Her Vampire Obsession

by Richardson, Lesli

  “Sorry…” I give him directions and turn to see Chaldis standing there and frowning.

  And he’s holding the nine-millimeter handgun he’s been teaching me target shooting with. I’m not bad with it. He must have blurred to get it.

  He’s also holding the concealed carry waistband holster. “Take this with you to town,” he says.

  “Really?”

  He arches an eyebrow at me—Dom eyebrow if I ever saw it—and shakes it at me. I don’t like to carry and he knows it.

  “Fine.” I strap it on, making sure my T-shirt and light jacket cover it. “Happy?”

  “And take a sat phone.”

  “Overkill much?” But I grab one of the three he keeps on the kitchen counter. Like a cell phone, but they get reception everywhere.

  “Perhaps, but I take no risks with your safety.”

  “I’m sure it’s fine.” I grab the list, the PO Box keys, and the Land Rover’s keys, and head to the garage. I always make sure the door to the inside is securely shut before rolling up the overhead door. Once I back out, I wait until the door has rolled all the way down before I leave.

  The gate opens automatically for me when I leave, and I pause to make sure it closes securely behind me before continuing on to town. The PO Box first, then the store. There were a couple of other things on the list we needed, but they could’ve waited until I made the trip tomorrow. Down at the airport, I see the small plane that arrived earlier is being unloaded, a cargo crate about the size of a large chest freezer being moved from the rear of the plane into a windowless panel van while three guys stand by closely supervising.

  At the grocery store, I make sure to smile and say hi to everyone. Because while I’m new, I’m now considered a “local,” in a way, since I’m a “relative” of a long-time local.

  Besides, if I do end up staying on, I don’t want to alienate everyone.

  I’ve walked away from enough people in my life. It gets harder every time, and this time, I ripped my heart out in the process.

  As I’m digging money out of my wallet to pay, Sandy, the clerk, lets out a sigh. “Wow, he’s cute. Never seen him in town before. Must be a tourist.”

  I look up but see nothing more than the back of a jean-clad guy disappearing around the end of another aisle.

  As I load my purchases in the Land Rover, I freeze when the hint of a scent drifts to my nose.

  Shifter.

  Wolf. Not one that I know, but definitely a wolf.

  Fuck!

  With my pulse pounding, I slam the back hatch closed and jump behind the wheel, peeling out of the parking lot before I even put on my seatbelt.

  Instead of heading toward the homestead, I race in the opposite direction. I have all the roads and tracks and trails in the immediate vicinity that can take the four-by memorized, just in case I ever needed to know them. I’ve learned a lot about the local terrain from driving Chaldis around at night, too.

  I keep glancing in the rearview mirror, but no one’s following me.

  My pulse finally slows, and I pull off and wait a couple of minutes not far from a turnoff I can take to make my way home, just to make sure.

  The gun’s in my hand and ready.

  No one follows me.

  Chaldis has been careful not to make enemies while in Alaska. There’s no wolf pack here in Homer, no other vampires. No resident shifters. He doesn’t draw attention to himself, meaning there’s no reason why anyone should be hunting him.

  Hopefully.

  Feeling stupid, because of course there are shifters in Alaska, I finally head home, not relaxing until the garage roll-down door’s safely shut behind me.

  The door to the house opens and Chaldis is standing there. He immediately frowns and blurs over to the driver’s door. “What’s wrong? Are you all right? You smell stressed.”

  “That’s freaky. I’m fine.” I tell him about scenting the wolf.

  “Homer does have an airstrip. It’s not unusual for shifters to pass through, on occasion.”

  “Dude, you sound about as convinced as I do, and it’s not making me feel any better.” The house line rings, and I walk over to the garage wall phone to answer. “Bianchi residence.”

  “Miss Hayley? This is Jarred down at the barn. Mr. B’s regular food shipment just arrived down here. Want me to send the delivery driver up to the house?”

  That means his blood shipment. They think Chaldis receives regular shipments of special perishable nutritional supplements. I turn to find Chaldis standing right next to me, scowling as he listens.

  He shakes his head.

