Prophecy: Child of Light (Vampires Realm Series Book 1) (Reading Sample) - Felicity Heaton (novels to read for beginners .TXT) 📗

wall opposite him humming to herself while she traced patterns on the mirror.

He shook his head again and sighed.

He’d arrived in this city no less than a hundred times in his life, not once had he been tracked by a hunter the second he’d arrived, and not once had he drawn the attention of the police.

The lift door opened and he went to grab hold of her wrist again but she pushed him away and walked in what she clearly thought was a straight line out into the hall.

He turned her around when she started heading in the wrong direction and suppressed his desire to growl when she jerked her shoulder backwards, making him let her go. She wove down the corridor, bumping into the wall occasionally and mumbling things under her breath whenever she did.

At least she was amusing to watch sometimes.

He whistled at her when she walked straight past the door to the room and she turned very slowly to face him, as though she was sure she would fall if she moved any faster.

He pushed the door open.

She held her hand out, ghosting it along the wall while she walked back towards him and then taking hold of the doorframe as she went into the room.

He almost walked into her when she stopped dead and looked around the room. Easing the door closed behind him, he slipped past her and let her take it all in. He went straight to the mini bar and opened himself a whisky. Sitting down on one of the couches, he watched her as she continued to stand in the same spot, her eyes moving over everything in the expansive room.

“Big,” she said and he looked around.

It was big.

Not as large as the apartment he owned in Paris, but he couldn’t risk taking her there. Whenever he’d travelled, he’d always stayed at the best hotels. There was no point in being immortal if you couldn’t enjoy the finer things in life.

The décor was typical upmarket hotel. The walls were painted a warm cream colour and the furniture was pompous and expensive. The living area between the two bedrooms was brightly lit. Flowers and fruit adorned the table that was situated near the window and the whole room smelt of them. His gaze moved back to Prophecy when she muttered something.

She moved painstakingly slowly towards the middle of the room. She blinked rapidly, her eyes rolling as she pressed her hand to her head and pouted. Standing, he downed the little bottle of whisky and tossed it into the bin. He caught her around the arm, pushed one of the sets of white double doors open and held his other hand out, intimating the bed.

“Sleep. You will feel better tomorrow,” he said.

She looked up at him, right into his eyes, and smiled.

She placed her free hand against his chest. “Thank you.”

He relinquished his grip on her arm and then turned away when she began to strip in front of him. His jaw muscles tensed and he stared at the ceiling, ignoring the voice at the back of his mind that told him to look. It had been hard enough in Prague when she’d got changed in front of him, now it was bordering on impossible.

He heard a soft thud and a sigh.

Risking a look, he found her flat out on her front on the bed wearing nothing but her underwear and a black vest top. The rest of her clothes were in a crumpled heap on the floor. He looked around the room, searching for a blanket to cover her with. She didn’t need it to keep her warm since her body would never naturally get above room temperature. It was more for him than for her. He would never be able to concentrate if he knew she was lying on the bed like this.

He found what he was looking for in the wardrobe. Unfolding it, he draped it over her body and raised a brow when she moaned, shifted onto her side and curled up into a tight ball.

He should have got her some nightclothes when he’d gone to get them clothes to change into but he’d been in a hurry. As it was, all he’d managed to bring with them was a small black bag filled mostly with underwear and clothes for her. Mathias had given him a black jacket to wear that wasn’t too dissimilar to his old one. It was less conspicuous, but made him feel like a Japanese schoolboy.

He gave her one last look and then walked back into the living area. He would leave her door open. That way if she woke during the day she wouldn’t panic because she’d easily be able to find him. He didn’t know how much of tonight she would remember, but he was sure it wouldn’t be enough for her not to be frightened when she woke to find herself in unfamiliar surroundings.

Crossing the room, he pushed open the other set of double doors. He carefully unbuttoned his jacket and placed it over a hanger in the wardrobe. Throwing a glance at the bed, he walked back into the living area and over to the mini bar. He couldn’t sleep when it was still dark out. He opened another whisky and went back to his room, pacing along the length of it while he tried to get his thoughts into order.

