Fashionably Hotter Than Hell

by Robyn Peterman

  “Losing the curse and mating with someone far beneath you must have addled your brain,” he replied, shaking his head in mock sorrow as he glared at her. “I heard you clearly. You simply don’t make sense.”

  “Oh but I do,” she replied as she crossed the room and took Juliet’s hand in hers.

  Raquel pulled her away from Vlad as he watched, growling low in his throat. They stopped inches from me. The bastard observed in confusion as Juliet wrapped her arms around Raquel and hugged her lovingly.

  Jesus, I was glad I knew Jean Paul was her brother. Anyone touching my mate besides family at this point was going to die.

  “Juliet, come back here immediately. You will be very sorry for this,” Vlad warned.

  “Actually, I won’t,” Juliet replied as she flipped him her middle finger and seamlessly morphed back into Jean Paul.

  He wore the same bloody bruises that he’d acquired as Juliet. He was not in his best form and I wanted him to leave. Vlad’s roar of displeasure blew out the sidewall of the room. Things were picking up and Jean Paul was in no shape to fight.

  “Transport out,” I ordered tersely.

  “Not on your life,” he snapped, his French accent heavier in his fury. “I get a piece of that fucker.”

  “Heathcliff’s right,” Raquel implored her brother. “Go. Now.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he said challenging both his sister’s and my authority.

  “Fine,” I ground out as I pressed my wrist to his mouth. “Drink.”

  “Are you done over there?” Vlad asked, pulled himself back together with difficulty. “I’m getting bored with your idle chatter. I have places to go and people to kill.”

  “You have choices, Vlad,” I said carefully.

  Jean Paul drank quickly and his open wounds began to close. Sadly, I was certain he would have more open wounds shortly. We all probably would. A violence-free ending wasn’t in the cards… but one could certainly try.

  “You’re giving me choices, guard?” he sneered. “That’s rich.”

  “The Angels know everything. Roberto was in the room with you and our Juliet. Your days are numbered. If you cooperate now, your punishment might be swift instead of long and drawn out as the Angels are wont to do.”

  “Do I look like an imbecile to you?” Vlad inquired caustically. His eyes blazed green with hatred and insanity.

  “Debatable,” I answered honestly, with a grin.

  With great effort Vlad swallowed his retort and casually took a seat on the couch. He turned on a dime and behaved as if he’d come for a civil visit. The tension in the room was palpable, but he studiously ignored it.

  Smoothing out his blood spattered evening coat, he checked the sharpness of his fangs with his fingertips. Seemingly satisfied, he crossed his legs and made himself comfortable—he then made a huge show of counting us.

  “One, two, three of you… and only one of me,” he confirmed aloud. “I don’t think that’s fair.”

  “Seriously?” Raquel asked with a wrinkled nose and disgusted snort.

  “Quite, my dear,” he purred. “However, I’m far more powerful than the three of you put together. So let me tell you how this will play out.”

  He paused and removed several knives from his jacket pocket. Placing them on the coffee table in front of him, he pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket and went to work cleaning his weapons.

  “First I will kill your guard. I don’t like that he has tasted what is mine. And Heathcliff, your reputation as a deadly warrior will be such a delight to disprove.”

  His laugh was purely to goad me, but I was far smarter than that. Timing would be everything.

  “It will be your punishment, Raquel—to watch him die. Next will be the one who fooled me.” He glanced over at Jean Paul and showed him his fangs. “I’m going to rip your head from your body… with my teeth. And then I will have you, Raquel. Unfortunately for you it will only be once as I will burn you to ash when I’ve had my fill.”

  “That’s an ambitious list,” I commented as I took the seat across from him. “My goal is far more attainable.”

  “Really?” he inquired not looking up from cleansing his knives. “And what’s on your agenda this fine evening?”

  I laughed and his eyes shot to mine in surprise. Time and space idled for a moment as I observed the madness in his gaze.

  “One thing,” I told him. “There is one thing on my list.”

  “Are you going to share?” he asked silkily as he stood and rose to his full height.

  I considered him for a long moment and grinned at his posturing. Not for a moment did I discount who he was and the power he had. His age alone made him extremely deadly, but his wrath and ego gave me the upper hand.

  “I’m going to destroy you.”

  “Well in that case, why don’t we even up my odds?” he suggested.

  A flash of red light splintered the room. I put my hand up to shield my eyes from the blast and quickly moved back to Raquel and Jean Paul. As the brightness receded, I realized Vlad had called for back-up. Ten Old Guard Vampyres stood in a line behind him. Their lifeless stares bored into us. This was getting more interesting and fucked up by the second. My need to tear them apart consumed me and I itched to start tearing heads from shoulders.

  “Shall we do this honorably?” he snarled.

  “Do you even know what that word means?” Raquel inquired sarcastically as she readied herself for battle. “The odds aren’t exactly even.”

