Walter stepped inside, and I followed.
Blurs of motion too fast for me to see moved around the room. Blades clashed, and teeth tore. I stayed with Walter.
A black cloak flapped as a vamp with black hair ran up the wall, flipped, and became another streak. The guards, wearing leather pants and nothing else, scuffled with intruders in suits.
Black fur caught my eye by the fireplace. A wolf fought by Bennet’s side. So he was alive—good. The wolf tore into the leg of a vamp that stabbed his knife at Bennet’s back.
The sofa was on its side. The chandelier had crashed down on top of it along with two vamps that had happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Two more vamps ran toward Bennet, knives in hand. I let loose a handful of daggers, striking the back of the suit-wearing dude farthest to the left.
“Up the stairs,” Bennet growled.
Walter seemed to know exactly what his brother meant, and led me through the throng. He used his blade on those who stood in our way. It was all I could do to keep up with his pace.
Down the hall, almost to the stairs we ran. I threw knives at the vamps that attacked the leather-clad stripper dudes. It was the only way to tell who was who.
Vampires clashed all around us. Paintings were torn and knocked to the floor, gashes made to the walls.
“No bullets,” I said, and ducked into an open doorway. A flash of red and black flew through the hall. A sword flew just past my face. It landed blade-first and jammed into the hardwood floor.
“What?” Walter asked.
“They aren’t shooting in the house,” I said.
“Too much risk of friendly fire in close quarters,” he replied.
Walter peeked out, then grabbed my hand and led me to the stairs.
In the upper hall, there was no fighting. Only gun-toting vampires in suits staring at us. Walter grabbed my wrist and pulled me back onto the stairwell. The jolt surprised me, and saved my life.
Bullets peppered the wall exactly where we had been, turning classic ivory and gold wallpaper into a mural of holes and streaked fluorescent blue fluid.
My heart pounded hard within my chest. With vampires it was usually knives, teeth, speed, and strength—not bullets. Those were typically more of a human weapon of choice, including the ultraviolet ones.
Deep voices whispered, and the sound of heavy footfalls told me they were coming.
A big, bald guy charged like a rhinoceros around the corner. With that force he smashed Walter head on, and threw him into the wall. Plaster cracked, or Walter did. The sound made me cringe. The beast threw a punch that Walter dodged, leaving the vamp’s fist stuck in the wall. I took the opportunity and stabbed him in the back. He groaned, and I stabbed again.
One down, lots more to go.
I leaned back against the stairway wall and tried to catch my breath. “What now?” I asked.
“Wait here,” Walter said.
“Walter, no.” It was too late, he was gone down the hallway without me.
BANG. The image of the bodies outside filled my head, charbroiled from head to toe. Panic welled, and caught in my throat. No. Not him. He had to be okay.
The sounds of bodies slamming into walls, of pained groans and bones broken, came from every direction.
I ran after Walter. Screw his instructions, I wasn’t going to wait for him to be shot. Those bullets robbed him of his advantage. One shot could kill either of us.
I stared down the hall in awe. Only Walter was left standing. Vampires lay across the floor, all monster-sized guys in suits. It was a carpet of corpses. Walter had finished them all. I stepped over the first, then another. Okay, not all. The third reached his mangled arm for the machine gun that lay two feet away on the hardwood.
I stepped on his broken wrist, and his hand stopped. He made a gurgling sound when I used all of my weight. Then I sank my blade into the base of his skull, granting him a quick and painless death, before running down the hall, over the rest of the fallen, to Walter.
He stood beside a door I recognized. It was the same room where I’d met the queen.
“Ready?” he asked.
I nodded. I was ready as I could be, though I wasn’t sure what to expect inside. Nothing good.
Walter threw open the bedroom door. Inside was a circle of the same bruiser, gun-toting vamps that we’d found in the hall, all pointing their barrels at Charlie, whose arms were spread wide as he shielded the queen behind him.
The four of us versus the ten of them. Walter was fast. The queen was strong. I had my knives, and Charlie was probably good at something.
Butterflies flapped in my stomach, and I clenched my fist around another batch of daggers. I liked our odds.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Walter
Relief mixed with anger. Evans had made it to Ashley, but at least she and Charles were still alive.
Hostiles surrounded my queen and my progeny. There were ten of them, five I recognized, five I did not. The closest to the door turned his head when we entered—Evans.
He wore a smug look on his face, the same he’d worn when we’d first met. He pressed his pistol to the center of Charles’s chest.
Terror filled my progeny’s eyes.
“Stay where you are, Chapman,” Evans said. He turned his body and switched his attention from Charles to me, aiming the gun at me instead. Good.
I examined the faces of those I did not know, the vampires from New York. Their leader was likely among them, or at least a lieutenant.
“Whatever deal Evans offered you,” I said, “he cannot deliver.”
There. One of the outsiders looked to another. It was he who was in charge, a tall, lean man with skin as dark as night, and a face as hard as stone.
“Tell your men to stand down, and you can still walk away,” I said.
Ashley’s face wrinkled. She did not approve, though she needn’t. When this was done, she could say whatever she chose, do as she wished, just like she always did. We needed an advantage, and beginning a dialog with the New Yorkers was key to destabilizing Evans’s control.
