The Community Series, Books 1-3

by Tappan, Tracy

  “Jesus, you’re not that idiotic, are you? I don’t want to live down there without you, Jacken, so I need to know if you love me.”

  Pack sand. Stick it up your ass. And, yes, I love you so much I can already taste you was the psychotic babble that lit off inside his head. Nice to know his sanity was still on a ten.

  “It’s a simple enough question,” she prompted.

  His temples were starting to pound. “Nothing about this whole damned situation is simple. We just found out that you’re a Royal, for Chrissake. Fuck if I’m going to let you waste those bloodlines on me. I can’t have children. We’ve been over that.”

  “They’re my bloodlines. Shouldn’t I get a say in the matter?”

  “You don’t have anything to say.”

  “Don’t I?”

  “Not that would change my mind. You’re going to make a great mother someday, Toni. I won’t steal that from you.”

  Her throat moved stiffly. “People adopt all the time.”

  A laugh came out of him that did his demonic heritage proud. “Right. Social Services is just dying to send kids down to Vampire Land to be raised by a half-demon father.”

  She dismissed that with a wave of her hand. “We could finagle our way around that. Just tell me you don’t love me, Jacken, and I’ll leave this alone.”

  He sat there, painfully mute, unable to lie. “It doesn’t mean anything if I do,” he ground out.

  “It means everything!” Tears collected along her lashes.

  He surged to his feet and pointed a rigid finger at it. “Don’t you do that.”

  Alex, her brother, started blinking rapidly at him.

  “C’mon, man,” Sedge said from the side of his mouth, “just tell her already.”

  A tear tumbled free of Toni’s lashes and rolled down her cheek.

  “Okay! Jesus! Yes! I love you.” He threw out his arms. “You satisfied now, you insane battle-axe?!” He spun toward the window, giving her his back. Shit, shit, shit. But what else was he supposed to say, for the love of crap? She was crying! He dragged his hand across his upper lip.

  “That’s all I needed to know,” she said softly. “Because I love you, too, and –”

  “Shut up.” He slammed his eyes closed.

  “I most certainly will not shut up.”

  He whirled back around and glared at her. “Toni, I swear –”

  “Would you just be quiet and listen a minute.” She reached under the conference table and produced a black leather briefcase. “While I was away, I did some research. I wanted to see for myself what all the uproar concerning your genes was about. So, I had my brother hack into the community’s hospital computer and I ran some experiments with the blood graphs on file. Here are two procreation simulations I conducted.” She pulled two sheets of paper out of her briefcase and set them on the conference table. “One is of Jacken and Beth, compared to one of Dev and Beth.” She pointed to a couple of hills on the second graph. “Strength and health came out high with Dev and Beth’s offspring, but” – she switched to the first graph – “even higher with Jacken and Beth’s. I’m assuming that’s because of Jacken’s Rău. But the problem is immediately apparent. Peak 12 is at excessive levels.” She glanced at Dr. Jess. “This is why you determined the Bruns shouldn’t have children, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Jess answered, “exactly so.”

  Jacken sharpened his glare on her. He was so happy to be taking this trip down memory lane.

  “Then I experimented with my own blood.” She pulled out another graph, but held onto it. “You see, when Alex told me I was a Royal, it got me thinking. Maybe my blood is different, too, and look!” She set the third graph next to the other two. “Here’s me and Dev.”

  Roth and Jess leaned forward, Dr. Jess making an interested sound.

  “Strength and health increase markedly with this pairing, do you see that? My blood is different!”

  Dr. Jess’s eyebrows popped up.

  “That got me wondering how my DNA would pair up with Rău bloodlines, so I ran Jacken and me.” She laid down a fourth graph.

  Jacken’s heart staggered out of rhythm and he stopped breathing.

  “The numbers for strength and health are through the roof, the highest, yet. And here” – she pointed to a small rise on the graph – “Peak 12 is at normal Vârcolac levels!”

  “Holy goodness!” Dr. Jess gasped.

  Jacken stared at the fourth graph, feeling like somebody had poured epoxy onto his brain, all the gears and mechanisms inside his skull glued into immobility. He should understand what was going on, he really sensed that, but everything was just stuck in a shocked standstill.