  “Too bad, so sad,” Vlad sang with a laugh that held no mirth. “Fuck it. Kill the males, but leave Raquel. She’s mine. And I’ve changed my mind, dear Raquel. I’m going to kill you before I take you.”

  “That is fucking gross,” Jean Paul muttered, disgusted.

  “And not going to happen,” I growled as I dove head first into the fray.

  And so it began.

  There was no honor—none at all.

  However, there was blood.

  A lot of blood.

  ***

  They came at us fast and furious. This was a far different game than I’d ever played. I was a Master Vampyre; however, these fucks were Master Vampyres with about a thousand years on the three of us combined. Fangs ripped through skin, and magic shot around the room like dozens out of control boomerangs. As I gripped the head of a particularly aggressive Vampyre, I caught Raquel out of the corner of my eye.

  She was truly splendid. A fucking beautiful killing machine. My girl wasted no movement as she took on the Vamp gunning for her. Jean Paul held his own—barely—sparring with two of the ugly undead bastards.

  “You’re mine,” a Vampyre with wild eyes and gnashing fangs screamed as he came at me like a freight train from the bowels of Hell.

  Exactly where I planned to send him.

  “Not today,” I grunted as I met him head on.

  We grappled in a match for our lives. He threw punch after punch backed up with a sorcery that flamed through my insides with sickening jolts. Flipping backward, I caught his head in my legs and crushed his trachea. It gave me the precious second I needed to overcome him. In a fluid movement, I tore the head from the son of a bitch and permanently ended the screams of agony he’d wailed seconds ago.

  Where the fuck was Vlad? There was a momentary foreboding stillness in the air and I spotted him across the room watching. Such a fucking coward.

  In the brief second I’d taken to find Vlad, I’d been struck. Pain shot through my body and seared like fire at the end of my left arm as I realized my hand was gone. The flying magic cast by the Old Guard tore through our bodies like knives. My stump tingled immediately as it began to regenerate, but it would take an hour that I didn’t have for it to be reformed and useful. Ripping heads with one hand was difficult. Using my good hand, my fangs, magic and my legs would have to suffice. There was no other choice.

  Directly in my sightline, Jean Paul struggled with two Vamps on a mission to destroy. He was bleeding profusely and h
is arm was attached by only a tendon, but he was still in the battle.

  Removing my eyes from my next aggressor would be deadly, so I focused and fought like I’d never fought. The gory satisfaction of decapitating and destroying overwhelmed me and I attacked as if there was no tomorrow coming.

  Sound was distorted and my vision was blurred by the vile magic ricocheting around the room, but I moved with precise actions and one goal. Kill the fuck in front of me and get to Vlad before he got to Raquel.

  Pain was secondary as dark red blood spurted from multiple wounds on my body. I think I’d killed six. The one in trapped in my vicious chokehold roared as I snapped his neck and yanked his head from his body with my forearms. Raquel’s victorious shout and Jean Paul’s grunt of satisfaction as my deadly mate pierced the heart of her attacker with her stiletto heel was music to my ears. We’d made it.

  They were all dead. All ten of them lay in tattered heaps in different stages of decay around us. Half had already turned to ash. Now to get to the root of all evils…

  I quickly cased the room to make sure we hadn’t missed anyone and searched for Vlad. Jean Paul was across the room leaning against the wall. It was holding him up. He smiled weakly and gave me a thumbs up. Raquel was about ten feet from me. She was torn up, bleeding and weak, but she was alive and looked gorgeous to me. Her smile was wicked and I felt the stirring of lust in my lower half. There was nothing about the woman that I wasn’t addicted to.

  And then there was silence. Silence was always bad in movies.

  It was far fucking worse in real life.

  Vlad stood on a table at the end of the room cringing in disgust and swearing at the fallen Vampyres. He muttered unintelligibly as he bent down and grabbed his weapon.

  It happened in slow motion—like trying to sprint under water. Raquel’s eyes were on her brother and in her damaged state her stance was lax and open. The long pointed silver stake in Vlad’s strong hands gleamed under the lights of the massive chandelier that had somehow survived unscathed in the battle.

  It was only a split second, but it felt like an eternity.

  My shout of warning to Raquel as the pole jetted toward her heart only confused her. She turned to me and left herself even more exposed and open than she was only moments ago.

  Jean Paul fell to the floor and tried to scramble over to her to knock her out of the way.

  Vlad’s shout of triumph rang hollow in my ears as images of Raquel from the last two hundred years whirled through my brain. I would love her in this life and beyond. Nothing would change that. The last several days of my life had been the most wonderful I’d known and I wouldn’t trade any of it.

  I’d even take the next chapter in our love story gratefully if it meant she would live.

