Embraced by Blood

by Laurie London

  “No, not yet.” She watched as Sadie and Mitchell shadow-moved over to the guardhouse on the other side of the road. As a changeling, Sadie wasn’t as quick as the rest of them. It was nice that Mitchell waited for her, rather than plowing ahead. Maybe he was trying to score tonight when this was all over.

  Lily lowered her voice. “But that doesn’t mean he’s not here. If he teleported in, he’d leave no scent trail. One moment he’s not here and the next moment, he is. Kinda hard to pick up a trail when there isn’t one. I’ll have to get closer to find out for sure.”

  She hoped to God he wasn’t here. Between the five Seattle field team members, they should be able to take down Rejavik, but given what Alfonso and Roxanne had told her about the blood assassin and the Order of the Red Sword, she wasn’t sure Alfonso could do it without backup. The thought of him being here—without her—made her stomach twist into knots. She needed to find him fast.

  Rejavik’s scent trail was fresh, no more than an hour old. Although she told herself it wasn’t much time, in truth, she knew it was long enough. Five minutes was long enough.

  They followed the scent to a huge Northwest contemporary at the end of a long driveway. U-shaped with a covered courtyard in the back, it had stacked slate columns, walls of windows and cedar-lined eaves. Some very wealthy humans lived here, but she didn’t detect an active scent. Rejavik had obviously picked an unoccupied home.

  “Snowbirds,” Mitchell said. “How much you want to bet the home owners winter in Palm Desert or Scottsdale?”

  Lily paused to pick up a golf ball half covered by crushed oyster shells in the bocce ball court. The logo was two turtles—a mother and a baby. “Or Oahu.”

  They split into teams. Mitchell and Sadie took the east entrance, Jackson and Lily took the west entrance, while Dom slipped through the shadows to the back of the property.

  A restlessness stirred inside her. An unease that didn’t match her strong resolve. It felt almost…external.

  She rubbed the back of her neck but couldn’t seem to shake the sensation—an unseen force pushing her away. Concentrating on it, she realized it wasn’t actually pushing her away, it was urging her to stay away. Begging her to stay away. It was as if—

  The wind changed direction.

  Alfonso.

  Her heart quickened and her throat swelled, making it an effort just to swallow.

  He was here. In the house. Alive.

  And she had sensed him before she detected his scent. He had communicated with her through his emotions.

  Sniffing back her tears, since there was no time for dramatics, she motioned Jackson in behind her. As they sprinted toward the house, she tapped her headset. “Alfonso’s here,” she told everyone. “I’ve got a lock on him from somewhere below ground level.”

  If she smelled him, chances were so did Rejavik.

  So they had to assume the worst.

  Not knowing whether Alfonso could detect her or not, she pushed her thoughts out to him anyway. Alfonso, we’re here. All of us. We’re coming for you. Just hang on and try to distract Rejavik, if he’s with you.

  Sensing that he was in great pain, she had to force herself to think clearly and logically, when her heart was urging her to run in blindly and stop the hurt.

  “Okay, people,” Dom said, loud and confidently through her earpiece. “This is most likely a rescue mission, so be careful out there. If you get a clear shot of Rejavik, take it. But don’t risk hitting Alfonso. There’s no telling what’s been done to him already or how much blood and energy he’s lost. One thing’s for certain. The blood assassin doesn’t leave the premises alive.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  THE KNIFE BLADE WENT DEEP. It pierced the skin near his shoulder and meandered slowly up his arm to his wrists, which were tied above his head.

  Alfonso wanted to swing his legs up from where they dangled just above the floor, kick against the cement wall and break his restraints, but he barely had enough energy to lift his head from between his shoulder blades. Having lost count at ten, he no longer could feel the individual trickles of blood running down his back, probably because there were so many now.

  “You know, Lord Pavlos and I were friends long before you met him in Paris that summer.” Rejavik twisted the knife point a little deeper when he said friends, his breath hot against the back of Alfonso’s neck.

