by L. E. Wilson
But this time was different.
Now he was acting on his own, coming into our territory without his coven’s knowledge, without the consent of Judy or Killian.
I came up with many reasons why he would do what he was doing, and discarded them just as quickly as they appeared. None of it made sense. Why would he take such a risk?
I know what he’d told me the first night he’d come to check on me. And I know what he’d told me tonight. But although I was trusting him with my life, I just had a hard time believing he didn’t have some kind of ulterior motive.
I glanced at him from the corner of my eye. He still held my hand with an iron grip. Strong, even for a human. Luckily, the chances were super slim any of the guys would still be out and about this close to sunrise. As a younger vampire—at least compared to the rest of the group—I didn’t have the authority to give Alex permission to be alone with me. And I didn’t have the power to challenge Killian over his right to be here if we were caught together.
Alex walked with his eyes straight ahead, looking neither right nor left, seemingly unconcerned. But I wasn’t fooled. I could feel the magic surrounding him. Felt it slithering over my hair and skin as it probed the air around us, searching for anything out of the ordinary.
I shivered, and Alex glanced over at me, his brows lowered and his eyes concerned. I gave him a tight smile but said nothing.
He was right. What he’d said before. His magic was different from the others. Darker or something. It frightened me, if I was being honest. Not that all magic wasn’t scary when it was on the defensive, but the aura emitting from Alex was like nothing I’d ever experienced before.
Yet, still. Something drew me to him. Something I couldn’t explain.
My cell phone buzzed in my pocket. Releasing Alex’s hand, I pulled it out without slowing my pace. It was Killian. I showed the screen to Alex and answered the call. “Hey, Killian…Yeah, I’m heading that way right now. Yup. I’m hurrying. See you in a few.” Disconnecting the call, I put my phone back into my pocket.
Without a word between us, we gripped each other’s hand again and picked up the pace.
New Orleans was just starting to wake up, and I came to the conclusion that Alex must’ve been right when he’d said the people would keep away the threat. Although The Quarter wasn’t near as crowded as it was at night, the humans who lived here year round still needed to work their day jobs and were beginning to fill the streets, even at this early hour.
When we got to within a block of the two-story house I shared with the other vampires, I pulled Alex into a doorway. With a hand against his chest, I kept him there. “You shouldn’t come any closer. Killian is still awake. He might see you. And even if he doesn’t, he’ll sense you.”
“Watching out the window like an overbearing father?” Although his tone was teasing, his expression was almost…angry.
I didn’t understand what it was about this situation that would make him feel like that. He’d been around us vampires long enough to know how it worked. Killian created me. He was the master of the coven. And we stuck around as long as he would have us, because as a master vampire, he had power far exceeding any of ours. We watched out for him and gave him a family, and he protected us and gave us a home. It was a win-win situation. “He very well might be.”
I kept my own tone light. But when he didn’t seem amused, I sighed. My skin was prickling with the oncoming sunrise. I didn’t have time for this. “I have to get inside,” I told him.
His eyes shot up to the sky, as though it had only just occurred to him how late—or early, depending on how you looked at it—it was.
“Please, Alex, just stay here.” His golden eyes found mine again. I could see the turbulence within them as his desire to see me all the way home dueled with his instinct to keep himself alive. “Don’t come any closer. I appreciate everything you’ve done tonight; I really do. And I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
After a long pause, he finally nodded. “I’ll stay here. But as soon as you get inside, keep everyone away from the windows.”
I frowned and shook my head. “Alex, you need to go home before you’re discovered here.”
I felt a brush of skin against my left hand and looked down to find his fingers playing with mine. I gripped his hand and held on tight, suddenly afraid for him.
“I’m not leaving until I put a ward around your house. It’ll only taking me a few minutes and I should do it now while there aren’t that many people on the streets.”
He cupped my cheek with his free hand, his eyes searching my face. I had the feeling he wanted to say something more, but in the end, he dropped his hand and released my fingers. “Go. Before you’re caught in the sun. I’ll watch from here until you’re safely inside. I’ll give you one minute to get everyone’s attention, and then I’m coming to ward the house.”
I nodded. “Fine.” With one last look at my unlikely savior, I turned to walk away, and paused. “Thank you,” I told him earnestly. Pressing a quick kiss to his cheek, I hurried down the sidewalk.
My cheeks burned with embarrassment. I’d wanted to convey my honest gratefulness. But the look on his face right before I’d run away told me I may have overstepped my bounds.
Gods, I was such an idiot.
I rushed through the back door just as I felt the heat of the sun on my back. Quickly, I shut it and turned the lock before I stepped away from the window. My reaction was kind of silly. Every window in this house was treated, the sun couldn’t hurt me once I was inside. And it would take a bomb to break them. I knew this, but my instincts still forced me to stay out of the direct rays.
“Kenya! Where the fuck have you been?”
Pasting a smile on my face, I turned to face Killian. “Hey, Killian!”
My creator and friend strode toward me. He wasn’t a big guy. Not like Alex. But anyone with half a wit about them would know Killian was just as dangerous. His power, fueled by his anger, coiled around him like a serpent, tightly leashed but ready to strike at a moment’s notice. He’d always been protective, but ever since my brush with the true death, he really had been like an overbearing father. “Don’t give me that smile, acting like you didn’t just almost kill yourself in the sunlight.”
