The Community Series, Books 1-3

by Tappan, Tracy

  Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. The distinct report of an automatic weapon sent them all diving for the floor. It was coming from her kidnapper, Murk, seated on the edge of the winking Civic’s passenger-side window.

  “Shiiiiit!” Dev yelled as the hailstorm of bullets riddled the van with holes.

  Marissa flung her arms over her head, cringing against the battering metallic sound of a thousand Budweiser cans being crushed against a giant’s forehead. Steely fragments rained down like ticker-tape confetti. “Jesus God!” She peered out from under her arms through the dust and debris at Dev. “Please tell me you have more men coming to help.”

  “Now, what fun would that be?”

  “Dammit to fuck!” Gábor snarled. He was glaring down at the smoking toe of his right boot. “My favorite pair.” He moved to kneel in the middle of the van, weapon raised in perfect plastic army man formation. “Buncha cheese weasels!” He started shooting like a lunatic.

  One, two, three small geysers of blood spurted up from Murk’s shoulder—white again?—sending him tipping precariously to one side.

  The one-eyed Civic’s windshield split from clear glass into crackled, then the car screeched sideways into a skid, running off the road. Blam! Gábor switched aim and shot out the green Taurus’s front tires. The Taurus pitched nose-first into a handstand, spun an almost graceful pirouette on one corner of its bumper, then not-so-gracefully smashed onto its back in a shock of thunder, windows blowing out. Two hubcaps wobbled off down the road on their merry way.

  “I need another clip!” Gábor bawled at Thomal.

  “Get the hell out of here!” Dev yelled at Sedge.

  Sedge cranked on the steering wheel. Tires squealed.

  With a grunt, Gábor rocked over onto his shoulder, while Dev was sent flying across the van. He landed smack on top of Marissa, tumbling her to the floor, his hips planting right between her legs in an explicit parody of missionary-position sex.

  “Oh, my God,” she gasped out.

  Dev groaned deep in his chest, his face coming to rest against her throat.

  It sounded like he was in pain. “Are you all right? Did you get hurt?”

  He moaned again. “You smell…so good.”

  Huh?

  His mouth brushed her throat as he drew a large, chest-expanding breath. He shuddered.

  Her lips parted, a shiver coiling up her spine. It was…the strangest way she’d ever been smelled, never before so completely, so deeply, as if this man could crawl inside her and smell the most intimate parts of her. And, even in the middle of this tornado, it was sexy as hell.

  “I can’t get around this car!” Sedge warned as their vehicle slowed. “Watch out for—!”

  The sound of multiple pairs of boots hitting the metal floor of the van echoed out. The other women shrieked, and Gábor and Thomal shouted. Suddenly, there was a shadowy tangle of men fighting in the middle of the van.

  Marissa flapped her hands at Dev’s back. “You need to get off!”

  More of his weight settled on top of her. Was he…snuggling? “Don’t want to,” he murmured.

  She angled her face to give him a confounded look, but could only catch sight of the masculine curl of his ear. Another bad guy leapt into the van. She drew a loud breath, every muscle in her body tensing. Him!

  The other women’s cries grew more hysterical. That got Dev’s attention.

  He hopped off Marissa, rounding on Videon just as that hideous man cranked back a steely arm and punched Dev brutally in the face. The blow hurled Dev from the back of the van all the way into what was left of the passenger-side seat. The forceful momentum of Dev’s heavy body snapped the seat in two, then smashed him into the front windshield, the glass splintering into a dozen spider web arms against his back.

  “Jesus!” Sedge yelled. “Dev!”

  The windshield broke apart and dumped a pile of chunky glass on top of Dev and into Sedge’s lap.

  Eyes flashing red, Videon turned on Marissa, grabbing her by the ankle and hauling her toward him. She screamed, her pulse hammering against her veins. “No!” God, not him! She kicked wildly at him.

  Dev jumped on Videon’s back, and she tumbled free. “That really fucking hurt, you anal load.” Teeth gritted, Dev wrapped his hands around Videon’s head and twisted, his awesome arm muscles standing out against the sleeves of his trench coat. Videon’s head moved from front-to-back with a vertebrae-breaking jerk.

