V for Vampire Hunter (Hunter V Book 1), page 22
Still, the burning pain inside my chest remained, a tight clench on my heart.
I bit down on my lip to keep from crying out. With my abilities barely better than a normal human, despite the potent potions Sloan used, the pain resonated inside of me like death calling. It was an echo of pain I remembered from the time before Phillip came.
It didn’t occur to me that I’d miss being superhuman. It was all I wanted, to be human. But I hadn’t considered what it would be like after a fight.
I’d never felt so helpless.
I struggled for a second to breathe, finding it harder to take in air properly the longer I laid on the ground. Kris had helped some with what she’d done before, so it was clearly all poison-caused.
“Where’s...Phil?”
Nigel’s face distorted for a second before he went to a knee on the other side of me. “My pack and Kris have gone to help. The magic-user didn’t shoot fast enough. Phillip had already gotten loose of the magic’s hold on him, and the mercenary fled when we arrived.”
Oh, thank God.
I breathed a sigh of relief, then hissed when Sloan prodded my injury with a silent gaze. “The poison has reached your lungs.”
“Could’ve told you that,” I rasped, smiling in spite of overwhelming anguish.
Sloan’s lips rose into a sly grin. “Guess I should’ve known you would’ve figured it out all by yourself.” He hummed lightly to himself, thinking. “Kris and I know about you and Phillip’s special condition, so it shouldn’t be long before your lung heals. That’s not what concerns me right now. The poison, however, is the bigger issue, so we’ll need to get the proper antidote.”
So, Sloan and Kris were privy to our hyper-mutated condition. It was a relief someone knew, because I wasn’t sure how I’d explain it. It wouldn’t have been an easy conversation to have with the poison taking my lungs hostage, anyway.
To Nigel, it’d likely seem as if I was the way I had been before my blood had been activated by Phillip. He wouldn’t be worried about the chest injury because I’d suffered worse injuries. Injuries my own grandmother inflicted on me during training. So, the Shifter’s concern would likely be the fast-acting poison I likely suffered.
Nigel grunted, muscles in his torso pulled tight. “Mia can put together an antidote faster than any of you Hunters ever could.”
The arrogant manner the werewolf spoke in was new for me. It reminded me oddly of Phillip, and it bothered me Nigel was outright rude to the Hunter beside me, who had been nothing but kind to him.
“Hey,” I rasped, irritated, “Don’t talk to Sloan like that.”
Nigel shifted next to me, bulky shoulders slouched. “I—”
“He’s here to help, same as you. You—” Another rush of heat hit my chest, and I gasped. But I was nothing if not determined. “You better get your act together if you want us to ever be friends again.”
“You’re right,” he responded with a sigh. “I’m sorry, man. I-I guess everything just sort of went to my head.”
Sloan shrugged, not at all bothered, the saint. “Consider yourself forgiven. I’m not really upset.” His glittering eyes dropped to my face. “But thank you for defending my honor when you should probably worry more about yourself, V.”
“Any...time...” I got out through waves of agony.
Holy cow, Sloan was seriously the whole package. Remind me to pine for him when this was all over.
Guess even poison couldn’t stop me from my horrifying teenage hormones. How sad. I was definitely beyond help. Definitely. No more evidence was needed. If the edge of death hadn’t distracted me from hot guys and their super suave moves, then it was a problem nothing would likely solve.
I turned to look at Nigel again, truly seeing him for the first time since I’d been attacked. Sadly, I hadn’t noticed the Shifter was stark-naked, and I jerked my head to look away a little too quickly.
“Ouchie,” I complained, sucking in a gasping breath when the sudden head turn hit my chest.
Angry, injured, or no, I’d never get used to seeing Nigel in the buff. It was ridiculous how even as injured as I was, I still blushed like a virgin; how I was likely to be all kinds of pale and sweaty after nearly ten minutes of pain but still managed to bring blood into my face to display the full extent of my embarrassment.
If I survive this, I’m going to spend a lot of time working on my game face.
