Relentless: A Cyn and Raphael Novella (Vampires in America 11.5)

by D. B. Reynolds

  RAPHAEL STARED at his Cyn, his eyes tracing the elegant line of her jaw, the sweep of lashes over green eyes. Every protective instinct he possessed wanted to order her to remain behind, to remain safe. He swallowed the words before they were more than a thought, but she heard them anyway. She’d read his mind. Not literally, but it hardly mattered. The effect was the same.

  She grinned at him, her eyes gleaming with challenge.

  He didn’t ask her to forgive him for even thinking about leaving her behind. But he didn’t need to. “Apparently, being in the old country is changing me already,” he murmured by way of an apology. “The plan is, we’re going to kill them all, and then we’re going home.”

  And, just as she’d known his earlier thoughts, she understood what he was saying now. He needed her by his side. Even in war.

  She leaned close and said softly, “It’s okay, fang boy. If you want to kill Laurent and everyone else in Mathilde’s filthy brood, I’m with you.”

  Raphael kissed her forehead, and then raised his voice to include the others. “We have one hour to formulate a plan.”

  THEIR STRATEGY WAS straightforward. Most of Raphael’s were. Hell, most vampire battle plans were. There was a code of sorts in vampire society that said the guy with the most power wins. And among vampires, power was measured not in how many weapons or warriors you could bring to bear, but in the raw power of the lord leading the attack. Sure, it mattered how strong his vampires were, because they kept the other guy’s fighters off his back, and served as a reservoir of power for him. But in the end, it still came down to one guy. Mathilde had tried to get around that by using magic, but it hadn’t worked. Magic could only augment what was already there, and she simply hadn’t had the power. She’d been forced to confront Raphael one on one, and she’d paid the ultimate price. Laurent had followed in his mistress’s sneaky footsteps when he’d sent his assassin, Tristan, to take Raphael out, and again with his forbidden daylight attack.

  With all these exceptions to tradition, Cyn had begun to speculate out loud about how much longer the traditional code would continue to hold sway.

  For Raphael, however, the old traditions still mattered. Not only because he was five hundred years old, but because he had so much more power than any of his enemies. He didn’t need to resort to daylight subterfuge or any kind of assassination. If there was going to be any killing, he’d do it himself. And probably enjoy the hell out of it.

  Like tonight. Little more than an hour after sunset, Raphael’s people were already moving to surround Laurent’s villa, while he shielded them against detection. The villa itself was ancient, but the dim lights showing through the covered windows told him it had been updated. This had been Mathilde’s headquarters for hundreds of years. Raphael himself had visited here when he’d been younger. She’d had a taste for handsome young vampires, but Raphael had proven far too powerful for her peace of mind. He hadn’t remained in her court for long. Christian, who was now Lord of the South, and one of Raphael’s allies, had been Mathilde’s child—one who’d broken with her over her plans to use magic against Raphael. He held no love for Laurent and had been more than happy to provide updated and detailed plans of the villa’s layout.

  The estate consisted of three buildings, all pale gray stone with peaked roofs of darker gray shingles. One of the outbuildings was a barn that had been converted to a garage, while the other contained the estate’s human residents—its daylight guards and few human servants. At least those who hadn’t died in the daylight assault. If they stayed out of the fight tonight, Raphael would leave them alone. If they joined in, they’d die like everyone else.

  Raphael’s focus was the main building. Two stories and a basement, with—he scanned a second time to be certain he hadn’t missed anyone—twenty-three vampires inside. Laurent stood out, not only because of his power—which was considerable—but because he was the only vampire who carried the mantle of a lord. That responsibility marked a vampire on the level of what some would call magic—it was the effect of all those vampires drawing life-giving energy from their lord. But it was also a source of power. Because just as those many vampires drew from their lord, he could draw upon them, too. He could drain his people dry in an emergency, killing them one by one as he fought to save his own life. It wasn’t something Raphael or any other honorable lord would do, but he had to consider it when dealing with his enemies. Mathilde had sucked every last ounce of life from more than 100 master vampires when she’d fought against Raphael. He had to believe that her favored child, Laurent, would do the same.

