Theo shook his head. “Saul is in South America on a peace mission. He’d never try to harm anybody. But Petey…”
Chalton nodded. “Petey is a chip off his old man’s crazy block. Was a missionary for hire during the war because he just liked killing. But I didn’t think he’d try to take all of us on.”
Theo rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ve had a watch on both of them, and Petey disappeared about five years ago. I thought he’d probably died in the war, but now I’m thinking he’s been laying low and planning.”
“Agreed,” Chalton said. “He’s two hundred years old and loves killing. Avenging his father would be fun for him and not honorable. Just fun.”
Olivia shivered. “Are Petey and Saul vampires?”
“No. Shifters,” Chalton said.
“Shifters?” she yelped. “Shifters exist? I mean, people who shift into animals? Like birds?”
Chalton leaned his head back, shutting his eyes. “Shifters exist and can become canine, feline, or multis, which turn into anything of same size. Except multis don’t seem to exist any longer and have evolved into different species of bears.”
Holy crap on a double cracker. “Can you guys cure organ failure?” She held her breath.
“Why?” Chalton opened his eyes and focused on her.
She shrugged. “Just asking.”
“Is that your motivation for these crazy articles? Your friend, Ronni?” he asked quietly.
Her head jerked back. “How do you know about Ronni?”
“I know everything about you. It’s my job,” he said simply. “As much as I’d like to help you and your friend, we are unable to cure human diseases.”
How was that even possible? “I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true.” He rubbed the now closed bullet wound. “We haven’t been much interested in science until recently, when we had to begin researching and ultimately curing a virus that harms us. We haven’t meddled with human issues.”
Issues. “You must have some knowledge that we don’t. Or at the very least, equipment we lack. Look at this helicopter. And your phone. And your bullets.” How dumb did he think she was?
He nodded. “The schematics for any equipment the queen felt would help humans has already been leaked.”
“The queen?” she asked.
“Yes. Our queen was a human geneticist before mating the king, a vampire. Now she’s immortal.” Chalton wiped blood off his flat stomach.
“He changed her into a vampire?” Olivia whispered, her heart dropping.
Chalton grinned. “No. You can’t be changed into a vampire. You could mate a vampire, and thus your chromosomal pairs would increase to immortality, but you wouldn’t become a vampire.”
Theo snorted. “Can you imagine? Now that’s crazy.”
“Definitely. Most legends are weird, especially the have to suck blood ones. We only take blood in cases of sex or war,” Chalton continued.
Sex? She cleared her throat. “But I saw you...in the sun.”
“Yeah. False urban legend,” Charlton said. “Although, the Kurjans can’t go into the sun, so maybe the legend is kind of a cross between vampires and Kurjans.” He cleared his throat. “Theo, you’re full of shit. No way did you go to all this trouble, waiting for me in Iowa, on the off chance I’d been assigned to find Olivia, so tell me the truth.”
Theo turned the craft to the left. “Don’t get mad.”
“You asshole,” Chalton said without much heat.
Olivia glanced at him and lifted her eyebrows.
He rolled his eyes. “How? I have firewalls that I even invented.”
Theo grinned over his shoulder. “They were really good, too.”
Ah. Olivia bit back a smile. “He hacked your computers.”
Chalton shook his head. “Yeah, but you don’t realize what a big deal that is.”
“How so?”
Theo snorted. “Chalton is the best of the best. And I hacked him.” Pure brotherly pride echoed in his voice.
Chalton jabbed two fingers in a hole near his sternum and yanked out a bullet to throw at his brother’s head. “I’m glad you’ve kept up your computer skills. Come work with the Realm.”
Theo hunched forward. “Only if Jared does. We’re all in or we should be all out.”
“Aren’t you loyal, considering since you haven’t spoken to Jared in a century?” Chalton muttered.
“Eh.” Theo lifted a large shoulder. “A century isn’t that long, considering we live forever. We’ve all been busy. I figured we’d all end up working together again at some point. So we should all be in…or all out. Don’t you think?”
