“Lord Raphael,” she said, pitching her voice deliberately into a low, sensuous purr. “Sophia Micaela Angelina de Sandoval y Rojas, in loyal service to my Sire, Lucien Guiscard, Lord of the Canadian Territories.”
She looked up, meeting his gaze intentionally. “But between us, my lord,” she said. “Sophia will suffice.”
Raphael eyed her dispassionately, giving no indication that he considered her anything but a nuisance. The skinny human woman draped over his shoulder was another matter. She was studying Sophia with undisguised dislike, her right hand dipping briefly beneath her short leather jacket where . . . Meu Deus, the woman was carrying a weapon! Sophia shifted her gaze back to Raphael, who had clearly noticed the human’s reaction and would no doubt chastise her for it.
But instead, the vampire lord slid his hand off the chair arm and onto the woman’s leg in a clear signal that was not lost on Sophia. Nor was the smug look in the human’s green gaze or her tiny smile of victory. Bitch.
Sophia shifted her attention away from the human, meeting Raphael’s eyes and letting her own register a polite disappointment, even as she bowed her head in respect.
“Where is Lucien, Sophia?” Raphael asked, his voice a burr of velvet-sheathed power against her skin.
Sophia’s head came up, her gaze meeting his once again. “My lord, I had hoped to find him here.”
She saw Duncan shift slightly, heard the intake of breath from the vampires behind her, and knew with cold certainty that her Sire was not in Seattle. Or if he was, none of them knew about it.
Raphael continued to study her, his expression devoid of any emotion. Of them all, only he had shown no reaction to her response and the information it conveyed—not the tiniest bit, not surprise, not puzzlement, and certainly not alarm.
“Lucien has not entered my territory,” he said bluntly, clearly having no doubts and feeling no need to elaborate.
“Why would you expect to find him here?” Duncan asked from his position to Raphael’s left.
Abruptly aware she was still bent into the uncomfortable curtsey, Sophia rose to her full, modest height. She shifted her gaze from Duncan to Raphael and back again. How much should she tell them? Lucien’s letter had sent her here, but had he meant for her to confide to anyone the details of the Vancouver deaths?
In general, the vampire lords did not share information—or anything else—with each other. They were viciously territorial and quite openly hostile, at least in North America. It wasn’t unheard of for a stronger lord to push the territorial boundaries in an attempt to enrich his own power at the expense of another, and frequent disputes erupted, sometimes violently. Lucien’s Canadian territory was vast, but largely unsettled, both in terms of people and vampires, and rarely the object of any other lord’s ambition. This was a good thing for Lucien since, as he’d told her many times, he was a lover not a fighter. Sophia wasn’t aware of any open conflict between her Sire and Raphael, or any of the other North American lords, for that matter. But then, she’d been gone so long, and had paid so little attention.
An unwelcome thought sent tendrils of nausea twisting into her gut. Had Lucien known Raphael would be here when he’d sent her on this errand? Or if not known, had he at least suspected it? Could there be a connection between the Vancouver deaths and whatever business had drawn the Western vampire lord away from Malibu and up to this concrete and steel compound?
Sophia sighed and turned her unwilling gaze on Raphael, who blinked lazily, letting his eyelids drop slowly over the silvery sheen of power. She almost laughed. What was she thinking? He didn’t need to ask for the information he wanted; he could rip her mind open like a tin can and simply take it.
“Lucien summoned me home several days ago,” she said bitterly. “It was our first contact in years.” She shook her head. “Decades,” she amended. “I’ve been living in Brazil. The lords down there are lax in their enforcement, to say the least. As long as a vampire observes a few basic rules, they don’t care who sired you or whom you call master.”
“How did Lucien contact you?” Duncan asked.
Sophia glanced at Raphael before answering, but the vampire lord seemed content to let his lieutenant take the lead. “Directly,” she said simply. “He spoke in my mind just as I woke for the evening. He gave me no reason, simply summoned me home to him with an indication of urgency.”
“Do you know why?”
Sophia shook her head, letting some of her frustration show. “No,” she admitted. “I only arrived in Vancouver yesterday evening. I went straight to his main estate above the city, expecting to find him waiting, but he wasn’t there. And no one I spoke with knows where he is.”
“What made you think you’d find him here in Seattle, then?”
“A letter. He left me a letter with details of certain recent and very troubling events. And then he told me to come here.”
“What events?” Raphael spoke at last, the question a whiplash of power demanding an answer.
