Kiss of Vengeance (True Immortality 2)

Fuck.

How is she doing this to me? he wondered as he studied her watching the warehouse.

By the time he’d handed over the Bugatti, Fionn was ready to unleash every molecule of pent-up frustration on someone. He just hoped there was a being up to the challenge in that warehouse. The plan had been to leave Rose at the apartment Bran booked for them in the center of Orléans. It was a beautiful space on the top floor of a seventeenth-century building in the heart of the city. Balconies led off nearly every room, looking down on the cobbled street with its shops and trams.

Rose had seemed energized by her sleep in the car and the new location, still seemingly unfazed by all the shit that had happened to her in less than a week.

She amazed him.

And that was the problem.

His plans for her had become a constant knife through his throat.

There was no relief from that knife. Not only did Rose insist on eating with him at a restaurant across the street, she’d then tried to insist, like a nagging wife, that he rest before the fight.

Fionn couldn’t.

Too agitated.

Teetering on the edge of temptation.

Temptation he was destined not to outrun, apparently, because the bloody woman insisted on accompanying him.

“I want to see,” Rose had said, her expression taut with stubbornness when he refused her request. “And I’ve got your back.”

Just words. They irritated him almost as much as his desire for her. No one, except Bran, had ever had his back. “I hate to burst your bubble, Rose, but I don’t need you to have my back.”

Rose would not be shaken.

Damn her.

“So, this is an underground fight?” She gestured to the warehouse.

She’d showered and changed into the jeans and shirt the last hotel had dry-cleaned for her, but her singular summery scent overwhelmed the complimentary coconut shampoo she’d discovered in her en suite.

Fionn grunted in response and walked toward the fence. A man, almost as tall as Fionn, stood guard by the gate. He knew his face. The vampire was at least fifty years old, for this was the third fight in France Fionn had attended where this vamp acted as a doorman.

“I know you,” the vampire said, opening the gate. “Here to do some damage?”

He gave another grunt as he made to walk by the doorman.

“I don’t know her.” The vamp grabbed Rose’s arm.

Later Fionn would blame his response on his wasted nerves. As soon as the vampire touched Rose, Fionn whirled on him, gripped him by the throat, and lifted him off his feet. He bared the spell-cast fangs he wore to pretend to be a vamp at the fights and growled into the doorman’s face, “We mustn’t touch what isn’t ours.”

The vampire tried and failed to release himself from Fionn’s grip, shock slackening his features when he realized he was the weaker of the two. Finally he nodded, and Fionn lowered the vamp to the ground.

He could sense Rose’s tension at his back as he guarded her from the doorman’s study.

The vampire rubbed his throat, gaping at Fionn. “No offense meant,” he wheezed out. “I sensed magic, that’s all.”

“She’s a witch,” Fionn replied, “and she knows the rules.”

Still holding his throat in bewilderment, the doorman waved them on.

Furious at himself for responding like a territorial animal, it took Fionn a moment to look down at Rose and ask after her welfare.

She nodded solemnly at him. “I’m okay. And just for the record, I can handle myself. But thanks.”

Knowing Rose was right, that she could handle herself, only made him feel worse. He was born in the late European Iron Age, not long before the Romans would try to conquer his part of the world. Fionn believed differently from how modern humans might expect. Perhaps they assumed women were treated as they were for most of history, as the weaker sex, to be protected and owned by men.

As a human king, he had believed he owned Aoibhinn, but it was a mutual ownership. She owned him in return. As the man who loved her, he wanted to protect her, but as a king who was often away at war, he wanted Aoibhinn to be able to protect herself.

Just as he taught Rose to use her abilities, to defend herself, he’d taught Aoibhinn how to wield a sword as well as any man in his army.

This kind of belief in the fairer sex had been unconventional and only lent itself to expounding upon the uniqueness of his kingship.

That belief in Aoibhinn had been his undoing.

Three centuries above the dirt had allowed time to disintegrate some of those memories, to mute the pain.

But never his thirst for vengeance.

As Fionn strode into the warehouse, relief moved through him as he took in the two large circles that had formed. Two fights. Supernaturals circling each, fists above their heads, baying for blood. The coppery scent of it already filled the air, mingling with sweat, dirt, and some kind of chemical, most likely due to whatever had been stored in the warehouse before it had been converted into an underground fight club.

