Blood and Thunder

by Roquet, Angela

  My fangs had retracted, but the warm tang of his blood sent a shiver through me. It was nothing like the bagged variety, which was still a far cry better than the cow blood. There was a world of difference between them all. Like going from dehydrated astronaut food to prime rib.

  My tongue crept out slowly, lapping the blood from my bottom lip first. I closed my eyes with a heavy breath and savored every drop. Then I devoured Vin’s mouth, licked it clean, searching for the source so I could probe it for more. His breath labored against mine, and when he jolted beneath me again, I was afraid I’d gone too far.

  “Good evening,” a rough, annoyed voice said from the lawn at my back.

  If my fangs could have retracted up into my eye sockets, they probably would have. I ran my tongue over my lips one more time, hoping to clean any traces of blood from them, and then turned to face Roman.

  Despite the muggy heat, he was wearing black pants and a turtleneck that hugged his wide chest and massive shoulders. It was very urban ninja with a touch of commando, but his fluff of white hair ruined the effect. Even when he chose to cover his ‘do with a stocking cap, those icy blue eyes made him stand out like a peacock in a dessert.

  “What do you want?” I said, not bothering to hide my irritation. Vin tensed, and his arms tightened around my waist. Roman ignored him, reserving his broody scowl just for me.

  “You haven’t been returning my calls.”

  Chapter Four

  Vin sat up taller and pushed his chest out so abruptly that, if not for his vice-like grip on my legs, I would have fallen right out of his lap.

  “I remember you,” he said to Roman, flashing a nervous smile. “You’re the FBI agent who took over Jenna’s case. Knight, wasn’t it?”

  Roman acknowledged him long enough to glare. “Special Agent Roman Knight. Have we met?”

  Vin sniffed, the sound coming out more startled than offended. “Dr. Vincent Hart, St. Louis County Medical Examiner.”

  I gave Roman a dirty look, knowing full well he remembered meeting Vin at the morgue. Roman had called him my beau. It was an old-timey word that served to remind me he was much older than he appeared.

  Being half-sired had its perks, and, truth be told, I would have preferred it to being a vampire. Roman could enjoy real food and sunlight, yet still cash in on the anti-aging and extra strength benefits of being a vamp. It wasn’t fair. It made his brooding even more intolerable. What the hell did he have to be so grumpy about all the time?

  “What do you want?” I repeated, the words grating through my clenched teeth. I uncoiled my arms from around Vin’s neck but didn’t move from my perch on his lap.

  “I have a case I need to discuss with you. In private,” he added with a nod at the house as if he expected me to invite him inside.

  Vin cleared his throat and loosened his grip on me, moving to stand. I resisted, grunting as he pulled me up, too.

  “Sounds like it could be important,” he said when I huffed at him. “I’ll be up late. Give me a call when you’re free.” He brushed my hair over my shoulder and kissed my cheek. Then he gave Roman a curt nod before cautiously edging past him and moving toward his lime-green Volkswagen Beetle parked on the street. Roman waited for the car to rattle to life and pull away before turning his full attention back to me.

  “Next time you feel like biting your friend, take it indoors.” His voice was low and threatening, like an officer lecturing a drunk driver. It sent my temper into overdrive.

  “There was no one out here to see us—except for you. Pervert.” I snorted and put my hands on my hips. “Whatever it is you want from me, the answer is no. I’m not interested in chasing down bad guys just to let them run off into the night. My bad guys go behind bars.” I almost choked on the words as I remembered the vampire I’d helped escape the night before.

  “Those were special circumstances.” Roman pressed his lips together and raised an eyebrow at me. “Most of my bad guys are sleeping with the fishes.”

  All the air left my lungs. I had to swallow a few times to get my throat to work again. “That sounds like even more reason to avoid working with you.”

  Roman nodded as if he could appreciate my resistance. “I wouldn’t be here if this didn’t concern you directly,” he admitted. The lump returned to my throat. It made sense. He hadn’t seemed to enjoy working with me either.

