I often wondered how I’d been able to survive this long. You’d think after five hundred years, I’d have figured out how to avoid, deny, or downright out perjure myself. Nope. Whenever I so tried, my nonverbal communication could give me away.
Maybe I hadn’t been taught how to do it properly, yet.
“Well, we’ll be right over here if you need us,” Angela said, and took five steps away and waited.
I turned my back to her.
“Leif, what are you doing here?” I bit my lip, and I wasn’t one of those women to flirt. But he made me feel young again, innocent even. He made me pine for what could have been. “I didn’t know you would be playing tonight.”
Of course, I did. I’d entered it onto my online calendar and marked it down just like my menstrual cycle. The best things were planned, shaving included.
He must have read through my lie. Sort of like the whole, ‘Santa Claus was real and shimmied down the chimney’ white lie. It didn’t hurt anything.
He led me to a corner. “Maybe we’ve been given some sort of reprieve for a moment. A man can hope.” He smiled broadly, and my mouth went dry.
“Did you ever marry your soldier?” I watched his lips move, and a dimple I never knew was there formed when he quirked his lips.
“I don’t think Freyja would have granted me this opportunity if I had.”
“An opportunity to do it all over again?”
His hot gaze on me, and I felt it, too—a magnetic pull between us. But what about the room of vampires looking for a snack? My mind seemed not to be listening to logic as I stared at him. My entire body flushed.
“It’s been five hundred years—do you think they are okay with us having fun for this one night?”
He dazzled me with his eyes, almost like they zinged and bounced, and for the life of me, I couldn’t think straight.
All I could imagine were scratches down his back, placed there by me, and the sound of our uniting.
I blinked to break the connection: Crapola! Was he trying to glamour me, wooing me with his magnetic charm, whereby I left my ironclad will at the threshold?
“I’m sure your wife or girlfriend might not like my complicating things,” I cooed.
“I’m unhappily single.” He leaned forward and sniffed. He looked down at my hand and noticed the wedding ring missing and quirked his eyebrow. “Precisely like I remember. Some things change, but not that my lady.”
“Whoa, this is going too fast,” I said and placed my hands on his chest. His firm, muscular chest was barely covered.
“It doesn’t have to be, but I’m scheduled to head out of town for a bit, and leaving tomorrow. So, it is now or never. Do we give this a go? Four hundred years of pent-up sexual desire?”
“You knew?” I blanched at such a revelation. I never knew he’d known of my interest back then when life was simple (except for the whole let’s-kill-the-pagans thing).
He nodded.
I knew this could never be anything, but for once I wanted to be selfish and enjoy this moment with him—this was worth a prison break.
He put his hotel room key in my back pants pocket. The warmth from his fingertips seeped through the material touching my skin. My stomach clenched. Butterflies fluttered. And his hand lingered.
And I didn’t object.
It had been so long since someone had known me, had touched me, and not the image I’d created, but really saw me: Abele.
Was I willing to risk it all for this? Oh, poppycock!
I would need time to properly prepare, too. Nothing was sexy about granny panties, and with his searing gaze, I knew it was going to be magical.
My hands trembled, and I tentatively reached out to touch his face. My hand hanging midair.
“It’s been too long since we talked, Leif. But we’re not going to happen. You had your chance and blew it. Plus, I need to get everyone safely back home.” I nicked my head towards Jaz, Natalie, Angela, and Ros sitting on the sofa gushing over two members of the band, whose names I didn’t know.
“I’ve waited this long. I can wait a little longer.” His voice was thick. He stepped backward, and my hands fell back to my side. “All we have is time, my lady.”
LEIF
Abele was still perfect.
Leif couldn’t let this chance pass him by again.
He watched them leave. His fangs extended, and a wave of anger rushed him. He and the band had been on the road for a while. They feasted on the groupies offered and those who willingly submitted. Sure, when one went rogue, he’d have to deal with him, but such was few and far between.
Seeing her had stirred something inside of him. It took everything within him to not order the room to clear then and there when she entered the room.
“You don’t seem as happy as a man about to get some,” Ronnie, the drummer, said. “They seemed very sweet.” He licked his lips for emphasis’s sake.
“Might taste sweet, too,” Dave the bassist said, and tilted his head back, putting his nose in the air, to catch a whiff. Leif knew they’d all smelled the pleasing aroma the girls had left behind, and it wasn’t their perfume.
Leif slammed down his hand. “They are under my protection and are not to be touched.”
“But you can smell it, too, right, sire?” Ronnie pushed.
“Mine.” He growled. “There is nothing to smell. Find yourself another willing meal, but those under my protection are not to be harmed, but protected.” He was lord and master, and ruler of them all. He clapped his hands, and the vampires under his command approached one by one, to bow and scatter.
The aroma of magic still permeated the air. Despite Leif’s age, his skill set didn’t include anything akin to the arcane.
“Bollocks, where in the name of the gods is Vincent?” Henney paced. Leif reached out his mind to feel his minions, and to account for his spawn. But for Vincent, he appeared silent.
Nothing.
