“Dude, you need to defect to our clan. That shit doesn’t go on in our—”
“But don’t you see, Nina?” January asked, grabbing Nina’s arm to remind her of the seriousness of the impending summit meeting. “The vampire clan’s highest official, after hearing Artem go on and on about the danger he claims you’ve put everyone in, is considering the same law—he’s considering forcing each sire, of each clan, to also revert back to the old ways. If your official rules as such, everything before becomes null and void.”
Nina blinked and, probably a rare moment, went totally speechless.
Wanda stepped between them all, her expression grave. “Okay, so we have a serious problem. Because if this is the case, if they don’t like crossbreeding and species mixing, then I’m a problem, too. I’m half werewolf, half vampire, and none of us were born this way. We were all human once—all turned by accidental circumstances. Well…they were anyway. How I was turned is a whole different kettle of fish that could bring us even more trouble. Anyway, are they considering booting me, too? Because I can assure you, I won’t miss those dreadful picnics they force us to attend each year in the name of unity.”
Nina nodded her dark head, a smirk on her face. “Yeah. Their weenies in a blanket suck. Also, the jackhole berserkers are big whiny babies when it comes to touch football.”
January’s heart pounded as the night began to cave in on her, surrounding her in darkness. “I don’t know what the entire plan is, I just know that Artem’s spent a lot of time as a consultant, wooing his way into the summit, and he’s been swaying folks to his line of thinking by creating hysteria and using the three of you—Nina, most specifically—as prime examples for why there should be no exceptions to his purist rules.”
“Okay, so who do we fuck up first?” Nina asked, cracking her knuckles and rolling her head on her neck.
“We don’t fuck up anyone, Nina! No fucking up! This is going to be a covert operation, nitwit. Don’t we have enough attention on us?” Marty asked, using the heel of her hand to nudge Nina’s shoulder.
“Yes. A plan. I wish I could say I had one,” Galen confessed. “But I’m at a complete loss as to how it will help our own situation. My clan’s rules are my clan’s rules. They’ve been clear since Artem took over.”
Wanda squeezed her temple and stood up straight as she began to pace the length of the alley, kicking up dust with her conservative sandals. “Is your coven of the same belief system? Can witches mate with another species? Or is that against your laws, too?”
Gripping Galen’s arm, January leaned against him. “They don’t love it. But it’s happened here and there. I mean, there’s no written rule that says we can’t. They’d just prefer we stuck to our own, you know, the whole procreation thing—keep the bloodlines strong. But I’ve never heard of anyone—not one single soul—persecuted the way we’re being persecuted. I didn’t even think about it until Galen told me his clan’s laws after our first date.”
Which should have been the moment she’d walked out and never looked back. At least, that’s what the rational side of her said. But there’d been no denying she belonged with him from the start. She’d fallen head over heels for him long before he even knew she existed.
Wanda leaned back against the brick of the building, her beautiful face tight. “So do you think we might find allies within your coven? Some high-ranking officials who aren’t against you mating with a vampire? Someone with some power who’ll back us up? Someone who can talk some sense into this Artem?”
January held up her hands in misery. “But who can I tell? Whom can I confide in without fear word will get back to Artem? What if there are witches in my coven who feel the same way? What if they believe what Artem believes? What if they told Artem? I can’t afford to arouse any suspicion, Wanda. We have an infant to consider.”
“Shit,” Nina swore, pulling a Snickers bar from her hoodie pocket and ripping it open with her teeth.
January put her hand on Nina’s wrist, the doctor in her unable to stay quiet. “You’re stress-eating.”
Nina hitched her jaw. “Really? If I pulled some fucking kale out of my pocket, would that be considered stress-eating?”
Point for the vampire. “Not technically, I suppose, because it’s better for you.”
“Well, if I liked that shit, that’s what I’d use to shove my stress down my throat. But seeing as kale tastes like dirt and I don’t give a fuck about calories or clogged arteries, here’s to you, Doc.” She saluted January with the candy then ripped a hunk of it off with her teeth and smiled.