“I can’t do that,” the man said. He stared at me, though his gun remained pointed at the queen.
His verbiage implied it was not a choice. He may have been in charge of the operation, but he was not the leader of his coven.
“I’ve heard enough,” Evans spat, a second before he turned his gun, and pulled the trigger.
BANG.
As soon as I heard the sound, I moved, though I feared that even I wouldn’t be fast enough. Everything happened as if in slow motion, the bullet spiraling toward my progeny, and our queen. If I had to choose which to save, it was an easy choice. Every time I would choose Charles.
Just before impact, I knew it was too late. I wasn’t fast enough.
Ashley turned, shoved Charles to the floor, and lifted her hand into the air in a single sweep of motion.
Waves of invisible force altered the trajectory of the projectile, curving its path away from the queen. And just like that, time righted itself, and a horrible scream filled the room.
Ashley looked at her palms, her face filled with pure delight.
“Sweet,” she said. “Didn’t even know I could do that.”
The New York leader grasped at the hole in his chest as a black crust radiated out and coated his skin. By the time his lifeless body crumpled to the floor, the air in the room had changed. There was no negotiation left, only anger, only a fight.
Violet jumped on Sylvester’s back, and wrapped her arm around his neck. As he struggled, she only tightened her grip. Charles rose to his feet, just in time to get tackled by a man in a suit. Ashley threw vampires on both of her sides toward the walls and away from her.
“Thanks to all your training,” she said, “I’m tops.” She winked at me, then tossed Evans across the room. He smashed into Tyr’s suit of plate armor, which toppled down on top of him.
Sounds of battle filled the bedroom—grunt
s of struggle and cries of pain.
Sylvester slammed Violet into the wall, tried to knock her from his back. I turned to help.
A glimmer of light on metal, and I flicked my head back. A battle axe thrummed as it lodged into the wall behind me.
Violet sat on Sylvester’s back, and pulled his arm unnaturally upward. Cries of pain mixed with clanging metal and shattering ceramic—the breaking of priceless vases.
I locked eyes with the man who’d thrown the weapon at me. He was a foot taller than me, and twice as wide. He let out a fierce battle cry before diving toward the wall for another weapon. He was too slow.
I looked to Violet, kept her within my periphery. She didn’t need my protection. She handled herself expertly, and held down Sylvester with ease.
Content that she was okay, I raced for the vampire with a preference for axes. He grabbed the handle of a second, but not before I reached him. I snapped his neck before he could pull the weapon from its mount.
Charles tumbled on the floor with one of the New Yorkers. I tossed Charles my seax, the gift my sire had bestowed upon me, and watched him finish his fight.
Violet returned to my side, unharmed.
Three of our foes bounced back and forth across the expanse of the large room. Ashley stood by the bed, waving her arms back and forth as she swept them from side to side, crushing Tyr’s armor and knocking weapons free from the walls, shattering artifacts hundreds of years old. One crashed into the stand of a black and white vase from the seventeenth century Quing Dynasty. It wobbled twice before the porcelain shattered to a thousand pieces. I cringed as it hit the floor.
None of the vampires she threw fought any longer, only tumbled lifelessly in a path of destruction.
“They are finished,” I told her.
“That was kinda fun,” Ashley said. She released those she had flung, and they lay still upon the floor. “And super badass. Am I right?” She dusted off her skirt as if it had somehow been touched.
Violet smiled.
“Did you know I could stop bullets?” the queen asked, and elbowed my side.
“No,” I replied.
“I can.” Ashley nodded, pleased with herself, and bounced her blond pigtails. The makeup around her eyes was smeared, though she seemed to like it like that. She appeared composed and unaffected by the attack. She looked just as she always did—jovial in her short skirt, tight shirt, and ridiculous footwear.
The queen looked across the fallen, and to those of us who still stood. Bennet leaned against the doorway, his wolf by his side.
“First story is clear,” Bennet reported.
Ashley nodded. “Great team work to all.”
Movement. It was Evans. Charles pinned him to the floor, and held Evans’s own gun to his chest.
“Wait,” the queen commanded. “He still may know something. I mean, this can’t be it. Kinda pathetic for an attempted coup.”
Maybe I had taught her something after all. This could not be the extent of the New York coven.
“I think it’s pronounced coop,” Charles said.
“That sounds right,” the queen replied.
I gritted my teeth and kept my mouth shut.
“It was the first one,” Violet said.
“Either way,” the queen said. Then she cleared her throat and lifted her chin in the way she liked to do before making a proclamation. “Take him to the dungeon.”
The basement was a space that had never been used before Yeke. He’d had cells built during his rule. No one that had spent time in a cell had ever truly deserved to go, until now.
“Just kill me and get it over with,” Evans snarled.
“Shush, you,” the queen said, then poked his nose with the tip of her finger.
Violet laced her fingers with mine, and I closed my eyes as her warmth soaked in.
“You guys have a dungeon?” she asked. Her blue eyes sparkled, and her cheeks glistened pink. Strands of red hair hung down around her face, fallen from her ponytail, and I wanted more than ever to kiss her. She was so beautiful.
