by E A Price
Juliet snatched her hand back and folded her arms. “You need to leave.”
His lips quirked and she growled at him, which only made his smile widen.
She jutted her chin stubbornly, but she imagined it was like a Cabbage Patch Doll trying to intimidate an elephant – pointless.
“I better go,” he said finally after a few minutes of silent persuasion/flirting. Though he waited long enough to make sure she knew he was leaving because he wanted to – not because she told him to. “Stuff to do.” He gave her a significant look.
Like what? A quivering voice inside asked. Another female? Juliet hushed herself, angry at her own soppiness.
He tweaked the end of her nose and chuckled as she wrinkled it.
“Don’t miss me,” he said as he slipped his jacket on.
“I won’t.”
“You’ll see me again soon.”
“There’s really no need to come back!”
His laughs echoed through the house as he left.
Juliet rubbed her arms. She was a vampire with a fair few centuries under her belt. Not to mention her special ability – namely talking to animals and being able to command them. There was nary a man, woman or beast in the SEA who wouldn’t ask how high if she told them to jump. Yet she couldn’t even get this male even to tell her his name. He was infuriating; he was insufferable, he was… her mate. No, he claimed he was her mate, but she knew that couldn’t possibly be true.
He was mistaken. He had to be, yet he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Didn’t matter. They were not mating. She was strong; she was fierce, she was respected, she was… completely powerless when it came to him.
But she couldn’t give in. She already knew he was crazy. The guy was a sabre-tooth tiger shifter who refused to tell her his name and apparently doesn’t actually exist – seriously; they could find no trace of him in any government database! Then there was all the ‘mate’ stuff.
He kept saying it, but she wouldn’t listen. She already knew it wasn’t true.
Vampires and shifters didn’t mate. No, it wasn’t that they didn’t. They couldn’t mate. Fate wouldn’t make them mates, because bonding for them would only lead to death.
Chapter Two
Juliet smiled politely, clutching at her non-alcoholic sparkling apple juice. She wasn’t going to drink it, but she wanted to look like she was enjoying herself. Which she was… kind of.
It was Cecile’s leaving/good luck party. Cecile was perhaps Juliet’s closest friend. Juliet didn’t exactly get close to anyone, but Cecile was gentle and lovely and could accept anyone. Cecile was leaving to have her baby. Not long ago Cecile – the most delicate swan shifter imaginable - had surprised everyone by mating with a gruff bear shifter and surprised everyone even more by getting pregnant. She was now bulging, fit to burst, and it was her last day.
Perhaps Juliet should not have come. Her new assistant Emily was ruthlessly efficient, and Emily would do anything she asked. Juliet adored her. But then anybody was an improvement on her last assistant who constantly disconnected the phone, couldn’t take a message to save her life and thought that making out with the water delivery guy was appropriate office behavior.
But getting back on track, Juliet could easily have asked Emily to find some meeting to attend to get out of being there. But no, for Cecile’s sake, she sucked it up, braced her fangs and attended the party.
Juliet cared for Cecile, she really did, but being around pregnant women was always depressing. They were always so perky and excited about their upcoming foray into motherhood, and Juliet had no idea what to say. What could she say?
I wish I could be in your shoes.
I’d give anything to have a baby of my own.
I hate you, please die!
A little harsh perhaps. Cecile would be happy for her if the roles were reversed. Except they never would be reversed an inner voice hissed.
She was pleased that Cecile found her mate, pleased she was having a baby, pleased that she was finally happy. Cecile deserved it after her first two disastrous marriages, but Juliet couldn’t help her own selfish feelings.
Cecile stood in the center of the room, stroking her huge belly while her mate, Boris kept an arm firmly around her. Cecile blushed at the attention as women crowded round her, cooing and giggling, while Boris bore it with a stony expression. Much the way he bore everything.
Cecile caught Juliet’s gaze and did a small eye roll. Juliet smiled and raised her glass slightly. Truthfully, she itched to go over there. Itched to know what it was like to be one of those females. But she would always be on the outside to them. They would live and love and have babies, and they would die. But Juliet would merely live.
Boris pressed a kiss to Cecile’s temple making all the females ‘aww’. Cecile smiled shyly as she rubbed her stomach and Juliet felt an intense longing so severe, so sharp in her heart that she had to get out of there. She fled to the bathroom, unsure what to do when she got there. She didn’t dwell on the machinations of her body, but vampires didn’t need to use toilets.
Juliet instead looked at herself in the mirror. Her pretty face stared back at her, perhaps a little paler and her eyes a little colder and more knowing, but she didn’t look much different than she had over five hundred years ago.
Her phone chirruped with a text message from an unknown number, but she knew who it was from. Darn sabre-tooth.
Dinner tonight? Your place?
She should ignore him until he goes away. Another text message arrived hot on the heels of the last.
What are you wearing?
Then another.
The black lacy thong? That’s my favorite.
Then another.
So, dinner at your place? I’ll eat mine. You eat me.
Juliet’s lips twitched. Logic told her to put her phone away. He’d get bored eventually. There was no need to reply to him – a reply would only pour oil on his amorous fires. But…
She typed out one word. No.
