Vengeance (The Captive #6)(53)

The pieces he dropped back down were dirty blonde in hue, but then her hair was actually streaked with dirt now, she thought with an inward giggle. Her hair might even pass as brown now, at least at night. He turned away from her and walked back over to the metal piece he’d propped against the rocks. She watched as he ran his hands carefully through his hair, taking away the reddish tones she liked so much.

When he turned back to her, he looked like a different person with his bare face and now brown hair. Even with the completely different appearance, she realized she would know him anywhere. She’d always know the smell, feel and taste of him, but more than that, she would recognize his presence anywhere.

Her admiring gaze followed his chiseled physique as he walked around the cave. Without his cloak on, she could get a good view of his powerful thighs in his loose fitting brown pants. The flaxen shirt he wore bunched over his powerful shoulders and biceps as he gathered the supplies they would need and set the feedbag up for Achilles.

He gave the horse a firm pat on his neck before swinging his cloak around his shoulders and turning to her. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” she said and took the saddlebag he offered her. He helped her tie it around her waist and made sure it was cinched securely against her back.

Taking hold of the torch, she led the way back into the cave system and toward her home.

***

William peered over the top of the mountain they had climbed to the peak of, and stared down at the small town located within the valley below. Tempest settled into the snow beside him. On her lips, he could smell the coppery scent of the fox’s blood they’d captured and fed from before climbing up here.

He held his hand up, keeping her away from the edge as he crawled forward on his belly to see more of the town. She stayed a little ways behind him, but she refused to stay back completely. She crept forward to lay beside him in the snow.

Fires burned in the middle of the street, and from the hiss she released, he assumed more vampires or people had helped to fan those flames. Now their burning graves continued to light up the night sky.

He pressed himself deeper into the snow as he surveyed the town. Along the street, he spotted the patrolling vampire guards Tempest had told him about. The white cloaks they wore helped them blend in with their environment. The quaint homes lining the roads made it appear far more picturesque than it actually was, given the sinister presence of those vampires.

He’d been hesitant to believe her in the beginning, but he realized she’d told the truth shortly after she’d started talking. He’d still been hoping she’d been off on her estimation of the soldiers, but her guess about the numbers may have actually been on the low side.

Where had they all come from? Then he recalled the desolate town of Chester. There was no way to know how many towns had been traveled through and destroyed by these vampires.

The vampires below were the ones he could see. There was no way to tell how many were hiding in the mountains or camped out inside the houses. He lifted his gaze to scan the mountaintops surrounding them, but he didn’t see anyone moving about from his current vantage point.

He gestured for her to move back. Sliding over the peak, they settled onto a rock lip beneath it. He pressed his back against the mountain as he stared down at the lake a few thousand feet below them. The moon and stars reflected in the water; their twinkling lights looked like fireflies on its smooth surface from this far above.

“I think there’s more of them than there were before,” she muttered as she tugged the cloak closer around her face. “What do we do now? Can we get to the children?”

William rubbed at his chin, not at all used to feeling smooth skin beneath his touch again. It wasn’t the same without the beard, he missed it; his face missed it, as the cool air brushed against skin that had been protected from the elements for over a year now.

“I’m not sure,” he admitted. She blinked away the tears that filled her eyes. “But we’ll try. I want to get closer and see if I can figure out what is going on, and who the vampire declaring herself the queen is. It will be a lot easier to get into town and try to learn something useful without Braith’s troops than it would be with them. There will also be a lot less bloodshed. Maybe there’s a way to put a stop to whatever is happening before another war starts. I’ve had enough of fighting.”

He could feel her eyes burning into him, but he didn’t look at her as he stared out at the velvet black of night. The clashing ring of steel echoed in his head, the twang of bowstring and the whistle of arrows filled his ears as memories flooded his mind. The coppery stench of blood burned into his nose while screams of agony and terror filled his head. Taking a deep breath, he ran a hand through his dirt-darkened hair, tugging at the ends of it as he grappled to block out the memories washing over him.

Taking a shaky breath, he lifted his head to look at her. Instinctively, he took hold of a strand of her hair. He hated he’d had to obscure the silvery strands, but the feel of it helped to calm him. The screams and blood faded away when his fingers trailed over her silken cheeks before brushing briefly across her lips. She somehow had a way of making the brutality of his existence better.

Reluctantly, he pulled his hand away from her. “We’re going to need a couple of those cloaks,” he told her. “If we have any shot of blending in down there.”

“Do you think it was the children?” she whispered. “Those fires?”