Chapter 5
Chapter Five
CAMDEN
Nicolo kissed like a master of seduction, and Camden loved it. He kissed back with enthusiasm. He gave a brief thought to Nicolo’s fangs, but he forgot all about the danger in the next second, too lost in the kiss to care.
For a brief moment he was off his feet, and then his ass met the table, and Nicolo stepped between his thighs, strong arms holding him close. He welcomed Nicolo and spread his thighs wider, then wrapped his legs around that sexy lean waist and held on for all he was worth.
He broke the kiss to breathe, gasping for air, lips wet, whole body tingling.
Nicolo pressed their foreheads together, eyes burning red, though his fangs weren’t down.
Camden appreciated the caution—there was no way he wanted to accidentally poison Nicolo with his blood.
He had no idea what to do if that happened.
Camden was breathing hard, and he refused to let go of Nicolo’s shoulders, fingers tight on his fine cotton shirt.
“I think you like the sword?” Camden finally gasped out, exhilarated from the kiss.
“I love it, tesoro, and I appreciate the thought and care that went into choosing it,” Nicolo replied softly, hands rubbing along Camden’s sides and waist, massaging and pressing firmly.
He wanted more of those hands on him, but they were at his workplace and he had no idea how Achilles would react if they had sex in the storage room.
He didn’t want to push the limits of their friendship, but it was hard.
“Camden, my treasure, will you do me the honor of dating me? I promise it’s not just for the pretty sword.
You are worth more than any piece of my past. Let me court you, please. ”
Camden met Nicolo’s eyes, which were like banked embers in a dark hearth, red and fierce with his heightened emotions.
“Court me?” Camden asked, charmed by the old-fashioned term. It spoke of embraces during moonlit nights in lush gardens, climbing balconies for illicit rendezvous, and scandalous dancing in ballrooms. He wanted all of that—or at least the modern equivalent. “Oh yes, please. I’d love that.”
He was rewarded with another kiss, slow and sweet.
“Come to my maker’s ball on this Midwinter’s Eve,” Nicolo said. “As my date.”
He sucked in a deep breath, excited and nervous. A vampire ball in the Bloodclan Tower? How could he resist?
“I’d love to,” Camden breathed out, touched.
“I must warn you, Priscilla has a flair for the dramatic. It will not be boring.”
“I’m intrigued. I can’t wait to go.”
CAMDEN
Achilles and Nicolo stayed at the shop for his entire shift, talking in the break room for hours.
Camden even got to show Nicolo around the shop, giving him a tour of the more unique items, like an enchanted troll skull that forecasted the weather, a crimson dragonscale brooch that created a shield for its wearer, and a pair of wedding rings that let the wearers know the emotional state of their partner.
Nicolo was especially interested in the weapons section of the shop, lingering over the display case that took up a generous section of one of the walls, full of axes, maces, a spear, and many swords and daggers from regions and eras all over the world.
Camden was delighted by Nicolo, the vampire having buckled the gifted sword to his hip, one hand on the pommel in a gesture of long habit.
He navigated the shop with elegant ease, moving as if the sword was an extension of his body.
The scabbard and belt were part of the gift, as enchanted as the sword to ignore the ravages of time and use, the leather and bronze as pristine as the day they were tooled into existence.
The shop got busy near the end of his shift, and he was occupied with customers when Achilles and Nicolo both headed for the front doors, alert and wary.
“Camden, get the customers into the storage room,” Achilles said loudly, and Camden blinked at him in surprise before his eyes registered a cluster of people outside the glass doors, and his ears heard the dull thuds of a sledgehammer on the glass.
There was the roar of an engine, and he saw the shadow of a large vehicle backing up onto the sidewalk and heading right for the doors.
It was a robbery attempt. Camden hurried to the nearest POS station and reached under the counter, hitting the silent alarm before running out from behind the counter and heading right for his two customers.
“Oh Goddess, come with me right now.” Camden gathered the two customers with him, thankful nothing was out of the cases unprotected, and herded the customers into the storage room.
