by Anne Malcom
Duncan did look good. A hundred years had passed since I’d seen the Scottish vampire, but it could’ve been a week. His burnt auburn locks brushed at his collar, wild and rough, framing his stubbled face and sharp masculine features. Everything about him—his stature, the muscles that I knew were more than a little impressive—screamed man. And he used that, plus his accent, to his complete advantage. The highlander had bedded more women in the centuries than he’d killed supernatural creatures, which was saying a lot since he was a hit man for hire.
He shook his head. “Still hurt me pride that a beautiful woman such as yourself couldn’t wait to get away from me.”
I grinned at him. “You or the snapping teeth of bloodthirsty werewolves. It was a toss-up.”
He grinned back, his hands resting on my hips. “Well I’m more than glad to be in a circumstance where I’m not wielding a sword or distracted by mangy mutts so I can fully take in your magnificence,” he declared, eyes roving over my body in a physical caress.
Although the look, the voice and the gentle grip of large hands on my waist might have been a winning combination for 99 percent of women on the planet, human or vampire, I just didn’t feel it. I never had with Duncan, ever since we’d ran into each other while he was hunting rouge Reinvents in Eastern Europe in the 1700s, although he’d been intent on bedding me. When he couldn’t, he became content with letting me help him out when I was bored and felt like killing things. Of course, he still tried relentlessly to get me in the sack, unable to believe I was immune to his charm.
“You’re fuckin’ glorious,” he murmured, meeting my eyes. “Which begs the question, why the fuck are you here with all these arseholes?”
I gave him a look. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Suffice to say, it’s not by choice,” I said low enough so only we could hear.
Luckily the rest of the populace had decided to distance themselves from the two of us; no matter how desperate they were to find out the information between me and the king, they didn’t want to rub shoulders with the likes of Duncan. Another reason why I liked him: asshole vampire repellant.
His eyes transformed from that of a teasing lothario to the ruthless killer I knew him to be.
“Who the fuck do I need to kill who’s forcin’ you to come to places like this, where your parents, of all vampires, attend?” he ground out, his voice as low as mine.
He knew my sordid history with Mom and Pa and was well-versed in the bloodbath that was my vampire birth.
“That would have to be me,” a smooth voice cut in, and I felt Rick’s presence at my back. I turned my head slightly to see him give Duncan a hard look, and the Scot’s hands at my hips an even harder one.
To his credit, Duncan didn’t take his hands off me. “Figures,” he scoffed. “You’ve got good taste, Your Highness, I’ll give you that. But even you and your whole fuckin’ royal guard couldn’t contain this one. And unfortunately, if you tried it would not end bonny for you,” he said.
I raised my brow as I heard a couple of gasps from around us. That was as close to an open threat as you could get without even openly threatening the king. I knew three black-suited men had already closed in behind me as I watched two more shoulder through the crowd behind Duncan. I tensed, ready to take them down if need be. Despite whatever loyalty I felt the king had earned, Duncan had mine immediately; I would take on the king himself and his guard if it came to that.
It was only fair, as he’d done the same for me once or twice. Or three times. Granted, the monarchs had been of the human persuasion, so it wasn’t exactly taxing like I feared any battle in this ballroom might be.
Rick gave a flick of his hand, which made the guards stand down and saved me from having to ruin my dress just yet.
He surprised me by grinning and yanking Duncan in for a man hug. “I don’t suspect it would, old friend,” he said while patting him on the back. I grinned as I heard Duncan’s ribs crack.
His eyes flared slightly and met mine. “Karma,” I mouthed at him.
He mouthed a filthy word in Gaelic before Rick released him.
“But considering she doesn’t seem to be having the usual reaction to all that is Duncan Campbell, I don’t think this will end bonny for you either,” he continued, mimicking Duncan’s accent perfectly.
I looked between the two of them. “You two know each other?” I asked in disbelief. The bounty hunter who once said “The only good monarch is one you can screw. The rest should be impaled,” and the king whom I guessed didn’t take kindly on such people.
Duncan showed me his fangs. “Got a contract on him once, gave it a go.” He shrugged. “Decided to have an ale with him after he put up a good fight.”
“After I beat you, you mean,” Rick corrected dryly.
“You took up a contract to kill the king of our race? And are still somehow standing here talking about it?” I clarified.
“Well, he wasn’t the king then. And to be fair, I didn’t know who he was until I was halfway through the job. Couldn’t rightly stop then, could I?”
“Jesus,” I muttered. “How you’re still here is beyond me.”
Rick gave me a half grin. “Pure pigheadedness and stubbornness, I believe, Isla. Plus, I wouldn’t put it past him to charm some witch into spelling him to make sure no assassination attempts are successful.”
His eyes only twinkled slightly as the rest of him stayed impassive, though the warmth was the most he’d betrayed in all the time I’d known him.
I snorted. “Duncan doesn’t tangle with witches. They’re the only kind of females he doesn’t whore around, probably because he had an unlikely incident with a curse and woman scorned,” I said, grinning at Duncan before continuing. “And if such a spell existed, I’d have charmed my own witch to do so. Assassination attempts are all well and fun, but like facials, too many in too short of a time span is just downright taxing.”
