by Tina Folsom
There were times when she wished she were less endowed. Now was one of those moments.
Yvette cleared her throat. “A vampire’s bite induces sexual arousal in the host as well as the vampire.”
“Ah, shit!”
She could only echo the sentiment, but for other reasons. While Haven clearly felt deceived by her, Yvette felt regret that the arousal hadn’t been real. He’d merely reacted to her because of her bite, not because he was attracted to her—whereas her own arousal, while heightened by the bite, had been real. She still remembered the times she’d fed from humans directly—before she’d started on bottled blood—and while she’d sensed the arousal that came during the feeding, she’d never felt anything of this magnitude.
She’d always been able to control it and rein it in. This time she hadn’t. This time, she’d been unable to control the lust; instead, it had controlled her and whipped her into an uncontrolled frenzy. All she’d been able to think of was that she wanted to feel him inside her. No other thought beyond that had existed.
“You used me,” Haven mumbled, his expression a mix of humiliation and regret. “If you ever touch me again, I’ll stake you.”
Yvette turned away from him, unable to continue looking into his eyes. He hated her. And she knew she had to hate him too. And she would do her best to make sure she succeeded in squashing those pesky little tendrils of sensations that seemed to grow inside her, wanting to morph into feelings and emotions. She wouldn’t allow it. Haven was her enemy. She would treat him as such.
Thirteen
The dog that had barked outside of Samson’s house hadn’t been Yvette’s, and Zane’s hope had deflated quickly. Nobody knew where the beast that had been following Yvette could have gone to. For now, it was a dead end. Luckily, they had other avenues to explore.
Thanks to the tracking device, the limousine that had carried Yvette and Kimberly had been found in the Outer Richmond neighborhood of San Francisco, a sleepy residential area. It was clear that the car had been dumped there. Amaury was currently going through it for any traces of Yvette and Kimberly that might tell them what had happened and where they could be. Luckily, no blood of either one of them had been found.
Zane glared at the driver of the limousine as he pressed him against the car behind him. It was still daylight, but Zane had one of the human Scanguards employees drive him to the house in the outskirts of San Francisco where the man lived. He’d been hiding at home, pretending not to be there, but the human driver had broken into the house, overpowered the occupant, and locked him in a supply cupboard in the garage before driving the blackout van inside so Zane could exit securely.
The large garage appeared to be used as an illegal mechanics shop; all windows were boarded up so the neighbors couldn’t see what activities were performed inside.
Zane looked at the trembling man again and repeated his question. “Why did you abandon the car and your passengers?”
The man’s eyes darted nervously in all directions, fear and mistrust written in their depths. “No can be involve in this.” His speech was heavily accented, hinting at Eastern European roots.
“In what?”
“Police. No involve.”
Zane grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and inhaled the man’s sweat. It reeked of fear. He abhorred the stench. “I’m not the police. I’m worse.”
“INS?” he whispered.
“INS?” Zane wrinkled his forehead. The man was afraid of Immigration and that’s why he’d run off without notifying anybody? How pathetic. “Listen, I don’t care if you have a visa or not, if you’re illegal or not. Hell, I don’t even care if you pay your taxes. All I want to know is what happened to my friends. Do you get that?”
The man swallowed hard and nodded, his eyes still wide and round as saucers. “You no tell Immigration?”
For an answer, Zane gave the man a brief, rough shake. “Now talk.”
“Some guy, he attack them just when they reach limo. I get out and want help, but Miss Yvette, she just going at him, like she some Ninja fighter or something. So I figure she handle him. And it look like she did. But then some strange smoke come, you know, puff” —He placed his hands in front of his face and made a theatrical expanding movement with his hands— “and she just collapse.”
Zane listened intently. Smoke? “What kind of smoke? Was there a fire?”
“No fire. Was weird. Smoke, no fire. Like maybe what have in nightclub to make fog. You know?”
Damn, that sounded like something he just didn’t want to deal with. Smoke without a fire was never a good thing, and what the driver described sounded more and more like the kind of smoke that was coming from a witch’s kitchen. “Did you get a good look at the guy who attacked them?”
He nodded. “Yes. Tall, big muscle.”
That wasn’t enough to go by. But Zane knew a surefire way to find out what the guy looked like. “You’re coming with me.”
“No, I told everything I know.” The man struggled against his hold, but it was no more effective than the pathetic struggles of a mouse against a cat.
Zane dragged his victim to the blackout van and opened the door, shoving the man inside despite his protests.
“Get us to Gabriel’s house. And make it quick,” he ordered his driver and slammed the door shut, embracing the darkness inside the van as he blocked out the scared whimpers of the limo driver.
How Zane hated fearful people—wimps, cowards, chickens, all of them. As if they knew of true fear, true horror. He’d seen it all. He’d lived through it and come out the other side: shattered, broken, but still alive. His heart had died a hundred deaths, but his body was stronger than ever. Zane feared nothing now. Maybe that’s why he despised the stink of it so much. And he didn’t care if the limo driver feared him now and was afraid of what might happen to him. It didn’t matter, not when he knew that the man’s memories could help them find Yvette.