  “No, I’ll come get it,” I tell him. “Down at the barn?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll be right there.” I hang up.

  “Give me the gun,” Chaldis says.

  I do, and he blurs into the house. He returns a moment later with it. “I replaced the rounds with silver-tipped ones.” And he’s holding a different holster, the hip one. “Wear it visible.”

  “You’re freaking me out.” I swap the holsters out.

  “I’m simply taking precautions, dear. And take this.” He hands me a knife. “Silver.”

  “Now you’re really freaking me out.” I clip the knife’s holster inside the back of my belt, hidden under my shirt and jacket.

  “I am concerned and cautious. Give me the groceries and take the Land Rover. Stay in the vehicle. Fire through the vehicle’s door, if you have to.” He points to his head. “Aim for the head. A body shot, unless it pierces their heart, might not stop them. A silver bullet to the brain will kill.”

  “I’ve got this. You’re overly nervous because of Corbin being gone.”

  “Yes, but I am also nervous because there are too many coincidences this afternoon.”

  Once he’s safely inside with the groceries, and the inside door is closed, I open the overhead door again, back out, wait for the door to close, and head down the groomed track that leads to the barn.

  There’s a muddy blue Jeep I don’t recognize parked in the yard in front of the barn, next to where the ranch hands park their vehicles and ATVs. I pull up close to the office door and roll down my window.

  Jarred walks out, followed by—

  Fuuuuuuuck.

  The dude’s definitely the same wolf I scented in town. He’s carrying a clipboard and the large, sealed cardboard box holding the Styrofoam shipper with the cold packs and blood in it. The thing weighs about thirty pounds, but he’s carrying it like it’s empty.

  I keep the gun in my lap, safety off, my finger along the trigger.

  “I need a signature, ma’am,” he says, his gaze heavy on me.

  Oh, shit. It’s the voice of the second tourist today, the one on the intercom.

  I’m not stupid enough to look him in the eyes and risk trying to jumble his mind, in case he’s an alpha and can resist me, but I keep my focus on his nose. “Jarred can sign for it. Just set it in the back hatch.”

  The wolf’s gaze remains on me as he walks past the driver’s door. From the way his nose wrinkles, I can tell he’s just scented the gun.

  Or he’s picked up Chaldis’ scent from me.

  Keep walking, dude.

  My heart’s pounding, racing in a way it hasn’t any of the times I saw that…thing.

  This is a strange shifter, where one has no business being, and I smell like a vampire.

  It’s daytime.

  I have to protect Chaldis.

  But Jarred signs the clipboard after the wolf sets the large box in the back hatch and closes it. The wolf walks past my door again, pausing, nose barely upturned, but I know he’s sniffing.

  Barely parting my lips, I whisper low, in a way I know the wolf can clearly hear and Jarred can’t. “I know you’re a wolf. Stay off this land, and there will be no trouble. We want no trouble with you or your kind, but you are not welcomed here. Do not test me.”

  And I cock the hammer on the nine.

  I know he heard that, because he freezes. He t
ips his chin up to show me his throat, signifying he’s capitulating and won’t fight me, then dips his head to me in a respectful nod. He briefly holds his hands up in front of him to signal he’s withdrawing and takes a slow, deliberate step back before turning and quickly leaving.

  Jarred walks over as I flick the safety on and ease the gun’s hammer down. “You all right, Miss Hayley?” he asks.

  I watch as the wolf gets in his Jeep and leaves. “Yes. If that man ever tries to set foot on this property again, do not let him, even if you have to shoot him.” This is fucking Alaska. All the hands openly wear sidearms, because of bears, for starters.

  He laughs, until he realizes I’m serious. “Um, yes, ma’am.”

  “Anyone else show up today you haven’t seen before?”

  “Just a couple of tourists. Same as always. Got ’em pointed the right way.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” I get the Land Rover turned around and speed back to the house as fast as I dare, bouncing over ruts in the track. Once the overhead door is shut, the inside door opens and Chaldis blurs over.

  He’s armed, another nine on his hip. “Well?”