Nigel howled low in his chest, the sound of it absolutely haunting. It surprised my head back over to him, and I cursed the pain again. But I was mesmerized by a naked man howling on purpose and it not being the slightest bit weird on him.
A minute later, Mia stood over me, in her birthday suit, still projecting her devil-may-care attitude. “What’s up?” And as if just noticing me, she looked down and her eyebrow rose in interest. “Why’s she on the floor?”
“Can you sniff out what this poison is and what it needs for an antidote?” Nigel cut in, tone clipped.
The gorgeous woman went onto all fours in a crouch, on full display, and Sloan didn’t even blink. The dude didn’t even blink. I, on the other hand, went a brighter shade of red despite the tremendous pain working its way through my body in rolling waves.
“Oh, that’s a rare one. They call it Sleeping Death. I’m just surprised someone even knows how to make this beauty anymore,” she remarked in obvious excitement.
Not weird at all. Guess Mia lived up to her attire.
Grams had told me about Sleeping Death though, mainly because it was what one of her previous partners died from. Most poisons were slow to work on Hunters, but this one was designed specifically with them in mind. It attacked vital organs first and shut them down. It was quicker than most Hunters could regenerate. And without an antidote on hand, fatal.
Lucky me.
But because it was one of very few poisons we could die from within the usual twenty-four-hour period, the Organization had an immense supply of the antidote. Still, we’d have to get our hands on it in time, which proved the biggest obstacle.
“Don’t have any of this antidote already made,” Mia commented, brow knitted together. “Like I’ve said, been a long time since I’ve seen it.”
“Can you make the antidote?” Nigel demanded, his glowing amber eyes jerking over to me as I sucked at the air and fought away the anguish in my chest and head.
Poison, dude. It’s the worst.
In thirty to forty minutes I’d go into a seizure and no longer have control over my body. In an hour, if this pain was any indication, I’d be comatose. In two hours, maybe less, I’d be dead. But as with anything, the timeline fluctuated based on potency, how much was administered, and how quickly it reached the blood.
Funny, poison wasn’t how I envisioned I’d die. I thought for sure it’d be by an old-ass vamp draining my blood, or my bones crushed to powder in a fight—or maybe with a blade stabbed into my heart or other vital organ I couldn’t heal from.
But not poison.
How anticlimactic.
Mia nodded, confident in herself. “It’ll take anywhere from twenty to thirty minutes, but luckily I have almost everything we need, and what I don’t have I can find in the forest.”
Seriously, what is this chick? A dark sorceress?
Honestly, with my vision so watery already and my body on fire, I’d likely go into a seizure in the next few minutes. It was the weird sensation in my head that made me think so. Also, my injury probably didn’t help, and it was likely the poison entered my blood stream sooner because of how it was administered. In less than an hour, I’d be comatose. Still, for some reason, even on the edge of death, I was oddly calm.
“Go,” the naked Shifter next to me commanded of his female counterpart.
Sloan lifted me into his arms, and I inhaled a pain-filled breath. “I have the antidote, but getting it will require I contact someone. It may take less time to get them here than for Mia to concoct it, so I’ll make the call.”
Head pounding, I closed my eyes and slumped inside Sloan’s hold while the other Hunter talked on his phone to whoever he planned to get the antidote from. The terrifying burn was in every part of my body, and I could only moan low in my throat.
Surprisingly, I wasn’t scared. The only thing I wished for was if I died, I wanted to make sure Phillip was okay. Call me crazy, but I was seriously worried about the other Hunter despite Nigel’s reassurance.
“Phillip...” I whispered.
Sloan made a sound in his throat. “He’s here.”
“I’ll take her,” a familiar and husk-deep voice called out.
Nigel growled low in his chest. “You didn’t protect her at all, you bastard. And how could you just fucking run off like that when she was injured?”
“I don’t need to explain myself to you, dog. If I let Eros get away—”
“But he did get away.”
Phillip grunted, obviously unhappy. “Only because your pack interrupted me.”