  “Going in.” Raphael sent the message telepathically to the more than two dozen vampires in his attack force. Steve Sipes and his people weren’t part of the attack; they had another role to play tonight.

  Raphael approached the door flanked by Jared and Cyn. The safest place for her was next to him where he could protect her. Or, he thought in amusement, where she could protect him.

  He knocked, or maybe pounded, on the door, making his presence known. Before the sound finished rolling through the villa, he sensed Laurent’s shock and knew the other vamp would be scrambling for protection, trying to figure out how Raphael had managed to reach his doorstep without a whisper of warning.

  The door was opened by two bulky vampires, obviously security types—both dressed all in black and carrying visible weapons beneath their well-tailored jackets. The two vamps did a lot of bowing and welcoming, none of which was necessary. Raphael didn’t need anyone’s invitation to enter this house, it was already his. He’d killed Mathilde. Everything and everyone she’d owned belonged to him, no matter whose ass currently sat on her empty throne.

  Leaving Laurent’s greeters behind, he strode with Cyn and Jared down the wide corridors to Mathilde’s old throne room, where he could sense Laurent’s presence. But even if he hadn’t felt Laurent’s power there, he’d have known where to find him. Mathilde had been firmly entrenched in the social and political mores of her human youth, when powerful men and women had proved their superiority by forcing others to stand around in useless attendance. Laurent was her child. He’d be no different.

  Seeing where he was headed, Jared increased his pace enough to shove the throne room doors open and enter ahead of Raphael. He paused for the briefest few seconds—long enough to verify the absence of any surprises, but not enough to break Raphael’s stride—and then stepped aside as Raphael strolled in with Cyn at his side.

  “Raphael, I assume,” Laurent said pleasantly. He sat on the same throne that Mathilde had used all those centuries ago, one vampire by his side—presumably his lieutenant—and several others simply hanging about, though they all stiffened to attention when Raphael entered. “Welcome to your lovely mate, as well,” Laurent continued. “Ms. Leighton, yes? Though I’m told they call you ‘Cyn.’”

  Cyn gave him a bland stare, then turned away with a yawn. Laurent snarled in anger before he could stop himself, but Raphael laughed out loud and pulled Cyn close enough for a brief kiss to her temple.

  “Welcome to Nice,” Laurent said, forcing the words through gritted teeth.

  Raphael eyed him silently. “I hardly need welcome to that which is mine.”

  The other vampire’s eyes narrowed in fury, but he controlled his reaction. He might not be a match for Raphael, but he was too shrewd to be easily provoked. “Fine. Let’s not pretend, then. You come into my territory with no invitation, no warning, and now you claim it as yours? On what grounds, Lord Raphael?”

  “By the most ancient law of our people, Laurent,” Raphael said, intentionally leaving off the honorific. “I killed Mathilde, therefore her territory is mine.”

  “You killed Lady Mathilde, but you never claimed the territory,” Laurent countered. “Her many vampire subjects were abandoned. They would have died, had I not stepped in to take care of them. That makes them mine.”

  Rapha
el smiled slightly. “We both know that’s not true,” he said, quietly enough that only those closest could hear. “I made sure Mathilde’s people were well-protected when she died. And my power is protecting them still.”

  Hatred brightened Laurent’s eyes with the red-bronze glow of his power. “Well, you can stop wasting your power, then, because they’re now under my care.”

  “If that’s true, then why waste that power trying to kill me. Not once, but twice.”

  The vampires lingering at the edges of the room stirred nervously, glancing at Laurent, as if sensing the growing tension in the room, and waiting for their lord’s orders.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Laurent said with an elegantly dismissive wave of his hand.

  Raphael’s laugh was loud, full of genuine amusement . . . until it wasn’t. Humor fled as his expression turned cold, his black eyes frosting with the starlight gleam of his power. “That’s a lie, Laurent,” he growled. “And the last one you’ll tell.” As he said it, he telepathed a single word to his vampires. “Now.”

