Funny. I’d known Triton since we were toddlers. We’d shared a telepathic connection and more adventures than I could count, and he’d been my first crush. Even when he made his “let’s be friends” feelings clear, I’d still loved him. All that time, and I’d never pictured Triton in a suit and tie.
“I had a meeting today, Cesca.”
My gaze shot up from his tie to his cocoa brown eyes.
“What?”
“That’s why I’m wearing a suit today.”
“You read my thoughts?”
He gave me the cocky grin I remembered from our youth. “We’ve still got the mojo.”
“What you have is the ego,” I zinged back, a hand on one hip.
“Same old Cesca,” he said with a wide grin. “The girl who’d take on any bully or BSer in town. My dear tyranoulitsa.”
I froze, my throat suddenly clamped around a sob. One word, echoing across the centuries, triggered emotions merely seeing him hadn’t.
A kaleidoscope of images flashed in my mind’s eye. Triton and me together, inseparable friends, occasional pranksters, clandestine adventurers.
Heart thudding, it took me three tries to gulp away the choking lump and draw a slow breath to speak.
“I-I’d forgotten that.”
Triton quirked a smile. “What?”
“That you used to call me little tyrant.”
The smile widened. “You used to box my ears for it, too, when you could catch me.”
His teasing eased the tightness in my chest.
“I caught you often then and I’m faster now, so don’t mess with me.”
“You two always got along this well, huh?”
I pivoted to Saber to find him grinning. An honest, full-out grin. An expression I hadn’t seen in weeks.
“Yeah,” Triton drawled. “I’d say this is typical.”
Saber laughed then, and the irritations I’d harbored with Triton fell away. It was worth any price if Saber stayed alive and healthy to laugh with me for a very long time to come.
“Now that old home week is out of the way,” Triton said, “come on back where we can be comfortable.”
Saber and I followed him to the ship’s bow setup where a cozy settee stretched along the wall. Saber settled next to me, while Triton took the creaky chair at the high point of our little conversation triangle.
“When I called,” Saber said, “I told you I needed help identifying the Void. Any luck getting in touch with Cosmil?”
“Afraid not. I haven’t seen him in over a week, and he isn’t answering his cell phone. I haven’t seen Pandora, either.”
Pandora, another magical shape-shifter, changed from a panther to a giant house cat. She also communicated with me telepathically, and apparently did the same with Cosmil and Triton. I didn’t know why Pandora had suddenly appeared last spring, but she’d helped me out of more than one jam.
Saber leaned forward, his elbows braced on his knees. “I’ll lay this on the line, Triton. I need to find and shut down the Void, and I need to do it fast. Do you or Cosmil know what this thing is?”
“I can’t speak for Cos, but no. I don’t know what the Void is.”
“You were hiding from it in August,” I said. “You must’ve known something then.”
“Not the way you’re thinking.” He sighed and loosened his tie. “I came home in March to look over this building and hire contractors.”
“And you left your gold dolphin charm on the beach for me to find,” I said.
“Yeah. I knew you’d seen me, but I didn’t want to impose on you and Saber just then. I went back to California to pack up the business and finished moving here in early July. Right after a diving trip to the Bahamas. A week later, Cos found me.”
“Here in the store?” Saber asked.
“Actually, he came to my apartment upstairs. He told me he’d been keeping track of me.”
“Why?” I asked. “And for how long?”
Triton grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck. “This is where it gets weird. He said he was responsible for me being a shifter. Something about a mermaid, a dolphin, and a spell gone wrong. Sounds like a bad ‘walked into a bar’ joke, doesn’t it?”
It did, but I didn’t say so.
“I take it,” Saber said, “that Cosmil told you to hide out.”
“Yeah. I made arrangements to delay the store opening, and he stashed me at his place in the country between here and Hastings.”
“What about the amulet?” Saber pressed. “Did the one you used at the comedy club come from Cosmil?”
Triton shook his head. “I got it from a kahuna in Hawaii. A shaman. That was last November when I went out there to dive.”
“Did the man know about the amulet’s power?” Saber asked.
“The kahuna was a woman, and hell, she was ancient enough to have powered the thing herself. She said it was for protection, but she didn’t mention from what. I took the amulet to be polite.”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t know how it worked, Triton,” I scolded. “You didn’t seem the least bit surprised when it went all supernova and made the vamps go poof.”
“I wasn’t surprised. I was damn impressed. Cos gave me the chant that activates the magick and made me repeat it until it was as rote as reciting the alphabet. But, I only knew what should happen. I didn’t take the thing out for a test-drive. I swear to you both. Everything I know about the amulet, about the Void for that matter, I know directly from Cos.”
“Then we need to track down Cosmil and get answers,” Saber said.
Triton narrowed his eyes. “Any reason for the urgency?”
I took Saber’s hand and squeezed. “It seems that Saber is infected.”
Triton cut his gaze to Saber. “But Cos said the Void feeds on magical beings, not humans.”
“I’m somewhere in between,” Saber countered with a tight smile.
“Saber’s been in direct contact with super-sick vampires for weeks, Triton. You have to help us. Please.”
