by Tina Folsom
“What is it you want from me in exchange for my brother?”
“You catch on fast. Given your somewhat unorthodox profession, what I’m asking will be just another day in the office for you.”
He hated being played with, and the cat-and-mouse game in which she was engaging him was his least favorite pastime. “Spit it out.”
“There’s a girl, a young actress. I would like you to bring her to me.”
“Given that you managed to get me to your lair without any trouble, I don’t see why you can’t get her yourself.”
Bess pursed her lips. “Ah, that’s where the little problem starts. See, the girl has a bodyguard.” The witch gestured with her hand. “Something to do with the paparazzi.” She rolled her eyes, her disdain for celebrities openly showing in their cold blueness.
“And you can’t get past the bodyguard? You used your powers to immobilize me. What’s the guy made out of? Steel?” Something stank. And it wasn’t the incense that was burning in the room, robbing it of oxygen.
“Unfortunately, her bodyguard is a vampire.”
Haven listened up. Things had just started getting interesting. He leaned forward in his chair, intrigued by her words.
“I see I have your attention now. You could kill two birds with one stone: free your brother by bringing me the girl and kill the vampire as a bonus. It’s a win-win situation.”
Win-win, but for whom? “Are you trying to tell me that you can’t defeat one measly vampire?” Haven knew for a fact that witchcraft worked on vampires just as well as on humans. And by the looks of it, this witch appeared strong enough to fight a vampire with her spells and potions and the way she was seemingly able to control at least one element: air. He’d felt it used on his own body earlier. A witch who controlled the elements wasn’t to be trifled with.
“I could, if I got close enough. However, vampires can sense witches from afar. I’d never get close enough to work my magic. That’s why I need a human; you’ll be able to approach him without drawing any suspicions to you.”
She dug her hand into the pocket of her cardigan and pulled out a little vial. It was filled with a purple liquid. “Once you’re close enough, you’ll smash the vial, and the gas it produces will render the vampire unconscious within seconds. And you know what to do then.”
Stake him.
Haven grinned despite himself. While he didn’t like the idea of being ordered by a witch, who held his brother captive, the thought of being handed another vampire to kill was appealing. Ever since his mother’s death, he’d searched for the one vampire who’d killed her and kidnapped his baby sister. He hadn’t found him yet, but he’d killed plenty of other vampires since.
However, the thought of handing over an innocent human to this witch created an uncomfortable knot in his stomach. “Who’s the girl?”
The witch made a dismissive hand movement. “Nobody to concern yourself with.”
Haven shook his head. “What do you want with her? If she’s just an actress like you say, why would you be interested in her?” There was plenty Bess wasn’t telling him. Maybe he shouldn’t dig too deeply, maybe he should just take the assignment and get his brother out of her clutches. But he still had a smidgen of a conscience left.
“It doesn’t concern you,” she snapped and rose. “Get me the girl, or I’ll crush your brother.”
“And where is my dear brother?” he asked casually. Once he knew where she was keeping him, he could figure out a plan of how to free him without doing her dirty work for her.
“Even if I tell you where he is, you won’t be able to free him. His cell is protected by wards. You won’t be able to break through them.”
If Haven knew one thing about witchcraft, it was that once a witch died, all her wards and restraining spells would dissolve as well. Now there was an idea in the making. “So, he’s here then,” he hedged and watched her face for any affirmation to the truth of his statement. He wasn’t an excellent poker player for nothing.
Her left eyelid twitched, and he followed the direction. He almost didn’t see the door; it blended well into the bookcases next to it. When he looked back at her, he noticed how her lips had pressed together into a thin line.
Haven tilted his head toward the door. “I see.”
“It’ll do you no good. He’s too well protected. You’ll never break through the wards.”
He didn’t have to. If the witch was dead, there’d be no wards.
“Fine. We’ll do it your way.” He rose from his chair and turned slightly, attempting to conceal the movement of his right hand. He was a fast draw and had won plenty of competitions against the best in the field. Bess was as good as dead.
