by Lauren Dane
He healed right before her eyes and she nearly groaned. But she kept on because this motherfucker had to die. If he didn’t, she would.
Or Clive might. Or David.
She couldn’t accept that, so it was kill him or else.
Genevieve seemed a little better after a few hits off that pipe and was back in the game by the time David came back and called out the place was clear except for a locked room on the second floor.
They didn’t know if the door was warded or spell trapped so it would have to wait until they were done with the homeowner.
Lyr laughed like the bugnuts crazy ass villain he was as he healed and then lunged at Rowan, using his nails to gouge rivulets down the side of her face. The sting of his venom made her eyes tear up. She was immune to Vamp venom so it wouldn’t poison her, but it still hurt and she’d have to clean those wounds with holy water—which also hurt like hell—or they’d get some sort of gross infection.
She managed to knock him upside the head with her fist and the handle of her knife. It was barely enough to make him hesitate before he was back, coming at her again.
“How’s your friend?” he asked, his voice heavily accented.
“I have lots of friends. You’ll have to be specific,” Rowan said, pleased not to wheeze as they circled.
With a grunt, Lyr managed to land another blow to her left kidney and get her cornered where he pinned her right wrist and then yanked her shoulder from the socket.
The world grayed out a little as she worked to push the pain back, control it enough to continue to fight.
Clive had gone full Vampire scary mode as he actually flew across the living room at top speed to knock Lyr to the side. She didn’t have much time to admire it though because Lyr was back to taunting.
“The one in your apartment in Las Vegas. I was so glad you were able to see my handiwork up close,” he jeered.
“Except it wasn’t your anything. You sent lackeys to ambush him.”
“Like the way you showed up at my door tonight?”
“But the difference is, I did it myself. I didn’t send anyone else to do the work because I was scared I’d break a nail.”
Clive had recovered and was back as they tag teamed Lyr. Clive moved so fast he was a blur, which was good because Lyr moved fast too. Fast enough to punch Rowan in the chest.
Motherfucker.
The sharp, ragged pain told her something had been broken. Most likely a rib or two. She just had to suck it up and keep going. It wasn’t the first time she had to fight with broken ribs and it hopefully wouldn’t be the last.
A rejuvenated Genevieve got back into the fray, her spells undoing whatever Lyr’s magic attempted.
But aside from his magic, Lyr was still a very old Vampire and a formidable opponent.
Deep inside her, Brigid unspooled her power, filling Rowan with that heat she’d come to accept as easily as breathing. Brigid pushed her, pushed adrenaline and raw power through Rowan’s veins to chase the pain away and help her keep her focus.
She wasn’t as fast as the Vampires in the room, but none of them had an actual Goddess inside their belly either.
Just a few feet away, Lyr and Clive fought hand to hand. Clive’s teeth and his nails had torn into Lyr multiple times and Vamp blood covered the walls and furniture before he moved away to regroup.
Those wounds he wouldn’t be able to heal nearly as quickly because they were made by another master Vampire.
The same could be said of Clive’s wounds, and despite Lyr not having his incisors, he’d gotten in more than one shot at taking Clive down. He needed to get his breath back so she jumped in.
“What’s your deal anyway, Lyr?” she asked, ducking in to slice at him again with her knives. This time it took him longer to heal, but he did.
“Deal?”
“What’s the purpose of this? Draining witches and humans? Violating the Treaty openly? Killing my Protected and the Protected of the Vampire Nation and the goddess Athena? To what aim?”
He didn’t answer for a while because he’d managed to create some sort of spell that knocked Clive off his feet and dropped a couch on him.
That had to hurt. All that expensive garish Vampire look at me I have money to waste on ugly shit furniture was heavy.
She wasn’t overly alarmed. The bond she and Clive shared told her he was hurt, but not critically.
Lyr sneered. “I don’t need an aim and I don’t need to share it with unworthy humans.”
“I’m not human,” Rowan told him as she abandoned her knives for her blade. It sang as it cleared the sheath and she lowered it, moving her wrist so it caught the light. “Goddess that sound.” She hummed. “Love it. Back to you though. It’s time for you to die. You violated the Treaty and I’m duly charged with your execution.”
“You have no authority over me!”
Goddess, Vampires were so fucking predictable. “You know they all say that, right? Every time I have to execute one of you dicks, you all say that same stupid crap.”
“I’m nothing like the rest,” he said, avoiding her strike.
“You’re nothing special, Lyr. Is that why you’re acting out? You want attention from your dad? He’s my dad too, just so you know. And he doesn’t give a fuck about you. He took your teeth and he knows I’m here ending your miserable life.”
“You do this at The First’s bidding?”
Clive was back by that point and she spent a moment just looking at him all rumpled and dangerous before she sneered at Lyr.
“I don’t work for Vampires. I end them when they break the Treaty. Like Enyo. I fucking killed her so goddess damned hard. I’d do it again every day for the rest of my life and never regret it. And I’ll end you anyway because you killed people who were important to me. Humans who didn’t stand a chance against you. You’re a coward.”
“You’ll continue to pay for that until I finally end your life. My Maker was a queen.”
