by Debra Dunbar
The group shared glances and shook their heads. Cassie’s head turned slowly toward me, a look of eager anticipation crossing over her face. “Fane? Did you see a woman matching that description on your way here?”
I stared upward doing a convincing job of thinking, made all the more believable because it was exactly what I was doing. The glaring overhead lights stunned my eyes as my mind jerked from one thought to the next.
I didn’t want to lie to Cassie. Nor did I wish to out the huntress who had not only let me off the hook, but gone so far as to warn me that more of her kind were coming. All this despite the fact that I was a vampire and she, a hunter. Even though I’d seen her face.
“I wasn’t really paying attention to people on my way here,” I answered truthfully, lowering my gaze until it was level with Cassie’s.
Her lips pressed together tight.
Bastian’s eyes flicked up to me. “You sure you didn’t get a glimpse of her? There’s not a whole lotta people walking the docks this time of night.”
With a sniff, I stuffed my hands in my pockets and shrugged. “Maybe she had snorkeling gear stashed on board.”
“That’s right,” Cassie said, eyes alighting. “Ronald was found in the ocean dressed in dive equipment. She probably arranged the whole thing and had planned to do the same with Edward.”
The vamp in the polo scowled. “She tried to stab me, not suffocate me.”
“Well, she probably has to change things up to keep authorities guessing,” Cassie said, placing her hands on her hips. Abruptly, she moved to the boat’s railing and looked across the water as though expecting to catch sight of the huntress butterfly stroking her way back to shore.
Bastian got to his feet and joined Cassie at the railing, shaking his head. “Four attacks in the last month. I don’t like this. It’s time to set sail.”
Edward got to his feet sputtering, “Set sail? What about the bitch who tried to off me tonight? Are you going to leave her to prey on island vampires?”
“I don’t know who she is, and it’s not my responsibility to police the islands,” Bastian said. “Tomorrow I head for the Bahamas. From there . . . that’s nobody’s business but mine. I’ll send you a postcard,” he said with a glint in his eyes. “Maybe.”
I mirrored Bastian’s smirk. I was beginning to warm up to the guy. Maybe I’d run into him at some other time and destination in the future. The world could be a small place, especially among vampires.
Bastian turned to Cassie next and said, “You should come with me.”
“To the Bahamas?” she asked uncertainly.
He nodded. “You did an admirable job looking into the island attacks. There’s nothing more to be done here. It’s your choice, of course, but I believe it would be foolish to stay.”
Tension eased itself from my shoulders. It was good to hear Bastian wasn’t all muscle mass and no brain cells. When Cassie looked at me I smiled.
“What do you think, Fane?” she asked.
“I think Bastian’s right. The Caribbean’s been compromised. It’s time to leave the islands.”
Cassie’s forehead wrinkled. “Are you leaving?”
“Tomorrow.”
“But you just got here. It doesn’t seem fair.” Cassie chewed on her bottom lip.
“I’ll catch up with you again later down the road. Maybe next time we’ll try Hawaii.”
Cassie sniffed. “So long as it’s off limits to hunters.” She stepped away from the railing and made her way toward me, a smile lifting her cheeks. “I’ve always wanted to visit Hawaii. You remembered.”
I grinned back. “The island girl from Canada. How could I ever forget?”
“Why don’t you just join us to the Bahamas now?” Bastian asked.
Cassie’s face lit up. “That’s an excellent idea. Come with us.”
I looked at the pair of them, sexy and carefree, offering companionship and conversation. A new adventure awaited on the horizon. It was ever so tempting, but the idea of Alaska had formed and grown in my head like a snowball wheeling down a mountainside, getting bigger as it went.
I pulled my hands out of my pockets. “I appreciate the offer, but I’m traveling with a companion. We have business to wrap up in New York before we move.”
Cassie’s forehead wrinkled. “You’re moving?”
“To Alaska,” I said, a grin widening over my face. Saying the words aloud made them feel real for the first time.
The Last Frontier. My own adventure awaited, perhaps not on the horizon, but along the Arctic Circle.
