Good thing we took a break when we did. Though Jo-Jo tried not to let me see his frustration, he’d slapped his forehead during the lesson so often that the wound Marco had inflicted with the silver knife was now red, raw, and seeping.
Saber sat Jo-Jo on a barstool on my patio and peered at the cut by the porch light.
“What have you been putting on this, Jo-Jo?”
“Antibiotic ointment.” He winced when Saber carefully probed the wound.
“Cesca, where is that special salve I had made up for you?”
“That smelly stuff I haven’t had to use yet? It’s in the first aid kit.”
“Would you mind sharing some with Jo-Jo?”
I smiled and trotted into the house. Anything to get out of flight school for the night.
When I’d been shot during the French Bride case—on two occasions, no less—Saber had insisted that I keep some anti-silver salve on hand. I’d argued that none of the bullets had been silver, but he gave me two one-ounce jars anyway. One I kept in the car, the other in the house. I didn’t know where he came by the salve or what was in it, but I hoped Jo-Jo had a weaker gag reflex than I did.
I grabbed some gauze pads and white medical adhesive tape for good measure and dropped everything in one of the plastic bags from Publix I saved to line trash cans.
When I handed the bag to Jo-Jo, he frowned and peeked inside. “Highness, why does a vampire have a first aid kit?”
“Because she has human friends.”
“Ah, that would explain it.” He stood and gave me a little bow. “Thank you for the medicine. I’ll see you tomorrow night.”
“What for?”
“More help with his act,” Saber answered, almost too quickly.
I let it pass because Jo-Jo left, and Saber murmured his pet name for me against my ear.
“Princesca, ready to come fly with me?”
We didn’t levitate in bed that night, but we did soar to the moon and stars a few precious times. In the afterglow, with our legs still tangled and our breathing returning to normal, I snuggled my head into the curve of his shoulder.
“It just gets better and better with you,” Saber murmured, his hand lazily caressing my hip.
I kissed his chest. “Glad to hear I’m holding your attention.”
“You hold more than my attention.” He paused and turned to face me in the light of the candles scattered throughout my bedroom. “What would you think of me moving to St. Augustine?”
I pulled back enough to see him without my eyes crossing.
“You could be based here instead of in Daytona Beach?”
“I can now. Since the Vampire Protection Agency is federal, they’re reorganizing. All former slayers who want to stay on the job as special investigators will be federal employees instead of working solely for each state.”
I took that in for a minute. “Is there a chance you’d be transferred out of Florida?”
“Some, but it’s not likely. The powers that be know we’re familiar with the vamps in our areas. Moving us around could create more problems than leaving us alone.”
“Wow, a federal reorganization designed to be more efficient instead of less? I thought that was unconstitutional.”
“Ha-ha, funny girl. If I buy my own place in St. Augustine, would you feel like I’m crowding you?”
“You couldn’t crowd me, Saber. St. Augustine isn’t that small a town.”
“It might be with Triton and me both here.”
I frowned and propped up on my elbow. “You’re not jealous of Triton, right? You know there’s nothing between us other than an old friendship. Emphasis on the old.”
“I’m not jealous. Not exactly. But I don’t understand why he came back, left you that dolphin charm you said he used to wear, then vanished only to send you another charm and a warning.”
“He’s turned into a drama king?”
“Cesca.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know what’s going on with Triton. Why he came back or why all the cloak-and-dagger stuff. I do trust that he’s not playing an elaborate game, but, whether he’s here in town or not, you’re the only man I want to be with.”
“Even if we don’t know where we’re going in our relationship?”
“Even then.” I scooted into his arms and kissed his chin. “And I think your moving here is the best idea ever, Saber.”
He gave me a scowl and growled, “What happened to calling me Deke in the bedroom, woman?”
“Well,” I drawled, stroking a hand slowly down his chest, “moving is business, not pillow talk.”
“Princesca, we’re in bed, we’re naked, and the South is rising again. If that’s not pillow talk, what is?”
