Vincent turned left at the top of the stairs, seeming to know exactly where to find Poncio. A week ago, that would have surprised her, but she’d learned a lot about vampires in that time. He was probably following the sound of Poncio’s heartbeat, or something equally impossible.
They followed the hallway to a room at the far end, away from the kitchen and on the backside of the house where it would face the desert. Vincent gave her a questioning look, and she nodded to say she was ready. He opened the door without warning and stepped inside, standing in the open doorway a second longer than he had to. Lana knew he’d done it on purpose, making sure it was safe before exposing her to whatever waited inside.
When Vincent did move out of the way, however, she discovered that what waited inside was just an overweight, middle-aged man in his underwear who was currently snorting cocaine. He straightened, staring in shock as they entered the room, a porcelain snort straw in one hand, his nostrils still bearing the telltale trace of white powder.
Lana’s first thought was that Vincent was going to be disappointed, because if Poncio was flying high on coke, he might not be as susceptible to pain. But then it occurred to her that it might actually be worse for him. Not the pain, but the mind games that Vincent could use against him instead. And then she wondered what the hell had happened to her that she could even approach the subject as though it was nothing but a problem to solve.
“¿Y tú, quién chingados eres?” Poncio demanded, his eyes glazed and blinking stupidly. Who the fuck are you? Belatedly, he seemed to recognize his danger and made a grab for the 9mm Glock sitting on the bureau next to the mirror which still bore three neat lines of coke. But Vincent was there before Poncio came anywhere near the gun, fisting his hand in the man’s thick hair and bending him backward until he squealed in pain.
“My name is Vincent, and you have something that belongs to me.”
“SOY VICENTE, Y TU tienes algo que me pertenece,” Vincent growled, drawing in the scent of the human’s fear, more intoxicating than any drug the humans could conjure up.
“¿Qué?” Poncio asked. His voice was a plaintive whine, and Vincent marveled that such a weakling could gain so much power in the human world.
“Salvio,” Vincent replied to the man’s question, and then he grinned, letting his fangs emerge from his gums with a slow glide, watching the terror build in Poncio’s gaze. He tightened his grip on the man’s hair and dragged him to the huge bed. Poncio was whimpering all the way, pleading, explaining, insisting that Salvio had been a gift from el gran jefe, el gran vampiro. That if Vincent would only call Enrique, he would see . . .
His begging was cut off abruptly when Vincent lifted him by his hair and threw him onto the bed. Poncio screamed like a woman, and immediately tried to crawl away. Vincent stripped the covers away, grabbing the flat sheet—black satin, how original—and tearing it into four strips.
Poncio had shoved himself up against the headboard, trying to put distance between himself and Vincent, and was now scrambling for the far side, trying to escape. He was gibbering in fear and making very little sense. If he’d had a working cell left in his brain, he’d have skipped the flight to the headboard and simply rolled off the side in the first place and made a run for the door. He had a much better chance against Lana than he did Vincent, which was to say, no chance at all. Vincent was certain Lana could have stopped the terrified man’s escape, too. She was a bounty hunter; she had to know how to take a man down. If nothing else, she’d probably have shot him. She hadn’t said a word about Camarillo’s death, hadn’t blinked an eye when Vincent had made it clear that he had the same fate planned for Poncio. No, Lana wouldn’t have let him out the door.
But Poncio didn’t know that, which made him a fool for not taking the chance.
Not that it mattered. Vincent was on him before he’d managed to put both feet on the floor, grabbing his ankle and dragging him back across the bed, kicking and squealing. He managed to score a decent kick with his free foot as Vincent secured the other ankle to the bedpost, and Vincent cursed silently, more irritated than hurt. He was pissed enough about it, though, that he glanced up and drew on his power to deliver a directed blow that snapped the man’s tibia like a twig. The fucker wouldn’t be doing any more kicking. Poncio screamed, and Vincent smirked.
He snagged the broken leg mercilessly and tied it to the other bedpost, barely registering the man’s agonized shrieking. His only thought was that it was a good thing he had the sheet to use for bindings, because it was a big fucking bed and Poncio wasn’t that big of a guy. There was good distance between the bedposts and the man’s various limbs. Not that it would matter much longer.
“You want me to gag him with something?” Lana asked, and Vincent turned to her with a pleased grin. As a vampire, it was in his nature to be what humans would consider heartless, even cruel. He didn’t see it that way. He simply did what needed to be done without letting useless emotion clutter the situation. But few humans would view it the same way he did. It delighted him that Lana understood. It already made his dick hard just being around her, waking up next to her. Add this into the mix, and no more excuses. They were going to fuck . . . soon.
But first . . .
“Nah, let him scream,” Vincent said, turning back to his task. “There’s no one to hear it, and he won’t be screaming much longer. I don’t want to keep Jerry waiting.”
“I have money,” Poncio begged, using English now, barely intelligible through his sobs.
“What a coincidence,” Vincent said dryly. “So do I.”
“Please, what do you want from me?”
“Your pain, mostly, but you can answer a question for me first.”
“Si, si, anything,” he choked out.
“I know you’ve been using Salvio as an enforcer, so don’t deny it. I want to know who gave him to you.”
“Señor Enrique. Ask him. He’ll tell you it is okay what I do.”
“Oh, I’ll ask him. But it’s not okay. It was never okay.” And with that, Vincent jammed both fists into the man’s chest, one on each side, breaking several ribs and driving them into his lungs, shredding both organs, before stepping back and watching as Poncio struggled to breathe, to scream. The human’s eyes grew comically wide, his mouth gaping open like that of a fish, horror filling his gaze as he realized there was no air.
Lana came up next to Vincent, her hand moving to his lower back, warning him she was there. As if he wasn’t exquisitely aware of her presence, as if he hadn’t known the moment she’d started across the room toward him.
Her fingers clenched in Vincent’s shirt as Poncio fought for oxygen, his lips turning a blue that eventually spread to his entire face, a red-tinged blue that bordered on purple as he strained against the inevitable.
“How long will it take?” she asked softly, and Vincent knew she wasn’t as blasé as she liked to pretend.
“I can end it now,” he told her. “We should rejoin Jerry anyway.”
Lana didn’t say anything at first, and he figured she was torn between wanting it over with and not wanting to appear weak. But then she said, “We can’t waste too much time here. We still need to rendezvous with Michael and get to Carolyn.”