Prince of Power (22 page)

Tyra's leg bounced impatiently on her sofa while she waited for the doctor to declare her healthy enough to leave the estate. A commotion outside the door drew her attention.

“I want Miss Tyra.” The front door opened and Selena entered first, leading Thad who looked more dour-faced than she'd ever seen him. It had certainly been a long time since Thad had allowed anyone to drag him anywhere like that. Probably not even Isabel. It was almost enough to make her smile.

Almost.

“I'm over here, sweetie.” She patted the tan microsuede and motioned Selena over. “Why don't you sit next to me while the doctor finishes checking me out?”

Thad gave Tyra a surprisingly apologetic look. “She woke up and she wanted you.”

“It's fine.” She looked at Selena and managed a smile.

She swept aside the girl's hair and glanced down at the strawberry birthmark. She tucked the girl against her side even as she narrowed her eyes at Thad. She tried to keep her voice neutral when she asked, “Where's Anton?”

Thad leaned against the wall. “He wanted to check into some things that Lex found on a thumb drive. I don't know exactly.”

“Did he say when he'd be back?” She probably knew the answer to this one already, but it would be nice to get a definite response.

Thad licked his lips and stared at her for a moment. “I'm not sure.”

She sighed and closed her eyes. “You're not sure when, or you're not sure if?”

“If.”

Tyra opened and closed a fist. Not so much out of anger, but because even though she'd anticipated the news, her heart had taken a pause from pumping the blood around her body and now her hands were a little numb.

“Ty, you know it's for the best.”

She scowled at Thad, past the penlight that Brayden was waving in her eyes. “Do I? You know, I'm getting a little tired of everyone else trying to decide what's best for me.” The realization that she'd been the last to get the memo about her wizard heritage was still not only infuriating but embarrassing.

Thad looked pointedly from Tyra to the girl nestled quietly by her side and then back again. “You've always had a rebellious streak, Ty, but you've always had the greater good in mind. So think about that.”

She flopped back on the sofa. What had she been hoping for? They wouldn't be able to live here, not without constant problems. And she did want to stay with her kind.

Besides, could she ever really have a guarantee that he wouldn't turn on her or something? Having him living in their midst… perhaps even
she
wouldn't be comfortable with that. And if she couldn't trust him with her own kind, then they definitely had nothing.

Because she had arrived at a decision. She was vampire. No half anything. Being part human she could live with, but being part wizard? She would not acknowledge that. Sure as hell she would not bow down to it.

Selena looked up right then. “Was Anton the man who rescued us from that place?”

Tyra brushed some stray hairs from the girl's face. “Yeah, sweetie.”

“I liked him.”

A tiny, invisible hammer tapped Tyra's heart and made it crack wide open. “I liked him too.” She closed her eyes and let that truth resonate through her body.

She did. She liked him. Loved him. Honestly, she wasn't sure who she'd been trying to convince with all that other bullshit.

***

On the surface, Ash Falls had all the trappings of a pretty, safe, sleepy little area. But Anton knew, because he'd grown up knowing, that a hell of a lot of dark and ugly lurked in the nooks and crannies. When he and Petros had been boys, they'd learned the small out-of-the-way places to go where they could stay off their father's radar screen.

The Ash Falls Old Towne Hall sat on the edge of the historic district. The place must have once doubled as a church, based on the cemetery next door. It had one of those stamped metal signs next to it, but Anton had never stopped to read it. He didn't now on his way in. The lock was already busted, and he squinted at the creak of the door as it eased open. White paint chips flaked and fell at his feet. “Place needs some serious TLC,” he whispered to nobody at all. This had been their favorite place to come as boys.

They'd had an older brother who'd been mysteriously killed when Anton was around the age of twelve. Petros had been older… eighteen? That had been the defining fork in the road for the two brothers. They'd never talked about it, but there was little question their father had been to blame. What had solidified Anton's resolve to someday break free had turned Petros hard and cold.

It was dark, but Anton could see clearly. How long would the effect of Tyra's blood last in his body? The main level was mostly empty, except for some stacked folding chairs covered in a layer of dust. He kept his ears open as he crept carefully to the set of steps at the back of the room.

