Though the winter was far behind, there was still a nip on the 3AM air. Sylvianna tugged her tailored wool-blend jacket closer around her as she reached for the keys to her garage.
She'd dressed accordingly to both the job and the weather, with heavy combat trousers and a long-sleeved shirt over a silk camisole with lace lining -- the latter being a small indulgence.
The only reason she'd allowed herself to leave the house looking so... unbecoming, was because the job required no interaction.
There were no £600 heels. No suit costing into the thousands.
Her platinum hair was slicked back and tied in a messy bun, and the gold studs in her ears were... boring. She'd indulged in a light dusting of makeup across her eyes and bold, winged liner. It served to highlight the startling silver-grey of her eyes, not that anyone would see.
The scent of cold... cold and... wrong. Something wrong.
Something
other
. Some
one
who didn't belong.
Someones.
Sylvianna stopped walking, ears twitching. She sniffed the air silently, eyes frantically scanning the area.
No silhouettes on rooftops. A faint smell. They hadn't been here long enough to leave much of an impression.
But they'd still left an impression.
She turned, still trying to see if she was being watched.
She wasn't. Another lick of wind carried clean, untainted air.
Perhaps it'd been a stray group of beasts. Perhaps it'd been a few members of Melantia stopping by for whatever reason when she'd been away. She'd bring it up, just in case.
She settled a knife in her palm all the same. She wasn't carrying firearms tonight. There were a pair in her car, behind the locked doors she activated with a switch of a button.
As they rolled open, out came the acrid, glacial stink.
It looked as though no one was in there. She knew better.
Giving no response, she turned on her heel and began walking back to the front door as though she'd forgotten something. She had. Her firearms. Whatever was in her garage couldn't be anything good.
The key pushed into the lock as the gravel behind her crunched under several pairs of feet. With a brief glance over her shoulder just to see how many of them there were -- four -- she twisted the key and rushed inside, throwing the door closed behind her.
It didn't slam. The heavy footsteps fell in behind her.
They were faster than her. By the look of them, they'd have been stronger than her, too, even if they didn't have vampirism running through their veins.
Reaching the kitchen, Sylvianna pulled open the drawer that had her loaded Nelson & Barr in it. When her hand shot forward to grab it, the drawer slammed closed on her fingers and she screamed.
The hand gripping the knife slashed out. Blood tainted the air with the tang of iron as it splattered away from her, the man she'd wounded staggering back with a grunt, hands covering his face.
She'd missed his eyes.
Shit.
"Stop fighting, Sylvi. It's not gonna work."
She
knew
that voice. The distinct Highland Scots accent. His name was Magnus.
She stilled and turned to look at him. Fear was replaced by anger. "What the
fuck
are you doing, McNeill?"
He held up his hands, as though the idiotic gesture would placate her. His hair -- brown, but dark as midnight in the unlit kitchen -- was mostly tied back in a bun, with a stray few strands falling over his roguish face. "Your number's up. You've been seen doing some very naughty things."
"Doing my
job,
you imbecile." She would've continued but the man stood next to him swept out with a backhand. It took a second to recover, her hand caressing the sting. "And it's nice to see you, too, Anand."
The man with dusky-brown skin that was tainted by an unhealthy pallor gave her a cheerless grin. She turned next to Laurent, his auburn hair unbound, the red in it vivid, even in the darkness. He'd been the one whose face she'd slashed. She felt no remorse -- they knew who she was and they'd
tried
to frighten her.
Besides, the wound had already healed.
Without a word, she turned at last to the man she'd wanted to see the least. The blond who was hanging back, his thick arms folded over a broad chest. A chest that was all muscle. Sylvianna knew. She'd slept on it more than once.
"You too, Aron?" She backed herself against the breakfast bar, hand still tight on her knife, and let out a dissatisfied huff. "Shit. So why didn't you just slug me through a window? What's with sneaking into my garage?" She paused, then growled. "Shit, how did you even get in without setting off the alarms?"
She realised she had the answer to that before she even finished asking. They worked for the same agency. They were more than capable.
Magnus stepped forward and reached out to tuck her hair behind her ear. "Do you really want to have this boring conversation?" He petted her cheek.
She didn't swipe him, but she threw her knee towards his groin.
He caught it before she even got close. Damned man was fast. He followed it up with a hammer-fisted blow to her cheekbone.
She saw stars, then she felt that same hand gripping her throat.
She fought, but one of the others pried the knife from her hand. She heard it clatter away. Another hand took her other wrist.
"Fuck's sake, Sylvi. Stop."
She spat in Magnus's face.
"She hisses and she spits, yet still we don't get to see that pretty kitty. What's the point in being a tiger if you never let us see her, huh?"
"Will you go to hell?" Her voice rasped. The grip tightened.
"Fuck it."
She was turned rapidly, then, Magnus's grip of her throat turning to a grip on her neck as he forced her down, bent over the breakfast bar. She felt his erection against the subtle curve of her arse, tried to pull back and fight, but the hands on her wrists had dragged her arms forward. Kicking did nothing. While she might've been a shifter, the four men in her own damn kitchen were vampires.
Old vampires.
"Do you remember her being so fuckin' flat?" This from Laurent.
"Thirty-four double-A," Aron responded, his voice deep and husky. He appeared to her left, reaching across to take her hair out of her bun.
She didn't bother wondering why this was happening. Didn't try to ask. Her guess satisfied her enough and if she was wrong, she didn't want to know.
She knew these men, what they were like. She was outraged, but she wasn't surprised. Not even when Aron pulled off her jacket and tossed it aside.
Magnus shifted his hips away only enough to pull back her trousers, taking her underwear with it in a single tug.
There was no ceremony. No warning, no preparation. He spat on her dry cunt and drove his thick cock inside her to the hilt.
Her snarl of pain and fury drowned out any groan of pleasure from the man behind her. Her fingers flexed. No matter how hard she tugged, her hands weren't getting free. Not even when they switched grip once Magnus had begun fucking her in earnest.
"We're really not going to get to see your kitty before you die, huh?" he asked, shoving hard and bottoming out inside her again.
Her eyes watered and the pain enticed another snarl, but she said nothing.
Strong, cold hands gripped her hips as he began thrusting harder. She hated the way her body responded to the stimulation. The way she slickened around his dick until he slid seamlessly in and out, filling the kitchen with the wet sounds of arousal.
"Fuck her, she's wet!"
Slap!
She hadn't seen Aron lift his hand to strike her, at the same moment Magnus had brought down his hand to slap her arse. He went back to gripping her hips, pulling her back onto him every time he shoved into her.
"There I was, thinking we had something special," Aron spoke, resting on his elbows his face was close to hers. His eyes wandered down to her arse and stayed there. "But it turns out you'll just get wet for anybody."
He gave a humourless laugh, tinged with spite, but when Magnus laughed from behind her, his was entirely filled with pleasure and... a lick of something darker. Malice.
This was going to get far worse.
"No, Aron," she tried pleading, though she didn't know exactly why.
Perhaps it was because he, evidently, wasn't wrong.
"Who's next?" Magnus asked, ripping violently out of her, filling her cunt instead with three fingers.
He pumped at her until Laurent straightened from gripping her hands, stretching lithely like a cat before swiftly pulling his cock from his trousers. She could already tell he was slimmer than Magnus, but the length...
"Fuck," he snarled, his cock driving into and painfully bumping against her cervix, "she's too shallow." And instead of an angry or frustrated growl, he laughed.