Yes.
Hell. You’d better bring her to my office at headquarters. I’ve got news regarding the lead on Rebecca’s maker.
Beck’s eyes popped open, but she didn’t dare look in Achilles’s direction for fear of revealing that she’d been listening in. Dear God. What did it all mean?
Suddenly he was no longer on the couch. Instead he was right beside her, his words close enough to send a shiver of longing down her spine. “We’re leaving. Get your jacket.”
Beck crossed her arms and turned to face him. “It’s almost dawn. I don’t think that’s such a good idea. Vampires and sunlight don’t exactly mix, do they?”
“You’re right. Grab your sunglasses, too.”
“I fail to see how that’d help me from burning to a crisp.”
He heaved a sigh and materialized her sunglasses into his hand. “You won’t fry, just possibly get a nasty sunburn. But from the looks of your skin, it wouldn’t be anything you haven’t risked before.” He unfolded the glasses and gently slid them on her face. “The sunglasses will delay getting a migraine from the intensity of the light.”
“But how—”
He pressed a cool broad finger to her lips, making them tingle. “You can ask questions later. Right now we have an appointment to keep. I’ll drive.”
He phased a fitted black leather jacket and a pair of ultra black wraparound sunglasses for himself and her wool peacoat. He walked her to the door and opened it. “After you.”
She looked at the open door. “Why are we going in the car when you could just zap us there?”
“It’s called transporting, and we’re going in the car because I like driving the car.”
“What was Dmitri talking about?”
He stared at her long and hard, a glint of wariness in his eyes. “Well, well. Eavesdropping at such a tender age for a vampire. That’s a new one.”
She cocked her hip to the side and crossed her arms. “What is an imprint?”
She couldn’t see his eyes behind his dark sunglasses that all but screamed screw you. “Imprint?”
“Yes.”
“Something you don’t need to worry about because you’re planning to go back to being mortal. Right?”
“Damn right.” Beck twisted her tongue in her mouth gnawing on the edge of it. Against her better judgment she grasped his arm. “Perhaps I want to know for scientific reasons.”
“Perhaps you want to know because you’re nosy.” Beneath her fingers his arm flexed. God his muscles were huge.
“Look, I think I have the right if there’s something growing, forming, building, whatever between us.”
He pulled his sunglasses down and his intense gaze hit her dead center in the chest. “Right now the only thing between us is a relationship as mentor and fledgling. Once you go back to being mortal, even that will cease to exist, and I’ll just be a figment of your imagination.”
More like her sexual fantasies. She glanced down at her hand on his arm and realized he hadn’t removed it. His jaw was working hard, and she could hear his teeth grinding as if he held an awful lot back. The hot blatantly sexual energy coming off him hit her. She looked up through her lashes at him. “So do you feed all your fledglings like that?”
“No.”
Beck quirked a brow, her lips bending into a small warm smile. “Then I’m special.”
“Yes.”
His voice sounded thick. Her fangs throbbed just behind her gums at his response. Clearly he didn’t ever intend to tell her this, but she still wanted something from him. She wanted him to explain the imprint to her rather than just brush off her questions as if she were stupid.
“You want something, Achilles. I can see it in your eyes and feel it through our touch. What do you want from me?”
He gently, but firmly pulled her hand from his arm, leaving her feeling the loss as if she’d suddenly snapped her mooring and was now adrift in an unfamiliar ocean.
“Nothing. Not a damn thing.” With that he turned on his heel and strode out into the dawn, leaving her to follow.
Chapter 9
They headed downtown, winding through early morning rush-hour traffic. The streetlights were still lit as they drove, and they cast the edges of his face in hard planes of light and shadow. The dark sunglasses only added to his Terminatorlike appearance. Achilles’s hot and cold response left her confused and the inside of the Veyron sparked with tension.
Beck knew she hadn’t merely imagined the sexual chemistry between them. It was there. It was palpable, and it was eating her alive.
