They wore matching long black dusters, which was most likely intended to make them look menacing, but ended up looking more comical. Like they were kids cosplaying at being bad and dangerous, but it was only make believe.
“Should we turn around?” Bobby asked.
“No. If we run, they’ll chase,” Olivia replied coolly.
We moved to the side, giving them plenty of room to pass us on the sidewalk, but Cyrus still shoulder-checked me as I passed. Olivia and I stopped immediately, whirling back around to face the vampires, should they choose to pounce.
“Watch out!” the shorter vampire barked.
Cyrus turned back to face us, an odd sickly smile playing across his face. “Look at you. Beating up poor defenseless vampires like that. I ought to call the Agency on you.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I widened my stance, with my fists clenching reflexively at my sides.
“We don’t mean any trouble,” Olivia demurred, with an exaggerated drunk quality to her voice. “We’re just out for a stroll.”
While I prepared for a fight, she was attempting to disarm them. She’d gotten the upper hand many times by being underestimated – by playing dumb, flirty, weak, drunk. In other situations, I know that worked wonderfully, but I wasn’t so sure about this one.
Cyrus already knew how dangerous we were, and he was still picking a fight.
“Cut the crap,” he snapped. “Me and my friend Omar know exactly what you’re up to.” He motioned back toward his comrade, who sneered at us.
“I don’t know what you’ve heard,” Olivia continued reasonably. “But we’re on vacation. We’re only visiting old friends and seeing the sights.”
“We don’t give a damn what you do in your free time,” Omar snarled, his words thick with a Slavic accent. “But we know who you are and who you work for. And the House of Basarab won’t stand for it anymore.”
Olivia laughed in surprise. “The House of Basarab? They’re back at it again?”
Her response only made Cyrus angry, and he glowered down at her as he said, “You laugh now, but none of those that side with the Agency will be laughing soon.”
“They can’t be reasoned with, so there’s no point to any of this.” She pushed up the long, sheer sleeves of her dress. “Let’s get it over with then.”
Since Olivia was closest to Omar, she lunged at him first. Cyrus charged at me, and I managed to land one punch – my fist solidly connecting with his jaw. But then, when I was about to throw another, he was gone.
Then suddenly, he was behind me, kicking my legs out from under me. I caught myself and bounced back up, but I had come to the frustrating realization that he was one of the rare vampires that was capable of incredible speed.
I’d once fought another vampire – a lycan, actually – like him, one who moved so quickly, it seemed like he could teleport from space to space. But now I felt less prepared, especially since Bobby still held all my emergency weaponry in his jacket.
While Oliva took care of Omar – who for his part, seemed to be keeping her on his toes – I dodged Cyrus’s attacks when I could, and tried to predict his movements, so I was able to get in another hit or two, but not anything that would keep him down.
“Bobby, stake!” I shouted.
Bobby had tossed the stake, and it soared through the air toward me. In a flash, Cyrus was on it, snatching it from the air, and landing on top of me and slamming me down on the hard concrete. I lay on my back as he held the stake up above me, preparing to strike.
“Never mess with those who follow Basarab,” he said, exposing his fangs at me.
Before he could do anymore, I heard a stake slide through him – the wet sound of metal tearing through meat. His eyes widened, as the capillaries broke around his iris, filling the whites with blood.
He collapsed forward, so I pushed Cyrus’s body off so it fell to the ground. Bobby stood before me, looking rather proud of himself.
“I know you’re usually the one that stakes them, but I thought I should take it upon myself this time so that, you know, you didn’t die,” he said.
What he’d done didn’t seem that impressive, but it took plenty of training and skill to know exactly where to strike a vampire so the stake slid between the ribs. Bobby would never be strong enough to break one of our bones, so he had to find the perfect gap to drive it through.
“You did well,” I told him as I got to my feet.
From behind us, I heard Olivia let out an irritated growl, and I turned around just in time to see her grabbing Omar by the head. She turned it sharply, causing a loud cracking sound, and then she pulled upward, ripping off his head.
