“Here, my lord!” Adorjan’s shout was punctuated by another booming crack of lightning, following only seconds later by the rumble of thunder.
Quinn spun around and spotted his security chief sitting behind the wheel of an older model Ford sedan, using his fists to smash the steering column. Two minutes later, he’d done something with the ignition and the engine sputtered to life. Quinn exchanged a look with Garrick as they piled into the passenger seats, privately hoping the old car had enough life left to fulfill its mission tonight. Quinn would buy its owners a brand new fucking car, as long as this one lasted long enough to catch up with Sorley.
Adorjan drove, speeding after Sorley, trying to stay on the road as he followed Quinn’s directions. The black night was absolute, broken only by repeated lightning strikes that threatened to blind, instead of lighting the way. Quinn could still follow the vampire lord’s blazing trail, but unfortunately, magic didn’t care about roads or physical obstacles. It said, “over there,” and left the rest up to Quinn, which was a pain in the ass. He’d managed to overlay his inner vision on the physical reality, but between the disorientation of seeing two views at once, and the rapid twists and turns in the rickety car, he found himself wondering if vampires could still vomit.
“I can’t see a thing!”
Quinn was startled to hear Eve’s voice coming from the back seat. How the hell had he missed her jumping into the car with them? And what the hell was she doing there? He had no time to worry about it, however, as Sorley’s power signature took a sudden dive. Was he blocking? But, no, it reappeared a moment later, just as their own car skidded down a short incline, and Quinn realized the road had entered a series of short dips and valleys.
“Fucking coward. He’s a damned vampire lord,” he muttered, holding on as Adorjan fought the car back under control. “He should act like it.”
“Where does he think he’s going?” Garrick asked, as confused as the rest of them.
“He’s not thinking at all,” Quinn said. “He’s just running.”
Sorley’s power signature abruptly stopped moving. It was sudden enough that Quinn closed his eyes, wanting to get rid of the physical, so he could concentrate on his vampire senses alone. A second later, he opened his eyes, just in time to yell, “Stop!”
Adorjan spun the wheel frantically. The ancient car and its nearly bald tires skidded in a full circle before coming to a shuddering stop only a few yards away from a fifty foot drop into the Atlantic Ocean.
“Fuck,” Eve breathed, and Quinn’s heart nearly stopped at the reminder of her humanity. He and his vampires probably would have survived the fall, albeit, not without significant damage. Enough to let Sorley escape, at least. But Eve . . . she would almost certainly have died.
Quinn shoved his door open and rounded the car to where she was climbing out from behind Adorjan’s seat. “Stay here,” he ordered, then bent to give her a hard kiss. “Please.” He didn’t know if she’d pay attention, but there was no time to argue. Sorley was out of his vehicle and running for a long, low building to one side. Quinn didn’t know exactly where they were, or what the building was, but he wasn’t going to give Sorley another place to hide.
Quinn stopped chasing after Sorley long enough to lob a concentrated beam of power directly in front of Sorley, cutting him off and forcing him to change his trajectory, away from the building.
Good, Quinn thought viciously. The last thing he wanted was to chase the coward through miles of corridor. For one thing, it would leave too many questions for the human authorities, but, more importantly, it would be too fucking time-consuming and an even bigger pain in his ass than this damn car chase.
Quinn finally brought the craven vampire lord to ground, high on a grassy cliff, with nowhere else to run. Sorley spun into a defensive crouch, knees bent and hands curled into claws. His face bore no signs of humanity, the sophisticated mask torn away to reveal the monster within—fangs bared, gleaming brightly with every crack of lightning, and eyes burning a sickly green with his power. The color was muddled, as if it had once been a pure emerald, but had been overtaken by something dark and unnatural.
Sorley sneered as thunder roared and the rain grew impossibly heavier, icy cold needles that threatened to slice every inch of exposed skin. “Can’t use your precious fire now, can you, boy?”
Quinn laughed and loosed his power completely, holding nothing back. Pale blue flame blossomed all around, surrounding him with a power that screamed with the joy of being free. It had been locked away for so long. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d fully embraced the glory of what he was. Vampire lord. Born to rule. And, by God, he was going to fulfill that destiny or die.
He filled one hand with the bright, blue flame and made it dance, twirling it around and through his fingers, smiling when he looked up and caught Sorley’s look of dismay. “It’s not fire, you fool,” Quinn called. “It’s magic.” And then closing his hand around the flame, he lifted it in a blindingly fast move and threw it at Sorley, laughing when the vampire ducked.
Sorley snarled his rage and attacked, moving with that incredible speed of his, spinning to one side an instant after he launched a pounding series of attacks on Quinn’s shields, pummeling the same spot over and over again, as if hoping to weaken it enough to break through. It wasn’t a bad strategy. The smallest hole in a vampire’s shield could be fatal. But Quinn hadn’t wasted the last few years. He’d practiced and honed the use of his power until it was second nature for him to shift energy around, to reinforce the point of attack, and launch a counterattack of his own. He’d also designed a fluid defense, one that could take his opponent’s strategy and use it against him. Having witnessed Sorley’s speed only hours ago in their first battle, he now did exactly that.
