Provoke Me: A Reverse Harem Vampire Romance (The Last Vocari Book 2)

by Elena Lawson

  “Get out of there,” Blake told the caller.

  “What do you want me to do?” A male voice asked on the other end. It wasn’t anyone I recognized, and I struggled to understand what was going on that had them all so worked up.

  “I want you to turn around and get the fuck out of there,” Blake hissed. “It isn’t safe.”

  “What’s going on?” I whispered the question to Ethan. “Who is that?”

  “Jerome,” Ethan whispered back. “A client of mine.”

  “…they’re torching everything, man,” the guy on the other end said, his voice growing hard.

  They’re what?

  Frost turned his steely green gaze on me. “They must’ve tracked you to the shop somehow,” Frost explained in a brusque voice, his great big hands clenching into fists as his face reddened.

  No…

  “They’re burning it down,” Ethan added without emotion. “All of it.”

  Fire and ice warred for dominion in my chest. My breathing picked up and my hands curled into talons. This was my fault.

  Hot, angry tears pricked at my eyes.

  Blake gripped the phone tighter. “If it’s who we think it is, you need to leave. Now.”

  There was a gasp on the other end and all of us stiffened. “Fuck, man,” the guy named Jerome cursed.

  “What?” growled Frost.

  “I see them,” Jerome replied.

  I stopped breathing.

  “How many?” Ethan asked calmly.

  “Six,” Jerome replied, and listening carefully, I realized I could now hear the crack and hiss and roar of the fire somewhere nearby to where he was.

  All their work…their home…maybe if the fire department got there fast enough it could be saved.

  My fingernails dug deep half-moons into my palms.

  The sounds of sirens sang out of the receiver and I sighed. Maybe if the building wasn’t consumed yet. Maybe—

  The sirens grew louder. Then came a scream.

  The bloodcurdling sound gripped me, sending goosebumps over my skin and making my hair stand on end.

  “What was that?” I demanded, loud enough for the caller to hear.

  A second scream, this one male, joined the first. Then a third.

  A fourth.

  “What’s happening?” Frost shouted into the received, snatching the phone out of Blake’s stiff hand.

  The vampire on the other end tripped over his words in his haste to speak. “They—they’re…oh fuck…they’re killing them. They’re tearing them apart…”

  My stomach turned and I gripped it, afraid I might be ill.

  “Jerome leave,” Ethan injected.

  A hiss came over the receiver and then a clatter.

  “Jerome?” Ethan asked, his face paling and tone growing higher in pitch with his panic.

  There was the unmistakable sound of a scuffle. Then a deep thud. A sickening gurgle.

  The line went dead.

  My heart pounded against my chest. “We have to turn around.”

  “Not a fucking chance,” Blake hissed, spinning to settle his black eyes on me. There was no space for argument in his tone, but I didn’t fucking care.

  My upper lip curled back, and I turned my attention to Frost and Ethan. “They’re killing people,” I shouted. “This is not an argument I’m going to have. We are going back.”

  An image of my mother, pale and unblinking in a pool of her own still-warm blood came unbidden to my mind and I gagged. They were killing people. The woman who’d screamed. She could’ve been someone’s mother.

  And the man—someone’s father.

  If we didn’t stop them, nobody would.

  They’d kill, and feed, and rape. Then they’d toss the bodies into the fire and compel anyone who saw to forget.

  It’d happened before.

  Fire’s were a great way to get rid of immortal evidence.

  Frost looked like he was about to blow his top, but he forced himself to draw in several deep breaths before he responded, meeting my venomous stare with a lethal one of his own. “She’s right.”

  Blake glared at him with murderous intent, his fangs bared.

  “Blake, stop,” Ethan said, deadpan. “Rose is right. We can’t allow them to keep killing. We have to try to stop them.”

  It was what they turned themselves for, wasn’t it? To protect humanity? It was the same reason I trained for eight years to get to where I am now.

  This was what we were bred for.

  Our purpose.

