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She halted behind the woman who’d fired the gun, grabbed her, and whirled to face the third Hunter. Just in time too. The Hunter fired. Pop. Pop. The woman in Gabby’s arms jerked, but there was no scent of blood. Somehow, the bullet had hit without breaking skin.
Gabby threw the woman at her comrade. The two Hunters tumbled to the ground in a tangle of limbs. She ducked as a knife swiped by her face so close she felt the air it displaced. Bending her knees, she grabbed the knife arm, swung her attacker over her shoulder, and kicked him hard enough to knock him out.
One down. Two to go.
The fallen Hunters had untangled themselves and dashed in opposite directions. They were fast. Nikolas had warned her the Hunters were stronger and faster than ordinary humans.
Noting the woman was slower than the man, Gabby gave chase. She knocked the gun out of the woman’s hand, but she wasn’t fast enough to dodge the knife that appeared out of nowhere.
Pain exploded in her shoulder. An angry hiss escaped her, the vampire within rising to the surface. Claws extended, she slashed upwards, cutting through the thick layer of protection the Hunter wore, and buried her claws in the woman’s stomach.
She gasped. Gabby let go and pulled out the knife with a grunt. It didn’t stop the burning path of the silver carving through her bloodstream like a shark scenting blood. She’d experienced silver poisoning before and didn’t remember it traveling that fast. Like the Hunters themselves, something had changed about the silver to make it more effective.
She needed to get rid of the other Hunter before the poison paralyzed her.
A flash of movement to her left. When Gabby turned to look, there was no one. A sharp ache punctured her arms. When she looked down, two darts stuck out of her left arm.
What the…?
Her arm was numb suddenly. No pain, only numbness. She heard gunshots and tried to leap away, except her legs gave out beneath her.
The bullets punched into her back. The searing agony stole her breath. A shocked cry escaped her lips and she collapsed. Her entire body was on fire, as if she had been caught in the sun and was turning to ashes from inside and out.
Except her arm. She couldn’t feel her arm.
Gabby!
She had no strength to respond to an outraged cry from Felix. He appeared behind her. Someone gagged before a body thudded on the ground. Then he was next to her.
“You need blood. Now.”
Felix sliced open his wrist and placed it over her mouth. Her fangs dropped of their own accord. His blood called to her not only because he was her mate, but she could sense its strength and life, and she craved that beyond anything else.
“No.”
Gabby clamped down on the need roaring through her, made even more powerful by her body’s need to expel the silver and their mating bond. But she couldn’t drink his blood. It would give him too much power over her.
Alistair’s warning rang in her pain muddled mind. Drinking from him would repair the tattered mating bond. Not something she wanted when she had not changed her mind about breaking their bond.
“Gabby—” His snarl would have made a lion jealous.
“No.” She struggled up to a sitting position with her right arm. She needed blood like an addict craving her next hit, just not from him. “Find a human.”
“Stop being unreasonable.”
“Find me a human. Or I will do it myself,” she snapped, a red film covering her vision as the vampire took over.
Growling, Felix jumped off the roof.We’ll discuss this later.
Over her dead body, but she said nothing. Gabby leaned against the wall and jerked out the two darts in her arm. They were sleek looking devices, small, about the length of her index finger. The needle was about a third of the length, and the rest was a clear capsule holding whatever had been injected into her.
Something else is wrong. What is it?
No use hiding it from him. She explained what had happened, that it wasn’t just the silver. Someone else had tried to kill her. No, not kill her. Whatever the dart had injected into her wasn’t lethal. There weren’t any chemicals with the ability to kill a vampire, not even silver. Silver poisoning only weakened and slowed them enough to give humans a chance to behead or stake them.
Gabby sliced open her wrists to draw the silver out of her bloodstream. It was grueling, tedious work, made harder by the foreign compound from the dart bonding with the silver. Sweat beaded on her brow. Hunger gnawed at her insides as she expanded her energy.
When Felix returned with two unconscious, healthy scented humans in tow, she was halfway through the cleansing process. Her stomach cramped and her fangs lengthened of their own accord at the humans’ proximity. She stopped breathing to better control her cravings and bit down on one human’s wrist.
