His grandfather found his feet and Payne didn’t give him a chance to attack. He launched himself at him, taking him back down and shattering a wooden side table in the process. His grandfather grabbed one of the broken mahogany legs and swung at Payne as he moved astride his legs, pinning him down. Payne growled and blocked it with his left arm, the pain of the blow not registering in the haze of his lust for violence and retribution, and smashed his right fist into the male’s face, cracking his jaw.
Arnaud retaliated, disappearing from beneath Payne. Payne’s senses blared a warning and he rolled forwards. The wooden leg plunged into the floorboards, punching a hole where Payne’s heart would have been. He snarled, got to his feet, and flexed his fingers as his claws extended. His grandfather stood between him and Elissa, brandishing the makeshift stake. Payne assessed his surroundings, eyes darting and searching for any weapons he could use if it came to it. He didn’t want to rely on anything manmade, but it was nice to have a backup plan.
Elissa muttered something dark and unholy, and a black blast shot from her trembling hands and slammed into Arnaud’s back, sending him flying across the room towards Payne. Payne ducked and threw himself forwards, under his grandfather, and rolled to his feet in front of Elissa. Tears streaked her pink cheeks and swam in her eyes, and the way they met his, the need that shone in them, filled him with an urge to gather her in his arms. He wanted to go along with that and give her what she needed, wanted to hold her and whisper that she was safe now and he would never allow anyone to harm her ever again because she was his to protect, but now wasn’t the time.
Arnaud grumbled and got to his feet at the other end of the room. Payne turned to face him. His grandfather brushed the plaster dust off his dark crimson shirt and fixed him with a black look. He had lost his weapon when Elissa had blasted him with magic.
Payne flexed his fingers again and drew in a deep steadying breath. His blood screamed for him to kill this man for what he had tried to do to his mate but he fought to tamp down that black urge, knowing that if he succumbed to it that he would have the whole den after him. Elissa would be in more danger, and he had already put her in the path of angry witches. He didn’t need to throw enraged incubi into the mix too.
Elissa moved behind him. His grandfather stood before him, eyes swirling darkest gold and blue. If Payne could see his fae markings, they would be as black and red as his own were.
“Are you alright?” he said thickly to Elissa, his voice tight and dark, gravelly.
“I think so... I don’t know... I’m scared.”
Payne already knew that but her admission tightened his chest and darkened his heart. He would kill his grandfather for daring to touch her. No, he wouldn’t. He had to keep a level head. He would get what they had come here for and then they would get the hell away from this place and he would never see his wretched grandfather again.
The vampire side of him snarled at that, outraged that he was planning to leave this male alive. He had dared to assault his mate. He had frightened her, threatened her, hurt her. He deserved nothing less than death. A slow, terrible, painful death.
Payne growled, his top lip curling back to flash his fangs at Arnaud.
The incubus stared him down, no trace of fear showing on his face, but Payne could feel it in his blood, a rich tang that hung in the air and enticed him to sever his control and unleash Hell on this disgusting beast before him.
He drew in another breath, deeper this time, and tried to expel his darker needs, focusing on the woman behind him and his desire to protect her. If he fought again with his grandfather, there was no telling how it would turn out. He had ended up with Arnaud close to her once already. If it happened again, Payne had no doubt that the male would use Elissa as a shield. He couldn’t let that happen. He had to be Elissa’s shield against this man. He had to protect her.
“It’s okay now, Sweetheart. I won’t let him near you.” He kept his back to Elissa but reached behind him. A comforting rush of heat streaked through him when she placed her delicate hand in his and he closed his fingers, gently holding it and feeling her trembling. His heart took her quick response as a good sign, a gift of hope that when all this was over, he wouldn’t be alone in this world.
“My grandson, I presume?” Arnaud straightened to his full height and stared across the room at him, accents of gold and blue swirling in his dark grey eyes.