  I didn’t want to put them in the line of fire any more than they wanted me in it. But I wouldn’t sit here driving miss daisy while people were being slaughtered.

  How could I?

  How could they?

  “There’s only six of them,” I tried to make Blake see reason.

  “We don’t know how old they are.”

  “I’ve killed four by myself at once,” I told him. “We can do this.”

  Surprise flickered over his sharp-angled features before his face settled back into a hard mask. “What if he’s there?”

  My jaw clenched. I knew none of us were a match for Raphael. But together…

  Maybe.

  It was a risk we’d have to take.

  “We end him.”

  Ethan bowed his head.

  Frost suddenly couldn’t look at me.

  “Yeah,” Blake said, his voice dripping sarcasm while a deep unease crept into his stare. “Or we all die trying.”

  I turned to the driver, grabbing his arm to get his attention. He was driving along as though nothing had happened. His face serene as the tires continued to chew pavement, taking us in the opposite direction of where we needed to go.

  “Turn around,” I demanded.

  He didn’t respond. I laced my voice with compulsion and jerked his head to face me. “Turn around.”

  “I can not divert from the route,” he replied robotically.

  Useless.

  I jerked the wheel from his hands and before he could fight me for control, I drew a stake and butted him hard on the back of his head. He slumped in the seat and his foot dropped heavily onto the gas pedal. The old hearse roared down the highway and I had to swerve to avoid hitting a minivan with six little people stickers on the back window.

  Vaguely, I was aware the guys were cursing and shouting, but I almost had it. I managed to lift his leg from the gas pedal and snake my foot down between his legs to get to the brake. We bounced onto the gravel at the side of the road and into a field, the tired chewing dirt and tall grass before we skidded to a sudden, jarring stop.

  Horns honked in our wake and Frost groaned as he held the top of his head. He must’ve hit it on the roof when we’d bounced off the highway.

  I threw the hearse into park and nudged Ethan to get out so I could go around to the drivers’ side.

  “Too slow,” he said, but obligingly got out of the way so I could stand outside next to the vehicle. “We need to run.”

  The back hatch clanked open and Frost and Blake were outside with us in an instant.

  “You’re the fastest,” Ethan said to Frost. “You’ll have to carry her.”

  What?

  It took a second for my brain to catch up. The drive back would take me an hour at least—and that was if I was breaking a lot of traffic laws. But vampires are fast. We could cover the distance back to Baton Rouge in ten minutes. Maybe less if they really pushed it.

  Speed was something else that developed with immortal age.

  I shook my head. What had I been thinking? An hour return trip would make the whole thing futile. By then they’d be done and gone. Hundreds killed. The building reduced to ash and beam.

  “What is that?” Blake asked suddenly, and I strained my ears to hear what he was referring to. It was a ringing.

  The driver’s cellphone.

  There was only one person who would be calling. I ignored the sound, stomping around back to grab my bag. I unzipped it and drew o
ut my Katana, strapping it across my back. I stooped to make sure the laces of my combat boots were tied tightly and drew my hair back into a ponytail with a stray elastic I found at the bottom of my bag.

  “Let’s move,” I said, my blood buzzing with anticipation of the oncoming battle. I’d been dying for this for days now. Hungry for blood. I ached for those who’d already lost their lives, but I lusted after their killers. I was going to fucking enjoy this. As I made my way to Frost, I heard the phone go off again.

  I ground my teeth. “Leave the vial of ink with the driver,” I told Ethan and watched his face crumple at the suggestion. I had to be realistic, we may not make it back. But if there was a cure for vampirism hidden somewhere in my genetic makeup, then it was my duty to make sure it got into the right hands. Ethan’s vamp sunblock ink could steer Azrael in the right direction.

  Don’t even get me started on why all of a sudden, I was thinking of the right hands as being Azrael’s…

  Better than his savage brother, though.

  Ethan nodded tightly and turned back to the hearse.