“We are vampires,” I replied.
“Fair enough,” Violet said.
When we left, there was a sense of victory in the air, though I knew the resolution could not be so simple. But if the others were content to consider the loss of so many acceptable, the capture of Evans enough, then so be it. I would not let down my guard. Whatever strike came next, I would be prepared. I’d do my best to make sure the others were prepared, as well. Just not tonight.
I scooped Violet in my arms, and walked through the gate away from the Ulfhednar Estate. After what had happened, it felt a little more like home again. And my distaste for the queen had lessened a little. That in itself was a small victory, but for whom, I was uncertain.
“Walter,” Violet said.
“Yes?”
“I don’t want to go back to my hotel,” she said. “Show me your home, amor aeternus.”
Those words made my chest ache, made the rest of the world disappear, and filled me with a feeling that was foreign to me—hope.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Violet
We didn’t head back toward the city. Instead, Walter whisked me further into the walled grounds. In the blink of an eye, we stood in total darkness.
When my feet touched the ground, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Lights from the manor were gone from view. Only the gentle glow of the moon lit the world, from its hidden place behind thick, fluffy clouds. My eyes slowly began to adjust, allowing me to decipher the outline of Walter’s form.
“After I was first turned,” Walter said, “my sire spent the first few years with me in England.”
I listened to his voice, and leaned against his chest.
“He helped me finish my work,” he said, “brought insight from lands far beyond my imaginings, which helped lead to a cure.”
“After you were turned?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “At first I wasn’t fit to handle the cravings. He helped me through that too. But eventually, there was nothing left for me to do in Edingshire, no one I cared for, so I returned with Tyr to this place.”
“And you lived with him in the manor all of this time?” I asked.
“There were others, vampires who he’d taken in, one other that he’d turned. But my eldest brother died long ago.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“It is part of life,” Walter said.
“And the others, the ones that Tyr took in,” I said. “Did they live with you?”
“For a time,” Walter said. “So long as they needed to. I, too, shared Tyr's roof until I was ready to make my own way,” he said. “When it was time, I built this.”
A gust of wind blew, and I stood alone.
From the darkness came a bright light. I blinked hard.
I hadn’t realized until the lights were on that I was in the center of a garden. All of the best autumn blooms were present—dahlias, black-eyed susans, and crocuses. Tall, manicured bushes, and taller trees surrounded the intimate space. There were leaves of orange and red, blooms white and yellow.
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
I turned and looked to Walter. And I saw it. A small cabin hid in the middle of this secret garden.
“The vegetation has been maintained,” Walter said, “though I have not entered since he was taken.”
Tyr. Of course, how could he stay here when the man who’d taken his sire lived in the home that meant so much? And then there was Ashley King.
“But now,” Walter said, “if you wish to see my home, this is the place that I want to share with you. It’s my home more than any other. And after tonight…”
“You can finally come back,” I said.
“Yes.”
He opened the door, an invitation. I couldn’t take him up on it fast enough.
The floor was a dark wood, with long planks. The ceiling was white, with exposed wooden beams. The walls were painted a gentle cream color, and th
e furnishing was simplistic, yet charming. There was only a small sofa by a large fireplace, and a small table with a lamp on it. Beside the fireplace was a set of large french doors. I peeked through the glass, shielding the light from my eyes with cupped hands. Outside was more of the garden, with a small patio and a single chair.
“Walter,” I said, “it’s wonderful.”
The corner of his lips lifted on one side, gifting me that sexy smile that I loved.
He set his coat on the sofa, and started a fire in the hearth. The wood crackled as the fire grew, and the cold room began to warm.
Walter pulled me close, and I closed my eyes. His chest was hard and cool, his arms strong and comforting around me.
“When I said yes,” I whispered, “I didn’t mean I wanted to be turned only if it would save my life. I meant yes no matter what happened. I mean yes now.”
The more time that passed, the more certain I was. I wanted us to be just like this forever, spend every night together for eternity. As excited as I was nervous, I watched his eyes for clues of what he thought. Dark irises shifted red, and I knew this was it.
His lips were firm yet tender as he kissed me like our lives depended on it. I slid my fingers up his shirt, exploring the hills and valleys of his toned abs. He lifted me, and I wrapped my legs around him. I dropped my jacket, pulled my shirt up over my head, and unbuttoned his. He laid me down on the rug by the fire, and I relaxed back onto the soft fabric.
The air was cold on my bare skin, yet the fire grew, and fought back against the chill of night.
Walter unbuttoned my jeans, and slid them down over my hips, pulling my panties with them. I stared up at the ceiling, to the exposed wooden beams, and let go of everything but the feeling of Walter’s tongue on my thigh.
He kissed my legs, my stomach, my breasts, and scraped his fangs against my collarbone. A chill carried through me, gooseflesh covered my skin.
I pulled him down, wrapped my legs around him, and felt the long, hard ridge of his cock pressed against his fly.
He lowered his pants, and soft skin rubbed against my tender clit.
Hunted: A Vampire Paranormal Romance (Vampires of Scarlet Harbor Book 2) Page 12