The rope’s coarse fibers had chewed her wrists raw, but Beth kept working at the knot. It was beginning to give. If she could just untie herself…
The basement door creaked, sending light lancing into her eyes. She cursed silently. It figured the bastard would come back just as she was making progress.
“Missed me, my dove?”
“Not really, no.” She squinted warily at the figure on the stairs. The liquid Castilian accent resembled Ramirez’s, but the voice itself was deeper, rougher. Too, the hulking silhouette looked more like one of her captor’s thugs -- the pack of blond brothers Ramirez treated like dogs.
Not that it really mattered which one of them it was. They were all vampires.
Cowboy boots rang on the wooden steps as the vamp started down into her makeshift cell. Like his brothers, the Swede was a big man, beefy and broad-faced, with a round knob of a nose and greasy, dishwater-blond hair hanging to his shoulders. In contrast to his master’s habitual suits, he wore jeans and a Budweiser T-shirt. He carried a length of white silk draped over one arm -- a nightgown?
She squinted at the fabric uneasily as the light from the doorway made her temples throb.
“Headache?” the blond asked with sugared sweetness. Appraising blue eyes flicked across her face. “You seem to be in pain.”
“What do you care?” she growled, in no mood for false civility. The punctures in her throat were aching, and her mouth was sawdust dry. Ramirez had made her drink his blood.
He’d infected her with the vampire virus.
“A headache is one of the first signs of the Change,” the blond said in that liquid purr that sounded so much like his master. “In a few days, you’ll be one of us -- a child of the night. A vampire.” Fangs flashed. “And my slave.”
Her stomach clenched at the thought. “I won’t be your anything -- your master is the one who’s Turning me.”
He grinned, exposing those gleaming fangs again. “My dove, I am Ramirez.”
He stepped into a shaft of light from the door, and she realized he was right. That was definitely the master vampire looking out from his eyes, ancient and evil and supremely powerful. He’d possessed the Swede -- moved his consciousness into the man’s body so he could use it like his own.
Suddenly Beth could feel him in her mind -- a vibration in the skull, deep and grating. Every hair on her body rose in quivering atavistic reaction.
Val had told her once that master vampires could use the bodies of those they’d Turned because they shared a mental link with their fledglings. Five years ago, she and Cade had used a similar technique to defeat Cade’s sadistic sire, Ridgemont.
Beth’s eyes narrowed with sudden speculation. That kind of link wasn’t an easy thing to establish. Cade and Val had only resorted to it because they couldn’t defeat Ridgemont any other way. Why would Ramirez make the effort? Unless… “Are you expecting company?”
That chilling smile flashed again as he reached down and snapped the rope binding her wrists to a ring in the wall. “As a matter of fact, I am.”
Beth’s heart leaped. In the two days since her abduction, she’d tried desperately to contact Val’s mind, praying she really did have the psychic abilities Kith were supposed to possess. There’d been no response, so she’d assumed she’d failed. But maybe… “Cade and Val are on the way, aren’t they?” Beth bared her teeth. “He’s going to rip your head off your shoulders with his bare hands.”
“Your brother-in-law? I think not.” Reading her expression, Ramirez laughed and jerked her off the cot so hard her dark hair flew. “Yes, I know all about your family. I checked you out thoroughly before I decided to take you. So don’t get your hopes up.”
Icy fear clamped in her gut. “What did you do to them?”
He smirked. “Sent them to South Africa on a wild goose chase. They’re busy fending off assassins in Johannesburg by now.”
“Assassins?” Beth’s knees went weak. “What assassins? How the hell did you send them to South Africa?”
He smiled, obviously enjoying her fear. “I laid a false trail indicating I’d taken you out of the country. Then I sent a few of my Swedes after them. Assuming they make it back alive, they’ll be too late to do you any good.”
The thought of her sister in danger made Beth feel sick, but she hid it behind a sneer. “So who are you expecting? A mortal enemy, I hope, preferably one who’s going to rip out your heart and eat it. I want to watch and pass the salt.”
Rage flashed through his eyes, and he lifted a hand. She flinched, expecting another of those brutal slaps. Instead, he stopped and smiled in a chilling stretch of the lips. “Oh, they’re going to love you.”
“Who?”
“The guests I went to so much effort to attract.” He brushed a knuckle down her cheekbone, chuckling when she recoiled. “I’m sure they’ll enjoy taking the… bait.”
Still smirking, he scanned the length of her body, his gaze lingering on the paint- splattered shirt and jeans she’d been wearing when he’d snatched her. Dried blood had joined the smears of crimson, ocher, and cerulean blue. Some of it was his. The resulting bruises had been a small price to pay. After all, he’d bitten her first.
“This isn’t quite the look we want, I think.” Before she could shrink away, Ramirez wrapped a fist in the front of her T-shirt and ripped upward, tearing both it and her bra off in one effortless swipe. With a satisfied smile, he dropped the scraps.
Beth stared at him as cool air touched her bare breasts. “You bastard!” Too pissed to consider the risk she was taking, she slammed a sneakered foot into his shin.
She didn’t even see the return slap.
Stars exploded behind her eyes as she hit the wall with stunning force, then tumbled to the floor. Gasping, Beth lay still, aching cheekbone pressed to the cold cement as tears of pain stung her eyes.
The vampire approached. Blinking at the engraved silver toe tips on his cowboy boots, she licked at the blood oozing from her cut lip. Something cool and soft landed across her back. “Put it on,” he ordered.