  “Pavlos,” Alfonso said, emphasizing his actual name, not the worshipful moniker employed by the Darkbloods, “was never a friend of mine.” He was surprised he had the strength left to sound so caustic.

  Rejavik continued as if Alfonso had never spoken. “You see, when my father lost his fortune in a series of business deals with members of the Night Brethren—excuse me,” he said sarcastically, “the Governing Council—it was Lord Pavlos who stepped in and saved our family from financial ruin. Everyone else had turned their backs on us.

  “If it hadn’t been for him, my family would have been destitute and cast from our ancestral home, forced into servitude for one of the Council elite. Not only was he a great man with a clear vision of what our people could achieve in this world if we returned to the ways of our forefathers, he was a compassionate man as well.”

  Alfonso wanted to vomit. As if killing and preying on humans was compassionate. As if the Darkblood cause he fought for was a noble one.

  Not sure if he’d spoken these sentiments aloud, Alfonso tensed what muscles he could in anticipation of another cut from the knife. When Rejavik continued his ramblings, Alfonso guessed he hadn’t spoken after all.

  “As a result of his kindness, I vowed to serve His Lordship in any way that I could and was both honored and humbled to join the Order of the Red Sword after my Time of Change.”

  “He used you,” Alfonso said, “just as he used me. Both of us were a means to an end for Pavlos and nothing more. A way for him to advance his agenda.”

  Rejavik stepped in front of him, his eyes black with anger. “You are such a fool.”

  In the only physical response he was capable of making, Alfonso flashed his fangs. “Obviously. I was a fool to have gotten mixed up in everything. But then, so are you. We were both his willing victims. I was foolish enough to let myself get addicted to Sweet, and willing to do many terrible things I would never have done otherwise. And you allowed him to capitalize on the debt you felt you owed him. He wasn’t a great man, just a great manipul—”

  With a growl, Rejavik slapped Alfonso across the face, knocking his head back. Black spots formed in front of Alfonso’s eyes. He tried to blink them away, but they remained, threatening to overtake his vision entirely.

  “I never trusted you, you know that?” Rejavik said. “Not from the very beginning. I couldn’t believe that the son of one of the founding members of the Governing Council would actually join our cause. I warned His Lordship, told him that you would deceive him and be an informant for your father. But he didn’t listen. He thought that by having someone with your stature in our ranks, the movement would be further legitimized and our numbers would grow.”

  Alfonso felt nauseous. There wasn’t a day that went by when he didn’t wish he’d made different choices back then. To hear that his presence may have caused others to join the Alliance was almost too much to bear.

  When he heard Rejavik take a few steps away, Alfonso squinted his eyes enough to see him unrolling a cloth bag on a nearby table.

  “When we caught wind of your plans to leave the Alliance, I advised him to kill you. But he wanted to give you a second chance, to just send you a warning. I’m afraid it was his forgiving spirit that was his undoing.” Rejavik ran a finger over the various implements stored inside the pouch and selected one.

  Alfonso tugged on his restraints. “A warning? You motherfucker. She was an innocent girl, studying music at the Conservatoire de Paris, with no knowledge of our existence until you showed her what we’re capable of.”

  “Ah, but you were playing with fire, weren’t you, having a relationshi
p with her in the first place? If you had left the sweetblood alone, that never would’ve happened. So it is because of you that the girl died.”

  Rejavik’s words cut through him like the stab of another blade. He was right, of course. Thinking he’d recovered from his Sweet addiction but not wanting to test it too much, Alfonso had only taken Jessica’s blood a few times and kept his true nature hidden from her. He’d been proud of himself and the restraint he showed, so at the time, it never dawned on him that his very presence was putting her in danger. He cursed the idiotic folly of his youth. As he recalled those thoughts and actions now, it made him want to reach back through time and throttle himself. No wonder his father and brother had been disgusted.

  But in the end, the Alliance always caught up with him. Just as it had now.

  A warm sensation stirred in his gut, and he closed his eyes. At first, he thought it was a new trickle of blood, but when it seemed to expand inside, heating his veins from his core to his fingertips and causing his skin to tingle, he knew that it wasn’t.

  It was Lily.

