Tempted (Amethyst Dagger Mafia #2)

Chapter 1

Anais

The whole world went still while I breathed in and out. I did it again, letting the calm settle over my body. On the hunt, I was alive in a way I didn’t feel the rest of the time, but I wasn’t alone today.

Three more vampire hunters were in the building with me, also sneaking around and trying to take out our target. It was my new team and so far they were making it work. For the most part.

Information with the latest academy job had told them to come to this area to find a young turned vampire.

She was supposed to be a little too young to escape notice, all on her own and relatively weak, but she was in a dense-population area so the money was decent and discretion was needed.

Alan had picked up the mission for us when he’d gone into the academy yesterday and it had taken us a night to track her down.

With a little help from a friend, Tess has been the one to lead us to the right door tonight. A vampire obviously lived here. One who had let themselves go pretty wild.

Dried blood didn’t smell like copper and it only tasted like it a little, despite what people believed.

And there was plenty of it on the walls and floors in this house.

From the appearance of the building, if the vampire was inside, they were either sleeping, or happy in the dark. There were no lights on.

As I shifted as silently as I could and gave myself a better position to see in through the open window, I tried not to gag on the stench. It wasn’t just the sweet, sickly smell of blood either. There were other bodily fluids and substances.

For a moment I considered putting on the ring I carried in my pocket at all times. It would help my body move faster, be stronger and help me see better in the dark. It basically gave me all the benefits of a vampire who had recently been turned. At the same time it taxed my body, however.

I wasn’t a vampire. It was the only way the ring worked and I had learned only a week or two ago that vampires gave this sort of jewelry, that had been magically enchanted, to their enthralled.

A lot of the vampires had them, especially in Vegas. An enthralled was a human so chemically and emotionally addicted to a vampire that they would serve them like slaves. I had gained the ring from one of the most powerful vampires in the Brethren simply because I had helped him take out a rival.

Not that I made a habit of working with vampires. Normally I killed them. That was my job. But he had been different.

I had worked with him on what would have been an impossible mission and he had saved my life more than once. Including by giving me this ring. Now it was a backup to help me keep my team alive. My new team.

“You going to go inside?” Tess whispered to me when I still didn’t move. “You look like you froze to the spot.”

“There’s more here than just one vampire,” I replied, not sure exactly how I knew that yet but knowing enough to trust myself.

Tess frowned and came in even closer, moving even more quietly than I had. “How many more? Do you want me to go around and warn the others?”

I shook my head, knowing that could upset the entire plan and leave me facing multiple vampires alone.

If the others went in and they fled this way, I’d have no way of stopping or delaying more than one vampire.

We had to carry on and hope that our divided team was big enough.

Or call the mission off until we could recon more, and I didn’t like the latter thought.

This mission had already taken a day longer than I wanted and I had been taking it easy on the team so far. It was time to see what they were made of.

After motioning for Tess to follow me, I crept around to the back door.

There wasn’t much of a garden here and the grass was fake, but it was also old and not looked after very well.

We had to be as careful about where we stepped out here, fragments of broken garden gnomes lying scattered like so many little traps.

The back door wasn’t locked and Tess turned the handle and prepared to open it for me as I raised the crossbow I carried. It wasn’t the most effective vampire killing weapon at any kind of long range, but in close quarters as this was likely to be, it would be almost perfect.

I couldn’t see into the building at first, my eyes struggling to adjust to the new level of dark inside. It was almost midnight in the city and about as dark as Vegas got, but there were so many street lights and buildings lit up like Christmas trees that it wasn’t really ever dark.

For a few seconds I paused, knowing that Alan and Naomi would be doing similar on the other side of the house.

We didn’t yet time this sort of thing perfectly, but we were getting better at knowing how long to take and I had no doubt I had hesitated long enough to give the other half of the team time to adjust as well.

Inside, the stench hit even harder and I had to fight not to gag. Someone had died here and recently. Possibly even several someones. We swept through the living room area and I avoided walking in the blood, Tess watching my back and any area I wasn’t facing at the moment.

I couldn’t hear anything, but there were signs someone had been here recently. Some of the blood stains were fresh and there were signs a body had been dragged through here.

“You take us to the greatest places,” Tess whispered as we cleared the area well enough to know the door I was watching was the only way into this section of the house, other than the outside door we’d just come through.

“It’s only been a week. One day we’ll get a five-star hotel to shack up in while we hunt turned,” I replied, smirking as I knew she’d think of the mission I had completed right before getting this team.

As far as the academy were concerned, I’d stayed at a luxury hotel and then gone on a cruise to deliver them the results. And I had been paid handsomely for it.

Of course, the true-blood, Leandro, had covered the cost of absolutely all of it. Since then I hadn’t known fully what to do. I’d ended up taking on the lease of my dead friend Emma’s apartment just so the team had somewhere to crash, but Alan was staying with male academy members somewhere nearby.

I still didn’t know who had killed Emma, nor who had tried to hijack my mission to kill Ludis, but Leandro had said he thought I was probably safe and it was probably something to do with him.

I’d simply got caught up in the crossfire.

Either way, no one had come after me since, so I took it as a good sign.

Not that it had been that long. Less than two weeks. I’d had this new team a week and already I wouldn’t have had anyone but Tess at my back in these situations. She might make quips now and then, but she was the first to react to movement and deal with it. She trained hard and she’d trained well.

