by C. L. Quinn
Turning back to the kitchen, he grabbed a few of the breadsticks from last night and sat down with a hot cup of coffee.
A groan a few moments later drew him back to the bed. Olivia sat up, her full breasts exposed to his admiring eyes, as Zach watched her stretch her arms.
“Hi, handsome.”
Grinning, Zach poured another cup of coffee and carried it over to her. “Hi, gorgeous. I’m heading back to my hotel room. My flight buddy is likely wondering where the hell I disappeared to all day.”
“Is he indoctrinated?”
“Sort of. I mean, he knows I’m something different, but I plan to wipe him before we part. He’s a good man, I don’t want to fuck up his life with knowledge of our existence.”
“Huh.” Olivia took a sip of the hot beverage and groaned. “Do you mind if I come along?”
Olivia blew into the room before he did. Zach followed her, and they both scanned the room at the same time.
Zip was still asleep in bed, alone, naked, and uncovered.
Olivia walked to him, sat on the side of the bed, leaned over and licked his chest.
Waking slowly, Zip opened his eyes to see her long hair against his skin as she sat back up.
“Whoa. Dreams do come true,” he whispered.
Olivia’s eyes shot up to Zach, then back to Zip. “Umm. Aren’t you just delicious? I think I’m going to eat…you…up.”
“Leave him alone, Olivia.” Zach shifted his gaze to Zip, who pushed up onto his elbows, rubbing his eyes. “She’s serious, bro. She’ll snack on you until there’s nothing left.”
Zip pushed his long hair from his eyes, which hadn’t moved from Olivia’s face and lingered now on her lips.
“Um, I think it’ll be worth it.”
Sighing, Zach reached for his gear, still stashed in the corner of the room where he’d left it. “Let me get the fuck out of here before that starts, then. I’m heading north. Once you guys finish devouring each other, I’d like to invite you to join me. I’ve never been to Russia, and it’s next on my world tour.”
Olivia’s eyes shot to Zach. “Oh, I love Russia. I’m in.” She looked at Zip. “Care to join us? I know some dens of sin that no tourist should ever miss. In fact, I know the perfect place. Lake Baikal in Siberia. I have a friend there who is doing research for the Global Protection Group and he emailed me a week ago to ask if I could come. He says that there is something that I must see. The area is quite spectacular.”
Zip nodded. “I’m on board.”
“Goody, we have a party. Zach, what do you say? Up for Siberia?”
Both Olivia and Zip looked at Zach, who shrugged.
“I’m open. Zip and I just completed a sky run over this mountainside, so I guess I’m looking for our next great adventure.”
“Sky run? How?”
Zip slid off the bed and slipped into his discarded camo pants. “Wingsuits, man. The only way to fly.”
“That scrap of nylon? You guys are crazy. Zip, you’re human. When you die, you die. And Zach, even a vampire can be seriously fucked up in a fall like that. For a long time, maybe forever.”
“Only one life, pretty girl. Gotta live it.” Noticing a half-full bottle of vodka on the floor beside him, Zip picked it up and took a sip, then grimaced. “Shit, I need some food.”
Olivia walked over, pushed back Zip’s hair, ran a fingernail up his throat and around his neck and looked at Zach. “So do I. Zach, darling, could you give us a minute?”
“Shop elsewhere. We’ll pack, you go home and get what you need, including your meal, and we’ll meet back here in, what, two hours?”
Olivia mouthed “sorry” to Zip, blew a kiss to Zach and disappeared out the door.
“Well, this should be an interesting trip,” he said to Zip, who stood still, distracted.
“Who was that enchanting creature?” Zip asked.
Two
IN SOUTH AMERICA
Nothing. No matter how hard Dez tried, she really couldn’t use her vampire skills to locate Zach. He was off her radar. Lying alone in her bedroom, closing in on dawn, she picked up her cell and punched a number.
“Yeah?” The voice on the other end of the line was masculine, deep, sleepy.
