Читать книгу The Vampire Hunter - Lisa Childs, Lisa Childs, Livia Reasoner - Страница 6

Strong arms encircled Jennifer as the man carried her down the dimly lit, underground corridor. She hadn’t been carried since she’d been a child. Hadn’t been loved or protected in so many years. Since she’d become a vampiress, someone had been interested in her—so interested that he’d actually made her feel unsafe, and she’d been hiding from him as much as she’d been hiding from her sister. That man didn’t love her, though.

This man didn’t love her, either. And he certainly didn’t intend to protect her. Liam McKiernan intended to kill her for what he thought she’d done.

“Why didn’t you just leave me for dead?” she asked, her voice raspy as her strength slowly ebbed back. “Or wouldn’t that have been good enough for you? You want the satisfaction of killing me yourself.”

“Is this it?” he asked, his pale eyes squinting as he peered through the shadows.

She glanced toward the door, in front of where he’d stopped, and nodded. “It’s my apartment.” And she had no idea why she’d let him bring her here except that she hadn’t been thinking when he’d asked where she lived. Jennifer had barely been conscious. The rising sun had weakened her physically and the news of Bryan’s death had weakened her emotionally.

Poor Bryan…

How could this man think that she would have murdered her best friend? She struggled against his grasp, trying to slide down his body. But he held her tight.

“Where’s your key?”

“Above the door.” What did it matter now if he knew where she lived or where she hid her key? The only way she would be able to stop him from killing her would be if she killed him first.

He clasped her against him with one arm, her face buried in his throat, as he fumbled above the trim. To kill him, all she had to do was bare her fangs and sink them deep in his throat. She’d never done it before, had never drank from another being—she’d only drank the processed blood the society supplied at places like Club Underground. But she was tempted to bite now, her fangs distending inside her mouth.

He smelled of musk and male sweat from his earlier physical struggles. Hunger clutched at her, tightening the muscles in her stomach, as the urge to taste him overwhelmed her. Just as he jammed the key into the lock and threw open her apartment door, she slid her tongue down the side of his neck.

He shuddered and finally released her, kicking the door shut behind them. “What the hell are you doing?” he asked, his voice rough while his pale eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Do you think you’re going to kill me like you killed my brother?”

“Bryan’s your brother?”

“Was,” he brutally reminded her of the death of her best friend.

Regret and grief overwhelmed her now. She backed away from him, through the brick archway that led from the foyer into the living room. He followed her then gasped, staring at the artwork propped against, and hanging from, all of the weathered brick walls. He circled the room before stopping in front of the portrait of his brother.

She’d painted Bryan as a teenager, the sun shining on his bright smile while the wind ruffled his brown hair. His eyes were wide with innocence and warmth. He couldn’t be dead. Not Bryan…

“You must be Liam,” she said. But she saw nothing of the freckle-faced redhead in the auburn-haired stranger she’d struggled with in the alley. The kid was in one of the portraits, too. Although they’d only met once, she’d remembered the mischievous boy Bryan had loved so much. She had painted Liam in a tree with his older brother standing beneath him, ready to catch him if he fell.

Liam reached out and ran his fingertip over the ridge of the thick oil paint. “You did these?”

She nodded then realized he had yet to pull his gaze from the painting, so she replied, “Yes.”

He moved along the wall to another portrait. “Is this you?”

Her breath caught as she stared at the blond-haired girl lying in a hospital bed, tubes and machines hooked to her fragile body. “No. It’s Eve.”

“Bryan said you were the one who was sick,” he said, “who had cancer.”

“Yes, and I would have died had my parents not had Eve, not used her to save me.” That was why she’d painted that picture, to remind herself what her sister had gone through for her, what she would have gone through again had Jennifer stayed human. Their parents would have used her again, whatever the risk, to save Jennifer. Guilt was as heavy as the paint on the canvas.

Then, remembering what he had done to Eve, anger coursed through her. “You used my sister to get to me!”

“I didn’t hurt her,” he said, his gaze finally locking with hers again, his pale eyes so cold and hard.

“I didn’t hurt Bryan.” She gestured at the portraits she had done to remind herself of her best friend. “I couldn’t have…”

“If not you,” he said, as if challenging her to change his mind about her guilt, “who would have done that to him?”

That—drained him of his blood. She remembered the vivid, horrifying picture Liam had painted inside her head. “He must have tried to find me, must have learned about the secret society. They don’t allow any human to learn about the society and live.”

“I’m alive,” he pointed out with that short, bitter chuckle that had her skin tingling in reaction.

What was it about the man that drew her when she should have hated him as much as he hated her? “You must not have told anyone.”

“Just Eve.”

“You might not have physically hurt her, but you put her in grave danger,” she said, fear pumping through her veins along with the rage. “You put her life at risk from them.”

“Them. They,” he repeated. “Don’t you consider yourself one of them?”

She shivered. While she lived among the secret society, she wasn’t entirely comfortable in their underground world—especially since one had taken that uncomfortable interest in her. But for a few friends, she kept to herself—moving from city to city, taking art classes or teaching them. At night. Always at night. But after all the years she’d spent in hospitals and her own bed, she’d grown used to going without sunshine. Eve and Bryan were all that she’d missed.

“Sometimes I don’t know what I am,” she admitted, surprised she would confess so much to a stranger. “But I know what I’m not.” She stepped closer to him, so that only mere inches separated his heavily muscled chest from her breasts. Staring up into his handsome face, she stated unequivocally, “I am not a killer.”

But was he?

Liam wished she was lying. Then he wouldn’t feel so bad about what he’d done, about how he had used her sister to further his own agenda. He hadn’t thought about the danger he’d put Eve in; he’d thought only about vengeance. And if Jennifer was lying, he could have that now. He could pull another stake from the pocket of his long jacket, jam it into the gun he’d designed and fire it into Jennifer Williams’s cold heart.

But her heart wasn’t cold. Even if he hadn’t felt her physical warmth when he’d wrestled with her and then carried her home, he would have been able to see her emotional heart. She’d put it into every one of her paintings, especially those of her little sister and those of his brother.

He turned back to the portrait of Bryan’s grinning face. Unlike some of the newer canvases, which were propped against the walls, the one of Bryan hung in the place of honor over the mantel of the old Chicago-brick fireplace. “You loved him.”

“Yes.”

Liam hadn’t needed her heartfelt confirmation. Her love for his brother was in every stroke of her brush across the canvas. Having felt about Bryan as she had, there was no way she could have hurt him. She never could have done to him the brutality that had been done. She’d loved Bryan too much.

Liam’s gut clenched, almost as if he were jealous. Of her feelings for Bryan? He’d always thought he’d been jealous of her, that no matter how much his brother had loved him, he would have rather hung out with Jennifer Williams. When Liam turned back to her, and lost himself in those mesmerizing deep green eyes, he understood why. She wasn’t just beautiful outside; she was beautiful inside, too. “He loved you, too.”

Tears trembled on her thick black lashes. “He was my best friend since kindergarten. When I got sick, other kids didn’t want anything to do with me. They seemed scared that they might catch cancer. Bryan wasn’t afraid of anything. He was fearless. And his friendship made me feel fearless.”

“His fearlessness is probably what led to his death.” When Jennifer had disappeared, Bryan had been determined to find her—with no thought to his own safety.