“Just because I’m not willing to put a stake through my own heart doesn’t mean I’m not willing to do what it takes,” Alistair argued in an annoyingly whiny voice.
“We can’t achieve anything without some risk,” Carmen insisted.
“She’s right,” Talon agreed as he moved from the shadows, appearing to fade into the room as if from thin air.
Alistair looked terrified, knocking over his seat in his haste to get to his feet and scurry across the room like a mouse fleeing a hungry cat.
Carmen, on the other hand, studied him with an intense curiosity. If she weren’t a vampire—little more than a disease infested human—he’d be tempted to fuck her. She was definitely easy to look at, with her curvy figure, curly golden blonde hair, and pale blue eyes. Dressed in tight black pants and a bright green top, she knew how to display her assets.
“What exactly are you?” Carmen asked without a touch of fear, making him respect her while longing to teach her why she should fear him.
“I am a god.” Talon flashed a condescending smile. “Lucky for you, I’ve decided to help you.”
“Why would you do that?” Alistair asked, sounding less nervous all of a sudden. Perhaps the idiot was trying to convince himself Talon wasn’t a threat. Alistair wasn’t unattractive, but he certainly wasn’t what anyone would call good-looking. He had an olive complexion, black hair, and green eyes, which might have made him handsome, were it not for his weak chin and thin lips. As Talon understood it, vampires didn’t grow facial hair beyond eyebrows and lashes, which was a pity since Alistair could benefit from a beard to conceal his chin. Like all vampires who were getting enough blood, Alistair had an impressive physique, but he was not very tall—at least a foot shorter than Talon’s six and a half feet.
“That’s the best you can do?” Talon asked Carmen with one raised eyebrow, completely dismissing Alistair.
“Sadly, it is,” she lamented. “There are others who might join me if I make some progress, but, for now, they’re terrified of the council’s wrath. This weak idiot is the best I could come up with on short notice.”
“I don’t have to stand here and be insulted,” Alistair sputtered as he turned toward the door.
“Don’t move,” Talon ordered him with barely a glance in Alistair’s direction. As expected, Alistair froze in place, waiting for his next command. Weak minds were always easier to control, not that Talon had trouble controlling even the strongest of human or vampire minds.
“However did you do that?” Carmen asked, her smile growing as she glided toward him. There was a calculating look in her eyes.
Yes, Carmen was the stronger of the two, but still weak enough that he could manipulate her into doing what he wanted. “I’m Fae. We can control whatever we want.” That was mostly true. “So, tell me, Carmen, do you want to learn how to take down your enemies? I can help you, but you’ll have to do exactly what I say. If I’m involved, then you take orders from me.”
“The dominant type, are you?” Carmen purred as she pressed her ample breasts against his stomach. Most men would be panting after her lush figure, but he had more important things to consider than satisfying his carnal desires. Her looks were likely part of the reason the idiot Alistair had become involved with her plot to begin with since Alistair didn’t strike him as the power hungry type. When he didn’t respond, Carmen licked her full lips and batted her eyes.
Talon chuckled at her blatant attempt to get him to fall all over himself as he suspected other men did. “That sort of thing won’t work on me, dear Carmen.”
“Then what will work?” she demanded, looking more mercenary than flirty.
“Just do as I say,” Talon replied with a shrug.
Her laughter made him frown. “I’m afraid I’m not much for taking orders,” she explained. “That’s why I’m so eager to rise to the top of the vampire hierarchy.”
“Then I suggest you be patient and do as I say.” Talon sneered, unable to hide his irritation. The bitch might be attractive, but she needed training.
“I’ll consider it after you tell me what you have to offer,” Carmen huffed and flounced across the room to sit on the large sofa.
Reining in his temper wasn’t easy when Talon wanted nothing more than to snap the bitch’s neck and then keep her alive to prolong her suffering. It would be so easy to bind her soul to her body, keeping her heart beating for days while she slowly died. Still, she was the best way to get what he wanted, and he could always torture her later. Letting out a long-suffering sigh, Talon lamented delaying his own pleasure. “I am a very powerful being, and I can help you come up with a plan to destroy anyone who stands in your way. Or, I can be a very dangerous enemy.”
To prove his point, he walked over and touched Alistair’s arm. The vampire’s skin bubbled as if it were boiling, steam rising from him, and Talon enjoyed the way Alistair’s eyes widened as he struggled to scream, impossible to do while Talon’s power held him immobile. Finally, the vampire’s flesh oozed, and his body dissolved until nothing remained but a scruffy black mouse.
Carmen giggled with delight and snatched Alistair up by his tail. “This is simply wonderful! You can turn my enemies into mice, or other useless creatures, and then I’ll be in charge of the vampire council. Let’s start with that scarred bitch, Eleanor. She’s always believed I was beneath her. I’d love to feed her to a snake.”
“It’s not quite that simple,” Talon told her, drawing Carmen’s attention to him.
Carmen’s mouth parted as if to scream before she caught herself. “You look just like Alistair!” she gasped.
“You don’t say,” Talon drawled, annoyed with his new appearance. “I can only keep him like that while I make use of his body, so this is it for now. Loath as I am to remain in this retched form, it will be much easier for me to help you like this.”
