So, while Eve presented no real danger to his future subjects, she clearly knew more about vampires than the average citizen. And she was a native to the region. She could be useful to him, even if she didn’t know it. And then there was the whole fuckable quotient. He decided to wait and see how the situation played out.
They slowed in front of an older building. Probably much older. It wasn’t unusual in Dublin—or Ireland, in general—to find homes and other buildings that were hundreds of years old and still occupied, most with significant upgrades over the years. The block where Eve lived was the working man’s version of Lucas Donlon’s modernized castle.
The street was mostly unlit, but for a single pole lamp on each corner, with the rare glow from an unshaded window casting a dim square of light on the uneven sidewalk. Quinn could see well enough with nothing but moonlight, but he wondered how Eve could maneuver the uneven sidewalks on those heels. They walked side by side, their bodies close enough that she could grab his arm if she needed to, but she never did. She’d said her mother lived nearby. Maybe she’d grown up in this area and had memorized the rough streets over the years.
Eve’s place was one in a line of four small units, each no more than twelve feet wide with a painted door in the middle. She stopped and turned to him, keys in hand. “Well, thanks for the escort, Kavanagh.”
Quinn was amused. It had been a while since a woman had given him the brush-off, even when he’d been human. But as a vampire. . . . Hell, women tripped over each other to get to him when he visited a blood house. That wasn’t ego speaking, either. It was fact.
Eve, the vampire killer, on the other hand, couldn’t wait to get rid of him. Too bad for her that Quinn had no intention of being shaken off. Even if he hadn’t wanted to bed her—and look at him, being all polite with his words—he’d have stuck close. If vampires were being killed, it was his business as the future Lord of Ireland, to investigate. Whether Irish vampires knew it yet or not.
He drew closer to Eve, trapping her against the door with his body, while not actually touching her. She was the skittish sort. He’d have to go slowly. “Good night, Eve,” he murmured. Without warning, he dipped his head down and kissed her. It was a bare touch of his lips against hers as she sucked in a surprised breath. He didn’t know if it was anticipation or fear making her heart pound, but she didn’t pull away and didn’t try to draw that wicked knife of hers and cut off his balls, either. He took it as a positive sign. “We’ll see each other again soon,” he promised, and walked away.
EVE WATCHED THE American stroll down the block, not even glancing back at her before he turned the corner and was gone. Cheeky fucker. Maybe it was the American way to kiss women you barely knew, but not in Ireland. She scowled. It obviously did happen in Ireland, since it had just happened to her, and she hadn’t so much as breathed a word of protest. None of the local lads would have dared take such liberties. Even without her brother to defend her, she had a reputation as a cold bitch, one who wasn’t afraid to leave marks on anyone who got too friendly. The question was . . . why had she let Quinn Kavanagh get as close as he had? She had a knife for fuck’s sake. And if she didn’t want to use that, there was always her fist. Or her knee.
Her face pinched in thought before she realized she was standing in front of her half-open door, staring down the empty street like a daft cow. Blowing out an exasperated breath, she shoved into her tiny flat before any additional cold air could get inside, then closed the door behind her.
Whatever had possessed her to kiss Kavanagh, or let him kiss her, didn’t matter. She had a job to do, a brother to avenge. There was no room for midnight dalliances with handsome strangers. She locked the door with a firm click of the deadbolt, dropped to her only chair to strip off her boots, and thought about the day ahead. She couldn’t afford more than a few hours of sleep. She had a heavy research workload right now—the kind of work that paid the bills—which meant it had to take priority over her vampire hunts. If she went out at all, it would be well after midnight, when she’d already done her paying research through the day and into evening. Sometimes she got lucky, catching a vampire or two on their way home. Vamps tended to pay less attention as dawn drew near. Bodies were tired, thoughts were sluggish. All of which made her hunting a lot safer. A tired vampire was her perfect prey.
She set the alarm on her mobile, hoping for an early start in the morning, then flicked off the light and pulled the covers over her head. Her eyes closed, and she saw Quinn Kavanagh’s smiling face for a brief moment, before her thoughts scattered and sleep claimed her.
QUINN PULLED through the gate of his newly-acquired home in Howth, glad to see Garrick’s sedan already parked near the front stairs. He let himself into the house, not bothering to call out his arrival. They were vampires. Garrick had known the moment he arrived. There was no need for a lot of unnecessary shouting.
He found his cousin in the ground floor room they were using as an office. It was the dining room, which they were obviously never going to use for that purpose. But the dining table was more than spacious enough for the two of them, the overhead lighting was good, and the room had plenty of outlets in convenient places. The table held what seemed like a lot of computers for only two vampires, but that was Garrick’s doing. While Quinn had been laser-focused from his early teens on getting good enough grades for law school, Garrick had been charming the school secretary, sneaking into her office, and changing his grades in history and English to match the ones in math and science, to ensure he got into his geek college of choice. He’d graduated from that same college with a host of job offers, and had been fully and profitably employed in the early development of what would become modern personal computing, when he’d caught the eye of the vampire bitch who’d changed both their lives forever.