Duncan raised a brow as his eyes glittered with anger. “And who, my love, is stupid enough to try and kill something as lovely as you? And where do they rest their head? So I can chop it off, of course.” He fingered his belt where his long, jagged-edge copper knife was strapped. He never went anywhere without it, even wore it while sleeping with women.
Not that I knew firsthand.
Obviously, I couldn’t answer his question because at that point in the evening, the room blew up.
Now of course, I wasn’t expecting to be thrown through the air, nor hit with a white-hot fireball, so I didn’t land in a catlike crouch like a vampire would be expected to by any Underworld fan. No, I hit a wall painfully and tumbled down onto a glass table, shards embedding themselves into my skin and ruining my fucking dress.
The excruciating heat and burning of my skin told me that I’d been close enough to the blast to have the top layer of my skin burned off, but not close enough to be blown to pieces like some had been.
The single arm lying next to me communicated that.
Vampires may have been able to grow back limbs, but they couldn’t survive being blown apart.
Which was what I told myself while I gritted my teeth against the agonizing pain pulsing through my entire body. There’s always a silver lining, even in the midst of third degree burns.
A quick glance told me my arms were the worst, almost charred to the bone. Most of my exposed skin in my dress, which was a lot, was peeled back so I looked like an extra in a B-grade horror movie.
Acrid smoke permeated the air and, based on the hacking coughs of any humans left alive, was choking anyone in the room who needed their lungs to breathe. Luckily, I needed them for swearing purposes only.
I wrested myself up to my feet, gritting my teeth at the searing pain that came with the movement. Ripping a piece of glass from my chest, I yelled, “Whoever set off that motherfucking bomb is either buying me a new dress and shoes or is going to die a very grisly death.”
The frenzied shouts and rapid exits from the less courageous of the guests hampered t
he impact of my shout. Then a body came barreling into my only recently healed midsection.
I was slammed into a wall once more, but that time I didn’t tumble down it.
The hand at my throat made sure of that.
Amidst the screams, the unmistakable sounds of battle communicated what this was—an ambush. Someone stupid and brazen enough to attack the king’s feast, breaking the most sacred vampire law.
I struggled against the hand at my throat, every move of my limbs ripping the burns on my skin that were trying to heal back together. They would’ve been half healed already if it weren’t for that whorish witch.
Even with my increased sight, I could barely make out my attacker through the thick smoke, apart from the fact that he was strong enough to crush my neck and I could taste his satisfaction hearing my bones crack as he did so.
Wow, the man trying his damnedest to rip my head off after trying to blow me to pieces wasn’t my biggest fan. Shocker.
I gritted my teeth through the pain and kicked out with my heels, which were somehow still firmly on my feet. I had them coated with copper in case of this very situation.
I managed to spear my attacker through the chest and sink my heels through his heart.
The hand at my throat flexed and tightened to the point of worry before he released me and I managed to land on shaky feet.
I didn’t have time to recover, as the sounds echoing through the smoke-filled room betrayed a battle, a lot of bad guys—or badder guys—trying their level best to kill the king.
And me, as it turned out.
“Is that all you’ve got, you lazy fuckers?” The twang filtered through the smoke. “Attack the king, you think you’d have bigger balls than that.”
A ripping sound and accompanying screech of pain made me grin as I clutched the throat of the woman darting through the smoke with a copper blade aimed at my chest.
I held her up, noting her raven hair and emerald eyes, and the expanse of cleavage. “Now that’s not very nice. For the record, this is mostly because you’re trying to kill me, but at least a little bit is punishment for crimes to fashion,” I said then I turned her knife around and thrust it through her exposed chest to her heart.
I threw her aside as the smoke cleared to expose Rick fighting off three different vampires at once, half of his face in the process of healing from the blast. He looked like he was handling himself okay, if the way he ripped off the first one’s head like it was a mushroom had anything to do with it.
His bodyguards didn’t look like they had done much protecting, their limbs scattered around his feet.
Guests caught in the crossfire littered the floor as some society ladies and gents cowered in the corners of the room, trying their best to make themselves part of the drapery.
For the number of people intent on kissing their fair king’s ass, there weren’t nearly as many willing to fight for him.
A knife slammed into the side of my neck as the barely healed skin exploded with pain. I whirled around, yanking the knife out to embed it into the skull of the vampire who threw it. I was satisfied with the crunch that came with the action.
I glanced to Duncan, who was suddenly beside me, face splattered with enough blood to fill a bathtub, his white fangs exposed as he grinned maniacally at me. “All right, Isla?” he asked while he choked a vampire to his chest.
I lifted my leg to impale an incoming attacker on my heel. “Oh yes, this is the way I wish all parties ended,” I gritted out.
He took the head off the vamp in an easy motion, his eyes no longer on the battle but where the split of my dress had moved.
“Well me too, lassie,” he breathed, his eyes hooded. “All this bloodshed is worth it for that view.”
Seconds after that, he emitted a deep “whoof” as a body barreled into him, sending him flying into the same wall that I’d created a hefty dent in what could have been hours or seconds previously. Though he brought half of the marble down with him as he landed.
