Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen

Ihad no idea where I was heading, but that only made the rush more exciting. My instincts were running free as I threw myself down the nearest steps to the London underground, two at a time, fearing for my life – or broken legs – as I somehow managed to stay on my heels.

There was no way I’d last more than two minutes in a cat and mouse game with Hans if I was reliant on my feet alone. I needed transport.

I took a one-stop journey, switching lines from District to Northern at the Embankment. I was hanging on to one of the carriage poles, my veins pulsing and my feet aching as the train pulled away from the station. I was still so new to London that I didn’t have a clue where I was going.

I hoped my confusion would only spell the same for Hans.

If I didn’t know where I was going, then how could he?

The Northern line took me to Tottenham Court Road, and I bailed from the carriage at the last possible moment, dashing up the escalator as quickly as I could. I glanced up and down the street at all the people around me, minding their own business like it was another easy night in the city.

For them, I guess it was.

So, where from here?

I saw signs for Covent Garden and made my choice, trotting on my heels like a girl gone mad, but barely anyone shot me a glance. I was spinning when I hit the park grass, checking for signs of an impending vampire attack, but none came.

Should I hide? Find another tube? Keep on running on foot as fast as I could?

I could see paths and benches, and people still walking on by… so which way? Which direction?

I guess I pondered my options too long, because when I looked back, I saw him there. Hans. Walking slowly towards me, like he had all the time in the world.

It took everything I had not to scream, but I kept walking, trying to blend in amongst some other people, even though I knew full well that Hans was watching me.

He didn’t try to catch up, and in some ways that made my heart pound even harder.

He was playing a game he had no fear of losing, but still, I wasn’t going to be an easy catch for him. Not this time.

I spotted an exit from the park and ran with everything I could, trusting instincts that were still fresh to me. My legs were already tiring, so it was a great relief when I saw signs for another tube station.

Leicester Square.

From that point, my race from the vampire was a blur of underground stations. I took random stops and switched lines, over and over. Sometimes I doubled back, and sometimes I ran across platforms, and I was panting, desperate, my heart crying out every second I had to wait for an overdue train.

I don’t know quite when I ended up in Camden Town, but it was a fitting location for a vampire given its almost otherworldly nature, lined with goth shops on both sides of the road. Hans would blend in like a mega posh goth guy pretty well here, but me? I’d be visible in a mile radius, so fuck it, I kept on running.

Of course, when I turned around at the end of the street, there was Hans, behind me, walking towards me with the same beautiful smirk on his face.

Fuck.

Running through Camden was even harder than running on the cobblestones. The people around me were unwelcome obstacles to avoid, made worse by my stupid heels. Fuck only knows how I ended up in Kentish Town, and fuck knows on top of that how I ended up back on the tube – destination Hackney – I was just grateful that Hans wasn’t on the same carriage as me.

Hackney felt different from the other parts of London. It had a different vibe somehow, with less people milling around. I felt out of my depth as I chose the next street to take, because some of them looked darker, quieter… more deserted.

But now was the time. I had to choose and run for it.

I picked the nearest street, and the nearest one again after that. The underground option seemed distant now, as though I was a million miles away from another station, so I slowed myself down and tried to use my brain.

Think Katherine. Think.

Hiding. That seemed the best option.

I dashed into a yard behind a closed restaurant and repeated a mantra in my mind. Maybe that would confuse him…

Kensington. Kensington. I’m going back to Kensington.

Maybe I was clutching at straws, but I had to try.

Kensington. KENSINGTON.

Ah, but fuck it. I failed.

I heard the footsteps and gave myself up with a grin as I panted, grateful for the shiver of excitement at what was coming. I was too exhausted to run any more.

My thighs were already parting, and my veins felt ready to be taken, and I couldn’t hold in just how much I wanted this. I only wished my hands could touch myself to get ready. My clit was aching for touch, screaming out to be played with.

I opted for as much confidence as I could, whispering out my invitation.

“Bite me, please,” I whispered. “And make it hurt…”

“Shut the hell up and give me your fucking purse,” a voice sounded out, and the tone of it gave me the horrors.

It gave me absolute, petrifying horrors, because Fuck, FUCK, the guy approaching me in the yard wasn’t Hans. Hans wasn’t the only one I’d been running from.

“I… I don’t have any money,” I managed to stutter. “Really, I don’t. Even my bank cards are maxed out. There’s no point in taking them.”

I didn’t know what I was doing, reasoning with a guy who was trying to steal from me, but I felt I had to try before I screamed.

“Please,” I said. “I don’t have anything.”

“Give me your fucking purse,” he snarled, and he was big as he stepped up, shrouded in a black hoodie so dark that I couldn’t see him. He was drunk. His words were slurry.

“Give me your fucking purse! Now!”

“Honestly,” I said, taking a step back, “I don’t have any money.”

The man stepped closer until I was backed against a wall. His breath smelt of whisky.

“Then I’ll just take something else,” he said and reached for my tits.

I put my arms up to protect myself, and caught a glimpse of the wild eyes under that hoodie. Fuck. I was terrified. I told myself to fight, to lash out. To give it everything I had to get him off me, but I didn’t need to…

That hood of his was yanked back and the man went sprawling to the floor, Hans towering over him.

The brute of a thief leapt to his feet and tried to wrestle him, but it didn’t matter. There was no way he’d ever have won.

