I wanted to reach out to comfort them, but I had no hands or limbs with which to do it.
Rage, pure and blinding, exploded to the surface. I didn’t know how in my disembodied state I’d accomplish it, but I was going to hurt their captors.
Anger had become my weapon of choice. It fueled me, gave me the strength and will to fight back. And while I might not have learned how to use this power to its fullest advantage, all I needed was a little time. Problem was time was running out.
Christie gave a low moan and rolled onto her back. Mark and I registered this in the same instant and he let out an audible sigh.
The man driving the van and his accomplice were about to get a frightening taste of the new-and-improved Austin Iverson. Because I realized now how I could make them pay.
Aboard the yacht, Vardoulakis experienced but a glimmer of my rage, as did that Greek youth on the mountainside. Of course, I’d been corporeal in both instances and pumped full of vampire blood. What better time to test the extent of my new skills.
The driver appeared to be my age. An older man rode shotgun. They were arguing in Czech, oblivious to my presence drifting toward the console separating them.
When I began to visualize them beating each other to a bloody pulp, the driver’s head snapped up, his eyes narrowing and fixing on the rearview mirror. He was looking right at me.
He sensed something was there with them, but could see only empty space.
“Slower, you idiot,” the passenger snapped. “You want the authorities to stop us?”
“Relax, old man,” the driver groused, shaking his head as though waking from an unpleasant dream. He rubbed at his nose with the back of his hand and sniffed. It came away with a smear of red, which he wiped on his jeans. “Nothin’s gonna happen.”
My self-satisfied grin faltered. Killing the driver might also kill or seriously injure my friends. Fine. I’d convince him to pull over, and then give him more than a little nosebleed.
“I don’t like this.” The passenger thumbed a gesture back at Mark and Christie. “They’re Americans. Rich ones, too. I can tell.”
The driver sneered. “With rich families who’ll pay big American dollars to get them back.”
The old man folded his arms and looked over at the younger driver. “They will never see their families again. The one following us,” he said, tightening his arms across his chest. “He will not let them go. Did you see his eyes, Ivan? There is no soul in him.”
The driver glanced at the side view mirror at the pair of headlights following us. His self-assuredness evaporated. “Quiet down, old man. We have a job to do.”
No need to guess who was traveling in the car behind us. At the mere thought of his name I found myself wrenched from the van and deposited at the feet of a grinning Haemon.
He leaned forward to sniff the air. “I know you are there, little incubus…”
I scrambled up and away from him, bracing my back against the car door, but he was quicker and lunged in my direction, hands curled into claws that found my throat.
Incorporeal they may have been, but my own hands shot up to stop him.
“Now, now,” he said. “I have my own set of special powers to show you…”
Hands pounded and tore at my forearms. “I cannot breathe!”
Haemon and the auto’s dark interior dissolved around me. I was once again in the quiet, Athenian street, my hands firmly locked around something warm and pliant. A throat. I was crushing the windpipe beneath it and the young man’s face was turning purple, his eyes rolling upwards into their sockets. Horrified, I released my grip.
Niko gasped for air and rolled coughing onto his side.
I scooped him up from the sidewalk and he sagged against my chest, his body trembling. Drawing him closer, I was never more thankful—or guilty—to see anyone in my life.
“Please tell me you’re okay!” He nodded through another bout of coughing. “What in the hell are you doing out here?”
“Heard you leave. Followed.” A ring of bruises was already beginning to darken his throat. “When you fell…” He reached up to touch my face. “It is not your fault. You did not know.”
Niko’s skin still smelled of our recent lovemaking and I couldn’t resist burying my nose in the crook of his neck. I squeezed my eyes shut and let the sensation of his touch and scent wash over me. This was the danger, would always be the danger, if I allowed a relationship between us to grow. If I couldn’t learn to control my newfound strength, no one, Niko included, would ever be truly safe around me.
