by Jenna Kernan
“Mr. MacConnelly told me that you can’t change back. This all must be very hard for you. You’ve made a great sacrifice serving your country, and I’m honored to know you, Mr. Lam.”
When he told her what she was, she’d said she was a pacifist, likely an antiwar liberal who opposed everything that he and Johnny stood for. And still she thanked him. Mac’s eyes burned. Damned if he wasn’t tearing up.
She sniffed. “Is something burning?”
Johnny darted to the stove and flipped the burgers. A few minutes later Johnny had three plates. He ate standing, finishing four burgers while Brianna selected a bun, then made a salad from the lettuce and tomato to go with her fries. Johnny paused between bites to look at her plate.
“So no burger?” asked Mac.
“I don’t eat meat.”
“Fish?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“People can live quite happily on nuts, grains, fruits and vegetables.”
“I can’t.”
“I’m not asking you to. But for me, it’s not necessary to kill living things to survive.” Her smile dropped away as she recognized the irony of what she had said. She killed things whether she meant to or not. Mac watched the pain blow over her features like an impending storm as she came to the same conclusion.
“Johnny and I need meat.”
“Of course. I’m not trying to impose my beliefs on you.”
They lapsed into awkward silence again. Johnny finished first and headed out. Mac was certain he’d be gone all night. He often preferred sleeping outside or in his private quarters.
“That didn’t go very well,” said Brianna.
“I disagree. He didn’t try to kill you.”
* * *
Brianna cleared the table and Mac washed dishes. Afterward, he made them coffee, and they sat on the dilapidated yellow couch that was draped in a ragged wool blanket.
She sat huddled beneath the blanket in the chilly room with her eyes wide and green as a glass bottle.
“Did you have enough to eat, Princess?”
“Why don’t you call me Bri?”
“If you call me Mac.”
“All right. I can do that, Mac.”
“So, Bri, tell me about your mom and dad.”
The smile left her face. She lowered the coffee to the low brass table and half-turned, hooking one foot behind her opposite knee. “My father was human.”
“Did you know him?”
“No, he died before I was born.”
They both knew why. She held his gaze a minute and then she lowered her gaze. “Shortly after meeting my mom. She was my nana’s only child.”
“That’s tough.”
“He was a brilliant musician.”
“Yeah. They go for the talented ones.” He realized too late that he’d said the wrong thing because of Bri’s intake of breath.
“Is that so?”
“That’s what our intel indicates.”
“My mother, well, just before she passed, my nana said that they are called the Leanan Sidhe,” she whispered. Then her eyes flashed to his. “The Fairy Mistress. Muses. I mean that’s what Nana said. The men they choose live lives of brilliance.”
“Short lives of brilliance?”
She glanced away. “Yes.”
“Maybe the creative ones give off more juice or whatever you call the energy you drain away. Anyway, maybe your mother was a fairy.”
“But I’m not, it that what you mean? And I’m not a Leanan Sidhe. But I’m half human, at least.” Tears leaked from her eyes and she shook her head in denial. “Half human and half Leanan Sidhe?”
“Yeah, Bri. I think so.”
She tried to drink a little coffee but seemed to be choking it down. He made great coffee, so he figured she was still grappling with all this shit.
“Have any other people around you gotten sick? You don’t have to sleep with them, just be near them.”
Now she was covering her eyes. “My college friends, yes, Gail and Kerry. They both got sick. God, that was me, too. And we moved again. Now I understand why Nana moved us around so much.”
“She might have been trying to keep your friends alive.”
Brianna’s hand slipped from her face, and she pinned him with those lush green eyes. Her chest rose and fell, as if she were running in full gear. Then her chin started to tremble. “Why didn’t she tell me long before then? Why only when she was...was dying?”
He shook his head. “Can’t answer that.”
Her head sunk to her knees, and her shoulders shook. He draped an arm around her shoulders and after a few minutes she lifted her gaze to meet his.
“I used to see them, when I was a child. Fairies in the woods, little ones, dancing at twilight and at night, when the fireflies came out. Nana couldn’t see them and told me I was imagining things. But we moved again, and we never lived in the country after that. Fairies don’t like the cities.” She wiped the tears from her eyes. “I don’t like them, either. The lights and the buildings give me headaches. The air smells so good here.” She inhaled deeply, filling her lungs with the mountain air. “I think I belong outside.”
“That’s probably true.”
“But Nana kept us in cities. When she was ill in the hospital, my nana told me everything she knew. I told the doctors a little of what she said and they said it was from the pain medication. Hallucinations. I tried to tell myself that was what it was. But, as you said, I can do things that aren’t normal. All my life, she would tell me to shush up, not talk about it. But was she trying to protect me from them or trying to pretend I wasn’t a...a vampire?”
“I don’t know.”
“If she was protecting me, why not tell me what I really am?”
“Perhaps she knew it would be hard.”
She placed her hand in his had held tight. Her voice shook when she spoke. “She died of cancer. Do you think...did I do that to her?”
