by Tessa Cole
“I’m just here to talk,” Gideon said, his tone calm, casual. Which is exactly how I’d play the situation. Not react to the naked people and keep it relaxed. Without a doubt bad things would happen as soon as someone made demands from a woman like Victoria.
“Is that why you brought my offspring and his human?” A sensual smile lit her face. “They’re your offering instead. How wonderful.”
Her gaze locked with mine, capturing my soul and making my pulse pound. The sensual smile was now edged with a deep hunger, and I really didn’t want to be desert. Her smile deepened, revealing her extended fangs.
“She’s really very pretty, in a human kind of way,” she said, her tone rich, sending an involuntary shiver of desire through me. “I can see why you picked her, Jacob. Is she as tasty as she looks?”
Her gaze trailed down my body, slowly, sensually, but stopped when it reached my right forearm and the exposed mating brand. The carnal hunger turned wicked, and she slid off the bed and glided toward us, every step exuding sex and danger.
“Oh, Gideon,” she purred, grabbing his right wrist and dragging a nail through the mating brand on his arm that matched mine. “I didn’t know you liked to share. If I’d known, I would have tried harder to entice you into my bed.”
“Victoria.” He captured her hand around his wrist, and a hint of light billowed from his eyes. “We really just want to talk.”
“No.” Her eyes narrowed and her sensuality turned dark, now filled with the promise of exquisite pain. “You’re here to ask questions. Demand answers. That’s what you angels do. Well, there’s a price for answers. Did you think you could get away with asking without paying.”
“This is for the benefit of both of us,” Gideon said.
She leaned her naked body against him, her other hand pressing against his chest. “I don’t see how giving you answers benefits me.”
“Because the humans found a feral vampire nest,” Jacob said.
“Oh, they did, did they?” Victoria raised a sculpted eyebrow and pursed her lips. “And you want to know if it’s one of mine making them?”
“Or if there’s a new player in town,” Gideon said, his tone still soft, almost seductive, but the muscles in his jaw flexed, proving Victoria was getting under his skin.
Her lips brushed his jaw, and her tongue darted out and licked the flexed muscles. “Pay the price, angel, and I’ll tell you.”
He inched his head away from her. “Which liquor do you recommend?”
“That’s not on the table any more.” Her hand slid down to the waistband of his fatigues.
“You know I’m not having sex with you,” he said, his voice low.
“No, you’d rather have it with my offspring’s human.” She turned her piercing gaze to me. “Do you think she’s already fucked him, Gideon? Or is she still fantasizing about what it would be like for my offspring to fuck her while he drinks her dry?”
I shuddered, my breath picking up with desire, as Jacob’s claim brought the fantasy to the forefront of my thoughts.
“Or do you share? He bites her while you fuck her? You know she’s thinking of him, that it’s him who’s driving her mad with desire.” Her hand slid past Gideon’s waist toward his groin.
He jerked back and grabbed her wrist, his body stiff, his eyes icy. “People are dying.”
“Only humans,” she purred. “Besides, I said I’d tell you if you pay the price.”
The ice in his gaze shifted, grew pained, and the mist of his grief returned, edged with a strange flickering heat. He was actually weighing the idea of letting Victoria use his body to save lives.
Jeez, I knew he’d do almost anything to save people, I’d seen that fierce determination when he’d promised to protect me from the archnephilim, but he shouldn’t have to make that decision, especially not with his heart still mourning his one true love, Zella. That wasn’t fair to him, and while the smartest option was to just walk away, that meant more people would die.
And I couldn’t let that happen, either. “How about you find out how tasty I am instead?”
Chapter 8
Gideon’s eyes flashed wide, and Victoria’s attention snapped to me, freezing me in place with her vampiric intensity. My pulse pounded a wild tattoo but my offer was the right call. It was dumb, but the right call. I couldn’t let others die at the hands of the feral vampires, but I couldn’t let Gideon give in to Victoria’s demands. Yes, using sex as a currency happened every day, but Gideon shouldn’t be forced into it, not if I could help it.
“Shaw,” Gideon said, his voice sharp with warning.
