by A. J. Aalto
Hood reached up into the cupboard for a mug, filled it with a pull of espresso, and sipped. He glanced at Harry, then at me, and bobbed his head to Marley's “One Love” for a minute before slipping back into the bedroom, hopefully to get dressed.
When I recovered from the unexpected mindgasm, I noticed Harry waiting for an explanation. “It's not what it looks like,” I said.
“Of course it isn't, don't be absurd,” Harry murmured. “Only, I do believe the lad displayed himself on purpose, though for which one of us, I should not like to guess.”
“It wasn't on purpose. And if it was, it wasn't for you.”
Harry gave me another long look, followed by a full-on grin brimming with fangs and amusement. “Well then, sound the hunts-up, my impious harlot, my indomitable flirt-gill, my intrepid little hussy. Have at him! I wish you Godspeed.”
“Hey!” I yelped. “I could get lucky if I wanted to.” If I had ketamine or some roofies.
Even fatigued, all of Harry's movements were graceful, including his tired eye roll. He swept into the sheltering shadows of the pantry and disappeared behind the shelf. When his footfalls on the stairs ended, I went to the front door to peer out the peephole.
* * *
Darth Vader's midlife crisis sat in the driveway, reflecting early morning sunbeams alongside Harry's carefully covered sport bike. The limited-edition, black on black on blackity-black Bugatti currently owned by Special Agent Mark Batten, had once, until one baffling morning of private trade-offs in mid-December, belonged to my Cold Company.
The FBI's second-most highly respected preternatural investigator and the nation's most prolific vampire hunter, Batten was in demand all over North America, but he'd recently chosen to settle in Boulder. Now he squatted in my driveway next to his hyper-exotic toy and spit-shined the road dust off the rims using the bottom edge of his white t-shirt. His butt looked unfairly appetizing in broken-in jeans; probably he should register it as a lethal weapon.
My forehead puckered almost painfully and I dropped it against the door with a thunk. I heard his footsteps crunch on the gravel and then clomp across the porch without any break in his stride. Apparently, my little trick had worked, and he wasn't significantly broken from wrestling with the Kitty Prioress. Huzzah for my healing magic, but why was he helping Sheriff Hood ruin my morning, if not my view? I whisked the door open with a feigned look of innocent expectation.
Batten was a dark hunk of manly perfection sent to torture womankind with unfulfilled erotic daydreams and sexual frustration. Seeing him in the driveway through the peephole was bad enough; now, barely a foot and a half apart, his presence was enough to make my brain liquefy into a lustful grey goo, incapable of any thought that didn't involve nudity and heavy breathing. I hated him for that, and was perfectly comfortable maintaining the delusion that it was something he did on purpose. He was the knight, armed and armored, and I was the floundering monster, his conquest over and over again. There may have been sword and lance and pot of gold metaphors when I conjured him up on late, sweaty evenings.
Arms crossed as if he expected a fight, he took up space on my porch in a wide-legged stance, jaw square and tight. He was bronzed from the sun; eight weeks in Costa Rica will do that, especially when followed by sixteen weeks in Panama. I also hated him for tanning so well, as my Nordic genetics did not allow such a feat. I wondered if the tan would set off the white of his teeth, but the chances of me getting a real Mark Batten smile were slim to stick-figure.
“Baranuik,” he started, then it was like he didn't know where to go from there. He shoved both hands in his pockets and nodded at me in greeting, rocking back on his heels.
I waited, folding my arms over my humble chest. When he didn't appear to have anything else to say, I prompted, “Sorry, do I know you?”
The corner of his mouth twitched upward, and took my breath with it. “Problem?”
“You interrupted Jamaica.” I threw a thumb over my shoulder. “Bob and I were Jammin’.”
“Not even going to pretend to understand that,” he said. “You look great. Healthy. Happy.”
Under my Mac cosmetics, I looked like an extra who had shambled off the set of Night of the Living Dead, but I wasn't about to blow my cover. At least I'd been caught on a day I'd done the just-in-case make-up not once but twice – once for each cop. Point: Marnie.
