Prince of Power (4 page)

“Mr. Smith?”

Shit. Without even thinking, her fingers closed around his. They were out of time.

Thad threw a fireball from one end of his practice gym to the other. Considering that he hadn't slept well since his parents' death a few months before—and sure as hell not in the time while Lee and Tyra were missing—the fireball was a decent one. The orange-sized orb hit Lee's protective shield and fizzled out on impact.

“That the best you got?” Lee adjusted his stance, sinking into a semi-squat. “Come on, hit me again.”

Thad snarled, as much at Lee as at his own reflection visible in the mirrored wall over his best friend's shoulder. “Lee, it's been a long night, for fuck's sake.” But Thad focused his power and threw again. This time the fireball was easily as big as one of the heavy balls they had down the hall in the mansion's underground bowling alley.

Lee rocked back on his heels, thrown for a moment by the force of impact against his shield. “Not bad,” he said approvingly. “Shit, Thad. You didn't need my help to learn control of your power after all.” He looked much older than his seven hundred years when he straightened and reached for a towel and some water. “And for all he's shown himself to be an irresponsible asshole in the past, Siddoh's stepped up and taken command of the fighters. Don't really need me around anymore.”

For
fuck's sake
. “What's this about, Lee?” Thad stripped off his sweaty T-shirt and finished toweling down. He grabbed a bottle of water from beside the padded blue floor mat and stared hard at his friend and bodyguard.

Only weeks ago their roles had been reversed. Before the death of Thad's parents, Lee had been in service to Thad's father. Thad had been one of dozens of fighters in the royal military wing. He'd been the one to answer to the seven-hundred-year-old guard, not the other way around. Having their roles reversed like this still smacked of wrong to Thad.

Lee ran a hand over his military buzz cut and toyed with the little plastic ring around the neck of his water while he stared intently at the floor. “Thad, I fucked up. There's no excuse for it. I'm fully prepared to step down. Leave the estate, even. My being here is an embarrassment, and there's no reason for me to stay on.”

Thad's fangs ripped through his gums. He shot across to Lee's bench and knocked the older male to the floor before he could do more than drop his water bottle. This time, Lee was too surprised to fight back.

“Don't be stupid,” Thad growled.

Lee's head bounced off the floor mat. “Thad.”

Thad tackled, and this time it wasn't good-natured sparring. A choking, gurgling sound came out of Lee's throat, and Thad pulled his knee off the older vampire's neck. Slowly, Thad stood and backed to the other bench. His entire body was practically on fire.

Lee was right. Disappearing that way without backup? Without as much as a cell phone? Leaving Tyra in the hands of a human? They were such unforgiveable, boneheaded moves that Thad didn't see how anybody could have made them, let alone someone with Lee's experience.

Truth was, he loved Lee like a brother. Thad had recently lost his parents, and Isabel had come awfully damn close to being killed by wizards before they'd even had a chance to get to know each other. Hell, he could have lost his half sister in the past week. And feeling his way through this new gig as king? He didn't have a clue half the time. He couldn't handle losing Lee, too.

Not that he knew how to say that out loud. So he paced. “I don't want you to step down, Lee.”

“You haven't put me back on active duty.”

That made him stop again. “You haven't been back very long. Wasn't sure you were ready. I still don't have a clear picture of what happened.”

Lee rubbed his chest and throat, struggled up from the floor, and sat again with his hands braced on the bench. “That night I left, Agnessa had shown up in my room. I admit I didn't handle it well.”

Thad dropped to the bench. “Siddoh figured out that she'd been there. We thought that might've had something to do with it.”

Lee shook his head sadly. “You think you're over something… Anyway, I went down to your father's office to clean it out like you asked me to. I wound up letting my anger run away with me and busted up a desk. Sorry about that, by the way.”

Well, that explained how that had happened. Thad's gums ached as his anger cooled and his fangs started to recede. “I was going to replace the furniture anyway.”

Lee's jaw worked side to side. “Thad, I found some important information hidden in your father's desk. About Ty.”

