Sleepers: Shifters Confidential Romance Collection

by Juniper Hart

  He opened his mouth to protest but seemed to reconsider after he caught the expression of irritation in her eyes.

  “I guess I don’t have a choice, do I?” he growled, ambling closer to climb inside the back seat. Kyla snorted.

  “I am not your chauffeur,” she snapped at him. “Sit in the front.”

  His hand paused on the door and again, he looked like he might argue but instead, he shifted directions and made his way toward the passenger side.

  “It’s weird, that’s all,” he grumbled, more to himself than to her. They climbed into the car, securing their doors behind them.

  “What’s weird?” she demanded, dropping the keys back into the ignition.

  “All of it,” Pascal muttered. “I was told I would be on my own when I was placed.”

  “You were warned that you could work with other Sleepers,” Kyla intoned flatly as she backed out of her spot. As she did, the policeman appeared, a disappointed look crossing over his face as he realized she was leaving. Kyla skillfully avoided his eyes and fixed her attention on Pascal.

  “You weren’t in my class,” he replied.

  “So? You think your class are the only shifters out there working with the program?”

  Pascal turned his head and looked blankly out the window.

  “I have no idea what to think anymore,” he replied. The answer surprised her, but Kyla didn’t push it, even as she cast him a sidelong look.

  “I’m Kyla,” she offered after a silent few minutes. “We’ll be working together.”

  Pascal’s head whipped around and he met her gaze evenly. On closer inspection, the vampire was much more handsome than Kyla realized. His skin was flawless, hair thick and wavy. She found herself wanting to touch it, if only to see how it could be so silky and yet so voluminous.

  I’m getting isolation fever, she thought grimly, humiliated by the idea. When this one leaves, I need to get a social life.

  “What do you mean, working together?” Pascal demanded. “My file said I was living on my own in…”

  He paused, trying to recall the details of what his assignment had read at the compound.

  “In Portland,” Kyla finished for him. “And that’s true but we’ll be checking in with one another frequently. When I drop you off at your house, I’ll give you a cell phone which you will keep on you at all times.”

  “How do I know you are who you say you are?” Pascal demanded suspiciously, his back stiffening. “Why didn’t I hear about working with someone else before?”

  “The less you know at the compound, the better,” Kyla sighed, reciting her answers by rote. The questions that Pascal was asking were not new. Every recruit she met had some level of skepticism. It was confirmation that there was hope for them after all. If they hadn’t asked questions, she would have been much more concerned.

  He’ll be on his way out of here in no time, Kyla thought with more confidence than she had any business feeling. She did not know why Pascal had been flagged for covert training. She never knew why any of them were but that didn’t matter. It would only serve to bias her if she learned their history.

  “Isn’t it supposed to be autumn here?” Pascal grumbled. “It’s hotter here than in Virginia.”

  “It never gets cold around here,” Kyla agreed, steering the vehicle toward a roundabout, leading into the neighborhood of Portland.

  “That’s just great,” Pascal snapped. “Why didn’t they just send me to Cuba?”

  Kyla snickered.

  “There are worse places to be than Cape Town,” she assured him.

  “For a vampire?” Pascal shot back. “I doubt it.”

  He peered at her with more interest.

  “You’re…what, a witch?”

  Kyla tensed but plastered a taut smile on her lips.

  “Don’t worry about me,” she suggested. “Worry about yourself.”

  “I thought we were working together,” Pascal retorted sarcastically. “Isn’t that what you said?”

  Annoyance fused down her spine.

  “Are you and I going to have a problem, Pascal?” Kyla asked coldly.

  “I don’t know, are we?” he growled back, folding his arms over his surprisingly broad chest.

  “Let’s hope not,” Kyla replied, pulling the Rabbit into a small driveway. “For your sake.”

  If Pascal heard her veiled threat, he didn’t comment, his eyes widening at the tiny bungalow.

  “Come on,” Kyla urged. “I have other things to do today.”

  She didn’t, not really. Her only job going forward was keeping an eye on Pascal. She hoped it wouldn’t be a long assignment. She was already sure she didn’t like the vampire.

  2

  Reluctantly, Pascal exited the passenger side, trying to smother his resentment. The mere fact that the driver’s side was on the right was bothering him more than it should. It was merely coupled with a dozen other matters that had worn away on his already thin nerves for days.

  Not days, Pascal corrected himself. Months.

  The vampire had not been himself since the day of that meeting, nine months earlier. In hindsight, he wondered how he had not anticipated what had happened.

  How can anyone anticipate being wrenched away from everything they’ve ever known to live in a commune with a bunch of misfit shifters and enchanted beings?

  In some ways, Pascal thought of the past nine months as a nightmare from which he would eventually wake up and find himself greeting dusk at his apartment in Anchorage, dismayed that he was in the heat of summer. It had never occurred to him, not in a million years, that the night of his interview would be the last time he might see Franz or the rest of his tribe.

  It’s not the last time, he reminded himself stiffly. Eventually, Franz will find you and you’ll be the hell out of this mess.

  But it had been nine months without word from the leader and Pascal was beginning to think that Franz had forsaken him.

