Chapter 8
EIRA
Being summoned twice in as many weeks does something to a person. It doesn’t inspire loyalty or warm fuzzies.
It inspires homicide.
I stand outside Vanta, one of Umbra’s crown jewels, and stare up at the black-glass facade hiding more sins than the church across the street. The entrance is guarded by men who don’t look like bouncers so much as executioners waiting for paperwork.
It’s the kind of place where humans come to feel important and vampires come to remind everyone they’re top of the food chain.
My collar sits high on my throat, a strip of matte leather that looks like fashion to anyone who doesn’t know better. A ward. An extra buffer. Maybe a prayer.
Selphine’s work.
Three months of breathing room for almost six months of my pay cheque, assuming I don’t do anything stupid. Like bleed. Or get too close to a certain centuries-old, hot-as-Netheris vampire who has just summoned me like I’m a dog he’s playing lethal fetch with.
Fuck my life.
I snap my name at the bouncer, almost daring him to turn me away so I have an excuse to leave. He studies me for a beat, murmurs into an earpiece, then steps aside without asking me for ID.
That alone makes my teeth grind.
Inside, the club is a cathedral of velvet and decadence. Low lighting, black marble and gold accents whisper money.
All very tasteful, until the scent hits.
Perfume. Sweat. Feral hunger dressed up as luxury.
Umbra doesn’t do anything halfway, and apparently heightened senses are the theme of the night.
I’m near gagging by the time I’m escorted to a waiting area beneath the VIP mezzanine. It isn’t so much a lounge as an antechamber.
A holding pen.
Humans in expensive desperation cluster with low-level vampires oozing manic arrogance, all of them glancing furtively towards the upper floor, frantic for a summons that probably won’t come.
According to the grapevine, this is where Valentin interviews those who want to be Made. Where he toys with the desperate and the greedy who’ll sell their first, second and third borns for a shot at immortality.
His special guard, the Black Twelve, handle most turnings.
Twelve men in Tom Ford black, matte onyx signet rings, shadow-metal cuffs hidden beneath tailored sleeves, and a thin black vein staining the inside of each left wrist. Every one of them over six foot five and moving with the contained violence of predators barely leashed.
Officially, they don’t turn more than two dozen vampires a year.
Unofficially, power has always preferred flexible accounting.
Apparently Valentin himself turns one, maybe two, every decade. Someone wealthy enough, ruthless enough, useful enough.
Yet everyone waiting here thinks destiny owes them a miracle.
How adorable.
I keep my back to the wall, my eyes on the exits.
High above, through the slatted architecture, I feel him more than see him. A king watching his subjects pretend they aren’t praying.
Minutes pass. Then more.
It’s deliberate. I wasn’t early and I’m not late. This is a reminder. Payback, maybe, for evading his initial summons.
My jaw tightens as a man drifts closer. Human. Mid-thirties. Rich enough to think manners are optional. His gaze slides over me and lingers.
‘You’re dressed like a Revenant,’ he says softly, as if it’s a compliment. ‘You’re smaller than I expected.’
‘I get that a lot,’ I reply without looking at him.
He chuckles. ‘I hear you bounty hunters are very… capable.’
‘I hear you talk too much.’
That should end it. It doesn’t.
He reaches out, fingers brushing my elbow as if we’re intimate. As if he’s allowed.
‘I’ll pay you to kick my ass.’ He barks out a laugh. ‘Or try to at least. I like them feisty.’
Something in the room shifts. My body moves before my mind finishes being polite.
I pivot, catch his wrist and twist. His breath leaves him in a sharp, humiliating sound as I take him down, his shoulder hitting marble with a crack that turns heads.
Silence slams through the space.
I crouch, voice low. ‘Touch me again,’ I tell him, ‘and I’ll remove the hand. Permanently. Got it?’
His eyes go wide, wet and shocked, his head bobbing frantically when I release him and rise.
Only then do I look up, compelled by a force I despise and can’t seem to deny.
Don Valentin Moretti stands at the edge of the mezzanine, one foot near empty air as if gravity is something other people worry about. Black shirt open at the throat, suit immaculate, every inch the terrifying creature I’ve had the misfortune to come into close contact with twice now.
I didn’t fool myself into thinking he wasn’t magnetically beautiful and deadly before, but being reminded of it here, with every creature in the room silently orbiting him, sheens my palms with sweat and twists my stomach into knots I absolutely will not call thrilled.
We study each other.
His expression is unreadable. His attention is not. It’s sharp. Fixed. Deadly.
Then a sliver of something bleeds through, and I wish it hadn’t.
Interesting.
The wrong kind of interesting.
For a moment, I think I’ve made a mistake. Then I decide, fuck that.
