All Hell Breaks Loose by Sharon Hannaford

sword hand began itching.  “I’m afraid the Master is currently unavailable.  Would you like me to let him know that you called?”  He was nearly a foot taller than she was and made a point of looking down his nose at her as though she was a mildly repulsive bug.
    “What I would like,” she ground out, holding on to her temper by a single thread, “is for you to get the fuck out of my way.”
    “Now, now, Miss Bradford, such language from a lady is hardly…”  His sentence was abruptly cut off as he stared at the tip of the curved metal blade lodged an inch deep in his chest.
    “I don’t call myself a lady, asshole,” she snarled, pressing Nex another fraction of an inch closer to his heart.  “Now get the hell out of my way before I’m forced to carve out your heart and take it home for my cat to eat.”
    She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen a Vampire swallow convulsively, but this one did.  As he backed slowly away from the door, she followed him, allowing the blade to pull free of his flesh but keeping it trained on him.  He was a Vampire, after all, and she was only partly Vampire.  She was almost as quick as most Vampires, but almost wasn’t always good enough.  She did have one advantage, though.  As indifferent as Julius seemed to be towards her at the moment, she doubted he’d changed the order that she was absolutely not to be harmed by any of his Clan or staff.  There weren’t too many who would (or in this case, could) defy a Master Vampire, especially one as powerful as Julius—a Master Vampire with the gift to control other Vampires just as she could control animals and, apparently, Werewolves .
    “Be it on your own head, then,” Maximilian spat, as she slipped past him into the house.  She kept a watchful eye on him, alert for any sudden movements, but instead, a malicious grin spread over his face.  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Angeli Morte!”  The cruel vindictiveness in that look nearly made her backtrack.  Nearly, but not quite.   The steward gathered himself, slammed the front door closed, and strode away without another word.  He hadn’t even touched the wound where Nex had cut him.
    A feeling of cold dread settled in her stomach, but she brushed away the man’s odd behaviour and allowed her senses to flow through the house, searching.  Then she turned and swept up the wide, wooden staircase in search of her quarry.
    He wasn’t in his office, as she’d expected.  He was still in his bedroom.  She doubted he was still ‘asleep’, he usually rose long before his Clan members and often even before the sun had set.  She was so distracted by what she was going to say to him that she didn’t even notice the steady, human heartbeat in the room before she flung open the door and walked in proclaiming, “Sorry, Julius, no more hiding from…”
    It was then that she noticed the human heartbeat, and the human it belonged to—the very petite, very pretty, female human sitting on Julius’s lap as his face nuzzled into the side of her neck.  Julius was naked from the waist up, his glorious, muscle-sculpted shoulders and chest gleaming with a pale luminescence in the dim lighting.  The shock on his beautiful face mirrored the shock on her own as his head whipped up to find her standing in his doorway.  She realised what she’d walked in on when she took in his elongated canines, the smear of red at his lip and the girl’s passive, vacant expression.  She took a quick breath as she tried to figure out if this was better or worse than her first assumption.  The streak of jealousy that had flashed through her like a firebolt at her first glimpse of the scene had nearly sent her to her knees.  She whirled back towards the door, but his voice caught her before she could leave.
    “Gabrielle.”  It was hardly a whisper.
    She heard him move, a little moan of protest coming from the blonde woman, but she didn’t look back at him.
    “Gabrielle, I’m