by Lynn Hagen
Rise of the Changelings, Book 6
Rise to Fall
Salvador is an ancient vampire who has come to America to settle a score with Kraven, the master vampire of Hamilton County. What he hadn’t expected was to find his mates.
John Freedman, formerly the leader of the Death Squad, must save Omar from the government, who is holding him in the last remaining detention center. When a stranger shows up claiming he wants to help, Freedman isn’t so sure he wants the man anywhere near him—especially considering the fact that Salvador is a vampire.
Omar Reed is in a truly messed-up situation. His parents had been less than understanding, and then his alpha knocked him down to juvenile status, an insult to any changeling breed. Worse yet, Omar was captured and experimented on by a sadistic scientist.
As the war against nonhumans becomes critical, the three spend most of their time just trying to stay alive, but there’s plenty of chemistry between them to take up the rest. Can they find enough common ground when their clothes are on to last forever?
When Dorian is critically wounded, no one is sure if he will live or die, until Salvador offers a choice that just might send Rick over the edge.
NOTE! You are purchasing Siren’s newest imprint, the Siren Epic Romance collection. This is Book 6 of 7 in the Rise of the Changelings series. The series shares an overall story arc with many crossover characters playing major roles in each book. These books are not stand-alone and should be read in their numbered order.
Genre: Alternative (M/M or F/F), Paranormal, Vampires/Werewolves
Length: 72,850 words
RISE TO FALL
Rise of the Changelings, Book 6
Lynn Hagen
SIREN EPIC ROMANCE,
MANLOVE
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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IMPRINT: Siren Epic Romance, ManLove
RISE TO FALL
Copyright © 2013 by Lynn Hagen
E-book ISBN: 978-1-62242-200-5
First E-book Publication: March 2013
Cover design by Les Byerley
All art and logo copyright © 2013 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
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RISE TO FALL
Rise of the Changelings, Book 6
LYNN HAGEN
Copyright © 2013
Chapter One
“Die, you son of a bitch.” Rick mercilessly drove the blade into the changeling’s throat with a heavy thrust, grunting as he used his boot to push the man away from him. The loud explosions sounded all around him, but he kept moving. The mercenaries had infiltrated the small town they had settled in for the night, and Rick was determined to show them that violence, despair, and death were going to be their only reward.
They finally had the upper hand in this war and Rick was not going to lose that edge.
Dorian was off to his right, his skills with a gun first-rate. It amazed Rick how much his mate had learned since the war between humans and nonhumans had begun. The man was an expert shot now, able to take down a target long range.
“More mercenaries are moving in,” Benito warned.
“Let them,” Rick replied furiously. He grabbed his rocket launcher from the ground where he had dropped it and hoisted it up onto his shoulder. Focusing, he aimed at the approaching convoy and fired. Both Rick and Benito dropped to the concrete when gunshots sprayed over their heads, but the loud blast told Rick he had hit his mark.
It had been six months since Rick had gone on-air. He had announced to the world about the government’s plan. They wanted to unleash a virus that would not only make the entire world sterile, but it would take away the changelings’ ability to shift into their beasts. It would also give humans cancer.
At first, nothing had come from his broadcast, but slowly, over the past few months, Rick noticed a shift in the war. There were fewer soldiers out here fighting, more Rebellion groups forming, and they were finally winning.
But the number of Breed Hunters—groups of humans hell-bent on killing anything nonhuman—hadn’t declined. Figures. Cockroaches were hard as hell to kill.
Currently, Rick and his Rebellion group were fighting changeling mercenaries—his own fucking species who decided they liked money more than keeping their species alive. They were paid by private corporations to kill as many animals as they could.
But once Rick had made his on-air announcement, Dyson Pharmaceuticals, the leading company funding the mercenaries, backed out, withdrawing their funds as well. To say the mercenaries were pissed was an understatement. They seemed to be crawling out of the woodwork and coming after Rick with a hard-on.
“Running out of ammo,” Benito warned. “Tell me you got extra.”
“Nate!” Rick called over to his top enforcer, who was currently fighting two changeling mercenaries. Nate was a big man, huge even by changeling standards, and able to do some serious damage when pissed off. When the werewolf changeling glanced Rick’s way, he asked, “Got any extra ammo?”
Nate finished off the two he was fighting and then tossed Rick two clips. Rick caught them midair and handed them off to Benito.
He caught sight of his mate, Dorian, heading Rick’s way, a look of determination and panic in his Peruvian-brown eyes. Rick immediately scanned the area, his heightened changeling senses sea
rching for the cause of Dorian’s alarmed expression.