“Of course,” I scoffed, touching my hair to make sure it wasn't hanging out of its ponytail. “My natural state is unrepentant awesomeness.”
“I haven't forgotten,” he said, but the quirk of his dark eyebrow told me I was full of it. “You made a cute squirrel last night.”
“If that's a clever way to get me to talk about nuts, try again.” I mentally smacked myself for thinking about what he had hidden inside his jeans and lurched towards safer anatomical territory. “You grew a little…” I rubbed my chin to indicate his scruff, a demonic-looking goatee. I figured if Satan felt like looking human for the day, he might appear as Mark Batten with horns. “Was that on purpose, or did you miss a spot?”
“Gonna invite me in?”
“Do I need to? Are you a spray-tanned revenant?” I peered up at the bright morning sun.
He dropped his chin to show me irritated midnight-sky eyes over his Oakleys. “Don't ever say that again,” the vampire hunter warned.
His tone made me smile anew. “Well, I sure will now.”
“It's just polite to ask someone in. Wait,” he held up his hand, shaking his head. “Forgot who I was talking to.”
“Maybe I don't want you in my house. I get a say in that, right? Wait,” I held up one of my hands, too. “Forgot who I was talking to.”
“Let's not do this. I didn't come to …” He gave up, stuffing his hands back in his pockets. “May I come in, Ms. Baranuik?”
“That depends, Agent Batten. Are you carrying?”
He sucked his teeth. “I'll put it in the trunk.”
“I was kidding.” I gaped. “You were actually bringing rowan wood into my home?”
“Forgot it was here.” He reached down under his cuff, showing a little stiffness around the knee, and pulled a hand-whittled stake out of an ankle sheath.
I grabbed it out of his hands and tried to crack it over my knee. It hit my jeans with a sharp thwack and didn't even bend. “Ow! Fuck!” I hopped on my good leg and tried bending and twisting it with both hands, setting my teeth, making noises like a Chihuahua on a soup bone, and the stake didn't so much as splinter.
Batten watched me, his gaze inscrutable behind his mirrored shades. “May I?” he offered, hand out.
I slapped it into his palm. He cracked it in two and tossed the shards over his shoulder. They clattered down the porch steps and rolled in the gravel. I watched them go and made a mental note to swoon over his asinine show of masculine strength later. For now, I informed him, “Harry could do that with your femur.”
“Harry tossed an SUV twenty feet in the air,” he agreed. “You'd have trouble snapping a pretzel in half with those tiny hands.”
“I ought to pop you one with this tiny hand.” I showed him my fist. “Here, grab my wrist; watch what I learned to do.”
He smiled at it, a slow, meaningful spread of his lips. “Pass.”
I got a glimpse of playful tongue snagged between straight white teeth and flashed back on delicious memories of that tongue working between my thighs while I squirmed, trapped under his strong, determined hands. I slammed the door on that thought, but not fast enough; my stupid fool of a heart kicked hard and I had to look away from his mouth. Half of me wanted to start a knock-down, drag-out fight with him. The other half wanted to drag him to the floor and show him where else he could put that tongue.
Cold. I needed something cold, quickly.
I found my voice. “Lemonade?” No, no, don't invite him in!
“Please,” Batten said agreeably, and stepped into the cool shade of the entryway.
CHAPTER 9
POURING LEMONADE W
ITH A SHAKY HAND was tricky, and might have been embarrassing if he'd noticed, but Batten wasn't watching me. His eyes were everywhere else, probably looking for changes in my life during his sabbatical from it. There hadn't been many. Maybe he was looking for signs that I was available, or maybe that was hopeful imagination on my part. Batten cocked his ear to listen at the pantry, where he knew the door to Harry's cellar chambers were.
