Captiva Craving Read online

  Chapter One

  A Collective Purpose

  In the thick cover of darkness, the little bird tactical helicopter flew along the coastline at more than one-hundred miles per hour, kicking up powdery sand in angry whirls where the marsh lined the shore. Down to the right, cerulean eyes flashed through adjacent vegetation at the same speed, whizzing by Cabbage Palms deep inside the densest mangrove on Sanibel Island. Sixten stared out the blackened window, watching the werewolves run. Their eyes swept left and right, searching for those missing with their inherent abilities while leaving nothing unturned. Six glanced at the pilot and looked back down, clenching his hands on his thighs until his claws pierced his palms.

  Where are you, Blythe?

  Sixten Kovac was one desperate vampire. If he had a choice between depending on highly trained Navy Seals weighed down with the ultimate in sophisticated load-out gear or these barely dressed creatures depending on claws, the moon, and brute strength as weapons, he’d pick his natural-born enemy any day.

  He caught a whiff of what he was wearing. His brother’s blood saturated his clothes. Hindsight, he should have never waited this long to kill him, especially since he was one of the few who could take down a pure blood Habaline. From the beginning, Sixten should have taken every possible precaution to make sure no one stayed in Rave’s crosshairs, mainly his Blythe. And although he sensed something was wrong, incredibly wrong, when Rave had first visited him in his Fort Myers office. He had other things to worry about.

  “I smell your distress,” Oudir spoke up over the droning rotors as neither needed headsets. Their supernatural hearing picked up almost anything. “It’s unpalatable.”

  In the nature of vampires, Sixten hissed his irritation. “So you’re saying I’m giving the big, bad warrior a tummy ache?” Qudir was unmated, had never found his Bride. He only had an inkling of what Sixten was going through.

  Qudir thought he was reassuring when he said, “Over the centuries, I’ve, uh, encountered many beautiful women. Blythe trumps them all.” He nodded, keeping his eyes on the water. “Besides her appearance, she’s a Donor. Why would the mixed-bloods kill her? She’s certainly worth keeping around. At least, that’s what I’d do if I were in their shoes.”

  Sixten rocked a string of blistering profanities that he shouldn’t have uttered this close to the heavens. “Thank you so fucking much, Qudir,” he spouted when he calmed down. “The weight of the world just slid right off my shoulders. Maybe instead of leading the Vampyr Vojaks, you should look into grief counseling as your new career choice. ”

  “I’m just saying she’s more valuable alive than dead.” He added smoothly, “Gives us a chance.”

  Sixten never appreciated the word chance. Chance meant he had the potential to fail. Creatures as powerful as he was never failed. Oh, but you didn’t protect your mate, did you? “You’re forgetting she’s a claimed Donor.” His fangs pulsated. “In need of her Dynasty Vampyr or she’ll die. Those blood transfusions Dru administered aren’t going to hold up if gluttonous idiots drain her while feeding.” A roll of revulsion swept over him at the thought of another creature savoring what was his. “Shit. She’s delicious. The first time I tasted Blythe’s blood, I nearly killed her. What does that say for someone who isn’t bonded to her, doesn’t love Blythe as I do?”

  He didn’t answer Sixten. Instead, Qudir whipped blacked-out goggles at his head. Sixten caught them, slamming them on his nose. No explanation was necessary. His Habaline irises were kicking up, glittering like the scorching desert sun, an illuminating distraction no one needed, especially the pilot.

  “Marco Island, Commander?”

  Sixten tensed, looking to the left at Fort Myers, his body refusing to accept the inevitable. The time had come for him to rely on others while he faced the Habaline Council as their joint ambassador. The only reason he wasn’t telling them all to fuck off was because he now needed their help. For her.

  Qudir glanced over and then directed the pilot, “Roger that. Head to Marco, pick up two more Vojaks and circle Fort Myers, Sanibel and Captiva Islands while we are in our meeting. This baby only stops to fuel up, got it?”

  “You got it, Commander.”

  “Oh, and watch out for birds.”

  “With all due respect, Commander, I always watch out for birds.”

  “Yeah, well, these would be the extinct kind, ones as large as this chopper. Similar to flying lizards, but I’m not going to say the D word.”

