“You’ve got us both. Did you find her?”
“Maybe,” Collins said. The click of a keyboard sounded in the background. “This person arrived on a motorcycle anyway.”
“Vintage Indian?” Roman asked.
“How’d you guess?”
“Never mind that,” I said. “Did you get a look at her plate?”
“Yup. Running it now.” Collins cleared his throat. “Heather Anne Miller—wait, this can’t be right.”
“What?” I pressed, unable to suffer through even the briefest silence.
“DMV records say Miller was born in sixty-nine, but this girl on the tape barely looks drinking age.”
“Plastic surgery?” I suggested.
“No surgeon is that good.” Collins harrumphed. “My guess? Either the bike is borrowed or stolen, or—”
“She’s more than just a donor,” Roman finished with a frown. “She’s half-sired.”
“Is her address in the city?” I asked Collins.
“Jennings.” The keyboard rattled in the background again. “It’s an apartment. I’ll text you the address.”
“Thanks. We’ll head that way.” I hung up and glanced at Roman. He had an uncomfortable air about him. “Talk to me.”
He was quiet for a minute longer. Then he took a deep breath, and his shoulders squared. “We’re not just questioning this one. We have to bring her in.”
“For breaking a few fingers?” I snorted. “You mean you’re not willing to let her tattle her way out of hot water like you did Arnie?”
“Ursula doesn’t have House Lilith’s blessing to anoint another potential scion. Certainly not after abandoning her last two.”
“What will happen to her?” I asked. He fell quiet again, letting my imagination fill in the gory details. “Roman?”
“At the very least, she’ll be contained until Ursula’s blood fully evacuates her system. The rest is up to the council.”
“And how does the council usually handle these situations?” I turned to gaze out my window as we passed the Gateway Arch, lit up against the night sky. The heart of the city glowed around us and reflected off the Mississippi River just east of the highway.
“That all depends on the outcome of the trial against the vampire who did the anointing,” Roman answered.
Collins’ words about being viewed as an extension of me and having to pay for my crimes echoed in my mind. It was all kinds of wrong, but making a vampire’s harem suffer was no doubt an effective punishment.
“She’s only in her fifties,” I said, grasping for a silver lining. “Losing her half-sired status shouldn’t kill her.”
Roman’s brow furrowed. “Unless she suffers from some mortal disease.”
My heart pinched with guilt. If Roman lost his half-sired status, he’d be dead within months. Maybe weeks. Our blood infidelity was a life-or-death gamble. We both knew it, but we were pretending that we didn’t.
“You got that address?” Roman said, avoiding my stare. He fingered a button on the dash, bringing up the GPS settings.
* * * * *
Miller lived in an unremarkable apartment complex. A few kids bundled in coats and knit hats were playing ball in the back corner of the parking lot where a rickety hoop had been anchored to an electric pole. A streetlight a few yards above lit their makeshift court.
The building manager buzzed Roman and me in and happily handed over a key to Miller’s apartment after seeing our badges. He seemed relieved to learn that we weren’t there for him. His bloodshot eyes blinked nervously, and every sentence ended with dude or man, no matter which of us he addressed. When he opened the door to his own apartment and slipped back inside, I smelled pizza and weed.
Roman and I took the stairs up to the third floor. The hallway was empty. The sound of a television hummed through the door of the first apartment, but the next two we passed were quiet, the tenants either out or bedded down for the night.
I waited until we’d reached Miller’s door before drawing my Glock. Roman drew his pistol, too. He flattened himself against the wall on the side nearest the doorknob, carefully slipping the key into the deadbolt. Then he nodded to me and eased the door open.
“Federal agents,” Roman announced. His voice was even, only as loud as it needed to be without alarming the entire building.
We spilled out of the narrow entryway and into the kitchen and living room, clicking on lights as we went. There wasn’t much to see. The place was as tidy and sparsely decorated as a two-star hotel. I imagined Miller considered someplace else home.