Fashioning his power into liquid flame, he threw it ahead of the fleeing vampire, then used Sorley’s speed to bend it around, until it engulfed him in sizzling magic. Sorley twisted and screamed, too lost in agony to think. If he’d taken a moment, he’d have known it wasn’t true flame, and he could have countered it with magic of his own. But the fear of fire was written in the deepest strands of human DNA, and while vampires might consider themselves a higher evolution, they were still human at the core.
And so Sorley fought fire, not magic. He rolled on the wet ground and raised his arms to the pouring rain, to no effect. Quinn’s power was unrelenting, trapping his opponent in a seamless cocoon of flame that slowly turned from agonizing blue to a killing orange that took hold of Sorley and burned away first his clothes and then his skin, blackening his bones while the vampire lord still lived. Quinn watched longer than he should have, relishing Sorley’s torment, even while recognizing the cruelty of it and knowing it made him less human. But then, he wasn’t human any longer. He was Vampire.
Finally, he walked over to the blackened mass that had been Sorley and, reaching through a fire that had no power to harm him, he plucked the vampire lord’s heart from between his crumbling ribs. Holding the beating heart in his hand, he dug deep within himself and brought forth a final reservoir of power, a pure, white flame so bright that it cast everything around it into shadow. Quinn cloaked Sorley’s beating heart in that flame, until it, too, blackened and disintegrated into ash, to be washed away by the cleansing rain.
Quinn didn’t notice when the rest of Sorley’s body dusted into nothingness. He slumped to the ground as his magic was sucked back into his body, compressing it into a hot core that was always there, but lay quiescent for now, seeming as exhausted as he was. He welcomed the cold rain, his eyes closed, every muscle loose with relief that the battle was over. And he’d won. He was the Lord of Ireland, ruler of all her vampires.
He smiled despite his weariness and gathered his strength to stand, when a force heavier than any he’d ever encountered crashed into him, slamming him back to the ground as a thousand voices all crying out as one o
verwhelmed every sense he possessed.
“Quinn!”
He heard Eve calling his name, heard her arguing with Garrick who was holding her back. What the hell was . . . oh right. The damn territorial mantle. Forcing himself to focus amidst the cacophony of screaming demands, he insulated himself from the others, the vampires who were now his to defend and protect, vampires who relied on his strength for their very lives. This was the burden that came along with the power of being a vampire lord.
Pulling his awareness back until their demands were a unified hum, instead of a thousand or more unique voices, he gathered his strength and said quietly, “Enough. I’m here. Ireland is safe. Go back to your lives, and . . . shut up.” He added that last in utter exasperation with their whining. Fuck.
He opened his eyes and looked up, meeting his cousin’s gaze with a nod that said, “We did it.” Garrick grinned and released Eve, who raced over and caught Quinn when he would have toppled over, what little strength he’d had after the battle having been consumed by the struggle to subdue his new subjects.
Eve’s arms felt good around him. She was his humanity. Her heart beat strongly, blood pumping beneath warm, soft skin, as she murmured love and encouragement, stroking him as one would an injured child. The image made him grin as she struggled to help him stand. He was a foot taller and far too heavy, but that didn’t stop her. Nothing stopped his Eve when she set her mind to it. Not even physics.
Garrick and Adorjan stepped in to help, dragging him back to his feet, half-carrying him back to their rickety car while Eve held his hand.
“The pilot wants to wait out this weather,” Garrick told him from the front seat, when everyone was finally back inside. Quinn’s head rested on Eve’s shoulder in the backseat, her arm around him, her soft breasts pressing against his arm. “He says he can fly, but he’d rather not. And Sorley’s house is empty. We can hang there in the meantime.”
Quinn laughed. “It’s my house now.”
His cousin and Adorjan both joined the laughter, but Eve said, “Wait. Won’t his heirs get—”
“Not in the world of vampires,” Quinn told her, hearing his words slur with exhaustion. “What was his is now mine. And that includes everything.”
“Ugh. Even that awful Donnybrook house? You’re not going to live—”
“No,” he said around a yawn. “Later,” he mumbled, his eyes closing. He was aware of Eve kissing his forehead, and then nothing.
Chapter Fifteen
Ballsbridge, Dublin, Ireland, six months later
QUINN STOOD ON the narrow balcony outside his office window, watching as the high wall between his house and the next was demolished. The huge, yellow backhoe was relentless, smashing into the wall, section by section, until it was nothing but a pile of concrete blocks. A second machine joined in on the destruction, gathering up huge loads of the concrete and hauling it over to a big dump truck, which would take the debris . . . somewhere. Away. That’s all Quinn cared about. The job was noisy and dirty, and Quinn kept telling himself it would all be worth it. He’d wanted more space between him and his neighbors, and he’d needed more room—more sleeping quarters, more living space for his growing crew of vampires and guards. So, he’d made an offer that was too generous for the owners to refuse, and now the neighboring house was his.
