our days of strife are behind us, and that we can work together in peace and allegiance for millennia to come.”
Gabriel offered a polite nod and gestured with his glass again, but didn’t exactly commit to the
“allegiance” bit. Vamps collected formal allegiances like baseball cards; shifters weren’t exactly crazy about that kind of thing.
“And since I’d truly rather Merit focus on her meal than on me,” Gabriel said with a wink, “let’s stop talking and start eating.”
But, of course, that would have been much too simple.
I don’t know why it surprised me that Scott offered up a mean feast. The man loved the Cubs, he had an amazing warehouse turned House, and Benson’s was his House bar. Those facts screamed “Quality Master.”
The food was no exception. The meats were choice cuts that even my particular father might have served to dinner guests. They were tender enough to make a knife irrelevant, and seared to perfection on the outside. He couldn’t have done better, especially for a group of predators.
Honestly, if I’d been a guy, I would have finished my plate, relaxed in my chair, and unfastened the top button of my pants. Food that good deserved undisturbed digestion.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be.
I’d just taken another sip of wine—grimacing at how dry it was—when the door at one end of the room burst open. Five vampires rushed in, some in black street clothes, but a couple wearing blue and yellow hockey-style jerseys with GREY HOUSE in capital letters across the front. They all had swords in hand and malice in their expressions.
“This is how you treat us?” asked one Grey House vamp who wore number thirty-two.
“Some fucking shifter and his bitch get fed like kings?”
The Grey House vamp on the other side wore number twenty-seven. “And the GP, too? Shit is falling down here in the States, and we’re serving steak to a vamp from the UK? Does that seem right to you?”
Within seconds, my dagger was in hand. And I wasn’t the only one on alert.
Scott Grey jumped out of his chair and marched to the end of the table. “Matt, Drew, back the fuck off. Drop the swords, and march right back to the door.”
The Grey House vamps wavered, probably the result of some mental Master juju Scott was throwing their way. But the rest of them didn’t seem to be affected at all.
I carefully got to my feet and moved toward them, spinning the dagger in my palm as the anticipation built. All five vamps wobbled a little on their feet, their movements erratic, their eyes darting around the room. As I moved incrementally closer, I could see the cause in their eyes—they were almost wholly silver.
“Scott, it’s V,” I warned him.
“Any easy solution for handling them?” he called back.
“Not without a sorcerer,” I told him. “We’ll have to knock them out the old-fashioned way.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do,” Ethan said, stepping beside me, a knife from the table in his hand.
“Nice of you to join us, Sullivan,” I teased, my gaze following the vamps as they spread out in a line, ready to rumble, whatever the cost. And with Darius, an Apex, and three Masters in the room, the cost would be high. . . .
“Let’s go, old man,” Thirty-two said. “You want to fight your own vampires? You want to take his side over theirs?”
“Liege,” Jonah said, “as your captain, I’m going to request you move into a safer position.”
“Request it all you want, Red,” Scott told him, a mirthless smile on his face. “But that’s not going to stop me from putting these dumbshits in their places. That’s what they get for doing V.”
The Grey House vamps seemed equally eager to brawl. “Oh, go to hell, man,” Twenty-seven said.
“Only if you join me,” Scott said pleasantly, and before another second passed, the room erupted into violence. Jonah and Scott took the Grey House vamps. Gabriel, Darius, and Tonya were sitting this one out. That left the Rogues to me, Ethan, and Morgan.
“I got the one in the middle,” I called out.
“That leaves the other two for us,” Ethan said.
“Greer, take the one on the left.”
And with that, we moved. I slipped between the in-House squabble to the angry-looking Rogue behind them, his eyes just as silver as the Grey vamps’ had been. He was a big guy, and beads of sweat formed at his temple as he fought the rush of the drug. But this guy didn’t care whether it was rage or drugs fueling his attack.
He bared his teeth and moved in.
I had to give him credit—he was faster than I would have imagined given his bulk. He moved like a spider— his weight carried delicately on small, mincing feet.
He slashed, stepping into the movement like a trained fighter. I blocked the knife with my dagger, but miscalculated his speed and felt the cold burn of pain on the back of my hand. My own blood scented the air, pushing my vampiric instincts into overdrive.
I glanced down and saw the thin line of crimson. Only a couple of inches long and not terribly deep. It was a glancing blow, but that didn’t ease the burn.
“Not cool,” I said, moving into a spin, the dagger in my hand slicing through the front of his shirt. He muttered a few choice phrases but jumped back again. I stayed on the offensive, my intent to make this guy as uncomfortable as possible—to keep him as off balance as possible —while watching for a chance to knock him out.
“You think you’re any better than the rest of them?” he muttered, raising the sword over his head and slashing down. I jumped back and out of the way, but my heel caught in a knot in one of the planks. I stumbled backward and into one of the room’s giant wooden posts, catching myself with a hand.
Ethan’s concerned voice echoed through my head.
When I was upright again, I recentered the dagger in my hand and stared back at the vamp.
“You were saying?”
“Bitch,” he called out, swinging his katana in an awkward cross-body slice that would have been better suited for a broadsword than fine Japanese steel. And I cringed on its behalf as I ducked, and felt the echoing shudder of the column as his katana made contact—and stuck there. What a waste.
I spun out from beneath him as he loosened his grip on the handle and began stepping backward, eyes widening as if suddenly aware that the Sentinel from Cadogan House was on his case.
Maybe the drug was beginning to wear off.
“I’m going to do you a solid,” I said, holding my dagger out to the side. “I’m going to toss this away, so we can have a fair fight.”
I saw the relief in his expression as I chucked the steel. And when his eyes shifted to watch it spin across the floor, I made my move. I threw out a roundhouse kick that connected with his head. He went down hard, like a sack of vampire potatoes, then bounced a little before finally rolling to a stop.
Sure, roundhousing someone while wearing a cocktail dress wasn’t exactly ladylike, but it certainly was effective.
With my Rogue out of commission, I glanced over at Ethan. He was in the process of putting his on the floor with a twisting judostyle drop that rattled the floorboards. When he was down, Ethan used an elbow at the neck to knock him out.
When the guy was still, he looked up at me, then noticed my guy was down.
Jonah looked around the room, his gaze stopping when he reached me. “You okay?” he mouthed.
I nodded back. That definitely seemed personal.
