Blood Rites: (Royal Blood #3) (16 page)

My gaze fell onto a scene of
horror and I almost fell to my knees. Lorelei was hanging upside
down from the ceiling, naked, cut, bleeding…pale… There was blood
everywhere and I let out an anguished wail.

Falling to my knees, I grasped her face,
unaware that her blood was seeping into the knees of my jeans, that
it was coating my hands. I held her face and her eyes stared back,
her big, brown eyes…and they were lifeless. Her spark, her life,
was gone.

No, no, no
…

With trembling hands, I checked for a pulse,
pressing against her neck. She was cold, her skin clammy to the
touch and sticky with blood.

There was nothing…nothing…

“Lorelei,” I moaned, tears streaming down my
face. “Please come back. Please…”

She was gone…gone…

“Please, Lorelei… I love you, come back… I
love you.” The words died in my throat.

She was gone…dead. He’d killed
her, he’d taken her from me.

Scrambling to my feet, I backed away.
Lorelei was dead. She was dead and I hadn’t told her that I was in
love with her.

Suddenly, I was overcome with unbearable
anger. It flared through my entire body, my grief ruling my head
and heart. Sykes had to pay. I would hang him, flay him and make
him suffer like the dog he was.

I ran back the way I came,
covered in her blood, my gun in my hand. I’d fucking kill him. He’d
murdered her, he’d taken the only woman I’d ever loved… I would
make him
suffer
.

Kicking open the door, the room was empty.
Sykes was gone.

I cursed out loud, fisting my hands into my
hair.

“Vaughn.”

I turned, drawing my gun and
came face to face with Hawkes. What a sight I must be. A crazed man
holding a gun in bloodstained hands.

“She’s gone…” I choked out. “He took
her…”

He looked me over and didn’t say anything.
He just reached out and took the gun from my shaking hand.

“We need to leave,” he said calmly.

I held out my hands and stared at her blood.
We had to leave her here and the thought horrified me, leaving her
so exposed, so violated, hanging there…waiting for the police to
find her. I had to leave her shell so I could avenge her
suffering.

Hawkes gestured for me to follow him. “I’m
with you, Sir,” he said. “We’ll get him.”

Nodding, I gathered the last of my strength
and stepped through the door, into the hall and simply left.

There was nothing else I could do.

Lorelei was dead.

In an instant, I’d become empty.

I hadn’t realized anything was
missing until she walked into my life and filled it. How could one
woman change me so much in such a short amount of time? I was no
longer Sebastian Vaughn, billionaire playboy. I wasn’t even close
anymore.

A week had passed since I’d
found Lorelei hanging in that room and things had just gotten
darker.

I stared at the screen of my
laptop and the diminishing figures in all my bank accounts. Gregory
Lansford will have financially ruined me, completely and totally,
by the end of the month. He knew I had something to do with his
daughter’s death, but had yet to find any evidence that I was to
blame and neither had the authorities. Hawkes had warned me right
at the beginning, but my heart had overruled everything—even my own
common sense.

I regarded what was left of my
kingdom and sighed. My business was dissolving, the Necromancers
and Royal Blood were already eating me alive and my job in the City
had been terminated, effective immediately. I had nothing left. I
was a shell.

None of it meant anything without
Lorelei.

Closing the laptop, I crossed
the room to the landscape painting on the far wall. It was a
covering for my safe and I pressed the button that was concealed on
the side of the frame. It swung open, revealing the sleek, black
piece of hardware set into the wall behind. Pressing in the code,
there was an electronic beep and the mechanism clicked.

Opening the door, I cleared the entire thing
out, shoving the contents haphazardly into a black leather bag.
Forged passports, about a million pounds in cash, the deeds to my
properties. I commanded Hawkes to gather anything of value in the
house and load it into one of the cars. He made sure to change the
plates to ones that were clean. All that was left to do was to
disappear before the police, or British Intelligence, rolled up
with guns blazing.

I sensed Hawkes hovering at the door and
glanced up.

“Everything is organized,” he said. “Nothing
remains to link you with your operation or—”

I held up my hand, not wanting to hear her
name. “Good.”

“Do you need anything else?”

“No.”

He shifted from foot to foot
and clasped his hands in front of him. I hadn’t thought about what
Hawkes would do next, I was hardly capable of anything myself at
that moment. Every breath was painful and every thought was of her.
She was in my dreams…and my nightmares.

“
You can either come with me, or
go your own way,” I said, my voice still sounding far away. “I
won’t hold it against you if you choose to disassociate yourself
from me.”

Hawkes shook his head. “You've always been
good to me, Vaughn, despite the things that we do. I’m coming with
you.”

“I have to start over from scratch,” I went
on. “Make a new name, become a darker version of myself. There is
no coming back from that.”

“Anything for Miss Lansford.”

I frowned.

“I saw the way she changed you,” he
explained. “I quite liked her.”

I shook my head, my heart twisting. If I
listened really carefully, I could almost hear her laughing at the
absurdity of Hawkes being fond of someone.

“We will leave within the hour, then,” I
declared, turning back to the bag.

“Where are we going, Sir?”

That was the billion dollar
question. I didn’t know, but as long as it was far away from here,
then anywhere was good. In time, I’d come back a stronger version
of myself and make Sykes
pay
. I’d bathe in his blood and laugh at his tormented soul.
I’d make him feel everything she did before she died.