  “Whatever’s in my Royal bloodlines appears to completely counteract the negative effects of Jacken’s Om Rău.” She shifted her gaze over to Jacken. “You and I can have children, Jacken. In fact, I think we’d make one heck of a Vârcolac kid, don’t you?”

  Jacken stared mutely at Toni, feeling like he was going ten rounds with a telephone pole. This … couldn’t be happening. “No,” he rasped out. “It’s not true. It can’t be.”

  Just run and hide when you see your father coming. His mother gently swept the hair off his brow. Tomorrow will be a better day, Jacken, you’ll see. But it never was. So stupid to hope ….

  “Dr. Jess,” Toni said, “could you please confirm my work is correct?”

  Jess nodded. “Dr. Parthen has done everything accurately.”

  “No.” Jacken’s stomach sloshed sideways. Clammy goose bumps broke out over his flesh. He reeled backward. “No!” He spun toward the window again and gripped the frame in tight fists. He wasn’t letting any of it in, not the impossible dream that Toni could actually be telling the truth, not the bone-deep hunger which had been eating him alive ever since he’d met this infuriating woman. He stared at the stars in the sky until they blurred before his vision and formed the word silently with his mouth. No.

  “Don’t misunderstand Jacken, okay, Toni?” That was Sedge coming to the rescue. “He’s not rejecting you. It’s just that, for most of his life, he’s had to accept that he’ll never have a wife or children, or love. You erased all of that in about ten seconds flat, and … I’m guessing he’s feeling a little overwhelmed right now.”

  Overwhelmed? There wasn’t a single solid-feeling bone left in his body.

  “Thank you, Sedge,” Toni said softly.

  Jacken heard her move around the conference table, coming toward him. He squeezed his fists. The window frame splintered beneath his grip with a soft crunch.

  Toni slipped a hand around one of his forearms. “Are you going to make me sit on you until you agree to bond with me, Jacken? Because I’ll do it. You know I will.”

  He dropped his head, a low, pain-filled groan spilling out of him. She would, wouldn’t she? Jesus, he was so in love with this whack-job. He wanted her for his wife more than he wanted to breathe. No more schizophrenia about it. He flat-out wanted her. “You’re a beautiful and smart doctor, a damned Royal, and I’m … I’m … a Half-Rău hardass.”

  She released an unsteady breath. “Oh, Jacken, do you have any idea how many pieces I’m in on the inside?” She pressed her forehead against his arm, her voice lowering to a whisper. “You’re the only man who’s ever made me feel whole.”

  His heart stopped, then restarted, thudding wildly. Jesus Christ, that’s exactly how she made him feel. He turned his head to look at her. Their eyes caught and held, and he saw the truth of her words right there in the depths of her magnificent blue eyes. He swallowed hard and found his voice; it was hanging out at the bottom of his stomach, sloshing around with the acid there, burning his throat on the way up and out. “Holy shit.”

  She laughed breathlessly. “Oh, that’s just the beginning of it, pal.”

  He straightened. “Why the hell didn’t you say anything before, damn it, about your blood graph?”

  “I had to know if you loved me first.” The color of her eyes darkened. “The
re might be other royal Dragon women out in the world, Jacken, I don’t know. But as it stands now, I’m the one woman who can be your wife, who can give you a home and children, and I didn’t want you to want me for only that.”

  He shook his head at her. “Haven’t you been paying any attention at all these last few weeks?” He made a grab for her, pulling her into a tight embrace.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck just as tightly.

  Everyone in the room came to their feet and broke into applause.

  “Ah, Jesus.” He tucked his face into her throat and inhaled deeply, allowing himself, at last, the supreme luxury of smelling her as his own. God, yeah, she definitely felt like his, her scent saturating him with such a sense of rightness, it was as if he was finding a long lost piece of his soul in this moment. “Don’t you know,” he whispered against her flesh, “that every viable feeling I’ve ever had in my whole life has been about you.”

  The clapping stopped abruptly.

  Jacken lifted his head.

  Toni stepped out of his embrace, frowning at the opening door.

