Monsters, Book One: The Good, The Bad, The Cursed

by Heather Killough-Walden

  As his mind spun and his heart literally ached like the rest of his hungry body, Angel told him she wanted the Apex case. He should have seen that coming. The Apex was after her; that much was obvious. And when Jake listened to the inner turmoil of her reasoning, his aching chest tightened further. He saw the same memory flashes she did. He heard her anguish. And then he caught her dangerous promise… I would give anything to be superhuman strong!

  The mentally bellowed desperation had brought him up short and had him turning around to study her carefully. Had she meant it? Was she serious? Because… he could arrange that for her.

  All it would take is one bite on his part. And one swallow on hers.

  That thought nearly drove him right over that ledge and would have done so but for the dizziness that swept over Angel then in her rising fear. She was not only afraid of the Apex. She was afraid Jake wouldn’t let her on the job. And then she was afraid that even if she did make it on the job, she would lose. And she was afraid of others dying again.

  That terrified her most of all. And his admiration for her shot up yet again.

  He felt her unsteadiness, and suddenly he shared her need for something a little more stabilizing. So as she’d touched her fevered forehead and tried to gather her wits, he’d approached her with vampire stealth and offered to take her for a drink.

  He happened to know from reading her file – over and over again and in memorized detail – that one of her favorite drinks was the White Russian. Well, this was the perfect time for one. And he really did know a place where they made the drink to perfection. He happened to enjoy the drink too. Vampires were fond of hot alcoholic concoctions because it warmed their blood in two different ways, and for a vampire that was heavenly.

  Besides, he could damn well use a drink right now. Angel was on thin ice with him. Maybe a drink would mellow him enough to keep him from losing his shit.

  He’d pulled on a shirt, much to her unspoken disappointment, grabbed his jacket, and escorted her out of the garage. He tried desperately not to touch her – not yet, anyway – as he led her through the back of the Monsters safe house to the larger, private garage where many of the cars belonging to Monsters members were parked. The Monsters clan was comprised of men who’d all had lives, some of them quite long, before becoming “cursed” enough for Cain to notice them and welcome them into the fold. Cain was selective, and for good reason. They had secrets to hide, not the least of which was his.

  Due to their individual histories, many of them had belongings they didn’t yet wish to part with – houses, land, vehicles, gobs of money. The money was banked or invested. The homes were tended to by hired servants who lived in the households and maintained them on a continuous basis. The land was tended by ranchers, farmers, gardeners, and so forth. And the vehicles were housed in warehouses or garages across the nation.

  This garage here contained seven vehicles in total, aside from the two-dozen motorcycles it was capable of storing. Two of the bikes and one of the cars were his.

  Jake pressed a series of numbers into an electronic pad on one side of the building, allowed it to scan his hand print, and one of the garage doors opened.

  He could still hear Angel’s heart hammering away behind him in the lot where she waited. He turned a little and shot her a glance over his shoulder. He’d meant to reassure her, but the moment his eyes fell on her again, he was lost to the monster in him. The wind was moving through her hair, framing her face as if she were some lost specter on a clifftop. Her eyes were glassy and narrowed against the cold, her cheeks were flushed, her lips parted. She was an advertisement for some designer perfume or shampoo. She was too beautiful.

  He swallowed hard and cleared his throat. “This way.”

  As if the devil were on his heels, he entered the garage and made a bee line for his car. The mint ’64 Pontiac GTO gleamed with liquid black shine under the lights of the garage. He’d taken the tarp off it this morning to rub down the leather – one of the many things he’d done to keep busy and try to get his thoughts straight as he waited to hear from Cain. So the car was ready and waiting as he approached it.

  But Angel’s footsteps were slow behind him. He stopped and faced her. She was moving through the cars and bikes as if in a dream, her breathing shallow, her eyes gleaming as bright as the paint on his car.

  “Wow…” she whispered. “Are… are these all….”

