Tane absently stroked the hilt of his dagger. “When we found the cabin empty, Jagr assumed you were in trouble. Since your clueless crew seemed incapable of forming a singular coherent thought, I agreed to come in search of you.”
Not surprising. Unlike purebloods who were born from full Weres, the curs were humans who had been bitten and transformed into werewolves. Hess and the other curs were excellent killers. Which was why he kept them as guards. Using their brains, however…well, he did the thinking for them. It solved any number of problems.
“So what happened to our captors?”
“We’ve been gaining on you over the past half hour.” Tane shrugged. “They obviously preferred escape over keeping their hostages.”
“You never caught sight of them?”
“No. A cur escaped through a side tunnel a mile back, and the demon simply disappeared.” Frustration flashed through the honey eyes. Salvatore could sympathize. He was anxious for a bit of blood and violence himself. “There’re only a handful of demons capable of vanishing into thin air.”
“The gargoyle thinks it’s a jinn mongrel.”
“Hey, the gargoyle has a name.” Stepping from behind Salvatore, Levet planted his hands on his hips. “And I do not think, I know.”
Tane narrowed his eyes. “How can you be certain?”
“I had a slight misunderstanding with a jinn a few centuries ago. He zapped off one of my wings. It took years to grow back.”
Tane was supremely unimpressed. “And that’s somehow relevant?”
“Before the demon dropped me and did her disappearing act, she left a little present.” Turning around, Levet revealed the perfectly shaped handprint that had been branded onto his butt. Salvtore’s laughter echoed through the tunnel, and the gargoyle turned to stab him with a wounded glare. “It is not amusing.”
“That still doesn’t prove it was a jinn,” Tane pointed out, his own lips twitching with amusement.
“Being struck by lightning is not a sensation you easily forget.”
Tane instinctively glanced over his shoulder. No demon in his right mind wanted to cross paths with a jinn.
“How do you know it isn’t a full jinn?”
Levet grimaced. “I am still alive.”
The vampire turned to Salvatore. “The Commission must be warned.”
“I agree.”
“This is Were business. It’s your duty.”
“I can’t lose the trail of the cur,” Salvatore smoothly pointed out. Ah. There was nothing better than getting the upper hand with a leech. “He’s proven a danger to more than just Weres. I’m sure the Commission would agree that my duty is to put an end to the traitors.”
A blast of frigid air filled the tunnel. Salvatore smiled, releasing his own energy to counter the chill with a prickling heat.
The curs stirred uneasily, reacting to the power play between two dangerous predators. Salvatore never allowed his gaze to stray from Tane. Few Weres could best a vampire, but Salvatore wasn’t just a Were. He was king. He wasn’t going to back down from any demon.
At last, Tane snapped his fangs in Salvatore’s direction and stepped back. Salvatore could only assume that the vampire had been ordered to keep the bloodshed to a minimum.
“This will not be forgotten, dog,” Tane warned, turning on his heel and silently disappearing down the tunnel.
“Good riddance, leech.”
Waiting long enough to make sure the vampire didn’t have a change of heart and return to rip out his throat, Salvatore turned back to his waiting curs to discover them battling back their urge to shift.
He grimaced. As a pureblood, he had the ability to control his shifts unless it was a full moon. Curs, on the other hand, were at the mercy of their emotions.
With a shudder, Hess at last gained control and sucked in a deep breath.
“Now what?”
Salvatore didn’t hesitate. “We follow the cur.”
Hess clenched his meaty hands at his side. “It’s too dangerous. The jinn…” His words broke off in a squeal as Salvatore’s power once again reached out, striking the cur like the lash of a whip.
“Hess, on how many occasions have I told you that if I want your opinion I’ll ask for it?” Salvatore drawled.
The cur lowered his head. “Forgive me, sire.”
“The cringing cretin is not entirely wrong.” Levet waddled forward, his long tail twitching. “It had to have been the demon who killed Duncan and knocked both of us out.”
“No one is asking you to join us, gargoyle,” Salvatore snapped.
“Sacre bleu. I am not going to be left alone in these tunnels.”
“Then chase after the vampire.”
The damned gargoyle refused to budge, a sly amusement entering the gray eyes.
“Darcy would not be pleased if something was to happen to me. And if Darcy is not happy, then Styx is not happy.”
Salvatore snapped his teeth. Darcy was one of the female purebloods he’d been searching for over the past thirty years, and while he didn’t have the least fear of her, she’d recently mated with the King of Vampires.
Styx he did fear.
Hey, he wasn’t stupid.
Muttering a curse, Salvatore led the way down the tunnel, his already pissy mood plunging to foul.
“Get in my way and I’ll chop you up and feed you to the vultures. Understood, gargoyle?”
He sensed his curs falling into step behind him, with Levet bringing up the rear.
“Mangy dogs can smooch my posterior,” the gargoyle muttered.
“A jinn is not the only creature capable of ripping off a wing,” Salvatore warned.
A blessed silence filled the dark tunnel, and at last able to concentrate on the faint trail of cur, Salvatore quickened his pace.
It was moments like this that he regretted leaving Italy.
In his elegant lair near Rome, no one dared treat him as anything other than Master of the Universe. His word was law, and his underlings scrambled to do his bidding. Best of all, there were no filthy vampires or stunted gargoyles.
Unfortunately, he’d had no choice in the matter.
The Weres were becoming extinct. Pureblooded females could no longer control their shifts during pregnancy, and more often than not lost their babies before they could be born. Even the bite of Weres was losing its potency. A new cur had not been created in years.
Salvatore had to act, and after years of research, his very expensive scientists had at last managed to alter the DNA of four female pureblood babies so they could not shift.