“Honey?” Galen said, squeezing her hand. “We have to go. Your spell won’t last forever.”
“So let us think on this, yes?” Wanda asked, gripping January’s arm, her eyes ablaze. “We’re better as a team. I’ll run this past Darnell and Arch and our husbands and let’s see what we can come up with.”
January blew out another breath of air. “That’s another thing. We have a tight time frame, Wanda.”
Marty’s gaze zeroed in on January’s face as she place her hands on her rounded hips. “How long are we talking, Doc?”
“A week,” January whispered. A week to prove Artem was a maniacal power-monger. “They’ve given me five days only to assess Nina. Nina should get notification from the council of elders that they’re calling a meeting soon.”
Wanda licked her lips and tucked her bone-colored purse under her arm again. “Okay, then. We need proof that Artem’s ultimate plan is to oust everyone in power. There has to be a way to prove it. Until then, Nina comes to see you as planned. Let them videotape her sessions. We’ll try to keep her in check on this end.”
Nina’s finger shot upward, eyeing them all. “Stop GD talking about me as if I’m not here, Halfsie. If I start acting like I want to go to therapy, this Artem is going to get suspicious, right? I can’t just go in and be all pro pick-my-brain. Is that at all like me? Fuck no. He’ll know something’s up. Especially if he has a list of all my so-called indiscretions—which is bullshit anyway. I do what I do because it has to be done. If I’m a little mouthy when I do it, tough shit. I can’t believe the clan wants people like our accidental clients to flop around like fish out of water until they figure out their new statuses in life. They should be grateful someone’s willing to help. Isn’t it fucking better that we help them so they don’t flip a nut and head to the local X-Files office? Jesus, these assholes are backward-ass fucks.”
“Nina’s right,” January agreed. “She’s absolutely right. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t show progress, because I hope we’ll make progress, Nina. But behaving isn’t in her nature. Of course she’s going to be resentful of the process at first.”
Nina pointed at January and smiled, a sly upward tilt of her lips. “What she fucking said. So I’m going to put my surly drawers on and I’ll see you and all your lame-ass breathing techniques tomorrow, Doc. We good?” She held out her hand to Galen and shoved it under his nose.
Galen’s reluctance, not to mention his skepticism, was palpable, but he grabbed her hand anyway and shook it with a firm gesture. “We’re good. I’ll do what I can on my end to dig up something. There must be some plan—something Artem’s got mapped out for this big coup he wants to attempt. There has to be something we can use to prove his intent to rule.”
“We’re on it,” Marty said as January and Galen turned to leave. “But wait. One question, January.”
January turned, tucking her shawl around her even tighter when the streetlight shone down on her head. “What’s that?”
“This cloaking spell thing,” she said softly, almost hesitantly. “I was curious. Can you make my boo—”
“Marty!” Wanda yelled. “Knock if off. It’s rude to ask for D cups from someone you only met twenty minutes ago!”
January and Galen looked at each other before she dissolved into a fit of laughter against him as they left the alleyway and headed back down the sidewalk to go their separate ways.
&nbs
p; And anyone who saw them together would see a hunched-over, graying gentleman with a cane, assisting an equally graying woman in a knitted shawl and sensible black shoes.
* * * *
“I hate saying goodbye,” January whispered against Galen’s chest. “Especially when I don’t know when we’ll see each other again without thirty different coworkers in our faces. I hate all this hiding and grabbing mere moments when we should be in our own home getting our Netflix and chill on while Calista sleeps.”
Galen tightened his arms around her, keeping his eyes wide open in order to survey the street for anyone who might have followed him. “I hate it, too, honey. But I promise, some way, somehow, we’ll figure this out. We’ll find a way to be together. You, me, and Calista—as a family. Swear it.”
“After meeting them, do you think these women can help?” she asked, her question muffled against his shirt.