Sophia drew a deep breath and forged ahead. Lucien had left this matter to her. She had only her instincts to guide her, and those instincts were telling her to come clean with what she knew. Any other path would only lead to more killing.
“Death, my lord,” she said bluntly. “Three vampires in Vancouver have been destroyed. I do not know how or by whose hand, but the killers may now be in your territory, and . . . I believe Lucien is somehow at the heart of this.”
Chapter Eleven
Thinking of his own dead, Raphael felt a renewed surge of rage. Next to him, Cyn shifted, resting her fingers against the back of his neck.
“Who died?” he demanded of Sophia.
He saw her blink in reaction as his anger washed outward, felt her power push back briefly. She had surprising strength for one of Lucien’s children. Perhaps that was why she’d been the one Lucien had called when he got into trouble over his head.
“I have their images, my lord,” she said with admirable calm. “And their names, although I’ve never met them.”
“Who?” Raphael insisted.
“Giselle,” she said softly.
Wei Chen gasped audibly when she said the name. Sophia shot him a quick glance over her shoulder before turning back to Raphael. “Along with Damon and Benjamin,” she said. “It is my understanding the three lived together and died on the same night.”
“My lord,” Wei Chen started to say, but Raphael raised his hand for silence. Giselle wasn’t one of his, but he’d known her. She was old and canny, but with very little power. And because of that, she’d chosen to live in Vancouver after Lucien and Raphael had matched the boundaries of their two territories to the international border between the U.S. and Canada. She’d wanted a quiet life and had trusted the easygoing Lucien to give her that. Unwisely, it turned out.
“How do you know these three are dead?” Raphael asked Sophia.
“Their names were in Lucien’s letter, along with a photograph. I have both of those with me, my lord, if you’d like to see them.”
Raphael signaled Duncan who stepped forward to accept a folded envelope Sophia drew out of her coat pocket. Duncan opened the letter slowly, shaking out the photograph and studying it carefully before handing both photo and letter to Raphael.
Raphael only glanced at the photograph, handing it off to Cyn almost immediately. He turned his attention instead to Lucien’s letter. If he’d had any doubts before about what Sophia had told him, he had them no longer. The handwriting was Lucien’s, but more than that, the vampire lord’s power was imbued in the parchment itself, the regret and sadness he’d experienced while writing it was as vivid as the tear drop staining the fine linen paper. But rather than sympathy, Raphael was revolted by the words of his fellow vampire lord.
Lucien and Raphael were nearly the same age, but the other vampire had set himself up in America decades before Raphael arrived in the New World. At first, Lucien had confined himself to the eastern provinces of what would become Canada. When he decided to expand westward, he and Raphael had easily agreed on a territorial line, moving it as events warranted and the humans expanded their settlements. Lucien had always been a poor protector of his people and a lax guardian of his territory, but he’d been just powerful enough to hold onto it, especially given the lack of any serious takeover bids.
But the current situation was a new low, even for Lucien. His people were dead, murdered as they slept, and he was gone, leaving nothing but an urgent summons to Sophia and this pathetic letter in which Lucien confessed his own complicity in leading the killers right to Giselle’s door.
And now, the animals who’d murdered Giselle and her lovers clearly had moved southward into Raphael’s territory to continue their killing spree. Was it coincidence that Lucien had directed Sophia to follow in their wake? That his letter connected the two sets of murders? Raphael didn’t believe in coincidence, especially not when it came wrapped in Lucien’s words of self-pity.
But Raphael was not Lucien. He would not cower in hiding while his people died. He would find these killers and eliminate the threat once and for all.
And after that . . . perhaps it was time to find a new lord for the Canadian Territories.
* * * *
Sophia stood silently, watching Raphael read Lucien’s letter. She knew how incriminating it was, knew her own anger upon reading it. She could only imagine Raphael’s rage. It was his vampires whom Lucien had put at risk by hiding instead of dealing with the tragedy he created.
She jumped when Raphael suddenly barked out an order.
“Wei Chen,” he said. “Have someone show Sophia to the guest quarters.”
“But my lord—” Sophia’s protest died on her lips when the powerful lord turned his black gaze upon her. She felt her heartbeat speed up, felt her own power trying to rise to the surface as every defensive instinct she possessed screamed to the fore all at once. She squelched the reaction brutally, nearly passing out with the effort, but knowing she would be dead in seconds if Raphael willed it. And he was in a temper. She didn’t need to know him to see that. His rage was like a separate entity in the room, a creature of heat and fury.