I grinned as he pushed himself up and went back to the vampire with a savage snarl.
“Serves you right for not being a gentleman,” I muttered.
My eyes went back to the bloodbath that had improved the party tenfold, in my opinion, and had the added benefit of dispatching any of the vampires I’d despised for centuries without having to face the Sector for inevitably doing it myself.
I searched for my family, expecting to see them fighting, of course. Just not on the right side.
My brothers and mother were nowhere to be seen, but amidst the battle I wasn’t surprised to see my father discard a head like a forgotten basketball.
His glittering eyes, full of bloodlust, met mine, and he didn’t hesitate to charge at me.
I braced myself for the attack, gritting my teeth at the inevitability of my death. I’d always half expected it to come at the hands of those responsible for my life and hadn’t considered my chances to be high in such a battle; my father was millennia older than me, and I was still recovering from the copper at my neck and the burns on my body.
That didn’t mean I wouldn’t fight.
It just meant I wouldn’t be surprised when I took my last glimpse of this world.
Thorne’s face flickered in my mind the second before my father descended.
A ripping of flesh and bone exploded in my senses as the unmistakable sounds of death poisoned the air. It took me a millisecond to realize it wasn’t my death.
I whipped around to meet those brutal eyes once more, then down at the head of the vampire who had been directly behind me, a knife in hand.
I opened my mouth and then closed it, having a moment of utter disbelief in the middle of the battle.
My father didn’t wait for me to speak, nor did he seem overly concerned about my injuries. Without a word, he disappeared into the fray once more. I didn’t get a chance to think because Rick was still in the midst of the furious assault, running low on bodyguards, which meant he was preoccupied with the two vampires he was wrestling, not noticing the one behind him about to land a kill shot.
I tackled the vampire around the midsection as Rick turned in what would have been just in time to see his head taken from his own neck if it weren’t for me.
Me saving him was becoming a habit.
We crashed into a table, scattering the cowards who had been huddled underneath it. A rouge piece of wood speared into my calf, the vampire I’d tackled up and brandishing his deadly weapon the second I let my grip relax in pain.
I dodged the first of his swipes. Well mostly. The copper grazed a line from shoulder to shoulder, nothing more than a flesh wound.
I tried not to notice that the world seemed to be sideways as my injuries got the best of me. The previous vampires had been relatively easy to dispatch, even in my injured state, but it seemed the ones focusing on Rick were the elite squad.
And I had to be all heroic and save my king. I may have just signed my own death warrant instead.
An attacker let out a hiss as I darted forward to connect my knees with his balls. I fought dirty, I wasn’t ashamed to say. Nobility in a battle got you one place—properly dead.
I clasped him to me and sank my fangs into his jugular, aiming on ripping it out, giving me a much easier job of removing his head. I managed my task at the same time as burning agony exploded in my chest. I let out a hiss of pain the same second the vampire’s eyes widened in victory.
“Die, bitch,” he choked through the wet sounds of his blood filling his mouth.
I winced but managed, through a sheer force of will, to grasp the sides of his neck.
“No, thanks. I think it’s your turn,” I rasped, then used the last of my strength to make sure that horrible gaze was looking at the floor instead of me.
His headless body stood there for a moment. I glanced down, seeing the white hand clutched against the handle protruding from my chest cavity.
“Fuck,” I murmured, yanking the hand away. As if we’d synchronized
it, the headless body and I tumbled to the floor.
I lay beside the bodies and blood, staring at the ceiling. I had intended to pull the copper blade from my chest before it could puncture my heart, but my hands didn’t seem to work.
Thankfully all of the pain that had plagued me this entire time seemed to wash away like the tide, leaving only blissed numbness in its place. I smiled at the tapestry hanging from the ceiling, not hearing the sounds of death or tearing of flesh. I didn’t hear a thing, in fact. Strangely, I saw Jonathan, lying on the ceiling in a mirror image of my position.
He wasn’t covered in blood like the last time I saw him. His eyes weren’t glassy and vacant; instead, they glowed with that purity of love that had made me forget everything but the two of us.
He smiled, his tanned skin glistening against the vibrant ceiling.
I grinned back.
His hand extended upwards, like it was trying to cross the distance between us, a yawning chasm thanks to the high-ceilinged mansion. I frowned and found myself able to do the same. Where my arms were once paralyzed, they came unstuck, reaching with everything I had to grasp his hand. His hand that I knew would be warm, residual heat from the Paris summer kissing his skin.
It wouldn’t be cold like the marble floor beneath me. I was certain I needed to grasp that hand and it would all be gone. The distance started to grow smaller as the cold spread through my body. I stayed on the floor yet somehow felt like I was floating.
Then the picture of him rippled as a bloodstained face yanked me away from the grip that had been mere millimeters away.
A face that was covered in blood, eyes cloaked in horror.
“Isla,” he said urgently, his voice thick as it waded through the layers of ice that had encircled my body.
I frowned at him for getting in the way and attempted to struggle, but my hand fell like a weight at my side.
Rick’s mouth moved as his fear-filled gaze ran over my body. His words were lost in the ice, and the last thing I saw was his wrist move to his lips before pressing it to my own.