Blood splattered out from his neck, all over her expensive black dress, and she let out another frustrated groan. When Omar’s headless corpse fell to the ground, she kicked it to the side, so she wouldn’t get more blood on her shoes.
“This is exactly why I quit hunting in the first place.” Absently, she tossed Omar’s head in the river. “I ruined so many nice outfits.”
“Wait, we’re just tossing bodies in the river?” Bobby asked.
Olivia picked up Omar’s body and threw it in after his head. “It’s easier than dealing with the police. And since this wasn’t an Agency sanctioned killing, it’s best if we just clean it up ourselves.”
He regarded the empty streets around us, but fortunately, it was late enough and we were far enough away from the clubs that it was deserted around here, with no pesky eye witnesses to deal with.
I pulled the stake from Cyrus’s chest and wiped the blood from it off on his clothes. I followed Olivia’s lead and threw the vampire body in the river, to float away with his fellow Basarab follower.
“What is the House of Basarab?” I asked Olivia as I handed the stakes back to Bobby, for him to safely stowaway.
“It’s this group of vampires who believe that we’re meant to inherit the earth and humans should be treated like cattle.” She explained it like it was the stupidest thing she ever heard. “It rises up and dies down through the centuries, but for some reason, it won’t stay dead.”
“Well, it is a vampire cult, so that makes sense,” Bobby pointed out.
Olivia laughed. “Touché.”
“What does the Basarab mean?” I asked.
“You’ve heard of Dracula?” she asked, then went on without waiting for a response. “Or Dracul, as his followers call him. He was a member of the House of Basarab, this old dynasty back in Romania. He wasn’t the first vampire, not by a long shot, nor was he the first to suggest that we all overthrow the humans. But he was one of the most successful and really helped popularize the trend.”
“Oh, so like Skrillex with dubstep,” Bobby offered up as analogy.
Olivia gave him an irritated look. “I don’t know what any of that is, and I don’t care.”
With that, she turned and started walking back toward the car, so Bobby and I followed suit.
“Did you tell anyone that we’re hunters?” I asked her, while we were still out of earshot of the club.
Olivia rolled her eyes dramatically. “Come on, Alice. I’ve been at this for a lot longer than you. I know better than that. Besides, I’m retired.”
“Cate knew that you and I were hunters,” I said, causing her expression to falter slightly, but she kept walking. “She said that’s why she was so freaked out when you namedropped me before. And now these two Basarab jerks knew, too.”
Oliva pursed her lips and furrowed her brow. “The Agency is very discreet and private, and any hunter worth their salt doesn’t advertise what they do.”
“Well, it looks like your secret identity isn’t so secret anymore,” Bobby commented.
“What would Batman do if his secret got out?” I asked.
Bobby just scoffed at me. “He doesn’t let it get out. He’s Batman.”
THERE WAS NO NEED TO linger at Rebekah’s spooky mansion with Rebekah and her creepy servants, so Bobby and I parted ways wit
h Olivia in the driveway. She promised to keep in touch if she heard anything, then hurried inside to see if one of Rebekah’s maids could get the blood out of her dress.
The sun would be up soon, and I was exhausted, so Bobby drove my Mercedes back to Amsterdam. I slouched down low in the passenger seat, staring at the scenery until my lids felt too heavy and sleep finally overtook me.
After the long days I’d had lately, I’d been hoping for a nice, restful nap. But of course, nothing in my life could be that easy.
This time, I felt the sunlight first, warming my skin, and I opened my eyes with the intention of asking Bobby to turn the AC up. But then I saw that I wasn’t in the car. I was back in the field of blue flowers, and I should’ve known, because I already smelled them.
“What now?” I groaned and sat up in the field of flowers.
“Alice,” she called to me, and I heard her before I saw her.
