Chapter 2
CHAPTER
TWO
Rolf waited until he heard the explosion. He waited a little bit more, until the sound of hissing lessened. After a reasonable pause, hoping the poison had settled, he shifted the bodies off him and stood.
Around him, several corpses had been reduced to ash, some to goo. Yet he remained in one piece, so he had that going for him.
Covered in blood and guts wasn’t a look he was going for, though. He grimaced at the sticky mess in his hair. But it would have to do until—
Rolf spotted what the battle horn had summoned. And my second uh-oh of the day.
Two massive slay lords approached. Though not many creatures in the five realms could give vampires a true challenge, slay lords were an exception.
Ten feet tall, made of dark hide difficult to penetrate without steel or the right magic, and impervious to flame, they had massive upper bodies and shorter legs and moved on all fours like gorillas.
Their teeth were sharp for rending, their hands and feet as tough as stone.
They didn’t need claws because they used brute strength to rip apart prey.
They especially enjoyed feasting on fresh entrails.
Rolf thought them delightful…when aimed at someone else.
“Kill him,” their master, a red-skinned administrator by the sight of those tiny horns, commanded.
The beasts screamed and rushed him.
Behind them, Varu appeared, seeming to step out of the shadows. “Rolf, quit playing around. We need to go.”
Rolf barely missed getting his head ripped off. Then one of the creatures knocked into him. He flew several feet, only stopping when he hit a wall.
Hard.
His spine cracked. “Ow.”
One of the slay lords grinned, showing sharp fangs. “Meat.”
Great. He’d found an intelligent pair.
Before the other slay lord could smash his brains in, Rolf rolled free and stumbled back. “Playing around?” he growled at Varu when the beast screamed its frustration.
Despite his annoyance with his patriarch, Rolf couldn’t help seeing the humor in it. Especially when the administrator tried to attack the strigoi.
Varu of the Night Bloode wore black trousers and a dark, button-down shirt. A strigoi, previously of the Crimson Veil clan, he now commanded the Night Bloode, serving as Rolf’s patriarch. Which meant Rolf had to obey him.
And he did…when he felt like it.
Several aspects set Varu apart from other vampires.
One, he commanded a clan filled with vampires from all different tribes, which should have been impossible, even with divine interference.
Two, he’d killed his own father and become a master vampire, which was unheard of even for a vampire of Varu’s thousand years of living.
And three, he commanded the mythic Bloode Stones.
The sixth Bloode Stone was the reason for this sojourn into literal hell. Alas, it didn’t seem as if Varu had found it while Rolf played bait. Varu, though stone-faced, seemed annoyed.
When the stupid devil reached for him, Varu disappeared in a blur, as if teleporting to another spot. Rolf knew he just moved faster than even a vampire’s eye could track. Varu stood to the side, and the administrator’s head slid from his body, a look of confusion perpetually stamped on his face.
The slay lords, now freed from their master, converged on Rolf again.
“We need to go,” Varu insisted in a voice as cold as ice.
“Missing your wife?” Rolf asked as he drew powerful runes in the air. “Simp.”
“My mate,” Varu corrected. “And so what if I am?”
Rolf dodged the beasts, who ran into each other. He still didn’t understand all his kin finding mates. But whatever. As long as that puzzling affection for another stayed far away from him, he’d accept their eccentricities.
Imagine falling in love. He laughed out loud and pointed a finger at the closest beast.
It lit up with an unholy glow, a blaze of ice that burned it from the inside out until the slay lord froze to death. Rolf didn’t hesitate and launched the frozen monster at its friend. It shattered upon impact into bits of frozen gore.
Rolf leaped onto the living slay lord and tore into it while it flailed. He moved too fast to be crushed by the beast. Too fast for any fun, honestly.
“I wish you wouldn’t rush me,” he told Varu, annoyed, as he was forced to belay any torture and simply dig through the tough hide until he found the thing’s heart. Wrenching it free, he considered the beast’s body. It still pulsed with a vibrant energy that faded as death settled into it.
Rolf stole its eyes as well, tucking all the fresh organs into a magical sack he hid away in a pocket dimension, where he stored all his treasures.
“Disgusting.”
“I’m not going to eat them,” Rolf said, offended.
Varu sighed.
“I’m going to give the eyes to Val.”
Valentine Darkmore, a human now mated to the most arrogant of all Rolf’s kin, the reaper. Reapers practiced necromancy, which made Khent’s mating to a human necromancer appropriate.
Rolf had found Khent amusing before. But the guy could also now shift into a massive black dragon, which Rolf found cool as shit.
Rolf couldn’t get enough time with him, wanting to know all about Khent’s association with the Egyptian goddess of fate and how it felt to breathe fire and swing around a tail.
Giving the slay lord’s eyes to Khent’s mate would put Rolf in good stead with the dickhead.
“What are you up to?” Varu studied Rolf as they made their way out of the dungeon.
“Me? Nothing. I just want to get along with all my amazing kin.”
Varu snorted. “Uh-huh.”
It didn’t escape Rolf’s notice that no one confronted them as they walked out the front door to the keep. Around them, hell beasts and servants, along with several demon knights and retainers, kept their distance.
Varu must have made quite an entrance earlier. So much for being stealthy.
With a disgruntled mutter, Rolf stalked to the portal and under his breath, added a few less than complimentary notes about Varu’s parentage.
“What’s that about the strigoi?” Varu asked, sounding amused. “Something about us being fae-fuckers?”
Truth, as Varu’s mate was fae.
Unfortunately, Varu refused to take offense. He laughed.
Rolf was put out. “Let’s go home. I’m messy.”
Varu grimaced. “Seriously. It looks like you bathed in blood.”
“Fuck off, oh great liege.”
Varu slapped him in the back of the head, then wiped his bloodied hand on his slacks. “Shut up and let’s go.”
They walked through the portal to their home in the mortal plane, back to Mercer Island, Seattle.
Only to find Hecate, their patron goddess, arguing with a vexing god Rolf had been hoping to avoid for a while.
Said god looked at the return party and centered on Rolf. “Ah, son. So glad to see you playing well with others.” Loki chortled like the evil blond bastard he was.
Varu nodded. “Son, eh? That would explain things.”
“I’m not his son,” Rolf snapped. Normally, he did the roasting.
How had things turned around? And now not surrounded by hellish beings, he noticed the blood in his hair and clothes starting to stink.
“Loki, who the hell invited you?” Then he noticed the female he’d somehow managed to overlook.
Of course, he’d been doing his best to forget her since they’d met.
“Who invited the valkyrie to play?” He brightened.
“Or is she here for dinner?” He licked his lips.
Instead of responding in anger or horror, the silver-eyed warrior woman laughed as if he’d told a joke.
“Oh, I can’t wait to make you eat your words, fanger.
” She hefted that big old ax she always carried over her shoulder.
She had the build of a sexy linebacker, all muscle and strength.
But it wasn’t her surprisingly pretty features or toned frame that intrigued him as much as her light gray eyes did.
She had the eyes of a wolf and the hunger to match.
Then she shocked him anew when between one heartbeat and the next, she attacked.
And sliced into his throat with her ax.