Page 30 of Bound By Blood

Clad in a pair of white shorts and a silky-looking orange-and-white striped shirt, she stood at the stove, her back toward him while she stirred something in a pot. Her legs were long and tan, her waist narrow. Her hair fell in long, loose waves down her back like a river of ebony silk.

Had he been in corporeal form, Zack was sure his mouth would have been watering, not from the smell of the food, but from the enticing scent of the woman.

Zack hovered there, content, for the moment, to simply admire the way she looked, the fluid way she moved, the lilting sound of her voice as she hummed an old rock-and-roll tune. Watching her, it was hard to believe she was half vampire. She seemed totally human. Until she put her dinner on the table and filled a goblet with a mixture of red wine and blood.

Type AB negative, he thought. Her drink of choice.

Zack was wondering if she ever drank anything else when Daryn Korzha appeared in the kitchen. What the hell? Apparently Romanian vampires didn’t need an invitation to enter another’s home. Or maybe that only applied to mortal dwellings. He would have to ask Kaitlyn about that. Later.

Kaitlyn whirled around, her eyes flashing with anger. “What are you doing here?”

“You stupid half-breed, you don’t even know who I am, do you?”

Kaitlyn stared at him. She had rarely felt fear in her life, but she felt it now, along with a sudden certainty that he belonged to the Carpathian vampires. No one else would know of her mixed heritage. The pure-blood vampires, inherently linked by centuries, recognized each other on sight, but Kaitlyn lacked that particular talent. It also explained his ability to materialize inside her house. No human could do that.

She lifted her chin, refusing to let him see her fear. “What do you want?” she demanded with far more bravado that she felt.

“Enough talk,” Korzha said with a sneer. One arm snaked out, wrapping around her waist to hold her flush against his body while he jabbed a needle in her arm.

She struggled a moment, then went limp.

In an instant, Zack was inside the house. He didn’t ask questions, simply grabbed Korzha from behind and broke his neck. Kaitlyn slipped from Korzha’s grasp and dropped to the floor. Zack took a moment to make sure she was breathing, then rummaged through the kitchen drawers. A broken neck wouldn’t keep the vampire down for long.

Zack cussed long and loud until he found a large wooden spoon. Grabbing a knife, he quickly fashioned a point on the end of the handle and drove the makeshift stake through Korzha’s heart, all the way to the floor. Dark red blood bubbled up from the killing wound.

Korzha gasped, his hand curling around the stake, but the strength was already draining out of him. He convulsed once, and then lay still, the life fading from his eyes as his skin turned a pasty gray.

Zack rocked back on his heels. It had been a long time since he’d killed another vampire, but he would gladly have dispatched this one again.

He glanced at Kaitlyn. She lay on her side, her eyes closed, her breathing shallow. Figuring she would be out for a while, he carried her into the living room, laid her on the sofa, and covered her with a blanket that had been folded over the back of the couch.

Returning to the kitchen, Zack hoisted Korzha’s body over his shoulder and carried it outside.

He stood in the dark a moment, considering what to do with the body. He grunted softly, wondering if the bodies of vampires who were born and not made disintegrated in the light of day the way his kind did.

Since he wasn’t sure, burying the body seemed like the smart thing to do. Moving with preternatural speed, he found a stretch of deserted ground high in the mountains. Dropping the body unceremoniously on the ground, he quickly dug a deep hole in the soft earth. Needing to make sure Korzha didn’t rise again, Zack ripped the man’s heart from his chest and tossed it and the body into the hole.

Once the corpse was buried, Zack transported himself to his lair, where he washed his hands and changed his clothes.

Minutes later, he was back at Kaitlyn’s house, scrubbing the blood from her kitchen floor.

Kaitlyn groaned softly as consciousness returned. She opened her eyes slowly and glanced around. What was she doing on the sofa? And why did she feel so funny?

Sitting up, she glanced around the room, her eyes widening when she saw Zack sitting in the chair across from the couch.

“What are you doing here?” She frowned as her mind cleared. “Where’s Daryn?” Her gaze darted around the room, but there was no sign of Korzha. Where is he?” She rubbed her arm. “He jabbed me with a needle.”

“He’s gone.”

“What do you mean, ‘gone’? What did you do?” She stared at Zack, weighing the curtness of his words, the icy expression in his eyes. “Did you … is he …?”

Zack nodded. “He’ll never bother you or anyone else again.”

Daryn was dead. It took a moment for the cold reality of it to sink in. Zack had killed a man. She had never killed anyone and now Daryn, a member of the Carpathian Coven—one of her father’s half-brothers—was dead. Because of her.

“Hey, are you all right?” Zack asked. “You’re looking a little pale.”

“Do you know what you’ve done?” What would her father say? What would he think, when he found out?

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