VEILED Complete Boxed Set: A Paranormal Vampire Romance Thriller

by Victoria Knight

  The smell of freshly brewed coffee wafted to the door, a stark contrast to the blood in Jason Eastman’s apartment. Usually a rabid coffee drinker, the thought of drinking anything after what she had seen in Jason’s apartment was sickening.

  “Ms. Humphrey,” Helen Davis said. “It’s nice to see you. I’m glad you’re here. I think Mrs. Eastman would like to speak with you.”

  Kara entered the apartment and found both of Jason’s parents inside. As Overton had said, the father was catatonic; he was rocking to and fro, staring at the ground and letting out a very stressed humming noise. His mother, Valerie, if Kara remembered correctly, had clearly been weeping. Still, she acknowledged Kara when she sat next to her on the couch.

  “Mrs. Eastman, I’m so sorry,” she said.

  Valerie Eastman nodded slowly. Kara saw the dried trails of tears on the sides of her face. Somehow, they were worse than seeing Jason’s father so out of it. As Kara spoke to Valerie, her husband still rocked himself, staring at nothing.

  “Do you think you could speak with me for just a moment?” Kara asked. “I have just a few questions.”

  “Sure,” Valerie responded. “Anything to find out…what happened. If there’s any chance that he’s wounded somewhere and still alive, do you think he could survive having lost that much blood?”

  It was the first time she was glad to be burdened with the title of deputy. She honestly had no idea if such was a thing was possible or not. “Sorry to say, I’m not the person to ask,” she said. “That might be a question you can ask the state police when they get here. As I’m sure you may have heard, I’m just filling in until Sheriff Morel recovers.”

  “But do you think it’s possible?”

  “Anything is possible, ma’am,” Kara said. “Mrs. Eastman, do you know what Jason might have been doing last night? Do you know if he’s angered anyone or has any ill history with anyone?”

  “No, not that I know of. He really didn’t get involved with bad crowds, you know? In fact, I don’t think Jason had many friends.”

  “None? Is there no one he would hang out with regularly?”

  “Well, there’s Nikki Galimore, but he never really talked about her. I think he sort of had a thing for her, but never actually said so.”

  Hearing Nikki’s name brought about a coil of uncharacteristic jealousy that sprung in Kara’s chest. She easily recalled seeing Nikki’s car leaving Saul’s driveway two nights ago.

  So what? Kara asked herself. Just what in the hell were you doing parked there watching his driveway, anyway? It certainly wasn’t for any sort of police business, now was it?

  These thoughts in the presence of a grieving mother made Kara feel ill. She asked a few more questions, ending the conversation with a request to take Jason’s computer to see if she could perhaps find any files or e-mails that might help them find some clues as to what happened to him.

  Valerie Eastman agreed. Kara gave her an awkward hug before leaving and then walked back out to where the coroner had just arrived. Overton was speaking to him animatedly. Kara passed by them both and headed back into Jason’s apartment to retrieve his computer.

  As she walked in, she wondered how recently Nikki Galimore had been here. That, naturally, led her back to wondering just what business Nikki Galimore had had at Saul Benton’s cabin two nights ago. The jealousy that lingered as a result confused her, but it did not alarm her nearly as much as the slowly blooming anger.

  3

  When Saul was stirred awake by a frantic knocking on his front door, he sat up in bed with anger rushing through him. He had no clocks in the house, but the play of filtered light though the blinds along the bed and floor suggested that it was around three o’ clock in the afternoon. This would make the second time he had been stirred awake during the day in less than three days. And although Nikki had come by around dusk, he still considered that an intrusion of his normal schedule.

  He assumed this knocking was Kara Humphrey again. Saul wondered just what sort of bullshit Lester had been telling on him this time. For a moment, Saul thought about lying back down and ignoring the knocks; eventually, they’d give up and go away.