If I were really lucky I’d meet my soulmate there—the one I’d been searching for my entire life. I wasn’t going to find her if I confined myself to a boat. Cassie would never be my forever woman; she wasn’t even open to being my “little while” woman.
“Alaska?” she asked now, shaking her head as though snow had gotten into her ears and she hadn’t heard right.
With a grin and nod, I said, “They’ve got direct flights to Hawaii. That will be convenient when I come to see you . . . or you could pay me a visit for a change.”
“In Alaska? I don’t think so,” Cassie said. “I grew up in Canada. I don’t ever want to see snow again so long as I live.”
“So long as you live?” I challenged, raising a questioning brow.
Cassie rolled her eyes. “Ask me in another hundred years.”
“In another hundred years the ice caps will have melted.”
Bastian snorted. “Good thing I have a boat.”
“Such a pessimist,” Cassie said, glaring at me.
I smiled wryly. “Quite the opposite. My awareness of the world is the reason I live each day to the fullest.”
“Very well,” Cassie said, stepping over to kiss me on each cheek. As we hugged she sighed. “Don’t freeze your fangs off up north.”
“Maybe I’ll find someone to keep me warm,” I said with a chuckle. An image of the blonde in the white dress drifted across my mind then vanished in an instant. I had a feeling I’d never see her again.
It was probably for the best. How could a romance between a vampire and a hunter ever hope to survive?
Then again, there was always a first time for everything.
Fane Donado is preparing to embark on the adventure of a lifetime. He’s encountered his first vampire hunter, but it won’t be his last. Soon he finds himself tangled up in Alaska’s underworld, where no one is who they seem and a forbidden romance changes everything.
Join Fane, Joss, and their new friends in Aurora Sky: Vampire Hunter.
About the Author
Nikki Jefford is an adventure seeker, storyteller, and book lover. She is a third-generation Alaskan now living in the Pacific Northwest with her French husband and their Westie, Cosmo. When she’s not reading or writing, she enjoys nature, hiking, and motorcycling. Nikki is the author of the Aurora Sky: Vampire Hunter series, Spellbound Trilogy, and episode four of French Kiss For Hire, a romantic comedy serial.
To find out about new releases and subscriber-exclusive giveaways, sign up for her newsletter here or on her website.
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@NikkiJefford
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Someday My Count Will Come
C. Gockel
Blood may be thicker than water, but family is where you make it.
Chapter 1
“Is he awake?” Dare asks, striding down the hallway of his keep.
Amethyst, his dwarven housekeeper, shakes her head, her enormous, glowing eyes red-rimmed. “No, Count. I cannot rouse him,” she says, and hurries past Dare in the other direction.
Cursing under his breath, Dare enters his ward’s chambers and finds Enit lying in bed on top of the blankets. The boy had never bothered to take off his clothes from the night before.
Grabbing the boy’s shoulders, Dare gives him a shake. “Enit, wake up!”
The boy’s eyes don’t even flutter. Only a few centuries old, with a face androgynous with youth, Enit looks so much like his mother, it makes Dare’s heart hurt.
“Don’t do this to me, Enit!” Dare murmurs, giving him another shake.
Enit’s head lolls, but his eyes don’t open.
Heart seizing, Dare slaps him across the face and sees the boy's eyelashes flutter. “Enit! Stay with me!” Dare says.
Behind him is the rush of tiny feet. “Count, I’ve got some blood for him,” Amethyst says, offering Dare a silver chalice. The horse blood within is warm and has barely begun to congeal.
“Oh, when will this curse on the Night Elves end?” Amethyst cries.
Dare swallows. “Thank you, Amethyst, you are a true gem,” he says, giving her a nod.
Blushing, his housekeeper curtsies. “I best be off, Count. There’s a messenger coming. He’s been spotted from the wall.”
“You are excused,” Dare says, turning back to Enit.
Enit’s head is rolling back and forth, as though he has a fever, but Dare knows it’s not that. Slipping his hand to his belt, Dare retrieves a dagger … and then he hesitates. The curse can only lift when Odin changes his law, and the All Father has not ruled on Dare’s petition. If Odin does not rule in the Night Elves’ favor they will die. Maybe letting Enit slip away is kinder.
