Quinn

by D. B. Reynolds

  “We’re moving in on the local vampire smuggling operation,” he explained to Adorjan. “And I expect bloodshed before the night is over.”

  “The others will be happy to hear it,” the big vampire said eagerly. “All this flying and driving can send a vampire over the edge of crazy. Too much sitting in one place.”

  Quinn laughed. “Come on in, then,” he said, leading the way back into the house. “Let’s not entertain the neighbors. We have blood, if you need it,” he added softly.

  “I’m good, but one or two of the others will be glad of it. Thank you, Sire.”

  Quinn signaled Garrick, who got everyone moving in the right direction, and before long, they were all settled around the dining room table, with its multiple computers and, now, Quinn’s neat stacks of printouts, most of which already bore his handwritten notes.

  “This all came over from the master vampire who ran the local smugglers until last night.”

  “What happened last night?” Adorjan asked the question, even though he and Quinn had already discussed it somewhat. As Quinn’s security chief, it was his responsibility to make sure everyone was briefed.

  Quinn explained about Christie and the other vampires at the warehouse, while Garrick offered bagged blood in a warm water bath. Quinn moved around the table as he talked, gathering the tidy stacks of paper and moving them over to a sturdy sideboard, where they wouldn’t get shuffled out of order, or, worse, dribbled with blood. He caught Garrick’s bemused look, but ignored it. If being neat was his worst sin . . . but it wasn’t. Never would be. He’d been one of Rajmund’s warriors for decades, before Raj had become Lord of the Northeast, and he’d governed Maine’s vampire community for him after that. Vampires were violent by nature, and sometimes that violence drove them too far. Quinn had killed to defend Rajmund and his rule of law, and there was no doubt that he’d have to kill again. But this time, it would be to seize and defend his own territory. And he’d do whatever he had to, kill whomever he had to, to protect the vampires who depended on him for their lives.

  He thought about Eve, and the threat she posed to those same vampires. And he knew he had to confront that situation, to confront her, very soon.

  But not tonight. Tonight was for vampires only.

  They were all caught up on the plan, such as it was—basically, walk into the warehouse, trigger Christie’s trap, and then kill everyone who didn’t fall into line—when Garrick said, “Just one more thing.” He walked over to Quinn, dropped down to one knee, and said, “I would swear to you, my lord, before we leave.”

  The others followed, pushing their chairs back, and dropping to their knees.

  Quinn stood and stared in silence. He’d expected this at some point, but not yet. “The blood oath—”

  “We all swore the blood oath months ago, and it stands,” Garrick interrupted. “But the battle is upon us now, and before we go in there, I want it perfectly clear where my loyalties lie. With you. Always with you.” The others signaled their agreement, some repeating the words, “with you,” others simply making wordless sounds of accord.

  “Thank you,” Quinn said sincerely. “All of you. You honor me with your trust.” He held the moment for a heartbeat, two. And then he grinned. “Now, let’s go win us a territory.”

  The vampires rose to their feet with a roar of agreement that probably had the neighbors thinking a jet had stormed over too low, but Quinn didn’t have time for the neighbors. He had a battle to win.

  Dublin, Ireland

  EVE LINGERED ACROSS the street from the Donnybrook mansion that was the main residence of Orrin Sorley, the Vampire Lord of Ireland. This was his “lair.” That’s what the monsters called it. It was the same house that Quinn had come out of a few nights ago, when he’d stopped her from questioning the accountant. Quinn still thought she’d meant to kill the vamp, and she let him think that, let him believe she was a cold-blooded killer just like the vampires she hunted.

  She scowled at the thought of Quinn’s attitude when it came to her late night activities. He claimed to be worried about her, but she couldn’t help thinking he was more concerned about his business deal and the vampires he needed to make it happen. Asshole.