His family was all that mattered to him. And if the illegal limo driver could provide them with the information they sought, maybe Zane would even wipe his memory of the events from his mind. If he felt charitable after all was said and done.
By the time they reached Gabriel’s house and had pulled into the garage so Zane could safely exit the van with his captive, his mind had somewhat calmed. He knew that Gabriel would be able to extract whatever they needed from the man. Zane envied his boss for his gift—Gabriel could unlock memories—and for that matter, he envied all those colleagues who possessed one, whereas he seemed to be entirely without any special abilities, unless inflicting pain could be called a gift. Even Zane doubted that.
Without delay, he hauled the man upstairs and brought him to Gabriel’s office, where his boss was pacing. Gabriel instantly turned to his guests.
“Zane, who’s this?”
“The limo driver. He’s seen the attack on Yvette and Kimberly.” Zane didn’t want to waste time on relaying what the driver had told him. “He knows what the attacker looks like. It’s in his memories.” He gave his boss a pointed look.
Gabriel held his eyes for a long while, then nodded. “This is an emergency. We need to know.”
Zane understood Gabriel instantly: he never used his special gift of prying into other people’s memories unless it was absolutely necessary, believing that everybody had a right to privacy.
Gabriel looked at the man and gestured to the chair. “Sit. You might as well be comfortable.”
“What you doing to me?” Panic was evident in the man’s voice and in the way he tried to pull away from Gabriel when he approached. His boss’ gruesome scar could be a bit of a turn-off, particularly when it throbbed like it did now. Not that the man had any idea that he needn’t fear the scarred vampire, whose strong ethics forbade him to harm others.
“It won’t hurt, I promise you.” Gabriel laid his hands on the man’s shoulders and pressed him into the chair. “It won’t take long.” Then he closed his eyes and fell silent.
The
driver’s eyes darted between him and Zane, his shoulders hunched, his breathing erratic. Zane could sense how the driver’s heartbeat increased, could smell the terror in the sour-sharp rankness of his sweat. Despite his attempt to get out of the chair, he couldn’t manage it: Gabriel’s hands on his shoulders still pinned him down effortlessly.
Outwardly, nobody could see what Gabriel was doing, but Zane knew how his boss’ gift worked. He would slip into the person’s mind by bringing himself to the same wavelength, then travel back in the memory bank to the place of the event he was looking for. Once there, the event would play out before him, and it would be as if he saw it through his own eyes in the exact same way as the driver had.
A couple of minutes into the silence, Gabriel opened his eyes and looked straight at Zane. “Witchcraft. Fuck!”
Zane nodded. He’d guessed as much. “Do we need Francine?”
Gabriel gave him a long look, warring emotions dancing on his face. “Unfortunately, yes. If I only knew what she’ll take for her help this time. I wish the woman took cash.”
Zane shrugged. Favors were returned with favors. Because of their longevity, most vampires had more money than they knew what to do with. Money in the end meant very little. Favors were a whole other currency and their world thrived on them. It could be a bitch at times, but it also made you think twice about when to ask someone for a favor.
Fourteen
“Why is your hair long?”
Yvette turned at Kimberly’s question and watched her tuck her legs underneath her as she sat on her cot. She briefly glanced in Haven’s direction. He and his brother were standing in the opposite corner of the room, talking quietly; nevertheless, Haven looked at her from under his long dark lashes. A man shouldn’t be allowed to have such sultry-looking eyelashes. With a deliberate jerk of her shoulder, she turned back to Kimberly.
“It grows while I sleep.”
Kimberly pursed her lips. “So does mine, but not twelve inches in one night.”
Yvette let out a long breath, not really interested in going into the reasons for her daily hair cut, but in the interest of keeping her charge at ease, she’d just have to make small talk. “It grows back to the length it was when I was turned. And since I don’t like it long, I cut it every day.”
“Wow.” Kimberly looked at her in fascination. “But why don’t you like it long anymore? It’s pretty.”
Yvette couldn’t suppress the bitter smile that crossed her lips. The long hair reminded her of the woman she’d been fifty years ago: the woman, who couldn’t make her husband happy, couldn’t give him the one thing he wanted. The child he craved. She didn’t want to remember those days. Nor was she in the mood to lay herself bare to a stranger. Hell, not even her friends and colleagues at Scanguards knew. “I prefer it short.”
“So … what’s it like to be a vampire?”
Yvette closed her eyes for a moment. Where would she even start? So much was different, yet so much was the same. She had feelings and desires just like a human, yet they were amplified, making unfulfilled desires and unrequited feelings harder to bear and impossible to ignore. She gave a shrug, unable to answer the question without revealing things she didn’t want to share.
“Is it true that you bite people and hurt them?”
What was this? Twenty questions?
From the corner of her eye, Yvette noticed how Haven’s head turned toward them. For once, she was grateful for her long hair and deliberately allowed it to fall around her like a curtain, blocking out his seemingly casual glance. Then she forced a smile for Kimberly’s sake. “No. I don’t hurt people. Hell, I don’t even bite people. I drink bottled blood.”