In the hallway that led to the apartment’s two bedrooms, we split off, checking closets and under beds before meeting in the bathroom sandwiched in the middle. I yanked back the shower curtain, revealing mildewed tile and a mostly empty bottle of cheap shampoo.
Roman ran a hand through his hair, mussing it in his frustration. He stalked into the living room and yanked back the curtains, revealing a sliding glass door that opened onto a balcony. There were no stairs leading down, but he leaned over the railing, squinting into the alley below as if he suspected our mark could have survived a jump.
I went for the refrigerator. Perishables always yielded useful information. In the door, I found a carton of milk that was good for another week, and a two-liter bottle of soda that was half-empty but still fizzing with carbonation.
“She’s been here recently,” I said as Roman stopped in the doorway of the tiny kitchen. I holstered my Glock and peeked inside a to-go box with a longhorn stamped on the lid, finding the remnants of a steak dinner. The bottom of the box was still warm. “I bet she comes back tonight, too.”
“What makes you say that?” Roman asked, shooting a nervous glance over his shoulder.
I opened the box wider for him to see. “Why save your leftovers if you’re just going to let them rot in your fridge?”
He nodded and rubbed his jaw. “We should put a couple cars on the building, watch for her return.” He flipped his phone open and blinked at the screen, holding it farther away before his fingers began to move.
“I thought being half-sired meant you got the all fancy vamp mojo,” I said.
“It does.”
“You seem to be having an awful lot of trouble with your eyesight lately.”
A stack of mail propped between the microwave and wall caught my attention. I snatched it up and began thumbing through it. When Roman didn’t say anything, I paused to look up at him.
His cheeks flushed, and his frosty eyes darted away from me. “It wears off over time. I’m due to be anointed tomorrow night.” He turned his back to me and retreated to the living room to complete his call.
I breathed in through my nose, trying to calm the wrath eating its way through my insides. Roman being anointed was a good thing. It meant that he got to keep living. I had no right to be jealous. I should be grateful.
I thumbed through the mail a second time, and again, none of it registered. The third time through, I focused long enough to read Heather Miller’s name and the return labels, most belonging to utility companies. One from a custom knife shop out of Colorado Springs caught my eye.
I held it up as Roman joined me in the kitchen again and began rummaging through drawers.
“Looks like we might have brought guns to a knife fight.”
“Darn our luck,” he said with a wry grin. His fingers looped through the handle of a cabinet, and a soft click tickled my ears.
Something instinctive exploded in my blood, and I was suddenly on the opposite side of the kitchen, shoving Roman away from the cabinet as it sprang open. His back hit the wall hard, knocking the air from his lungs with a surprised oomph.
The snap and hiss of the trap finished before his exclamation did.
I gasped and looked down at my chest. The tail end of a silver dart jutted from the wool lapel of my blazer. A glass syringe was nestled in the shaft. It was empty, the plunger likely depressed on impact. Whatever had been inside it was now inside me.
>
The entry wound burned with each breath I sucked in, the heat quickly spreading into my arm and neck. I felt it inching inward too, toward my heart.
“No, no, no.” Roman pushed away from the wall. Bits of sheetrock crumbled from a cracked indentation left by his shoulders. He caught me as my legs gave out, and we both nearly collapsed to the linoleum floor.
“Ow,” I said, mostly at the ruined wall. Miller would definitely know we’d been here now.
“I’m sorry,” Roman said, his eyebrows drawing together.
“For whaaa—” My words dragged out and warped into a clipped scream as he yanked the dart out of my chest. “Ow,” I said, louder this time and right in his face.
“We’re not out of the woods yet.” Roman tugged me toward the door, but my legs refused to work. I couldn’t decide if it was from shock or if the silver was just working that fast. After a few steps, he lost his patience and slid his free arm under my knees.
My brain felt sluggish, jiggling around in my skull as Roman carried me down the stairs. His boots echoed in the stairwell, and his breath panted across my face. He was straining from exertion. I was no waifish damsel, but he’d thrown me around like a ragdoll in the past without even breaking a sweat.
