The Last Hunt Read online

  “I don’t care how you dress it up,” I said. “The ‘Pure’ label was just invented by vampires who wanted to get close to humans without actually hunting us. You’re even more despicable than Vampire Lords. At least they’re honest about their intentions.”

  “Temptation waylays many on their journey to virtue,” said the vampire. “I can’t disagree with your assessment about some of my fellow Pures. All I can do is speak for myself and my own journey.”

  I eyed the vampire carefully. “What’s your name, vamp? Or do you even have one? Lots of vampires don’t.”

  “Lucius Red,” said the vampire. “Unlike you, I don’t have a nickname that I am better known by. I am simply me, which is another part of being a Pure. We reject nicknames and titles in order to maintain our virtue.”

  “Lucius Red, eh?” I said. “Yeah, your name doesn’t ring any bells. How old are you?”

  “Older than you,” said Lucius without missing a beat. “Why are you here, by the way? Aside from the obvious.”

  “I’m here for my own reasons,” I said. “A better question to ask is why you’re here. Are you working for Lady Hisara?”

  Lucius suddenly scowled. “No. I’m here to kill her, with my own bare hands if I have to.”

  I didn’t show it, but his response—and the heat with which he said it—surprised me. “What a coincidence. I’m also here to kill Lady Hisara, though I’ve never heard of a vampire trying to do it. Do you want to kill her to take her place as the leader of her Horde or do you just have a bone to pick with her?”

  “As I said, I have no interest in becoming a Vampire Lord myself,” said Lucius. “And Vampire Lords don’t like us Pures very much, either. We’re too stubborn, too independent-minded. Vampire Lords much prefer normal vampires for followers, who are so consumed by their blood lust that they can’t think straight long enough to question their Lords’ orders or rebel against them.”

  I nodded. I had heard similar things, but I was still skeptical about Pures in general and didn’t think that their supposed ‘independence’ meant they could be trusted. “Then why are you even here? Going to lecture Hisara and her followers on the virtues of Purity?”

  “I said I want to kill her,” said Lucius. “As a Pure, I see it as my duty to free my fellow vampires from the stranglehold their desires have over them. Vampire Lords like Lady Hisara take advantage of our blood lust to make us do their bidding. I’m simply going to show her—and, by extension, all Vampire Lords—why that isn’t going to fly anymore.”

  My eyes narrowed. Though vampires were united by their hatred of humanity in general and sorcerers in particular, they were extremely prone to infighting and power struggles. It wasn’t exactly uncommon for Vampire Lords to make alliances only to break them a few days later or for the title of Vampire Lord for a particular Horde to be cycled through quickly as usurpers killed the last guy in charge. I knew a few clever vampire hunters who were good at playing different vampire factions against each other and then killing the winners, but I was never cunning or Machiavellian enough to do that. I just preferred to use Domination and my faith in God to kill vampires directly. No need for complex Machiavellian plans.

  Lucius leaned on the banister, looking at me with his blood red eyes. “That’s why I said we could work together earlier. We both have the same goal of killing Hisara. She’s a powerful Vampire Lord, but if we work together, we might be able to kill her easier than if we worked alone.”

  I didn’t say anything at first. As a rule, I didn’t trust vampires, especially Pures. Even if I didn’t have a bias against vampires, I had no idea if Lucius really was trying to kill Hisara or if he was actually working for her and trying to trick me into allying with him so he could get me later down the line.

  I rested my sword on my shoulder. “Suppose I say no. I’ve never needed a vamp’s help to kill another vamp. I’m perfectly capable of killing vamps all on my own. Or what if I decide this is a trap and fight you?”

  Lucius shrugged again. “If you fight me, you risk alerting Lady Hisara and her minions of our presence. I’m not sure if you’re aware, but Lady Hisara has quite the Horde under her control. Unlike me, they would all love to be the ones to be able to boast they killed the Hunter. Do you really think you can beat me, Hisara’s Horde, and possibly even Hisara herself all by yourself?”

  I said nothing, which Lucius must have taken as an answer, because he simply said, “I thought so.”

