-Gabriel-
I spot Andreas, Fenriz’s Beta, waiting for me at the entrance of the hotel. He’s powerful, second only in strength to Fenriz, tall, lean and muscular like Church, and has a scar running down his face courtesy of Katherine’s father. His long hair is tied up, and when he sees me, he cocks his head in greeting.
“Fenriz told me,” he says. “My condolences; Myrcella was a little spitfire on her own.”
I chuckle at this. “Thank you, and she truly was,” I say as he leads me to his Alpha’s office.
I would never have dreamt of coming to the Lycans for help, but they have a score to settle with Death’s Temple just as I do. Andreas especially, since his fated mate was raped and brutalized by them - his human mate, might I add.
We reach Fenriz’s office door, and Andreas turns to me. “Gotta warn you, he’s in there with his mate, and she might be a little different to the women you’ve seen with Fenriz. Try not to look too surprised.” He says, and I am about to ask him what the fuck he means when he opens the office door, and I see what exactly he’s talking about.
Fenriz has a petite Asian girl wrapped up in his arms, and she looks flushed as fuck; as if we just walked in on the biggest secret ever.
“Will you two get a fucking room already?” Andreas says and rolls his eyes. Fenriz shoots him a glare and nods his head in greeting, while his mate goes completely pale and looks like her soul has just left her body as soon as she sets her eyes on me.
What can I say? I’m a fucking charmer.
“Priest, glad you could make it,” Fenriz says while wrapping his bulky arm around the little thing’s waist.
I return his nod and follow him to his desk, where he narrows his eyes at me before lacing his fingers together on the desk in front of him.
“Okay, you need to be one hundred percent fucking honest with me right now, Gabriel. What happened last night, and how did Myrcella get caught in the crossfire?”
I sat forward, bracing my elbows on his knees. “You asked me to track down the hunters, and I did; the head’s daughter might I add. I was going to play with her a little when the gunfire started, and I realized that the bitch had a tracking device somewhere on her when I checked every fucking thing she had before letting her into my home.” My throat burns as guilt sets in, but I continue.
“Myrcella ran out of her room for some reason, and Katherine shot her before getting away with another woman.” When I conclude my story, they all look at me incredulously, and Andreas lets out a whistle.
“Fuck,” Andreas says, shaking his head. “What do you suggest, Fenriz?”
Fenriz sits with two fingers to his mouth, thinking. “Is there any way of luring Katherine out? I know she has a proverbial boner for you and your family,” he says, but I shake my head.
“She won’t show her face again for a while, not with the warning I left her with,” I say before sitting back and breathing out a sigh.
“You know, I’ve never killed a human while feeding before; none of my horde has. You can tell by a vampire’s eyes whether or not he’s taken a life; the white of his eyes turn black, but this guild is positive we killed their family. This is why I came to you for help, Fenriz.”
Fenriz nods. “You’re the mercenary; where would the first place be to look for a hunter?” he asks.
“Well, I’ve had some friends stand watch, and no one has left Vegas in the last 24 hours save for a few tourists, so they’re definitely still in the city,” I start, then think back to the raven-haired hunter who rescued her. “They would not have checked into a hospital even though the hunter who took Katherine was severely hurt. We also-”
“What about a church?” My eyes snap to the small, soothing voice of Fenriz’s mate, and I raise my eyebrow at her interjection. She looks like she’s about to faint when she peers up at me, then her eyes go back at Fenriz.
“Why would you suggest that? Oh, Gabriel, this is my wife, Umiko,” Fenriz finally introduces us, and I see his mate visibly swallowing before she starts.
“Well… back home, we also have hunters, and they would leave their weapons and supplies close to a shrine or temple. Would western hunters not do the same?”
I don’t know why I never fucking thought of that; it would be the most logical choice since the Roman Catholics were heavy on vampire hunting back then. They would provide sanctuary to the hunters if need be, even house weapons.
“Fuck, that would make sense,” Andreas says, and I nod, shell-shocked as shit.
“If this is true, then we’ve just discovered the hunters’ biggest secret,” I say incredulously, then get to my feet. “Will you come to check it out with me?”
“Obviously,” Andreas says, then turns to Fenriz. “We’ll be back in a few hours.”
Three hours later, we raided all the churches and found the Death’s Temple hunters - all but Katherine and the raven-haired bitch.
“Well, there’s torture at least,” I say, stringing one of them up against a barb-wired fence around the perimeter of the last church we’re searching. “I know you like that bit.”
“It relieves my stress,” Andreas says, snapping a head clean off and stomping on it. “These cunts deserve so much more than a quick death.”