  “Same fucking wolf. He was definitely the second tourist who buzzed at the gate. Get all the heavy storm shutters closed. Now. I don’t know what’s going on, but we might need to move you down into the crypt.” The storm shutter system can handle bears and hurricanes.

  I just hope it can handle werewolves.

  “I’m not leaving you upstairs alone,” he says.

  “Yeah, well, you don’t pay me to let someone set a trap for you, either, and it’s daylight.” There’s an emergency exit, a small tunnel leading from the deep, rock-lined basement where his original crypt is, to a spider hole about a hundred yards down-slope from the house, just at the edge of thick, hilly woods with plenty of small, dark rocky nooks and crannies he could safely hole up in during sunlight, if forced to.

  The escape tunnel has three branches off it, leading to sealed but easily opened exits, just in case the main exit is ever discovered and blocked. There’s an old windowless ammunition storage bunker from World War II farther out on the property. They keep the roof and walls maintained, a secure door, and an emergency crypt with some supplies there in case he ever needs to use it.

  He takes the container of blood into the kitchen, where we open the box to examine it. It doesn’t look like it’s been tampered with. The inner foam cooler’s seals are also intact, as are the inner wrappers for the blood bags, which are, obviously, disguised as liquid nutritional supplements.

  Chaldis leans in, his nose almost touching it as he sniffs. “You’re right—I can smell the wolf on the outer box, but I believe the contents are all right. I smell nothing on or inside the cooler or on the blood bags, except the usual techs who pack the shipment. You didn’t recognize him?”

  “No. If I did, I wouldn’t be so damned freaked out right now. I’d just be irritated that they’d managed to track me. If it was a Tucson wolf I knew, I could call Garrett and ask him to pull him off me. This is too much coincidence, though. I know you don’t travel much anymore, but there are a lot of shifters out there who hate vampires. We’ll need to get you down below.”

  “I’m not leaving you up here alone to face a potential threat.”

  Stubborn vamp! “You might not have a choice, boss. It’s still daylight.”

  “Perhaps you should call your friend in Tucson and see if they sent him?”

  “No. If Garrett did, then this wolf’s not a threat, and he won’t attack. If he didn’t send him, that’ll just reveal my location to him, and he’ll tell Dexter.”

  Although I really want to call Tucson, for a lot of reasons.

  The main one being that, right now, I’m scared, but I have a job to do.

  I always could fight hard for others.

  For myself? Not so much.

  We get the house’s storm shutters closed tight and I nervously pace inside, checking windows. As soon as twilight gets dark enough around 10:30, I go upstairs and use a pair of night-vision binoculars to scan the surrounding property.

  I’ve just completed one lap around the upstairs, to sweep the grounds around the house, when I spot a blur of movement too fast to be a bio-bear or a werewolf, coming from the direction of the front gate. Before I can yell a warning to Chaldis, the doorbell rings.

  I race downstairs, taking them two at a time. Bullets will usually not stop a fucking vampire, but a bow or crossbow can. I grab the crossbow Corbin gave me to use—complete with silver-tipped wooden bolts in case of werewolves—that I’d readied earlier and left leaning against the wall in the foyer.

  “Go,” I whisper to Chaldis as I shove past him, where he’s standing near the kitchen doorway. I point toward the door to the cellar.

  “No. I won’t—”

  I turn on him. “Dammit! Go!”

  He glares at me. “A shifter would’ve already tried to burst through the shutters. It would’ve jumped on the roof and tried to rip a hole in it, not give warning by ringing the doorbell like a civilized person. You grabbed the crossbow, meaning you saw a blur. A vampire cannot enter without permission.” He takes the crossbow from me and aims it at the door. “Go ahead and see who it is.”

  The heavy storm shutter is rolled down over the outer storm door, but the button for the doorbell is located on the wall just outside it. That means looking out the viewfinder won’t do me any good. The intercom is inside the storm shutter, though, protected from the weather, and not accessible by someone outside the shutter.

  I draw my gun and, standing to the side, I unlock the heavy front door and ease it open a hair. “What do you want?” I yell. “You’re trespassing. This is private property. You are not welcomed here.”

