Chapter 3 Vin
CHAPTER 3: VIN
“Why didn’t you wake me?” Angel muttered.
His voice, emerging from the blankets of the bed, was cutely bleary from the deep sleep he’d been in before Vin had silently entered the cabin. He was impressed the shifter had roused, given how little sound he’d made. Angel was clearly experienced and probably close to a century old with how he could hold his own with Vin.
“You looked like you needed your beauty sleep,” Vin said, perching on the edge of the bed and letting his eyes trail down Angel’s bare skin where the sheet had slid down.
He’d been right. Angel’s chest had just the right amount of curled hair to run his fingers through. He had a sexy tattoo above his heart, too. A stylised image Vin guessed represented the family he’d lost. Vin bit his lip as he stared, entranced, at the way Angel’s nipples were tightening in the cool morning air. Or maybe because of Vin’s inspection? One could hope.
Angel rolled away from him out of bed, and he was disappointed to see the man had put on sweatpants before he went to sleep. It was a crime to cover up such perfection, though the grey fabric wasn’t doing much to hide his morning wood.
“Need some help with that?” Vin offered, not bothering to hide where he was looking.
Angel growled and yanked a shirt over his head. “Sounds like you’ve already made your way through half my pack. No, thank you.”
“Are you slut shaming me, Angel? I thought you shifters were all about touching and pack with benefits,” Vin said, lying down in the delicious warmth Angel had left behind and placing his hands behind his head so his top rode up. Vampires ran much cooler than shifters or humans, and the heat felt amazing. Angel’s Alpha was the only one in his pack Vin had slept with, but he didn’t need to tell him that.
“That’s different,” Angel grumped as he headed for the kitchen.
Vin scoffed but dropped it, indulging himself in closing his eyes for a few moments of rest while Angel clattered around the kitchen.
“Anything interesting show up last night?” Angel asked once he’d settled at the dining table with toast and coffee.
Vin stretched his arms up, arching his back until it cracked, before sitting up to face the shifter. Angel was holding a piece of toast halfway to his mouth, his gaze locked on Vin’s torso.
“My eyes are up here,” Vin teased.
Angel let out another growl and turned his focus firmly on his food.
“Nothing of note,” Vin said, answering his earlier question.
The ring of Angel’s phone broke through the awkward silence that settled between them .
“Alpha,” Angel said in greeting.
Vin could just make out the conversation, but Angel had the volume turned right down, probably to avoid supernatural eavesdroppers. So, naturally, he sauntered over and dropped himself onto Angel’s lap to hear better.
“What the fuck—” Angel said, before hurriedly apologising. “Sorry, Alpha. Not you. Vin is being… difficult.”
Marco’s familiar laugh rang out from the phone. “I put you there because I thought you were the least likely to fall for his charms, Angelo. Have you succumbed already?”
Vin leaned forward and spoke into the phone, which had the added bonus of bringing his lips very close to Angel’s. “Hi, Sugar. It’s been a while. Remind me—how long did it take you to succumb?”
Angel growled and unceremoniously shoved him to the floor a moment later. Vin flipped himself back to his feet with a chuckle as the shifter turned his body away and pretended to ignore him.
“Vin needs to chase down some leads in the city to figure out who’s behind this. Is it safe to come in?” Angel asked, his voice sounding strained.
“Give it a couple of days. Kyan’s still got people everywhere,” Marco said.
Vin sighed. He doubted there’d be any evidence left by the time the shifters agreed to a city day trip. “Marco. Sugar. I’m grateful to have somewhere safe to sleep, but it’s literally my job to be invisible. I’ll be fine.”
“Grab the spark plugs out of the truck so he can’t leave without you, Angelo. I’d hate to find him in one of Kyan’s warehouses. I have an annoying soft spot for him,” Marco said.
“What kind of soft spot?” Angel asked, voice too neutral to be convincing.