I’d felt Hans’ strength before, but I’d never seen the extent of it. I’d felt the power of his teeth, but I’d never seen them biting someone else…

Hans slammed the guy into the wall beside me, crushing the guy’s heaving chest against the bricks with his face turned in my direction, right next to me. And then he tore the hoodie down far enough to free the thief’s neck. The guy’s flesh was pale and orange under the pathetic excuse for a yard light, but it was bright enough for me to witness the attack.

Hans’ eyes were on me as he sank his teeth right the way into the thief’s neck next to me. The guy tried to cry out, but Hans slapped a hand over his mouth.

Gloved.

Hans had gloves on.

The guy was muffled and flailing, trying to shove Hans away, but it was pointless. It wasn’t just Hans’ eyes on mine as the scene reached its peak. I stood mute as I stared into the thief’s gaze, watching the submission of his soul as he lost the fight.

The thief gave up in front of me, his eyes draining of life along with his throat. His hands dropped at his sides, limp, and he tried to whimper but had no sound to give.

Neither did I.

I was fixated in a mash of horror and fascination, mute and useless. I didn’t even try to help the man survive, but maybe I would have if Hans’ eyes hadn’t drawn my attention back to his with their glistening green. The glow of his stare was enough to drive me insane, but it wasn’t in a bad way. Not like it should have been.

The vampire was a monster. He was killing someone right in front of me.

I should have been running again as fast as my legs could carry me, since he was cold, and ruthless, not giving a fuck about the life he was taking, but I couldn’t.

He was too beautiful. A beautiful creature in the most beautiful form I’d ever seen him.

He gasped when he finally pulled his teeth free and let the thief’s limp body drop to the floor. I could still hear the victim’s ragged breaths, but they were so slow now that they were nothing but tiny little whistles.

“Time for you to see another vampire ritual,” Hans told me, his mouth dark with blood.

With that he took a knife from the inside of his jacket. Long and thin and brutal.

I flinched, finding my voice.

“Hans? What the hell?!”

He dropped to his knees and tugged the dying guy’s head back, staring up at me with blood still trailing down his chin.

“Do you think we can drain people to the point of death and leave our teeth marks standing proud when we walk away? Our reality wouldn’t just be a whisper of folklore then, little one.”

Hans slit the guy’s throat open with enough force that it slashed through the bitemarks, and tore the evidence away. I had to cover my mouth with my hands.

Watching someone being butchered was a world away from seeing their blood being sucked by a vampire – bizarre, but true. I retched as I watched Hans wipe the knife clean with a handkerchief, then slip it right back inside his jacket.

“It’s all right, Katherine. I know this is difficult.”

I was shaking my head, trying to believe it.

He got to his feet and put his hands on my shoulders, still gloved and no doubt still wet with blood.

“Katherine, listen to me. The guy was nothing but a vile, corrupt excuse for a man. He was going to beat you, do you know that? After he’d raped you, of course. And plenty of innocent people after you. I’ve just saved plenty of people from a nasty fate.”

I was still shaking my head, with my ears ringing. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t handle it.

“You can,” Hans said. “Do you really want the truth of it? Do you want to feel the mentality of the vile excuse for a man lying on the floor there? Trust me, it’ll do you some good.”

I squeaked as the killer of a vampire took my head in his hands and placed his thumbs against my temples. His eyes stared into mine.

“Let me show you.”

The thoughts came pounding into me one after the other – visions of robberies, and fights, and rapes, all from the dead man’s point of view. It wasn’t just visions that came to me, either. I felt the malice in the guy’s memories as he committed his crimes…

And then came more.

Hans.

I felt the vampire’s thoughts as he bit the evil man’s neck and took his life from him. I felt Hans’ pain for the people the guy had hurt. Hans’ belief in righteousness and saving the guy’s future victims from suffering.

It felt good. At odds with the man he’d just destroyed.

I tried to gain hold of myself when Hans pulled away, but I was trembling in shock.

“See?” Hans said. “He wasn’t ever going to change his ways. I just did the world a favour.”

I nodded. “I saw.”

“Good.”

We stared at each other. His mouth was still wet and bloody as the body of the man lay next to us, but that didn’t matter. The charge of the magnetism came back between us. The fizz of need, and my pride at the creature in front of me.

I could see him in his cross fronted robe, protecting the pilgrims as they travelled. A knight. A warrior. A protector.

Hans wasn’t evil. Just brutal.

My soul cried out for his, because it was obvious to me then that he still had one.

The beautiful, vampiric Hans Jacob Weyer had a soul.

A beautiful soul.

My words were a whisper, my body trusting itself.

“Kiss me, please…”

Hans kissed me with passion, and depth, and hunger, and I kissed him right back with the same. I tasted someone else’s blood, but I didn’t care. It felt erotic in the most insane of ways. Maybe because that was so much a part of Hans and his life. I was sharing the taste of his ways.

He hitched me up and I ground against him as he kissed me, back in the memories of the alleyway when he’d first shown his true colours.

“We have to stop,” he hissed between kisses. “We have to get away from the body.”

We were still kissing as we stumbled back towards the street.

“Wait,” he said, before we risked the clear sight of people.

He licked the remaining blood from my lips, then wiped his own with a fresh handkerchief.

“Let’s get around the corner and I’ll hail us a cab,” he said, and I followed meekly as he guided us away.