The limitations and dangers of his half-sired status slipped to the back of my mind as the silver reached for my heart. I felt it coil around an artery like vines choking a tree trunk.
I was running out of time.
* * * * *
Undead Biology 101. A vampire can heal almost any injury given enough time and enough blood—provided the injury isn’t decapitation or an explosion. Even an otherwise mortal wound to the heart can heal if addressed quickly, and the only thing capable of slowing that healing process to a fatal crawl is silver poisoning.
The seeping hole above my right breast would have been fixable even as a human, but if the silver reached my heart first, it would spread through the rest of my body and attack the healing enzymes working to patch me up. And if there was enough silver in my blood, it had the potential to trigger a true death.
The queen’s mortal wound had needed an extra dose of those enzymes to combat the silver in her system or, as the ancient vamps who had yet to unravel the science of our species believed, the blood of one’s enemy. Where was a vampy foe when I needed one? I would have gladly drained Scarlett.
I thought of the bloodstone Ben had given me in Spero Heights. How I’d scoffed at it. I slipped my hand into the pocket of my blazer and searched for the smooth rock, wrapping my fingers around it as if it were a lucky charm. I had no idea if it would actually help or not, but it couldn’t hurt.
There were other, less effective methods to heal minor silver wounds. I suspected that Roman had one in mind as he dragged me from Miller’s apartment and into the driver’s seat of the SUV. The kids playing ball were gone now, but even so, the tinted windows kept anyone from seeing my growing fangs as I gasped for my next breath.
Roman tore off his suit jacket and threw it in the passenger seat. He pushed a button to open the hatch of the SUV and disappeared, quickly returning with the tackle box of a first-aid kit he kept in back. He climbed in next to me and closed the driver’s side door behind him. Then he shoved back the console and laid me across his lap.
The memory of our first blood exchange made my pulse skip, and I felt the silver skim the edges of my heart.
“We need to extract as much of the silver as possible,” he said, dumping the contents of the first-aid box onto the dashboard. He fumbled through the supplies until he found a snakebite kit.
My consciousness faded around the edges, sweat rising up on my skin despite the chill in the air. I felt Roman move my blazer and blouse aside before something pinched and sucked at my skin.
The silver burned just as much on the way out as it had on the way in. A shiver rocked my shoulders as my eyes flickered open. Roman’s angelic face hovered above mine. He shoved up one sleeve and pressed the inside of his wrist to my mouth.
“Drink, now,” he demanded.
“Don’t I need vampire blood?” I asked, my voice raw with confusion.
Roman shook his head. “Not if we got enough of the silver out. Besides, I take a selenium supplement—it’s part of my cancer treatment, and it counteracts heavy metal toxicity. My blood is the next best thing to a vampire’s, and right now, it’s all you’ve got. Drink.”
I knew I shouldn’t. Even through the feverish confusion eating at my brain, I resisted. Roman could rush us back to the office, and Collins, as mad as he was with me, would offer up his blood in an instant. It was only a twenty-minute drive. Ten if we lit up the dash flashers and blasted the siren. There was a chance we could make it in time.
Wasn’t this how we’d gotten into this mess in the first place?
Roman pushed down harder until my fangs hooked on his flesh. Blood hit my tongue, and my vampling instincts kicked in. All logic escaped me.
This was only the third time I’d fed from him, but each tasting had revealed a new flavor. I was picking up subtle notes that I hadn’t detected before, as if he were some high-end wine. It had to be his half-sired nature. His blood had been cultivated and ripened to perfection.
The familiar stirrings of lust roped around my insides as the small trace of remaining silver in my veins diluted. Soon, I’d be begging Roman to satisfy another hunger.
The two went hand in hand where he was concerned. There was no settling for one or the other. I wanted them both and at the same time. What good was having cake if you couldn’t eat it, too?
Something tickled the hole in my chest, and I pulled away from Roman’s wrist with a groan.