So, the Assassin’s Creed wannabe gave someone like Phillip and an entire pack of wolves the slip? Great.
“Right. My pack also saved your ungrateful ass.”
“I didn’t need saving,” Phillip retorted angrily. “It doesn’t matter. Give me V, Sloan.”
“She’s been poisoned,” Sloan said, handing me over like I were made of glass.
Phillip cursed under his breath and tenderly adjusted his hold on me, bringing my side impossibly close to his chest. His heart was a pound against my ear.
“What kind?”
“Sleeping Death,” Sloan responded quickly.
“Fucking shit,” Phillip groaned, brushing the hair away from my eyes. “I have the reverse serum. It’ll be faster if we get that to her than the antidote.”
Reverse serum?
I’d never heard about it. Then again, Phillip did mention he’d make sure he was a step ahead of our enemies with the serum. So, it made perfect sense he’d create a counter-acting agent to reactivate our abilities. Smart people would, and Phillip was annoyingly smart.
Thankfully, Nigel wouldn’t know what he was talking about. Which was made perfectly clear when the Shifter cut in a second later. “What serum are you even talking about?”
Phillip ignored him. “Go. I’d be faster, but I refuse to leave her with Eros still out there. I can’t run with her like this. You know where to look for it.”
It was interesting that Phil seemed to trust Sloan and Kris enough to tell them about the serum and where it was.
That was new.
I hadn’t expected Phillip to keep anyone close, but it was a good idea to trust someone with the information who could help when push came to shove.
Maybe they were also part of the revolution we intended to create. Maybe Phillip had already gotten other Hunters on our side before activating my blood. It didn’t seem farfetched that he’d have already been working in the background to get others on board, and it explained why he trusted them to work with us.
But if I thought about it carefully, Sloan and Kris seemed faster and stronger than most of the Hunters I’d been told about. It made me wonder about them. It made me curious about how much Phillip was keeping from me. But I didn’t really have time to worry about secrets when I was literally dying of poison.
Sloan sighed and I opened my eyes, finding Phillip’s intense gaze on me. If I was honest though, I was just so happy to see the other Hunter alive.
“Phillip, I’m so damn glad—” I rasped, but the thundering pound in my head doubled and I couldn’t finish. Then everything faded away and I sunk into a deep unconsciousness.
21
Phillip: Tears for Fears
I’d gotten complacent. My head was full of the ginger-haired minx, and I’d all but forgotten to take the reverse serum with us. I’d forgotten she was still a target. I’d been wrapped up in my complex, conflicted feelings for her, and it led to mistakes on the job not even an amateur would make. And I’d likely do it again, if my time with her taught me anything.
Eros, a longtime mercenary, was someone who’d kill anyone for the right price—and a massive pain in my ass. Mostly because Eros was a descendent of the first Fae. I hadn’t been given an age, but it was speculated he was among the first creatures to cross over into this realm. So he could very easily be thousands upon thousands of years old.
Humans might refer to his kind as warlocks or elves. Maybe even fairies, but we called his particular type Dark Fae. They employed dark magic to bring death and destruction. Their magic was tainted by the countless lives they’d stolen, and over time, Dark Fae were physically marked by it.
Eros stayed covered by several layers of fabric, and I’d only seen his true face a handful of times, but it was marked by countless black lines of ancient runes. They marred his pale flesh and couldn’t be concealed with magic.
The Organization had long hunted the renegade Fae. He’d killed more Hunters than any other person in the history of our kind. Often, some of the top Hunters the Organization ever employed.
Eros’s magic was nearly impossible to evade, and his spell of invisibility rendered his victims helpless to fight him. Very few ever escaped him. Seeing through his invisibility wasn’t impossible. But not many people I knew ever managed it, so their lives were claimed before they even knew they were a target.
It was a difficult skill to teach.
