The Purest of the Breed (The Community) (4 page)

Beyond him, seven armed bad guys were shouting and, yes, coming up fast. More gunfire cut through the night.

Bat Man ducked. “Crap, we need to haul balls.” Without another word, Bat Man plucked Thomal’s ex-passenger from the ground and swung her up onto his unoccupied shoulder, then hauled Thomal up by the arm. “Grab his other side,” he ordered Bull Tattoo.

The two men seized Thomal under the armpits and bolted off at a run again.

Marissa gasped as she teetered precariously on Bat Man’s shoulder. Now that he had only one arm available to hold
two
passengers—the other occupied with Thomal—she was in serious danger of taking a nosedive off her perch. She strained her head to look at her co-passenger, her body stiff with trying to stay onboard. Their gazes met through their masses of long, whiplashing hair, both of them teary-eyed, both their mouths deformed out of shape by ball gags. And both of them were clearly thinking the same thing: had they just jumped from the frying pan into the fire?

Who
were
these guys?

Footsteps pounded onto the path right behind them, and Bat Man hissed a breath. “
Now
might be a real good time to bring the van, Sedge.” No sooner had Bat Man spat those words into the mic of his headset, than a windowless Dodge cargo van ripped onto the road in front of them.

The van squealed in a neat circle, the driver-side door opening even before the van had spun to a complete halt, and a man took what appeared to be no more than a casual step out of the moving vehicle. His wild mane of long blond gave him the look of a romance book cover hero…except for the monstrous rifle he had jacked back against his waist.

Teeth bared around a rebel yell, Deranged Fabio unloaded his rifle’s clip onto the neo-Nazis, the report from the weapon jerking the huge muscles swelling along his chest and arms.

Didn’t men come in size regular anymore?

Behind, men hollered and bodies thumped to the earth. Whether from being shot or diving out of the way, Marissa couldn’t tell.

Bat Man catapulted into the back of the Dodge with Bull Tattoo right behind him, dumping Thomal toward the front of the vehicle and depositing Marissa and her co-passenger to the side of—

Tëer of the Gangrene Jaw hurled himself at the van, his hand grasping the door frame and one foot already planted inside.

Marissa and the other two women muffled out screams.

Eye-blink quick, Bat Man spun in a crouch and swung a short-nosed rifle up from the depths of his trench coat, squeezing off a couple of shots.

Tëer’s collarbone sprayed up liquid, the blood looking eerily white in the dim moonlight. He fumbled to hang on, his body leaning out, then the van shot forward and Tëer was flung off the back.

“You soddin’ dobber!” Tëer yelled, stumbling. “I’m goin’ to rip your ricker out through your mush!”

“Great,” Bat Man drawled. “I’m sure I’d be real scared if I knew what the hell you just said.”

Marissa blinked as she watched Tëer turn and run back to join his companions. Hadn’t the man just been shot?

The van picked up speed, and Tëer’s image rapidly receded.

Bat Man gave the roadway a quick scan, then turned toward them, wind from the open rear doors lashing strands of dark hair across his eyes. He made a harsh noise in his throat as his attention skimmed over all three of them. “That’s some fucked-up shit there.” He withdrew a long knife from a sheath at his waist. He held it up in front of them in a non-threatening grip, his fingers forming an
okay
symbol around the hilt. His other hand was raised palm out in the universal sign of peace. “I’m 100% Grade A Good Guy, I promise. I just want to cut your bindings off, if that’s okay.”

Marissa nodded her head vigorously.
God, yes, starting yesterday
.

Leaning forward, Bat Man reached around her back to her bindings, nearly tucking her nose against his throat. She caught the woolly scent of his trench coat and another distinct aroma. Not of cologne, but of
man
, of grit and masculine power and something…she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Something almost animalistic, but in a good way, sort of like a warm, hay-scented barn full of stallions or a freshly washed, totally nice cougar. He must have also come equipped with his own internal combustion engine, because his body heat was off-the-charts hot.

She felt a back-and-forth sawing at her wrists, then
snap
, she was free. She pried the ball gag out of her mouth and hauled in a huge breath.