It was only a few moments before she appeared, floating down the hill from me. She stayed farther back than she usually did. In most of the dreams, I felt like I could reach out and touch her, but this time, I could barely even see her face.
Everything about her seemed blurrier and weaker than normal – everything except her voice, which still seemed to permeate the dream.
“Danger is on its way,” she said, her ethereal voice lilting. “You must be prepared.”
“Prepared for what?” I asked, and I felt a strange tickle on my hand as vines crept over them. It was so early in the dream, but it was already happening. The flowers were overtaking me.
“Time is running out.”
“Then you need to tell me what I have to do!” I shouted at her as I fought against the flowers. “If time is important, then you need to quit wasting my time.”
“I don’t have all the answers, Alice,” she said mournfully. “You have to find them yourself. And you must move quickly if you want to break free.”
I couldn’t see her anymore because the flowers were pulling me down. At first they just pinned me to the ground, but now they were pressing me into the earth. The dirt felt cold and heavy as it consumed me. I tried to claw and scream, but it was futile.
“Alice?” Bobby asked, shaking me, and I responded by lashing out and hitting him in the arm. “Ouch! Alice!”
“Shit, sorry.” I blinked and sat up straighter, trying to make sense of what was happening. “Are you okay? Sorry. I was having a bad dream.”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine. I think.” He rubbed his shoulder and looked at me warily. “Are you okay? You look… shaken up.”
I forced a smile. “I’m fine. Everything’s fine. Why’d you wake me up?”
“Because we’re home.”
I looked around and realized that we were in the parking garage below our apartment complex, sandwiched between Milo’s Lexus hybrid and Jack’s DeLorean.
“Holy shit. How long was I asleep? I feel like I just closed my eyes for a few seconds.”
“That’s usually how sleep works,” Bobby said, stilling giving me an odd look. “You slept the whole trip. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I repeated, but I don’t think either Bobby or I were convinced. “Let’s just get inside.”
That was easier than explaining that I really didn’t feel like I’d slept at all. It felt more like some kind of crazy teleportation, and the scent of the dirt still filled my nose and mouth. I could still feel it under my fingernails as I tried to claw to the surface. But when I looked, there wasn’t any sign of it.
Which made sense, since it was only a dream. An intense realistic terrifying dream.
“Are you gonna be okay for your honeymoon?” I asked Bobby, hurrying to discuss anything normal so I wouldn’t have to think of the dream anymore.
He nodded. “Yeah. We’re flying out, because Milo didn’t want to waste time on the road, so I’ll be able to sleep.”
“Good.” I nodded, then took a deep breath. “Everything’s good.”
When we made it up the apartment, it was quiet and the shades were drawn, so no one had gotten up yet for the day, but it was still early afternoon. I walked quietly into my bedroom, where Jack slept with his back to me.
Matilda lay at the end of the bed, and her tail thumped a few times at the sight of me. I kicked off my shoes and peeled of my pants before scratching her head, then I climbed into bed. Jack was shirtless underneath the sheets, and I wrapped my arm around his waist, pulling myself close to him and resting my head against his back, so I could listen closely to the slow, steady beat of his heart.
“Hey, you’re back,” he murmured, still half-asleep. “How did it go?”
“I’ll tell you more about it later.”
He rolled over so he faced me and brushed the hair back from eyes. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah,” I lied.
His blue eyes studied my face, and I couldn’t tell if he believed me or not, but maybe he just saw that I needed some time to destress before I talked about anything.
“I missed you,” he said finally.
“I missed you, too.” I leaned in, kissing him gently and sweetly on the lips, then he pulled me into his arms and let me rest with my head on his chest.
As I closed my eyes, drifting off to sleep again, hoping for a real sleep this time, I felt something gnawing at me from the trip in Prague. Beyond Cate’s strange reaction to me, or the fact that my status as a vampire hunter was now apparently relatively public, or that the House of Basarab was resurging (whatever that meant).
