You would think that because school is out for the summer and I am only taking a few summer classes, I would have had this out sooner, but nope. Fooled ya, I am taking forever! Sorry about that, I am trying. I actually have been editing this chapter for like 2 weeks (that's how lazy this summer is turning out to be). Thanks for reading though. I hope you enjoy.
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Rhys cursed mentally. He had lost her name. While taking over her mind, he had been able to extract her name, and he remembered that it was a beautiful name, unusual and beautiful, but for the life of him, he had lost it upon his exit. Every time he tried to recall the way his mouth moved or the way his lips had formed the name, it slipped away from him. The blockage felt magical and the memory gap was most likely thanks to a spell that had been cast over her, a security measure, because one's name was everything. It was tricky; something that would protect her against most psychics that tried to enter her thoughts and use them. It had not even occurred to him that he'd lost her name until just moments before.
She had also managed to shut her thoughts away from him. He had no way in, not able to catch on to any of them, like he had minutes earlier. The only thing he was picking up was her emotions, and he was only catching glimpses of that. Rhys was convinced that he had caught her while she was frazzled when they met in the club, when her guard was down. He had been able to grab at her thoughts and force his way in. Now. Nothing.
"Perhaps it is Emily," Rhys murmured to himself while he sat on his couch, waiting for his guest to finish changing in his bathroom. "Or Angela. Perhaps even Angel." He shook his head at the last name. He was not sure that someone like her could be called that. She was everything but. She butchered his people, ate like an orphaned child, and cursed like a sailor.
She was most certainly anything but an Angel.
And yet you couldn't take your eyes off of her.
It was true. He hadn't been able to. As those greenish-brown eyes had watched him intensely, he too had watched her. Analyzing her every facial expression and every bit of her body language. She reminded him of something beautiful but deadly like a black widow.
The air that surrounded her demanded attention and respect. She had fought hard for both in her life. He could tell. Not just in the way she carried herself, but also in the way that she was always quick to fire back, quick to defend herself and especially in the way she was quick to drop her emotions.
And yet her scent had changed so quickly when he told her that she had urinated on herself. She had been humiliated, momentarily, yes, but embarrassed nonetheless.
Instinct had told him to comfort her in the way he would a normal human woman; tell her that she had no reason to be worried. He had wanted to tell her that he had not smelled it when he scooped her up. He wanted to ask her if she went to the beach and spent hours, days, months in the water and in the sand because her scent had been intoxicating, made him yearn for a life that he could no longer have.
But despite the urge, he had not said any of it. Instead he had watched the expressions in her eyes change from hard and resentful to almost vulnerable. It was beautiful and disturbing.
When he had gone to fetch her clothes, the look on her face as he had turned, to see her mouth so stuffed with pasta had made him want to laugh out loud. It had been so unexpected that he had stared. She did not slurp the pasta up like most Americans did. Instead she used her teeth to cut the noodles and let it fall from her mouth back on to the plate, almost delicately. Another surprise he had not expected from a huntress.
"A French name would be appropriate," he told himself. He had told her his name but she had not seemed to care, and while he could easily just go into her thoughts and find out for himself, he preferred for her to give it to him willingly. As a sign of trust.
Rhys glanced at a small, yellowed picture that seemed watch him from the coffee table.
Black and white eyes stared back at him intently, not smiling or telling anything. "What do you think her name is, Eli?" he asked the picture. The photo did not answer, of course, and Rhys chuckled to himself, laughing away the familiar loneliness that had long since become a good friend. Of course Eli hadn't answered. It almost saddened him how much he really had expected to hear the young man's voice.
"You know, I've heard of humans who talk to themselves, but never vamps."
She approached the back of the couch, butcher knife still in hand. Rhys stood up politely and looked her up and down. The sizes he had chosen fit her perfectly. The jeans were snug in all the right places but not overbearingly so. The shirt was a long sleeved v-neck and dipped low enough to show just the beginnings of the curves of her breasts. When she adjusted her stance a tease of skin showed where her jeans and shirt were supposed to meet. He had managed to not throw away the stilettos that she had been wearing the night before, and she'd put them on, lengthening the lines of her legs. The jeans that she wore seemed to tighten at the knee all the way down to the calf and then barely meet at the top of the heels. Skinny jeans, the humans called them. She looked tall, despite the fact that he knew she wasn't, and the tightness in the jeans showed off the slight curve of her hips.
She's breathtaking.
He thought to himself, unable to contain the thought. It slipped passed his defenses and the words were so loud within him that for a second he could have sworn he said them out loud. He watched as she placed a hand on her hips and switched the weight of her stance from the right to the left. She raised one eyebrow, waiting for a response. She wanted a fight, wanted him to retort back. She was an adorable little warrior.
"V-neck, huh?" The blonde warrior murmured. "How appropriate." She took her hands and folded them into her arms being careful to place the knife below her elbow, but still hold it tightly.
"If you have no intention of cutting off my head, I would appreciate it if you put my knife back, Ms..."
"I never said I wasn't going to decapitate you." As a show she twisted the handle of the weapon loosely. Rhys only nodded. If she were going to do it, she would have done it by now, he was sure.
"And don't try to be cute, you don't need my name. We aren't friends."
Rhys could only nod once again. She was so defensive all of the time. What had happened to her to make her that way?
"If you don't mind me asking. Why do you do it?" He used his chin to point to the knife. She looked at it then back up at him.
"Hold knives?" She asked.
"Kill," he corrected. "You kill our kind for sport, do you not? The way other humans hunt dear or bear, you and your friends just pick a night for it and go." The huntress's confused face turned to anger.
"We don't do it for sport. We do it keep you fuckers under control. So th—"
"So you are self-employed vampiric population control."
She thought for a second, turning her eyes to the ceiling then back down to him. "Unless we have someone that wants us to do a hit for them, then yeah. We're population control."
Rhys nodded. She was very much beautiful, but her beliefs worried him, reminded him of a time he sadly had no choice but to live through.
"You know, I knew of some people a few decades ago who felt the same way you feel. They believed what they were doing was for the good of everyone and they themselves also called it population control."
The huntress smiled. "Well, aren't you just every vamp hunters best friend. How many vamps did they kill?"
"None. They did not kill vampires."
Her forehead creased in a mix of suspicion and confusion.
"They killed minorities and homosexuals." A silence passed between them. Like a cloud of smoke exiting a house through an open window, Rhys was instantly shut off from her emotions. He hadn't had to send himself far to find her, but now he found himself almost leaning forward to try and pick up something. Anything.
"That's different." She whispered. Rhys could almost swear he had touched her in some strange emotional way.
"How so?" He countered.