“Fucking hear you, brother,” I say, just as I catch the faintest whiff of caramel on the breeze… before hearing the light thrumming of two heartbeats.
Andreas sees the grin on my face and frowns. “What?”
“They’re here,” I say, holding my head up to the breeze while straining my ears for those heartbeats. “Caramel; that’s what little Katherine smells like.” I look down at the ground but see nothing out of place, and then, as I walk to the back of the church, I step over a flowerbed and nearly trip.
But that’s when I hear it; a hollow thump where my boot lands.
I get to my feet and call Andreas over before stomping hard against the soil. “There’s something here,” I say, and just as I give it another stomp, the top breaks open. The fuckers didn’t even think to use steel but wood.
Something shoots past me when I pop the top, and I realize it’s a wooden bullet. Their hearts are both thumping like crazy, and the anxiety wafts up from beneath me. Letting out a chuckle, I sit down on my ass and shake my head.
“Wood won’t do jack shit; you know that,” I say.
“Yea, but it will sting like a bitch and cause the area to go numb,” the raven-haired cunt calls up, sounding cocky as shit. “Wanna come down here to see if I have one of those little baobab stakes, Priest?”
I can’t help but grin at this one’s sass; she’ll die last. “I don’t think so; why don’t you come on up so we can talk?”
“Talk? Ha! You’ll have to drag us out of here,” she says. When I look up at Andreas, he’s wearing a grin and holding a pepper grenade. My grin matches his when I see what he’s contemplating.
“Or we could just smoke you out,” he says before pulling out the pin and dropping it down the shaft.
Spluttering, coughing, and vomiting, the two eventually clamber out of their underground hiding place and crawl over the ground. They’re both still wearing the same clothes from when they left. We watch them fighting to breathe but don’t do anything to help them, enjoying their little bit of suffering before the torture truly starts.
I walk over to Katherine and pull her to her feet; she reeks of blood, sweat, and dust but the defiance in her red-rimmed eyes is unmistakable. She knows what’s about to happen, and yet she still wants to fight me.
“Do your worst, Priest,” she sputters, tears and snot running down her face. “Whatever you have planned, I’ve had worse.”
I scoff and shoot her a crimson eyed-glare while gripping the scruff of her dress. “Oh, little lamb, you have no fucking idea who you’re dealing with. I’m going to take my time with you, and when I’m done, you’ll be begging me for your death.”
-Katherine-Xenia and I look at one another when we hear the screams and heavy footfalls above us. We shouldn’t allow them to fight our battles, but if I die, then the guild dies with me. They’ve found us; somehow, they fucking found us, and if they know we’re down here, then we’re dead.“We need to make him understand that you didn’t fire that shot,” Xenia whispers, pacing the floor on her sprained ankle. I shake my head. “What good will that do? She died with one of our bullets in her heart, Xen; in his eyes, I might as well have fired it,” I say, thinking back to how Gabriel’s eyes were blazing with hurt and anger.“I won’t let anything happen to you, okay? I promised your father that I would always be at your back looking out for you,” she says.Wrapping my arms around her, I hold her tight and hope that it wouldn’t need to come to that. That Gabriel would leave here so we can find a way out of Vegas to nurse our wounds.She lets go of the embrace, looks at me, and sighs then cro
-Gabriel-I slide the heavy barrel bolt lock in place and slip on a padlock before making my way back up the tomb’s jagged stone steps. It’s probably cruel to leave Katherine alone down there, but I doubt she’s spared any thoughts of cruelty when my men suffered at her hand. In the last few hours, I’ve had myriad emotions pass through me; grief to anger to total numbness. From the tremble in my hands to the burning in my chest, I know that right now, I am a combination of all three. But I don’t know when I’ll finally snap and murder someone I shouldn’t.“...the fuck! I am going to kill all those fucking cunts!” I sigh when I hear the voice of my third, Church, coming from upstairs. If anyone was closer to Myrcella than me, it was Church - she called him her second big brother, and he was extremely overprotective of her.“Get the fuck off of me! Where is Gabe!” “I’m here,” I say when I walk into the living room, only to see Valentine holding Church back by gripping him in a chokehol
-Katherine-I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve been locked up down here, but the five styrofoam takeout containers and water bottles tell me that my time is up. Priest hasn’t been back down here since he left me with that bombshell, and when I wake up, there’s already food and water waiting for me.Yeah, I know that I should probably not have eaten whatever it is that my captors have given me, but the downside to this baobab mixture is that it makes you incredibly thirsty and hungry, especially when it wears off.I sit down and lean my head against the wall before getting up to resume my pacing. On the first day, I couldn’t sleep knowing that Priest had put me in a tomb with dead Pureblood vampires; I didn’t even switch on the flashlight and stayed rooted in the spot.How can I know that he’s telling the truth about the color of their eyes? For all I know, he’s stringing me along so I can feel guilty for killing his kind. I must admit that I felt guilty at first, but the more
