Vampire Most Wanted by Lynsay Sands

regions. He followed that up with a lovely string of curses in both Italian and English that ended on an “Ah hell,” when the world blurred around him and he felt himself sliding toward the floor and unconsciousness. It seemed the cure was going to knock him out where the actual blow hadn’t.
    D ivine watched Marcus sprawl on her floor and sighed with exasperation. She really needed to control her temper. While she’d been annoyed that he would enter before she’d given him permission, all she’d managed to do was make more work for herself.
    Clucking under her tongue, she shook her head, set aside the mop, and then squatted to turn the man over. He was white as a sheet, she saw, but didn’t understand why until she gave him the once-over and noted the bloodstain around his groin.
    “Oh damn,” Divine muttered, guilt sliding through her. She hadn’t meant to do real damage, just teach him a lesson about entering other people’s homes without permission. Unfortunately, she used her strength so rarely that Divine forgot just how strong she was. This wasn’t the first time she’d done more damage than intended. She’d once tossed a grandson through a wall when all she’d meant to do was slam him up against it. But she hadn’t felt too bad about that. It had been Rufus, who she suspected didn’t follow her rules about feeding. He was a mouthy piece of work, always sneering at the “stupidity and weakness of mortals.” She’d heard him more than once declare they were stupid cattle and deserved to be slaughtered. He knew she hated it when he said things like that. She hated that he even thought like that, and blamed herself for it.
    Divine didn’t spend a lot of time around her son and his sons. She hadn’t since he became a man and struck out on his own. She had visited with him more often at first. She’d even raised several of his boys in the early centuries when the birth mother didn’t want to be bothered, but had found it too heart-wrenching when one or another of them had been caught by one of Uncle Lucian’s scouts and killed. It had actually been a relief when Damian had stopped asking her to raise them.
    The last time she’d spent more than a half hour or so with Damian had been when she’d had to rescue him from Uncle Lucian up in Canada. She’d moved as quickly as she could when she’d got the message from Abaddon that her son might need her. Fortunately, the carnival she’d been traveling with at the time had been in Michigan and she’d got to Toronto quickly enough. She’d checked into a hotel and had immediately tried to contact Damian. When she hadn’t been able to reach him, she’d reluctantly tried to contact Abaddon with no success. She’d paced her hotel room for two days, trying repeatedly to reach either of the men. Just as she was about to give up and head back to Michigan, Abaddon had called in a panic. He’d told her Leo was holed up in a hotel in downtown Toronto and Lucian and his men were there searching for him.
    Divine had ground her teeth at his calling Damian Leo, but had merely snapped out, “Which hotel? What room is he in?”
    The hotel hadn’t been far from her own. Still, by the time she’d arrived, slipped past the men her uncle seemed to have streaming through the building, and got to the floor Damian’s room was on, she’d been too late. They’d found him, and Damian was lying on the floor in the hall, several bullets in his chest and an arrow protruding from his heart.
    Shocked and horrified, Divine had scooped him up and started to turn away with him, but a small sound, perhaps a gasp, had made her swing back toward the room Damian had lain outside of. A petite brunette was trying to help a dark-haired man to his feet and had spotted her. The woman was opening her mouth to scream when Divine had taken control of her mind, stopped her from making a sound, wiped her mind, and put her to sleep. She’d then rushed off for the stairs with her son,