Payne had to wonder how he could doubt they were related when they looked so alike. Was this what he would have looked like by now if it weren’t for his vampire genes? He was aware that his dominant vampire side slowed his aging, so he looked far younger than most incubi his age.
He raised his other arm, revealing the markings that tracked along his forearm. Arnaud’s gaze dropped to them and narrowed. That reaction wasn’t only because his markings revealed Payne to be his grandson. It was because Payne’s markings were coloured by hues of black and darkest red, a sign of the fury he held just below the surface, the need to resort to violence and bloody his claws.
“He has the ring,” Elissa whispered and moved closer to him. She clutched his arm in one hand and pointed to Arnaud with the other.
Payne looked down at his grandfather’s hands. The man only wore one ring and it was gold and red, and on his little finger.
He held his hand out. “Give it to me.”
Arnaud shook his head. “I don’t think so. The ring belongs to me.”
Payne released Elissa’s hand and stared the man down. “I said give it to me.”
He didn’t give his grandfather a chance to respond this time. He teleported right in front of him and snatched his hand before he could react. Arnaud wrestled with him but Payne’s vampire genes gave him power and strength far beyond his grandfather’s grasp and he easily twisted Arnaud’s arm around. Arnaud’s only choice was to fall to his knees to avoid Payne breaking his arm and Payne used that moment to yank the ring from his finger.
He released his grandfather and backed towards Elissa, placing the ring on his little finger at the same time. Arnaud stood and stared at him, murder shining in his eyes. Payne knew he wore the same dark look.
“I want to kill you,” Payne growled low, his eyes locked on his grandfather’s. “One wrong move and I will. You dare to look at my mate and I won’t be able to stop myself. I will kill you.”
A soft gasp sounded behind him and he glanced over his shoulder at Elissa where she sat in the middle of the four-poster bed, the green sheets wrapped around her. She had her hands against her chest and the heat in her eyes struck him hard, causing his heart to skip a beat and thump heavily against his ribs. Had she doubted that he saw her as his mate now, his forever? He would have to make his intentions clearer to her later, so she would understand that he was never letting her go and that he belonged to her as much as she now belonged to him.
“Do you know the location of what you’re looking for now?” he said to her and she shook her head. He turned back to his grandfather, crossed the room to him, and grabbed the front of his red shirt. He twisted the material in his fist and dragged Arnaud towards him. “Where is your room?”
Arnaud stared at him in stony silence.
“I said, where is your room? You would do well to answer me this time. I am a man of very little patience and I’m itching for an excuse to draw blood.” Payne flashed his fangs.
“The next floor up, at the far end of the east wing.”
The other end of the house to where they were now. Could they make it there, retrieve what Elissa had come here for, and get out before Arnaud alerted the entire mansion and sent every incubus after them?
He couldn’t teleport there. It was difficult to teleport anywhere unfamiliar, not without risking ending up in a bad way.
Elissa slipped off the bed behind him. Arnaud’s swirling blue and gold gaze slid to her. Payne roared at the sight of desire in his grandfather’s eyes, dark twisted hungers that snapped what little hold he had managed to retain over his urge to
spill blood.
“I warned you not to look at her.” Payne growled, pushed Arnaud backwards and swiped his claws across his throat. Crimson flowed from the deep slashes, spilling down his neck and soaking into his shirt, darkening the already red material.
It drenched Payne’s hand and he released the male. Arnaud collapsed to his knees, gasping as he tried to cover his throat to stem the bleeding. Too late. Payne glared down at him, towering over him, feeling no remorse over his actions. He watched the blood flow from between Arnaud’s fingers, saw his eyes return to grey and the flicker of life in them die, and turned away as he fell.
Elissa stared at him, eyes wide and horrified, her skin as pale as moonlight.
“Come,” Payne said as he crossed the room to her, wiping his hand on his jeans to clean the blood away. He held his other hand out to her. “We must leave.”
“You killed him.” Her beautiful silvery eyes flickered between Arnaud and Payne, the shock in them not subsiding.
