Page 22 of Cry of Blood and Joy (French Quarter Vampire Enforcer #2)
Chapter Twenty
Enzo
As Rocco and I stepped into the room I’d paid for, I closed the door behind us.
I stared at it a moment, wishing I could go and gather Joy into my arms and bring her pleasure rather than pain.
What I’d just done crashed over me like a tidal wave of self-loathing.
Guilt over tasting her blood—sweet and intoxicating and wrong in this context—tore at what little decency I had left like claws ripping through flesh.
The metallic taste still lingered on my tongue, a reminder of my monstrosity that I couldn’t swallow away.
She was my mate, my heart, my everything. I’d taken something sacred between us—the intimate act of feeding she’d always given freely—and weaponized it to keep her safe. The irony was bitter as poison. I’d hurt her to protect her, violated her trust to ensure her survival.
But at what cost? The question haunted me, and I had no answer that didn’t make me hate myself more. What good was keeping her alive if I’d destroyed the very thing that made life worth living—her faith in me, her love, her trust?
Behind me, I could feel Rocco watching me with the wary intensity of someone who’d just witnessed something deeply disturbing.
When I finally turned to face him, disapproval was written across his features like condemnation carved in stone.
His dark eyes held judgment and something that might have been pity, and both made my skin crawl with shame.
“Don’t say a word,” I snarled. The last thing I needed was a lecture from someone who’d tortured his own mother, even if it hadn’t been his choice.
He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, but the wariness never left his expression. “I didn’t say anything.” His tone was carefully neutral, but his unspoken criticism lurked beneath the surface.
“You didn’t have to.” My hands clenched into fists, every muscle screaming to punch the nearest wall. “Let’s go.”
I was already moving toward the door when his quiet voice stopped me. “You might want to wipe the blood off.”
Drawing on vampire speed, I ran into the bathroom. I caught my reflection in the mirror and cringed. I looked like a fiend right out of hell—one of the demon Balthazar’s nightmares. I grabbed a white towel off the rack and wiped the blood away from my chin and mouth.
I threw down the bloodied towel, the evidence—her blood, Joy’s blood—of what I’d done. No amount of cleaning would wash away what I’d done, and we both knew it.
The door opened and I rushed back into the room, my heart still hammering from the sight of my own monstrous reflection. The taste of Joy’s blood lingered on my tongue like a brand, a constant reminder of what I’d become—what I’d chosen to become.
Rocco met my gaze with a look that confirmed my worst suspicions. “Dimitri’s outside. I don’t think he saw me.”
The news twisted inside me like a sharp blade.
I scrubbed my face with both hands, trying to push away the despair that threatened to overwhelm me.
“Fucking great.” The words came out raw and bitter, tinged with the kind of exhaustion that went bone deep.
“If we go outside, he’ll know we’re staying here. Angelo would be here in a heartbeat.”
Everything was falling apart. Every decision I made seemed to drag us deeper into this nightmare, and now Joy was lying weak and defenseless in the next room while one of Angelo’s most dangerous enforcers prowled outside like a predator scenting blood.
“The bathroom window perhaps?” Rocco’s voice cut through my spiral of self-recrimination. “Mine had one. Doesn’t yours?”
I blinked, my mind struggling to focus through the fog of guilt and panic that had consumed me.
I was so wrapped up in my own self-loathing, so consumed by the memory of Joy’s hurt expression and the taste of her betrayal on my lips, I hadn’t even bothered to assess our surroundings properly.
The most basic enforcer protocol—always know your exits—and I’d failed because I was too busy drowning in what I’d done to her.
“Come on.” Even now, even when our lives depended on my clear thinking, I couldn’t shake the image of her eyes as I’d drained her strength, couldn’t stop hearing the whispered “I love…” that had nearly broken me completely.
Rocco was right. There was a small window in the cramped bathroom, its glass grimy with years of neglect and protected by rusted iron bars that looked like they’d been installed sometime in the previous century. But the metal was old and corroded, weakened by time and humidity.
I gripped the bars with both hands, channeling my supernatural strength and my burning need to escape—to get away from this place where I’d betrayed the woman I loved.
The metal groaned in protest before giving way with a screech that sounded unnaturally loud in the small space.
I easily removed the entire frame, my vampire strength making quick work of what would have been impossible for a human.
I gestured for Rocco to go first, then followed him through the opening, my shoulders barely fitting through the cramped frame.
But even as I cleared our escape route, I realized I was running from more than just Dimitri—I was running from what I’d become, from the look in Joy’s eyes, from the knowledge I might have saved her life but destroyed her love forever.
