Passion Bites: Biting Love, Book 9

by Mary Hughes

  Between my sister, the Meiers Corners Blood Center, a lab at the University of Iowa sponsored by some rich-as-sin mucky-muck in Coralville and little ol’ me, we formulated an antidote, another enzyme that blocked the blocker.

  It hit me. Rich, helpful mucky-muck… Crap, our benefactor was Luke’s boss.

  I’d figured out from Ric’s episode that not much was known about vampire physiology. Which explained why Elena was willing to let me, an outsider, examine her son.

  Nixie waited for me at her door and waved me inside. The living room was lined by several bookshelves, many crammed with books bearing Latin titles etched in gold. One held a guitar case with a couple big amplifiers on the shelf below.

  Elena’s son waited on the couch. Nixie nodded at the boy, then went to sit at a coffee table in the corner, where Elena and Twyla were trying to stay out of the way, but I could tell by their anxious glances it was hard.

  I sat down next to the boy. Serious brown eyes turned up to me, amazingly calm.

  “Hi, Rorik. I’m Dr. Alexis. Your mom asked me to take a look at you. I’ll tell you everything I’m doing before I do it—and I have a sucker for you when we’re all done. Any questions?”

  “Do you have grape?”

  I smiled. “Do I?” I rooted around in a pocket of my medical bag. “I have one, two…three grape suckers.”

  “Cool.”

  “Okay, you sit tight while I talk to your mom.”

  All eyes were glued to me as I slid into the last empty chair at the corner table. “Before I start, tell me your impressions. How is he?”

  “Good.” Elena’s normally direct, cop-laser gaze twitched away. “Better than good.” Her faint frown told a different story. She was actually desperately worried about her son. “He’s outstripped every growth indicator the pediatrician’s thrown at us.”

  I checked the doctor’s report on my phone and nodded. “Height and weight.”

  “And talking, walking, reading, everything. He’s…precocious.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  As I rose and returned to the couch, I scrolled through the boy’s complete lab results. Most parents exaggerated their progeny’s accomplishments. If anything, she’d understated Rorik’s. The boy was as fast and strong as an Olympic athlete, and as healthy as a…well, horses were actually quite fragile. But pretty damned healthy.

  Rorik was still sitting on the couch, but he’d slid closer to my bag and was peering in. “What’s that?” He pointed.

  “My stethoscope.” I’d deliberately left it on top as the least-scary instrument. “I’m going to use it to listen to your heart. Would you like to try first?” I took it out and offered it to him.

  He nodded until his black curls bounced. I smiled and put the earpieces in his ears.

  While I worked, the women chatted in low voices. I got the impression it wasn’t so much to communicate as Nixie and Twyla trying to distract their worried friend.

  “So,” Twyla said. “Luke Steel is visiting here.”

  My ears pricked.

  “Why?” Elena said.

  “He’s riding herd on his nieces,” Nixie said. “Five-year-old sleepover.”

  “Do you do musician things while he’s here? Jam or something? He’s a musician, right?”

  Nixie snorted. “Depends who you ask. He’s a violist, and the only good use for a viola—”

  “Nope.” Elena punctuated the word like pellet gun, noooh-ppp. “No music jokes.”

  “Not even, ‘What’s an oboe good for?’”

  “‘Lighting a bassoon’,” Elena replied promptly. “You already told that one. What the hell’s a bassoon anyway? Sounds like baboon.”

  “Think bazooka with a reed.”

  “Oh. See, bazooka, I get.”

  I refocused on my patient. “Okay, Rorik, I’m going take this swab and swish it along the inside of your mouth.”

  “For DNA evidence?” the boy asked around the swab. He certainly was a detective’s child.

  “Not in this case.” At his crestfallen look I amended, “But it is for a tissue sample. I even brought a microscope, like CSI.” I swiped the swab onto a slide, covered it, then took a pouch from my bag, one of the extra things I’d brought. I set the portable microscope in its stand, staged the slide, flicked the scope on and adjusted the focus. “Well, well.”

  “Can I see?”

