Xavier: Vampires in Europe (Vampires in America Book 14)

by D. B. Reynolds

  “I don’t believe this.” She opened her comm and said, “Brian, I’m coming up. He’s all yours.”

  Brian was waiting when the elevator door opened. “What happened?”

  “You’ll see,” she said tightly, then stepped out of the elevator and began doing laps of the marble circle, while breathing slowly in and out, in and out.

  AT 1900 HOURS, everyone breathed a sigh of relief when they decided the front door didn’t need to be completely blocked, and sent River out for more food. Which once again, they all enjoyed a lot.

  And at 2000, with the sun still a pink glow above the glass dome, Layla made her way down to the basement for the final watch.

  Since Brian still insisted on remaining downstairs with Layla, she explained to him what it would mean when Xavier woke to an unfamiliar and unsecured location after what had clearly been a pitched battle with Sakal’s bodyguards, and possibly with Sakal himself. Xavier had been fighting not only whatever magic Sakal had used to trap him, but the power of the rising sun. That he’d succeeded at all, much less long enough for Layla and her team to finish off the enemy, was a textbook example of the extraordinary strength possessed by a vampire lord compared to every other vampire walking the earth.

  “He saved both Chuy and himself,” she told him. “But he paid a price for that, a price that is measured in blood. Which means he’ll need blood to recover. No, not need. Demand. From me,” she said softly. “Not only because I’m here, but because we’re lovers, and he’s done it before.”

  “You said he wasn’t your boyfriend,” he teased.

  “Things change. But really, Brian, I should be down here alone. He won’t hurt me, but he doesn’t know you. And you’re a guy.”

  “I am? When did that happen?”

  “Ha ha. I’m serious. He’s a guy, you’re a guy . . . it could be problem. He won’t be in his right mind, not at first. And I’m the only one of us he knows. It has to be me.”

  “I could stay,” Kerry said as the elevator doors opened. “I’m not a guy.”

  “Thanks,” she said, and hoped the other woman heard the deeper meaning in the words. “But, no. It’s better if there aren’t any strangers here. I’m going to go in there and close the door.”

  “How’re you going to open it by yourself?”

  Layla smiled. “I won’t be by myself when the door opens,” she reminded Kerry.

  She chuckled. “Oh, right. Duh.”

  “Okay, see you all on the flip side. Casales out.”

  She stood and stretched, then walked over to the vault, where Xavier and Chuy slept in motionless silence beneath the tents which they’d had to be moved in. It was undoubtedly the most primitive daylight protection that either one of them had ever been forced into. She didn’t know the name of Xavier’s Sire, but she knew he’d been a Catalan aristocrat. And Xavier was Chuy’s Sire, so as a vampire, he’d lived the same way Xavier did.

  Closing the door on her well-meaning friends, she climbed onto the bed and unzipped Xavier’s tent, the heavy metal teeth scraping her fingertips due to her awkward position. She sat in the opening, close enough to see him, to know that he still breathed, that his heart still beat. That he was alive. Because contrary to popular superstition, vampires were not dead. They’d never been dead. To the edge of death, yes. But not dead. As a matter of fact, from a vampire point of view, they were the new and advanced version of humanity. Their blood carried something that they were unwilling to talk about, that gave them enhanced strength and senses, power—for some of them—that could only be explained as magic, and virtual immortality. And Layla didn’t see anything wrong with that, not as long as they consented to the change.

  The chime went off on her watch, set as she’d advised Riv, for 2045. 8:45 p.m. Local sunset was at 9:10.

  Twisting, she checked to make sure the door was shut. She felt almost guilty, she realized, because she was going to let Xavier sink fang and drink her blood. And she knew, although hopefully the others didn’t completely understand, what would follow. “Fuck that,” she decided, and crawling forward, did her best to reposition him so that he’d be a bit more comfortable. Although Xavier was so damn big, and it wasn’t like moving a sleeping person. His arms and legs didn’t want to stay where she put them, and moving his entire body was beyond her strength. She wondered idly if vampire bodies had a greater density than a regular human’s. “Makes you think,” she muttered, and finally gave up trying. The tent was designed for one person, but this wouldn’t be the first time she’d shared one with a lover. So she lay down next to him, and maneuvered until they were face to face.