  She’d considered telling him about this trip to Dublin, just so he’d know she’d be gone and wouldn’t worry if he came looking for her. Yeah, she thought dismissively, in case he needed to fuck. Because that was all they ever did. It wasn’t like they’d made some deep connection with each other. There’d been no flowers, no candlelit dinners. Just fucking. And, sure, she had to admit it was the best fucking of her life. The man had amazing skills and incredible recuperative powers. But her mission was more important than a good fuck. She dreamed of her brother almost every night, saw him beaten to the ground by the two vampires, heard him begging for his life while they kicked him, until he lay still and silent and dead.

  She wouldn’t stop until she found the vampires who’d murdered him, until they were nothing but dust in the dirt, their lives meaningless, forgotten. She knew their faces—hell, those faces haunted her dreams. And she’d learned enough about how Sorley deployed his henchmen to know that those two were probably part of his Dublin organization, just like the two she’d killed in Howth had been local only. Sorley kept his toughest warriors, his most ruthless killers, close at hand, for both his own protection and to make sure he knew what they were doing. Which was why she was moving her focus to Dublin. She was never going to find those two anywhere else.

  And while she searched for Alan’s killers, she’d do the world a favor and get rid of a few more of the monsters. So that some other sister didn’t have to watch her brother die like a dog.

  She shivered suddenly, as if the dark thoughts had brought a chill to the night. Zipping her jacket closed, she hugged herself, glad she’d thought to wear a scarf and gloves this time around. When she’d first started hunting, she’d been so focused on dressing for seduction that she’d forgotten about the hours she’d have to spend lying in wait. She’d learned since then. And not only how to dress, either. She’d fine-tuned her weapons and her technique until she’d been able to take down both of those big vampires the night she’d met Quinn. That had been the best kill of her life, but there’d been no celebration. Because of Quinn. He’d distracted her from her goal, and then, even worse, he’d made her aware, in a way she’d never been before, of the dangers of what she was doing. She hadn’t killed a vampire since she’d met him. But that was about to change. She’d come to Dublin to prove something to herself, to prove that she hadn’t lost her edge, hadn’t lost sight of her mission.

  She stilled when she detected fresh movement in the courtyard of the house. She’d established the guards’ routine long ago, but this was something else. A small group of men—vampires always seemed to be men—were leaving the house, though she’d been there since before sundown and hadn’t seen anyone go in. That meant this group had to have spent the day inside Sorley’s headquarters, something only his inner circle ever did. At least as far as she could tell from her one time inside the house, and her many nights spent watching from afar.

  She raised a pair of binoculars to her eyes, wanting details. She needed to see their faces, so she’d recognize them on the street. The binoculars were a new piece of equipment. Small and easy to conceal, but remarkably powerful.

  She moved several feet down the sidewalk, careful to remain in the shadows of the tree-lined street. Between the wall and the various cars parked in the yard, it was difficult to get a good line-of-sight before they disappeared into one of the vehicles. This new group appeared to consist of three vampires, all talking amongst themselves, ignoring the guards stationed right outside the door. One of them turned to walk back inside, and she recognized him as Lorcan, Sorley’s lieutenant. She’d seen him many times before, but it was the accountant who’d gotten away who’d finally given her his name and con
firmed his high position within Sorley’s inner circle.

  Her gut tightened. If Lorcan was sending these two on a mission, then it was important. And they had to be . . . Her breath froze in her lungs. She stared into the binoculars until her eyes burned, afraid to blink, terrified she was wrong, that she was seeing what she wanted to see, not what was really there. But then one of the vamps laughed as he walked around to the driver’s side of the car, and she knew.

  It was them. The two who’d killed her brother. The hard reality of it finally unlocked her lungs and her legs as she raced for her car. She might have trouble keeping up with them in their fancy, high-perfor­mance sedan. But there were a lot of cars on the crowded streets of Dublin. They’d make her invisible, no matter how close she got.

  Luck was with her a moment later, when the two vamps sped right past her parking space just as she began to pull out, not even slowing when they swerved around her with only an inch to spare. “Fucking vampires,” she muttered. She’d noticed that about them. They were so secure in their own immortality, so confident with their enhanced senses, that they didn’t give a damn about the rest of humanity who filled the city.