“Tell her hi for me when you see her in hell. She’ll probably still have an eye patch.”
That just really pissed him off because he roared—an actual roar like a beast—at her.
“Guess I hit a nerve,” Rowan said on a giggle.
“If you hate Vampires so much why do you rut with one?” he demanded and Rowan guffawed.
“Am I supposed to be insulted? Rutting is one of his finest qualities. He’s very good at rutting. Sometimes he ruts with me, sometimes I rut with him. It just depends on the day and what we feel up to.” Rutting was a great word.
She stepped into his personal space and sliced his face open. He hissed in pain and annoyance and when that cut didn’t close immediately, Rowan smiled, showing him her teeth.
“Is that your problem? Is this whole issue because you’re not getting any rutting done? Is your dick as worthless as your missing incisors?”
Still bleeding, he rallied, backhanding her as he shouted a spell that squeezed her so tight she couldn’t breathe. She stumbled to the side, hopefully out of his reach as she tried not to panic. Which wasn’t as easy as she’d imagined before that but not being able to draw breath was no fucking fun.
The table that had cut into her back was nothing compared to that slow, tight suffocation.
Genevieve rushed over and touched Rowan’s chest, just above her heart. Brigid flared back to life, as if freed, and the tightness eased. Rowan gulped in several breaths as she nodded her thanks to Genevieve.
“Company!” David shouted from his place at the front window. “Three Vampires armed to the teeth are heading this way.”
“Handle that,” Clive called out to Rowan before he used a heavy coffee table to strike Lyr’s head and neck.
Rowan wanted blood and she couldn’t have Lyr’s just then so she might as well enjoy killing the no neck bastards coming to the door.
; They sure weren’t expecting to see her when she came out to the front porch, her blade in her hand. David stood at her side, ready.
“I can’t waste time needling these pricks so let’s kill them true and get back inside,” she told him, making sure the Vamps could hear.
They rushed her like she knew they would and she angled herself, bending her knees slightly as she drew her blade up, slicing through the first one’s arm and chest. David had pulled his handgun and put a bullet right between the eyes of the second one.
“Nicely done!” she shouted gaily as she went back to the Vamp she’d injured with her blade. Brigid sang through her body like the blade sang its own melody. Both wanted blood.
Rowan stepped in, stabbed him in the heart, turning the blade and angling it up to slice through this chest. The blessed steel and silver seemed to melt through him before she used the sole of her boot to shove him off and free her blade.
He crumpled to the ground and she moved on, taking out the third who’d dodged David’s bullet and had moved in for some hand-to-hand.
Normally Rowan would have let David finish it himself but Clive and Genevieve were inside with Lyr and she didn’t want to delay any further.
“Stand back,” she told David, who quickly obeyed before she lopped the Vampire’s head off.
Rowan and David shared a look before they went back inside.
The entire living room was utterly destroyed. Broken furniture littered the space, windows had been shattered. Clive looked very satisfied with himself as Rowan caught the uppercut to Lyr’s chin that had him stumbling back several steps.
Genevieve seemed to be in her element as she batted away the spells Lyr attempted to work against them.
Rowan started to tag Clive out so she could beat on Lyr a while, but Clive snarled at her. “I’ve got this, darling.”
“Don’t let him ruin your pretty face. I like you the way you are,” she said and he grinned before going back in.
The two Vampires fought their way through the room, punching and biting. Lyr used his nails more than Clive did, to make up for his lack of incisors, she supposed, and he gave as good as he got.
Walls had cracks in the drywall, the floor had been torn up in several places and Clive’s body knocked out a marble pillar as he got thrown into it with a groan of pain. Both began to slow a little, but Lyr wasn’t as used to prolonged battle. Not anymore. He got lazy as he sucked the power from others. Clive was a little over half Lyr’s age, but he’d gained his strength and power in his own right. He worked out every night. He trained and kept sharp by training with Rowan and his security team.
And Clive was pissed, which Rowan always found helped her give that last little bit of oomph to a fight.
“Do you fight her battles for her all the time?” Lyr taunted.
Rowan snorted and Clive didn’t rise to the bait. “There’s not enough time in the world for me to fight my wife’s battles. She’s very busy fighting on her own. But you’re a special case. You blew up my favorite car. You’ve killed people who were Protected. My grandfather was right to punish you. It seems only right that I do this once and for all in his stead.”
“Not everyone feels that way,” Lyr said, his voice silky.
“That my grandfather should have killed you centuries ago?”
Rowan and Brigid got very intent. Something was on the verge of happening.
“If you say so,” Lyr told Clive. “But Malcolm didn’t kill me back then. He knew I was right. Knew that if we didn’t push back the humans and human loving Vampires would ruin everything. He had a duty to protect his lands and he performed it. But your grandfather was a warrior. He knew I was one too. He’s not the only one.”
Clive was disciplined enough not to take the bait but Rowan knew his curiosity had been piqued.
Rowan wanted to question Lyr. Wanted to interrogate him and get all the information they so desperately needed. But she knew, watching the Vampire not giving up the fight with Clive, that even if they could take him alive and then managed to hold him, he wasn’t going to tell them what they wanted to know.