Thad's pulse picked up its tempo. “What kind of information?”

Lee took a drink of water and wiped his mouth. Hard, almost like he was slapping himself in the face. “Our suspicions were correct that they were gunning for her specifically. Your father went out that night to try and put a stop to it.” He pulled an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Thad.

The cream-colored note inside was wrinkled and stained. The late king's words were perfectly legible, though. And their meaning was clear. Thad pegged Lee with a hard stare. “You haven't told her about this, have you?”

“No way.” Lee held up a hand. “No question, she's going to shoot the messenger. And I haven't shared the info with anybody else, either. Nobody knows about it right now except you, me, and all of these barbells.”

Thad nodded. His head was full of noise all of a sudden. “How am I going to tell Tyra that her mother wasn't human?” Tyra, older than Thad by a quarter century, had been conceived before Thad's parents were mated. The big, scandalous story was that their father had fallen in love with a human. It had ended badly, as those things tended to, and months later Tyra's mother had dropped off a baby. Nobody had ever heard from her again. Nobody had questioned Tyra's half-human lineage. Why would they have?

Before Lee could answer, the double doors to the gym pushed open with a creak. Isabel stepped in, clad in a tank top and fuzzy pajama pants covered with glow-stick-wielding bunnies. Thad had found his queen at a rave in Florida, of all places. You could take the vampire out of the party, but not the party out of the vampire. In her hands was a skinny mutt of a dog. Something called a whippet mix, whatever that meant.

Damn, but he was glad to see them both right now.

“Thad, I hate to ask, but I'm having trouble sleeping. It's already after eight. Do you think you could come upstairs when you and Lee are done here?”

Really
glad. “I'll come now.”

He clapped Lee on the shoulder. “Thank you.” He crumpled the note in his hand and pointed a commanding finger at his friend on his way out of the room. “No more talk of you leaving.”

***

“This is a terrible idea.”

Tyra fought the good fight, but in the end she rolled her eyes at Anton anyway. “It's a perfectly good idea.”

“You can't possibly believe that.” Anton dropped his plastic garbage bag on her bed. He all but sneered at her walnut Ethan Allen dresser and sleigh bed like they were beneath him. “We are in your home. On your brother's estate.
On
the
vampire
king's estate.
This is the most hideous idea in the history of bad ideas. Trust me, I've been party to plenty.”

The eggshell-painted wall was comfortingly cool against Tyra's skin when she leaned against it for support. What was
wrong
with her? She'd slept far longer than any vampire had a right to, and yet that teleport had left her a little woozy. Anton seemed to have handled it fine for a first-timer, bad attitude aside. Folks didn't always.

She could blame the light-headedness on extreme frustration. Maybe also stress and anxiety. Bringing him to the estate had been a nerve-wracking decision. No plan was perfect in situations like these. There wasn't exactly a
Planning
a
Secret
Takedown
with
the
Scion
of
All
Evil
rule book.

She rubbed her eyes. “They were kicking you out of the shelter. We had to move you in a hurry, right? I don't recall you coming up with a better idea.”

His long fingers curled into a fist. “I suggested a hotel. Even one of the abandoned buildings downtown would have been better than this.”

“Look.” Tyra pressed her palms against her closed eyes for a moment. Neon-looking lines appeared in her field of vision from the pressure. This entire experience was as surreal as those lines. Talk about conversations she never expected to have. “Okay, first of all, sit down. You're standing there like you expect my bathrobe to jump out of the closet and attack you.”

Instead of sitting, he stepped forward. “You've put me behind enemy lines here, you know.”

Tyra pushed away from the wall and crossed her arms over her chest. “Of course. I know what I'm doing, Anton.”

For a while they stared at each other, both with narrowed eyes and flared nostrils. Anton swallowed, rubbed the back of his neck, and looked around some more before finally—slowly—his butt landed on her rose-colored silk duvet. He perched on the end of her bed, as ill at ease as before.

