Chapter 22
EIRA
‘What’s happened?’ I demand, because I know in my bones something has.
When he remains silent, I jerk out of his arms, all that lingering, drugging heat vanishing from my body, replaced by something stark and bright and dread-filled.
‘Calm yourself, little hunter.’
He sounds glacially calm, even as his tongue darts out to lick his lips. Licks my essence from his mouth.
Oh my Gods.
I shake off the drugging haze and snatch at my trousers without bothering to look for my panties, because I heard and felt what he did to them.
Heat slams into my face hard enough to make my skin prickle. I try to look away, because there are only so many humiliations a woman can process in one morning before her soul starts filing complaints.
But he holds my gaze with that silver, merciless focus, and I’m no longer entirely sure he isn’t using glamour on me right now, or if this is just what happens when a vampire rearranges your insides with his mouth and then looks at you like he’s memorised every sound you made.
Hell, I’m not sure about anything any more.
I don’t ask myself what I was thinking. Letting him go down on me, making me forget everything I’m trying to protect. Allowing him to pull me into a fire that will consume me whole if he discovers who I am.
Those thoughts highlight my stupidity, and none of them preserve my dignity.
But Gods, it was cataclysmic.
No clever snarky substitute. No sarcastic little phrase to make the truth smaller. He took me clean out of my skin, out of the room, out of every defensive structure I’ve built, until for a few impossible minutes I was nothing but sensation and heat and the unbearable focus of his mouth.
No performance, strategy or detached curiosity.
My first true sexual act.
Because yes, I’m a virgin.
Who was just eaten out by the vampire who claims I’m his fated mate.
And the worst part is, I don’t know how to explain that I didn’t feel taken.
I felt pulled. Not by glamour or fear or even threat of the potion failing, but by something deeper and more dangerous than all three.
I should feel violated by my own surrender, but I don’t.
I feel terrified because whatever drew me towards him was stronger than self-preservation, stronger than every warning I have ever trained myself to obey.
If there is a patron saint of women losing the plot, I hope she’s taking notes.
Movement snaps every instinct back into place.
I straighten on the sofa, fingers fumbling with clothes, seams and dignity, dragging fabric back where it belongs and shoving every dangerous thought into the deepest vault I can manage. ‘Tell me.’
Valentin drags his fingers through his hair once, which vexingly restores the lustrous strands I well and truly tousled. Then he tucks his hands behind his back.
He would be the epitome of furious suave control if not for the massive boner pressing urgently against his fly.
An obscene erection he does nothing to hide when he catches me looking.
I cross my arms, denying every craving that wants to touch that shaft, cradle and stroke and—
‘The Location Teleporter,’ he says. ‘Tezra. That name matters to you?’
I freeze, heat turning to cold so fast it hurts. ‘Of course it does. You know I used him yesterday.’ I swallow. ‘What about Tezra?’
Before he can answer, the door opens.
Malachi enters, and I scramble my face into something approaching composure.
It probably fools no one.
He takes in the room in one sweep. The disordered cushions. My flushed skin. Valentin standing too still with hunger and irritation warring in his shoulders.
At the very least, his vampire sense of smell can pick up what we’ve just put down, but Malachi is a master at making judgement look like architecture.
‘Sire,’ he says, inclining his head, then his gaze cuts to me for the briefest second. ‘Hunter.’
‘Speak,’ Valentin says.
Malachi does, and every word strips the room colder.
‘Tezra was lured with a job request just after dawn. Routine transport on paper. High fee, low profile. Pickup in Lower Manhattan, drop in Brooklyn. The request came through a relay channel used by fringe contractors and emergency magical couriers, one he has worked before without incident.’
My mouth goes dry.
Tezra would take something like that. Fast money, simple jump, in and out before breakfast. He liked the easy ones because they let him get home before the kids were fully awake and sticky with cereal.
