Thicker Than Blood Read online

  THICKER THAN BLOOD

  BLOOD VICE BOOK FIVE

  Angela Roquet

  THICKER THAN BLOOD

  Copyright © 2018 by Angela Roquet

  All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the publisher. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. Neither is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  www.angelaroquet.com

  Cover Art by Rebecca Frank

  Edited by Chelle Olson of Literally Addicted to Detail

  For Paul and Xavier,

  who make my world go round.

  by Angela Roquet

  Blood Vice

  Blood Vice

  Blood and Thunder

  Blood in the Water

  Blood Dolls

  Thicker Than Blood

  Blood, Sweat, and Tears (September 2018)

  Lana Harvey, Reapers Inc.

  Graveyard Shift (FREE on Kindle)

  Pocket Full of Posies

  For the Birds

  Psychopomp

  Death Wish

  Ghost Market

  Hellfire and Brimstone

  Limbo City Lights (short story collection)

  The Illustrated Guide to Limbo City

  Spero Heights

  Blood Moon

  Death at First Sight

  The Midnight District

  other titles

  Crazy Ex-Ghoulfriend

  Backwoods Armageddon

  THICKER THAN BLOOD

  Chapter One

  Jenna Hazel Skye, 29, a lifelong resident of University City, MO, passed away Friday morning, January 19, 2018, in a tragic house fire. She was born October 3rd, 1988, the daughter of Antonia Skye, a St. Louis police detective, who preceded her in death.

  Jenna graduated from University City High School in 2007 and went on to receive an associate degree in criminal justice before joining the St. Louis police force in 2009, where she served for seven years as a patrol officer within the second precinct. She was promoted to vice detective before transferring to the K9 division, but shortly after was recruited by the FBI and assigned as an agent in a specialized division of the St. Louis field office.

  Jenna is survived by her twin sister, Laura, her foster daughter, Amanda, and countless friends and colleagues. In addition to her mother, she is preceded in death by her former partner, Detective William Banks.

  A public memorial for Jenna will be held at Mooney Park from 4 to 6 p.m., Thursday, January 25th. The family has requested no flowers and ask that any donations be directed to Project Paws Alive, a non-profit organization that provides lifesaving K9 equipment nationwide.

  Well. That was my life in a sugar-coated nutshell.

  I would have called foul on the countless note, though considering how many jobs I’d blown through in the past year, I supposed the abundance of colleagues made up for the friends I could count on one hand—more like one finger, if I only considered those who knew I was undead but still kicking.

  I closed the program and frowned at the outdated picture on the front. It had been taken the day I graduated from the police academy. My blue eyes stared stoically into the camera, completely oblivious to all the fuckery that awaited me in the not-too-distant future.

  “You should have seen them.” Mandy snorted. Her curls fanned across the white fur throw angled over the foot of my bed, and her skinny legs stretched up the gray duvet cover. She’d shed the wool coat but hadn’t yet changed out of the black sweater dress she’d worn to my funeral.

  The public memorial was two days off, but I didn’t expect Mandy to go. Not everyone had the stomach to keep up such a charade. Speaking of class acts…

  “Did Laura put on a good show?” I asked.

  Mandy rolled her eyes. “Oh, it was award-worthy, for sure.”

  I smirked and lay back on the bed beside her, pulling my blond ponytail over my shoulder. In my black tunic and tights, I looked as if I might have been at the funeral with her—and not just posing as a fancy jar of ashes.

  I wondered what Laura would do with whatever—or whomever—they’d found to put in my urn. Would she display it on her fireplace mantle? Tell her guests all about me and put on a waterworks show? Would she consider it an improv exercise? The thought made me queasy, so I pushed it away as Mandy snuggled closer.

  At this angle, we had a perfect view of the framed photograph above the headboard. The massive sunrise print was the only spot of color in the room, a burst of pink and purple against the shades of gray my little world had been reduced to.

  The duke hadn’t exactly confined me to the room in his Ladue manor, but he might as well have. There was no one I cared to see in this zip code outside of Mandy, which was convenient since she’d been set up in the room next door. She’d also been tasked with delivering fresh blood to me from the household harem since I refused to feed from the donors. There was no sense getting attached to anyone here.

  Mandy chuckled in my ear. “Langford even made an appearance, though his crocodile tears weren’t fooling anyone. It was pitiful.”

  “Ugh. I bet Mathis loved that.”

  The two police captains were night and day. I’d only served under each of them for a short while before the incident that led to my actual death last year, not the staged one mentioned in my obituary.

  Mandy laughed again, but it sounded nervous rather than amused. “Patz was there, too. He kept his mouth shut, but it was all I could do not to take a bite out of him.”

  I couldn’t blame her. Of all the captains I’d worked under, Patz was my least favorite. I’d wanted to take a bite out of him plenty of times myself—even before acquiring my fangs. But I didn’t really care whether or not Patz was at my funeral. We were just working our way up to the harder questions.

  “How are the Bankses doing?” I asked.