I moved over him and whispered against his lips. “This is, Deke, darling.”
The moon and stars were even more spectacular on our next trip, and I didn’t feel the least bit slighted when Saber—Deke—sank into sleep when the eagle landed. I was too blissful, spooned in the curve of his body, dozing and drifting in dreams of us sharing beds in both of our homes.
My sexually sated daze didn’t last long. I needed to get to my homework and run a few loads of laundry. Since the washer and dryer are super quiet, and since the laundry room is off the kitchen next to the half bath, the noise wouldn’t bother Saber.
I pulled on my flamingo sleep shirt and blew out the candles as I moved through the room, folding Saber’s discarded clothes and gathering my own. The necklace and charm jingled in the pocket of my shorts, and Saber made a noise in his sleep as he turned over.
I gazed at his face in the moonlight, the angles softened in sleep. Suddenly, my chest tightened with a crashing wave of tenderness, stealing my breath.
I loved this man.
When the best I’d hoped for were some dates and, okay, semicasual sex just so I wouldn’t spend my afterlife as a virgin, I’d found love.
Sure, Saber pushed and prodded me to do things I didn’t want to do, like fly. He’d challenged my idea of a safe, secure, normal afterlife since we’d met, but he’d helped heal me in places I hadn’t acknowledged I hurt. No, we didn’t know where our relationship was going long-term, but it didn’t matter. He loved me, and I loved him.
Nothing, not even Triton, would get in the way of me being with Saber for however long we might have.
I slipped out of the bedroom with new determination. Not about the laundry, though I started the first load right away. Nope. This was about getting through to Triton. He might block me from his thoughts, but there was a chance he might hear mine.
If nothing else, a good ole telepathic rant would make me feel better.
With the washer whooshing softly in the background, I settled on the sofa, the rich leather a warm caress on my partly bare legs. I laid the mermaid charm within reach, then went through the centering routine I’d learned from reading books on how to tap psychic energy. The reading was at Saber’s insistence, but, hey, I was woman enough to admit the focusing techniques worked.
I was soon ready, and scooped the chain and charm into my left palm. The white noise buzz began as soon as I closed my hand around it, but the longer I held the charm, the more the radio-type static morphed into the sound of the ocean. I imagined diving beneath the waves, then pictured Triton until I saw him clearly. A few more deep breaths, and I knocked on his mind door. It opened a sliver, and I stuck my ethereal foot in. My little voice cautioned me against using Triton’s name, but, otherwise, I let ’er rip.
Of all the nerve! You show up after eons of silence—and just when I finally met a great guy, I might add—then vanish and appear again? I don’t think so, bub. I don’t know what’s going on, but getting that obscure message was annoying as hell.
I sensed Triton raising a brow.
Yes, I said hell. I’m that ticked. And, okay, it was good to hear from you, but this popping in and out is not acceptable. I want to know where you are, why you’re back, and what this big evil is that has you in hiding.
Very, very softly, I heard, Not safe.
Well, when will it be? Because I have a nice afterlife filled with friends and activities, and I don’t want anyone screwing it up.
Nothing.
You hear me? I will not be yanked around, not by you and not by anyone else.
Again, nothing, but Triton’s mind door ever so slowly closed on my ethereal foot.
Ouch.
I came back to myself, blinked at the room, and opened my fingers to find I’d squeezed the charm hard enough to make an impression in my hand. Damn.
Well, all right. I’d given Triton my bit of what for. I hadn’t expected any response from him, so I suppose it was a victory that he’d answered me at all, however briefly.
What could be such a big darn deal that we couldn’t do a mind hookup? Was someone telepathically eavesdropping? Hunting Triton? It would have to be him, because I was a breeze to find. My crazy Covenant stalker did it, which is why Saber insisted on all the security.
