Enraptured (22 page)

Paige’s eyes flew up to him when the three
vampires moved closer. She couldn’t allow him to be hurt because of
her. “Look…” the younger man started.

“If you say one more word, I’ll rip out your
tongue. Now, I’m only going to tell you this one more time; I’ll
kill every one of you before you ever lay a hand on her. I suggest
turning around, going back to whoever sent you here, and telling
him he’s fucking with the wrong vampire. I will find him, and I
will
kill him.”

Paige’s mouth fell, not because of his
words, though she couldn’t remember the last time someone had
defended her, but because his skin looked to be taking on a
strange, reddish black hue. It had to be because of the setting
sun, she told herself. What else could it be?

The woman placed her foot on the bottom step
and rested her elbow on her knee. Paige tried to move around Ian;
he kept his arm firmly pressed into her shoulder and his body in
front of hers. Frustration filled her, but she’d have better luck
at moving a mountain than budging the large man before her. He
pushed her back another step, angling her toward the door as the
woman climbed onto the stair.

“We can’t do that,” she replied.

“Don’t come any closer,” he warned.

The woman’s eyes ran over him again. “And
what are you going to do to stop me?”

“You’re not going to like the answer to that
question,” Ian growled.

A smile played at the woman’s eyes; she
licked her lips as her eyes flickered to Paige. “I think I
will.”

The woman burst forward in a wave of speed
Ian had been anticipating. He lunged to the side, throwing up his
arm and pushing Paige back. He’d been hoping to shove her into the
cabin, but she sidestepped at the last second and bumped into the
frame instead of going through the door. The woman crashed into
him, but it hadn’t been him she’d gone for, Paige was her main
prey.

A knife the woman brandished from a holster
on her hip sliced across his ribcage, spilling his blood. A hiss
escaped him, he dodged backward, sucking in his stomach as she
swung the knife at him again. He grabbed hold of her arm and
smashed it over his knee. The bone gave way with a resounding
crack, the jagged piece of it sliced through her skin and burst out
of her forearm. The woman squealed, her fingers released the knife.
It clattered onto the porch before he shoved her down the
stairs.

The two men ran at the porch, but instead of
running up the stairs, they leapt over the banister and landed only
feet away from him and Paige. “Get inside, Paige!” he bellowed at
her.

Paige’s head spun over the velocity and
brutality of the attack. The realization Ian had been cut and was
now bleeding caused her to take a step toward him. She couldn’t
stand the sight of the blood spilling down his side. He didn’t seem
to be aware of it though and showed no sign of discomfort as he
spun to face the other two vampires.

The woman’s bone protruded from her arm, but
she still spit with fury. Violence vibrated through the air; Paige
could almost taste the coppery blood spilling onto the ground. Her
hands fisted; she braced herself for the woman’s attack. She may
not have a weapon, but she’d never backed down from a fight, and
she wasn’t about to start now.

Before she could move to help him, Ian spun,
grabbed hold of her arms and pushed her through the doorway. She
took a staggering step and almost fell on her ass, but managed to
keep her balance by spinning her arms. Turning away from the chaos
reigning outside, she searched frantically for anything to use as a
weapon. She sprinted into the living room, snatched up the small
table beside the couch and lifted it over her head.

With a loud grunt, she smashed it onto the
ground. Bits of debris scattered around the room, her arms vibrated
from the force of the impact, but she was rewarded with a few
jagged pieces of wood she could use. Grabbing hold of a foot long
sliver, she spun away from the table just as the window of the
living room blew apart.

A startled cry escaped her; she threw her
arms up as glass and wood sprayed over her. Shards of glass sliced
across her arms and tore into her flesh. Wood bounced off of her,
knocking her back a step. Thrown through the window, Ian slid
across the floor on his back. He came to a stop only a foot away
from her. At first she thought it was blood, and perhaps dirt
streaking his skin, but that made no sense, the blackish red color
covered him from head to toe. She realized the color she’d believed
she’d seen on him earlier hadn’t actually been the sun. It really
had
been his skin.

