Not going to happen, sister, Laurent thought.
The problem was, how to figure out a way to stop her without any violence being committed upon her person. That was the one problem with being part of a Vampire Clan, you had to be good. All the time.
When she reached the entrance of a coffee shop he was very familiar with he decided to draw back and wait outside. Though he cursed the woman for what she was doing, Laurent was certain he'd find out what she was up to soon enough.
Perhaps I should have worn a red rose in my teeth, Eden Wolf thought as she sipped a latte and wondered how she and the potential client she was waiting for would recognize each other. She would have preferred a formal meeting in the agency's office, but the woman had insisted they meet here.
Eden looked around and smiled. She sat at a small circular metal table set on a black and white tiled floor. The walls were done in a pattern of pale pink stripes. The tall counter was gray marble with a black top. Busy baristas worked the controls of large, complex and beautifully shiny copper coffee machines. She thought the place looked more like an ice cream parlor than a coffee house, but the wonderful aromas of coffee drinks and the occasional spicy scent of chai tea bore witness to the establishment's true purpose of providing caffeinated beverages.
She had fond memories of the place. This was where she and Laurent had met. Well, they'd met in an alley, with her aiming a crossbow at him and thinking he was named Sid, but this was where they'd held their first conversation. He had not disabused her of any of her mistaken suppositions that evening. About the only truthful thing she'd found out from him was that they were both fans of the X-Men. To this day they sometimes referred to each other as Rogue and Gambit.
Her smile turned dreamy and affectionate. Laurent was a rascal, a rogue, a big, blond, gorgeous, sexy, wicked fellow. He was a vampire. And she had been a vampire hunter.
"And I decided to keep him anyway," she murmured very softly before taking another sip of coffee. It was warm and sweet and reminded her of the rush of kissing her very own Prime.
Eden sat with her back to the wall and watched the door. She did her best to ignore the 80s music playing on the sound system. She had nothing against the music, per se, she simply preferred to choose her own soundtrack to her life. It was a busy afternoon, with lots of people coming in and going out, most with earbuds trailing down to various electronic devices, because everyone else preferred their own soundtracks as well.
We all live in our own little world, Eden thought. Not necessarily a good thing. She wondered if her world was weirder than anyone else's. She'd grown up being taught not to ask.
Most customers headed directly to the counter to order. When a woman came in and stood looking intently around the room, her gaze lingering on each occupied seat, Eden decided this must be her potential client. She lifted her hand as their gazes met. The woman began to weave through the crowded tables, making her way toward Eden. Eden studied her. The woman was of medium height and slender build, perhaps in her mid-thirties. She had short dark hair, with a dyed streak of blue and green on either side of her face. Sharp cheekbones, large eyes and a pointed chin gave the woman a gamin look. The skinny jeans, boat=necked white shirt and red and black patterned scarf around the woman's neck added to the sophisticated Audrey Hepburn vibe.
All this edgy glamor made Eden feel downright frumpy, with her big boobs and curvy hips and dark curly hair that wouldn't do anything but - curl. Laurent said her aquiline nose gave her the beauty of a Greek goddess. She told him he was the world's best bullshitter, and that she loved him for it.
Eden politely stood as the woman reached the table. "Rachelle Burke?" She offered her hand for a shake.
Instead, Rachelle Burke placed a small tablet computer in Eden's hand. "Have a look at this, Mrs. Wolf." Burke turned and made her way through the crowd.
At least she went toward the service counter instead of making a dramatic exit out the door.
Eden did not like the contemptuous way Burke emphasized Mrs. and Wolf.
She sat and swiped a fingertip across the tablet screen to wake it up.
The first thing she saw when the machine awoke was a picture of Laurent.
As she expected.
Eden sipped her latte while she worked her way through a slideshow featuring the Prime she loved. Despite his choice of hairstyle in some of the photos being distinctly dubious.