Chalton frowned. “It’s not that simple.”
“Yes, it really is.” Theo clicked some levers on the dash. “Let’s fight about that once we figure out who’s trying to draw the three of us out at once.”
“Good plan,” Chalton said, leaning his head back and reaching for Olivia.
She blinked as he wrapped his huge hand around hers. Warmth and an odd feeling of safety filtered through her. She didn’t know him, she sure as heck didn’t understand him, but somehow, that simple touch calmed her as nothing else could have.
Of course, that just gave her one more thing to worry about. How would a vampire react to blackmail? She, unfortunately, was probably going to find out.
CHAPTER SEVEN
After Theo had landed the helicopter on the roof, Chalton led a subdued Olivia down the stairwell to the penthouse suite of one of the legendary apartment buildings in New York. How many laws had he broken by letting her know that vampires, Kurjans, and shifters existed? Probably enough to get them both killed.
Treason had become an unfortunate byproduct of his current mission. “That’s why I stick to the control room,” he muttered.
“What?” she asked, stumbling into him.
“Nothing.” He also didn’t like the silence coming from his younger brother, who took up the rear. It was almost as if Chalton could feel the guy thinking things through. Man, he’d missed his brother. Why hadn’t he reached out before now? Fighting a war seemed like a lame excuse. He had to make things right.
They reached the vestibule, and Chalton punched in a code near the door.
“Where are we?” Olivia whispered as they entered the grand foyer of an opulent penthouse.
“Our great-uncle Benny’s New York home,” Chalton said, drawing her inside.
She glanced down at the sparkling fifties-style marble. “You have the code?”
“Sure.” Chalton pressed a button near the door, and heavy drapes swung open across the living room to reveal the New York skyline. “He’s in Europe this time of year, so his place is open for anybody needing to camp out.” Chalton waited until Theo had entered and shut the door, leaning back against it, after assisting her out of her jacket. “Talk,” he ordered.
Theo flushed. “Well, none of this makes sense.”
“Who hired you?” Chalton released Olivia’s hand, and she moved past him and headed straight for the floor to ceiling windows and incredible snow-filled view. “Time to talk, Theo.”
He nodded. “That’s just it. I was hired by, well, mom.”
Chalton stilled, the hair on the back of his neck rising. “Excuse me?”
Theo shrugged. “Mom is involved in a group investing heavily in different enterprises, and some of those are pharmaceutical facilities the Realm has used to research and manufacture the virus that formerly impacted vampire mates. Their stock has risen, mainly because of byproduct research, so mom’s making a killing.”
Chalton rocked back on his heels. “So she and her group hired you to track down Olivia? And do what? Kill her?”
Theo snorted. “Of course not. I’m supposed to bribe her to let the story go.”
Chalton frowned, his mind spinning. “Was it mom’s idea for you to go after Olivia?”
Theo frowned, his eyes sizzling. “No. Well, I don’t think so. It seems like she mentioned one of her partn
ers suggesting we tamp down on the articles talking about possible immortals.”
Chalton nodded. “Okay. Go get mom, and get all the information you can. In fact, bring her here, just in case she’s in danger from whomever is trying to get us all involved in this. Find out who told her to hire you.” He reached for his phone and called Jared, having kept tabs of his brother’s location and contact information through the years. “Where are you?” he asked when his brother snapped a greeting.
“On my way to have a little discussion with the group that hired me. Somebody is setting us up, and I’m starting with them.”
Chalton nodded. “Good plan. Theo is getting mom and bringing her to Benny’s. Apparently somebody got to her, too…and that’s how he was hired.”
“Fuck. I’ll call you when I get answers.” Jared clicked off.
Chalton shoved his phone in his pocket. “He gets more charming every year.”
“Look who’s talking.” Theo opened the door. “I’ll be back with mom. Bye, Olivia.” He swept outside, and the door automatically locked behind him.