“What’s in this for you?” she asked skeptically. “I find it hard to believe you want to help me out of the goodness of your heart. Something tells me there is no goodness in your heart.”
“I want a particular female handed over to me,” he explained. “In exchange, I will give you the ability to destroy your enemies.”
“Dare I ask what you plan to do with the woman?” she inquired, sounding somewhat intrigued.
“I plan to bind her to me for all eternity and use her to destroy her father.” Just thinking about his victory over Arawn had Talon’s lips curling into a smirk.
Carmen merely laughed. “I really could learn to like you. So, tell me what we need to do.”
Chapter Four
March 17, 2014
It was no exaggeration to say that her workday had been totally craptastic. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Lexi had been forced to work late, only to be faced with a delay in service getting out of the city. Stupid BART trains always ran late when she had to be somewhere! Normally, it wouldn’t be too bad, but tonight, she’d really needed to pick up her car before the shop closed. She’d taken it to a place right by the MacArthur station because they were cheap, and they’d done a good job for her in the past. Unfortunately, they also closed at six, and she needed to pay the invoice before picking up her car. They might be nice people, but they weren’t going to trust her to take her car and come back to pay them later. She was going to have put this one on three different credit cards and live on beans and rice for the next two weeks. She’d made it to the shop at six-fifteen, hoping someone would still be there, but it was already locked up for the night. She’d figured things couldn’t get any worse, but fate was a bitch who loved proving her wrong, and she’d ended up getting mugged on her way back to the BART station.
Now, she was standing outside the MacArthur BART station after filing a police report with a very irritable police officer who apparently believed she was responsible for her purse being stolen. Not only that, he’d left her standing here with no purse, no money, no ID, and no cell phone. Oh, and no psych meds. Now, she’d also have to call her psychiatrist to get
an emergency refill, something her insurance wouldn’t cover since she’d just filled her prescription that morning—hence the reason they were in her purse.
“Someone just shoot me now and put me out of my misery,” she muttered.
“You look like you could use a friend.”
Lexi turned, ready to snap at the man who’d uttered those words. When she caught sight of him, she was left momentarily speechless. This wasn’t the normal creepy guy who came on to her. No, this guy was nothing short of stunning, even in the dim lighting outside the station. His hair was a pale shade, and his eyes were a luminescent grey. The only place she’d ever seen eyes that color was in a mirror.
“Do I know you?” she asked, trying not to sound affected by this guy’s presence, which was no easy task. There was something oddly familiar about him, and it scared her. Since Lexi hated being afraid, she crossed her arms in front of her chest and worked on looking pissed off by his intrusion.
He shook his head, not at all bothered by her angry glare. “Regrettably, we’ve never met.”
Maybe it was her eyes that had drawn him to her. It was always possible they had the same loser dad. He looked to be about her age—sort of. There was a timeless quality about him that she couldn’t explain. If she were the sentimental type who wished for siblings and a father, she might want to find out more about this stranger, but she wasn’t interested in finding any long-lost brother who was most likely as fucked up as she was. Insanity probably ran in her loser dad’s side of the family, so the only reason she’d be interested in siblings would be to compare meds and talk about their favorite delusions.
Thankfully, he said nothing more, so she assumed the conversation was over and started walking away. Where she was going, she still had no clue since she had no way to get home, and she didn’t think she could walk all the way to Hayward.
“What sort of drugs have they given you to dim your power so much?” he asked, and she once again found him studying her as he walked beside her.
That certainly confirmed her suspicions about him being crazy, maybe even crazier than her. She was tempted to ask him for help, but it seemed stupid to ask the crazy person to help her.
When she didn’t respond, he placed hand on her shoulder. While he wasn’t really hurting her, she felt compelled to stop walking. No, it was more like she couldn’t move. This was the time when she should be panicking, and she had no clue why she was more exasperated than frightened.
“Great,” she grumbled. “It’s not bad enough I was mugged today. Now, I’m going to be killed by some creepy guy, who might be my creepy brother. I don’t even have my purse, so no one will know who I am when they find my body in a dumpster. This is what I get for wishing I could find a way to avoid going back to my crappy job tomorrow.”
He laughed, and his silver eyes filled with warmth. “You have your mother’s dry sense of humor, Alexa.”
“You know my mother?” she demanded before realizing he also knew her name. “How the hell do you know my name?”
“You have no reason to fear me,” he murmured softly. “I’m here to help you.”
For just a moment, Lexi was struck with the strange longing to reach out and hug this stranger because she had no one, and there was this part of her that longed to have someone she could truly count on. Of course, that was ridiculous because she didn’t even know this guy, and he was crazier than her, so there was no reason to believe she could count on him.
“Why would you want to help me?” Lexi asked, shrugging his hand off her shoulder. It was a relief to realize her limbs were willing to obey her again.
“You’re right to be suspicious of my motives,” he said with a sardonic twist of his lips. “Something tells me you don’t trust people to be there for you. Things haven’t been easy for you, have they?”
