“Do you know him?” John whispered.
“No.”
“What do you want?” John demanded in a deep, hostile voice.
Jenna peeked through the peephole again.
Sheldon went still. “I . . . ah . . . I’d just like to talk with you for a moment, ma’am, if that’s all right. We . . . ah . . . we have a mutual friend who . . . with whom I’ve lost contact and . . .” He glanced around, frustration written all over his face.
Jenna lowered her heels to the floor. “He must be a friend of Richart’s,” she whispered and reached for the lock.
John caught her hand. “Or he could be one of the people who hurt him.”
“If he’s a friend, maybe he can help him.”
“And if he’s not?”
“Hello?” Sheldon called.
“Just a minute,” Jenna called back.
“Hang on,” John said and hurried from the room. When he returned, he carried one of Richart’s daggers. “Just in case. No way am I going to let whoever cut him up cut you up.”
He casually slid his arm a little behind his back so the blade wasn’t visible.
Nerves jangling, Jenna opened the door.
Sheldon looked down at her. “Hi. Jenna?”
“Yes.”
He offered his hand. “I’m Sheldon. Nice to meet you.”
Jenna shook his hand, not getting any kind of danger vibes from him, but still on guard.
“I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am, but”—he looked to John, then met Jenna’s gaze again—“may I speak with you privately for a moment?”
“No,” John said before she could answer.
Jenna shot John a warning glare. “What is this about, Sheldon?”
He looked from side to side and down to see if anyone was outside who might overhear them. Leaning forward a bit, he murmured, “It’s about Richart. I don’t want you to worry, but . . . something happened last night and I’ve lost contact with him. I—”
“What is your relationship with Richart?”
“Oh. I’m sorry. I’m his nephew.”
Relief rushed through her. Richart had mentioned his nephew several times, but she didn’t remember him ever calling him by name. “Come in.” She stepped back so Sheldon could enter and closed the door behind him. “This is my son, John.”
Sheldon offered his hand to John, who shook it with reserve.
“What’s going on with Richart?” she asked.
“I’m not at liberty to go into detail. It’s highest level clearance only. In fact, I shouldn’t even be here, but . . . Richart was . . . out on assignment last night and some problems arose. The situation deteriorated quickly. There was a lot of confusion and . . . I’ve lost contact with him. I hoped you might have heard from him.” He glanced around the room, his words slowing as he noticed the splintered coffee table, the bloody fistprint on the wall. “I really need to talk to him.”
“He’s here,” she announced, hoping her instincts were correct when they insisted he was friend and not foe.
Relief blanketed his features, though some wariness remained. “Is he okay?”
She shook her head and motioned for him to follow her back to her bedroom. “He collapsed shortly after he . . . appeared.”
“Do you mean arrived?” he asked carefully.
“No, I mean he just appeared. Out of thin air.”
“Oh, shit. Okay. There’s an explanation for that.”
“Of course there is,” John drawled, bringing up the rear. “He’s a vampire.”
“He isn’t a vampire!” Sheldon denied. “Wait. You guys believe in vampires?”
“We sure as hell do now,” John answered.
Jenna nodded as they entered the bedroom. “It’s hard not to after seeing Richart’s glowing eyes and fangs.”
Again he swore. “Yyyyyyeah. There’s an explanation for that, too.”
They surrounded Jenna’s bed.
“Has he regained consciousness?” Sheldon asked as he leaned down and drew the covers back. Bandages and butterfly closures decorated most of Richart’s torso.
“No,” Jenna answered.
“Are his wounds still bleeding?”
“No.” Had she not seen Richart’s fangs and eyes, she would have puzzled over that. She had not even needed to apply pressure to them. The bleeding had just . . . stopped.
Sheldon peeled back one of the bandages. The wound beneath was a few inches long with ragged edges held together by butterfly closures. A dark, ugly bruise surrounded it. “Is this how it looked when you cleaned it?”
She nodded. “Should it have healed by now?”
