Free Hunter's Blood by Erica Hayes

 
     
    Chapter One
     
    "I'm not hunting demons with him. No way." Gina Santangelo glared and folded sweaty arms across her hard leather vest, but her belly tightened. Heaven, strike me dead. Rip hell asunder and devour me whole. Anything but this.
    "Nice to see you, too, Santangelo."
    That dark male chuckle tingled heat down Gina's spine. The guildmistress's modern office was warm, but not that warm, and Gina's cheeks scorched, surely the color of the fresh blood she'd gulped down for breakfast. Don't meet his gaze. Don't even look at him.
    Might as well beg hellfire not to consume.
    Screaming hells, even after five years of hating him, Luka Dragovic was still hotter than the devil himself.
    Piercing eyes, greener than envy and as dangerous. An aristo's cheekbones, full lips that made her think dirty thoughts, sharp white fangs just the right length for the kind of rough games she liked. He wore hunters' leathers, like she did, black pants and boots and a buckled black chestplate with shoulder guards that showed off his massive arms. His whole body was tightly muscled from decades of physical training. Powerful thighs, a killer ass, a palpable aura of strength. She could taste his magic, salty and hot like blood. Around his neck on a leather strip, a blood-red gemstone glittered bright. A bloodstone was the focus of a vampire's magic, and his was dazzling. The man oozed power.
    Her own bloodstone burned. Hunger growled in her stomach, as well as in more secret places, as he draped his arrogant gaze over her body, and the spelled hunting knives strapped to her thighs glowed hot.
    Recognition—and sultry challenge?—flamed golden in his eyes, and she squirmed, the thick heels of her hunting boots scraping the soft carpet. Boots notwithstanding, he was taller than she. His sheer size threatened her, which was a total turn-on. So many men were too short. And that tousled, coal-black hair was surely the eighth deadly sin. She'd always had the hots for longer hair on a man. Crisp ends curling about his neck in sultry invitation, begging to be wrapped around her fists while he sank those sexy fangs into her throat…
    Gina swallowed, and tore her gaze away. She'd crushed that hair in her hands once, five years ago, and he'd humiliated her. "Lady, is this necessary?"
    "Afraid so." Guildmistress Nyssa tidied papers on her curved white desk, dismissive. At four hundred and fifty years old, Nyssa was still a beautiful woman, though her skin was roughening with age, her blond ponytail riffled with silver. In the modern era of incredulity, even vampires aged eventually. Few people believed in magic anymore, and without belief, magic failed.
    "But—"
    A blue glare. "In case you'd forgotten, Santangelo, tonight is Samhain, when the hellflux is at its thinnest. Demons are breaking through in ever greater numbers. We need our very best hunters on the job."
    Gina's stomach flipped. The hellflux was the invisible barrier between the human and demon realms. Hell wasn't underground—it was everywhere, occupying the same space as the visible world, yet separated from it by the thinnest of skins. With her magical vampire sight, she could see the hellflux everywhere, crackling in the air like a web of static, a cosmic bubble that kept earth in and hell out.
    Some vampires had long desired mastery over demons, believing that demonic powers were the key to the vampires' lost eternal life. Secretly, they used their magic to weaken the hellflux, giving the demons what they wanted in return—access to human souls. And lately, their faction, known in the Hunters Guild as the hellmongers, had gained ascendancy, infiltrating positions of political power in both vampire and human worlds.
    The Hunters Guild disagreed. Humans weren't just food animals to be sacrificed. But humans were weak, and needed protection from soul-hungry demons if both vampires and humans were ultimately to survive. The existence of vampires was no longer a secret, but they still