High Stakes and Vampires (Pandora's Pride Book 2)

by Annabel Chase

  I closed my eyes and willed myself to sleep. I had to report for a nine o’clock training session with Tate tomorrow morning, so there’d be no chance to sleep in if I failed to rest during the night. I was someone who had to eat in the morning before I could function, unlike my father who’d been capable of lasting until lunchtime without provisions. I would’ve eaten the bark off the trees if I’d had to wait hours to eat.

  I turned on my side and tried again to get comfortable. Sometimes I tried to influence my bedtime thoughts so that I’d have good dreams and decided tonight would be one of those nights. As much as I loved my dad and missed him terribly, I couldn’t stomach another nightmare that forced me to relive his grisly death. It only reminded me that he was gone and that I’d been too late to save him. At least I’d managed to kill Canute. I took some solace in that.

  After an hour of tossing and turning, my breathing finally slowed and I welcomed oblivion.

  Despite my best efforts, I dreamed about my father anyway. Thankfully, it wasn’t his death at the campsite but in a motel room. I was fourteen and trying to establish my independence, which meant choosing my own clothes.

  “Callie, your back is showing.”

  I craned my neck to look—a futile gesture because the only way I could see the mark on my back was with the help of a mirror. “I thought this shirt was long enough.”

  “It’s the way it’s cut,” my father said. “You’ve got those slits in the back so the fabric doesn’t completely cover it.”

  I groaned. “Is it such a big deal? How much can anyone see?” The entire mark consisted of a five-petaled red rose in the middle of a golden cross against the backdrop of a five-pointed star. No one would know what it was if only a couple points of a star were visible.

  “Lark.”

  At the sound of my nickname, I knew I’d lost. He’d never once let me walk through the world with an inch of bare skin on my back exposed and he wasn’t about to start now.

  “You know how it goes,” he continued. “Someone glimpses the mark and they’re intrigued, so they ask to see more. Or the breeze is stronger than you expect and blows your shirt high enough to see the rest.”

  The door of the room burst open and a gust of wind rushed past me, forcing my eyes closed. When I opened them again, I was in a different room. A familiar figure stood poised in front of a canvas with a paintbrush in his hand. Even though he faced the canvas, his black and grey wings were a dead giveaway. I didn’t recognize the room, although the window revealed a lovely view of the moonlit bay. If I was in a dream version of Pride headquarters, it wasn’t somewhere I’d been before.

  “Saxon?”

  The handsome hybrid turned to look at me, a quizzical expression on his face. “Nice dress.”

  Dress? I glanced down and realized I was now wearing a hip-hugging red dress with black heels—a far cry from the boxers and T-shirt I’d worn to bed.

  “Sorry about your beatdown today,” he said. “Abra probably should’ve nixed it.”

  “No, I wanted to test her.”

  His mouth twitched. “More like she wanted to test you. I think you made her nervous after you managed to take down the Tzitzimime demons and Supai. She’s used to being the most powerful.”

  “No worries there. She still is.” I’d be a fool to say otherwise after my earlier experience.

  He cocked his head. “Why didn’t you use your fangs? You could’ve at least tried to even the playing field.”

  I balked at the mention of fangs. “We agreed never to talk about that again.”

  “No, we agreed never to tell anyone. We never agreed not to discuss it between us.” He grinned. “Besides, this is a dream, right? There’s no safer place for a conversation you don’t want anyone to overhear.”

  He had a point and, truth be told, the memory of tearing into Supai’s flesh with fangs I didn’t know I possessed still rattled me. I’d considered confiding in Harmony, but that wasn’t possible now.

  “I don’t know how to use my fangs.” Even uttering the phrase my fangs sounded foreign to my ears. “I’m not sure how I managed it the first time.” It had been a critical moment in the fight against Supai. I’d seen Leto dying…Ugh. I couldn’t bear to remember it even now in a dream state. “It just happened.”

  “Supernaturals don’t suddenly grow fangs for no reason. Maybe you learned a spell when you were younger and forgot about it.” I could see his mismatched eyes in the glare of the artificial light—one blue and one green. Both beautiful.