He heard the whispers when he reached the doorway to the basement. Only a few men occupied the room. Five, not including Petros, who stood over the one seated in a chair chanting like he was in a trance.

“…open… gateway… power…”

What was he doing? Anton couldn't hear much at all. The double doors that led into the basement had long since fallen off their hinges, but there was a noisy furnace in the room, and inexplicably it still ran. Petros's doing, perhaps. The man in the chair stood and circled around close to the doorway where Anton was spying as another took his place in the seat. Anton shivered as the man passed. He was clearly a wizard; the evil of his aura was tenuous, but it was there.

Petros's hands moved around the next man. Anton inched closer to the edge of the doorway. More chanting. It was a ceremony of some sort; that much was clear, but it was unlike anything Anton had ever seen the Master do. This was… holy shit. A bright ring of light formed around the man in the seat, suddenly turning fiery red and absorbing into the man's aura. This was some sort of magic transfer. Anton didn't know quite what Petros was doing or how, but that much of it was clear.

Damned if Petros hadn't found a way to transfer wizard magic. The fangs, and now this. All part of his brother's plans to ramp up the wizard establishment. Fuck, the possibilities were endless and horrifying. How much faster would he be able to create wizards if he didn't have to physically breed them first? “Jesus, just open up a prison and you've got a fresh supply of minions.”

For all he knew, Petros had already thought of that.

Whatever this was, Anton had to put a stop to it. He felt for the gun at his back. When he'd left, Thad's guard had given it to him, along with a cell phone. Perhaps it had been clear that he wasn't simply planning to look for an old address on a computer file.

He'd taken aim when his brother's raised voice came through the doorway, clearly this time: “That would be unwise, Brother.”

Anton froze. The gun stayed trained on his brother, aimed at the widest part of his torso. Anton had a clear shot now that Petros had stepped back from the man in the chair. The newbie wizards, or whatever they were, stood up, wary, and ready to fight, but Petros held up his hand to stay them. Clearly, he already commanded better allegiance than their father had. Not surprising.

“You can't have thought I was going to just let this go, Petros.”

Petros grinned. “I suppose not. It would be nice to call a truce the way we could have when we were boys. I agree not to come after your precious Tyra anymore, and you agree to leave me alone. You ride off into the sunset—or the moonlight, I suppose—and we leave each other to our lives.”

Anton pulled the hammer down.

“No? Well, I should warn you that I did see the chance that this sort of thing might happen. How about this? There's a protective barrier about the perimeter of this room. You fire that weapon, and it's going to hurt you more than it hurts me.”

Cold air stung Anton's nostrils, and his teeth bit into his lips hard enough that he tasted blood. Of course, Petros had planned for this. The question of what exactly would happen was the thing to figure out.

Then he absorbed a vital piece of information. A closer look at the doorway revealed a gentle, reddish glow. He'd seen this before. At Petros's first kill, he'd been so proud of the power he'd gained that he'd shown off to Anton what he could do. There was a chance here that Anton could use that knowledge to his advantage. He returned Petros's smile.

“Hard not to stick with what's tried and true, eh, Petros?”

The look on his brother's face was blank. He didn't remember, and that was fine. Anton fired twice. Fast as he could. Then he hit the deck. The barrier exploded.

He covered his face and prayed, as the flames washed over him, that maybe the second bullet had hit its mark. Then he focused on using his own power to heat his body. Instinct told him to fight fire with fire.

There was a clamor and a bang. Windows exploding. Chairs toppling. Wizards escaping the building. As soon as the fire stopped licking his back, Anton jumped up. He needed to get out. His brother and his buddies were gone, except for one poor bastard left behind who'd taken the bullets intended for Petros.
Fuck
.

“Sorry, man,” Anton muttered. It was tough to feel too bad for the dead newbie. Chances were good that he would have wound up slaying untold numbers of vampires, had he been given the opportunity.

