The Hunted

By Sirena Van Schaik

Angela Cross has walked on the edge of the surreal and has more than once been tempted to lose herself in it. Caught up in a world where vampires exist and their addictive kisses leave people aching for more, Angela has always kept her distance from the powerful hunters that fill her best friend's world. Until she is drawn into the world by two strangers that capture a piece of her heart. Now Angela must choose between two dangerous men, one that will draw her deep into the world of vampires and the other that will take her into oblivion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sirena Van Schaik
• Release date: Mar 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310873584

Sirena Van Schaik

Sirena Van Schaik was born in British Columbia, Canada and was the youngest of four. She has two older brothers and an older sister who spent a great deal of their childhood doing what children do best, tormenting their siblings. When she wasn't exploring the wilds of her home province, Sirena was busy writing.At the age of 18, Sirena moved to Ontario, Canada and earned an honors degree in early childhood education. Today, she resides in London, Ontario with her husband, two children and several pets, including her English Mastiff.

Book preview

THE HUNTED

THE HUNTER CHRONICLES BOOK ONE

The Hunted Copyright © 2015 Sirena Van Schaik

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof,

may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

without the express written permission of the publisher

except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Cover Design: F4E Studios

Cover Image: © Pilgrimego | Dreamstime.com

Editor: Steve Soderquist

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

ISBN 978-1508718093

Dedication

To my wonderful husband, James, and my two sons, Gabriel and Michael, I couldn’t have done this without your support and encouragement. Thank you for everything.

CHAPTER ONE

We all make mistakes.

I can trace my greatest back to one moment in time when my life hung precariously at the edge of insanity. How different would it have been if I hadn’t entered that darkened club; my friend’s ivory hand firmly gripping mine as she drew me into the strange world I should have feared to tread.

But perhaps that is where my mistake lay; not in the club itself, or the step that hung precariously on its threshold. Maybe it was not my naivety over what filled the club, but my naivety over what could destroy me.

In my memories, I am a lamb led to her slaughter but there may have been a truth shining in my eyes, an excitement pulsing deep within me – humming like the music echoing out of the club. My mistake wasn’t in being the lamb; it was in being a woman completely enthralled with her desire for freedom.

A part of me wanted what hid in the shadows, wanted to experience the secrets that my friend shared with others and for a time I drank of those secrets, became dizzy in all their heady flavors. For a time, I was lost and all the mistakes I made were merely stones cast into the dark waters to send ripples of regret through my soul.

But it all started with that first mistake. The mistake that left me standing in a street, where I could feel the lick of the music as it throbbed against my soul. Beating to a rhythm I never knew existed in my body. A hungry rhythm, which spoke, of desire, and of all the dark emotions that swam just below the surface of my skin; emotions I had been too terrified to touch; to own. It is in that mistake, where the music sank deep into my veins, my story truly began.

I felt the music before I could hear it. The lyrics obscured by the heavy drums as I paused at the entrance, straining to catch the words as though they held a secret. Kit glanced back at me, her blond hair framing a perfectly oval face; large, robin’s egg eyes dancing with mischief at the sight of my hesitation, Come on, she laughed.

I shrugged away the shiver racing down my spine as we passed over the threshold; the dark eyes of the doorman watched us hungrily.

Kit tugged me along the midnight blue corridor, her excited steps matching the pulsing lights of the crowded dance floor. I shuffled behind her, trying not to trip in her haste, trying to find my way back toward the door and escape. I knew my dark looks made me resemble a shadow stealing after a golden nymph; my lack of excitement creasing my carefully groomed brow.

I hated these clubs and Kit had been dragging me to them for over a year. Often she went alone but every few weeks; she would force me to go with her. I hated the attention we got and the way she would disappear for hours at a time.

All of the clubs had the loud music, the gyrating lights and the mesh of bodies on the dance floor but there was something different about this one. I couldn’t put my finger on it. It looked like all the others – the same dancers, the same decor with the pulsing light but I felt something insidious creeping towards us. It was there in the music that pulsed deeper than before, the lights that cast longer shadows across the dancers’ faces. It was there in Kit’s focused drive through the heart of the crowd – her face glazed from a need I didn’t understand.

Kit laughed in her eagerness and my fingers ached under the pressure of her grip. It ripped at my heart to see her need overcome her common sense the deeper we moved into the club. I prayed she was only addicted to dancing but I knew that wasn’t the case. Hope was for young girls and my prayers wouldn’t be heard here. We were women now, and Kit was addicted to the men she would find in the club. Men who could offer her something the average guy couldn’t.

Goosebumps peppered my arms as we finally stumbled through the crowd, Kit with the fevered look of an addict and I like a prude. Several men and a couple women looked toward us as though sensing fresh meat and maybe we were. I never really tried to converse with any of them and to an untrained eye they would have looked like every other club goer in the place but I knew what to look for now.

No amount of loud music or bad lighting could hide the pale skin, the dark eyes flashing like onyx shining in moonlight, the hunger that surfaced in the tight line around their lips. A tall, black-haired man smiled at me; an involuntary gasp caught in my throat as his white fangs flashed between plump, kissable lips. No matter how many times I saw them, the initial surprise always clawed at my heart and made me want to run. I knew why I had the reaction – there was a predator close by and the natural instinct of the prey is to flee. I am the hunted and they are definitely the hunter.

Monsters are real, and they stand before me pretending to be human, and even worse, pretending to be charming. The first time Kit had revealed this secret to me, I had been horrified. She had found them on her own – or maybe they had found her, drawn in by her light. I don’t know what her first reaction had been but I do know that she became an eager participant in the world they had created. These clubs were the hunting grounds. A place, just like this one, where the monsters and humans met to fulfill the needs of sex and blood.

I shuddered with revulsion as I tried to ignore the way this particular monster was watching me. It hadn’t been easy to deal with the truth. They were supposed to be fairy tales – things to frighten us at night when we watched a scary movie. All those years of sleeping with the light on, checking under the bed before I jumped into it hadn’t been the imaginings of a young girl; there were monsters in the world, hidden from us. Even now, after a year of knowing, a part of me was still horrified. No, more like affronted that vampires existed. But there was another part that scared me even more. The part that craved their teeth against my flesh, the glazed vision of satisfied oblivion; I kept that part wrapped tightly out of sight from everyone; even Kit.

They’re so beautiful. The thought whispered across my skin and raised it to little peaks of gooseflesh, and maybe it was their beauty that made me wonder. Like sculptures come to life every last one of them was perfection. Maybe the curse made them that way or maybe the predators only looked for the strongest to turn – I wasn’t sure. All of them were athletic and were a combination of hard plains, full curves and defined muscles chiseled into works of art; perfection in form but flawed by the lack of softness true life brought to the limbs.

A shiver arced up my spine as my gaze slid past the lifelike statues of the vampires in the club until it came to rest on a pair of fiery blue eyes that burned my flesh as they watched me. Their intensity pulled me so completely into their depths; it took a moment before I could focus on the face around them. A sharp nose framed by a square jaw line, a hard slash for a mouth, which did nothing to detract from the man’s rugged beauty.

He was a dizzying blend of perfection, so often found in these clubs but the perfection gave way to the softness of life; brought to new heights by the striking contrast between his short black hair and blue eyes. Power swam just below the soft black shirt; primal, dangerous and radiating energy like a lion ready to spring.

Heat filled my cheeks