“Listen, I have a shrink to talk to when I need to vent about my misery, and I suggest you get one for yourself because this conversation is beyond weird,” she told him with as much authority as she could muster. This whole encounter made her more than a little uneasy. “You say you know my mother, but she’s never mentioned anyone like you before.”
“I met your mother many years ago,” he began. “I didn’t even know she had a daughter until recently. How is she?”
That threw Lexi off, and she swallowed hard, trying to decide how much to reveal to a stranger. Her mother was the one person she could count on, the one person who had always been there for her. Lexi had few friends, and she wasn’t particularly close to any of them. It was hard to let people in when you had crazy delusions about being able to feel other people’s emotions.
“I take it by your expression that she’s not doing well,” he said with a sad sigh.
Lexi shook her head, unable to utter the words. After being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, her mom had decided against any medical intervention, a decision Lexi understood and supported. She had, at most, another three months to live, and then Lexi would be alone.
“Comforting others isn’t my strong area, but you should take comfort in the knowledge that you will be reunited with your mother.”
“Sorry, but I’m not the religious type,” Lexi replied, trying not to sound like too much of a bitch. She was really tired of people telling her this was their god’s will.
“Tell me about the medication you’re taking,” he said casually when she was getting ready to walk off again.
“If you didn’t know about me, then how do you know about my meds?” Lexi demanded, edging back toward the more crowded area of the BART station.
“I can sense your power, and I know it’s being suppressed,” he explained, as if that didn’t sound completely insane. “The human doctors can’t possibly understand how truly special and powerful you are, so they drug you.”
Yep, this guy was even crazier than her. Time to end this conversation quickly. “Listen, I need to get home. Do you have a phone I can borrow so I can ask someone to pick me up?”
“Don’t worry, Alexa, I’ll make sure everything is taken care of,” he assured her just before his hand snaked out and wrapped around her bare arm.
A strange tingling sensation ran up her arm, and Lexi nearly pulled away from him. In fact, she wanted very much to pull away from him, but her body wouldn’t obey. It seemed that missing just one pill was making her completely lose her mind. The world faded around her as wispy strands of silver swirled and glowed brighter until her eyes burned from the light. She might have screamed, but she heard no sound. It was as if she were ripped from reality and thrust forward.
Hands gripped her shoulders as the swirling slowed. “I hope you know how to swim, Daughter,” came a soft male voice before those hands shoved her. It was like being flung through a glass door. Everything shattered, and she was finally able to scream as her body was thrust into the icy cold water.
As if her day wasn’t already bad enough—she didn’t know how to swim.
Chapter Five
April 13, 2115
It was a little cold to be napping naked by the creek, but Zane figured a little discomfort was worth it if he could avoid having to deal with his father. It hadn’t been enough that he’d agreed to impregnate the female; his father had insisted on him meeting her today. The meeting had been even more awkward than he’d expected when the frightened female had walked into the room with her family, looking like she was being led to a slaughter. She hadn’t made eye-contact with him the entire time he’d been in the room, and she’d only given one-word answers.
Even he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get it up for this. All he could picture was the female lying there with her eyes closed while he did his thing—not a sexy image. That might change when she was in heat and their instincts took over. Still, he was pretty sure instinct wouldn’t be enough unless she stopped looking like a fucking sacrificial lamb.
Following that dick-shriveling meeting, he’d gone for a run in lynx form to avoid his father’s many questions and instructions. After
that, he’d decided to swim in the creek, which had nearly been enough to make his balls climb back inside. He’d been born after the lynx clan migration from Canada and had no idea how anyone survived the cold winters. While some of the clan still talked about missing snow, he could easily live without it. They got a little snow in this area from time to time, and it was definitely not to his liking, even with the warm covering of his lynx fur.
A scream and a splash grabbed Zane’s full attention. Sitting up, he saw a female struggling to stay above the surface of the creek. Normally, the creek wasn’t deep, but this year, they’d had some serious rainfall. He had no idea how the female had ended up in the creek, but clearly, she couldn’t swim.
Running to the water’s edge, Zane dove in. “Calm down. I’ve got you,” he ordered as he slipped an arm around her to pull her to the edge. The female was still panicking and nearly took him under with her.
“Be still or we’ll both drown,” he commanded with more force this time, and she instantly went limp in his hold. Pulling the crazy female to the water’s edge, he scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the soft grass before dropping to his knees with her on his lap.
The poor female was shivering. “You’re safe now,” he assured her.
“I almost drowned,” she barely managed to say with her chattering teeth.
Damn, she had the most captivating silver eyes he’d ever seen, but it was more than just her eyes that held his attention. She was stunning, with dark blonde hair and skin like ivory with a hint of a chilled flush to her cheeks. Just looking at her, Zane was instantly hard, despite the cold. He was having a difficult time resisting the temptation to taste her pink lips. Resisting temptation wasn’t exactly his strong area, but he figured she might start to panic again if he kissed her.
“Why’d you go in the creek if you can’t swim?” he asked, to distract himself from his erection that was begging for an introduction and the voice in the back of his head telling him to listen to his dick. There was only a small part of him that thought he should ignore his dick.
Impulsive Destiny Page 3
