“I’ll give Riker a shot at doing it his way.” He jerked his head toward the door. “Out. Everyone but Riker. Fill in the other senior staff. We’ll let the rest of the warriors know what’s happening when we need to.”
“What about general clan members?” Baddon asked. “Everyone is on edge.”
“I’ll speak at dinner. Assure everyone there’s nothing to worry about for now.” Hunter nodded at the door again. “Go.”
Jaggar, Baddon, and Katina filed out, each shooting Riker a sympathetic glance as they went. Once the door closed, Riker got to his feet and moved away from the table, waiting for the dressing-down.
It came in the form of a right hook to the face.
Riker hit the wall hard enough to make the picture frames rattle.
“Don’t disrespect me in front of the others again.” Hunter glanced down at his knuckles. “Also? You have a hard face to match your hard head.” No one went from pissed to playful in a split second the way Hunter did.
Tasting blood, Riker tested his jaw. Nothing broken or loose, but he’d feel it for a while. “You didn’t learn that the first ten times you decked me?”
The truth was that Hunter had held back. Riker had never felt the full brunt of his chief’s anger, but he’d seen it. If Hunter had wanted to, he could have shattered every bone in Riker’s skull with a single blow.
Hunter gave a lazy shrug. “I’m a slow learner.”
That was a load of crap. The ancient vampire came across as a laid-back, couldn’t-give-a-shit slacker who liked video games, Sports Illustrated, and muscle cars, but he was a lot smarter than anyone who didn’t know him gave him credit for. His calculating mind was blade-sharp, his smiles frequent, and his nature affable and calm, outwardly, at least. He’d never ruled with an iron fist—and he didn’t need to. Respect for his leadership kept the clan running smoothly.
“You won’t regret this,” Riker assured him. “I can do it.”
Doubt all but billowed from Hunter’s pores as he lifted the ceremonial pipe from the tray. “If this were any other mission, I wouldn’t be concerned. You know that.”
“I know,” Riker admitted. “But you know I’m right about this. I’m familiar with the Martin house. I’ve memorized the grounds. I’ve studied every detail of their security, both inside and outside the house.”
“Studied?”
“Okay, stalked. But my point is—”
“I know what your point is. And I know how much your hatred for the Martins has eaten at you. Hatred makes you sloppy. Makes you focus so completely on revenge that you’re blind to the dangers around you. Makes you—”
“Makes me determined to succeed.”
Hunter put his back to the wall and propped one foot behind him, his pose casual, his expression as serious as Riker had ever seen it. “Your mate was a slave in the Martin household. How can you be sure you can do what needs to be done without that history coloring your actions? A pissed-off bear will run straight for the hunter with a gun.”
“Because this is my home.” Riker met his leader’s gaze head-on. “This is my family. And if I screw up, I lose everything.” He glanced over at the depiction of MoonBound’s battle with the now-extinct CloudStrike clan. “We all lose everything.”
TWO DAYS AFTER persuading Hunter to let him have his way, Riker stood on a ridge on the outskirts of Seattle, a cemetery at his back and, fittingly, a dead man at his feet.
Dead but not bleeding.
Riker had drained him of every last drop of blood—a fine vintage, aged about twenty-five years in the veins of a vampire hunter.
A rush of exhilaration flooded Riker’s body, because nothing beat the high of taking down a hunter or poacher. Both were scum, just different subspecies of scum.
Tasty scum.
He touched the tip of his tongue to a fang as he looked down on the lights of the city that had propelled vampire slavery from a local phenomenon into a worldwide passion. Seattle’s nightlife, which had exploded along with the population in the last twenty years, used to draw him; there was so much sport to be had in a thriving metropolis. But he no longer lived for fun. Couldn’t remember the last time he’d had any.
No, life now was about revenge, just as Hunter had said.
As a vampire, he ate food daily, drank blood when he had to—and sometimes, like tonight, when he didn’t.
“Hey, man, you ready to head back to the clan?”