  At first Jacken thought it was Kimberly who was knocking while simultaneously pushing open the door – the woman entering had the same short, bobbed blonde hair as Sedge’s wife – but, no, it was some nurse. “Dr. Parthen?”

  “Yes, Penny?” Toni’s frown deepened as she moved toward the nurse. “I thought I’d asked not to be disturbed.”

  “Um, I’m sorry, but ….” The nurse gave her a distressed look. “The hospital was under strict orders to report it if you showed up.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Toni’s question was answered as the door swung wide. There, standing in the hallway, were two men with guns and badges, one with brown hair, the other Spanish-looking with tan skin.

  Penny gestured weakly at them. “This is Detective John Waterson and Pablo Ramirez of the San Diego Police Department.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Jacken’s fist hooked out in a brutal uppercut, slamming into the brown-haired cop’s chin to shut that gawping-way-the-fuck-open mouth of his ….

  All right…no, he didn’t actually do it. But he saw the act in his mind’s eye so clearly, so perfectly, it was as if he actually had. He also wouldn’t mind pulling a Three Stooges on the peckerhead and double-fingering the man’s bulging eyeballs back into their sockets. For Christ’s sake, Toni might as well be naked, the way the cop was eyeballing her.

  Jacken should probably cut the guy some slack, considering Toni did look totally hot. But slack-cutting had never been one of his strengths, and he certainly wasn’t in the mood for it now. No, the longer that cop stared at Toni with such blatant hunger in his eyes, the more Jacken wanted to introduce the man to getting his ass kicked Rău-style.

  “Toni,” the cop exhaled her name. “Good God, you really are here.”

  “Detective Waterson?” Toni inflected her voice with mild surprise, although Jacken saw her hands flex and release at her sides. “What are you doing here? Is something wrong?”

  The cop’s expression morphed into something between incredulity and irritation. “You’ve been a missing person for more than two weeks now, Dr. Parthen, and I’ve been busting my hump trying to find you, that’s what I’m doing here.” He drew up right in front of her and stared her dead in the eyes.

  A growl built in Jacken’s chest, a single crackle popping dangerously in his ears. He forced himself to concentrate on the glow of the light over the conference table, the smell of disinfectant, the sound of Sedge shifting his feet subtly into a stance of readiness. The growl exited his lips as a hard breath.

  Toni cut him a chill-out glance.

  Waterson followed the look around the edge of the door – and his eyebrows shot straight up.

  “I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” Toni tried, but –

  The cop wasn’t listening to her. He was already shouldering past Toni, his eyes traveling in swift assessment over their group, lingering on Sedge and Jacken. Looked like the cop didn’t care much for their large size and obvious strength.

  Waterson’s dark-skinned partner followed, then Toni stepped back into the room, her expression strained.

  Waterson’s brows made another trip toward the ceiling when he spotted Toni’s brother. “Well, isn’t this interesting?” he drawled. “And here I thought you were frantic with worry over your sister, Alexander. Now you look like you should be having tea with the Queen.”

  “Yeah,” Alex chuckled, “no worries, John. Everything’s cool, as it turns out.”

  “Oh?” Waterson crossed his arms and rocked back on his heels. “How’s that, exactly?”

  “Ah, well, that’s because, um ….” Alex’s smile skewed off center.

  Jesus. Obviously, Mr. Milquetoast hadn’t prepped for ways to avoid saying things like “vampires” and “secret, underground community.” Jacken muttered a curse under his breath. He’d be seriously amazed if he managed to get through this without hitting someone.

  “Please, Detectives,” Dr. Jess intervened, a charming smile aimed at the two cops. “If I might be permitted to clarify matters. I think Alex and Toni Parthen might seem a bit awkward because they’re not sure how much they’re allowed to say. You see, these past few weeks Dr. Parthen has been going through a rigorous interview process for a position with our Research Institute. We have a highly classified operation, however, so during the time Dr. Parthen was with us, she wasn’t allowed contact with anyone outside of our facilities, including her family. We’ve just recently determined she’s passed all of her security clearances, and we’ve come here tonight to officially offer her the position.”

  “I see,” Waterson responded in the bland tone of someone whose bullshit meter was pinging.

  “And the name of this institute?”

