“Well?” she demanded. “I no drive. Who takes me.”
“Madam, would you not prefer to rest—”
“Your body rest when dead. Who.”
“We do have an hour,” Ehric hedged.
As Assail glared at the other vampire, the little old lady hitched her purse up on her forearm and nodded. “So he will take me.”
Assail met Sola’s grandmother’s gaze directly and dropped his tone a register just so that the line drawn would be respected. “I pay. Are we clear—you are not to spend a cent.”
She opened her mouth as if to argue, but she was headstrong—not foolish. “Then I do the darning.”
“Our clothes are in sufficient shape—”
Ehric cleared his throat. “Actually, I have a couple of loose buttons. And the Velcro strip on his flak jacket is—”
Assail looked over his shoulder and bared his fangs at the idiot—out of eyesight of Sola’s grandmother, of course.
Remarshaling his expression, he turned back around and—
Knew he’d lost. The grandmother had one of those brows cocked, her dark eyes as steady as any foe’s he’d ever faced.
Assail shook his head. “I cannot believe I’m negotiating with you.”
“And you agree to terms.”
“Madam—”
“Then it is settled.”
Assail threw up his hands. “Fine. You have forty-five minutes. That is all.”
“We be back in thirty.”
At that, she turned and headed for the door. In her diminutive wake, the three vampires played ocular Ping-Pong.
“Go,” Assail gritted out. “Both of you.”
The cousins stalked for the garage door—but they didn’t make it. Sola’s grandmother wheeled around and put her hands on her hips.
“Where is your crucifix?”
Assail shook himself. “I beg your pardon?”
“Are you no Catholic?”
My dear sweet woman, we are not human, he thought.
“No, I fear not.”
Laser-beam eyes locked on him. Ehric. Ehric’s brother. “We change this. It is God’s will.”
And out she went, marching through the mudroom, ripping open the door, and disappearing into the garage.
As that heavy steel barrier closed automatically, all Assail could do was blink.
The other two were equally poleaxed. In their world, dominion was established through force and manipulation by individuals of the male persuasion. Position was earned or lost by contests of will that were often bloody and resulted in a body count.
When one came from that orientation, one most certainly did not expect to be castrated in one’s own galley by a woman who didn’t even have a knife. And would likely have to get up on a stepladder to remove said anatomy.
“Don’t just stand there,” he snapped. “She’s liable to drive herself.”
TEN
“…Only one of them is a game changer.”
As the running shower continued on like nothing was doing, the pleasant sound of falling water reverberated through the locker room—and Wrath’s head remained locked in its torqued-back position: With a dagger at his jugular, and a heavy hand on the braid that ran down his back, he was going nowhere.
Gritting his teeth, he didn’t know whether to be impressed or to encourage that blade to head home.
But he was not suicidal. “What are they, Payne,” he gritted out.
The female’s voice was a low growl right in his ear. “We both know that you can get out of this if you choose to. In the blink of an eye, you can overpower me—you more than proved it back in the gym.”
“And the second?”
“If I got to you once, I can do it again. And maybe next time I won’t waste my breath trying to prove the fact that I’m your equal.”
“I am the King, you realize.”
“And I’m the daughter of a deity, motherfucker.”
With that, she released him and stepped back.
Covering his genitals with his hands, he turned to face her. He’d never seen what Payne looked like, but he’d been told that she was built along the lines of her brother, tall and powerful. Apparently, she had the same jet-black hair and those pale, icy eyes, too—and the intelligence was something he could judge for himself.
She also, evidently, had the balls.
“I can kill you,” she said, grimly. “Anytime I want. And I don’t need a conventional weapon, either. You are stronger, yes—I give you that. But there are things I am capable of that you can’t imagine.”
“Then why didn’t you use them.”
“Because I don’t want to put you in a grave. You are needed here. You are critical for the race.”
Goddamn throne. “So what you’re saying is that you would have let yourself die back in the gym?”