  In the instant the attack began, Raphael lashed out with his power, a blast aimed at pinning the self-styled Lord of Nice to his throne. But Laurent was no weakling. He anticipated the blast and raised a protective shield in seconds. The hasty shield whined with the friction of power on power, but it held, even as his many vampire minions hanging around the room jumped into the fray. None of them attacked Raphael directly. They were too smart for that, too protective of their own lives. Raphael was Laurent’s job. Their job was to go after Raphael’s people, to distract him and deprive him of their support.

  Some went after Jared, not realizing that the vampires of Raphael’s inner circle were among the strongest vampires in North America. Jared was one of those. He spun to face the attackers, to protect his lord’s back, to kill his enemies. His weapon of choice was knives. He especially enjoyed using his power to drive the blades through flesh and bone. He liked swinging them through the air in a dance that was as much magic as skill, and then stepping over the bloody remains of his dead enemy as he moved to the next. The outcome of his battle was never in question. Two of the attackers fell to dust with knives in their hearts, and one of the others was in danger of bleeding out on the marble floor as arterial blood began to pump around the hilt of a third well-placed knife. The final fighter circled warily, testing Jared’s power against his own, looking for weaknesses, something to exploit. An expression crossed his face, one of determination and resignation. He had no choice but to fight. He’d watched his fellow vampires fall one by one, and now hated Jared with every ounce of rage in his body. This was Laurent’s territory, and he would defend it to the last drop.

  But even as Jared was dispatching his final opponent, Raphael’s attention was on Cyn and the vampires swarming around her. Laurent’s people had made a critical mistake. They looked at her and saw a woman, a human, a victim. And they forgot the most basic rule. Guns kill.

  It wasn’t only Raphael’s vampires who trained ceaselessly to fight and kill. Cyn trained right along with them. Hell, she trained harder than any of them. She was ruthless and disciplined in a fight, a born killer—which was something she only admitted to herself in the dark of night when no one but Raphael was around to listen. She hadn’t needed Raphael’s telepathic order to know when it was time for the battle to commence. Her instincts had lifted her weapon a heartbeat before he’d whispered the word of command in her head. Her MP5 was firing while the single syllable was still drifting in the ether, the deadly weapon on full auto with a 100-capacity mag. A stake to the heart might be the traditional favorite, but his Cyn liked the raw efficiency of a good machine gun. She swept the room, mowing down vampires, wading into the blood and guts to kill up close and personal, where death wasn’t certain. One or two vampires tried to come at her from behind, but Raphael took them down with brutal precision, covering her back just as he did Jared’s, without ever breaking his concentration on Laurent.

  Out in the rest of the house, Raphael’s fighters attacked from all sides, coming in through doors and windows, snaking down hallways, battering their way into every room. Where they encountered resistance, they fought and they killed. And what they lacked in power, they drew from Raphael. He was aware of every one of his people, his presence a thundering wave of power that crashed through doors and cracked walls. It terrified his enemies and reassured his fighters. Lights flickered and died, as modern electricity met ancient power and lost, as vampires welcomed the darkness with eyes that gleamed with power.

  Raphael was aware of every death, every wound, even as he waged his own fight against Laurent in the throne room. They battered each other’s shields, neither breaking through—Raphael’s was like a brick wall, but one without so much as a chip in the stone. He stood there like a statue, his shield deflecting everything Laurent tried to throw at him, as he focused on the battle around them instead. The conflict turned almost too quickly, as Laurent’s people weakened and surrendered, or were killed, and Raphael’s people changed their strategy, no longer needing his protection.

  Which meant Raphael no longer needed to share his power.

  His awareness withdrew from the wider front of his attack and returned to the throne room. He’d expected a barrage of gunfire to greet him. Instead he found gore-spattered walls and a floor covered in the bloody mud that resulted when too many vampires died a brutal death in too small a place. He needed to end this, before more people got pulled into a fight that Laurent simply couldn’t win. Mathilde hadn’t been strong enough to defeat him, and neither was her heir.