  Dr. Jess gave Waterson a regretful look. “I’m sorry, but I’m not free to say anything more than I already have.”

  Waterson looked less than impressed. “Well, that’s kind of problematic for me, isn’t it?” He turned on Toni. “And you couldn’t have told your family you were going to be out of touch before you left for this … interview?”

  “Of course, and I thought I had,” Toni answered, rolling smoothly into this new direction. “I was suffering from a concussion, though, and it had made me a bit fuzzy.”

  Jacken almost snorted his appreciation. Good answer.

  Waterson pursed his lips. “I have to admit to feeling a bit fuzzy here, myself.” He reached into his breast pocket, his lips slanting when Sedge and Jacken stiffened. The detective pulled out a small notebook and opened it. He glanced at it, then looked back up at Toni. “You wrote numerous emails to your brother stating that you were at a hematology seminar in St. Louis.” He flipped the notebook closed with a short swing of his wrist. “Now why would you have done that, if you were really at some super hush-hush job interview?”

  “I … didn’t write any emails like that.”

  “They came from your email account.”

  Toni paused, her throat moving. Whether or not she would’ve eventually said something brilliant, it didn’t matter. The silence was long and telling enough.

  Waterson slid his notebook back into his breast pocket. “All right, here’s what we’re going to do. You two big boys are going to turn around and place your hands on the wall, making sure to act all nice and cooperative for my partner here. Nobody else moves – even sneezes – while I take Dr. Parthen into the hall for a private chat.”

  Jacken narrowed his eyes on Waterson. He knew exactly what the cop was thinking: that Toni was really in trouble, but she and her brother were being forced to play along like everything was fine by two threatening “big boys,” or someone else in the room. The assumption was reasonable. Unfortunately, Jacken himself wasn’t feeling especially top-heavy with reasonableness right now. In fact, Hell could freeze an ice palace up his ass before he’d allow this horny bastard to be alone with Toni.

  “N
o.” Jacken clipped the single word.

  Waterson smiled coldly. “Now how did I know you’d be the one to put up a fuss about that, champ?”

  The dark-skinned cop slid a hand inside his coat.

  Waterson jerked his chin at Jacken’s black clothes. “You’re not a doctor with this Research Institute?”

  “I’m with security.”

  “Ah. Well, then, you’ll certainly understand my need to see your ID, won’t you?” The chill in Waterson’s smile worked into his eyes.

  Jacken felt a sneer start to pull at his upper lip. If you don’t mind me feeding it up your ass through a tube.

  Tension crackled in the air between them.

  “You have very unusual eyes.” Waterson’s bland tone was back.

  “My mother was French,” Jacken responded, just as mildly.

  “That explains it. The ID?”

  Jacken reached for his wallet, moving slowly for the sake of the dark-skinned Cisco Kid over there with the itchy trigger finger. He pulled out one of Cleeve’s manufactured business cards and held it out. “This is the contact information for the government agency we work for. We answer to them, cop, not to you. So any more questions you have can go through that number.”

  Waterson looked down at the business card and –

  The cop’s hand shot out, grabbing Jacken by the wrist and yanking his arm forward. He shoved the long sleeve of Jacken’s leather jacket up to his elbow, exposing the teeth tattoos he’d spotted showing at the cuff of Jacken’s jacket. “Some unique tats you have here, sport.”

  Jacken curled his free hand into a fist, but didn’t slam Waterson’s head down the chute of his neck like he wanted. The barrel of a gun had suddenly appeared at the side of his vision, pointing directly at his face. Waterson’s partner had drawn his pistol.

  “Oh, God,” Toni groaned out.

  “I was once in a gang,” Jacken squeezed through set teeth. “Now get your fucking hands off me.”

  Toni’s lids sank closed. Not exactly the chill-out from him she’d been hoping for, probably.

  “I think I’m going to choose option number two on this one, chief, and bring you down to the station for questioning. Men with tats like yours are wanted in connection with the attempted kidnapping of a teenage girl, as well as various other crimes around the city.” Waterson pulled a two-way radio off his belt. “This is Detective Waterson,” he spoke into it, “I’m going to need back up at –” Words stopped coming out of his mouth.