Jacob shifted closer to me. He opened his mouth to say something, but Victoria shot him a glare and his body jerked, his expression tightening with pain.
“You answer our questions and you get to find out how tasty I am.”
“So you’d rather I feed from you than fuck your mate?” Victoria threw her head back and laughed a sultry laugh. “What if I want both?”
Gideon stiffened. “That’s not—”
“On the table,” I said, cutting Gideon off. I squared my shoulders and met Victoria’s gaze. She was terrifyingly powerful, her intensity soul-consuming, but she wasn’t an archnephilim, and I’d be damned if she forced my angel to sleep with her. “You either get to find out what’s so interesting about me that your offspring and an angel want me, or we walk.”
“I could crush you,” she hissed.
“And then you’d have no hope in hell of getting into Gideon’s pants.”
“We’re leaving.” Gideon grabbed my arm and started to turn, but the room erupted into chaos.
Two vampires, their expressions filled with wild hunger, their fangs fully extended, rushed past the gauzy curtains into the room. They raced straight to the bed, one grabbing the dazed man before he could get up, the other vampire tackling Victoria’s other man and sinking his fangs into his neck.
The men screamed. Victoria howled with rage and jerked a step toward them, but more feral vampires came through the open windows and threw themselves at us.
Gideon shoved me behind him and sent a blast of divine light at the closest vampire. She screamed, her face and hands burned, her skin red and oozing. Her body convulsed, but she didn’t drop and instead jerked back toward Gideon, snarling. Jacob drew his Beretta, but his eyes widened at the non-effect of Gideon’s blast, and he shoved the weapon back into his holster. With a snarl, he lunged at the vampire Gideon hadn’t taken down, and ripped out her throat.
Victoria had taken out two ferals already with her bare hands and was moving, a blur of pale flesh and flying black hair, to the ones who’d killed her lovers, while her guard rushed into the room from the hall and joined the fight.
Gideon formed a sword of divine light in one hand and pushed me farther back with the other. “Stay back.” Then he lunged into the fray.
I drew my Glock and fired at a vampire coming through one of the windows. The enspelled bullet slammed into his chest and blue lightning crackled over his body. He screamed and staggered, his arm tangling in the curtain and tearing it down, but the shot didn’t kill him.
Shit. I stilled needed to make a kill-shot to take these things down. Head or heart. And while I was a good shot, I wasn’t that good, certainly not when they were moving in a frenzy. There were over two dozen ferals still standing and I didn’t know if more were coming. I only had ten of my sixteen shots left. I had to make them count, which meant I was going to need them to get closer to me to increase my odds of hitting my mark.
Victoria screamed, her vampiric speed slowing. Her chest rose and fell with wild gasps and blood rushed from gashes along her ribs. A chill tightened in my gut. These ferals could even hurt a master vampire.
Jacob ripped out the throat of another feral and lunged at another one when a gunshot roared into the room. It slammed through Jacob’s chest, dangerously close to his heart, and likely would have hit it if he hadn’t lurched forward a split second before to attack. It drew a s
trangled scream of pain, and he staggered. The vampire he’d been about to attack slashed at him with wicked claws, slicing his shirt and gouging deep rents in his chest.
I fired at that feral, aiming for the heart, hoping that even if I didn’t hit, the enspelled ammunition would make it stumble long enough for Jacob to get away. Blue lightning snapped around the feral’s body and it dropped to the floor, my shot striking true. But another gunshot roared into the room. Jacob wrenched to the side and the shot tore through the sleeve of his duster.
“Sniper,” he yelled as he ripped out the throat of another feral. “Take cover.”
Gideon decapitated a feral with his sword and glanced around the room, and in that second of taking stock, the sniper fired again. The bullet sliced through the right side of Gideon’s upper chest near his collarbone with a spray of blood, drawing a scream of pain.
A hint of jagged electricity flickered in the mating brand, but it wasn’t all-consuming like it had been before, which meant his injury wasn’t fatal. Yet.
