Dark Seduction (Vampire Royals of New York #2) - Sarah Piper Page 0,3

imagine it’s easy though, all your brothers being back.” Cole dug through the junk on the table for a lighter, then plucked the half-spent joint from the ashtray, sparking it up and taking a deep drag. “How you holdin’ up?”

Dorian laughed. “I see your self-imposed isolation hasn’t prevented you from keeping up on the latest vampire gossip.”

“Matter of survival. Gotta know who the players are.” He offered the joint, but Dorian declined, and Cole took another hit, the pungent smoke quickly overtaking the tiny kitchen. “Besides, if this bullshit with the rogues proves anything? Ain’t no place secluded enough to outrun fate. Not for us.”

“You think being stalked by grays is our fate?”

“I’m just sayin’… The human world? That’s exactly what it is. The human world. We can play in their sandbox, Red, but it won’t ever be ours. Our world is…” He shook his head and scooped up the teeth, fisting them tight. “Blood and death, brother. Blood and death.”

Cole had always been prone to philosophical tangents when he smoked, but tonight’s declaration felt particularly ominous.

Blood and death, brother. Blood and death.

He was right. That was their world. And Dorian, in the blind, selfish pursuit of his own desires, had dragged an innocent woman right into the thick of it, putting her directly in the path of Renault Duchanes and his demon mercenaries…

She’s not bloody innocent, you knob.

“Anyway,” Cole said, “I figure something must’ve changed up north, right? Something messed with their home environment. Either that, or someone led them here on purpose. But who the fuck would do that?”

“Renault Duchanes.” The name was out of Dorian’s mouth before he could even think it through, but the moment he said it out loud, he knew it was true. “House Duchanes is plotting against the crown. I turned down their alliance after my father’s death, and after that, everything just… fell apart.”

Dorian told him the story—the spurned offers for the Duchanes witch and the blood donors, the attacks on Charlotte, the string of threats in Dorian’s penthouse. So much had happened, it was hard to believe it’d only been a few hours since he’d left Charlotte’s bedside.

Since he’d nearly drained her dry.

Since she’d nearly died in his arms.

Since he’d discovered her betrayal.

“I heard some of the vamps got pretty riled up after your old man died,” Cole said, “but I had no idea shit hit the fan so hard. So Duchanes has demons in his back pocket, and now you’re saying the grays are his too?”

“Duchanes is desperate for power, Cole. I put nothing past him, no matter how dangerous or despicable.”

“That’s what worries me.” Cole stamped out the last of his joint and refilled their mason jars. “We don’t even know how many we’re dealing with here, Red. If these fuckers get out of the woods, they’ll—”

Dorian held up a hand to silence him. That was one picture Cole didn’t have to paint—it shone in vivid, technicolor detail in Dorian’s mind.

It was hard enough for so-called “civilized” vampires to control their urges. The grays had zero control—they operated purely on instinct, and that instinct pushed them to consume. It was just as he’d told Charlotte: they could hunt, they could fuck, and they could feed, and that’s exactly what they did, until they burned up in the sunlight or rotted from starvation.

If they escaped the woods and reached a populated area, no one would be safe. The creatures would destroy everyone in their path, leaving no witnesses alive. And if by chance a single human escaped to tell the tale, no one would believe him anyway—it was too outlandish, even for the most open-minded among them.

By the time humans realized what they were dealing with, scores of innocents would be dead.

It was a terrible, brutal bit of chaos—and the perfect way to slaughter humans without getting one’s hands dirty.

Duchanes’ name was written all over it in blazing neon signs. For all Dorian knew, the pathetic vampire had a safe house nearby and was presently holed up inside with whatever sycophants he’d gathered, licking his wounds from the earlier confrontation and plotting his next attack.

“So tell me about the woman,” Cole said. “I assume she’s the reason the boys found you vampin’ out in my woods tonight.”

Dorian’s silence confirmed it.

“Do I need to stage an intervention?” Cole asked. “Thought you were done with that psycho vampire shit.”

“I was. I am.” Dorian swirled the moonshine in his glass, his chest burning with a mix of leftover rage at Charlotte, the shame