Page 37 of Ruthlessly Mated (Shared Mates #2)

C onroy

The plane engine hums deep as we cross the ocean. Tailor, Kita, and I are sitting in the back while a vampire pilots us toward our destination under cover of dark.

“Are we really going to go along with his plan?” Kita looks dubious and concerned.

“We’re going to hurt a lot of people if we do that.

I mean, I know those people suck, and it wouldn’t be a great loss, but I feel like, with my background, I don’t want to do what was done to me.

I don’t want to help vampires kill people’s parents. ”

“Not everybody deserves to suffer just because most of them do. We need to get the heart out of there. That is all,” Tailor says, ever the voice of rationality.

“Or we blow it up, and then we don’t worry about any of those things anymore, the bigots in Rock City and the maker’s heart, and the vampire. We could explode all our enemies in one big explosion.”

“Wouldn’t that make us evil?” Tailor says dubiously.

“Was our stated purpose ever not to be evil?” I reply.

“Wait. Are we evil?” Kita cuts in. “Because I have some ideas for if we’re going to be evil.”

“We are not good or evil. We’re largely neutral. We’re trying to look after ourselves. That means we’re going to do what we need to do, and if that means someone else gets hurt, that’s on them. But we’re not going to go out of our way to hurt anyone.”

“Okay. Feels like that’s still an evil answer,” Kita says. She has a slight smirk on her face as she says it, as if she’s enjoying messing with me. “If we’re going to be evil, I think I would be good at it.”

“You would be, but evil has consequences.”

“Consequences like winning, you mean?”

“We are going to get the heart back for the angry vampire, and we are going to go about our business, living our lives, having our babies,” I say. “And that is final.”

Kita

This is entirely out of order. We’re going to suffer for as long as we are in Alexander’s life. He’s going to snatch my mates, and kill my mates. He’s going to put my babies at risk if I have any. He is a true monster.

My mates are treating this whole affair as if it’s a matter of appeasing Alexander.

I know better.

I know I have to kill Alexander.

He needs to be removed from the equation permanently, erased from the face of the Earth.

I can’t tell Conroy and Tailor. If I tell them, they might let something slip. Right now they are playing along like the useful pawns Alexander imagines them to be. I’ve got to let everybody think I am on board, which is exactly why I have to argue and ask questions.

“Can we have babies in a world like this? One where we have to fight humans to survive?”

“We’re going to have babies because our bloodlines deserve to survive. Fighting humans or not, if we don’t have them, then we lose anyway.”

“Easy for you to say. They don’t come bursting out of the nearest convenient one of your orifices. They don’t drink from your body. They don’t get in the way of your plans.”

“You have plans?”

“I had plans,” I say. “Big plans. I was going to be rich. I was going to live in comfort. I was going to see what Eclipse City is really like.”

Now I’m bumping around in the back of a plane waiting to be unleashed like a pack of hounds on people who are, aside from their rampant bigotry, largely innocent.

I am an animal, being treated like an animal, either deployed as an attack dog or used as a breeding bitch.

Alexander didn’t give me a choice, and my mates won’t give me a choice either.

The plane lands outside Rock City, on the motorway.

It doesn’t have any other traffic because the vampires have put in blockades.

Alexander’s willing little peons have effectively annexed this section of the countryside, keeping humans out.

I wonder if Rock City has called in reinforcements of its own. Doesn’t look like it yet.

This part of the country is kind of lawless.

There’s the wolf king who lives in Eclipse City, but that is tens of thousands of miles away.

I’m not sure who is responsible for ensuring things like this don’t happen, but whoever it is, they’re not doing their job.

It’s probably something to do with Alexander.

His influence is broad and deep. And honestly ridiculous.

Something should be done about him. I was trying to do something about it, until they stopped me.

As we disembark the plane, it becomes obvious that the Rock City siege is still underway.

The vampires are amassing on the verges of the city, keeping well back from the garlic trebuchets.

Every now and then, a big ball of vampire repellent substances comes arcing out from behind the city walls.

They don’t have any effect, but it does allow the humans to waste some of their resources.

