“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.
“We’re getting ready to blow that,” Brian told him. “No need to secure anything that bastard Sakal owns.”
“Yes. This will be faster, however.” Xavier lifted both hands toward the door.
A moment later, Layla was gasping for breath as the short, narrow passage leading to the door filled with a wave of power that threatened to suck every bit of oxygen from the air. A moment later, barely in time to stop the black spots dancing in her eyes from becoming a complete blackout, she heard a sound like air being sucked into a vacuum, and then the heavy door frame and all the junk contained within it, were flying outward toward the street. She had the sudden thought that the damn door would crash into their SUV, which was parked a little too close. But before she could shout a warning, the door simply . . . stopped and hung in mid-air.
Her heart was pounding from the juxtaposition of fear and relief, but when she stepped up next to Xavier, she was grinning. “Show off.”
He glanced down, one perfect eyebrow arched innocently. “I have no idea what you mean by that.”
She snorted. “Yeah, right. It’s all good,” she added when Brian shot her a doubtful look.
They all moved fast after that, gathering up every piece of gear, anything that could possibly be used to identify them. As Brian had already made clear, they didn’t want to waste time trying to explain what had happened to local law enforcement. The vamps could always wipe memories if necessary, but it was better to avoid that if they could.
River had been bored enough as they’d waited for sunset, that he’d succeeded in knocking out surveillance on the block, so there’d be no record of their departure. He’d taken out a good chunk of the electrical grid to do it, but city employees were already working on the unexplained failure, and had announced they’d have power restored soon. And that meant that both vampires and humans needed to be gone before that happened.
Loading was mostly finished, with the bundled up remnants of tents and various weapons shoved into the cargo space of the Mercedes SUV. The biggest problem, however, showed itself when the time came to load themselves. Xavier and Chuy had arrived in the small sedan, but there’d also been the white van, which had been prepositioned for them. Unfortunately, both vehicles had either been flat out stolen, or more likely, Sakal’s minions had taken them both. The sedan had little value, but the van would have been a nice prize for a vampire. Especially one who didn’t like to admit his true nature.
Xavier didn’t care much about where the vehicles had gone, or with whom. But the loss meant they now had just the one SUV for all their gear, plus four big men and two women.
“Well, shite,” Riv said, eyeing the single, back bench seat. Someone was either going to be taking a taxi, or shoved into the cargo space.
Kerry stepped up next to him and sighed. “I’ll sit with the cargo,” she volunteered. “I’m the only one who’ll fit. But I want major points for this.”
“You can sit on my lap, petita flor,” Chuy volunteered, from where he stood in the open door of the front passenger seat. “There is more than enough room, and you can protect me.” He gave Kerry a smile so charming and so fucking deceptively innocent that it was like looking at a completely different vampire than the one Layla knew.