“I warned him,” Payne said on a dark snarl, unable to contain his anger. “I told him not to look at you and he did just that.”
“You wanted him dead though... for your mother... for you.”
“Yes.” He wouldn’t lie to her about that. He had wanted Arnaud dead. “But I did not intend to kill him... I would have let him live in order to protect you, so others wouldn’t come after us.”
“Us?” She almost smiled.
His heart missed another beat. “Us... I swear I will not allow anything to happen to you, Elissa. I condemned you with my actions and I will take responsibility and protect you.”
Her face fell and she looked away and busied herself with dressing, tugging on her black halter-top and jeans.
He had said something wrong. Was she angry because he had said he was taking responsibility for what he had done to her, rather than saying that he desired to protect her because he felt something for her and she was his mate? He hadn’t said such a thing because he wasn’t sure she was ready to hear it, not yet.
“Come,” he said again and held his hand out to her. She took it and stepped into his arms. He focused on the floor above, able to teleport to the corridor there and give them a head start. When they had materialised, Elissa pushed out of his arms and raced along the hallway, heading towards the far end.
Whatever Arnaud had taken from her, it was important to her and she wanted it back.
Payne ran behind her, his senses sweeping the rooms, searching for trouble. Some of the bedrooms were occupied but most of the people in them seemed busy judging by the rapid heartbeats and moans he could hear.
Elissa stopped at the far end of the corridor and looked back at him. “Which one?”
Payne slowed to a walk and sniffed, focusing on his grandfather’s scent so he could follow it to the right room. He stopped outside a door one room from the end of the hall. “This one.”
Elissa went to open it and he grabbed her arm. “What?”
Payne focused on the other side of the door. “Someone is in there.”
Arnaud’s current lover? Elissa broke free of him and burst into the room, sobs escaping her. Not fear or sorrow. He couldn’t sense such emotions in her as she ran towards the bed, blocking his view of it. She felt happy.
She rounded the bed and Payne’s eyes widened as she peeled away the dark blue covers and gathered a small boy who looked no older than six in human years into her trembling arms.
This was the item she had lost?
It couldn’t be hers. Payne could sense the boy was an incubus. No markings covered what he could see of the boy’s arms beyond the short sleeves of his charcoal grey t-shirt but they would emerge in a few years, revealing his lineage. Payne didn’t need to see it to know it would be like his own.
His scruffy sandy hair was evidence enough.
“Who does the boy belong to?” he said and stepped into the room.
Elissa looked up at him, her eyes bright with affection even though tears lined her dark lashes. Her chestnut hair fell around her shoulders and the boy in her arms nuzzled it, reached up and sleepily buried his small hand into the wavy locks. His black loose bottoms blended into her halter-top as he curled up against her and murmured something in his sleep.
“He is mine now... he was my sister’s. She gave birth to him and had raised him in secret, moving from one town to the next, forever on the run until the coven finally found her and executed her. I kept my promise to raise him in her stead and I had managed to keep him hidden, but then his father tracked him down.” She held the boy closer to her and looked down at him, and Payne could see the love in her eyes as well as feel it in the remnants of her blood in his body.
He wished she would look at him like that, while feeling emotions so warm and beautiful.
Payne looked at the sleeping innocent in her arms. They were related. His grandfather’s son. His uncle. That didn’t feel right as he looked at the boy, so much younger than he was, new to this dark world and unaware of just what he would become when he matured. A witch had given birth to him, a human, making him a full-blooded incubus, not a half-breed like Payne. The boy would need protecting and teaching. He would need love and Elissa looked as though she would give it to him unconditionally.
He ached inside with the need for her to give that to him too.
“Thank you, Payne,” she whispered and looked up at him through her eyelashes.
He shrugged it off. “We have to go.”
“Where?” Her voice shook now and he knew what she was thinking.