  Mandy exhaled a long, trembling breath. “Alicia is a wreck. Serena, too. The closing on their house is next Friday. Alicia went ahead and hired a moving company since I had to bail on helping her, thanks to my new house arrest schedule. I’m glad that she’s going to be closer to Serena.”

  I hugged myself and resisted the urge to offer Mandy an out. She took offense whenever I suggested releasing her from my harem. I assumed she felt as obligated to me as I did to her, a bond we’d forged long before she began sharing her blood.

  “Vin was there, too.” Mandy chewed her bottom lip. “He didn’t say anything to me, but that’s probably because he was too busy pissing himself over Tweedledee and Tweedledum.”

  Mandy wasn’t fond of the werewolf duo the duke had assigned to keep watch over her. I’d spied them out in the hallway the night before the funeral. They were beasts, each at least three times her size, and also the reason we huddled together like girls at a slumber party and spoke in hushed voices—for fear their wolfy ears were pressed against my bedroom door.

  There was nothing I could say about Vin without incriminating him or myself. I had a feeling Mandy knew about the mess we’d made—how I’d let him draw my blood to experiment with, and how that blood and research had been stolen by one of his colleagues. Because I clearly wasn’t in enough hot water. At least he’d had the good sense not to question my more recent death.

  “Lazlo asked if I wanted to stay with him and Collins,” Mandy said. A melancholy note
entered her voice, and I again felt the tug to offer her a way out of the trap I was caught in.

  “Did you tell Collins the truth?”

  “He guessed.” Mandy’s head turned toward me, her voice dropping even lower. “When I went to hug him goodbye, he told me to pat his back if you were okay.”

  I grinned. “He’s always been the smart one.”

  Mandy’s brows knit together, and she looked away from me. “I think he was relieved when I turned down Lazlo’s offer.”

  “It’s not you he wants distance from, it’s me,” I said, lacing my hands together over my stomach.

  Collins had done his best to accept what I’d become. He’d even gone through Blood Vice training with Mandy and me. But I hadn’t been honest with him, and that had ultimately ruined our friendship.

  Being turned into a vampire was one thing—one very big, very scary thing—but adding myself to the top of an exiled royal’s shitlist? Then snacking on our boss’s sworn scion? As a member of my blood harem, that put Collins in danger, too.

  I guessed we all had to draw a line somewhere. I hadn’t quite figured out where mine would fall, but Collins had. It was for the best. Having Mandy’s fate in my hands was nerve-wracking enough, and she had her own set of fangs. Besides, Collins would have only complicated matters.

  After my last conversation with Roman, the duke had his flunkies confiscate my and Mandy’s phones. My line had been canceled, and one of the guards had been assigned to vet all of Mandy’s calls. It was just the two of us. Locked in this tense if well-decorated limbo, counting down the nights until the queen announced my replacement sire.

  I had a terrible feeling that the duke wanted in the running, but royal scions were more carefully crafted. Everyone thought I was the orphaned, vampling scion of the late Pablo Zajalvo. I was his sloppy seconds, as far as anyone fancy was concerned.

  Whoever the queen handed me over to would see the act as a punishment. I’d be a black sheep in a herd of them. After my recent upset in Blood Vice, I had a feeling the queen would be even less likely to appoint me to a decent household.

  Someone rapped at the door, and a second later, it opened wide to reveal the duke. He was extra formal tonight, wearing a navy waistcoat over a crisp white shirt. His boyish curls had been combed back and slicked into place with some hair product or another. The look was severe, demanding of respect—a sentiment that had left a sour taste in my mouth where he was concerned. Sure, I respected him. But it was the brand born of fear rather than admiration now.

  Mandy and I scrambled off the bed and stood. It was expected in the presence of royalty, but more than that, his visit was alarming. I hadn’t seen Dante in almost a week, not since the night he snapped Roman’s neck and turned my world inside out.

  The sight of him sent a jolt of rage-laced panic through me. My fists clenched at my sides, and I struggled to draw in my next breath.

  Belinda, the duke’s assistant, and Mandy’s wolfy handlers followed Dante inside the room. The two guards had to duck to clear the doorframe, inviting in a healthy dose of claustrophobia along with them.

  “Good evening, Ms. Skye.” Dante folded his hands behind his back and gave me a placid smile. Then he turned to Mandy, and my stomach dropped. “Ms. Starsgard.”

  Mandy dipped her head and trained her eyes on the floor. “Your Grace.”

  “Allen Cable, head of the St. Louis wolf division of Blood Vice, has formally requested your assistance on a case,” Dante said. His eyes darted briefly to me as if to gauge my reaction before he went on. “It is an urgent matter, and I am sending every wolf available to help. It may well be one of the only opportunities you have to stretch your legs over the next few months.”

  Mandy’s breath hitched. I knew she hated being cooped up even more than I did. It was making her crazy, not being able to shift and run free, especially as the moon swelled in the night sky. And I knew how much she admired the Cadaver Dogs. To work a case with them would be a dream come true for her.

  But something told me that the duke had ulterior motives for separating me from my only ally under his roof. Mandy seemed to suspect the same.

