by Tina Folsom
To her surprise, he let out a soft chuckle. “Oh, Lilo. You really think I’d have it in me to kill you?” He shook his head. “I could wipe your memory, of course.”
She jolted. “What?”
“It’s a skill every vampire possesses: to wipe a human’s memory of an event so the vampire’s secret remains hidden. I could do that. But I’m not going to. I want you to know the truth about what’s going on. I don’t want you to be in the dark any longer. You’re much more use in helping me in my search for Hannah if you know everything.”
“You’re truly looking for her?”
“From the moment I found out she disappeared, I’ve done everything in my power to find her. And I won’t rest until we’ve got her back, safe and sound,” he vowed.
“Why? She’s just a human. She can’t mean anything to you.”
“I don’t distinguish between human and vampire when I choose my friends. And Hannah is my friend.”
The sincerity in his voice was undeniable, as was the honest look in his eyes.
Slowly she nodded. “And once we find her. What then?”
“That’s up to you, Lilo. It’ll be your decision. To go home and pretend nothing has happened, or to accept this new world and make it yours. I already know what I would choose, if I had a say in it.” He ran a searing look over her that made her shiver involuntarily. “But whatever you decide in the end, you’ll be safe. Nobody will hurt you as long as my heart beats.”
Lilo could only stare at him in disbelief. Was she really listening to a vampire making her a promise, a promise she was inclined to believe? She searched his eyes to find the truth in them. Would he keep his word?
The chiming of a cell phone cut through the silence of the room. Blake pulled it from his pocket and looked at the display.
“Sorry, I have to take this.” He connected the call. “Wes?”
Lilo couldn’t hear Wesley’s words, only Blake’s reply. “We’ll be there shortly. Thanks.”
He disconnected the call and looked straight at her. “Wesley is calling a meeting at headquarters. He’s figured out what Ronny’s been up to.”
24
Blake slowed the Aston Martin and entered Scanguards’ well-lit underground parking garage, while tossing Lilo, who sat in the passenger seat, a quick glance.
“We’re here.”
She nodded. “Good.”
While she’d gotten in the car without protest, knowing he couldn’t leave her alone at his house, Lilo had carefully avoided touching him, always keeping distance between them. Her eyes had been vigilant at all times, watching him for a sign that he would pounce. Without a doubt, he’d rattled her with his confession, though he was pleased to see that she wasn’t hysterical and had accepted his revelations with stoic grace. And a pinch of apprehension, though not fear. Fear was too strong a word; he didn’t think that Lilo feared him. She was too smart and too brave for that.
But just because she didn’t fear him, didn’t mean that she welcomed him with open arms. How he could ever regain her trust, he didn’t know. But he was willing to try anything, because never making love to Lilo again wasn’t an option.
Blake pulled into his assigned parking spot, and switched off the engine. Lilo was already reaching for the door handle, but he put his hand on her forearm.
Lilo shrieked and whirled her head to him, shock lighting up her eyes.
“I didn’t mean to startle you.” He eased his hand off her arm, regretting the loss of physical contact. “When we’re in the office, I want you to stay close to me. Don’t wander off. The building is crawling with vampires, and without an employee badge they’ll assume you’re an intruder. I’m breaking a few rules by taking you inside. Some people won’t like that.”
“Okay.”
Blake got out of the car and watched Lilo do the same. At the elevator, he turned to Lilo, who’d followed him.
“Most of my colleagues are like tame lambs once you get to know them.”
“Well, excuse me if I take that with a grain of salt,” she said and tossed him a you’re-shitting-me look.
“Fine, maybe not like lambs, but real laid-back guys.”
She tilted her head to the side. She wasn’t buying it.
He shook his head. “Okay, you’ve got me. Every single one of my colleagues is an alpha. Including the female bodyguards.”
For the first time in the last half hour, Lilo’s face lit up with genuine interest. “Female bodyguards? Are they vampires?”
“Yes. Does that surprise you?”
The elevator doors opened and he ushered her in.
“I just thought… I mean you said vampires bond with human women to have children.” She suddenly froze. “You told me you were sterile. But you admitted that vampires can father children with human women. Does that mean you—”
“Lied about being sterile? No. I am sterile. For now. Every unbonded vampire is. Only once he’s blood-bonded is a vampire able to impregnate a woman—and then only his mate. Not that a bonded vampire would ever want to touch a woman other than his mate.”
“I understand.”
But he wasn’t done talking yet. This was his opportunity to tell her about his world. “Vampire males can of course also bond with vampire females. And have offspring.”
“You mean children born as vampires? But would they grow up?”
He understood where she was coming from. “Well, actually, they would still be hybrids, half vampire, half human.”
“I don’t get that. Where would they get their human part from, if not from their mother?”
“That’s where science comes in. By nature, vampire females have always been sterile, and they still are. But Maya, the wife of Scanguards’ second-in-command, Gabriel Giles, was a doctor before she was turned. And she’d made it her mission to find a way for vampire females to bear children. She succeeded.”
“How?”
“By implanting human stem cells into the vampire’s uterus so she could get pregnant and carry the child during pregnancy.”
