Carnal Thirst #1.2 Dark Kisses - Sylvia Day Page 0,1

herself. “If you were looking for a bal and chain, and vampirism was one of your requirements in a perfect mate, Grimm was the man to see. He had personality profiles, compatibility charts, etc. Al of which he used to weed out the whack jobs so he could pair them with nutcases.

I knew his doctrine was dangerous, so when I took him out I hunted down al his disciples, too. Whoever is responsible for this, Grimm didn’t document them the way he did the others.”

“Disciples,” Syre murmured. “Interesting word choice.”

“It’s the right word, trust me. What else would you cal the folowers of an idiot playacting as a messiah preaching revolt against you?”

Syre ran a hand through his thick black hair, the only sign he gave of any disquiet. “Whoever is responsible, they came directly to you. This is personal.”

“You’re goddamned right it’s personal.” He looked at the body again, knowing it wasn’t merely a taunt but a message. “Help me turn this guy over.”

Syre stepped forward, waving Vash back.

It was a gruesome task. The smel emanating from the open body cavity would torture a human; for a vampire, it was pure hel. They got as far as getting the corpse onto its side. Then the loosened entrails slid out with a soft sucking sound, and they both leaped back and away. Raze had eviscerated his own share of enemies, but this man was a victim, and that made al the difference.

“Do you guys need a hand?” Vash asked, stepping up to them.

“No.” Raze had seen the tattoo on the corpse’s shoulder blade. Unlike Grimm’s brand, the ink was a mark the man had voluntarily applied as a show of loyalty, affection, and team spirit.

“The Cubs,” he muttered. “Guess I’m heading to Chicago.”

CHAPTER 2

Raze hit the ground running in the Windy City. Within an hour of his plane landing, he’d swept through the building that had once housed Grimm’s operation (presently a printing shop) and checked his way through a quarter of the list of Grimm’s known haunts. Then, impatient, he took a chance and headed to Wrigley Field.

Although the balpark was dark and quiet for the night, Raze knew wrong when he came across it and he damn wel felt it as he drove by. Parking a few streets away, he slid out from behind the wheel and opened the back door of his rental to grab his blades. He strapped them on with the efficiency of long practice: daggers on each thigh and two katanas crisscrossing his back. Then he darted over on foot, moving so quickly the mortal eye couldn’t catch him.

As he approached, he picked up the faint sound of a melodious male voice coming from the field, folowed by a chorus of murmurs in reply—sounds too slight for anything but a vampire’s hearing to catch. Grimm had been big on staging, too, which made Raze wonder just how closely this protégé had been to Grimm and how long he or she had been working in the shadows.

He rounded the back of the balpark and climbed up the rear of the bleachers. Puling his head up over the top, he looked down at the darkened field below. A lone man stood before a group of approximately two hundred robed and kneeling minions. Segmented into pairs with the men in black and the women in red, they formed a perfect pattern of stripes in the center of the field.

Raze listened to a couple lines of bulshit about the supremacy of the vampire nation, then he tuned it out and focused on the leader. The man was tal and lean, dark-haired and dressed in a three-piece suit. He had a mesmerizing cadence to his speech, a luling sonorousness that was evident even though Raze had stopped picking out the words.

He debated his next step, knowing this was an elaborate trap for him, one that would be designed with the expectation that he wouldn’t come alone. Which was why he’d done exactly that.

But he could stil take them by surprise.

Puling out his phone, he jumped the hoops necessary to reach Adrian.

“Mitchel,” the Sentinel leader answered.

“It’s Raze. I’ve got a situation you’l be interested in.”

“Where are you?”

“Chicago.”

“Yes, that is interesting. So am I.”

Raze stiled, his hackles rising at the softness of Adrian’s tone. “That’s not a coincidence.”

“No, it’s not. Location?”

He wasn’t surprised that the angel was so far from his home base in Anaheim, California. That was Adrian’s way. While Syre was cerebral in his leadership, using Raze and Salem