Dare closes his eyes. The All Father is just, surely he will agree with Dare that an exception must be made? Slitting his wrist, Dare lets the blood run into the chalice.
Enit groans, and blinks his eyes. “Uncle?”
Pulling his wrist away from the chalice, Dare offers his blood to the boy. Enit is not his nephew, but calls him uncle anyway. There are so few Night Elves left … they need to consider each other family.
Taking the chalice in shaky hands, Enit sips, and the tremor in his limbs decreases.
“Why is your blood capable of rejuvenating us?” Enit asks.
“Because I’m old as dirt,” Dare replies wearily. He feels his age more and more. The only thing that keeps him going some days is his responsibility to Enit, and the families near his estate.
Meeting Dare’s eyes above the chalice, Enit says, “Mother was older than you by a century.”
But Enit’s mother, Eirween, hadn’t been sent to Earth to retrieve Night Elves that broke Odin’s law. It isn’t Dare’s blood that is sustaining Enit; it’s the human blood still flowing in Dare’s veins, and that won’t last forever. How long has it been since Gretta died?
“Count! Count!” Amethyst pants as she rushes back into the chamber. “The messenger! It is Angharad! She comes all the way from Asgard!”
At mention of Asgard, Realm Eternal, and home to Odin, All Father, King of the Realms, Dare commands Enit, “Drink it all,” and dashes from the room.
Minutes later he is in the courtyard just in time to hear the clatter of hooves. Blakkr, his niece's favorite nightmare, streaks through the portcullis. The animal looks for the most part like an ordinary horse, but her eyes glow faintly red, and her sharp, pointed canines glint in the low light. His niece Angharad is upon the creature’s back, long curly dark locks windswept, her cheeks very pale, even for a Night Elf.
“Uncle,” Angharad cries, “Odin sends a message with Loki!”
Dare’s eyes go wide. “His fool?”
Nodding, Angharad jumps from the saddle. “Odin has a quest for you on Midgard. I overheard Loki muttering about it before he was dispatched.”
At the mention of Midgard—Earth in that realm’s own parlance—Dare finds himself licking his lips, and his heart rate quickening. Inwardly he curses himself. If he is going to Earth, it may mean that a Night Elf is terrorizing humans, and even if the Night Elf’s presence there is innocent, it will still be Dare’s job to bring him or her before the All Father.
“Loki rides Sleipnir,” Angharad says.
“Sleipnir?” Dare says with a start. “How did you get here before him?” Sleipnir, Odin’s eight-legged steed, is the fastest horse in the Nine Realms; even a nightmare is no match.
Angharad gives a disgusted sounding snort. “Loki’s very drunk … he’d fallen off when we passed him on the road.”
One of Dare’s eyebrows hike. “You passed an agent of the All Father in distress and did not give aid?”
Angharad shrugs. “He didn’t sound distressed. He was snoring quite comfortably.” Looking pointedly at the sky, she says, “No moon, no stars, and misty. I do so miss our weather when I am in Asgard.”
Dare contains the urge to shake her. Abandoning a servant of Odin on the road is tantamount to treason. “Ruthenium!” he calls instead.
“Preparing your weapons, Count,” the Captain of his meager guard answers.
“My Earth—Midgardian—weapons,” Dare clarifies.
“Aye, sir!”
“I wish you could take me,” Angharad says.
Dare’s attention returns to his niece. For the first time, he notices that her lips are pale. The skin on her cheekbones is peeling—sunburn perhaps from her time in Asgard—or something else. She looks better than Enit and ninety percent of his people. Still, she needs to go to Earth, or the “curse” will lead her into the final sleep.
“Don’t be silly,” Dare lies. “It’s very dull.” If she goes to Earth without Odin’s permission she will be in violation of the All Father’s law.
“Here are your weapons, Count,” says Ruthenium, holding a nondescript leather satchel in one hand. It conceals a Colt M1911 pistol and ammunition. The M1 Garand rifle Ruthenium holds in his other hand is not so easy to disguise.
Dare catches Angharad’s sharp intake of breath. “What is that?” she whispers.