His jaw tightened. How could he shoot down the only thing that had given her hope in months? But he had to admit he was riddled with skepticism. “I don’t know.”
“What you’re saying is, they’re not exactly instilling hope in you because they argue like children on a playground, right?”
He chuckled and relaxed a little. “That Nina? Whoa. She’s like having a conversation with a hand grenade. You never know when you’ll mistakenly pull the pin and she’ll explode.”
“Ah, but she’s also the one who’s responsible for saving many lives, including her best friend’s just this past winter.”
“Which one? The cute blonde with all the bracelets and hair, or the understated one with the patience of Job and the schoolmarm voice?”
“The cute blonde. Her name’s Marty, and she’s also not exactly someone you want to tangle with, by the by. Nina took a bullet for her, Galen, and she was human at the time she did it. She knew going into that mess they had with a mob of Russian bears that she’d take a literal hit, and she jumped into the fray anyway. It took four months of physical therapy for her to heal, and I get the feeling she’d do it all again because she’s selfless, even without her powers. Selfless and fearless and intensely loyal to those women and her family—not to mention the countless others she’s helped along the way. They all love her despite her surly nature.”
“She can’t be easy to love.” He’d never seen a woman as abrasive, forthright, downright in-your-face as this Nina. But he had to admire her willingness to threaten him—even when he was cloaked in a spell that made him look like he was eighty. She was a human, he was a mean vampire, and still she hadn’t backed down.
She was unafraid, and that was a trait necessary if they were going to try to stop Artem. But he didn’t want anyone hurt because of them. He didn’t want anyone hurt period.
“Nope. She doesn’t make it easy to love her, that’s true. That’s her shield. Her armor to keep the world around her at bay. It’s a test she gives—a game she plays with herself to ensure she won’t end up hurt. But when you do love her, when you can’t help but love her, that’s when she shines. She’s all or nothing. How many people can you say that about? I have to find a way to help her discover she’s just as valuable to her friends, vampire or not.”
“You really do want to help her,” he murmured, his admiration for her never-ending.
January didn’t just do her job. She was her job. Honest, straightforward, nurturing. She had it all and then some, and even in the midst of this disaster, even when she could simply use Nina and her friends as a means to her own end, she wanted to fix the ex-vampire.
“Of course I do, Galen. She’s suffering. The fear of her mortality is huge. Her daughter’s half vampire, for goodness sake. Charlie—that’s her daughter’s name—has eternal life. So do all her friends, her husband, the people she’s surrounded herself and created a family of her own with; they’ll all live eternally. She’s petrified to leave them, but she’ll have to. She’ll age. She’ll suffer all the things aging brings. Her friends won’t. I want her to acknowledge that—learn to move forward despite that. Find a way to live out her humanity with a different outlook now that her landscape’s changed.”
“Your passion for your work is one of the things I love most about you, January Malone. It’s what attracted me to you from the start.”
Kissing his jaw, January nipped at the skin, making his body harden to an almost unbearable need for her—even still cloaked as an old man. It had been a long time since they’d been able to be intimate and it was killing him slowly, day by day.
“You know what I want to know? Why’d they put such a cute guy in the office right next door to me? Didn’t your crazy clan think about the temptation you’d create, Dr. Marcus? All tall, dark, and blood-drinking? It was just too much for me to resist.”
Galen tipped her chin up and stared down into the eyes of the woman he’d been head over heels for since day one. From the second she’d poked her head out of her swanky office door the day he’d moved into her medical building in Manhattan, he’d known she was the woman for him.
From her chestnut-brown hair in a thick braid, falling over her shoulder while stray strands floated about her heart-shaped face, to her petite but curvy frame and wide blue eyes, hidden behind black-framed glasses and peering at him intently, she was perfection.
And he’d known it was against his clan’s laws to even engage in polite conversation with her. He’d known the rules. He’d known the risks. He’d tried to look the other way, ignore her subtle hints, avoid brushing up against her in the elevator, shut his nose off so he wouldn’t smell her amazing scent.