  Only, the knocking was rapid and sounded urgent. Saul sniffed the air, hoping to get some indication as to who was at his door. He smelled no alcohol, so it wasn’t Lester. And he couldn’t smell the excitement and degree of sexual energy he had sensed in Kara. He smelled something familiar though, something he couldn’t place right away.

  “Damn,” he said, getting out of bed. He slid on the pair of jogging shorts and shirt he kept by the side of the bed in case of emergencies, and walked into the living room. As he strode across the room, the knocking at his door sounded almost like gunfire.

  He opened the door cautiously, not sure of what to expect. The last thing he expected to encounter was Nikki Galimore, in tears, throwing wild punches at him. Saul took two stumbling steps backwards—not from the blows (they had the effect of a gentle spring breeze as they fell on his face and chest) but because of the shock.

  As he righted himself, a hard right-handed blow struck him along the side of the face.

  “You fucker!” she screamed at him with so much emotion in her voice that he thought the force of it would crack her throat. She threw more wild punches, most missing altogether, as she swung through the tears.

  “Nikki, what are y—”

  “How could you do it, you monster. You fucking demon! How dare you…”

  She swung one last time. Saul caught the swing, grabbing her arm and pulling her to him. He held her in a restraint against his chest and felt her fury boiling inside through her clothes. He felt it like heat, like holding his hand over a stove. More than that, he felt her fragile weight against him, her tiny feminine curves leaning into him. He held her tight, not out of any sort of desire, but to try to calm her.

  “Nikki, what are you doing?”

  “Let go of me! Don’t you dare touch me!”

  “You’re not making sense,” Saul said. “Nikki, what the hell is going on?”

  “Where is he? His body wasn’t even there! What did you do?”

  He didn’t shout, but he raised his voice enough to give rise to his anger. “Nikki, I have no clue what you’re talking about.”

  She looked up at him with tear-flooded eyes. Saul didn’t know if he had ever seen such a perfect mixture of fear and hatred in a pair of human eyes. She gave him a queer look and, pushing slightly away from him as his grip loosened, a shaky understanding dawned on her.

  “You…” she said.

  “Dammit, what?” Saul growled. He was very aware of his clenched fist and the anger trying to push that other part of him to the surface.

  “You don’t know, do you? You really don’t know?”

  “Apparently not. What are you talking about?”

  “Jason’s dead,” she said, choking back a sob. “Something broke into his apartment. From what I hear, it was brutal. Blood everywhere and no body to be found. I…I thought it was you. I thought you went after him because I told you about the footage of you in Deke Goode’s pasture.”

  “One last time, Nikki…that was not me!”

  “But you seemed so concerned. I thought maybe the film was a threat to you and so you took care of him.”

  She looked down, pulling completely away from him now. She was ashamed and embarrassed. Saul reached out to her, but she flinched away.

  “It’s okay,” Saul said. And really, it was. He would have jumped to the same conclusion if the roles had have been reversed.

  “Nikki, I swear I had nothing to do with it. I don’t even know who Jason is.”

  She shook her head. “I know. But it was the only thing that made sense. I mean, who the hell would kill him?”

  “That’s a good question,” Saul said, instantly thinking of his visit from Benali. But Benali would never do anything like that, even if he knew exactly who had that damned footage. It was against the oath of The Guard.

  “Are
you sure the only one of your kind around here?” Nikki asked.

  “Yes. As far as I know. It is unlawful for two vampire families to exist in the same location. I have been here for a very long time and there have been no others.” He didn’t tell her about his own speculations that perhaps the monster on the footage was indeed another vampire. Of course, she had likely jumped to those same conclusions. She said as much with the next comment out of her mouth.

  “If that thing on the footage was another one of you…maybe it is what killed Jason. Is that possible?”

  “I suppose so,” he said, again not letting her in on his visit from Benali and the conversation that had passed between them. “There are rules set in place by The Guard, as I told you, but there’s always the possibility that some rogue family could seek to break them.”

