Hunting Ground [Claiming Series, #3]

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He smelled blood on the night air. Little did he guess the danger it was about to lead him into.

Kane Durand sped through the dark city streets, moving shadow to shadow, too fast for human eyes to see. He didn't want to be here. Indeed, he was returning to this place only because he felt he owed at least a small favor to Asher Peres, a fellow vampire. Asher was one of very few vampires he counted as a friend.

Which wasn't saying much. For most of his two centuries as a vampire, Kane Durand had grown truly close to only one other of his kind: Violet. His lost lover, his claimed mate. When she had died, madness had overtaken him, and although with Asher's help he'd achieved a measure of vengeance, the excruciating sense of loss and sorrow still remained.

A claiming was supposed to be broken by vengeance, but apparently it hadn't been. That left only his own death to release him. But for some reason he clung to his existence, however unwillingly. He hadn't yet asked a vampire for mercy, although he had come close. So he was still here, and because some dregs of conscience prompted him, he was entering a city he had no desire to ever see again.

He should be in Paris, the city of his heart. Or anywhere in Europe where life felt more comfortable than this new world with all its brashness and noise.

But all those thoughts, thoughts that dogged his heels almost obsessively—a sign of a claiming—dropped into the background as he smelled blood on the air.

He was a vampire, and there was no sweeter siren call than that of fresh blood. He lifted his head, sniffing the air, locating the direction from which the enticing scent came. The park. Someone had been injured badly.

He could have just continued on his way, but the call was hard to resist, and his resistance was low these days. If nothing else, he could at least put some human out of misery. Or so he thought, trying to put a noble veneer on what was an irresistible instinct.

Even he could see some bleak humor in his own rationalization.

He slipped through the shadowy woods swiftly, the night as clear to him as day would have been to a human. A high, full moon deepened the shadows, allowing him to pass swiftly, invisible to human eyes, just another shadow among shadows. But for him, colors shone with jewel like brilliance.

The night came alive to him in ways it never would for a mortal. The movement of every leaf, the insects crawling in the grass or nibbling on leaves, he could hear all that. Even the sound of water running up inside the trunks of trees reached him with a delightful syncopated rhythm. He heard a bird's wings flutter then settled quickly.

The night sang to him.

He could hear the distant sound of a baby's cry, a couple of people who argued blocks away and even the sound of someone's private lovemaking.

Once, he had soaked up these sounds with pleasure. No more, for he had lost his capacity for pleasure. Tonight he shoved them into the background as the call of blood dominated.

He paused a few times, testing the air, smelling for humans. What he smelled gave him pause. As the delicious scent of fresh blood grew, so did another scent: the scent of his own kind.

"Putain," he said under his breath. He should clear out now. He had a message to deliver, and a face-down with some hungry vampires enjoying their meal would not serve him at all. But there was too much blood on the air, too much to be a simple feeding. What if those he had come to warn Asher about had already arrived?

Even when not concerned, a vampire tended to be very quiet, but now he heightened his senses and moved with true stealth to avoid his own kind. Trees zipped past him. He stayed off the paved paths and tasted the air frequently. Both the scent of blood and vampires grew, but the blood strengthened more quickly. Whoever had done this thing, he judged they had moved on.