The storage room was the safest room in the building, equipped with a layer of spells that acted as a panic room in cases just like this.
He urged the two customers to sit in a pair of antique chairs from 16th-century France. “Please stay here, it’s safe.”
“What’s going on?”
“Robbery attempt. I hit the silent alarm, the police are coming. Stay in this room.” Camden jogged out of the storage room, shutting the door behind him, and he activated the security spells with a slap to the wall by the door and a surge of energy.
Shields rose over the walls and doors as the wards activated.
Only Achilles or Camden or another employee could take them down.
It would take a serious amount of power and time for the shields to be broken by sheer force, and most robbers didn’t have that kind of time or power.
Camden hurried to the front of the shop, the sound of the sledgehammers growing stronger, sending vibrations through the soles of his shoes. The rear of what appeared to be a truck was pushing into the doors, two men with hammers on either side of the truck bed attacking the doors as well.
Achilles and Nicolo turned as he joined them, Darrell standing in front of the doors, his gun out and pointed at the floor, ready.
“Camden, go back to the storage room, you’ll be safe in there,” Achilles ordered him, shaking his head.
Camden glared fiercely at his friend, and Achilles blinked in surprise. “No. I’m not abandoning any of you. I hit the silent alarm, the police are coming.”
“No time for arguments.” Nicolo drew his sword, his grip steady and sure, gaze returning to the glass doors. “They’ve got some kind of magic helping them. The wards are about to fail on the doors.”
“Shit,” Achilles swore, and he gently pushed Camden back from the doors. “Shield yourself, now.”
Camden didn’t argue, hands up, a shield forming around him in a rush of emerald green energy. Thankfully, the entrance to the shop was free of display cases and he was able to raise a substantial shield around himself without any gaps or inclusions.
“How long until the police arrive?” Nicolo asked, the cacophony of bangs growing louder as the exterior doors began to cave in, glass and metal cracking and warping. Sparks from the ward spells misfiring and failing illuminated the figures of the dark-clad robbers wielding the hammers.
“Sir, they should be here by now,” Darrell said without taking his gaze from the robbers breaking their way inside the shop. “Something’s wrong.”
Achilles whipped out his smartphone and checked it, fingers flying over the screen. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
“What?” Camden asked, even more alarmed. He’d never seen Achilles so frazzled.
“They must have a jammer. I’ve got no signal, no way to check the shop’s security app. The Wi-Fi is gone, too. I think they jammed everything. I don’t think the alarm worked; the cops would be here by now if it had. They’ve got a four-minute response time.”
“Shit,” Camden breathed out. He was suddenly terrified.
“Tesoro.” Nicolo gave him a soft smile as he looked over his shoulder, sword at the ready. “Breathe. We three will protect you, I promise.”
Camden nodded and pulled out his own phone, and sure enough, there was no signal and the Wi-Fi was dead.
“They’re through!” Darrell shouted, a second before there was an almighty crash and the doors crumpled inward, glass flying everywhere.
NICOLO
He shielded his eyes from the flying glass with his free arm and felt more than saw the approach of one of the robbers, frigid air currents spilling into the shop as the doors fully collapsed inward.
Darrell fired his gun, three shots, and two of the robbers climbing over the debris shouted and fell back. Nicolo had no idea how effective the shots were before he was face to face with a robber wielding a massive sledgehammer.
With a shout of effort the robber lifted the hammer high and charged at Nicolo, glass crunching under his boots like ice.
This was the vampire from the other night—Nicolo recognized his scent.
He waited for the other vampire to draw close, the sledgehammer starting to swing down for his head, and he blurred just a single stride to the side.
The hammer hit the floor where he had been standing, the floor cracking and dust flying.
The vampire’s strike embedded the head of the hammer in the tile and subflooring—if it had made contact with Nicolo’s head, he would’ve been reduced to red mush.
Nicolo struck, a long cutting motion with the sword in a blur of silver and steel, and the other vampire howled in pain and fury as Nicolo neatly lopped off one of his arms just above the elbow.
