by S. K. Ryder
The corners of Serge’s eyes pinched. His mouth went white. Something in Samantha’s thoughts did not agree with him.
“Serge?”
His gaze focused on Dominic. “Yes, my lord?”
“Did you hear what I asked?”
“Yes. But why me?”
“Because I will not compel my family. I have done enough damage to them. Now go. And be gentle.”
“As you wish.” But Serge took his time ambling out of the vault and across the house, reluctance in his every barefoot step.
Dominic sped upstairs and traded his usual T-shirt and gym pants for jeans and a dark gray dress shirt. He rolled the sleeves up his forearms, tied his hair back, stuck his feet into the sole pair of leather loafers he owned, and returned to Cassidy and Serge where they waited at the bottom of the stairs.
“It is done, my lord,” Serge said and disappeared out the back of the house in a blur of motion.
Cassidy sighed. “Étienne.”
“Étienne,” Dominic agreed. Serge sensed a rival for Samantha’s affections and with good reason. In Cassidy’s memories, Dominic saw how his cousin and Samantha had grown besotted with each other in the space of hours. Any other time Dominic would have been amused. Now he could barely register that Étienne was there at all. As Francesca explained it to Cassidy, her nephew had volunteered to stay with her on St. Barth and help with the restaurant after she lost her husband, daughter, and son within days of each other. Island life seemed to agree with Étienne, for he hadn’t left since.
Dominic saw himself through Cassidy’s eyes as a hard, pale, mesmeric beauty. Compulsion or not, it wasn’t a look he wanted to expose his mother to. It took him only an instant to deploy a bit of silent compulsion and make himself appear as his suntanned mortal self to all who saw him.
Cassidy raised a doubtful brow but said nothing. She had never been susceptible to his persuasive talents, but she knew when he deployed them.
“A small aide to ease their minds.”
She hooked her hand into the offered crook of his elbow. “As you wish.”
He steeled himself for the moment he rounded the last corner and became visible to his mother. He thought he knew what to expect. He didn’t.
The doors to the side porch stood open, admitting evening air soaked in rain and ozone, and carrying lavender and orange. He could pick her scent out in an instant and in an instant drowned in a lifetime of memories.
His step faltered, preparing to turn back, but too late. His mother’s gaze found him and pinned him in place.
The practical, reserved, always-in-control woman he had known all his life disintegrated before his eyes. She stood, her expression slack with shock, her eyes brimming with moisture. Her hands made to reach for him across the space, then clapped to her mouth, stifling a sob behind long fingers.
Beside her, Étienne stood and touched her elbow in support, though he, too, only had eyes for Dominic. “Cousin,” he greeted with a tentative smile. “You look well.”
Samantha didn’t get up. She gaped at Dominic. Or rather at the vigorous mortality he conjured for them. Even the cat looked confused. Instead of launching his typical attack, Brinkley cowered under the table, growling, every hair on his body standing on end. No one else noticed.
“Madame? Your son,” Cassidy said with a warm if nervous smile in her voice.
“Maman?”
With a cry, Francesca lurched forward. In her haste she knocked the table, wobbling an array of half-empty glasses, then stumbled over the slider track. Dominic moved a touch too fast to steady her. Her hands clutched at his biceps.
“Mon fils,” she whispered. “Mon petit.”
“Oui. Ç’est moi. Welcome to my home.” It was an automatic response; all his stunned mind could come up with.
She grasped his face in both hands, kissed both his cheeks three times each, then gave up and clutched him in a trembling, sobbing embrace no French person would allow themselves—unless the recipient had risen from the dead.
Dominic held her, breathed her familiar scent, and wondered how different her reaction might have been if she saw him as he truly was. Tears tracked down his cheeks and dripped into her hair. She felt fragile as a bird in his arms as she continued to shower him with kisses, speaking every endearment she had ever heaped upon him along with her relief, her love, and her gratitude. She was reborn, she said. God had heard her prayers and answered them.
It was too much.
I’m not worthy of this, he thought but found it impossible to let go of her. It is all a lie. I am the one who destroyed her life.
And now you’re making up for it by giving her a priceless gift, Cassidy replied. She stood beside him, her hand in the small of his back to strengthen the remnants of their connection.
Dominic closed his eyes and pulled all the strength, all the humanity, he could from Cassidy. “Maman,” he murmured. “How I have missed you.”
It took several minutes before she calmed enough to gather her shredded composure and let him go. Étienne greeted him with the traditional kisses, but also bestowed a quick, shoulder-slapping hug. “You had everyone so worried, you dolt.”
At first the words stuck in his craw, but they came easier as he went along. Cassidy had spun them a tale about the need to stay hidden from the same drug cartel operatives who had supposedly killed his father and sister. She told them he was trying to keep his surviving family safe by faking his own death. Now Dominic fleshed out the gaps with half-truths and allusions, but not an ounce of compulsion. Bit by bit their doubts turned to amazement and then relief. He imagined that even Jackson, the master of spin, would have been impressed.
