Kindred (Book 1 The Kindred Series) (46 page)

  
She inhaled great, heaping gulps of air in an attempt to ease the shaking that wracked painfully through her bones.
She was trembl
ing so hard that the teeth rattled in her head. Her gaze went slowly back to the paper. It now seemed malevolent to her, awful, wrong, out of place in what used to be the
warm
comfort of her kitchen.

   Taking another deep breath, she used the counter to
support her as she
move
d
slowly back to the
island she had left the paper on
. She did not want to look at it again, did not want to touch it, but she knew that she had to. She needed to see it, to
know for certain
if what she had seen was right. To see if what she feared was true.

   Releasing the counter, she stumbled to the island, nearly hyperventilating as
she
grasped hold of the paper
and
pull
ed
it close. She was shaking so badly that she could barely get the pages open
. Her gaze scanned over the article, coming to rest on the date of the first
d
isappearance
. September fifteenth, Megan Keller
,
twenty-two
, had
vanished from a
park
in Sandwich.

   Cassie grasped the paper; sliding limply to the floor she pressed it tight to her chest.
The wrinkled pages crinkled loudly as her fingers curled into it.
Devon had arrived on the
thirteenth
. He had strolled into her life two days before the
disappearances
started.

   Her mind began tripping over everything t
hat she had been trying to deny.
L
ittle pieces of
the
puzzle
she
’
d always had, but hadn’t wanted to assemble, suddenly began to fall
swiftly into place.
Devon’s
speed and agility,
the strength
he
exhibited
when he lifted Mark easily, effortlessly
,
off the groun
d. He hadn’t even broken a
sweat
!
She thought over the
way he spoke
, it
was
so
old and
elegant
,
so
outdated. H
e knew
the card game faro
, a game
no
one knew anymore
. She had definitely never heard of anyone
her
age ever having played the game
.

  
Though the puzzle horrified her, once the pieces began slipping together, she could not stop them from
assembling the picture
.
Melissa had seen nothing about
Devon,
other than his arrival,
and
Chris could not read him.
Both of which
could be explained by the p
ower
that
radiate
d
from him,
far more power than a
human
would possess
, and she was beginning to believe it was even more power than
she
possessed
.

   A chill ran down her
spine
, her body shook with the fierce tremors wracking it. Closing her eyes she tried to stop the images tumbling swiftly together, but
no matter how hard she tried,
they would not
stop. H
e was
always
slightly colder
than normal
,
a fact that could be explained by the weather
,
or bad circulation, but neither of those
explanations
seemed right to her now.

  
She had been
irresistibl
y
attract
ed
to him,
pulled to him
like a magnet to metal
from the very beginning
. All of the girls were drawn to him, so much so that they had turned against her
in the hopes that they would get him.
It was something that she had known all along, that her attraction to him was fierce, and something that most people did not experience
.
B
ut
she had chosen to ignore that fact i
n her desire
to be closer to him, to be
with
him.

  
As t
he
last piece
s
of
the p
uzzle slid into place, Cassie’s breath
locked
in her chest
as panic clenched at her. Every single one of those pieces,
every
single one of those oddities
,
w
as
abilities
or traits
,
of
vampires
.
Abilities that her worst enemies and most hated foe’s possessed.
Now that the
puzzle
was in
place,
she fully realized
that it was a jigsaw straight from hell.

   He had
s
ense
d
the evil in the woods, but what if
he
was that evil? What if he had let his guard
down
briefly, allowing the evil to slip free, allowing it to permeate into them? ‘It’s playing with us,’ Chris had said softly.
‘Playing games with us, before killing us.’
What better way to play games with
her
than to make he
r
fall in love with
him
, before
he tried to
kill
her
?
   Tears streamed down Cassie’s face, pain twisted in her chest as she
tried to
inhale heaping
gulps of air
through the agony consuming her
. Her gaze darted to the window, and the bright sunlight beyond.
Her forehead
furrowed tightly
in confusion
as a piece of the puzzle did not slide into place. Devon
walked about in the day, unaffected by the light of the sun
. She had
never
known a vampire to do that
before, it was
im
possible.
Sunlight killed them
.

  
T
he day was for humans, their time to be safe, and not
to
have to worry about the monsters lurking in the shadows.