Haven slipped his hand inside his jacket, wrapped his fingers around the gun’s handle and pulled it from its holster.
“Ow!” he yelped, releasing the weapon from his hand a moment later and dropping it onto the carpet where it made a muffled thumping sound. Shocked, he stared at the angry red skin of his palm. The gun had turned sizzling hot in his hand. “What the fuck?”
“It’s better you learn right now that there’s no crossing me. Either you do what I say—or your brother dies.”
Haven glared at her and recognized the impatience in her eyes. He swallowed his own anger, forcing himself to calm down. Losing his head now would not serve Wesley. He had to push his pride and scruples aside. Only his brother mattered. Wesley was all that was left of his family.
For now, he needed to keep a cool head.
“You win. What’s her name and where do I find her?”
Two
Yvette moved behind the privacy screen in Maya’s exam room and ripped off the paper gown. How she hated these examinations, but in order to get what she wanted, she put up with them.
“It’s consistent with the lab results,” Maya explained from behind her desk. “There’s nothing wrong with your uterus or your tubes.”
“And the eggs?” Yvette asked as she shimmied into her entirely too-tight leather pants, sucked in a breath, and zipped up. She slid her toes into her black stilettos. Most other women would have broken their ankles twice over if they had to walk in her penny-diameter heels, but she felt powerful in them. Besides, a well-placed kick with her heels could do serious damage to any aggressor.
“As fresh and viable as the day you were turned.”
Yvette pulled her black top over her head and walked around the screen, looking at Maya, who was rifling through the lab file. Over the last few months, she’d undergone test after test to help Maya figure out why vampire females were infertile and what it would take to change that. She couldn’t deny Maya’s dedication to the project, despite the fact that the two of them hadn’t exactly started out on the right foot.
After Maya had been turned into a vampire against her will, Gabriel, Yvette’s boss, had fallen hard for her. Yvette had her own eyes set on him at the time, and the fact that Maya had just swooped in and snatched him up within a week of meeting him had hurt.
But none of their earlier disagreements were evident now. Maya, who’d been a doctor before she was turned, had become a champion for her cause: to find a way for vampire females to become pregnant. But so far, all tests had resulted in a dead end; none of them indicated a reason for the infertility.
“Then I don’t get it. I always assumed that my eggs died when I was turned. But if my eggs are intact, why haven’t I gotten pregnant?” She’d had plenty of unprotected sex over the last decades, not just with vampire males but also with humans.
Maya motioned toward the chair in front of her desk, and Yvette sank into it. “You mean, apart from the fact that you haven’t been with a man since we met?”
That got Yvette’s hackles up, even though she had put herself on the shelf over the last few months. But that wasn’t Maya’s business. It was easy for Maya to talk: she had a man who loved her and was totally hot for her no matter what time of day or night. All she had were unsatisfying one-night stands, and she ha
dn’t even bothered with those in the last few months.
“That’s beside the point. I had lots of sex with virile men who, I know for a fact, have gotten other women pregnant. It’s just been a little slow lately.” Who was she kidding? She hadn’t been interested in anybody after Gabriel had bonded with Maya. Not that she was jealous or anything—the two were really suited for each other—but she’d avoided men, afraid to fall for the wrong guy again.
“Listen, Yvette, we’re at the very beginning of this. I don’t want you to lose heart. Just look at what we’ve already discovered: your uterus is built the same way as a human’s, which means the turning didn’t change that. That’s a good thing. Your fallopian tubes are clear and unobstructed, and your ovaries are stocked with viable eggs. The lab confirmed it.”
She tossed Maya a hopeful glance. “What happened with the donated sperm?”