But where to from here? Thanks to Serge, they believed that rather than asking for rescue with his surprise phone call, Dominic had invited them for a visit. He could not send them away without compelling them to forget they had ever been here. Two weeks ago, he would have done just that, or asked Serge to. But that was before he was fired by the possibility of reclaiming a small part of his lost life. The suppressant hadn’t delivered him the sun, but it had brought him something even more profound—his family.
Not only could he not send them away, he uncorked several bottles of wine and cooked them all dinner.
Étienne joined him in the kitchen and delighted in showing off his culinary skills. Or rather, showing them off to Samantha, who sat at the counter, spellbound by his every word and gesture. Dominic’s cousin was an endless font of breathtaking flirtations for the blushing, effervescent woman. And the teasing rejoinders he tossed at Dominic harkened back to long summers the two had spent running wild around Étienne’s family estate outside Bordeaux.
Francesca’s confident, throaty laugh rang out often as she joined in with stories of her own about the family’s history and shared happy recent events. Most notable of these was the news of Dominic’s older sister, Genevie, who had been newlywed when he last saw her. ‘Frère préféré,’ she used to call him, her ‘favorite brother,’ despite her having only one brother. She confided in him her hopes and dreams, advised him on matters of the heart, and helped him out of dilemmas as often as he helped her. And when illness struck either of them, more often than not, it was the other who tended them.
It staggered him to think that she was now a mother herself to a baby girl of eighteen months. The doting grandmother had a phone full of pictures to show off, and Dominic dutifully admired his new niece, but not without a pang of regret. Thrilled as he was that Genevie was moving on with her life, this child was a poignant reminder of how much he had truly lost.
Cassidy sat beside his mother, nursing a glass of wine and glowing with high spirits. Sensing his turn of mood, she stirred the conversation into new avenues.
Silently he sent her his love and his thanks.
Their hands touched as
he passed her on his way back to the stove. Her heart shone in her eyes as she looked up at him. I love you, husband of my soul. And I adore your family.
Slowly the years of darkness thinned, the regrets lost their cutting edges, and reality as Dominic knew it faded into the background until it was little more than a lingering nightmare. With the past done and gone, and the future eternal and obscure, this moment was the only one that mattered. This limitless love and joy that threatened to burst his heart. This rang in his soul and made him whole.
This he vowed to never let go again.
Which was why, long after midnight, he offered his mother and cousin the two best guest rooms in the house and invited them to stay for as long as they wanted.
Chapter 10
Urgent Business
Dominic waited with Cassidy and Serge in the entrance hall and kept a tight lid on his temper. Every few months a blood-drinker found his or her way to his dojo’s door. They had heard rumors of him, they would say, or maybe found the address listed on the V-zette site. They wanted to see with their own eyes if it was true, that there was a lord of their kind, and what did it mean? He spoke to them, re-sired them, sent them on their way. It was part of the job, and he enjoyed turning their world upside down, turning them away from fear and darkness and into love and light.
But why did one have to show up tonight?
Samantha managed the facility for him and used the space to teach yoga classes during the day. Not all her classes ended during daylight hours, however, and tonight an unknown vampire and her human companion had surprised her after class, insisting on an audience with him.
“It’ll only be a little while,” Cassidy said earlier when Samantha’s text request for instructions hit both their phones. Dominic had been preparing to go out to hunt. He needed the sustenance for his plans tonight, which included renewing his bond with Cassidy and spending more time with his family in the happy illusion of being human again.
Instead, there were hunger pangs in his belly, Cassidy was only a remote whisper in his mind, and his mother was occupied in her room, catching up with the rest of the family via Skype as Serge had ‘suggested’ she do.
And Dominic waited.
Finally, the garage door rumbled open and Samantha’s hybrid whispered in. Another car rolled up the driveway. He settled into one of the plush, high-backed chairs in the far corner of the foyer. Serge took up position behind him.
While Dominic wore jeans and a dress shirt with his loafers, Serge was his usual disheveled self in board shorts and Hawaiian shirt. In honor of this ‘official’ occasion, he had donned flip-flops. Dominic didn’t insist on formality. The casual dress and decor was a convenient way of soothing the jangled nerves of blood-drinker visitors—or lulling potential enemies into underestimating the true extend of his power.
Samantha hurried in from the garage through the kitchen, her new shadow, Étienne, trailing behind her. Both were flushed, their eyes shiny, and their heart rates elevated in ways that did not speak to looming danger.
He allowed himself a tiny smile.
“Sorry, Dominic,” Samantha said. “I didn’t mean to ambush you.”
“But you were ambushed, non?”
She nodded. “Her—” her eyes flickered to Étienne “—boyfriend made it sound pretty grim.”
“Très mystérieux,” Étienne supplied.
Dominic’s mood darkened further. His cousin was getting far too exposed to things he would be better off not knowing. “Thank you. You may go.”
Étienne cocked a brow at the official tone. “I may go?”