  But they were going to learn just what an ordinary human could do. She would show them. And it would be their turn to die.

  Howth, Ireland

  THE WAREHOUSE WAS silent. There was no more music blasting, and only the thinnest line of dim light around the closed door of the main entrance indicated anyone might be inside. Quinn wanted to believe they’d learned their lesson from the night before, that they’d taken his admonishment about secrecy to heart. But somehow, he doubted this new security was the result of his interference. He sighed inwardly. He’d rather hoped Christie and the others would see the benefits of having a powerful vampire like himself in charge of the smuggling operation. Or, if not that, then at least recognize the opportunity to do Orrin Sorley a favor, since Sorley had given Howth to Quinn.

  On the other hand, maybe that’s exactly what they thought they were doing. Getting into Sorley’s good graces by killing off a thorn in his side. A very sharp, prickly thorn named Quinn Kavanagh.

  Quinn waited until all of his team were out of their cars and gathered around him, then let his senses stretch out to the building in front of him, searching for life signs, listening to heartbeats, eavesdrop­ping on the leaking thoughts of the people inside. Most humans didn’t realize just how different vampires were from the humanity they’d left behind. Vampire hearts beat stronger and faster, and their lungs drew more deeply, but fewer breaths per minute. It was their minds that set them apart, however. They sparked with a much higher level of activity than humans, their brains a constant buzz of neurons going off like fireworks in the night sky.

  Not every vampire was capable of what Quinn was about to do, to scan a building and determine how many life forms were inside, how many vampires, how many humans. But for a vampire of Quinn’s strength? It was as natural as breathing. “No humans in there,” he said. “Fifteen vampires, including Christie.” Quinn shook his head. Christie was shining like a fucking beacon, compared to the others in the warehouse. He was a master vamp, but he didn’t need to paint himself like a giant target. Either he was too stupid to conceal his presence, or he wanted Quinn to sense him and ignore everyone else. Like that was going to happen.

  “Rules of engagement,” he said quietly. “You kill anyone who tries to kill you. No mercy. But remember, I’m here to establish my right to rule, not only in Howth, but all of Ireland. I can’t start by killing every vampire I meet. So, don’t kill anyone who’s not a threat. I’ll handle Christie. He has to die. The others—” He shrugged one shoulder. “—will be given a choice. We’re vampires, not mindless thugs. You understand?”

  A chorus of muffled agreement responded.

  Quinn grinned. “Great, then, let’s have some fun.” He strode the short distance to the door and reached to pull it open.

  Adorjan got there first. “Don’t want to get your head blown off before you even get started,” he murmured, then stepped in front of Quinn and yanked the door open.

  The warehouse was empty. Or, at least, that’s what they wanted Quinn to think. Did Christie really believe Quinn wouldn’t have checked first? Or maybe it was much simpler than that. Maybe Christie didn’t realize just how powerful Quinn was. Sure, Quinn had concealed his true strength when he’d confronted Christie last night, but Sorley had a better sense of him. He could have clued Christie in, but it would appear that he hadn’t. The Irish lord seemed to enjoy playing games with other vampires’ lives, pitting his vampires one against the other. Or at least against Quinn.

  Christie suddenly appeared from the hallway in back, near the office where he’d met with Quinn the night before.

  “Quinn,” he said, smiling with feigned surprise. “And you’ve brought friends.”

  “Not friends. Advisers. Vampires with experience running a smuggling organization, or its equivalent. Where are the others?”

  “Out and about. Doing whatever it is they do with their free time, I suppose. I didn’t see the need to have them here for this meeting. Everything is ready for inventory,” he said, sweeping his arm to indicate the warehouse full of presumably smuggled goods. “Did you have a chance to go over the records I sent you?”

  Quinn wanted to laugh. Christie was so fucking smug, so certain he’d outwitted the stupid American. He didn’t bother to answer the vampire’s question. Without turning away from him, he addressed his own people, saying, “Make yourselves comfortable, lads,” and then made as if to follow the Howth vampire into the back.

