Sleepers: Shifters Confidential Romance Collection

by Juniper Hart

  You know what this is, she chided herself furiously. He’s going to feed.

  The realization was a combination of infuriating and frightening. There were protocols in place for feedings and even if she had never had to trail a vampire before, Kyla knew her charge was doing everything wrong.

  Still, she made no move to stop him. She heard the screams reverberate in her ears. A small boy ran from a back room toward the commotion and she inhaled sharply, her mind reverting to her childhood home. Kyla dismissed the cold memory and focused on the mess Pascal was making.

  “What did I ever do to you?” Kyla heard the man gasp. “Who are you?”

  She sensed an immediate change in the air. The feel of impending death was seeping out of the confined space.

  He is not going to end the man’s life, she realized but the understanding gave her little relief. Inhaling sharply, Kyla stepped out of the apartment. She could sense Pascal’s apprehension and recognized his intention to run. Sliding stealthily back into the stairwell, she descended the steps and waited outside the building for him to depart. She didn’t want him to see her there.

  A moment later, Pascal ran from the doors, his wan face aghast, and she followed him, watching his expression. He looked panicked, unfed, and worried. Kyla was sure she had never seen him look so pained in all the time she’d known him.

  She kept a safe distance, contemplating her next move.

  She could easily go after him and order him to head home but to what end? That was never something that worked to her advantage, no matter how many times she had tried to make it happen. Pascal did not respond well to threats and coercion.

  Dammit. I’m losing him.

  She had to keep after him before she lost him.

  It didn’t take her long to find his trail again, her curvy frame falling behind him at a good distance, but it wasn’t necessary. Pascal was too distracted to notice that he was being followed.

  He finally stopped and collected himself and Lara watched as he peered back down Darling Street, where the complex stood tall against the night. Even from the distance between them, she could see the throbbing of his fangs against his cheeks.

  He seemed to be thinking about his next move.

  He’s going back to finish what he started, she realized. She was surprised to see him carry on away from the building. Where are you going? You came here for a reason. Finish what you started!

  She didn’t know why the urgency was so great, but she wanted him to see it through with every fiber of her being. She had never seen him in action before and the notion stirred hot emotions inside her, as if she had almost been privy to a part of Pascal’s life that she’d never seen before.

  She felt like if she had seen him do this, she would finally understand Pascal better than she already did.

  Or she was just clinging to something that could never be.

  Stifling a sigh, she looked around for Pascal but he was already gone, leaving Kyla to think about her next course of action.

  Torn for a moment, Kyla whipped around in the opposite direction, allowing him to disappear from her view.

  He left witnesses, she thought worriedly. He’s not keeping a low profile at all.

  She wondered if that was the reason she spun on her heel and headed back into the building, determination spilling through her veins.

  It was either that or she was driven by something else, something she had been stifling for far too long.

  A deep yearning to be with Pascal, no matter what the cost.

  No, I can’t, she thought hastily, spinning around once more to head back toward her car. My job is to watch and never, ever get involved.

  But Kyla knew it was too late for that already. She had already let her heart take over and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

  Except keep Pascal on a much shorter leash.

  This time, she did laugh aloud.

  Taming Pascal would be as easy as calming Anatoli.

  And Kyla’s laughter turned to moans of defeat.

  10

  Lara’s senses were on high alert, even if her energy was depleted.

  I’m overdoing it now. I shouldn’t have gone this far in such a short time.

  Of course, she hadn’t had much of a choice. She could have flown by airplane from Virginia to Cape Town but that would have left a paper trail, one that she did not want Franz learning about. No, this quest had to be done in secret and the only way to ensure that was with her batwings, dangerous as it was.

  She had had to stop several times over the past day, particularly when the sun got too hot or intense. Unlike Franz and Pascal, who had been protected by the harmful solar effects, Lara’s veil of protection only extended when she was under Franz’s shadow. The further she flew away from him, the worse off she was.

  At least until she got to Pascal. He would save her.

  A wave of dizziness slowed Lara down and she ducked into an alleyway to catch the breath she hadn’t realized she had lost. She was surviving from the boost which Franz had given her but that would not sustain her long enough. It had been far too long since her last feed and with the trips back and forth across the world, she needed fresh blood and plenty of it. She didn’t need anyone to tell her that she was pushing her luck.

  She made her way to the slums of Cape Town where her kill would not be noticed by anyone, and found herself in a very familiar place again that night. The shine of the streetlamps bounced off the white stone of the church, but a quick scan of the yard told her that Pascal was not there as he had been the previous night.

  There was still time. She could find him after she fed.

  It was still early enough in the evening that drug addicts bound together and police were slowly making their presence known but she knew in time, she would be left alone with a sprinkling of enfeebled bodies, ripe for the taking. Still, she did not sit still. She continued to move, knowing that it was still too light outside for a random kill. She needed to bide her time until the authorities would merely flitter off to more brightly lit parts of the city, only to return when someone overdosed or a drug deal went awry.

