Taming the Heart (Creatures of the Night Book 2) (5 page)

Chapter Three

Miranda looked around her at the woods. The moon was bright overhead and illuminated the forest as if it were daylight. She stood alone in a clearing and the air smelled fresh and clean. It took her a moment to realize that she wasn’t sitting in her chair. She was standing on her own two feet. She gazed down at her bare legs and feet. She wiggled her toes in the grass and laughed out loud.

She spun around with her arms outstretched and when she didn’t collapse she took off across the field. Her legs held her and spurred her along with no difficulty at all. She jumped over a few vines and roots and landed with a thud that raced up her legs and told her she was alive. She ran until she came to the other end of the clearing and then she just kept on running into the woods. She smiled as she breathed hard and dodged trees easily. It was as if it wasn’t even night and there were no trees in her way.

She sensed the trees before they came to her vision. She felt the cool earth beneath her feet. Her heart beat felt like the rush of the wind as she seemed to glide effortlessly through the foliage. She ran with wild abandon and it made her feel so free. She caught sight of something off to her left. It was a wolf. It was running alongside of her and she kept stride with it easily.

Suddenly she was surrounded by wolves, part of a pack, as they ran sleekly under the moon light. She heard an owl cry in the distance. She lifted her face to the breeze as her hair flew out behind her, her nightgown plastered against her sweaty flesh. It felt so real, and the night smelled crisp, sharp. It was as if she could feel the earth turning, the rivers flowing, and the pull of the moon. Finally she entered another small clearing and came to a halt.

The wolves vanished as if they were wisps of smoke, phantoms. She looked upon the cabin that her kidnapper had brought her to and nearly turned to run away from it when she saw something luminescent on the porch. It was tiny with little arms that moved and waved, reaching for her. She looked from left to right but there was nothing else moving around and the house was dark.

She entered the clearing and walked cautiously towards the porch. Sitting there near the front door was a tiny chubby baby clad only in a diaper, his skin illuminated by the night sky. He was open and exposed to the night, and any stranger that might happen by. He held something in his plump fingers as he chewed on it. It looked like a large key chain, silver skull and crossbones with a silver spike jutting from the bottom.

He could hurt himself with that thing. She looked around again. There was no one around to claim the child. What was he doing out here alone, unprotected? She walked faster now and was nearly to him when she heard a growl coming from behind her. Slowly she turned her head until she was staring into the ugly blood red eyes of the creature she’d come upon in the woods. She stood still.

It smiled that manic smile as it had done before. This time, instead of reaching for her, it ran past her toward the porch. The baby! Without a thought she jumped on the creatures back and begun to fight it. It grabbed her arm in its claw and clamped down on it with razor sharp teeth.

Miranda screamed aloud as she sat up in bed and clutched her arm. It stung like fire. It burned as if someone had set a hot curling iron down on it and left it there. The big blanket wrapped around her nearly trapped her so she fought it. Realizing that the thing was a robe and the only thing separating her from nudity, she left it alone and pushed the sleeve up. Someone had tied her arm to a board and bandaged her up properly.

She didn’t take time to really pay it much heed though as she struggled to rip the bandage off. She cried out as the agony continued where ever her hand touched the wounded arm. She screamed again before she got the board and the bandage off. She had to stop the pain. She had to cool it off. She looked over and saw a glass of water on the bedside. She reached out and poured the water over her sutured arm. Who had stitched it? Had her kidnapper fetched a doctor? Had she dreamed the whole thing about shooting his face off? There was no telling, she had probably lost a lot of blood.

The water began to sizzle on her arm and she fell back as it boiled her skin. The door came open and the large man filled the frame. He looked menacing and if there had been anyone else available, she would have called for them, but it seemed like he was it. She reached for him.

“Please! Please help me! It burns,” she screamed.

He strode over to her and took her hand. “It is beginning now,” he said in a calm tone.

“What is beginning?” she asked as the pain intensified. She screamed out and thrashed against the pain. He grabbed her arm and held it away from her. She fought him trying to get to the offending arm. “Stop it! Cut it off! I don’t care, it hurts,” she cried as more tears surfaced. She was beyond a sobbing fit now, however. She was in pure instinctual fight or flight mode. Fighting wasn’t working. She had to run. How would she run though? She had no legs.

With a strangled cry she realized that… she did. She had been kicking her legs about since she woke up. Before she could drink in that revelation, however, the pain hit her again. This time she rose up off the mattress and pummeled the large man who was holding the arm away from her. She actually heard something in his back break and he released her with a muttered oath.

She scrambled from the bed and ran into the bathroom. The robe was so large it nearly tripped her and she hissed again as the fabric touched her wounded arm. She turned the cold water on before she lifted her sleeve and put her arm under the cold flow. Steam rose up off her arm and her skin boiled yet again. There was no relief in this. She screamed and pulled her arm away and began to claw at it. The sutures popped loose and came out in her hand, but the pain did not ease one bit. She looked at the veins around the wound.

Something black was flowing through her veins from the wound and up her arm and it burned like fire. She wanted it out. She began to claw at her arm again and it began bleeding again. Then he was there again and he wrapped himself around the arm she was trying to claw off. She hit at him and struggled against him but he pinned her to the floor. His weight should have crushed her but she felt all of a sudden that she was… stronger.

She clawed at him, kicked him, bit him, but he still held on to her arm. She remembered something and stopped fighting as much as she could with her arm in as much pain as it was in. She let tears fill her eyes and peered up at him.

“Please,” she whimpered with a sob. He hated that.