  He hasn’t forgotten about you, Pascal insisted, taking sides in the fight against himself. Anatoli’s compound is a fortress. There was no way for him to reach out to me. I just need to be patient in my posting.

  Unfortunately, Pascal had no way of knowing how accurate his hope was in the matter. He had not been given the chance to leave Anatoli’s side after meeting her. Dexter had picked him up that morning and Pascal had not been home since. He could not shake the nagging doubt that he had done the wrong thing by agreeing to join the Sleepers, even though he believed that was what Franz wanted. Of course there was no way to be sure, especially not now.

  Did he abandon me or is he just biding his time?

  There was really no way for Pascal to know. It was far too late for him to second-guess the decision he had made staying on the compound. How could he have foreseen what would happen, that he would be swept away from all he had ever known without any contact to the outside world for three seasons? All Pascal was able to do was bide his time and wait for his eventual posting, resentment growing in him almost overpoweringly.

  When he had received his posting from Anatoli, he had thought it was a joke.

  “You can’t send a vampire to such a warm climate!” he protested but as she tended to do, the Director had ignored him, ushering him off as if he were a pesky fly.

  The fact that it was nearing winter south of the equator clearly meant nothing to the near tropics of South Africa.

  But now, standing in the tiny house that he was supposed to make do in, Pascal wondered if he was trapped in a life that he had never had any interest in maintaining.

  Why wasn’t I forewarned about Kyla? How does she expect us to work together? What does that even mean? How does she play into my life?

  He opened his tightly pursed lips to pepper her with more questions, but Kyla seemed to anticipate his words and cut him off before he could begin.

  “This is your house,” she explained unnecessarily. “You’ll be expected to return home after your job at the call center every night.
Arrangements have been made because of the nature of your abilities that you will work nights and sleep days.”

  “How noble of Anatoli,” Pascal growled before he could stop himself. Kyla eyed him through narrowed eyes.

  “Is there a problem?” she demanded in a tone that told Pascal she really didn’t care one way or another.

  “No,” he grumbled, turning away. “I get it.”

  Kyla remained in the tiny living room, watching him with muted interest.

  “You’re protected,” she finally said as he scanned the house with irritated eyes.

  “What?”

  “You aren’t that affected by sunlight.”

  Pascal scowled at her.

  “Aren’t you observant,” he retorted shrugging off his dark jacket. “Is there anything else you need from me?”

  Kyla visibly stiffened, her frown deepening.

  “You’re not going to be a problem, are you?” she demanded. “Because if you are…”

  She didn’t finish her thought but it intrigued Pascal all the same.

  “If I am, then what?” Pascal asked, his ears honing.

  “I don’t think you want to get off on the wrong foot with me, Pascal,” Kyla told him flatly, spinning to leave him alone in the house. “You want us to be friends.”

  Pascal did not bother to answer as he watched her leave, a prickle of alarm shooting down his neck.

  Did she have a direct line to Anatoli or was she just trying to throw her weight around?

  He reminded himself that he had come this far without losing it to paranoia or anger. The next few weeks would dictate if he had wasted nine months of his life or if Franz had always been there, waiting in the shadows for him to leave the compound.

  Kyla is the least of my worries right now, he told himself with more confidence than he knew he should feel. The first thing I need to do is find a way to contact Franz and let him know that I am still loyal to him.

  But even then, Pascal knew that it was easier said than done. Kyla had made it clear that she was watching him.

  I’ll just need to be careful, Pascal told himself, moving toward the slatted windows to peer into the gray afternoon beyond. Kyla’s Rabbit had all but disappeared into the neighborhood, but Pascal could not shake the feeling that the voluptuous brunette was still watching him with smoky, intense eyes.

  Training at the compound had taught him few things, mostly because Pascal had listened to very little. By the time he realized he had been trapped in the compound, bitterness had overcome him, and the vampire had learned to disassociate.

  “Why are you always such a miserable prick?” one of his classmates asked him once. “If you don’t want to be here, then go! We shouldn’t have to watch you moping around.”

  “If you don’t like my moping, Laurel, then maybe you should go,” Pascal shot back but he realized that his attitude was causing him to stick out more than it should.

  But he had managed to pick up a few tricks in his training, one of them being to check for bugs.

  “Forget what you’ve seen in spy movies or read in books,” Callie told the class. “Bugs are not microphones tapped to the back of pictures. Bugs are cell phones, necklaces, eyeglasses. No good agency is taping you with a reel-to-reel, smoking cigarettes before a projector screen. In this day and age, technology is everywhere. Nothing is sacred. Not a baby monitor or a cremation urn. This is not the FBI, you understand. This is the Cabal who would rather you dead than locked up.”

  Pascal searched the sparsely decorated house from top to bottom, looking for any signs that Kyla or Anatoli had bugged his residence, but he could find nothing.

  That doesn’t mean it’s not here, he thought grimly. I have to act like I’m constantly being watched, no matter what.

  Which meant that he would need to ditch any of the clothes or footwear that had come with the house and make any calls or internet connections from beyond the walls of his little community.

  Over the next few days, he began to explore his options and his surroundings. What he saw did not give Pascal much hope.