  “A spell that turns me into a vampire?” I edged toward him, curious whether we’d feel solid to each other if we touched. It was both a thrilling and terrifying prospect and not at all the thought I knew I should be focused on. It didn’t matter how drawn I was to him. Saxon Hanley was officially off limits.

  “It could be mimicry magic,” he said.

  I was so close to him now that I could feel his breath when he spoke. Did we breathe in dreams or did I only imagine it because I expected it? “That assumes I’m skilled in mimicry magic.” Which I wasn’t.

  “You seem so real.” Saxon raised his hand to shoulder level and opened his palm toward me.

  “I was thinking the same thing.” Instinctively I followed suit. Our hands hovered millimeters apart and I fought the urge to press mine against his, knowing that it would incite my desire to touch more than hands. Then again, this was only a dream. Nothing we did here counted against us.

  “Is this the first time you’ve dreamed about me?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” Most recently, my dreams had revolved around Leto and my dad, which was understandable, but throughout my life, my dreams often included strangers. I’d believed that was the way everyone dreamed, until one of our travelers had told me otherwise. My father and I had been escorting two humans through the mountains to Telluride—Myriam and Doug Lassiter. While warming ourselves in front of the campfire one night, I’d told Myriam that I hoped I didn’t have another nightmare about the frightened Swedish family that had plagued my dreams the prior two nights. Myriam had been fascinated by the details—their names, their descriptions, the house where they lived—and asked me so many questions that my father finally came over and put an end to the conversation. What I remembered taking away from that exchange and my father’s response was that my dreams weren’t normal, so I never mentioned them again.

  I lowered my hand and Saxon did the same. He turned back toward his canvas, which was now awash in dismal blacks and greys.

  “That’s the gloomiest landscape I’ve ever seen,” I said.

  Saxon tilted his head, as though noticing the painting for the first time. “I never paint anything cheerful. I think it’s meant to be a self-portrait.”

  I laughed. “Of your wings? Because that’s the only thing it matches.”

  “Not of my outside.” He twisted to look at me. “Of my inside. I think it’s a glimpse of my soul.”

  That seemed harsh and not at all like the kind of thing I would dream about Saxon. In fact, it seemed more like the kind of thing he would dream about himself.

  I stared at the bleak painting for a prolonged moment. “I thought you said you couldn’t dream walk.”

  He looked down at himself as though the answer would be written there. “I can’t.”

  “Then how is this happening? Maybe you’ve finally figured out how.”

  His face glimmered with understanding. “Callie, I’m not in your dream.” His mismatched eyes stared at me, the blue one every bit as intense as the green one. “I think you’re in mine.”

  His revelation triggered something inside me. I felt a weightlessness followed by a snap. I bolted upright in bed, my heart racing. The back of my neck was sticky with sweat and the fringe of my hair was plastered to my cheeks. My head swiveled, taking in the small hotel room. The king-size bed. The seating area by the window. I was definitely in my room at Salt.

  I kicked off the covers and swung my trembling legs over the side of th
e bed. Did that really happen? Or was it a dream within a dream? I couldn’t deny my attraction to Saxon—not to myself. It was entirely plausible that I’d constructed that entire dream and that it only felt real because my mind designed it that way. After all, I knew what he looked like and how he spoke. The gods knew I’d studied every fleck of those mesmerizing eyes.

  There was only one way to find out. I reached for my phone on the bedside table and typed a text.

  I swear I’m not hitting on you, but was I in your dream?

  I sat cross-legged with the phone cradled in my hands as I awaited a reply. It was silly, really. Saxon was probably asleep and wouldn’t get back to me until morning. He’d probably tease me for flirting with him. As long as Liam didn’t overhear, I wouldn’t mind. The werevamp would never let me hear the end of it. I started to relax and put the phone back on the table. It was then that a message popped up with a single word.

  Yes.

