Chapter Nineteen: Demetri
Abi watched on, silently wringing her hands while Hunter tugged on his boots. "I'm sure she'll be back," she said, but even she wasn't convinced.
"If you think that, then you really don't know your sister," he said as he grabbed a shirt from the bed he had just hours before shared with Ginger. He felt sick that he'd hurt her like he did -- for the second time.
"Then I'm coming with you," Abi decided.
He glanced where she stood, wrapped in a robe. "You're safer here," he curtly replied as he turned away.
"With a couple of vampires that are dead during the daylight hours?"
He brushed past her. "Look at it this way," he said, "the Creature is just as dead. You're safe until the sun sets."
She grabbed his arm. "Will you be back by then?"
His eyes were steely blue as he stared down into her face. Her eyes glistened and he could clearly tell she was terrified. The one thing that their frolicking had proven was that she realized how close she'd come to willingly giving herself over to the undead. He had saved her, and she was petrified of facing the vampires who clearly had a hold on her without him there to pull her back from the brink.
She knew she wasn't that strong.
Ginger clearly was.
"I don't know," he told her honestly. Her lip quivered. "I'll try," he promised in a low voice before he turned and headed out the door.
What had he done, he wondered to himself as he hopped aboard his motorcycle. How could he have made the same mistake twice? He still remembered the first time Ginger walked in on he and Abi in the throes of passion -- the night she returned for her father's funeral and found them naked and in each other's arms in Abi's room in their family home.
There had been no excuses to give. There was no way he'd have insulted her intelligence. He really had been comforting Abi and it had gone farther than he had intended, but that was just the way things were when he got anywhere near Abi. He needed her. And even seeing the woman he had loved from his freshman year wasn't enough to chase those feelings away.
Instead it had chased Ginger away -- back to Europe and into the arms of the most dangerous rebound guy she could have possibly found. A vampire long dead, who wanted nothing more than to ensure Ginger was with him forever.
Worse, Ginger seemed perfectly okay with the idea.
The thought still made Hunter shudder at how close she had come.
He supposed it was karma to find her making love to Stephen the night he had gone to apologize and beg for a second chance.
He managed to step into the room at the exact moment Stephen was going to sink his long, sharp fangs into her sweet smelling, virgin neck.
Hunter had rushed the monster and tore him off of Ginger, and the vampire reacted accordingly. He flung Hunter up against the wall and nearly knocked him unconscious from the force of the blow. All Hunter could remember was peering out of barely opened eyes as Ginger rushed to his side, naked and blurry and scared.
Who saved who remained a mystery. All he knew was how she looked when she told Hunter that she was in love with Stephen, and no matter what he did or didn't do she planned to follow him where ever he would go... even if that meant to the grave.
Hunter sped along the dirt road, racing for town, scouring the swamp land around the road for any sign of red hair.
He had worked hard to regain her trust so that he could save her from that evil, cursed fate. How was he ever going to make it right again? He did the one thing to the one person that would have severed their bond forever.
And he knew it when he took Abi in his arms that morning.
It was a bitch loving two sisters, especially when he was addicted to one of them.
He had naively thought he could return to New Orleans and face Abi again without losing his composure. But he knew from the first time he looked at her face in that club it was a losing battle.
That was the real reason he told her that he and Ginger were married. He'd hope it would be the barrier she needed to keep far away.
He should have known that the way he felt when she was near Raven or Constantine, he was fooling no one.
But he made love to Ginger last night anyway, knowing that Abi was fucking two vampires just a few rooms away. If she noticed that he was more desperate, more demanding, more forceful, she never said anything.
He had to prove to himself yet again that he had chosen the right sister. But the harder he fucked Ginger, the more he saw Abi's face.
When he had thrown Abi against the wall that morning he was doing it to punish them both for a lust they could neither deny.
But when they made love on the floor, it was gentle and it was sweet... and it was everything he had wanted for more years than he could remember. He knew as he did it that he would have to face Ginger and tell her the truth, but he was hoping to put that off until after they had killed the Creature.
He was terrified that she would run off and do something self destructive.
Like give herself to a vampire.
Fortunately she had been drinking holy water for enough years that any that dared to touch her would find much more than a conquest. With any luck their skin would peel from their bones and their bones would then turn to ash.
That was their theory anyway -- they had never put it in practice. It was the idea of a man named Walter, who had saved them both from vampire clutches and would teach them to become hunters.
It was also Walter who told Hunter to follow his heart to Ginger, that she needed to be loved by someone who would never let her down. It was the only way to purge her vampire lover from her heart for good.
Walter would strangle Hunter for what he had done.
Especially knowing that Ginger had run off into the swamp with a shattered heart, heading straight for a Creature unlike any that they'd ever dealt with before.
She couldn't charm this Creature, couldn't use her feminine wiles like she had done in the past. It only wanted to destroy anything and anyone who had anything to do with Raven.
After that electrifying kiss at the club, she had painted a huge target on her head.
It was evident that Raven wanted her; proven by the way he wouldn't let her go even when it physically hurt him to hold on.
Hunter gulped down a throat full of regret when he realized Raven had sacrificed more than Hunter had been willing to.