  Frost lifted me into his arms as though I weighed no more than a babe. He cradled me against his warm, hard chest and locked his fingers just above my hips.

  “I’ll take point when we get there,” I told him. “You’ll all be needing a minute to catch your breath.”

  His jaw twitched. He didn’t agree, but he didn’t disagree, either.

  It would have to do.

  “Well,” I said, exasperated. “What are you waiting for? Giddy up!”

  24

  I had to tuck my face in tightly to Frost’s chest as he ran. Have you ever gone two-hundred miles an hour without protection from the wind? If I so much as tried to open my eyes, they instantly watered and burned. And I didn’t think the deafening sound of wind rushing into my ears would ever fully fade.

  As Frost slowed and I was finally able to turn my head out from the shelter of his wide chest and open my eyes, I gasped. We were still several miles away. Skating down empty streets and abandoned alleyways to avoid someone catching sight of us. But the billowing smoke pouring into the otherwise clear night sky was unmistakable.

  My chest tightened and I glanced up to see Frost’s jaw twitch as we drew nearer. “Put me down,” I told him as he skirted around a bank of parked cars and hopped a fence in a single bound, landing us on our feet at the edge of the huge park that stood across from their building. He did, setting me gently down while keeping a hand on my arm to steady me.

  His barrel chest was heaving hard as he drew in exerted breaths through his nostrils. I regained my footing and stretched out my stiff muscles, drawing my stakes. Through the trees we could see snippets of the beautiful old concrete corner building where Ethan’s shop and their apartment were. But now the light-colored walls were charred black. Now, smoke and flames billowed from the windows.

  Now, it was too late to save it.

  I turned to Frost just as Ethan and Blake sped into the park, skidding to a stand-still beside us.

  “I’m so sorry,” I managed, my voice hard, but cracking.

  Blake’s eyes flashed with murder. “It’s not your fault.”

  But it was…

  A scream ricocheted into the night and spurred us all back into action. They were still attacking. We might’ve been too late to stop the fire, but we weren’t too late to stop the carnage.

  A fire engine squatted against the sidewalk just on the other side of the trees, vacant. As we ran nearer, at a slightly quicker than normal pace that I could match, I began to notice what the strange light-reflecting bits scattered on the sidewalk and the road were…

  Body parts.

  Fireman body parts.

  A helmeted head there. A leg and arm bent at odd angles next to it. Blood spattered blacktop reflecting flames in crimson.

  My stomach lurched.

  Ethan’s fangs slid out and his jaw worked to contain his thirst in the presence of so much fresh blood.

  Frost and Blake looked pained, too, but not nearly as affected.

  I supposed my blood only worked to stave off the cravings if people’s blood stayed inside their bodies. Not even a properly sated vampire could resist a king’s buffet.

  A twig snap alerted me to someone approaching and I squinted into the foliage to see the vague shapes of people as they drew nearer the burning building. “Ethan,” I said, getting his attention. “Keep the people away.”

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “But—”

  “Please,” I said, interrupting him. “Just keep them back.”

  His lips tightened, but he nodded.

  Then I was running, Blake and Frost flanking me left and right. It was time to stake some motherfuckers.

  The thrill of the hunt sharpened my focus. Lengthened my strides. My blood sang with the adrenaline rush and despite myself, I smiled.

  They wanted The Black Rose.

  Come and fucking get her…

  I plowed into the first vampire I saw. A tall, lanky fucker with greasy brown hair and a gaunt face. He was drinking from a news-reporter’s carotid, and by the look of the scene around him, he’d already finished with the rest of the news crew.

  He lifted his head and his bloodlust hazed blue eyes met mine. He wasn’t anticipating an attack. The fucker barely had time to drop his fresh kill and move into a fighting stance before I was on top of him. I dodged his right hook and snaked my right leg out to swipe his from under him. He landed hard on the blood-soaked pavement, dazed for the fraction of a second I needed to stake him.

