“Let’s not pretend, Enrique,” Vincent responded. “You’re no more surprised to see me here than I am to find you surrounded by your gaggle of worthless sycophants.”
The vampires in question shuffled in affront, but not one of them had the balls to challenge Vincent’s assessment. He dismissed them with a glance.
“I see you’ve acquired a gaggle of your own,” Enrique observed, then raised his voice. “Jerry, Salvio, oh, and especially you, darling Carolyn, on your knees,” he commanded, putting enough power into it that several of the vampires in the clique behind him dropped to the floor in submission.
But none of the three vampires Enrique had named moved a muscle.
Enrique’s face distorted with anger. “I am your master and your lord, and you will obey me,” he snarled.
Vincent again felt the power in Enrique’s command and drew on his own power to shield the vampires standing behind him.
“They are no longer yours, Enrique,” he called, diverting the vampire lord’s ire. “You never had their love, and you lost their loyalty the day you enslaved them to human masters.”
A mutter of shock ran through the room as this piece of history was absorbed.
“So you’ve made them your slaves instead,” Enrique said dismissively. “How is that any better than what I can offer?”
“Not slaves. They’ve given me their loyalty in return for my protection. That is the ages-old bargain between vampire and master, between a vampire lord and every vampire living in his territory. It is a responsibility, not a right.”
“Oh, listen to you,” Enrique scoffed. “Such lofty words from the bastard son of a whore.” He meant the barb as an insult, something to enrage Vincent into acting foolishly. But Vincent only shook his head, mocking the weakness of his opponent’s verbal volley.
“Your words mean nothing, Enrique. I know who I am, who my parents were.” He paused, seeing Xuan Ignacio enter the room to one side. “I also know who my brother was,” Vincent continued. “And I know how he died.”
Enrique saw Xuan, too, and his eyes went wide in surprise, an uncontrolled reaction that was there and gone so quickly that Vincent wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been looking for it. But it was the final confirmation he needed that Xuan had been telling him the truth. The same truth that Raphael had known would set Vincent on this path.
“I see you’ve met my old friend Xuan Ignacio,” Enrique said smoothly. “Has he been rewriting history again?”
“Don’t bother, Enrique,” Vincent said. “Blood speaks to blood.”
“Perhaps, but it changes nothing. You speak so eloquently of loyalty, what of yours to your rightful lord?”
“A vampire lord owns only what he can hold. It has always been thus.”
Enrique’s response was a smile so smug that it sent a chill worming into the tiniest and most distant of Vincent’s bones.
“I thought you might feel that way,” the vampire lord said and gestured at the small door behind his throne.
The door was pulled back, but Vincent didn’t need to look to know what he’d see. He’d scented her blood the moment the door cracked open. This was where Lana had gone, where she and her guard had disappeared to. She hadn’t gone into hiding, hadn’t run from him and everything he represented. Somehow, one of Enrique’s spies had succeeded in kidnapping her, sneaking her out of the building, despite all of Vincent’s security.
But the how of it could be dealt with later. The why of it was now and very clear. Enrique thought to bargain with Vincent, to exchange Lana’s safety for Vincent’s surrender.
It might have worked if Vincent hadn’t known Enrique as well as he did. But he did know him, knew the duplicity, the depravity the vampire lord was capable of. Even if Vincent fell on his knees in this moment and pledged eternal fealty to Enrique, the old lord would not let Lana live. He would slit her throat in front of Vincent and let her blood paint the floor simply to prove that he could, to punish Vincent for even thinking of defying him.
Enrique had thought to weaken Vincent by producing Lana like this, but he’d only hardened Vincent’s resolve instead.
Lana’s gaze found Vincent as she was dragged into the room. She was wearing nothing but a bathing suit and sweatpants, not even shoes, despite the chill in the room, and her hair was a tangled mess. Her arms were gripped to either side by vampires who each outweighed her by fifty pounds, as if she was such a threat that two of them were needed to contain her. Vincent wanted to smile at the stupidity of that, and to show Lana that there was nothing to worry about. But there was. As long as Enrique remained alive, she was in danger.
Enrique signaled when the vampires drew closer, and they released Lana with a shove that would have thrown her to the floor if Enrique hadn’t caught her first, wrapping a casual arm around her neck, his thin fingers caressing her throat.
“Your taste in women has improved, Vincent. This one had spirit . . . before I fucked it out of her.”
“He’s lying,” Lana rasped as loudly as she could with Enrique’s hand gripping her throat. “He tried, but he couldn’t get it up.”
Enrique snarled furiously, curled his free hand into a fist, and plowed it into her stomach. She dropped to the floor and curled over her knees, clutching her stomach and retching. Enrique reached down and casually twisted her long hair around his fist, yanking her head up so that Vincent could see the tears streaming down her face, the blood flecking her lips.
“Too much spirit is not attractive in a female,” Enrique said fastidiously.
Vincent ground his teeth against a rage so powerful that it felt like he had a wild animal trapped within his body, raking long claws over his ribs and against the walls of his chest, demanding to be released, howling for revenge against the monster who had dared to harm his woman. Vincent’s fists curled into claws in an unconscious mimicry of the creature as he stared at Lana, her face crumpled in pain, tears streaming from beneath lowered lids as she gasped for breath.