Triton gave a jerky nod. “I’ll call Cos again.”
But before he could reach for the cell phone on his desk, little bursts of hell broke loose.
Vibrations shimmied through the room, rattling the artifacts in their display cases. The floor beneath us heaved, and Triton’s creaky barrel chair lurched sideways.
Just as the three of us shot to our feet, the air in front of me shimmered like a heat wave rising from summer-baked pavement. The shimmer solidified into the human form of Cosmil, but he looked nothing like I remembered. Not the Santa in a sapphire wizard cape, not his scruffy carriage driver guise.
Instead, he looked like he’d been on the bad end of a back-alley brawl, inky dirt streaking and rips rending his white duck pants and tunic.
And then there was the blood.
So much smeared blood.
In another instant, Cosmil collapsed.
THREE
Triton and Saber leaped to grab Cosmil by the arms before he smacked face-first into the tiled floor.
I fought nausea. Not from the sight of blood, but from the smell. Coppery tinged with the taint of tar, like newly laid asphalt.
“Tell me what happened,” Saber said, kicking into cop mode.
“Attacked,” Cosmil gasped. “Void in the Veil.”
“The Veil,” Triton supplied, “is what he calls the passageway between dimensions. Think wormhole with scenery.”
The injured wizard inhaled a raspy breath. “Get me home. Pandora at risk.”
My chest ached with fear as his eyes fluttered closed. It hurt to see the quiet, confident wizard as an old, beaten man, but to lose him and Pandora, too? The panther shifter might be a cryptic critter, but she’d pawed her way into my heart. We had to save them. Both of them.
“We can take him out the back,” Triton was saying to Saber.
“Done. I’ll drive, you follow.”
“I can drive him,” Triton argued.
“Yeah, but I’ve got l
ights and sirens.”
Saber fished his keys out of his jeans and tossed them to me. “Pull the car around, Cesca.”
I sprinted through the store and outside, beeped the locks, and climbed into Saber’s black SUV. In no more than a minute, I’d cut across an empty lot, dodged five old oak trees along the way, and angled the car behind Triton’s store at the rear entrance. With the passenger-side door toward the building and Saber’s tinted windows providing extra cover, a causal observer would see nothing amiss.
Like the bloodied man Saber and Triton half carried between them.
“Lay the passenger seat back,” Saber commanded. “As far as it will go.”
I reclined the seat then scooted out of the way to watch the guys load Cosmil in the car. Saber buckled him in and slammed the door.
“Okay,” he said, grabbing my hand. “Triton gave me directions, but keep your phone on in case I need to check them.”
“I will.”
He gave me a peck on the cheek and sprinted around to the driver’s door.
“We’re right behind you,” Triton called as Saber got in the car.
I watched Saber peel out, then Triton nudged me. “Move, Cesca. Help me lock up.”
We sped back inside, down a hall, and through to the shop proper. I followed Triton’s instruction to flip the dead bolt on the main door, and he set the security alarm mounted near his desk. His movements were quick and efficient, just the way I remembered from watching him cast fishing nets centuries ago, but I caught the fine tremor of tension in his hands and the worry in his eyes.
When we exited in the back, Triton bounded up the wooden exterior stairway I assumed led to his apartment. I trailed after him but waited on the small, east-facing deck filled with potted plants while he ducked inside. Seconds later, he emerged with a gray duffel bag.
“Just a few more things to get,” he said as he locked up.
He strode to a monster-sized wood fern in a glazed yellow pot at the left corner of the deck and thrust his hand in the middle of it, ignoring the tiny sparks that fizzled on the fronds.
“Catch.”
Good thing for vampire reflexes, because he tossed a missile at me. When I looked at the object in my stinging hand, I saw the amulet. Immediately, the hexagon-shaped crystal, shot with silver and gold lines and framed in copper, pulsed in my palm, warm and steady as a heartbeat.
“Tell me you don’t leave this out in the open where anyone could take it.”
“The fern hides it,” he said as he crossed to the same fern in a matching pot in the right corner of the deck. “Plus Cos has warded the whole place against theft.”
“Then why the alarm system for the shop?”
“Keeps the insurance company happy.” He stuck his hand in the second fern, again to accompanying sparks. “Heads up.”
He underhanded another disk, but I snagged it easily.
“What’s this? A fake?”
“Nope, they work together. They’re mates. Let’s ride.”
I was tempted to brain him with both amulets as he trotted past me, but refrained. Good thing because he opened the garage door I hadn’t noticed to reveal a honking-huge silver F-250 truck that made my darling SSR look like a Tonka toy. It was also, I saw, a stick shift, which I couldn’t drive.
I buckled up, opened the glove box, and stashed the amulets under the owner’s manual.
“You don’t want to hold those?”
I crossed my eyes at him. “Which way to Cosmil’s place?”
“South down A1A to the 206 bridge, then west toward Hastings.”
I chewed my lip as Triton steered out of the neighborhood and took a screeching left onto Anastasia Boulevard. Yes, I was nervous, but not because of his driving. Because we were alone for the first time in centuries, and I didn’t know what to say.