  “They belong to the clan members,” he told her, following her gaze. With some amount of pride, he noted that as she scanned the motorcycles, her gaze paused and settled on one of his. It was his favorite actually, a 1952 Vincent 998cc Black Shadow in the same condition now as it had been when he’d bought it.

  As was fairly standard for Vincent motorcycles, the seat was big enough for two. What he would give to get her on that seat. To have her pressed up against him, her arms wrapped tight around his stomach as he thrust the bike into a higher speed and made her squeeze him harder.

  But he knew how she felt about bikes, and she proved as much when after lingering for a while on the Vincent, her gaze flickered and she swallowed hard. She looked down for a split second as if to compose herself, then turned her attention to the other vehicles in the garage.

  “Most of these bikes are mint condition vintage…” she said. “A Brough Superior, a Vincent HRD, a Crocker Big Tank Twin, an Indian Tomahawk from the sixties, and that ‘52 Vincent Black Shadow....” She shook her head in frank admiration. “It must have cost the owner a fortune. And these cars – just wow. They’re all muscle cars, every one of them, and they’re all mint too.” Her tone was nearly a whisper now as she moved slowly through the garage.

  Jake decided to just watch her and wait. He was having too much fun observing the expressions change on her lovely face. Each emotion was displayed so clearly and matched her inner thoughts so well. She was devoid of duplicity. It was a beautiful thing.

  But then the tone of her thoughts shifted ever so slightly, darkening a touch from pure admiration and awe to both of those emotions tainted by disbelief. But how? she asked herself. How is this even possible? Does one of the Monsters crew own some kind of auction house or something? I mean, I guess no one knows anything about any of them, but… damn. She moved from a ’68 Dodge Charger to a Plymouth Road Runner from the same year, both with exquisite paint jobs. Then came a ’69 Cobra Jet, and finally she stopped on the other side of his GTO and stared down at it.

  Holy damn, her mind whispered. “Jake… is this your car?” she asked, bewildered. Her cute little voice actually trembled. “This ’64 GTO?” She didn’t wait for him to respond. Her eyes moved down the jet black hood to the shaker scoop. “With a shaker hood and… shit, the original red leather interior and… every single upgrade you could possibly get with the package back then?” She blinked several times, and her thoughts told her a number of things overlapping: Wake up from this dream, do you think I’m allowed to touch it, I want to go for a ride, holy shit.

  Jake stifled his laughter behind a big smile and ignored the fact that his gums hadn’t stopped aching and his fangs were still waiting for the slightest green light from him. The windows of his car were down at the moment. Angel leaned in through the window frame on the passenger’s side. He bent to lean in the driver’s side, watching her as she admired his possession.

  “You know… this car was the first of its kind,” she told him. “It was the car that heralded a new age of muscle and wheels. Made when street racing laws were just going into effect, forcing a crack-down on racing. The GTO was the brain child of John DeLorean himself, who was chief engineer at Pontiac at the time.” She laughed softly, shaking her head, her beautiful eyes roving over every inch of the car’s fifty-year-old interior.

  “In ’63, GM faced a sort of crisis,” she said. “Their main market had been the speed-minded youth, and in fact at the same time Lee Iacocca was already working on the Mustang for that reason – but that’s a whole other story. With the new laws facing them, they f
ound themselves suddenly limited.” She leaned her elbows casually on the window, allowing her hands to relax. “So DeLorean basically said, ‘Let’s make a race car and disguise it.’ And they made the GTO.”

  She met his eyes, and a smile curled the corner of her pretty mouth. “This beast dressed up as a gentleman was still technically a violation of engine displacement policy,” she said with a laugh. “And even though DeLorean took the name GTO from the Ferrari 250 GTO, the Pontiac was faster. Its production made all sorts of purists steam above the collar.”

  She straightened slowly to come away from the window, and he followed suit, meeting her eyes again as she placed her hands wide over the top of the car. “They limited initial production to five thousand, figuring it wouldn’t sell because of the changing market and regulations.” She grinned a killer bad-girl grin and said, “But they were wrong.”