No, I reminded myself. The immediate danger was sitting on our asses when we should be running like the Devil was after us, because he really was!
“There’s no good way to say this.” I held Niko gently away from me, struggling to push back the Hunger that rose too easily in me. “We’re in trouble. Haemon is in Athens.”
His eyes widened. “But how did he find—”
“I don’t know, but we’re too exposed out here. We gotta move. Right now.”
The hotel was a good mile or so behind us. When I stopped to consider that we were also dealing with an immortal who could move with inhuman speed, it might as well have been one hundred miles to safety.
“Okay.” Niko moved unsteadily to stand. “I am ready to fight with you.”
How brave he was. I wanted to tell him so, but my body began to thrum with a renewed sense of danger. Haemon was closing in again. So why isn’t he making a move?
To fuck with us, of course. He was a monster who got off on playing sadistic games of cat and mouse before he pounced.
As Niko and I hurried off, I recalled the vision image of Haemon in the back seat of the car. There was nothing pre-recorded about it. It felt completely in the now. Which meant that if he were truly hundreds of miles away in the Czech Republic—at least that was the language the driver of the van and his accomplice had been speaking—how could he also be in Athens?
This reservation didn’t deter my preternatural senses from reaffirming that danger was still very close; I just couldn’t get a bead on its position.
Instinct dictated that we not head back the same way we’d come, and I wasn’t about to argue with it. Urging Niko to move faster, I did everything shy of picking him up and carrying him. At the end of the block, we made a hard right and happened upon a café still open at this late hour. Three people stood talking beneath the glow of its purple neon sign.
I said a little prayer under my breath, but Niko didn’t appear to share my same relief. He pressed in against the line of my body and cast anxious glances between the café and the two men and woman loitering outside it. An instant later, I understood why.
“That is the Fallen Angel,” he whispered.
My entire body tensed and adrenaline shot into my limbs. Niko didn’t have to tell me what kind of patrons frequented the nocturnal haunt, which was why I made certain I stepped around in front of him.
The trio spotted us and stopped talking. Next they closed ranks, blocking any chance of our getting past them on the sidewalk. This was the danger I’d sensed.
The female wore a tight, black-leather skirt and stiletto heels that glinted in the lamplight. Her clingy red top exposed smooth shoulders and her heavily lined eyelids gave the vampire an edgy glam look. I’d have thought her desirable, if she wasn’t primed to kill us.
She exhaled a plume of bluish smoke from blood red lips and flicked her cigarette into the street, sizing me up through narrowed eyes.
The only remarkable aspect to the male standing next to her was his size. He towered over her by at least a good foot and had broad shoulders and a barrel chest.
The third member of the trio, the one who’d been sitting on a parked motorcycle in a black T-shirt and skinny jeans, concerned me more. He grinned at us as he got off his bike, brushing a shock of platinum hair out of his eyes. Menace poured off him in waves. He also looked familiar and shouldn’t have.
“It is Jace!” Niko said. “
An ally to Master Dimitri in the Council.”
The vampire’s lean, punk-rock appearance screamed troublemaker, and I could see that he was enjoying the fact that he’d instilled fear in us. “Niko, stay behind me.”
“But we are okay now. Jace is—”
“Just do it, okay.”
He did so without further protest. A wise move, because we were a couple of county lines over from safe. Everything about Jace & Company told me that we’d stumbled from one deadly spider’s parlor smack dab into another, a thought which caused the female to smirk.
I brought down shields to shut them out.
Then there were only two vampires advancing on us.
To Niko it must have appeared as though the stocky vampire simply vanished. Too fast for human eyes to register, I saw him dart out into the street and run past us.
A cursory glance over my shoulder confirmed that he was now standing on the sidewalk some thirty paces behind us.
“Our leader has been expecting you,” the female said in a heavy Greek accent.
Jace took several more steps in our direction, his counterpart behind us matching him.
A pack of wolves, I thought, moving in for the kill.