  And then, suddenly, his eyes opened. And the next thing she knew, a big male body was crushing her into a too-soft mattress.

  Chapter Fifteen

  XAVIER WOKE, AWARE and awake in an instant. And didn’t know where the fuck he was or who . . . No, he realized. He knew who was next to him. Layla. And he was starving.

  He rolled, or tried to, but they were in some kind of tube. Reaching up, he tore away the flimsy fabric above him, switched their positions until he was half on top of her, with one muscled leg thrown over her lower body, trapping her as he lowered his head to sniff at the delicious scent of hot blood that flowed beneath every inch of her bare skin. Her eyes were wide with shock, but relaxed in a heartbeat, her hands cupping the back of his head, her body arching beneath him.

  He licked her cheek, her neck, then burrowed his nose into the warm crevice beneath her jaw, while her soft moan fluttered over his cheek. Fangs slid from his gums without conscious thought, his body following instinct until he found what he needed. He was drained from a battle, from a struggle to survive, his power lower than it had been in years. Her blood was what he needed, what he craved. He whispered her name. “Layla.”

  He heard a soft inhalation that he might have called a sob from another woman, and then her voice. “How’d you know it was me?”

  Bracing his arms on either side of her body, he looked down at her, making no attempt to conceal his fangs. This was who he was. “I would know your scent anywhere,” he growled, his voice roughened by a hunger he was straining to control. “I would know the scent of your blood in a dark room filled with people, in a stadium of thousands,” he told her, the gleam of his eyes highlighting the smooth curves of her face. “I know your mind, your soul. My body recognizes all of you.”

  “Is that good?” she asked, searching his face for answers.

  He dipped his head and kissed her, forcing himself to go slowly, to gentle her mouth into sweet acceptance. “It is if you want it to be.”

  Her arms tightened around his neck, pulling him down and holding him closely. “I was so afraid,” she whispered.

  He lifted his head enough to give her a puzzled look, surprised that she’d admit to that, to caring that much about him. “Why?” he asked, waiting to see if she’d back away from the vulnerability of the truth.

  She studied his expression for a long moment, as he waited for her gaze to shutter, to glance away. His heart tightened painfully when that didn’t happen, when she said, “I thought we were too late. That you were already dead.”

  “If I’d died, cariño, you would have known.” His lips curved into a crooked, deprecating smile. “All of Spain, and beyond, would have known,” he admitted. “But only your heart would have known.”

  He claimed her mouth again, letting his hunger, his need, flavor the kiss as he lowered his body to hers, letting her feel his weight, his intent in the hard muscles of his arms and chest, the rigid length of his cock against her thigh. Without warning, he dipped his mouth to her neck again, his fangs grazing her soft skin, skimming over the thudding pulse of her carotid artery and coming to rest against the swollen vein beneath her ear.

  Scraping his fingers through her hair, he pulled her head back to bare the smooth length of her neck.
“I can hear the rush of your blood,” he whispered, licking the curve of her ear. “I want you.”

  Her heart was thudding so loudly, he almost missed the words she breathed against his forearm. “You have me.”

  He bit down, his teeth breaking the skin of her neck before he stopped himself. “Not here,” he snarled. He didn’t want to stop. Wanted to take her right there, right now, and to hell with the consequences. But he wouldn’t do that to her.

  Her fingers clenched on his shoulders, digging into muscle with the strength of a warrior. “Here,” she said, her hold going from a caress to a demand. “Right here. You need blood, you need your strength. We don’t know what’s waiting outside.”

  “Layla.”

  “Now,” she insisted. “You can fuck me later—and you’d damn well better—but you need blood now.”

