Azrael tossed Jacob’s clothes at him as he walked through the doorway and repeated his demand. “We have to go, now!”

“Hey, what are you talking about?” Jacob asked, even as he began to pull on his shirt and underwear.

“There’s only one reason I can think of why that smell would be in your place. I don’t know how, but Alexia was here,” Azrael told him, as he quickly yanked on a pair of jeans.

“Is that the cranky bitch you told me about? The one who’s the child of the other older vampire?” Jacob asked.

“That would be the one. She fucking hates me, and she’s apparently smarter than Paul because we didn’t even realize she was here. She wears this God awful perfume. Always reminds me of jasmine, but it’s always so strong, no matter how little she wears. Never known anyone else who has it, she was here. And if she was here, that means that others are going to be coming, if they aren’t already on their way,” Azrael said, almost panicked.

“She must have followed you,” Jacob said in annoyance.

“And we were too busy to notice we were being tailed,” Azrael said.

It was no one’s fault, but Azrael blamed himself anyway. The two of them had been so caught up in seeing one another after a couple of days apart, they hadn’t thought to watch their asses. Their lack of attention had caused them to miss the very important detail that there was someone a little too interested in what they were doing.

“Please tell me you don’t have your information sealed away in this apartment,” Azrael said as he snatched his keys from the counter.

Jacob snorted. “I’m not going to leave a laptop full of secrets laying around, why?”

“Because anything that could be in there could be traced back to who you really are, or where you come from. Do you really want them following you out of the city?” Azrael demanded.

“You really think they’re going to let either of us leave this city? You don’t know anything about the people who are supposed to be part of your ‘family,’ do you?” Jacob asked incredulously.

“I know they’re not to be screwed with or taken lightly, but I’m guessing you mean something a little deeper than that,” Azrael said as he made a last minute check for anything they might have missed.

Jacob followed him out the door as he spoke rapidly. “They’ve got people everywhere, man. Your master has enough money to keep plenty of humans well paid to do what he wants. If he doesn’t want us leaving, then we’re not going to leave.”

“No, you’re not,” a cold voice said as Azrael swung the door open wide.

Azrael’s eyes widened as something hard hit him in the chest, sending him flying through the air. He would have hit the opposite wall if Jacob’s large body hadn’t been in the way. Azrael bounced off Jacob, sending the werewolf sprawling as Azrael hit the ground and rolled. Heat flared in a riot of pain from his chest, and he found himself glad he didn’t have to breathe. He was dazed as he rolled over to see what had hit him.

Merrick strolled into the apartment, followed quickly by Alexia. They were both dressed as if they were preparing to go to one of Alexandre’s parties again. The elder vampire’s eyes searched the room, nodding to Alexia subtly. She turned in a clipped motion, closing off their exit with a swing of the door behind her. Merrick’s dark eyes swept over Azrael, moving only to lash out at Jacob when the werewolf made to stand up. Jacob groaned as he fell over, holding his side and glaring up at Merrick.

“My, my, you’ve got yourself into a good bit of trouble with this,” Merrick said, his voice calm enough to sound like a normal conversation.

“Merrick, I think we should talk about this first,” Azrael said as he stood up.

Alexia snorted, the noise ugly. “What, have something clever to say? I saw everything I needed to see last night. I always thought you were trash, but I never thought you’d sink low enough to sleep with a werewolf of all things.”

Merrick raised a calming hand, silencing Alexia’s follow up. “I’m sure Azrael has a most interesting explanation for what he’s been doing with this mongrel.”

Azrael didn’t know how far it would help, but he tried anyway. “We don’t tell you everything we get up to, you know. Congratulations, Alexia, you managed to ruin everything we were working for. I was supposed to seduce him, get him to trust me, make him take pity on the poor ‘human’ he’d pulled into his world. Then he would feel obligated to tell me everything about what he was and what he was doing. Then I’d know where he’d been hiding all the information he’d been gathering on us since he came into the city. Fantastic.”

Merrick raised a thin brow. “You mean to tell me that this entire time, you were supposed to play lover to some mutt. And Alexandre approved it?”

Azrael shrugged. “He’s not exactly going to broadcast to everyone visiting that he’s okay with me doing what it takes to get the information. But he’s not going to let that information sit around either.”

“There is no way Alexandre would allow any of his children to lay with a beast,” Alexia sneered.

“Alexia is quite sure she saw the two of you together, if you catch my meaning,” Merrick told him.

Azrael rolled his eyes. “I’m glad she gets off on watching something she’d supposedly hate to see. But yeah, that’s kind of how seducing someone goes. Seduction leads to getting into someone’s pants. You can understand why Alexandre wouldn’t want everyone to know about this, since that whole werewolves versus vampire thing runs pretty deep.”