  Oh Lord. She was near.

  He pinched his eyelids tighter and willed her away. Please, Lily, he’ll kill you.

  A surge of adrenaline shot through him and, although he couldn’t hear her thoughts, he felt her determination and focus as if it were a part of him.

  Surely she hadn’t come alone, he told himself. It would play right into Rejavik’s plan. He prayed she’d brought backup—she wasn’t foolish enough or brash enough not to, was she? A planner, a rule follower, she’d never attempt a mission like this on her own. Oh please, let him be right about that.

  “You and I are very much alike, you know that?”

  Alfonso scowled. Rejavik’s sickly sweet odor, although much less pronounced than a regular Darkblood’s, was still there just below the surface, the smell of the young sweetblood from the party still strong on his breath. And his eyes, gray orbs with obsidian irises, marked him as the bloodsucker he was.

  “I’m nothing like you.”

  “Ah, but you are wrong, my friend. We are both driven to succeed at any cost, willing to sacrifice ourselves and give up a normal way of life for the cause we believe in.”

  Reluctantly, Alfonso realized there was a truth to his words. He had given up everything in order to right the wrongs he had made so many years ago.

  “How’s your woman, by the way?” Rejavik stepped closer and inhaled deeply. “You fed from her recently. I can smell her on you.” He swiped a finger against the blood on Alfonso’s torso and put it in his mouth. “And I can taste the sweetness of her blood in yours. Not only will she be easy to find because of it, but her daughter should be easy enough to locate as well.”

  A roar of rage ripped from his lungs and reverberated off the walls, his internal temperature cranked beyond boiling. He arched his back, kicked his legs, twisting, pulling at his restraints. Everything in the room blurred as he fought, the details fading into a red-tinged nothingness.

  But the cuffs held. He continued to dangle helplessly in the unfinished storage room.

  Out of breath, he was hardly aware of the sweat dripping from his forehead and stinging his wounds as his entire focus became pinpointed on the smug-faced assassin standing before him.

  “You stay…the fuck…away…from them.”

  Clearly undeterred and with a faint smile on his lips, Rejavik looked mildly entertained and raised his eyebrows. “Or else…what? Doesn’t look like you’re in a position to do anything about it.”

  Dread filled every pore and Alfonso’s body felt suddenly heavier. He should’ve just stayed away from Lily in the first place. It was a mistake to have inserted himself into her life again, thinking she wasn’t capable of taking care of herself—that he could do a better job. Through his own goddamn arrogance, he’d put her in mortal danger. And now he’d put his daughter in danger as well.

  Maybe he deserved to die for his mistakes.

  But not Lily.

  Or Zoe.

  Oh God, Lil, if you can hear me, if you can feel me, get out of here. Please. Get away from him.

  Alfonso wasn’t sure what kind of affect his blood had on her, but if hers gave him the ability to teleport, maybe she could at least sense his plea. He hoped to God she could.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a thick blue-gray smoke seeping in under the door. Like an upside-down waterfall, it licked up the inside wall. A fire?

  His throat suddenly became dry and scratchy; he couldn’t seem to draw in a breath, the air suddenly devoid of any oxygen.

  Instantly, he was taken back to the night when Pavlos had been killed, and he had almost died. Inside the lab, he had poured petrol onto the file cabinets and computer equipment, and set a match to them. As fire devoured the paper and the components began to melt, he’d watched, mesmerized, the thick smoke curling upward and accumulating on the ceiling.

  It had signified the end of his life as a double agent. And he’d been hopeful, as Lily’s face had flashed before him, that it would be a new beginning as well.

  It was then that one of the guards had discovered him.

  They’d fought, and although Alfonso didn’t remember getting doused with gasoline, he must’ve been, because suddenly they were both on fire. He’d kicked hard to loosen the man’s grip, felt a stabbing pain deep inside his leg. The guard had squealed in agony as the fire consumed him. With silver-weakened fingers, Alfonso had shed his burning clothes and the smoke had thickened.