The flames were already climbing the walls when Anton made it to fresh air. He braced his hands on his knees and sucked wind, groping in his fatigues for the cell phone Lee had given him. The vampires needed to know what Petros was up to. If nothing else, they needed to brace themselves. His thumb hovered, ready to call Tyra but afraid she might be too angry to listen.

Instead, Anton called the vampire he'd come to think of as an unlikely sort of friend. “Xander,” he said into the phone. “I've got some important information for you, buddy.”

Xander stood in Theresa's foyer. “You're really sure this is a good idea?”

She laid a hand on his shoulder, smoothing it over the front of his jacket. Tam used to do the same thing before he went out for the night. Maybe it was something mates just did. Xander couldn't be sure. Not that he was going out to fight exactly, although that remained to be seen. And not that Theresa was his mate. This whole thing was confusing.

“You're doing the right thing,” she said.

“Hope so.”

They all but tripped over each other in their good-byes. She walked him out to the front stoop where they both stood and stared for a while, not sure what to say to each other. And Xander, for his part, couldn't put his finger on why. And then the baby cried from the bassinet in the living room, and he could admit, if only to himself, that he was relieved he didn't have to figure it out.

It was a speedy trek across the estate grounds to borrow one of the community vehicles. He'd never asked Theresa's age, but it was clear that she was from an old bloodline as much from the strength of her blood as from her bearing and her style.

Tam had been modern. Independent. Which he'd loved and respected, until the night that going out alone had gotten her killed.

All the air left his lungs as he slid behind the wheel of one of the estate's Land Rovers and programmed in the address Xander had given him. And now, God only knew why, he was going to retrieve the enemy and bring him home, in a manner of speaking.

“Stupid doing-the-right-thing bullshit,” he muttered to himself. The hills and valleys of Ash Falls were soon behind him, and the glittery lights of Washington, DC, lay ahead. At this time of night, he wondered if he would find anything at all.

Xander double-parked illegally outside a row of townhouses. A parking ticket was the least of his issues. Thank the moon and stars, Anton was seated on a bench swing on the porch of one of the townhouses, staring at… well, not much of anything as far as Xander could tell.

“They're going to be selling this place soon,” Anton said.

Talk about your non sequiturs. The comment was the only indication that Anton knew Xander was there. “So, find anything interesting?”

“It's under foreclosure now. Someone who was maybe my biological mother used to live here,” Anton murmured. The man ran a hand over his head and face. “She died last year.”

Shit. Talk about too little, too late. “I'm sorry to hear that.”

Anton shook his head. “It was stupid. I'm not sure what I thought I might find here. Should have known Petros wouldn't really give me anything useful. It was a head fuck like everything else. Like father, like son.”

Xander shrugged. “Sometimes it's hard to be at peace until you have all the history. You had to try. Sorry it didn't work out.”

Anton faced Xander for the first time since he'd settled on the bench. How had he, of all vampires, been tapped to be this guy's new friend? Sure as hell, this whole thing had the tight, itchy sensation that it was heading that way, and Xander wasn't so sure he liked it.

Wasn't sure he hated it, either.

“Thanks.”

Xander had to laugh at that. “Yeah, I can't take credit. Theresa, my… uh, the female I've been helping to take care of. She said it to me earlier. Made sense.” He gave Anton a fake punch in the arm. “But you know you got stuck with the genetic short straw, and you're gonna have to play the hand you were dealt with whatever information you do or don't have about your past. I don't think that means you have to disappear into the night like some sort of Old West gunslinger.”

Anton quirked an eyebrow at him, and Xander shrugged. “What? I like those human Old West movies. That and anything with Gene Hackman in it. Anyway…” He punched Anton a little harder this time.

“Ow.”

“Pansy. Anyway, you haven't had the pleasure of meeting Agnessa, have you?” Anton's blank stare said it all. You sure as hell
knew
when you met Agnessa. So Xander continued. “Back in the day, she and Lee, Thad's second in command, were a couple. Thing is, Agnessa is part vampire, part succubus. More the latter, from what anyone can tell. The last in existence as far as anyone knows. Know much about those?”

Anton blinked.