  It was the tiniest noise that made him stop, the most miniscule flicker of awareness in his brain. Warning his team with a quick mental blast, he released the bonds that held his power in check. It flowed around him in a glorious nebula, invisible to most others, but a swirl of gold fire to his eyes, ethereal and fragile in appearance. But it was as hard as diamond, an impenetrable shield that he raised between his team and the vampires who suddenly materialized all around them, some coming in through a side door, others popping up from their useless concealment amid the crowded shelves.

  Quinn’s eyes never left Christie. He caught the look of shock on the vamp’s face a moment before Christie screamed for the Howth vampires to, “Kill these fuckers!”

  But it wasn’t vampiric power that lashed into Quinn and his team. These were smugglers, after all. They opened up with automatic weapons, spraying round after round that crashed into Quinn’s shield and fell away, until finally his patience snapped. Yes, these vampires were potentially his people, but enough was enough.

  Reaching deep within, to the most primitive depths of his soul, he found the unique power gifted to him by his vampire blood. He found . . . fire.

  Vampires screamed as blue flames reached out to engulf them, burning endlessly, but leaving their bodies untouched, so that the agony never ended. They writhed in pain, begging for an end, for mercy.

  Don’t they know? Quinn thought distantly. There was no mercy in the world of Vampire. He slowly returned his gaze to Christie, whom he’d left trapped in place, but untouched by the blue flames.

  “My lord,” Christie said, going down on one knee. “I didn’t know.”

  “What didn’t you know?” Quinn crooned, gliding a step closer.

  “Th-that you had such power, that—”

  “That I could kill you with a thought? Or let you suffer the way they are?” He gestured casually at the vampires still writhing within their prisons of the blue flame.

  “My lord, please.”

  Quinn tilted his head curiously. “Please? Please what?”

  “Don’t . . .” He shot a terrified look at the screaming vampires. “Spare me.”

  “Ah. You believe they deserve to suffer, but you don’t?”

  Christie’s eyes rolled in terror, until a
ll Quinn could see were bloodshot white orbs. “Mercy, my lord.”

  “Very well,” Quinn said idly, his gaze wandering over the trapped vampires. “Not everyone needs to die. They were just doing their jobs.” His gaze swung back to Christie. “Doing what you told them to.”

  “Nooooo!” Christie’s scream of denial lasted far longer than his life, as Quinn surrounded him with flames that went from blue to fiery orange in the blink of an eye, leaving nothing but a pile of dust that danced merrily as the fire consumed even that.

  With a thought, the blue flames dropped from around the scream­ing vampires, and they fell to the warehouse floor, unconscious. When they woke, they’d remember being trapped and a vague sense of horror. But there’d be no specific recollection of fire, unless Quinn decided to make them remember. He didn’t think of himself as cruel, but it was a cruel weapon. It was also very effective.

  Quinn swung his gaze around to scan his people, afraid of what he’d see. They all knew what he could do. He’d made sure of it before he recruited them. But, other than Garrick, they’d never seen him burn another vampire, or any living thing, into dust.

  Quinn had known early on that his power was unusual. After killing Marcelina, he and Garrick had found Rajmund, and Quinn had learned even more about his extraordinary ability. Every vampire born with the power to be a lord had a unique gift. Quinn had seen what Rajmund could do, had heard stories of Lucas’s power on the battlefield. And he’d recently witnessed firsthand the unbelievable power wielded by Raphael, a power so great that he didn’t know how a single vampire could contain it.

  But he’d never heard of a power as willfully destructive as his own. Was there any pain greater than that inflicted by fire? He’d worked with it over the years, until he could control its effect. Blue flames to cause pain without damage to the flesh, orange to kill. There was also a paler flame, nearly white, that trapped a victim, but inflicted only terror, a wordless threat. It was all horrific. But it was his to wield, and so he’d studied it, practicing over the years, until he could not only control its destructiveness, but wield it effectively. Because he’d known even then that he had the power of a vampire lord, that the day would come when he’d want a territory of his own. That he’d have to fight to make that happen, and then fight some more to defend the people that were his. And he had to be ready.