Beth lifted her spinning head to look up at him. Her heart was pounding in pain and fear, but she was damned if she’d give in. “Fuck off.”
When he grabbed for her, she fought like a cornered cat attacking a mastiff. Escape was worth any risk at all.
Including death.
When her foot came too close to his balls, Ramirez hit her so hard, blackness crashed down for the second time in three days.
* * *
“He’s in there,” Morgan Axton said in the mental link he shared with his cousin. He stared at the enemy’s safe house in the moonlit Georgia woods, its white wooden siding gleaming, golden light spilling from its lower windows. “I can smell the bastard.” Ramirez’s psychic reek put a match to the fuse of his rage, sending it sizzling along paths already well-seared by guilt and pain.
Crouching next to him in the darkness at the edge of the clearing, Garret shook his head. “You know he’s probably riding another of his thralls. He never fights us in person if he can help it.”
Morgan shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. If we kill enough of them, he’ll eventually run out of fledglings. Then we’ll have him.”
“Assuming he doesn’t get us first.”
“We’re not that easy to get.” Drawing the great sword sheathed across his back, Morgan rose and ghosted toward the house. He could feel his cousin following through their mental link, rapier and dagger in either hand.
Dracula notwithstanding, it took a lot more than a wooden stake to kill a vampire. You had to either decapitate him or destroy his heart. A shotgun would do the job, but Morgan wasn’t in the mood to kill Ramirez that quickly.
It had taken Elena a very long time to die. He intended to make sure her killer suffered just as much.
Cautiously, he studied Ramirez’s latest lair as they approached. It was nothing more than a two-story farmhouse -- white and nondescript, with a wrap-around porch and steeply pitched roof. Quite a comedown from the mansions they’d reduced to rubble over the past sixteen months.
“I don’t sense any boobytraps,” Garret began. “We should be --”
Morgan cleared the six steps to the porch in one long bound. Ignoring his cousin’s curse, he rammed his booted foot into the door. The jam exploded into splinters with the force of his kick, and the door crashed in so hard it banged against the wall. He leaped through the doorway and landed in a crouch, sword held in a steady two-handed grip.
Somewhere in the house, he sensed Ramirez come to attention. He could almost feel the bastard’s anticipation.
“Dammit, Morgan, it’s a wonder you don’t get your fuckin’ head blown off!” Garret snarled, charging in behind him, blades ready in both fists.
“Ramirez won’t use a gun on me. He wants to kill me with his bare hands.” Sword ready, his cousin at his heels, Morgan strode down the foyer toward the room beyond it. Every sense he had was on quivering alert.
He could sense their enemy waiting. The bastard’s psychic power field felt like the taste of rot on his tongue.
A searing memory flashed through his consciousness -- Elena’s mind calling to his that last time, reaching out to him across the miles, begging him to save her. He’d tried -- God, how he’d tried.
He’d failed.
Now all he could do was avenge her.
Yet when they stepped into the farmhouse’s shabby living room, the man who stood waiting wasn’t Ramirez. Not physically, anyway.
“Ahhh -- the Axton cousins come to call.” The big blond Swede raised his broadsword with a practiced skill that shouted of their enemy. One look in his eyes told Morgan Ramirez had possessed him. “Welcome, mis mamobichos.”
“The only cocksucker I see is you,” Morgan growled.
In contrast to Ramirez’s habitual dark elegance, the thrall was broad-faced and beefy, with close-spaced blue eyes and greasy, shoulder-length hair. He was obviously one of the brothers Ramirez had turned a few decades back. There’d been fifteen of them when this private little war started. Now, thanks to Morgan and Garret, less than half were left.
Two more Swedes guarded a dark-haired woman who stood in the corner. In contrast to the white lace nightgown she wore, a dog’s choke chain bit into her throat, its short leash clipped to a hook in the ceiling. A half-healed vampire bite marred her neck, while bruises shadowed her pretty face and narrow arms. Her wrists were bound; if she lost her balance, she’d hang herself.
Morgan glared at the thrall. “Did you ever meet a woman you didn’t abuse, you bastard?”
Ramirez pretended to consider the question. “No, I don’t believe I have.”
Morgan lifted his great sword and started toward him. “Free the girl, Garret. I’ll take Ramirez’s thrall.”
“It’ll be my pleasure.” Garret headed for the woman’s two vampire guards. “Wonder where he’s got his own body stashed this time?”
“It can’t be far. We need to finish this fast and find him.” Morgan began to circle the big blond, who watched him with catlike interest. “So, Ramirez,” he said aloud. “Tortured anyone lately?”
“I have not had that opportunity.” He smirked at the bound girl. “Perhaps later.”
“I don’t think so.” Morgan bared his teeth. “You’ll be dead in ten minutes.” He leaped, swinging his sword in a hard slice at the Swede’s neck.
The thrall parried, broadsword hitting Morgan’s blade hard enough to rock him on his heels.
Six hundred years of vampirism had given Ramirez a great deal of power.
Regaining his balance with a wrench, Morgan lunged at the Spaniard. Steel clashed on steel as the two vampires slammed chest-to-chest, muscles straining as each tried to break through the other’s guard.
“You grow reckless, amigo,” Ramirez told him in that infuriating Castilian purr. “It will be the death of you, I fear.”
“Or you.” Morgan shoved his opponent back a pace, getting room to circle for another opening. He was dimly aware of swords ringing as his cousin engaged the two Swedes. He wasn’t worried; without their master lending them strength, Garret was more than a match for them.
At least, as long as the Swedes didn’t get lucky.