  “Sure.” I moved aside.

  He peered into the eyepiece. “It looks like lace.”

  “It does indeed.”

  I gestured to the women at the table. “I’m ready.”

  Elena exchanged a telling glance with Nixie and Twyla.

  Twyla nodded and rose, holding out a hand to the boy. “Why don’t you come with me, sweetie? You can play with Tyge and the girls while your mommy has a big-people talk with the doctor.”

  He glanced at her hand, then at me.

  “Oh, your grape suckers. You were very brave. You’ve earned them.” I tossed him all three.

  The boy swiped them out of the air one-handed, without even appearing to try very hard. “Can I have two more? Cherry, please.”

  I smiled as I dug up that flavor. I knew they’d be for Sarah Jane and her sister.

  Twyla left with Rorik. As I came to sit at the table, Elena followed me with anxious eyes, her hands tightly clasped.

  “Don’t worry.” I waited a few beats, until even an extraordinary boy would be out of hearing range. “He’s a perfectly normal human.”

  The sigh she released was audible.

  “Heart normal, blood work within parameters for a healthy child. More importantly, completely normal bone marrow. He’s producing red blood cells.”

  That was one precious secret my sister gave up. She said Ric’s “kind”, when there was enough of a cadaver left to dissect, had hollow bones.

  Which would explain their need to drink blood. No bone marrow, no red blood cell factory. No red blood cells, no oxygen trucks on the freeway from the lungs to the body.

  They drank blood for their veins, not their stomachs.

  “That’s wonderful news.” Elena smiled.

  “Yes.” Hopefully that was enough cushion for the bad news. “There was one…anomaly.”

  Sucked-in air. “What?”

  “You know I worked on my brother-in-law’s toxin?”

  She nodded.

  So here was the rub. How to explain this gently without revealing I knew about vampires? Because I really didn’t want Nixie or Elena’s husband charging down here and erasing me.

  But Elena the Mom needed to know. I cleared my throat and simply spilled.

  “Rorik’s tissue samples show holes, similar to those found in Ric’s. I don’t know what those holes mean, but my sister and I have theorized that they’re left by an extra, um, factor that disintegrates on removal from the living host.” Meaning vampire bits went poof when skin samples were taken, leaving holes.

  “What are you saying?” Elena’s heart was in her eyes.

  Well. There was no way to euphemize it, not without hopelessly confusing her.

  “Rorik is completely human—but I believe he’s augmented by vampire cells.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Luke, with a warrior’s mentality, put his problem with Alexis firmly out of his head and marched onto the battlefield.

  He wondered when he’d started thinking of a party as a war.

  But like a battlefield, as he hit Emerson’s lawn, he automatically ticked off vital facts. Near sunset. Punk polka music already pumping from behind the closed door. Many dozen humans in the building. Several vampires too, but the human heart rates were normal, so they were Alliance. No rogues or enemies nearby. Adelaide was still dead…and Alexis was here.

  He palmed his face. When had the contrary doctor become a vital stat?
>
  The sky was gray, the air heavy with moisture. He stopped at the front walk’s edge and breathed deep. Water shimmered in his awareness, both from the air and the Meiers River, a little over a half-mile away.

  He let the air out and took another deep breath. He’d have to go inside soon. But he stayed where he was a beat more, enjoying nearness to family and friends without actually having to talk to any of them. To explain to well-intentioned friends why he hadn’t gotten over his dead wife in three hundred years.

  He pressed the breath out on a sigh. And that answered that, didn’t it? He’d started thinking of parties as battles when his family and friends had all paired up. Started families of their own. Pressed him to find someone, so he could be happy too.

  Odd man out, he was increasingly lonely.

  He imagined the hugs and bubbling conversation inside, feeling older and more alone each moment. It got so bad he started imagining what it would be like to feel included instead. For Twyla to grab his hand and introduce him to everyone as her cousin Alexis’s boyfriend or Alexis’s mate…

  No. He had a mate. Lost to time, yes, but he had no right to imagine himself as mate to another. No right to be anything other than lonely. No right to happiness.