He twisted with the force of the blow and his light sword vanished. A feral vampire lunged at him, and he wrenched his hand up, his sword forming with the movement and impaling the vampire at the last second.
Two more gunshots roared into the room, one skimming Victoria’s cheek. She stumbled, her enhanced vampiric speed making her lurch halfway across the room. The other hit Jacob’s thigh. He staggered and the feral beside him raked her claws across his face.
Gideon ran his blade through that feral’s chest and yanked Jacob to his feet.
I dove for the bed and ducked behind its meager cover. But all the shots had come through the one set of windows and there weren’t a lot of other pieces of furniture in the room that I could hide behind. The body of one of Victoria’s lovers hung over the side, a massive swath of blood darkening the sheets and pooling on the floor.
Four feral vampires remained, more than two dozen bodies lay bleeding on the floor, and another gunshot erupted. The sniper fired again. This time the bullet tore through a gauzy curtain and exploded out the back of the head of Victoria’s guard. The guy dropped, his eyes vacant and dead.
Gideon hauled Jacob back toward the bed while Victoria made a dash for the door. The remaining ferals dove for Gideon and Jacob, and another flurry of shots erupted, drawing a scream from Victoria and forcing her to wrench away from the door. Blood slicked her body from killing the ferals with her bare hands, but also oozed from two bullet wounds in her chest.
She dove for the bed as another gunshot slammed into the wall behind her, and she crashed to a stop beside me, bumping me into the blood pool. I fired another shot at a feral on Jacob, giving him time to kill a different one before turning to the one I’d hit. He and Gideon were only a few feet away from the bed, but with the ferals not pulling back, there was no way they could take cover.
Gideon killed another one and turned to the last remaining one, but another gunshot slammed through that feral vampire, into Gideon’s chest, closer to his heart than the last shot, and out his back. He screamed and lightning erupted from the brand.
My muscles seized, agony screaming through me. Everything within me howled to save Gideon, help him, do anything, but what I really needed to do was duck back behind the bed. My head and shoulders were still exposed from the shot I’d taken to help Jacob. I was a target, and if I got shot that wouldn’t help Gideon. Except I couldn’t move.
Another gunshot roared into the room.
Time stuttered into slow motion. Gideon clutched his chest, his sword of light gone, and staggered for the cover of the bed, Jacob close behind him, while Victoria’s eyes flashed wide. Frost swept over my hands and cheeks from a sudden fear-induced temperature drop, and the master vampire seized my arm and yanked me to the floor.
Searing pain sliced across my cheek and into my hair. My head hit the marble floor and specks of light snapped across my vision.
Time jerked back to normal. Gideon scrambled around the foot of the bed and dropped down beside Victoria, while Jacob dove over it and landed with a heavy thump beside me. The jagged lightning released its hold on my muscles, but still burned agony through me, and now strength bled out of the brand from me to Gideon.
“We have to get you to Amiah,” I gasped, struggling to sit up and making the room spin around me.
His gaze locked with mine and for a second all the ice was gone and I was immersed in a perfect summer sky. God, he couldn’t die. I couldn’t let him die. Please.
“We have to deal with that sniper first,” Jacob growled, drawing Gideon’s attention away from me.
“I commanded my lieutenants to search the buildings across the street and find the bastard,” Victoria snarled.
“And yet they’re not going to find me there,” a raspy tenor said from the far side of the room by the windows.
The frost on my hands crept over my wrists and down my neck.
Victoria shot Jacob a terrified look. “You said you killed him.”
“I did.”
“You know I can hear you,” the tenor said in a singsong. “You did kill me, Jacob, but my century and a half is up and I’m back to take what’s mine.”
“I’ll stop you the same as I did last time.” Jacob glanced over the edge of the bed. “And now you’ve lost the advantage of surprise.”
“How’s your chest, Jacob?” Raspy Tenor asked. “Half an inch to the right and I’d be done with you.”
