Quinn

by D. B. Reynolds

  She watched until the vehicle’s red taillights disappeared around the corner, then raced into her flat and dug around her tiny desk until she found what she was looking for—directions for the tracker she’d slapped on the smug asshole’s roof. She’d bought it for her cell phone a while back and then forgotten all about it, when she couldn’t find the damn thing. Apparently, it had been sitting in the pocket of the sweater she wore around the flat the whole time. There was a bit of serendipity that she wasn’t going to complain about. But now, she needed to make sure it worked, and see how far she could track it.

  “You think you’re so smart,” she muttered, clutching the flimsy page of directions. Walking over to her bed, she propped herself against the headboard and started to read, but. . . . Her bed smelled like him. Her eyes burned with tears she refused to shed. Hugging her knees to her chest, she wrapped her arms around her bent legs and tried to think. She couldn’t believe she’d fucked a vampire. Not just fucked, but . . . hell, admit it. He’d been charming and smart, even funny sometimes, when he wasn’t trying to run her life. And so handsome that it made her teeth ache. She’d liked him—one of the monsters who’d killed her brother. Except . . . he hadn’t been a monster. Not with her.

  Tears filled her eyes again and she didn’t try to stop them. Frus­tration, sadness, and confusion all tumbled together. She hadn’t cried this much since her brother had died. Hadn’t been this confused in much longer than that. She’d been so focused on finishing university, so excited about going on to graduate school. And then her brother had been killed and vengeance had substituted itself for books and studying. A new focus, a new obsession. Her life for the last five years had revolved around nothing but revenge, working just enough to pay the rent, to buy food, and give her mam what she could. And there’d been equipment to buy, too. Things she’d needed in her hunt. Like the damn rifle Quinn had just stolen from her. She’d scrimped and saved for two years to afford it, had spent even more money going to the range, learning how it worked, practicing until her arms trembled with effort.

  So stupid. Tonight was the first time she’d used it in real life. She hadn’t even been trying to kill the local vamps, though she’d never admit that to Quinn. She’d been trying to wound, not kill, and she’d hit what she’d been aiming for. It had been a sort of live fire exercise. Everything she’d read about long distance shooting had discussed the careful compensation needed for wind and elevation, and even temperature and humidity. She hadn’t been able to practice under the right kind of long-range conditions, hence tonight’s shooting gallery.

  She’d counted it as test before she headed back to Dublin and her pursuit of the vampires who’d killed her brother. She’d followed them for two nights before coming back to Howth, and she’d only come back because she had to get some side work done, to earn enough damn money to keeping going. But in the two nights she’d watched them, she’d figured out where the pair of murdering vamps lived and, most importantly, where they fed. She’d even snapped a couple pictures with her cell phone. She’d been ready for the kill, and now the gun was gone. All that money and work for nothing.

  She sighed and rubbed the bruises on her arm where Quinn had grabbed her, but that only reminded her of the stricken look on his face when he’d noticed those same bruises. It humanized him and made her want to like him, even more than she already did. Or had, before she’d known what he was. A vampire. And not just any vampire, but one with a bodyguard. She started thinking about how he’d always seemed to be the one in charge, even with his so-called cousin. Was Garrick even really his cousin? Or was that just another farce on his part? He hadn’t been faking his anger tonight, that was for sure. He seemed to consider those vampires his, for some reason. And he claimed to want Sorley dead. Was it possible? Had he come over from America and taken over a chunk of Sorley’s business as the first step toward his real goal?

  She knocked her head against the wall. She didn’t know what to do now. Should she continue her crusade? But what if that meant confronting Quinn? Could she kill him? Could she kill someone he cared about? Like his supposed cousin, or even that stupid bodyguard who treated him like he was royalty. Someone deserving respect. Did vampires have feelings like regular people? Did they love?

  She pounded her head against the wall harder this time. Damn Quinn for doing this to her. Her fist crumpled the tracker directions, and she stilled. That was a place to start. She’d follow him and find out what he was up to. And then, maybe she’d get her damn rifle back.

  QUINN WAS FURIOUS at himself and at Eve, too. That wasn’t how he’d wanted to tell her what he was. But then, he admitted, he hadn’t given the big reveal much thought at all. He’d been stupid to think he could hide it from her in the first place, stupid to think that scene could have gone any differently than it had, no matter how he’d done it. Unless it had been over his bloody body. Or hers. He growled. No way in hell. He didn’t know how he was going to swing it, but somehow he had to extricate Eve from this clusterfuck, without her getting hurt. Even if it meant bundling her up and shipping her somewhere where there were no vampires for her to kill. Except he couldn’t think where that would be. Alaska, maybe. Those long summer days wouldn’t be very friendly to his kind.

  He glanced at Adorjan as they left Howth and headed for Dublin. The big vampire hadn’t even tried to put Quinn in the backseat this time. Smart vampire. Quinn wasn’t in the mood to be managed. He was usually the one who did the managing. Like now. He thought of all the people depending on him to get this right. The human security team who’d picked up and moved to Ireland on a promise. The vampires who’d risked their lives to join him in this fight. They deserved better of him. Right.

