He’d probably had some form of mental breakdown about his characters on Star Force or whatever it was.
“Scott, you do have the best timing,” I answered, giving a wink to the stoic and pissed-off male in front of me.
My wink and easy demeanor were immediately cut off by the pained cry at the end of the phone, followed by Scott’s garbled words.
“Where are you?” I hissed.
I got the location in the midst of his hysteria, then slipped on my heels, which were soot and bloodstained but still wearable.
Both Duncan and Rick had heard both sides of the conversation, so Duncan had lost his easy grin and Rick had more tension and frustration rolling off him.
“I’m sure you can fill Duncan in and make battle plans. I’ve got another disaster to handle,” I informed them.
Rick was in my way before I tried to make it to the door. “Isla, you just survived an assassination attempt. You’re not going anywhere,” he growled, sounding decidedly more caveman than his usual refined monarch.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “No, you survived an assassination attempt,” I corrected tightly. “I was merely unlucky enough to be in the immediate vicinity. I’m sure you’ve got enough mute burly guards to keep you safe, so don’t worry.”
He narrowed his brows. “You’re a prime target for these extremists, if you haven’t noticed. Plus, you were responsible for a considerable dent in their numbers after this evening. We can’t be sure this wasn’t a retaliation.”
I shook my head at Duncan when he mimed hitting Rick over the head in order to let me leave. They’d only just stopped almost killing each other.
“No, this was a planned and coordinated event,” I said, impatience leaching into my tone. “No one knew I was even coming, since it’s pretty well known I’m not a regular on this circuit, so it was your party, your house and you’re the figurehead for the entire establishment these assholes are trying to bring down. Sure, they’d like to get their hands on me too, but I’m quite capable of protecting myself—and you, for that matter. And now I’ve got another damsel who needs saving, so if you’ll excuse me.” I gave him a dangerous look, and the air turned palpable as he debated on restraining me bodily. I could see it in his eyes. Likely he could do it, as he was stronger than me, but then Duncan would try to join in on the fun and then guards would storm the room and it’d be a big thing.
He stepped aside.
“You’re getting a guard on you,” he relented.
I grinned at him. “Of course. I’ll feel so much safer.” I quickly kissed Duncan on the cheek. “Great to see you, Dunc.”
He squeezed my waist. “Never a dull moment, Isla,” he murmured. “Sure you don’t need backup?” he asked hopefully.
I shook my head. “I’ve got this one. You stay with our fearless leader and plan to fight a revolution. I’m sure two strapping brutes such as yourself, plus the council keeping patriarchy alive, don’t need a little woman being in the way.” I gave Rick a look. “Rain check on the details of my speedy recovery,” I said firmly. It wasn’t a question.
Rick and Duncan exchanged a glance. “I’ll be in touch,” he gritted out.
“Dandy,” I replied.
“Try not to get killed,” Duncan called to me.
“Ditto,” I replied as I sped out the door.
I LOST MY TAIL WITHIN two minutes of weaving through traffic heading back into the city.
Really, Rick needed new staff. I was in a cherry-red convertible, not exactly hard to miss. But I did have mad skills.
I didn’t enjoy that as much as I normally would. Scott’s phone call took care of that. Only when confronted with his scrambled cries about a slayer attack and his injury that wasn’t healing had I realized how fond of the idiot I was.
Which had me pissed the hell off at the prospect that he might die. At the hands of slayer, no less.
“Hey, hooker,” Sophie answered when I dialed her on my car Bluetooth.
“I need you to be at a warehouse near the Hudson in five minutes,” I clipped, ignoring a red light and swerving past a semi that seemed intent on plowing into me. “I’m sending you the address.”
“Do I need to bring weapons?” she asked, catching my tone immediately. “No, I’ll take care of that. Just be there.”
I hung up and spent the rest of the deceptively long trip thinking up various ways to punish the slayer who did this.
I could smell the blood before I even got out of the car.
Scott’s slumped form at the corner of the empty warehouse was the source of most of it. A dead human was sprawled a few feet away from him.