  “Fine,” I snapped. “We can work together for now, but only until we kill Lady Hisara. And if you try anything—and I mean anything—I will take your head off like any other vamp, ‘Pure’ or otherwise. Got it?”

  “Perfectly,” said Lucius. “Once this is over, we don’t even have to see each other again.”

  I nodded. “All right. Now come down here and go down to the basement with me. I don’t want you behind me because I don’t trust you.”

  Before Lucius could respond, something solid slammed into the back of my head and I fell into unconsciousness well before my body hit the floor.

  ***

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I was awakened by a splash of ice cold water on my face. It was so sudden and unexpected that I cried out in pain, but then someone slapped me and a voice hissed, “Stop screaming, Hunter. It’s annoying.”

  Panting, with water dripping from my chin, I looked up to see a vampire standing before me. It wasn’t Lucius. It was a different vamp, one I had never seen before. He was shorter and skinnier than Lucius, though his eyes were every bit as red as Lucius’ but twice as bloodthirsty. He held an empty water bucket in his hands, but as soon as I woke up, he tossed it to the side and stepped back, a cruel grin revealing his sharp fangs at the corners of his mouth.

  “What … where am I?” I said. “What happened?”

  I tried to get up, but discovered that I was tied to a chair with thick rope. I could probably burn the rope with a simple fire spell, but for some reason I couldn’t feel my magic at the moment. My sword was also missing, which worried me even more, because Domination was my main weapon for killing vamps. Even my wooden stakes were missing, which made me wonder who had taken them.

  “Sorry, Hunter, but it wouldn’t be very wise of us to let you wander around Lady Hisara’s mansion anymore like that,” said the vampire with a chuckle. “Lady Hisara was already furious when you killed one of her most recent Newborns. She didn’t want to lose anymore.”

  My hands balled into fists and I looked around. I appeared to be in the basement of the mansion. At least, I assumed I was, because I hadn’t been down here before. There were no windows or doors. Just a set of rickety stairs leading up to a door that probably led to the first floor of the mansion.

  The basement was dimly illuminated by a few torches along the walls, which revealed a series of strange and gruesome images of what looked like vampires brutally murdering humans and sorcerers. Even with the limited light provided by the torches, I could tell that the images were not only very detailed and realistic, but also drawn in blood. I told myself it wasn’t human blood, because they would need to kill a lot of humans in order to get enough blood to draw so many images, but the scent of dried blood confirmed that my theory was wrong.

  I looked at the vampire again. “Where am I? Am I still in the mansion? Or did you take me elsewhere?”

  “You’re still in my mansion, young Hunter,” said a seductive feminine voice behind me. “And you won’t leave until I tell you to.”

  A cold, female finger ran along the back of my neck as a woman walked into view from behind me. The male vampire immediately bowed in her presence, which was how I knew that this was no mere woman, but Lady Hisara herself.

  Not that I needed the male vamp’s groveling before her for confirmation of that assumption, however. I had seen Lady Hisara once before in person and also in pictures and she looked much the same as she did in them: A thin, sexy woman with skin so pale it was nearly pure white and long, dark hair as black as midnigh
t. She wore a tight, formfitting dress meant to show off her impressive figure. If I hadn’t known how to spot the vamp tells—such as the small fangs poking out of the corners of her mouth or her unusually sharp fingernails—I might have thought she was an unusually beautiful human woman.

  But I didn’t let myself get distracted by her sex appeal. I knew, from experience, that all vampires, male and female, used their sexuality to trick humans into lowering their guard around them. Female vampires were especially good at it. Though I had never been seduced by one myself, I had known more than a few vampire hunters—usually rookies who didn’t know any better—who ended up in bed with a female vampire who then killed them in cold blood. Supposedly, they were really good in bed, but as tempting as it was, I had no intention of finding out the truth behind those rumors for myself.

  “Lady Hisara,” I said in a tense voice, practically spitting her name. “As beautiful as everyone says, I see.”