  With a metaphorical slap of his hands, he put Eve out of his thoughts, shelving the problem she represented with the ease of long practice. It was all about prioritizing. He couldn’t change who he was. Wouldn’t change it, even if he could. He’d hated Marcelina for what she’d done to him. But now? He loved the fucking power of it, the new challenge that every night brought. He was going to rule a territory. Lord fucking Quinn. That’s why he was in Ireland. It wasn’t to fall in love. He was there to fulfil the potential of his vampire blood, to serve the unrelenting drive that had hounded him from the moment he’d awoken to discover his entire life had been turned upside down.

  Boston, MA, USA, 57 years ago

  MARCELINA’S FACE twisted in anger, stealing her beauty, making her look like the monster she really was. That’s what ordinary humans called vampires. Monster. Devil. Spawn of Satan.

  Ridiculous. Vampires were no more intrinsically monstrous that humans. History was filled with cases of serial killers, men and women who’d inflicted horrific suffering on their fellow humans to satisfy their own sick desires.

  Marcelina was one of those, Quinn thought to himself. She’d probably been torturing the neighbor’s cat long before she’d been made a vampire. He didn’t know who her Sire had been, or why he’d chosen to turn her. He supposed the vamp had been motivated by her beauty, maybe even desire. But he could have saved the world a lot of suffering if he’d simply fucked her to death as a human and been done with it. Quinn would happily rip out the bastard’s heart if he ever met him.

  “Are you listening to me?” Marcelina snarled.

  Quinn lifted his gaze, focusing on the beautiful psychopath who was his Sire. “I’m listening, Marcelina. I simply don’t agree with you.”

  Her mouth opened in disbelief. “Agree? It’s not your place to agree or disagree. I am your Sire. You will do what I say.”

  Quinn fought not to sigh with the sheer tedium of her demands. She was never going to win with this line of argument. Ex injuria jus non oritur. Basically, she had no inherent right to benefit from her crime against him, and, he, therefore, owed her no service. But he wasn’t going to waste time debating entitlements with her. He was much more concerned about derailing her pla
ns for tonight.

  “If we follow your plan, we’ll kill too many civilians, Marcie.” He used the nickname intentionally, knowing how much she hated it. “We can’t afford to go around willy-nilly killing humans.”

  There was so much hatred in the look she turned on him, Quinn had to smile in private satisfaction. He loved that look. It was his goal to make her regret every day of her life from the moment she’d decided to turn him and Garrick without even the pretense of consent.

  “You will do what I tell you,” she snapped.

  “No, actually, I won’t. You’d have me kill humans and put vampires at risk, for what? Because some asshole threw you over more than a hundred years ago? Get real.”

  She hissed like a snake. An apt comparison. “It was sixty years ago, and his betrayal forced me to abandon my home.” She gestured around her at the rundown mansion. “I had to leave everything I knew, everyone who loved me. I was forced to run for my life in the middle of the night. I. Want. Him. Dead.”

  “Yeah, I get that. But here’s the problem. That pimply-faced college student who dumped you is now a United States congressman. You go after him, you risk bringing a world of hurt on every vampire in the U.S. Besides which, the only way to get to him at night is either at a public event or in his home. Both of those venues will risk human casualties, and he has five small grandchildren who live with him. That’s beyond the pale, even for you.”

  His risk assessment wasn’t quite honest. He could think of several ways to kill the congressman and make it appear to be a natural death or an accident. But Quinn wasn’t going to kill anyone who’d been lucky enough to escape Marcelina’s clutches. He met her gaze evenly. “I won’t do it.”

  He waited, every sense he owned attuned to Marcelina’s tiniest twitch. There was no way in hell she’d let this pass. But he’d known that going in. He understood his bitch of a Sire. He’d been studying her for 12 months and 23 nights. That’s how long it had been since she’d enthralled and then turned him. Oh, sure, she’d loved him at first. He was fit and strong, and, in the early throes of his vampirism, he’d been so eager to please his beautiful Sire. His eagerness hadn’t survived the first month he’d spent with her, but she’d kept him in her bed longer than that. Marcelina wasn’t a particularly powerful vampire, but her skill at seduction was remarkable. He’d always assumed those skills were rooted in her vampiric blood, but maybe that had only been a way to excuse his own weakness in succumbing as long as he had.

  It had been more than six months since he’d shared her bed and, looking at her now, he couldn’t imagine what he’d been thinking. He saw the manipulation beneath the charm, the cold calculation behind the seduction. But more than that, he saw the blackness of her soul.

  Obviously, Marcelina didn’t take rejection well. Witness her persistence in demanding revenge against a lover whose only crime had been breaking up with her decades ago. And, equally, her decision to send Quinn to exact that revenge, knowing full well that he was likely to be killed by the congressman’s security detail, which was large and well-armed. And if he managed not to die, there was still the likelihood that he’d be identified and hunted down by the human authorities. Marcelina’s escapee lover was not just a congressman, he was a wealthy congressman. No one who wanted to keep their job would let an attack on him go unpunished.

  This mission wasn’t only a potential death sentence for random vampires and innocent humans. It was intended to be a death sentence for Quinn. Unfortunately for Marcelina, he wasn’t in the mood to die.