“Isla,” he choked out as soon as I knelt in front of him, his voice strained. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s the last time you apologize until we make sure you’re going to live long enough to be sorry,” I snapped, pushing his hand from his face that was covered in a thick blanket of blood.
As were his white tee and jeans.
And the floor surrounding him.
He winced but otherwise didn’t cry out. Which was admirable considering he was missing his left eyeball, a gaping and jagged wound carved into the socket instead.
“He just came out of nowhere,” he cried as I knelt in front of him, unsure of what to do. First aid wasn’t exactly needed when you healed within minutes.
Pressure. That’s what they do on those shows.
Four hundred years on this earth and I had no idea how to treat injuries.
I laid my hands against the bleeding wound on his face. It was rather awkward and Scott let out another pain-filled hiss. That one choked into a small sob and I gritted my teeth against it, remembering how young he was.
“How long have you been here?” I asked him, voice tight.
“Um, I’m n-not exactly s-sure,” he stuttered. “It’s b-been longer than an hour, though.”
“Fuck,” I hissed. He’d been bleeding for an hour. And still hadn’t healed.
“Am I going to die?” he asked, his rough voice little more than a whisper.
I looked into his one tear-filled eye. “Of course not,” I snapped. “Don’t say such stupid things. You’re a half breed, so you just take longer to heal, that’s all,” I lied.
His eye held mine before it turned slightly glassy and started to droop.
“Don’t you dare pass out,” I ordered. “If you do, you’ll never come out on a hunt with me again.”
My threat did little, but his eyes thankfully stayed open and he stretched his bloodstained mouth into a sad grin.
“It’s what I was doing,” he rasped. “I found one for us.” His head did a weird little jerk to the dead human. “Rapist,” he coughed. “Easy to trail him here. Wanted to show you I could do it myself.” He chuckled in a dry and utterly horrible sound, coated with death. “Guess I proved myself wrong.”
“He’s dead, isn’t he? I’d say you did well,” I said, my voice chock-full of fake cheerfulness. I was inwardly screaming at myself for inability to do a thing to help him.
My gaze landed on the glint of silver that hummed with its power. It was covered in blood, Scott’s blood, but it was unmistakable.
“Scott,” I said urgently. “The slayer who did this, did you get a look at him?”
The yawning silence between my question and his answer was full of the life draining from Scott.
“Big, like he took too many roids, you know?” he said weakly. “Bald head. A total tool.”
I smiled weakly. “Erik?”
He nodded.
I gritted my teeth.
At the same moment Scott’s eyes dropped closed, Sophie’s scent mingled against the blood as she settled beside me.
“Shit,” she hissed.
“Yeah,” I agreed. I picked up the blade, embracing the pain that came with the contact. I held it up to her. “You can undo what this has done?”
She glanced at the blade as she pushed my hands away, replacing them with her own that started to glow slightly.
/>
“I can’t undo the damage, you know that,” she said, her voice turning thick with magic leaching from her. “But I can save his life.” She glanced at me, her eyes glowing with that same green. “You want to go make sure that no one can save the life of the one who did this?” Sophie had become rather fond of Scott too.
I grinned. “Do I fucking ever.”
Content that Sophie had it covered, I bent down to Scott’s head, placing my lips on it before leaving the warehouse with one destination in mind.
I clutched the blade in my hand, barely feeling the pain jarring up my arm.
I hadn’t needed Scott’s identification of Erik; his scent was all over the warehouse, sticking to the blade like a leech. I wasn’t a werewolf so I couldn’t use my nose to track the undesirable scent through the city. I could use my brain, though.
“Isla, did that explosion at the king’s compound have anything to do with you?” Dante asked on the other side of the phone.
I rolled my eyes. “No, though I did happen to get my favorite dress ruined as a result,” I hissed, weaving through traffic to get to the side of the city I was aiming for. There was one or two places in the human quarter where slayers were known to mingle. Humans didn’t know it, but they had a small sliver of the pie that had divided New York amongst immortals when the city was first born. That’s the place the slayers skulked when they weren’t brave enough to head into our territory.
