Page 9 of Unbound

“You know better, Rosa. I’ll get a small team together.”

She makes eye contact with me. “You don’t have to come yourself. I know you have your own deal here. I just wanted to tell you I’d be gone when you get home.”

“Then it won’t be home. I’m coming, and there’s no point arguing.”

She turns it over in her mind, and I see the cogs moving. The way she battles against her instincts to accept help, the way her independence is so deeply part of her. Unsurprising, given the scum she calls family. She lost her parents and two siblings in a fire that was set by her grandfather and has a brother who was ordered to rape her and almost did. Where there should have been love, she endured abuse. Where there should have been support, she faced conflict. Rosa has had to fend for herself, and I know how hard it is for her to let that go.

“Okay,” she says eventually. “You can come. And I love you.”

She stands on tiptoes, throws her arms around my neck, and kisses the shit out of me. I’m still stunned by it when she leaves, telling me to call her when the plane is ready. I hear Aidan sniggering behind me.

“Enjoy the show, you asshole?”

“Very much, boss, very much. You could sell tickets. Wheels up in an hour … fuck, I always wanted to say that.”

Chapter 6

Luca

In the end, it’s a helicopter. This place is totally isolated, with no landing strip for miles. We touch down in a clearing in the woods and climb out into cool night air. The sky overhead is bright with stars, owls are calling, and in any other circumstances, this would be pretty. Now? Not so much. I can smell the carnage from here, and one look at Matteo and Stefano tells me they can too.

We’re all dressed in black, which is not unusual. My men are strapped with weapons—guns, ammo belts, knives—and all look pumped. Ready for a fight. Stefano has brought two more soldiers with him, and both Donatella and Rosa are just as eager. In fact, Rosa was the first out of the chopper, landing nimbly on her sneaker-clad feet with cat-like grace. It’s sometimes easy to forget what she is. That for the whole of her life, she has hunted my kind. She can be easy to underestimate, but I never do. She is ruthless. She is a predator who has been fighting monsters for decades.

She pauses, sniffs the air, her senses almost as good as ours. She makes eye contact with Donna, who nods. Her face is grim, her usually flowing blond hair hidden beneath a hood. Another one who is easy to underestimate, a killer hiding beneath her vacuous airhead exterior—Vampire Hunter Barbie.

They take off without a word, and I curse under my breath. I’d tell them to wait until we go in, clear the scene, check for danger, but what would be the point? They wouldn’t listen, and besides, this is their job. They were running into danger long before I came into their lives.

I glance at Matteo and he gets it. He bounds off to the side, cutting through a thick swathe of trees, running so fast he soon becomes a moonlit blur. He’ll get there before the women, make sure they won’t be ambushed. The rest of us move silently through the forest, picking up the cries and sobs of survivors as we get closer. The faint sounds of the wounded, the scents of death and blood and pain. Smoke and the flicker of flames licking the night sky.

We follow the trail, come to a small road. The town is called Goliath, and the population sign she mentioned is there, but it’s different now. The four hundred and eight has been crossed out and replaced with a zero. It’s written in blood, still fresh enough to be dripping. Stefano grunts beside me, which for him is a major speech. “Sick fucks,” he mutters. “I hate these assholes already.”

Vampires need blood to survive, but we don’t need to kill. To torture. To do what has been done here. That’s a whole different beast, and it’s one that gives us all a bad name. I have no qualms about murder; sometimes it’s the best course of action. I shed no tears for the loss of life when needed. But Stefano is right; this is sick. This is someone taking deep pleasure from their strength and their power. Even worse, to take out so many people, it’s got to be more than one; it’s got to be a group. Nothing worse than a nest of twisted vamp perverts all pushing each other to greater depravations. It’s not just the human cost; it’s the fact that they threaten us all by bringing attention to our existence. It was a group rampaging through Europe like this in the 1600s that led to the Bargain being signed, and the whole vampire world changing. Since then, the Coscas have done a pretty good job of policing our own kind, and when we haven’t, the Vecchissime Seers have always been there to clean up.

Except there should be four, and now there are only two—both here. One of them, the love of my life. A flash of fear makes me speed up, and I run into the town as fast as I can. I see her standing there, and I stop dead by Rosa’s side, staring at what she sees. Fuck me. It’s bad. Really bad.

