The Cyn & Raphael Novellas Page 22

  Any other vampire would have been executed on the spot for betraying Raphael like that, but Alexandra was his baby sister and he loved her. So he hadn’t killed Alexandra. He’d locked her away in a prison cell filled with every comfort and convenience instead. Cyn would have chosen death over life in a box, no matter how comfy it was. But then, she and Alexandra didn’t exactly see things the same way.

  Cyn’s attention sharpened when another vamp showed up on screen. But when she saw it was only one of the guards, she gave Juro a puzzled glance. What was the big deal? Alexandra was never left unguarded, so what did it matter that . . . Wait. That wasn’t just any guard, it was Pascal. Now that was interesting in a what-the-fuck sort of way. She knew the visiting vamp had petitioned for a permanent spot among Raphael’s security force, and she knew that against all odds, Jared had begun rotating him into the patrols, but even so . . .

  “What’s he doing with Alexandra?” she asked, not concealing her concern. Very few guards were permitted that particular assignment, and they had all proven their loyalty to Raphael who was their Sire on top of everything else! Something was definitely wrong here. She might not like Jared much, but he was as fanatic as any of them about Raphael’s security. And Alexandra was a living threat to that security, so why . . .

  Her eyes widened as Pascal produced a set of keys and unlocked the first level of security, which was the cage around the keypad which controlled access to the cell door. The cell itself was actually two rooms—the main room, which was visible through the bars, and a small bedroom and bath, which afforded Alexandra a measure of privacy that no other prisoner enjoyed.

  On the screen, Alexandra stood in the outer room, just inside the iron bars, watching Pascal, a smile playing around her lips. She was a beautiful woman, there was no denying it. She was, after all, the female version of Raphael, and he was the most gorgeous male Cyn had ever laid eyes on. But while Alexandra’s heart was a shriveled lump of coal, Raphael’s burned like the brightest star in the heavens, his power warming every one of the thousands of vampires in his care. And his love for Cyn was the burning flame at the center of that star.

  “Raphael,” Cyn said in growing alarm as Pascal began punching buttons on the security keypad.

  “We expected this,” Raphael assured her, reaching out to pull her closer. “Or something like it. I confess I’m surprised that this is their play.”

  “Are you going to let him take her?” she asked, as the cell door opened and Alexandra emerged, offering her hand for Pascal to kiss, like a queen and her subject. The fucking pretentious bitch.

  “We are,” Raphael confirmed. “Pascal is nothing but a tool. We want to know who’s wielding him.”

  “Do you know where he’s going? Where he’s taking her?”

  “Not yet,” Juro told her. “But we will. I’ve had a team waiting ever since he maneuvered his way into this assignment. They’ll pick up the trail as soon as Pascal leaves the estate. But I expect that will only be the first step. Alexandra has no value other than to pull Raphael in.”

  Cyn felt Raphael’s gaze on her, and she looked at him, her own eyes widening. “You think they’ll use her as bait? That whoever’s running Pascal will expect you to ride to her rescue?”

  “It’s been done before,” he reminded her, as if she needed reminding. It was how they’d met. Raphael had hired Cyn to find the kidnappers who’d taken his sister.

  “Yeah,” she agreed now, “and everyone who tried it is dead.”

  “Obviously, my new enemy believes he will be more successful in this ploy.”

  “Obviously,” she agreed dryly. “So how far are you going to play out this little game?”

  “All the way, my Cyn.”

  She frowned. “All the way,” she repeated. “Wait. You can’t actually go there yourself, wherever there is. You don’t even know—”

  “That’s the point. There’s too much we don’t know,” Raphael said, “and our enemies are too many. This will force at least some of them to show their hand.”

  “This will force you to show up!” she argued. “Juro, you can’t possibly think this is a good idea.”

  “We will take every precaution—” Juro said, but Raphael interrupted him.

  “You constantly underestimate me, my Cyn,” Raphael objected mildly. “I’m not helpless.”

