Page 9 of Immortal Hunter
Coven?
“Witches.”
“Yep. They keep to themselves mostly, on the west side of town. Don’t go bothering them and they won’t bother you. But if you do run into one, don’t make ‘em mad. Messing around with magic is dangerous.”
Swallowing hard, Ewan nodded. “Aye. I know.”
* * *
This night’sshift passed smoothly. He’d learned how to work with the different sized bottles, with the slippery glasses, and he’d nearly perfected the dance between the barmaids and the kitchen. As the sun started to set, he felt a pull unlike anything he’d ever known before. Heneededto find…something. Damn Kára and her allure.
Close to eight, Ewan took his break and slipped out the back door of the pub and into the crisp night air. Sucking in a deep breath, he tried to clear his head, but all he wanted was to find Kára.
“Stop it,” he muttered. “She’s a feckin’ vampire, and yer a Hunt—” An overwhelming compulsion to shut up snapped his jaw shut, and he groaned as he leaned against the cold stone wall.Feckin’ glamour.
He’d just have to go back inside and distract himself with work. Otherwise, he’d take off across town, searching for a woman he never wanted to see again.
* * *
Kára
Her eyes snapped open, and she was instantly awake. The incessant beating in her chest left her off balance and panicky. She’d been away from him for an entire eighteen hours, and she was about to come out of her skin.
Before she could go back to Ewan, though, she had to go see the witches. The dead shifter and the presence of another vampire in town worried her, and if any of the coven happened to meet Ewan, they’d peg him as a Hunter immediately.
She could still taste Ewan’s blood on her tongue, even after brushing her teeth three times before she fell into bed. His scent surrounded her, and she hated it. So why couldn’t she make herself shower him off?
Because that wouldn’t work.
She knew the truth, even if her brain refused to get with the program. She was bound to him. Wanted to be bound to him for the rest of her vampire existence. If he rejected her, she wasn’t sure she could survive it.
Dressing quickly, she grabbed her phone, her weapons, and an offering of carefully preserved herbs, and started her short trek to the last place in town she wanted to be. The Coven House.
* * *
The ornate carvedwooden doors loomed twice as tall as Kára, and when she approached, the magic reached for her, curling its tendrils around her feet, then her ankles, then all the way up her legs. She knew better than to fight it. She’d only exhaust herself and wind up on the coven’s bad side. So she let it sense her, identify her as friend—or at least not foe.
With an eerie creak that had the corners of Kára’s lips turning up until she stifled the motion—because how cliché was that?—the door opened, and she took the steps two at a time.
Face your fears, daughter. Face them and they cannot control you.
Her sire’s voice in her head shocked her enough that she tripped and face-planted onto the polished stone landing. Fuck. After being free for nearly two hundred years, she thought she’d banished her demons. Thought she’d shoved all of her memories of his torture down so deep, they’d never surface again except in her nightmares.
“Why now?” she murmured.
“Because evil stirs in the world, vampire,” the raspy, feminine voice said from the shadows. “And where there is one evil, there is another. You have come with news?”
Warm fingers wrapped around her upper arm, and Kára met Vesper’s cloudy gaze. The witch’s gray eyes took in little but saw everything. Blindness had long ago stolen the physical world from Vesper, but not the supernatural one.
“Yes. I believe…another vampire has come to our haven.”
Vesper’s grip tightened, and she closed her eyes, murmured a few words Kára didn’t understand, and threw her free hand out in front of her. A burst of power rustled the trees lining the path from the main road, and Kára scented the salty tang of Vesper’s magic.
“I sense only one without a heartbeat.” As soon as the words left Vesper’s thin lips, the witch dropped Kára’s arm and took a step back. “And that one is not you.”
Lowering her gaze, Kára sighed. Such a human gesture—but one of the few she clung to stubbornly, even after so long. “No. I have found my mate. He is human, and the other reason I am here. Will you…call a gathering?”
“I suppose I must.” Vesper gestured down the dark hall. “Inside, third door on your left. You will wait until my sisters and I assemble.”
