by Unknown
Cameron snorted. He’d believe that when werewolves grew wings and sang soprano.
Chapter 2
Speaking of werewolves, one stood guard outside what he assumed to be Eden’s room. She was in human form, but he’d experienced that hot shimmer of energy too many times not to know a werewolf when one stood in front of him, no matter how normal he or she happened to look.
Not that this one was a shining example of conventionality, he observed, but then who could be, in an environment like this?
“Evening, Sable.” Mr. Charles inclined his head to the tall woman. “I believe Eden is expecting us?”
The werewolf glared at Cameron, her whiskey colored eyes narrowing with disgust. “I’m not letting that butcher anywhere near her.”
Ah, his reputation had preceded him. Good to know he had the furries scared shitless too.
“Sable,” Mr. Charles began in a patient tone, “Mr. Zane has accepted the position as our new head of security.”
“Do you know how many of our people he’s killed?” Sable spat.
“Except they weren’t people.” Cameron gave her his special sticks and stones will break my bones but insults only amuse me smile.
Sable’s mouth curled into a snarl and a deep growl rumbled in her throat.
“Charles, call off your dog if you want this meeting to continue.” Cameron sighed, letting all and sundry know just how bored he was by the posturing werewolf. Actually, he was tensed to draw in a fraction of a second if the shifter made one false move. She was attractive with her cocoa colored skin and ebony cornrows cascading to her waist, but he wouldn’t hesitate. He’d waste her if she tried anything with him.
“Sable, I think Eden is perfectly safe with you, Clow, and the Speedway Pack guarding the building.” Mr. Charles gave Sable a pat on the shoulder. “You simply must let Mr. Zane through.”
The Speedway Pack? Impressive. How had the Gulf Coast Court secured Houston’s most badass werewolves to guard their ruler? He filed the question away to be asked later, because at that very moment, Sable relented and moved her leather-clad form away from the door.
Mr. Charles opened it, and they stepped inside.
* * *
Cameron blinked his eyes, waiting for them to adjust to the sudden dimness of the candlelit room. The scent of roses hung in the air like an invisible fog, filling the darkness with an incomparable fragrance. The hazy blue glow of a plasma television hanging on the wall a few yards from the door added a bit more light, but not much. The sound was turned down low, but he recognized the theme music from Endless Eternity, a popular vampire soap opera.
He barely had time to mentally sneer over her ladyship’s choice of entertainment when he caught sight of a figure seated on the massive canopied bed that occupied most of the room. There were other objects in the room -- vases of roses spilling over on every surface, for starters -- but the figure on the bed snared his attention and held it.
She was dressed in unrelieved black, from her blouse -- one of those poet shirt things with the open neck and ruffled wrists -- to her short black skirt, fishnet stockings, and black lace-up boots. Her hair, black and glossy, framed her round face in a style like a vintage pin-up girl… what was her name, Bettie Page… the one with the short bangs.
It wasn’t the hair or the clothes that made it so damned hard to look away. As far as that went, she could’ve been any kid hanging around a Goth club after dark. It was the face looking back at him with a scowl as good as anything he’d ever been able to muster -- a face so arresting it compelled the beholder to look twice, instantly searing itself on the shuddering surface of his memory like a brand.
“Eden.” Mr. Charles bustled into the room, positioning himself between the gorgeous Goth girl and Cameron like a human shield. “This is Cameron Zane.” The Englishman dropped his voice a notch. “The one I’ve been telling you about.”
The beauty on the bed turned kohl-lined slanting green eyes back toward him, regarding him with barely concealed annoyance. “Do you actually want to take over my personal security?”
A synapse clicked belatedly in his brain. This unbelievably gorgeous female was Eden? Eden, the vampire queen?
No fucking way. Just… no.
“As I told you earlier, he’s the most qualified person we could possibly find for the position.” Mr. Charles smoothed down his red silk tie. “Agent Stern says she would trust him with her life.”
The girl laughed. “Easy for her to say. Katya’s not a vampire.”
He wasn’t about to let this babe in black question his professional abilities. He also wasn’t going to imagine if her magnolia white skin was as soft as it looked. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to notice the fact that her extremely voluptuous body had one of the finest sets of breasts he’d ever witnessed hiding behind the fabric of that loose top.
He kept his gaze fixed on her face -- distracting enough territory without dipping lower. “Look, Your Majesty --”
She cut him off. “I haven’t been crowned yet.” Her full ruby lips formed a bemused smile. “You may call me Eden.”
“Eden --” he began again.
“For now.” She interrupted him again, this time with a smile revealing tiny white fangs.
He felt a pulse beating in his forehead. He’d pulled weapons on other vampires for less. “Look, whoever you are. You need protection from a vampiric serial killer, one who happens to be terrorizing the entire vampire community.” He took a step forward. “You need someone who understands bad little vampires, someone who knows how they think. You want someone who knows how to kill a vampire quickly and cleanly, no fuss, no muss, no questions asked.” He met her green gaze. “In other words, you need me.”
“And you need the money, since rogue hits are all you can get now.” She wiggled her curvy frame to the edge of the bed, dangling her legs over the side.