  “Fine,” she snarled. “Then I’m going with you.” She glared down at him expecting an argument, but he only smiled.

  “Of course, you are. I expect this to take several days, and I don’t want to be without you that long.”

  Cyn’s heart swelled with emotion, but she narrowed her gaze at him in mock irritation. “Don’t forget my mad skills as a bodyguard,” she muttered.

  Raphael’s smile widened into a grin. “Never. I have every intention of keeping your body as close to mine as possible.”

  “So, when do we leave?”

  “First we wait,” Juro explained. “We don’t want our enemy to know we’re aware of their ploy, so we’ll have to wait for them to contact Raphael and make their demands. My team will be in place well before then, however, so we won’t be going in blind no matter where it is.”

  Cyn gave Raphael an unhappy look. She didn’t like this plan. She remembered the last time someone had tried to use Alexandra as bait. And, yeah, the bad guys had all ended up dead, but Raphael had nearly been blown to bits in the process because his vampire enemy had tried something Raphael had never expected.

  Juro paused, his hand going up to touch his ear where he was wearing a nearly invisible Blue Tooth earpiece. “Pascal and Alexandra just cleared the gate, my lord.”

  “How’s he doing all of this?” Cyn puzzled. “It’s like he’s Houdini or—”

  “Not Houdini,” a new voice chimed in. Cyn turned to see Jared enter the office. “More like Franz Mesmer,” he provided.

  “Who?” she asked, trying to keep the snap out of her voice.

  “Franz Mezmer, the father of hypnotism.”

  “Mezmer,” Cyn repeated. “As in mesmerism.”

  “Apparently. That was before my time, although . . . my lord?” he said, giving Raphael a questioning look.

  “Our paths never crossed,” Raphael said dryly. “What did you discover?”

  “Our friend Pascal is actually the very ordinary Paul Modesti, a stage magician of small repute and smaller talents. Or he was until someone saw fit to make him Vampire. What had been a modest ability to push his victim’s attention away from whatever trick he was doing—which was usually cheating at cards—became a fairly strong telepathic talent courtesy of his new vampire blood. He fancies himself a power with a capital P, someone to be reckoned with. He’s even given himself a name, The Mesmer. He’s a legend in his own mind.”

  “What an ass,” Cyn muttered, and Jared gave her a look, as if he wasn’t altogether certain whether she was referring to Pascal . . . or him.

  “I meant Pascal,” she assured him with a saccharine sweet smile. It didn’t fool him, but he moved on.

  “No one knows who sired him. He’s not one of Klemens’s, though if you ask, he’ll say he is. The truth is that for years he lurked around Jabril’s court. Once Jabril was dusted—” He glanced at Cyn. She’d been the one who’d killed off the former Lord of the South, though they let the world assume it was Raphael. “Anyway, once Jabril was dusted, Pascal stayed in the South. He never swore to anyone, as far as I can discover, but we do know he’s been freelancing. Mostly petty theft kinds of shit, but lately he’s been hinting at something or someone bigger. He thinks this is his chance to step up into the big leagues. My take is that someone with real power has noticed his talent and decided to make use of it.”

  “Are you saying he hypnotized his way onto Alexandra’s guard detail? And the gate guards, too?”

  “We only wanted him to think he did,” Jared assured her. “Juro recognized what he was trying to do as soon as he met him at Luci’s, and he gave
me the head’s up. I made sure the guards he was assigned to work with were briefed, while Raphael made certain their link to him was strong enough to repel any mental intrusions.”

  “Why not simply dust him? Wouldn’t that send a signal?”

  “But a signal to whom?” Raphael asked quietly. “I’d much rather know who sent him. Pascal is nobody. He can move freely over territorial borders and no one will notice. But he didn’t plan this. The planner is someone who cannot move about unnoticed, which means someone on this continent is abetting this plot against me. If, as I suspect, the mastermind is a European player, then his North American ally is betraying every vampire on this continent, trying to cripple our alliance before it begins.”