“He was supposed to meet me at the club earlier. But he said he was going out for a snack.” Henney chuckled.
A coldness gripped Leif followed by goosebumps.
The room slowly emptied, except for Henney, in search of other as the men went in search of a willing meal from those offering in the hall. Leif plopped down on the sofa and picked up the bag of runes. He neatly placed down the white cloth and uttered a prayer to the gods.
He reached into the satchel and grabbed a handful of the runes, runes he’d made ages ago from a fruit-bearing tree, and cast them like dice. Nine fell from his palm, and three of those nine were unreadable, but the other six contained a message: balance, victory, gods, destiny, anger, and past.
The gods didn’t speak with him. He’d been cut off from direct contact, hearing only from the runes cast.
Even his dear brother, Erich, hadn’t always provided insight, but through the holy runes, he could usually find his path.
Three of the runes did not show face up. He removed the crystal pendulum and watched it swing. His brow furrowed. What could be coming his way? What were the gods trying to prepare him for? He turned over the runes and saw: love, battle, and journey.
He turned to Henney. “Call off the feast tonight. You can drink later.”
“But sire,” Henney argued. “They are all ripe for the taking. These beautiful women.”
“Don’t be a fool. One of the women who just left is a hunter. No, you shall not touch a hair on any out there tonight, or you will bring the hunters to us.”
Vincent was dead, Leif could feel it. And Leif was smart enough to know he, too, was on the lady’s list. If he made one false move, she’d try to stake him.
And he needed to make sure that option never came to fruition.
“No, tonight I need to prepare, to make sure we all continue to thrive, and that means the night of her life.”
“Will you kill her?” Henney asked. “Or do you care too much?”
Leif clinched his jaw. Only one of them could survive, but which one of them would
it be?
“I could never care for one as cold as she. She came from a family of nothing and nothing she has remained.”
As the words tumbled from his lips, he could have sworn he heard the sound of retreating footsteps. Even with his vampiric hearing, he’d not detected anyone standing outside his door.
“Bollocks!” He ripped the door open and found the hallway empty.
Chapter Seven
Tink
We hopped back into my car to drive home, and I could feel my face flushing red from rage. Evading Jaz’s questions would be more than enough of a challenge. But Luckily, Jaz would be with her mother tonight since Erich had to work, and I could leave her unprotected. A mini-vacation of sorts.
Another asshat.
The gall of that asshat.
The jackass.
I gripped the steering wheel and wished to be able to ram the car right into him and his dumb vampire friends.
“So are we not going to talk about you and Leif? Because he wasn’t going by his stage name—Reaper,” Jaz teased.
“Reaper, ha-ha, now that’s funny.” I snickered. There was no way I was going to reveal we’d been in the vampire den. No way was I going to say that I’d scantily saved all of those present from being part of a vampire’s buffet.
“I so wish I didn’t have to head out tomorrow,” Ros chimed in. “I want to know all the details when I get back.”
“You know what that means, Belle? You need to make yourself pretty.” Angela snorted. She’d had one Vodka Tonic too many, and I could have sworn she was checking out all of the eggplants in the room. How in the world could she be into produce? All I heard was eggplant, banana, carrot, and avocado. I still had no idea what the avocado was.
“He already knows how I look, Angela.”
“He knows your good and bad, but nothing says let’s have fun like leather and lace. I tell you, he is a bad boy. You can always tell how they strum their guitars and the faces they make.”
“Get your head out of the gutter.”
“What do you think rock n’ roll is all about? Those rock stars have horrible reputations, and make sure you’re safe.”
She might have been referencing STDs.
Instead, I was wondering more than if he was disease free. It mattered to me if I could trust him for this one night, but I should have been strategizing how I could stake him.
Tonight was not the night of reckoning.
We dropped the others off, and I was itching to talk to Jaz about what was really on my mind. It was one thing for Leif to be gallivanting around, but he had an entire nest that saw us all as food.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t know,” I began, “Especially considering the current spike in attacks.”
“I’m not a cop anymore.” Jaz shrugged. “Leif has promised me he would be on his best behavior. He doesn’t want me to put him in timeout.”
Oh, it would take a while for me to get used to Jaz being Leif’s creator, and her referring to herself as his mother.
“You know, you’ve waited so long. Go for it. Get him out of your system. Who knows, it could be naughty sex. Like sex so good it’s a big cataclysmic release—you know to get it out of your system.”
Being a woman in the modern age gave agency. It was freeing. I could taste and see if he was any good, get him out of my system, and go on with my life. But Leif made me weak. Could I actually taste and not want more? Even if he was the most handsome man in all the universe, would I give him another try if sex was lackluster? Did it mean he was less if we both didn’t have a porno-worthy orgasm, or if everything wasn’t as hot as I’d always fantasized it would be? He wouldn’t know what I liked. Oh, gosh, the pressure of it all. If the panic of thinking about it didn’t lessen up, it was going to be a slow burn thing. Not one and done, but more like a three-course meal.
“Does his best behavior include sending his minions to munch on us for lunch? Just this afternoon I had to stop someone from killing an innocent in a back alley. There’s been a spike in magic since your return. I think you opened something, a portal maybe.”