  My hands slipped off my hips, and I sighed. “Fine.” I pushed the front door open and waited for him to climb the porch steps before entering ahead of him. “Make it quick. Laura and Mandy will be back soon.”

  Roman followed me into the kitchen, taking in the dove-gray walls, the white cabinets, and the new quartz countertop. Laura and I had bonded over the remodeling project, inspired by the giant hole Mandy had created in the wall the night I discovered her squatting in my house. Which also happened to be the same night Laura had arrived, like my very own bizarre little intervention team. Without the two of them, I wouldn’t have survived the summer.

  Roman took in the new fixtures with a blank expression, then he glanced at the window over the sink and the sliding glass door behind the dining room table. Probably checking for assassins or spies. Or a speedy exit should I try to bite him, too. He didn’t exactly have a high opinion of me.

  The last time Roman had been in my home, he’d pointed a rifle in my face. To be fair, he had just caught me snacking on a gangbanger in East St. Louis. But in my defense, the guy had tried to carjack me. And I’d been hungry. The memory made the gums around my fangs throb.

  I opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bag of blood. Then I caught sight of Roman’s pinched frown and blushed. “Do you want something to drink?”

  “No.”

  “I have soda and Gatorade in here, too,” I said, opening the door wider for him to see.

  “I’m good.” His eyes took in the rows of bagged blood. “I hope your friend isn’t doing anything illegal to get his hands on that much product for you.”

  My nostrils flared at the baited accusation. “I’m pretty sure you’d know before I did if my friend were ransacking blood banks around the city.”

  “It’s my job to ask these kinds of questions.”

  “That’s funny. I didn’t hear a question,” I said, propping a fist on my hip. “Just a nasty, speculative remark.”

  Roman made a frustrated noise and shook his head. “You should set up a proper blood harem. It’s the responsible thing to do. You’d require half as much if you drank exclusively from the source, and your strength would increase faster, too.”

  I slapped the bag of blood down on the counter and glared at him. “You say that like I should know better. How the hell would I know any of this? You made it sound like mingling with other vampires would bring up too many questions about my sire, and it’s not like I can waltz into a library and ask where their nonfiction vampire section is!”

  Roman grimaced, and I realized that my voice had escalated into a shout. I’d also inched across the kitchen until I was standing right in front of him, looking up into those frosty blue eyes, inhaling his earthy body heat. The knot of anger in my gut loosened. Damn pheromones. My chest heaved as I took a careful step back and reached for the blood bag, ready to devour it.

  “I’m sorry,” Roman said, almost causing me to choke on my first mouthful of blood.

  “What?” I rasped.

  “You’re right. I should have been more helpful. I counted on the mutt having enough experience with vampires to get you through the transition, but I should have known better.” Mutt. He was talking about Mandy, and however politically correct the term might be, I didn’t like it. But I let it go this time because he was actually apologizing. I couldn’t spoil that.

  “Go on.” I watched him with expectant eyes as I sucked on the bag of blood.

  Roman grinned. It was slight, and I almost missed it. Just a gentle lift of one side of his mouth. “If you help me, I’ll divulge everything I know about being a vampire.”

&nbs
p; I eased around the counter and onto a barstool. “Tell me about this case.”

  Roman glanced at the empty seat beside me but chose to stand on the opposite side of the counter instead, putting a safe stretch of distance and an obstacle between us. He folded his hands behind his back, assuming a military stance as if this were a formal debriefing.

  “For the past six weeks, someone has been targeting new vamplings in St. Louis. Those without an active sire are especially vulnerable, their casualties roughly double those with local sires.”

  “Wait a minute.” I held up a hand to stop him. “There are other vampires in the city like me?”

  “Maybe not quite as new as you are—”

  “But without a sire?”

  Roman dipped his head in a quick nod. “Their sires are either dead or inactive, loosing their novice scions on the world long before they’re ready.”

