Killean lowered his hand and rested it on the ground before her. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes. Are you?” she asked and stretched a shaky hand out to caress his battered face. His right eye was nearly swelled shut, and blood spilled from a nasty gash above it that revealed a gleaming piece of his skull.
“I’m fine,” Killean said and turned away from the gentle prodding of her fingers. “I’ll heal when I feed. I have to clean up this mess, and we have to get out of here before someone comes across us.”
Killean gazed at his hands before wiping them on the front of his shirt. Blood already splattered it; adding more didn’t matter. Taking the elbow of the arm Simone wasn’t cradling against her chest, he helped her rise before gripping the wrist of her injured arm.
“Do you think it’s broken?” he asked as he tenderly examined it.
“I think he just squished it.”
“It will heal fast.”
He released her arm and lifted his eyes to meet hers. Unable to resist, he clasped her chin and ran his thumb over her lips to wipe away the blood staining them. It bothered him she’d fed from another,heshould be her primary source until they were separated, but the lethalness she’d exhibited excited him. There was far more to this little hunter than he’d ever realized.
“Stay here while I clean this mess up,” he said.
“I’ll help you.”
“No,” Killean said. “I don’t want you touching these things.”
“Killean–—”
“You’re injured, Simone. Just let me take care of it.”
Simone stepped back, and he turned to gather Andre’s head and body.
“How did they find us?” she asked as he worked.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Do you think there were more of them at the campground, and they saw us leave?”
“No. I would have sensed them if there were, and they would have found us sooner if they knew what vehicle we were driving. They could be patrolling all the roads and simply got lucky.”
He didn’t believe that, but he didn’t know how else the Savages could have stumbled across them. There hadn’t been any other vampires at that campground; he was sure of that.
Killean carried the remains of Andre over to the car, opened the passenger door, and heaved him inside. The Savage pinned behind the wheel made a gurgled sound and jerked harder at the column keeping him in place. Killean leaned over to examine the Savage more closely and realized the wheel was fusing into the vampire’s skin as it healed.
“You should be afraid,” Killean assured him before closing the door on Andre’s body.
Simone stood behind the truck while he gathered the rest of the bodies and tossed them into the back seat of the car.
“Go stand by the front of the truck,” he said to her when he shut the door on the last of the remains.
Simone flexed the fingers of her injured arm. They tingled with the feeling returning to them, but it didn’t hurt when she twisted her arm to the side. “Why?”
“Because I’m going to kill him.”
She glanced pointedly at the blood splattering the street around her. “I already saw you killallthe others.”
“Yes, but I’m going to drain this one dry,” Killean replied unapologetically. He would not make excuses for who or what he was now, and he had to feed. These deaths hadn’t completely satisfied his bloodlust the way drinking the life from someone would.
Simone stared at him as she tried to process what he was telling her. This last kill would not be as merciful as the others. No, this one would be an unleashing of the Savage he’d become. She should be repulsed; instead, all she felt was a level of understanding she’d never expected to experience for a being who thrived on killing.
In the glow of the one remaining headlight on the car, Killean watched her turn away before he walked around to the driver’s side door, pulled it open, and bent down to meet the eyes of the Savage within. The vamp’s eyes rolled in his head, his distressed sounds increased as he beat his hands uselessly against the wheel.
Killean tore the steering wheel off its mount and out of the pinned Savage’s chest. The wounded vamp couldn’t put up much of a fight, but Killean wasn’t so far gone that he would kill a defenseless man.