Having been here for a while, the evil undead are starting to find ways to entertain themselves.

Some of the vampires are playing musical instruments.

Violins and drums, mostly. I guess getting a piano into the desert would be too much of an inconvenience.

Others are dressing up in attire from all sorts of periods of history.

I suppose that could just be the way they usually dress.

Vampires are odd creatures. They’re solitary, but also always lonely.

Not like wolves, who are pack creatures, but quite often go off on their own as lone wolves quite happily.

The whole affair is starting to take on the vibe of an impromptu death Coachella.

Alexander, who has just appeared, saunters off to the vampire army lines, which are brooding and stylish. They’ve brought velvet tents in, and they’ve decorated with the bones of their enemies. They are milling about looking pale, hungry, and eager to drink some human blood.

“The three of you go and get my heart back,” Alexander says. “Daddy will be waiting over there.”

Conroy growls, quite furious at the implications.

“Not your daddy,” I assure him.

“No,” he agrees. “Not my daddy.”

I smirk. Alexander smirks. I stop smirking. I do not want to share humor with him. I do not want to share anything.

Alexander leads by settling himself down and lounging in a large chair that looks quite a lot like a throne.

The man is going to observe the battle in comfort, it seems. I wonder what it is like to have just stopped caring years ago, to be so removed from the consequences of your own horrific actions, and to expect others to forgive you as you immediately forgive yourself.

It sounds quite chill, actually. I’d never get away from it.

He lifts his hand and waves at me, wriggling his fingers just a little.

“Let us know when you’re ready for the distraction,” he says.

There is a plan, of sorts. The vampires are going to assault the city and draw fire. Then we are going to go in, get the truck. It’s a simple plan, which is good because that means it is hopefully simple enough to work.

“I’m ready to be distracted now,” I say. “Let’s do this.”

I am nervous. Sick to my stomach, actually.

I have done a lot of sketchy, terrible things in my life, but I have never been a part of a full supernatural assault on a city.

We are not the good guys in this story. When people talk about this in years to come, it will be the day that the city’s defenses were tested and overrun.

Everybody inside those walls is going to hate us even more after tonight than they do already.

“Assemble!”

Alexander snaps the order loudly, and in an instant several hundred vampires are in clean straight lines worthy of a marching band. Watching his power in action is quite impressive and intimidating. He has been quite restrained with me, actually, all things considered.

“I know you are all hungry. I know you have slept in the desert dirt for days on end, just inches from the scorching sun. You have suffered in myriad ways, but they are all about to pay off now. Go and feed. Remove this city from the face of the planet. After this evening, this tedious little collection of humans will be nothing but bones bleaching in the sun.”

The vampires are enjoying this speech greatly. They expose their fangs and they make a general hissing sort of sound that sounds like the rattle of a thousand snakes. It is unnerving. There shouldn’t be this many vampires in one place. One is more than enough.

“Go, my children!” Alexander booms. “Show them the wages of disrespect!”

Watching a vampire army assault a city is a sight nothing short of terrifying.

They move so inhumanly fast, skittering across the desert like a plague of human-ish things.

Humans would take probably four minutes to run that distance.

Shifters might make it in two. The vampires seem to do it almost instantly, moving so fast they are more like blurs than obviously distinct creatures.

I hope wherever Damon is, he has some sense that there’s a whole lot of fun going on right now. I also hope he’s very, very far away, tucked up in that infirmary in the little town with the nice doctor. I hope he has ice cream.

Light flashes in the distance, looking like a whole lot of little white bright sparklers are going off in celebration. Unfortunately, that is not what is happening.

The humans are trying to shoot the vampires, because humans love shooting things. Humans and projectiles go together like cotton and candy. The vampires are getting shot and largely ignoring the bullets.

They go up the city’s barricades like spiders go up a bedroom wall, crawling as if they are on hands and knees.

“Alright,” I say to Tailor and Conroy. “I’m going to go in there, get the truck, and handle the situation.”

“You’re not going anywhere. I am going to get it,” Conroy says. “You are going to stay here, safely with your vampire.”