  Autopilot was my mode as I mentally gauged the velocity and weight of the silver stake with a critical eye. In split seconds, my entire world crumbled around me. I shot from my spot and flew at Vampyre speed into the path of the stake. Raquel’s scream pounded through my head as a fire like I’d never known pierced my chest.

  Fuck… I’d hoped it would hit lower. Lower would have been so goddamned much better. The room spun and as my body contorted as my mouth filled with liquid. I tried to swallow. If I could drink, I’d be fine—but it just kept coming up. Nothing would go down. Why wouldn’t it go down?

  “Damn you, Heathcliff,” Raquel shouted from a far away place. “You can’t die on me. You promised you wouldn’t die. I’m a Master fucking Vampyre. I don’t need your macho caveman bullshit tendencies. I need you… I need you to live,” she sobbed hysterically.

  She shook me, but it felt like someone else’s body was moving. A reddish haze covered everything in my vision and with sickening clarity, I realized I hadn’t killed Vlad. Raquel was above me crying like the world was ending. Tears fell from her eyes and onto my face.

  I had to tell her to run. Vlad was still here. He wanted to hurt her.

  Where the fuck was Jean Paul? Words refused pass my lips as my joints sizzled agonizingly with the silver from the stake streaming through my blood.

  “You will not die. You will not die,” she ground out as she bit down on her wrist and pressed it to my mouth.

  Her blood poured over my chin along with my own that refused to stay within the confines of my body. She was so very beautiful, even in her distress. Her shouts grew softer even though her beautiful lips continued to move frantically. Slowly she began to fade away.

  I was drowning in my own blood. I couldn’t thrash or even explain. The stillness of my body was not a comfort. It was a failure. The fire raging inside me was a combination of the silver winding its way through my system and fury. Fury at not having ended the life of the man that wanted to kill the most important person in the world to me.

  I knew it was too late. I knew there was no way to reverse the effects of the silver, not to mention I was fairly sure the fucking stake went through my heart. The heart that was breaking slowly as I watched my mate come apart as she mumbled garbled words at me and pressed her soft lips to my face. The world was so fucking unfair…

  Her scent was faint, but it was there. I needed to remember. I wanted to take it with me. I needed…

  I loved her with my heart, my soul and now my life… but it was good.

  She was good.

  She would live.

  I could close my eyes.

  I’d saved her.

  And then my beautiful world that held Raquel as the center of the universe faded to black.

  Chapter 24

  “Well this is some fucked up shit,” a hushed female voice said.

  “Be quiet,” another snapped in frustration.

  The pacing around the area was rampant and the whispering nonstop. Tension filled the air and the staccato tapping of heels on hard wood produced the rhythm of a disjointed tap dance. The rustling of papers and far off sounds of splashing water slightly muted the drumming of the feet on the floor.

  “This was an enormous mistake,” the loudest of the men informed the crowd. “It’s against the laws of nature and we’re not even sure who in the Hell is even in there now.”

  “I don’t care,” a woman said flatly. “I’ll know.”

  “Was this selfish?” a different female asked quietly.

  The woman with the flat voice replied coldly. “In the same situation you would have done exactly as I have done. Do not judge me until you’ve stood in my shoes.”

  The silence was long and then the movement recommenced.

  “It’s been a week, child. There are only hours left. If you haven’t said your goodbyes… the time has come,” a kindly male baritone said trying to comfort the flat voiced woman.

  “If anyone so much as utters a goodbye, I will end you. If you have no faith then I’d suggest you leave,” she hissed.

  The raw pain in the woman’s tone was heartbreaking. Her belief in a miracle was undeterred even though she seemed alone in her convictions. A soft murmuring of words jumbled together assuring the poor woman that they would stand by her floated in the air like muffled music in a somber key.

  “I know you people don’t want to hear anything more from my fucking trap, but there were stipulations to this deal,” the woman who’d spoken first revealed.

  “What are they?” the woman with the flat voice asked tonelessly. “Actually I don’t care. He is owed a favor and I called it in. What’s done is done.”

  “Well… because it wasn’t technically you he owed the favor to, he tagged on some motherfucking extras,” the foul mouthed one replied.

  “What in the Hell else on a shit stick did that pompity ass-jacking buttknocker want?” a higher angry female voice demanded.

  “That we swear on our lives this never happened and that if something goes awry we are to destroy… ”

  “Stop,” the woman with the flat voice snarled. “I won’t hear this.”

  “You have to,” the loud man insisted. “Are you willing to end him if he’s not who we
want him to be—who we knew?”

  “Again,” she ground out. “I won’t hear this.”

  “Fine. Did they find the other bastard yet?” the loud male asked tightly.

  “No, but there isn’t a corner of this earth where he’ll be safe. The entire army of our race and that of the Angels are searching,” came a terse reply.

  “When they find him, he’s mine,” the woman in pain growled. “The Holy Ones have promised to mute his power and have given me permission to destroy him… slowly.”