by Alyssa Day
Ven laughed. “Yeah, there is that. Anyway, there’s more to it than a simple training mission. We hear that Vonos is hiding the Vampire’s Bane somewhere near St. Augustine. Evidently he has some kind of super spidey fortress of stu pitude or something near there.”
Alexios whistled. “Now that is a prize. Is it true that the diamond does what the myths claim?”
“Quinn and Alaric saw Vonos use it to wipe out a whole crowd of vamps in seconds. The Bane exploded them clear out of their shoes, which sounds wicked cool. Vonos wasn’t hurt at all, either, more’s the pity.”
Ven stood up, stretched, and yawned. “I think I didn’t need that twentieth toast to the baby’s health. My head is pounding like there’s a room full of hammers in my skull.”
“Nobody needed that twentieth toast,” Alexios admitted. He’d been trying not to move his own head too quickly ever since he woke up.
“Look, here’s the deal. We need you. Denal is in some kind of black funk after that stunt he pulled, and we can’t even get him to go see Riley and the baby. Brennan has already gone back to Yellowstone to find out what in the hells is going on with the wolves, because that’s a big problem, Tiernan is in Florida, and you know she and Brennan can’t be anywhere near each other.” Ven stopped to take a breath, and then continued. “Conlan’s obviously not going anywhere, and would you trust Christophe with this? He’s as likely just to stab the recruits and be done with it. Also, I don’t know why I’m explaining all this to you. I serve as the King’s Vengeance, not the damn social secretary.”
Defeated, Alexios ignored the jibe and simply nodded. “There was a time when being part of the Seven meant fighting shoulder to shoulder. We are Poseidon’s chosen elite—the royal guard to High Prince Conlan. Together, we have battled humanity’s oppressors for centuries. Now, it seems as though we are being torn further and further apart.”
“Maybe. Or maybe we’re finally growing up, my friend. I have a new nephew now, and I intend to make the world as safe as possible for him. Especially since we’re almost certainly taking Atlantis to the surface as soon as we find and restore all of the gems of Poseidon’s Trident.”
“I will do my part, of course. I will find that diamond, and I will do my best to turn these humans into a fighting force worthy to stand at our side.”
“I know you will. Now, back to a more fascinating topic. Grace. Did you know the heritage there? She claims to be a descendant of Diana.”
“I’ve seen the bow she carries but only rarely seen her shoot it. She’s very good when she does, though. I’ve never seen her miss,” Alexios was forced to admit. “We’ve fought on the same side often enough for me to know that. I’d trust her to have my back in a bad situation. It’s not that she’s not a good fighter, it’s just—”
“Personal?”
“Yeah.”
“Get over it,” Ven advised. “We’re fighting a war here; we don’t have time for personal.”
“Is that what you told Erin? Before or after you took her to your bed?” Alexios asked, deliberately crude. He might be going along with this stupid pile of miertus plan, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.
But Ven didn’t take the bait. “Get over it,” he repeated. “Or, if it really is that way for you and Grace—like me and Erin—then may the gods help you. Because your life is about to get very complicated, my friend.”
Before Alexios could settle on a reply, the prince had left the room, no doubt returning to his warm bed and warm wife.
And maybe the gods did need to help him, because suddenly Alexios was picturing a warm and willing Grace in his own bed, and his cock got so hard that it ached. Five years of self-enforced celibacy and strict self-control vanished into the mist at the thought of all that glorious hair spread out on Atlantean silk. Those golden arms and legs reaching to him. Those dark eyes promising delights like none he’d ever known.
Just when he thought he’d go off in his pants like a green youngling, another thought made him laugh and eased some of the pressure: knowing Grace, she was more likely to offer to spar him over who got to be on top.
The gods help him, he may have finally met a woman whose mind intrigued him more than her body. The image in his mind shifted, transformed. Now it was Grace laughing, as she sometimes did with her friend Michelle, those lovely golden brown eyes alight with her generous sense of humor.
Grace serious, offering good counsel on matters of strategy.
Grace stern, arms set like stone as she braced her bow for target practice or battle.
Grace determined—selfless—courageous—as on more than one occasion when he’d seen her throw herself into harm’s path to protect another.
Dozens of images whirled through his mind, tumbling around and around like the funnel of a treacherous sea spout.
Grace, Grace, always Grace. And, sadly, not even naked.
It was going to be an interesting mission.
Fort Castillo de San Marcos, later that morning
“Grace, they’re here.”
Grace looked up from her computer to see Sam standing in the doorway. Good old Sam. She’d known him for a while; he came and went as needed. Sort of a troubleshooter for rebel groups. He’d gotten in before dawn one day from Georgia, told her Quinn sent him to be Grace’s go-to guy. Second in command, she guessed, came closest to a description, not that she even now was used to her new title. Commander. It was almost laughable.