The reddish black hue brought to mind the
images of demons she’d seen over the years in artwork and books.
Paige couldn’t stop her jaw from dropping as her gaze continued to
rake over his strangely shaded, massive frame. How was that
possible?

Finally tearing her gaze away from him, she
looked up as the younger looking male vamp, and woman, stepped in
front of the ruined window. Before she could react, Ian shot to his
feet and raced across the floor at them. She didn’t have time to
blink before he launched at the man, seized hold of his throat and
tumbled across the porch with the man in his grasp. The porch
banister snapped like a locust tree in a hurricane beneath the
force of their impact. The woman spun away from the window to go
after them.

Shaking herself off, Paige turned toward the
door, but then she recalled the brand new doorway in the middle of
the living room. She ran across the room and poked her head
cautiously out of the shattered window before leaping out. The
disconcerting and stomach turning spectacle of the older vamp’s
head lying only feet away, caused her to hesitate by the shattered
remains of the window. She didn’t know where his body was, and she
didn’t look in order to find out.

Ian and the other man rolled across the lawn
in a blur of motion that made it impossible for her to
differentiate one from the other. The woman had no problem as she
raced across the lawn and flung herself onto Ian’s back. The force
of her weight halted the aggressive rolling across the grass. More
blood spilled from Ian as the woman beat at his back and tore at
his clothes. Pulse pounding wrath burst through Paige, she’d wanted
to pummel Ian more than a few times, but no one else was ever going
to hurt him.

She leapt over the broken railing and raced
across the yard toward them. Ian threw his arm back and twisted
around to clutch the woman’s broken arm. A screech escaped the
woman when he twisted the dangling appendage up toward her back,
bending the shattered bone in an awkward direction. Blood streaked
Ian’s face and clothing, but his face was expressionless when he
lifted his foot, placed it in the vampire’s stomach and shoved her
away. The woman reeled backward so fast Paige barely had enough
time to get out of the way before she sprawled on the ground.

Ian turned back to the man and drove his
hand through the man’s chest. The sound it made reminded her of a
ball hitting a bat. The man’s eyes bugged as he grabbed at Ian’s
wrist, but Ian wrenched backward mercilessly. He crushed the heart
in his hand as he drove his left fist into the man’s cheek. Bone
caved beneath the powerful force of the blow, the man’s feet kicked
on the ground before finally going still.

The woman rolled over, but she was slower
than she had been. Before she could react, Ian grabbed hold of her
head and twisted it around so forcefully it actually came around
again. The woman’s eyes bugged from her head; stuttering sounds of
anguish escaped her as her hands flailed wildly at her distorted
head. Paige skidded to a halt a few feet away from them. Ian’s eyes
were the same color as the blood coating him when he lifted his
head to look at her.

He held his blood covered hand out to her
and gestured at the makeshift stake. “Give it to me.”

Paige had come out here with the purpose of
putting one of these monsters down; she realized now this wasn’t
her world. She’d been deluding herself into thinking she’d be
anywhere near as effective against a vampire as the hunters who had
taken her in. Handing the stake out to him, a sick sensation
settled in her stomach as she realized she’d been nothing but a
pawn to the hunters she’d believed were trying to help her.

No normal human could hope to take on one of
these creatures and survive. The woman’s freaking head was
completely twisted around, and she was still moving and trying to
fight! They may not all look like Ian did, with the deep reddish
black swirling over his skin and turning him nearly the color of
charcoal, but they were all far more lethal than she was.

Ian took the stake from her and grabbing
hold of the woman, drove it deep into her heart. The woman howled
and clawed at the stake; her face twisted grotesquely as she spat
at him before crumpling to the ground. Ian didn’t give her another
second’s worth of attention. Turning away, he frowned at Paige’s
ashen skin and bloodless lips. He knew blood covered him, knew what
she’d witnessed, and he would have done anything to have prevented
her from seeing it, but this was the life
she
had
chosen.

“Are you ok?” he demanded.

Taking a deep breath, Paige waved a
dismissive hand at him. She was extremely proud her hand didn’t
shake. “I’m fine.”

