“What is it you’re trying very hard to tell me without upsetting me?” Hal looked at the opening of the cave, then back at him. “Hal, just tell me. I don’t care to have my information in half sentences any more than I like to give it out.”
“We think she might have been part vampire before she was changed.” Remy thought about that and thought Hal might be on the right track. “She’s not taking it well, but her magic, it is surpassing anything she should have had. Before you, we mean.”
“Who is the we you’re referring to?” He told him. “I had no idea that you were having trouble with the other faeries, Hal. If you want, I can talk to them. Do they know what a fine job you’re doing with my mate here? You should bring them around some time to meet Lizzy. I’m sure Lizzy would enjoy that very much.”
His chest puffed out, and the strain on his buttons was very noticeable. A faerie worked hard all the time, but like any creature, they enjoyed a compliment as much as the next person. Hal seemed to be taking his to the top.
“What would Lizzy like to do?” Remy stood up and saw that she was just inside the cave where the shadows were still darkest. “I’m sick with worry that this isn’t going to work. I know I shouldn’t get my hopes up that far, but I already have.”
“Come out and see.” She stood there, and he could see that she wanted desperately to do it. Instead of telling her to come out, he tempted her with things she’d be able to do when it worked. “I’m betting you have a house that you miss, too, don’t you? Not to mention, you said something about a company you wished to purchase. I wanted to tell you this yesterday, but it slipped my mind. I have a great deal of money. I’ve been around for a very long time, and I didn’t have much use for things such as stoves and air conditioning. So I invested wisely.”
Remy had no idea if she was going to be able to be out in the sun, but he had a feeling. A feeling so strong, he wanted to lift her up toward the sun and let her feel it over her entire body.
She put her hand into his when he held it out to her. He could take on the world in that moment. Not just take it on, but conquer the entire universe if she would allow him to hold only her hand for the rest of his days. As soon as she stepped out into the sunlight, he moved back so she could see it all. Feel the warmth of it that he vowed never to take for granted again.
“It doesn’t burn.” Her laughter rang through the woods like a waterfall that fell from hundreds of feet only to splash loudly into the water below. It was a wonderful sound. One that he was going to work every day to hear. “Oh, Remy, it’s heavenly, isn’t it? The sun isn’t burning me.”
He and Hal both watched her dance through the sparkling sunbeams. The dew on the grass made her clothing wet, yet she didn’t seem to mind. Each time she knocked a few droplets of it off a leaf, the sun would make it all the more beautiful by catching it at the right moment. Remy laughed with her, enjoying something he’d not thought of in a thousand years or more.
“Oh, the things I can do now. Hal told me I’d have to be in when the sun was at its hottest, and I’m all right with that. Just so long as I can feel it on my face once a day, I think I could live forever.” Hal started to tell her she would, but Remy stopped him. “I can go home now. Have a hot shower, and even sleep in my bed. To have a real bed and mattress beneath me sounds so wonderful right now. Oh, Remy, this is the best thing that has ever happened to me.”
She was still dancing around when Kelly and Bancroft—he was trying to remember to call his long time friend that—joined them. Kelly joined Lizzy, having a grand time with not just the sun, but the feel of a warm flower. A stone that skipped smoothly across the pond.
He glanced at Bancroft when he said his name. He didn’t want to hear anything terrible right now and told him that.
“Nothing terrible. I promise. The league is looking into your receipts. Kelly gave them hell, in her own way, when they asked her if she had the originals. They wanted them as well. They don’t know, but they might well have destroyed them, and that would have been the last straw.” Remy thanked him as he watched the two women. “Also, and you might well get a kick out of this. The vampire that changed her was an old vampire with plenty of magic to keep him going. He had amassed a fortune in cash. They’re going to divide it up between the victims that were with Lizzy when she killed him. She’s not going to have to pay any restitution either. It was justified as far as we’re concerned.”
“And his magic? What happened to that? I’m sure someone thought of it.” He said he’d brought it up to them. “And does that mean she’s going to get that as well? Or has she gotten it already? Could that be the reason she’s so strong?”
“Neither of you will get it until you bond. They—we all figured she’d be strong enough after that so she could handle it. There is a great deal of it too, from what I understand. But for as strong as she is now, neither of you will likely notice when it comes to you.” Remy nodded and asked when he was going to tell her. “I’m not. You are. She doesn’t like me at all, remember?”
“She currently is only tolerating me because she can be in the sun.” They both laughed. “What happens after we bond? I’m only hoping we do that someday, but I’m not going to pressure her. I honestly think she’d hurt me if I tried.”
“I have no doubt she would. Seriously too. Here you go.” He handed him an envelope. Remy snapped his fingers, and the paperwork was magically put on his desk at home. “That is a list of the things she will get from his estate. It’s a great deal of money, gems, as well as three houses we’ve found. She’ll get the hard things, the houses, and gems. The rest will be divided between the women’s families. There is also an award coming to her for killing him. Richardson has been a black mark for vampires for some time, I heard.”
“The magic, do you also have a list of that?” He said he was working on that for him. “Good. Thank you for your help in this. I have made sure that this Hinkley person is kept away from her. After the things she was telling us yesterday, I put a man on him last night. He sounds like a money hungry prick.”
