Page 6 of For Love and Blood and Fury

Assaulted by the clamor of sounds and smells, Elena’s skin crawled while she waited for her human proxy. The two-level bar had become the go-to place for young professionals in downtown Miami.

She hated the energy. Hated the desperation that poured from them. Polished facades with rotted cores. She’d never had a taste for false bravado masking insecurity or the desperate need to be liked. It didn’t help that the irritating proxy charade was because of them.

“Ready,” Olivia said when she joined them near the painted black door camouflaging the entrance of Elena’s private lounge.

Not exactly a body double, Olivia was taller and fairer than Elena. Her purpose wasn’t to be her clone, it was to age normally as the face of her enterprise.

As if Elena didn’t already know they were sleeping together, Robert pretended to hesitate before presenting his arm for Olivia to take. It was almost endearing enough to clear the heaviness from Elena’s chest. But not quite.

When they finally started their trek through the bar, Elena’s patience had worn down to the bone. Playing her role as Olivia’s assistant, she rushed them through attempts at glad-handingand out to the warm spring night. She’d never been so happy to inhale the humid air, thick before an impending rainstorm.

The night clung to Elena like a shroud as they navigated the scattered humans milling between the converted warehouse near the Port of Miami and the parking garage across the alley. Flanked by Lance and Jesus while Robert walked ahead with Oliva, Elena rolled her eyes.

She wasn’t in the mood for the production of them scanning for threats. Elena was older and stronger than all of them combined. It was like asking Pomeranians to escort a crocodile. She was nearly to the garage storing her Bugatti when the world around them changed.

It started with a single, sharp crack echoing through the alley. A popping sound that Elena was reacting to even before she processed its nature. Instinct triggered her fangs, sharpening her vision, heightening her hearing, making her sense of smell keen.

Elena shoved Olivia toward Robert, her voice a razor’s edge. “Get her inside.”

Another shot, this one aimed at Elena, whizzed past her head. She tasted copper in the air, the tang of violence.

Her gaze snapped upward, seeking the source. A glint of moonlight on metal, a silhouette framed against the glassy reflection of a half-constructed high-rise balcony. Male. The scent of his rage, acrid and sharp, cut through the humid air.

Coward. Hiding instead of facing her head-on. Instead of facing certain death.

More shots exploded from the balcony, the staccato rhythm of gunfire shattering the night. At her sides, Lance and Jesus used their bodies to cover Olivia, turning toward the bar and following her orders.

Focused on where she’d seen the glint of metal seven landings up, Elena darted across the street, dodgingbullets while she moved with a speed that defied human comprehension. There was no time to care about witnesses.

“Get out of here,” Elena shouted, adrenaline surging through her veins.

But it was too late for their retreat. Like a swarm, vampires, all male by the scent, descended from the adjoining buildings, from the alley, from parked vans. Their faces twisted in feral hunger, their fangs bared.

They were nothing. Elena was a hurricane, an unstoppable force. She tore through them, cutting down anyone who lunged at her while she kept her eyes on the gunman. He was the threat she needed to neutralize.

As she ran so fast her feet barely touched the ground, searing pain ripped through her hip, a bullet lodging deep in her flesh. Paralysis surged through her limbs, an unexpected numbness threatening to consume her. But Elena was fueled by rage. Animated by the primal need to protect her own. She pushed forward, her only focus on getting up the building.

Leaping onto the second-floor balcony, her body didn’t respond to her demands to go faster. By the time she was on the fifth floor, all she had was her upper body strength to power herself up the last two floors.

When she landed on the balcony, body broken in a way that shouldn’t be possible, the gunman hesitated. Elena didn’t give him the chance to take another breath.

She was on him, her fangs sinking deep into the taut muscle of his throat, tearing through tendon and sinew. His scream was still rattling in his throat when Elena spit it out onto the concrete.

Panting, agony the only sensation in her lower body, Elena nearly choked on his anger. She grimaced at the bitter aftertaste on her tongue.

Around her, the city lights swirled and bowed, her vision blurring. She had to get back to her sons. She had to protect them. But her body was betraying her, the paralysis spreading like death. She stumbled, her vision going black at the edges. Her other senses failing her.

Clutching at her left hip where a bullet had shredded her pants, she was shocked to find the deep wound still bleeding. She should be healing. Shouldn’t feel like she was dying.

There was something on the projectile, she realized in cold horror. There was more than the harmless bullet she should have already expelled. Gnashing her teeth, she dug her fingers into the hole in her flesh and tore out the crushed metal with a groan.

A new pain raced up her spine before seizing her chest. Screaming into the night, anguish, like she’d only known once before, gripped her. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think when it dropped her to her knees. Forehead pressed to the balcony glass, she froze.

Below, on the blood-soaked pavement, was Robert. His pristine white clothes were covered in blood. Laying motionless, the attacking vampires had left him for dead. She felt his life force flicker, a slow, agonizing fade that mirrored the excruciating pain in her own body. It was like losing a limb, a piece of her soul ripping away.

And then the others, fighting to the end despite being outnumbered. Despite the fading that dismembered Elena’s soul. She wrapped her fingers around the handrail, dragging herself over the ledge and intending to leap.

Despite Elena’s direct orders to the contrary, her legs buckled, her muscles refusing to obey. She tumbled over the edge of the balcony, the world tilting on its axis as she fell.

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