“Ireland it is, then.” Raphael had to fight back a grin. He’d decided on Ireland before they’d even agreed on this meeting. He knew about Lucas’s foothold on the island. He even knew how many vampires were sworn to Lucas, rather than the Lord of Ireland. Lucas was his oldest child. He had few secrets from Raphael. Which was why Raphael also knew that Lucas thought he’d be leading the invasion. But that wasn’t going to happen.
“We need a general,” Duncan said into the silence, reading Raphael’s thoughts. Not literally, but from more than 200 years of loyalty and friendship. “A vampire powerful enough to take Ireland from its current lord.”
Lucas made a gesture, as if to say, “I’m right here.” But Raphael ignored him, saying instead, “We all have vampires within our territories who are strong enough to pull off something like this. Most of our lieutenants could do it easily, but I, for one, am not willing to lose another lieutenant just yet,” he said with a nod at Jared, who’d replaced Duncan as his lieutenant. “You have two days to send me your suggestions,” he said to the others, “and then, we’re going to war.”
Raphael was about to say more when pain, sharp and woeful, struck his heart and reverberated in his soul. Vampires were dead. His vampires, children of his blood. And they’d met a violent death.
Chapter Two
CYN WAS SITTING cross-legged on the bed, typing furiously on her laptop, when she heard the distant ding of the old-fashioned elevator. It was a small hotel, only 12 rooms. The kind of boutique hotel favored by vampires, like the ones who’d taken over the entire building for the last few days while they’d met on super-secret vampire business. Raphael and his people—being the most super-secret of them all—had claimed the two top floors. Which meant the arriving elevator would be bringing the one person she cared most about in all the world. His deep voice confirmed it for her a moment before the lock beeped on the hallway door out in the sitting room of their suite.
The door opened, and Raphael’s rage rolled ahead of him like a physical wave, battering at her senses, filling the room with stinging energy. She jumped off the bed and met him as he entered the bedroom, his hard strides silenced by the thick carpet. She was struck, as always, by his beauty, even with fury making his eyes spark, and his clenched jaw accenting chiseled cheekbones.
She’d been sensing his growing anger for the better part of an hour and had worried that the meeting was going badly, that the powerful vampires had come to blows. Seeing him now, being close enough to feel the electric charge of his rage against her skin, she knew it was more. It was almost like battle lust, as if he was ready to kill someone. But underneath that . . . She looked up, searching his face. Her heart seemed to still in her chest, and she forgot to breathe. “What happened?”
“There was a shooting at the blood house,” he said, his deep voice almost a growl as he visibly fought to contain conflicting emotions. “My people are investigating, but it looks—”
“Who died? Is Lenny okay?” she demanded. She started a mental roll call of the people she loved, tallying what they were supposed to be doing tonight, and where they were supposed to be doing it.
“Lenny was unharmed. But two vampires, both mine, are dead. Marvin Figueroa—”
She shook her head. She didn’t know him.
“—he was a mechanic, working mostly in the garage.” Raphael paused, and Cyn knew the next name would be one she recognized. “Davis Atwell.”
“Oh, no,” she breathed. Davis had been an instructor at the estate’s training center. An Olympic gold medal winner in Judo in the ‘60s, he’d been turned a few years later and had changed his name when he’d joined Raphael’s staff. Cyn had trained with him at least once a week, though her skills were nothing compared to the vampires he usually worked with. She blinked back the tears filling her eyes, focusing on anger instead. “Why? Who?” she demanded.
“Early indication is a hate crime. The shooter was careful. Only vampires were hit, even though the house was full.”
“How’d he manage that?”
“The shots came from a boat, probably 500 yards at sea. Single shooter.”
“Video?”
He nodded. “You know the set-up there. We have extensive video from multiple angles, but our best witnesses are several vampires who heard the shots and saw the boat. Even for them, it was too dark to pick up details, however. Especially at that distance.”
“We need to get home.” She knew it was late, knew how much Raphael hated flying in daylight. But she also knew what he’d say next.
“We’re leaving within the hour.”
Her vampire didn’t fuck around when it came to his people. She went up on her toes to wrap her arms around his neck and hug him, then felt his powerful arms come around her and hold on tight. Her vampire didn’t fuck around, but he did hurt when his people died. Especially when they were his children, vampires he’d turned with his own blood.
She pulled back enough to brush her lips over his. “We’ll get them,” she whispered.
“Yes, we will.”
THERE WERE SEVERAL hours of darkness left when Raphael’s jet took off from Chicago. They’d gain even more as they flew west, but not enough to avoid spending the day sleeping on the plane. Juro was receiving updates as they flew, spending most of his time huddled with Jared at one end of the jet’s main lounge. Occasionally, one of them would join Raphael and Cyn, updating them on the latest details. But there was little they could do until they were on the ground. Raphael’s people in L.A. knew their jobs. They’d be handling everything.
Cyn was thinking of the day ahead, hours spent on the plane, waiting for sunset. She could leave at any time, but she never did. Not with Raphael lying vulnerable inside an aluminum tube in an airport hangar. Steve Sipes would have the place covered inside and out with security, but, in the final analysis, she really only trusted herself to protect Raphael.