  “Oh, so you actually care what happens to these particular vamplings?” I said, my lips sagging into a condemning scowl.

  “I apologized, didn’t I?” Roman’s eyes met mine briefly before he continued. “The similarities in the deaths are striking enough to categorize this as the work of a serial killer. That they are only going after the youngest and weakest means we could potentially be looking at a human predator. Their tendency to move bodies around during the day also supports this theory, though they could be working with a half-sired accomplice.”

  “Like you?” I injected. He scowled as if he’d forgotten I’d pried that detail out of him already. My job made me good at asking questions, too. “How many victims are we talking about here?”

  Roman locked eyes with me again. “As of last night, six confirmed dead—though a dozen more have been reported missing.”

  My hands clenched the empty blood bag, and I took a slow breath. “And you think I can help how, exactly?”

  Roman gave me an apprehensive look, and I knew the answer before he said it. “We could really use a vampling with police training who knows what they’re doing—”

  “To play bait,” I finished, shaking my head. “Uh-uh. No way. You don’t want my help. You want a carrot you can dangle in front of a psychopath you’ve been chasing in circles for the last six weeks. Do you really think I’m that stupid?” I bit my tongue before I started shouting again.

  “You’d be paid. Well.” He pulled a hand out from behind his back and ran it through his hair. “And I meant what I said before about telling you everything I know.”

  “That’s assuming I survive.” I scrunched up my nose at him. “That’s assuming you don’t intentionally let me die so you don’t have to follow through.”

  The corners of his mouth twisted down in offense. “Is that really what you think of me? I spilled my blood for you. I don’t do that for just anyone.”

  “Why did you do it?” I asked, my breath tightening at the memory. The event played out in my mind whenever I so much as thought his name. I could recall the rich flavor of his blood as if it had never left my tongue, and it stirred a moan at the back of my throat that I had to swallow, lest I humiliate myself. It was obscene, the amount of time I spent reliving those few moments over and over.

  “You were my responsibility that night,” Roman said. His voice was tight and uneven as if he, too, struggled with the memory of it. “You were only there because I asked for your help.”

  “Because you blackmailed me into helping.” I leaned back in my barstool and folded my arms.

  Roman nodded. “Even more reason for me to make sure you didn’t die. I’m not a monster. I didn’t let anything happen to you then, and I won’t now.”

  “But you’re more than happy to let me grope around in the dark to figure out this whole vampire thing on my own.” Yeah, that was a sore spot I wouldn’t be getting over anytime soon.

  Roman’s jaw flexed, and I could tell I was starting to get under his skin. He’d been trying so hard there for a minute, too.

  “We didn’t exactly part on civil terms,” he said, giving me a pointed stare. “And maybe if you’d returned my calls, you wouldn’t have had to do so much groping in the dark. It’s difficult to impart information when someone’s ignoring you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Sure, that’s why you called. I haven’t known you for very long, but from what I’ve seen, sharing information isn’t exactly a skill you’ve mastered.”

  “I’ve spent half a century learning the ins and outs of this world, and you think I should just recite those details to you like a breathing encyclopedia?” he snapped. “What is it you want to know so badly anyway?”

  “Everything!” I leaned over the counter and glared at him. “The day you die and rise as one of the undead, you’ll be fully prepared. I didn’t even know that vampires existed until after I’d been one for a full day. How is that fair?”

  Roman’s face flushed. He took a shuddering breath before stepping in closer to the counter, narrowing the gap between us even more. “Fair? I’ve served for fifty years on Blood Vice, and I’ll serve fifty more as a half-sired agent before I earn the privilege of becoming a vampire. Something you accomplished with one foolish mistake as a green detective.”

  I recoiled from him as if I’d been slapped. “You think I should have stayed dead?” His mouth opened, but I went on before he could deny it. “Most days, I wish I had, and that my partner had been the one to survive.” I thought of Will and his family who still mourned him.