‘The location was staged,’ Malachi continues, voice flat and merciless. ‘Wards disrupted his exit vectors the moment he arrived. They held for seconds only, which was all they needed. He was struck with silver-laced anchors before he could fully phase. Brutal and precise. No signs of feeding.’
I stare at him. For a second, the words don’t fit.
Tezra is quick. Slippery. Tezra can be gone in one second and still have time to laugh about people underestimating him because of his size.
Then it lands.
He’s dead.
Shock hits first, a hard blankness hollowing out my chest.
Then fury crashes in, hot and useless, because whoever did it knew exactly what they were doing. Knew how to pin a teleporter just long enough to butcher him.
And beneath both, heavy and ugly, grief rises slow and thick.
Tezra was a sweet man.
Too chatty. Too optimistic. The kind of man who sent photos of his lunch because he was proud he’d made it himself. The kind who talked about his wife like she hung the moon and his four kids like tiny warlords he was lucky to survive.
‘He… he can’t…’ My voice scrapes. ‘Are you sure?’
Malachi gives a brisk nod but, to his credit, doesn’t judge me for asking.
A rock of sorrow lodges in my throat. His wife. His kids.
Gods. What the actual fuck.
‘He had a family,’ I say, and my voice cracks before I can stop it. I hate that. Hate that I can’t get a full breath around the pressure in my chest. ‘A wife and four kids.’
Valentin’s gaze shifts to me, and for once there is no mockery in it. No heat. No taunting. Only a grave stillness that feels older than his cruelty.
‘They will be taken care of.’
I blink. ‘What?’
‘His family,’ he says, each syllable precise, ‘will be provided for. He was a product of my city, and therefore under my protection. Whoever did this will be found. New York doesn’t take from me without consequence.’
I stare at him.
Because this isn’t performative generosity. It’s command-level certainty.
He means it.
Valentin turns his head a fraction towards Malachi.
No words pass between them, but something does. A silent command. Malachi dips his chin.
‘I’ll see to it, sire.’
The room tilts strangely for a second, grief and shock making everything too sharp. Then I drag myself back into the conversation before sadness pulls me under.
‘Who hired him?’ I ask.
Malachi’s eyes flick to me, measuring the abrupt shift from shaken to razor-focused. ‘Layered aliases and dead channels. The account chain traces to shell identities and burned phones. The wards were old-form work augmented with modern suppressors. Deliberate.’
‘In New York,’ I say, looking at Valentin. ‘This happened in your city.’
His face hardens. ‘Yes.’
‘Someone set up a kill box for a teleporter under your nose.’
The silver in his eyes brightens. ‘Be careful, little hunter.’
‘Why? I’m agreeing with you. It’s a problem.’
Malachi cuts in, perhaps wisely. ‘It was designed to vanish inside ordinary noise. Millions of moving parts. The scene was meant to disappear for several hours at minimum.’
‘Until Tezra didn’t call back,’ I mutter. Until I called and he didn’t answer. My stomach twists.
Malachi studies me for half a beat. ‘There is something else, sire.’
Valentin turns to him. ‘Go on.’
‘The private investigator the hunter mentioned yesterday. The one presumed to have died naturally. We reopened the report.’
The room goes still.
‘He did not die naturally,’ Malachi says.
Valentin’s voice turns deadly soft. ‘What changed?’
‘The original finding was cardiac event. But we pulled the body and had one of ours examine the tissue. Poison was found.’
My pulse picks up with cold, investigative dread. ‘Poison?’
Malachi nods. ‘Old. It caused catastrophic clotting and arrhythmic failure.’
One PI dead. Tezra dead. Both tied, however loosely, to Lyra. To Valentin’s search.
To me.
‘That’s not coincidence,’ I say.
‘No,’ Valentin agrees softly. ‘It is not.’
He’s already moving, every trace of what happened on the sofa sealed behind iron control.
‘Pull every camera from the block. If a cop touched the file, buy him. If he can’t be bought, ruin him. I want the truth.’
