head, refocusing as the two cubes started their fall to the stone flooring that the kings stood upon.
Both kings zipped back to sit in the empty thrones beside their queens.
It only took a moment to see why.
The dice made contact with the stone floor and the vampire-strength backspin on them sent the cubes catapulting. They careened over the chamber, bouncing off the floor and furniture.
I winced, imagining how loud it must be in real life.
“If the dice hits a member of the royal family, there’s a re-roll. But King Julius has the best roll,” Angelica promised.
A few females at my back murmured their agreement.
I absorbed that, craning to watch as the dice slowed and eventually toppled onto their sides.
“Seven,” I announced.
Gasps rang out. Angelica shot me an amused look.
I started as the live stream showing the kings and queens disappeared and a screen with the flashing colour blocks descended from the ceiling. Kyros was visible through the glass once again, and his hooded gaze held me in its grasp before he removed a small remote from his interior waistcoat pocket.
Damn.
I sucked in a ragged breath, pushing back at the growing inferno low in my stomach, but it was no good. The lusty embers were there to stay until either Kyros or myself had the sense to put more distance between us.
Somehow I gathered that he wasn’t the retreating kind.
Given the differences in our tooth length…
I stepped back onto someone’s foot.
I grimaced my apology to the glaring Vissimo and quickly shuffled forward again, biting down on my lip to withhold the yearning whimper that wanted to slip out.
Kyros’s voice rumbled through Level 66, but I couldn’t miss the slightly strained undercurrent.
“As our human guest has already announced,” he said, “today’s number is seven.”
Was that his job? My bad.
I glanced at Kyros, who had the remote lifted in the direction of the screen with the flashing blocks of colour.
I concentrated on a shifting red dot. The dot moved seven times in response to Kyros’s command on the remote until it landed on an orange block. The entire orange block wasn’t flashing, just most of the squares within it. What did that mean?
Were the blocks specific colours?
Oh!
“Yeti schlong!” I pressed my nose against the glass. “It’s Bluff City.”
The image was a simplified map of the city. The colour blocks were the various suburbs. And the squares within them must be the individual houses within each suburb.
I recalled the path of the red dot as Kyros clicked on the remote. The dot hadn’t moved around the perimeter of the city, it zig-zagged. There was a set path the vampire clans followed with the roll of the dice, just like snakes & ladders or Monopoly.
Shit!
The humans here weren’t only unaware victims of some ancient supernatural game; our city was set up like a game board.
“Fuck me,” I blurted.
“Miss Tetley,” Kyros said.
I glanced up and choked as a wall of heat slammed into my body. He’d taken a single step around the glass tube. That was all it took. Heat flashed in his gaze and he visibly shuddered.
Yep, he felt it too.
But the vampire didn’t retreat. Was he serious? A pissing contest?
Kyros spoke from between clenched teeth. “Kindly keep your observations until after the debriefing.”
Oh. “Yeah, sure. I can do that. Continue.”
His furious snarl ripped through the level, and my knees nearly gave way. I’d swear to whoever was listening that Angelica laughed under her breath.
She was fucking crazy.
And so was I.
I’d given Kyros an order.
His body shuddered and he bent forward, looking ready to bolt straight through the glass tube to rip my throat out. Though he wouldn’t manage that with the pheromones we were putting out. Honestly, I wasn’t against humiliating Kyros in some way, but I really didn’t want to get hot and heavy with him on the floor of Level 66 in front of hundreds of vampires.
Or at all.
That ship had well and truly sailed.
Except if he came any closer, that’s where we’d be going.
“Continue, if you’d like to,” I forced myself to say, dropping my gaze to the floor. You bastard.
His snarling cut off abruptly. Someone needed to introduce the fucker to meditation. Maybe he could hire someone to massage his earlobes full-time too.
“I will,” he hissed.
I hovered still and quiet like a good little human, while Kyros rattled through the debriefing. Most was hard to interpret, but his stream of orders made me realise just how intricate this operation had to be. Roll forecasts, statistical probability for future rolls and