Serge zipped around his chair and crowded into Étienne’s space. His eyes flashed black, and his mouth opened, compulsion ready to fly.
Samantha slapped her hand to Serge’s chest. “No. I’ve got this.”
The softest of growls escaped Serge, but he relented.
Étienne blinked, uncertain. Samantha took his hand. “Shall we leave them to boring business and continue our . . . conversation?”
He smiled down at her, trapped in her wide, beguiling eyes. “Yes. Let’s.” Bidding them all a good night, he let Samantha lead him away.
Serge watched them go, still growling, and Dominic feared that if Étienne were not related to him, the man would be short serious amounts of blood at this point. He sent the mental equivalent of snapping fingers at Serge to gain his attention.
Shooting his lord an unhappy glance, Serge returned to his post behind Dominic’s seat.
Tentative steps approached the door. Dominic nodded to Cassidy who turned to open it before anyone could ring the bell. “Welcome,” she said warmly.
The vampire who entered was a petite work of art determined to disappear into the background. There was no color about her. Not in her white-blond, up-swept hair, nor in her baby blue eyes, or in her soft pink lips. And certainly none in her translucent skin. Even her choice of dress, a pantsuit ensemble of white and peach beneath a cream duster, seemed to work toward making her disappear. She carried herself with the regal posture of royalty and an impassive expression that bordered on the haughty.
But her heart raced in her chest as she approached, the click of her heels tentative. And he smelled the hint of fear in her still-wintery scent. Young. Perhaps a decade as a blood-drinker, no more, and perhaps all of twenty when she had been made.
A human male carrying a leather shoulder bag, entered with her. He was the polar opposite of her. Tall, muscular, with a dark beard and dressed in workout clothes. After murmuring a greeting to Cassidy, he stood by the door, hands clasped before him. He, too, carried about him a fine mist of fear.
The vampiress stopped before Dominic, but her enormous eyes were for Serge alone. Her chin pointed up another notch. “I am Natalia Bogomolov.” Even her hard Russian accent sounded delicate in her crystal voice. “I have come to find the friend of a friend. Dominic Marchant.”
“You have found him,” Serge said with little enthusiasm, his mind clearly still with his personal problems.
Her uncertainty only grew.
“Our common friend is Aubrey Wainwright?” Dominic asked. He recognized her name as that of the woman who had so charmed the Englishman. He frowned. That had been five eventful nights ago, and no word from Aubrey since.
Natalia’s gaze flicked to Dominic as though annoyed he had spoken. “Yes, it is,” she confirmed, looking back to Serge.
A mental nudge made him look in Cassidy’s direction. “She can’t see you,” she mouthed, and he realized that he was still holding himself shrouded in the illusion of humanity he had adopted for his family’s sake. Natalia saw only one vampire in the room. Serge.
Amused, Dominic tented his fingers before him. “Did he send you here?”
Fire flashed in those pale eyes at the human meddling in her business, but seeing no objection from Serge, she turned to Dominic. “No, he did not. But he told me this vampire had great power and would rule us all.” She glanced at Serge as though unsure about applying this statement to him. “He spoke highly of him and called him a friend.”
“And so he is,” Dominic said and let the soft, sun-bronzed human guise melt away into the reality of his stark, pale, blood-drinker reality.
Natalia gasped and dropped to her knees, folding over so far her head touched the floor. Her cream duster flared out around her, all but vanishing against the cream tile.
Dominic was too startled to react. Serge made a tiny, troubled sound deep in his throat.
Cassidy’s mouth dropped open. The man beside her shifted nervously.
Blood-drinkers always accorded Dominic the respect he was due once they realized the true extent of his supernatural gifts, but not one had ever prostrated themselves to this degree. Of course, he had never frightened one as thoroughly as he had just frightened this hapless soul
who knew him not at all.
“Be at ease, Natalia,” Dominic said. “This is not required.”
She sat up, uncertainty hunching her shoulders. “I am so very sorry, my lord. I meant no offense. I didn’t—”
“No offense taken. Please. Get up and tell me why you are here. As a friend, non?”
Natalia gracefully rose back to her feet, but her head no longer rode quite so high. “I’m afraid I come to bring sad news, my lord. Our friend, Aubrey. He . . . he is dead.”
Chapter 11
Pretender
Dominic didn’t react. He could not have heard this correctly, could he? This could not be true. Not of Aubrey.
When the stunned silence lingered, Natalia’s companion hurried to her side and held open the bag he carried. She reached inside and retrieved a finely made red metal urn. “You are the only relationship he mentioned in our brief time together. I thought perhaps you would like to receive his remains.” She placed the urn on the table beside Dominic. The man and the bag retreated into the background, his eyes downcast.
Dominic touched the cool metal with his fingertips. He had no reason not to believe her. Aubrey had not reported back as he always did. On the other hand if there was one thing blood-drinkers were good at it was playing cruel games. The blood-drinkers of old anyway, the ones who still fed on terror and pain. The ones not yet re-sired to him.
Like this one.
Keeping his head right now was paramount.
“How?”