  Discreetly, he knocked his skull with a fist. Boo-hoo, his friends had mates. At least Luke had friends.

  Time—past time—to go in. But he stood there, his emotions roiling inside like a dark snake. Irritating, because he’d trained extensively under Elias, which meant he’d trained within an inch of his life. Beyond, actually. He was self-disciplined to his core. Normally, his emotions never ran amok like this.

  Not until Alexis.

  He wanted to blame it on anything but himself. On Elias or Logan or even Alexis…but he couldn’t. It wasn’t her fault he’d looked for her the moment he got here. Not her fault he couldn’t get her out of his head. Not the fault of her pretty kissable face or gorgeous cuppable breasts or soft, inviting, fuckable thighs…

  Lightning broke the sky, followed by a booming crack of thunder. The evening opened to torrents of rain.

  “Damn it.” The gloom suited his mood, but this was just fucking insulting. He glided for the front entrance.

  The door flung open.

  “You’re here. Finally.” A curvy woman leaped onto the stoop and, despite some truly scary skyscraper heels, ran across wet pavement and grass to grab his hand. He recognized the woman’s facial bone structure, so similar to Alexis’s that despite different skin color and heights, even if Luke hadn’t known her, he’d have understood here was Alexis’s cousin Twyla.

  “The kids have been asking for you. Incessantly. To the point that they were watching for you.” She pointed over her shoulder at a second floor window where small faces pressed. Hands waved.

  He waved back. “Should you have left them alone?”

  “Zinnia is with them. Come on.” Twyla dragged him toward the door.

  Music and laughter spilled out. To him, that door looked like the maw of hell.

  It’s only a party, not a war. He gritted his teeth and slogged through the entrance.

  Suddenly something attacked him. Strangled him. He slashed claws at it…strips of pink crepe-paper streamer dangled around him.

  Beyond, flabbergasted faces gaped at him.

  “You really thrashed that nasty streamer.” Twyla waved at the gapers, indicating they should pay no attention to the blond idiot in the suit, and started inside.

  Cheeks hot, he followed her.

  Only to be KO’ed nasally by the stench of bright sugar, musky chocolate and oppressively cloying candles.

  “Mon Dieu. What have they done to the place? It looks like the inside of a wedding cake.”

  Despite Twyla’s tugging, he stopped again. Looked around in sick amazement. It was even worse than yesterday’s brief foretaste. From the silver stars dripping from the ceiling to the tiny pink sugar hearts scattered every-damned-where, the room was an homage to wedded bliss. No, not an homage—a shrine. No, a carnival. The place had been decorated by coke-swilling, crack-smoking, coffee-bean-chewing love monkeys.

  Then, with Tetris-level genius, the Emersons had managed to squeeze in what seemed to be the entire population of Meiers Corners. Even cranky Old Man Crahn was among the guests.

  “You gonna come help me watch the kids or not?” Twyla tried to tug him into motion.

  Even childish mayhem was more bearable than this. “Absolutely.” He took another step into the room.

  And came face-to-face with a raging red monster of epic proportions.

  Luke didn’t even think. He shunted Twyla aside with an arm, drew his blade and stabbed the monster…

  Pop!

  The thing blew apart, guts spewing in hard little pellets that peppered his chin.

  He opened eyes to Julian Emerson watching him.

  “Hmm. There goes the bridal piñata. You seem a little on edge, Steel.”

  “On edge?” Twyla was shaking her head. “Try wired tight as an espresso-hyped Chihuahua. On second thought, maybe you’d better wait a bit before being with children.”

  Luke looked at the floor. The pellets were wrapped candies. He slipped his knife back into its sheath, fortunately a practiced move because he was shaking.

  Emerson leaned closer. “Need to get laid?”

  Luke shook his head. “I need a fight. Or a drink. Or both.”

  “Well, I can’t accommodate you on the fight, but I can get you a drink. We have punch…or something stronger?”

  “Stronger. Much stronger.”

  “This way, then.”

