Cain's Identity (Scanguards Vampires Book 9) (3 page)

The bodyguard with the shoulder-length dark hair was built like a tank. Technically Amaury wasn’t a bodyguard anymore; he was a director of Scanguards but, despite his rank in the company, Amaury loved getting his hands dirty.

With a motion of his head, Amaury walked into the alley next to the building. Cain followed without a word, then stopped a few feet from where Amaury stood in front of a dumpster.

“What the fuck’s wrong with you?” Amaury asked without a greeting.

Cain pulled his shoulders back and broadened his stance instinctively. He was ready for this fight. “I don’t like your tone.”

“Guess we’ve got that in common. ’Cause I don’t like yours, either.” Amaury glared at him. “What happened to you? When we took you on, I thought we’d struck gold! Of all the bodyguards I know, you’ve turned out to be the one with the best instincts. As if it had been bred into you! And look at you now!”

Cain took a step toward him, balling his hands into fists. “Nothing’s changed!”

“The fuck it hasn’t! Ever since Oliver’s wedding three months ago, you’ve been slacking off! You don’t show up for your shifts. And when you do, you’re in a stinking mood!”

“My mood’s my business, not yours!” Cain ground out between clenched teeth.

Amaury narrowed his eyes. “It is when you turn into an insubordinate prick!” He flashed his fangs. “There are rules if you want to continue working for Scanguards. And you’d better be following them, or—”

Cain’s hand shot out by itself and slammed Amaury against the dumpster, as if somebody else had taken control over his body. “You think you can order me around?” Instinct told him that he wasn’t used to following orders. He was meant to give them.

Amaury pushed back, using both hands to catapult Cain against the wall of the building. “You listen to me now, you little shit! Samson and I agree on this. Either you follow the fucking rules, or you’re out. You understand me?”

So they’d all conspired behind his back. That was just perfect! Fucking perfect! “Fuck you, Amaury! Fuck all of you!” But just cursing Amaury wasn’t enough. Hurling the words at him didn’t give Cain the satisfaction he needed. Only one thing could do that now.

Cain brought his fist up and delivered an uppercut to Amaury’s chin, making the hulky vampire tumble back. He caught himself just as quickly and lashed a furious glare at Cain.

“You wanna fight? Fine,” Amaury bit out. “Let’s fight.”

Before the last word was even out, a fist slammed into Cain’s face, whipping his head sideways. Pain radiated through his body and made him feel more alive than he’d felt for the entire last year. It was a thousand times better than the numbness and void he’d been feeling.

With a growl, Cain aimed his fists at Amaury and delivered blow after blow. But the huge vampire was no willing punching bag. He gave as good as he got, alternating between kicks and blows. Despite his size, his opponent was more agile on his feet than anybody would have guessed.

Cain let his instincts take over. He’d known himself to be a remarkable fighter, but in this fist fight with Amaury, Cain sensed that his skills were superior to those of his boss. One thing that Amaury had said rang true: fighting had been bred into him. He was no novice, and he was proving it now by pummeling Amaury with his fists, kicking him with skilled and lightning-fast moves, while Amaury was forced into defense.

Satisfaction surged inside Cain. This felt right. Making another vampire submit to him, beating him down and showing him who was stronger, triggered a spark in him. As if a tiny candle was illuminating something in his past. Something that lay just beyond his reach. So close, yet so far away.

Amaury’s next punch hit him in the stomach, making him fold over for an instant. Another blow followed the first, confirming that Cain’s moment of contemplation had cost him the upper hand.

“Fuck!” Cain growled and cleared his mind.

He avoided Amaury’s next punch by swiveling on his heel and jumping behind his opponent. Cain kicked his leg out and hit Amaury in the back of his knees. The linebacker-sized vampire lost his balance and fell backward, landing hard on the concrete ground.

A whoosh of air expelled from Amaury’s chest, but already he tried to jump up. Cain was faster. He landed on him, pinning him to the ground, when Amaury’s eyes suddenly stared at him in shock.

It took a second for Cain to realize what Amaury was looking at.

In horror, Cain recoiled, scrambling backward to release him, while he looked at his own hand in disbelief. He was holding a stake. A ragged breath tore from Cain’s chest. He hadn’t even noticed pulling his stake from his jacket pocket.