He felt a deadly stillness inside him. “I’m not in this for the money.” Sammy’s face flashed through his mind like a falling star… something you could only see through the corner of your eye before it was gone, leaving a trail of stardust behind it.
“Is it too much to ask you why you’d take this job?”
He could feel the weight of her gaze on him. If she were like any other master vampire, she’d sense a lie. “We all have our reasons.” He paused, forcing the past back into the mental locker where he kept it stashed away. “Let me assure you… you have no reason to question my loyalties. Yeah, I’ve executed a lot of vampires, but if you’re my client, my life is on the line for you and only you, twenty-four seven.”
She folded her hands over her knees and looked at him with a softer expression. “I can accept that.”
The door behind him swung open, and he drew before the person on the other side could cross the threshold.
“Holy shit!!” The woman standing in the door held a dinner tray covered with those silver domes like they use for room service at hotels. A wave of power rolled off of her, hitting him like an electrical current.
“No one comes in here until they’ve cleared it with me first.” He kept his gun trained on the woman and turned to Eden. “You know this one?”
“Hell yes, Lisa is my totem!” Eden slid off the bed, rose to her full height of somewhere just around five foot two, and crossed the room to take the tray from the slim, dark haired woman.
Well, that settled that. She was a master vampire. Only masters had totems.
On the other hand, he’d never seen a master vamp attack a plate of spaghetti marinara before.
“We’ll get radios for the entire staff,” Mr. Charles was saying, giving Lisa one of those pats on the shoulder like the one he’d given Sable. “I assure you, that won’t happen to you again.”
Cameron watched Eden twirl strands of pasta around the tines of her fork. She looked up, catching him mid-stare. “Yes, I eat human food.” She opened the lid of what he knew to be a synthetic blood warmer, revealing a bottle of Vlad’s Chocolate Truffle. “I
also drink synthetic blood once a night.” She met his dumbfounded expression with a half-smirk. “What, am I the first dhampire you’ve ever seen?”
She was a dhampire? Holy mother of fuck. That explained a lot.
He swallowed, forcing his face to go blank. “You’re the first one I’ve ever seen alive.”
She put her fork down to peel the paper wrapper from a straw. “We are a rare breed, I’ll give you that.”
“Most don’t live to adulthood,” Lisa commented, settling herself in a chair opposite the bed and shooting a glare in his direction.
“Most weren’t sired by Master Cain.” Eden smiled and put her straw into her bottle of Vlad’s.
Master Cain was her sire? Shit, this kept getting better by the minute. If she’d been sired by the most ancient vampire in Texas history… “You must have some interesting powers,” he said, finishing the thought out loud.
“She can’t daywalk,” Mr. Charles jumped in like a game show host eager to extol his wares. “She’s confined during daylight hours, just like any full-fledged vampire. Her need for both human and vampiric food sources has given her…” Mr. Charles appeared to grope for words. “Let us just say that she has an extremely compromised metabolism.”
What was that, a way of calling her fat? Cameron allowed himself a quick visual trip up and down Eden’s form. Apparently blood did a body good, because all the padding appeared to be in the right places.
“And she has a minor allergy to silver. But her elemental conjuring abilities are quite remarkable.”
“You control the element of earth?” He directed his question to Eden.
“How did you guess?” She twirled another bite of pasta.
“It would explain the roses everywhere.” He looked at the blood red flowers, frothing over in vases, climbing an indoor trellis against the west wall. “You conjured them.”
“There’s one more thing… an important thing.” Eden put down her fork. “I’m not immortal.”
“That you’re not.” Mr. Charles turned to Cameron, an expression in his eyes that implied far more than mere words could convey. “She can be killed -- maybe not as easily as a mere mortal, but she has nowhere near the strength of a full vampire.” The older man paused for emphasis. “You can see now why we must guard her so carefully.”
Cameron let his gaze travel from Mr. Charles to the almost fragile looking female totem to the voluptuous beauty on the bed. “If I’m going to protect the mortal offspring of Master Cain from a psychotic vampire serial killer, I’m going to need to move in here.”
Mr. Charles nodded. “We expected as much, and have a lovely guest suite on the second floor, if you’ll…”
“No.” Cameron cut him off and made his way to a door on the wall beside the bed. He opened the door without knocking, revealing what appeared to be a sitting room. “I mean that I need to move in here.” He gestured through the open door. “Eden, looks like you’ve got yourself a roommate.”
* * *
Gulf Coast Paranormal Almanac
2007 Edition
Predator Press
Dhampire
A dhampire (also dhampir, dhamphir or dhampyr) is the offspring of one human parent and one vampire parent. The term is of Serbian-Balkan origins. It became widely used in North America when vampires gained legal citizenship in both the United States and Canada. Dhampires are not to be confused with the more common daywalker (see separate entry), who are “full fledged” undead vampires possessing a rare strain which gives them immunity to sunlight.
The first live dhampire birth recorded in North America was that of Bella Grey, who was born to a human mother and vampire father on November 15, 1967 in Cavendish, Maine. The high rate of infant mortality among dhampires has kept their numbers consistently low. However, with hospitals steadily adding preternatural departments to their neo-natal units, more dhampire infants are surviving into childhood every year.