Sitting here wondering what kind of danger I was in and where it was coming from wasn’t getting my homework done. Much as I loathed our current assignment on period furniture, I went to my desk and dropped the chain and charm in a tiki motif mug by the monitor. While the system booted, I added fabric softener to the wash load and grabbed a Fig Newton to chew on. Beat chewing on questions about Triton.
I waded into my History of Furnishings textbook wondering why anyone had thought heavy styles like baroque looked good. To me, they just looked hulking. And, once you got that furniture into a room, no way did you want to move it out again.
Of course, the wealthy had servants to drag furniture around. I wondered how many had suffered hernias. Then again, people weren’t so mobile in earlier times. Family homes were passed down through generations and still were, for that matter.
I set my chin on my fist and thought about my own family. I’d been raised with furniture just as chunky as some of the pieces in the book, though not as elaborately carved and costly. The tables and chairs, chests and bedsteads in my family home were sturdy, serviceable. They had to be to stand up to the beating that first my brothers, then my nieces and nephews gave them. Had my family missed the things they couldn’t take when they’d finally fled St. Augustine?
I looked at the full-page photo of an oak trestle table darkened to black brown with age. The surface looked pitted, scarred, beloved. I hesitated, then touched the photo with one fingertip and was jerked back in time.
The children huddled under the table, shooed there by the women. They didn’t cry, but their eyes were huge and frightened as they peeked at me between their mothers’ skirts. I’d cared for these babies, coddled and laughed with them, but no more. I was a vampire now, and if they knew not what that meant, they’d been told stories enough to fear me.
I raised my gaze, and my heart bled to see the face of my mother contorted in horror. Her pallor was severe, so much so that I feared she would collapse. Instead, she gripped a cleaver in her arthritic, trembling hand. Two sisters-in-law, they who had chided me for not choosing a husband, wielded long knives and regarded me with loathing. My youngest sister-in-law, the one I best loved, clasped the newest baby to her breast. I ached to touch that fuzzy head, to croon a lullaby.
To be a family again.
“Please, don’t be afraid,” I said over and over. “I’m here to warn you.”
They didn’t heed me. They couldn’t. Their terrified screams begging me to spare them and the children drowned my anguished voice, and I wept as I slipped out the garden door. They thought me a monster, with no soul, no love, no loyalty in my heart. They were wrong.
Later, I asked Triton to get them out of town so that King Normand could no longer threaten them, but I relinquished my family that day. I was alone with no one to love and no one to live for. I would survive or find a way to forever die.
The memory faded, and I wondered for the first time if I had relatives somewhere. Descendants of my nieces and nephews who would be happy to learn about their ancestors and perhaps to know me. If so, they hadn’t shown up yet, which was telling in itself.
I shook off the past and closed the textbook, then about screeched out of my skin when a hand landed on my shoulder. I spun in the old-fashioned swivel desk chair to face Saber.
“Easy, babe, it’s me.”
“Geez, make some noise next time,” I said, my heartbeat still in overdrive, my eyelashes wet with the remnants of tears.
“I did make noise, honey,” he said gently. “Are you okay? Is your vampire hearing on the fritz?”
“My hearing is fine. I was hyperfocused.” I surreptitiously wiped my cheeks dry. Then I noticed that, except for his shoes, he was dressed. I glanced at my dolphin desk clock. “Where are you going at three in the morning?”
“Daytona.”
“But you were just there, like, eighteen hours ago. What happened?”
He rubbed his hand over his whiskered cheek. “The cops found a guy in an alley a block from Ike’s club.”
“Dead?” I asked, rising to hug him.
He shook his head and held me. “The guy is alive for now, but he’s in shock and sporting some vicious fang marks. Not clean or neat.”
“You need to go talk to the victim?”
“More than that. The guy is claiming he was robbed, but he can’t give a coherent description of who lifted his wallet and ring or of who bit him. We’re serving another search warrant on Ike. The Daytona cops are waking a judge now, and we’re planning to hit them right about the time they close at four.”
I stepped out of his arms. “If you’re raiding Hot Blooded while Ike and his nest are awake, I’m coming with you.”