  “That’s not what I meant.” Roman gripped the edge of the counter and looked down, hiding his face from me. My raw honesty had surprised him, and now he was uncomfortable. I was over-sharing, but I didn’t care as long as my point was made.

  “I didn’t sign up for this. And if I was so shitty at my job, I don’t see why you’re asking for my help.” I pressed my palms into the countertop and tried to breathe through my nose. Tears burned at the corners of my eyes, but I begged them to wait. “I think you should leave now.”

  Roman blinked at me as if he only just realized how much his words had stung. Then he blew out a half-hearted sigh and shook his head, though it looked as if maybe it was more at him than me. “You can’t work for the human police forever. I’m amazed you lasted as long as you have.”

  “Amazed that I haven’t made any more foolish mistakes or gotten anyone else killed?” The red spilling across my vision throbbed. “Get out of my house.”

  “Right.” He tapped his fist on the edge of the counter, ignoring the expanding fog of wrath I was suffocating in. “You have my number. When you decide you’re ready for those answers, all you have to do is call.” He turned and headed for the living room.

  “Maybe I’ll hunt down a vampire and ask them my questions instead.”

  Roman paused and looked over his shoulder at me. “And maybe you’ll find our serial killer first and not have backup. Don’t be stupid, Jenna. If you want to meet another vampire, I can introduce you to my partner.”

  I snorted. “Are you jealous of your partner, too? Or did he earn his undead status the hard way like you did?”

  “She was made a vampire a century before we met.”

  “She?” I thought of the dark-haired woman I’d seen in his SUV at the warehouse and again in the barn after he stopped me from taking out Scarlett. Roman sighed and made an awkward noise in the back of his throat. He really wasn’t good at this sharing business.

  “She’s heading up this case. You’ll meet her if you agree to help.”

  “I’ll think about it.” I rolled the empty blood bag between my hands and tried to keep a neutral expression until Roman turned and headed back through the living room. I waited until I heard the front door close behind him before I let out the breath I’d been holding.

  Answers sounded nice. Playing bait for a serial killer, not so much. Especially when that murderer had a taste for vampires. And not bad vampires. Just the youngest and the weakest.

  It was a worthy case, and I knew I should have agreed to help for that reason alone. But I wouldn
’t just be pretending to match the killer’s type. I was his type. That changed things.

  I had a lot to think about, but if this guy had already taken out six vampires and maybe a dozen more that just hadn’t been found yet, there wasn’t much time to lose. I could stay hidden inside my isolated, human-ish lifestyle and go undetected while innocent vamplings died around the city, or I could fang-up and make my debut in the underground society a memorable one.

  My only reservation was Roman. He’d been so persistent about keeping me away from that world. It had felt like he was trying to protect me. After his heated confession tonight, I had to wonder if jealously wasn’t partly to blame. Still, there had to be more to it than that. And he had promised to answer my questions. I had plenty.

  Now, I knew exactly where to begin.

  Chapter Five

  I listened to the most recent message Roman had left on my machine and programmed his number into my cell phone. He’d given me his card before, but I had been pretty sure I would never actually call him. So I’d thrown it away. I was still sitting at the kitchen counter, stewing over the idea of accepting his offer, when my phone rang. My teeth clenched as Ned Ricker’s cell number lit up the screen.

  “What’s up, Ricker?” I answered, trying not to sound as annoyed as I felt. There was only one reason he’d call me on my night off.

  “Skye,” he groaned through the speaker. So dramatic. “I need you and Star to cover for me and Yogi tonight. We ate some bad Mexican food, and it’s not agreeing with us.” I heard his tongue click softly, and then Yogi joined in with a solemn howl.

  “It can’t be too bad if you keep going back for more.” I slumped in my barstool and scowled even though he couldn’t see me. “Langford would kick your ass if he knew how many table scraps you feed that poor beast.”