“Not yet.” Riker looked over at the vampire standing next to him. “It’s time.”
Myne’s thick mane of pitch-black hair whipped at his temples as he shook his head. “You know I’m all for cutting through the humans like a tomahawk through snow, but—”
“But you think I’m stupid.”
The slow roll of Myne’s shoulder was a screaming Hell yeah.
“Humans tortured you for years. Defanged you. Were going to fucking castrate you.” Riker eyed with admiration one of the few vampires who had escaped human slavery. It had been eighty years since humans had become aware of the existence of vampires, sixty since they’d enslaved them, and in that time, only a handful of lucky vampires had found freedom before the great uprising twenty years ago led to even stricter controls. Myne was one of the few to slip the slavery noose. “You slaughtered more humans in twenty-four hours than I have in my life. You kill people every chance you get. So tell me, how am I stupid?”
“Dude, I don’t have enough fingers to count off all the ways.”
“Ass,” Riker muttered.
Myne regarded the glittering skyline in the distance, the streaking blurs from the headlights and taillights on the freeway. “You’re stupid because you plan to do this on your own. I can’t believe Hunter went along with your crazy plan.” His mocha eyes shifted to Riker. “And how fucked-up is it that I actually agree with Hunter for once? We both think you’re being an idiot. You need to rethink this.”
“I’m not scrapping the mission. There’s less risk of the clan being discovered if we do it my way.”
If Riker acted alone, authorities would waste time scouring the city’s trashy underbelly for him among the many lone vampires who lived there like cockroaches. But the more clan members he enlisted, the greater the chance that said authorities would realize they had an organized group on their hands. And soon after, the forest, usually left alone by the government, would be crawling not just with the usual hunters but also with Vampire Strike Force personnel—specialized law-enforcement agents whose mission it was to kill or capture every nonenslaved vampire on the planet.
Once VAST entered the picture, it wouldn’t be long before someone from MoonBound was caught and tortured into revealing the clan’s location. Although the entrances were concealed by both physical camouflage and magic put in place by the clan’s mystic-keeper, Riker knew there was no such thing as completely secure. There was always a way to breach a wall, penetrate an enemy stronghold, and locate the hidden. Just one careless clue left behind by a clan member could lead VAST to the second-largest population of free vampires in the Pacific Northwest.
In the distance, a coyote yip-howled, and Myne listened, almost as if he understood the creature. He probably did. Myne had grown up with his Nez Perce tribe until he was a teen, and after that, he’d lived with animals for longer than he’d lived with people.
“What happens if you fail?” he asked.
“Then the clan goes with Plan B. Hunter’s proposal.” Which involved far more people, coordination, and risk.
“Shiiit.” Myne kicked a stone off the ridge and watched it tumble down the rocky bank. “Let me help your sorry ass. With me, your insane scheme has a shot of success.”
Riker grinned. “I knew you couldn’t resist a challenge.”
“So you were counting on my offer to help?”
“Yup.”
“You could have just, you know, asked.”
“Asked?” Riker snorted. “And turn in my male card?”
Riker ignored Myne’s string of curse
s as he made his way down the embankment, moving toward the mansion he’d been staking out for the last week. Myne followed, his footsteps as light as a cat’s despite his massive size. At six-foot-five and a born vampire, Myne was one of the tallest males in the clan, save Hunter. Not that Riker was short, but Myne seemed to enjoy flaunting his extra three inches and twenty pounds.
Riker would just smile and claim extra brains and an extra three inches on another part of his anatomy.
“So what’s my job?” Myne dropped his hand to the dagger at his hip and skimmed his thumb along the hilt. “It better involve fighting.”
“It does.”
“And feeding?”
“If you want.” Riker crouched behind a fir tree to avoid the sweep of a security spotlight sitting atop the mansion’s north wall.
“And fucking?”
Riker shot Myne an are you kidding me? look over his shoulder. “Even if there was time for that, I didn’t think you were into humans.”