Except for replacing the broken glass, everything was more or less exactly as it had been in December. The faded cherry-couplet wallpaper was still scorched black around the window because I hadn't found its replacement. The floor still creaked in front of the stove. The fridge was still an ancient, avocado beast with a tendency to judder in the dead of night. The oven was a mustard-colored contraption with two broken burners and chips out of the enamel, an appliance to which I had an inexcusable emotional attachment. Harry wanted to replace both, and since he did all the cooking, the request was more than fair, but I felt they, in their imperfection, matched the turquoise Formica-and-steel table, creating a quaint, hand-me-down feeling that could never be reproduced with modern items. Every scratch told a story, each black mark had a history. Best of all, the human memories and impressions lurking in the inanimate objects, stored like digital video, were familiar enough to be white noise now to my psychic Talents, and had faded to a nice background hum.
The cheery yellow linoleum flooring still bore sooty marks from a vampire hunter's Molotov cocktail attack. Little did anyone outside of my household know that attacker, Deputy Neil Dunnachie, was buried in a duffel bag under the mud at the bottom of Shaw's Fist's deepest trench, chained with a hundred pound weight. I feel it's best that your revenants tidy up after themselves; they find hiding spots that human beings couldn't without the help of unexpected equipment.
I pulled the blinds open, filling the little kitchen with a rare blast of sunshine. Beside the sink, in an old glass Coke bottle with the paint almost completely faded away, were half a dozen bubblegum-pink wild roses that Harry had clipped the night before. Batten focused on them and removed his sunglasses.
“Didn't peg Harry as a truck guy,” he said, with a nod in the general direction of my driveway. Hood's Ford F-150, I thought, but said nothing as I stirred a bit of sugar into Batten's lemonade.
“Harry's well this morning?” he went on. “Or should I say, ‘Guy Harrick’?”
“Figured it out, did you?” I handed him the glass, which was already perspiring in the morning heat. “Harry's fine, thank you for asking.”
“And your brother?” In the next room, Hood was making cloth-on-skin, getting-dressed noises that Batten's cop ears didn't miss. “Someone else here?”
While Bob Marley confessed to shooting the sheriff but not the deputy, I grabbed my glass and jerked my chin at the mudroom. “Let's go sit on the dock, it's nicer out there.”
“No gloves?”
“They got dirty,” I said, ignoring the fact that I had built my collection back up to twenty pairs or so.
“Hate to think what you dirtied them with.” He studied my walk. Was he watching the sway of my hips? “You're not armed, are you?”
Or not. “I'll never tell.”
He hooked his sunglasses in the collar of his shirt, drawing my attention to the soft, lickable spot at the hollow of his throat, and then strode out in front of me, giving me far too good a view of his immaculately-muscled ass. When he turned to walk backwards across the lawn, talking as he did so, I tried not to let my eyes drop to belt-level.
“There's something different about you,” he observed.
“I'm not currently trying to kick you in the bahookie?” I guessed.
“Maybe that's it.”
“That could change at any second, so watch it.”
Another smile, reaching his eyes. “You are a master of social relations.” He chose a spot at the end of the dock where I'd have to sit as far away from his gun, holstered at his left hip, as possible. He was always maneuvering his body so that I was to his right, and I was always insulted by it. He yawned, lifting both arms up to the sky in a giant stretch. “Man, I missed this place. It's good to be home.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, sugar-tits. This ain't your house.”
Batten ignored me and got comfortable on the dock, letting his long legs out in front of him, leaning back on one tanned arm while the left hand scratched the new stubble on his chin. I sat beside him and fumed. There wasn't much space, and my hip brushed up against his, electrifying parts of me that I had vainly hoped had forgotten all about Mark Batten and the wonderful things he could do with that big, chiseled body. Particularly lewd and vociferous parts woke up and cried out for attention that didn't require batteries.
I cleared my throat. “You must be here about the Fur Con case? I was surprised to see you at Malas’ fortress of doom. Didn't know you were back.”
“Take it you didn't miss me?” he replied carefully.
“I didn't think about you any more than you thought about me.” Which, for me and my overactive hormones, was about six hundred times a day, but he didn't need to know that.
