“Where are we heading?” she asked, glancing his way.
His jaw set stubbornly before he answered. “I’m taking you to a safe house.”
She tilted her head curiously. “And what do I need a safe house for?”
“You were the one being shot at.”
She considered arguing, but it was hard to do so when she had been shot at, for the second time in as many days. So she leaned her head back against the leather seat and closed her eyes once more. It helped her to think when she wasn’t looking at Bridger.
Why isn’t she fighting me on this? Matt wondered. The fact that she wasn’t being adamant and making demands was deeply disturbing. Modern mortal women did not simply acquiesce to being taken care of, no matter how well that suited their vampire lovers’ primal instincts.
The old-fashioned part of him was relieved that she put herself in his hands—but he also knew that the old-fashioned part of himself was a fool to be lulled into thinking he was completely in control of the situation. He wouldn’t be in control until he knew exactly what she was up to.
He was very tempted to goad her into an argument for the sake of exploring her mind. But she looked tired, and he hated disturbing her just because he was uneasy. Sentimental, romantic foolishness, of course…but he spent the drive out of the city stealing glances at Phillipa, drinking in the sheer pleasure of her presence.
Eventually the GPS told him to make one last turn onto a long dirt drive, and he stopped the car in front of a low house surrounded by scrub trees and cacti, hidden from the highway by a low hill.
“We’re here,” he announced.
Phillipa opened the door before he could do it for her, but he did reach her side as she got out of the car. She gave him an odd look as he took her by the arm, but she didn’t comment on how quickly he’d moved. She let him lead her into the house, but once they were inside, she shook off his touch. She crossed the wooden floor until she was well away from him, standing next to a window, and turned her back on him.
He didn’t realize that she had a mobile telephone clipped to her belt until she’d already flipped it open and pushed a speed dial button.
“If you’re calling the police—” he began.
She continued to ignore him. “Jo, hi, it’s me.”
Matt sighed with relief. Until—
“Josephine, is Marcus a vampire?”
Matt was too stunned to snatch the telephone from her. He could only stand there during the tense silence that followed, and then listen to Josephine Cage’s reply to her older sister.
A quiet but firm, “Yes.”
“Thank you.” Phillipa put the phone away and slowly turned to face Matt. Though her expression was still completely neutral, anger seethed close to the surface. “Now we can have that argument you’ve been waiting for.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
I t’s not what you think,” he said.
“You don’t know what I think. Though I suppose you could find out if you want to,” Phillipa added. “You being a vampire, and telepathic, and—stuff.”
Matt came forward and held out his hand. She frowned, but gave up her mobile phone. He pocketed it. “Obscuring thoughts and memories is permitted for our kind to preserve the secret of our existence,” he informed her. “But invading a person’s mind is a punishable offense. So yes, I could find out your thoughts, but no, I won’t. What I think you think is that vampires can’t be the evil monsters of legend, or you wouldn’t be alone in the middle of nowhere in the power of one of them. You are not a stupid woman, Phillipa Elliot.”
She reached into her pocket. He wondered if she was going to bring out a cross or garlic, but she took out a piece of hard candy, unwrapped it, and popped it in her mouth. “I need some carbs,” she said after sucking on the sweet for a bit. “I’ve been thinking about Brandon,” she said after she swallowed. “Actually, I’ve been wondering how I could tell my parents that their eldest grandchild is the spawn of Satan. Then I remembered what my brothers were like as kids, and it occurred to me that they might not even notice.”
She moved across the room and took a seat in a deeply upholstered living room chair. He followed and sat down facing her on the nearby couch. He could feel a great deal of turmoil beneath her calm exterior.
“I’m wondering when the hysteria is going to erupt,” he told her.
She folded her hands in her lap, and lifted her chin. “I am trying to remain calm. Stress makes my blood glucose shoot up like a rocket.”
“Then what about the argument you promised me?” he teased. “I always look forward to a bit of fireworks. They make lovely foreplay.” Before she could respond to this, he added, “Our goddesschild is not the spawn of the devil, though I imagine he will be an unbearably spoiled brat.”
Her folded hands clenched until the knuckles went white. “My nephew really is a vampire?”
“No.”
“I mean, how is that possible?” She didn’t seem to have heard him. “How could vampires reproduce?” She shot to her feet. “Oh, my God, my sister’s been sleeping with a vampire!”
“So have you,” he pointed out. He got up and put his hands on her shoulders. He meant to gently push her back into her chair, but the need to keep on touching her was too strong. So he faced her with his hands on her, and gave in to his own curiosity. “When did you first suspect? How did you figure it out?”
She moved closer to him, though he doubted she knew she did so. “When did I suspect?” Her expression went out of focus as she thought back. “At Jo and Marc’s wedding. I knew something was wrong, even then. Everyone was too perfect, too beautiful, too young, too masculine, too feminine, too—everything.”
“You shouldn’t have noticed,” he said. “At least, you shouldn’t be able to remember us that way. We had some very good professional telepaths working that party.”
“I know when something is true,” she said. “It all seemed perfectly reasonable at the time, but the weirdness stayed in the back of my head. Then there was the sex with you.”