  Chapter Three

  My hand shook as I brushed my teeth after breakfast the next morning. Part of me wanted to forget that last night ever happened. How could I possibly have been in Saxon’s dream? There had to be another explanation. He was half angel; this had to be a latent skill. His latent skill, not mine. He’d told me in Baltimore that the Pride had tested him for dream walking and teleportation and had been disappointed that they were skills he didn’t possess. I’d heard of supernaturals coming into some of their powers later in life, like after a crisis. That being said, dream walking meant the angel could enter your dream. I’d never heard of an angel being able to pull someone into their dream.

  I studied my face in the mirror. Did I look as nauseous as I felt? Would everyone be able to tell that something was amiss the moment I walked into headquarters? Training started at nine. After yesterday’s humdinger of a fight, maybe it would only be Tate in the room. I’d have to push the thought to the back of my mind. As Nathaniel always told me—I had a terrible poker face. If I brought my concerns into the session, they’d be written all over my face.

  As I made my way through the casino to the exit, I wondered whether Saxon would tell someone or keep it to himself. He was the silent, brooding type, but he was also the team leader and a trusted member of Pandora’s Pride. If there was an important bit of information to share about one of his teammates, wasn’t he under an obligation to share it with our superiors? Then again, this wasn’t necessarily important. It could’ve been a one-off situation, never to be repeated. Like my fangs. I’d tried to force them to come out a few times in the privacy of my bathroom but to no avail. Whatever I’d done in the battle against Supai, I had no clue how to repeat it.

  I managed to exit Salt without running into Oren and made my way to the abandoned-looking building that towered over the bay. I placed my hand flat on a sealed metal door and passed through once the panel slid smoothly aside. I crossed the entryway and hopped onto a tall escalator that spanned several floors, taking a moment to admire the enormous light fixture that dangled from the high ceiling.

  I waltzed across the lobby with a smile plastered across my face in an effort to shake off last night’s unexpected development. Jonas greeted me in front of the elevator bank, waving a laminated schedule at me.

  “I have training with Tate,” I said, refusing the offering. “No schedule required.”

  “No, that session has been moved,” he said. “There’s a meeting in its place.”

  “A meeting?” I took the card and reviewed it. Sure enough, there was now a team meeting scheduled for nine. Great. I hurried to the conference room so as not to endure Abra’s wrath. The witch “couldn’t abide tardiness” and I had no doubt that more than one team member had been turned into a toad after one too many tardies on their permanent record.

  “Thank you for joining us, Miss Wendell.” Abra’s cool gaze was the equivalent of a slap in the face by a frost-covered tree branch and the gods knew I’d run into more than my share of those during a mountain winter. Her cropped white hair looked a smidge shorter today, as though she’d had a haircut. She wore an ochre-colored blouse with bronze buttons that glinted in the ribbons of sunlight.

  I took the empty seat next to Tate and across from Saxon, careful to avoid eye contact with him. In hindsight, the shared dream had felt strangely intimate and seeing him in the light of day was mildly uncomfortable, as though we’d seen each other naked. My cheeks burned at the thought.

  “As I was saying, we’ve been asked to investigate a stolen amulet,” Abra said.

  I glanced around the conference room. No one seemed surprised by her statement. Slowly, I raised my hand. “Um, I have a question.”

  Abra’s expression grew pinched. “Perhaps you can save it until the end.”

  “You and I both know that’s unlikely to happen.” My curiosity was both a blessing and a curse. “Why are we chasing jewelry? Shouldn’t we be tracking big, scary demons?” I thought that was the whole point of this organization. Centuries ago, the gods had sealed off the worst supernaturals in a pocket dimension. Thirty years ago, they escaped and hundreds of deadly demons and other monsters invaded our world, creating a literal Hell on earth referred to as the Plague. They spread like locusts and forced supernaturals like witches, werewolves, and vampires out of the shadows, resulting in what became known as the humans’ Awakening. In an unprecedented move, a group of supernaturals banded together to form Pandora’s Pride, which was dedicated to tracking the Plague demons, and occasionally the minor nuisance demons, and destroying them. Unfortunately, very few supernaturals were capable of killing a powerful Plague demon, not without help.