The only reason those establishments still stood was because most vampires had better things to do than hunt slayers on their spare time. Slayers usually came to us. Much more convenient.
I knew men like Erik wouldn’t tuck themselves back in bed after mutilating innocent vampires; they were more than likely to boast about their conquests while poisoning their livers. The night was getting late, dawn only a couple of hours away, which had me thinking he wouldn’t be doing any more slaying for the night.
“You were there?” Dante hissed over the background noise of the bar. “Jesus, Isla, are you okay?”
“Didn’t you hear me?” I asked. “I’m not okay. My dress got ruined, I am now intimately acquainted with how uncomfortable copper to the chest is, and now I’m pissed the fuck off at a slayer who doesn’t know when to cry uncle,” I half yelled. “I need intel so I can make sure I let out the wrong amount of rage on the right person.”
There was a split-second pause. “What do you need?”
“You still got that contact at that slayer bar in Brooklyn?”
“Fuck, Isla,” the demon said by way of reply. “That’s crazy, even for you.”
“I didn’t ask for your diagnosis of my sanity. I said good-bye to that centuries ago. I asked if you still had that contact,” I snapped.
“Yes, I do,” he answered, obviously giving up on the concerned demon routine. “What do you need from him?”
“To know if an asshole named Erik has been in the bar, and if not I need his location. I need it five minutes ago.”
Dante sighed. “Got it. You not already neck deep in enough shit, you gotta add slayers to the mix?” he asked, sounding concerned.
I drummed my fingers against the steering wheel. “Oh no, this isn’t trouble. This is going to be fucking brilliant.”
I’m pretty sure I heard him mutter “crazy bitch” as he hung off.
Five minutes later, I had my location.
Fifteen minutes later, I kicked in the door of a dive bar in Eastern Brooklyn.
All heads turned to me, as the slayers could sense my arrival. Also, wearing a men’s white dress shirt covered in blood and nothing else but ruined Jimmy Choos might have contributed to the slack-jawed reaction I got from the supposed warriors of the human race hunched over beers in a dirty bar.
“Did anyone order Girl Scout cookies?” I asked sweetly.
Before they could start getting their shit together, I wove through the tables and grabbed No Neck from his perch on the bar, slamming him against the wall.
Dante’s intel held up. He was so getting a Christmas card this year.
“Hello, asshole. Didn’t anyone teach you it’s rude to stab other people?” I paused as he kicked his booted feet out uselessly. He reeked of alcohol. Cheap whiskey. Figures. I screwed up my nose. “Nope? Me neither.”
I didn’t waste any time pressing my borrowed blade through the same eye that he had done to Scott in a practiced sweep. The blade wasn’t exactly designed for vampires to use against slayers, hence the resistance from the blade itself, but that didn’t mean it didn’t sink into his flesh; I just had to ignore the shooting pain in my bones. His screams worked as my lullaby. I let Erik crumple to the ground when I was satisfied with my work.
The first of his buddies to try and attack me from behind went flying into the bar, landing awkwardly and probably breaking some bones, but not enough to kill him.
I turned to the remaining patrons, who now had enough blood spilled to realize they needed to fight. They roughly circled me, each of them eying me warily. One had a gun, another a copper knife and the third a shotgun. Nothing to worry about. I didn’t recognize any of them as Thorne’s people, and I didn’t know whether this was a bad or a good thing.
“Now, boys. I’ve had more than enough of battles and bloodshed tonight and I’d prefer not to kill you considering you lead such fulfilled and charitable lives.” I gave the bar and their drinks a pointed look. “But if you force my hand, I will have to maim at least some of you,” I continued.
Before one of them could pluck up the courage, or shake off their drunkenness, the door burst open. Without even looking, I knew who it was.