“Is it working?” he whispered, gently pushing my blazer off my shoulder to examine the wound again. The blouse I wore beneath was soaked through with blood. Roman tugged the material down so we could watch a small bit of silver ooze up and out of the wound as it healed. It drew a hiss from me.
“Hold still,” he said, and used the cuff of his shirt to wipe it away. A small, star-shaped mark remained behind. The veins nearest pulsed a gray-green color beneath my skin, slowly fading as Roman’s blood coursed through me.
“I need you,” I whispered, my voice shifting between the fleeting pain and a desire that rolled over me like thrashing ocean waves, shoving me under before I had a chance to catch my breath.
“Roman,” I pleaded, pressing my face into his hand as he cupped my cheek.
“I’m here. I’m yours.” His words were a prayer I wanted to answer—that I needed to answer. The urge to anoint him struck me. When I remembered that I couldn’t, I closed my eyes, straining to keep my envy and grief from spilling out and spoiling what we’d begun.
Roman’s fingers dragged softly across my skin, tracing my jaw and trailing down the center of my throat. He paused at the collar of my blouse, letting his touch slide back and forth, just under the material and around his masterful handiwork.
His mouth brushed against mine, and the tip of his tongue slipped past my lips. I moaned as he completed the kiss.
Static crackled through a speaker on the dash, and then Vanessa’s commanding voice sliced through our bliss, parting us like the Red Sea.
“Bravo Victor HQ to 7-12,” she said. “Do you copy?”
I recoiled from Roman and shoved to the opposite side of the cab, pressing my back up against the passenger door. She couldn’t see us through the radio, or at least, I didn’t think she could. Either way, I felt like a trapped animal in the SUV.
Roman grabbed the transceiver from the dash and sucked in a deep breath before pushing the call button. “This is 7-12.”
“The detail units you requested are in place. Report back to HQ.”
“On our way. Over.” Roman gave me a soft frown as he returned the transceiver to its cradle on the dash. “Let’s hope Miller is apprehended before she makes it inside her apartment and discovers she had visitors.”
I nodded and rubbed the heel of my palm over my mouth,
trying to wipe away the evidence of our latest mishap. I would have an easier time of it than Roman.
As his hand pulled away from the dash, blood trickled from his wrist and splashed onto the stretch of leather between us. He swore and grabbed his forearm, stopping a small stream as it headed for the bend of his elbow and the crumpled sleeve of his white dress shirt.
“Shit.” I reached for the first-aid supplies on the dashboard, my nervous hands scattering more than they grasped as I tried to find a bandage. “Shit, shit, shit.”
“Jenna.” Roman waited for me to look at him. “Take a breath. We can do this.”
“Can we? God, what are we doing?” I panted as the severity of the situation slid home. Vanessa was going to kill me. She would fire me and then kill me. Or worse, she’d insist that I be coffin-locked.
I’d never had an office romance as a human. I’d never even been tempted to. How did people pull this shit off on such a regular basis? I was completely out of my depth.
“We can do this,” Roman said again. His voice sounded tired, and bags hung under his eyes. He looked like a ghost. He’d given too much blood recently and hadn’t taken care of himself well enough. A lot of that was my fault.
He nodded at a wad of napkins hanging over the edge of the dashboard. I handed them to him when what I really wanted to do was lick his arm clean.
So stupid. Terrible idea, I silently reprimanded myself. His blood erased all reason.
“This could still heal before we get back to the office,” Roman said. He squinted at his wrist in the dim streetlight filtering in from the parking lot.
I finally took that breath he’d suggested and snatched up a roll of gauze.
“Let’s hope so.”
Chapter Twelve
As Roman and I made our way across the city, I wondered how much longer we could keep torturing ourselves like this. From the looks of him, not very.
He couldn’t continue giving his blood to both Vanessa and me. Donors shouldn’t be shared. For good reason. A line had to be drawn soon, or he wouldn’t survive our tenuous affair, but the obvious solution felt too much like defeat.
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