Lucas reached forward and clapped his lieutenant on the shoulder, where he sat in the front passenger seat. “Let’s be polite, Nick. I’m sure Heintz and his minions will be excited as hell to receive a visit from their rightful lord and master.”
Nicholas laughed and issued a few terse commands into his throat mike. The doors popped open on all three SUVs, and black-clad vampires poured out, deploying quickly to surround the house. Every one of them was a highly trained and powerful fighter. By virtue of their vampire blood, they were weapons unto themselves, but they also carried whatever human weapons they preferred, from 9mm handguns to compact submachine guns. And no doubt a knife or three thrown into the mix.
Lucas himself carried no weapon other than the power which made him one of the most feared vampires in North America—a vampire lord, ruler of the PlainsTerritory. Thousands of vampires literally lived and died at his command. Including Alfonso Heintz. Traitor or not, Heintz was still beholden to Lucas for every breath he drew, every beat of his heart. Klemens might have used Heintz, but he hadn’t offered his protection, hadn’t taken his oath of fealty. Which meant if Lucas wanted, he could have shriveled the unfaithful bastard’s heart in his chest without ever leaving South Dakota.
But where was the fun in that?
Nicholas caught Lucas’s eye and nodded once, then took up position to the left and slightly ahead of his Sire. They climbed three short steps up to the covered porch, and Nicholas knocked on the door. Or perhaps pounded would be more accurate. It was the adrenaline. Lucas stifled the urge to laugh. He loved this shit. After weeks of playing nice, of waiting while various vampire politics played out, he was ready for first blood.
The door creaked open, and a slender vampire stood there, his eyes wide with fear. “My lord,” he managed to stammer out. “We didn’t expect you.”
Well, that was a lie, Lucas thought to himself. No one, neither human nor vampire, could lie successfully to a vampire lord. This was not a very auspicious beginning. Who was this child anyway? Not one of his.
Nicholas didn’t bother with further niceties. He simply shoved the vampire out of the way and pushed the door open, slamming it against the wall.
Lucas followed him inside. “Where’s Heintz?” he asked the trembling vampire.
“Forgive me, my lord, but he’s not here. He had to—” The sentence ended on a squeak as Lucas picked the vampire up by his throat and dangled him several inches off the ground. “Fool. Do you think you can lie to me?”
“Please,” the vampire rasped. “I only—” Lucas had no interest in what this one had to say. Heintz had sent him forward as a sacrifice, and he had fulfilled his purpose. Lucas granted him the mercy of snapping his neck before he incinerated his heart with a short burst of power.
“Nicholas?” he said sharply.
“Ready at your command, my lord.”
Lucas sent his power raging through the big house. It spread outward like a massive concussion of air, rushing up the stairs, sending furniture crashing into walls, slamming open doors and breaking windows. Screams sounded from deep inside the structure, some of them muffled, as if in a vault or safe room. Lucas laughed out loud and turned to his lieutenant.
“The command is given,” he said and strode forward, his eyes flashing gold fire with the furnace of his power, his fangs in full view and gleaming. “Alfonso!” His voice boomed out like the wrath of God, or the wrath of a vampire lord, which was eminently worse. God was rumored to have a sense of mercy, whereas Lucas had none, especially not for traitors.
His vampires moved in from all sides, and the battle began, the air filled with the enraged roars of the combatants and the terrified screams of the dying. There were no humans in the house. Heintz had been that smart, at least.
Lucas passed several fights in progress, but he ignored everything in his search for Heintz. The coward was hiding. Lucas laughed gleefully and picked up his speed, racing through the house until he stood in front of a daytime sleeping vault. Heintz was behind that door, along with . . . Lucas tilted his head as his mind reached out . . . two other vampires. And they both belonged to Lucas. What an ass. These vaults had been designed to withstand human assault, not that of a powerful vampire. If the traitor was going to try to hide here, he should at least have been clever enough to hide behind someone Lucas couldn’t easily control.
Almost bored with the simplicity of it, Lucas sent his mind out and touched each of the two vampires cowering inside the vault with Heintz, ordering them to open the door and present themselves to their master. He could have ordered Heintz to deliver himself, too, but it was much more pleasurable to drink in the sweet taste of the bastard’s terror when he realized what was happening.
The heavy vault door swung open to reveal the two vampires already dropping back to their knees, heads bowed. Even Heintz had assumed the penitent posture. As if that would save any of them from their treachery.
Lucas entered the vault, moving with the preternatural speed of his vampire nature, and ripped the heads off the two vampires flanking Heintz. Blood sprayed from their severed arteries, coating Heintz in the thick red stuff. He swayed, moaning with fear, hands clasped in front of him as if in prayer.
Lucas regarded him dispassionately. “The sniper talked, Alfonso. He didn’t even bother to put up a fight. Saved himself the agony of torture. Unlike you, he was smart enough to see the writing on the wall.”
“Please, Master,” Heintz whispered. “I had no choice—”
“Silence, worm. You had a choice. You simply made the wrong one. Bad enough that you betrayed me—” Sudden rage rose hot and heavy in Lucas’s heart, nearly choking him with fury. He shoved his closed fist into Heintz’s open mouth, shattering his fangs as he rammed the fist down the vampire’s throat and used it as a lever to lift him into the air.
“You conspired with my enemy and hired a human to assassinate my Sire,” he snarled, and saw Heintz’s already terrified eyes fill with horror. Very few vampires still alive knew that Raphael was Lucas’s Sire. Both of them wanted it that way. It was a weapon they wielded in secret, and Lucas only voiced it now, because he wanted Heintz to understand the full magnitude of his sin before he died. Painfully.
The vampire was trying to shake his head, making guttural sounds deep in his throat, no doubt of denial. But it was far too late for that.
Lucas shook Heintz off his fist, dropping him to the floor.
“I beg you—” The worm began whining almost immediately, and Lucas flicked his fingers, silencing him.
He gazed down at the sniveling vampire dispassionately, then stepped back and started breaking bones, beginning with the little ones, fingers and toes, the delicate bones in the hand. Heintz groaned softly at first, but by the time Lucas had started on the big bones—the tibia and fibula in the calf, the thick femur in the thigh—the vampire was grunting like a rutting pig, the only sounds of pain he was able to make. Bloody tears streamed down his face as he groveled on the ground, unable to even wipe the snot from his chin.
Lucas worked systematically, splitting the skin open when he ran out of bones, slicing the abdomen and watching the vampire’s gray entrails spill onto the blood-slicked floor, making certain to keep the spinal cord intact and the heart beating. He wanted Heintz to feel every last ounce of pain before he died.
He was crouched over the bloody form of ruptured flesh and shattered bone when Nicholas found him. Heintz was whimpering weakly, his heart still beating, his vampire blood keeping him alive despite the destruction of every other major organ.