“It runs deep because the monsters have done everything in their power to eliminate us at every turn. We’re hardly allowed to exist without a group of them showing up to try to wipe us out. For all our gifts, only the eldest among us can hope to stand against a pack’s strength. They do everything within their considerable power to kill us, and we will not tolerate even a whiff of one of their kind in our city. To fake a friendship, and even a courtship with one of them, I can understand. But to lay with one? Come now, Azrael, even we must have standards in what we’re willing to do for our own,” Merrick chided.

Azrael sighed. “No one thought to hand me the guidelines on the do’s and don’ts of seducing a werewolf. To be fair, no one was even supposed to know.”

The conversation sounded all well and good, but something about it felt off. Even if he was successful in convincing Merrick it was all a ruse, it left his plan with one glaring flaw. It had been one thing to convince Alexandre, since the elder vampire hadn’t alerted Jacob to his presence or blown Azrael’s cover. By arriving in such an overt way, Merrick and Alexia had destroyed any pretense of Azrael’s ‘cover.’ The only option in Merrick’s mind would be for Azrael to kill Jacob and worry about the information later. If the rumors about some of the darker tastes of the elder vampires were true, a quick death at Azrael’s hands would be one of the better options available.

Merrick seemed to consider that before nodding. “So I assume he’d already told you what he was, then?”

Azrael cocked his head, confused. “What makes you say that?”

Merrick motioned to the door. “Well, I heard the conversation as you made for the door. The two of you were seeking to hide as you had discovered Alexia had been here. I can only assume he had told you the truth of his nature…”

Azrael’s face didn’t shift, freezing in the confused expression as he realized he was being played. From the moment Merrick had come through the door, the master had known exactly what had been going on between Azrael and Jacob. Everything else had been simply the elder vampire playing a game, enjoying watching how Azrael or Jacob would try to squirm out of the trap. There would have been no way, under the guise of his cover, for Azrael to admit to Jacob that he knew Alexia, without having first admitted what he was. Leaving out that he might have already told Jacob what he was would have brought into question everything else he’d told Merrick.

Azrael snorted. “I guess I should have known that my bullshit wouldn’t get me out of this one.”

Merrick smiled, his expression cold. “You would not be the first vampire to have ever felt sympathy for one of these things. It’s always the young ones you have to look out for, they can be so gullible in the first few decades.”

Alexia pushed forward, apparently unable to contain herself any longer. “Paul figured it out, didn’t he?”

Azrael’s lip twitched in an almost snarl, “You really are a shrieking bitch, you know that?”

Merrick placed a hand on Alexia’s shoulder, drawing her back and silencing her with the gesture. “She did ask a valid question.”

“That idiot didn’t figure anything out. He came across us, mistaking me for a human because he didn’t see my face. He tried to attack us on his own, recognized who I was and was finally able to put the numbers together and figure out what was really happening,” Azrael snorted.

Merrick nodded. “And so you killed him.”

Azrael shrugged. “What was I supposed to do? Let him live and go running to you at the first chance he got?”

Merrick sighed, bowing his shaking head. “Azrael, you disappoint me. It would have been one thing for you to commit a folly of youth by choosing to involve yourself with a werewolf. That sort of mistake is something even I could forgive from one who hasn’t even seen his tenth year as one of us. To kill one of your own in the name of a relationship you know to be forbidden? That is an entirely different matter. I did say one had to watch for betrayal from their own children, and it seems Alexandre was not watching close enough. I do hope I am not as blind to my children’s flaws should I find my way to his age.”

“Make sure your ‘children’ want to actually be one of you before you make the choice to turn them,” Azrael snapped.

“Your permission, or lack thereof, is immaterial in the face of what you have done. Not only have you laid with a werewolf, but you betrayed one of your own for this beast. I will spare Alexandre the pain of having to slay another one of his blood and avenge the loss of my own child in the process,” Merrick told them as he straightened.

Azrael cocked his head, earning a frown from Merrick as a smirk passed over his lips. Both Merrick and Alexia had been so intent on Azrael they had completely ignored Jacob. Azrael didn’t know if they thought he was simply beaten or had been knocked unconscious by Merrick’s blow. Azrael had fought to keep his expression appropriate to the conversation as he’d watched Jacob slowly begin to change.

Watching the transformation had been fascinating. Azrael hadn’t known Jacob could get bigger than he already was. He’d certainly grown taller, at least one and a half times his normal height, and heavier too, probably three times his weight in what looked like pure muscle. In the light from the kitchen, Azrael could see, to his amusement, that most of Jacob’s fur was the same shock of almost unnatural red that Jacob’s human form had on his head. He looked every bit the deadly and ferocious monster every vampire Azrael had known had described werewolves as.

“Something amuses you?” Merrick asked, sounding irritated.

Azrael cocked his head as Jacob pulled his arm back, claws shining in the dim light. “Oh, I’m just thinking about how when I get to your age, I hope I pay a bit more attention to what’s going on around me.”