Boston, Massachusetts, USA, 57 years ago
QUINN RAISED HIS eyes from the contract, frustrated by language that was unnecessarily congested even by legal standards that were designed to obfuscate and confuse. He squeezed the bridge of his nose, wondering if he needed glasses, and then frowned. Why was his phone ringing? More importantly, why the hell wasn’t his secretary answering the damn thing?
He lifted his head and blinked, surprised at the nighttime lights outside the windows of his high-rise office. Fuck. Now that he thought about it, he had a vague memory of his secretary bidding him “good night.” He was even fairly sure he’d answered and had told her to leave the door open. But that might have been the previous night, or, hell, any of a hundred nights before that. He’d become the workaholic his mom had warned him he would become, something that had cost him more than one girlfriend.
And the damn phone just kept ringing. He looked, saw it was his private line, and hit the speaker button, expecting his cousin Garrick’s voice. “Yeah. Kavanagh here.”
“Mr. Kavanagh,” a woman purred. He wasn’t a fanciful man, but there was no other word for the sound of that voice. It made him suspicious. No one had his private line except family and ex-girlfriends. And she was neither of those.
“Yeah,” he said. “Who’s calling?”
“This is Marcelina Rios,” she said, as if he should recognize the name. He didn’t. Figuring this was his cousin’s idea of a joke, he checked the calendar. Not his birthday, not April Fool’s, or Valentine’s.
“How can I help you, Ms. Rios?” He played along on the off-chance this wasn’t a prank.
“Your cousin recommended you.”
Quinn’s jaw clenched. He didn’t have time for this shit. “Right,” he said tiredly. And he was tired. Fucking exhausted. He’d thought making partner at the law firm would make his life easier. “Give my regards to Garrick,” he muttered and lifted his hand to disconnect.
“Mr. Kavanagh,” Rios said somewhat sharply. “I no longer expect much from your kind, but simple courtesy would do.”
Something about her voic
e—not the purr, but a sense of authority or . . . no, it was entitlement—made his finger freeze before he could hit the button.
“All right,” he agreed. “So again, how can I help you?”
“I’m in need of legal advice. Garrick tells me you’re the best.”
“How do you know my cousin?” He hadn’t actually seen Garrick in months, though they’d once been as close as brothers. They were still close, but like everything else in his life, Garrick had slipped away under the constant demands of his job.
“Garrick is very dear to me,” she said.
Quinn frowned. What the hell did that mean? And what was it about the way she talked? It was formal, as if she had to think about each word before she said it. He considered. Maybe English wasn’t a ready language for her. She had no discernable accent, or, rather, she did, but it was the accent of a person who spoke multiple languages. He’d had clients like that before, mostly older people who’d been born in Europe and had lived in the U.S. a long time. But this woman didn’t sound old.
Telling himself his next call was going to be to Garrick, demanding to know what the hell was going on, he dug down for his polite voice and asked, “What sort of problem are you having?”
“So, you’ll help me?” She sounded way too pleased.
“I don’t know if I can yet. What’s the problem?”
“We should meet.”
Quinn frowned. This was the oddest conversation. “Maybe you can give me the basics first.”
“It’s complicated.”
“It usually is. Give me the highlights.”
“The highlights,” she said distastefully. “A rather large corporation wants a piece of property that I’ve no desire to sell. It’s been in my family for generations, you understand.”
Quinn didn’t understand any of this, but he said, “Yes,” just to keep her talking and get this damn farce over with.
“Good. Garrick said you would.”
He was going to kill his cousin. “I still don’t quite understand the problem.”
“They’ve bought off some politician or other and are trying to take it away from me by force. They’re saying I have an imperfect title or some nonsense.”
“And do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Have an imperfect title?”
“Mr. Kavanagh, I don’t even know what that is, and I’m beginning to think this was a huge waste of my time. Garrick was obviously mistaken about you.”
“Wait,” he said, cursing himself in the next minute. Why the hell had he said that? But he knew why. Because of Garrick. Because he’d been a bad cousin and a worse friend over the last few years. Because Garrick, who never asked him for anything, had reached out through this admittedly odd woman, and Quinn couldn’t simply blow him off. “We should meet,” he said, hoping she mistook the resignation in his voice for tiredness at the end of a long day. “I don’t know my calendar . . .” He paused, knowing how stupid that sounded. “My secretary—”
“Perhaps we can keep this informal,” Rios suggested. “A conversation between friends.”
Friends? He wasn’t friends with this lady. He sighed inwardly. But . . . Garrick. “All right,” he agreed. “I’ll call Garrick—”
“That won’t be necessary. Garrick will escort me to whatever meeting we arrange.”
Quinn didn’t like the sound of that. What the hell was his cousin into? But since it seemed the only way to get answers, he glanced at the display on his computer, checking the date and time. Friday. He shook his head. What the hell was he doing at the office this late on a Friday night? He was 32 years old and single, for fuck’s sake. “What did you have in mind?” he asked. “I can do lunch tomorrow, or one day next week, if you prefer.”