  Marissa scrambled back against the van wall, bile rushing into her throat, and her lips trembled. Dear God in heaven. She’d just witnessed one man kill another with his bare hands.

  With a savage bellow, Dev heaved Videon outside the van.

  The body flopped along the street for several yards, then… Videon rolled to his feet and surged upright, standing with his head tweaked into a backward position. Like no more than cracking his knuckles, Videon snapped his head back into place.

  Marissa’s jaw dropped to her chest, the blood washing from her face. What in the world?!

  Dev slid his eyes sideways toward her. “Um…” His expression turned sheepish. “Videon’s triple-jointed.” He paused, waiting for her reaction.

  She didn’t have one to give—except to stare gawp-eyed at him.

  Dev turned his attention back to the roadway, one hand clutched around the hilt of another sheathed knife, his profile tense. His hair whipped against the sculpted rise of his cheekbones, and she caught the glint of a gold-hoop earring in his left lobe. Blades of silvery moonlight arrowed through the myriad bullet holes around them, crisscrossing the interior of the van like a matrix security system that only the Human Blob could’ve gotten through. The rushing wind was the only sound.

  In the sudden quiet, adrenaline abandoned Marissa’s body, leaving her slightly dizzy. She felt as if someone had just chucked the earth down a bowling alley. This whole night was fifty different ingredients of nutso, put into a blender and then set for frappé. Men who couldn’t be killed, other men who appeared dead but actually weren’t, white-colored blood, flashing red eyes, knives that exploded, and then, of course, the all-consuming why me? Maybe she was still asleep back at her apartment.

  “They outta here?” Gábor asked, crouched with his rifle butt braced against one thick thigh.

  “Seems like it,” Dev murmured, the tension in his body visibly easing. “I think we’re clear. Nice shooting, Pavenic.”

  “So what now?” Sedge called back to the men.

  “Hightail it out of here and head for one of our entrances.” Dev turned to the women, his expression softening to concern. “Are you all okay? Is anyone hurt?”

  They stared back mutely, shivering in shock, reeling with horror and confusion…and awkwardly silent. All three of them were hurt in some way, bruises, scrapes, sore jaws from those fricking ball gags, but one of their group was worse off than the rest. By far.

  Marissa’s co-passenger, Hadley, finally spoke. “Kendra was…” She wrapped an arm around the woman seated next to her and hugged the dainty figure. “One of those disgusting men, uh…raped her in the… She was…anally raped.”

  A beat of shocked, almost disbelieving silence passed. Then Dev’s head slumped forward on his shoulders. “Ah, Jesus,” he breathed, covering his eyes with one hand. “Why do they do shit like that?”

  Thomal’s face was a mask of tight rage, and Gábor was glaring at the roof of the van as if imagining a hundred different pain-filled ways to make the bad guys pay.

  Dev looked up at Kendra. “Do you think you could describe the guy for me?”

  Hadley answered. “He was… God, he’s the meanest one.”

  “You broke his neck,” Marissa said softly.

  Dev swung his stare over to her.

  “I think he’s called Videon.”

  “Fucking figures.” Dev’s face hardened. “Sedge, pull over.”

  Sedge braked to the side of the road. “Tell me this is something good,” he said grimly.

  “Yeah, I’m going after the scuzzba
g. Thomal, give me your M16, my weapon’s shot to shit.” Dev hopped to the ground and caught the tossed weapon one-handed. “Gábor, you’re with me.”

  “Hoo-rah.” Gábor jumped off the rear end of the van.

  Sedge turned around, one arm hooked over the back of his seat. “Hell, let me go. I can already taste that guy in my teeth.”

  “I need someone who can see in the dark for this, Sedge, and, um”—Dev’s eyes darted toward Marissa—“and your NVGs are busted. You and Thomal just make sure the women get back to Ţărână safely.”

  “No sweat.”

  “You only have a little over an hour till sunrise,” Thomal said, strangely enough.

  “I got it.”

  Marissa watched Dev turn to go, and her chest clenched. She grasped his forearm. “Don’t leave,” she whispered around quivering lips, her stomach filling with a sudden, weird desperation. It might be just the slightest exaggeration to say that Dev Nichita was the only person in the world she’d ever felt wholly safe around. “Please, I-I don’t want you to.”