He was accompanied by a woman in each of the photos, a different one in each picture. Most of the photos looked to be repros of grainy newspaper pictures, and the fashions, hair and makeup of the people in the pictures spanned the popular images of decades.
"He got around," Eden said softly.
"You sound amused," Burke said as she came back to the table. She put a tall glass containing a pink smoothie down and stood over Eden. "That is his doing."
Eden gestured toward the spindly black metal chair across from her. "Stop looming. Sit."
Burke shook her head and took the chair. The sympathetic but superior look she gave Eden when she was sitting across from her was annoying.
Eden kept her expression and tone professional. "I thought this meeting was to discuss your interest in hiring the Bleythin Agency. I disapprove of someone wasting my time." She pushed the tablet across the table to Burke. "Especially under false pretenses."
"I didn't think you would see me, or my evidence, if I told you I am an investigative journalist researching what even I believe is an impossible, but true, story involving the person in those photographs."
"My husband," Eden said. "And his father and grandfather," she lied easily to the journalist. "They are, were in grandpa's case, notorious womanizers. And there is a strong family resemblance."
"I know you don't want to believe that all those photos are of the same man. That man, who has a great deal of mental force, has brainwashed you to believe any thing he tells you."
Eden had never believed everything Laurent told her even when he'd let her think he was a Clan Prime named Sid sent to help her hunt evil Tribe Manticore vampires. She didn't even blame him for lying, because he hadn't. He simply hadn't bothered to correct her assumptions about who and what he was. It turned out Sid Wolf was a female vampire named Sidonie and Laurent was a Manticore, at least on his sire's side. If she'd asked for an ID back in that alley one of them would be dead now, and they wouldn't have their darling little Toni, now would they?
Burke leaned in across the little table. "I know how this sounds, but please give me a chance to explain." She tapped her tablet screen again, bringing up a photo of Laurent. His arm was around someone who looked a lot like Mae West. "This picture is from a newspaper gossip column printed in 1937. The man shown is your husband, not any of his relatives. I have been able to trace the person now calling himself Laurent Wolf not only through old photographs, but through facial recognition software, DNA and fingerprint evidence and other modern research tools. I have traced this man through more than ninety years of history."
Eden tried to show an expression of utter disbelief while thinking, we have people who charge us lots of money to erase every trace of our - of vampires and their culture's - existence. How the hell did the woman get this stuff? Okay, vampire hunters knew a lot about the Primes history, maybe more than most Primes. But this woman was a civilian. She had no business - or right - to have this information.
Eden supposed what Burke had discovered was ecause Laurent had spent most of his long life as a rogue Tribe Prime. It was the Clan and Family vampires who actively worked to hide their existence from mortals. Tribe vampires just hid.
Except for one tall, blond, gorgeous, charming, somewhat reckless Prime who'd run away from the dark protection offered by his nasty Tribe relatives.
Laurent had never liked being a bad guy. Though he'd never admit it.
Eden folded her hands together on the tabletop. "What do you want from me, Ms. Burke? Even if the men in the pictures are the same person, which they aren't, I don't think there'
s a law against longevity."
"I think this man is dangerous." Burke leaned in close again, and whispered. "I believe he may even be a vampire."
Burke wasn't wrong about either.
"Don't be ridiculous," Eden said.
"If he is what I believe, he needs to be hunted, exposed, possibly even destroyed. I need your help. For your own safety you must run away from Laurent Wolf. Let me help you."
Oh, for crying out loud!
The journalist seemed to think she was the first mortal who'd tumbled to the existence of the immortal world, and that she was the first vampire hunter. Eden saw no reason to disappoint Burke by telling her the truth. History lessons about secret societies led to their not being secret anymore.
"If you wish to acquire my expertise for tracking a missing person, I'm at your service, Ms. Burke." Eden stood. "Other than that we haven't got anything to talk about."
Seeing as this was a perfectly good exit line, Eden left the coffee shop.