He sniffed. “Saw your article in Fast Science Quarterly. March or April. Didn't expect to be on an island-hopper over the coast of Panama and have to look at your picture. It about came off the paper and kicked me in the chest.”
I waited, having no idea whether he expected an apology for it. When he said nothing further, I let it go. “Do you know what Chapel wants to see me about? Did he find evidence that he needs me to Grope?”
“No. And if he had, he'd use scientific avenues before he'd ask you to do that.” He held up a hand to ward off cries of objection that didn't come. “Chapel is interviewing a new guy, probably just wants your help.”
“Interviewing for what?”
Batten squinted sideways down at me. “In-house UnBio nerd.”
But that was MY job. The Feds had started shortening preternatural to unnatural, and running it together to define my degree as UnBio. Feds shorten everything. No time to talk, must chase something down and shoot it, far more important than saying full words. I curled my lip and asked, “Who is this clown?”
“Chapel stole him away from the OSRA in the UK, the Oxford Service Recruitment Academy.”
“Sounds like a school for butlers.”
“Agency similar to Gold-Drake & Cross, managing psychics and preternatural experts in the UK and parts of Europe. He's Ireland's best.”
“You know what Harry says about Irishmen,” I warned. Actually, Harry didn't have a warning about the Irish. I wondered why not. He had objections about everyone else on the planet. Harry wasn't what anyone would call politically correct, but how many four hundred-year-olds are? Old prejudices die hard, especially for the dead.
“The good news is, you could be off the hook.” He said it like I'd be relieved, and I should have been. I wondered why I wasn't. “Speaking of Count Humpurbutt, where is he?”
“It's broad daylight.” I lowered my voice. “And he doesn't hump my butt, jeez. We hardly ever…” I let it hang in the air over the water.
“I know,” Batten said. Splash.
I didn't need my sex life examined by the guy who inspired most of it. “You don't know shit. You haven't even been in the country. What, have the rag-mags started charting my sex life now?”
He waited for me to stop flailing my arms. “When you get some on a regular basis, your face changes. Whole different look in your eyes.”
“Oh, like you remember. It was forever ago.” I crossed my arms in front of my chest, then cut him a glance. “What look?”
He smiled knowingly. “Vulnerability.”
“I'm never vulnerable.” Uncertainty creased my forehead. “It's probably just endorphins and improved circulation.”
He barked a laugh that dragged out into a lyrical hum, then said, “Both vamps at rest?”
“Your point?” I asked, studiously not checking if there was a point in the front of his pants.
“Once you train the new guy, we don't have to be coworkers anymore. I'll work at the PCU. You'll go back to doing whatever it was you did before. Sudoku, eating cookies, malingering.” His eyes gleamed with meaning.
I felt an immediate rush of lust as my body responded with a big hell yes even as my brain squalled hell no. My privates twitched happily into a state of enthrallment and I had to work hard to ignore the quivering of my thighs.
“I gave up cookies,” I said sadly. The admission helped tamp down my inflamed lust. I missed cookies almost as much as I missed him. Crap. Batten was mercifully oblivious to my inner turmoil. “Seriously, you want this OSRA ass-monkey to knock me out of a career just so you can bone me whenever you want?” I made motions to get to my feet and he pulled my elbow. “You've got some nerve.”
“Settle down there, Snickerdoodle.”
“Oh, that's right,” I drawled, “I'll just hang out in the woods all naked and lubed-up until it's convenient for you to come around. Screw you, Kill-Notch.”
“That's all I'm saying,” he appealed.
“Which is exactly your problem.”
“It's better you don't have a job.”
“I'm useful. Chapel wants me, and he's got me. I'm not quitting.” Wait, could I not-quit a job I didn't even officially have yet?
Batten grimaced.
“I'm sorry, does that put a crimp in your lurid little plans?” I'm pretty sure I had just crotch-blocked myself, too, but I was too irritated with Batten to spare any for my big mouth.
“Chapel seems to want you both. If you don't quit, you might have to work with someone and be civil.”