The academy didn’t seem to like her much and that was probably because she also spoke her mind. Just like me.

“Given how many new missions there are at the academy lately, we might just get another good one like you did,” Tess replied, bringing her crossbow as I motioned to open the door and head toward the front of the building.

I’d not seen stairs so far and had assumed this was an apartment from what I could see on the outside, but it wasn’t so clear now I was inside. We’d not found any bedrooms.

Tess pushed open another door and I hurried through, protecting her as much as looking out for danger. Thankfully I saw my own team mates. Alan, holding a hand up to let me know I should be quiet and not move too much. He pointed to some stairs and then upward without uttering a word.

I slowed, but continued to approach, taking in the other rooms I could see from here.

There was what looked like a small bathroom by the front door, from where Naomi was watching the stairs.

She was crouched in the corner, her crossbow aimed right up them and her back safely against a wall.

It was the least vulnerable, most steady way to wait to see if someone came downstairs while also making sure no one else could sneak up.

This was a trick I had taught them. In a house with vampires, you never put your back to anything you didn’t have to. And you certainly didn’t take your eye off the stairs until you’d cleared every floor. No doubt she had stopped there while Alan had continued on.

To be sure, I pointed toward the one other room I’d not seen inside.

It would make sense for it to be the kitchen, but I wasn’t going to take any chances.

Alan noticed my pointing and gave me a thumbs-up.

I took the gesture to mean he had checked it and it was all clear and I carried on past the open doorway, heading toward the stairs.

Although Tess would have seen Alan’s enthusiastic affirmation that the kitchen was clear, she came out to one side of me and checked it anyway. I paused just long enough to let her, noticing Alan roll his eyes.

Finally my team were ready, the entire downstairs checked.

“Do you think she’s up there?” Alan whispered when I was close. “Or we’ve got our intel wrong.”

“From this level of blood and guts, we’ve got some kind of intel right,” Naomi replied breath-quiet, shaking her head.

“Could be a regular serial killer or something.” Alan shrugged but I glared at them.

If there was a vampire in this building and it was awake, it might be able to hear them, and while I didn’t mind a little bit of risk, I wanted this over and done with and I didn’t want any more surprises. Not now we were this close.

I reached out to put my foot on the first step knowing this could also be a tricky part of the mission.

Stairs were the bane of my existence. It wasn’t easy to get up an unknown set of stairs without creaking at least one of them.

I didn’t know what it was about stairs, but they were never fully quiet.

With any luck our vampire had drunk herself into a stupor and wouldn’t notice, but I didn’t want to wake her. Each step I tested and I moved incredibly slowly, knowing that the more I moved gently and transferred my weight gradually, the far less likely I was to creak it.

I was halfway up the stairs before I could get a look at what might lie on the top floor.

Street lamps made it easy to see that there was a sleeping form on the bed.

Even though they were a vampire, their chest shifted up and down, the body breathing.

It was a telltale sign that this vampire was likely recently turned.

It was as if the body was so used to breathing that it kept doing it, even though the turned didn’t all have to. The true-bloods were different again, but the academy didn’t teach much on them and I hadn’t exactly found Leo very forthcoming on what it meant.

When I saw that there was another sleeping form and there were two in the bed I stopped entirely.

Being careful not to set off the crossbow I currently held in two hands, one steadying it while the other aimed, I shifted on the middle step and lifted my off hand up and over my shoulder so my team would see it behind me.

I formed a fist to let them know to stop as well and then I raised two fingers and pointed at the doorway. They’d know what that meant. I was currently standing ahead of them, two vampires ahead of me and no way to shoot both if we woke both.

At this point I had three choices. Go on and try to get in a better position while the creatures were sleeping and risk being discovered if they were sleeping lightly.

Wait for one of my companions to climb the stairs beside me, or go back down and rethink this plan. We had expected one vampire, not two.

While I thought the team could handle it if organized, it would be the first time they had.

Generally all vampire hunter teams avoided a surprise like this.

It wasn’t entirely unheard of in situations like this, however.

A newly turned vampire who didn’t seem to have any companion of any kind.

She’d probably turned her partner. Or a random hook-up.

Although I knew it was a risk, I opted to not only trust myself, but the ring I had.

Very slowly and very carefully, I motioned for the team to slowly come up the stairs with me, pointing to Naomi and sending her left, and then Tess to send her right of the doorway.

Then Alan could come up close behind me and hopefully we’d all get into place before either of the vampires heard something.

Keeping Alan back while Naomi and Tess took up positions was also strategic.

He was the one of the four of us most likely to make some noise and upset this whole plan of action.

For now, I had to focus on my task. If either vampire moved, I needed to shoot them and not miss before anything else happened.

I slipped my ring on, wanting to make sure I was at my best, and it was as if every sound was amplified and I could suddenly see even more clearly.

If the situation grew dire, I also knew I would react faster and be stronger.

But it would come at a cost. Every second I wore the ring my body was working twice as hard to just move. I couldn’t use it for long.

As Naomi slipped past me, I kept still and focused ahead. If anything was going to go south before we were ready, it would be getting Naomi into place.

This was the moment where I found out what my new team was made of.