Chapter 14
Vash’s brows rose when she saw Syre exit from the private plane.
“Damn. We got the big gun,” Raze murmured before stepping forward to clasp forearms with their commander. “Syre.”
“An entire subdivision?” Syre asked without preamble. He stood on the tarmac, the wind blowing gently through his hair, his all-black attire making him nearly one with the darkness.
A beautiful and deadly dark prince, Vash thought whimsically. Regal, powerful, and lethal.
“That’s Elijah’s take.” Raze glanced at the three lycans and four minions disembarking. “Good thing we brought two cars.”
“Where is the Alpha?”
“Snoozing. It’s damn near two in the morning. Unlike us, he needs sleep.”
Syre acknowledged that with a nod. “What’s your take, Raze?”
“Same as his. The place gave me the willies. It’s like a ghost town.”
Syre looked at Vash.
“I haven’t scoped it out yet, but if Elijah says it’s squirrely, then it is. We’ve never faced a cleanup of this magnitude before,” she said grimly. “How do you keep a lid on an entire neighborhood vanishing overnight?”
“UFOs.”
They all turned their heads toward the minion who’d spoken.
Vash placed him in his mid-thirties when he’d gone through the Change, and by the brightness of his smile and his twinkling eyes, he hadn’t been a vampire long enough to become world-weary.
He wore his dirty-blond hair in a shaggy style, which gave him a laidback and youthful appearance.
“Seriously,” he said. “We snag a few of the video cameras that we’re bound to find when we enter the houses and film the rest of you running around with flares in the darkness. You’ll look like streaking lights. Then let the government cover it all up.”
“Fuckin’ A,” Vash said, deciding to run with the absurdity. “I’ll man a camera. Syre, you’re the fastest. You can run around with the flares.”
The look on Syre’s face was worth the cost of admission.
Grinning, she asked the minion, “What’s your name?”
“Chad.”
“Don’t talk around Syre, Chad,” she suggested. “He might kill you.”
Chad laughed, but she was only half kidding.
He was definitely a newbie. One who hadn’t been around long enough to figure out what his moniker would be. Most minions changed their names a century or two into their new lives, when everything they’d once known and loved had burned through the finite days of mortality and passed away.
Vamps often chose names that represented who they’d become.
Like Raze, who leveled every opponent in his path, and Torque, who tweaked, finessed, and applied pressure to situations as necessary.
Contrarily, Vash had kept her angelic name as a reminder of the woman she’d once been, one who’d been worthy of Charron’s love.
She’d changed a lot since then. She wondered what Char would think of who she was now, whether he’d want her as much as he had before, whether he would want her as much as Elijah did.
Syre held out his hand. “I’ll drive. Chad, ride with Raze.”
“Gee,” Raze muttered. “Thanks, sir.”
Vash took the three lycans with her and Syre; Raze took the four vamps. They hit the road with Vash resetting the GPS so Syre knew where they were going.
“I’m surprised to see you here, Vashti,” Syre said, glancing at her.
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes. I am.”
“Not as surprised as I am to see you.”
He adjusted the rearview mirror. “I’ve yet to see one of these wraiths in the flesh, and it’s high time I did so.”
She hit the button to lower the window and rested her elbow on the frame, relishing the cooling kiss of the breeze on her face. “I feel like you’re checking up on me. Again.”
“Maybe I am,” he conceded. “You’re valuable to me, and I’m concerned that you’re…conflicted.”
Great. Pretty soon, everyone who mattered would know she was a mess. “There’s a lot on our plate right now. I’m worried we won’t be fast enough.”
“We’ll know more once the other teams check in.” His voice was low and soothing, wielding his ability to mesmerize and charm.
“And if they all come back with reports of entire neighborhoods taken over by wraiths? What then?”
“Ah, my eternal pessimist. Then I guess we’ll stock up on zombie apocalypse movies and try to pick up some pointers.”
She didn’t want to smile, so she turned around and looked at the crew instead.
The males were dark-haired and big. Beautiful male specimens, really, but mere shadows of Elijah.
The female was blond and petite, pretty in a wholesome, homespun way, with her stick-straight hair, green eyes, and pink, bow lips.
Vash briefed them. “Elijah will be able to zero in on the aspects relating to lycans better than I will, but I’ll tell you to be careful regardless.
Wraiths seem to have a hard-on for you guys, and our alliance is new enough to be a liability.
We haven’t fought alongside each other long enough to dance together without stumbling.
A stumble with these guys can get us killed.
