Page 192 of Vampire so Virtuous

He stared at her, a vein twitching in his forehead, his red eyes unblinking. “Whether what you say is true or not, you’ll die this night.”

“So you said in the car,” Cally looked away, affecting boredom. “Antoine has so many marked chattel he won’t care. I only volunteered to be bait in the hope he’d love me more.” There was a certain delicious irony in that play. It had been a spur-of-the-moment fiction, but it grazed some truths, too.Shame I’ll never get to tell him.

“Maybe I won’t kill you after all,” Minh said coldly. “Maybe I’ll enthrall you and have you serve me. Or better yet, I’ll make you my next spawn. That would be ironic, wouldn’t it? I can control them as easily as my thralls, you know. Justthinkof what I could make you do.”

“Feed your fish?” she asked, turning to look at the aquarium. “Seems like a full-time job.”

She didn’t hear him move, didn’t realize he was there until his hand clamped around her neck, yanking her off the sofa. “Such a smart mouth you have, chattel,” he sneered. “Spawn or thrall, I’m sure I could find some use for it.”

Cally wasn’t sure if it was fear or revulsion crawling down her spine, but she reached desperately for the power inside her. Again, there was nothing—or if there was, no clue how to wield it.

“For all your bravado, I can smell your fear,” Minh said. “And it’sdelicious.”

Her desperate repartee might have achieved nothing, but it was better than sitting there, letting despair take over. She lifted her chin and met his gleaming red eyes.

“Antoine is coming, and he can smell fear too.” She sniffed mockingly. “But the only fear I smell is yours.”

Farewell, Antoine. Do kill him for me, won’t you?

Forty-five – Antoine

“About two hundred feet, straight down.” Antoine pointed at the rain-slicked sidewalk.

“Then let’s get her back,” Gabe’s voice was firm. “Do you want to go in the front, or take the parking garage?”

Antoine remembered the blaring music and winced. “I’ll take the back.”

Gabe bared his teeth. “Suits me. We’ll make so much goddamn noise they won’t even know you’re there.”

“Somehow I doubt that, but either way, see you in two hundred feet.”

Gabe gripped his arm. “Stay in the shadows.”

Antoine smiled wryly. “A little late for that, don’t you think?”

He turned and headed for the parking garage, while behind him, Gabe and his thralls moved toward the main club entrance.

Antoine had thought about bringing his own thralls—Noah and Zoey in particular wouldn’t want to miss this—but it would have delayed them, and Cally had already been with Minh too long. He could feel her across their bond, her life vibrant, pulsing, calling to him.

I’m coming, ma chérie.

He had no way of knowing if she could hear him. Prior chattel bonds hadn’t worked that way, but this one was different. Maybe she’d sense something.

Feeding on Minh’s spawns had given him another boost to his power—disgusting as they’d tasted, whatever Gabe had said—and he used it now, pulling his shadows around him as he flew into the parking garage, his feet barely touching the ground.

It was full of cars, but his attention was on the shutter gate that screamed ‘private entrance.’ He accelerated, throwing his weight behind the strike, his momentum and strength driving his shoulder into it, dead center.

The impact reverberated through the garage. The steel shuddered, but all he had to show for it was a dent the size of his shoulder.

“Ow,” Antoine said through clenched teeth, glaring at the gate as he rolled his shoulder. “What the hell is that thing made of?”

He stepped back. No control panel. No security camera. Just reinforced steel, built to keep out chattel, thieves, cops—and, apparently, him.

Fine.

Antoine slammed his fist into the steel. The first blow barely dented it, but with the next, the metal creaked and split. He persisted grimly. The same fate would befall anything else that got between him and Cally. Blood streaked his hand as he hammered it again and again, the shutter finally bending under the force.

Antoine didn’t hesitate. He gripped the warped edges of the gate, and tore at the weakened metal. This time, the locks sheared away, the structure compromised. With one final, wrenching pull, the gate ripped open, revealing the ramp beyond.