Dhampires have unique nutritional requirements. Not only do they need a balanced diet of human food, they also must ingest blood -- whether human or synthetic in origin -- regularly. Additionally, some dhampires have the ability to consume human vital energy, or prana (see separate entry; also see psionic energy for further discussion).
Given their extreme sensitivity to sunlight and varying degrees of allergy to silver, combined with their status as mortals, the number of dhampires who have survived into adulthood is low. Experts estimate that there are less than two thousand adult dhampires worldwide.
Certain factors seem to increase longevity in dhampires. Having one parent possessing master-level vampire powers appears to improve the immune system and metabolism of the dhampire infant. Furthermore, dhampires can gain strength by drinking the blood of a more powerful vampire. A few rare dhampires have risen to the master power level by ingesting the blood of an ancient vampire.
In the event that an adult dhampire succumbs to illness or injury, they can sometimes avoid final death by making the transition from dhampire to vampire. However, this technique is not recommended as an alternative to prompt medical care, as it has a success rate of only fifty percent.
--Susan Lee
Chapter 3
If he didn’t have such a shitty attitude, she might have been happy -- maybe even a little too happy -- about having the arrogant prick guarding her person.
But having him move into the room next door, where he could breathe down her neck during every waking moment? No thanks… even if he was pretty damned attractive, in that tattooed -- shaven head -- hired gun sort of way.
“I really don’t think that’s a good idea.” Eden pushed her dinner tray forward and reached for the remote control, switching the channel to the vampire cable news network. They were replaying the same grainy footage of a body bag holding the remains of Melanie Bates as it was being wheeled to a waiting ambulance.
A shudder ran through her. No matter how many times she saw footage of the bodies being wheeled away, they still made her cold with fear. Her senses were sharp enough to know that this thing, whatever it was, wanted a piece of her.
A big bloody piece, served up raw.
“Perhaps you should consider it, Eden.” Mr. Charles fiddled with his tie again. “Mr. Zane is an expert in his field.”
She kept her gaze fixed on the television screen. “I have the Speedway Pack crawling all over this place during the day when we’re sleeping.”
She heard a hissing sigh coming from somewhere in Cameron’s vicinity.
“Fine.” He shrugged his wide shoulders and put his hand on the doorknob. “Find someone else to handle security for you. I’m out of here.”
Her last frayed nerve snapped. She couldn’t cope with all the stress in her life and an asshole bodyguard with a God complex too. “So that’s how it works? Your way or the highway?”
He put his free hand on the butt of his gun, unintentionally drawing her attention to his thickly muscled bicep. “I’m trying to keep you out of a pine box here. I don’t have time to play games. If you can’t trust my judgment, you need to find someone else.” He turned the doorknob with a click, his jacket slung over one shoulder.
She closed her eyes and took a breath. “I just don’t understand why on earth you’d need to be next door to me.”
The glacier chill of his blue eyes met hers. “You have the Speedway Pack posted outside your bedroom door when you sleep?”
“Of course.”
“Got ’em stationed outside these windows?” He gestured to the row of heavily shaded windows on the rear wall.
Eden blinked. “We’re on the third floor.”
He nodded. “So you’re saying a master vampire couldn’t levitate all the way up here and smash the glass before you had time to notice it?”
Aha! “Not during daylight.” She had him there.
The corner of his mouth turned up. “Not even a daywalker, huh?”
Okay, so maybe she hadn’t played an ace with that one. “Well…”
“
Not to mention that a master daywalker could simply break in here and expose you to sunlight. You’d be a crispy critter before any of your little furry friends could rescue you.” His gaze flicked over her. “And that would be a real waste.”
She felt heat burning her cheeks and cursed it silently. She would not blush over an interested glance from that shaven head ruffian. She would not.
“So you’re going to do what? Stare at me while I sleep?” She tossed the remote aside and tried to look bored, despite the fact that her heart was hammering like a power tool.
“Basically. Or you could just invite a few members of the Speedway Pack in here to sing you lullabies. I’m sure they’d be real interested in checking out your nighties.” He leaned against the door and folded his arms across his broad chest, a satisfied smirk on his face.
Bastard. He’d won and he knew it.
“So when do you plan to sleep?” She scowled. He may have won the battle, but the war was far from over.
He gave her the closest thing to a genuine smile she’d seen since he’d arrived. “When I’m dead.”
She laughed and threw all her vampire wiles into it, making sure it was a sound that would crawl up a human’s spine. “That might happen sooner than you think.” She grinned, baring fang.
“Meaning what?” His smile vanished.
“Tonight is the Lesser Feast of St. Germain.” She folded her hands over her lap. “And I have to go to the service at the chapel.”
He thought he was so tough? Let him try that act in a building full of vampires.
She could hardly wait.
Chapter 4
Funny, but Cameron had never expected to come face to face with his own personal vision of hell inside a chapel.
But if wall to wall vampires didn’t comprise his idea of Satan’s back forty, nothing did.