Night Kissed (Chosen Vampire Slayer #1) - Mila Young Page 0,73

the inside of the blindfold, cursing my own conceit. It would’ve been so easy just to keep my big mouth shut. As a last act of defiance, I rattled my restraints.

“Shut it,” snapped a vamp. “Just sit there and look ugly, will you?”

I wanted to kill him. But exhaustion made my body seem like it was filled with sand. For the moment, all I could do was obey.

That alone damn near killed me.

Chapter 25

Veronica

The next forty-eight hours passed at an agonizing crawl. I couldn’t focus on anything other than the three men who had suddenly swept in and taken over so much of my world. Orion had not been in contact since the visit he had paid me at the hotel, and I knew when not to push an issue. Besides, much like my tryst with Seth, I still wasn’t sure how I felt about it. That wasn’t what I came to Anchorage for, yet I found myself tangled with them. My mission was always to observe, learn what was going on first, then jump into battle. But that was seeming less possible with each passing day.

But standing around in my hotel room was driving me crazy, and the police scanner offered no insight into anything potentially supernatural, so I got dressed, added my stake, extendable staff, and blade to my belt, then covered it with my thick jacket. Stepping into my boots, I made the call that my watching time was over. I needed to get involved and end the battle that would eventually spill into killing innocents if not stopped.

Dressed warmly, I went into my bag of weapons.

I slid the blade on the sheath on my belt, a stake, both of which I carried backups. Then I grabbed my extendable silver cylinder and hung it off my pocket which worked best as a long stake.

An icy wind greeted me at the sliding doors of the hotel. Chin tugged low, I folded my hands over my stomach and rushed out to the sidewalk. Fresh snow crunched underfoot, and I hurried onward.

Over the day and a half that followed, I spent a lot of time shaking my head and wrestling with complicated emotions. The problems I faced in the moment could not have looked more different than the ones I left behind in Seattle. Who had time to worry about schoolwork and rescheduling exams? I was caught in the quagmire of a potential love rectangle, between lovers who lived together even as they struggled to tolerate each other.

My head spun with the feelings that searing feeling inside I held for the three men. Three enemies... and whatever was going on between us was different. I'd never felt this way before. Other slayers had fallen prey to the allure of vampires, and I'd seen it personally myself. I never understood the attraction, the dynamics… until now. Well, in truth, I still didn't understand how I could be so drawn to them when I had one mission. Find and stop the vampire killings. I'd done the first part and found the killings, but the second part was a lot more complicated. There was a clan war going on, and if Orion was wiped out, was the next monster to step into his shoes going to start butchering humans more openly? Orion's followers didn’t seem to practice this or there would be more innocents killed.

Then my thoughts swung to the gruesome scene from earlier... who was responsible for that?

I had more questions than answers to understand what was going on here. There was something I still remembered Dylan would say to me often. He'd compare vampire actions to the ice berg principle. The attacks they carry out were only ten percent of the real story that explained their behavior. It was so much more than feeding, he had said. But I wasn’t sure I believed him. The assholes who killed my parents seemed to be there for the purpose of feeding. Not to mention the two in the alleyway attacking the young boy shortly after I arrived in Anchorage.

Dylan taught me a lot of new things, and I followed his approach as I only got into slaying after he passed, after watching him kill the wicked, after I needed to do something to put out the inferno burning me up from the inside out. That came in the form of eliminating vamps.

I shook away those thoughts because it felt like I was going in circles. There was so much I needed to uncover.