“He is. She has it too. Money, I mean. As a matter of fact, she’s about as close to you in having it all, as I am. Lizzy is smart and has a good head on her shoulders. She also makes sure that a lot of the charities she donates to have all they need. However, you should also be aware that she doesn’t abide by them fucking with the money. If she finds out a charity is using the money wrong, she cuts them off without a second thought.” He asked his friend how she made her money. “Investments mostly, but she also won the lottery several years ago. No one ever knew it was her. She kept working at her dishwashing job until they were able to afford to replace her. I’ve spoken to her attorney, and he seems to think she’s about the only multi-million dollar winner that has doubled their winnings within a year, as well as going on to make more each year since.”
“Just curious, does this count the vamp’s money too?” Bancroft only shook his head while smiling. “Yes, I thought that was what you were going to say. Christ, no wonder that Hinkley guy wanted to marry her and then kill her. She’s a catch. Too bad he’s going to be shit out of luck.”
The women joined them as they set out for the bodies. Remy listened to what Kelly was telling Lizzy, mostly about her job and what she did for the FBI. He’d known that, of course, but not that Kelly only worked for them. Neither of them had to work, but Remy understood that to not work was paramount to getting into trouble. Idle hands and all that.
As soon as they were within a hundred yards of the graves, he could smell them. He glanced at Lizzy when she came to stand with him. It was Bancroft that explained why the smell was still there after all this time.
“You see, when you buried them here, they couldn’t decompose. Their maker, even though they were killed, wasn’t the one that buried them. By you doing it, and it was great that you did, they could only completely become one with the earth after he was killed.
It’s why when a vampire changes someone, and they die, they burn the body. It’s the only way to make sure they’re not found by someone that can pull them from the ground.” Lizzy told him that it was weird. “Yes, I agree. Once you killed Richardson, not only did they start to rot, they also had no blood in their bodies. There won’t be any wounds on them to indicate how they were killed. The only thing Kelly will be able to tell about them is that they were dead for however long it’s been since Richardson was killed. They were young and female. There will be no obvious signs of trauma to them at all.”
“So how does she tell someone they died? Someone is going to want to know a reason that all six of these women are dead and buried together. I’m sure their families are going to want to know the truth.” Bancroft told Lizzy that they would be considered homicides because there would be lies printed on their death certificates. “Then how will anyone know that their killer has been disposed of? I mean, I would love to have killed him and had a body to go with theirs, but he turned to ash the moment I tore his throat out.”
Remy cleared his throat before he explained what would happen. “There are people in place in government offices and the like that work with our kind all the time. Changing the name of a property that we might have owned for several generations. Things like that. After a couple of months, no longer than that, I’ll call one of the offices and tell them the killer has been found and killed. There will be a small article in the newspaper. The families will be given a great deal of cash, and it will soothe them knowing the killer has been caught.” Lizzy told him it wouldn’t soothe her. “No, it wouldn’t. But you won’t have a vampire coming to your home and making you believe everything is all tied up in a neat little bow. It’s for the humans, Lizzy. They need this more than any other species the earth holds.”
Remy could see she was struggling with the lies of it. He would, too, he supposed if he’d had to live through what she had. And she had too. A great deal of terrible things that should never have been done to her, nor the women that had died that day.
Kelly made two phone calls. First, to the FBI to have the grounds excavated and the bodies removed. Then she called the funeral home in town to let them know what to expect. Her story for finding them was that it was at the back of their property. Which, as of that morning, Kelly told them, it was. She and Bancroft had been out walking and stumbled across them.
“I won’t have my name in the paper, nor will any of us for that matter.” Lizzy said that was good, but why. “Because I work for the government, and that’s part of my deal with them. Also, I think you have to lay low because you have things to take care of first as well. Correct?”
“I do, as a matter of fact.” Lizzy looked at him as Kelly spoke to the people she’d had on standby for this. “I need to talk to you about some things. Things that I have going on in my life that you might want to know about.”
“I’ll be happy to know anything you’re willing to tell me.” Lizzy told him he might not. “Whatever it is, we can figure it out together. I have things going on as well. We’ll get through it. I have a feeling we’ll come out on the other side smarter for it too.”
“Christ, I hope so. I would hate to think that neither one of us is all that smart.” He laughed with her when she guided him to her cave. “I’ve not just been laying around on rocks here. I’ve made sure I have all the comforts of home.”
Laughing, he nearly fell back when he entered her cave, as she called it. Good lord, she really was living with the comforts of home. He loved the fact she’d not been sitting idle but had kept working even with her inability to be out in the sun.
~*~
Lizzy looked over the paperwork that had been sent to her from her attorney. Mike Holloway had been working with her since she’d gotten out of college. While he went on to be an attorney, she’d gotten a business degree and had taken a lot of money management classes. He had other clients, but he was there for her whenever she needed him.