  “But if he came from the South, then you think Anthony—”

  “No, as Lord of the South, Anthony is a loyal ally to me, if only because he knows that he cannot continue to hold his territory without my support. But in any event, I suspect the traitor will be found farther south than that, in Mexico. The only question is whether Enrique is an unwitting victim of the poison lurking in his territory, or if he is the source.”

  CYN TURNED THE minute the doors to their private suite were secured behind them. “I don’t like this,” she said, ripping her sweatshirt over her head.

  “I know,” Raphael said, gliding a hand along her bare arm as he walked past her and started to get undressed, toeing off his boots and unbuttoning his jeans.

  “Why can’t you just do your thing on this Pascal or Paul or whatever the fuck his real name is? Dig into his brain and find out what you need to know.”

  Raphael pulled his sweater off and tossed it into the laundry basket, turning to speak over his shoulder as Cyn paced the room behind him. “Because I suspect he doesn’t know everything,” he told her. “If I was planning an operation like this, I’d use layers of secrecy to protect myself against just such a discovery. Pascal will only be able to tell me the name of his master, the vampire who sent him out here. I want his master’s master.”

  Cyn sighed. “I’m tired of this, Raphael. Every time we turn around, someone’s trying to kill you.”

  At that, Raphael stopped what he was doing and turned fully to wrap his arms around her. “I’m sorry, lubimaya. I’ll understand if you want to leave—”

  Cyn stiffened in his arms before raising both hands to shove him away. He actually stumbled back a step which told her she’d caught him completely off-guard.

  “Don’t you dare finish that sentence,” she hissed angrily, slapping away his hands when he reached for her. “What the fuck, Raphael? Is that what you think of me, that I’d run at the first sign of—”

  “It’s hardly the first, my Cyn, as you pointed out. It’s been one thing after another since we met.”

  “Then maybe it’s you who should be running,” she practically shouted. “Maybe I’m the bad luck charm. Is that what this is really about? You pretend it’s all about me getting away from you, when really it’s you who wants away from—”

  “Stop.” Raphael put enough power into the command that Cyn’s words froze unspoken in her throat. Eyes flashing, he grabbed her by the shoulders, forcing her to look at him. “My love for you is the single burning truth of my life. If I am to go down in this fight, I would have you by my side and nowhere else, your face the last thing I see. But I would understand—”

  “You don’t understand anything,” Cyn whispered through the tears streaming down her face. “If you think for one second that I’d leave you, you don’t understand anything.”

  “Lubimaya,” Raphael murmured, pulling her into his embrace. “I forget sometimes that my mate is a warrior, a woman who will stand with me instead of behind me.”

  Cyn pounded a fist against his chest, but he only held her tighter.

  “I, too, grow tired of these challenges,” he said softly, his breath stirring her hair where it lay against her cheek. “I had hoped if we had a united Council, if the Europeans saw that we would stand strong against them, that they would abandon this foolish scheme of theirs. I would even have welcomed a few of them to this continent, permitted them to make their own way here, just as humans have for centuries, even to challenge for territory if the individual vampire was strong enough. But it seems I underestimated their desperation, or perhaps the greed of their current masters.”

  Cyn heard the weariness in his voice and softened against him, letting her arms wrap around his back, her hands curling up over his shoulders. “We’ll fight the bastards together,” she whispered.

  “We’ll defeat them together,” Raphael corrected.

  “Right,” Cyn agreed. “And when it’s over, we’ll lock the doors and turn off the phones for, like a month,” she muttered.

  Raphael laughed, the sound tinged with surprise. It unfroze something in Cyn’s chest and she hugged him even tighter.

  “So how long do you think it’ll be before we get the call from Pascal’s handlers?” she asked. “They have to know we’ll discover Alexandra missing sooner rather than later.”

  Raphael threaded his fingers through her hair and down her back. “Pascal believes he’s persuaded enough of my guards to his cause that they will ignore her absence, giving him nearly a full shift, almost twelve hours, to manage his escape.”

  Cyn scoffed noisily and pushed back to look up at him. “What about the fucking video? How did he plan to persuade that?”