  She was nodding, but Saul didn’t think she was really listening to him. She was looking around the cabin, her knees wobbling. It almost looked like she was dizzy.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions…I shouldn’t have come here again. I’m—”

  “Nikki, you need to sit down.”

  She nodded and started to weep again. She stumbled to his couch and buried her head in her hands. Saul had never known how to provide comfort; this sort of sorrow was not something that his kind was accustomed to. It was foreign and, quite frankly, made him rather uncomfortable.

  She wept for fifteen minutes, hard hitching sobs that caused her tiny frame to shudder. Saul sat down on the other end of the couch, not sure how to react. After a while, she looked to him with red-rimmed eyes and frowned.

  “I really am sorry,” she said again. “I shouldn’t have assumed.”

  He shrugged it off. “It’s okay. I understand.”

  This set her off again. She whimpered, tried to stop it, and then lost control. Through her sobs, she said, “I don’t…don’t normally cry like th-thi-this. I’m so s-sorry.”

  “It’s okay. Take your time to grieve.”

  She did. She leaned against the arm of the couch and cried. Saul sat there, wanting to put his arm around her, wanting to draw her close, yet did not. He didn’t feel that it was his place. And besides, if Nikki had those same stirrings that he had smelled coming off of Kara, his act of comfort may be seen as something more.

  And what would be so bad about that? he asked himself.

  He shut the thought out before it had time to grow. He sat there as her crying eventually tapered off. It took him a moment to realize that she had fallen asleep. He wondered if she had been crying over the death of her friend all day and, if so, how exhausting it must be for a human.

  He then thought about the brutal death she had described; having one’s throat torn out happened quite often in the wild, but not with humans. Perhaps there was something strange occurring in Red Creek beyond his own current oddities.

  Saul slowly stood from the couch and walked back into his bedroom. He tried to go back to sleep, but smelling her in the other room was too much. He lay there and watched the ceiling, waiting for those traces of murky sunlight to die out as the night strangled it.

  4

  Saul lurked around the house for a while, staying quiet as to not wake Nikki. She slept hard, even letting out light snores on occasion. Saul had the impulse to go to her and stretch her out so that she could at least sleep comfortably, but it somehow did not feel like the right thing to do. With her intrusion on his life, in addition to Kara Humphrey, his sexual urges and bloodlust were both spiking. As far as he was concerned, the less he touched Nikki Galimore, the better off he would be.

  When one o’ clock in the morning rolled around and she was still sleeping, he assumed that she would likely sleep through until morning. Had her grief really taken that much of a toll on her? He would never understand the odd ways a human body worked…particularly something like grief or true sorrow. He didn’t envy humans at all.

  He waited around for another half an hour before his own interrupted sleep from that afternoon caught up with him. He retired to bed, oddly satisfied that Nikki was sleeping in his cabin. Before closing his eyes, he checked the foot of his bed. He knew it was stupid, but he felt like he needed to make sure that Benali wasn’t there.

  With the sound of Nikki’s soft intermittent snores coming from the living room, Saul eventually fell asleep.

  Later, when he was stirred awake, it was still dark. It was the sort of dark that feels soft—the sort that will soon be dissolved by the dawn. There was something in the room with him, something moving towards him.

  By the time he sat up, he felt the bed shift beside him. The weight there was not much. And the smell was familiar. Alarms sounded in his head but his body was exceptionally calm as Nikki got into bed with him.

  “Is this okay?” she asked him.

  “Probably not,” he answered honestly.

  She made a hmmph noise and then pulled the covers over her body. In the dark, he listened to her body as it shifted comfortably into the mattress.

  “Sorry. It was creepy being alone in your living room. And I didn’t want to go back to my place. I’m not sure I could handle being alone just yet.”

  “Fine,” he said.

  “Saul?” she asked after a moment.

  “Yes?”

  “What sort of self-respecting vampire can have a defenseless nineteen year-old girl sleeping on his couch and not attack her?”

  “A vampire that has spent countless years training himself to ignore such things.”

  “Is my blood not good enough for you?”