Laurent was outside the door when Eden came out. He smiled warmly at the sight of her. The look she turned on him was both annoyed and amused. Mostly annoyed. He put his hands on her shoulders. Her dark eyes snapped angrily to meet his. It sent a thrill through him. How he loved her when she was angry! And every other emotion.
"Mae West?" she asked.
"Wonderful woman," he answered. "Brilliant. Funny."
"You got your picture taken with her."
"Careless of me. I know. I'm sorry - now."
"You never thought it would come back to bite your ass."
"How was I to know technology was going to change so much? So fast?"
Eden twined her arm with his. "Let's get away from here. She's probably standing by the window filming us on her smartphone."
"Maybe we should give her something sexy to post on YouTube," he suggested. He pulled her closer, pressing her hip and waist against his.
She chuckled. "No humping in the street," she said. She raised an eyebrow. "We can have fun at home."
"If we arrange for a date night and babysitters," he said.
"It's the fate you accepted, Clan boy."
"Wouldn't have it any other way," he agreed. He gave himself a moment to appreciate the warmth of her body, her scent. He was hungry for her all the time. "Though I do miss not being able to kill people who get in my way anymore."
Eden glanced back toward the coffee shop as they moved along the busy sidewalk. "Yeah, that is a shame. Let's get back to the office and work on solving this current little problem without fatalities."
He sighed. "If I have to..."
Head down, Ariadne's thumbs sped over her smartphone keyboard.
"What are you doing, child?" Great grandmother asked from the head of the dining room table.
It was a very long, ornate table in a very large, formal room decorated in a combination of Moroccan and Spanish styles, the colors mostly blue and yellow and cream. A huge crystal vase of red roses sat on the center of the table, and scented the room.
Great grandmother did not use daylight drugs, so she was not normally up during daylight hours. It had been a surprise to find her seated at the table eating a large, very rare steak when Ariadne and Cheetah brought their bowls of breakfast cereal into the room. Upon rising, they'd agreed that they'd imagined feeling ghostly activity after coming home from the graveyard the night before, and hurried to get ready for school. Only to be summoned to run into someone far scarier than a ghost in the dining room.
The room's heavy curtains were drawn against the bright morning sunlight. Nor were there any lamps on. It was a way of reminding them that they were not mortals and didn't need mortal conveniences. Use your true senses, she liked to say. Don't get lazy. Laziness will lead to suspicion and discovery, which will get you killed. Great grandma was full of all kinds of cheerful advice like that.
They'd greeted her properly, and kissed the huge blood ruby ring when she'd held out her hand. She was their Clan Matri as well as their great grandmother, and deserved the formal greeting if she wanted it. Then she'd told them to eat before their cereal got soggy. Of course they'd had to have a conversation with her between bites and the cereal got soggy anyway.
She'd said that since she hadn't seen anything of them on her schedule for the last few days, she'd decided to spend some time with them on theirs. By spending time she meant grill the hell out of them about what they were up to, of course. Great grandmother didn't allow monosyllabic answers so it had taken a bit of work to avoid mentioning the visit to the graveyard, and the ghost.
Once great grandmother decided she'd learned enough, silence fell. Eventually, Cheetah and Ariadne relaxed enough to almost forget the Matri was there. They even took out their smartphones to check social media, as was their usual post-breakfast habit. Great grandmother's sharp question made Ariadne jump in surprise.
"Texting," Ariadne answered great grandmother's question. She showed the smartphone she'd held beneath the edge of the table. "Answering a text, actually. From Mom."
She instantly regretted adding this bit of truth, but telling the truth was what you did when speaking to your Matri. Their mother, her whereabouts and parenting style were a bit of a sore spot where the elder females of Clan Wolf were concerned. It was bad enough that cousin Sid had become a member of the Dark Angels. She'd at least gotten permission from the Matri to be a female taking on the duties of a Prime. Mom had simply joined Corbett Security without asking anyone's permission to wander the world on her own, without a single Prime bodyguard protecting her precious female person. She claimed that having given three kids to the Clan, two of them female, she now had the right to do what she wanted with her life. There was nothing dangerous in Mom's job. All she did was collect data and objects the Corbetts identified as possible clues to the supernatural world.