  The metal tip burrowed through flesh and muscle, cracked through rib bones and found its mark. His gaunt face slackened, and he choked as though the stake had perforated his windpipe instead of his heart. A dribble of blood rolled over his bottom lip, and then he was gone. His blue eyes losing focus as death took him.

  I freed the stake from his chest and roared, my inner lioness baring its feral teeth, my limbs lithe and light as I surveyed my surroundings, searching for my next kill.

  Blake was on the roof of the building next to their burning one. I glanced up at the exact moment he tore an arm off the vampire he was fighting. The high pitched mewl so loud it rose above the roar of the flame.

  That’s my boy.

  Even though I was still at the other side of the street, I could feel the waves of suffocating heat rolling off the structure. Inside, it looked like the mouth of a volcano, or the seventh circle of hell. The heat so intense and the flames so strong they all blended together into a rippling, waving, bright orange glow.

  Sweat slicked my palms and beaded on my forehead. I couldn’t see Frost or Ethan anywhere. Where were they? Where were the rest of the vampires?

  Just as I thought it, my amber eyes latched onto another. He was frozen like a deer in the headlights. He clutched a severed arm in his blood-coated hands and from his stance near the building and the mass of corpses at his feet, he was the unlucky bastard tasked with getting rid of the evidence. He was clearly tossing the bits of deceased human into the fire.

  I didn’t have time to allow the rising emotions at the sight of so many dead humans—to feel grief stricken for all the families that’d just been broken…

  Instead, I did what I do best; I let fury eat up the pain and turn it into fuel for the fight.

  Got you, fucker.

  I charged, a battle cry tearing from my aching lungs. The vampire’s eyes widened, but unlike the other, he was ready for me. He saw me coming and he lifted a crowbar from the ground, snarling as I descended upon him.

  He lashed out with the bar, missing me by a hair as I thrusted my stake in, aiming to incapacitate. The vampire was faster, dodging my advance and parrying to the right. He lunged again, hissing, and I whirled out of the way. But he anticipated that, too, and landed a blow with the back of his hand across my face.

  Blackness flashed in my vision and I shook my head as I lifted it, tasting blood on my tongue. I laughed.

  Damn, how I’d
missed this. My skin crackled with energy as I lifted my head to meet his gaze and he watched me, horrified at my bloody smile. At how I laughed in his face. He moved to attack again, and I spun out of his reach, staking him in his kidney from the back.

  Awe, the darkness whispered in my mind. I thought he would actually give me a challenge…

  Too bad.

  The vampire drew in a broken breath, and his millisecond of pause was all I needed to finish the job. In a single movement, I sheathed the stake from my right hand in its holster and lifted it to the hilt of my Katana. Widening my stance, I drew the blade and swung in one long, beautiful arc of shining steel and spraying blood.

  His head bounced to the ground and I punted it into the flames as the rest of his body slumped.

  I wiped his spatter from my cheek, probably just smudging it, and scanned for the next one, finding Frost instead. He had just finished dispensing with one in the tree-line, and he was watching me, his lips parted and bright green eyes wide with something between horror and awe.

  I was just as impressed with them, though, and I beamed as I took in the strong lines of him. Fuck, it was like they were born for this.

  The vampires here weren’t very old, that much I could tell, but they were certainly older than my guys…

  Rule number one in a fight, don’t check out your fellow comrades. I was so enamored watching Frost that I didn’t see or hear the other fucker coming until he was practically on top of me. He hit me hard in the back and I flew several feet toward the flaming building before I landed in a breathless heap on the ground and he was digging his knee into my back. My Katana and the stake from my left hand clattered to the ground ten feet away and rolled beneath the fire truck.

  Fuck.

  My breath came back after a heartbeat and I kicked up my left leg, nailing the bloodsucker somewhere in the back with my stiletto heel.

  It was enough for me to be able to buck him off and roll into a crouch.

  I heard a distinctive grunt that had me breaking focus for a fraction of a second to see that a group of three had surrounded Frost.

  What the fuck? I thought there were only six?

  Obviously more had come to join the blood bath.