A classic small town. Small main street, couple of coffee shops, a grocery store. Hair salon. A bar, the kind that spews drunks onto the sidewalk at the weekends and hosts at least one brawl a night. A church, now a blazing inferno, its wooden frame engulfed in flames and its bell tower about to tumble. And right in the middle of it all, the bodies. Men, women, children, stacked in a haphazard pile of torn throats, broken limbs, so much blood that it’s pooling around them on the ground. The stink is intense, the gore and flesh scattered around like so much dead meat. Some of them are naked, some wearing torn and stained clothing. One older woman is in a plaid housedress, her silver-haired head ripped almost completely from her shoulders. It’s hard to separate where one body ends and another begins, such is the tangle of corpses in front of us.

For a moment, we’re all too stunned to move, even me. I have seen much over the centuries. I have seen wars and massacres and carnage of every kind. But this? This once ordinary place completely torn asunder by the worst among us during a time of peace? This is horrific excess. It’s nighttime. There’s no way these people were all outside. No, they were dragged from their homes. Pulled from their fake security, brutalized, beaten, drained. Cast aside like garbage. I feel Rosa inside my mind: her horror, her fury, her sadness—too big for words. She looks at me, her eyes ablaze, her hands at her side. Sparks flying from them.

“Be calm, carissima,” I tell her. “We will fix this.”

“Fix this? We can’t fix this. We’re too fucking late. I’m too late!”

Nobody else can hear our mental exchange, but Donatella misses nothing. She sees the sparks shooting from Rosa’s hands, blinks once in surprise. “Come on,” she says, placing a hand on her friend’s shaking shoulders. “At least one of them is still here. I can smell it.” She wrinkles her pretty nose in disgust, and I realize she’s right. There, beneath the burning wood and the human blood and the lingering fear, a faint trace of vamp.

Rosa nods, pulls herself together. For once, I don’t feel afraid for her as she stalks off into battle. One vampire, who probably thinks he is the strongest being on earth. One vampire, who is about to get schooled in exactly how weak he is.

Matteo emerges from the other side of the body dump, a look of pure fury in his eyes. Matteo looks like a monster, but he’s made entirely of compassion. He has his own code—he only feeds on humans who deserve death and pain. Child molesters, rapists, the occasional politician. He once kept some human traffickers in a shipping container for over a year, leaving them without food, water, or light until they were at the point of death, then providing just enough for them to survive. On repeat, over and over, until he finally thought they’d learned their lesson. Then he arranged to have the whole container dumped in the ocean, with them screaming inside. He is not a man who is easily shocked, but the slaughter of these innocents has clearly shaken him.

He stares at one still form in particular. A child, maybe four or five. A little boy, still in his dinosaur PJs, clutching a teddy bear. Pale, drained, gashes on his neck. Matteo gulps, gathers himself, but I see the rage burning away in his eyes.

“Buildings are all clear, boss,” he says, his voice heavy with emotion. “A few survivors we can help. One vamp, blood drunk and passed out. Could’ve taken him, but I knew the ladies would want a chat.”

I nod. Damn right they will. I give orders to my men, directing them to find survivors and save any who seem viable. Vampire blood can work miracles for humans, bring them back from the verge of death like we did with Pietro when he took his swan dive from Rosa’s balcony. I still feel conflicted about that.

I also make it clear that this is to be a clean operation. No snacking on the job, no screwing around. Discipline is required. We save those who can be saved, get any info we can, then charm them, so they forget. No fucking clue how we could possibly hide this—it’s a massacre, too big to write off—but at least we can stop them bleating on about vampires to the cops or on the news.

We go our separate ways, tracking down any surviving humans. Not all of them are keepers, and I leave it to my men to decide. I’m not going to get torn up inside about it, and some people would be better off dead. Bringing someone back with vamp blood when half their skull is missing? Not a good idea. Mercy killing is the only option. Some, though, have made it through the whole ordeal in one part. Physically, at least. We find nine people hiding in their homes, including a whole family in a storm cellar, and gather them all up in the bar. The place is a wreck—glasses smashed, chairs broken, blood splattered on the walls and windows. The shaking survivors huddle together, wrapped in blankets, terrified.