She waited for a few moments to see if he’d respond, feeling certain he would. But when nothing arrived, she was pathetically disappointed. She needed to stop with this. Needed for him to find another female to obsess over.
Erin came into the bathroom, and Juliet stowed her phone in her purse. The young psychic was fairly new to the Los Lobos SEA but was already mated to a polar bear shifter and mother to three adorable cubs.
“Oh hey, Juliet.” Erin looked around quizzically, wondering what a vampire would be doing there.
“Just checking my make-up,” Juliet said smoothly.
“Oh, you’re perfect!” she laughed, and perhaps a little jealously.
Juliet brushed away the compliment. It was a fact that she received compliments on a regular basis, they never pleased her, and she never sought them. After all the years she’d been alive, her looks gave her very little comfort.
“How are the triplets?” Juliet asked as brightly as she could manage.
“Oh, wonderful, getting big! Has Gunner shown you the recent pictures?”
“Yes, he caught me earlier,” Juliet admitted. Erin’s mate Gunner virtually hunted people down and forced them to look over the hundreds of photos of his children.
Erin chuckled, half in embarrassment. Her huge mate truly was a proud father – Juliet doubted she’d ever met another prouder. She couldn’t really blame him; his cubs were pink, chubby angels.
She felt the pang in her heart again and tried to force it down, but it wouldn’t leave her. She was trying to be friendly, trying to be cordial toward Erin but instead, she was looking at the woman with something close to anger.
Her fingers pressed into her palms. Why was this female so deserving of three cubs?
Thankfully, her phone rang before she could really let the feeling fester and Juliet quickly excused herself and took her black mood with her.
*
Juliet found herself summoned to meet the vampire member of the Council of Supernaturals, Julian Holge
rsson.
It was half relief to get away from the happy party, and half dread with which she met him. Being summoned was never a good thing. It meant he was unhappy or that he wanted something – neither option appealed.
Juliet bowed on being ushered into his quarters. If she were his friend, she wouldn’t bother with the formalities, but she wasn’t, and he was very much her elder.
Julian didn’t keep a house in Los Lobos, but always commandeered an entire floor of one of the top hotels when visiting. Surprisingly, he also didn’t travel with an entourage. Much older, powerful vampires, traveled the world with servants and human blood donors, but Julian went everywhere solo, finding new donors when he arrived at his destination.
Julian waved a hand at Juliet to sit down. A human maid watched them with interest. She had a hotel uniform, so Juliet assumed she came with the room, though whether the hotel manager intended for her to become a blood donor was anyone’s guess, but given the harsh bite marks on her neck, clearly that’s now what she was.
He didn’t bother with niceties – vampires rarely cared how anyone was ‘doing’. “Can I offer you a drink?”
Given the way he flicked his wrist, she suspected it would be directly from the maid. Juliet declined, politely of course.
“You’ve had a new murder today,” he commented briskly.
Juliet perched on a chair, brushing the wrinkles out of her skirt. “We have incidents every day; it’s a large city.”
Julian’s cold eyes fixed on her. “The victim was a cougar shifter.”
“I had heard, yes.” She was the director of the Los Lobos SEA and tried to take an interest in all ongoing cases. “You are well informed.”
His lips curled up. “I have eyes and ears everywhere.”
Juliet didn’t doubt that. He probably knew more about what went on at her SEA branch than she did.
Julian stared at the human maid until she got the message and started to leave. She treated them to a wonky curtsy, and Julian winked at her in a way that Juliet would almost describe as roguish. It certainly had the maid coloring in delight.
Juliet reflected that Julian was a strange looking man, slightly built, short, hair thinning, his skin so pale it was almost papery – yet the fact that he was a vampire made him attractive. He wouldn’t have been much when he was human, but turning into an immortal being seemed to up his sex appeal. From zero to an almighty ten, apparently.
Judging by the pinpricks on her neck and the flush on her cheeks, the maid was more than happy to share both her bed and her blood.
Juliet probably couldn’t understand it because she’d never been in that situation. The first time she met… Master… she gritted her fangs. Hell even thinking about him angered her. The first time she met him, she was too young and scared, and when she became a vampire, male vampires didn’t seem to hold much allure. In spite of that, she’d certainly dated enough over the years, hoping to find the right one to share her life with – the idea of changing a human wasn’t enticing. Becoming a vampire was a sacrifice, and not one she wanted to thrust on anyone else. But the males she had dated made The Count from Sesame Street look like a catch.
Not like the tiger – he was all sex appeal. He just had to stand there, and her sex practically purred.
She thought of the first time she really saw him. Naked, splattered with blood, sheening with sweat and gazing at her with dark, impenetrable eyes. It shouldn’t have turned her on as much as it did. Even now her sex – which had virtually been dormant for over a year was waking up and threatening to boil with the intensity of a volcano.
Julian frowned at her, possibly wondering if her sudden scent of arousal was for him. Lord, she hoped not. Having to tell such a powerful vampire that she found him less attractive than a smoked herring was not a conversation she wanted.
“Pretty girl,” he commented. For a moment she had no idea what he was talking about. “If you like, I can lend her to you.” He nodded toward the door.