“Didn't figure. Well, the short version is that they need sex to survive more than they need blood, if you get my drift. So Agnessa had a little problem staying faithful. And everyone knows. Everyone.” He leaned in to Anton like they were whispering in a movie theater. “Rumor is that Lee put up with it for a long time, until a couple of decades ago when he caught Nessa in bed with Thad.”

Anton jerked. “Thad, as in the king.”

“A long time ago, when it was still his father's rule.”

Anton shook his head. “That's… why are you telling me this?”

Xander chuckled. “Thing about Nessa is that I don't think she can even really live anywhere except the estate. She wouldn't blend in with the humans. When you meet her, you'll understand. And there aren't any more of her mother's kind around.”

He noted a slight nod of interest from Anton. Whether the dude knew it or not, Xander had him on the hook. Powers of persuasion, he had 'em.

“Anyway nobody likes her because everyone knows how she broke Lee's heart and how she did it by shagging the prince. But she still lives at the estate and manages to hold her head up proudly, even though folks scatter like startled cockroaches when she walks into a room. Sure, not many of the residents like her or trust her, but we all manage to coexist peacefully enough.”

“I'm betting she was never responsible for anyone's mate getting killed.”

Xander pressed his lips together. “I believe you when you say that you weren't directly involved unless you were forced. If I can buy it, others will come to believe that as well. And Nessa ended relationships. Not by way of death, but she ended them. In a way you two have something in common. She can't help her genetics any more than you can.”

Anton leaned forward. The porch swing creaked in protest. They'd be lucky if the thing didn't collapse under both of them. “What about Tyra?”

Xander stood. “I hear Tyra's pretty pissed at you for taking off, buddy.”

Anton didn't move. “Maybe she's too pissed.”

Xander held out a hand. “Come on, that's bullshit. With females, anger's never really about anger. Now look, I'm sticking my neck out here. Don't make me sorry. Come back and help us use that insider knowledge of yours to kick more wizard ass, huh?”

Anton's feet shuffled on the slate tiles of the porch. His face twisted up like he'd bitten into something sour. “I'm not so sure that I can do it, Xander. Even knowing they're evil, even knowing it's the right thing to do. I want to help you guys fight but I really do hate to kill. I don't think I could do it night after night like you do.”

“Huh.” Xander planted his boots and pushed back on the swing a little. “I have to admit I hadn't thought about that.” A frigid blast of wind prompted him to pull his zipper up farther, and he remembered the warmth of Theresa's bed. “It's kill or be killed. You know that as well as I do. It also gets easier. Know what, though? I remember being told you helped heal me out in the woods when that wizard blast hit me.”

Anton's toe scuffed at a spot on the porch. “I can heal, sure. So what? You think anyone's gonna want to be reminded of how I got that power?”

“So maybe there are other options for helping with the fight. You can help us with your knowledge. Maybe over time you'll think of little things that aren't coming to you now. And maybe instead of going out to fight, you can help us by healing the guys who come in wounded. Some nights the docs are spread awfully thin. Might be a way to spread goodwill by using the powers you've claimed for something positive.”

“Maybe.”

“Won't know unless we try, man.”

Cold air gripped Xander's fingers. He waited for what seemed like an endless number of minutes while the gears whirred almost visibly in Anton's head. He was about to give up and back away when one gloved palm landed in his.

***

Anton had barely put his foot on the bottom step of the mansion's brightly lit front entrance when the blood in his veins surged hot and livid. He knew as certainly as he knew his own name that he would look up in a few seconds to see Tyra standing in the open doorway.

He wasn't disappointed.

Wow. He knew she'd be angry, but this fury speeding through his system was beyond comprehension.

Somehow, as if even if the weather was angry on her behalf, the wind picked up and her dark brown curls danced around her face. She was framed so beautifully by the long, white columns on the mansion's long front porch that he was tempted to run up the long set of stone stairs and pull her into his arms, even though she was mad at him.

A smattering of snow had started to fall, and it hovered and worshipped nearby. None of it was brave enough to come in for a landing. Her skin probably had a surface temperature of more than a hundred degrees right now.

