Scorched Ice (Fire and Ice #3)(26)

She took a step back to leave when the hair on her nape rose. She detected no new scent, but her instincts screamed that she wasn’t alone. Over her time with Julian and the others, she’d become attuned to their presences. It wasn’t one of them coming up behind her now.

Ever since Earl had first walked into her life and torn it apart when she was eighteen, she’d always been ready for a fight. Always been loaded down with weapons so well concealed many wouldn’t know they were there. Now, she was standing in a freaking robe and bikini with none of the weapons she’d become so adept with over the years.

For the first time in six years, she’d let her guard down, allowed herself to pretend to live a “normal” life for a vampire, and she was about to pay for that.

The faintest hint of a step behind had her spinning and swinging the butter knife out. She’d twisted it within her grip so the blade was pointed to the side in her fist. Despite its dull blade, she swung the knife with enough force that it whizzed past the nose of the man standing there and drove deep into the wall next to him. Plaster filtered over her hand as blood trickled from the thin slice the blade had left across the tip of the man’s nose.

His blue eyes widened on her before narrowing. Quinn yanked the knife from the wall at the same time he pulled out two stakes. Her fangs tingled as realization sank in.

Hunter! Not Commission, she faced a Hunter, and he was far better prepared to kill her than she was him.

She danced back a few steps, cursing the cumbersome robe swaying about her feet as she moved, but she didn’t dare shed it and reveal to him how woefully unprepared for this battle she was.

The man’s agile body moved around her with the flowing grace all Hunters and vampires possessed. With the faint lines around his eyes and mouth and a hint of gray in his brunet hair, he appeared to be in his mid to late thirties. His eyes were assessing as he tried to gauge how deadly of an opponent she may be—something she wasn’t sure of herself right now.

She’d never fought a Hunter, one of her own kind. She’d killed Zach, but that had been to save Julian. Could she kill another Hunter again now?

Yes. If push came to shove, she would kill him in order to stay alive. She would do everything she could to keep it from coming to that point first though.

“I don’t want to fight you,” she said.

The man wiped the back of his hand across his nose, removing the trickle of blood from it. “You don’t have a choice.”

“I’m not a killer.”

He snorted as he shifted the stakes in his hands. Quinn recognized the move as him readying to throw one at her. “I suppose those fangs are only for show.”

“Oh no, I’m perfectly capable of tearing the throat out of something. I simply refrain from doing so,” she replied, moving with him in order to keep from being cornered against one of the machines.

He chuckled and moved so rapidly that Quinn barely saw his hand pull back before he threw the stake at her. Darting to the side, she plucked the stake from the air. Before he could get a chance to realize what she’d done, she whipped the weapon back at him. He wasn’t fast enough to completely dodge it as the stake embedded in his shoulder, knocking him into the wall.

“That could have been your heart!” she hissed at him. “I chose not to make it so. I don’t want to kill you.”

Wrath blazed in his eyes when he tore the stake from his shoulder. The scent of his blood caused saliva to fill her mouth as her earlier hunger surged back to the forefront.

“Your eyes,” the man murmured.

Quinn glared at him as she realized she’d lost control of her hunger enough for her eyes to change. She’d worked her entire life to keep herself restrained from allowing that to happen. There was no denying she was different when her eyes changed. Unlike other vampires, whose irises became red when out of control, her irises became a molten gold color and red danced around the outer rims of her pupils. Like flames, that red actually seemed to leap and burn. The whites of her eyes turned completely red to emphasize the striking anomaly of her irises.

He twisted the stake around in his good hand. Despite his years of training, she heard the increased beat of his heart, and a thin sheen of sweat beaded his brow. He’d been completely composed when he first encountered her, but her eyes had rattled him.

“What are you?” he asked.

“I’m not your enemy,” she replied.

“All vampires are my enemy.”

“That’s not true. You’ve been taught wrong all these years. The Commission has taught you wrong. You have to believe me.”

“Lies,” he murmured, but his gaze never left hers. “Vampires spew lies.”

“If I was your enemy, I’d be on you by now.”

He chuckled as he changed his stance. She may have injured his right shoulder, and most likely the dominant side of his body, but she had no doubt he’d be as capable of handling a weapon with his left hand as he was with his right. Most Hunters were; she was.

“You’re simply not as stupid as most vampires,” he replied. “You’ve learned to hang back and gauge your enemy. A sign of your age and the power I feel coming from you.”

“I was only turned into a vampire six years ago. I’m twenty-four.”

“More lies.”

“The truth.”