  Lady Hisara’s mocking smile faltered slightly, probably because she heard the sarcasm in my voice, but then she said, “And you are quite the handsome little man, aren’t you? I usually prefer older men, but younger men can be fun sometimes, too. Their blood is usually fresher.”

  I didn’t show any fear. One thing I had learned in my years of hunting vampires was that you never displayed fear before them. They always took it as an invitation to attack. It sometimes seemed like vamps liked the taste of fear rather than blood, though I thought they liked it because they took it as a sign of easy prey.

  Instead, I said, in a calm voice, “Are you going to convert or drain me? Or maybe just kill me outright? You know who I am, don’t you?”

  “That I do,” said Lady Hisara, folding her arms across her chest. “You’re Richard Lee, the famous Hunter. I’ve heard so much about you, especially from my fellow Vampire Lords, whose servants you’ve killed rather mercilessly.”

  “And I’ll do the same to you and your men once I free myself,” I said. I struggled against the rope, but it still didn’t budge.

  Lady Hisara smirked. She walked up to me and stopped less than a foot away from me. She put a finger under my chin and made me look up at her. Her face was eerily human, save for the fangs and red eyes, and it took a lot of willpower on my part not to feel attracted to her or let my feelings of arousal cloud my thoughts.

  “You’ll never escape,” said Lady Hisara. “I made sure the ropes were tied tightly enough to keep you from escaping through force. As for your magic, forget it. I’ve cast a spell over your ropes that negates your magic. As long as the ropes are touching your skin, you can’t cast even the simplest of spells.”

  I bit my lower lip. I should have known. Vampire Lords, in addition to their advanced age and physical strength, were also masters in negating sorcerer magic. Normal vampires couldn’t use those kinds of spells or any magic at all for that matter, but Vampire Lords could. Vampire Lords were not as magically gifted as actual sorcerers, but they didn’t need to be in order to negate our spells. That was the main reason I preferred to take my targets by surprise. A skilled Vampire Lord could cast a magic negation spell if they were given even just a few seconds warning. And trust me, as a vampire hunter, you didn’t want to find yourself suddenly powerless against a Vampire Lord who could snap your bones like twigs without even thinking about it.

  To keep my mind off Hisara’s seductive looks, I darted my eyes to the left and to the right. “Where is Lucius? Did you kill him or is he being held prisoner somewhere in this place as well?”

  “Neither,” came a familiar cold voice from the shadows.

  Lucius melted out of the shadows of a nearby corner. He walked over to me and Hisara, his broad shoulders and large chest a sharp contrast to Hisara’s slim form. The other vampire—the one who had been bowing to Hisara—skittered backwards, eying Lucius with a mixture of distrust, fear, and envy. Not that I could blame him for the last part. As much as I hated vamps, even I could acknowledge that Lucius looked like a bodybuilder.

  “Ah, Lucius,” said Hisara, standing up and taking her finger off my chin. She turned to face Lucius, standing in a way that was clearly meant to arouse him. “I hope you didn’t think I was flirting with the Hunter. I just like messing with humans’ heads, particularly male humans.”

  Lucius stopped. He didn’t seem to be impressed by Hisara’s seductive pose. Maybe he was used to her exaggerated assets. “I’m not jealous. I understand your methods and have zero issue with whatever you choose to do with the Hunter. I simply ask that you don’t do it when I’m around, that’s all.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Hisara with a slight purr in her voice. “It’s just that you’ve been so helpful ever since you joined my Horde that I didn’t want to anger you unnecessarily.”

  I should have been astonished that a Vampire Lord was apparently attracted to a Pure, but instead, when I saw Lucius, my temper shot through the roof and I shouted, “Lucius, you bastard! You really were trying to trick me. Traitor.”

  Lucius looked at me without moving his head. “How can I be a traitor when we worked together for less than five minutes? You humans don’t handle betrayal all that well.”

  My hands balled into fists. “Was the bit about being a Pure a lie as well? Because if so—”

  “I wasn’t lying when I said that,” said Lucius quietly. “I truly am a Pure. It’s just that I have chosen to work with the beautiful Lady Hisara for now because of our common goals.”