Eros despised me the most because I could beat his magic, so he never got the jump on me. My abilities tore through his spells, and my propensity for clever thinking put me one step ahead. I created counter-weapons that disrupted his spells, and most of his spells were too slow to match my speed. I cataloged every single spell he cast and how it could be overcome; information privy to a select few because the Organization would use it to better themselves and not protect anyone.
But Eros couldn’t win against me. He attempted to countless times, but he always failed. That was when he started to go after those close to me—Hunters, friends, my master.
Giselle.
Anyone of value, Eros targeted. In every case, he was successful. Getting close to someone always proved my greatest mistake. It put a target on their back and directly in the Dark Fae’s sights. Eros was determined to spend his life punishing me, and I vowed never to get close to anyone again. Not after I barely picked myself back up after Giselle’s death. Not when I knew what sort of torture awaited those close to me if he ever made them his target—and he would.
Twenty years ago, I broke off my partnership with Kris. She was a strong and immensely talented Hunter, but she’d be no match for Eros. So, I suggested Sloan, who was like me—immortal, strong, and a product of the same gene mutation. Kris was the only one I managed to save, and I very quickly dropped off the radar afterwards.
Long ago, I met Sloan by total accident. And when his speed matched mine, his skillset hauntingly similar, I questioned if the Organization had done it again. I’d never met anyone capable of countering my moves like Sloan could. After a little digging, I discovered his age and connected the dots. He was one of two other Hunters I found with the gene mutation V and I had.
Sloan was a century younger, a prodigal genius, and he’d made top Hunter within the first twenty years of life. He wasn’t as fast as I was, but he was stronger. Even though we shared the same gene mutation, our abilities were in no way identical. In a few years after meeting, that fact was clear.
The blue-eyed Hunter was assigned to do the highest-level covert missions, so very few Hunters knew he existed. Not even Rose was aware the UK-born Hunter lived. Only after he became Kris’s partner did people really start to see him more.
The secret of our gene mutation wasn’t much of a kept secret anymore. Sadly, it was difficult to conceal immortality after a time, but many Hunters accepted it as a long-dormant trait of our Hunter genetic line, and not something mutated out of a lab. People would believe practically anything to keep the status quo.
And after over two hundred years, I was well-acquainted with the ugly side of humans and their kin. No matter where you hailed from or what powers you had, ultimately, very few cared about anyone outside of themselves. Greed bred more greed, and it always came down to personal gain.
But I wasn’t any different.
Incidentally, with Sloan’s help, the reverse serum was created. He was the only other person who knew how to make it. There were very few I trusted, but Sloan and Kris were among them.
With Eros after me, as much as I could, I kept my distance from them. I didn’t call for their help unless I didn’t have a choice, and I rarely talked to them. Otherwise, sending Kris away was pointless.
Eros disappeared from anywhere familiar shortly after I parted ways with Kris. For that reason, I went off the grid and completed only solitary missions, similar to Sloan before he was partnered with Kris, to stay hidden in case Eros reappeared.
The Dark Fae was a phantom when not on the hunt.
The only contact I permitted myself was with Rose. We rarely met over the last few decades, but for some reason, the bond we shared was the most maternal one I’d ever experienced.
I didn’t have a mother or father, or really any family. I’d been raised in a white box, monitored and tested on like a fucking animal. After my life was destroyed when Eros killed Giselle, I closed myself off to every person I met.
But Rose, she intrigued me. She provoked me to think. She forced me to come out of my own damn head and live a little, so I couldn’t abandon her. And when V’s suspicious abilities came into the picture ten years prior, I couldn’t say no.
The fact that Eros was here could only mean one thing: V was targeted for the same reason as everyone else.
But because the Dark Fae had the serum, it was different. There wasn’t any way a guy like him could get his hands on it without help, because he was a top-priority enemy to the Organization and one they’d been eager to capture for as long as I was a part of it.
The Dark Fae may know everything about magic, but his comprehension of progressive science was practically nonexistent. He hadn’t countered any of my devices or figured out a way to protect against them. His weaponry was limited. The Dark Fae relied heaviest on his magic, which told me everything I needed to know about his skill set.