Olivia turned around, nicely framed by sparkling lights across the city. “Your family is very interesting.” She glanced at the door behind him, at his bare chest, and then at a spot over his shoulder. “So.”
“So.” Amusement dashed through him as his body finished repairing itself. His injuries weren’t bad enough for him to need somebody else’s blood, but he’d truly love to bite her anyway. So far, he’d treated her with kid gloves, and now they had to come off. “I know it’s been a long day, and you’ve had more than one shock to your system, so as soon as you give me the name of your source and the location for your research materials, you should catch some sleep while you can.”
“No.” Her eyes, tired as they looked, still spit sparks at him.
“No?” he asked, pushing away from the door.
She held her ground, her gaze turning very alert. “I will, however, make a deal with you.”
“Is that so?” He reached her in several long strides, stopping just close enough to force her to tilt her head to meet his gaze. Intimidation was a necessary evil, and although he hated to frighten her, other enemies would do much worse. “Give me the terms of this deal.”
She crossed her arms beneath her ample breasts. “Back away.”
“No.” His dick went hard as rock, and tension began to filter around them.
Pink climbed into her cheeks, and she licked her lips.
He bit back a groan. Why did she have to be so delectable? “What’s the deal, Olivia?”
She cleared her throat, and a vein pulsed wildly in her delicate neck. “I’ve been thinking about the situation, and I guess I understand why you’d want to keep your existence private.”
“Good.”
She relaxed her arms and pushed back her hair. “I’ll stop writing the articles so long as you fix my friend, Ronni.”
Ah, what a sweetheart. “Who’s your source?”
“My source stays protected.” Her chin firmed into a stubborn, albeit very cute, rock.
“No.” Regret tore through him, but he couldn’t allow for emotion quite yet. “I have to know the identity of your source to figure out how they gleaned the information.” While Olivia may not understand the issue, the breach in protocol merely ended with her. It had to have started somewhere else.
“Sorry. Source stays protected.”
He rubbed his chin and studied her. “I want to be reasonable, but I have my orders, Livy. Give me the source, and I’ll do my best to make sure he’s protected throughout this.”
Her nostrils flared. “You’re lying.”
He lifted his chin. Yeah. There was a good chance that her source was an immortal enemy that had wanted to draw out the Reese brothers, and as such, he would be beheaded for leaking such information. “How do you know?”
She shuffled her feet and broke eye contact. “Good instincts.”
“Are you empathic?” he murmured.
She jerked. “No. I don’t think so.”
Interesting. “But you can tell a falsehood?” He’d never heard of an enhanced female being able to do so, but it could be an offshoot of empathic abilities, so it did make some sense.
“I just have good instincts.”
Ah, the lies humans told themselves to avoid anything they couldn’t rationalize with logic. He stepped right into her space.
“What are you doing?” she gasped, her chest rising.
He slid curly dark hair off her shoulder. “I’m facing a bit of a dilemma.”
Her head lifted, although her gaze only reached his lips and stayed there. “How so?” Her voice lowered to a breathiness that licked along his cock.
“I need a shower to wipe off the blood and grime, so my choices are to bind you or have you join me.” It was crazy, but he’d give his left arm for her to join him in the shower.
She half-coughed and half-laughed. “Are you hitting on me?”
His hand curled around her nape. “Yes.”
Her gaze lifted to his, and her pupils widened. “That’s insane,” she whispered.
“I know.” Hell, the woman was right. “But here’s the deal. My brothers won’t return for several hours, and then we’ll have to move again. I want you, and you want me, so let’s take the edge off so we can think.” His mind hadn’t been clear since he’d first sighted her two days ago, and he needed clarity. One good night, and he could get her out of his system. “What do you say?”
“I say you’re crazy.” She stepped back against the window. “If all I wanted was an orgasm to take the edge off, I sure as heck don’t need you for that.”