He replaced the bandage and straightened. A full minute passed while he stared down at Richart. “You know what?” he said finally. “Screw protocol. Screw the rules.” He met Jenna’s gaze. “Yes, it should have healed by now. All of them should have at least partially healed by now, especially if you . . . I mean if he . . .”
She raised her eyebrows. “Drank my blood?”
Heavy pause. “Yes.”
“He didn’t.”
Sheldon spun on his heel and left the room. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he called over his shoulder. A moment later the front door opened and closed.
John brought the dagger out from behind his back and slipped it in the bedside table’s drawer. “This just keeps getting more and more surreal.”
Jenna nodded and sat on the bed. “It was weird hearing him confirm it.”
“Actually he said Richart wasn’t a vampire.”
“Then he asked me if Richart drank my blood and said his wounds should have healed by now.”
“Yeah. I don’t get it either.”
Sheldon returned in short order. Rapping his knuckles on the front door, he let himself in, then strode into the bedroom carrying a cooler and a duffle bag.
Jenna’s stomach sank when he opened the cooler and drew out two bags of blood.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” John muttered. “He’s going to drink that?”
“No.”
While Jenna watched in silence, Sheldon set up an IV and began siphoning blood into Richart’s vein.
“Why don’t you just . . . use his fangs?” she asked.
Sheldon gently peeled back Richart’s upper lip enough to show her that he no longer sported fangs. “Can’t use them if they aren’t there.”
A frown creased John’s face as Sheldon exchanged the already empty bag with a full one. “Shouldn’t it take longer for those bags to empty?”
“Honestly?” Sheldon put the empty bag back in the cooler. “I’ve never done this before, so I don’t know.”
Jenna stared at Richart, willing him to open his eyes and let them know this was helping. “Has this never happened before?”
“The injuries or the not waking up thing?”
“Both.”
Sheldon sat in the chair John had carried in earlier from the breakfast nook. “He’s been injured like this, but . . .”
“He didn’t lose consciousness?”
“No.”
“What’s different this time?”
Sheldon sighed and dragged a hand down over his face. “I shouldn’t be telling you any of this.”
“No,” she agreed. “Richart should. But he can’t. So I need you to do it for him.”
“We think he may have been drugged.”
“Who’s we?”
“That one would take too long to explain.”
John’s frown deepened. “Vampires can be drugged?”
“He isn’t—” Sheldon broke off, muttered something under his breath. “Until tonight, no drugs affected him. At all. Period. If he drank five gallons of vodka and swallowed four bottles of sleeping pills, nothing would happen. He wouldn’t get drunk. He wouldn’t get loopy. He wouldn’t get sleepy. And he sure as hell wouldn’t die. He would feel exactly the same afterward as he did before. He would just need a little blood to replace what he lost while his body repaired the damage. But toni
ght . . .” He shook his head. “He was hit with several darts carrying an unknown substance. The others hit with the same drug—”
“There are others?” Jenna asked, not knowing why that surprised her.
“Yes. They were transfused hours ago, right after it happened, and should have awoken immediately, but . . .”
“What?” she asked.
“They haven’t stirred. This drug is something we’ve never encountered before. We don’t know if it was a tranquilizer, a poison, or what. We don’t know why it affects them when nothing else does. And . . . we don’t know how to help them.”
Jenna swallowed hard. “Are you saying you don’t know if Richart is going to wake up?”
“He will,” Sheldon said, voice filled with determination. “He has to.” He replaced the second empty blood bag with another full one.
“Are you really his nephew?” she asked. Richart had withheld a lot of information from her. Had he lied outright, too?
“No, though I may as well be. He treats me like family because I’m a descendent of his first Second. Damien was my great-great-I-don’t-know-how-many-greats grandfather and was like a brother to him.”
Holy crap. “How old is Richart?”
He grimaced. “Old enough and mellow enough I hope to forgive me for not knowing how to keep my damned mouth shut. I’ll let him tell you his age.”
No wonder Richart hadn’t cared about the age difference. He must have inwardly laughed his ass off when she had asked him if it bothered him that she was older than him.
