. Her apartment may be small, but the tub was large and she’d taken advantage of it since she’d moved in there.

  As a vampire, her throbbing feet and back eased faster than a human’s, but it was still a little bit of heaven to sink into her scented, hot water as often as she could. Tonight she’d used her lavender and peppermint bath salts to relax and rejuvenate.

  She lifted another handful of bubbles and blew them at the wall. A knock on the door drew her head around. “What?”