  Abra’s sigh was almost imperceptible. “Miss Wendell, this is not some trinket from a suburban mother’s jewelry box. We are talking about the Ab.”

  I wiggled my fingers in the air. “What’s the Ab?”

  “Jonas,” Abra called.

  The redhead appeared in the doorway and I was convinced more than ever that he was a soulless technology demon she could summon at will. “Yes, ma’am?”

  “We’d like the presentation now,” the older witch said. “It seems that some of us are impatient.” Her eyes shifted accusingly in my direction.

  Jonas tugged a remote out of his pocket and clicked a button. The whiteboard at the front of the room lit up with the image of a heart-shaped amulet that appeared to be made of black glass.

  Abra nodded approvingly. “This is the Ab. Can someone enlighten Miss Wendell as to its significance?”

  Liam snapped his fingers. “It’s right there on the tip of my tongue.”

  Tate lifted a finger and her grandmother nodded for her to proceed. “The Ab is said to contain the soul of the goddess Tefnut.”

  “So someone’s run off with the soul of a goddess,” I said. “Is that a problem?” Maybe someone was desperate for a good luck charm. I’d witnessed quite a lot of that since my arrival in Atlantica City. Gamblers tried day and night to amass enough money to consider themselves winners. Nobody wanted to walk away before that outcome. I’d spent twenty minutes during breakfast observing a poker game where one of the vampire players was accompanied by his ‘lucky companion,’ an anemic-looking woman with more holes than a sponge. I’d quickly learned that the term for such companions was a bijou. She didn’t seem unhappy and I’d wondered whether she was with him voluntarily or whether she’d been compelled.

  “First, the amulet belonged to someone, which means it is now in the hands of a thief,” Abra said. “Second, it would be very unfortunate if the soul were somehow released back into our realm.”

  “From what I remember reading, Tefnut isn’t a goddess we’d welcome back with open arms,” Tate said. With her honey-colored hair in a ponytail and dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose, you’d never guess she was a powerful witch.

  “Tefnut had incredible elemental powers,” Saxon added. “Back in her time, she caused widespread droughts when she was in a bad mood.”

  Oh. I was beginning to get the picture.

/>   “Let’s not forget her most important role as the goddess of moisture,” Liam said. He looked around the room with an innocent expression. “What? I think we should try to remember that nobody’s all bad or all good. We all need moisture in our lives.” He rubbed his cheeks. “Do you think I’d have this baby soft skin without it?”

  “Moisture aside, it would be very bad for the world if Tefnut found her way back into it,” Emil said.

  Natasha nodded somberly. “We need to recover that amulet before it falls into the wrong hands or worse—ends up reunited with the goddess herself.” With her hair styled in small, coiled buns around her head and her eyes lined with thick purple liquid, the vampire looked ready to do shots with you and behead you, probably at the same time.

  “Can that happen?” I asked. “Wouldn’t the soul need a body?”

  “She has a body,” Doran said. The angel had been so intent on his cup of tea that I wasn’t convinced he’d been listening until now. “It’s entombed. No one knows where.”

  “I guess that lowers the risk of reuniting them,” Liam said.

  Abra ignored him. “I don’t need to assemble a whole team to visit the victim’s home. Three of you should suffice.”

  “Lothar Friedan is a friend of Lloyd’s, so you’ll need to be on your best behavior,” Emil said.

  Evadne placed her hands behind her head. “That rules me out.”

  Liam scratched his chin, debating. “I think I’ll stay here too. Lothar doesn’t sound like the name of a hot lady.”

  “I believe you’ll find that your job is not contingent upon the attractiveness of…anyone,” Abra said.

  “You’re going, Liam,” Natasha said. “The team will need your werewolf traits.”

  The werevamp covered his face and moaned. “Why did I open my big, sexy mouth?”

  “I’d also like Miss Wendell to accompany you,” Abra said.

  I perked up. “Me? Why?”

  “Because it’s a good opportunity to get a feel for an assignment that doesn’t involve death and destruction,” Evadne said. “Otherwise, they’d send me.” She flashed a fanged smile.