“Bas, my love, did I wake you?”
“Dez. Yeah, but you would know that. Still happy to hear your voice, though. What did you need?”
“Some information. Look, you know that it’s been centuries since I’d converted a human before Zach, so I’m rusty on the details. Let me in, dear, aren’t I supposed to always be able to find his lifeforce? Wherever he is? Shouldn’t I just be able to know where he is?”
After a muffled yawn, she heard some rustling and the sound of a door opening. “Sorry, don’t want to wake Park, she’s exhausted. Although she’s still a few months from delivery, this one is taking it out of her. Anyway, um, yeah, usually you can. Usually. But your conversion with Zach wasn’t normal. If you remember, Park’s blood started the conversion. Although you fed Zach, she fed you, and Zach came through with first blood features like those disturbing blue eyes.”
“I have blue eyes. He could have gotten them from me.”
“No, it’s not like a child who shares your genes. Dez, I think that Park’s blood has the sire tie to him. Do you want me to have her try to find him when she wakens?”
“Fuck me,” Dez said softly. “Yeah, please, would you, my friend?”
Silence from the other end of the phone told Dez that Bas considered his next words before he spoke again.
“So, you’re going after him?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I haven’t fully decided. But I need to fix this vampire tracking thing or I’ll never find him. I truly have no idea where he is. Last I heard, he was in Dubai, but that was a year ago. I haven’t found any evidence that he’s still there.”
“So you have been looking for him. Good. You two are great together. I don’t know why you let him go in the first place.”
“In the first place, it’s none of your business, love. And in the second place, you more than anyone know how jacked up I am about relationships. I’ve never had a long-term one and I didn’t think I did then either.”
Dez went silent this time. She heard a soft chuckle.
“Well, you did. Do. He and I will never be friends, but I could see how you glowed when you were with him.”
Dez laughed with a snort. “Glowed. You’re dreaming, my darling.”
“Either way, I’ll call you when Park has a chance to try to find him, okay?”
“Thanks. You are one of the longest relationships I’ve had so successfully. Probably because I never fucked you.”
“No. That’s why we’re still buds. You’re a beautiful soul, Dez, you’ve always sold yourself short.”
“The world has always done that. I think I’m fucking amazing!”
“Touché. Good night.”
“Yeah…” Dez answered with a sigh as she ended the call and pitched her cell phone onto her bed, then threw herself back to bury her face into her fat pillow.
So, she might not even really hold the position of Zach’s sire. Huh. While it was a surprise, memory of the difficult conversion returned.
The nearly dead human man hadn’t responded to her blood during conversion. Her attempt to make him vampire to save his life had failed. Zach would die and she couldn’t do anything to save him. At the last minute, Park had raced in to offer her blood as a final chance. Having discovered that her blood had unexpected components that made a conversion go easily, Park hoped adding her blood would work. Thankfully, it had and the pale, dying man had not only survived, he’d thrived on the blood blended with Dez’s.
Yes, that’s how it had happened. Bas was right, Park was Zach’s sire. Dez had just been blood meals and a convenient lover for a couple of years.
She rolled over onto her belly, punched the down-filled pillow and released a low shriek.
“He’s really nothing to you, then, is he?” Frust
rated, her voice tight, she spoke out loud to the uninterested emptiness of her bedroom. “He’s moved on, anyway, bitch, you know that. It’s been over two years now, and he’s not waiting for an emotional wreck like you to come crawling back to him. And stop talking to yourself, it’s just mental!”
A sharp rap on her door brought her upright.
“Come on,” she barked, after a long hesitation.
A slender man wearing jungle camouflage peeked in before he actually came into the room. “Boss? I just finished. Did you want the intel now, or do you want to wait until night?”
“Now, Ty, you haven’t forgot how impatient I am?”
“Never, mistress. Here, everything I’ve been able to verify. It’s not much and it’s not recent, sorry.”
“I know you found anything that can be found. Thanks, Ty.”