Ah, he meant the maid. He thought her desire was all for the human. A lot of vampires did tend to have lovers of both sexes. When they got to a certain age, variety was much more interesting, and most vampires weren’t overly territorial with their lovers. Most weren’t, but some were, she knew that first hand.
Juliet never had inclinations to female lovers. Except for that one time in the ‘60’s but then she was high on a stoner’s blood.
“Thank you, no.”
He nodded, not offended in the least.
“So, the murder…” she prompted, wondering where this was going. As far as she could remember, the victim was as he said, a cougar shifter - a twenty-one-year-old who had been attending Los Lobos University to study European history. Hardly someone she would have thought Julian would have any connections to or interest in.
“Yes.” He pursed his lips in thought. “Her throat was ripped out.”
She tired of his reticence, wishing he would just get to the point. “No offense to her or to you, but how is this special? Unfortunately, we have murders like these every day.”
He sighed. “I have reason to believe a vampire killed her.”
Oh dear. Not good. Vampires were possibly the most universally reviled creatures by humans. Mostly, because the majority of vampires refused to conform to laws and were dangerous individuals. A lot of vampires were arrogant and believed they could do as they wished – which included taking blood from whatever human they felt like. A lot of humans were still having trouble coming to terms with shifters; vampires were something else. So when a vampire committed a crime…
“What makes you think it was a vampire?”
Juliet narrowed her eyes. He was her boss, a member of the Council of Supernaturals and more importantly a vampire elder. The Council of Supernaturals was put together when supernatural creatures officially came out to humans. The council was there to oversee supernatural creature affairs, and a range of different species of shifters, as well as a few other supernatural creatures, sat on it. However, that wasn’t to say that each species didn’t have their own council or elders as well. The vampire elders had long been in place, longer than most humans would even believe.
But that didn’t mean he could get away with withholding evidence.
“A source informed me that prior to her death the cougar was involved with a vampire and it was their intention to mate and bond.”
Dracula’s fangs that can’t be true! Juliet stared at him in shock.
He nodded at her response. It was the response he would expect from any sane vampire. “Hence the reason I came here to investigate the claim quietly.”
“What have you found?”
“Nothing. She died before I even arrived.”
“And the vampire she is supposed to have… to have wanted to…” Juliet bit her lip.
Julian shifted in his seat. “I have no idea who he, or indeed she, may be.”
“You think she was killed before the bonding happened?”
“I believe so. I have not heard of any mass deaths of our kind, so I can only think her death occurred before the damage was done.”
That was somewhat of a relief. “The other elders?”
“Are aware of the situation.”
Juliet looked down at her hands.
“I sense you realize that the matter is not over.”
“If a vampire really was willing to risk so much for her, I cannot see that he, or as you say she, would take her death calmly. To even consider bonding is madness itself, they cannot be a rational creature. Now that she is dead, who is to say what they will do?”
“Correct. Given that the news of the impending bonding reached me, it must have reached other vampiric ears – and I cannot imagine they would all be as measured as me in their actions.”
There were an awful lot of vampires in the world who would not think twice about killing a shifter. Killing was just a way of life for a lot of older vampires.
“I do not like to jump to conclusions wh
en it comes to cases, but I would have to agree the most likely suspect is a vampire.”
Julian tapped his long, thin fingers on the arm of his chair. “You understand how quiet this must be kept. Just the idea could lead to panic and anger among our kind, and reckless vampires are not the kind of creatures we want blundering around.”
“I understand.”
“I ask that you investigate this yourself.”
“I have agents who are…”
“No, I speak for the elders who insist it be you. They do not feel, and I agree with them, that a shifter or a witch would understand the precariousness of the situation, and nor should they be enlightened.”
Juliet gave him a steady gaze. “What exactly are you asking?”
“Find the killer or indeed killers and the vampire who was intent on mating the dead shifter, and deliver them to the elders for judgment.”
“The killers should be arrested and prosecuted, in accordance with the laws the Council agreed upon when supernaturals first outed themselves to humans.”
Yep, all supernaturals were subject to the law. A concept that many vampires could not grasp. Some actually considered themselves to be god-like, and it was perfectly reasonable to them to kill humans for their blood.
“If arrested, they would be tried in a human-driven court where the truth would come out about our situation. No, we cannot have that. This is knowledge that humans and shifters should not have. That is just the way it is right now, perhaps one day that will change, but the queen...”
Julian trailed away, the slight irritation in his voice not entirely masked. Juliet stilled as she always did at the mention of the vampire queen. Master’s mother – the witch who created all vampires. Juliet had never met her, and she prayed she never would. There was no way a meeting between the two of them would go well. Hey, aren’t you the vampire who murdered my son?
“I am not sure I can do that.”
He shrugged, unconcerned by her pickle-like situation. “You can. You will. Though we also would not mind if the killers happened to perish in your attempt to apprehend them either. That would be a happy outcome too.” He smiled coldly. “But the cougar loving vampire must be taken alive – the other elders are quite sure that they need to speak to him or her, and that a suitable punishment must be agreed on.”