  He was weaker than he could ever remember being, but not so weak that he couldn’t have resisted her if he’d tried. He didn’t try. Sinking his teeth in her neck once again, he pierced her vein and moaned in a pleasure that was deep and heartfelt as the delicate silk of her blood flowed down his throat, heating his body like a furnace, while his parched cells stretched with new energy and eagerly drank up more. He could have lain there for hours, sipping the life-giving nectar from her vein, sliding first his fingers and then his cock into the succulent heat of her pussy.

  But he forced himself to stop, to close off his senses against the temptation of her body. Withdrawing his fangs in a smooth glide that left the two small wounds already closing, he hastened the healing with a long, slow lick of his tongue. Then he stared down her.

  She was still panting beneath him, overtaken by the chemical in his bite that had sped the most exquisite pleasure to everywhere blood flowed in her body. Which was everywhere. She cried when he stopped, bucking against his weight in demand, her glassy eyes staring up at him and filled with anger.

  “How are you?” he demanded, biting back a groan as the soft heat between her thighs cradled his erection.

  She finally seemed to focus on his face, stared for a moment, then said, “I’m . . . fine. How’re you?”

  He wanted to laugh at the polite, almost trite, response. “Feel that,” he snarled, taking her hand and pressing against his unrelieved erection. “That’s how I am. I want you. But there are several humans who I hope are your people standing just outside that door, and Chuy will wake at any moment. I don’t think you want any of them to see us naked and entwined, to put it poetically.”

  She tried to conceal an amused smile. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But you’re right.”

  “Of course I am,” he grumped.

  She made a disgusted noise. “Good God, Brian just commed me. I told them I would be fine. How long before Chuy—”

  Xavier sent his lieutenant a telepathic order, rousing him to wakefulness only slightly earlier than he would have on his own. “He’s waking now,” he told her.

  “You’ll have to open the door,” she said as they rolled away from each other and sat up as much as they could before crawling off the bed to stand on the narrow strip of concrete floor at its foot.

  “That won’t be a problem.”

  “It’s pretty well sealed shut, so—”

  “Fix your clothes,” he said, then stomped to the vault door, and with a quick glance over his shoulder to be sure she obeyed, shoved the door open to find three people standing in a concrete hallway, staring, as if waiting for him to start raving like a lunatic.

  “Layla,” he said in a flat voice.

  “I’m here,” she said and shoved in next to him. “I’m fine. I told you I would be.”

  The human male named Brian, who she’d insisted had never been more than a friend, was talking. He fought back an instinctive wave of possessive rage that was no more appropriate for the moment than it would have been to let the human fighters discover him balls deep in her pussy.

  When the others stepped into the elevator taking Layla with them, he waited until the door was about to close, then reached out and pulled her to his side, his glare daring them to try and stop him.

  “Go,” Layla said calmly. “Send it back down. We’ll be up in a minute.”

  Xavier bent to her ear when the door closed, leaving them alone. “You’re mine,” he murmured. “Tonight and every night.”

  She pulled back and gave him a searching look. “We’ll see.”

  With an angry snarl, he yanked her against his chest and kissed her, his mouth hard. And as his tongue swept between her teeth, his fury filled her throat. “Decide now,” he ordered. “You’re mine or you’re not.”

  She lifted her head with an angry glare to match his. “It has to go both ways. You’re mine, too.”

  He grinned, flashing fangs that were still fully visible and dripping with hunger. “Of course,” he replied silkily. “Just remember, cariño. I don’t share, ever. Not for an hour, not for a moment.”

  “Same goes,” she snapped.

  His grin broadened as he took her angry mouth, rumbling with satisfaction when she softened into his embrace, when her arms circled his neck to hold him tightly.

  They broke apart at the sound of furious howls from inside the vault, turned to see Chuy crawl from the shreds of his tent and flow gracefully to his feet, as if his bones moved differently than a regular human’s.

  “Sire?” he asked, gazing around the empty hallway, before looking to Xavier for guidance.

