Primal Instincts

by Susan Sizemore

  Damn it, Patrick, why’d you have to go and die on me? We would have made beautiful babies.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

  Francesca hated that she hadn’t noticed Strahan come up behind her and that she felt like that was where he was supposed to be. She watched his faint reflection in the glass as he filled the space behind her. For a moment she couldn’t recall why he might think he’d upset her.

  “I like most mortals I’ve met,” she finally said. “Small ones are especially cute. They take a lot less training to domesticate than vampire children.”

  His laughter was ironic. It coaxed a faint smile from her.

  “Of course, I’ve never raised one,” she added. She thought she successfully hid the stab of pain these words brought her. Never mind the connection she and Strahan were developing, there were some things she needed desperately to keep to herself. “Where is she? I get the impression it’s a private school somewhere.”

  “Very private,” he answered. “Very exclusive. Very expensive. Back east. She hates it.”

  “Well, if she was raised around your Crew—”

  “That’s the point. I’ve let her get close to danger too many times. She needs some stability. She needs to learn how to be a normal mortal girl.”

  This time Francesca gave the ironic laugh. “She’s being raised around vampires and werefolk—and studying to be a witch, I think—so how can she even pretend to be a normal mortal?”

  “She needs to have the chance.”

  “Or so you have decided, oh master of all you survey?”

  “Don’t start. All I want is for Saffie to be happy and safe. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

  His sincerity twisted her heart. She turned to face him, unsatisfied with talking only to his reflection. The look of absolute pain and horror was frightening. And utterly compelling. She had to reach out to comfort—

  Chapter Nineteen

  The baby batted her big brown eyes at him again and Tobias couldn’t stop the smile. He didn’t spring for first class often, so he hadn’t been at all happy when the Indian woman with the baby sat down in the seat next to him.

  He’d had one of his feelings since he boarded the plane. He expected the baby to add to his irritation. Instead she was proving to be a delightful distraction on the long international flight. He had a lot of thinking to do but played peekaboo with the baby until she went to sleep. The baby’s mom didn’t mind his attention to her but didn’t say anything to him, either. She nodded off a little while after the baby did, though her hold on the child resting against her shoulder never slackened. Parenting wasn’t something he’d ever given any thought to, but he found the example of it next to him quite touching.

  As the huge plane plowed on through the night he turned his head toward the window. Every now and then he caught a glitter of moonlight off the ocean far below beyond his own reflection in the glass.

  He wondered where the legend of vampires not being able to be seen in mirrors came from. Was it from folklore or the movies? He knew that many of his own kind very deliberately shunned knowing anything about the mythos that surrounded vampires in mortal minds. They were snobs, in Tobias’s opinion. Besides, what you didn’t know could get you killed.

  The problem with both vampires and werefolk was that they weren’t paying attention anymore. He had a strong feeling that it was a much bigger problem than even the paranoid few like himself suspected. Oh, Clans and Families kept an eye on the fanatic fringe of mortal vampire hunters. Werefolk were expert at hiding from mortals—even those few mortals who knew they were real thought they’d been hunted to extinction. But Tobias suspected that it was time to keep an eye on more than just the traditional threats.

  And what about internal threats? Not all Clan and Family Primes worked for the protection of the good old U.S. of A. Even though most vampires had migrated to the wider spaces and more open society of America in the last three centuries, those who hadn’t had their own loyalties, their own ideologies. Prime fighting against Prime in mortal conflicts had happened in the past. Tobias felt it was coming again.

  What about the Tribes? Feral werefolk? The Tribes were keeping too low a profile in his opinion. They were up to something. Getting themselves organized? Finding or forcing mortal alliances?

  And feral populations were growing, even though the werefolk councils in America, Asia, and Europe actively and angrily denied it.

  He was on his way home from Africa and the tale he had to tell wasn’t a pretty one. He’d resigned his army commission to make this trip, to tell his story, to put a plan in action. He was a Family Prime. He hadn’t taken any vow to protect mortals, but he’d loved his military career. He knew some of the people he was heading to America to meet would mock his feelings, but they would have to listen to his evidence.

  He’d been in West Africa on a totally covert mission. His five-man team had been there as protection for a team of spooks gathering intel on the bad and ugly things mortals were doing to each other in that desperate, unstable, violent, but very mineral-rich part of the world.

  He’d seen a lot of death along the way. Mortals killing mortals for ancient grudges, for modern politics, mostly out of greed. Illegal diamond mining was a lucrative way for mortals to fuel trouble all over the world.

  It was diamonds that had gotten every living soul in one village they’d come across killed. He’d been the only one who’d truly understood how appalling the sickening sight he couldn’t get out of his mind really was. He’d made his mortal comrades forget what they’d seen, what they’d found. He was the only one who could bring this knowledge back to the world. His world.

  He’d recognized the villagers for who they’d really been, werefolk. Lion People. It took more than AK-47s and machetes to kill people who could change at will into lions, but every male, female, and child was dead. Why? Because they worked their own small, carefully concealed diamond mine. They’d probably worked it for many generations. The trade was their means of keeping themselves secret from the mortal world.

