Night's Kiss (The Ancients)

by Mary Hughes

  Better he show her. See if she gleaned something he didn’t, while he was here to pick up on it.

  “Well, ma’am, another set of eyes would help. You have to share any ideas you get from it, though. Promise?”

  “Of course!”

  “Cross your heart?”

  She grimaced but drew an X on the air over her breast.

  It would have to do. He led her back to the lab, zipped the camera footage to where the door opened, and started the playback.

  When the ball of fury separated, Kat leaned closer with a frown. “Is that Elias?” She pointed.

  “Yes, ma’am, I believe so. Why?”

  “I expected him to look…different.”

  Mentally, Ryker cursed. Of course she would. She’d met Elias as a full-blooded ancient. “Well, ma’am, I guess it’s okay to tell you drugs were involved. They can affect a person.”

  “Drugs can make him a foot shorter?” she muttered. Her hand rubbed unconsciously over her vest full of vampire-killing equipment. He worried briefly for his friend as he hit play.

  She tilted her head with a frown. “Those guys…they’re in some kind of uniform. It’s familiar.”

  He’d thought the same thing. Black fatigues, blue patches…

  “My attackers.” She leaned in, frown deepening. “Private military of some sort. Fangs for Hire…?” She glanced at him. “I mean gangs for hire.”

  Sure, she did. But Keydew was the gullible sort, so he said nothing.

  The quartet hustled Elias offscreen and he hit stop. “Did that help, ma’am?”

  “Unfortunately, no. Too many unanswered questions.” She sighed. “Why were they still in town to attack me if they already had him? What kind of vehicle did they take him in? That camera didn’t have what I really needed…” Her eyes widened and her brows rose. He could practically see the idea hit her.

  “What?” he said sharply.

  “Oh, nothing,” she said airily, like she expected him to swallow that whole.

  That was the biggest problem with the Keydew disguise—he radiated naivety.

  “Miss Kat, you promised to share any ideas you got from the video.” He said it as sternly as Keydew’s nice young tenor allowed, regretting he couldn’t bark it. “You crossed your heart.”

  “Honestly, Officer Keydew,” she insisted. “I didn’t get any information from that video.”

  Normally he wouldn’t have broken character for anything or anybody. With Kat he found himself snapping, “Don’t give me that. You had an idea.”

  She startled. “How did you…?” To herself, she muttered, “Only Ryker and Rey are that annoying.” Turning a bright smile on him, she said, “My idea wasn’t about this video. Well, I’ll get out of your hair. Thanks again.”

  She left at a quick pace. Her light footsteps padded double-time along the institutional tile.

  Cursing under his breath, he jumped to his feet. I’m glad she’s so clever, really I am. He only wished she’d be a little more transparent about it.

  No help for it. He’d have to follow her and hope to find out what she’d discovered.

  Grabbing his pack, he wheeled out of the lab in time to see her disappear from the corridor. He kicked into a lope. It was altogether too slow, but he couldn’t chance getting caught in a vampire run or worse, traveling as mist. He managed to get to the front doors as she hit the sidewalk below.

  He followed her, grabbing what cover he could from municipal landscaping, blurring his form when he couldn’t find any. She headed toward Roller-Blayd Hall. He was more and more certain with each step that she’d had a breakthrough.

  At Roller-Blayd Hall, she paused. As if, despite his careful craft following her, she was aware of him.

  He froze, not even breathing, until she moved again.

  She hopped on her scooter and headed west.

  His admiration for her grew even as he damned his luck to Kur. He nearly kicked into a vampire run to follow her. Stopped. If she glanced back at Keydew, zipping along at forty, he’d deserve a prize—Impatient Imbecile of the Year. Instead he trailed the scent of her scooter. It led him to a flat. He sidled up to one of the windows and listened.

  The slam of a trunk or chest was followed by the hiss of a shower. A short time later his enhanced hearing caught light snoring from inside.

  He paced furiously on Keydew’s lanky legs. Kur take it, he’d seen the idea hit her. Something she hadn’t shared with Keydew.