Bat Man moved over to cut free her co-passenger; Bull Tattoo was releasing the rape victim.

“I’m Hadley,” her co-passenger introduced hoarsely, taking Marissa’s hand and squeezing it.

Marissa squeezed back. “Marissa.”

Then the three of them rounded on their rescuers, all asking questions at once.

“My God, what’s going—?”

“Who are those men?”

“What do they want with—?”

“Who are
you
?”

“Whoa, whoa. Okay, slow down.” Bat Man re-sheathed his knife. “We’ll get to all your questions, don’t worry. First off, introductions. I’m Dev Nichita, that’s Gábor Pavenic,” he pointed to Bull Tattoo, “he’s Thomal Costache,” he indicated the injured blond, “and the one driving is Sedge Stănescu.”

Marissa gave Bat Man an incredulous look. Sounded like a Who’s Who from the Kremlin, and… She narrowed her eyes on her other rescuers. Now that she was getting a good look at them, she saw that they were all serious eye candy, ten points above any other number of gorgeous she’d ever seen on a man before. Sedge-Fabio with that mane of blond hair any woman would kill for, Flattop Thomal with a face of Greek quality structure, and, jeez, even disreputable-looking Gábor, with that bull skull tattoo, had a sexy cleft in his chin and a pair of sulky, downturned brown eyes that just oozed bedroom.

But it was the owner of the muscular shoulder she’d ridden on, Dev, who had the type of looks that made her mouth water. He was the rugged and virile type, but also smoldering and a little threatening, although in a titillating way, like a tuxedoed figure she might encounter in the dim hallways of a Transylvanian castle. If she hadn’t been so frazzled, she would’ve taken a moment to let her imagination go wild.

Hadley cleared her throat. “Maybe the better question would be:
what
are you? Military? DEA? ATF?”

“Um, well…” Dev reached outside and hauled one of the rear van doors shut. “That’s complicated and somewhat classified. It’d probably be better if you just think of us as an extra-special security unit.”

“What, like, ‘Special
Special
Forces’?” She huffed a breath. “What kind of cockamamie BS is that? Why would some ultra-classified security unit need to be saving me—any of us?” She glanced at the other two women, and they nodded in agreement.

“All that will be explained to you when we get you to a safe location.” Dev reached for the other van door, and—

The guttural rumble of a boat engine cut him off as the lowrider Impala turned sharply onto their road and fishtailed up behind them.

Chapter Four

134 years ago: August 10th, 1877, Transylvania, Romania. Văcărescu Estate in Târgovişte

A vicious backhand came out of nowhere, striking Pettrila Rázóczi on the side of her jaw with enough force to send her spinning to the floor. Pain streaked a lightning flash through her face as she braced her hands on the Kula rug, her eyes dizzily tracing the red and beige pattern. Catching her breath and gathering her wits, she twisted her head to glare up through the tumble of her black hair at the man who’d just hit her. Glare up his trunk-like legs, up, up his tall, wide body to that face like hewn rock.

“How
dare
you put your hands on me, you bootless sow!”

Emil was a mere valet, valet to Ion Brătianu, the Romanian prime minster, true, but Pettrila was a descendent of the Rázóczi princes of Transylvania. An orphan she might be, with only one older brother to claim as her own, but her station was still one of the highest in the nobility.

“The master has bid you come to him.” Emil’s voice was gravel on her spine. “Why do you naysay him?”

“Quiet your tongue,” Pettrila hissed, glancing toward the stairway leading to the upper chambers. Emil had just made her sound like naught but a common
târfă
, and the young Elena Văcărescu, who Pettrila was visiting while the girl’s father was fighting in the war, loved any reason to gossip. Thank the stars that Pettrila was, as usual, the only one prowling the estate at night. “I went to him yestereve.” Pettrila kept her own voice low, her temper held in check by the thinnest margin. “I cannot go to him again so soon, as well you know.”

Emil stared down at her with dispassionate eyes. The kerosene wall sconce behind him threw a hellish glare over the forbidding angles of his features, turning him into one of Satan’s familiars. “If the master says come,” he pronounced, “you come.” Bending over, he tangled a fist into her hair and used it to yank her to her feet.