  “The elevator, Chuy,” he said when the thing dinged open. “We’re leaving.” When they stepped inside, he looked at Layla and said, “Sakal?”

  “Gone.” She continued speaking over his sharp curse. “There’s a garage exit in the basement,” she explained. “We think his remaining bodyguards spirited him out as soon as he went downstairs. It would have been a simple matter to park a shielded vehicle in there and take him out that way. Now we just need to figure out where he’ll go.”

  “He’ll run home, like the coward he’s always been.”

  “Where’s home?”

  “I don’t know, yet. Though I do have suspicions, and if necessary, I can contact my fellow vampire lords. After all, that’s why I’ve spent so much time courting their friendship and alliance. It’s time for them to step up and prove themselves.

  “In the meantime, there’s nothing we can do tonight. Let us return to my Fortalesa, have a shower, and change clothes, so we can all meet in a more civilized manner to consider the fastest way to locate Sakal. And then—and much more pleasurably—we can discuss in great detail how I will rip his guts open, watch him heal, and then do it again. Over and over, until he begs for death.”

  His voice had taken on a dreamy quality as he’d described Sakal’s painful death, and when he turned, he found the elevator doors open, and the other woman, Kerry, staring at him.

  “You’re a scary motherfucker, you know that?” she asked.

  He grinned. “Actually, yes I do.” He clapped and said cheerfully, “So are we all traveling together?”

  LAYLA DIDN’T KNOW what to make of Xavier’s blunt verdict. Sakal? Yeah, sure, that bastard was guilty as sin and deserved to die. His own words had condemned him, so it wasn’t the question of his guilt that troubled her. It was the torture. But the more she worried about it, the more she saw the inevitable logic. Vampire justice was very different than that of humans, for a good reason. Vampires were not only harder to kill, but they could tolerate so much more pain and heal so much faster. If you wanted them to suffer for their crimes . . . well, that’s where the torture came in.

  One only had to look at Xavier and Chuy, knowing what they’d been through a day earlier, knowing the horrible death Sakal had planned for them, to understand Xavier’s determination to make the sorcerer suffer. But that same evaluation of the two vamps demonstrated their resilience. Xavier,
obviously, had taken Layla’s blood, which explained his rosy health. But Chuy, too, seemed fully recovered.

  She’d asked Xavier about it, when he’d been “helping” her gather her gear, mostly she thought, because he was establishing his claim on her. Like a dog, he was making it clear that she was his bone. She laughed to herself at the weird analogy, since really . . . he was the one with the bone, right? Ha ha.

  Anyway, while Xavier was flexing his muscles, lifting her heavy gear bag as if it weighed nothing, Layla had glanced over to see Chuy in deep conversation with Kerry, and looking damn good. She’d leaned in to Xavier and whispered, “Is Chuy okay? He wasn’t hurt by what happened yesterday?”

  Xavier had studied her, as if wondering why she was asking, long enough that Layla had been certain she’d stumbled on another deep, dark vampire secret.

  But then Xavier said, “Chuy is very well. As one of my own vampire children, it’s easy to share my strength with him. He’ll feed when we return to the Fortalesa, and restore his full strength. But I needed him capable and strong before we left this place. We can’t afford to assume there will be no more attacks before we reach home.”

  “You think Sakal will hit us again so soon?”

  “Not him personally, no. But he may arrange for some of his acolytes to do so.”

  “Right, I’ll warn the rest of my team, too. They walked over to join the others by the front door, which was now a combination of the broken chairs and miscellaneous debris that had been used to block it, and the enlarged hole through which they’d been crawling whenever one of them needed to exit.

  Brian dumped his gear bag and weapons in a pile, then turned to her and said, “The tents are a total loss, but we brought them along. Don’t want to give the local cops anything more to wonder about. The damn bed in a bank vault is strange enough.”

  He shot a glance at Xavier when he made the comment about the bed, but the vampire lord didn’t seem to hear. He was too intent on eyeing the exit hole.