The girl peeked toward the brothers, then back to her. She dropped her voice when she continued, “But you bit him, didn’t you?” Her eyes darted to the side to indicate who she meant by him. Not that it was necessary. “I guess he deserved it.”
Yvette gave her a stunned look.
“For kidnapping us, I mean. I would hurt him too if I could.”
“Kimberly, a vampire’s bite doesn’t hurt. It’s … uh, pleasant.”
“Oh,” Kimberly said and blushed like a little schoolgirl.
A snort from the corner behind her told her that Haven’s hearing was better than she’d thought and that he didn’t want to admit just how pleasant it had been. Yvette tried to block him out, but his presence was too overwhelming. In fact, something didn’t feel right at all. Her senses seemed to be in hyperdrive, now that she’d fed and seemed to have fully recovered from the witch’s potion. And not just that—she smelled things that didn’t seem possible.
Yvette pulled forward a bit. Now that she was closer to the girl, she picked up the scent of something that hadn’t been there earlier: an underlying scent of witch, almost as if the witch had rubbed herself all over the girl …
Without thinking, she snatched Kimberly’s arm and led it to her nose, sniffing.
The girl let out a gasp. “What are you doing?”
Before she could assure Kimberly that she wasn’t going to hurt her, Haven lunged for her. Yvette jumped up from the bed and swiveled on her heels to fend him off before he could grab her. In the split-second before he reached her, her mind crazily compared his rush to a charging bull—hell, she could feel faint impact tremors through the floor! Nah, nothing subtle about him—and then he was upon her.
“My blood didn’t satisfy you? Now you want hers too?” He looked furious, his eyes wide and glaring, the cords in his neck tense … He looked on the verge of delivering a deadly blow.
“I wasn’t attacking her.” Yvette pushed against him, making him tumble toward the wall behind him. “You sure jump to conclusions pretty fast.”
Wesley rushed to his brother’s side, stake at the ready. “Don’t touch him, you bitch!”
Yvette rolled her eyes.
“I can handle this, Wes,” Haven sniped at his brother, got to his feet and marched toward Yvette again, giving his brother a quick sideways glance. “You know what we’ve discussed.”
Oh, she’d heard them talking about how to escape. Stupid ideas, all of them: trying to rush the witch the next time she brought them food. And they wanted Yvette to help them—which was the only reason Wes had agreed to let her live. For now. As if their plan was going to work. All they’d get was another blast of energy.
Yvette was going to stick with her own plan. She had to outwit the witch. Having mulled it over in her head, she was pretty sure that Bess, as she’d heard Haven call her, had to be within her own wards to exert her powers on them. Unfortunately, this eliminated the idea of attacking her while she was in the same room with them because, while within the wards, she’d be able to counterattack. Those attempts would fail. There had to be another way. Only an attack from the outside would work.
“By the way, none of your escape ideas will work,” Yvette said casually.
Haven narrowed his eyes at her. “And what do you suggest instead?”
“I, for one, will wait for my colleagues to rescue me.” It was the only feasible plan. But Yvette would have to try to warn them about the wards and the kind of powers the witch possessed, so they’d be prepared.
“What colleagues?”
“Scanguards. Ever heard of them? I thought you did your homework before you kidnapped us. Scanguards has the best bodyguards in this country. And many of them are just like me: vampires. A hard bunch to beat.”
Haven’s eyes flashed in surprise. “What makes you think those heartless creatures will be coming for you?”
The jab hurt. Her friends weren’t heartless. Yvette gave an unladylike snort. “Ever heard of the Musketeers? ‘All for one, one for all’? That’s just how it is among our kind. They’ll come.” The knowledge gave her strength.
“Well, I’m not waiting for a gang of vampires to storm in here—what the fuck do you think we are, suicidal?” Wesley yelled.
Haven looked at her, shaking his head, his body moving toward her. “I’ve
gotta agree with my brother on that one.” He was only a few feet from her now. Was he thinking he could overpower her? Distract her by talking, then jump on her? Did he still think she was trying to harm Kimberly?
“Another step closer, and your brother will have to scrape what’s left of you off the walls,” she warned Haven. Yvette noticed a barely perceivable flinch go through him, and he did a good job at trying to disguise the fact that her words were getting to him. With the way he’d treated her earlier, there was no way she’d walk on eggshells around him. He’d chosen to be hostile, and she was simply reacting to it.
“As if I wanted to get any closer.” Despite his words, his tone wasn’t as cold as she’d expected. Somehow, hidden in those eight words was a good dose of pent-up emotions. His problem, not hers, she told herself.
“If it’s not my body you want, what then?”
“See how she’s trying to manipulate you again?” Wesley cut in and took a step forward.
Never taking her eyes off Haven, or moving her head a fraction of an inch, she issued her warning, “If your kid brother does anything stupid, he’ll pay for it.”
“And if you touch Kimberly again and try to hurt her, then you’ll pay for it,” the stupid pup replied.
Yvette blinked twice. That’s how the latest confrontation had started. She’d touched Kimberly’s arm and smelled her skin, then Haven had interrupted her, but now that she was back on the subject, she remembered what she’d wanted to ask Kimberly.
“Kimberly,” she called out without letting the two brothers out of her sight.
“What?”
