Free 02 Blood Roses - Blackthorn by Lindsay J Pryor

back. Jarin, who had betrayed and humiliated Seth even further by unjustly placing him on the dishonoured list.
    They had both idolised their older brother – but for Caleb, Seth had been the father figure they’d never known. And Seth had been the only one capable of tempering Caleb.
    Caleb had slipped into an even darker place after that – immersed in resentment, restrained from enacting revenge only by knowing the repercussions for Jake and anyone else he had left to care about.
    Then along came Feinith – the beautiful, sensual, Higher Order vampire with an offer Caleb couldn’t refuse: a chance to appease some of that pent-up frustration and turmoil by hunting serryns.
    But it had only done the opposite.
    For the decades during his hunting, there had been too many dawns of Caleb returning home blood-splattered, wounded and darkly unrepentant. Worse, he’d seen his brother thrive on the depravity and cruelty he had engaged in. There were times when he’d lost his brother to it and not only physically. Emotionally the serryns created an impenetrable barrier in him. Seventy years of hunting serryns had turned him into something almost unrecognisable from the brother he had grown up with.
    He knew Feinith had a lot to do with that and he’d never forgive her for it. Feinith had fed that side of Caleb. Caleb’s tumultuous on-and-off furtive relationship with her during his hunting days, let alone the years that had followed, had done nothing to abate the darkness that had almost consumed him.
    Sixty years since Caleb’s last kill, he’d hoped it had been the last of it. The ban on the hunting of serryns, let alone them seemingly becoming extinct, had since let Caleb rebuild his life. And Jake had enjoyed having his brother back – the real Caleb: a Caleb not weighed down with the need and desire to wipe every single serryn off the planet. Tension and energy he had instead ploughed into building the businesses.
    But having seen how Caleb had looked at Leila, the way he’d dragged that blade slowly and coaxingly down her defenceless body, told him how close his brother still lingered to the edge. And more than ever, he knew why he needed to get her out of there. Not just for Leila’s sake, but for his brother’s sake too. He couldn’t have that brother back – the uncompromising, bloodthirsty, depraved Caleb. Not for anything.
    ‘Caleb, we’ve got to get her out of here,’ he said, joining his brother at the arc of CCTV monitors that bowed against the wall directly ahead.
    Caleb’s attention was fixed on the image of Leila lying on the dungeon floor. ‘Not now we’ve got more reason than ever to wait until dawn, we don’t.’
    ‘And then what?’ He watched Caleb knock back a mouthful of drink in silence. ‘Caleb?’
    ‘How old do you think she is? Twenty-five, twenty-six?’
    ‘Alisha’s twenty-five and I know Leila’s a few years older than that. Why?’
    ‘She should have been active years ago.’
    ‘Active?’
    ‘Hunting. Did you see that look in her eyes when I killed Tay?’
    He had. He’d seen the fear. He’d seen the horror and disgust at what her blood had done. A look that was a far cry from the serryn warriors Caleb had spoken of. ‘It wasn’t exactly a pretty sight.’
    ‘It’s what they’re made for, little brother. It’s what they live for. I’ve seen looks in those cold bitches’ eyes that would chill you to your core.’
    ‘Which is all the more reason why we should get her out of here quick.’
    Caleb ran the rim of the glass across his lower lip as he stared pensively at the screen. ‘She can’t be a latent. They’re teenagers, not women in their twenties.’
    ‘Maybe she’s the exception to the rule.’
    ‘There is no exception to the rule when it comes to them. And there never will be. Besides, she may not have liked what she saw in there but she knew what was coming, so someone’s taken a bite out of her before. That in itself should have been enough to