Free Captiva Craving - Vampire Werewolf Menage (Six Feet Under Series Book Two) by Talyn Scott Page A

lush lips, “for eternity.”

Chapter Four
A Facility For The Damned
    A faint breeze floated around Captiva Island. Sixten inhaled again, breathing in the brackish air from the only place he truly called home. Although their hunt moved rapidly, the dawn had quickly turned into afternoon, and strangely, Sixten felt a chill far colder than customary at this time of the year. More than likely, it was not the weather at all, but his body dying from the inside out, his heartache piling up on him with a crippling pain far more excruciating than dying at his enemies’ hands. If he had ever endured a night longer than this, he certainly could not remember it now. No, not now. That was saying a hell of a lot, considering the vilest creatures unknown to man had intermittently tortured Sixten throughout his service as a Vojak. In pain, a warrior always thrived.
    Not this time.
    Not in this way.
    Dead palm fronds crunched under Kash’s heavy feet as he came behind Sixten. “Do you detect anything?” he asked in a rumbling voice tight with emotions, which after their girly chat down in the Sanctuary, Sixten could now name. No male wanted to discuss any feelings, much less a vampire, so props to Kash for not emasculating himself in the process. Although Sixten still had not decided if he was going to castrate him. Time would tell.
    “I want to walk the west side,” answered Sixten, glancing at the other three. No matter how tired they were, Oycher and Qudir remained nervous with warrior’s excitement over any impending battle, a natural occurrence at the thought of doing what they were born to do, which jacked up their adrenalin. Kash, on the other hand, seemed older. His fingers remained closer to his weapons, his moves strongly calculated. “Her trail is getting colder by the second. I never thought they were stupid.” He was half Habaline. He should know by his own incredible intelligence. “But the way they’ve covered up her scent…it's…”
    “As though her abduction was highly premeditated,” Kash finished. Tight lines stretched from the corners of his mouth, lavender eyes washing silver in the sunlight while glancing furtively at Sixten. “I picked up a faint trail to the right of that Black Mangrove patch.” He shifted on his feet as another cool breeze flittered through, pushing his leather coat against his thick thighs. “A human female, though it wasn’t Blythe, and other .”
    Sixten stared downward, following with his body, his long legs making short work of the trail his friend indicated. Kash always scented creatures better than he did, whereas Sixten felt his shapeshifter cousins in a manner, a unique connection, no Species vampire could ever. In a physical way down to his bone marrow and he hated it, could not embrace it if he tried.
    As Sixten neared them, the Black Mangroves definitely caught his attention. Something multidimensional lingered there. A pulling ensued, a disjointed lulling coaxing him to move his body forward. But where? What was he sensing? Instead, he stopped, cautiously lowering himself on his haunches and trailing his fingertips across the loose dirt mixed with powdery sand. Another peculiar, though familiar, sense rushed him, much the way those scrolls did on Marco Island. “Then show me,” he growled with exasperation, standing up and walking forward, “…wasting time here.”
    “What’s going on?” Oycher’s voice came through another breeze, this one stronger.
    “Don’t know.” In a slow blink of his ice-green eyes, he caught it, a narrow trail opened for him to follow. He motioned for the others, though by their bewildered expressions, they could not see what Sixten was noticing. Ten scant feet and there it was, pushing outward from the ground. An opening so large, he wondered how anyone missed it. By the gasps that he heard from behind him, they were thinking the same thing.
    “You’re like a key, Six,” Qudir said in horrified awe, “a freaking key opening