He’d been playing the long game for centuries, amassing power and strength and he’d become a full-blown monster. He needed to be put down or he’d continue to threaten everything she held dear.
“Kill him already, Clive, or I will,” Rowan said. Teasing. Mainly. She didn’t want Lyr messing with Clive’s head with this taunting.
Lyr turned his attention to Rowan a moment. “He can’t beat me. After I kill him I’m going to feast on you and all your power. Suck it right from the marrow of your bones until you’re as dead as your friends are. But I’m going to play with you first. Make you wish for death. Make you beg for death. Yes, that’s what I’m going to do. Perhaps I’ll bind you to me first so you love it when I finally end your miserable mistake of a life.”
He stood there, arrogant as balls after he’d had Carey murdered. After he’d tortured and murdered Martin and Thena. He’d been kidnapping and killing people and he needed to be ended.
Rowan kept his gaze as he tried to glamour her. It suited her purpose though because he didn’t see her grab her gun. Didn’t know about it until the bullet shattered into his thigh, ripping his femoral artery. Blood spewed at an alarming rate, hit the walls and the floor at his feet.
As she’d hoped, the bullet had done plenty of damage. Enough to slow him down. Enough that Clive took that opportunity to leap on him, driving Lyr to the floor as he rode his chest. He tore into Lyr’s throat and then before she knew it, he’d plunged his fist into Lyr’s chest and yanked out his heart.
His shriveled, black heart.
Fire rose from Rowan without warning. Holy fire. Brigid’s fire. She managed to direct it to that heart Clive had tossed over his shoulder, burning it to ash.
Lyr gurgled, still clinging to life though he had no heart, and with one loud growl, Clive yanked Lyr’s head right off his body.
The room went silent for long moments as Clive stood, all dignity and elegance even covered in blood and gore and whatever else Lyr had spilled out as he’d died.
“Don’t talk to my wife that way,” Clive said to what was left of the body.
Well, okay then.
“We need to search this place from top to bottom. Let’s start with the locked room David found,” Rowan said after nodding at Clive.
* * *
Clive wanted to be alone with her so he could hold her and know she was alive and all right. But he knew that while the others were around it wasn’t going to happen.
She was so strong and capable, protective and fierce but beneath that, she was fragile and sweet and had lost more than most beings ever would.
Genevieve had to go with them to check for any possible trouble from magic, especially from that locked room on the second floor.
And once the witch had undone whatever spell locks had been on the door, Rowan picked the lock like a pro.
None of them was ready for what was behind the door though.
It was the scent of fear that hit Clive first. Fear buried beneath perfumed soap and shampoo.
The woman inside wore expensive clothes and a full face of makeup. But that didn’t hide her fear and anxiety and it certainly didn’t hide the chain and cuff around her ankle that appeared to be attached to an anchor that’d been drilled and fastened into the floor near the bed.
The sound Rowan made tore at Clive’s heart.
She shoved it all down, he felt it through their link as she headed toward the captive woman, her hands open, palms exposed.
“We’re not here to hurt you. I promise,” Rowan said softly.
“He’s going to come. You have to leave,” the woman said.
“He’s dead,” Rowan told her. “He’s not coming back.”
As the woman cried silent tears, Rowan and Clive managed to free
her with Rowan’s lock picking skills and his raw strength.
Genevieve wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and helped her out of the room. She halted at the doorway, so afraid to go through it slammed into Clive like a physical thing.
“You’re free. Anything trying to hurt you has to get through me. And they can’t. Because I’m sort of a big deal,” Rowan said.
This Rowan brought out tenderness in Clive more than any other version. This compassionate, vulnerable person who just wanted to help someone suffering wasn’t a side she showed to others very often. She thought no one knew what a big soft hearted person she was.
But he knew. And the captive woman, whose name was Clara, knew that too. She kept very close to Rowan and Genevieve and Clive understood that. He was covered in dried blood and the remains of Lyr’s death throes and he was a Vampire. Everything she’d been conditioned to fear.
“I’m going to keep looking while you handle Clara,” he told Rowan quietly. She looked up into his eyes and he saw her own hurt. Saw that girl who’d been abused and misused by Vampires. That survivor he loved so much.
“Okay. Take Genevieve with you so you don’t get some sort of magic bomb going off in your face.”
He left as Clara began to tell her story to Rowan.
Genevieve’s anger radiated from her. “If he weren’t already dead I’d have killed him for this. She’s twenty-four years old. She should be going to nightclubs and having fun with her friends, not tied up in a monster’s house so he could drain her at his leisure.”
“Can’t argue with that. Though I’m quite pleased he’s dead already. Let’s see if we can’t find something good here to repay us for this dreadful event.” Clive took a moment to text Patience to come to the scene to help. Now that Clara had been found, Rowan would want to focus on her.
Genevieve touched his arm. “Vampire. Thank you. The siphon spell was tapping into dozens and dozens of people. Most of whom will live another day because you killed Lyr. The Conclave Senate will not forget your service to us and ours this day.”
He nodded slightly in acknowledgment. And acceptance of that implied debt from the Conclave.