  Surprisingly, the young, delicious beauty in the middle of the drug-infested neighborhood drew no notice. Everyone was too far gone in their own woes to notice the diamond in the rough.

  Lara walked leisurely as if she were invisible. It was one of her natural abilities, the capacity to assimilate in any surroundings. While her radiance would stand out in any environment, she was virtually disregarded amongst the vagrants and lost causes. They were too involved in their own misery and hellbent on self-destruction to look up from their crack pipes.

  Soon, she found herself before the government housing complex again, blinking in surprise. She hadn’t realized she’d come full circle somehow. Two armed policemen were apprehending a huge man who was almost frothing at the mouth as he fought against their restraints, cursing incomprehensibly at anything and everyone. His ebony eyes locked on Lara and for a moment, a peculiar smile twitched at her lips.

  A dragon. He’s not going to be detained very long, she thought, barely hiding her contempt at the sight of the beast. He snarled, baring his teeth when their eyes met. She casually stepped aside, allowing for the uniformed officers to hustle the man into a waiting cruiser. As they left, she slipped inside, wondering what had drawn her there again. As if driven by some inexplicable force, she found herself climbing through the perilous stairwell, a strange longing guiding her toward something she could not identify. It was not until she entered the hall of the fourth floor that she understood why she had been called to the location.

  What am I doing here? she wondered but as she thought it, she had a feeling she knew exactly why she had gone to that precise place. A slow smile formed on her lips as she made her way down the hall, knowing that it was Pascal who had led her there.

  Lara walked down Darling Street, wiping the taste of the man from her mouth. As she ran her tongue over her teeth, she tasted the syrupy
aftermath of alcohol, its diluted contents running through her own veins. She was slightly intoxicated from feasting on the man with all the booze in his system. She did not know why Pascal had selected him, but he was not what she would have normally gone for. She had not killed the woman or the boy, something Franz would be furious to know, but of course, she wasn’t going to tell him. She could almost hear his voice in her ears, warning her that witnesses were never to be left behind, but she refused to let herself succumb to the dark umbra of him hanging over her head. In fact, Franz was thirteen thousand miles away and the furthest thought from her mind as she could have hoped.

  He will not be my problem again, not after this.

  New life had filtered through Lara and she roamed the streets, her instincts on high alert. The sound of sirens screamed through the night and in seconds, firetrucks roared past her, presumably on their way to the blaze consuming the bodies of her victim, the one she had started on the way out.

  We are still connected, Pascal and me, she thought, licking her rosebud lips as she moved away from the devastation she had left in her wake. Even after all this time, I can find him, no matter how far away he gets.

  She didn’t remind herself that he had sent notification to Franz, not her. She had made her choice to stay with the vampire regent, even if she had not been given a choice to be turned. She could have left at any point during the past two centuries, to make a life with Pascal.

  Not that Franz would allow for that to happen, she thought with some resentment but even as she thought it, she wondered how much of that was true. She had never tried to leave Franz before, not even after he had turned all the remaining villagers in the wake of the horrors the soldiers had left behind. It had simply been an unspoken fact that Franz owned her now and she had made no move to change that.

  Until now.

  11

  This has already gone too far, Pascal told himself, wiping sweat from his brow. He had returned to the church for some unknown reason, as if the sanctuary of the shady courtyard was calling out to him. In fact, it was odd that he would find solace in such a place and yet there he was.

  Sanctuary. That is what I need, to claim asylum. Or I need an asylum, he realized.

  He wiped his face with his palms, but he was not clear-headed, as if a fog had overcome him. The events of the past couple days were taking their hold on him and he knew he needed rest. It troubled him slightly that Kyla had not been on him the way she usually was, and he continued to look over his shoulder as if he expected her to appear.

  He realized that she had been acting peculiarly but he hadn’t given it much thought, not when he was so caught up in his own world.

  I can’t believe I left a witness behind. Not just one but three. It’s like I’m calling out to Anatoli to come and punish me.

  There was some sanity to that thought. Wasn’t that what the past two years had been about? Crying out for someone to take notice of where he’d been outcast to?

  Franz had clearly forsaken him after sending him on some fool’s errand that he had no interest in fulfilling and now he sat, unsure of his future, pondering what his life had become and what he was going to do about it.

  He couldn’t just keep moping about. He needed to get out of Cape Town and return home, even if just to see what was waiting for him. What if Franz was still looking for him? Maybe Pascal’s letter never got there. It wouldn’t be the first time snail mail failed.

  But he knew if he did return home, he would not only be inviting the wrath of Anatoli, but also losing Kyla in the process.

  The air seemed to shift, grow colder, and his head jerked up instinctively. He was staring into a set of intense blue eyes but this time he didn’t feel guarded. He recognized Lara on sight now.

  “It is you,” he breathed in disbelief. “I wasn’t imagining it!”

  She did not touch him but instead the two gazed upon each other’s faces as if suspended in time. Suddenly, a torrent of emotions overwhelmed him.

  “Hi,” Lara finally breathed. “How are you?”

