Hunger Read Free Page A

against his face, and shoved forwards, snapping his head backwards and breaking his neck.
    Eve took another step backwards, towards the door to the back rooms. Maybe she should have made a break for the exit while the man had been occupied with neatly defeating three vampires in under three minutes.
    He advanced on her, the sense of malice coming from him not abating. If anything, it was getting stronger.
    When he reached the gunshot victim, he casually crouched over him and ruthlessly snapped his neck, twisting hard enough that the crack was audible and sickening, making her own spine ache in response and her stomach turn. He rose to his feet, his backdrop a vision of darkness as the vampires began to turn to ashes, and approached her, silent but not wary.
    Confidence and danger flowed from him, as if those two words were created for him alone.
    An assassin.
    A man bred for the purpose of killing.
    She had met men like him in her years as a hunter, but not on his level.
    Eve backed off another step and hit the wall beside the door to the back rooms.
    The man continued his advance, each step closer he came only making her more aware of how immense he was as she had to tilt her head back to keep her unsteady gaze on what she could see of his face.
    Oneiric appeared beside her and the man halted his approach.
    “I dealt with all the ones out the back. Are you alright?” Oneiric said in a low voice, his crimson gaze never leaving the newcomer.
    Eve kept her eyes locked on him too and nodded. “Sustained a few injuries but they’re healing. I took one down, and… well…
he
handled the rest. Any idea what they wanted?”
    She waited, curious and a little afraid, as the male shifted his focus to Oneiric.
    “I imagine it was the usual grudge against our kind. My ones had a few choice things to say about us.” Oneiric moved closer to her, a protective gesture by the vampire who called himself her father, one that she appreciated.
    “It must get tiring. You think they would get bored of killing themselves.” She glanced at him, catching his brief smile.
    They had spent hours discussing how foolish the weakling vampires were, those with muddied blood that made them far less powerful than vampires of the seven pure bloodlines. They often attacked pureblood vampires. Oneiric had called it suicide. She had to agree. As a hunter, she had seen weaklings picking fights with purebloods and it always ended the same. A gruesome death for the weakling.
    She pressed her palms against the wall behind her, clinging to it for support as her tired body threatened to give out under the stress of the fight and the presence of the assassin.
    Whenever his focus leaped to her, she felt the full extent of his power and it pressed down on her. Oneiric had warned such a thing would happen around stronger members of the seven pure bloodlines and she hadn’t believed him until now.
    This vampire was more powerful than any she had met. What did he want with her father? Had he just been passing and had sensed the fight, and had come to help them? Or did he have business at the club? He would make one hell of a bouncer.
    Her father eyed the ashes of the vampires and then the man before them.
    “I thought Lilith would be the one to come for Eve,” Oneiric said and Eve swallowed hard.
    This man couldn’t possibly be her escort.
    She wasn’t going anywhere with him.
    The towering male said nothing in response. He simply stuck his gun down the back of his black jeans and then casually pushed his hood back.
    Eve’s breath left her in a rush.
    Piercing glacial blue eyes held fast on Oneiric, the pale white-blond eyebrows above them drawing down, causing them to narrow and intensify. The man was handsome, not at all as she had expected, but radiated danger too, a sense of deadliness that his appearance could easily belie.
    She had never thought she would face a vampire and think they were beautiful. Her body heated, her blood turning to liquid fire at the