Striding toward the door, I said, “Someplace
dark, Hawkes. Someplace dark.”

Twenty-One

Vaughn

I couldn’t even attend her funeral.

I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye.

I didn’t have a chance to mourn.

I left Hawkes to prepare for our departure
across the border into Europe and I’d ventured off alone to be a
sick, sad voyeur. I sat in my car, watching some unknown man lower
her casket into the ground. They couldn’t see me behind the tinted
windows, but I could see them. I could see them all.

I saw Gregory Lansford standing
at the front of his Lorelei's casket, his arm around his wife,
their black clad bodies overcome with grief as they buried their
daughter. I couldn’t cry, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t do
anything.

I didn’t hate Gregory Lansford. How could I?
He was only making good on his promise and protecting his little
girl. I didn’t hate him. I hated Sykes.

Her family and friends surrounded the somber
scene, heads bowed as what was left of the woman I loved was
lowered into the earth. I saw a lot of things, watching over that
scene, but the one thing I did notice were the men lingering in the
shadows. The men watching and waiting to see if the man who lead
her down that dark path would dare to show his face.

It didn’t matter who they were, if they were
Lansford’s men or Necromancers, it didn’t matter one bit. I could
end it all right now. Just step out of the car and they’d take me
out. A bullet to the head and my suffering would be over.

What was the use in that? Sykes would still
be out there and Lorelei would go unavenged.

I watched as handfuls of earth were thrown
into the grave and onto her casket.

Ashes to ashes.

I turned they keys in the ignition, bringing
the engine to life and drove away, leaving everything behind.

There was nothing else I could do.

Twenty-Two

Vaughn

Five years later…

The man that hung in front of
me had long stopped screaming. Not because he wanted to, but
because he was no longer able.

I hated when they thrashed.
Hanging by their ankles from the ceiling, they wiggled around like
a fish out of water and it made my work so much harder, so I fixed
their hands to a chain imbedded into the floor. This guy had been a
thrasher.

Nobody knew the real reason
they called me The Hangman, only Hawkes, and that was because he’d
been there when I’d found Lorelei hanging in that room, all those
years ago. Her name still scarred me deep, but it no longer
incapacitated me. I took my grief and I channeled it into something
a lot more productive.

The man’s breath was bubbling
in his chest, which meant he was on the way out. There was blood in
his lungs.
Fuck
. I knelt in front of him and regarded my handiwork, the
knife I’d used to cut him open dangling in my right hand and
covered in blood. Exposed muscle, sinew and bone. That ought to be
enough to get my point across.

Never fuck with The
Hangman
.

If you had of asked me five years ago if
this is where I might end up, I would’ve laughed. What a fucking
joke. Sykes had created the man I was by taking the love of my life
away from me. He took her before we even had the chance to be happy
together. He took everything, but I had it back—everything but
Lorelei.

What he didn’t know, was that
by doing business with The Hangman, he was doing business with the
man he destroyed. He helped build up all that he and Gregory
Lansford had taken from me, and then some. It would be a warm day
in hell when he was no longer useful to me. He would hang and bleed
the same way he’d made Lorelei suffer.

The door opened behind me and I closed my
eyes, thoroughly annoyed at being interrupted. The part where the
life slipped from their eyes was the best bit. Someone had taught
me that a long time ago.

“Vaughn?”

“What the fuck is it, Hawkes?” I snapped.
Hawkes, who was fucking loyal to the ends of my insanity.

“A protocol has been activated.”

I rose to my feet, blood dripping from the
tip of my knife and I turned to face him, suddenly curious.
“Really? Which one?”

“The Black Horse.”

A slow, lazy smile tugged at my lips. So,
Xavier Blood and his bit on the side had come out of hiding to
play. No doubt he was helping her go after Sykes and since he was
cast off from Royal Blood, wanted a little push in the right
direction. A warm feeling of satisfaction spread across my chest.
This was going to be very interesting and extremely profitable for
The Hangman.

“
Ready for some fun, Hawkes?” I
asked, setting the knife down on the table, my quarry hanging in
the middle of the room, forgotten.

Hawkes eyed me, his grin reflecting mine.
“Always.”

Nothing is ever what it seems…

Devil’s Blood (Royal Blood
#3
)

Expected Release:
TBA,
2015

We would embrace the darkness
together…
or
not at all.

Xavier Blood
is a man adrift. A
dangerous man without purpose is a lethal cocktail for
disaster.

Mercy Reid
has her revenge, but it’s not
what her heart desires.

After everything he’s been
through, X doesn’t want to know where he came from, let alone
who he was. Mercy has become his life, his anchor, his everything,
so why should it matter?

Mercy thinks X is delaying
the inevitable and pushes him to understand the thing he struggles
with the most—his identity—but it might be one push too far in the
wrong direction.

Who is Xavier Blood? Only
one man has the answer and it’s the man Mercy wants to meet the
least. The more X withdraws into his broken mind, the more
desperate she becomes to save him, even if it means coming face to
face with the man who tortured and conditioned her love to be a
cold hearted killer.

The Watchman
 has the answers, but are
they the ones she wants to hear?

Warning:

If you like long walks on
the beach and cuddling teddy bears, Devil’s Blood is NOT for
you.