The blade cut through dense muscle and bone and thick winter clothing like a burning red-hot coal through virgin snow, black blood spraying in a thick arc from the stump.
Nicolo spun out of the way of the blood and neatly skewered the vampire through the neck, turning the blade in a swift counterclockwise motion that destroyed the spine before pulling it back out.
The vampire gurgled, then fell to the floor, bleeding from his severed arm and neck, twitching. Not enough to kill a vampire, but he was incapacitated for a while.
Nicolo took in the chaos for a split second, marking each robber and deciding where to go next. Camden was safe, hands up and pouring energy into the emerald green shield, eyes wide as he took in the violence around him.
Achilles was fighting, light seafoam-green and blue energy swirling around his hands, and swift bolts of light and power spun out from his hands to hit the robbers, driving them back toward the doors as they tried to advance on him.
Achilles was powerful and skilled—he was several thousand years old and had fought before, his experience apparent in his speed and accuracy.
It was a mixed crew of supernatural and human, these robbers—one of the men Darrell had shot was still on the ground by the doors, groaning in agony, and the other was on his feet, unaffected, sledgehammer in hand as he tried to pulverize the security guard.
Darrell needed help. He was facing two robbers, both of them armed with sledgehammers, and he dodged the massive hammers, firing at close range before his gun clicked, empty.
He’d hit one of his attackers but missed the other, too busy dodging to reload the gun.
He pulled out a handful of charms and tossed them at his attackers, but they bounced off, not strong enough to combat whatever magic they were using, the charms dying on impact in a flash of silver light.
Nicolo blurred into the fight, smashing his elbow into the jaw of one of the robbers.
He thrust his sword forward into the attacker’s abdomen, point gliding through clothing and flesh with equal ease.
The sword was amazing, and it met no resistance as Nicolo pulled back at an angle, widening the injury.
Red blood fell in a shower to the floor, and his opponent dropped the sledgehammer with a resounding crash.
He curled in on himself and fell into a fetal position, groaning.
Nicolo immediately engaged the second robber, slicing wrists and elbows, forcing the robber to drop the sledgehammer, leaving an opening for Darrell to slip in close and lay out the robber with a vicious right hook.
Nicolo wasted no time, speeding through the wave of robbers as they tried to corner Achilles. He slashed and thrust, bodies falling to the floor with thuds, and when he was fighting a mortal, he made sure to incapacitate with non-lethal strikes, though he spared no one the touch of his blade.
One robber tried to make a run for it, but Achilles shot a bolt of energy out quicker than Nicolo could blur, smacking into the back of the robber’s head and dropping him like a stone. Achilles’s magic was far stronger than the charms that had failed to have any effect on the robbers.
There was a brief moment of quiet, broken by groans of pain, and then the truck that had destroyed the doors revved hard, rocking as the driver tried to free the vehicle.
“Ain’t happening!” Darrell shouted, and ran through the rubble to the driver’s door.
Darrell busted the window with his gun, then reached inside and literally dragged the driver out of the truck to the ice-cold sidewalk.
He threw the driver down and pulled out handcuffs, slapping them on the driver in seconds.
Darrell dragged the driver into the building, dropping him beside his defeated compatriots, and Nicolo saluted him with the sword, grinning.
“Is that all of them?” Achilles asked, hands on his hips, hair slightly messy from the fight.
“You got them all,” Camden said, a bit shaky, and Nicolo promptly went to Camden, pressing a hand to the surface of the shield.
“You’re safe, tesoro,” Nicolo said, meeting Camden’s eyes. Camden was pale and shaking a bit, eyes wide and breathing a bit fast. “Camden? Do you need to sit down?”
Camden sucked in a deep breath. “I think I might pass out? Maybe.”
“Drop the shield, love,” Nicolo urged him gently.
“Yeah, okay. Good idea.” Camden took another breath and then the shield was gone, and Nicolo pulled him into a tight hug, careful of the bloody sword, holding it away from their bodies.
He pressed his face into Camden’s soft hair and breathed in his scent, relishing the way Camden hugged him back, hard and tight, holding onto him with a fierce grip.