It might have helped if she’d had any military training. Thank goodness Sam did. Rumor was that a few of the new recruits had been in the army, too, back in the days before all military actions in the United States fell under the direct command of the over-sec def. The over-secretary of defense, appointed by the president but only with the advice and consent of the Primus, was a vampire, by law. The vampires had argued, convincingly enough to carry the vote, that with centuries of experience in military campaigns, it only made sense that their representative was in charge of all matters military.
Plus there was the threat of foreign campaigns conducted by vampires—no human could know how to combat that. Or so they’d claimed. And they’d won that argument, too. Back before any of the rebels had mobilized. Before quiet stirrings of unrest had solidified into fear, and then concern, and finally defiance.
“Grace?” Sam’s bushy white eyebrows drew together in a look of concern she’d seen from him far too often lately. “Penny for ’em?”
She smiled and shut the cover of her Dell. Time enough later to figure out encrypted messages about supply chains.
“My thoughts aren’t even worth a penny, not that we have one,” she said, grimacing as she unbent her long legs from underneath the small desk. “Funny how you never think about revolutions needing money. In the movies, the good guys just seem to have a constant supply of shiny new guns and ammo, and they never actually have to eat.”
She walked to the doorway of her cramped office space, part of the officers’ quarters of the old fort. When they’d requisitioned the fort for “theater group practice,” the city of St. Augustine had been glad enough to turn it over for a monthly fee. Ever since the vampires had shut the fort down as a tourist attraction—apparently it was politically incorrect to celebrate a fort where the Spaniards had once held mass vampire burnings; bet you never saw that in your Florida history books—the city had been operating in the red.
Kind of like the rebels.
“They never need to take a dump, either. Didja notice that?” Sam asked as he ambled along beside her. “Nobody in movies ever has to go to the bathroom unless it’s some sort of girly bubble-bath thing.”
He snorted, whether at the idea of not taking a dump or bubble baths, she didn’t know. Probably both. Sam looked and acted like an uneducated redneck when it suited him, but he’d been a colonel in the army Special Forces back before a new “undead bloodsucker of an ass-wipe general” had railroaded Sam out of the service for insubordination.
“Why didn’t you ever go into P Op
s, Sam?”
He glanced over at her. “What does that have to do with bubble baths, exactly?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. It’s just that the Paranormal Ops teams would be thrilled to have somebody of your talents, and I’d think with your background you’d prefer their organization and structure over our raggedy group. For that matter, you should take over this training mission, and I’ll be your go-to guy.”
The sounds of excited voices, unmistakably edged with tension, grew louder as Sam and Grace approached the stairs to the upper deck of the building. All the newbies ended up there, and Grace didn’t blame them. The view was spectacular.
The fort sat right at the edge of the entrance to the harbor, strategically positioned to protect the oldest continuously occupied city in America. Grace had had time to learn some of the history of the area, and it was fascinating stuff. The abandoned gift shop was lined with dust-covered bookshelves filled with various books about the fort, the city, and the military history of the area. Cendoya, the Spanish governor of Florida, had been in charge of building the fort. He broke ground in late 1672, and with a military engineer named Ignacio Daza and labor in the form of soldiers, Indians, slaves, and skilled craftsmen, the work on the fort began. Poor Governor Cendoya died only a few years into the project, though, and the fort wasn’t finished until 1695.
What Grace found most fascinating about the fort itself was the construction of the walls. The beautiful rock, coquina, was composed of tiny seashells that had literally been turned into concrete by the sea itself, as if Alexios’s sea god had been playing with building blocks as a child. The Spaniards had ferried the coquina on an elaborate system of boats from nearby Anastasia Island. The enormous task had been complicated by pirate attacks and storms, but they’d persevered, and the fact that the amazing structure still stood today was a testament to those early builders.
These days, the harbor was often dotted with sailboats as residents and tourists enjoyed the mild winter weather and the glorious Florida sunshine. On the other side of the fort, the historic town was laid out in a wonderful panorama, with so much to see and do that Grace had spent one day from sunrise to sunset simply strolling from one end of the old town to the other, stopping at shops, historic sites, and artisans’ studios.
Sometimes, in the midst of training, worry, and planning for battle, a girl just wanted to watch a glass blower at work.
“You still there?” Sam asked, making her think that maybe he’d asked before. She grinned and nodded, coming back from her reverie.
“P Ops wouldn’t let me take my dog on patrol,” he drawled. “And Quinn tells me you have special talents that make you the right one to be in charge of this ball game.” He stopped at the bottom of the stairs and whistled. “Come on, Blue.”
The wrinkliest dog Grace had ever seen lifted his head from his paws, opened first one eye and then the other, then stood up and stretched in a motion that was about two city blocks away from graceful. Sam had told her Blue was a Georgia bloodhound. “The perfect dog for tracking bad guys and sleeping on porches,” he’d said. “Or tracking bad guys who’re sleeping on porches. Something like that.”
But he’d had that unique Sam grin on his face, the one that told her he was pulling her leg so hard she’d be lucky if it didn’t come clear off and leave her with only one, like the “one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest” Sam so often claimed to be busier than.