-Gabriel-I can smell her defiance even before she walks into the room, and I let out a low chuckle as I play with the signet ring on my finger. That’s so fucking Katherine, it’s not even funny; defiance and a smart mouth that gets my cock harder than steel.I knew she would have expected cruelty, so I decided to switch up my method a little bit. She won’t expect kindness or respect, so that’s just what I’m going to show her until she’s let her guard down a little bit.She hit me when I didn’t expect her to, and I’ll be fucking sure to return the favor.Valentine drags her in by her upper arm, and her eyes go everywhere but where I’m seated. She’s looking for a weapon, I’m damn sure about that, but she’ll have a hard time finding one in my home after what happened five days ago. Everything now is made with a material spun by the Fae and cannot be broken, nor is it flammable. Why would I keep a means to kill me right under my own nose, anyway?I lean back and rest my chin on my fist w
-Katherine-I arch my back off the bed and let out a moan, his tongue lapping at my hardened clit while two of his fingers pump slip inside of me, caressing my sweet spot. Fisting his hair in my hand, I wrap my legs around his neck and drive my drenched pussy into his face; he smirks when I do this, then continues his assault on my sex until I scream out my release.Not long after this, he slams his massive cock inside of me, groaning as soon as he’s entered me to the base. I dig my nails into his tattooed back, raking them over the length of him until they find their way into his lower back, and I meet his thrusts while pushing him deeper. His thrusts become more frenzied, taking from me what he needs while I give him everything I have to offer. He lightly nips at my shoulder, his hand slipping around my neck and squeezing gently. My moans turn into screams the closer I am to my peak, while his groans become grunts, and I feel his cock becoming more engorged every time he enters me.
-Gabriel-“You can’t keep doing this,” Valentine says in a chastising voice and crosses his arms while sitting on his Harley. He’s dressed the same as I am in all black leather, including his boots, and his blonde hair is tied up in a braid.It’s been a week since I let Katherine out of the tomb and a week since I started her slow torture. She’s wound up so tight every time I see her that she might just snap from all the pressure. I’ve been nothing but kind to her, even drinking my blood out of a crystal tumbler, but I know she’s waiting for the axe to drop.My eyebrow shoots up, and I scoff. “I’m not sure I know what the fuck you’re talking about,” I say and swing my leg over my motorcycle. Valentine growls. “You know exactly what I’m talking about, Gabe; you’re playing with her and pretending not to like it. But I’ve seen that look in your eyes many times before; it’s the same look you have when we go on our Fae hunts in Ireland.”I can’t help but laugh as he likens my playing with
-Katherine-The severed heads of the men I used to respect stare up at me with glazed, dead eyes. It’s been hours since Priest winded me with news that knocked everything I knew down like a Jenga tower.The Death’s Temple, my guild, my home… is, in fact, involved with the most disgusting thing to come out of humanity since slavery and segregation. I can’t doubt what’s been presented to me anymore; the more I think of what Priest has said, the more it starts to make sense.My father’s flight plans, the donations to churches, and those two specific orphanages… Disgust coils in my gut, and I rush to the bathroom only to dry heave as there’s nothing in my stomach. I haven’t been able to eat or sleep since he came in here, and now I’m sitting in front of the large windows again. Even with the sunlight streaming in, a chill still sets deep in my bones.Everything I know is a lie. If Death’s Temple is indeed part of a human trafficking ring, then what have I been fighting for? Who is the tr
-Katherine-I pace the room after Valentine leaves and try wrapping my brain around what Valentine just told me. My mother died fifteen years ago in our home with two gashes in her throat and a symbol for war carved on the walls in her blood; my little brother saw the same fate. I was thirteen at the time and hadn’t been home because my mother and I had a fight about me going to a party that night. She forbade me from going, but Xenia and I snuck out anyway after the heated argument. I was going to apologize for how I acted and what I said, but when I found my father sobbing over their bodies, I knew I was too late.My father said that it was the Devil’s Void vampires who had murdered them, and that was the day my childhood ended, and I swore vengeance on Gabriel Priest and his nest for what they did to my family. I believed my father’s words, and he trained me to become the woman that I am today.But what if it had all been a lie? “No, it can’t be true,” I repeat while I pace the f