Elegant, brass-handled double doors opened, and Siddoh and Alexia passed by on their way somewhere. A gruffly muttered warning from Siddoh to “stand clear” made a smattering of onlookers vanish from the porch as if the vampire had waved his own magic wand.

All the while Tyra stared at Anton, hair swirling and eyes flashing. Waiting. Anton could see the momentum gathering around her almost like a visible force. Any second now the yelling was going start, and damned if he knew what to say. He'd mulled it over the entire trip back from DC. Not that he'd had much time to think, the way that crazy fucker Xander drove.

Another surge in Anton's blood and Tyra stormed down the stairs. She stood toe to toe with him, staring at him with dark, bottomless, terrifying eyes for an endless stretch of moments. And then she smacked him on the arm. Hard.

“Ow.” He rubbed the sore spot. “Okay, fine, I deserved that. I really think, though, that we should go inside and talk—Sonofa—”

She'd taken a few steps back. He'd assumed erroneously that was so she could follow his suggestion to head inside where they could talk things out like something resembling normal adults. No, she'd backed up so she could plant her feet for a good roundhouse kick to his head. He narrowly dodged, but the cold ground was slippery with the dusting of newly fallen snow, and he landed on his ass. How could he have forgotten how long those legs of hers were?

And was he weird for thinking it was kind of hot that his woman was trying to beat the shit out of him?

His
woman? His… for now he'd stick with “woman.”

Something about the way she was advancing on him with her squared shoulders and her fists of fury told Anton that she wouldn't exactly embrace the title of “his” openly. Wow, he'd screwed the pooch big time on that one, hadn't he?

“Tyra. Shit.” He rolled backward just as a boot-covered foot lashed out with his testicles' names written all over it.

She slipped but didn't fall. “Why the hell did you even bother coming back here, Anton? I was getting used to the idea of you being gone.”

He staggered to his feet and she stormed forward. Her hands were open now, and for the first time he noticed her fingernails. Well-manicured and trimmed, but long enough to do damage the way she had them extended like they were claws. “I was only gone for a few hours.”

“But you weren't going to come back, were you?” He grabbed her wrists to stop her from coming forward, which only encouraged her to get her knee working on engaging his balls again.
Brilliant, Anton
. “Were you?”

He sighed. “Tyra, can't we go inside and discuss—”

“No.” Her staccato shout was loud enough that Anton was surprised it didn't draw the crowd back outside. But there was no time to consider that because along with the shout came a hard shove, and somehow he lost his footing or something. It was enough for her to gain a moment of advantage, and true to her nature, she took her opening.

“Shit, Tyra.” A fireball landed near enough to singe his bootlaces, and Anton took the very manly action of running away as fast as he could manage. Not that he could outrun her. He was faster than a garden-variety human, but vampires were faster still.

They were too close to the main house, though, and to cars and other residences. If she was going to start hurling projectiles, he wanted her to do it someplace safe. So he headed for the nearest tree line with dirt peppering his ankles as fireballs chased his retreat. Dammit, had she gone over the edge straight to plain old crazy?

Anton ducked behind a tree when he hit the woods and waited until he had the benefit of dry leaves and snapping branches to gauge her approach. “What the hell are you doing, Tyra, trying to blow up your brother's property?”

When the flaming orbs seemed to have taken a pause, he stepped from behind the tree to face her. Sweat from the fight and from the exertion of using her power caused her hair to cling to her face and her shirt to cling to her body.

“How could you just…
leave
, like that?”

“I was trying to do what was best for you.” He gestured at the property beyond them. “What was best for everyone here.”

She scoffed. “Well, that's excellent, Anton, and you've lived here for how long?”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

She stepped closer. One long finger jabbed hard at a sore spot on his left pectoral. Both of their bodies vibrated in sync, as much from the cold as from anger. “I mean, you don't get to be the one to make decisions about what is best for me and my kind, Anton.” Her eyes flashed in the moonlight. “Is it the whole ‘live fast, leave a pretty corpse' thing you're really after? Seems to me you've been on one suicide mission after another. Maybe you're just gonna keep running into stupid situations until you crash and burn.”