He searched the space, determined to find the supernatural that would prove the most challenging.

“Is this like a bare-knuckle boxing match?” Rose asked, raising her voice to be heard over the commotion. He heard the awe in her tone but refused to look at her. The bloody woman muddled everything up.

He opened his mouth to respond in the affirmative just as a huge figure strode between fights, observing the opponents, halting Fionn’s answer.

The Fates were feeling sympathetic. A hard smile pushed at Fionn’s mouth.

Kiyonari. Or Kiyo as the werewolf preferred.

Years ago, Kiyo had learned of Fionn’s immortality. That did not worry Fionn, for Kiyo was an anomaly, the result of ancient Asian magic that even Fionn was ignorant to.

Kiyo was the world’s only immortal werewolf.

Sensing him, Kiyo halted his progress around one of the circles and turned his head. The shadows beyond the overhead lights masked his face, but Kiyo had spotted him. Fionn knew.

They walked toward one another.

Rose followed at Fionn’s side. “Who is that?” The awe in her voice penetrated this time. He shot her a quick glance and caught her ogling the shirtless Kiyo.

He bit back a growl of annoyance.

Kiyo drew to a stop before them, his expression the same as always—scowling and impatient.

Fionn had been accused of being a broody bastard but no one brooded like Kiyonari. The product of an illicit affair between an American doctor and a Japanese merchant’s daughter sometime in the nineteenth century, Kiyo’s life was difficult before he was bitten and spelled with immortality.

Although Fionn hadn’t thought of it one way or another before Rose’s reaction, Kiyo’s mixed heritage (a curse during much of his human and immortal life) had favored him physically. Rose’s expression said the werewolf wasn’t hard to look at.

“I was just about to leave,” Kiyo said, his accent distinctly American.

Kiyo had lived in New York until the 1960s. He’d been a nomad ever since, but he’d never lost his adopted accent.

“I assume you’ll answer my challenge.”

Kiyo nodded, his attention moving to Rose. His expression never changed. “She’s like you.”

There was no question in the comment, just an observation by the most perceptive son of a bitch in the werewolf world.

One of the things Fionn liked most about the werewolf, however—he wasn’t a nosy arsehole.

“Hey.” Rose held out her hand to Kiyo.

He stared at it and promptly ignored the gesture.

“Okay, then.” She threw a “Who’s this guy?” look at Fionn that would have amused him under other circumstances.

“Weapons?” the wolf as

ked.

Fionn rolled his shoulders, shrugging out of his coat. At the same time, he called on the weapons he stored in his Paris apartment. He had homes everywhere and weapons in every single one. Magic tinged the air around them as the swords appeared in his hands. The coat slipped to the ground.

The others were too caught up in the current fights to even notice.

Rose drew in a breath at the sight of the medieval claymores, steel glimmering in the dim light.

Kiyo quirked an eyebrow. “No katanas this time?”

“Last time you had the advantage.” Fionn tossed one of the broadswords to the wolf; he caught it by the hilt with ease. “This time it’s my turn.”

“Like you need it.” Kiyo brandished the sword with ease, feeling out the weight and balance of the steel.

“A sword fight?” Rose stepped between them to ask Fionn, her back to Kiyo.

“You’re surprised? It’s what I’m used to in a fight. And this way it’s fair. No magic, just strength and skill.”

She took a step closer to him. Too close, if you asked him. “Who is this guy?” she said under her breath.

Kiyo scowled at her back, having heard her easily with his wolf ears.

“This is Kiyo … a friend. A werewolf.”

Kiyo transferred the scowl to Fionn and this time, he failed in his attempt to suppress his smile.

“Your werewolf friend is hot,” Rose said, causing his smile to wither in an instant. He glared down at her, and she grinned. “But not as hot as you when you smile.” She smacked him playfully on the arm and stepped out of his way. “You should do it more often.”

She really was the devil.

The werewolf offered him a commiserating look in return for Fionn’s beleaguered one. A roar of animalistic growls rent the air, signaling a fight was over. Kiyo turned from watching a crowd disperse, calls for the next opponents circling the warehouse. “Now?”

Fionn nodded before handing his overcoat to Rose. “You watch. That is all. No interfering.”

Her expression serious, she nodded, folding the coat in her arms. “What about…” she bared her teeth and gestured to Kiyo.