I heaved a sigh. If the heaviness of his Irish accent was any indication, he was past angry and on to worried sick. “I’m sorry.” Walking past him, I led him to the kitchen in the center of the house. He would still be able to see out the front windows if he was looking, but what I was about to tell him should hold his attention long enough to allow Alex to do his thing. “Where’s Lizzy?” I liked Killian’s new mate, and she was the only one who could calm him down these days when he got himself all in a tizzy.
He didn’t respond to my question, though he did look down the hall toward their bedroom, unable to resist. “You told me you were finishing up two hours ago.”
“Yeah, I know. I had a visitor.”
His head snapped around.
That had gotten his attention.
“Who?” he demanded. “A customer?” Sometimes, the ladies who’d had an especially memorable night at our club with one of the guys—usually Brogan—tried to come back after closing to see if the fun time they’d had could develop into something more.
Spoiler alert: It never did.
I shook my head as I went over to the cabinet to grab a glass. I’d just downed half a bottle of vodka, but alcohol didn’t hang around long in a vampire’s system, and I needed something to calm my nerves. And the way Killian was staring daggers at me, it would keep his attention on me and not on the warlock I’d just spotted outside the windows behind him.
Alex stared at me for a brief second, then his mouth began moving silently as he warded the house.
“Whiskey?” I offered Killian.
He gave me a nod, and I grabbed him a glass, too.
“Who came to the club then?” Killian asked again.
I set the glass in front
of him and talked while I poured us each a shot of his favorite whiskey. “I don’t know. I didn’t see them.”
He held up his hand to stop my pour and I moved on to my own glass. Then he waited until I’d set down the bottle and picked up my glass before he gave me what I called his “expectant face.”
I leaned back against the cabinets and looked at him across the island. “When I went to leave, I’d just gotten outside and locked up when I felt someone watching me. But I didn’t see anyone. Just the usual humans stumbling back to their hotels.”
“Are you sure someone was there?”
He wasn’t patronizing me. Killian would never do that. He respected my intelligence, if not my ability to look after myself. And honestly, I couldn’t really blame him there. I had been an awkward human, and I was more times than not a complete failure as a vampire. Besides my eyesight never correcting itself, I didn’t appreciate any of the things my new life as a supernatural creature could give me, preferring to stay home and read when I wasn’t at work. I didn’t even enjoy the excitement of the hunt. I got my meals from the women the guys lured into our private room.
Honestly, I was surprised Killian had kept me after he’d turned me.
To answer his question, I gave him a nod and took another drink. “Mm-hmm. I felt it, Killian. The hatred. The sorcery. But it wasn’t one of Judy’s coven.” Having lived so close to them for so many years, we were all familiar with the feel of that particular group of witches.
His drink sat on the counter, forgotten. “Why the fuck didn’t you call me?”
“Because I didn’t want anything to happen to you.” This was true. Although I believed, ultimately, Killian might be able to overtake Alex if he could get past his warlock’s spells, he would not be able to defeat the entire coven of witches who would come to get their revenge if he hurt one of their own. They would force him out into the sun and burn him alive.
If he was lucky.
“It was something really dark, Killian. And it felt horribly familiar.” My voice was thick with tears and the fear I finally allowed myself to feel.
In a flash, he was around the counter and holding me in his arms, one hand pressing my head to his shoulder. “You should’ve called me,” he insisted.
I started to tremble as the events of the night hit me all at once. I was scared. A hell of a lot more scared than I’d let on to Alex.
A wave of anger surrounded me, but only for a moment before it was quickly retracted.
Wait. That wasn’t Killian.
Opening my eyes, I met the furious glare of Alex through the glass. Widening my eyes, I lifted my hand and waved him away.
“What’s going on?” a female voice said.
I quickly gripped Killian again and let myself take comfort in my maker’s arms for a few more seconds before I pulled away, stealing a quick glance out the window to make sure Alex had left, and faced Lizzy, Killian’s mate. “I’m sorry,” I told her. “I had a rough night.”
“Someone came after Kenya tonight,” Killian spoke over me, his hands still on my arms.
Immediately, she was by my side. Her hands joined her mate’s as she looked me over, panic in her pretty brown eyes. “Oh, my God. Kenya! Are you okay? Did anything happen? Why didn’t you call me?”
Even the new witch who knew practically nothing about magic was offering to protect me. “I’m fine,” I told her. “I went back inside the club and locked myself in until it was safe to come home.”
Killian stepped away and gave me up to Lizzy’s concern. Her dark hair was in wild disarray, she had no makeup on, and she was wearing a T-shirt that was too big on her—Killian’s, if I remembered correctly. She was still stunning.
“What were you thinking?” he asked me. “Locking yourself in the club was probably the worst thing you could’ve done.”
“Apparently not. Because it worked,” I told him. “I just waited it out, and eventually it left.” I shrugged. “He clearly didn’t want to be seen by any residents of the city.”
“You know it’s a him, then?”