Prophecy was going to want to kill again, unless the blood Mathias had given her had helped abate the Hunger. Apart from her indiscretion in the nightclub, she had seemed fine, so there was a chance that another feed on bottled blood would free her of the effects of the Hunger. It would be better if she didn’t need to openly kill again.

When they had the key, they would need to get the first part of the scroll. He knew exactly where it was and who had it. Mathias had said that a veritable princess was holding it.

Valentine swigged his whisky.

She was one at that. Mia was always pleased to see him and he would be able to kill two birds with one stone. She would give them her part of the scroll and she would be able to help Prophecy remember things. They would need good cover to slip in unnoticed and meet with her. The families in that city were powerful and although one of them had not released their guardians, it would still prove difficult to avoid detection.

But first, they had a job to do in this city.

First, they had to go and see the Three.

 

Chapter 11

Chapter 11

The murky alleys they had been walking were a stark contrast to how Prophecy had imagined Paris. There was nothing beautiful and delicate about the places they had passed through in the last twenty minutes. They were dank, wet streets with little lighting in what seemed like a bad neighbourhood. She’d heard the sirens of police cars several times and had seen them as they sped down the wider roads that the alleys led out onto.

She looked at the old stone walls of the buildings around her. They looked like factories or something similar. She couldn’t quite tell.

Her brows met in a frown when she trod in a puddle that had been made in a pothole and felt the cold water seep into her boot. She shook her foot off, the scowl remaining on her face as she tried to rid her boot of water.

“I hope you know where you’re going,” she grumbled, staring at her foot. She could see Valentine’s meticulously clean boots just out of the corner of her eye. They were facing her, meaning he was probably watching her with another frown.

He’d been frowning all night. Whenever he looked at her, his brows knit and his eyes narrowed into a hard look. She knew that she’d done wrong and she’d apologised a thousand times, but it didn’t seem to be enough for him. He was still angry with her. He hadn’t seemed to hear her when she’d told him that she’d tried to resist the urge to kill but it had been too great. She could still hear his words from last night, had felt them hit her deep in the chest through her drunken haze.

She was worse than a child.

But then he’d changed, he’d looked at her with such a hunger in his eyes that all the words she’d been ready to throw at him had slipped from her grasp, leaving her lost in his eyes and wondering if he was going to do something they’d probably both regret.

It would only make things even more confusing and that wasn’t what they needed right now.

She’d awoken early tonight, before he’d risen, and had paced around the living area, occasionally sneaking glances at him when she passed his open door. She’d spent most of her time formulating an apology; the apology she’d recited at least ten times over to him throughout the course of the evening. The rest of the time, her mind kept replaying the moment in the bathroom. She could remember it all, could remember the way he’d held her close and tight, and the look in his eyes. She didn’t know what to make of it. He’d told Mathias that he hated her and he couldn’t bear her wanting to be close to him, but last night he’d been the one that had wanted to be close to her and it hadn’t been hate in his eyes.

She raised her head to look at him when he spoke.

“A good hunter knows everything about his environment,” he said and glanced up the alley. “It’s not far now.”

“A good hunter? Like the one who was following us last night?” She fell into step beside him when he began walking up the alley again.

“Him, myself, any one of the many elite.”

She frowned, her eyes narrowing as she scrutinised him. He wasn’t wearing his long red embroidered jacket any more, it had been replaced with a black one of similar stand up collar design, but he hadn’t lost the proud and confident air she’d noticed the moment she’d met him. He still reminded her of a Law Keeper.

“You’re a hunter? But hunters are human…do you hunt vampires?” Her frown remained in place. Had he been hunting her that night? Had he killed the son of her house?

“No,” he said and relief bloomed inside of her. “I hunt the hunters.”

She looked at him. He hunted the vampire hunters? No wonder he seemed like a Law Keeper. They had to be strong enough to take on the hardest of opponents and win, and Valentine looked as though he could certainly do that, especially if he’d spent a lot of time hunting the hunters that plagued their species. There were only a few vampire hunters that were skilled enough to take on a member of one of the seven pure bloodlines. Most hunters probably spent their whole life tracking and killing the weaker-blooded vampires that all of the pure bloodlines detested. Her family saw those hunters as nothing more than a form of pest control, something they were glad of as it kept the weakling population steady. Most hunters probably never met one of the seven. They were