  “Hey,” he said in a gentle voice. “Don’t you worry about a thing, all right? My men are taking you someplace safe, and I’ll be there real soon.”

  “Y-you’re coming back? For sure?”

  His goatee parted in a gleaming smile. “I always do, sweetheart.” And then he was gone, he and Gábor disappearing into the darkness as easily as if they were made of the night.

  Thomal carefully stepped off the back bumper. “There still a first aid kit in the glove, Stănescu?”

  “Yeah, come on up. Not that there’s anywhere to sit.” Sedge was still craned around, looking at them. “Sorry, ladies, but we have to go no-vis now. The entrance into our compound is classified.” He flipped a switch and a thick screen descended from the roof just behind the front seat.

  Thomal closed the rear doors and locked them.

  Screen met floor, entombing them in the Dodge’s dark metal belly, then the screen’s motor shut off in an abrupt, unearthly quiet.

  Marissa crammed herself into a corner of the van and hugged her knees to her chest. Compound…? An extra special security unit…? Bad men called Murk, Teer, Videon, Tollar, Krolan…? More questions than answers never felt good.

  The Dodge moved back onto the road, the steady drub-drub of rubber tires over asphalt the only noise. Taking them someplace safe…called Ţărână…

  Chapter Six

  Community of Ţărână, 6:11 p.m.

  Luvera Nichita shifted from foot to foot in the doorway, running her work apron through her fingers as the orchestral beauty of Bach floated softly around her from a hidden sound system. A grandfather clock lorded over the living room, keeping time with perfect Swiss accuracy, and the furniture and objets d’art on their étagère were all poised on the glossy parquet hardwood floor with Architectural Digest precision. Nothing but the best in the Nichita household. Nothing that ever felt like home, even though she’d lived here forever.

  “Are you going to speak, child?” Her mother was seated at a custom-made maple roll top desk, her posture as erect and precise as the surrounding furnishings.

  Pettrila Nichita had become an elder seven years ago, her appearance changing abruptly, as was the way of aging in their race—one day, young, the next day, old, like a snap of the fingers. Lines now creased Pettrila’s eyes, her body sagged a bit, although Pettrila would never allow herself to be anything but flawlessly slender, and gray hair fanned out from the temples of her short, styled black hair like skunky streaks.

  “Yes, um…” The strings of Luvera’s apron tangled in her fingers. “Jennilith has asked me to move in with her again.”

  Pettrila elegantly dipped the tip of her quill into a small antique ink-pot. A leather-bound cookbook was open in front of her. She must be hostessing the next bridge club, a small, elite group of women handpicked by Pettrila herself of only the noblest Pure-bred matrons. Basically, a bunch of old prows who somehow managed to make Luvera feel as useless and disappointing to them as she was to her mother.

  She’d make doubly sure to waitress at Garwald’s that night.

  “You’re not married,” her mother pronounced. “You should live at home.”

  Luvera sighed under her breath. At one hundred fifty-seven, a modern woman Pettrila was not. “Mother, I’m forty-nine.”

  “A baby.” Pettrila turned a page in the cookbook and peered down her nose at a recipe for aspic.

  Gack, who liked jellied meat? “In Vârcolac years, yes, I’m young, but that’s an awfully long time to live at home.”

  In her willowy script, Pettrila wrote down several ingredients across a sheet of vellum paper. “That Jennilith isn’t a good influence.”

  Luvera secretly rolled her eyes. Who was, in her mother’s opinion?

  Pettrila re-dipped her quill. “At any rate, Jennilith will surely be moving into a house in Ţărână’s residential neighborhood soon, and then where will that leave you?”

  Luvera scrunched her fingers around her apron.

  Pettrila sniffed. “Roth has practically tied a ribbon around the girl and put her in that human’s bed.”

  Luvera bit her lip, her throat overflowing with a sudden, sharp longing. That human was Alexander Parthen, who, like his sister Toni, was a Dragon of the extremely rare Royal Fey kind. So, yes, considering his bloodlines, it was perfectly reasonable that Roth would want Alex and Jennilith to get together. Jennilith was the last female of Royal Fey Vârcolac bloodlines. Luvera should be supportive. The match was perfect—heck, their offspring would probably be genetic demigods—and Jennilith was one of her best friends. Problem was, Luvera herself was insanely in love with the smart, off-beat, adorably nerdy Alex. Which was sad and pathetic.