She had her laptop open, trying to stay busy, reminding herself that Raphael’s people were trained to handle this sort of thing. She was on-line, checking open cases for her limited private investigations, dealing with a few new inquiries, when Jared and Juro both made their way down the wide aisle of the private jet. Cyn watched them come and felt her heart squeeze in fear. Something had happened, something more. She glanced at Raphael. Without a word, he picked up her laptop and laid it on an empty seat across the aisle. He wrapped his fingers around hers and rested their joined hands on his muscular thigh. He already knew what they were about to tell him, she realized.
Something had happened, something even worse than two dead vampires.
RAPHAEL SQUEEZED Cyn’s hand where it lay on his thigh, taking comfort from her touch, from the press of her thigh against his. He watched Jared and Juro approach, but didn’t need them to tell him there’d been more attacks. Within moments of the initial shock, the agony of losing two of his children at the blood house, he’d known there would be more. He’d sensed pain and death, the blows coming one after another, a coordinated assault. But he hadn’t known who had died, and who’d survived. Until now.
“Sire,” Jared said, with a glance at Cyn’s pale face.
“Just say it,” she insisted, her hand gripping Raphael’s so tightly that her fingers were more bloodless than her face.
“One more dead. A young female named Zoya. She’s fairly new to the household—”
“She worked for Irina,” Raphael said softly. “They had cousins in common.” Zoya had been sworn to him, but not of his making. He’d felt her death, but it hadn’t carried the same anguish as that of his own children. “How did she die?” he asked.
“Shot in the heart as she left the movie theater with a human male. Not a lover, as such, but, according to Irina, someone she’d dated more than once. We don’t think he was involved.”
“Who was injured?” Raphael asked quietly, more for C
yn’s sake than his own. He knew which of his vampires had been injured, though not the specifics.
Jared glanced from Raphael to Cyn, and said, “Elke—”
“No,” Cyn breathed. She turned wounded eyes on Raphael, knowing that Elke was his, and he’d have sensed her death. “Is she—”
“She’s alive,” he assured her, then asked his vampires, “What happened?”
“She was at the Beverly Center, with Mal—”
“Mal?” Cyn asked, her voice tense, expecting the worst.
“Also alive,” Juro said, “but both were injured. Mal was shot in the shoulder. He saw the shooter at the last minute and covered Elke, taking them both to the ground. The bullet passed through him and hit her, a grazing wound on her scalp. She’s pissed as hell and out for blood. She says there were two more shots fired in close succession, but none of them hit the mark. When Mal knocked her to the ground, it was between two cars. Elke thinks the vehicles got in the way. The shooter escaped.”
“I want to talk to Elke,” Cyn insisted, bending to retrieve her phone from the computer case at her feet.
But Raphael closed his hand over hers, stopping her. “She’ll be with Mal,” he said quietly.
Juro nodded. “She’s helping him heal, despite her own injuries. Her wound isn’t serious, but she will need healing of her own.”
“She’ll be mainlining blood, and won’t be happy about it,” Raphael said. “Tomorrow night will be soon enough, lubimaya.”
Cyn looked like she wanted to fight him on it, but then nodded. “Okay. What do we know?”
“The three attacks happened within moments of each other,” Jared said, his words crisp and businesslike. The time for grieving was over. It was all about vengeance now. “The blood house was hit first, but the other two attacks were almost simultaneous. Single shooter for each, although, there was most likely a second person to pilot the boat at the blood house assault.”
“A professional hit, then,” she said, putting into words what they were all thinking. “Any idea who?”
“A European backer seems most likely, given the current state of hostilities,” Raphael commented. “We’ll know more once we catch them.” He turned to Juro, “I want the blood house shut down—”
“Already done,” the big vampire said immediately.
“—and the estate on lockdown. All leaves cancelled.”
“Already done, Sire,” Jared said quietly. “Standard operating procedure. Although, in this case . . . that might be exactly what they want. One big, fat target.”
“You’re probably right,” Raphael agreed. “But I’d rather have them come at me on the estate than pick my people off, one at a time, until I give them what they want. Juro, your team needs to comb through all intel received in the last month. It’s possible the shooters were human, but I’d put my money on them being vampire. Whoever’s behind this wouldn’t trust humans to do all the work. And if the attackers are vampire, then they must be feeding. Someone knows something. Find out who.”
“Yes, Sire.”
He turned to Jared. “Davis had no family, no mate, but Marvin had a lover. They weren’t mated, but they’ve been together for years. Make sure she’s taken care of financially, and cover whatever else she needs. Zoya was very young. She almost certainly had family still alive.”
“I’ll check with Irina,” Jared said, making notes on an iPad. He looked up. “You must know, Sire, that Elke is out for blood. She won’t want to sit this one out.”
“There’s no reason she should. Whatever happens, I’ll want her with us. What about the arrangements for our arrival in L.A. later this morning?”
