“She’s going to mate?” Dillon was incredulous. Mating? That sounded like something from a freaky SyFy channel show. Or Animal Planet.
Jamie moved closer and said, “From the research and reading we’ve done—from all that we know, she’s at the critical point. The female’s blood is a kind of bargaining chip in their society. And rumor has it that Kate’s line is deadly pure. So she’s either already done the deal—in which case your presence will reveal her partner because mated male vamps are crazy possessive. Or if she’s not mated, you can find this ring for us before she gives it to the male at her mating ritual.”
Dillon rubbed his eyes. His head was hurting a little more sharply than it often did; he lived with chronic pain because of his brain injury. “You want a blind man to find a ring,” he muttered, trying to beat back the sharp pain in his head. “Freaking awesome.”
“Who better?” Mace laughed. “She’ll have her guard down, and you can search her room, maybe find a jewelry box.”
“Or maybe trip over my own two feet and make an ass of myself.” It was so easy for someone without a disability to ignore the issues Dillon faced with his blindness.
“You get around better than old Jamie here does, so shut up,” Mason said.
Maybe he could take on this mission, Dillon thought, suddenly feeling an odd surge of excitement. A sense of purpose that had been missing for far too long. What had he done in the past year, what point had his life even had? But now Mason and Jamie actually needed him. He was skilled and capable, and hell, even with his ruined vision, maybe he could do this thing.
Dillon cleared his throat. “Okay, so I understand the mission and the objective. But why is it so important to determine whether she’s taken a… mate or not?”
Neither of the Angel brothers answered at first, and Dillon would’ve sworn they were trying to decide what to tell him, possibly trading glances. Finally Mace replied, “Because once she mates, she’ll become fully vampire. The females don’t drink until they’re mated. She hasn’t been a threat to our community, but that will change once she’s mated. So…we need to know if our intel is right.”
“So, I get close to her and we confirm all this. That she’s about to mate, about to start…feeding or whatever. Then what?”
“If we’re right,” Mason answered, “then we have to kill her.”
CHAPTER TWO
Kate stood by the kitchen sink and scrutinized the living room. She’d already ensured that all the chip bowls had been refilled and the dip freshened. There were paper napkins with seashells fanned beside the party platters and citronella candles burning in every corner. Out on the deck overlooking the beach, there were three giant metal tubs filled with beer and Cokes and lots of ice. An hour into this end of summer bash that her brother Toby had insisted on having, everything was on track. So far nobody had broken anything—legally speaking or otherwise. She should be having fun, enjoying catching up with some of the friends she’d not seen since the Fourth of July.
So why was there a knot in her stomach, one that had her feeling vaguely nauseous as she prepared to do another pass through the party crowd?
She knew exactly why her palms were sweating. And why she felt dizzy and light-headed. And if she forgot, she was totally sure Toby would keep reminding her, well into the night.
Her body and her life were a ticking time bomb. If she didn’t want to die in the coming weeks, this party would be her last as a single woman—and the last where she could pretend she was a normal human. Time to grow up, the end. As eldest female of their generation, she was obligated to mate with a full-blooded vampire, to preserve the bloodline. Not so for Toby, who could mate freely and without the supervision of the elders and their father. For Kate, however, looking toward Normals wasn’t tolerated—no matter how intensely her mating urges seemed to compel her toward human males instead of breedable male vampires.
Her father and older brother believed her desires the work of demons, the way she craved the touch of someone so alien to her. They said the holy scriptures were clear on the point—that if one yearned to mingle across species lines, it was the work of Satan.
It was like a sickness in her blood, and no matter how she tried to explain to Daddy and Toby the way she burned for a human mate, they discounted her needs completely. Maybe they were right; maybe she was listening to the dark spirits when she should just keep asking God for the right mate. The one he had destined for her, not the one she’d encountered in those strange, sightless dreams, nearly every night for the past year. But she could smell him, touch him, feel him, night after night, and it only made her blood burn hotter for the faceless human male. A man who was, quite literally, the man of her darkest dreams.