  
Hope ballooned briefly inside her, and then
swiftly deflated as
she recalled Luther’s words.
‘We do not know what an
E
lder could be capable of.
The powers that they might possess.’

   One of those powers may very well be the ability to stroll about in broad daylight, a monster among humans.
It would be a
perf
ect disguise to fo
ol any Hunter. If D
evon
was an E
lder, than he was more than just a normal vampire, he was
one of the most powerful and one of the
most hated. He would have been one of the ones to help mastermind the destruction of her parents, one of the ones that had helped to eradicate her race.

  
Her body lost all strength; t
he paper fell limply
from her hands
as she slid to the floor
.
H
er heart
was
shattering into a million pieces, her world crumbling around her. She gasped, shaking
and crying;
her head f
ell
forward
into her hands
.
He breathed, she thought desperately, she had felt him breathe, but what if he only pretended to
breathe
in her presence? She tried to recall if she had felt the beat of his heart, but try as she might she could not re
member
ever feeling the reassuring pulse of life within his chest.

  
She tried to convince herself that she was wrong, but
though she tried to hide behind a wall of denial,
she
could
not.
Not anymore.
Her mind, her
soul
, knew that she was right.

   He was not human
. He was not a Hunter. He was not even a human with special abilities.

  
He was
the
monster. He was the one hunting them, stalking them, playing and toying with them. And he had been very good at it. She had fallen helplessly
in love with him. She had
allowed him into her soul, taken him into the very essence of her. And the entire time he had been
playing with her,
plotting her death, her murder
, and the murder of the ones she loved
.

   The past two nights, when he had held her gently, making her feel safe
and protected,
had all been part of his game. He was good, excellent even, she ha
d
to give him that much. His game had succeeded in crushing her, from the inside out. There was nothing left to her. No hope, no wonder, no life. She was an empty shell of the person she had been, wounded and beaten
.

  
A
nd yet
,
somehow stronger.
She would not let him win. She was stronger than that. He may have destroyed her, but he would not hurt anyone else. He would not take her loved ones from her.
 

   Wiping the tears from her eyes, Cassie placed her hands on the floor and shoved herself up.
She could not sit here and cry
.
S
he didn’t have time for that. There was a monster out there, and she was one of the few people that could stop him.
She stood shakily for a mo
ment, numb and deadened. Then, like a phoenix rising from the ashes fury blazed hotly forth
and
burn
ed
away the devastating hurt that had encased her. He may have destroyed her, but she was also going to destroy him.

   She strode forcefully from the kitchen, pounding up the stairs to gather her weapons. She was tired
of running, tired of hiding, and very tired of being frightened. It was time to take a stand. It was time to do some hunting, instead of being the hunted
for a change
.

***

   Devon sat
completely still on the tree branch
,
all of his senses
tuned to the night beyond.
It was the exact same thing h
e had been doing every night for the past week
while Cassie had been occupied with studying, or at Melissa’s
.
Probing with his mind, he sorted through the few brains close enough for him to pick up on in the area. It was one of his talents, the ability to sift through people’s minds in order to pinpoint the one that he wanted. The
mind he would
then
latc
h onto, track down, and destroy;
t
he one that stalked
th
is
town, and its inhabitants
,
e
specially
Cassie. 

  
Thoughts of Cassie caused him to tense. Whenever he came out here, h
e had to shut his mind off of
her;
otherwise he would be dis
rupted
from his pursuit.
He could pick up her mind from mil
es away;
it was as bright and as welcoming as a lighthouse beacon to him
.
But now, here, her mind was a distraction to him, and one that he could not have if he was going to succeed in destroying his prey. 

  
Tuning his senses to the night, he strained to feel anything out there, to
find
anything out there. Then, he felt it. For the first time, he picked up on a small
flicker
of power in the night.
A power that he recognized instantly as belonging to the one he sought.

   Slipping easily from the tree, he moved swiftly through the woods, faster
and more graceful than any cheetah
.
Leaping over fallen
logs,
and effortlessly dodging branches, he
darted swiftly through the trees
,
hunting
the power
that he had sensed. He could feel it moving deeper into the woods, running from the pursuit that it had sparked.