  Who would know about the place? Other immortals.

  Who could kill werelions? No one who wasn’t even more dangerous and deadly. Other werefolk, perhaps. Weretigers might stand a chance against werelions. A very large pack of werewolves might be able to do the job.

  But Tobias knew damn well from what he’d seen, from what he’d smelled, from what every sense and extra sense told him, that the killers had been vampires.

  He didn’t yet know who. He didn’t yet know why—maybe it had only been to get the cache of diamonds and no other agenda. He knew only that immortals had killed immortals and he had to do something about it.

  A sudden hard jolt brought him out of his thoughts. Another knocked the plane sideways almost instantly. The jarring continued. The baby beside him started to cry. Seat belt signs lit. The captain’s voice announced, “We’ve run into some bad turbulence, folks. We should be out of it in a few minutes.”

  The turbulence didn’t last long, but it was wild while it did. The baby didn’t cry for long after being startled awake, but Tobias watched her mother’s face going paler and paler with nausea, until she’d turned a faint shade of green that contrasted horribly with her bright turquoise sari.

  As soon as the seat belt sign went off, he said, “Go.”

  She handed him the baby. “Saffron,” she told him, and ran for the nearest unoccupied toilet.

  It was in the center of the plane, between first class and coach. That was where the bomb went off.

  The poor woman never had a chance. Nor did anyone in the back of the plane, where the explosion and fire immediately swept through. Those in the front of the plane didn’t have a chance either. They had the long fall ahead of them.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Oh, dear goddess! How could you . . . ? How did you . . . ?”

  Francesca knew Strahan must have been holding her up because she could not have been standing on her own. Th
e horror of the memory was too much. The fear . . .

  But at least the voice was her own. She looked out of her own eyes now. She was herself. But the terror was fresh. The falling . . .

  His fingers tightly gripped her arms. He held her as close as it was possible for two beings to be without melding into one. His warmth kept her alive.

  No. That wasn’t right. It was her warmth that kept him alive—while he fell and fell and the earth came closer and . . .

  At least they were over land.

  What does that matter when striking water at terminal velocity would be no different than striking . . .

  Francesca made herself look up into haunted brown eyes. His eyes. His eyes, not hers.

  She forced her mind away from his direct memories. This time she would stay herself. But she had to know!

  “How? Even a vampire shouldn’t have lived through that. And a mortal baby?”

  Strahan nodded. “Shouldn’t be possible, but it happened. I can’t exactly say we were saved. At least I wasn’t. The pain was—” He shook his head. “The cold was worse. The fall goes on for a long time when you’re that high. At least the oxygen masks still worked. I made sure Saffie was able to breathe. Wrapped her in my coat, her blanket, her mom’s shawl. You couldn’t tell there was a kid in the cocoon I put around her. Maybe being bundled up like that helped her, cushioned her. I held her close and curled up around her.”

  “But how did you survive everyone else’s fear?”

  It must have been a telepath’s worst nightmare, to be bombarded with the emotions of all those people who knew they were doomed.

  His face went blank, but his eyes still burned with anguish. “I’ve been a soldier all my life,” he said. Then he bent his head and admitted, “I still have nightmares reliving it.”

  Francesca nodded. His honesty deeply touched her, made her proud of him. She knew this wasn’t the time to hug him, even though she wanted to. “Damn right, you do. You couldn’t be sane and not be haunted by it.”

  “I don’t think I was sane for a while after the crash. I . . . coped, but because Saffie needed me.

  “The pilot was damned good,” he went on. “Half the plane was gone, but he still managed to keep the nose up.”

  “He tried to glide? Like a shuttle landing?”

  “Tried, yes. The cabin was mostly in one piece after we hit the ground. But no mortal could survive that landing. I remember—I remember curling myself around the baby and then darkness and—pain.”

  What he did say was hard enough to express, but Francesca was aware that what he wasn’t telling her was worse. Something he didn’t want to think about haunted his mind, his soul, even his physical memory. She knew it couldn’t just be the recollection of pain. He was a Prime, a soldier. Pain came with the territory.

  It was blood.

  She knew he’d never told anyone else this, yet he couldn’t help telling her. Couldn’t help trusting her with this secret. She was appalled at this intimacy—and honored by it.

  “Mortal bodies fly apart with that kind of impact. Bones are crushed, skin bursts, limbs are torn away, organs—you get the picture.”

  She swallowed nausea. “Vividly.”

  “There was blood everywhere, along with every other bodily fluid. The reek of it blended together—goddess, but I didn’t want anything to do with blood for a long time after that. I had to get out. Maybe I should have checked for other survivors, but I had to get out of that charnel house.”

  “Nobody could have survived.”

  “Of course not, but . . .” His gaze had been far away; now he looked her in the eyes. “I shouldn’t be doing this to you.”

  She wanted to understand him. What he needed was important to her. “Talk as much as you need to. I’m here.”

  His big hands cupped her face. “Why are you the one?”

  Her heart raced at his touch. She fought the urge to kiss him, fought the desire brought on by his nearness. If talking helped heal his wounds from that awful time, it was her duty to listen.