“No, I don’t,” I told him honestly. “But that’s the feeling I got. Maybe it was just all of the frustration and anger.”
Lizzy harrumphed, earning her a look from the lone male in the room before he turned back to me.
“And he just left?” Killian asked. “Just like that?”
“Could it be another vampire?” Lizzy said. “I’m just thinking with the sun coming up, that maybe that’s why they left.” She shrugged as though to say I got nothing else. “Is there anyone else who’s sensitive to sunlight?”
Killian and I both shook our heads. “Not that I’m aware of,” he told her. Chewing on the inside of his cheek, he crossed his arms over his middle and paced away.
Lizzy turned me toward her. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
I returned her smile. “Yeah, me too.”
“I wish I could stay with you, but I need to get ready to go to the voodoo shop.”
She gave me one last, quick hug and made to rush off, but Killian suddenly appeared in front of her. Lizzy crashed into his chest and his hands shot out to steady her. “I don’t want you going there today,” he told her.
“Killian, I have to. Mike can’t make it. I gave him some time off.”
“Take it back and tell him to go in.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to do that.”
“I can’t protect you during the day,” he gritted out. “I can’t be there with you. And that thing is here, in our city.”
Lizzy stopped trying to get around him and let him pull her against his chest, mumbling words of reassurance to her mate.
While they were distracted with each other, I wandered closer to the doorway that led to the front room, searching through the windows for Alex, but he was nowhere to be seen. I didn’t dare leave the room though, even as exhausted as I was. I knew Killian wasn’t finished with me.
When it sounded like they’d reached a compromise—translated into Lizzy going to the shop as she wanted to and Killian having to deal with it or tie her to the bed—I refilled my whiskey and settled onto one of the kitchen stools.
A few minutes later, Killian joined me and I told him everything that had happened in more detail.
Well, almost everything.
Now, I just had to hope Alex would also keep silent about where he was and who he was with tonight.
Chapter 4
The Djinn
I pulled up in front of the pile of lumber and sheet metal that used to be a house of sorts. The house the vampire should have died in.
However, I was so very glad she hadn’t.
Her illness had been a test I’d created. Taking a spell I’d found and infusing it with my own very different kind of magic, I had hoped it would be enough to take out a vampire. I had two reasons for doing this. The first was mostly for fun, because the blood suckers insisted on continuing to mate with the witches who should ultimately be in MY coven. Not theirs. However, a vampire’s blood bond was impossible to break, so there was no hope of severing it once they’d been fed on by their leach of a mate.
That is, unless one side of that bond no longer existed.
But unlike the vampires, if the witch was left alive, their physical body would just pick up its natural course where it had left off. They would begin to age naturally again, no worse the wear for their little trip to the immortal side. However, I’d learned from experience that this approach did nothing to bond the witches to me. Actually, they took extreme offense when I released them from the mating bond. Something that left me flabbergasted, to say the least.
On the flip side, however, a vampire would die without its mate’s blood, but I certainly couldn’t run around killing off the witches I wanted to recruit. That made no sense at all.
I’d needed another way. Something I wouldn’t be blamed for.
The second, more important reason, to leave the safety of my home and do what I’d done was much more
personal. It had to do with my own blood. Family I’d been denied and who I hadn’t even known existed until I’d been tipped off that one of the witches here in the wonderful city of New Orleans had magic that was quite a bit…different. Darker, like my own. I’d needed a way to flush them out without scaring them away.
The curse I’d created was effective, but obviously took entirely too long to finish the job. This ended up being a good thing, for it gave the others time to figure out a cure. And that’s exactly what had happened. I knew a simple warlock would be unable to undo a djinn’s magic. And I’d been correct. The vampire’s savior hadn’t been a simple witch.
He was only part warlock.
And part djinn.
My new problem was that he was obviously quite taken with the vampire he’d saved, as he’d so happily proven to me tonight. But actually, that had also turned out to be a good thing. His little act of rebellion had revealed something to me. Something I never would have known otherwise.
Running my tongue over the roof of my mouth, I could still taste the voodoo in her blood. In her frantic haste to get back inside of the club, the vampire had cut herself, leaving behind this gift for me to find. Just a drop. But that was all that I’d needed. I wondered if she was even aware of the legacy she carried within her. Of what she was capable of.
If I’d known who she was, I never would have tried to kill her that first time. But it had been so easy to see how adored and protected the female was by the other vampires. Like a little sister. An easy target, if an unwilling sacrifice.
I also knew witches and vampires could not live in such close proximity to each other without some type of truce between them. And if history was any indicator, it would be an agreement of mutual benefit to them both. Which I deduced to mean that when the chips were down for one group, they wouldn’t hesitate to enlist the help of the other. And only one of the witches would have the talent to withdraw my curse.
One who was like me.
Imagine my surprise when I discovered there were two.
When my source here had told me the vampire had been cured, I didn’t dare to believe. But now that my great niece and nephew had been revealed to me, I could do what I’d come back here to do: convince them to come back to the north with me where they belong. Or they would soon discover they are on the wrong side of the battlefield. For when their coven of witches discovered whose blood ran through their veins, they would no longer be welcome. They would become too much of a threat.