They may be fighting mercenaries, but Rick knew Dorian wouldn’t let that worry him. It had been over a year since Dorian had been arrested for three murders he didn’t commit. In that period, the man had proven time and again he had a steel backbone.
“What is it?” he asked when Dorian drew close. Rick didn’t like to see anything but a smile on his mate’s face. Anything else was offending to his senses. Since mating Rick, Dorian hadn’t had a peaceful night’s rest. He could tell it was wearing on his mate. The dark circles under the man’s eyes were testimony to that. Dorian was quieter as well, despite the joviality he sometimes displayed.
He knew his mate. After over a year of living with their growing bond, he knew Dorian like the back of his hand. Something was changing in the man, and Rick wasn’t certain it was for the better.
“The mercenaries are running.”
Rick set the rocket launcher on the ground beside him and picked his rifle up, checking the clip. “That is a good thing.”
Dorian shook his head, his eyes flickering around the area. Rick hadn’t seen Dorian this nervous since they first starting running from the madness. Even as Dorian spoke, a strange sense of dread entered Rick’s mind. “Something has spooked them.”
Stilling, Rick glanced around as well. He was now on high alert, wondering what had scared the changeling mercenaries. “Do you know what frightened them, gatito?”
Dorian gave a quick jerk to his head. “No, but I saw them scenting the air before they took off.”
“Damn strange,” Benito said as he stood, glancing around the small town. “Maybe they smelled their money slipping from their fingers since the big corporations are backing out of funding them.”
Even with the dead bodies scattered all around him, Rick could scent another kind of death, a decaying smell that only came with the oldest of graveyards.
He’s coming.
The words whispered through Rick’s mind. It was a warning the Shadow had given him the night Rick had gone on-air. A warning Rick never understood. He didn’t know who he was or why he was coming.
The messenger, the Shadow—the name Rick and his Rebellion group had dubbed the man shrouded in darkness who had stalked them for some weeks—was a vampire. Rick was sure of that. The incandescent red eyes had revealed that little secret to him.
Grabbing Dorian by his upper arm, Rick hurried his mate toward the Hummer. “Get out of here, gatito. Get back to the safe house now!” Rick could feel his edge of control slipping as an ancient power he had never felt before slid over him like a black oil, making him feel panicked—something he wasn’t used to feeling, and didn’t like.
Anger sharpened Dorian’s brown eyes. There were tight, controlled lines around his lips and a flash of dark emotions on his face. “You want me to run and leave you behind to deal with god knows what?”
Opening the driver’s door, Rick shoved Dorian toward the seat. “That is exactly what I fucking want you to do.”
Dorian pushed at Rick’s chest, the anger burning in his eyes so deeply that Rick took a step back. He had never seen his mate look at him with such contempt before. “Sorry, my horoscope said nothing about me running like a coward today. It said something about dodging bullets and eating takeout, but nothing about running with my tail tucked between my legs.”
“Gatito,” Rick said in warning.
“Gatito, my ass, Rick. We’ve been together over a year now and you still treat me like I’m going to break. Haven’t I proved that I can take care of myself? Haven’t I shown you that it takes more than what the enemy dishes out to take me down?”
Rick grabbed Dorian by the collar of his shirt, yanking him close, their noses almost touching. Whether instinct or imagination was at work, Rick couldn’t be sure, but he sensed an ominous presence close by. “This is not like any enemy you or I have encountered. I don’t know what it is, but I can feel his power washing over me. There is no way in hell I’m going to allow you to stick around.”
“If you stay, I stay, Rick. In this together, remember?” Dorian spoke of a pact Rick and his mate had whispered so long ago in a dark barn. It tore at his heart to see Dorian looking at him with trust and love, knowing he was trying to send the man away. But he couldn’t endanger his mate when he had no idea what was coming.
“Get the fuck out of here, Dorian.” Rick picked Dorian up and shoved him inside the Hummer, slamming the door closed. “Go!” he shouted, putting anger behind his words he didn’t feel. Scared, yes, scared to death, but not angry. Dorian was who he was and Rick loved the man. His mate was stubborn to the bone, and normally, Rick loved that quality about him, but not today, not now.
“Fuck you, Mr. Marcelo.” Dorian started the Hummer and drove off. The venom in Dorian’s voice was enough to make Rick want to run after his mate, but he didn’t.