  Fuck, Jake thought as his guts tightened and his cock hardened. He’d never seen anything sexier in his damn life than Angel Clemens with her hands on his car, her smile like that of a speed demon from Hell.

  He wanted to take her on this car. On the hood. Right now.

  “So, is it yours?” she asked again, now that she’d stopped filling him in on a history lesson he’d already been well versed in. After all, he’d lived it.

  Jake forced himself to concentrate on the here and now rather than what he swore to himself would happen soon, and decided the best answer would be to just show her. He opened the driver’s side door, and just before he slid his body behind the wheel, he said, “Get in.”

  Chapter Thirty

  All of the servers at the bay-side restaurant were smiling. Angel’s gaze narrowed, and she looked around, feeling something must be up. Normally, there wasn’t such a feeling of energy around a bar like this. Locals didn’t really care for tourists, and since tourists made up the majority of the people at the café, the impatience of the hard-working local to anyone with enough time and money to take a vacation came out in body language no matter how rude it was.

  She’d always hated that. After all, the people working had no idea why or how the people visiting were there. What if they were there after thirty years of saving for the trip? Or for a funeral? Or because they’d been forced to move for work?

  Anyway, that was how it went whether she approved of it or not. So why was everyone here acting so friendly?

  Ah, she thought. She had her answer when she noticed a man in a suit making his way through the doors that led to the kitchens. Another two suits, one man and one woman, followed behind him. Management is here. Everyone’s walking the tight rope.

  That meant two things. One, they would probably get the best service ever. And two, they would probably have to show their ID’s. She was glad she’d had the forethought to stick hers in her pocket before leaving the hotel. Then again, it was just habit. Years of riding taught you to pack light and find space for essentials. One day she would die and they would find her body with her license, lip balm, keys, and a credit card in one pocket, and her cell phone in the other.

  Jake lead her to a booth at the back of the restaurant, nicely tucked against the wall where they would both have a view of the door. She smiled to herself at the thoughtfulness. Every warden wanted a view of the door. It was self-preservation.

  But it reminded her of Gabe, too, and the way he always managed to find just such a table. It awakened doubts in her mind.

  No sooner had they taken their seats than the waitress was at their table. The young brunette was pink-cheeked and bright-eyed, but unlike most of the smiles in the place, hers was genuine. Angel could understand that. Jake had that effect on women.

  Jake ordered for them, and when the waitress heard him ask for two White Russians, she got a glint in her eyes. “Trying to warm up a little, huh?” she asked, moving a smidge closer to Jake’s side of the table.

  He leaned back in his seat, draping a strong arm over the back of the booth, and smiled. “I guess you could say that.”

  Angel felt her teeth clench.

  “Well, I’m sure we can make that happen,” she flirted. “But since you’re ordering alcoholic drinks, I’ll have to get one of the other waitresses over to serve you.” She tried very hard to hide her disappointment in this – and failed. “I’m only twenty.” She said it as if she were proud, almost batting her eyelashes. “But next week’s my birthday. Maybe you should come back then?”

  A few more inches, and the waitress would be sitting in Jake’s lap. Angel’s blood boiled. It was hard and fast and spiked through her unlike anything she’d experienced.

  She blinked, frowning. Jealousy? Seriously? What the hell? she thought. Since when do I get jealous like this? And furiously so, it would seem. This wasn’t like her at all.

  But then she’d never been seated across someone like Jacob Crow before.

  Fuck.

  She fiercely made herself ignore the waitress and turned her attention to one of the screens on the bar wall. There was a football game on. It was some kind of re-run of a game from last season. Angel looked away from that nearly as quickly, feeling irritated now.

  “Not a sports fan?”

  Angel returned her attention to Jake, noticing that the waitress was gone, and Jake was watching her with steady eyes. The server had probably gone to switch out with someone who was legally capable of serving alcohol.