Gideon drew in a ragged wet breath, his hands pressed tight to his chest, and the lightning from his brand threatened to seize me again. We needed to get out of there, but the only other door in the room was farther away than the hall door. We’d be bigger targets if we ran towards it. Perhaps if I shot this guy with my enspelled ammunition, we’d be able to make a break for the door. Which was ridiculous, given how both Gideon and Jacob had been shot and couldn’t run at full speed. We’d be shot before we made it halfway there.
I peeked over the edge of the bed to see who we were dealing with, then quickly dipped back down. Raspy Tenor looked like another Wild West gunslinger. He was lean, a complete opposite to Jacob’s bulky build, but just as tall. His eyes were black, and he radiated the terrifying intensity I recognized as vampiric. The intensity, almost as strong as Victoria’s, made my gut clench in fear.
He too wore a black duster that looked an awful lot like Jacob’s, and a black hat, the wide brim pulled so low that if I hadn’t been sitting on the floor looking up at him, it might have shaded his eyes from sight.
The only things that didn’t say he’d just stepped out of history was the modern sniper rifle slung over his shoulder and the SIG Sauer P210 in his hands trained at the bed.
“Still with Mommy, I see. Has she hooked up with the angel or have you?” The soles of his boots shushed against the carpet. He was moving, drawing closer to the head of the bed. “And you’ve found yourself another human. How cute.”
Jacob drew his Beretta and shifted his attention to the head of the bed as well. “Give up now and I’ll make your death fast.”
“But I’ve barely been back, and I’m having too much fun.” Raspy Tenor rushed around the bed, his SIG raised to fire, but Jacob shot first. His bullets drove through Raspy’s chest, making the other vampire jerk. It threw off his aim, and his shot hit the wall behind us. Blood rushed across his chest and splattered onto the rug.
“Run,” Jacob barked, and I jumped to my feet.
I wrenched against his claim, staggered, the jagged electricity from Gideon’s brand slicing through Jacob’s command, and forced myself to grab Gideon’s arm and help him stand. Victoria rose to her knees, glared at Raspy, and squeezed both of her hands into fists.
Raspy hissed in pain against Victoria’s mental control, but didn’t drop, and snarled back at Jacob as bullet after bullet slammed into him.
Jacob scrambled to his feet, grabbed Victoria under the arm, and hauled her up, still firing one-handed.
She wrenched out of his grip and stood her
ground. “You’re still my offspring. I still control you.”
“Keep on trying, bitch.”
Jacob’s Beretta clicked. Out of ammo.
Raspy snarled, revealing his fangs, and fired his SIG.
Gideon wrenched me close and put his body between me and the danger. Victoria screamed and I shoved Gideon’s arm aside and fired my gun, hitting Raspy in the chest. He didn’t even bother getting out of the way. Blue lightning crackled around him. He dropped to one knee and his eyes widened.
I aimed to fire again, but the door crashed open. Five vampires — Victoria’s lieutenants? — rushed inside, exuding dangerous ferocity, their fangs extended.
Raspy sneered. “Next time I won’t miss, Lockwood.” He bolted with his enhanced vampiric speed to one of the windows and leaped out.
Victoria’s vampires rushed after him. A gunshot roared outside and someone screamed.
Victoria turned to Jacob and clenched her fist, making him groan in pain and sag to his knees.
“You said he was dead,” she snarled. She was even more ferocious than her lieutenants. Blood gushed from another gunshot wound in her chest — Raspy’s last shot — mixing with the blood splattered over her naked body.
Jacob gasped for breath. His blood oozed from the gashes on his face and chest, shallow enough that his vampiric healing was already starting to close them. But the gunshot in his thigh still bled profusely.
“I didn’t know his soul was bound to the demon’s seal,” he said.
“Victoria,” Gideon gasped, his breath wet and rattling. He pressed his palms to the wound in his chest, blood oozing between his fingers, and dropped to his knees before I could even try to ease his descent. His head dipped forward as if it was too hard to keep up. “Please.”
I holstered my Glock, wrenched off my jacket, and pressed it as best I could to both the entrance and exit wounds near his collarbone. He was losing a lot of blood, and while an angel did heal faster than the average human, it wasn’t anywhere fast enough to save him from bleeding out from the two gunshot wounds.