“I’m coordinating with Steve. The daylight guards were locked down on the estate along with everyone else the minute the blood house was hit, so we have a full roster available. Steve’s doubling the usual number of guards at the airport, and—”
“And I’ll be there,” Cyn added softly.
Jared nodded in her direction. “And Cyn will be on the jet.”
In fact, she’d be the only person awake on the aircraft, the only human allowed during daylight once they landed and the human pilots exited the plane. Steve Sipes could enter if the emergency was dire. But Cyn was the only sure thing. Raphael had counted on her before, and would count on her again. His mate was both beautiful and deadly.
They all looked up as the jet’s human crew suddenly got up from their seats at the front of the jet and made their way to the cockpit, getting ready to switch out with the vampire crew. They’d gained a few hours of darkness because of their westward flight, but sunrise was looming. The cockpit door opened and there was a general shuffling of bodies before the door closed again, and the vampire crew retired into the vampire-safe sleeping bunks in the same section where the human crew had been waiting.
“Anything else, Sire?” Jared asked. “Any final instructions for Malibu before we hit daylight?”
“That’s all for now. Rest. We’re all going to need it tomorrow.”
CYN CRAWLED INTO bed next to Raphael, rolling into his warmth as he wrapped his arms around her. She wanted to cry. For the dead vampires, especially Davis, whom she’d thought of as a friend, but for the others, too. It was one thing for a vampire to die in battle, in a stand-up fight for their lord, or for their own lives. Cyn herself had killed her share of vampires, when they’d threatened her or someone she cared about. But it was something else entirely when a vampire was murdered, attacked from the shadows, purely because they were vampire, or even just to make a point with Raphael. Vampires weren’t strictly immortal. They obviously could be killed. But the waste of such a life . . . who knew what they might have accomplished in the future?
“You’re thinking too hard, lubimaya.” Raphael’s deep voice shivered over her breasts where they were crushed against his chest.
“I can’t help it.”
“Then at least think of ways to catch the killers. There’s nothing you can do about the rest.”
“I know. Do you think this has something to do with your meeting?”
“I don’t see how. No one knew what I was going to say until I said it. Except for Jared and Juro. And you. I doubt the three of you leaked it to our enemies.”
She sighed unhappily.
“More likely,” Raphael continued, “it’s payback of some kind. Mathilde certainly left children behind in France, and she had a talent for inspiring devotion. I didn’t know Hubert or Berkhard as well as Mathilde, but I’m certain they had followers who might seek revenge for their deaths.”
Cyn petted Raphael’s muscled chest and wished the European vamps would stick to their creaky castles and leave the rest of the world alone.
“How’d the meeting go, anyway?” she asked, though she had a strong suspicion the previous night’s deaths might change everything. “Did the others agree that something has to be done about Europe?”
“Of course,” he muttered, his hand rubbing absent circles on her back.
She smiled at his arrogance. It was one of the things she loved most about him. “Of course,” she repeated. “So, what’s the plan? Are we sending harshly worded postcards? Or storming the strongholds?”
“Closer to the second option. We’re moving into Ireland first, then using it as a base of operations.”
“Ireland? What does Lucas think about that?”
“You know how he feels about Ireland. He still blames his grandfather for his mother’s death, as if it happened last week instead of 200 years ago. It doesn’t matter to him that the old man is long dead himself.”
“Well, his grandfather deserves to be blamed. If he hadn’t cast her out after she was raped, she’d have lived a normal life. And Lucas, too.”
“But then I’d never have met him,” Raphael murmured. “And he’d never have become Vampire.”
“You don’t know that. If his fate was to meet you, it would have happened anyway.”
“Maybe,” he conceded. “But it didn’t come to pass that way. His mother died, and Lucas has hated his grandfather for centuries. He bought the family estate to get back at the old man, even knowing he couldn’t live there. He barely manages to visit once a year. The Irish lord won’t give him permission.”
“So, if you want someone to seize Ireland, then logically Lucas would be—”
“That’s what Lucas thinks, or what he wants. But it’s not going to happen. He can’t have Ireland and his Plains territory here at the same time. Ireland needs a strong lord, someone allied with North America, but focused on Ireland. Not torn between the two.”
“Lucas would never live in Ireland full time. He’d never move that far away from you.”
“I don’t know about that, but he’s smart and a brilliant tactician. He’ll see the necessity for a new vampire lord. Even if I have to pound it into his head myself.”
Cyn patted his chest. “There’s my fang boy. You guys pretend to like each other, but you’re really just waiting for a chance to beat each other bloody. You should have a cage match once a month or something. Two vamps enter, one vamp leaves. That sort of thing. I’d pay to see that. You’d win every time.”
“I’m warmed by your confidence.”
“Anytime. So, who’s leading the charge into Ireland?” she asked, feeling her thoughts begin to drift. It had been a long, stressful night, and she was tired.
“The others will offer suggestions. We need someone unencumbered, someone strong enough to challenge and kill the current lord, and then hold the country for himself. I’ll look over their candidates and make the final decision.”
Relentless: A Cyn and Raphael Novella (Vampires in America 11.5) Page 2