  “Oh, hell.”

  “I said worse when I encountered one a few hours ago,” Qudir rubbed the tension from the back of his neck. “Can’t miss ‘em. But when they’re right on your ass, it’s too late. So shoot first, got it?”

  Minutes felt like hours as they finally curved a wide expanse of sand centered by a private landing pad. “You have some flame-throwers with you?” Sixten asked while staring ahead at the sparkling lights stretching for miles.

  Families vacationed here in droves. Winter season brought more visitors into this area than summer months did. And right now, dangerous predators were roaming the streets. Sixten knew their blood since he was a dangerous mixture himself - a half-breed. However, his mother descended from prominent bloodlines traced back to the first Species vampire family. She raised him in a nurturing, civilized home with her Undead husband and taught Sixten how to control his two sides as a collective whole. Rave, on the other hand, raised his breeding experiments as dispensable weapons. Nurturing would have been the last thing on his mind. Other than those who were pure bloods, Rave had no regards for any lives. His imprisoned mixed-bloods led a harrowing existence devoid of any real contact. As if they were main attractions in a psychotic zoo, looking out from the lonely inside while living in cells where they awaited feeding.

  Instead of hunting their prey.

  Until tonight.

  Undoubtedly, their first targets would be women. Those now freed would prefer immortal, mixed-blood females of any species to all humans, so they wouldn’t break easily. Sixten visibly shuddered. This meeting between the factions involved more than Blythe, though she was the only one that he truly cared about; he still couldn’t forget the women who were at the mercy of savages.

  Hungry savages.

  “Yeah, your thrower’s behind your seat.” Qudir dug his phone from his pocket. “Crispy critters guaranteed. It’s primed and pumped with immortal fire so make sure you don’t have any styling gel in your hair, Goldie Locks. That shit ignites.” He stared down and then sent a blindingly fast text, his face intense as they circled. “Damn it.”

  “What?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “That’s annoying,” Sixten snapped. “So ominous and melodramatic, Commander, hasn’t the night been dramatic enough?” He nodded to the coastline while they landed. “If you’re saying the boogieman’s out there waiting for us, then guess again. I am the fucking boogieman.”

  “Yeah, if I make it to my bed within the next few days, I’ll be sure to check under it first.” Qudir agreed. “You’re in rare form, Sixten. And it’s understandable. Even so, there’s another creature here that has recently gone through having his mate abducted. Twice.” He pointed a long finger at the window towards Jayce Jordan, the Alpha of the North American Pack. Sixten watched him disappear inside a hidden tunnel in a flash of golden light. “The last time his female vanished was courtesy of Maestru.”

  “And at the time, you knew nothing about it, Commander.” Laughable since Qudir was responsible for leading the Vojaks and the soldiers who ranked beneath them. He upheld vampire law and Maestru clearly broke it. Repeatedly.

  Qudir nodded. “I looked the other way.”

  A disturbing decision, overlooking Maestru’s senseless infractions put the lives of all Species civilians at risk, especially those infractions encouraging wars with werewolves. “I’d forgotten that story.” Sixten shrugged as if he did not care, because, at the moment, he didn’t. “But, lately, I’ve been preoccupied.”

 
“Obviously, if you’ve forgotten Gage MacGelton misted inside our Coven leader’s home and defanged him when he rescued the Alpha’s queen.”

  Clearly, Maestru deserved it. “Fangs are easier to regenerate than balls, I always say.” The precise reason why Sixten castrated those he killed, an ingenious distraction enabling him to decapitate his immortal opponents quite easily. He fought dirty, or he didn’t fight at all. Playing with others’ fangs was a critical time waster. One Sixten didn’t commit, or he would have been eating dirt centuries ago. “What Gage MacGelton delivered was a warning, an embarrassing one for Maestru and the Coven, but nothing more.”

  “Yeah, well, Maestru and the Alpha weren’t cozy before, so I’m not expecting this meeting to go very well.”

