Fury darkened Duran’s stare. “There’s an easy solution to this.”
He took off at a dead run without any warning, his powerful body bursting out from behind the tree so fast, there was no way she could have grabbed onto him—not that she was strong enough to hold him back anyway.
With a curse, Ahmare dematerialized and triangulated a short ascent that put her directly behind, and upwind of, the trio of males. Sure enough, they were dressed in Chalen’s uniform, and taking cover behind a group of boulders. No weapons out, but there were knives all over them.
The second she resumed form, her scent registered to them, and the guards wheeled around.
“I can’t have you with us, boys.” She shook her head as she pointed her gun at them. “Please don’t make me have to take care of this problem—”
The crashing and crunching sounds of something huge barreling through the forest got loud and grew louder, Duran’s approach like a tank crushing all that was in its path.
She spoke faster. “I’m going to ask you to leave. If I find you anywhere near us again, I will take it as an attack even if there are no weapons in your hands. Do you understand me?”
They didn’t have time to respond. Duran arrived with a roar, and as he went for the guard on the right, Chalen’s males palmed daggers.
Their former prisoner was too fast for them.
Duran picked up the first guard he came to and spun around, going discus on the male, slinging him into a tree. As a terrible crack sounded out—like the trunk split from the impact—he smiled like pure evil at the other two, fangs descending.
“I know you,” he growled. “Both of you.”
His attack on those who had hurt him was vengeance in motion, payback for suffering he had endured, and it was bloody and ugly, limbs bitten clean through, bones broken, heads split on knee and by elbow. The damage was one-sided. All one-sided.
Ahmare shrank back from the fight, especially as Duran killed one by twisting the head so far around that bloodshot, bolt-wide eyes stared out over the guard’s own shoulders. It was too close to Rollie. But there was no looking away or leaving, even as the second guard tried to drag himself out of range, his hands clawing at the fallen pine needles and the loose, muddy earth to put distance between him and his previous prisoner.
The male didn’t have a chance.
As Duran shoved the loose, dead body of the guard with the over-the-shoulder stare aside, he roared, the animal Ahmare had first witnessed in that cell not only out of its cage, but free of any restraints of decency that civilized vampires held.
There was no stopping him—but she didn’t even think to, and not because she was afraid of being collateral damage. His violence made her think about that trigger box and how he’d had to use it to orgasm. How he’d strained and concentrated and tried to find that which should have been a natural and beautiful consequence of making love . . . and in the end, had needed pain to find his release.
It was because of what these males had done to him.
Are you okay?
Yes, are you?
And now, I know you. Both of you.
Healer she may have been, but she didn’t feel the need to save people from the consequences of being evil and doing wrong. And this was so personal, so visceral, that all of Duran’s weapons stayed holstered. This was blood for blood, pain for pain, not a bullet shot from an arm’s length away, not a quick-and-it’s-over stabbing.
Duran launched himself in the air and pounced on the clawing guard’s back. Grabbing a fistful of hair, he yanked back, bared his fangs, and bit into the throat he’d exposed. As he tore flesh away, an arc of arterial blood soared into the air before falling on the ground like paint splashed.
Now Ahmare turned away and put her hands over her mouth. She wasn’t sure what she was holding in. Screaming. Crying. Cursing.
So much to choose from.
God, she didn’t know how much more she could take.
19
SILENCE.
No, there was breathing, Ahmare realized dimly: Her own, which was high and quick, just the top of her lungs doing the work, and Duran’s, which was deep and ragged. She was still wrenched away from him, still with her hands up to her mouth, still . . . with a feeling that she couldn’t handle much more.
To get rid of a wave of light-headedness, she forced a long inhale, and that was when the meaty smell of fresh blood and flesh really hit her. Dropping her palms, she knew she had to turn back around so— Dearest . . . Virgin Scribe.
In the midst of Duran’s fang attack, he had flipped the body over, and the carnage was . . . you couldn’t even tell what the anatomy had been before his canines had struck. And even now, when there was no more life, at all, in the body of that guard, he was still crouched over his kill like he was waiting for reanimation.
“Duran?” she said.
With a jerk, he looked over at her, his wild eyes unfocused and unblinking, his lower face dripping with blood, his teeth stained red.