Let him watch. Let him understand I’m not something that can be handled.
Movement breaks around me. Bodies scurry out of the way, and a hostess appears at my side. ‘Miss Cross, come with me.’
In the second it takes me to glance at her and back, Valentin is gone.
The knot in my stomach expands as I’m led up black marble stairs and through a dark corridor. I sense eyes on me but look neither left nor right. My temper, and a few other unfortunate emotions, are hanging by a thread.
And I absolutely cannot risk spilling blood in Valentin’s presence.
The VIP space is quieter, darker, carved out of the club like a private throne room. Valentin lounges on a black leather banquette as if discomfort has never touched him.
His gaze tracks me the second I enter, a grappling hook made of icy menace.
‘You’ve been busy, Miss Cross,’ he says when I stop at a safe distance.
And maybe it’s my overactive imagination, but I swear he’s scenting me.
Again.
I force myself to keep breathing. ‘Yes, because I have a job.’
‘You have my job.’ His voice sounds like a cello played in a tomb. Haunting. Mesmerising, if you’re careless enough to let it be. ‘And yet your busyness has had very little to do with what I require of you.’
I smile without warmth. ‘Funny. My contract doesn’t mention absolute ownership.’
His eyes gleam as the hostess approaches with a sterling silver tray and a glass half-filled with red wine. I start to shake my head.
‘You should try it. It’s galaxies better than the swill you usually enjoy from the bodega near your agency.’
I freeze.
He’s baiting me. Taunting me with his knowledge of Eira Cross’s life. But that life is lived with meticulous care. He knows nothing.
I pluck the wine from the tray and don’t take my eyes off him as the hostess melts into the blackness.
Only then do I notice the massive shadows within it.
Shit.
Six members of the Black Twelve stand arranged with deliberate spacing, dark eyes tracking everything, posture relaxed but coiled, each one waiting for the slightest excuse to demonstrate exactly how permanent loyalty can be.
‘You’ve also been asking questions about me,’ Valentin says.
The words detonate inside my chest. I twirl the stem of the glass between my fingers. ‘Due diligence.’
‘Is that what you call it?’
‘It’s what professionals do. You’ve clearly been doing the same.’
He rises with smooth, unhurried grace, and something cold shifts in the air, restraint slipping loose just enough for the room to notice.
Without looking away from me, he lifts his phone and dials. The ring pulses through the speaker until a familiar voice answers, tight with nerves.
Victor Hale.
Valentin wastes no breath on greeting. ‘She is permanently assigned to my case,’ he says, calm enough to be almost polite. ‘Until it is resolved.’
Hale stammers, trying to find footing. ‘Don Moretti—’
‘She will be moved into the condominium beneath mine,’ Valentin continues, as if he’s discussing weather rather than detonating my life. ‘Immediately.’
My blood turns to ice.
I step forward before I can stop myself. ‘Absolutely not.’
Valentin’s gaze cuts to me with the sharpness of a half-drawn blade.
On the line, Hale’s voice drops to something faint and obedient. ‘Of course. We’ll… do the paperwork.’
Valentin ends the call.
I let out a laugh sharp enough to hurt. ‘So that’s it? You make one phone call, and the agency rolls over like a dog showing its belly?’
His eyes darken, not with anger exactly, but with the quiet impatience of a man unaccustomed to resistance.
‘You are well-versed in the imperative benefits of hierarchy,’ he says softly. ‘And yet you fight it so viciously. Why is that, Miss Cross? I do not believe it’s simply because you enjoy wasting my time. And yours.’
‘I don’t like people who throw their weight about,’ I shoot back, my voice steady on spite alone.
His head tilts. ‘But I barely threw, Miss Cross. In fact, it was barely a nudge.’
Then he lunges.
So fast my instincts barely have time to scream.
One moment he’s across the room, contained elegance and tailored menace, and the next his hand is at my nape.
Making it brutally clear he could do either choke or break whenever he chose.
His grip is mostly on my collar but I still feel his fingers, and skin on skin is electric in the worst way. My body reacts before my mind catches up, panic and fury colliding with something darker that makes my nerves feel as if they’ve remembered him.
I slam my hands against his wrist, trying to pry him off.
Useless.
His face is inches from mine.
Warm.
Too warm. A vampire shouldn’t feel like this.
His scent hits me, clean metal and winter air, and my pulse stutters traitorously as his eyes flicker, silver rimmed with something darker. Hungrier.
‘Your scent,’ he murmurs, almost to himself.
My blood freezes. Nausea coils beneath my ribs, but I force the words out through the pressure at my throat. ‘Rude. But by all means, tell me. What about it?’