“Where are we going?” She said it more to break the tension than because she had the need to know.
“The entrance to the Cascade Clan headquarters is through the Seattle Underground.”
“You mean that cheesy underground tour in Pioneer Square?”
Even with the sunglasses in place, she could feel the burning point of his stare as he shifted his head to gaze in her direction. “Not everything is what it looks like on the surface.”
“Since when did you get to be so profound, professor?”
He turned back to face the road. “Since I got landed with you, Doc.”
He made her sound like an unwanted burden. A small uncomfortable bubble welled up in the pit of her stomach. He swung the car into a parking structure and headed for the lower levels.
“We’ll park here and walk the rest of the way in.”
Beck pulled off her sunglasses and looked around. The rest of the way turned out to be a service entrance to the side of the elevators. The bland gray metal door blended in so well, it was nearly indistinguishable from the concrete around it.
“So this is the front door?”
He stared at her, his glasses masking his eyes as he reached for the doorknob and shoved a key in the lock. “You were expecting doormen?”
Beck shrugged. “Is Evaline St. Croix here?”
His hand stopped midtwist. “Why do you want to know?”
“Professional curiosity. I want to meet the person who’s the genetic antiviral.”
He opened the door and held it for her. “Do you ever take a vacation?”
Beck stepped past him and into what she recognized as an elevator. “Not if I can help it.” He shut the outer door and the elevator door closed with a metallic shush.
Achilles pulled a key card from his pocket and slid it through the reader slot by the button panel. “You need to learn to relax, Doc.”
Beck snorted and crossed her arms. “You’re one to lecture. When was the last time you took a vacation?”
He poked the button leading to the bottom level and then slipped off his sunglasses. “Soldiers don’t take holidays.”
“Neither do scientists,” she shot back.
The doors opened and they stepped out into a modern atrium of sorts created from white walls and chrome fixtures with a high lighted ceiling of translucent glass. Lots of green plants clustered around empty sitting areas of comfortable white couches and chairs. Across the room a delicate waterfall bubbled down a wall of gray stones, the whispering sound of it amplified in the wide-open area. Off to the left was a receptionist’s desk with a woman dressed in white scrubs, her brown hair in a twist. Near the desk stood a security officer suited out in black. He was nearly as big as Achilles, but one look at him said he had far less humor.
The scent of clean cotton, green plants and some kind of artificially floral air freshener tickled Beck’s nose. In any other setting it might have seemed serene. To Beck it seemed surreal. They were underground, beneath the waking city of Seattle and nobody, except the vampires, knew it even existed. “Nice place.”
Achilles jerked his head to the side. “That desk is the reception and security point to our medical facility and laboratories. Once we’ve met with Dmitri, perhaps he can arrange for you to have a tour and get answers to some of your questions. Right now, we’re going directly to Dmitri’s offices. Follow me.”
He turned down a hall papered in a
sage green leaf pattern punctuated by beautiful paintings and artistic color photographs. It looked just like any other hall in a high-end set of office high-rises in downtown Seattle. The hall ended at a set of frosted double glass doors. Achilles pushed open the door, waiting for her to cross into a reception area with tasteful teak furniture. Behind the reception desk, a woman with shoulder-length black hair wearing a red business suit lifted her head and offered them a bland smile.
“Morning, Ciara.” Her smile broadened when she saw that the visitor was Achilles. She winked, before looking over Beck. She sniffed lightly, a slightly confused look flitting across her features before they smoothed back into flawless perfection once more as she turned back to Achilles.
“And this is?”
“Dr. Rebecca Chamberlin.”
The receptionist nodded. “Go right in, he’s waiting for you both.”
Achilles gave her a curt nod and grasped Beck’s hand, pulling her with him toward the dark office door before them. His touch was warm, dry and smooth, but still sent a zap of high-octane sexual energy shimmering up her arm. Totally the wrong time and definitely the wrong place. But in all her life, Beck had never felt this close, this fast, to someone. It was as if he knew her, as if he was the secret missing ingredient in a chemical formula that made up relationships she’d never been able to figure out.