There was something deeper that was bothering me, something less deadly but more personal, making it far more terrifying. It was something that Cate had said that I couldn’t shake, as I lay with the man that I loved more than anything on this earth.
She’d been convinced that Elise hadn’t been meant for Peter. If Elise and Peter weren’t bonded, what did that mean for me? Was I really meant for Jack? Or maybe I wasn’t meant for any of them at all, the way Ezra once suggested. That maybe because I was a dhampyr I reacted strongly to them, but I didn’t have a soulmate in the bunch.
Maybe I didn’t even have a soulmate at all.
“SO?” JACK ASKED, LOOKING AT me expectantly. “Do you want to talk about it now?”
After I’d gotten back, I’d slept uneventfully late into the evening, and when I woke up, Jack was gone at work, and Milo and Bobby had already left for their honeymoon. I used the alone time to get on my laptop and search for anything I could find about either Cate Brennan or blood bonding, but both searches had turned up nothing fruitful.
When I heard Jack at the front door, I’d closed at all the open tabs I’d been perusing and started a more innocent search about the House of Basarab.
Jack played with the dog before kissing me on my temple, then he sat down beside me, propping his feet up on an empty chair across from him. He had the strangest look in his soft blue eyes – faraway and strained, which wasn’t that strange, I supposed, except it did look so out of place on his normally smiling face.
“We had a run in with vampires from this weird cult,” I said, deciding to explain the part of it I was comfortable talking about first.
By the time I’d finished the story, his expression had changed to restrained concern – a look I’d gotten used to seeing since I’d been working full time as a hunter. He knew I could take care of myself, but he was never happy about me going out to face vampires that might try to kill me.
“But you were all okay?” he asked, trying not sound as worried as he so obviously felt.
“Yeah. We’re all fine.”
“And that’s what you didn’t want to talk about this morning?”
“Yep.”
He looked away from me and scratched the back of his neck. “Hmmm.”
“Are you okay?” I closed my laptop and scooted my chair closer to him, so I could take his hand in mine.
“Yeah,” he said, but he didn’t sound like it, and his eyebrows were pinched together. “I just ha
d a weird day.”
“How so?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I really don’t know how to explain it. We had a busy day, with lots of customers, so that was good. I just kept getting these odd vibes all day, like people were staring at me more than normal.”
“People always stare at you,” I reminded him.
When we’d first started hanging out, when I had still been mortal, I had been so annoyed with how often other humans would openly check him out and flirt with him. He was very foxy, even by vampire standards, and that combined with the supernatural attractiveness had always gotten him a lot of attention.
“I know. But it wasn’t just humans.”
I straightened up in surprise, but I didn’t let go of his hand. “What do you mean?”
He licked his lips, like he was stalling for time, before finally saying, “A vampire came into the shop.”
“And?”
“And she just kept asking me questions and kinda followed me around. The questions were all benign – like about this title or that one, what do I think of the New 52, what do I recommend, just basic comic questions.”
“That all sounds normal,” I said cautiously. “So what was the strange part?”
“The way she looked at me. Like she was awestruck.” He stared off, thinking of the right words. “Like when people say something is ‘amazing,’ they usually just mean cool or neat or whatever. But the way she looked, it was textbook definition of ‘amazed.’ She was slack-jawed stunned and her eyes were so wide.”
“Did you catch her name?” I asked.
“Nah. I honestly tried not to make conversation with her. Eventually, I just pretended I had something important to do in the back office, and I hid out there until Jeroen came to get me and let me know that she’d gone.”
“You’re sure she was a vampire?” I asked.
Jack looked at me like I was being ridiculous. “Come on, Alice. I think I know a vampire when I see one.”
“Sorry. Of course you do.” I smiled apologetically. “What did she look like?”
“She had blond hair, blue eyes, fair skin. She must’ve been about forty when she turned, but I have no idea how long ago that was,” he explained. “But the only thing really remarkable about her was her accent.”
Swear (My Blood Approves #5) Page 10