True North (Aurora Sky: Vampire Hunter, Vol. 6)

by Nikki Jefford

  A sudden shriek of “It’s about time!” came from a hallway to the left.

  A flash of red hair streaked into view as Valerie rushed into the living room, wearing skinny jeans and a navy halter top. Seeing her again gave me a jolt. I braced myself for a snappy comment, but she swept past me, ignoring me completely. At the moment, she only had eyes for Jared.

  “What took you so long?” Valerie demanded, her lips forming a pout.

  Jared turned with languid ease, chest puffing up. “I came right back,” he said in a bemused, chastising voice.

  The pout over Valerie’s lips became further pronounced. “It felt like forever.”

  “You think a minute away from me feels like forever,” Jared said with a chuckle.

  “Don’t get cocky,” Valerie returned in a sassy tone. “You feel the same about me.”

  “Do I?” Jared raised one eyebrow.

  Instead of answering, Valerie launched herself into Jared’s arms, wrapping her legs around him when he caught her. Her arms snaked around Jared’s neck, fingers stretching up the base of his neck. Once she had his head in her hands, she brought his lips to hers. They made loud, slobbering smooching sounds as they devoured each other’s faces.

  My stomach gave a sickening twist. Someone needed to point me in the direction of the toilet. I had a strong and sudden urge to vomit.

  Valerie made murmuring sounds of pleasure, like a kid sucking on a lollipop. It was about the grossest thing I’d ever seen, and this coming from someone who’d laid eyes on more than a dozen corpses.

  “Ah-hem,” I said. “Why don’t the two of you get a room? This place looks like it has plenty.”

  Valerie yanked her head back. It sounded like a suction cup pulling away when she did. Another sickening lurch shot through my stomach. I was sure the aftereffects of sleeping drugs weren’t helping, nor the fact I hadn’t had my morning blood.

  Valerie’s legs slid down to the floor. Feet firmly planted, she disentangled her arms from Jared’s neck and put her hands on her hips.

  “Why don’t you get a room, Aurora? You’re the one crashing the party.” She turned her signature pout on Jared. “I told you three would be a crowd. You’ve barely walked in the door and she’s already ruining the mood.”

  “She’s not going to ruin anything,” Jared said. “We’re the ones calling the shots.”

  Valerie spun around and shot me an evil smile.

  “That’s right. We’re in charge now, not Melcher or anyone else, so if you want to live, you play by our rules.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I was promised community bliss. So far, the welcome party leaves something to be desired.”

  The corners of Jared’s mouth crinkled into a malicious smile.

  “Raven wants a hug, too.”

  “Not a chance,” Valerie said at the same I said, “Not what I had in mind.”

  Valerie straightened out to her full height. “Well, you can forget a warm welcome. Until you prove yourself otherwise, you’re an enemy.”

  “Ditto,” I said, narrowing my eyes.

  Valerie took a step toward me, fire in her eyes. “And probation or not, if I catch you flirting with my man, you’re dead.”

  I coughed, choked, and sputtered.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  Valerie’s eyes narrowed. “Fane was never good enough for you in high school until you saw him with me.”

  Her meaning rocked me back on my feet. Revulsion spiraled straight down to my stomach, twisting into knots. Just when I thought Valerie Ward couldn’t be any more deranged, she went and raised the bar straight up to level infinity.

  “Unlike you, I haven’t forgotten that Jared pushed me to the brink of death and ruined my life.”

  “You mean gave you life, you ungrateful whore,” Valerie snapped.

  My skin bristled and itched. “Sure, I’m the whore,” I said sarcastically. “Rest assured, I wouldn’t kiss Jared for all the blood in the world.”

  Jared’s voice dipped dangerously low. “Careful, Raven, you might hurt my feelings.”

  Although I hadn’t seen Valerie in months, I recognized her irate, pinch-faced, puckered lips immediately. I didn’t have a chance to cover my ears before she screeched, “Are you disrespecting my man?”

  Oh boy.