  Well, fine. She’d damned well tell him as Ryker. He pulled out his phone and hit redial.

  “Hello?” Her voice was warm and drowsy.

  He was overcome with the mental image of her in bed, covers rumpled, sleep tank and tiny shorts exposing her slender muscled body, or perhaps she slept nude…

  It shorted out his already overloaded brain cells. “I-I…” He tried to speak. His vocal cords were still Keydew’s shorter length, and he croaked it.

  “Who is this?”

  He glanced at the phone’s display, which told him both the identity of the caller and his own calling identity. Ryker. Without morphing his body—which would shred his Keydew uniform—he couldn’t manage his usual voice. He stayed mute. He didn’t remember until too late that he could have misted and dropped his clothes that way. Impatient Imbecile of the Century.

  “Ryker?” She had caller ID, too. A pause. “I was at the station. Where were you?” A little catch to her voice. She was hurt.

  His throat closed. Right by your side.

  She sighed. “Look, I can’t deal with you and your secrets right now.”

  He whispered, “B-but I’m here now.”

  “Go away, Ryker.” She added, “I’ll call you tomorrow,” before she hung up.

  Go away.

  He stood there, strangely awkward and unsure, as long-buried memories rose inside him. Running, wild and free, with his family. Leaving to be with his first woman. And on his return…

  You are no longer one of us. Go away.

  He gritted his teeth. It was only a memory.

  Go away.

  He wheeled and got out of there.

  …

  I left fresh-faced Officer Keydew at the police station, pretty pleased with myself despite Ryker having bailed on me. That hurt, for reasons I was too tired to explore. But I had one thing I’d wanted for years—the face beneath the king’s fearsome mask.

  Although his mouth wasn’t nearly as nibbleable as I remembered. Then again, he hadn’t been smiling his edible smile.

  The video footage hadn’t shown the most critical piece of information: the vehicle. I had an idea to remedy that. I’d gone to test it—without being hampered by any annoying, too-sexy-for-their-own-good private investigators.

  Maybe I wasn’t hurt at Ryker’s abandoning me. Maybe I was pissed. Yeah, that was it. He’d deliberately cut me out of the investigation for twenty minutes—then disappeared, the bastard. Probably run off to check some new clue he’d found. It was only supreme good fortune I’d met that nice young officer and was able to encourage him to show me the footage.

  Memory of Ryker’s gentle support while I’d spilled the story of my parents intruded. I sighed. Not pissed. Maybe not even badly hurt, but definitely bruised. I couldn’t deal with him right now.

  So yes, I’d tell him my idea—after I checked it out. I’d headed for, not Roller-Blayd Hall, but the bungalow on the back of the lot.

  That house, squatting there alone, defiant, clinging stubbornly to a block where the rest of the houses were probably razed in the name of progress. Something about that made me think its owner would be equally stubborn and suspicious.

  Maybe he was even paranoid enough to have a camera on the hall. Exactly where the vehicle would’ve stopped.

  Then my neck had prickled.

  I hadn’t wanted to lead anyone to
my big clue, especially not those black-fatigue suckers. And I still couldn’t deal with any sexy too-human PIs.

  I’d come back later. Go home now, take a nap before a little rogue hunting tonight. Retrieving my scooter, I’d headed to the flat.

  Ryker had called, waking me with that cryptic croak. Couldn’t deal with him. I’d told him so a little too abruptly.

  I made a mental note to apologize when I talked to him next and shut my eyes…and dreamed.

  Have you ever had a dream where things are so bright and vivid, they’re realer than real? Stuff that would never actually happen seems natural and right, so emotionally luminous it’s filled with absolute truth.

  This dream was that perfect. That real.

  A man made love to me. Not simply sex, not a meaningless encounter for physical relaxation.

  This giant, moving above me, in me, meant the world to me.

  As he thrust, I grabbed his sheened biceps, his rock-hard muscles as big as boulders. The love in my heart burned bright and pure. Desire furled tight inside me, deeper, sharper, hotter than an angel’s righteous sword.