He smiled. “You were overwhelmed by my prowess.”
She snorted, but admitted, “Yes, I was, actually. It was—is—like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. Can sex be too good?”
“Not when you find the right partner,” he told her.
He burned to make love to her right now, to show her how right they were together. He settled for giving her a swift, hard kiss. “What other clues did you follow, Officer Elliot?”
She took a deep, steadying breath. He was aware of her racing pulse. “You call me sweet,” she said. “Is that because you’ve tasted my blood?”
“That’s one of the reasons I think you’re sweet.” He touched the tip of her pert, upturned nose. “Is my sweet tooth one of your clues?”
“It wasn’t, until just now. But there were so many other things. One of them was Marc telling me that I needed a vampire boyfriend. I thought he was joking.”
“He was matchmaking. Just because he’s happily bonded to a mortal—”
Phillipa frowned. “What’s bonded? Has he forced Jo into anything?”
“What do you mean by anything?”
She blushed and looked away. Then she cleared her throat and looked him in the eye. “Is my sister a vampire’s sex slave?”
Matt threw back his head and laughed. “Does she act like a sex slave?”
“I don’t know what they do in the privacy of their bedroom. And I don’t really want to know,” she told him, “unless he forced her into this bonding thing.”
“It can’t be forced,” he said, and sighed. “A bond is true love, and cannot be denied.”
“Oh, crap. I suspected it was something like that. So if I put a stake through Marc’s heart, Jo would be really pissed at me.”
“To kill him would be the same as killing her. What other clues?” he asked, wanting to distract Phillipa from the subject of vampire love.
“The baptism ceremony. It certainly wasn’t like any
rite from any religion I know about. And then there was the guy who came up to me at the airport and told me that my sister was damned because of the vampire. Among his exact words were, ‘They want all our beautiful women to be their sex slaves.’”
“Not all of the women,” Matt said. “And we only take volunteers. I also don’t see where damnation has anything to do with it. I’m sure you assumed that this man was completely mad.”
“Until I discovered he was telling the truth about vampires. Of course, by then he’d started shooting at my sister and nephew. Oh, and I thought I was dreaming when I saw you vampout in the garage, but that wasn’t a dream. Not yesterday, or today, when I saw you move too fast to be human when the guy was shooting at us again.”
“Ah, you noticed.”
“And you were wearing sunglasses in a place where the lighting wasn’t all that bright. That’s very cool in a Matrix sort of way, but it’s not normal human behavior.”
“Would you kindly stop using the word human as if you and I are from different species?”
“We are, aren’t we?”
“Would we be interested in mating if we were? Would Marcus and Josephine have a child if we were?” He pulled her close and pressed his hips against her. “I’m not dead yet.”
“Yeah, I can feel that.”
He gave a low, wicked chuckle and whirled her toward the couch. “Maybe I should prove it, instead.”
Philippa smiled, and her arms came around him as they landed on the soft cushions. “Yeah. Maybe you should.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
I t was very hard to pace inside a cage, but Mike had to do something or go crazy. Where the hell was that damned vampire?
The wolves, aware of his dangerous mood, had disappeared behind a counter. Every now and then one of them would stick its head around a corner to check him out. Mike would growl, and the wolf would duck back. It wasn’t much entertainment, but it was something to do.
While he paced and wished for Cage’s return, he racked his brain trying to recall what he knew about this Family vampire. Jason was his name—but Matt had called him something else, hadn’t he? Sandor, or Sandor’s son…Sanderson…yeah, that was the term Matt used. Along with “stupid,” “idiot,” and “kid.” What was it he had done?
He remembered just as Cage came back into the room, and would have laughed if he could.
“Why are you still in wolf morph?” Cage asked as he came over to sit by the cage again. He looked as impatient as Mike felt. “Do you think that shape offers an excuse for what you’ve done? From what I’ve heard about werewolf justice, that isn’t going to help your case any.”
No it wouldn’t—if I was the one responsible for the killings.
Cage got up and went to his wolves.
Mike was furious at being ignored while the vampire fussed with the furballs, and he began to howl. The wolves soon joined in. What he expressed in werespeak was anger and frustration. The wolves’ howls were a mixture of anxiety and sympathy. They understood the problem. Why didn’t the freakin’ vampire?
Fortunately, the vampire seemed to understand his wolves. After he managed to get them calmed down, he came back to Mike.
“You’re stuck in wolf morph, aren’t you? You can’t change.”
Mike nodded.
“How is that possible? Brain damage?”
Mike let out a small snarl, then remembered that he needed this guy. Go get help, Lassie! he thought at the vampire.
But Cage preferred touch telepathy, didn’t he? Mike did not, not with another species, and especially not after having been mind-raped. But there was no escaping the contact if he wanted to get into his human shape again. He gritted his teeth and moved to the front of the cage, then pressed his head against the bars, hoping the vampire would take the hint.
He did.
Mike closed his eyes when Cage reached out to touch his head. The expected intrusion didn’t come. He didn’t feel a thing, other than the pleasant warmth and pressure of the contact. What was the matter? Had this guy lost all the psychic talent Matt had told him about?
Cage’s hand jerked back as if he’d been bit. “You know Bridger?”