  My plan to settle in and not rock the boat until such a time that I could catch Jared unaware was quickly sinking. I wasn’t going to last the first hour with bloodsucking Bonnie and Clyde, let alone the first day, or week, or however long it took. I wanted this mission done as soon as possible, but Rome wasn’t built in a day . . . not that I was building anything at the moment. More like demolishing.

  I folded my arms across my chest. “Just stating a fact,” I said. “My heart belongs to Fane.”

  “You better get over him quick, because you’re never going to see him again,” Valerie fired at me.

  I didn’t dignify her comment with a response.

  Jared shot me a smug smile. “As I recall, that’s not even your heart stuffed inside your chest. After our collision, Melcher had it replaced.”

  Valerie’s head jerked up. “That’s right. I almost forgot,” she said, a grin spreading over her face like a red stain.

  “That doesn’t change my feelings,” I said, resisting the urge to finger my North Star pendant. I didn’t want to draw any attention to Fane’s gift and risk having it confiscated.

  “Are you sure about that?” Jared challenged.

  “Yeah, I’m sure,” I said peevishly. At least my sullen tone caused Jared and Valerie to visibly relax a fraction. That’s what I wanted, I reminded myself. I needed them to get used to having me around, encourage a false sense of security, and then I’d look for an opportunity to end this and get back to my man—a vampire who didn’t make me want to retch every time he opened his mouth and spoke words.

  I sniffed. “Now that I’m here, what’s the plan?”

  “Ready for action,” Jared said with a pleased grin.

  Valerie sidled up beside him, rubbing against him like a needy cat. Jared slung an arm over her shoulder, his hand dangling languidly down her torso.

  “Like I mentioned during the drive, the majority of the vamps in this state are a bunch of toothless crybabies.”

  Valerie snorted disdainfully. “Pathetic,” she sneered under her breath.

  Jared retracted his arm from her and walked over to one of the windows. He stared out for only a few seconds before turning to face his audience of two.

  “Originally, I had planned to lead our kind to liberation, starting with the supposed wild fangs of the Far North.”

  “How noble of you,” I muttered sarcastically.

  Jared ignored my comment, maintaining his stoic stance, framing himself in the center of the window like some kind of general posturing for his portrait.

  “Everlasting life and yet all they care about is staying under the radar. None of them want to stick their necks out for a grander purpose. None of them wants to risk getting caught.”

  Imagine that, I thought, this time keeping the comment to myself.

  “Their loss,” Jared said with a careless shrug. “I was going to help them, but now they’ll help me.”

  “Why would they do that?” I asked.

  Valerie smirked. “Because they don’t have a choice.”

  Jared nodded. “Before the three of us head out of state, we need to ensure that the agency has their hands full for a while. We also need to make them believe we’re still moving around from location to location—keep them searching for the needle under the snowbank.”

  “And meanwhile we’re off in Paris,” Valerie said, teeth flashing a gleeful smile.

  Jared’s eyes locked on mine. “That’s what you’ve been wanting, isn’t it, Raven? To get out of Alaska? I’m about to make all your dreams come true.”

  Bile rose up my throat and I fought back my retch.

  Jared the dream weaver, not a chance!

  “How are you
planning to deceive them?” I asked. I preferred keeping Jared on point rather than listen to his disturbing digressions at playing a twisted version of fairy godfather. Let him spill his guts out confessing his entire plan. This was information no undercover informant had gotten within ten miles of. Part of me was jumping for joy at uncovering this information, but it wouldn’t do any good if I didn’t make it out alive. “How do you create diversions, and how do you keep the agency looking for you in Alaska when you’re no longer here?” I added.

  Jared’s grin sent a chill speed skating down my spine.

  “We get the lowlife vampires of the state to up their activity. Give them the identities and locations of all known undercover informants and vampire hunters. Let them take over the dirty work. The agency will have its hands full like never before if we orchestrate a coordinated attack across the state.”

  The bile I’d felt rising in my throat was nothing compared to the sickening, gut-churning revulsion rushing through me now.