Dmitri, dark and brooding behind his massive burl desk, didn’t look nearly as casual as Beck remembered him. He was in a power suit that snugged along his broad shoulders topped off with a crisp black shirt and a red tie. He glanced up when they entered.
“You took long enough, brother.” His words weren’t loaded with malice, but were edgy just the same.
Achilles braced his feet apart and faced Dmitri head-on. “You said you had news.”
Dmitri glanced at Beck, and she felt cold sluice over her head, down her back and shoulders as if someone had dumped a bucket of frigid water over her. “We know who Rebecca’s maker is.”
“And?”
The brown of his eyes darkened to nearly black, as he turned his gaze back to Achilles. “It’s what we feared.”
“Vane.”
Dmitri nodded, leaning forward and planting his fists down on the top of his desk. “The council has convened a meeting. They want us there in two hours.”
She didn’t know who or what the council was, but she knew Vane meant trouble. The situation and the tension ebbing and flowing around the two mountain-sized men in her presence were enough to make her feel light-headed and off balance. “What are we going to do until then?”
Achilles slid his gaze to hers. “We wait here.”
“If we’re just waiting, do you think I could meet Evaline St. Croix?”
Dmitri’s gaze flicked to Achilles, his brow raising.
What does she want with Eva? Beck heard Dmitri’s voice loud and clear as though he spoke to her, but knew she was once again listening in to his mental communication with Achilles since his dark eyes weren’t even looking at her.
Something about researching a natural antivirus.
Dmitri sighed. Yeah, Kris gave me a difficult time about our intentions to wipe out the vaccine project completely. Something about people having a choice.
Beck couldn’t stop herself. “They should have a choice,” she said defiantly. “I would’ve liked a choice. And there is no reason why vampires and humans can’t live peaceably just because there is an option for those who need it.”
Both vampires stared at her, Dmitri’s eyes slightly wider. “She’s already reading others?”
Achilles nodded. “Would have told you, but only just found out myself.”
Dmitri pinned her with the hard unyielding gaze of a man used to the responsibility and right of power. “The vaccine poses a risk to our kind.”
But Beck had been challenged by far bigger blowhards her whole life. “All science is a calculated risk. Just because something is risky doesn’t mean you give up on it.”
Dmitri glanced at Achilles. “She’s got a good head on her shoulders.”
Achilles grinned. “I’d like to take the credit for that as her mentor, but she came with that before I got to her.”
Dmitri nodded. “I’ll see what I can do to get a hold of Eva.”
He sat down behind his desk, a silent gesture of dismissal, and Achilles grasped her arm steering her out of the office. “Time to go, Doc.”
He walked with her out of the offices and back down the hall toward the atrium. “What does it mean that Vane is my maker?”
Achilles’s steps faltered. “He’s not your maker in the traditional sense. He didn’t feed you himself.”
“Like you did.”
Achilles’s jaw flexed. “Yes. Like I did. But he is the one whose ichor you used in your vaccine. There is a connection there which Dmitri believes set him off to track you at the club.”
“So we’re related?” Her stomach kind of bucked at that one. What if he was also the vampire masquerading around as Victor who had turned her mother?
“In a manner of speaking. Which makes you kin to Dmitri, since he’s Vane’s blood brother.”
“Back up. They’re related? He acts like he hates Vane.”
“He does. They share the same maker, Larissa, but like you, Dmitri never intended to be a vampire. He actually used to hunt them in the Middle Ages. Now he’s our Trejan, our Vice President of sorts, second in command of the entire clan.”
Beck shook her head. “That’s certainly a switch.”
Achilles’s shoulders stiffened. “We may not all decide to come to this existence in the same way, but it’s what you do with what you’ve been given, not how you were given it, that defines you.”
“Thanks, professor, I’ll remember that,” she quipped. “Are you sure you weren’t a Greek philosopher rather than a solider?”
