Page 76 of Dark Reign of Forever

Esteban still didn’t acknowledge the humans. “But even that doesn’t explain you, does it? You weren’t here last night, and you would have had to face the sun itself to come here during the day.” He tilted his head in thought. “So perhaps you compelled these mortals to bring you? That is an impressive feat for one so young. How do you have such power?”

Dominique tested the chains again. Hard. They held. “Do you truly expect me to answer your questions while you keep me shackled?” The sneer was tepid, uncertain. A gambit. Dominique, the vampire, was still MIA. The poor fool was running blind.

“I’m extending you a courtesy by asking. If you weren’t so intriguing, I would have been rid of you by now.” For another second, he remained calm. Then, his hand flashed out in a blur and grabbed a startled Dominique by the neck. “Tell me who sired you, or I will rip your baby brain to shreds.”

Dominique wheezed. His eyes bugged.

“Tell me!”

“Kambyses,” Jackson called, holding the bars in a death-defying grip. No matter what, he had to keep Esteban out of Dominique’s muddled human head and learning just how vulnerable he was right now. “Kambyses sired him.”

For the first time, Jackson found himself the target of Esteban’s full attention. Eyes like wads of tar pressed into a ghost-pale face bore into him, and brutal fangs appeared in an otherwise refined, slack-jawed mouth. Dominique’s current human self must be shitting himself right about now. Jackson wasn’t far behind.Keep it together, Striker. You don’t spin this right, no one will ever find your body.

“You have heard of Kambyses?” Jackson prompted. Esteban regarded him as if he were a dog using human speech. “The most powerful of you all? He had gifts nobody even imagined.”

Leaving Dominique to gasp and wheeze, Esteban materialized before Jackson in a silent blur. Only the bars separated them. With the light behind him, Esteban’s face was in shadows again, but the vampire’s attention settled on Jackson like a physical weight. He took two small steps back.

“You,” Esteban whispered. “I know you.”

“I doubt that.”

“Yes. Iknowyou.” The vampire closed his hands around the bars where Jackson’s had just been. He was a full head shorter, but broad shouldered and powerful. “You were there the morning Santos died.”

Jackson backed up farther. Every hair on his body stood on end. What the fuck was happening here?

“I know you…hunter,” Esteban said. He keyed the lock to Jackson’s cell and cornered him as a tiger cornered prey. A constant, inhuman growl vibrated in the surrounding air. Jackson fought to raise his anger, the fury that could mask his fear. He took another step back and bumped into solid rock.

“Santos was my oldest child. It was you and…your brother who came for him, wasn’t it?” His cool breath brushed Jackson’s face. “I was close, but still too far. I saw you come for him through his eyes. I felt the blow that took his life.” He reached out to scrape a line across Jackson’s larynx with a cold, hard fingernail. The growl dropped to a whisper. “But before that…before that, I shared his joy at tearing your brother’s limbs and hearing the wet crack of his bones.”

Jackson shuddered.

Esteban leaned closer, bracing one hand against the rough-hewn wall. “His skull smashed like a ripe melon.” He illustrated by flicking apart his fingers in front of Jackson’s face. “Pop.”

Just like that, Jackson’s burgeoning fear evaporated. The sire of his brother’s killer, the reason this Santos was conscious enough to attack them, the ultimate catalyst for every nightmare that haunted Jackson since then—thatmonster stood right in front of him and prepared to destroy him too.

And there wasn’t a single thing Jackson could do to stop it. He wouldn’t even try.

Staring down into the black eyes, he gathered all the grief and rage that defined him into two words. “Fuck you.”

Esteban grabbed Jackson by the scruff and yanked his face down to his own. “Is this why you’re here? To finish me? Did you drag in that pitiful young one to bait me? Trick me? Coerce me? You are nothing, hunter.Nothing!Nothing but what I say you are.” Compulsion resonated in the snarling voice. “And I say that you are mine to do with as I please. You are mine to grovel at my feet and to obey my every command for as long as I wish it. For. The. Rest. Of. Your. Miserable. Life.”

Esteban released him with a shove that sent him smacking into the rock wall so hard he saw stars. The command vibrated in Jackson’s bones—and dissipated. It was no match for the Lord of Night’s earlier compulsion.

But his life depended on him making Esteban believe otherwise.

“As you wish,” he said, doing everything in his power to sound calm and entranced despite his churning insides.

“I wish,” Esteban reiterated with a dark growl. Then he surveyed the others in the cell with them. Rao and Campbell sat propped against a wall, both of them handcuffed, the latter looking dazed and clammy, his left leg soaked in blood. Jackson held his breath. His imagination served up several horrifying possible fates for them, including many Esteban might order him to execute.

To his unending relief, Esteban’s interest in the officers appeared limited to being rid of them with the least amount of trouble. He hauled them to their feet and quickly drove his teeth into each neck. If he was surprised by what he didn’t find in their heads—Dominique had erased himself from their memories as he compelled them—he didn’t show it. Esteban poured his own blood into Campbell’s wound, healing it. Shortly, the man regained his footing and moved with only a slight limp. Then, while breaking their cuffs with his fingers, Esteban put a new compulsion on them. “You are released from your duties here. Go home, clean up, burn your clothes. Nothing special happened today. You were never here. Let no one tell you otherwise. Go.”

Without so much as a backward glance, they walked into the tunnel leading to the cavern and disappeared.

Only then did Jackson realize how much he was counting on Rao’s assertions about someone coming to look for two missing officers. Now, no one would. Rao and Campbell wouldn’t even remember him.

He was on his own.

Dominique had witnessed all this with a stillness that reeked of shock. He watched Esteban return as though watching a bear charging at him.

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