  “We may have neglected to inform him of the camera’s existence.”

  “He didn’t pick up on it himself?” she scoffed. “He’s an amateur. You’re right. There’s no way he could have planned this alone.”

  “Enough about Pascal,” Raphael said abruptly. “There’s nothing we can do until tomorrow, and there are more enjoyable ways to spend our time before sunrise.”

  Feeling wicked, Cyn frowned. “Do we know anything about the individual vamps in Europe? Maybe I should dig into this online, see if I can get a lead on who might be running him.”

  Raphael’s eyes narrowed and his fingers twisting in her hair, tugging her head back until she was forced to look up at him. “Fuck Pascal.”

  “But Raphael, now that I know his real name—”

  He snarled angrily, his grip on her hair tightening to the point of pain, his other arm squeezing her around the waist and yanking her against his hard body . . . his very hard body. Everywhere.

  Cyn bit back a grin and said with feigned seriousness, “Raphael, I really think—”

  He didn’t wait to hear what she thought. His mouth came down on hers in a hard, ravaging kiss, the kiss of an alpha male who wanted his woman and no more bullshit. Holding her tightly, he backed her up to the wall, pressing against her, holding her in place while he tore at her clothes—ripping her midriff baring t-shirt, twisting the clasp on her bra to expose her breasts, snapping the drawstring waist of her sweatpants and letting them fall to her ankles, tearing away the tiny thong which was all she was wearing beneath it.

  Cyn grinned into his kiss and gave as good as she got. Her arms were around his neck, her fingers pushing through his short, thick hair, grasping it tightly, tugging hard enough to hurt, thinking payback was a bitch. Raphael growled a soft warning, and she bit his lip, her laughter more of a cackle as she dared him to his face to do something about it.

  Raphael lowered his head to give her a half-lidded stare. “You want to play?” he asked with soft menace. “Game on, sweet Cyn.” Using the full weight of his big body, he slammed her against the wall and shoved his hand between her thighs, his fingers sliding wetly in the slick moisture of her arousal, slipping between her swollen lips to fuck her fast and hard, the heel of his palm grinding against her clit.

  Cyn groaned, her teeth digging into the soft tissue of her lower lip . . . except it wasn’t her lip, it was Raphael’s, and she gasped in shock as the taste of his blood filled her mouth, warm and exotic, sizzling along her nerves, making her heart pound and her lungs strain for air. She reac
hed between their bodies, her hand dipping into the unbuttoned front of Raphael’s jeans to take hold of his cock, wrapping her fingers around its thickness, stroking up and down, relishing the glide of smooth skin over marble shaft, squeezing and releasing, feeling it jump in her hand as his groan matched her own.

  “Raphael,” she demanded, needing more, wanting more, wanting him inside her now.

  Raphael bared his teeth in a primitive smile as he pulled his fingers out of her pussy, as both hands shifted to cup her ass instead, his right hand still wet and slick with her juices. The muscles in his bare arms flexed and bunched as he lifted her higher against the wall, as he stepped between her thighs and forced her legs to spread around his hips. Cyn reached again for his cock, positioning him at the opening of her aching sex, feeling the tip of his penis enter her pussy, thrusting forward in demand, urging him to move, to fuck her. Until finally, with an angry growl of possession, Raphael plunged deep into her body, ripping his cock away from her fingers, forcing the quivering tissues of her sheath to stretch around his thickness as he slammed all the way inside her, until he was buried as deep as he could go, their bellies skin to skin, hips touching. And then he stopped.

  Cyn opened her eyes to find him staring at her, his black eyes filled with the starlight. She could feel him everywhere, the touch of his cock on her cervix, the swell of his powerful chest as he breathed, crushing the air from her lungs, the pounding of his heart, beating in time with her own. Every inch of their bodies was touching, every vital function moving in rhythm, two individuals made one.

  “Raphael,” she whispered, terrified by the strength of her emotions.

  “I love you, my Cyn,” he said quietly.