  Somehow he’d made it to the loading dock where his Daytran-outfitted SUV was parked just a few feet away. He’d dragged himself into the rig and had just cleared the building when the whole place had exploded. Never would he forget the smell of his own flesh burning. And it had all started with the smoke.

  Rejavik turned toward him, pulling him back to the present. His black eyes sparkled with the promise of evil and he twisted a thin blade the length of a chopstick. With an eager expression on his face, he moved closer.

  Alfonso sniffed, didn’t smell anything burning. Yet.

  He stared over Rejavik’s shoulder.

  There was something unusual about the smoke. It didn’t seem to grow thinner as it spread outward—it had very distinct edges, with a finite beginning and end.

  Almost like a contained entity.

  Hell, that didn’t make any sense. He must be getting delirious from the blood and energy loss. With a curious detachment, he watched as the smoke concentrated into a tighter mass.

  It seemed to be taking shape.

  Into—

  Holy Mother of God. Alfonso choked.

  This couldn’t be happening. It wasn’t possible. The smoke was taking shape.

  Into that of a man.

  It was Dom.

  His brother held a finger to his lips and reached for his hip.

  Alfonso blinked, not believing he’d actually witnessed his brother vapor. He couldn’t have spoken even if he’d wanted to.

  He’d never heard of anyone being able to vapor. Like teleporting, it was an ancient vampiric ability recorded in the old tomes, but as far as he knew, it no longer existed in the population today.

  Rejavik laughed, obviously thinking Alfonso was reacting to him and what he was about to do. “I wish I could tell you this will all be over quickly, but I’m afraid I’d be lying.”

  For the briefest of moments, Rejavik hesitated, his eyes narrowed as if he suddenly knew they weren’t alone.

  But before he could react, Dom flicked his wrist.

  With a snap, the brindmal encircled Rejavik’s neck.

  Wide-eyed, his captor was yanked off his feet and landed hard on the floor.

  It took too much effort to figure out what had actually happened, but relief rushed through Alfonso like a tidal wave. In the next few moments, he was vaguely aware of someone cutting him down, and the low murmur of several voices. The adrenaline that had kept him lucid seemed to have faded from his system. He couldn’t keep his eyes open and fell l
ike a rag doll on the floor. When the warmth in his gut increased, he knew that Lily must be near.

  He expected to feel her touch him. He wanted to hold her in his arms to assure himself that she was alive and okay.

  But instead what he heard was the sound of a boot making contact with a body. Hard.

  He opened his eyes to see Rejavik curled up in a fetal position about ten feet away.

  “That’s for killing my friend,” Lily said. She stood behind Rejavik, anger burning in her eyes, hands on her hips, fangs fully protracted.

  Thunk. Rejavik’s body jerked and he grunted again.

  “That’s for threatening my daughter.”

  The metallic sound of a blade being drawn echoed loudly in the enclosed space. Rejavik’s eyes, as black as the barrel of a shotgun, bored into Alfonso’s. Those same eyes that had witnessed his Blood Oath and watched gleefully as Alfonso had been forced to kill Jessica now looked terrified, but unrepentant.

  “And this—” a flash of light glinted off Lily’s blade “—is for putting my man through hell.”

  In a quick, downward motion, the sword hit its mark. Rejavik’s mouth flew open, his jaw working with no sound. His body stiffened, then relaxed. As Alfonso watched, the skin on the assassin’s face puckered and darkened as his body shriveled in on itself, curling inward, until, a few moments later, it was a useless pile of ashes.

  For years he’d imagined what this moment would feel like—the day his assassin didn’t exist, no longer a threat that prevented Alfonso from leading a normal life. A constant reminder of the terrible choices he’d made as a young man. He’d always pictured the guy’s death would be a grander, more momentous occasion, the earth moving as the gates of hell opened. At the very least he’d imagined there would be the kind of huge-ass fire and explosion that had marked the end of Pavlos’s reign. But the simplicity of this small room somehow made the event more poignant and powerful.

  What had begun when he’d taken the Blood Oath in the dank catacombs under Madrid ended now in this claustrophobic storage room in Seattle. That part of his life was over.