Dez watched as her IT guy pulled the door shut and disappeared. Glancing down at the file folder he’d given her, she opened it to peruse the documents he’d prepared for her. He was right, there was nothing that would lead her to Zach’s current location. Nothing that would lead her to him, but it included a stack of badly focused, grainy or distant photographs taken from CCT feeds or security cameras in a dozen cities. She dropped back against her pillow and slowly scanned each image.
Zach. In bars, smiling, dancing…nuzzling into, grinding against, or kissing various women. And why not? He was unattached. Why wouldn’t a sexy vampire take the attentions of a beautiful woman? God knows she had enough in her years.
Closing her eyes, Dez remembered that final night before he’d left. Although she’d been alive for hundreds of years of memories, that moment before he’d walked away from her, threw his long leg over the motorcycle she’d bought him and rode away, remained the most overwhelming of all. Centuries from now, those images and words, his face, the unshed tears in blue eyes similar to hers, would still burn in her mind.
Rolling onto her side, she felt them threaten again. Memories of him made her a blubbering idiot, and while she resented that, she couldn’t seem to stop herself.
He’d loved her. Deeply. Too deeply, and she’d known that. A love so real that she hadn’t known what to do with it. The numbers of lovers Dez had known over centuries had been many. Only one had ever affected her, and when he died, the pain had overwhelmed her. She knew that she had shut down then and had never recovered her ability to really connect after she lost him. All the years later, when the wisecracking, oversized blonde human she’d helped convert fell madly for her, she hadn’t known what to do with him.
And she still didn’t.
After over two years of missing every breath that Zach took, of empty arms and an even emptier bed, Dez knew only one thing. She needed that strong-headed man in her life and it was well past time to respond to his last comment.
Just before he’d left that night, Zach had kissed Dez with the passion of a thousand goodbyes. He’d held her face in his hands and looked into her eyes. “When you decide that you love me, find me.”
Recent events in Dez’s life showed her what she had been afraid to accept…she did love him, she could admit that now, and she would move hell and earth to find him. If the fates were kind, they would let him still love her. If it wasn’t too late, she would let him know that she belonged to him for any days or years left in this vampire’s life.
Now all she had to do was find him. As she fell asleep, the photos scattered around her, Dez whispered her promise to the man who was not there. In her exhaustion, she mumbled, over and over, “I’ll find you…”
Suddenly Dez decided that she wanted to be there when Park located him. At nightfall, she would fly to France.
IN SOUTHERN FRANCE
“Holy shit, Batman! Can you slow down and let a woman catch up?”
Park stopped and waited for her friend, who was having trouble breathing. “For heaven’s sake, Burne, I’m four months pregnant, and I’m outpacing you.”
Burne looked up at the beautiful woman with flaming red hair who was a good thirty feet uphill already. “Oh, don’t play that pregnancy card. You’re a second-generation first blood, you move at the speed of light.”
Park laughed, a hand on her expanded belly. “Hardly. Especially with this little guy pushing out of me in every direction. But I’ll slow down. I’m just excited to see you again and I can’t wait to show you the expansion to the lab.”
“I know, sweetie.” Burne smiled, her eyes misting.
“That’s what I missed, that laser-bright smile. You always bring the sunshine, Burne. Two years is just too long, even for vampires.”
Burne pushed back the blonde bangs that fell over her eyes. The first thing that made Park grin when she saw her old friend tonight after her arrival was that Burne once again sported the same short platinum haircut that she had when they first met all those years ago when they were both human.
With a sigh, Burne nodded. “I know. I agree, but Vaz has some weird shit going down at his stronghold, and we’re still trying to figure it out. I can’t wait to get the blood samples to the lab and take a look at what’s going on.”
“Then, hustle, my dear. We’ll get the samples started, and join the rest for first meal. You’ll love my father’s wife, Alisa. And wait until you meet Tamesine’s husband and twins. You have so much to catch up on.”