But even those dreams were dismissed by her family. It was natural for a vampire female to dream of her mate—in fact, it was the way couples were drawn together, beckoned toward one another. But she knew the man she’d been dreaming of was human. She could smell his blood, the sweet tang so different from any vampire male’s coppery scent. The dreams raised an important question. If she kept praying that God would bring her the mate he had ordained, and if she kept dreaming about this nameless, faceless human, wasn’t it possible that her desires weren’t evil or dark at all, but rather her destiny?
It was a fruitless hope, though. She turned to the sink and wiped her hands on a towel with a dejected sigh. This party had been Toby’s idea, a big summer blowout to allow her to feel like a Normal for one last hurrah. To play the game before he and her father escorted her to Charleston to meet several eligible men from the full blood families. Toby just didn’t get it, remaining as sanguine and clueless as ever in his outlook on life, but then again it wasn’t his duty to preserve their family’s pure bloodline. That responsibility fell entirely to her, rendering her without any choices of her own, and no amount of beach parties would ever change that fact.
Toby could laugh it up, do shots, and never stop grinning because he didn’t suffer under any mandate as to whom he’d eventually marry. She could be human or vampire or any blend in between. But Kate’s female bloodline, one of the most pure and undiluted in all of the Southeast, fell under the aegis of codicils that were hundreds of years old. She literally had no right to choose for herself. Equal rights for women had no play in their courts, and her blood was to be preserved—and used—at the discretion of others.
“Kate, girl! What’re you doing hiding back here in the kitchen?” Her friend Sunny plopped down both hands on the marble kitchen counter, squaring off with Kate from across the bar.
“Just making sure we’re all set with everything,” she said, lying through her teeth. She didn’t want to be at this party any more than she wanted to deal with her biological and familial deadlines.
“You ain’t gonna hide in here anymore. You’re coming outside with me. On the deck, now.” Sunny wagged a finger, and although she still smiled, it didn’t reach her eyes. Her friend knew firsthand just how much Kate was struggling these days; she was also the only Normal who Kate had ever told the truth about being a vampire. Sunny, oddly enough, said that nifty little revelation didn’t faze her in the least. That she’d always known Kate was special, ever since they met in their fifth grade gifted class. Except…something about Sunny had always been different, too. At times, Kate found it hard to believe her lifelong best friend wasn’t a vampire as well.
“I’m telling you, Katydid. There’s some yummy-ass men out there, circulating round your party. Come on now, you can’t hide your love away!” Sunny’s brown eyes crinkled at the edges, playful and teasing in their expression. Her honey-dark skin seemed touched by the sun after the long day on the beach. Kate’s pale skin always burned easily, whereas Sunny’s African American complexion only grew richer and more lovely.
“I’ll come out there. Just let me feed the cats real quick.”
Sunny swept a black eyebrow upward. “You fed ‘em before the party. I saw you do it.” She glanced significantly toward the outs
ide. “You better go feed the dawgs now.”
“You’re a hot mess, Sunny Renfroe, you know that?”
Sunny planted a hand on her hip, cocking her head sideways. “This funk you’re in’s gotta end. Like I’m talking… tonight.”
“It’s still afternoon.” Kate busied herself with spraying down the bar so as to avoid her friend’s prying gaze.
They’d spent the past few days hanging out, catching up. Sunny lived in Athens now, where she’d stayed after they’d graduated from UGA. She worked at the Botanical Gardens and Kate envied her sorority sister’s satisfaction in her job. Whereas Kate seemed to struggle with the nagging sense that she should be doing more than running her family’s bookstore, Sunny tackled new skills and challenges without batting an eye. Kate envied her friend’s serenity, a peace that forever eluded Kate, just as that faceless, nameless man from her nightly dreams did.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true. She knew his scent as surely as she knew the wonderful smell of the beach just beyond the open sliding glass doors. It was warm and soothing and arousing, all at once; she’d known from the very first dream that if she ever caught even the faintest whiff of that human’s aroma in her waking life, she’d be hooked like an addict.