He raised an eyebrow looking as though she’d insulted him.
Beck got the sense that she had drifted into dangerous territory digging up his past and quickly started walking toward the atrium. “What about caffeine? Do vampires drink coffee, tea, diet soda? Right now I’m feeling severely caffeine deprived. Do you have a vending machine around here somewhere?”
Achilles caught up with her in three quick strides, his legs far longer than her own. “You’re not hungry are you?”
She slid a cautious glance sideways at him. “I just need caffeine.”
They found a quiet table and he phased a cup of steaming coffee for each of them. “You like cream or sugar?”
“Both.”
The contents of her cup swirled, turning paler. She hadn’t managed to materialize anything the time or two she’d tried, but perhaps she wasn’t doing it right. As cool a skill as it was, she wanted to be successful at it once, before she went back to being human, just to see how it felt to create something from nothing.
A curl of smokelike air in one of the two empty chairs at their table quickly knitted together into the form of a woman with long wavy chestnut hair close to Beck’s own color, but with far fewer red highlights, and big pale blue eyes. A softly knit purple wrap hung loosely over her slender shoulders.
“Could you get me some, too? Black with sugar?” she asked, her wide mouth forming into a generous smile as she held a hand out to Beck in greeting. “Sorry to pop in like this, but Dmitri said you wanted to see me as soon as possible. I’m Eva.”
Beck shook her hand. A third cup appeared on the table along with a plate of crisp beignets coated with a dusting of powdered sugar. Eva’s grin grew wider. “You remembered! Thank you, Achilles.” The yeasty scent of the freshly fried pastries caused Beck’s mouth to water.
“Fresh from Café du Monde.” Achilles took a sip of his coffee.
Eva picked one up and took a bite, closing her eyes and licking the powdered sugar from her lips.
Beck snatched up a beignet and took a bite, as well. Damn, they were good.
“So you’re curious about me.” Eva’s words stopped Beck
midway through her bite. She need a second to think how to handle her request for some of Eva’s ichor so she just stuffed the entire thing in her mouth and nodded as she chewed.
Achilles spoke first. “Rebecca is a scientist. She thinks you may be the key to something very important she’s working on.”
Eva glanced at him. “This is because of the whole salvation thing, isn’t it?”
He nodded.
“Did you have a maker?” Beck asked quickly.
Eva turned her gaze to Beck. “No. I didn’t. I became a vampire by a rather unconventional means. I wasn’t expected to survive, and yet somehow I did.”
“That’s why I think hidden in your ichor may be the genetic key I’ve been searching for.”
“For what?”
Beck threw a cautious glance at Achilles. Should I tell Eva about the vaccine?
Achilles nodded once in the affirmative.
She leveled her gaze at Eva. “I was turned into a vampire by some unconventional means myself. A vaccine that I was developing to help protect humans from accidentally becoming vampires wasn’t as viable as we’d hoped. I believe it’s because we’re missing whatever the something is that you possess. The key that will give both vampires and humans options to choose how they want to live their lives.”
Eva leaned in closer. “What can I do to help you?”
“I’d like a sample of your ichor for testing, to see what genetic markers may differ from the DNA in our original ichor base.”
Eva stared at Beck, her blue eyes intense. “When I was twenty-one, a palm reader told me my fate was to change the world. I thought that had already happened when I saved the vampire race from extinction. Looks like I wasn’t quite finished yet. I’ll do it. I’ll have a sample waiting for you by this evening at the medical center here in the clan complex.”
Beck grabbed Eva’s hand, it was smooth and warm. “Thank you, Eva. I can’t tell you how valuable this could be to our research. I appreciate it.”
Eva nodded. “We all have a role to play in this world.” She gave a slight shrug. “I guess mine is to help save others.”
Across the table from the women, Achilles stiffened. His sudden shift in manner immediately drew Beck’s attention.
The Vampire Who Loved Me Page 10