Page 31 of The Love Bitten Series: Vol 2

What the fuck?They were clearly nightwalkers, and it sounded as though someone had told them there was a way for them to become like my kind. That person must have gotten their wires crossed because there was only one very specific scenario where someone who’d been bitten and turned could make the transition to daywalker, and I highly doubted any of these motherfuckers were destined consorts who hadn’t found their match yet.

But they seemed to think—

“Besides, we don’t even know if it will work with this one,” another male voice piped up. “The last two didn’t survive his attempt at claiming. This one has been paired with a very powerful daywalker, though, so maybe she’ll be different.”

Apparently, someone had made them believe that they could claim a daywalker’s consort to gain the ability to walk in the sun. And their master had made more than one attempt.Fuck.I needed to help the girl he’d taken. They said she was a consort—probably a relation of the man they’d killed—and even if it hadn’t been my duty to protect her, I still would have reached out to my family to save her.

First, I needed to take Narkissa home where I knew she’d be safe, then I’d meet up with my brothers to take this master and his minions down.

“The Bancrofts are the most powerful family I know of. If—”

At the mention of my last name, it hit me just how fucking stupid I was. I popped into Narkissa’s old room and saw the open suitcase on the bed and a beautiful, blue gown dropped on the floor by the closet—still on the hanger.

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

What the hell is going on?Ren’s voice floated into my mind.

How do you know something is wrong?I asked as I teleported back to the alley behind the convenience store.

You’re so worked up, you’re projecting your emotions through our connection.

Usually, we only spoke through our link, but on occasion, we could catch each other’s feelings, so they must have been pulsing from me pretty hard. Not that it was surprising, considering the situation.

Braeden and Liam’s voices followed Ren’s, asking the same questions.

Narkissa’s been taken by a nightwalker.

My statement was met with silence, so I added,The master of those minions we killed when we found her.

Their relief was almost audible. Under just about any other circumstance, if a human was taken by a nightwalker, they were a lost cause. By the time anyone arrived to save them, they would already be dead or in the process of turning.

But by a stroke of luck or fate, Narkissa seemed to have been abducted by a delusional master who thought she could turn him into a daywalker. I quickly filled them in on what I’d learned about his motives for keeping her alive.

I told them where to meet me, and one by one, they appeared beside me. In the few minutes I’d been watching the house across the street, I’d counted at least six minions patrolling outside, and I’d spotted three more inside when they passed by a window. The master was obviously paranoid.He fucking should be.

“I’m going to see who’s available to back us up,” Braeden whispered.

Over the next minute, our cousin Kieran and his brother Athan arrived. Followed shortly by another cousin, Cian, and his twin siblings, Aura and Abel. They brought a belt for each of us, ones specifically made to hold the tools we needed to take down nightwalkers. A stake, a cross, holy water, and garlic.

Braeden and Abel went to take care of the guards. Kieran and Aura crept around the front of the convenience store to take care of any vamps from the nest we missed last time or new ones they’d created since then. Cian, Athan, and I would be going inside the house to save Narkissa.

Two blurs went up the porch, where two guards stood by the front door. They circled the vampires and then came back down, disappearing behind the house. All that was left of the guards were two piles of ash.

“Let’s go,” I told Cian and Athan in a low tone. We teleported to the porch and waited to see if any trouble showed up. After a minute, I tried the doorknob and rolled my eyes when I found it unlocked. Minions or not—people should keep the fucking doors locked if they didn’t want someone to come inside and kill them.

I pushed the door open to just a slit and sighed when water splashed my face. Idiots. Since I couldn’t see my attacker, even after the water cleared my eyes, because of the angle, I had to retaliate on instinct. I wiped at the wetness on my face and, quick as lightning, reached through the opening and grabbed the arm of a leech while shoving the door open all the way. He tried to scream in agony as his flesh burned, but he barely uttered a sound before my stake went into his heart, and he burst into flames.

The sound had been enough to draw two more minions from a dark hallway behind the stairs, right in front of us, that led to a second story. Athan and Cian handled them while I sprinted up to the next level. I didn’t know for sure where he was holding her, and the basement would usually be my first guess. But something about this asshole made me think he wasn’t going to do the obvious.

Clearly, he was obsessed with the idea of walking in the sun, and I was willing to bet that he kept his room above ground because of it. If his plan worked, he’d be able to walk to the windows and throw open the curtains.

My stomach lurched at the idea of Narkissa in another man’s bed, but it was the most logical plan, so I forced myself to keep it together by focusing on nothing but finding my consort.

Upstairs, the hallway was lined with two doors on one side and a single door on the other. At the end was a set of ornate double doors that looked as if they’d come from a fifteenth-century building. I suspected the inside of the room would be just as gaudy. The master must have thought becoming a daywalker would essentially make him royalty.Stupid asshole.

A board on the stairs creaked behind me, but I recognized Cian’s scent, so it didn’t cause my focus to waver. I had to be slightly more wary when dealing with a master. Minions were usually a pretty easy kill, but masters fed from both humans and the vampires under their leadership. The combination made them stronger, a little faster, and more deadly.

Not that this asshole was any match for a Bancroft. We grew up learning how to fight and defeat nightwalkers practically from the cradle. Still, arrogance could get you killed.

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