Beautiful Danger

Prologue

Smoke billowed and clouded the halls and rooms in the Levallois pack complex. Werewolves, in both animal form and human form, retreated from what had once been their sanctuary.

The alarm sounded a droning cry but didn’t coerce the pack leader to work more swiftly. Remy Caufield, pack principal, stuffed a valise with valuable financial records taken from the safe, along with other documents he was unwilling to leave behind. Sure, the safe was fireproof. But he could not guarantee he would be first on the scene following the fire’s devastation to claim what was inside the safe.

The door to his office slammed open, and thinking the flames had raged this far, he held up the leather valise in a protective manner to block his face.

What stood in the doorway was not flame or a fellow werewolf.

The haggard creature who bounded into the office, right leg dragging limply, and wild black hair tangled about his head so only his eyes showed, was the pack’s pet vampire.

Well, pet defined the man ironically. They’d had the longtooth for countless months, and had used him well. The thing just would not die. It had become a sort of experiment to see how long the creature would cling to life. He had defeated every opponent put to him in the circular steel cage kept in the compound basement. And remarkably, the UV sickness, while it maddened the creature, only seemed to make him stronger in the ring.

The werewolves had made a mistake last night. Remy hadn’t known the vampire they’d matched against this creature was a phoenix. The phoenix was a powerful vampire who decades ago had survived a witch’s blood attack, which had once been poisonous to vampires. Drinking his opponent to death must have infused their pet’s blood with the nearly indestructible phoenix’s blood.

Domingos was his name. Maybe. Remy didn’t care.

“You’ve gotten loose?” he asked stupidly.

The vampire slapped his filthy hands on the desk before him and growled, showing his bloody fangs—blood that could only have come from Remy’s men.

“You will pay for this!” the creature raged. “I will return!”

Remy scoffed, but his heart cringed. The vampire’s eyes were black as hell and yet bright, so frighteningly bright. He looked into a strangely lucid madness.

“Serve me your worst,” Remy said bravely. “You won’t make it beyond the flames.”

The vampire grinned maniacally. For a second Remy thought he would leap the desk and attack. But instead the longtooth grabbed the office chair and tossed it toward the window. Glass shattered.

Leaping to the windowsill—they were three stories up from the concrete courtyard—Domingos turned and saluted. “I will kill every wolf in the Levallois pack.”

And then he jumped.

Remy slapped the valise to his chest, knowing he would see the vampire again.