“Nothing interesting,” he says, knowing she’d find it immensely so. “Just have to blend in with the natives and they’re primitive.” He thinks of Schrödinger’s lectures during his and Gretta’s sojourn in Oxford, and how much Gretta had taught him about biology. Humans aren’t more primitive; their technology just can’t rely on magic.
Her eyes narrow at him, but a gust of air, the whinny of a horse, and the clop of what sounds like the hooves of two enormous draft horses makes everyone, including Blakkr, turn. Dare’s vision is immediately blinded by light. Screwing his eyes shut, he throws up his arm to protect himself.
“Uncle?” whispers Angharad.
Dare blinks at the ground. There is no bright, searing light. He wonders what caused him to have such a terrible vision.
Lifting his head, he knows. Astride the enormous dappled gray, eight-legged Sleipnir is Loki. The ginger-haired man has rounded ears and might pass for human, but he is originally from the realm of Jotunheim and a magical creature. At the moment he is unshaven and his eyes are half-closed. But what is most striking about Loki is his aura. All magical creatures have an aura. The more powerful the creature, usually the more dramatic the aura. Loki’s magical aura is roaring like a bonfire. Flickering blue, orange, and yellow, it leaps all the way to the top of the keep’s walls.
Dare takes a step back in shock. He’s encountered Loki on very few occasions in Asgard, but never before had he noticed Loki’s magic being so powerful. He glances around him; the others seem not to have noticed. Angharad is young, and more interested in nightmares than magic, and Ruthenium and Amethyst are dwarves, the least magically sensitive of all the magical hominids. Blakkr raises her head and whinnies at Sleipnir; perhaps the nightmare would normally notice, but Sleipnir’s presence seems to have distracted her.
In the saddle, Loki belches and thumps his chest.
Dare draws back at the stink, Angharad throws a hand to her mouth, and Blakrr pulls at her reins.
“And the Light Elves say he is The Destroyer,” Angharad whispers. “What a disgrace.”
Dare blinks. The Light Elves call Loki the Destroyer? That a fool should have a title so grand should be preposterous … He feels his skin prickle, and a tiny knot of worry in his gut. Leaning dangerously in his saddle, Loki intones, “Count D
arerick Razvano Noapt … whatever. You are commanded by the All Father to come with me at once to put an end to a scourge of a vampire—”
“Night Elves,” Dare retorts.
Putting a hand to his chest, Loki amends, “The scourge of a blood sucking two-legged leech that has embedded its fangs in the innocent people of Earth.”
Sleipnir whinnies, and it sounds suspiciously like a laugh.
Dare stands straighter. “Tell me, Loki. Has Odin ruled on my petition yet?”
Loki shrugs. “I’m sure he’ll get to it. But at the moment mortals may be dying … it would hardly help your petition if mortals were to die at the hands … ” He chuckles. “... or fangs of a Night Elf.”
Dare swallows. “Of course not, nor would I wish that. I will prepare my mount. We shall need to go through the World Gate to Switzerland so I may prepare for my finances—”
Throwing up a finger, Loki interrupts, “No! We are going directly to the scene of vampiric incursion! We leave at once! Hop aboard Sleipnir.” Magic whips around the king’s fool and a shriek sounds from the corner of the courtyard. “Fire in the rose bushes!” shouts Amethyst. Dare’s eyes go wide—Loki has set fire to a wet rose bush?
“I need to prepare,” Dare insists.
“You need to obey the law of Odin,” Loki smirks.
Dare closes his eyes and takes a breath. Odin’s council is considering his petition. He can’t let a Night Elf loose on Earth hinder those deliberations.
Opening his eyes, he unclenches his fists and climbs aboard the giant steed.
“Orlando?” Dare asks.
“Yes, do keep up,” Loki says astride Sleipnir in front of Dare. The horse has slowed to a careful walk. They are passing through a place in the rocky, wooded foothills to the west of Dare’s lands. “Why is Odin sending you, and not me?” Loki waves a flask with such abandon that Dare grabs Loki’s belt to keep him from falling off.
“I can’t imagine,” says Dare.