The Vampire Hunter. Lisa Childs

not.

      “Why?” she asked again. “Why do you hate me so much that you want me dead?”

      He hadn’t expected her to recognize him. He’d only met her once, what seemed like a lifetime ago, and he looked nothing like his older half brother. “I want you the same way you left Bryan Truman.”

      Her body tensed beneath his, and her green eyes warmed with affection. “Bryan. I haven’t seen Bryan in twenty years.”

      “Not since the night you drained him of all his blood and left him for dead,” he said.

      A cry of pain slipped through her lips. He studied her face, which had drained of all color. He could see her clearly now, as the darkness lightened with dawn’s approach.

      “Bryan’s dead?” she asked, her full lower lip trembling slightly.

      Damn. She was beautiful. It wasn’t just the golden blond hair and those mesmerizing green eyes; it was the vulnerability about her that drew a man to her, that made him want to protect her. While she was physically stronger now than the sickly girl he remembered from their meeting so long ago, her sensitivity belied an ethereal fragility. Those eyes shimmered with tears that softened him until he realized that it had to be an act. “Don’t pretend you don’t know.”

      She shook her head. “He can’t be dead.” Her voice cracked with what seemed like genuine distress. “Not Bryan…”

      “Did you think you could do that to him and he’d live? There’s no way a human could survive that. But then you might have forgotten…since you’re not human any longer.”

      A breath shuddered out of those trembling lips. “I don’t know what you’re talking about…”

      “Yeah, I know all about your damn secret society of vampires.” And he wasn’t dead even though he’d been warned any human who learned of its existence would be killed.

      “I wasn’t talking about the society,” she murmured, her voice growing fainter as the sky lightened. “Bryan…” Tears shimmered in her eyes. “He can’t be dead…”

      “How could you not know that he died?” Liam asked. Even though two decades had passed since his brother’s death, Liam still missed him. With only three years separating the half brothers, they’d been more like friends than siblings—even though they’d lived in separate homes.

      “I—I had to give up everything from my old life,” she explained. “My family. My friends. I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t keep in touch with them.”

      Bitterness overwhelming him, he released it in a short chuckle. “But yet you’re here for your sister.”

      “I haven’t been there for my sister,” she said, guilt dimming the brightness of her eyes. “I haven’t seen her in twenty years…until tonight, until you put her in danger to draw me out. Why?”

      “You know why.” Or at least he had been convinced she would know, but her confusion and surprise over his brother’s death seemed genuine. “For Bryan…”

      “Bryan wouldn’t want you to hurt me,” she pointed out. Correctly.

      “You’re doing this for yourself,” she said. “For revenge for something I didn’t do—for something I never could have done. I couldn’t have hurt Bryan. He was my friend.” Her voice cracked again with undeniable pain. “My best friend…”

      Liam’s head pounded, maybe from the fight with the professor. The vampire had nearly strangled the life from Liam. If not for this woman’s interference, the professor probably would have killed Liam. Despite his boot-camp training and sixteen-year career in the marines, Liam hadn’t been able to match the monster’s strength. While he’d made a point of learning everything about the secret society, he wasn’t one of them. He was a vampire hunter, but the only vampire he’d ever sought to kill was her.

      Maybe his head also pounded because of the doubt now plaguing him. What if she spoke the truth? What if she knew nothing about Bryan’s murder?

      Her body went limp beneath his, her face paling as the sky grew lighter. He could kill her easily now. He wouldn’t even need the special weapon he’d made to fire the stake into her heart. He could impale her chest with his bare hands. Then he would finally have the revenge that had driven his life for the past twenty years.

      Unless she was innocent…

      Then he would become the cold-blooded killer he’d thought he had been hunting for two decades. He would be just as much a monster as a member of the Secret Vampire Society.