  “Taking the Alpha’s queen,” Sixteen muttered while tossing his goggles on the floor. “That’s so small-town high school, like being the first to nail the preacher’s daughter. You know you’re going to get caught, and there’ll be hell to pay at the barrel end of a sawed off.” They stepped out, lowering the heads as air and sand whipped their faces. Ocher and Kash slipped by them, leather dusters laden with blades billowing behind as they settled inside the chopper. Nothing passed between them and Sixten. No words. No wordless glances. No forlorn expressions ladled with pity. The Vampyr Vojaks understood Sixten wanted Blythe back, and since they were Warriors in arms, she would come first during their search. “If it weren’t for this mess my brother made,” Sixten added despondently, “we’d be smack in the middle of an entirely different war with the werewolves. What was Maestru thinking using her capture to negotiate with those Beasts?”

  “You’ve been away for years, Sixten.” Qudir shifted his flamethrower on his back. They effortlessly carried weighty packs, ready to shoot the flames of hell more than a hundred feet if necessary. “In Maestru’s defense, decades went by while we attempted to recover our Species females from that Habaline breeding facility.” Qudir nodded at two guards, and then they headed through a natural canopy of live oak trees. “Yet he could never pinpoint their location for a stealth attack due to Ciaran’s miasma. Only Beasts had a bead on where it was hidden and wouldn’t share their intel with us since it was too close to their own females.”

  “Well, who can blame them?” Sixten retorted, surprised he was managing to follow a basic conversation when he was so strung out over Blythe. But that was a Habaline for you. Alien blood flowed through his veins, and it kicked in whenever and wherever he needed it. “Because of our kin, werewolves haven't many females left for the survival of their race. Species vampires used to drink their female younglings to death for their Were power. Talk about your greedy leeches. That naughtiness only stopped about two-hundred years ago. Kind of hard to forget that soon, wouldn’t you say?”

  “You’re overlooking that Maestru was a key factor in stopping their voracious hunting.”

  “So he says,” Sixten muttered. “I wasn’t in Scotland during the eighteen-hundreds, and I never go by hearsay.” Another fifteen feet passed as they walked a true tunnel. Cables and pipes lined the ceiling similar to the vampire’s Sanctuary on Captiva Island. “Furthermore, to follow a leader who openly kidnaps an Alpha’s queen reeks of careless stupidity. Mistakes are things we learn from, but there’s no cure for stupid.”

  Qudir grunted. “Make sure I’m ringside when you say that to Maestru’s ancient face.”

  “Ah, Qudir, I like to fight while naked,” he said with a mirthless laugh. “You’d just feel tawdry.”

  “As shameful as it sounds, Six, I’d still watch a fight like that any day of the week.”

  He understood Qudir was attempting to break the tension, but nothing would work short of seeing Blythe again. Sixten adjusted his pack and stopped at a three-way intersection. He looked through all tunnels, seeing for miles as light emanating from his eyes scattered across wet cinder blocks oozing with mold.

  At that moment, Sixten had three thoughts pressing to the forefront. First, considering he had two natural, albeit alien, flashlights in his face, he still hadn’t calmed down enough to negotiate with other factions. Second, allowing for the magic protecting this place, no one should have developed Marco Island into an underground faction facility when it smelled this nasty. Third, if another night fell, and he didn’t have Blythe safely in his arms; he would shift into the vilest killing machine that ever roamed the face of the earth, taking down any Habalines he encountered.

  Hence, Sixten considered his subsequent behavior highly questionable. Unquenchable rage stoked immortal power. Habaline power had a way of unleashing itself when a vessel no longer contained it. In layman’s terms, Sixten’s power was currently morphing into another creature.

  A dangerous one.

  “Down here, children,” said Maestru.

  Qudir raised a brow at Sixten, shaking his head. Maestru’s voice drifted through the right corridor, undoubtedly listening to every word. They moved forward. Walking in single file due to the bulky flamethrowers on their backs, they headed towards his voice.

  “Tell me why this place smells like the wharf during red tide?”

  “This red tide, in particular, has nothing to do with dying fish. Nothing smells quite like hatred.” Qudir’s lips kicked up in the corners. “And we’re heading toward plenty of it.”

  “Yeah,” Sixten said gloomily, “I despise this fucking place and practically every creature assembling here tonight.”