As she expected he growled and turned his head to her but he was more than annoyed. There was something else. His crystal blue eyes had turned from blue to… violet?

“I told you not to do that. Fight!”

“I can’t. It’s too much. I want it to stop.” She made her voice as small and pathetic as she could manage.

He leaned his face down close to her and looked her square in the eye. Were those… did he have fangs? She had clearly been reading too much Vampire romance lately. This wasn’t real, it couldn’t be. Without warning the pain hit her again and she was forced from her thoughts. She screamed before she used her head to smash him in the face. She saw stars for a moment but he fell away from her. She squirmed out from under him and took off running. She had to get away from here, from him, from this.

When she looked over her shoulder, he was sitting up and rubbing his head. A trickle of blood ran down the center of his face as he leveled those violet eyes on her. She jumped over the bed and ran for the door. She was well on her way to the front door and freedom when he picked her up from behind. She struggled and cursed and prayed. Everything was running together. The pain was all consuming.

It was too much. She had to get away. She had to get away. The mantra was in her mind. He had pinned her to the floor again but she didn’t care as the pain pulsed through her, reaching her brain, saturating her. It was unbearable. There had to be an end. It was going to kill her. Her heart was beating so fast that it felt like it would burst out of her chest. Finally she was released once again to sweet oblivion.

*

Braden sighed with relief. Now her heart would stop, start again, and she’d go through the fever time, only… He pressed his ear to her chest. Her heart was still fluttering in her chest like a little bird. Her arm was healing fast and her legs seemed to be healed but… her heart hadn’t stopped beating. Not once. Not for a minute, and definitely not for the twenty minutes or so it took for the change to really take place.

The worst of the change should have been suffered after she died, but it seemed to him like she was bearing the brunt of the pain on the front end while she was still human. How could that be? A human couldn’t really survive what a hunter went through. Hunters felt pain but not to the extent humans did. She was going to lose her mind if this kept up.

He picked her up and put her back in bed before he stormed out into the living room again. He might be heartless and cold inside, but even he couldn’t stand to watch this. He dug out his phone and dialed Bateman’s number again. Again the receptionist answered.

“Get Bateman on the line right now! If you can’t get him on the line, get me another mentor. Something weird is going on with this innocent. She was bitten hours ago and she has not begun the change yet!”

“I’m sorry sir but all the mentors are either on assignment or in Britain at the yearly meeting.”

“Listen. This innocent is suffering and I don’t want to deal with it anymore. Either you get me Bateman or I will bring her there and dump her on you!”

He disconnected the line before he sat down and flipped open the lap top that sat on the table. He turned it on and punched in his pass word. Once the web was up he logged on to the hunter website and opened several chat links. He put out an APB on the missing Bateman and marked it urgent. He got several replies telling him what he already knew, that the mentors were having their yearly meeting. He got several responses ribbing him about him needing his mommy. He got several more slams to his manhood in general. Usually he amused himself by sending several cutting replies back, but not this time.

This time he responded in kind with threats of bodily harm, telling the other hunters that this was not a game. He explained the situation and then got no replies for a long while. He waited. Finally Rajah Manikin from the Iraqi providence responded.

Tiger Hunter: Your mentor in training, that Stone woman, has been here for a few months following some human. She has checked in with me a few times, but not your other mentor.

Norse Hunter: Thanks. Tell her that I need her or Bateman here in the North Eastern territory on the North American continent. I will owe you.

He left the computer on. Rajah was two hundred years old and a lot more mature than some of the others. He would take the matter seriously, especially when there was an innocent in pain.

He stood up and went to the refrigerator in the little kitchen in the corner. He took out a bag of blood he stored here in case of emergency. It was stale and disgusting compared to the real thing, but up here in these woods it could be a long time before he saw a human. That plus people might start to put things together if he fed on the local population. He was one of the few hunters that actually set up a residence for that reason.

After a thousand years, living rootless and on the road had very little appeal for him. He liked to enjoy the comforts of a home now and again. He went to the record player that sat on a shelf built into the wall and set Chopin to playing. He then went to the couch and sat in front of his lap top. He punctured the bag with his fangs before retracting them and sucking at the fluid.

He made an ugly face before he hurried to finish it off. Setting the bag aside he exhaled and sat back, sinking into the couch. If the woman moved again he would hear it, but it had taken a lot of energy to collect his face… twice, and fix his broken shoulder blade. She was bound to be much rougher once the fever set in so he might as well rest while he could.

*                            *                            *

Miranda rolled over and took a moment to focus. It was daylight outside. It was hard to tell from the little bit of light streaming through the window. She took a deep breath as she threw the covers back. It was warm in the room and… Something, some scent, filled her nose and hammered her in the chest. It had woken her from a deep sleep.

She pulled at the robe’s belt and allowed it to fall open. Her skin was on fire. She needed something. She wanted something. Pulling her arms free she began to writhe in the center of the huge mattress. Some part of her brain acknowledged that she should be concerned about her arm or the fact that she could move her legs, but she wasn’t concerned at all. She needed something. She needed it so badly.

She touched her breast and ran a hand over her midsection down between her legs. What was happening to her? She had felt desire before, but never like this. The door slammed open and she looked that way. He filled the door frame once again but she had no fear this time. It was a wicked realization. He was the something she needed.

*

Braden woke suddenly from a deep sleep. The female was awake. Her heart rhythm was different. Something was happening. Without meaning to at all he rose from the couch. It was as if he was in some sort of a trance. He acknowledged the fact that he was leaving his weapon on the floor next to the couch where he had fallen asleep, but he couldn’t make himself go back for it. He was sleep-walking.