Bound by Night (The Moonbound Clan Vampires) (3 page)

“Dude, I don’t have enough fingers to count off all the ways.”

“Ass,” Riker muttered.

Myne regarded the glittering skyline in the distance, the streaking blurs from the headlights and
taillights on the freeway. “You’re stupid because you plan to do this on your own. I can’t believe Hunter went along with your crazy plan.” His mocha eyes shifted to Riker. “And how fucked-up is it that I actually agree with Hunter for once? We both think you’re being an idiot. You need to rethink this.”

“I’m not scrapping the mission. There’s less risk of the clan being discovered if we do it my way.”

If Riker acted alone, authorities would waste time scouring the city’s trashy underbelly for him among the many lone vampires who lived there like cockroaches. But the more clan members he enlisted, the greater the chance that said authorities would realize they had an organized group on their hands. And soon after, the forest, usually left alone by the government, would be crawling not just with the usual hunters but also with Vampire Strike Force personnel—specialized law-enforcement agents whose mission it was to kill or capture every nonenslaved vampire on the planet.

Once VAST entered the picture, it wouldn’t be long before someone from MoonBound was caught and tortured into revealing the clan’s location. Although the entrances were concealed by both physical camouflage and magic put in place by the clan’s mystic-keeper, Riker knew there was no such thing as completely secure. There was always a way to breach a wall, penetrate an enemy stronghold, and locate the hidden. Just one careless clue left behind by a clan member could lead VAST to the second-largest population of free vampires in the Pacific Northwest.

In the distance, a coyote yip-howled, and Myne listened, almost as if he understood the creature. He
probably did. Myne had grown up with his Nez Perce tribe until he was a teen, and after that, he’d lived with animals for longer than he’d lived with people.

“What happens if you fail?” he asked.

“Then the clan goes with Plan B. Hunter’s proposal.” Which involved far more people, coordination, and risk.

“Shiiit.” Myne kicked a stone off the ridge and watched it tumble down the rocky bank. “Let me help your sorry ass. With me, your insane scheme has a shot of success.”

Riker grinned. “I knew you couldn’t resist a challenge.”

“So you were counting on my offer to help?”

“Yup.”

“You could have just, you know, asked.”

“Asked?” Riker snorted. “And turn in my male card?”

Riker ignored Myne’s string of curses as he made his way down the embankment, moving toward the mansion he’d been staking out for the last week. Myne followed, his footsteps as light as a cat’s despite his massive size. At six-foot-five and a born vampire, Myne was one of the tallest males in the clan, save Hunter. Not that Riker was short, but Myne seemed to enjoy flaunting his extra three inches and twenty pounds.

Riker would just smile and claim extra brains and an extra three inches on another part of his anatomy.

“So what’s my job?” Myne dropped his hand to the dagger at his hip and skimmed his thumb along the hilt. “It better involve fighting.”

“It does.”

“And feeding?”

“If you want.” Riker crouched behind a fir tree to avoid the sweep of a security spotlight sitting atop the mansion’s north wall.

“And fucking?”

Riker shot Myne an
are you kidding me?
look over his shoulder. “Even if there was time for that, I didn’t think you were into humans.”

“I’ll dive into any lake in a drought, man.”

Myne was full of shit. He might be stuck in a perpetual sex drought, but Riker knew damned well the guy went for vampires. He’d gotten his fill of human sex a long time ago, and Riker only knew that because the guy had gotten so shitfaced once that his tongue had loosened. The next morning, Myne had been practically suicidal—and homicidal—over what he’d revealed, and Riker had probably saved both of their lives by lying to him, telling him that whatever Myne imagined he’d said had been all in his drunken head.

Thank God.
Riker wasn’t sure who would win in a contest of hand-to-hand, but he knew who’d win a fang free-for-all.

Myne’s titanium chompers could rip limbs from bodies and heads from necks with the messy ease of a chain saw.

“So.” Myne’s fingers caressed the dagger hilt like a lover. The guy had carved it himself from the thigh bone of a poacher decades ago. The thing was so smooth from his touch that it practically shone in the moonlight. “What do we do first?”

Riker effortlessly leaped to the top of the twelve-foot stone fence that circled the mansion and
surrounding grounds. “See the northwest fence corner? Where the stone is built up into the tree?” Riker peered into the branches. “That’s a sniper station. Built after my mate died. We need to take the sniper out, or he’ll smoke-check us before we get halfway across the lawn.”

“Cool.” Myne had always preferred a stealthy stalk-and-kill over a full-blown battle. Said it was a measure of skill and patience and a more honorable way to hunt an enemy. Riker figured dead was dead, but whatever. “You really think this Charles guy is just going to hand over a captive vampire because we tell him to?”

“Charles? No. That’s why we’re not bothering with that asshole.” He scanned the property, taking one last inventory of the cameras, the dogs, and the security detail, all of which he’d been familiar with for two decades. “I’m after much more . . . sensitive . . . prey.”

Myne landed in a crouch beside him, whisper-soft. “Who?”

Ahead, through one of the mansion’s giant windows, a figure moved. A ginger-haired female. Tall. Curvy.

Enemy.

“Dr. Nicole Martin.”

Riker felt Myne’s eyes boring into him. “She’s alive?”

“Apparently.” A shiver of hatred slithered up Riker’s spine. Until last week, when he’d seen a newspaper article glorifying the return of the Martin heir, he’d believed only one member of the godforsaken immediate
family, Charles, was alive. “After the rest of the Martins were slaughtered in the rebellion, she was sent to Paris to live with her mother’s relatives until she was old enough to work in Daedalus’s French division as a vampire physiologist.”

The mere mention of the infamous Seattle Slave Rebellion made Myne’s voice degenerate into gravel. “And she’s here now?”