“I’ll dive into any lake in a drought, man.”
Myne was full of shit. He might be stuck in a perpetual sex drought, but Riker knew damned well the guy went for vampires. He’d gotten his fill of human sex a long time ago, and Riker only knew that because the guy had gotten so shitfaced once that his tongue had loosened. The next morning, Myne had been practically suicidal—and homicidal—over what he’d revealed, and Riker had probably saved both of their lives by lying to him, telling him that whatever Myne imagined he’d said had been all in his drunken head.
Thank God. Riker wasn’t sure who would win in a contest of hand-to-hand, but he knew who’d win a fang free-for-all.
Myne’s titanium chompers could rip limbs from bodies and heads from necks with the messy ease of a chain saw.
“So.” Myne’s fingers caressed the dagger hilt like a lover. The guy had carved it himself from the thigh bone of a poacher decades ago. The thing was so smooth from his touch that it practically shone in the moonlight. “What do we do first?”
Riker effortlessly leaped to the top of the twelve-foot stone fence that circled the mansion and surrounding grounds. “See the northwest fence corner? Where the stone is built up into the tree?” Riker peered into the branches. “That’s a sniper station. Built after my mate died. We need to take the sniper out, or he’ll smoke-check us before we get halfway across the lawn.”
“Cool.” Myne had always preferred a stealthy stalk-and-kill over a full-blown battle. Said it was a measure of skill and patience and a more honorable way to hunt an enemy. Riker figured dead was dead, but whatever. “You really think this Charles guy is just going to hand over a captive vampire because we tell him to?”
“Charles? No. That’s why we’re not bothering with that asshole.” He scanned the property, taking one last inventory of the cameras, the dogs, and the security detail, all of which he’d been familiar with for two decades. “I’m after much more . . . sensitive . . . prey.”
Myne landed in a crouch beside him, whisper-soft. “Who?”
Ahead, through one of the mansion’s giant windows, a figure moved. A ginger-haired female. Tall. Curvy.
Enemy.
“Dr. Nicole Martin.”
Riker felt Myne’s eyes boring into him. “She’s alive?”
“Apparently.” A shiver of hatred slithered up Riker’s spine. Until last week, when he’d seen a newspaper article glorifying the return of the Martin heir, he’d believed only one member of the godforsaken immediate family, Charles, was alive. “After the rest of the Martins were slaughtered in the rebellion, she was sent to Paris to live with her mother’s relatives until she was old enough to work in Daedalus’s French division as a vampire physiologist.”
The mere mention of the infamous Seattle Slave Rebellion made Myne’s voice degenerate into gravel. “And she’s here now?”
Riker nodded at the female in the window. “Right there and all grown up. And if you’re done jacking off your dagger, we’ll go have a chat with her.”
“You think she’ll cooperate?”
Hell no. She was a Martin, after all, current CEO of the company that had revolutionized vampire slavery and used vampires like lab rodents to advance human medicine. Daedalus went through vampires like a slaughterhouse went through cattle, and Riker doubted the company held to any kind of “humane” standards.
“For her sake,” Riker said slowly, “I hope so.”
NICOLE MARTIN SHOULD never have left Paris. She hated the Seattle weather. Hated the family mansion.
Hated the vampires.
She would never have believed that the vampire situation could be so different here.
She tossed a Chinese-food container into the trash bin hard enough to send bits of rice flying and turned to the tele-screen on the obnoxiously decadent black-and-gold granite kitchen counter. Her towheaded half brother, Charles, stared at her from his desk at Daedalus Corporation’s headquarters.
“You okay?” He gestured in the direction of her garbage can. “You subjected that poor takeout to some serious abuse.”
“No, I’m not okay. I miss Paris.” There. She’d said it. Pretending to be happy about returning to her childhood home was officially a big lie. “I miss my research lab. I miss my friends.”
Sure, most of her friends had been of the casual kind, Europe’s wealthy and powerful who only wanted what she—and Daedalus—could do for them, but she’d genuinely liked some of her colleagues. Plus, surrounding herself with people at all times kept her busy and kept the memories of her childhood at bay.