  He could sense that she was joking, but there was an edge of doubt in her voice.

  “I’m sure your blood is just fine,” he said. His throat constricted as he imagined her coppery blood trickling down. He also imagined his mouth on the curve of her neck and felt a brief surge of heat spike through the lower half of his body.

  Nikki moved towards him and he became very aware of his nakedness. For a moment, he was furious with her for intruding not only in his cabin, but his bedroom. She was pushing his limits and soon he wouldn’t be able to deny himself. He’d have her throat, her blood. She’d die at his hand and fang and it would be her own stupid damned fault.

  That thought was pushed away when she pressed her body against his. The room had been dark and he had admittedly been too distracted with preparing himself to resist her blood, so he had not noticed that she was also naked. He felt her bare skin against his. He felt her small breasts along his ribs and the heat of her sex pressed against his thigh.

  “Is this okay?” she asked. Her breath was hot and soft on his neck.

  “Absolutely not,” he said.

  But he did not move. In fact, when he felt her hand grazing his chest, he reached his own hand out and grabbed her hip with just enough force to let her know that if she didn’t stop soon, there’d be no turning back.

  She responded by making a soft noise. She slid closer to him and he could actually feel her heart beating through her chest. She was excited but, at the same time, amazingly calm. She slid one leg over his, intertwining their bodies. She stretched against him and then, in one motion, slid on top of him while brushing her lips along the nape of his neck. He arched beneath her though her weight on top of him was literally like a feather.

  “Nikki,” he warned, “this is tricky. This could be bad.”

  “Does it feel bad?” she asked, grinding her sex against his hips to emphasize the feel.

  “No.”

  “Then we’re okay. Just don’t sprout any fangs on me. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  In the dark, their mouths found one another and their tongues met. When he pulled her down close to him, she moaned slightly. Inside, he felt something springing into life, an energy that had been contained for far too long. He knew what it was and it only intensified when she reached down with her hand and found him hard and waiting. She enjoyed the feel of him in her hand for a moment and Saul did his best to not
writhe like a horny school boy.

  “How long has it been for you?” she asked. “Out here, all alone. When was the last time you had a woman in your bed?”

  “Fifty years at least. But not in this bed.”

  “A human?”

  She was playing him with expert care. She never stopped the exploration of his body as she asked the questions. Her lips were now on his upper chest, her hand still lightly caressing him below.

  “Yes. A vagrant. She was hitch-hiking.”

  “So she’d never have to find out about you, right? Because she wouldn’t have to stick around afterwards.”

  “Right.”

  “Was she pretty?”

  “No,” he answered. He was growing irritated not because of the conversation but because he didn’t know how much longer he would be able to take the teasing. If he ended up taking her with his full force, he could potentially hurt her badly.

  “Not particularly,” he said. “It was just the need.”

  “For what?” she asked with a smile. She guided him to where he was aching to go and pivoted slightly on him, not allowing him inside of her yet. “For this?”

  “Yes.”

  She slowly led him into her and they remained like that, motionless for a while. She was breathing hard and it set that last trigger off within him.

  “You’re sure you want this?” Saul asked.

  “Yes,” she said softly.

  “Let me know if I hurt you. Make me stop, okay?”

  “Uh-huh,” she said, although it was apparent that any rational thought was gone and the only thinking was being done by their instincts.

  So Saul let that energy out. He rolled her over onto her back, careful not to crush her with his weight. When he was confident that her moans were of pleasure and not pain, he started taking charge. He held himself above her and did his best to restrain his force. Apparently, Nikki had been expecting more. She raised her hips to him and dug her nails into his side, urging him on.

  He gave her what she was asking for. He went harder, faster, and let his body have its way. She writhed beneath him, biting her lips at first but finally giving up and letting out screams of pleasure. Her screams escalated and when she climaxed, she did it hard. She bucked and shuddered beneath him, groaning in a way that was hard to decipher Saul had a moment of fear where he thought he had hurt her.