Riker nodded at the female in the window. “Right there and all grown up. And if you’re done jacking off your dagger, we’ll go have a chat with her.”

“You think she’ll cooperate?”

Hell no.
She was a Martin, after all, current CEO of the company that had revolutionized vampire slavery and used vampires like lab rodents to advance human medicine. Daedalus went through vampires like a slaughterhouse went through cattle, and Riker doubted the company held to any kind of “humane” standards.

“For her sake,” Riker said slowly, “I hope so.”

N
ICOLE MARTIN SHOULD
never have left Paris. She hated the Seattle weather. Hated the family mansion.

Hated the vampires.

She would never have believed that the vampire situation could be so different here.

She tossed a Chinese-food container into the trash bin hard enough to send bits of rice flying and turned to the tele-screen on the obnoxiously decadent black-and-gold granite kitchen counter. Her towheaded half brother, Charles, stared at her from his desk at Daedalus Corporation’s headquarters.

“You okay?” He gestured in the direction of her garbage can. “You subjected that poor takeout to some serious abuse.”

“No, I’m not okay. I miss Paris.” There. She’d said it. Pretending to be happy about returning to her childhood home was officially a big lie. “I miss my research lab. I miss my friends.”

Sure, most of her friends had been of the casual kind, Europe’s wealthy and powerful who only wanted
what she—and Daedalus—could do for them, but she’d genuinely liked some of her colleagues. Plus, surrounding herself with people at all times kept her busy and kept the memories of her childhood at bay.

“You’ll make new friends,” Chuck assured her.

“Really?” She snorted. “I think it’s more likely that after tomorrow, I’m going to be a pariah no one is going to want to look at, let alone invite to cocktail parties.”

“Don’t worry about the meeting.” Like Nicole, he’d inherited his green eyes from their father, and they softened as he met her gaze. “The partners will get to the truth about what happened at the Minot facility.”

A sting in her bottom lip was a sharp reminder that she was biting it. Bad habit, and one she’d been trying to break for years.
A lady doesn’t fidget
, her mom used to say. Later, in private, Nicole’s nanny Terese would tell her that Nicole was a child, and children could fidget all they wanted. The secret, she’d said, was to fidget productively.

Nicole reached past her medication bottles for the dwindling stack of paper on the counter, one of many she kept around the house.

“They don’t want to get to the truth, Chuck. They want a scapegoat.” She folded one corner of a sheet of paper and smoothed a crease into it. “Three dozen vampires from the Minot lab are dead. Ultimately, I’m responsible for everything my company does, and I’m going to get shipped off to Siberia for this.”

If she was
lucky
, she’d get sent to the Siberia office. The other alternative, criminal prosecution, was also a
possibility, thanks to groups like the Vampire Humane Society and Humans for the Advancement of Vampiric Entities, which had, in the last five years, forged huge inroads regarding the ethical treatment and disposal of domestic vampires.

“Don’t think like that. You have a defense worked out.” Chuck scribbled something on the notepad in front of him. “When you present your evidence, the board will have to give you the benefit of the doubt.”

Uh-huh. Sure.
The board had been looking for a way to get her out of the company for years. Her mother and father had been the brawn and brains behind the business they’d built from the ground up, but Nicole had merely inherited her position.

Even Chuck, whose illegitimacy hadn’t allowed him a guaranteed place in their father’s empire, had worked his way from the mailroom to chairman and then, finally, seven years ago, to CEO. The position had been temporary until Nicole was ready to take over, but she’d been happy to let him run the company, so he’d remained, and she’d settled into medical research.

Until two months ago, when she’d turned twenty-eight and legal clauses from her parents’ wills and trusts kicked in, requiring her to rule the kingdom or lose everything. She hadn’t wanted to drag her parents’ names through the mud, so she hadn’t fought the clauses and reluctantly moved back to Seattle to take over.

Understandably, there were now a lot of envious, bitter people sitting on the board of directors. At least Chuck had understood, and he’d returned to his prior chairman position with grace.

Nicole made a quick series of folds in the sheet of
paper, and the shape of a bird began to take form. “I should have asked for more help when I took over as CEO. Daedalus is too big, and my suggestions to sell off everything but the medical and scientific divisions haven’t exactly been popular.”

Chuck gave her a
no shit
look. “That’s because you’re asking that we keep the least profitable branches of the company and get rid of what our father founded the company on.” His leather chair creaked as he shifted. “Acquiring, training, and selling vampire servants are the cornerstone of Daedalus. We make billions from supplying the public with vampires and all the accessories that go with them.”

It took effort to not roll her eyes. “Oh, please. We make nearly as much from our scientific breakthroughs. Or haven’t you noticed that people will practically sell their souls to stay young another fifty years or to heal from serious injuries faster or to be cured of cancer? We need to focus more fully on medical advancements. Let someone else handle the tasks that don’t reflect positively on us.”

“Like?”

“Like draining recently deceased humans to package and distribute their blood to vampire supply shops. Like conditioning and processing newly captured vampires before they’re sent to a training facility.” Nicole might hate vampires, but neutering, defanging, and torturing them until they broke didn’t sit well with her.

“Look, Nicole,” Chuck said, with a deep, long-suffering sigh. “I understand why you want to concentrate company efforts on the research side. I know how hard it is for you to live with your medical condition.”

She ground her teeth at his bullshit soothing tone. Her ideas for the company were
not
about her medical issues. Her ideas were about helping people while getting away from the vampire trade. “But?”

Chuck braced his forearms on the desk and leaned closer to the screen, his expression a mask of concern. “But some Daedalus staff members think that’s why you ordered the deaths of those vampires. To sabotage the company.”

“What?” Her jaw dropped. “Are you kidding me?”

“Come on, sis. Like it’s so ludicrous? You hate vampires.”