“You’ll make new friends,” Chuck assured her.
“Really?” She snorted. “I think it’s more likely that after tomorrow, I’m going to be a pariah no one is going to want to look at, let alone invite to cocktail parties.”
“Don’t worry about the meeting.” Like Nicole, he’d inherited his green eyes from their father, and they softened as he met her gaze. “The partners will get to the truth about what happened at the Minot facility.”
A sting in her bottom lip was a sharp reminder that she was biting it. Bad habit, and one she’d been trying to break for years. A lady doesn’t fidget, her mom used to say. Later, in private, Nicole’s nanny Terese would tell her that Nicole was a child, and children could fidget all they wanted. The secret, she’d said, was to fidget productively.
Nicole reached past her medication bottles for the dwindling stack of paper on the counter, one of many she kept around the house.
“They don’t want to get to the truth, Chuck. They want a scapegoat.” She folded one corner of a sheet of paper and smoothed a crease into it. “Three dozen vampires from the Minot lab are dead. Ultimately, I’m responsible for everything my company does, and I’m going to get shipped off to Siberia for this.”
If she was lucky, she’d get sent to the Siberia office. The other alternative, criminal prosecution, was also a possibility, thanks to groups like the Vampire Humane Society and Humans for the Advancement of Vampiric Entities, which had, in the last five years, forged huge inroads regarding the ethical treatment and disposal of domestic vampires.
“Don’t think like that. You have a defense worked out.” Chuck scribbled something on the notepad in front of him. “When you present your evidence, the board will have to give you the benefit of the doubt.”
Uh-huh. Sure. The board had been looking for a way to get her out of the company for years. Her mother and father had been the brawn and brains behind the business they’d built from the ground up, but Nicole had merely inherited her position.
Even Chuck, whose illegitimacy hadn’t allowed him a guaranteed place in their father’s empire, had worked his way from the mailroom to chairman and then, finally, seven years ago, to CEO. The position had been temporary until Nicole was ready to take over, but she’d been happy to let him run the company, so he’d remained, and she’d settled into medical research.
Until two months ago, when she’d turned twenty-eight and legal clauses from her parents’ wills and t
rusts kicked in, requiring her to rule the kingdom or lose everything. She hadn’t wanted to drag her parents’ names through the mud, so she hadn’t fought the clauses and reluctantly moved back to Seattle to take over.
Understandably, there were now a lot of envious, bitter people sitting on the board of directors. At least Chuck had understood, and he’d returned to his prior chairman position with grace.
Nicole made a quick series of folds in the sheet of paper, and the shape of a bird began to take form. “I should have asked for more help when I took over as CEO. Daedalus is too big, and my suggestions to sell off everything but the medical and scientific divisions haven’t exactly been popular.”
Chuck gave her a no shit look. “That’s because you’re asking that we keep the least profitable branches of the company and get rid of what our father founded the company on.” His leather chair creaked as he shifted. “Acquiring, training, and selling vampire servants are the cornerstone of Daedalus. We make billions from supplying the public with vampires and all the accessories that go with them.”
It took effort to not roll her eyes. “Oh, please. We make nearly as much from our scientific breakthroughs. Or haven’t you noticed that people will practically sell their souls to stay young another fifty years or to heal from serious injuries faster or to be cured of cancer? We need to focus more fully on medical advancements. Let someone else handle the tasks that don’t reflect positively on us.”
“Like?”
“Like draining recently deceased humans to package and distribute their blood to vampire supply shops. Like conditioning and processing newly captured vampires before they’re sent to a training facility.” Nicole might hate vampires, but neutering, defanging, and torturing them until they broke didn’t sit well with her.
“Look, Nicole,” Chuck said, with a deep, long-suffering sigh. “I understand why you want to concentrate company efforts on the research side. I know how hard it is for you to live with your medical condition.”