Luther's Return (Scanguards Vampires Book 10)

“Well, that explains that. So you decided to get quid pro quo for saving her life, didn’t you?”


He knew Blake was referring to the fact that Katie would have been aroused by his blood, whether she was attracted to him or not. Considering that her brother already seemed to be annoyed with her, Luther decided to shoulder the responsibility for what had happened in the last hour. After all, it was his fault. He’d given into her demands to have sex when he knew full well that she wasn’t in the right frame of mind to make a decision.

“Yes, I did. I took advantage of Katie.” Though he didn’t regret it. Making love to her had been the best thing he’d done in over twenty years. And if he had to pay for it now, so be it.

“You didn’t!” Katie shot back at him, bracing her hands on her hips. “I told you already, it had nothing to do with your blood. Idiot!”

“Let me handle this,” Luther said through gritted teeth. “It’s better this way.”

“But you’re distorting the facts!” Katie protested.

“Stop!” Wesley raised his hand in a plea for silence, his face red with rage. “I don’t think I wanna know the facts about what happened in there.” He motioned to the bedroom in the back. “I have a feeling I know more than I ever wanted to know. But what I do wanna know is what the fuck you’re doing with him and why you got stabbed by a prison guard. Maybe we should start with that.”

Blake folded his arms over his chest, looking at them expectantly. “I’d like to know that, too. And start from the beginning.”

“And you’d better not leave anything out,” Grayson added, aggression rolling off him.

Luther caught his look. There was no love lost between them. No surprise. The young hybrid clearly knew all about Luther’s past, how he’d tried to kill his mother. Hell, Grayson wouldn’t even be here today if Luther had succeeded. Somehow he couldn’t blame the guy, though that didn’t mean he had to like him.

“You got my message about the letters?” Katie asked, looking at Blake.

He nodded. “I called you back right away, but got no answer. When we couldn’t find you, Haven searched your house, but found no sign of the letters.”

Luther tossed her a sideways glance. “So there are no copies in existence.”

Katie gave him a sheepish smile. “I bluffed.” Then she looked back at Blake. “I have the letters. They’re in my purse in my car.”

“We didn’t see your car outside,” Wes commented.

“We had to abandon it when we fled the prison,” Luther explained. “I can give you the exact location.”

Blake nodded, then motioned to Katie. “By prison I’m assuming you mean the vampire penitentiary near Grass Valley.” He shifted his gaze to Luther. “From which our friend here was just recently released.”

“Yes, the vampire prison. When I couldn’t get a hold of you and ran into Luther…”

Luther clasped her forearm. “Maybe I should explain from here.” He looked at the three Scanguards men. “When I saw the letters, I realized that somebody connected to the prison had to have sent them. So I decided to help Katie locate the person who wrote them.”

That Katie had practically blackmailed him by threatening to set all of Scanguards on his ass and use witchcraft on him—witchcraft she didn’t even possess!—was immaterial. He was certainly not going to admit to the men standing in front of him that he’d been tricked by a woman.

“You could have let us do that. No reason to get involved. Samson told you to stay out of our way,” Blake said.

Luther scoffed. “Yeah, and the moment you learned about the letters coming from the prison, you would have put two and two together and chased me instead of the real culprit. Samson isn’t acting rational right now. He would have just—”

Grayson jumped at him, baring his fangs. “How dare you talk about my father like that?”

Luther didn’t budge an inch. “You’re just like him, hothead!”

“You fucking—”

“Shut up, Grayson!” Blake ordered and pulled him back. “He’s right. Samson would have pulled resources off other leads and chased down Luther. And considering that Katie is still alive and Isabelle isn’t here, I’m inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt that he’s got nothing to do with Isabelle’s kidnapping.” He lifted his chin. “Go on.”

“I’d seen a cell of one of the V-CONs plastered with posters of Katie. I figured he was obsessed with her. Had to be him. I had to find out his name, and I could only do that from inside the prison. So we broke in.”

“How?” Blake asked.

“You don’t need to know the details about that. What’s important is that we got the information we were looking for and got out.”

“Apparently you ran into a few problems.” Blake motioned to the bloodstain on Katie’s shirt.