“What you just saw…”

“I’ve seen worse, well maybe not worse, but
close to it. I told you I know what your kind is capable of.”

Ian’s eyes narrowed at her words. “I’m not a
monster.”

“That’s not what I meant!” she gushed out.
She ignored the blood coating him as she grabbed hold of his arm.
What she’d seen had left her rattled, but she knew what kind of a
man he was. “I know you’re not a monster, Ian.” He remained
immobile, before his shoulders slumped and some of the tension
eased from his body at her words. She kept hold of his arm,
refusing to release him, needing the contact with his body. “Why is
your skin like that?” she asked.

Ian glanced down at himself, an eyebrow shot
up when he saw the reddish black color suffusing his body and
pulsating through his veins. He’d only seen something like it once
before, with Ethan. If he’d still needed confirmation she was his
mate, that color swirling through his body would have done it. Now
it only made him realize his brother wasn’t the only one who would
be capable of breaking the rules governing their kind, not when it
came to her. There was little he wouldn’t be able to do when it
came to keeping her alive.

“It’s something that seems to happen to
purebloods,” he murmured. “Or at least the only other vampire I’ve
seen it happen to is Ethan.”

“What is it? What causes it?”

“I don’t know what it is,” he admitted. “But
when our mate is endangered it comes out in us.”

He flexed his hands, relishing the power
swirling throughout his system. He could take on ten more vampires
right now, and he
knew
he could and would destroy anyone who
looked to hurt her.

He wiped the blood away from his face with
the back of his arm before gesturing toward the house. “We have to
go,” he said gruffly.

“Are there more nearby?” she asked.

“No, not yet, but that doesn’t mean there
won’t be, and I’m not taking any chances with you.”

She blinked at him as if she didn’t hear him
before nodding. Glancing at the bodies surrounding him, his
shoulders slumped. All he’d ever wanted from life was peace, yet he
and his family were constantly threatened by those who had never
been able to find any peace in their own lives.

Turning away, he swiftly climbed the porch
to pick up the duffel bag he’d left there and to retrieve Paige’s
bag. “I’m sorry you had to see that,” he told her when he rejoined
her. He placed both of their bags near her feet.

Paige felt hollow when she met his gaze. It
was never going to end, she knew that now, her father would hunt
her until the day one of them died. “It’s my fault, they came here
for me.”

“No, it’s not. I have to bury the bodies.
Wait here for a few minutes.”

“You’re going to dig a grave in a few…” her
question trailed off. He’d taken out three vampires on his own,
could run forty miles in five minutes, of course he could dig a
grave in a matter of minutes.

“Your back!” she gasped when he turned away
from her. His shirt had been shredded along his side and multiple
times across his back. His blood had turned the blue material a
deep maroon color. A jagged piece of wood from the window was still
embedded near his shoulder blade.

He absently glanced at it over his shoulder
before grabbing a shovel from the shed. “It’s fine.”

Paige remained immobile as she watched him
walk to the edge of the woods. She stood in awed silence as he
rapidly sliced through the earth to dig a grave large enough to
store the three bodies. Breaking free of her strange paralysis and
shock, she grabbed their bags and walked over to toss their bags
into the back of the truck.

She realized now the hunters had lied to
her; she could never be the vampire killer they’d told her she
could be. The events that had unfolded here had finally jarred free
her memories of the night she’d been attacked in the alley. Nabel
had been with her, but he’d sent her into that alley alone as bait
to lure in a vampire he’d sensed nearby. So excited by the
possibility that vampire just may be her father, she’d gone
willingly, but she’d believed she’d stand a chance against him in a
fight. She knew now she never would have; Nabel would have realized
that too. She’d been the bait, and thankfully Ian had come along to
save her.

She’d been deluding herself by thinking she
could take a vampire one-on-one and win. Maybe a massive group of
people could take one down, but there would be many casualties.
Nabel had led her to believe she wouldn’t need a group of people or
a hunter’s aid. She couldn’t stand here and wallow in her
realization or the sense of betrayal it caused to twist in her
stomach, there was work to be done here. She walked across the lawn
as Ian bent and lifted the body of the headless corpse.