  Love met desire and burst like a sun gone nova. Climax filled me with pleasure so deep and broad it overflowed, triggering his release. We shuddered together, clasping each other as tightly as if we were one being.

  As if this was the male destined for me.

  I woke up panting and in a sweat, my heart pounding. Disoriented. Love shivered through me in the remains of an orgasm so potent it seemed blasted from the bedrock of reality itself.

  Yet it was a dream. Unreal. I couldn’t even remember the face of the man…

  A terrifying mask. Steely, brandishing spikes for extra fear. So primally terrifying it was almost beautiful.

  And within it, red eyes burning into mine with an equal fervor, an equal passion.

  Freefalling stilettos of fuck. I’d dreamed I loved my vampire king.

  Chapter Eleven

  The dream-king’s passionate eyes abruptly cleared to my father’s bloodless face.

  Dead eyes rebuking me.

  Screaming my defiance, I tore off the sheets. I grabbed Shredder from his scabbard and aggressively chopped the moves of a fighting form, trying to calm myself.

  I swung too hard and cut myself instead.

  Pain burgeoned along my forearm. I backed, stumbling, to the bed, Shredder sagging in my hand.

  Heat fired along the cut, blood rising and starting to sting. I sank to the mattress on trembling legs. Dropping my talwar to the mattress beside me, I stared at the red welling on the meat of my forearm. What was happening to me?

  I was a vampire hunter, a killer of all evil, hateful bloodsuckers—of which the king was the worst.

  Yet I’d dreamed of him moving inside me.

  Of him, loving me.

  My chest and throat hurt, frustration and despair fighting deep inside me, fighting to emerge.

  Something wet and itchy rolled down my cheek. A tear? “No,” I growled at myself. “Tough hunters don’t cry.” I wiped it impatiently with the back of my cut arm. The cut stung worse, exactly as rubbing salty tears into it would, damn it. I leaped to my feet to walk it off.

  My pacing took me past the mirror.

  My face was a mess of red streaks, the blood from my arm when I’d swiped at my cheeks, smudged by definite, stupid tears. My expression was like I’d been hit in the back with a nail gun, my emotional pain apparently as bad as any physical injury.

  Crap. Cuts and bruises I could handle; this was out of my wheelhouse. Unnerved, my phone was in my hand and my sister’s speed dial under my thumb before I hesitated, thumb trembling.

  My emotions were already a caustic stew. Did I need Rey to stir it? Surely once I found the vampire king and eliminated him, all would return to normal.

  In my reflection, the tears, still cutting paths down my face, contradicted me. I couldn’t wait until I found the king. I needed Rey’s help now.

  With a hard swallow, I pressed call.

  As I told my sister about my dream, I calmed enough to bandage the cut. “Am I losing it?”

  “No. It’s just a dream, Kat. You’re not going over to the dark side.”

  “It must mean something.”

  “Sure. It means you’re too busy fighting monsters to have a real date.”

  I managed a laugh at that. Sometimes her digging in my psyche’s poisonous stew only churned up the worst muck. More often she put things in perspective.

  Either way, I loved her. “Thanks.”

  Rey talked about the poor homeless man, sick with jaundice, and then something about the card games she played with him at the shelter.

  I’m ashamed to say I listened with half an ear. I was thinking of Ryker, the only other male I’d been attracted to in a long time. Was it possible the dream was connected with him? After all, he was friends with the vampire king, if not an outright slave. And he was similar in size, musculature, and coloration.

  Sure, that was it. It wasn’t a bloodsucker I’d dreamed of. It was a human.

  Except no human had that terrifying, achingly beautiful mask. My shoulders slumped.

  Maybe Rey was wrong this time. Maybe she’d been right when she worried I had an unnatural attraction to death. Maybe I liked Ryker because on some level he reminded me of the vampire king. Maybe I had some misguided desire for the king, and Ryker was a placebo.

  I flopped onto the bed on my stomach. Damn. Compared to this, meeting with my birth family was an emotional slam-dunk.