We’d snuck out of our homes as children and teens, always to have adventures. Most often we’d borrow a rowboat, take it to the island, and end up swimming and racing on the beach. Unless it was the dark of the moon when Triton shifted. In that case, I’d stand watch until he was fully a dolphin and in deep enough water to swim away. Guess we were too predictable, though. That’s how one particular vampire and his henchmen knew where to capture me.
I met Triton alone only a few more times after that. Once to beg him to get my family out of town, another time to beg him to leave, too. Without the leverage of loved ones who could be tortured, even Turned, King Normand had less power over me.
I knew when Triton had left St. Augustine. He told me telepathically, and we’d stayed in touch on and off for fifty years. Not that I could tell time once Normand had punished me by sealing me in his own coffin. Triton kept me apprised of the passing years and of his travels through our mind connection. And then, suddenly, he was silent.
“I like your hair.” His mellow voice seemed to boom in the truck cab “The blouse, too. You look good in red.”
I touched the cap sleeve of my blouse then the clip holding my partial updo. “Thanks.”
Had he been reading my memories and thoughts a moment ago? If so, he wasn’t taunting me. Yet.
“Am I getting the silent treatment?”
“Uh, no. After all this time, I don’t know what to say.”
“You? You always have something to say.”
I punched him in the arm, but his teasing unwound another twist of tension in my chest. “Do you think Cosmil will be okay? I mean, should we have taken him to the hospital or at least to a doctor?”
“Hell, no. Doctors ask questions. We just have to hope Cos isn’t too badly hurt, or we’re all screwed.”
“All?”
“I’m in the early stages of infection, too, Cesca.”
“Oh, Triton, I’m sorry.” My pulse faltered, and I touched his shoulder in sympathy. “Did the Void get to you before you went into hiding?”
“I don’t know when it got to me. Remember a few weeks back when I told you telepathically that the Void was affecting all magicals?”
“Yes, but you didn’t say you were ill.”
“I didn’t know I was then, and I sure as hell don’t know how I got infected. Not even Cosmil knows if the disease is passed by direct contact, is airborne, or is magically delivered in some combination.”
Was he thinner than he’d been five weeks ago? Were his cheekbones more prominent? What did I know? I’d seen him for maybe ten whole minutes at the comedy club, and I’m not all that observant when I’m busy banishing crazed vampires.
“What are your symptoms?” I asked as we flew past the island branch of the library and Ace Hardware.
“Itchiness under my skin, restlessness. I’m not sleeping well.”
“You used to feel the same way near the new moon. That’s in six days.”
“This is different. More severe.” He paused. “You aren’t sick at all?”
“Not a bit, and I’m not looking that gift mule in the mouth.”
“But you inhaled enough black energy from those vampires at the comedy club to choke a whale. That alone should have infected you.”
“I learned to ground it out and rebalance.”
Triton shot me a surprised glance. “From Cos?”
“From Saber.”
Triton’s hands tightened on the gearshift, but we sailed through the light where A1A intersects with Beach A1A.
“You love Saber.”
Triton spoke softly, a statement, not a question.
“I do.”
“Guess I blew my chance, huh?”
I snorted. “Your ‘just friends’ speech was loud and clear, Triton.”
“I meant my second chance. I moved back here for several reasons, one of them being you.”
My heart stuttered to a dead stop then pounded one painful beat. Was I hearing right? Triton had wanted a second chance with me?
“I heard on the national news,” he continued, “that you’d been unearthed, but I couldn’t get away from California for a while.”
�
��I’d been out of the box for seven months before I saw you at the beach,” I said carefully.
“I left my dolphin charm so you’d know I planned to see you again.”
“And then you disappeared for another five months.”
“I was a little tied up moving my business and dodging the big bad Void.”
“Too busy to call?”
He braked at the Dondanville stoplight and turned to hold my gaze.
“Would a call have made a difference?”
Would it?
I’d once dreamed of waking to those twinkling brown eyes each morning. I’d dreamed of the twinkle turning to passion. I’d dreamed of a life of joy with my best friend.
The spring before I turned sixteen, Triton told me flat out that we’d never be a couple and shattered my dreams. I’d accepted his reasons, mainly that I was sister to him, not a lover. But years later, when I’d been trapped in that coffin, I’d hoped that Triton would be the one to find and release me. That just maybe, after decades apart, he’d see me differently.
Now?
A horn blared behind us, and Triton hit the gas.
I hit a reality check. So, okay, if Triton had come back sooner, come back anytime before I met Saber, maybe it would have made a difference. Triton was my first love, and seeing him stirred memories. But nostalgia faded. My feelings for Triton might be pond deep, but what I felt for Saber was ocean vast.
“Never mind, Cesca. I can see you’re in love. Besides,” he added, throwing me a grin that seemed only a little forced, “I’m still looking for a female I can shift with.”
I made my tone as light as his. “Is that why you came back? You never found that special woman in California?”
“Or anywhere else. The kahuna woman in Hawaii told me I needed to return to the ocean of my birth to find my fin mate.”
“Cosmil confirmed you were born in the Atlantic?”
Always the Vampire Page 3