Taken: A Vampire Syndicate Romance, page 1
Taken
A Vampire Syndicate Romance
Rebecca Rivard
Wild Hearts Press
Contents
The Vampire Syndicate Romance Series
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Epilogue 1
Epilogue 2
Also by Rebecca Rivard
About Rebecca Rivard
The Vampire Syndicate Romance Series
“A must-read series!” - Paranormal Romance Guild
They call us the Dark Angels: Gabriel, Zaquiel and Rafael.
We’re brothers. Princes. Billionaires.
The richer-than-sin heirs to one of the world’s most powerful vampire Syndicates.
But we’re not vampires, we’re dhampirs. Half-human, half-vampire, with panty-melting good looks.
The media love us.
Vampires hate us.
And Slayers, Inc. will do anything to take us down.
Pursued (Gabriel)
Craved (Rafael)
Taken (Zaquiel)
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1
RIDLEY
Zaq Kral didn’t look like a monster.
He looked like an angel in a T-shirt and jeans. A beautiful, exhausted angel.
He sprawled bonelessly on a plastic chair in Charles de Gaulle Airport, long legs stretched in front of him, in wrinkled clothes that looked like they’d been washed in a sink and hung out to dry. Sun-streaked brown hair curled over his ears, and dark stubble covered his lower face. Beneath his sunglasses, his eyes were closed.
The fatigue was genuine. He’d just spent six weeks working with refugees in North Africa, most of that underground as bombs rained down on the city. He’d been everywhere—transporting injured humans, aiding the doctors and nurses, even burying the dead. The man apparently didn’t sleep.
A real live angel come down to earth, if you believed his press.
I knew better.
Zaq Kral was no angel. He was a monster in a pretty package, a rich and powerful vampire syndicate prince.
Yeah, he wasn’t actually a vampire. He was a dhampir—half-human, half-vampire. But he was the son of a ruthless syndicate primus. Peel away the do-gooder veneer and Zaq Kral was just another hard-hearted, entitled blood-sucker.
I sank onto a chair two seats down, setting my backpack between us. The sunlit atrium was packed with passengers waiting for the flight to New York. French mingled with English and a handful of other languages.
I flicked a look at Zaq from beneath my own sunglasses. No visible weapons, but that didn't mean he wasn’t carrying a blade. A dominant dhampir like him could compel a human guard to look the other way.
The waiting area grew more crowded, but Zaq remained in his own bubble. The facial scruff and worn-out, wrinkled clothes were the perfect camouflage. The humans didn’t seem to realize he was one of the famous Kral brothers, the vampire world’s heartthrobs.
Still, no one but me took a seat within three yards of him. Humans have a sixth sense about these things, an instinct that warns them a predator is nearby.
The hair on my nape stirred. Somehow, I knew it was Zaq. Looking at me.
I chanced a glance. He eyed me from beneath half-open lids.
My heart jittered.
I gave him a fake-shy smile and reminded myself to breathe.
He took in my purple Baltimore Ravens hoodie and frumpy brown wig, lingering on my sunglasses.
I fought the urge to squirm. Should I take them off? But the early morning sunlight pouring through the atrium’s windows hurt my eyes. Even some of the humans wore dark glasses.
And if his father’s people hacked into De Gaulle’s security feed, the wig and sunglasses would prevent them from getting a clear image of me.
Zaq nodded back, clearly deciding I wasn’t a threat. He slumped deeper in the chair and closed his eyes again.
An incoming flight arrived and deboarded. The chatter in the lounge grew louder. Zaq’s flight would begin boarding soon.
Almost showtime.
I touched the switchblade in my hoodie pocket for luck—the blade that security had been bribed to ignore—and loosened my muscles.
Jaw, neck, shoulders, fingers.
Tension distracted you. It wasted energy, added to your mental strain. When you were tense, you made mistakes.
And mistakes could get you killed.
Étan, the Tremblay Syndicate lieutenant, took a seat a couple of rows away. He’d glamoured his features, but kept his flashy blond hair and Bulgari sunglasses.
My tension ratcheted up like a screw had been turned at the base of my spine.
On a scale of one to ten, Étan had a creepoid factor of eleven. If it were up to me, he wouldn’t be part of this op. Since when did Slayers, Inc. work with one vampire syndicate to take out members of another syndicate?
But it wasn’t my job to understand.
I was a slayer. When I signed on for an op, I carried it out.
The end result was what mattered: One less monster in the world.
Zaq’s flight was announced. Passengers started lining up at the gate. He rose and stretched, long and loose-limbed. The gray T-shirt spread across impressive pecs. He picked up his backpack and slung it over a shoulder.
I grabbed my own backpack and sank deeper into my current persona: Mary Kay Simmonds, a shy, nervy woman in her mid-thirties, a decade older than my actual age.