“Shit!” he cursed and dropped it to the ground.

Amaury sat up. “I’ve never seen anybody as fast as you.”

Cain rubbed a trembling hand over his face. “I didn’t mean to—”

The simultaneous pinging of two cell phones saved him from completing his sentence. Automatically Cain pulled his phone from his pocket to look at it.

Trouble at the End Up. Vampire involvement suspected,
the text message read.
Accept or reject
, it flashed an instant later.

The End Up was a popular nightclub in the South of Market area. He knew from experience that it could be a hotspot for trouble. Heck, most nightclubs in the city were.

“Crap!” Amaury cursed, clearly having received the same message.

Their gazes met.

“Are you with me?” Amaury asked.

It wasn’t an order, but a request that he saw in his fellow vampire’s eyes. It made all the difference.

“Let’s go and kick some ass.” Cain jumped to his feet and reached his hand out to Amaury.

Amaury flashed a grin. “They’re not gonna know what hit them.”

4

From the door of the End Up, which was guarded by a bouncer with way too many tattoos on his face, neck and arms, loud techno music emanated. A crowd of youngsters stood in line, waiting to be let in.

Without hesitation, Cain followed Amaury as he walked to the head of the line and stopped in front of the bouncer, ignoring the verbal protests of the waiting clubbers.

“Hey, there’s a line!” one of them complained.

Cain turned, letting Amaury do his thing with the bouncer, while he glared at the kid who’d dared make a stink. “Official business. So butt out, little punk.” Without waiting for a reply, he turned back just as the bouncer made a motion for him and Amaury to enter.

The
thing
Amaury had done was a little trick known as mind control. Every vampire possessed the skill, which had always been thought to work only on humans. However, only recently they’d found out the hard way that there were vampires who were capable of exerting mind control on other vampires. To Cain’s knowledge, all vampires possessing that particular skill had been eradicated—all but one: Thomas, the chief of IT at Scanguards. And luckily Thomas was one of the gentlest creatures Cain had ever met and absolutely devoted to Scanguards. Almost as devoted as he was to his blood-bonded mate, Eddie.

Cain entered the club, his eyes instantly adjusting to the dim interior. A vampire’s vision was superior to that of a human, and he could see everything as clearly as if the place were lit up like a Christmas tree. The noise was deafening, and unfortunately not something Cain could easily drown out.

It wasn’t hard to see why Scanguards had gotten a call from one of their informants—trusted humans and civilian vampires who kept their ears to the ground to alert Scanguards to any problems that needed to be taken care of immediately.

While Scanguards was primarily a company supplying bodyguards and other security personnel to politicians, celebrities, foreign dignitaries, and other rich people, the mayor of San Francisco, a hybrid himself—half human, half vampire—had recently hired them as an underground security unit that not even his police force was aware of. As such, Scanguards was now in charge of rooting out problems that human police officers were ill equipped to deal with.

Amaury pointed to the far corner which lay in almost complete darkness.

“I see them,” Cain replied.

Paving the way through the throng of dancers on the dance floor that occupied the middle of the club, Amaury charged ahead, Cain on his heels. He ignored the come-hither looks he received from some of the women he passed.

The three punks looked high, but the moment he laid eyes on them Cain knew it wasn’t alcohol or drugs that had caused their inebriated state. After all, alcohol or drugs didn’t have any effect on a vampire. Only blood—massive amounts of it—could make a vampire high. That, or tainted blood. The kind of blood that ran through the veins of Ursula, his colleague Oliver’s mate. But to Cain’s knowledge, all women with the special blood that could drug a vampire had been removed from San Francisco and given new identities.

It appeared that the three juveniles had indulged in too much of a good thing.

Cain exchanged a quick look with his colleague. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

Amaury grunted. “Why is it that I always get the babysitting jobs? Do I look like a fucking kindergarten teacher?”

“Well, let’s take ’em out back before they cause any more trouble.”

The three vampires still hadn’t spotted them, too busy with their prey: three scantily-clad women who couldn’t be older than eighteen or nineteen. And who clearly didn’t know what they were getting into. They had no business being in this club. How they’d gotten past the bouncer who was supposed to check ID was anybody’s guess.