“I’m surprised.”
“Why? Maya is a brilliant doctor.”
Lilo shook her head. “Not about that. But about the fact that a vampire female would go through so much trouble to have children.”
He smiled. “Vampire females are just like other women. Some of them want a family as badly as human women. They’re no different in that respect.”
“Mmm.” She nodded. “I think I would like to meet a female vampire. I can’t quite imagine what a woman like that must be like.”
“You met one the other night: Rose.”
“Your cousin?”
Blake made a grimace. Another lie he had to set straight. “Rose isn’t my cousin.”
Lilo’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“Rose is my grandmother,” he hastened to say.
“Grandmother?”
“My fourth great-grandmother to be exact. In 1814, when Rose was still human, she gave birth to my third great-grandmother. Rose was turned shortly after that and from then on watched over her human line from afar, until she had to reveal herself to me to save my life.”
Lilo stared at him in stunned silence. “Oh my God, she must be over two-hundred years old!”
Blake winked at her, smiling. “Granny doesn’t look it, does she?”
When Lilo chuckled unexpectedly, he added, “Don’t tell her I called her granny, or she’ll stake me.”
He noticed Lilo swallow hard. “So the legend is true: a stake through the heart will kill a vampire.”
He nodded slowly. Should he be careful about revealing how a vampire could be killed? What if she used this knowledge against him? But when he looked into her eyes he didn’t see a woman scheming, but he saw the writer in her, the person who wanted to understand the process.
“A stake isn’t the only thing that can kill us. Silver can do that, too.”
“How?”
He welcomed her eagerness to learn. It would only help
her understand him better. “A silver bullet will burn a vampire from the inside. Shot into the brain or the heart, it’s fatal almost instantly, in other parts of the body it leads to the silver eating its way through flesh and bone. But if the bullet can be extracted in time, there’s a good chance of recovery. Given sufficient human blood and sleep, a vampire will heal in a few hours.”
“So when you get injured, you can heal yourself?”
He smiled. “Our bodies are made that way. Any injury will be healed during our restorative sleep cycle. Major injuries need human blood to help the healing process along.”
“So human blood is your cure-all?” There was no accusation in her tone. It was a simple question a researcher would ask.
“The same way vampire blood can heal a human, human blood can heal a vampire.”
Suddenly she shifted her eyes and stared at the shiny elevator wall. “A perfect symbiosis…”
He’d never thought of it this way, but now that she’d uttered the word, he couldn’t deny that the lives of the human and vampire races were intertwined to the advantage of both. He didn’t get a chance to agree with Lilo though, because the elevator doors opened on the executive floor.
He stepped into the hallway, quickly ascertaining who was milling about, before looking over his shoulder at Lilo.
“If you can bear my touch at all, I’d like to take your hand. It’ll make it clear to everybody that you’re with me.
The faint smell of sex that still clung to her—as well as to him—would equally make it clear to any vampire or hybrid that Lilo was his. But he wanted to have a physical connection to Lilo, just in case one of the young pups they were likely to encounter didn’t have his hormones under control, and he needed to maneuver her out of a delicate situation quickly.
When Lilo finally slipped her hand into his, he released a silent sigh of relief. At least she wasn’t so disgusted with him that she couldn’t even hold his hand. It was a step in the right direction.
“The conference room is this way.”
“It looks like a real office,” she said, pointing at a niche with a photocopier.
“It is a real office.” He smiled at her. “We all take our work seriously. Without us, people die.”
She looked up at him then. “I’m beginning to understand that.”
“Hey, Blake, wait up!” At hearing Amaury’s voice, Blake stopped and turned, releasing Lilo’s hand in the process.
Amaury, one of Scanguards’ directors, marched toward him. As so often, he was dressed in a loose shirt and cargo pants. Built like a tank, the Frenchman with the long dark hair and the gravely voice was one of the strongest vampires he’d ever encountered.
“Amaury.”
Amaury’s gaze shifted to Lilo and a flash of recognition filled his eyes for a moment. He stopped a couple of feet away.
“I hope you have a good explanation for this.”
His superior didn’t need to clarify what he was referring to. Blake knew the rules well enough: no humans were allowed on the executive floor. Well, no humans other than the human mates of Scanguards’ upper management.
“I know: no humans up here.” Blake bent to Lilo. “Lilo, this is Amaury LeSang. He’s one of Scanguards’ directors. A vampire, in case you were wondering.”
Amaury sucked in a sharp breath. “What the f—”
“Lilo knows the truth. She’s vital to this case. Without her, I doubt very much that Wesley would have been able to figure out what’s going on in this city.”
Amaury ran his eyes over Lilo, assessing her. “The drug case?”
“Yes.”
“Drugs?” she squeezed out.
Blake looked at her. “Hannah’s disappearance involves drugs.”
He caught Amaury raising his eyebrows. “I didn’t realize you were on that case. I thought you were in charge of Nicholas and Adam for the week.”
“Ryder is watching them right now.”
“Why don’t I call the twins? Let them do their share and help Ryder out.”