Zaq took his place at the back of the line.
I edged up next to him. “I hope the flight’s on time.” I let my voice go up on the end so it came out like a question.
“Looks like it is.” His smile was reassuring. He’d taken Mary Kay’s number now.
Étan got into line behind me.
“Good.” I shifted from one foot to the other, sent a look over my shoulder. “I’m—” I halted, shook my head.
“What?” Zaq cocked a brow and gave me his full attention, which made his lean angel face even more attractive.
“Nothing. It’s just, I need to get on that flight.” I put a catch in my voice.
“Don’t worry. You will.”
I nibbled my lower lip. “Could you do me a favor? Pretend you know me?”
Zaq’s weariness sloughed away. “Is something wrong?”
I shook my head, fast and jerky, like a terrified rabbit. “Just pretend you know me. Please?” I sent another anxious look over my shoulder.
Blaise, a Paris Syndicate soldier, stepped off the escalator and zeroed in on me. Tall and broad-shouldered, he had dark hair, a vampire’s impossibly beautiful face and a boxer’s fists.
Zaq’s gaze followed mine. His brow creased. “Sure, okay.”
“Thank you,” I whispered.
Blaise cut through the crowd toward me. I gave a frightened squeak and hugged the backpack to my stomach. Everything depended on Zaq believing I was in danger. I was counting on him not being able to resist playing the hero in this little scene.
On cue, Zaq caught my hand. “Hey, it’s okay.” Out of the side of his mouth, he asked, “What the fuck’s going on?”
Blaise pushed into the line beside me. Nobody objected. In fact, the people behind us edged back a few feet.
The big vampire crowded me with his body. “Where do you think you’re going?” he asked in French. Meaty fingers clamped around my arm, digging into the soft flesh.
Prick. He knew I couldn’t fight back.
I shrank from, hugging the backpack like a pathetic shield. “Please. I want out.”
Zaq looked from me to Blaise.
“Sorry, little girl,” Blaise said in English. “You don’t get to decide when you leave. I do.” He dragged me away from Zaq and threw my backpack to the floor.
“Let her go.” Taking off his sunglasses, Zaq tucked them into his T-shirt pocket and planted himself in front of Blaise. He was two inches shorter and thirty pounds thinner than Blaise, but he radiated the calm self-possession of a man who knew how to fight.
Not that we intended to give him the chance.
Blaise flashed his fangs. “She’s mine. This is not your business.”
The atrium went as silent as a cemetery at midnight. The nearest humans backed away.
Zaq held up his hands, palms out. “Chill. Out.” His voice was don’t-mess-with-me mean. “Let her go. Find yourself another thrall.”
Blaise sh
oved him out of the way and hustled me toward the escalator.
“Help me,” I mouthed at Zaq over my shoulder.
He started after us, but Étan cut in front of him, preventing him from following too quickly. “Pardon, m’sieur,” he muttered.
Blaise and I reached the escalator. I shot Zaq a panicky look.
Zaq pushed past Étan and kept coming.
Satisfied, I faced forward. Everything was going as planned.
The escalator was too crowded for Zaq to catch up with us before we reached the ground floor. Blaise and I ducked into a side hall where the security cams had been disabled. A couple of security guards had been paid a fortune to wait five minutes before investigating.
Outside, another Paris soldier waited in an anonymous white van.
I palmed a syringe of a fast-acting tranquilizer. We’d have to move quickly. The dose would knock out a human for half a day, but a dhampir like Zaq would shake off the effects in fifteen minutes, maybe even ten. I wanted to spend as little time as possible in the van with an awake and pissed-off Zaq.
Zaq caught up with us near the exit. He grabbed Blaise’s arm and jerked him away from me. “I said, ‘Let her go.’”
I whipped around Blaise and jabbed the syringe into Zaq’s upper arm.
“What the—?” His gaze locked with mine.
Time stopped. I’d known his eyes were green, but their intensity stunned me, rendered me immobile—a bright, leaf-green touched with gold, like a jaguar I’d once stumbled upon in a South American rainforest.
For an endless moment, I stared into them, captured as surely as if he’d laid hands on me.
Étan appeared and time restarted. I stepped back, giving Étan room. With superhuman speed, he dragged Zaq’s hands behind his back and secured them with zip-tie handcuffs.
Zaq lashed out with his foot, catching Blaise in the thigh. Blaise swore and slammed a big fist into Zaq’s solar plexus.
Zaq’s breath whooshed out. He bent over, sucking in oxygen—and spun around, still bent at the waist, and kicked out at Étan, a heel shot to the shin.
Étan hissed. “Enculé.” Motherfucker.
