No good deed goes unpunished. And never had that statement been more true.
She’d known if she ever saw him again, he would demand answers. She’d been determined to avoid him, but she could almost hear God, or whoever or whatever controlled the fates, laughing at her when they once again put her smack-dab in the middle of the hunter’s path.
But her conscience hadn’t allowed her to walk away from him.
Not for the first time in her life, she cursed her stupid conscience. They were truly horrible things, and she didn’t understand why she had to be burdened with one.
Maybe it would stop rearing its ugly head one of these days, but she wasn’t counting on it. If it hadn’t shut up after what happened five hundred years ago, it would never learn to zip it.
Turning another corner, she almost skidded to a halt when she spotted the ten-foot fence across the way, but stopping now would be a bigger mistake than taking on the barbwire at the top of the fence.
Determined to get over the top as fast as possible, she poured on the speed. This could be her chance to escape him for good. It shouldn’t be too difficult considering it was chain-link, but she was not looking forward to the wire.
Running faster, she refused to think about the pain sure to come. She leaped into the air three feet away from the fence. Metal rattled as she crashed into it, and her fingers hooked through the links while her toes found grips to propel her upward.
She grasped the barbed wire and yanked herself over the top. She ignored the sharp points slicing into her palms as she flipped in the air like a vaulting gymnast. The wires tore across her hands as she released her grip on them.
With a small grunt, she landed on the other side. Blood dripped from her as she planted one fist on the ground and looked up to stare at the fence and the hunter still coming after her. Unwilling to wait and see what he would do, she turned and fled down the alley.
She didn’t have to look back to know the barbwire wouldn’t deter him either. The determined look on his face and the steely gleam in his eyes had already told her that much.
Asher cursed the stubborn, stupid woman as he jumped onto the fence and climbed. Grasping the wire at the top, he winced when the barbs dug into his flesh, but he didn’t let it stop him as he threw himself over the top.
His movements and landing were nowhere near as graceful as hers, but he wasn’t far behind as she sprinted onto another street. Headlights illuminated her small frame, and horns blared as she dashed in and out of the cars screeching to a halt around her. The vehicles didn’t get a chance to start moving again before he raced across the road after her.
“Hey!” a man shouted after them. “Hey! Leave her alone!”
“Someone call the police!” a woman shrieked.
As he chased the woman into a parking lot, Asher didn’t wait to see if anyone obeyed the command. The asphalt was lit only by the dim headlights of the cars on the road, nearly a hundred feet away.
No one chased them as they darted in and out of the few remaining cars. Though Brie was no more than five foot five, her legs ate up the ground like they were six inches longer.
Asher cursed legs that shouldn’t be that fast, brown hair just out of his reach, and the exasperating woman who owned them both. However, cursing her wasn’t doing any good.
They were almost to the edge of the parking lot when a streak from the corner of his eye caught his attention. At first, he hoped Lucien or Declan had caught up with them, but his hopes died when the sickening stench of rot filled his nostrils.
Only a Savage could ever smell that bad, and the fetid thing was heading straight toward her.
CHAPTERTWO
Brie caughtthe flash of movement from the corner of her eye as the Savage’s putrid stench filled her nostrils. This was thelastthing she needed right now, but there was no way to avoid a confrontation with the vamp.
When she turned to take the thing on, red eyes and fangs filled her vision. Throwing out her hands, she grasped its shirt and flung it to the side. Still, its impact against her was enough to knock her back a few feet, but she recovered quickly.
She hadn’t spent nearly five hundred years working to destroy these things only to be taken down by one measly Savage with a stupidity issue. As she stumbled, she removed a stake from the holster she kept tucked neatly beneath her windbreaker.
The idiot Savage came back at her as she turned toward it. Bouncing on the toes of one foot, Brie pulled back her arm and let the stake fly.
Spinning through the air, the stake embedded itself in its intended target. The wood pierced through the creature’s flesh and bones before embedding in its black heart.
She didn’t have time to take pride in her kill as the distraction was enough for the hunter to catch her. Turning toward him, she prepared to fight as something inside her recoiled at the idea.
She had no idea why she had such a visceral reaction to possibly hurting this man to get free, but everything in her body screamed against it, even as she prepared to knock him out. The idea of harming him made her stomach churn, but he couldn’t stop her from completing her mission.
When he was almost to her, Brie swung out and caught him under his jaw; his head snapped back. The blow would have knocked a lesser man off his feet and thrown him backward, but a hunter was trained to combat vampires and could take a punch.
He hadn’t anticipated the blow, and his brief hesitation was enough for her to put some distance between them again. She sprinted onward, but he recovered faster than she would have liked.