Humor bubbled up, and he full-on laughed. The woman was one of a kind. “Well then.” His hands slowly went to unbuckle his belt, and he drew the heavy leather through the loopholes, quite enjoying the way her breath caught and her eyes widened. “Plan B it is, then.”
Every dark fantasy she’d had in her wild mind flashed through her brain. “Wh-what are you doing?” she asked, her lungs feeling way too full all of a sudden.
He grinned and continued releasing the belt.
Yeah, she was more tempted than she would like to jump his bones and just go for it. The guy was a vampire—a real, honest to goodness, vampire. Somebody with advanced genes could probably go all night, right? Probably all night and all of the next day.
She liked sex. Sure, it had been a long time since she’d tried it, and it had never been crazy fireworks time, but she’d liked being close to a man. Her last boyfriend, an accountant named Chuck, had taken a while to get going but had then been all right closer to the finish line.
Something told her Chalton didn’t need any time to get going, and he’d probably be much better than all right.
Yet, she wasn’t giving up Helen, her source, and so far, Chalton hadn’t promised to save Ronni. Sleeping with him would be a colossal mistake, and she’d lose leverage. “What’s up with the belt?” she asked again, eying the thick leather. A slow shiver wound through her body.
His grin widened. Shoot. He’d seen the shiver.
“Livy.” His voice deepened to nearly guttural.
Desire unfurled in her abdomen. Then reality slammed her in the face. “Are you glamoring me?” she asked, anger rippling along her skin.
His eyebrows drew down. “Glamoring?”
“Yeah. What vampires do.” She put her hands on her hips. “Making me want you.”
He chuckled again. “Oh, you want me, and it’s all you. There’s no such thing as glamoring.”
Truth. She opened her senses, and he was definitely telling the truth. “Oh.” Then she focused on the belt, and her knees bunched to run around him.
Quick as a whip, he grasped her wrist. “That’s a pretty blush you have there, gorgeous. What exactly are you imagining me doing with this belt?”
She stopped breathing, and her face heated to the point of pain. No way was she into all the “tie ’em up and spank ’em” rage going o
n right now. Yet there was something undeniably sexy about that leather in his strong, and no doubt capable, hands. “We, ah, are not on the same side here.”
“We could be,” he murmured. “If you keep publishing information about us, you’re going to harm a lot of people. I know you don’t want to hurt anybody.”
No, she didn’t. “All you have to do is save Ronni, and I won’t publish another word. I promise.”
He sighed. “We can’t save human hearts, sweetheart. Hell, we can’t even cure the common cold or cancer. We don’t have the knowledge, either.”
“There has to be something you can do.”
He studied her, those dark eyes seeming to see everything. “There is one thing, but it’s asking for a lot.”
Her chin lifted. “What is it?”
“She’s an enhanced female human, so somebody could mate her, and her chromosomal pairs would increase to near immortality, so her heart would repair itself.”
“Enhanced?” Olivia asked.
“Yes. I searched her apartment when she was sleeping to see if your research was hidden there, and she definitely gives out vibrations. Strong ones. I’m guessing that’s what drew you as friends, and I’m thinking she’s probably psychic.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Many human females are most likely distant cousins to the witch nation, and they have gifts beyond the norm like visions, empathic abilities, or many others, and they can mate an immortal.”
“Mate?” Olivia’s voice wavered on the end.
“Yes. It’s forever, probably. So like I said, it’s a lot to ask.” He ran the leather through his hands. “Since this is my mission, I’d be on board. So if that’s your final offer, it looks like it’d be me.”
No! The reaction careened inside her and planted in her heart. “I assume mating means what it, well, means?”
“Yes. Sex and a good bite…and forever.”
She blinked. “You said probably forever.”
He nodded. “There was a virus that attacked vampire mates, hence all the research you found, but we cured it. The queen modified the virus, so technically the mating bond of immortals can be reversed.”
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