Sheldon peeled back the bandage he had peered under earlier. The wound it covered shrank as they watched, dwindling to nothing as the bruise around it faded.
John moved closer. “That’s amazing.”
Nodding, Sheldon systematically removed all of the other bandages.
Had Jenna not seen the wounds with her own eyes, she would have never known Richart had been injured.
Sheldon retook his seat and caught Jenna’s eye. “I hope you’ll cut him some slack over keeping this part of his life from you.”
John snorted.
Jenna . . . didn’t know what to think. She felt numbed by the shock of it all. “He knew how much I value honesty and chose to keep this from me.”
“It isn’t an easy secret to share.” When she remained silent, he said, “He didn’t cheat on you. He doesn’t have a wife tucked away somewhere. He’s just . . .”
“What?”
“Different. In a way that, when revealed, usually sparks violent reactions in others.”
“So—what—he thought if he told me I’d come after him with a torch-bearing mob and try to stake him?”
“You wouldn’t be the first to do so.”
That was unsetting. “People who found out what he is have tried to kill him?”
“Richart and others of his kind, yes.” He nodded at his uncle. “Who do you think developed the drug he was hit with tonight?”
Jenna stared down at Richart, her hip pressed to his.
His chest rose and fell more often. Not as often as a human’s, but more than it had before.
“Look,” Sheldon said, drawing her gaze, “I know all this must have been a hell of a shock to you. I know you must be pissed, finding out that Richart isn’t quite who you thought he was. But he’s an honorable man, Jenna. If he weren’t, I wouldn’t have practically begged him to let me serve as his Second.”
“You used that term before,” John said. “What’s a Second? Is that like his Renfield?”
Jenna’s head began to pound. Dracula had always had a human assistant, a Renfield as fans of the fictional figure had come to call him.
But Richart wasn’t like Dracula. He wasn’t.
“Yeah. I guess you could say that.”
Crap.
“And now, if you’ll excuse me for a moment, I need to make a call. A lot of people are worried about Richart. I should let them know he’s safe and tell them his condition.” He rose. “I didn’t ask this earlier . . .” He hesitated, as if he really didn’t want to ask whatever it was.
Could things actually get worse?
“Did Richart speak before he passed out?” he finally queried.
“Yes. A little bit. Most of it was in French—”
“Did he mention someone named Ami?”
“Yes. He said he left her behind.”
Sheldon gripped the back of the chair with a fist. A muscle in his jaw jumped.
Jenna remembered the torment in Richart’s eyes, in his voice. They’ll kill her. They’ll tear her apart. “He tried to go back for her, but couldn’t.”
Sheldon lowered his head, raised a hand to rub his eyes.
“He said they’d kill her,” she continued softly.
Head still down, Sheldon nodded. “Yeah.” Turning away, he headed out of the room. “Excuse me.”
Jenna saw her own concern reflected in her son’s face. She glanced at the clock. “When are you supposed to meet with your study group?”
“I don’t think I should go. I think I should stay here.”
“No.” He’d worked his ass off all semester, balancing work and school. And the exam he’d take tomorrow counted for sixty percent of his final grade. The partial scholarship that covered half his tuition was contingent upon his maintaining a high GPA. “Go. Study. I’ll be fine.”
Sheldon spoke softly in the living room. “Cam? It’s Sheldon. I found him.”
John looked toward the living room. “It isn’t safe.”
“That isn’t for you to decide,” Jenna reminded him.
Again Sheldon spoke. “I need you to keep this from Reordon if you can. Richart didn’t want him to know. He’s been seeing someone. I think the drug got his wires all crossed and he accidentally teleported to her place. . . . No. She cleaned him up and has been watching over him. . . . No . . . I’m sure. She hasn’t told anyone. Nor will she. She cares about him as much as he cares for her.”
“John,” Jenna said firmly, “go. I don’t know what I’ve gotten myself into, but I’m not going to let it threaten your future.” He opened his mouth to protest. “Go!” she insisted.