  Hisara put her hands together. “Oh, Lucius isn’t one of those uptight Pures. He’s fun and he doesn’t judge the rest of us for feasting on humans. I normally hate Pures, but I’m always willing to make an exception, especially for ones as … attractive as Lucius.”

  Hisara said ‘attractive’ with a voice so full of lust that I felt sinful just listening to it. But I actually felt more like an idiot for even trusting Lucius in the first place. I knew that vamps didn’t care very much about trust—which was why Lucius seemed confused about my attitude toward him—but I somehow convinced myself that Lucius was different and wouldn’t betray me at the last moment. It was a rookie mistake, one I was about to pay a very big price for. I was just glad that my brother wasn’t here. Otherwise, he’d be laughing his head off and I’d never hear the end of it.

  “Where is my sword?” I said. “My silver blade. Domination. Where is it?”

  “Still where you dropped it when you got knocked out,” said Lucius. “You know we vampires can’t touch silver without getting burned.”

  “As long as you can’t get it, it is practically harmless,” said Hisara. “Besides, even if you were in the same room as your weapon, you wouldn’t be able to use it thanks to those ropes.”

  She had a point. Still, it was good to know where my sword was. I had been worried that they might have stolen it or maybe even outright destroyed it. I should have known better, however. Vamps had a huge fear of silver and wouldn’t touch it even if they could destroy it in a way that wouldn’t harm themselves. That was why silver was such a useful element for a vampire hunter to have, especially if it was forged in the shape of a weapon.

  “What are you going to do to me, then?” I said. “You still haven’t said. Are you going to eat me? Turn me into one of your own? Or just kill me the old-fashioned way?”

  “There are many things I’d like to do to you, Hunter,” said Hisara in a suggestive voice. She put the back of her hand against her forehead and sighed. “But tonight, I won’t get to do any of it. You will neither die or be converted, at least not right away. You’re going to stay right here, like a good little boy, while I put the final stages of my plan into completion. After that, I can’t guarantee your fate, though I doubt it will be particularly pleasant.”

  Hisara said that last sentence in the same suggestive way she said everything. Combined with what she said about wanting to ‘do’ things to me, and I was already starting to put together a mental image of what she would do to me once her plan was completed. It made my stomach churn.
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  Nonetheless, I pushed those unpleasant thoughts out of my head and said, “Plan? What plan?”

  “You mean you don’t know what I’m going to do here?” said Lady Hisara in surprise. “Then why did you come here in the first place?”

  “You’re a Vampire Lord,” I replied. “I’m a vampire hunter. Put two and two together. I know you vampires dislike counting things, but even this should be easy for you to figure out.”

  Lady Hisara looked at Lucius in disbelief. “Lucius, is he telling the truth? I was certain that he had been sent by the Sorcerer Parliament to interfere with my plans. Hell, I thought that maybe even the Vampire Council had hired him to take me out.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not on particularly good terms with the Sorcerer Parliament and I would never take a job from the Vampire Council, ever. I just heard that a Vampire Lord was terrorizing a small Texas town full of God-fearing folk and I knew I needed to be here.”

  “So simple,” said Hisara. She licked her lips. “But at the same time, strangely masculine. Going against a Vampire Lord all by yourself, without even the Sorcerer Parliament to back you up … it is both stupid and brave, a combination only humans are known to have.”

  “I see it as just doing the right thing,” I said with a shrug. “But if you’re so impressed, maybe you can loosen these ropes holding me to this chair. They’re not very comfortable.”

  “Just because I am impressed by your single-minded devotion to ‘justice’ doesn’t mean I’m going to let you go,” said Hisara. “If anything, this just confirms that I was right to have you taken down quickly. You would have been an annoying thorn in my side for sure.”

  “I suppose you’re not going to tell me your plan, either, then,” I said. “Wouldn’t want me to foil it, now would you?”

  “Oh, there’s nothing you can do to foil it even if you broke out of your ropes this very instant and attacked me,” said Hisara. She tapped her chin. “This plan has been in the works for a long time and in the next hour or so, it should be complete. Isn’t that right, Lucius?”