  The lawyer led Luke downstairs, through the underground parking linking the two townhouses, and into the other basement. Here was a paneled room with the big screen television, bookshelves and wet bar of a den, and the bare earth floor of a vampire haven.

  Julian glided behind the corner bar and pulled out a bottle. “Spirytus vodka. The stuff’s 192 proof. Will that do?”

  “It’ll have to.”

  “Hmm. If you want an ear for whatever’s eating at you, I have a couple available.”

  Whatever was eating him. Luke snorted. How about his three hundred years of erector set dysfunction inexplicably Viagra’d by one female with kissable lips?

  Julian poured clear liquid and handed Luke the glass.

  One whiff of the stuff nearly took Luke out, but at least it cut through the damned candle and chocolate goo still clinging to his nostrils. “Thanks, but this will be all I want.”

  “Certainly. Just letting you know I’m here. You probably ought to relieve Twyla and Zinnia with the kids when you’re ready. Don’t worry, they’ll be played out.”

  “I look forward to it. In the meantime…” Luke shed his suit coat, vest and tie, tore his hair from its restraining queue and shook it free, then took the still-open bottle from the other male’s hand. “I’ll spend a little quality alone time with my new best friend.”

  The sting of vodka didn’t quite cover the metallic tang of fresh blood. Warm liquid slid down Luke’s neck. He glanced at his hand holding the bottle. His talons were extended, and in tearing out his braid, he’d managed to dig a set of grooves in his scalp.

  He tossed back a shot and poured another. His scalp would heal soon enough. He ignored the pain and blood, hoping the other male would too.

  But Julian wordlessly got out a second glass and a bottle, poured himself a shot then sat on the soil and waited.

  Luke steeled himself for the other male to ask the question he did not want to answer, a question that would unintentionally reopen a wound far more painful than the minor rips on his scalp. Why are you alone?

  To Luke’s surprise, Julian asked, “So what’s your story?”

  Like married couples had tales of their first meeting, each vampire had a making story. The change of subject was
as welcome as it was unexpected.

  “You’ve heard it before, I’m sure, or one just like it.” Luke threw back the shot. His buzz was getting pleasant. Another bottle, and he might even be mildly drunk. He thought about getting naked, decided it was too much work and kicked his shoes and socks off instead. Burrowing his feet into the rejuvenating soil with a sigh, he said, “Logan and I survived the French Wars of Religion only to be in the wrong back alley at the wrong time. Paris, 1611, shortly after the assassination of le bon roi Henri—he wasn’t seen as ‘Good King Henry’ then.” Luke poured the last of his bottle and managed a dark laugh.

  “I know.” Julian took three bottles of mid-grade Scotch from the bar, set them on the dirt between them, and dug in himself. “I was in England at the time, but I kept up with events. So how’d it happen, gang attack?”

  “Nothing so heroic. As we left a pub, we met an unfortunately peckish vampire. Next thing I knew, I was clawing out of my grave. Logan lay panting on his, right next to mine.”

  “Did Logan attack you?” Julian referred to the instinct of the new vampire to attack anything that moved in order to get fresh blood in the veins.

  “Actually, no. We already had some idea vampires were real. A couple strange happenings that other people forgot, but we didn’t—we were probably immune to hypnosis but didn’t know that then. Anyway, I looked across at my brother’s face, saw the fangs and red eyes and figured out what happened. He did the same. Once our limbs started working a couple hours later, we stumbled around until we found a band of older human boys daring the cemetery at night. We managed not to drink them dry then found a crypt and broke into it. We stayed there nearly a month, until a bunch of irate townspeople nearly burned our asses out.”

  “Your maker didn’t help you?” Julian said.

  Luke understood his surprise. Most baby vamps were helpless on rising and required an older vampire to help them survive. “We knew just enough that we managed. After the crypt incident we moved around a lot to stay ahead of pitchfork mobs. Eventually we mastered voice compulsion and were able to blend back into society. I found Adelaide. But then…” His hand, holding the shot glass, sank to the soil as if the small vessel were made of lead.