Sunny picked up a discarded towel and flicked Kate on the arm with it. “Come on. I just saw Mason Angel and some friend out there.”
Kate’s skin prickled, alarms going off in her head. “You did not.” Mason wouldn’t have the balls to show up here, in the midst of her party, would he? The Angels and the Rabineaus were like the pentagram and the cross, they just didn’t mix without everyone’s hackles rising.
“Come on and give him hell, girlfriend. It’ll take the edge off.” Sunny started across the room.
“The edge off what?” Kate called after her, already trying to scan the crowd of mostly twenty-somethings gathered outside on the deck.
Sunny did a one-eighty, sailing back toward Kate. Eyes mischievously wide, she stage-whispered, “The edge off your mating itch, that’s what.”
****
He was beautiful, no other way to put it. The tall, broad-shouldered guy beside Mason Angel, leaning against the deck railing like he owned the space was absolutely, positively drop-dead gorgeous. He seemed to be looking across the deck at nothing in particular, a faint smile playing at the edge of his full, luscious lips. She couldn’t see what his eyes looked like, the dark wrap-around designer shades obscured them. But that smile…it was a true thing of beauty, making him seem mildly amused with life in general and her party in particular.
And he had dimples that were so deep they popped even at his hint of a smile. His dark brown hair spiked short and stylish, but with the kind of GQ effortlessness that meant he was danger on wheels. A guy who, obviously pushing thirty, seemed single and fully fine with that fact, a little cocky in his self-assurance. So Mason Angel had brought reinforcements for his party-crashing maneuver. Releasing the clip that held her ponytail, Kate let her long blonde hair fall loose down her back. She had a few weapons of her own at her disposal and she planned to use them.
Holding her daiquiri overhead so she wouldn’t somehow wind up with it sloshed onto the front of her sundress, she pressed her way through the party. From the stereo, an old Jackson Five song blared, music just made for a beach party like this one. She had to squeeze through a couple of frat boy pals of Toby’s, guys with thick drawls who were already well on their way to being drunk. With another glance, she laid eyes on Mason and his gorgeous friend, and shoved a little closer, nearly to them.
She opened her mouth to greet Mason—the jerk knew he was crashing, she didn’t have to call him out on it. But before she could ask him what in blazes he was doing at her party, her cat Venus screeched and wailed past her ankles, making a horrible, warbling sound of distress that bordered on the demonic.
The crowd parted like the Red Sea, her blurring ball of terror loose like a firecracker. A guy behind her tried to sidestep the caterwauling little kitty, and managed to bump right into her. Which in turn sent her daiquiri careening out of her overhead grasp and all over the front of her brand new Ann Taylor end-of-season sundress.
“What the hell?” she said, right as one of her other cats, DeMilo, chased past her ankle, then leaped onto the railing, knocking some hapless guest’s beer bottle down into the dunes.
And then she saw. The full-on, undeniable source of the cat terror. The guy. Mr. GQ on a stick had caused it all. The drop dead gorgeous, beautiful man had come here—to her beach house, uninvited, no less—and brought a dog. A tongue-lolling, happy-looking black Labrador. The thoughtless jerk. Typical. Totally typical of the company the Angel boys kept.
“Excuse me, sir,” she said, poking a finger into the stranger’s very muscular chest. “But what in sweet Jesus’ name do you think you’re doing? Bringing that animal to my….”
She didn’t finish, didn’t even try and salvage what she’d been about to say. Because everything became crystal clear in another speed-of-light second. His scent, the same as the one from her dream. The blacked-out sightlessness from it, too. The sign on the Labrador’s harness that read, “Guide Dogs for the Blind.” And Mason Angel, his green eyes wide and telegraphing as he gestured toward his friend significantly.
Every last bit of the series of events seemed to train wreck together, box cars slamming into box cars, words being spoken all at once, apologies muttered, the man dropping to his knees and tugging his dog much closer.
