Watching her flee brought up memories of another time he’d spared a life. That mistake had resulted in the Gladwells becoming a lineage of hunters.
What would come of allowing this one to escape?
I hope I never know. Roger turned to step into the house.
Seamus stood in the open doorway. He was shorter than Roger by half a head, but his aura was colder than a gathering of a dozen vampires. His chin was covered in blood, and trails of it decorated his shirt. Grinning, he grabbed Roger’s shirt and tugged him closer. His voice was slick as a metal roof in rain as he asked, “Had your fill, darling?”
Darlingwas a tricky word in Seamus’s lexicon and almost as dangerous as his tone. He used both when he was well pleased, but also when he was about mete out a punishment. Had he seen the hunter leave? Was he tracking the sounds of the automobile hurtling across the road for safety?
The best course of action was to assume everything was fine. Roger had narrowly dodged more than a few punishments with the right word and a smile. He’d used the tactic relentlessly and had survived for two and a half centuries under Seamus’s rule while older sirelings met their end.
Roger leaned in and dropped his voice to a husky whisper. “Not yet, master.”
Then, he kissed Seamus, first plunging his tongue deep into his sire’s mouth and then opening for Seamus when he pushed back. Kisses were a tug of dominance that Roger always let Seamus win. They were inconsistent lovers, but he remembered every trick.
Eventually, Seamus relaxed his hold on Roger and gently pushed him away. He groaned with a note of satisfaction. “You have a dazzling tongue.”
Slyly, Roger smiled at him.
With the speed of a vampire master more than a millennium old, Seamus backhanded Roger. The blow came at a speed that Roger barely saw, but he didn’t move out of the way. That would have only angered Seamus more.
The strike broke Roger’s jaw. The blood he’d drunk had infused him with vampiric magic, so his jaw instantly began to heal. He kept his head turned and braced for Seamus’s next slap.
But Seamus walked away from him. He stood in the middle of the living room and assessed the bodies on the floor. “Whenever I think you finally understand your responsibilities as one of my captains, you disappoint me. These hunters flourished in our territory for years, and you knewnothingabout their activities.”
Seamus hadn’t known about them either. A shifter looking for his mate had brought evidence of the hunters’ existence to Seamus, and hunting them down had become Roger, Dmitri, and Candide’s task. Anton, Seamus’s eldest sireling and a warlock, hadn’t lifted a finger. And Seamus knew that hunters in their territory were nothing new. Hunters tended to be humans, and they lived their human lives until they struck. They were never bold enough to strike at the heart of Seamus’s empire in Chicago, but they continued living in the territory. Though this twig of the Wright family tree was clipped, there were dozens more branches. It was likely another branch lived in the Great Lakes Coven’s domain.
But demonstrating logic would only incur more wrath. Roger held his jaw, feeling it knit together. The pain was lessening. He’d endured far, far worse than a slap and a scolding.
Seamus glared at him. Disgust twisted his features, and frost began to congeal the blood on the floor. “And you let one of them go.”
“She surprised me.”
“I saw you back away from her,” Seamus replied.
Pointing out that if Seamus had seen that, then he could have acted and stopped her was futile. Whatever Seamus’s reason for letting the hunter go, the fault of the action would still rest on Roger. Arguing anything would only incense him further.
“She had a cross,” Roger lied. A believer with faith strong enough to repel a vampire with a holy symbol was rare, but they did happen. He shrugged. “I didn’t feel like burning myself to get to her.”
Seamus smacked him. “You released her when you realized she was pregnant. This world doesn’t need another generation ofvermin. You have lived hundreds of years, and you still fail to learn the basic lessons. This weakness of yours to let prey slip between your fingers will be the death of you one day.”
Compassion is not weakness. Roger held his tongue and buried that truth deep in his soul. Another vampire, an older one, had refused to kill at all once he’d gained control over his feeding, and Seamus had eventually murdered him in a rage. And as horrible as the night was, he enjoyed his life as a vampire. Blood, power, money, sex—those were amazing reasons to keep living. He didn’t want to die.
His jaw was healing again, but he leaned in to playing up the injury and faked remorse for his action. “I’m sorry I’m such an idiot, master.”
“At least you’re smart enough to apologize,” Seamus grumbled. “Though it’s a good thing you’re gorgeous.”
Roger played with the gold ring on his left hand. It was a symbol of Seamus’s coven and cursed to remain on him until hewas strong enough to become his own master. “I do live to serve, master.”
Seamus stepped forward, grabbed him by the jaw, and dug his fingers into the break. Pain flared, but at a level Roger sometimes enjoyed in the bedroom. He tried to pretend he liked it as Seamus said, “You’re far from off the hook. These hunters had to have financial support from someone wealthy and connected to keep them from our notice.”
“I may have the answer,” Dmitri said as he came down the stairs. His Russian accent was less notable around Seamus. With Russia and America on the brink of annihilating each other, Seamus had ordered Dmitri to lessen his natural speech. However, Dmitri only bothered when Seamus was in the room.
Dmitri had sharp cheekbones and short dark hair, and his sleek black clothing made him extra scrumptious. His expression was too serious, but he’d been like that even as a human. He’d been Roger’s lover. They’d risen from graves mere feet from each other, though Anton was his sire.
He had a pile of papers and what looked like a leatherbound journal in his hands. In his typical cold fashion, he handed the lot of it to Seamus. “From what I’ve found so far, the Fey Weather Court and the Enduring Circle of Chicago were supporting these monsters.”
“Damned Seelie and mages,” Seamus complained as he took the papers. He rifled through them. “Every time I think we’ve made peace with the bastards, they do something like this. I will burn them out of our city.”