“Looking forward to it. Most of all, though, I really wanted to see you now that you are finally pregnant again. I am excited for you guys! It’s a boy, right?”
“It is. I’ll let you meet him tonight. When Cairine was born, I didn’t know how to move through the spiritual plane on my own, but now it’s second nature. After we eat, we’ll go down to the sea, and I’ll take you to meet my son.”
Burne hurried to Park and drew her into her arms.
“God, I’m glad to see you again. I plan to stay a little while. I hope there’s room.”
“Bernie! Always, you know that! I wasn’t planning to let you go too quickly, anyway.”
Just ahead, Park’s two story laboratory sat nestled into the hillside, the ocean on one side and the mountain on the other. The entire building was lit with ecologically designed security lighting, the light escaping only to the ground where it was needed, not up into the sky where it would create light pollution. It was a Park’s passion to find a better way to live on the mother planet, not to interfere with her natural order. She was proud of the work she and her team accomplished here on behalf of the living planet and the ancient vampire race.
Burne, Bernie in her human life, had been with Park from the beginning of this journey to her first blood heritage. They had bonded at Bas’s Vancouver home before the craziness that destroyed that magnificent compound, killed a lot of people, and led them here to the south of France. Their friendship…no, sisterhood…meant so much to her. Her hope that Burne would stay in France with her and continue their work wouldn’t happen, she knew that. Burne was in love with the incredibly handsome Vaz, a vampire who had helped her through the conversion from human to vampire over five years ago. Too soon, Park would say goodbye to her friend who would return to Vaz in Switzerland.
Until then, they would enjoy every second that they had together.
Park engaged a hidden release and a double doorway slid open. “Come on, my friend. You’ve got to see my new equipment.”
Burne followed Park into a cavernous room divided by tall glass walls. The partitions clearly marked separate lab units, including isolation rooms, everything shiny and high tech.
“Wow, girlfriend, the new lab chambers are awesome,” Burne commented, her eyes still moving from one area to the next.
Laughing, Park pulled Burne further into the hallways built by the transparent dividers. “It’s partially Bas’s project. I’d commented that our arch enemy, you know who, had better equipment than I did. After claiming that I was jealous of his labs, Bas refitted this entire facility when we returned last year. It was extravagant, but I love it. And I’m getting better results than e
ver before.”
“Glad to hear it. We really need some help with this.”
“Bring your sample over to Lab 6. I’ve cleared it for your project. You said that you’ve had eight people sickened this year? Two died? Human, right?”
Burne placed a leather satchel on a cleared stainless steel countertop.
“That’s right. But no human medicine has been able to help them. We’ve worked with two local hospitals and no one has any idea what this virus is. One of Vaz’s friends, a vampire about a hundred years old, hasn’t been feeling well for about three weeks now. We’re just concerned about this bizarre virus.”
“Bernie, that’s very bad if it’s true. A virus that crosses between normal humans and vampires? One that a vampire hasn’t been able to slough off is…well, I’ll have to check with Koen and Eillia, but I think it’s unheard of. Let me have your samples. I’ll make sure they are isolated and secured. Let’s see if my Lamont-inspired facility can identify this virus.”
“If it can’t, I don’t know where else to go.”
“Sweetheart, if we can’t find out what we need here, we have an entire world at our fingertips. You know that we’ll do anything we have to do to destroy this thing. It will be all right.”
“Thank you, Park. You are exactly what I needed right now. Okay, the blood and samples are in these vials and labeled by patient name, timeframe, and details of the illness.”
Moments later, Park took Burne’s arm and led her from the building.
“My two best are on the job. Since I’m pregnant, Bas doesn’t want me here when they’re working on the samples, and I have to agree with him. Even though we’re sure that the fact that I am Shoazan should protect both me and the baby, we’re opting for caution. Baron will text me when they have something to report. He’s excellent, I couldn’t ask for a better lab manager. Meanwhile, dinner? We usually join my father for first meal.”