The relief from the men around me was palpable. Thorne stormed past me and the disbelieving eyes of the men, who’d presumably thought he’d enter a death match with the evil and sexy vampire immediately. Familiar faces trailed after him, eyeing me and the bloody scene with blank gazes.
Apart from Chace, of course. His young eyes popped out. Not literally, thankfully; there’d already been too much of that.
I grinned at him.
Thorne’s gaze was filled with utter rage and disgust, and I winced.
“What the fuck have you done?” he hissed, his voice at a decibel that shouldn’t be heard over the screams, but the weight of accusation in it gave it an echo quality.
Each of the slayers stood in their spots, weapons drawn but not doing anything with them. Thorne was barking at someone to get a doctor while putting pressure on Erik’s face. His furious gaze rarely left mine, keeping me anchored to the floor.
I flipped my hair in an effort to make it seem like that gaze didn’t hurt. “An eye for an eye,” I replied casually. “I know history has made the phrase metaphorical, but I take everything literally. And I take revenge very seriously. Be happy he’s even breathing. Fifty percent loss of eyesight is better than one hundred percent loss of blood.” I scanned the slayers who were ready to pounce. “You’d all do well to remember that, in case anyone was considering serving me a dish best served at the same temperature as my heart. I doubt Erik is someone you’re willing to die for.”
“Your men come after my innocent friends again, I’ll burn your entire fucking compound to the ground.” I gave Thorne a pointed look. “I know where you live, remember?” My gaze left his to scan the rest of those in the bar. “You slayers think you’re doing humanity a favor by murdering those who qualify, but you’re damning souls irreparably. You know what road’s paved with good intentions, and it’s not the one that saints walk on. I know how much you’d all like to believe you’re doing God’s work, but Lucifer makes all his worst sinners commit his wishes in the act of God.”
Erik’s heavy breathing and irritating cries were the only thing that followed my little speech, the cries silenced when he thankfully passed out. Or died. I was hoping for the latter, but a quick sense in his direction disappointed me with a weak heartbeat, distinguished from the rest of the men whose hearts where thrumming like sparrows.
Except Thorne’s. His continu
ed on a steady cadence, a different texture to the ones around him, so much so I could have picked him out in the middle of Times Square.
Troublesome.
As was the atmosphere of the bar. The air had an almost damp quality, like before a storm, hinting at another battle. My outfit was about as practical as the last one.
“I really need to rethink my wardrobe if things keep going like this,” I muttered to myself.
Thorne’s energy coursed through the bar, the attention was focused on him yet eyes on me. It wasn’t lost on me that the men considered my life in his hands. What they likely didn’t know was that he was moments away from condemning his men to death.
Something in Rick’s blood had changed me. I could feel the texture of the air and the blood of every single human in the room in a way I hadn’t before. I knew that the Hispanic one in front of me clutching a semiautomatic weapon had a metal insert in his knee which would spear through the skin if hit correctly. The lean man in front of me who looked like he should’ve been on Wall Street had an undiagnosed heart murmur. The man beside him hadn’t slept in almost thirty hours; his organs on overdrive mingled with the adrenaline in his system would make him erratic.
How I knew these things, I had no clue. Or rather, I did and it unnerved me. But it also made my blood sing akin to the high of a draining a human who had imbibed drugs. I knew I could beat them all, and without effort. A foreign part of me introduced through this new blood urged me to do it. The vampire I had been before beckoned me with her cold arms and empty heart, tempting me with the simplicity of cruelty.
It was the thundering heart behind me that kept me rooted in place. I wouldn’t make the first move.
“Stand down.” His quiet command lay heavy on his shoulders and the ones of his men.
Chace lowered his immediately, looking almost relieved. The rest hesitated.
“I said stand the fuck down,” he repeated on a growl.
They did, though their hatred filled the room.
“I’d love to stay and chat,” I said amidst the loaded silence, “but now that we both have eyeless friends, I have other things to do, like kill the people who ruined my dress and severely pissed me off. Toodles.” I finger-waved and darted through the gaps in their ranks before they could say a thing.