  “How am I?” he echoed, a short laugh escaping his lips. “How do you think? I’ve been abandoned here. The tribe forsook me.”

  Lara shook her head, but she didn’t speak, as though she was collecting her thoughts, but Pascal wasn’t finished, all the grief and anger he’d been harboring, spilling from his lips in a torrent.

  “I sent word as soon as I was released from the compound, waiting for someone to come for me, to make contact, but there was nothing!”

  Lara sighed and shifted her eyes away, nodding slowly.

  “I know,” she murmured. “And I understand you’re upset but things have gotten very complicated since you’ve been gone.”

  Pascal gaped at her.

  “Complicated?” he echoed. “Franz sent me out here blind! Don’t tell me about complicated!”

  Again, Lara sighed, but this time, she met his eyes evenly. As he took in her fair complexion and fine features, he noticed patches of red about her mouth as if she had rubbed coarse material on her face. Her eyes gleaming, she sat beside him on the very same bench he had been sitting on the previous night.

  “I got your letter,” she confessed. “Franz never saw it.”

  He stared at her blankly, unsure of what she was saying, but a feeling of dread overcame him as he recognized something in her face that he wished he did not.

  “What?” he asked dully. “What are you talking about?”

  “I received your letter when you sent it last year, Cal, but I never gave it to Franz.”

  Pascal’s mouth parted to gape at her.

  “Why the hell not, Lara? I thought Franz had forgotten about me! I didn’t go home because I thought I’d be exiled!”

  “I wanted to be sure…” Lara mumbled, not making any sense, but Pascal was not going to let her off the hook so easily.

  “Be sure about what?” he insisted when she didn’t continue. He knew her well enough to know her evasiveness was going to have to be drawn out of her fully and painfully. “Lara, you shouldn’t be here.”

  A shadow of alarm overtook her face, but she quickly brushed it off.

  “Or what? The big, bad Sleepers will get me?” she teased but Pascal could not help but look over his shoulder, half looking for Kyla.

  What will she do if she sees Lara here? I’ve already been pushing my luck with her. This will be the straw that broke the camel’s back for sure.

  “You have no idea what you’re up against,” he sighed. “What do you want, Lara?”

  She smiled warmly but her next words sent ice pellets through his veins.

  “I want what’s best for both of us,” she replied softly.

  “And what would that be?”

  “I want you to come home and kill Franz.”

  The words hung between them like a blast of frigid air and for a long moment, Pascal had no response. Suddenly, he unleashed a short laugh.

  “Did Franz send you here to test me?” he growled, unamused, despite his cold chuckle. “You can tell him that my loyalty is unshaken, even if he has left me here to rot for this long.”

  “It’s not a test,” Lara replied flatly. “And you know you want him dead just as much as I do.”

  A chill fused down his spine, but he held her gaze evenly.

  “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he tried to sputter but the look in her bright eyes knew all. It didn’t matter how much he tried to deny it—she was onto him.

  “I don’t want him dead.”

  “How can you say that?” she growled. “After all he and Kieran did to us? After all they took from us?”

  “Lara,” Pascal growled in a low voice, his eyes shooting around the darkened courtyard. “If Kieran and Franz hadn’t turned us, we would have been long dead by now.”

  Lara’s hand touched his bicep gently and she shook her head.

  “We never had a chance,” she whispered. “We might have made it out if he had just let us be—”<
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  “You know that’s not true,” Pascal interjected, turning his head away. Oh, how he wanted to deny everything that Lara said, to shove her away and insist that she leave him alone, but what she was suggesting was almost delicious, tempting.

  “If you take out Franz, you and I could be together again,” Lara muttered. “Like we always should have been.”

  Anger shot through Pascal and he glowered at her.

  “The choice to go with Franz was yours, Lara, not his. You’ve been perfectly happy for two centuries, it seems.”

  “I’m not! I wasn’t!” she cried out, her voice attracting the attention of several people nearby. She instantly realized it and lowered her voice. “I had no choice but to pretend that everything was well, but Franz…”

  She trailed off and visibly swallowed, dropping her head down to pout slightly.

  “Franz what?” Pascal grumbled. “Franz isn’t spending enough money on you? He isn’t keeping you in a mansion with servants at your beck and call?”

  He couldn’t keep the sarcasm from seeping into his words, but he had not realized just how much resentment he’d been holding onto until that moment.

  “You make it sound so simple,” Lara muttered. “But it’s not. I was young and stupid when I agreed to go with Franz, but my heart always belonged to you.”

  Pascal scoffed loudly.

  “You’re playing a dangerous game here, Lara,” he reminded her sharply. “Does Franz even know you’ve left America?”

  “Of course not,” she retorted, folding her arms defiantly over her chest. For a moment, Pascal could not help but compare her to Kyla. It was not just their physical differences that were obvious but the distinct way that they carried themselves.

  Could I imagine Kyla coming halfway across the world to enlist someone else to do her bidding? It would never happen. Kyla is too strong, he realized.