Sighing, he pointed to the drawer in which he’d placed the dagger. “If you need it . . .”
She nodded.
He padded down the hallway to his bedroom, went inside, and closed the door.
“I’ll stay with him,” Sheldon said. “No, he’s safe. No one else can track him here. Besides, you can’t do anything for him there that we haven’t already done for him here. . . . No way . . . I don’t give a damn. Richart doesn’t want Reordon anywhere near her. Why the hell do you think I’m using a prepaid, untraceable cell phone? Richart would kick my ass from here to Antibes if I let any harm come to her.”
Was Reordon Richart’s enemy? Sheldon seemed to think she needed protection from him, whoever he was.
“Have Étienne and Lisette regained consciousness?” He swore. “What about Roland and Marcus?”
Jenna combed her fingers through Richart’s hair. Étienne and Lisette were his brother and sister. He had spoken of them with great affection. She hated to hear that they, too, had been harmed.
“Listen, there’s something else,” Sheldon said, voice somber. “I think Ami may be dead. Apparently Richart tried to teleport her with him, but the drug was fucking with him too much and she didn’t make it here. . . . What? . . . He did? . . . Uh-huh. . . . No, I didn’t bring my cell with me. I didn’t want Reordon to be able to locate me. I’ll just call every hour to check in.”
John returned to Jenna’s bedroom, clothed in jeans and a heavy sweater with a book bag looped over his shoulder. “Are you sure you’re okay with this? I don’t feel right about leaving. I’d rather risk losing my scholarship than risk losing you. You’re more important.”
Jenna crossed to him and leaned up to kiss his cheek. “I’m fine. Sheldon will be here with me.”
“Mom, we don’t know Sheldon from Adam. For all we know, he’s—”
/> “I trust him,” she said. “If you’re worried, just call me in a while to see how things are going.”
He groaned. “Fine. But if you don’t answer, I’m hauling ass back here with reinforcements.”
“That’s fine, honey. Study hard.”
Rolling his eyes, he left the room. “If anything happens to her,” she heard him tell Sheldon as he passed him in the hallway, “I’ll hunt you motherfuckers down and laugh while I feed you your own entrails.”
Jenna leaned into the hallway and stared at her son’s back with wide eyes. She had never heard him sound so menacing.
“Dude,” Sheldon responded, “vampires threaten to feed me my own entrails all the time. You’re going to have to come up with something better than that.”
“Fine. I’ll cut off your balls, shove them down your throat, and watch you choke on them.”
“That’ll do.” Sheldon shuddered. “Okay, I see we’re going to have to have a little talk, John. Here’s the thing. Since Richart is planning to explore the Kama Sutra with your mom, if she forgives him . . .”
“Really?” John said. “You’re going to put that image in my head?”
“. . . you and I are going to be running into each other a lot, so you need to understand something,” he said earnestly. “You can’t threaten a man’s balls, dude. A man’s balls are off limits. Even vampires don’t fuck with a man’s balls. That’s just . . . mean.”
John glanced at Jenna.
She raised an eyebrow. “Still think I’m in danger?”
“Hell, no.”
“Good. Go study.”
Shaking his head, John left.
Sheldon met Jenna in the doorway. “I know you’re probably just as concerned as he is, but I won’t let any harm come to you, Jenna. And I promise I’m not here to harm you myself. If I let you get so much as a paper cut, Richart would hang my ass out to dry.”
“You seem very loyal to him.”
“I’d give my life to protect him. And, since he cares for you, that means I’d give my life to protect you, too.” His voice rang with sincerity.
Jenna nodded. “So what do we do now?”
He sighed. “Now . . . we wait.”
Richart bit back a groan. Some asshole was mowing his lawn or trimming his hedges or juggling fucking chainsaws in rhythmic intervals. On. Off. On. Off. On. Off. The noise assaulted his ears in perfect accompaniment to the pounding that made his head feel like someone was hitting him repeatedly in the forehead with a snow shovel.
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