Marco laughed again, but there was an edge to it this time. “ That’s twice this week you’ve wanted to challenge me, Angelo. Watch yourself. We’ll pretend you’re asking so you don’t step on my toes, though. Rest assured, I have no desire to jump back into bed with our charming assassin, as talented as he is.”
Vin snorted. “As if it was an option. I don’t do repeats and we didn’t even use a bed,” he told Marco, before turning to Angel and patting his cheek. “Cute that you’re jealous, though, Angel. I’m going to take a nap. Wake me when something interesting happens.”
The rest of the day passed much the same, with the two of them switching out between the cabin and patrolling the grounds. The waiting sucked, but Dar had told him to stay put, the same as Marco. Vin was willing to give it an extra day for the hunt to calm down.
It was three in the morning when they struck.
Vin had been calling his contacts to figure out where to start with his hunt and the first he knew of trouble was Angel’s bone-chilling howl echoing through the night from somewhere outside. Don’t ask him how he knew it was Angel’s. He just did. He was moving before he’d even processed the sound, grabbing a rifle and jumping to pull himself up through the ceiling hatch into the defensive position on the roof he’d found the day before. Clever design hid the way the almost flat roof met with the walls to create a solid steel perimeter of cover broken by a series of sniper holes. The perfect place to watch the surroundings and deal with any attackers.
Taking a deep breath, he lined up his sight and exhaled slowly as he took three quick-fire shots into the darkness. His finger was a gentle caress on the trigger as each shot smacked dead centre between a vampire’s eyes. Too fast for even their supernatural speed to avoid. The bullets were specialised rounds designed to cause maximum trauma and release silver nitrate into the wounds. His targets wouldn’t be getting back up unless they had some serious age and healing power. He didn’t feel the slightest bit of remorse. Anyone stupid enough to come after him knew what they were in for.
As he scanned the darkness, he was aware of Angel taking out another two of their would-be ambushers, slipping between the trees half-shifted to slash their throats with his claws. It was messy but effective. Angel was good. And with a little luck, one of them would heal enough to be questioned when they were done.
A scatter of tapping sounds on the roof beside him had him looking down.
“Fuck.”
He threw himself over the side just in time to miss the worst of the grenades that had landed beside him. It wasn’t fast enough to avoid the blast that slammed him back first into the dirt road of the clearing, cracking several ribs and gifting him a concussion courtesy of a stray rock he didn’t want to think about. The crunch of bone when he landed had been something else. He’d heal. But in the meantime, it was making it very difficult to get to his feet.
Dammit. He was not going down from a fall, of all things. Even if it had been off a roof propelled by explosives. How embarrassing.
In perfect coordination, the two attackers converged on his position before he’d done more than roll to his side. Vin braced himself to dodge the bullets he knew were coming, hoping his compromised speed would be enough as he kept the two men in his blurred vision. These guys were here to kill, not capture.
“Touch him and I will fucking end you,” Angel growled from nearby.
Maybe that concussion was worse than he thought, because Vin literally swooned. He could kill these fuckers himself, of course. But who didn’t want their man to threaten murder for them? No one had ever done that for him. There had been a weird connection between him and Angel from the moment they’d met, but it was as he lay on the dirt there he decided he wouldn’t give up until he’d had a taste of him. He’d always been impulsive. He’d have died long ago if he didn’t follow his instincts—hard and immediately. Those instincts were currently screaming at him to reach out to a certain shifter when they should’ve been a bit more concerned with the two men still trying to kill him.
“Awww… puppy. I knew you cared,” he said, voice slurring.
The snick of a finger on a trigger had him jerking to the side. A shower of dirt hit his face when the bullet slammed into the ground close enough to graze his ear. He kept moving in a jerking stop-motion that was nothing like his usual fluidity as two more shots fired against the backing track of Angel’s snarl.
Then there was silence.
He must’ve lost consciousness for a second because the next thing he felt was a damp snout nuzzling against his face as concerned golden eyes looked down on him. Angel had fully shifted to take the men out, and the wolf was whining as he pushed against Vin.
“I’m fine,” he muttered, groaning again at his throbbing headache before forcing himself to sit up.