  “On the contrary,” Angel replied easily, her irritation giving her a whole lot of courage. It always had. “I grew up in a small town in the Midwest. The town had a hockey team; we were quite proud of it. About a week before each big game, the coach would make his boys go to the hospital to have blood drawn and stored. Pints of it.”

  Jacob Crow was very still, very attentive. His entire body looked like some gay sculptor’s dream, perfectly relaxed and perfectly predatory. His eyes resembled cut sea glass.

  She went on. “He did this so that if any of them were seriously hurt in the game, they would have their own blood on hand for any necessary transfusions.” She paused for effect. “This came in handy at least once every year, and one year it came in handy twice.”

  She smiled to herself remembering those games. They’d been a part of the early, good years of her life, the years before the car accident that tore her family apart. She shrugged. “To me, hockey is a game for the well behaved boy who lets out all his frustrations where they belong, on the ice.” Or according to Elena, in the bedroom, she thought. But she was in hockey land now, and wouldn’t be distracted.

  In her head, she replayed some of her hockey heroes’ best goals – Mario Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr, Brett Hull, Wayne Gretzky…. “These guys play rough,” she said, unable to help the small smile that still played on her lips. “Pucks hit hard, sticks are unforgiving, and skate blades are sharp. I won’t even go into the fights.” She couldn’t help but shiver at the thought of the strength, speed and finesse involved in the game. She’d always loved it.

  She glanced at the bar screen, where the football game was once again being paused for some sort of extra long break where the players did absolutely nothing and the sportscasters babbled at high volume to fill the empty spaces. She tried not to roll her eyes. “As far as I’m concerned, if you’re not giving blood beforehand, it’s not a sport.”

  She wasn’t really curious to know what Jake thought of her opinion, and she was a little afraid to find out – maybe he was a huge football meat head, in which case he wasn’t who she’d thought he was…. But she was saved from having to find out when their second waitress chose that moment to appear at their table, and this one wasn’t any less interested in Jake than the last.

  Angel fell silent and forced herself not to glare.

  “Hi!” the woman greeted happily. Her eyes slipped from Angel to Jake and stayed there. Of course. “What can I get for you two?” she asked.

  “Two White Russians please,” Angel replied before Jake could. She smiled a friendly smile.

  But when the waitress glanced at her, a
nnoyance flashed in her eyes. “Sure thing,” she said. “I just need to see your ID first.”

  Angel hesitated. The waitress was only asking for Angel’s ID. Not Jake’s.

  So that’s how it’s going to be, she thought. She wondered whether a nice dose of saliva would find its way into her coffee too. In the spirit of trying her best to make sure that didn’t happen, she kept the friendly smile on her face, pulled her license from her inner jacket pocket, and handed it politely to the waitress.

  The thing was, she didn’t usually mind flashing it. Ten years ago, it might have pissed her off to have to show her license every time she wanted a drink, but in all honesty when she had to do it now, it was a downright blessing. She knew she looked younger than she was. A hatred of the sun was partially to blame. And good genes were the other reason. But any reminder that she wasn’t yet wrinkling on the vine was a good thing.

  This, however, was different.

  The waitress glanced at the license in her hand, glanced at Angel, glanced down at the license, glanced back at Angel, and very rapidly, Angel’s patience boiled away. Finally, the waitress turned the card over, did a drawn-out mental calculation that Angel could almost see, and at last nodded, breathing out a sigh as she placed it down on the table. “Okay then!” she said through her great big smile, straightening up to jot something down on her waitress pad.

  She focused her smile on Jake, where it softened into sincerity. “I’ll get your drinks right out to you.” Then she spun on her heel and walked away, putting a decent amount of swing into her hips as she went.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “You’re licensed to ride.”

  Angel blinked and faced her companion. Surprisingly, he wasn’t watching the waitress’s pendulum of an ass. His eyes were on her license instead, where it still waited between them on the table. He leaned in and nodded at it, raising a curious brow. Obviously he’d seen the “M” along with the “C” under the registered vehicle class.