Damn. Had I miscalculated the dose?
I moved forward to help, even though I kind of enjoyed seeing two vampires get their asses kicked by a man with his hands bound behind his back.
Zaq’s eyes rolled up in his head. He slumped forward into my arms.
I got a noseful of his scent.
Dark, male, and somehow right.
I gulped and shoved him at Étan. Blaise opened the door and Étan dragged Zaq outside. The Paris soldier stood next to the van, its back door open. He tossed the keys to Blaise and went inside the terminal. He’d clean up any loose ends, including retrieving my and Zaq’s backpacks, then return to Paris by train.
Étan heaved Zaq into the van. Zaq’s head bounced off the metal floor. He lay where he’d fallen in an awkward heap.
I jumped into the van after him.
Étan grabbed the door handle and eyed Zaq. “You sure you can handle him?”
Typical vampire arrogance. I almost rolled my eyes. Instead, I wordlessly pulled out my knife and released the blade.
Étan grunted and shut the van door. He got into the front, and Blaise accelerated around the terminal and headed out of the airport.
I hunkered down on the metal floor near Zaq. Close, but not too close.
I was shaken, damn it. I couldn’t risk smelling his dark, too-right scent again.
Zaq Kral was a monster.
And I was a monster hunter.
He could never be right.
2
ZAQ
I came back to consciousness with a jolt. I was sprawled face down on a dirty metal floor, arms secured painfully behind my back.
My lungs seized. For a few seconds I was back in Syria, where relief workers were always at risk of being captured.
The floor was moving. No, we were moving. I was in the back of a van, or maybe a closed truck.
It came back to me then. The sad-faced woman in the oversized Ravens hoodie. The syringe. The vampires.
I’d survived a bombed-out city only to be kidnapped in fucking Paris? Served me right for traveling without a bodyguard. Father had warned me I was asking for trouble, but I’d always been able to blend in with humans, even though I sucked at producing a normal, feature-changing glamour. Instead, I somehow dimmed the slight radiance that marked me as a dhampir and threw up a barrier that made the viewer’s gaze slide past me.
Snick, snick. “You’re awake.”
I turned my head. The woman from the airport was crouched on the floor of the van, extending and retracting a switchblade. She eyed me through dark glasses like she was sizing up dinner with me as the main course.
So much for the damsel-in-distress act.
That’s what you get for playing hero, Zaq.
She extended and retracted the switchblade again. Snick, snick.
My nape tightened. The blade was long and silver, the kind you used to stake a vampire—or a dhampir.
I drew my legs beneath me and sat up. The inside of the van swooped around me, an aftereffect of whatever they’d injected me with.
My stomach heaved. Bile burned my throat. I braced my feet on the floor and concentrated on not throwing up.
Snick, snick.
I gave my aching head a shake to clear it. Not a good idea. A bright bolt of pain lanced through my brain. I gritted my teeth and scooted backward until my shoulders were against the wall, my bound hands pressed into the small of my back.
The two vampires were in the front, the big dark-haired man at the wheel and the lean blond on the phone.
I gave the woman what I hoped was a death’s-head glare, but was probably a helluvalot more wimpy, given that I had trouble focusing my eyes. “What the fuck’s going on?”
“You’ll see.”
I growled. “That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’ll get.”
The van rounded a curve too fast. Brakes squealed. I braced my feet against the floor so I wouldn’t be thrown back onto my face.
My companion easily kept her balance, even crouched on the floor as she was. The too-big hoodie hid her upper body, but her legs were long and strong and supple. The legs of a dancer—or a black belt.
The heavy dark hair had fooled me into thinking she was older, but now I could see it was probably a wig. The color didn’t fit her roses-and-cream complexion. Her real hair must be lighter—blond or even red.
And she was younger than I’d first thought—around my own age, twenty-seven.
Behind my back, I twisted my wrists, trying to work them out of the plastic cuffs. The blond asshole had cinched them good and tight.
“Who are you with? The Paris Syndicate?” It didn’t make sense, because Paris was one of my father’s allies, and besides, she had an American accent, but it was the only explanation my foggy brain could come up with.
A shake of her head.
I strained at the cuffs again, this time trying to break them apart. “Not the Paris Syndicate, then,” I said to distract her. “The Fuentes?”
The Fuentes Syndicate had started in Chile, then crept north, first into Central America, then Mexico. Now it was trying to expand into the United States, including the Kral Syndicate territory on the East Coast.
She didn’t bother to respond, just stared at me, playing with that damn switchblade.
Snick, snick.
I felt in my back pocket for my phone. My last call had been to my older brother Gabriel in New York. If I pressed Send, he’d guess something was wrong when he answered and heard me speaking to a strange woman.
“I have it.” Snick, snick.