Working with a Georgia man was definitely an education for a Midwestern girl.
She took a deep breath and rubbed her suddenly damp hands on her jeans, and Sam narrowed his eyes.
“No call to be nervous about this bunch, Grace. They’re all in awe of you.”
“Of me? Why?”
He ignored her question and answered the one she deliberately hadn’t asked. “He’s not here yet. Your important trainer fellow.”
The nervous butterflies the size of flamingos swarming around in her stomach dialed it down a notch, and she blew out a breath. “Okay. Good. We can focus on meet and greets first. I’m sure Alexios will want to meet them all, too, so we can save the intake interviews for later, when he gets here.”
“Fine by me,” he agreed, starting up the stairs. “You gonna let me know what it is about this guy that gets you so riled up?”
She didn’t bother to deny it; Sam was a bit of a bloodhound himself. “As soon as I figure it out, you’ll be the first to know.”
An hour later, Grace made her excuses to the fresh-faced young guy eagerly questioning her and headed to the refreshment table to fill her mug from the thermal carafe filled with hot coffee. An even dozen trainees. It was a pitifully small number, but recruits were down. Ever since the so-called “accidental” fire that had wiped out a training compound in northern California two months ago, during the same week that a “gas leak” had caused an explosion that killed twenty-six rebels at a training compound in Colorado, people had been more and more reluctant to have anything to do with the movement.
Grace couldn’t even blame them. Most people had families and friends. Loved ones who would mourn if they died, even for so just a cause as freedom. Unlike her.
She had no one.
She scooped too much sugar and cream into the rich pumpkin spice coffee—one of her few luxuries—and stirred it mindlessly, giving herself pep talk number 67(a), the one in which Our Heroine refused to give in to self-pity. It’s not like she was really alone. She had friends. Michelle, Quinn, Jack, and now Sam and—
“Hello, Grace.”
She jumped a little at the sound of his voice; the sound she’d been waiting for—and dreading—all morning. Coffee splashed over the rim of the mug, stinging her fingers. “Ouch!”
“Not the greeting I would have expected, but you do have a history of surprising me.” The amusement colored his voice until it was as rich and dark as the coffee.
She told herself the shiver snaking down her neck was simply because of the cold. He couldn’t possibly be as formidable in reality as he was in her memories. It had been adrenaline-fueled attraction, that was all.
Pasting what she hoped was a friendly but neutral expression on her face, she put the mug down and swung around to face him. “Alexios. Welcome. We’re glad you’re here. Did you just get in through the magic doorway?”
It hadn’t been the adrenaline.
He was tall, broad-shouldered, and lean-hipped with the exact muscular body type she’d always found irresistible, but that wasn’t what she saw first. It wasn’t what anyone would see first.
In the bright afternoon sunlight that turned his mane of thick hair the color of molten gold, the sight of his scarred face was almost shocking. She’d seen him—seen his face—several times before, but always in the nighttime. Always in the dark. The merciless quality of the winter sunshine cast dark shadows along the jagged edges of the badly healed gouges. The left side of his face was scarred from temple to chin, leaving only his left eye and, oddly enough, his nose, whole and unmarked. But the right side was perfection; both counterpoint and mockery to the damage it mirrored.
The half smile that had quirked at the edges of his lips faded under her perusal and she was suddenly desperately ashamed. How long had Alexios been forced to endure the stares and speculation? And, worse, what torture and unimaginable pain had he suffered that could have caused such scars?
His narrowed eyes, rapidly turning the deep, turbulent blue of a storm-tossed sea at dusk, gave her the answers: far too long and far too much.
“No, I took the tram,” he replied to the question she’d almost forgotten asking. “The tour guide was excellent. Did you know St. Augustine is the oldest European city in the United States, first visited by Ponce de León in 1513?”
She smiled, gratefully accepting his unspoken offer of forgiveness. “I did, in fact. I’ve spent a lot of time exploring the city since we decided to establish this outpost here.”
“It still surprises me, when I think of it, to recall just how you
ng your country is. Coffee?”
She blinked. “What? No, I have some, thanks.”
“I meant, may I have some? Coffee?”
She felt the heat climb into her cheeks, where it would probably stay for the rest of the time Alexios was in St. Augustine. She was twenty-five, damnit, and a trained fighter. A commander now, even. Not a giggly teenager with her first crush on a man. No matter that he’d kissed her like a starving man devouring a feast, and she, the feast.
Forget the damn kiss, already.
“Coffee?” he prompted, amusement shimmering in his eyes, as if he could hear her ridiculous thoughts. Oh. God.
“Can you read minds?” she blurted out.
A slow, sexy smile spread over his face and every nerve ending in her body wanted to sing and dance. Even his teeth were gorgeous. Somehow, those sexy eyes and that sinful smile, combined with the sheer virile presence of the man, caused the scars to fade into insignificance.