“I’m so sorry,” he muttered, huddling the dog against his knees as he stroked its head. “I didn’t realize you had cats.”
She knelt beside him, and covered his hand with her own, resting it against the dog’s side. “No, no, I didn’t realize…not that you….”
“Really, it’s okay,” he reassured her, but he wasn’t smiling any more, not even that charming hint of a grin. His tanned and freckled cheeks had stained red, his embarrassment obvious.
She squeezed his hand slightly. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I just didn’t know…”
For one long moment, their hands lingered together, her softer skin against his rough palms. She could feel showers of electric warmth shoot up into her forearm, reaching all the way into her chest like wildfire. That burning sensation unleashed her mating urges before she could stop them, rendering her breathless, trembling. And still they held hands, neither moving, neither saying anything. Was he feeling the same cascade of sensation and need as she was? Was that why he didn’t say a word? It couldn’t be possible that he shared in the same crazy, intense sensations that were swamping her. He wasn’t a vampire. He was a Normal and only her kind experienced such volatile mating instincts. Or dreamed about the man they were meant to…mate with. Oh, holy crud.
“Where are they now?” he asked, and the question brought her back to the moment. Slowly she released his hand. As soon as she did, he sidled his dog closer against his knees, as if the absence of her own touch had somehow made him feel vulnerable. It had to be unsettling for him, to be in a party full of strangers, totally blind, your guide dog distracted by the presence of two unruly cats ping ponging around the deck. “Are they gone?” he added, petting the dog’s side with a soothing gesture.
“My cats? Yeah, they went parasailing into the dunes. They won’t bother your dog.”
He looked up and around as if he might be able to see. Perhaps he was partially sighted? Or maybe newly blinded? She’d lay money that he was one of Mason’s fellow Marines, injured in combat—probably recently. Given the short cut of his hair, and his physical strength and overall bearing, he smacked of the military. Which did absolutely nothing to dampen her interest and attraction to him. In their vampire society, warriors made up their highest caste, always revered and honored. Those who had been injured in combat of any kind were at the pinnacle of the social strata.
He was even dressed in a vaguely military manner, wearing a tight-fitting black T-shirt and khaki cargo shorts, ones that revealed his powerful, musc
ular legs, and as he leaned back on his heels another wave of mating heat rolled through her veins. She couldn’t help herself: she instantly imagined parting those legs, feeling all that silky hair and strength poised between her own thighs. Her face burned hot and she was glad he couldn’t see the shame in her expression. But that didn’t mean Mason couldn’t, and she let her hair fall across her cheek, obscuring her flushed features from his scoundrel’s inspection.
That and she gave a quick glance to locate her brother Toby, and was thankful to see that he and his pack of rowdy pals were heading down to the beach. If he’d noticed that she was practically panting after a gorgeous Normal, he’d have hauled her as far away from Mr. GQ as possible. So as she watched him shoulder an ice chest down the wooden steps to the beach, she felt…free. Independent.
With Toby out of the way, she took a quick moment to study the stranger’s beautiful face. The light dusting of beard growth on his jaw, the soft fullness of his lips, the faint scar between his eyebrows…all of it gave him a slightly roguish appearance, which only made him even more appealing. “Perfect,” she sighed before she could stop herself.
“Excuse me?” He inclined his head closer toward her, trying to hear over the music.
She blushed, heat fingering all the way into her chest. “Uh, I’m really sorry about all…this,” she said, far too breathlessly for a chance encounter on a crowded deck. Her words came out on a soft exhalation, and she leaned into him slightly, unable to restrain her urge to be all up against him. Who was she kidding? She was the cat here, and he was all lap. She wanted to curl up next to him and rub up against him, sniff his neck and then purr against his chest—right before she absolutely begged him to haul her off to the bedroom for a proper lovemaking.
Red Blooded: The Gods of Midnight Series, Book 3.5 (Paranormal Romance) Page 2