“I don’t know. But she was an old woman.”
“Only eighty-eight.”
“She must have known some way to keep from—”
“—my energy draw? That’s what you called it, right?”
“Yeah.”
“She never touched me.”
Mac cocked his head. “What?”
“Never. No hugs. No good-night kisses. I never crawled onto her lap or into her bed after a nightmare.”
“She never touched you?” His insides felt hollow, as he imagined a child with no one to hug her or kiss away the tears.
Brianna’s head hung, and her face flushed with shame at her revelation. “I thought it was me, and it was. I knew there was something wrong with me.” She stared up at him, anxious to explain, to defend her grandmother. “But I know she loved me. Oh. I knew it then, too. I just never really understood why...and it was hard.”
It seemed even breathing was hard for her now.
“So I’m a vampire, like the thing that broke into my apartment.”
“The female version. Males drink blood. You feed on energy.”
“Energy. I don’t feel that. The only thing I feed on is tofu and veggie burgers and nice green salads mixed with nuts. I’ve never hurt anyone. At least...I never meant to hurt anyone.”
She met his gaze. It was hard not to look away for the pain she experienced seemed to beat in him as well.
“But I have. Haven’t I?” She raked her hand through her hair. “I can’t even bring myself to kill a spider in my house. But somehow I can kill people without even trying. So now and for the rest of my life, I can’t be around people.” She gave a harsh laugh that sounded like a cry. “A social worker who can’t be around people.” She laughed again and then the tears spilled from her eyes as t
he laughter collapsed to weeping.
He gathered her up in his arms and she nestled against him.
“But not you,” she whispered. “I can’t hurt you.”
“That’s right, Princess.” He stroked her head, threading his fingers through the thick curls and angling her tear-streaked face up so he could look into those green eyes, shimmering now like faceted gemstones.
“You said there were two females. One at the hospital. Tell me about the other one.”
She nodded. “She was beautiful, too. Not like that thing on the road. I was a senior in high school when she found me. She was a beautiful, strawberry blonde with blue eyes. She called me sister. She said I was a woman now, and that they’d be coming for me soon. I told my nana, and she moved us the next day.”
“They’d be coming?”
“That’s what she said. Nana acted weird. She wouldn’t tell me what was happening. She said the woman knew my mother. I thought maybe the woman really was my sister, that my mother wasn’t dead at all but just gone. I didn’t want to leave school but Nana insisted. That was three years ago. After Nana got sick, she told me that I had to keep moving and that men would be attracted to me but I couldn’t...I couldn’t ever sleep with them. She said devils were chasing me. That they were pure evil.”
“They’re not devils. We knew the females were lovely and the males hideous. The fairy part, that’s new. I’m not sure about that, but it’s possible. The males are an international organization of hired killers.”
She squeaked. “A what?”
“They’re mercenaries. The females, too, Princess.”
Chapter 7
Mercenaries. Brianna’s head hung as the implication of his words ate into her bones like acid.
“Is that why they want me? To turn me into a killer?”
He didn’t turn away, but continued to meet her gaze, holding it unflinching as he spoke. “They want to capture you, train you and then, yes, use you as an assassin. Human males can’t resist you. You must already know that.”
“I feel sick,” she said, cradling her head in her hands. She glanced up, cast him a forlorn look. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.” Then she remembered the woman at the hospital. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone, either, but they kept her for many years. “She said that no one had helped her. She didn’t want me to get caught because she knew what they’d do and why they’d do it. They want me to be one of them.” Bri grasped Mac’s hand and squeezed tight. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
“But you do. You have. And you will.”
“How do I stop it?” she whispered, her gaze pleading.
“You can’t. It’s what you are.”
“But I don’t want this. Can you help me?”
“No, Princess. I’m sorry.”
Her red hair bounced all around her face, and she released him to push it back with both hands. When she spoke her words sounded dull and lifeless to her own ears.
“That woman, the one who warned me. She said they had her for eight years. Was that to train her?”
“We think that the females are used for breeding during their confinement.”
Bri felt dizzy and dropped her chin to her chest until the spots stopped dancing around her as she thought of all the things the woman had saved her from.
My God, could all of this be real?
“My nana used to tell me tales of the fairy folk, the Fey and their court. I thought it was all just bedtime stories, but before she died she said they all exist. The doctors said it was a product of her medical condition and I should just humor her. So I did. I listened and I pretended it was all her mind coming unhinged with drugs and pain. But I knew. I knew it all the time.”
Bri recalled all the bedtime stories her Italian grandmother had told her, making sure her Feyling granddaughter understood her mother’s people and her roots. Now she remembered all the funny, odd and sometimes terrifying creatures that inhabited the world of Never Never.
“All true,” she whispered. “All here on earth and I can see them. I have seen them. Now they can also see me.”
Her protector fell silent. Was this too much, what she was telling him? Too much for even a werewolf to believe?