  A coordinated attack. It reminded me of terrorism in its worst premeditated form. The thought of informants and agents around the state being put down all at once made me sicker than I’d ever been, including sicker than when I’d personally killed other vampires. I barely masked the horror I felt. But I had to. And I had to stop Jared before he could put any such plan into motion.

  Suddenly the stakes had been risen higher than I could have imagined. This wasn’t just about the safety of my family or my happiness with Fane. Lives were on the line. Agency recruits, new vampires like me, were in danger of having their lives cut short. Ironic given our lives had supposedly been extended. That’s what working with the agency got us—everlasting life and a target on our backs. Why bother turning us just to slap an expiration date on our lives? That was the hypocrisy that had always been Agent Melcher.

  “Melcher will send in the cavalry, and they’ll all have their hands full hunting down the killers. It will keep them busy, and it will reduce their numbers. Win, win.” Jared smirked.

  “It will also obliterate any hopes you ever had of recruiting your own in-state vampire army,” I said.

  “Their loss for being cowards,” Jared said, dusting his shoulder with a flick of his wrist. “They deserve what’s coming to them.”

  “How the tides have changed,” I mused. “First you wanted to liberate the vampires of Alaska. Now you want to throw them under the Polar Express while you make a run for it.”

  “I’m not running,” Jared snarled. “Don’t think I don’t know what Melcher and Fane are trying to pull. They think they can cut me off from the rest of the world, close in on me and lock me up for the rest of my life. They want to keep me in Alaska. They think they stand a chance so long as I remain on frozen ground, but they have another thing coming.”

  Valerie’s eyelashes fluttered, and she swayed the slightest bit as though in a swoon over her evil brute of a boyfriend. It was kind of scary how well they paired together—like a match and gasoline.

  I found it amusing Jared believed Fane would allow him to be locked up. He didn’t seem to have a clue that there was a big red bull’s-eye on his back. Let him be cocky. The chances of him slipping up were that much better. He just needed to slip before he could execute his evil plan of death and mayhem to vampires on both sides of the battlefront.

  “It’s about time,” Valerie said, rubbing her hands together. “I never wanted to come to this godforsaken place to begin with. I’m a California girl.” She flipped her hair over one shoulder. “I like city life and culture, not moose and mosquitos.”

  Then along came Jared to make all her redheaded dreams come true. Barf. Gag me with a silver spoon.

  At the moment, I wasn’t too particular about the kind of life I led so long as Jared and Valerie didn’t exist in any corner of the globe.

  And as much as I’d dreamed of leaving Alaska, I didn’t relish hearing it bemoaned by a couple of cheechakos. We were on my home turf. It didn’t matter to me that they’d caught me unaware or currently had me outnumbered. Valerie would never see Paris, and Jared would never execute his vile plan. I’d stop them with whatever it took and make sure they never stepped foot outside Alaska.

  For my dreams to come true, I had to put an end to Jared and Valerie’s.

  11

  Rule Breakers

  Branches weighed down by icicles flew past the window as Jared steered the SUV back toward the city’s center. Valerie road shotgun now, and I was all too happy to take the backseat for myself. The sun had barely dragged itself to the horizon before Jared announced we had an appointment.

  Good thing I hadn’t bothered removing my shoes.

  “Hey, while we’re in town, mind stopping at the store?” I called from the backseat. “I didn’t get an opportunity to pack a night bag.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll make sure you’re fed and clothed,” came Jared’s reply from the front.

  “Great,” I said. “What about a toothbrush and toothpaste? I’ll also need a hairbrush, soap, shampoo, and conditioner . . . or dry shampoo depending on the shower situation. I forgot to ask if our current residence has running water.”

  “There’s running water,” Jared assured me, not sounding perturbed in the slightest. “Val knows how to keep us in comfort no matter the circumstances, which is more than I can say for you and Dante after I found you in that shit shack down near Cantwell.”

  “Shit shack?” I repeated. “We had an entire lodge to ourselves.”

  “With no electricity or running water,” Jared said.

