Page 5 of Property of Scar

Church finally settles because Raze flips the switch and stops looking like a man wrapped up in his woman. One second, he’s got Roxy against his side, the next he’s the prez again. He leans forward, and the whole room falls into line around him without a single word needing to be said.

Wreck reports.

Flux reports.

Ruckus lays out numbers from the fight ring that would make a banker’s hands shake. The legitimate businesses are performing exactly as they should. The illegitimate ones are performing better. Everything is operating the way an empire operates when the people running it have had centuries to learn from their mistakes.

Then the other thing…

Rogue vampires.

Humans attacked.

Territory compromised.

I listen to Flux with my jaw locked tight, staring straight ahead while I pick through every detail he drops in the same way I study a fighter before I tear him apart. Looking for the crack, the mistake, the one piece that makes the rest of the bullshit make sense.

“This isn’t normal vampire behavior,” I say when Flux finishes. “Someone’s either genuinely stupid, or they’re sending a message.”

The room takes that in quietly.

“Want backup?” Rhett raises a hand from the back. “I’m excellent at tracking things that bleed.”

“You’re excellent at making things bleed,” Bennett says. “There’s a difference.”

“Tomato, to-mah-to.”

I turn to look at them slowly. My eyes have gone the color of old blood, and the smile I’m not wearing is somehow louder than the glare. “The next interruption comes with fangs. Choose wisely.”

Both prospects’ eyes locate the floor with sudden, intense interest.

Raze nods. “Find them. End them. I don’t want cops or hunters near our territory.”

Church breaks apart the same way it always does, brothers peeling off and moving slowly to get back to running a kingdom the rest of the world isn’t even supposed to know exists.

I’m already working the problem over in my head before half of them leave the room… frenzied feeding, sloppy kills, and far too much blood left behind. That kind of mess usually comes with panic, ego, or a vampire too far gone to give a shit who notices.

Behind me, the prospects are handed cleanup duty down in the pit, and Bennett sounds about one bad second away from regretting every life choice that brought him here. “I’m an angel of the Lord. I shouldn’t be mopping blood.”

“Should’ve thought of that before you fell in with bikers,” Rhett tells him.

“I didn’t fall. This is a mission.”

“A mission. Right. That’s why you have a cut with your name on it.”

“Move!” I don’t look up. I don’t need to. And they scatter.

The club moves around me, loud and sharp as a blade, everyone slipping back into their part like this life was carved into them at birth. I head out into the night with blood drying across my knuckles and a heaviness under my skin that has nothing to do with rogue vampires and everything to do with the feeling that something bigger has started moving.

So many centuries, and trouble still finds me the same way it always has.

I’ve never once been one to back down from it.

And I’m not about to start now.

Chapter Two

CALYPSO