She caught back a cry of pain and rage, force of habit making her seam her lips tightly shut across her teeth. Although she needn’t have done so with Emil; he knew what she was. Hence the reason he was dragging her across the dining room, into the high, rotunda-shaped front entryway, and through the square-pillared main door.

A fearsome black beast of a horse waited directly in front of the house, its body both sleek and muscular, its long mane falling down a noble, arching neck and across coal-black eyes. The magnificent animal was outfitted in reins and saddle of the finest Cordovan leather dotted with grommets of glinting silver: Ion Brătianu’s mount. Worry slid between Pettrila’s shoulder blades. Ion must be desperate indeed if he’d lent his most precious and fastest steed to Emil, no matter how beloved the valet.

The horse flattened its ears and crabbed sideways at their hurried approach, but Emil tossed her onto the beast without so much as a by-your-leave. She landed sidesaddle, her long, layered skirts and petticoats leaving her little option. Emil climbed up behind her, gathered the reins in one fist, encircled her waist with his other arm, and set his heels to the animal.

The beast leapt forward into a gallop, hooves thundering on the dirt drive. Pettrila’s long hair seethed across her face, the strands of midnight tangling in her lashes and catching on her lips. The summer sky disappeared momentarily beneath the leafy cover of trees lining the roadbed, hordes of sleeping black crows hulking like Death’s messengers on the knotty branches. They skirted a creek that looked like a long ribbon of shiny pewter under the bulging eye of the moon, then careened onto the main roadway. Here, the landscape sprawled into an endless vista of flat fields, the lush green fertility long ago baked to brown under Romania’s August heat.

Pettrila turned her face to the sky and drew in a deep breath, calling the darkness into her lungs, her blood. The night had become a part of her just this year, when she’d turned one-and-twenty and come of age, entering into the full conditions of her breed. Her former sensitivity to sunlight was now a lethal allergy, relegating her to a life with the moon and stars. She’d thought she would miss the daytime, but with the loss of light had come the heightened sense of the dark. She
owned
the night now; she could breathe it, see through it, feel it as a physical entity, control it. She could let it wrap her in its cloak and make her disappear. Nay, she didn’t miss sunlight.

She missed her freedom. Now that her survival depended upon a Sânge Taică, or a blood father, she could never be more than a week away from his vein, in this case, Ion Brătianu’s. Aye, the prime minister was one of those rare, secret few who’d once been married to a Vârcolac, thus turning him into a man whom an unbonded vampire female like herself could feed upon without creating a permanent blood-bond.

Out of generosity, Ion had become her Sânge Taică this year, even though he already served others… Or had he done so out of an addictive lust for the intoxicating, near mind-altering pleasure of Fiinţă, the elixir which came out of a Vârcolac’s fangs when he or she fed? If his reason began as the former, it had become the latter. Tonight’s desperate need for Pettrila confirmed that all too readily.

Emil yanked the horse onto the cobbled drive leading to the Princely Palace where Ion sojourned for a meeting with Romania’s dignitaries, slowing them to a jolting trot as they rode past the red brick cathedral. Before them loomed the Chindia Tower, an adornment to the estate built in the 15th century by Vlad III Draculă, a man known less affectionately as Vlad the Impaler, for his renowned cruelty. Dracul, meaning dragon, indicated the “Order of the Dragon,” a secret fraternity created in 1387 sworn to defend Romania against the powerful Turks. But Pettrila knew the political agenda of the Order to be but a façade. In truth, the group was a collection of men sharing a common, special lineage, one that was now intimately intertwined with her own race.

The mixed breed of Dragon Vampires.

Emil reined to a halt in front of the palace, also made in red brick, and swung to the ground. He plucked her out of the saddle and led her into a rectangular antechamber, candles spilling dull yellow light from three small, recessed niches. They traversed a long, vaulted hallway, passing regularly spaced wall sconces, flames low at the wicks and unnervingly still beneath their protective glass covers. Shadows of her and Emil thrust up the whitewashed walls in large, grotesque shapes as they passed each lamp.