  Dead silence met them as they turned the last corner. All primordial eyes landed on Sixten. “Sorry,” he said without any sincerity whatsoever. Quite the faux pas from a newly appointed ambassador, considering those present had immortal hearing. But right now, he could give two shits. If someone could take his pain away, then he would consider apologizing.

  Maestru was on one end of a long table; elbows anchored, and chin perched atop two clenched fists. Clearly annoyed. Jacye Jordan, on the other hand, was the picture of relaxation, leaning back in his chair and staring dead-on at Maestru. It wasn’t a disrespectful stance or even an arrogant one, but more of a relaxed nature. As if nothing in the room could touch him, and he knew it.

  Maybe he was right.

  But Sixten wouldn’t wager on it.

  The Alpha was first to break the tense silence. “Gentlemen, let’s get to it. My Beta’s familial female was taken this night.” He nodded at Bane Ruyter. His hair as black as Blythe’s, he sat covered in ancient ink while flashing cobalt eyes. Two werewolves with similar markings and coloring anchored the Beta. Sixten identified them as close kin, possibly siblings or cousins.

  “Blythe is Sixten’s wife and Bane knows it,” Maestru interrupted, gesturing towards Sixten. “Have a seat, Six.” With a booted foot, Maestru kicked out a metal, folding chair. Qudir stood behind him, snagging Sixten’s flamethrower before he sank down.

  “No one presented a contract to me,” Jayce said, readjusting his blue flares to concentrate on Sixten. “Beta, as her nearest blooded male relative, did you allow Blythe to be given unto a vampire?”

  “I did.” Maestru cut in, dropping his palms on the table with a definite thud. “Where are we going with this, Alpha? We have human women and immortals dying out there.” Vampyr Vojaks protected humans against overpowering, supernatural forces as well as their own kind.

  “Don’t make it sound like I’m trying to play some game, Coven Master.” Jayce kept an unwavering focus on Sixten. “I have countless werewolves flipping the smallest pebbles looking for clues, hunting in the way of the Were Beast. They will bring down anything touching females, whether or not those females are yours, human, or mine.”

  Sixten ground his molars, looking between the two faction leaders. He felt like a father on a long, road trip with errant children bouncing in the backseat. “If I had known my wife had any Were blood flowing through her veins, I would have deferred to her closest, blooded male’s decision.” A total lie and every Beast in the room could smell it, especially the Alpha. “However, I am led to believe that she was not
under your Pack’s protection when I took her virginity several years ago.”

  During years gone by, mortal fathers bartered their daughters as chattel, using them to negotiate for land, money, power, or all the above. Thankfully, in most parts of the world, those human ideals are long past. However, ancient laws governing supernatural species remain untouched. Males oversee immortal females until they mate. Males protect, cherish, and spoil their daughters and any female wards.

  Unlike their human counterparts of long ago, their negotiations for any mating have nothing to do with material things, but more in the lines of ensuring the males match the females by celestial appointment. A male asking formal permission did so out of respect for ancient ceremonies In vampiric bylaw, any vampire taking an innocent’s blood could claim her as his wife. That convenient law was now Sixten’s favorite, since he claimed his Blythe in that way.

  “I want Blythe Ruyter placed in my home right after she is located,” Bane said formally, narrowing flaring eyes on Sixten.

  “Blythe Kovac will go home with her husband.” Sixten’s hands gripped the table. “Where she belongs, Beta,” he hissed, losing anything civil by the minute. And for him, that was easy. “What happened to getting down to it? I believe those were your words, Alpha.”

  “We’re still waiting on a Habaline representative,” Jayce replied. “You’re a joint ambassador, right? You tell me why they’re not here representing their race.”

  The hell if Sixten knew, not that he’d chatted with anyone, so he turned to Maestru. “Well?”

  “I’m assuming they’re a no-show,” Maestru answered bluntly. “But the record will state that we made an effort.”

  “They’re not coming?” Sixten laughed manically while looking across the table. “I flew in a chopper because I couldn’t mist with the amount of weapons I needed to fight…God, have you taken a look at what’s out there?” Answering grunts filled the room. “And here we sit,” he continued, “representing some of the most powerful of our collective races, and we’re going over formalities. For what reason? To inscribe something in a book that says we tried but the Habalines decided to play hooky today?”