“Anton, it's the middle of winter. We'd have both frozen our asses off in an abandoned building. The key problem,” she said as she crossed to sit on the damask settee opposite Anton's position on the bed, “is that right now pretty much
anywhere
is behind enemy lines for you. You couldn't stay at the shelter, and I couldn't have protected you very easily anyplace other than here.”

Anton looked a little like she had just struck him across the mouth, but she kept going. “You're as safe as you can be here. It's daylight, and I've told everyone I need to rest, so nobody's going to bother me for a while. This place is like Fort Knox inside Fort Knox. We'll get you situated by nightfall, get some rest, and then work on a plan. It'll be fine.”

He kept staring. His tongue made a slow, thoughtful sweep over his lips. Her body heated a little, remembering that he'd been touching her face when she woke from torpor. That he'd been leaning so close to her face that he practically could have kissed her.

Was it really possible that he
loved
her? It couldn't be.

She almost snorted at the thought. The idea that he believed what the wizards were doing was wrong and wanted to help her kind—she could almost buy into that. She was banking hard on his good intentions, in fact. But the notion that he was doing this because he had fallen for her while watching her from afar? Well that was naked-with-a-megaphone-on-the-street-corner crazy. No way could it possibly be true.

“You know…” Anton leaned forward, and despite the prior weeks of strain, his chest and biceps bulged under the worn flannel he wore. Goodness. Not all wizards were so well put together. “I don't appreciate the idea that you think
you
need to be the one protecting
me.
”

It took only her a few short paces to cross the room. She ignored the breath he drew when she knelt in front of him. Her sanity took leave as she tugged at his shirt's neckline and ran her finger over the scar that was visible just above the opening. His skin was warm. Surprisingly so. “Your own crew tortured you and left you for dead in the woods. You're still healing from a head injury. Do you really think you could defend against them on your own if they found you right now?”

Tyra realized that her thumb had been rubbing the same strip of scarred skin under his collarbone for longer than was strictly necessary to prove her point. A little zing of sensation made her pulse speed up. They were nearly nose to nose.

Anton's short hair was askew from the teleport. His breath came hot and fast against her mouth. “My own father stripped the skin off my body and bashed my head against a wall. And I'm willing to bet that's nothing compared to what will happen to me here if anyone finds out who I am. What I am.”

If she'd leaned in a fraction, his lips would have brushed against her skin. The realization sent a jolt through Tyra's system. She stood quickly. “That's not going to happen,” she said. “Lee couldn't tell, and he's been fighting your kind longer than anyone else around here.”

Anton's body language closed up. She hadn't been feeling for his emotions right then, but his expression was cloudy. He tapped his feet. Dropped his hands back to his knees. The whole shuffle-tap-fidget routine went on until Tyra thought she might very well lose her mind.

Her nails dug into her palms. Possessed though she was by a case of the squirmies herself, she thought one of them ought to be able to stay still. She'd perched in treetops waiting for wizards late at night before, dammit. She was on the verge of losing her cool when Anton flopped unceremoniously onto the bed.

His arms landed above his head, and the move shifted his clothing enough to expose a strip of hard, dark skin on his abdomen. Without warning, he jumped to standing and stomped forward. His entire body was rigid and his stance was combative.

Tyra's blood rushed and her adrenaline spiked. If the rubber met the road, she could most likely beat him in a fight. She had power that he didn't, but shit. She hadn't honestly believed that he would attack her. Stupid,
stupid
.

“You can't guarantee anything,” he ground out. “Now, I'm good with that. When I said I'd help you get to my father, I wasn't signing up for a paradise vacation. But let's not kid ourselves here.” Gray eyes stared her down, pupils dilated. His nostrils flared.

“Fine,” she said quietly. Her long exhale failed to relax her. “Let's just get some rest. We both need it.” She pointed to the bed. The soft flannel of his sleeve brushed her bare arm when she pulled away. “You can sleep there. I'll take the couch. Once we're both rested, we can start planning how we're going to, you know, lay siege to your father's evil lair.” She didn't wait for him to say anything before she walked out of the room.