Cain had to hand it to the three vampires. They were warning their potential victims. Their black T-shirts had it imprinted in bright red letters:
I’m a vampire. Come closer and I’ll bite you.

Clearly the three females hadn’t heeded that warning.

“Sick fuckers,” Cain cursed and grabbed one of the bloodsuckers, pulling him up so he had to release the woman he was about to dig his fangs into.

A startled outcry from the vampire was the response, while the girl dropped back onto the sectional, her glazed-over eyes testament to the fact that the vampire had used mind control to make her unaware of what was happening to her.

From the corner of his eye, Cain noticed that Amaury snatched the other two in a similar fashion, barely exerting any strength as the two vampires in his grip struggled.

“What the fuck?” the one Cain was restraining cursed.

“Yeah, I could say the same!” Cain snarled. “Retract your fucking fangs, jerk!”

When the guy didn’t immediately comply, Cain kneed him in the back, forcing him toward the ground, while he bent his arms back so the idiot lost his balance and fell face forward onto the floor. Cain jammed his boot on his neck, pressing his cheek into the ground.

“Now let me translate that into a language you understand: retract your fucking fangs or I’ll rip them from your mouth!”

“You can’t do that,” his captive ground out.

“Watch me!”

“Lay a hand on me and the mayor will have your hide!” the idiot claimed, glaring at him with red eyes.

Cain glanced at Amaury. “You know this punk? He claims the mayor will protect him.”

Amaury shot him a quick look, while the two vampires in his grip still continued to struggle. “Will you fucking stop it?” he commanded them. “Ah, fuck it.”

With amusement, Cain watched as Amaury simply knocked the two vampires’ heads together, making their resistance crumble instantly.

“You should learn when to listen. Didn’t your mother teach you anything?” Amaury asked, before he turned his head back to Cain. “Now what were you saying?”

But before Cain could respond, the vampire on the floor piped up. “My uncle will kick your ass if you hurt me.”

Cain exchanged a look with Amaury. “Do you want to tell our out-of-town guest or shall I?”

Amaury feigned a bow. “Go ahead. I like watching.”

Cain crouched down to the juvenile vampire. “Here’s the deal, buddy. The mayor sent us to clean up, and guess what: you’re the trash.”

The vampire’s eyes widened.

“I’m not done, so don’t even think of interrupting me,” Cain warned, though his voice wasn’t as ice cold as it had been before. He had to admit he was having fun now. Working for Scanguards did have its perks, such as teaching some assholes a lesson. “You and your two useless friends here—” He jerked his head in the direction of the two vampires who now hung their heads like dogs with their tails between their legs. “—will be taken to a nice, cozy cell tonight, where you can sleep it off. And once you’re sober, the mayor will pay you a visit and decide on your punishment.” He pulled the jerk up by his shirt. “Because, believe it or not, wearing stupid T-shirts saying you’re a vampire, and biting people in public isn’t something we tolerate here in San Francisco. Maybe you can behave like that in the shithole you come from, but not on our turf.”

“He’ll never punish me!” the vampire said, full of defiance.

“Oh, I see, you’re a betting man.” Cain grinned at Amaury. “Wanna make an easy twenty bucks?”

Amaury chuckled. “It would be like taking milk from a baby. I have ethics.”

Cain winked at him. “I keep forgetting.” Then he wiped the smile off his face and glared at his captive. “Now move your fucking ass out of here before I get really pissed off.”

The other two vampires seemed to shiver at his commanding voice, but the mayor’s nephew clenched his jaw. His eyes darted past Cain, as if looking for an escape route.

“Don’t even think about it.”

When the idiot lunged for one of the girls, in a misguided attempt to use her as a shield or a hostage, Cain had had enough. He jumped and wrapped his arm around the kid’s neck, taking him down in a chokehold. For a few moments, the mayor’s nephew struggled, trying to use his hands to pry Cain’s arm off him, but not even the claws digging into his forearm stopped Cain from choking the air out of the defiant vampire.

Only when the kid went slack in his arms, did Cain ease off the pressure. While vampires could lose consciousness when out of oxygen, they couldn’t die from loss of air.

Amaury shrugged. “You put him out, you carry him.”