  Pettrila set down her quill. “All this talk is fiddle-faddle, anyway. You have obligations to this family, child.”

  Luvera winced. Oh, oops. Her mother saw that.

  Pettrila shut the cookbook firmly, her amber eyes flashing. “Geology is a noble profession, Luvera. If not for the work your father and I did to unearth the precious minerals of this cave, Ţărână wouldn’t have the vast wealth it now owns. Without doubt, the entire community would have faltered long ago.”

  “I know, Mother.” It was just that the thought of studying rocks and gems all day made her want to gouge her eyes out…an attitude that must’ve resonated in her voice.

  Scorn flared Pettrila’s nostrils. “Do you think that I want this honorable responsibility laid on your shoulders?”

  Heat flushed into Luvera’s face. She glanced down at the floor. She could hardly quibble with her mother on that score; there wasn’t much to commend Luvera these days. For God’s sake, she couldn’t even get herself out of this house.

  “I can’t call upon Devid—your father made certain of that—and I don’t have any other choices beyond you. Do I?” A slight tightening of Pettrila’s chin was the only show of sorrow she demonstrated over the death of her other choices, four daughters who’d perished in a 1942 cave collapse.

  For some reason Pettrila and Grigore, Luvera’s father, had waited eighteen years after that catastrophe to replace their losses. In 1960, Dev was born. Another four years after that, Luvera came into the world, born to a mother who by that time was the ripe age of one hundred and eight: two very different women born in two different ages. In all of Luvera’s existence, never once had her mother offered her even a scintilla of understanding or sympathy, and Luvera sometimes wished, quite horribly, that Pettrila and Grigore had just left well enough alone with their family.

  On the other hand, the moon had proven to rise and set on the Nichitas’ only son. Dev could do no wrong, at least in Grigore’s eyes, and when Dev had done the unthinkable and decided to go into the Warrior Class—a career choice which would elude his duty to the family—Grigore had indulged his son’s dream with hardly a blink. And then immediately thrust the entire burden for taking over the family business onto Luvera’s unwilling shoulders. Without even asking
her.

  Her mother’s stern eyes were still on her. “Would you have this community perish?”

  Guilt lodged like a dead weight in Luvera’s stomach and left a bitter taste in her mouth. It was her mother’s favorite ploy, setting up Luvera’s career path to be a life-or-death calling, when, in reality, Luvera suspected that Pettrila mostly didn’t want the noblest profession in the community to fall to the Vasilichi family. Always involved in only the gritty work of mining, the Vasilichis had positioned themselves to leap into the gemology side of the profession soon after Grigore’s death. Such a coup would’ve been an insufferable prick to Pettrila’s pride, and for Luvera to be responsible for either the financial ruin of the community or for her mother’s step down, however miniscule, from her social strata was not… No, Luvera couldn’t manage the fallout from either.

  Attention back on her cookbook, Pettrila lifted the vellum sheet off her desk and held it out to Luvera, her wrist bent at a graceful angle. “Go get these items at the store for me, if you would.”

  Their conversation was apparently over. Had Luvera gained anything besides a headache and a stick poked into that soft, insecure part of her? Of course not.

  “Um, sure.” She took the paper. “I have to go on an errand, anyway.”

  Pettrila’s attention snapped over to her. “Where?”

  “Oh, nowhere. The post office just gave a package of mine to someone else by mistake.” Luvera turned and trudged for the door. Something she wouldn’t have to explain if she had her own apartment.

  “Stand up straight, Luvera.”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  * * *

  “Avoided becoming a Toaster Strudel today.” Gábor slouched into the seat of the Lincoln Town Car, his M16 propped between his legs, and added on a mumble, “Hoo-rah.”

  Dev grunted, wearily dropping back against the headrest. Their Town Car transport had just pulled into the large cargo elevator that would take them on the twenty-minute trip home—they both recognized the soft grind of the cables—and heading the one half mile down into the safety of Ţărână was always a bit of a sphincter un-clencher, especially so close to sunrise.