  Raphael checked Cyn first, noting the multitude of small cuts bleeding through rips and tears in her shirt, the dark bruise swelling over one cheekbone. But when she turned to check on him in turn, her green eyes sparkled, and her smile beamed. She was beautiful and ferocious in her victory, and she was his. His body stiffened with desire, but this battle wasn’t over yet. He slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her in for a quick, passionate kiss, satisfying the deep need to touch her, to know she was alive and well and with him. And then he turned back to Laurent, the vampire who’d killed Raphael’s people and attacked his home, who’d sunk so low as to send a daylight force to butcher his vampires while they slept. It was time.

  LAURENT’S EXPRESSION darkened when he took in Raphael’s determined gaze. Girding himself for the fight of his life, he stepped into the center of the room and faced Raphael fearlessly . . . until Raphael let loose the full, terrible weight of his power, and Laurent recognized his mistake. He’d thought he’d already faced and survived everything Raphael had to offer, that he still had a chance.

  But no longer. He was going to die. And his followers—vampires he’d nested with for more than a century, vampires who’d been loyal to him when he’d risen to take over Mathilde’s territory, who’d counted on him to protect them—were going to die along with him. He might not value human life, but neither was he Mathilde, to throw away his vampires without reason. His heart broke at the realization that most of his people were already dead, and that the rest would soon follow.

  He opened his mouth to plead for mercy—not for himself, but for his people—and saw nothing but death in Raphael’s cold stare.

  RAPHAEL SAW THE moment Laurent accepted the inevitability of his own death. And he knew that Laurent would fight anyway. He couldn’t win, but he hoped to gain time for some of his people to escape.

  Raphael respected the hell out of that sentiment. He would have done the same. But he couldn’t permit any of Mathilde’s children to live. If they’d accepted her defeat and left him and his alone, he’d have ignored them. No matter what he’d told Laurent, he didn’t want Nice or any other part of Europe. But they’d come after him, and, in doing so, they’d signed their own death warrants.

  They were Vampire, and there was no mercy in their world.

  Still, Rapha
el’s rage fell to dust in the face of Laurent’s devotion to his people. He couldn’t let them live, but he could make it quick. Without so much as an indrawn breath to give away his intent, his power reached out and stopped Laurent’s heart. Laurent’s brain fought to reconcile the sudden failure, the vampire symbiote in his blood racing to the stuttering organ in an attempt to save him. But it was too late. The symbiote was magic, but so was Raphael. Laurent died, and as he died, his people died. Vampires across the territory reached out for their new lord, but there was no one to save them. Raphael made sure of it.

  He watched impassively as Laurent’s dust settled to the floor, standing immobile until Cyn’s hand touched his back, her arm sliding around his waist. Lifting his arm, he pulled her against his chest as Juro rushed into the room and was brought up short at what he found. He exchanged a questioning look with Jared, and said, “Sire?”

  Raphael glanced up. “Is the plane ready?”

  Juro nodded. “Yes, my lord.”

  “Then let’s go home.”

  The limos were waiting when they piled out of Laurent’s now empty villa. Raphael didn’t know what would happen to the property. Some new vampire would move in, maybe even try to rule the territory. He didn’t care. Europe’s vampire politics interested him only insofar as they tried to destroy what was his. He didn’t fool himself into believing this was the end of it, though. He’d destroyed Mathilde and her brood, and probably eliminated any threat from this specific region for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, the basic problem presented by Europe remained. They had too many vampires and not enough territory. Three European vampire lords had attempted to invade North America and take territory by force—Mathilde and Hubert from France, and Berkhard of Germany. But Raphael’s spies told him many more would follow. Not on as grand a scale as those three, perhaps—the European vampires had learned from the others’ mistakes—but smaller incursions, attempts to snip away land around the edges, rather than seize an entire territory.