“Are you standing out here again?” Eve’s teasing voice was accompanied by the sweet scent of her perfume, as she slid under his arm, and put her head on his shoulder. “It’ll be okay, baby. A few more days, and you won’t know the wall was ever there.”
“Uh huh. And then they’ll start renovations on the house. More noise and destruction.”
She laughed. “Come on. It’s cold and wet out here, and this stupid balcony is going to collapse. It’s not even a real balcony, you know.”
Quinn tightened his arm around her and turned them both back into his office. “So you keep telling me. You should probably stay inside anyway. The cold’s bad for your aging joints.”
She pulled away and punched his ribs. He barely felt it, but he made an “oophing” noise for her benefit.
“Enough with the aging jokes!” she scolded. “How was I supposed to know your blood was a fountain of youth?”
Quinn pulled her against his chest, and twisted his hand in her long hair. Tugging her head back, he demanded a kiss. Her mouth opened beneath his, her lips soft and warm, her tongue tangling eagerly with his. “You know I love you, don’t you, Eve?” he asked against her lips.
“I know,” she whispered.
“And you know, if you leave me, you’ll immediately shrivel up like a leaf in winter.”
Her laughter spilled into his mouth, lightening his soul. “You’re awful.”
“But you love me anyway.”
“Aye. I do love you.”
“We should get married, then.”
Eve’s brown eyes were suddenly shiny with tears. “Was that a proposal, Lord Quinn?”
“It was.”
“Then, I say, ‘yes.’”
Epilogue
Somewhere in the Highlands of Scotland
“IT’S CONFIRMED,” Fergus McRae said. “Auld Lord Erskine won’t admit it, but the American, Quinn Kavanagh, defeated Sorley of Ireland. Dusted him complete is what I heard. Washed away in a rain storm like yesterday’s dirt.”
He spoke in a subdued tone, as they all did. The house where the three vampires sat around a simple wooden table was safe ground. It had been in the McRae family for generations upon generations. But they’d been born and bred in the Highlands. Long before they’d become vampires, they’d been fed superstition along with their mother’s milk. And one never knew who was listening on the wind.
“Who’s yer source?” It was Lachlan, the largest among them, who asked the question, though he spoke softly enough. Dark in body and soul, his power was a humming presence beneath the skin, always there, waiting to pounce. If they were going to fight for Scotland’s vampires, it would be Lachlan who’d lead the challenge to become the next Scottish vampire lord.
“’Twas Taskill who told me,” Fergus responded. “But I don’t need a source to know Sorley’s gone. I can feel it in my bones.”
“Aye, we all felt something,” Munro agreed. He was the third of their number. “Quinn’s rightly the new Irish lord, but, even so, I heard it was Raphael’s support that made the difference.”
“Oh, aye, going in, maybe,” Fergus agreed. “But even Raphael would nae interfere in a territorial battle. This Quinn guy had to have won it on his own.”
Silence then, as the fire crackled, and they all contemplated the territorial changes so close on their own borders. Once again, it was their leader, Lachlan, who broke the silence. “What does that mean for us?” he asked quietly, his voice almost lost in the wind pounding the walls. “Must we reach out to Raphael, as well? Is he now the arbiter of vampire challenges worldwide?”
The others frowned at the idea. Vampires were a fiercely independent lot, violently territorial. It didn’t sit well that anyone outside Scotland would tell them who should rule.
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Fergus said. “But I’m thinking it couldn’t hurt to reach out. Casual like.”
“Right,” Lachlan agreed somberly. A deep frown marred his broodingly handsome face. “Fuck. You think he’s listed in the phone book?”
They all laughed at the ridiculousness of that, then Fergus brightened. “I think I can get a number for that mate of his, Cynthia Leighton.”
Lachlan gave him a glance that carried all sorts of meaning, most having to do with what a bad idea that was. “It’s probably not wise to cozy up to Raphael’s lover,” he said, just in case his cousin hadn’t gotten the non-verbal message.
“Oh, aye, and I was born yesterday,” Fergus responded. “I’m not cozying up t
o anyone. You’re forgetting our wee cousin Catriona, and that fancy French school she went off to. And who do you think was there at the same time?”
“Leighton?” Lachlan asked, suddenly intent.
“The same.”
They all straightened in their chairs, as if understanding that this one moment could change their lives forever. They looked from one to the other, each of them nodding in turn.
“It’s time, lads,” Lachlan said. “Let’s do it.”
To be continued . . .
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Quinn Page 35