“Good news actually.” Maya shuffled through her papers and pulled out one sheet. “Here’s the latest result. Bringing donated sperm in contact with your eggs resulted in a fertilized egg in the test tube. So there’s—”
“But my body won’t keep the egg. Is that it?” Just like the other miscarriages. Yvette pushed the memories away. She didn’t want to be reminded of those times. Nobody knew about her past. And she wasn’t going to dish about it now. If Maya knew about the miscarriages she’d had as a human, she would have never even tried to help her. She would have considered Yvette a lost case and stopped wasting her time on this futile undertaking, but Yvette couldn’t give up despite the obstacles.
Maya could never find out. But Yvette remembered everything: the pain and the disappointment—as well as her broken heart. She’d been married. Robert had wanted a family: her and kids, a dog and cat, a white picket fence surrounding their trim little yard…. What he’d gotten was a wife who couldn’t hold onto the life that was inside her. The first pregnancy had started well enough. He’d been ecstatic. He’d told everybody that she was expecting. Every day he’d showered her with flowers and other little trinkets. But one day, in the middle of her first trimester, she’d started bleeding. She’d miscarried. Robert had been disappointed, but he’d said they’d try again.
He’d been supportive then. Her husband had comforted her. Yvette had gotten pregnant again six months later. But it all had ended the same way. In her third month, she’d lost the baby. This time, her husband wasn’t as understanding. He’d accused her of deliberately jeopardizing the pregnancies.
Which was ludicrous. It hadn’t stopped him from leaving her, however. She wasn’t important enough to him. All he wanted was a child. And she couldn’t give him that, so he stopped loving her. She didn’t want that to happen again; she hadn’t let a man that close in a long time. With the next man, she wanted to know that she could give him everything he wanted. Then there would be no reason for him to leave her—and she didn’t give a rat’s ass about whether the man was human or vampire.
“Yvette?”
Yvette looked up and saw Maya’s concerned face. “We’ll have to be patient. You’re healthy, and there’s no apparent reason why you can’t get pregnant. I’ll just have to figure out what happens in a female vampire’s body during conception.”
Yvette rose and ran her hand through her short, spiky, black hair. “I know. It’s just … well, I’m just impatient.” And damn it if she didn’t feel a tad bit guilty about having kept her prior medical history from Maya, but she couldn’t divulge that information—or the pain and hurt that was so closely associated with those events. Nobody needed to know that as a woman she was a failure. It was enough that she faced the cold truth every day. And the truth was she wasn’t woman enough to give a man everything he wanted. Not as a human, and certainly not now as a vampire.
“I’ll do everything I can.”
“Thank you.” With a last nod to Maya, she strode out the door and took the stairs to the main floor of the Victorian mansion, relieved to leave the examination room behind her.
After bonding a few months earlier, Gabriel and Maya had bought a large, old Victorian home on Nob Hill, not too far from Samson’s house. Ah, Samson, Scanguards’ founder. He was another one who’d found love and happiness—with a human woman, a woman who was expecting thier first child. Envy sliced through her like a knife. It wasn’t a child she craved, but the love of a man. And how could any man truly love her for eternity if she couldn’t give him everything he wanted? If she couldn’t satisfy his every need?
“Just the person I wanted to see,” Gabriel’s gravelly voice greeted her as she reached the foyer.
Yvette looked at her boss. As was the case so often, he was dressed in black jeans and a white shirt. His long brown hair was tied back in a simple ponytail. He wasn’t even trying to hide the long scar on his face, which stretched from the top of his right ear to his chin. It gave him a dangerous look. Yet underneath it all, he was handsome and kinder than anybody could imagine. Which couldn’t be said for the man who stood next to him: Zane.
Just like her, Zane was one of the bodyguards employed at Scanguards, the security company owned by Samson Woodford. Zane was as tall as Gabriel, but his head was shaved bald, and apart from one single time, Yvette had never seen him smile or laugh. To say that Zane was brutal and violent would be a gross understatement, yet, at the same time, he was family, just like the rest of the vampires who worked for Scanguards. They were the only family she knew. The only one she was likely to ever have.
“What can I do for you, Gabriel?”
“Everything okay?” he asked and motioned downstairs, indicating Maya’s medical practice.