“I do not understand why Jace is acting this way,” Niko said against my back.
“I do.” Because I now recognized exactly where I’d seen him before. He’d cruised me in the Prague sex club, the guy leaning against the wall outside the room in which Haemon had raped me. This was Haemon’s henchman. “Get down, Niko!”
Fury and fear collided inside me, igniting a different kind of rage, as the trio rushed us.
A pulse of energy leapt off the surface of my skin and shot outwards, knocking the female on her ass. The larger vampire behind us had fallen to his knees, a dazed look in his eyes. Only Jace appeared less astonished by what had just happened. He glared at me from his crouched position near his bike, his face a mask of pure hatred, his body primed for the attack.
About to give him another taste, the door to the Fallen Angel burst open and my focus slipped. All that newfound firepower churning beneath my skin cooled.
Dimitri Ravello strode toward us, the look in his eyes indignant. “I see you have learned a new trick.”
“No thanks to you,” I said breathing hard. My new trick had drained me. “These thugs—”
“Trusted allies. Sent here to guard you. Both of you.” He cast a heated glance at Niko, who pushed back up to his feet but sensibly remained behind me.
Recovered from my smack-down, the female offered me a reproachful stare, her companions coming to stand on either side of her once more.
“Don’t bet on that,” I said, motioning toward the blond biker.
Jace snorted a laugh. “Whadya know. The demon ‘ere ain’t so wanker after all, yeah?”
Dimitri didn’t get a chance to question the Cockney, because the night came alive with the hissing rush of black-swathed figures descending from the rooftops of neighboring buildings.
I counted six positioned at key points to the rear and sides of us, the only possible retreat being the Fallen Angel. That was when a seventh figure landed between Niko and me and the door to its whitewashed façade.
Dimitri went very still, scrutinizing the dark shapes surrounding us. They were playing the shadows, their faces concealed behind fitted masks.
“Council assassins?” I asked him, my body on full combat readiness.
“Worse.”
The large male vampire and his female companion edged closer to Dimitri, Niko, and me in a protective maneuver. Only the biker isolated himself, a smug furl to his lips.
“Jace, what have you done?” Dimitri demanded.
“Stopped takin’ orders from a bloody turncoat,” he snarled back.
One of the seven figures slinked forward, its feline walk and curves unmistakably female. Stepping into a pool of yellow light from the streetlamp above, she removed her mask and let her hood fall back. She shot Dimitri a wicked smile.
“Was he too much of a coward to face me in person?” he said.
“He’s busy preparing for our guest.” Kassandra glanced over at me, her exotic beauty incapable of camouflaging the coldness within.
“Elsa,” she called out to the other female vampire. “You and Adrian either stand with us or against us. The choice is yours.”
The barrel-chested vamp moved closer to Elsa’s side. I was beginning to like these two a whole lot better.
“Cazzi vostri—Your fucking problem,” Kassandra said with a chilling smile.
Dimitri sprang into action and charged his sister, but Kassandra anticipated his move and lifted into the air with all the agility of an acrobat. Using supernatural speed, she landed behind him, extracting something thin and gleaming from beneath her sleeve.
The flash of pain in Dimitri’s eyes turned to raw fury. “You have made your choice, sister. I shall show you no mercy.”
She laughed at this.
Then the once quiet street erupted into a flurry of black shapes brandishing similarly polished weapons and moving in to join the fight.
When an assailant rushed Elsa, she spun around to deliver a powerful kick, driving a stiletto heel into her attacker’s heart. The masked figure cried out, a torrent of blood and silver mist spewing out of the hole she’d made in his chest. The scene reminded me of a mini atomic blast, the vampire exploding outward from within a bloated cloud of light, until all the bits and pieces of his body drew back in toward the center. Once the light faded, he was gone.
Now I knew how a vampire could die.