Rocco and I slipped through the narrow bathroom window without a sound, our vampire nature allowing us to move with the fluid grace of predators born to hunt in darkness.
The humidity hit my face like a wet blanket, thick with the scent of rain-soaked concrete and the distant aroma of beignets drifting from some all-night café blocks away.
I led the way around the crumbling exterior of the hotel, my enhanced senses cataloging every detail of our surroundings with military precision.
The building’s stucco facade was pockmarked with water damage and graffiti, casting jagged shadows in the weak glow of a flickering streetlight that buzzed and sputtered like an old radio.
Broken glass crunched softly under our feet as I navigated around discarded beer bottles and fast-food containers that littered the narrow alley behind the building.
My eyes swept constantly through the darkness, looking for any sign of Dimitri or another one of Angelo’s henchmen lurking in the maze of shadows that seemed to shift and dance with every breath of wind.
The streets stretched before me in both directions—empty ribbons of cracked asphalt gleaming wetly under the intermittent streetlights, bordered by a mixture of abandoned storefronts with rusted security gates and dimly lit establishments that never seemed to close.
I strained my vampire hearing, filtering through the ambient sounds of the city—the distant hum of traffic on the interstate, the muffled bass of music from a bar several blocks away, the skitter of rats in the gutters, the soft whisper of wind through the Spanish moss hanging from ancient oak trees.
But beneath it all, I detected no telltale heartbeats of watchers, no shuffle of feet trying to stay hidden, no sharp intake of breath from someone holding their position too long.
The night was heavy with possibility and danger, every shadow a potential threat, every doorway a possible ambush point. But for now, the streets appeared genuinely empty, and I didn’t see anyone lurking in the pools of darkness that my enemies favored for surveillance.
“You’re going to go to the police department to find out about what happened to Maximo Barone. I’m going to have a little chat with Lorcan Blackthorn.” The words came out clipped and cold, each syllable carrying deadly intent that made the air between us crackle with violence.
Rocco frowned, genuine concern flickering in his gaze. “Split up? But you promised Joy you wouldn’t do this alone.”
The reminder of my promise was like lighting a firecracker, and something inside me snapped with an audible crack.
Rage—hot, primal, and utterly consuming—flooded through my veins like fire.
I grabbed him by his flour-dusted shirt and slammed him against the grimy wall with enough force to split the bricks behind his head.
“I know what the hell I promised her,” I snarled. The sound that came from my throat was more animal than man, rough with the kind of fury that had left drained corpses in New Orleans. “But I need answers. Now.”
My control unraveled like a rope pulled too tight, fraying at the edges until only raw violence remained.
I was a hundred times stronger than him, and we both knew it.
He was a born vampire, blessed with natural grace and inherited power, but I was a made vampire forged in the fires of Angelo’s brutality.
Centuries of violence lived in my hands, flowed through my veins like poison, whispered in my ear with every heartbeat.
I was one step away from becoming the monster I had been when Angelo first turned me—the creature that had left the ancient streets of Rome covered in blood and screaming.
Back then, no one had been safe from me.
Innocent or guilty, it hadn’t mattered. I’d been a force of nature, a walking nightmare that fed on terror and painted the world in shades of crimson.
It had taken years—decades—to control the bloodlust, to build the careful walls that kept the monster caged. But with Joy in danger, with her blood still coating my tongue and her weak attempt to whisper I love you echoing in my skull, those walls were crumbling like ancient stone.
The monster was invading, doing anything in its power to protect her, clawing its way to the surface with desperate hunger.
My fangs had already descended without my permission, and the sweet tang of violence lingered in the air like perfume.
Rocco’s eyes went wide as he recognized what he was seeing—not Enzo the enforcer, but something far older and infinitely more dangerous.
My logical mind screamed warnings, begging me to step back, to remember who I was supposed to be. But that voice was growing fainter with every second, drowned out by the roar of protective fury that demanded blood, demanded answers, demanded the heads of anyone who dared threaten what was mine.
“Enzo, let me go.”
There was something in his eyes, something that held royalty, that broke through my instinct to kill.
I released him abruptly. “Go to the police then come back and stay with Joy. Don’t let anything happen to her.”
He shook his head as if still dazed. “I won’t. You have my word.”
“Good. Don’t disappoint me.” I didn’t wait for him to answer and sped off into the darkness to find my next prey. And God have mercy on him, because he wouldn’t get off as easy as Rocco had.