Bloody and Wild

Addicted

"Did you buy chocolates for your colleagues at work?" Mary Fox's innocent question caused her daughter to suddenly drop her fork with a clatter that made them both jump. Mary raised a delicate eyebrow in question but Lauren avoided her eye contact and quickly bent to retrieve the offending cutlery. The colour had drained from her face and her gaze looked off into the distance as she frowned slightly. Lauren's mind was whirling with the sudden realisation that tomorrow she was due into work, due back to her normal life.  

Could she go back? Wasn't she Ryder's hostage, she might not be tied up but did that mean she was free? Her heart jolted, did she want to go back?

"Yeah." Mary pursed her lips unhappily and sighed, finishing drying the last plate.

"Goodness knows where the men have gotten off to," she mused critically, "probably lost in a rant over the football." Lauren wasn't paying her the slightest attention.

"Right, I'll be right back. I just have to make a call." Lauren muttered hurriedly already stepping through the back door, oblivious to her mother's scowl.

*

Ryder whistled in admiration. Christian Fox observed the young man's reaction with an expressionless face. Ryder's cool grey eyes ran over blades, rifles, nets, maces, swords, guns, arrows and all manner of weapons from through the ages. He thought he spotted a couple decorated in ancient runes. A shiver ran down his spine as he eyed the disturbing instruments resting in a display to his left. They were instruments of torture, some that he was familiar with but others that were much more...imaginative.

So these were the tools of a vampire hunter then.

"I knew your father." Ryder returned his attention to Christian Fox. "Kieran was a brave and good man." Christian's voice became gruffer. "I always knew he had my back." Ryder saw a flicker of pain behind Christian's opaque eyes. He nodded his head, setting his lips into a grim line. "He spoke of you with so much pride, boasted that one day you would be the best of us all. I wonder..." 

Ryder heard the scrape of metal and that was his only warning. He moved to the side just in time and felt his hair stir as a nasty looking spiked star embedded itself in the wall where his head had just been. It took a moment for his heart to restart. "Sharp reflexes, but how agile are you?" Christian purred in a voice as smooth as silk. Ryder didn't hesitate this time.

When Christian had suggested showing him the garage he had half expected the secret panelling and revolving walls that created a façade for this hunting workshop but this he had never seen coming.

He swiftly did a back flip with no difficulty, landing with the grace of a dancer at a good distance from the vampire hunter. "Good," Christian conceded unfairly, "but what are you like in a fight?" Ryder straightened up and glared at Christian.

"I won't fight you. I made a promise and I won't break it." He spoke sternly and crossed his arms over his broad chest. "Know that I can harm anyone that I wish to," he assured his grey gaze cold. He could feel the electricity running to his finger tips and he fought against it, gritting his teeth in the struggle.

"What are your intentions with Lauren?" Christian demanded, Ryder caught the older man's troubled expression and held his gaze so that his sincerity might speak through his eyes.

"I will protect her, always." He replied solemnly. Christian appeared to relax slightly. Ryder noticed that neither of her parents had Lauren's eyes. Hers were never cold instead she had a burning passion constantly stoked in her emerald depths. But it was odd that both Oliver and Lauren should have green eyes whilst their parents didn't. In fact the more he looked the fewer semblances he saw between Christian and his children at all.