The smell of blood was everywhere, and he realised the wolf’s face filling his vision was covered in it. The scent had his fangs descending as he craved the life-giving liquid that would help him heal. Nearby, both his attackers lay dead. Their throats had been so viciously ripped from their bodies that their heads were barely attached by the scraps of skin and shattered bones that were left.
So much for questioning them .
“I’m going to grab a blood bag. Can you find someone not quite dead and bring them back to question?” Vin asked.
His vision was slowly coming right, and he watched as the wolf transformed in front of him. Limbs and muscles shifted until Angel’s very beautiful, very naked body stood before him.
So hot , he thought. Or at least he meant to think it. Angel’s frown suggested he might’ve accidentally said it out loud. Oh well.
“Your head was catapulted into a rock when you fell. The back of your skull’s all caved in. Shut up and let me take you inside,” Angel said, scooping up his body like he weighed nothing.
“You’re really pretty. I might keep you,” Vin said, fighting dizziness and nausea as he stared up at Angel’s face, which was wreathed in shadow and streaked with blood and gore.
“Hush,” Angel said, placing him down gently on something soft. The bed. How were they inside already? Time was acting a little jumpy.
“I really do need to question one of them,” Vin said, as his eyes blinked too slowly.
“I’ll take care of it. Just drink this and get some rest,” Angel said, pressing a blood bag into his hand.
Vin woke with a pitiful moan the next afternoon as he winced against the UV coming through the window. Usually, it didn’t bother him at his age, but it still sucked when he was already feeling weak.
“Good. You’re awake,” a voice said, and Vin was out of bed with a knife drawn before the guy had reached the end of the first word. How had he not noticed Marco in the room with him?
“Easy, Vin,” Angel murmured from nearby.
Angel’s voice settled him, and that fact terrified him into finally waking up enough to take in the room. There was a vampire tied to one of the kitchen chairs. The pool of blood underneath their captive suggested he’d either been near death when they found him, or Vin had slept through his torture. Probably both. Head wounds were a bitch.
Marco and Angel were the only shifters inside, but now that he was paying attention, he could feel the presence of more of their pack on the roof and in the surrounding forest.
“Care to explain why Kyan thought he could invade my territory and get away with it?” Marco asked.
Vin eyed him warily. The Alpha had more control than most, but he was still the head of a criminal empire. This kind of incursion by vampires into shifter territory was begging for war. If lines were drawn by species, there was no guarantee Marco’s soft spot for him would mean shit, even though they both knew he had no official ties to the Cruor Coven. He was just a contractor. Still, he wouldn’t show any weakness. That was a sure-fire way to end up dead.
“I need a shower. We can ask our guest once I’m clean,” Vin said, waving his hand airily toward the vamp tied to the chair as he tried to saunter rather than stagger to the bathroom.
How big was the fucking stone that had brained him? It had been a long time since it’d taken this long to recover from an injury. He took his time in the hot water, rinsing away blood and gravel and trying not to wince at the dent he could still feel in his skull. He needed another blood bag and to sleep at least another day. But first, he needed to avoid a war between the city’s criminal families. And lure Angel into bed with him .
Someone had left him a pair of sweatpants and an oversized t-shirt to change into. He rolled his eyes at the thought of wearing anything so ill-fitting before he inhaled and realised they were Angel’s. They’d be way too big for him, but he could make it work if it meant the shifters here would smell Angel’s clothes on him and know Angel was his.
Vin froze as he processed the possessive thought. Where had it come from? He’d certainly never thought anything like it before. But life was too long not to embrace every novel sensation, and he wasn’t one to hesitate once he made his mind up. Angel would come round. They could fuck and get this out of their system and then he’d go on his way like always.
A quick knot and tear in the too-large t-shirt had it baring his midriff and riding down one shoulder instead of swamping him. The sweatpants were a little more challenging to style. He settled on ripping off the bottoms so he didn’t trip over them, and letting them ride dangerously low on his hips, ignoring the boxer briefs in favour of going commando.
