Free Taming the Night (Creatures of the Night Book 1) by Tisha Wilson

one of those guns from you… I would.”
    She didn’t wait for a response but went to the pack of cigarettes that sat on the bedside table. She took one out of the pack and lit up. The nicotine played on her nerves for just a moment before the feeling of euphoria simply disappeared.
    “Smoking is bad for you,” he commented. She laughed.
    “I wish it was bad for me. The only thing that is bad for me is you sitting over there with those guns.”
    “If I shot you with one of these bullets, would you burn like the creatures?”
    She sat on the bed and grabbed the thin silver stake that she had worn in her hair earlier. She saw him tense but ignored it. She stabbed the space between the bones in her ring and middle finger. The spike imbedded itself deep into her flesh until it plunged through to the other side. Blood spurted and he rose to his feet automatically.
    “What the hell are you doing ?” he yelled as he rushed forward and grabbed her wrist.
    He instantly pulled the stake from her hand and pulled out his shirt tail to stanch the flow of blood. He wiped at her hand to find that the wound had already sealed itself and was nothing but a red scar. He turned her hand from front to back and looked at it in amazement. She had to repress a quiver at the feel of his rough hands on her skin. It didn’t even matter that the room was freezing cold and her hair was still wet. Her blood was boiling again.
    “That’s impossible,” he whispere d as he released her and looked at the blood that still stained his shirt.
    “That’s right honey. It’s all a bad dream,” she said as she took another tug on her cigare tte. He backed away and sat down still looking at his shirt. She blew out the smoke and nearly laughed at his dumbfounded expression. “You see. It would have been better for you to walk away from me. I’m not human.”
    “What are you? ” he asked as he looked up at her. His deep chocolate eyes bored into her looking for the truth.
    “I hunt the creatures and to do that… I have to be like them. I might be worse than them because… unlike them… I can’t die.”
    *
    He saw her soul on her face then and it was… hallow, drained of something vital. How long had she been alive? There was humanity there. She didn’t think so, but he saw it just in the way she lamented not being able to die. What would it be like to live forever in the night, hunting those things, alone?
    “But there are others like you? ”
    She nodded. “And I can never be w ith them. The hunter in us forces us to rip each other apart every time we get together. Trust me, that’s a laughin’ good ole time.”
    “But if you can’t die… what would be the point of that? That would be like a fight into eternity with no winners.”
    “You’re right. It’s a wa ste of time for us to even be in the same room, unless we are learning some new hunting technique. There is no one better to practice killin’ on than someone that cannot die,” she said. A playful grin crept onto her face.
    “Remind me never to come to one of your trainings.”
    She laughed and the sound lifted his heart. He preferred her laughing. When she laughed it was honest. It wasn’t flirting, neither was it the soulless self condemnation that she practiced when she said she wasn’t human. He couldn’t tell exactly why he was so quick to defend her when she wouldn’t defend herself. He barely even knew her.
    “No. I don’t think that would be a good idea,” she agreed still grinning.
    “So… Training implies that there is some type of organization or secret military group or something. Are you like the League of Extraordinary Gentleman or something?”
    Again she laughed and he returned the smile. Her laughing was easy on his ears and dangerous to his peace of mind. He was more attracted to her this way, if that was at all possible. When she’d opened the door wearing that thong… he thought he’d stepped into a live issue of playboy. It had taken all of