  Even though he had not found any bugs in the house, he could not shake the sense that someone was watching him all the time. Kyla popped over at her discretion, even when he warned her away.

  “You can’t just come in like this!” he protested.

  “Why not?” she asked with feigned innocence. “Hiding something?”

  Indignantly, Pascal shook his head.

  “How can I?” he snapped back. “Even if I wanted to, you’re always here!”

  “I’m just checking in on you,” Kyla told him demurely. “Most males would be happy to have a hot chick looking after them.”

  To his utter shock, Pascal found himself blushing as he took in the curvy witch with too much interest.

  I must be losing my mind if I’m looking at Kyla like that, he thought furiously. I’ve barely been here two weeks and I’m going stir crazy.

  In some ways, being at his placement was worse than being on the compound. At least in Virginia, there had been no doubt about eyes being upon him. In Cape Town, Pascal could never be sure.

  If only I could get in touch with Franz…

  It seemed to be the only notion keeping him sane—if he could call himself sane. Every day that passed seemed to loop Pascal further from any sense of reality.

  By the end of the first month, the vampire realized that Franz had not learned of his whereabouts if he was looking for Pascal at all. There had not been an opportunity for him to confidently steal away and send word, not via digital channels.

  In the end, Pascal wrote a letter by hand and mailed it off on his way to his job at the call center, doing his best to ensure that he was not being followed, but he knew he was taking a massive risk regardless.

  He had no doubt what would happen if Anatoli suspected that one of her Sleepers had double-crossed her. Pascal realized he was playing a very dangerous game but that did not change the fact that his loyalty was strictly to his tribe.

  Even if the tribe had forgotten about him.

  For the moment, he was safe, caught in some kind of limbo without a foreseeable outcome, but that could all change on a moment’s notice. Franz could show up and help him out of the life he’d been sucked into as the leader had vowed he would.

  For if he didn’t, Pascal had no idea how he was meant to keep going on the way he was. He was sure he would rather be dead than acting as a puppet for Anatoli and her lawless group of Sleepers.

  And if she catches me playing both sides, I will probably be exactly that, Pascal thought, popping open a beer. It was time to drown his sorrows again.

  3

  One Year Later

  “Kufuneka uhambe!” the bartender growled. “Get out before I call the police!”

  The sound of the man’s voice was unexpected, and Pascal whirled to face the human looming over him, a baseball bat in hand, poised to strike. The vampire had not realized that the towering giant had armed himself, a drunken haze overtaking his bright blue eyes. The drink slinger’s meaty face was a twisted mask of fury as he advanced, the time for negotiations over.

  “Go ahead,” Pascal intoned sinisterly, a placid smirk overtaking his ruggedly handsome features. “I dare you.”

  The barkeep accepted the challenged and without preamble, the giant man smashed the wood post onto the bar, sending half a dozen glasses scattering. The shards smashed over the patrons, who jumped back to avoid being sprayed. A murmur of annoyance coursed through the bar but Pascal barely noticed. He was having a hard enough time focusing without the extra bodies, his thoughts jumbled and confused.

  I might be in over my head this time, he thought grimly but he did not falter. He had already started the fight. He needed to see it through, justified or not.

  Pascal’s translucent eyes narrowed into dangerous slits as he leapt back into a crouched position, his fangs elongating as he waited for the attack. Through his peripheral vision, Pascal could see the man he had been
on seconds before lying immobile on the filthy floor a few feet away. He didn’t have time to gauge whether his victim was alive or dead.

  All he could do was hope for the best.

  If Kyla heard about this, he would be in a world of trouble.

  The bartender jumped onto the countertop with surprising nimbleness for his size and lunged toward Pascal, forcing the vampire back into the present. He didn’t have time to entertain what would happen when Kyla found out about his current infraction.

  Stealthily, Pascal ducked away, licking his lips as if to mock the bartender, his clear eyes still focused on the huge barkeep who was now intent on doing him harm.

  “Junior, I called the police!” a terse server shrieked, her cell phone still firmly in hand as if she intended to use it as a weapon. “Get out, inja! Get out or you don’t know what the cops will do to you!”

  Pascal glanced at the waitress. Her face was etched in shock at the turn of events. What had started off as a typical night at work had taken an unexpected turn after Pascal’s sixth or seventh drink.

  She’s probably right. I should get going, he thought but sensibility was not shining through the alcohol and his vampire stubbornness was prevailing again.

  With Pascal momentarily distracted, Junior seized the opportunity to pounce. Like a cat on an injured mouse, the bartender jumped on the smaller man, pelting him with giant fists. Pascal threw his arms up to protect his face too late and Junior’s blow landed squarely on his finely sculpted face, his nose shattering on impact.

  Ugh. That’s going to take a day to heal! Pascal thought furiously, baring his teeth to take a chunk out of the bartender’s throat, but the bigger man continued to pummel the figure below without any indication of stopping. It wasn’t until Pascal seemed to give up the struggle that Junior sat back, suddenly hearing the screams of his customers. He wiped his bloodied hands on his apron and glared furiously at Pascal.

  “Have you had enough?” he hissed in Xhosa. “They are all recording you on their phones!”