When he emerged back into the cabin, Angel’s searing gaze and flared nostrils as he took in their combined scent made the terrible fashion choice worth it. Bouncing over to the shifter, he kissed him on the cheek before he could pull away.
“Thanks for the clothes, Angel.”
For a second, he thought Angel might turn his head and claim his lips, but then his face shut down and he pushed past Vin to grab a blood bag from the cooler. Vin stared at him in surprise, cocking his head in question as Angel shoved it into his hands. That was the second time Angel had provided food for him. Did he even realise he was doing it?
“You need to heal so you can get out of my fur,” Angel explained defensively, still scowling before he retreated as far as he could get, which wasn’t very far in the small cabin.
“He’s not talking,” Marco said from nearby, breaking the awkward tension as he glared at the silent vamp tied to the chair.
“Is that so?” Vin said, smiling at the captive as he sat down on the table in front of him, swinging his legs while he drank from the blood bag the other vampire was no doubt desperate for.
Once he was finished, he reached out to touch the vamp’s hand where it was bound tight, but stopped when Angel growled. Glancing over his shoulder, Vin saw the shifter glaring at his fingers where they hovered near their captive’s skin.
Interesting.
“Angel, stop letting your wolf hold the reins and let Vin do his thing. He’s not flirting with him,” Marco snapped.
“I don’t give a shit if he does,” Angel said.
“I mean, I could flirt with him. That’s usually how I get the information I need,” Vin teased.
Angel’s responding growl was drowned out by the vamp yelling at him to fuck off, disgust clear on his face. Supernaturals didn’t tend toward homophobia. You had to try really hard to live as long as they did and not understand lust was lust and love was love. So, Vin assumed the disgust was about the whole having his brain manipulated by Vin’s power into betraying his employer thing. He didn’t give a shit. He was much more interested in the jealousy pouring off his Angel.
“Stop toying with him,” Marco said, and Vin knew he meant Angel, not the attacker.
“Fine. I’ll do it the boring way,” Vin sighed.
Reaching for his power more consciously than he usually bothered to, he touched a single finger to the vampire’s pulse point and let his charisma flood over him. This attacker was neither young nor old. His mind was strong, but not such a challenge that Vin couldn’t make him want to comply, especially as injured and hungry as he was.
“You’re a mercenary, aren’t you, Sugar?” he asked, starting with a simple question. He called all his marks Sugar, whether he was targeting them for sex or murder.
The vamp looked dazed as his charm took hold, and he was nodding before he could catch himself.
“Well done. Doesn’t it feel good to tell me things?” Vin murmured, leaning closer as he lured the vamp’s mind into confused compliance.
“Can’t…” the vamp muttered.
“You can’t resist me. That’s right. Because you want to please me. Who hired you to attack me?” Vin asked, stroking his fingers over the vampire’s skin in a pattern designed to distract him from his resistance and hold the skin-to-skin connection he needed to overcome his defences.
“Don’t know. They were anonymous.”
Vin pouted. “Awww, Sugar. Don’t disappoint me like that. I bet a clever boy like you would’ve figured them out. They pay you a lot to attack on shifter territory?”
The vamp looked distressed. He was straining against the ropes tying him down, but not getting anywhere. “Didn’t know it was shifter land until we got here.”
That was interesting. They must be from out of town. Any vamp within fifty miles of the city would know this was Lunetti Pack territory. “What was the job they paid you for?”
The vamp opened his mouth to reply, and a flash of green light flared from a ring he was wearing on his right hand, barely visible in the sunshine, before his jaw snapped shut and resigned terror filled his eyes. A moment later, it became clear why as his body started to twitch and silver foam frothed out of his mouth .
It only took him seconds to die.
“Well, fuck,” Vin said, staring down at the vamp’s vacant expression.
“This wasn’t Kyan,” Marco growled as he drew close and tried to prise the vamp’s jaw open with no success.
“No,” Vin agreed. “Which means it’s someone trying to start a war.”