  The man’s growly response nearly makes me drop my gun. “Then how the bloody hell am I supposed to give you a well-deserved spanking for disappearing the way you did, love?”

  31

  Dexter

  Make no mistake—there absolutely will be a spanking in her immediate future.

  Earlier, when Mark returned and confirmed he thought it was Eilidh, it took everything I had not to race out into the sun.

  Fucking Alaska. My girl just had to end up someplace where summer days are longer than anywhere else, and the nights are barely five hours long right now.

  That’s hardly long enough to fit in one of the spankings my girl’s earned herself.

  Then, when Noah, one of Garrett’s cousins from Seattle, reported back that he’d nearly gotten himself shot by a woman who obviously knew he was a wolf, and who definitely smelled like the scent he’d been given to look for from Eilidh’s wig I had, I knew we’d found her. Although he reported her hair is blonde, not black.

  What other human would be brave—or feckless—enough to knowingly and so brazenly face down a potential werewolf threat the way she did?

  Only my Eilidh.

  Holy fates, am I proud of her, too. She’s all mine.

  If I can catch and keep her long enough to get her to stop running and allow me to help her solve the problem of her mysterious spectral canine stalker.

  And now here I stand, with nothing but a storm shutter and a glass storm door separating me from my love. I can smell the strange vampire and my Eilidh.

  I’ll kill him if he’s so much as laid a finger on her, much less if he’s blooded her.

  The wooden door slowly swings open, and Eilidh’s scent fills my lungs. There’s my girl, and for the first time in over seven weeks, relief and peace fill me.

  “Dexter? Wh-what the hell are you doing here?”

  I stand in the doorway, in front of the storm shutter, and peer through the cracks at her. I brace my hands on either side of the doorway, much as I did in her apartment doorway that first night she took me there. “What do you think I’m doing here, love? I’m here to claim what’s mine, dammit.” I see the vampire standing behind her and force myself to remain still. “Let me in, Eilidh.”

  “That is
my decision, I do believe,” the vampire replies. “Since she works for me, and this is my house.” He’s got a slight accent I can’t quite place. I want to stake him, revive him, and stake him again for being so goddamned good-looking and continental European-ish as he stands next to my girl.

  “Back up, Dexter,” she warns.

  Reluctantly, I do. I hear her flick a switch and the storm shutter slowly rolls up.

  Now I can see my girl. Yes, her hair’s changed color to golden blonde, like in the picture I saw of her and her mother. I believe I like it better than I did the black. My gaze doesn’t leave her as the vampire steps forward, a crossbow leveled at me from the other side of the storm door.

  “Dexter Van Sussex, I presume?” He sounds amused, so that’s something, I guess.

  “You presume correctly, and that’s my girl in there.”

  He studies me for a moment and then tips his head toward Eilidh. “You’re right. He does look like Ianto Jones.”

  She nods. “I know, right?”

  He smirks. “Funny, I somehow pictured you older.”

  “I’m over two thousand years old. How much older do you think I should look?”

  He snorts. “Okay, Boomer.”

  “Let. Me. In.”

  “Dexter!” she scolds. “Quit being an asshole. He loves his boy, whose brother—FYI—just fucking died. You want in, Fangster Hunkadoofalus? Then show some respect. He hasn’t blooded or touched me. He’s my boss—I work for him. And he’s a friend. Chillax.”

  My girl knows exactly what to say to calm me down, I’ll give her all credit for that. “My apologies.” I take a deep breath. “I am truly sorry for your loss. May I please come in and talk to Eilidh?”

  “Hmm.” He looks down at her. Now the asshole’s just fucking with me because he’s smiling. “Do you wish for him to come in, Eilidh?”

  “As long as he promises to behave himself and not act like a dick.”

  She is soooo getting spanked. “I swear, I will respect this home and all within it.”

  The vampire reminds me a little of Lucius in his mannerisms, the way he taps a finger against his lips, dragging this out before nodding. “Then yes, I suppose you may enter. I invite you in.” He reaches over and opens the storm door for me.