Instead, he turned to face what was coming. It made him a bastard the way he had handled Dorian, but Rick would rather be a bastard than watch as Dorian’s life drained from his eyes. He didn’t know what was coming, but from the way his skin crawled, Rick wasn’t taking any damn chances.
He would work it out later tonight with his mate.
“Should I start praying?” Benito asked soberly as he stood next to him.
“Yeah,” Rick said as his eyes scanned the hills toward the south. “You just might want to.”
Dorian drove down the road, so damn angry that he was actually fucking crying. He never cried. But Rick had never treated him so high-handedly before either. They argued and snapped at each other on occasion, but he had never been treated like a juvenile before.
Didn’t Rick get it? Did he know that Dorian didn’t care what danger came their way? He was Rick’s mate and would stand at his side, fight at his side, and die at his side. He had thought they were partners, but Rick had just told him otherwise by action and words.
He loved Rick to the point it physically hurt and there was no way—Dorian slammed on the brakes when he saw a tall, dark figure standing in the middle of the road. What the devil? The guy was just standing there, staring at Dorian, unmoving.
Any other time, he would have run over anyone looking at him like this was an approaching murder scene in a B-rated horror movie. But he didn’t because there was a compulsion in his head that Dorian couldn’t seem to fight. It told him to sit there, to relax, and to put the vehicle in park.
Ever so slowly, his arm began to rise.
Dorian fought his own goddamn arm when it reached for the gear. There was no way he was going to allow a stranger to manipulate his mind and use him like a damn marionette, pulling Dorian’s strings.
He didn’t even listen to Rick half the time. This stranger had nothing coming from Dorian.
Yet his arm wouldn’t stop reaching.
“Get the fuck out of my head!” Dorian shouted through the windshield, but lost the fight and placed the Hummer in park. The night was silent this deep in the forest, only a two-lane winding road and plenty of trees for his escape.
But he couldn’t escape because he just sat there like an idiot and watched the man thirty feet in front of him.
The stranger began to slowly walk toward him, his predatory gait telling Dorian he was in deep shit. Why in the fuck did he listen to Rick and leave? He was no safer running away.
The stranger that was dressed in a finely cut suit continued to move closer, close enough that Dorian could see the man’s eerie twin obsidian orbs and the red circle around his irises.
Oh, fuck!
This stranger was a vampire.
Dorian knew better than to look a vampire in his eyes. Rick had warned him eons ago that a vampire could enthrall a person with his eyes.
But he couldn’t tear his gaze away. He wanted to. God how he wanted to, but it was as if he were locked in some sort of daze.
The man twitched his fingers—a slight movement, barely noticeable—and the doors on the Hummer unlocked. It was as if Dorian was t
rapped in his own mind. He was screaming for Rick, fighting to slam the truck into drive and mow the bastard over.
But he just sat there, staring.
Mesmerized.
Helpless.
This was bad.
Real bad.
Rick!
Nothing, no answer. There was just an emptiness inside his head that said he was all alone, facing a vampire in a very expensive and dark suit on an isolated back road in the country, surrounded by nothing but fucking trees. God, he should have stayed in bed today.
Dorian turned his head to his left, gazing at the man when he stopped right outside the door. He just stood there, his ancient eyes and his black hair standing out in contrast to his bronze skin. Dorian’s eyes slowly lowered, watching helplessly as the vampire’s hand reached up and grabbed the handle to the door.
He tried to struggle again, to free his body from the mental hold it seemed to be imprisoned in. A whimper fell from his lips when the door opened and the vampire stepped aside.
Dorian slid from his seat, standing in front of the man. He was tall, about six two, and chiseled. Dorian could see the cut in the man’s arms. This stranger could do some serious damage to him.
“Quem é seu mestre, jovem?”
Dorian blinked up at him, feeling as if he were just drifting along, not a care in the world. He liked the man’s voice, though. It was deep, rich, and the accent was a killer. “What?”
The vampire walked around Dorian and his survival instincts kicked in. He didn’t like having his enemy at his back. He fought the haze, struggled to free himself, but his body hadn’t moved one damn inch.
“Who is your master, young one?”
The man’s voice was so relaxing, so lulling that Dorian wanted to follow behind him like a lost little puppy, yapping at his feet.
Wait, that wasn’t right. “I don’t have a fucking master, you piece of shit. Now let me out of this mental trap.”
The man twisted his wrist and Dorian lost the ability to talk. He would love to be able to move around freely because he would shoot the bastard.
“Your tongue is very hostile. I have caused you no harm, yet you spat volatile words at me as if I have offended you.”