  “Damned if I know why you’re telling me,” she answered. “What happened next?” Francesca coaxed him.

  “I remember crawling, but where to and for how long, I have no idea. I was blind for a long time, I think. At least the world was completely dark and my eyes hurt like hell. The air was sweet and fresh, but my lungs were injured and it hurt to breathe until they started to heal. I’m not sure how long I crawled, but we were out of sight of the wreckage when my vision came back.”

  “The plane crashed in Canada, didn’t it?”

  She recalled how news of the air disaster had filled the headlines back then. Investigators had found evidence of a bombing but no clues on who was responsible. No terrorist group had ever laid claim to the horrendous crime.

  He nodded. “Nova Scotia. Lucky for me. Where we hit helped me to survive.”

  “How?”

  “The Fenris Pack has a sanctuary up there. They were the first to reach the crash site. Saffie would have died if we’d had to trek out of there. I’m not sure I would have made it.”

  Each of Strahan’s individual words made sense to her, except for two. “What’s a Fenris Pack?”

  He looked at her like she was crazy for a moment. “Vampires don’t know very much about other immortals,” he said with an exasperated sigh.

  “Well, you obviously do.”

  “The Fenris are werewolves,” he told her. “A fanatical pack that spend most of their lives shifted to wolf form. They keep as far from mortals as they possibly can. They showed up to try to help at the crash site and were not happy when all the rescue crews, investigators, and media showed up in their territory. It was months before they had their sanctuary all to themselves again. In the meantime they took in Saffie and me, kept us hidden, and got us out of the area when I was able to travel.”

  “Why hidden? Why didn’t you take the baby back to mortals?”

  Why would a Prime adopt a mortal child? She believed that had been her original query before time had disappeared into Strahan’s bad memories.

  He stepped away from her, suddenly wary. “Her mother gave her to me.”

  Well, that certainly made no sense. The woman had run to the bathroom; she hadn’t meant to get herself blown up before she could come back.

  “But what about her family?”

  “I couldn’t contact her family.”

  “Couldn’t? Or you didn’t look for them? Surely you could have gained access to the passenger list.” That was the sort of thing the Corbett twins were experts at and charged exorbitant fees for.

  “No one survived the crash,” he said. “No mortal could have.”

  “Not even a miracle baby who managed to crawl away—”

  “Oh, please. Don’t you think there would have been an investigation of how this miracle baby survived? An investigation that would have led to the Fenris Pack? The entire immortal community?”

  She saw the logic to this argument, even if she thought Strahan used it more as an excuse after the fact to justify the impulse that bonded him to the mortal child. He couldn’t have been thinking clearly when he made the decision to keep Saffron. There was no use questioning something that it was too late to change.

  Besides, it was none of her business. Even though she was profoundly affected by this Prime’s love for a child.

  Strahan’s attention shifted as a call came in on his Bluetooth earpiece, ending any further conversation. He answered the caller’s questions, then took Francesca by the hand.

  “Come on,” he said. “Time to go to work.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  “Contacting me by telephone might not be wise at the moment.”

  He listened to the vampire’s sneering voice issue from his telephone handset and gritted his teeth. “You also told me that it wouldn’t be wise to meet. Not being a telepath, I can’t think of any other option. Unless you can get e-mail in your coffin.”

  “I read my e-mail at Wi-Fi hots
pots.” The vampire’s sneer was gone now. “But I’m not checking it at the moment. Our communication lines aren’t as secure as our enemy’s, but we are working on that,” he added.

  Sometimes he thought this liaison with the monsters was just plain crazy. The creature was prone to mood swings. Sometimes he could be outgoing and treat his mortal allies like buddies. Sometimes he was sullen. Sometimes the creature’s natural arrogance dominated his personality. The monster even called himself by an arrogant name—Dr. Stone. A vampire variation of the eighties term for a drug dealer Dr. Feelgood, was how the vampire explained the stupid nickname.

  He suspected the knockoff daylight drugs the Tribe vampires used weren’t as improved as they claimed. But as long as the Tribe Primes stayed sane enough to carry out the alliance’s goals, what did it matter? The Purists would put them all out of their misery eventually anyway. But until that time he had to be patient with the animal.

  “I have information from the selkie that Primes might want to act on.”

  “Is the guinea pig still alive?”

  Though he was fully aware of the immortality experiment, he resented the vampire’s term for the woman who had been used. Even if she was a vampire’s whore.

  “That is part of the information, yes. She is alive, and test results run by Casmerek’s lab show that she is healthy, so far.”

  “You do understand how valuable she is, don’t you?”

  Of course he did! He had money invested in the longevity project. They all did. It was rumored that the Tribe vampires had poured all the profits from their illegal diamond trade into the project—blood diamonds, indeed.

  Even if the Purists weren’t the main financial backers of the scheme to adapt all the vampires’ physical advantages for human use, their motive was to improve humankind. He wondered why no one had ever thought to make a profit from the monsters before disposing of them for good before now. Not that the Tribe Primes saw the project that way.