  …

  I spent the whole night in a fruitless hunt for a rogue or two to whup my drama on. Naturally I found nothing, not even a blue-badge. I didn’t get any more sleep that night, so I was groggy when it was time to leave for my breakfast meeting with good ol’ bio Mom and bio Dad.

  If he hadn’t run out on us again, that was.

  Yeah, I guess I had an emotional scar or two that hadn’t quite healed right.

  In a mental fog, I chose jeans, boots, a fitted T-shirt, and my blue fleece hoodie with the vampire slashes hurriedly stitched, trying to be “normal.” Last minute, I added a dagger in one boot.

  The walk from my rented flat to the Caffeine Cafe through the overcast, chilly early morning didn’t help wake me up. When I pushed open the door to the cafe, I was almost asleep on my feet.

  The air smelled so strongly of bakery that sugar crystallized in my lungs. Great. Now both brain and lungs were sluggish.

  Dozens of people filled the heavy wood tables. Bright chatter—how the hell were these people so awake that they could not only form words but spit them out so fast?—was punctuated by the loud whirr-crunch of a coffee bean grinder.

  Liese and Hattie met me. No potential father was with them. He’d let us all down.

  A lucky sperm doesn’t make him a dad.

  “We’re upstairs.” As Liese led me, Hattie fell in behind, like they were making sure I couldn’t flee. A good idea, though I was too groggy to figure out how to turn around, much less escape.

  Reaching the upper landing, Liese continued on through a door, but Hattie’s hand on my arm stopped me. I turned.

  Her sideways glance, her expression tinged with regret, told me we weren’t going to chat about the weather.

  “Kat, something I should have said… I didn’t just give you up because I couldn’t raise you properly. I gave you up because I thought I was giving you a better life.”

  Glossy eyes and a wrinkled forehead signaled her misery. Her gaze lifted to mine, pleading for understanding.

  In that tremulous, hopeful gaze, something in my chest softened. My anger, my guilt and fear…lifted. And I was surprisingly better for it. Anger and fear are powerful emotions, but heavy.

  “It’s okay. I can see you did it for me. Thanks.” Sure, some people use “I did it for you” as an excuse, b
ut she really had. I turned toward the door, pausing as a thought hit me. Without turning back, I asked casually, “But why didn’t you try to find me until now?”

  “You were…” She paused, too long. I thought no more was coming. “You were better off without me.”

  Hell. I’d thought she’d been better off without me.

  My heart burst with sympathy for her. Spinning, I seized her in a quick hug. “I had a good family. But I missed you.”

  A trembling smile broke through on her face.

  I’d said the right thing. I smiled in return. It’ll be okay now.

  We went through the door into a private room with a single round table and no windows.

  Two men rose as we entered. One was Logan, the Luke-alike with shoulder-length hair. The other…

  He was young. Too young to be my dad. Tall and lanky, he had light brown hair in a tousled, spiky cut that brought out strands of red and gold. Smart khakis and an Oxford shirt. Good jaw. He reminded me of the actor playing MacGyver.

  A ruby glinted in one earlobe. Matching rubies adorned Hattie’s. That confused me. The matching jewelry implied couple, but he was twenty or thirty, more likely son than lover. I have a brother, too? This family stuff was complicated.

  She took the seat beside the man. Liese shut the door behind us. “You’re there, Kat.” She pointed at one of the two chairs left, beside Hattie and across from the men.

  A big mug, wafting steam, sat on the table before the empty chair, along with a plate dwarfed by a gigantic chocolate muffin. I started for the liquid wake-me-up.

  The man pointed at the mug. “Hope you like cuppa-chinos.”

  “Cappuccino.” Hattie rubbed his arm, an affectionate gesture. She smiled at me. “It’s an endearing quality of his, a little word problem that keeps him from being too perfect. Kat, this is Race Gillette.”

  “Pleased to meetcha.” He was still standing.

  Disbelief tangled with dismay inside me. This young man couldn’t be my dad. Logan was already sliding Liese into the chair beside mine, then seating himself, so despite my confusion, I sat, too.