Page 65 of A Vampire Bewitched
He had just stirred up the coals and was about to put a couple of logs on the fire when the sound of someone whistlingRule Britanniacame down the tunnel.
Nik glanced over at Emma. She returned his bemused expression before they simultaneously swiveled toward the entrance as Aiden strolled in, not a care in the world.
Carrying a head.
A grey, bald, and quite mangled head.
What was left of the ragged neck dripped fresh blood. The wide-open eyes stared straight ahead, the shock of being killed so savagely still showing in their depths.
When Aiden noticed the two of them sitting there, a broad smile crossed his face.
“Finally! There you are. It’s been bloody dull here since you two left. What’ve you been doing?” Casually dropping the disgusting head onto the floor, he plopped down on the rock next to it and put his blood-stained hands out toward the heat of the fire. “Why didn’t you put some more wood on the fire, mate?” When no one answered him, he looked back and forth between their baffled expressions. “What?”
“Whatcha got there, Aid?”
“Hmm?” Aiden’s face was the picture of innocence as he followed Nik’s gaze to the head at his feet. “Oh! That. It’s a head. I tore it off of a beastly thing…I don’t even know what it bloody was. But it was creeping around our little hideaway here.”
“Those are the same creatures that attacked Emma and took Keira a few years ago. Right around the time Luukas disappeared. We just ran into a few of them ourselves.” Nik filled him in on their encounter in the meadow, but only the parts he needed to know.
Aiden’s face lit up like it was Christmas morning. “Did you happen to keep the heads?”
Nik shook his head. “No, man. Sorry. They don’t last very long.” Pointing with his chin toward Aiden’s trophy, they watched as it started to flake away.
“Bugger.” Aiden nudged at it with the toe of his boot in disgust. “I wanted to add it to my collection.”
“Your…collection?” Emma asked.
Nik put his hand on the back of her head, smoothing her soft hair. “Yeah. Aiden has quite the collection of his foe’s heads.”
“Um…” Emma turned to look up at him, and he pulled his hand away with an apologetic look. “And where exactly are these heads located?” she asked with a surprising measure of calm.
Aiden answered her before Nik could. “Don’t worry, love. They’re hidden away. It wouldn’t be easy lugging them up to the apartment with all of those humans around. The smell and that, you know.”
Emma blinked at him with a blank expression. Nik couldn’t blame her. Aiden had a way of sounding so seemingly sane while talking about things so obviously insane—such as head collections—he often gave him the same look.
“Still no word from Dante?”
Aiden shook his head.
“From anyone?”
Another shake.
“Where the hell could they be?”
Resting his elbows on his knees, Nik contemplated the far wall for a moment before saying, “Emma and I did a wide loop around this place. I didn’t see or scent anyone besides us, and those things.”
“It wasn’t these piss poor vamps I scented,” Aiden told him. “It was someone else. Hard to tell who or what. The scent was kind of wonky.”
“Wonky?” Nik asked.
“Mm hmm, the wily sods covered it up to confuse us. And they did a bang-up job, I tell you. Even I can’t place it.” Despondently kicking away his disintegrating head, Aiden got up and grabbed some water out of his pack to wash his hands.
“Well, I’m not going to waste my time worrying about it.” Nik stood up. “Daylight is coming, and tonight we’re going after Luukas and Emma’s sister, with or without the rest of the guys. I’m tired of waiting.”
Aiden dried his hands on the tail of his shirt and came back to the fire, throwing on another log before joining them on the rocks. “And how do you propose we do that, Nik? Not that I’m complaining, mind you. You know I fancy a good fight.”
Locking eyes with Emma, Nik answered, “I have no fucking idea.”
