I laughed and his eyes shot to mine in surprise. Time and space idled for a moment as I observed the madness in his gaze.
“One thing,” I told him. “There is one thing on my list.”
“Are you going to share?” he asked silkily as he stood and rose to his full height.
I considered him for a long moment and grinned at his posturing. Not for a moment did I discount who he was and the power he had. His age alone made him extremely deadly, but his wrath and ego gave me the upper hand.
“I’m going to destroy you.”
“Well in that case, why don’t we even up my odds?” he suggested.
A flash of red light splintered the room. I put my hand up to shield my eyes from the blast and quickly moved back to Raquel and Jean Paul. As the brightness receded, I realized Vlad had called for back-up. Ten Old Guard Vampyres stood in a line behind him. Their lifeless stares bored into us. This was getting more interesting and fucked up by the second. My need to tear them apart consumed me and I itched to start tearing heads from shoulders.
“Shall we do this honorably?” he snarled.
“Do you even know what that word means?” Raquel inquired sarcastically as she readied herself for battle. “The odds aren’t exactly even.”
“Too bad, so sad,” Vlad sang with a laugh that held no mirth. “Fuck it. Kill the males, but leave Raquel. She’s mine. And I’ve changed my mind, dear Raquel. I’m going to kill you before I take you.”
“That is fucking gross,” Jean Paul muttered, disgusted.
“And not going to happen,” I growled as I dove head first into the fray.
And so it began.
There was no honor—none at all.
However, there was blood.
A lot of blood.
***
They came at us fast and furious. This was a far different game than I’d ever played. I was a Master Vampyre; however, these fucks were Master Vampyres with about a thousand years on the three of us combined. Fangs ripped through skin, and magic shot around the room like dozens out of control boomerangs. As I gripped the head of a particularly aggressive Vampyre, I caught Raquel out of the corner of my eye.
She was truly splendid. A fucking beautiful killing machine. My girl wasted no movement as she took on the Vamp gunning for her. Jean Paul held his own—barely—sparring with two of the ugly undead bastards.
“You’re mine,” a Vampyre with wild eyes and gnashing fangs screamed as he came at me like a freight train from the bowels of Hell.
Exactly where I planned to send him.
“Not today,” I grunted as I met him head on.
We grappled in a match for our lives. He threw punch after punch backed up with a sorcery that flamed through my insides with sickening jolts. Flipping backward, I caught his head in my legs and crushed his trachea. It gave me the precious second I needed to overcome him. In a fluid movement, I tore the head from the son of a bitch and permanently ended the screams of agony he’d wailed seconds ago.
Where the fuck was Vlad? There was a momentary foreboding stillness in the air and I spotted him across the room watching. Such a fucking coward.
In the brief second I’d taken to find Vlad, I’d been struck. Pain shot through my body and seared like fire at the end of my left arm as I realized my hand was gone. The flying magic cast by the Old Guard tore through our bodies like knives. My stump tingled immediately as it began to regenerate, but it would take an hour that I didn’t have for it to be reformed and useful. Ripping heads with one hand was difficult. Using my good hand, my fangs, magic and my legs would have to suffice. There was no other choice.
Directly in my sightline, Jean Paul struggled with two Vamps on a mission to destroy. He was bleeding profusely and his arm was attached by only a tendon, but he was still in the battle.
Removing my eyes from my next aggressor would be deadly, so I focused and fought like I’d never fought. The gory satisfaction of decapitating and destroying overwhelmed me and I attacked as if there was no tomorrow coming.
Sound was distorted and my vision was blurred by the vile magic ricocheting around the room, but I moved with precise actions and one goal. Kill the fuck in front of me and get to Vlad before he got to Raquel.
Pain was secondary as dark red blood spurted from multiple wounds on my body. I think I’d killed six. The one in trapped in my vicious chokehold roared as I snapped his neck and yanked his head from his body with my forearms. Raquel’s victorious shout and Jean Paul’s grunt of satisfaction as my deadly mate pierced the heart of her attacker with her stiletto heel was music to my ears. We’d made it.
They were all dead. All ten of them lay in tattered heaps in different stages of decay around us. Half had already turned to ash. Now to get to the root of all evils…
I quickly cased the room to make sure we hadn’t missed anyone and searched for Vlad. Jean Paul was across the room leaning against the wall. It was holding him up. He smiled weakly and gave me a thumbs up. Raquel was about ten feet from me. She was torn up, bleeding and weak, but she was alive and looked gorgeous to me. Her smile was wicked and I felt the stirring of lust in my lower half. There was nothing about the woman that I wasn’t addicted to.
And then there was silence. Silence was always bad in movies.
It was far fucking worse in real life.
Vlad stood on a table at the end of the room cringing in disgust and swearing at the fallen Vampyres. He muttered unintelligibly as he bent down and grabbed his weapon.
It happened in slow motion—like trying to sprint under water. Raquel’s eyes were on her brother and in her damaged state her stance was lax and open. The long pointed silver stake in Vlad’s strong hands gleamed under the lights of the massive chandelier that had somehow survived unscathed in the battle.