But…
They’d both been working late, and he’d known better than to invite her to share a table with him so she didn’t have to eat standing up in the cafeteria while a late-night conference was in progress.
He’d known better, but his vampire lust, his entire existence, narrowed to only January after that first conversation. Her voice, her scent, her desire for him, so rich and real he could taste it, all drove him mad—absolutely mad.
And now they were here and a baby later, trying desperately to find a way to be a family.
“Galen? That you, man?” a voice called from behind him.
Shit.
Their cloaking spell must have worn off.
January stiffened in his arms. He sniffed the air, picking up the scent of Rowdy Goram, an optometrist from the third floor of the medical building where he and January housed their practices.
“Shit,” he murmured. Rowdy was a fellow clansman and a total ass-kisser. If he saw Galen with January, Artem would know the minute Rowdy could dial his number. If it could bring him some rank in the clan, he’d rat out his own damn mother.
Rowdy’s footsteps grew closer, and as Galen was about to scoop January up and whisk her away, she giggled.
He frowned, looking down at her. January—all buxom blonde and ruby-red lips—looked back up at him and winked a sultry conspirator’s eye.
Thank the gods for her cloaking spells.
“Galen?” Rowdy slapped him on the back.
“A little busy here, buddy. You mind?” He pointed to January’s head and made a face at Rowdy as he tucked January closer and wiggled his eyebrows.
Rowdy blustered, his pale, narrow face eerie in the dark of the night. “Sorry, buddy. Didn’t know you were otherwise,” he coughed and grinned like they’d just shared a dirty picture in Penthouse, “engaged. Just checking to be sure you’re okay. Anyway, ’night, you two. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” He wiggled his eyebrows at Galen and made a crude gesture before he was off, scurrying his lanky frame toward the office building and slipping inside behind the tinted glass door.
January let out a breath of air. “Gods, I hate your clan.”
“Ditto, Marilyn,” he teased, dropping a kiss on her nose.
She chuckled and shrugged her shoulders. “What can I say? She’s the absolute opposite end of the spectrum from not-so-va-va-voom me. Marilyn Monroe was the first image that came to mind. Somet
imes it just happens that way.”
“Yeah? Well, I like your end of the spectrum way better, young lady. It’s all kinds of restrained hot. Now go, before this spell wears off and I get into trouble for having my way with you right here in the middle of the sidewalk.”
“It’s the pouty lips, isn’t it? What is it with men and big, poofy lips?” she teased, kissing the corner of his mouth.
“It’s your everything. Now scoot. Don’t change back until you’re halfway home. Promise me.”
She held up her fingers in a Girl Scout’s Honor and mocked a sultry smile, turning her head to rest her chin on her shoulder. “Promise. But what are you going to do here tonight? It’s almost midnight, Galen.”
“Just some research—besides, nighttime is my thing. Remember? Coffin-dweller here?”
Giggling, she stood on tiptoe and pressed a kiss to his lips. “I love you, Galen Marcus. We’ll figure this out or we’ll pack up and move to Siberia.”
“I love you back, January Malone. Like crazy. And I guess I could get used to borscht and an igloo,” he teased. Kissing her one last time, he sent her on her way, regretting instantly the moment she left his arms.
As he watched her sashay down the sidewalk, her Marilyn hips much fuller than her own, her sway accentuated by her heels, Galen fought the tight sting of fear in his chest.
If these women couldn’t help them, by hell, he would find a way to make their family whole—because there was still one more issue he hadn’t told January about.
One really big issue.
He was holding off as long as he could in the hopes Artem wouldn’t say anything until after the summit had gathered. But he’d have to tell her soon.
Closing his eyes, Galen sniffed the muggy New York air and once more made the promise he’d been making to himself since he’d decided January was his mate. He’d protect her and Calista to any end. Go anywhere to be with them.
How Nina Got Her Fang Back: Accidental Quickie (Accidentally Paranormal Series Book 13) Page 5