Blake nodded. “Appreciate it. I sent Ryder out to grab some pizza with the boys. Have them call him to see where he is now.”
While Amaury pulled out his cell phone, Blake ushered Lilo toward the conference room.
“What twins?” Lilo whispered.
“Amaury’s got two boys. They’re in training to become bodyguards.”
“So he’s blood-bonded. To a human or a vampire?”
“You learn fast. He has a human mate, Nina. She’s one hell of a woman.” He smiled. “A lot like you. Blond. Lots of spunk. And she’s got Amaury wrapped around her little finger so tightly the poor guy has no chance of ever denying her anything.”
Lilo looked over her shoulder. “He doesn’t look like a pushover to me.”
Blake chuckled. “As I said earlier: tame lambs.”
She turned her head back to him and rolled her eyes, but her lips quirked into the beginnings of a warm smile.
25
Lilo stopped at the open door to the conference room, Blake next to her.
She knew exactly what he was doing: he was making small talk to put her at ease. She had to admit that it was working. Blake’s sudden willingness to answer all of her questions, not just with a perfunctory yes or no, but with a full explanation helping her understand the vampire species better, helped calm her nerves.
Despite the fact that she was now in the lion’s den, or the vampire’s lair, if that’s what they called it, she felt oddly safe. The building they were in looked like an ordinary office building, and this almost sterile environment helped give the impression that Scanguards was truly just another security company.
So far none of the people they’d encountered on their short walk to the conference room showed any outward signs of being vampires: no fangs, no glaring red eyes, no claws instead of fingers. Everybody looked… civilized.
She peered into the conference room. By her estimate it could hold around thirty people, and it was currently half full.
“Ready?” Blake whispered from next to her.
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
She felt his hand at the small of her back, gently guiding her forward. The touch wasn’t unpleasant, just as it hadn’t been unpleasant when he’d taken her hand earlier. Even though she’d seen what his hands could turn into, right now she could only feel the softness of his fingertips as he ushered her to an empty seat around the oval table.
“Here, take a seat. I need to have a quick word with Wes.” He pointed to one corner of the room where Wes stood talking to another man.
Instinctively she reached for his arm. “I don’t know anybody else here.”
“I’ll be just a moment.” He bent closer, dipping his face to her ear. “I’ll let you in on a secret: a vampire is the fastest animal on this planet. It would take me only a second to rush to your side if you needed me.”
Her heart suddenly hammered out of control. Could he hear it? Was the legend true that a vampire had more sensitive hearing than a human?
“Okay.”
She watched Blake walk to Wes and pat him on the shoulder. They exchanged a few words, and Wes looked in her direction, lifting his hand in greeting. She nodded to acknowledge him, then looked around the room once more. She couldn’t help but catch the furtive stares the men and women in the room gave her, though nobody approached her to confront her about her presence here.
More people entered the room, taking up more of the empty seats, while others continued to stand. Amaury was now coming in. He spotted her and walked toward her. Instinctively, she froze. He let himself fall into the chair next to her.
Nervously, she clasped her hands in her lap.
“So Blake told you about us,” he started without preamble.
Her throat was suddenly as dry as the Sahara. “He did.”
“Did he explain to you that we won’t tolerate anybody spreading our secrets?”
She lifted her chin. “He didn’t have to. I got th
at when he showed me his fangs and his claws.”
“Ah, you got a demonstration. Did you like it?”
“What are you doing, Amaury?”
She took a relieved breath at the sound of Blake’s voice behind her.
“Just chatting with your girlfriend,” he said casually.
“She’s not my—”
“I’m not his girlfriend,” Lilo ground out.
“—girlfriend,” Blake finished.
“Whoa!” Amaury lifted his hands in a show of surrender and got up. “My nose hasn’t betrayed me yet. And it sure isn’t lying now either.” He grinned triumphantly and turned away.
Lilo swiveled in her chair and faced Blake, who now sat down in the chair on her other side. “What did he mean by that?”
Blake ran his hand through his dark hair, an expression of embarrassment on his face. “A vampire’s sense of smell is ten times better than that of a dog. Amaury could smell me on you, and you on me. He knows we had sex.”
Lilo felt like sinking into the floor. “Oh, crap!”
“Do you really regret it that much?”
There was a touch of pain in his voice that made her meet his gaze. Their eyes locked. Did she regret having slept with him? If she could turn back time, would she make it undone? If she knew everything she knew now, would she still allow him to make love to her and surrender in his arms? Would she be the sensible one and stay away from him, or would she—just like Hannah—fall for a vampire, even though she knew that nothing good could come from it? That one day she, too, might disappear.
“Welcome!”
Wesley’s voice coming over the loudspeakers in the room saved her from having to come up with an answer, for both Blake and herself. She tore her gaze away from Blake and looked to the front of the room, where Wesley was standing at a lectern, speaking into a microphone. Behind him the desktop of a computer was being projected on a screen on the wall.
“Let’s all settle down. We need to get this started. There’s a lot that you all need to be brought up to speed on,” Wesley urged. He craned his neck toward the door, where more men streamed in. “Is everybody here?”