Michele Hauf - The Vampire Hunter

Kaz tucked his head against his elbow and closed his eyes. He shook his head. He wasn’t even sure what he’d seen. What he’d done. He’d killed a vampire?

“You have a talent with the stake,” Tor said. “Homeless, eh?”

Kaz nodded minutely but didn’t look up at him.

“Well, you’ll need the wound cleaned up so it doesn’t get infected. And...to be totally up front with you, I don’t have a home for you or a means to help you.”

“Don’t need your help.”

“Course not. But there is a man I know who would be interested in talking to you. His name is Rook, and he heads an organization of knights who protect humans from creatures like the one that attacked you.”

“Knights?”

Kaz looked up into Tor’s eyes, blinked and saw...the truth. Along with the truth, he also saw a deep and concerned kindness he’d not recognized for years. So without thinking it through, he grabbed Tor’s offered hand and stood up, wobbly, yet not out for the count by any means.

“You can trust me,” Tor said, “though I know you won’t. You’re a smart kid and know how to protect yourself and that’s how it should be. But do you want to learn how to use that thing the right way?”

Kaz looked at the bloody chair leg he still gripped. The man was offering him something he hadn’t known in a long time—trust. And he wanted it with every breath he inhaled.

“Come on,” Tor beckoned.

And Kaz took his first steps toward chivalry, something he wouldn’t comprehend until many years later.

Chapter 1

The vamps were fast, and he—well, he wasn’t much faster, but he was skilled. A human matched against a vampire must wield some mean martial-arts skills or he had better be a track star. Kaspar Rothstein possessed the former, but right now he was contemplating the run.

Yep, best to go for the run.

The sickening heat of a vampire’s breath skimmed the back of his neck as he raced down an alleyway in the eighteenth arrondissement near Paris’s shadowed Montmartre Cemetery. His goal: to lure the four vamps far away from humans and curious eyes. Rushing into an open cobbled courtyard behind closed businesses far from any tourists, Kaz stopped abruptly, planting his steel-toed boots.

With a confident grin teasing his mouth, he swung around, catching one of the vamps in the chest with a titanium stake. The vamp ashed before him, forming the shape of a person out of fried vampire flesh, bone and clothing.

“Happy birthday to me,” he muttered his victory claim. Wasn’t his birthday, but who needed cake to celebrate?

The three remaining vamps grinned at him. Kaz had expected the idiot longtooths to actually share a brain among them and run for their lives. But if they wanted to stick around for the party games...

“Come on,” Kaz encouraged. He tucked away the stake and put up his fists. He hadn’t gotten in a workout this morning. Time for some fun.

The first vampire charged him. Kaz managed to grab him by the scruff of the neck, and swung the gangly tormentor toward another of his rag-tag pack. Their skulls cracked, both swore, and they collapsed on the cobblestones.

The leader swung around with a punch that Kaz stopped with his open palm. “Nice to meet you. I’m Kaz. Vampire hunter. I’ll be ashing you this evening.”

“Wiseass,” the vampire cracked.

Kaz gripped the miscreant’s fist, twisted, and with a swing from the waist, rocketed up a high sidekick to his jaw. The heavy boots delivered damage by breaking jawbone. The attacker dropped, growling and spitting blood. The other two charged him with fists. Kaz immediately dropped the one on the left with a wince-inducing gut punch.

A female scream alerted him. A woman clung to the limestone wall not thirty feet from their little soiree.

“Get out of here!” he yelled at her, and caught a punch across the jaw. He tasted his own blood, and shook his head to chase away the bluebirds spinning about his skull. That one could have led to his death had it been a knockout.

Enough play. Best to stake them before they beat him to a pulp. But—hell, not in front of an innocent.

Frozen in fear, the woman watched their antics with wide eyes. Chills scurried up Kaz’s spine. He delivered another kick and landed a vamp at the hip, sending it stumbling backward. He had to keep the vampires busy and away from her until she grasped her senses and ran. Only then could he ash these idiots.

Out the corner of his eye, Kaz alternated his attention between fight and female. Was she scared—or interested? She leaned forward from her position against the wall, her bright eyes following the action. A vampire charged him; he landed a kick to a particularly vulnerable part of its anatomy, bringing it down.

Licking her lips, the woman seemed to marvel over the show.

“Go!” Kaz shouted at her, but too late he realized the command had alerted one of the vampires to their audience.

He swung a fist at an attacking vamp and took him out cleanly. The other vampire raced toward the woman and pinned her to the wall by her wrists. She didn’t scream. That was good and bad. A scream would call attention to this altercation and alert other innocents.

But why didn’t she scream?

Must be scared voiceless.

Wishing he could stake the attacker from behind, Kaz left the stake clipped at his hip. He ran toward the vamp, grabbed him by the head and shoulder and peeled him away from the woman.

“Wow,” he thought he heard her say, as he landed on his back on the cobbles, bringing the vamp down with him.

Twisting to straddle the vamp, Kaz punched him repeatedly until the longtooth’s lights went out, his hand sprawling across the toe of the woman’s lace-up boot.

Springing up to stand in the center of the fallen vamps, Kaz looked over his mayhem. Fists still coiled at his sides, brows drawn and serious, he was ready for another four, or even a whole gang.

But the vampires were only out, not dead. They wouldn’t stay down long. He had to get rid of the girl.

Lifting her chin, the woman looked up at Kaz with wide and wondering eyes. He had rescued her from a bite, surely. But the less she knew, the better. And if he could contain this slaying then he wouldn’t have to call in Tor to do spin.

“Impressive.” She stepped over the sprawled vampire and slowly approached him. Strangely, she clapped, giving him due reward. “Like a knight who fights for his mistress’s favor.”

Kaz arched a brow. He was a knight. But he couldn’t tell her that. Why hadn’t she screamed and run? That was the normal MO for unknowing humans who stumbled onto a slaying.

Something wrong with this chick?

As he looked her over, he took a long stroll over her black hair, streaked on one side with white. Her heart-shaped face was shadowed by the night. A soft gray blouse rippled with her movements, hugging a narrow figure. Black, high-waisted slacks emphasized long legs that ended in heeled boots. Sexy, in a business kind of way. If her lips hadn’t been thick and plush and so pink, Kaz would have marked her off as just another accountant or pencil pusher.

But that mouth. All pink and partly open and—he swallowed—kissable. That mouth distracted him.

“Generally,” she said, unaware of his distraction, “when the knight defeats the bad guys, his mistress grants him a favor, such as a ribbon or piece of her clothing for him to proudly display.”

He rubbed his jaw and chuckled softly. “I’m not much for ribbons.” But the moment jumped on him like a blood-hungry vampire and he went with the next move. “Guess that means I’ll have to take something more fitting.”

Kaz wrapped his hand about her neck and curved his fingers against her silken hair as he bent to kiss her distracting mouth there, in the mysterious shadows of a city he would never feel comfortable calling home. About them, the vampires showed no sign of coming to, yet he remained aware.