“Where’s the portal?”
“That isn’t the question or worry, but more of what else is about to come through. You went through time, like on fast forward.”
“I only fell asleep. It was all a dream.”
I shook my head. Even now Jaz could morph into a dragon; she’d somehow lied to herself and explained her waking in the 1520s was merely a figment of an overactive imagination—more like a dream of imminent consequence.
But since then, she refused to wear pretty gowns or visit enchanted castles anymore.
“How can you even say such?” I groaned. “I checked. The room you mentioned didn’t exist. You went through a portal; your lover’s mother is the goddess of death, and you are a magical being. Self-denial much?”
“You knew about all of this!” she rebutted. “You never warned me Leif was a vampire.” I nodded in agreement. These last few years I’d been protecting Jaz like she was a fragile egg.
I groaned and rubbed the back of my neck. “He’s now a threat to you. It’s become a problem. He’s captured the attention of the higher-ups. None of society knows the supernatural exists, especially not vampires. But the more they do, the more they are going to step from the shadows. Since you are the dragon, you are going to have to become involved, too.”
Jaz dissolved into laughter. I wasn’t sure if she was tickled that she should have a divine purpose or if it was the beginning of hysterics. It started with her shaking her shoulders and then moved to a deep guffaw. “You can’t be serious? How does this have anything to do with me? As long as they stay hidden, what should I do?”
Sure, I’d give her this. She was still learning. Up until now, her whole life had been one big lie. She’d handled it thus far well enough, but she wasn’t responding positively to all of the change. When she thought no one was looking, I’d catch her fixed stare filled with terror. She hadn’t admitted it, but I knew it was there.
“You are the catalyst,” I pressed,
Jaz shook her head. “Nope.”
I clenched the steering wheel. “I’m here to protect you, assigned to protect you. But you also have to let me take care of Leif.”
The sound of a woman screaming caught my attention, and I saw her running down the empty sidewalk as a man in black leather slowly followed her. I pointed it out.
“See that there,” I said and pointed at them, then slowed down the car.
“You got to do something,” Jaz pled.
“No, we do.” I pulled the car over to the curb, and parked it. “The gods sent a dragon for a reason. Now it’s your time to do something with it.”
As Jaz raced forward following the vampire, I cupped the air around me, “Azkabash explodere!” A thick fog moved in, blocking any cars from driving on the street, and any nearby onlookers from observing as Jaz raced into the street, morphed into the dragon, and launched into flight.
TINK
After arriving back to Erich’s place, I wasn’t surprised to find a directive from Freyja. Odin’s ravens had told them the news of Leif’s and my paths crossing, and his still breathing. Crap! They’d ripped him out of my life one time before, and now they were to do it again with a nice hollowed stake made from Ydrassil—the tree of the nine realms.
“You know what you must do, or the consequences will be dire for all parties,” Freyja’s message said. It rested on my bed in her runes.
Alone in my room, the water droplets ran the length of my body, and I gulped.
I smoothed lotion on my body and powdered my skin, eased on the skin-tight leather pants, used for the hunt, and slid my blades and wand into their sheaths.
Leif was a skilled fighter. It wouldn’t be an easy take-down, but it was all to keep Ros safe, even if it meant destroying my own heart in the process.
He was a vampire, after all, and time had taught me the rogue ones only liked to do one thing: lay and slay.
I steeled myself against my duty. It weighed on me, but this was the path I’d chosen when Freyja had called me for her purpose. I was still here because of Jaz, and no other reason.
This was my torture.
My thoughts drifted to who Leif was, and now who I’d made him become.
I should have died. To have to kill him was more than I ever wished to do.
It took me a long time to make it there, because my heart wasn’t in it. He’d made a life. I’d been unable to. What could have been a happily ever after was separated by this chasm. I pushed the thought away.
I didn’t want to be vulnerable.
Vulnerable got stepped on, taken advantage of, and used up.
Only one person would understand this problem: Erich. Turning over my wrist, I glanced at my watch. He’d be working at the morgue tonight, and what I had to say required an in-person visit, and one that didn’t have Jaz nearby to eavesdrop.
I sped through the city, knowing time was ticking. The deadline for Leif’s death was looming. If I didn’t answer, another assassin would be activated.
Was I willing to risk everything?
My heart battered against my ribs. Panting, I rushed through the doors of the morgue, causing the swinging doors to swish closed behind me. The sound of loud drums boomed, echoing off of the subway tiles lining the walls. The room was a necromancer’s dream—filled with sleek chrome, and all of the macabre trappings and instruments needed to either dissect or revive.
Erich had found his place with this incarnation, and being able to talk and see between realms, helped to make it much easier. Today, wearing his doctor’s coat, he hummed along to some sultry songstress’s dissonance. I watched him note the details of the body on his table.
The lab was empty, unusually so.
His brown hair was swept back, his concentration still on the task at hand.
“One of yours,” he called out to me.
I frowned and pushed my dyed-red hair behind my ear. Those I took out didn’t end up on an autopsy table.
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