  Her mouth twisted into a sly smile. “How are your parents, Quinn? Your father’s a lawyer, isn’t he? And your mother, a pretty little housewife. Niall and Maureen from Chicago. Such very Irish names. Do they know what their bonny boy is up to lately?”

  Quinn’s gaze hardened. He’d known this day was coming, though he might have wished for a few more months of preparation. He under­stood the unique vampiric gift his blood had bestowed upon him. That fire was a mark of his power, a presaging of his future strength. His control wasn’t yet all that it could be, but he wouldn’t accept threats against his parents. That was one step too far. He glanced at Garrick in silent apology. No matter what he did tonight, his cousin would stand by his side. Quinn just hoped he wasn’t going to get them both killed.

  He took a breath. He’d been practicing in private and already knew he was stronger than Marcelina. But for all his sneering disregard of her, the bond between a vampire and his Sire was not easily broken. It would take all of his strength to strike the first blow and shatter that bond. And then he’d have to kill her. If he’d learned one thing about vampires this past year, it was that you never left your enemies alive behind you.

  Bracing himself, he gathered his power in the way he’d been practicing ever since he’d figured out what lived inside him, and what he could do with it. He pictured pulling energy from every part of his body, pictured it streaming through his veins, burning along his nerves, until it was a ball of searing, bloody power just below his breastbone. He touched his hand to his chest and held it there for a moment. Then, using all of his vampiric speed, he drew that power out of his body into his clenched fist, and threw it at Marcelina as hard as he could.

  She screamed as a cloud of ethereal blue fire surrounded her. Her beautiful hair shot up in brilliant orange flames, shriveling against her head like blackened threads, while the rest of her remained untouched. And still she screamed. The other vampires in the house, all of whom were Marcelina’s children, rushed into the room. They froze in shock at first, but then, driven by the Sire bond to protect her, they ran at Quinn.

  He was ready for them. Ignoring Marcelina and her agony, he swept his gaze over the charging vampires. There weren’t that many. Marcelina wasn’t powerful enough to control more than a dozen children, and with Quinn’s defection, she’d lost not only him, but Garrick. That left only ten vampires, all weak, who rose to defend her.

  “Don’t,” Quinn warned, his power crashing over them with that one syllable. “She’s not worth it.” He knew he struck a nerve with that. There wasn’t a single one of her children whom Marcelina had treated gently. But the Sire bond was about more than loyalty. It was security, protection against a world that saw them as monsters. What would they be without that protection? “Get on the floor and stay there,” Quinn said. “I’ll protect you when she’s gone.”

  They froze, studying him, and then one by one, Marcelina’s children slid bonelessly to the floor. Some continued to watch, wide-eyed with curiosity, as their Sire twisted in agony. Others stared with eyes that burned red with hatred and satisfaction.

  Quinn swung back around to face the monster who’d so irrevocably changed his life. The blue fire wasn’t touching her, but the heat was. Pain marred that lovely face, straining the skin over her perfect cheekbones, drawing lush lips back over perfect teeth. Except those lips were torn and bloody from where her fangs had sliced into them, and her teeth were dripping blood onto the swell of her creamy breasts.

  “Whatever shall I do with you, Marcie?” he asked with intentional cruelty.

  Her mouth writhed, her lips closing to form a single word.

  “Mercy?” he asked. “Is that what you think you deserve?”

  She slid off her chair and to the floor, one hand reaching out in entreaty. Her hair was gone. He’d wanted her to suffer that much from the beginning, a blow to her vanity. But he’d spared her scalp, which was only reddened. Thus far.

  Quinn’s first instinct was to let her suffer, but he retained enough of himself, enough of the humanity his parents had given him, that he wondered what he’d become to even consider such cruelty. More important than any consideration of cruelty, however, was the simple fact that he couldn’t hold the flames much longer. He was still very young as a vampire, his power far from fully mature. He had to end this.

  Focusing once again on the fire i
nside him, he drew from the very heart, where it burned the brightest. Plucking that brilliant ember from his chest, he tossed it almost negligently at Marcelina. Her face brightened with hope at his gesture . . . and then she screamed in terror as the flames surrounding her went from blue to orange, and her body lit up like a torch. Within minutes, she fell to ashes.

  Quinn sank to his knees, exhausted and panting. The fire wasn’t real as most people understood it. It came from his power as a vampire, drawing on the spark of his vampire blood. When he used it, it sucked all the energy out of him, leaving him utterly drained. He hoped it would prove less grueling as he aged, and his magic grew stronger. Fuck. He still had a problem thinking of his new ability as magic, but he didn’t know what else to call it. There were other powerful vampires out there who did know, however. Vampires beyond Marcelina’s narrow little world. Maybe they had a better theory.

  He was too tired to think about it now. All he wanted at that moment, all he had the energy for, was to stumble to his room and sleep for a week. But he couldn’t do it, couldn’t show any weakness at all. Marcelina’s children might have supported his decision to get rid of her, but they were still vampires. Their instinct was to attack, especially if their target was a powerful vampire who’d suddenly become weak.