“My father died of pancreatic cancer at thirty-three. My nana said that my mother died in a boating accident off Ocracoke, North Carolina, shortly after I was born. Her kayak flipped. She had no life vest, and her body was never found. I still have the article.”
“I’m sorry,” said Mac.
“I used to wonder if my mother had intentionally left her infant daughter and paddled straight out to sea. It always felt like a suicide. Nana wouldn’t talk about it.”
“Are you sure she wasn’t like you?”
“Not according to what Nana told me in the hospital.”
She recalled her nana’s words and she repeated them to Mac.
“She said, ‘Your father, my son, Vito. He was human. He loved her and he wouldn’t leave her, even when she told him the truth. He wouldn’t abandon her and she couldn’t walk away from him. Nothing I could do to stop them. And then he died.’ I asked if my mother died, too. She said, ‘Fairies don’t die, Bri. I’ve taught you that. But it killed her heart. She loved him too much to leave him.’ I said that that didn’t make any sense and she said, ‘Love rarely does.’”
“She couldn’t leave him?” asked Mac.
“That’s what she said. Nana said she begged him to leave my mother, but he told her that he’d rather be dead than live one single minute without her. It was fairy magic, but it was strong, unbreakable on both parts. Once he accepted her, she couldn’t leave him unless he found another for her, but he wouldn’t even though it was killing him. His death released her, and that was when she left me. It wasn’t suicide. Wasn’t a drowning at all. My mother is still alive, somewhere.” Brianna rubbed the knuckle of her left hand absently with her thumb. “She said that my mother was a fairy, immortal, and she loved me, but I was part human. Nana said that she couldn’t begin to know how to raise me. So she left me with her husband’s mother and returned to the Fey.”
“Do you remember her?”
“No. Not at all. Or my father. He was a composer. Successful, wildly, after he met my mother.”
“The muse.”
“Yes. He left it all to my nana for me. It’s all mine now, or it will be when the attorneys finish settling her estate. Millions and millions, they say.”
“Well, that’s good.”
She snorted. “If I live to spend it. Not looking good right now. I think Johnny still wants to take a bite out of me.”
“He’ll come around.”
“And those vampires, what did you call them?”
“The Chasers. They hunt the females.”
“Yes, them. They’re still out there. Maybe they know by now that the ones they sent after me didn’t come back.”
His expression told her he had already thought of that. “Very likely.”
“So what will happen?”
“They’ll send more to the males’ last known location and begin their search from there. If they find you, then I’ll kill them, too.”
“You think you can stop them.” She held his gaze, her auburn brows lifted in a mixture of hope and incredulity.
“I know it.”
She shook her head as if she still had any choice. “This is crazy.”
“Yeah. It is.”
She wondered about him, realizing all she knew about werewolves came from folklore and the movies. “What about you? Werewolves aren’t born, are they?”
His eyes went cautious, hooded, and she realized that she’d broached a sensitive topic.
“Werewolves are made.”
“I saw the scars. Did something bite you?”
He answered her by grabbing the sleeve of his T-shirt and tugged it over the rounded dome of his shoulder muscles. His skin was pale, taut and smooth, except for the puckered scars.
“He got me here first. Grabbed ahold with his jaws. Puncture marks,” he said, pointing out the result of each long tooth.
Then he lifted his shirt from the hem and tugged it over his head. She sat up straight at the sight of so much muscular male flesh. His defined muscles contracted at his stomach and chest. Her gaze swept up at the tempting expanse of male flesh, and then her own flesh went cold as she saw again the horrible scars that laced his chest and arm. She’d seen them in the twilight when the Chasers had attacked her. Her mind cast back to that time. She realized Mac had been one of the werewolves that had attacked the vampires. Like her, Mac was more than he appeared. She understood now that he was not just a man. Johnny was the black werewolf, so he must be the gray one.
The scars looked different under the unforgiving overhead light. She took in the damage, reaching for him before she even thought of what she was doing. Her fingers grazed the raised, puckered flesh of the slashing scars that sliced across one side of his chest, measuring them with a touch. He flinched as the pads of her fingers brushed white, puckered flesh in a gentle imitation of the attack.
He held his shirt in a wadded ball before him as she circled, studying the punctures on his deltoid and the matching ones on his shoulder blade. It had clawed him and bitten him repeatedly.
“These bites are from the one that attacked you?”
“Turned me. Yes. The last scars I’ll ever have. Nothing cuts my skin now.”
She was behind him now, her hand caressing his shoulder, and she felt him tremble and saw the blood vessels at his throat pulse. Bri dropped a kiss on the ravaged flesh.
“Tell me about it?”
“Maybe some other time.”
Her hands slid over his arms, measuring the strength of those wide shoulders. He turned and gathered her up against him.
“You shouldn’t play with wolves,” he cautioned. “We bite.”
* * *
Mac pulled her close. His firm grip and warm hands gave the illusion of strength. Was he really strong enough for her? Would she draw away his energy just as she’d done with the others? She didn’t feel anything.