Alexia looked angry in her confusion, but a furious understanding flared in Merrick’s eyes as he whipped around. But it was too late. Jacob’s large hand slammed into the master vampire. In an almost perfect mimicry of Azrael’s flight earlier, Merrick was thrown across the room, into the opposite wall with a sickening crunch of plaster. Alexia turned to Jacob with a hiss, ready to strike, but earned a dismissive backhand for her efforts. Like her master, she flew through the air, hitting the back of the couch and sprawling as it was knocked over by her flailing body.

Azrael was more than aware of his capabilities and turned to Alexia as the two vampires rose to fight. He hadn’t wanted a war between Camarillas, or a war within his own Camarilla, but he was more than happy to fight Alexia. If Jacob successfully killed Merrick, then he wouldn’t be bothered by that either.

Azrael wasn’t surprised in the slightest when Alexia turned out to be a wildcat. She fought with the ferocity of an enraged animal, going for every soft spot she could reach as he weaved around her blows. Azrael had never seen her fight before, but he knew she’d been well-trained, by her agile footwork and her accuracy.

“I guess you’re not just eye candy for Merrick’s arm,” Azrael taunted as he narrowly missed a blow meant for his eyes.

“I’ll kill you for what you did to Paul,” she snarled as she leapt at him.

She had certainly been taught well, and from the looks of it, had kept up with her training. Alexia wasn’t the first vampire Azrael had fought, but she was definitely one of the more skilled. If this was one of the sparring matches he’d participated in for amusement, he would have taunted her. He would have told her that all the expensive training in the world didn’t count for shit when you never had a chance to put it into practice. Sparring wasn’t the same as fighting, and even superb fighting with a ferocious, angry vampire wasn’t the same thing as winning. Azrael had been in more life or death fights than he could count, and he’d had all the fancy training as well, courtesy of Alexandre. For all her nifty training and willingness to kill, she couldn’t quite keep up with his experience, or with the dirty tricks he was willing to use.

He rolled with the pounce, hooking his hands around her wrists and shoving his feet into her stomach. They rolled backward and he used both his strength and momentum to hurl her across the room. He was on his feet before she hit the fridge with a hard collision that dented and shook the appliance. By the time she unsteadily gained her feet, Azrael was already in front of her, the large knife he’d used to kill Paul held tight in his hand.

As he raised the blade, a dull thud on the tile behind him drew both his and Alexia’s attention. Expecting Merrick behind him, Azrael spun around, ready to fight what he knew would be a losing battle. For all his skill and wiliness, he knew it wouldn’t compare to the strength and speed the elder vampire would have gained with age.

It was Merrick, but only his head, rolling across the tile with a sickly smear of blood trailing behind it. The elder vampire’s mouth worked, unable to make a sound without a throat to draw air from. Azrael’s wide eyes slowly slid upward, finding Jacob’s towering form standing in the dining area. The werewolf’s chest heaved, blood dripping from his claws as he waited.

A wail echoed through the apartment, a piercing shriek that penetrated right into the center of Azrael’s brain. It was coming from Alexia, who was staring in abject horror at the sight of her master’s head on the ground. For a moment, it was a sound of pure sorrow and grief as she gripped the fridge behind her, as if she needed it to keep her feet.

Azrael could see the look in her eyes and knew what was going to happen before it did. Without hesitation, he stepped to the side, opening up the path between her and Jacob. As her shriek turned to one of pure hatred and utter fury, he closed his eyes and felt the rush of air as she leapt past him. For all their airs of civility and manners, he’d always suspected vampires were little more than humans with fangs. Perhaps a little more of the animal came out in vampires than it did with humans, but that only made them all the more stupid when their emotions took over. Alexia had known the fight was over with the sight of her master’s head on the floor, but her grief at her master’s inevitable death had driven her to extremes.

He didn’t need to turn around to know what was going to happen. If Merrick, a vampire of greater strength and age than Alexia, had been unable to best Jacob, Alexia would stand no chance. He winced at the ugly noises behind him, wishing silently it would be over fast. Not once had he ever taken pleasure in a kill, whether it was necessary, deserved, or otherwise. He took no pleasure in ending Paul’s life, and he would take no pleasure in ending Merrick and Alexia’s either. Killing was nowhere near as much fun as fighting—it was messy, demeaning, and too permanent for Azrael’s taste. Until Paul, he hadn’t realized how much worse it was to kill a vampire. To fight and kill a vampire meant all the ugliness coupled with the inevitable guarantee that the bested vampire wouldn’t recover.

Azrael didn’t realize how long he’d been standing there with his eyes shut tight until a large hand fell on his shoulder. He knew it was Jacob from the smell of fertile earth that wafted to his nostrils. He hated how much the smell of blood tainted the normally comforting smell, but he nodded all the same.

“I can clean this up,” Jacob told him softly.

“No, I’ll help. We’re in this together after all,” Azrael said as he turned to face the room.