  “Wow, you weren’t kidding when you said they were slumming it.” Valerie gave a little giggle from the front.

  “How do you know? Did you stop to wash your hands when you came inside or something?” I challenged.

  “I can tell when a place has been weatherized for the winter,” Jared answered.

  “Well, we had furniture, which is more than I can say for your McMansion in the woods.”

  “We’re not looking to get comfortable and settle in,” Valerie snapped. “Like my man said, we’ve got a war to start and then it’s hasta la vista, Alaska.”

  “Sounds like a bad Terminator sequel,” I muttered.

  “You have no imagination,” Valerie quipped. She turned her head to Jared. “I told you she has no imagination.”

  Jared chuckled then lifted one hand off the steering wheel to cup Valerie’s chin.

  “That’s why I have you, baby.”

  Barf and double barf.

  He retracted his hand and returned his concentration to the road.

  Valerie, being Valerie, wasn’t about to let up. Attention in any form made her world go round.

  “Remind me why you wanted her to tag along?” she asked.

  “The two of you are natural-born killers. Two of my best recruits.” Jared said the words as though reciting them.

  “I am not your recruit,” I said between clenched teeth.

  Jared ignored me. “You are rebellious. Like me, neither of you likes playing by the rules. And you have both defected from the agency at least once in your short time under Gabriel’s rule.”

  Jared made Agent Melcher sound like a dictator or king. King of the Vampire Hunters. Jared wasn’t entirely wrong on that account, though he was delusional if he seriously thought the three of us had anything in common. I had about as much in common with him as I did with a fairy princess.

  “You’re forgetting one thing,” I said. “I have a conscience, something you’re clearly lacking.”

  “You’ll learn to let it go with time,” Jared said, not sounding like he doubted it for a moment.

  Well, he was very wrong.

  Valerie snorted. Clearly she was also skeptical.

  “Miss Stick-Up-Her-Ass Prude? I don’t think so.”

  Her words set my teeth on edge.

  “Gabriel’s the one who wanted to recruit the two of you for his own gains,” Jared said. “I did something far more valuable. I helped make you, and that
’s as close to family as you get. Both of you. You’re like sisters.”

  Valerie folded her arms. “I never got along with any of my real sisters. I’ve never been the family type.”

  “The two of you got along in Sitka,” Jared said. “The three of us worked great together there. We can work well together again.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” I asked. “You tried to murder us with an ax in Sitka.”

  Jared’s eyes narrowed in the rearview mirror. “I never tried to kill either of you. You disobeyed my orders and locked yourselves in Giselle’s bathroom. How else was I supposed to get you out?”

  Valerie twirled her hair around her finger before peering around her seat at me. “It’s true, you know. He never swung the ax at us. He just used it to get the door open.”

  “Oh, gosh. When you put it that way, I see your point. Nothing psychotic about that at all,” I said sarcastically.

  “Take a chill pill, Aurora,” Valerie returned. “My mom once had a boyfriend who lit his baseball cap on fire anytime the Trojans didn’t win a game. He never would have hurt her or me or my sisters. He was just eccentric. We don’t all grow up like the Brady Bunch.”

  No kidding. Me neither. Nor had I grown up in the House of Crazy.

  “Who are we meeting?” I asked. “I thought all your Fairbanks associates died in the shootout at the lodge last month.”

  The SUV swerved into the opposite lane. My stomach lurched, but I couldn’t help smiling to myself. A pickup truck honked as it passed us. Valerie flipped them off. No doubt she’d been born with her middle finger set to autopilot.

  “Those buffoons?” Jared asked easily, as though my question hadn’t caused him to careen into oncoming traffic. “We picked them up at the local dive. Weren’t worth the bullets you put in them. Thanks to her undercover agency work, Val here has far better connections. Quality connections,” Jared added, his voice turning husky. His right hand slid off the steering wheel over to Valerie.

  She breathed in suddenly, sitting up straight then relaxing into the seatback.

  I grimaced and spoke up. “If things up there turn X-rated, I don’t care what speed you’re driving, I’m jumping out of the car.”