Mike stared Cage in the eye, and the vampire put his hand back on Mike’s head.
After a few more minutes of Mike feeling absolutely nothing, the vampire shot to his feet. This time he was the one who paced like a trapped animal. His wolves had ventured from behind the counter, but they got out of Cage’s way and disappeared again.
Cage’s agitation got on Mike’s nerves as well. He growled to get the vampire’s attention.
Cage turned to confront him. “I cannot help you.”
Mike could tell from the way Jason Cage spoke, from the way he radiated tension, that he could help. Mike lowered his head menacingly and stared at the vampire, fangs bared in a silent snarl.
“I can’t!” Cage paced some more before turning back to him. “Do you know how much trouble I got into the last time I messed with somebody’s head?”
Mike nodded.
“Bridger told you?”
Mike nodded again. He hoped his association with the Prime who had put Cage away hadn’t earned him an enemy. Help me, he thought, and pawed at the cage door.
Cage studied him and rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. Then he moved forward and opened the animal pen.
The temptation was strong to make a dash toward the door, but escape didn’t really lie that way. Mike held down his sense of panic and urgency and stepped carefully, slowly, out of the cage. He walked up to Cage and butted him in the knee with his head. The vampire’s hand automatically came down to pet him, and Mike let him do it. He aimed his thoughts squarely at Cage at the contact.
Help me! You can do it.
“It’s forbidden to go that deeply into another mind.”
How do you think this happened? A vampire did this to me. A vampire can fix it.
“Let Bridger do it.” Cage gave a bitter laugh.
Help me, Mike insisted.
Cage moved across the room. Mike growled, and followed.
When they reached a couch, Cage gestured. “Have a seat.”
The cushions smelled of wolf. How nice to know that pets were allowed on the furniture. Mike’s sore flank twinged when he jumped, but he got up on the couch and lay down.
Cage took a seat on the floor next to him, then put his hands on Mike’s head. “If this works, I’ll probably be in deep trouble.” He sighed. “And if it doesn’t work, I can always use you in my act. Close your eyes,” he went on soothingly. “Go to sleep.”
Mike didn’t want to go to sleep, but he did. Once asleep, he had a long, dark, and terrible dream. There was screaming. Something awful chased him across a barren landscape while a storm raged all around. A lightning bolt crackled out of the sky. He tried to dodge, but the force pursuing him drove him forward, and the lightning lanced through him. He had to be dying, it hurt so bad, and the universe went dark.
When he woke up, Mike had a terrible headache. He sat up and pressed his hands against his aching temples.
“What the hell have I been drinking?”
“Would you like some coffee?” Cage asked.
He caught the heavenly scent of it and looked up. “Good God, yes.”
Hands.
He held them out in front of him. He had hands!
“I’m back.”
“You are,” Cage said, and held out a full mug.
Mike grinned at the vampire and took the coffee. It felt marvelous to have thumbs! “Damn, kid, you’re a good wizard.”
“Kid?” Cage’s head lifted proudly with typical Prime arrogance. “Kid?”
Mike remembered that Cage was a good forty to fifty years his senior. “Sorry. Matt thinks of you as a kid.”
Cage looked annoyed, then he grinned. “Yeah, well, Bridger’s an old geezer. Where do you know my cousin from? How do you know about me?”
Mike took a sip of coffee while Cage took a seat on a nearby chai
r. “I know that Matt spent most of World War II chasing you all over Europe after you pulled that hypnotizing-the-Nazi stunt.”
“It was a stupid stunt,” Cage admitted. “I was young, and trying to save the world. If I’d been a Clan Prime, I might have gotten away with using my power for good. Tony Crowe fought in the war, and he didn’t get in trouble for it.”
“Tony Crowe didn’t hypnotize Rudolf Hess into taking a plane and defecting to England.”
Cage shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. The Romany my family had lived among for generations were being murdered. I had to do something.”
“You used your gifts to interfere with mortal history.”
“I used my gifts to convince a crazy occultist Nazi to seek a peace agreement. It might have worked too, if Churchill hadn’t turned out to have vampire blood on his mother’s side, and figured out what was going on. He’s the one who set Bridger on me. Do you know Tony?” he added.
Mike nodded. “I work with his daughter, Sid Wolf. That is, I work with her when I get a chance to do my day job. I’m Mike Bleythin,” he added.
Cage looked uncomfortable for a moment. “I found that out while I was inside your head.” He gave a respectful nod. “Welcome to Las Vegas, Tracker.”
Mike couldn’t help but smile at the vampire’s apologetic attitude. “If you’d managed to catch that other werewolf, too, my job here would be done.”
“So you are in town to solve that problem.”
Mike nodded.
“But what does a werewolf have to do with the bank robbers?”
Mike just smiled. He was grateful for Cage’s help, but that didn’t give the vampire a need to know werewolf business. Except that there were other vampires involved, Mike recalled.
“What do you know about the werewolf problem?” he asked.
Cage’s wolves had come out of hiding and were seated on either side of his chair, where he rubbed his fingers through their fur. “When a wolf was spotted at a bank robbery, the police consulted me as a wolf expert.”
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