I rushed to get Niko out of the line of fire and was knocked to my ass by another attacker. Attempting to stand, I had to duck to avoid a second lethal kick by Elsa, her leg whizzing past me in a great whoosh and connecting with the jaw of my assailant. Seconds later, I felt the heat blast against my back from his incinerated body.
Niko helped me up, and we both scooted back against the wall of the Fallen Angel. I was eager to join the fight, but didn’t dare leave him unprotected.
Adrian, the burly vampire, seized Kassandra from behind and put her in a chokehold. She struggled against him and he wrapped one leg around hers for stability, bending her backwards at a painful angle in order for Dimitri to deliver the killing blow.
She was too quick, though, and thrust her dagger backwards into his gut.
Twisting in his grip, she jerked the knife blade up and into his heart. The bloody explosion of heat and light propelled her into Dimitri and they both hit the pavement in a tangle of arms and legs. Here was my chance to crush Kassandra with my own brand of supernatural mojo.
I focused all my concentration on re-summoning my newest trick, which was when I felt Niko yanked out from behind me.
Elsa scrambled away from the imploding remains of another of Kassandra’s henchmen, leapt into the air to grab hold of the awning above the door to the Fallen Angel, twisted her body sideways, and then used both deadly stilettos to drive home her message to Niko’s abductor—one to the eye, the other to his heart.
Niko and I dropped to the sidewalk and covered our heads to avoid the scorching discharge from the immolating vampire. Once the air cooled, I glanced up but was too late to get out a warning to Elsa. Jace and two others had descended upon her.
I wanted to help her, but that meant leaving Niko vulnerable to attack.
“How can you do this to us?” Elsa demanded as she fought to free herself.
Jace approached her and cradled her face in both hands. “I’d ask the same of you, luv.”
She parted her lips to speak and he rotated her head violently. It twisted clean away from her body in a spray of dark, shiny liquid that spewed from the severed stump of her neck and rained down her chest onto the leather skirt. Her decapitated remains slumped to the pavement in a flash of red chromium light.
There was no time to mourn her loss. Jace and the two assassins had surrounded us.
The punk vampire lifted into the air with such spe
ed that even I could scarcely follow his trajectory. It was just the distraction his cohorts needed to tear Niko from my arms.
Time slowed to a crawl. I could either sit there and die or fucking react to save Niko’s life and, with any luck, my own in the process.
Then the vamps did something foolish and so very human. They pummeled me to the pavement and began kicking and beating me. They wanted to make my suffering last.
So I curled into a tight ball and called upon that same new energy I’d used earlier.
It answered me in the form of a body-shuddering cry that sent a shockwave of energy radiating outward from my core. It collided with my assailants and hurtled them up and backwards into the night air. The force was so great that it triggered car alarms and shattered windows in the neighboring buildings, the falling glass a lethal downpour.
I half-dove, half-rolled into the doorway of the Fallen Angel in time to avoid a large pane that shattered several feet away. Smaller fragments struck my exposed skin but didn’t penetrate too deeply. My attackers weren’t so lucky.
One of them had nearly been bisected at the waist and lolled on the ground like a turtle trapped on its back, a sea of glittering red glass strewn around him. The second henchman was in almost as dire a state, his severed arm twitching beside him while blood gushed up from a nasty gash in his upper thigh.
I’d missed an opportunity to kill Jace. No way in hell was I about to let this one escape me.
I reached over and snatched up one of Elsa’s silver-tipped stilettos from the pavement. Pushing up to my feet, I stalked over to the bisected vampire with steely resolve.
The bloodsucker glared up at me in a pathetic and useless attempt at retaliation. I offered him an icy smile in response, letting him both see and feel the full weight of my hatred for him and how very much I was going to enjoy ending his life.
His injured cohort tried to claw at my ankle with his remaining hand, but I kicked it away.
I crouched down next to the first vamp and raised the stiletto high above my head. His indignation quickly transformed to all out fear, which was when I drove the shoe’s silver tip down onto the monster’s chest and felt the lethal sliver of metal pierce his heart.
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