“I will take you somewhere you will be safe and I can protect you.” He was risking a lot by taking her to Vampirerotique but it was the only place he knew and he would only stay there long enough to figure out somewhere else to take her. He would find a safe home for her and the boy.
She rounded the bed and the sight of her struck him hard. She looked beautiful as she carried the boy, gazing upon the sleeping child with love and happiness. Jealousy coiled in Payne’s heart, striking deep with poisoned fangs. He closed his eyes and took hold of her arm, unable to see her without feeling she was never going to give him what he needed from her and that as soon as they were away from here, she would leave with the boy and he would never see her again. She wouldn’t want to keep the child around him. He was barely mate material, let alone father material, and an erotic theatre was no place to raise a child.
Payne focused and teleported them.
Right onto the black stage of the theatre in the middle of a performance.
Fuck.
He must have been thinking about what it would be like for the boy to grow up around the erotic shows and got his coordinates skewed.
The whole theatre froze and the combined focus of over two hundred vampires shifting to him and then to Elissa and the boy sent him off the deep end.
Payne roared at them all.
Red bled over his vision.
The two male and two female performers on stage broke apart, crimson eyes on Elissa. Payne growled a warning at them and then things took a severe downward turn. One of the males moved. Payne tried to go for a flesh wound but the thought of Elissa coming to harm, the thought of someone hurting the boy, had him automatically aiming higher. He swiped his claws in a direct arc across the male’s throat and thankfully the male had fast reactions.
Victor.
Payne hazily recognised the shaven-headed immense elite male.
His claws caught him on the shoulder, digging deep and ploughing through his flesh. Blood spilled fast and thick from the wound. A female shrieked, not on the stage but in the audience. The other male on the stage growled and bore his fangs.
Payne lost it.
He barrelled into the male, taking him down, and punched him hard. The heady scent of blood saturated the air. Elissa’s rapid heartbeat filled his ears, driving him on, urging him to maim and kill, to protect her and her youngling.
A familiar female scent popped into the myriad of smells. Succubus.
&nb
sp; “Payne?” Andreu’s thickly accented voice reached his ears.
Payne shot backwards, growling and snarling at the dark-haired Spaniard, baring his fangs at the same time as he stretched his bloodied arms out, shielding his female.
Andreu moved a step towards him and Chica held him back, her black hair wild and as ruffled as Andreu’s hair, and their clothing too. Half of the buttons on Andreu’s black tailored shirt were undone and the tail hung out of his equally dark trousers. Chica’s strapless purple corset was wonky and her legs were as bare as her feet beneath her short black layered skirt.
They smelled of sex.
Payne growled low again, hunger blasting through him, twin urges, needs he couldn’t deny. The smell of sex and blood filled him with a need to feed, mingling with his need to protect, driving him deeper into his instincts.
“Payne isn’t right,” Chica said and he bore his fangs at her, his focus locking on her now. Weak female. He snarled and the red spots across his vision were joined by blue and gold. “There’s something off about him.”
He moved his feet further apart and lowered himself, breathing hard, his focus diverted by the noises and rapid heartbeats surrounding him. Victor’s blood spoke to him, luring him into feeding his hunger for it. He wasn’t alone now. A female was with him. Clothed in a crimson dress that matched her flame red hair.
She would taste sweeter.
“Payne, talk to us... tell us what is wrong,” Andreu said but the words grated in Payne’s ears and he struggled to make sense of them.
Payne growled his reply but not in English. Panic shot through him, sending a hot prickly wave across his skin.
Chica released Andreu and walked forwards across the black stage. His focus shifted entirely to her. She wouldn’t taste sweet and he didn’t want her near him. He didn’t want her near his female and her youngling.
He snarled a warning at her.
She didn’t heed it. She kept edging towards him. Andreu spoke again, the noise indistinct. Light burst across his eyes from his right. Doors slammed. More scents joined the maddening mixture of them swirling in his mind and his lungs. Stronger scents.
Dark and Deadly: Eight Bad Boys of Paranormal Romance Page 40