  “I… I can’t leave Jenna,” she said, shooting me a pained frown. “My blood—she needs me—”

  “You won’t be gone but a few nights.” Dante’s focus shifted to me again. “And the household harem is more than adequate, I assure you. I selected each of the donors personally.”

  “It’s okay.” I squeezed Mandy’s hand and tried to summon a smile. “You should go. It’ll be good for you.”

  Collins had said I was dangerous to be around. No. He’d said I made myself dangerous to be around. He was right. And I didn’t know how to stop. Half a dozen nefarious plans skipped through my mind, things I wouldn’t dare risk if Mandy were around for the duke to use as leverage against me.

  Part of me wanted to escape the manor, track down Roman in Denver, and whisk him off to someplace like Spero Heights where we could live happily ever after. But who was I kidding? The duke’s detail would be hard enough to ditch, but breaching the BATC facility…by myself… That was impossible.

  And then there was the question of whether Roman would even leave with me. For all I knew, he loved his new life as a vampire. I hadn’t felt him through our bond since the night he first rose.

  Dante cleared his throat and opened an arm to Mandy, directing her to the door. “Mr. Hays is waiting out front with a car as we speak. Belinda will help you pack.”

  “That soon?” Her pleading eyes met mine, but I refrained from hugging her. I didn’t want the duke to see how close we really were. He’d gotten too comfortable taking away the people and things I loved most.

  “Good luck,” I said, giving her hand one last squeeze before letting go.

  Mandy nodded slowly, understanding my reserve. Then she followed Belinda from the room. The two guards trailed behind them, leaving me alone with Dante. He wasn’t done with me yet.

  I tried to maintain a neutral face and pressed my tongue up under my fangs to keep them in check. For the past five nights, I’d fantasized about all the ways I wanted to kill him. The long, winter hours had occupied my mind with little more than his many gory ends.

  But I couldn’t. Not with him scrutinizing me from halfway across the room. He was more powerful by far, so at the very least, I’d need the element of surprise—and maybe a solid alibi if I wanted to get away with my retribution, though that was never a priority in my fantasies. Homicidal impulses rarely mixed with reason or proper planning.

  “You hate me,” Dante finally said, loosing a heavy sigh. “And that is unfortunate, but I do hope you one day realize that everything I have done has been in your best interest.”

  I stifled a sarcastic huff and folded my hands behind my back, mirroring his stance. He hadn’t asked a question, so I didn’t feel the need to humor him with a reply. A dry grin tugged up one side of his mouth as he released his arms to his sides, breaking our awkward symmetry. He tucked his hands into the pockets of his dress slacks, but I didn’t attempt to copy him this time. I wasn’t a complete juvenile.

  “I am leaving for Denver tonight to meet with the queen,” he said, pausing as if he expected me to pry for details. I ignored the bait. If he wanted me to know something, he could spit it out without forcing cues from me. “I will not be gone long, but I hope you will take advantage of my leave and enjoy the manor in my absence. There is an excellent library in the north wing.”

  As if a bunch of old vampire books could somehow make up for what he’d done. A week ago, I’d have fallen all over myself and thanked him profusely. But it was going to take a lot more than a library to keep me from ripping his throat out just as soon as I saw an opening.

  Dante sighed again and pressed his lips together. “You are nearly as ungrateful as Ursula, and here I am, trying to keep you both safe and comfortable until this mess can be sorted. Why ever do I bother?”

  Finally, a question.

  “I don’t k
now, Your Grace.”

  He waved a dismissive hand and turned to leave, giving me his back. The opportunity wasn’t ideal, but I was desperate and full of loathing. Adrenaline lit up my senses, and instinct drew me across the room in a few long, soundless strides. But somehow, Dante detected me. He spun around, and his hand snatched my neck, my esophagus trapped in the vice of his thumb and forefinger.

  “Do not mistake my charity for weakness.” His hot breath sliced across my cheek, and I caught a glimpse of fangs as they peeked out from under the curl of his lip. I’d surprised him. The thought was satisfying, even as I struggled to breathe around his grip on my throat.

  “Yes, Your Grace,” I choked out, locking eyes with him. Dante’s pupils widened, eating away at the caramel color of his irises, but I couldn’t tell if it was more from fear or anger. He released me without warning and exited the room, slamming the door behind him.

  So much for the element of surprise. And so much for my wicked plans. If the duke was leaving, then I couldn’t exactly carry out an assault against him. But without Mandy by my side, I was less likely to attempt escape. Sending her away was a calculated move.

  Check. But not checkmate.

  Chapter Two

  Without Mandy to help pass the time, every second was an eternity. I lay on the bed and switched between staring at the sunrise print and the vaulted ceiling. Then I stepped outside onto the terrace and activated my blood vision, using it to spot the guards stationed around the perimeter of the estate in a demented game of Where’s Waldo. When I tired of that, and my fingers went numb from the cold, I retreated inside and paced the room.

  It was barely midnight. Sunrise was seven hours off, and I was already dying of boredom. My stomach pinched, and I realized that the duke hadn’t mentioned who or if anyone would be taking over Mandy’s blood delivery schedule.