Watch each other’s backs more than usual. ”
All three glared at her with mute hostility.
“Names?” she asked, lacking the energy to get into a pissing match now.
John, Trey, and Himeko, she was told. Turning back around, she called Raze. “Hey. How’s the sleeping situation going to work at the motel?”
“I picked up three additional rooms, aside from the one Elijah’s got.
I wasn’t expecting you, Syre, or a five-man backup crew.
Hopefully, we can snag another room for the commander; the motel isn’t exactly in high demand.
If not, we’ll put you with Syre, and I’ll take one of the vamps in my second bed.
The other two rooms have multiple beds, so we’ll have them bunk up. ”
“Sounds good. Thanks.”
But when they arrived at the motel, they found the place sold out, thanks to a popular band playing at the restaurant next door.
Vash claimed her backpack from Raze’s room and exited out to the sidewalk to wait for Syre, who was grabbing his bag from her rental on the other side of the lot.
Raze was in the front office, taking care of getting keycards for the new arrivals.
She stood alone, feeling inexplicably lonely.
Drawn to Elijah, she sidled closer to his room.
Her stomach knotted with every step she took, her mouth watering with the need to taste him.
Not just for blood and sex, but the sound of his voice, the beat of his heart beneath her ear, the warmth of his arms around her.
It struck her that she was terribly afraid he might open his door, and she would plead for him to stop shutting her out, forfeiting all her dignity and pride.
She was shaken by the depth of her craving. She didn’t understand why he had to make their…association—she wasn’t going to call it a relationship—so complicated. Couldn’t they just take what they needed from each other, give each other what they had to give, and take it one day at a time?
She was formulating an argument to hit him with when a suspicious sound caught her ear. When she heard it again, her lungs seized, and an icy lump settled in her gut.
“No, no, no,” she growled, stalking closer to Elijah’s door.
Her blood heated, and her heart began to pound.
Horrified and disbelieving, Vash stared at the number on the door, willing it to change when she blinked.
The unmistakable sounds of enthusiastic sex emanating from Elijah’s room twisted her stomach into a hard knot.
A shard of white-hot pain speared through her chest.
A woman’s breathless pleas for more…rhythmically squeaking bedsprings…the growl of a man pumping his way to climax…
Her bag fell from her nerveless fingers to the ground.
For a moment, she stood shattered, something inside her broken into pieces.
Then fury took over. Lifting her foot, she kicked in the door.
The woman’s high-pitched scream only spurred her bloodlust. The smell of sex hit her hard, propelling her across the room toward the big figure rising up from the mattress.
“I’ll kill you!” she hissed, backhanding him so hard he flew from the bed and crashed into the dresser. Her head swiveled toward the cowering nude woman on the mattress, her hand rising and clawed to strike.
Her wrist was caught in a steely grip midair. “Vashti.”
Syre’s voice, low and furious behind her, penetrated her wrath. She glanced at him. “Let me go.”
“What the fuck is going on?”
Her spine stiffened at Elijah’s barked question. Her gaze shifted to the silhouette in the doorway—the familiar broad shoulders, tapered waist, and long legs. He was shirtless, barefoot, his jeans unbuttoned and barely clinging to lean hips.
The woman on the bed was still screaming like a banshee. The man who’d been fucking her moaned from where he was sprawled on the floor.
Yanking her arm free of Syre, Vash rounded on Elijah. “This is your goddamned room!”
His eyes glittered in the semidarkness. His arms crossed, taunting her with the sight of his gorgeous biceps and lickable abs. He was hard all over, precisely cut and built. And she wanted him. Desperately.
Sudden silence descended as the woman abruptly ceased her caterwauling. Syre’s soothing murmurs registered in Vash’s brain, then faded beneath her roaring blood.
“It was my room,” he corrected silkily. “Obviously, I moved.”
She bit off a scream of frustration. His mouth twitched as his gaze took in the scene behind her.
Mortified at her lack of control, she got in his face.
“Don’t smirk. If that guy had been you, you’d be swallowing your severed balls right now.”
He set a hand over his heart. “I feel so loved.”
Her mouth opened on a retort when Raze sauntered up with their reinforcements in tow. He looked at the crumpled metal door, the warped frame, and the situation inside. Then he looked at Vashti with one brow raised.
“Don’t say a word,” she warned him. “Not one fucking word.”
Syre came out of the room like a shadow, sinuous and silent. His face was impassive, but his eyes were deadly. “The mortals won’t remember this incident, but damned if I’ll let you forget it, Vashti.”