Lover Unleashed

“Why this particular man, trahyner?” Even though he knew.

“He killed women in London.”

“How many?”

“Eleven.”

“Not a square dozen then.”

Throe’s frown smacked of disapproval. Which was a delight, really. “He cut them up while they were alive and waited until they were dead to . . . take them.”

“Fuck them, you mean?” Xcor ripped the flesh from the bone with his fangs, and when there was no reply, he cocked a brow. “Do you mean that he fucked them, Throe.”

“Yes.”

“Ah.” Xcor smiled with an edge. “Dirty little fool.”

“There were eleven. Women.”

“Yes, you mentioned. So he’s a rather horny little perverted fool.”

Throe took the papers back and flipped through them, staring down at the faces of the worthless human women. No doubt he was praying to the Scribe Virgin at this very moment, hoping to be granted the opportunity to perform a public service for a race that was nothing but an induction ceremony away from being their enemy.

Pathetic.

And there would be no solo traveling for him—which was why he looked so put upon: Alas, the oath these five males had taken the night of the Bloodletter’s incineration tied them to Xcor with iron cables. They went nowhere without his consent and approval.

Although when it came to Throe, that male had been bound to him far earlier than that, hadn’t he.

In the silence, tendrils of Xcor’s dream resurged in his mind—as did the burn of knowing that he had never found that wraith of a female. Which was not right. Although he was more than willing to be the backbone of myths within human minds, he did not believe in ghosts or hauntings or spells and curses. His father had been taken by something of flesh and blood, and the hunter in him wanted to find it and kill it.

“What say you?” Throe demanded.

So like him. Such a hero. “Nothing. Or I would have spoken, yes?”

Throe’s fingers started to tap against the old stained wood of the table, and Xcor was pleased to let him sit and play drummer boy. The others simply ate, content to wait for this battle to be resolved one way or the other. Unlike Throe, the rest did not care which targets were chosen—provided they were fed, watered, and well sexed, they were content to fight whenever and wherever were chosen for them.

Xcor stabbed another strip of meat and eased back into his massive oak chair, his eyes drawn to the decrepit tapestries. Within the faded folds, those images of humans going off to war on stallions that he approved of and weapons he could appreciate irked the shit out of him.

The sense that he was in the wrong place tingled along his shoulders, making him as twitchy as his number two.

Twenty years of no lessers and eradicating mere humans to keep up their skills was no kind of existence for his crew or himself. And yet there were some vampires who had stayed in the Old Country, and he had lingered on this continent in hopes of finding among them what he saw only in his dreams.

That female. Who had taken his father.

Where had all this tarrying gotten him, however?

The decision he had long toyed with crystallized in his mind once again, forming shape and structure, angles and arches. And whereas previously, the impetus had always faded, now, the nightmare gave it the kind of stay- power that turned mere idea into action.

“We shall go unto London,” he pronounced.

Throe’s fingers immediately stilled. “Thank you, my liege.”

Xcor inclined his head and smiled to himself, thinking Throe might get a chance to off that human man. Or . . . perhaps not.

Travel plans were indeed afoot, however.

NINE

ST. FRANCIS HOSPITAL CALDWELL, NEW YORK

Medical center complexes were like jigsaw puzzles. Except for the fact that their pieces didn’t fit together nearly as well.

But that was not a bad thing on a night like tonight, Manny thought as he scrubbed in.

On some level, he was amazed it had all gone so easily. The thugs who had driven him and his patient here had parked in one of the thousand dark corners of St. Francis’s outer edge, and then Manny had called the head of security himself, stating that he had a VIP patient coming in the back who required total discretion. Next ring-a- ding-ding had been to his nursing staff and the line was the same: Special patient coming in. Ready the third-floor OR on the far end and have the MRI techs ready for a quickie. Final dial had been to transport, and what do you know, they had shown up lickety-split with a gurney.

Within fifteen minutes of finishing the MRI, the patient was here in OR VII, getting prepped.

“So who is she?”

The question came from the nurse in charge, and he’d been waiting for it. “An Olympic equestrian. From Europe.”

“Well, that explains it. She was mumbling something and none of us could understand the language.” The woman flipped through some paperwork—which he was going to make sure he snagged after all this was through. “Why all the secrets?”

“She’s royalty.” And wasn’t that the truth. As he’d ridden along with her, he’d spent the entire trip staring at her regal features.

Sap. Stupid-ass sap.

His head nurse glanced out into the corridor, her eyes wary. “Explains the security detail—my God, you’d think we were bank robbers.”

Manny leaned back for a peek as he scrubbed under his nails with a stiff brush. The three who had come in with him stood in the hall about ten feet away, their huge bodies dressed in black with a lot of bulges.

Guns, no doubt. Maybe knives. Possibly a flamethrower or two, who the fuck knew.

Kinda cured a guy of the whole government-is-just-full-of-paper-pushing-pencil-necks idea.

“Where’re her consent forms?” the nurse asked. “There’s nothing in the system.”

“I’ve got all those,” he lied. “You have the MRI for me?”

“Up on the screen—but the tech says that it’s with errors? He really wants to redo.”

“Let me look at it first.”

“Are you sure you want to be listed as the responsible party for all this? Doesn’t she have money?”

“She has to be anonymous, and they’ll reimburse me.” At least, he was assuming they would—not that he really cared.

Manny rinsed the brown blush of Betadine off his hands and forearms and shook them off. Keeping his arms up, he hit the swinging door with his back and entered the OR.

Two nurses and an anesthesiologist were in the room, the former double-checking the rolling trays of instruments set on blue surgical drapes, the latter calibrating the gases and equipment that would be used for keeping his patient asleep. The air was cool to discourage bleeding and smelled like astringent, and the computer equipment hummed quietly along with the ceiling lights and the operating chandelier.

Manny beelined for the monitors—and the instant he saw the MRI, his heart jumping-jacked on him. Going slowly, he reviewed the digital images carefully until he couldn’t stand it anymore.

Looking to the windows in the flap doors, he remeasured the three men standing right outside the room, their hard faces and cold eyes locked on him.

They were not human.