Malachi nods. ‘Yes, sire.’
‘We go to the scene,’ Valentin says.
I push off the sofa, my body protesting in several deeply distracting ways, and I force myself to ignore all of them.
Business now. Rage now.
Grief later when I can have a private breakdown over vampire oral and fate-induced doom.
Aaron appears outside the suite moments later, accompanied by three more of the Black Twelve, all in black, silent, moving with that eerie synchronised efficiency that makes them look less like men and more like one organism with multiple bodies.
Valentin’s gaze lands on Aaron. ‘You will transport us.’
Aaron inclines his head. ‘Sire.’
‘But you will not touch her,’ he adds, voice turning colder.
A muscle jumps in Aaron’s jaw. ‘Understood, sire.’
For one stupid second, the possessiveness punches through grief and lands low in my stomach like a spark.
I squash it immediately.
Valentin reaches for me, and when I step closer, he curls his arm around my waist, bringing my back to his front.
Aaron places a hand on Valentin’s shoulder only.
The world folds.
Teleporting via someone else is nothing like Tezra’s jumps. Tezra’s had a weird popping pressure and always smelled faintly of ozone and mint gum. Aaron’s is cleaner. Harder. A blink-and-cut sensation that strips the air from your lungs and gives it back a heartbeat later.
We arrive in a narrow service alley off a filthy Brooklyn street, boxed in by brick, steel and yellow police tape that has been very pointedly ignored by the men standing within it.
Three members of the Twelve are already on site, positioned at entry points and shadow-lines, keeping mortals away with the subtle coercion that makes people suddenly remember urgent appointments elsewhere.
I step forward before anyone can stop me and crouch near the ward-scorched marks on the ground. The residue is messy now, disturbed by time and feet, but the pattern remains if you know how to look.
Containment geometry nested inside bait geometry. A double-layer trap designed to trigger after arrival, so Tezra would step into it already committed to the endpoint.
‘Fucking bastards,’ I mutter.
Valentin says nothing.
I glance up.
He’s gone utterly still. Not his usual controlled predator stillness. This is a brief arrest in motion, his head tilted almost imperceptibly, nostrils flaring, silver eyes narrowing on a patch of brick and shadow as if the alley has whispered a name only he can hear.
It lasts less than a second but it’s long enough. I know some of his tells now.
‘What is it?’ I ask, rising slowly.
His mask slides back into place. ‘Nothing you need concern yourself with at this moment.’
‘Try again.’
‘Eira.’
‘Don’t Eira me.’ I step closer, ignoring the way the Twelve tracks the movement. ‘You smelled something. Or saw something.’
His jaw tightens.
‘You owe me answers.’
His gaze drops to my mouth and lingers, and because apparently my body is a traitor to the end, heat flickers through me despite the alley, death and grief.
‘I made you come twice, little hunter,’ he says quietly, a dangerous thread of humour slipping through the gravity. ‘As sublime as the feast was, in theory, I should be the one making demands.’
The nerve of him almost knocks the sadness out of me.
I fold my arms, because if I don’t, I might hit him or kiss him, and I’m not sure which would be worse.
‘I read the small print this time, Don Moretti. I gave you exactly what you wanted. Stop acting like a hostile lawyer and start talking.’
For one blasphemous instant, despite the body count and blood-rot in the air, his mouth almost curves. Then he sobers, and whatever he found settles back over him like a dark fog. ‘We will discuss it at the Tower.’
I open my mouth to argue, but the look he gives me stops me for exactly one reason. The unmistakable promise that the answer is real and he intends to give it.
Just not here.
Valentin turns to Aaron. ‘Take us back.’
Aaron steps in, hand to Valentin’s shoulder, and the dark alley collapses into that hard, cutting fold of space.
The last thing I see before the city blinks away is the scorched geometry where Tezra died.
And the knowledge settling colder in my chest.
Whatever game this is, it just turned ancient.
And ten times more deadly.