“Tomorrow,” she said quickly. “But not lunch. In the evening, if you please. I have a place in the city. Garrick will give you the particulars.”
“What time—” But she was already gone. He stared at the phone for a long moment, then immediately called his cousin. He listened to it ring before it rolled over to his answering machine.
“Garrick, buddy,” he said. “I just got the weirdest call. Some chick . . . well, maybe not a chick, she sounded a bit older than that. But, anyway, she used your name and said she wants to meet tomorrow night. You’re supposed to provide the particulars. Her word, not mine. Call me when you get this.” He paused. “Oh, and, dude, if this is a joke? You’re going to pay.” He disconnected, slammed the phone down, and picked up the contract he’d been working on. He stared at it for ten seconds, then dropped it to his desk. The hell with that. It was Friday, he was tired, and life was short. He was going to do something wild, something totally out of character. He was going to go home and sleep for 12 hours straight.
Howth, Ireland, present day
THAT PHONE CALL, the one that had set so much else in motion, had been 57 years ago, but the memory of it still had the power to enrage Quinn. He sometimes wished he’d kept the bitch alive, just so he could kill her all over again. He’d torture her, bring her right to the edge of death, and then let her live, knowing he’d be back to do it again the next night.
Maybe that made him a monster. But if anyone didn’t like it, they could take him on, or shut the fuck up about it.
He glanced over at his cousin. While he’d been reliving nightmares, Garrick had rolled down the table and pulled up a second keyboard. The multiple computers covering the table weren’t simply for Garrick’s hacking fun. There was also the rather extensive security network they’d set up on a separate shielded network, in an abundance of caution. Without daylight guards, they had to rely on technical means of safeguarding their daylight sleep. They’d installed pressure plates and cameras all around the perimeter, and motion and entry sensors on every door and window, all with piercingly loud alarms. They’d also installed vastly improved locks on every door, both inside and out, and were painstakingly careful to lock them every morning. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best they could do. If someone tried to break in during daylight, the loudest alarm in the world wouldn’t wake them, but it would, hopefully, scare off the intruder. And, of course, it would let them know they’d been tested.
What Quinn needed was his team of daylight guards from the U.S. They were ready and eager to deploy, but he wanted to wait until everything was in place. He would take over the smuggling op here in Howth, present Sorley with the fait accompli—thus establishing himself as a powerful ally—then slide into Sorley’s inner circle, with the vampire lord unaware that he’d just invited his killer through the door. Fun times. It would be so much easier if he could just walk into the fucker’s house and kill him. Hell, he’d do that, too, before the month was over. But there were steps to take first. This was a campaign, not a smash and grab.
Once he had Howth, he’d move into the Dublin house that he’d acquired some months earlier, when he’d first known he’d be moving to Ireland. At that point, he could bring in his own team. Not only the daylight guards, but his fighters, too.
He’d told Raphael, after the Malibu attack, that he didn’t want to bring any American vamps with him to Ireland, that he was going to recruit locally. But that wasn’t entirely true. He hadn’t wanted any interference from the Western Lord or anyone else when it came to choosing the vampires who’d form his inner circle of fighters and advisers. These were the vampires he’d have to count on in the coming battles. Their loyalty had to be unambiguously his. But he’d seen this day coming from the first moment he’d learned what Mathilde had done to Raphael, and why. He’d known that war wouldn’t be far behind. And when the European incursions had kept coming, he’d known that the only way to win would be for the North American vampires to fight back, to go on the offense, instead of standing and waiting for the next invasion.
He and Rajmund, the vampire lord who ruled the
American Northeast, had discussed it at some length, and they’d known that the day was coming when the North American vamps would be forced to take the battle to Europe. A day when the call would go out for a vampire powerful enough to command the vanguard of that battle. They’d both wanted Quinn to be that vampire, so Raj had given Quinn permission to recruit a small group of vampires as his private invasion force. He’d chosen his people carefully, and they’d all trained and socialized together for months, waiting for what they believed would be the inevitable call to arms. Like Quinn, they’d all been sworn to Rajmund initially. But now that the North American lords had set their sights on Ireland with Quinn as its lord, they’d sworn a blood oath to Quinn. They’d become his, and they were waiting for his call.
With their strength behind him, he’d use his newfound position with Sorley to expand his own power, while undermining the Irish lord himself. After that, it would be a matter of days before he formally challenged and killed Sorley. It sounded tedious on paper—if he’d ever written it down—but he figured it would take less than a month altogether. He frowned. A month was a long time. Maybe he could skip some of the middle part. He was a fast learner.
“Garrick,” he said quietly, staring at the papers on his desk without seeing anything.
“Yeah?”
“We need the house in Dublin up and running.”
“Okay,” he said slowly, dragging out the word.
“I know it’s sooner than we’d planned, but things change, and we need to pick up the pace. I think it’s time to embrace our vampire side and shed some blood.”
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