“I will say this for Josh. He’s persistent. Calling the insurance company daily was what got them looking into other policies. I have a feeling that had you gone through with that marriage, you’d have not been long for this world.” She asked him if Josh had been able to collect any money. “No. Even his own accounts are closed off to him. Not by me, though I wish I had been in on it. He’s been nagging the banks, saying that since you are gone, he should, as your almost-husband, be able to have half the funds in there. Like I said, he’s persistent.”
“What can you tell me about Stanley Remy? Not that it matters, according to Bancroft, but is there anything there I should be concerned with?” Mike told her he wasn’t an easy man to get to know. “I’ve noticed that. While he talks to me, I think he’d rather be someplace where he didn’t have to interact with people as much as I do.”
“He has money in both the local bank as well as out west. I do believe he has stashes of it all over the world. If he’s as old as I’m to believe he is, I’d say he’s also a very intelligent man. Both his parents are dead. He hasn’t any relatives that he has much to do with. Also, you should be aware that he’s put your name on his accounts. I found that out yesterday when I was working on setting up the account you asked for. The money, or whatever comes from your maker’s estate, it’ll go right into that account.” She thanked him. “No, I should thank you. I wouldn’t have thought of putting money like that into an account other than your personal one. Who knows what sort of things they might well do to your account with access to it.”
“The house—have you had it taken care of?” He told her all the locks had been changed, and there was someone at the guardhouse all day and night. “Good. Kelly gave me a book to read over. It said that in order to keep up appearances, you should have a full-time staff on hand so you could look human. I honestly never thought of myself as anything but a monster. I just never thought I’d ever be able to go back to my place.”
“I’m learning a great deal too. Remember that professor we had for literature? Well, come to find out, the reason he’s so well versed in that art is that he’s been around for a while too. I was just making inquiries into finding someone that would be able to help you, and he was the one that called me back. He doesn’t know Remy well, he told me, not enough to form an opinion, but he does know Bancroft.” Lizzy asked if he had a good opinion of him. “He does. Everyone I’ve spoken to, they say he’s a fair man, and since he’s found his mate, he’s become friendlier, as well as more of a philanthropist. You and he have that in common.”
“He’s a pain in my ass is what he is. I like Kelly, his mate. She’s friendly and charming. The funniest thing about her is that she never curses. I mean, Mike, she uses words like butt and darn it. It’s hard not to laugh at her sometimes.” Lizzy smiled. “I think Bancroft is afraid of her too. She has that—I don’t know what you’d call it, but she can peel your skin right off your body and smile the entire time she’s doing it.”
“No wonder you like her. You’re just like that too. I’ve never seen a man shiver in his shoes so much as when you’re giving him a dressing down. It’s funny how you can insult someone, and they’re still thinking you’re polite as hell.” Mike laughed. “My goodness, I think you might fit into this group more than you think.”
They worked on the paperwork that had been lying on her desk and his for most of the morning. She knew it would be important for her to take a nap during the hottest part of the day, and she was all right with that. This morning she’d watched the sun crest over the mountains. Lizzy decided she never wanted to miss it again. It was the one thing she’d miss more than anything else.
Lizzy went to find Remy. He’d told her he was going to look her house over to see if it was safe for a vampire to live in. He’d not pushed her into letting him move in with her. Arriving at a decision was difficult. Remy was starting to grow on her, but she didn’t want to have to give into him either.
“There are only a few things I’d change out here. It’s mostly to do with the bedrooms. Each of them has windows, of course.” She asked him if they should be taken out. “No, nothing that drastic. There are darkening curtains you can buy that will do the trick. I’d not put them in all the rooms either if I were you. Just the ones that someone such as yourself would use. If anything, the basement here has a suite in it that would be perfect for a visiting vampire.”
“Where are you planning to sleep?” She hadn’t meant to ask him, much less ask him like she was accusing him of something. He only smiled at her, and that made her feel more stupid. “I’m sorry. I’m not used to having to share my things. I mean, I guess I should know that you’re not the pushy type—you’ve been so laid back with me. The next time I sound nasty to you, go ahead and be nasty right back.”
“I don’t think that would make either of us feel better. I know you have a lot of stress in your life. I also know, from your staff, that you’re usually not so upset like you are now. I can wait. I’m in no hurry to have you accept me.” She asked him what he meant. “Not whatever you’re thinking. I mean, just you having me around to help you get through this. It’s difficult to ask for help. I know that firsthand. I want you to be comfortable about not just me being here, but with what you are now.”
“I don’t know what I am.” It was the first time she’d said it aloud but still felt the need to explain. “I know I’m a vampire. But what does that mean? Really? What’s the big deal about being able to kill someone with a slash of the hand or drinking them to death?”
“You’re only focusing on the things that bother you. There are a great many things you can do now that you weren’t able to before, one of the most important ones being that you’re going to live forever. You’ll heal quickly. No more sickness or broken bones that take weeks to heal.” She told him she couldn’t eat her favorite meals anymore. “But you can. Just not as often as you wish. Having a steak once in a while is perfectly fine. You’ll enjoy it as you did before. However, you’ll fill up quicker, and it won’t satisfy your real hunger.”
Stanley: Dalton’s Kiss Book 2 (Dalton's Kiss) Page 4