“Cesca, I’ll have a squad of city cops there.”
I shook my head and headed for the bedroom. “Not good enough. Somebody there bit a man, and I might be able to tell who it was. Plus, I can do my energy-draining trick if the natives get obnoxious.”
“No way. I can’t have a civilian at a possible crime scene. Besides, weren’t you going surfing with Neil this morning?”
I paused at the bedroom door. Actually, I’d forgotten about the date with Neil, and this was far more important.
“Surfing can wait, and you can deputize me or something so I won’t be a civilian.”
He frowned but didn’t have a comeback, so I pressed my case.
“I’ll follow you in my car and leave as soon as I know everyone will be safe. I’m going to tail you anyway, so you might as well give in.”
By the time he had his sneakers laced up, I was dressed in blue jeans and a tank top, and ready to kick fang.
SIX
We sped south on A1A, Saber with his light and siren bubble stabbing the night, me streaking behind in my SSR. I’d never been to Daytona but had heard the drive took an hour or more at normal speed and in normal traffic. I’d bet both fangs we’d be there in thirty-five minutes.
Enough time for my bravado to wane, but not my resolve.
Not that I wanted to confront the Daytona Beach vamps. Been there, survived that. Ike’s rich voice oozes over a body like a controlled oil spill, but he’s a quiet flavor of scary next to Laurel. Vampzilla is bossy, bitchy, and wears human bones in her cornrowed hair. The other two vamps I’d met in March were Ike’s muscle. Tower and Zena are very tall, very built, and very loyal to Ike.
Ike had left me alone since our meeting five months ago. Would he take my turning up on his turf with Saber and the Daytona cops as a declaration of war?
If so, I’d just have to talk him down out of the boughs. A vamp had chomped on a human, and that simply wasn’t kosher.
Of course, there was the off chance—way off—that the biting had been consensual. In March, I’d also met four blood bunnies that hung out with Ike, and I’d later asked Saber about their bite marks. He’d explained that biting could be consented to during sex. Not an encouraged practice, but the VPA overlooked love bites just as it ignored small nests. Sometimes, bureaucracy bit
es.
Consensual or not, a vampire should never leave a bitee to wander around under a partial thrall. The effect was like turning a drunk loose. Without the upchucking.
Saber killed his light and siren and turned into a parking lot behind a two-story cinder-block building painted Caribbean blue. Not the color choice I pictured for a place called Hot Blooded, but I imagined City Hall controlled the colors of buildings. St. Augustine’s city government did the same.
The parking lot teemed with official vehicles and uniformed men and women from the Daytona Beach police force. I joined Saber, and we headed for a tall, rangy black man wearing a Daytona Beach cop uniform and a scowl.
“Captain Jackson,” Saber said, “this is Cesca Marinelli.”
“I know who she is,” Jackson snarled. “What the hell is she doing here?”
That’s me. Making instant friends wherever I go.
“I’ve deputized her on the good chance she can ID the biter, and we can get out of here fast.”
“How is she gonna do that?”
I smiled, being perfectly pleasant. “I have a sharp sense of smell for blood, Captain Jackson.”
“Just stay out of my way.” He turned the full weight of his gaze on Saber. “Are you clear that this is our operation? You’re here as a consultant for now.”
“You mean until you throw your hands up and dump the mess in my lap?”
“That was Hake’s style. It’s not mine.”
“Then your way will be a nice change,” Saber said.
Jackson blinked, then nodded and handed Saber a photo of a man with ragged, bloody bite marks on one side of his neck.
“Since you know the head vamp, you can assist me in questioning him while my teams conduct the search.”
Saber murmured his agreement.
“We round up all the vamps and any humans still in there and put them at opposite sides of the room. I’ve assigned people with silver ammo to guard the vamps.”
“Good plan.”
Mollified that Saber wasn’t here to upstage him, Jackson seemed to stand down.
Last Vampire Standing Page 6