Yvette’s spine stiffened. “Sure, why wouldn’t it be?”
“Good, good.”
“Listen, Gabriel, I don’t think we need to get Yvette involved,” Zane interrupted, his feet impatiently grating against the wood floor.
Gabriel cut him off with an impatient hand movement. “We’ve discussed this. You won’t use mind control on our client. I won’t allow it. If she’s afraid of you, it’s better we assign somebody else.”
Yvette raised an eyebrow. A client Zane was protecting was afraid of his—or if she heard correctly, her—bodyguard? Well, that certainly wasn’t anything new. “You have an assignment for me?”
“Yes. The agent of a young actress has approached us to protect her while she is on a publicity tour here in the Bay Area. She’s had some threats against her. I originally assigned Zane, but it turns out the girl is intimidated by him.”
“Go figure,” Yvette muttered under her breath. Zane shot her a furious glare which didn’t bode well for her immediate future.
“I could easily influence her, and she won’t even realize that she can’t stand me,” Zane offered. She knew her fellow bodyguard well enough to know that he didn’t give a rat’s ass about whether somebody liked him or not—more often not—but that his ego was bruised because he’d been taken off a job. Zane wasn’t a quitter. A lot of bad things could be said about him—hell, Yvette had a whole litany of things she could rattle off right now—but she had to concede one thing: he was loyal and determined to a fault.
“You won’t use your powers on her. There’s no need; Yvette can take over your job, and I’ll assign you to somebody else.”
“Fine by me,” Yvette answered. “Any other things I should know?” She ignored Zane’s grunt.
“Her name’s Kimberly. She’s young, early twenties, an up-and-coming actress. Her latest movie has just hit the theatres, and it’s making a big splash. There are bound to be lots of crazies around who think themselves in love with her. Just watch her back for stalkers and keep the paparazzi at bay. She isn’t used to all the attention yet.”
“No problem. When do I start?”
“Tomorrow night. There’s a premier party at The Fairmont. I’ll send a briefing to your iPhone. Good luck.”
“Sounds good. Check in with you tomorrow.”
Yvette walked to the door, the prickling tension at her nape telling her Zane
was following.
“I’m out of here,” Zane grumbled.
“Zane,” Gabriel warned, the single word heavy with reprimand.
“What?” Zane didn’t break his stride.
“Are my orders clear?”
With an answer more grunt than word, Zane stopped next to her and reached for the knob. Yvette was faster and opened the front door. Then she stopped in her tracks. There on the steps, a golden Labrador lay on his haunches. The moment he saw her, he rose and wagged his tail.
“Your dog?” Zane asked from over her shoulder.
“No. He’s been following me for four months. I don’t know what he wants.” It wasn’t entirely the truth. Yes, the dog had been following her ever since she and her colleagues had rescued Maya from the clutches of a rogue vampire several months earlier. What Yvette didn’t reveal was that she’d begun feeding the stray.
“Looks like he’s yours,” Zane observed.
Made sense. Ever since she’d let the dog into her house on Telegraph Hill, the beast really thought he belonged to her.
“What’s his name?” Zane continued undeterred, obviously enjoying her discomfort.
“Dog.” At hearing her say his name, the dog’s ears perked up and his tail went into overdrive. Damn, he even listened to her.
“Yep, definitely yours. Enjoy.” And Zane was gone, striding down the dark, deserted street and disappearing into the shadows.
Yvette looked at the dog, whose intelligent eyes seemed to ask her a question. He tilted his head and looked as if he smiled. Could dogs smile?
She caved in. “Fine, we’ll go home.”
Three
Yvette heard the flap of the doggie door slap against the wooden doorframe and opened her eyes. Installing the door so the dog could go into the garden whenever he pleased had been a blessing; however, it also was a curse. Now that stray really thought he belonged here. How she’d ever get rid of him, she really didn’t know. He’d even started barking at the mailman as if the poor postal employee was encroaching on his territory.