"Your mother is a telepath," great grandmother said, voice dripping disapproval. "Why would she send you a message on a telephone?"
Cheetah tapped a finger to her forehead. "She talks to us plenty."
"I asked your sister a question," great grandmother said.
Mom's mental communications usually came in the form of gentle telepathic caresses letting them know she loved and missed them, along with reminders to stay safe, and be careful out in the mortal world.
"Mom told me she's bringing home a cat," Ariadne said.
"Then she will be home soon?"
"I guess."
Cheetah jumped to her feet. "It's getting late. We have to go." She picked up hers, and tossed Ariadne her backpack. "Move it."
Ariadne pushed her chair back and gave great grandmother a faint smile over the top of the pack. She rushed out after her twin.
Lady Juanita looked after them, her faint smile mirroring her great granddaughter's. There had been something distinctly odd about the twins' auras, and their psychic connection to each other. She took the time to finish her rare steak before sending a thought to one of her Clan Primes.
The girl's are up to something, Laurent. Find it and fix it.
A hand passed in front of his face. "Are you listening to me?" Eden asked.
Laurent winced and rubbed his temples. "An incoming message." He focused on Eden again. They were sitting side by side. He'd pulled a chair up beside hers at her desk so they could both look at her large, double computer screens. Eden was quite the computer expert and kept up with all the latest tech toys. It had taken her all of ten minutes to pull up everything there was to know about Rachelle Burke.
Unfortunately the woman was a very respected and respectable reporter and blogger. This made it harder to make her out to be a conspiracy theory nutjob hysteric. Laurent was disappointed by this, but Eden felt lying about people, even for the good cause of saving her husband from being exposed as a vampire, was not a nice or fair way to handle the situation.
At least they'd discovered that Burke hadn't yet posted anything online about Laurent.
"She wants to interview me," he told Eden. "Get my side
of the story." He ran a hand down Eden's arm. "And save you from my evil influence, of course."
Eden snorted cynically at this evidence of altruism. "So I can help her expose your secrets."
"Enlightened self interest on her part," Laurent said. "Normally I'm okay with that."
"I am not okay with any of this." Eden's fingers flew over the computer keyboard. More open windows stacked up on the screens. "Not a word on real vampires."
Laurent read every word that flashed by. He knew how he did it, but was very impressed with Eden's ability to speed read. Mortal or not, his girl was good.
"The Corbetts are doing their job," he said.
"You should give them a call," Eden told him.
"Too late for that," he said. He held up a hand at her stern glance. "You know I don't like dealing with official sources."
"Lady Juanita will insist."
"Let's keep her out of it, too," he said. Loyal as he now was to Clan Wolf, Laurent hated owing Clan vamps anything. It was a knee-jerk holdover from his days as a renegade Tribe Prime. He'd been raised with hate and contempt for Clan and Family vampires. He knew better now, but didn't think the prejudice would ever completely go away. "Besides, even if the Corbetts can deal with what Burke has on me, there's no getting rid of what she knows." He tapped his forehead. "The woman is immune to telepathy."
Eden put a hand over his and squeezed, hard. "You've already tried mind wiping her." Not a question, and she was not at all pleased with him.
"Was I supposed to consult you first?" he asked.
"When getting into some other woman's head? Yeah, I think you might have discussed it with me first."
"I wasn't interested in getting personal with her."
"Unlike Mae West?" Eden snapped back. "And all the others."
At least she looked as surprised by her jealous words as he was.
He turned her chair so they were face to face, and kissed her patrician nose. "I love it when you're jealous."
Children of the Night, You're Grounded: Vampire Primes Short Story Page 2