To cover her nerves, she used a little more hip action while she walked, and tapped the riding crop in a measured beat against her thigh.
A chill had hit the mountains just after dusk, and though she rarely reacted to changes in temperature, she was glad for the leather sheathing her body.
When they arrived at the dais, Arthur held her hand while she climbed the steps. With a bow, he stepped back and took a seat in the front row.
Phoebe offered Trevor a smile that was all fang. He eyed her warily as she took her place next to him. Was her rage apparent? She hoped so.
“Just so you know,” she murmured into his ear. “I always like to be on top, and I enjoy inflicting pain.” She tapped his behind with the crop hard enough to give him a little sting. He jerked.
“I hope you like being spanked, Trevor.”
His eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed in distaste.
She fought down a gleeful grin. “I wouldn’t want to be accused of misrepresentation later.”
Harry Adcock, their master of ceremonies—he wasn’t a minister—looked down his blade-thin nose and narrowed his beady eyes. Tall, skinny, and wearing Vampire Council robes, he looked like a crow. Sparse hair swept over his balding head in a failed comb-over. He released a warning flow of power, glared at her, and then cleared his throat. “Shall we begin?”
Phoebe smiled back. “I’m ready when you are, Councilman Ad-cock.” She allowed a hint of her power to escape and wash over the two men. Both males stiffened as though she’d farted. Trevor eased away from her about a foot.
She’d been told her power caused a pain/pleasure sensation not everyone enjoyed. Hopefully, by the time the evening was over, Trevor would want to be farther away than just a foot. Perhaps more like the width of the state. She was going to make it her lifelong ambition to encourage maximum distance between them.
Phoebe listened to what Adcock was saying with only half an ear while she scanned the crowd for trouble. Armanno Ricci was scowling, and his dark eyes homed in on her. She met his eyes for a moment. His eyebrows rose when his power had no effect on her.
Adcock reached the dreaded vows stage of the ceremony, and Phoebe dragged her attention back to him and Trevor.
“Do you, Phoebe, take Trevor as your mate, to honor, protect, and obey?”
“Obey? O-bey?” She raised her eyebrows and tilted her head. “Not going to happen, Adcock. Wishful thinking.”
He paused with his mouth open.
“A. Deal. Breaker.” She emphasized each word.
“I agree to having that part of the vows taken out of the ceremony,” Trevor said. Was that an actual blush tinging his skin?
“Thank you, Trevor. Dear.” Though she knew it wasn’t in the ceremony, she added, “When it comes to your vows of obedience, I’ll do the same.”
Adcock inhaled, and his nostrils narrowed further. If he kept doing it, they were going to collapse.
“Do you, Phoebe, agree to honor and protect Trevor, for as long as you both shall live?”
An eternity to be responsible for a stranger. Phoebe glanced over at Arthur. She didn’t want to claim the man standing next to her. Everything inside her was screaming for her to walk away. Arthur nodded, and her stomach fell. Tears stung her eyes and she looked away. The congregation behind her had begun to shift in their seats before she managed a resentful, “I do.”
“Do you, Trevor, agree to honor and protect Phoebe, for as long as you both shall live?”
His “I do” was louder, and held a hard note of triumph, as did the dark glow in his eyes when he looked at her.
“The ceremony will conclude with the sharing of blood between husband and wife,” Adcock announced.
Nausea hit Phoebe. She held out her wrist.
“I prefer your neck, Phoebe.”
He could deliberately hurt her for embarrassing him before his people. No one would stop him. She turned her chin and exposed the soft side of her throat.
He smelled of spicy cologne and something like cloves or evergreen as he tilted her jaw just a little and delicately struck her neck with his fangs. It didn’t seem he drank at all, but just rubbed his lips against her throat in a kiss. He wiped a thumb across the puncture wounds. His mouth was barely red with her blood when he stepped back, wiping it away with a handkerchief. There was an unwanted intimacy about his unfastening his tie and unbuttoning his shirt to expose his neck. He held aside his collar and presented his throat.
She hadn’t bitten a live source of blood in a long time. Also, she hadn’t eaten in nearly two weeks. Bad idea. The strong beat of Trevor’s pulse thrummed against his skin. He had obviously eaten before the ceremony.
Phoebe homed in on his heartbeat, saliva pooled in her mouth, and her fangs dropped. She bit him delicately, tasting the salty sweetness of his blood…and something else.
Her lips and tongue went numb, and her throat tightened. Her neck where he’d bitten her began to burn. She staggered back. Then her legs gave out and she landed hard on her hip.
What was happening?
Poison, it had to be some kind of poison. But how had he dosed her? Not his blood, his skin. Maybe his mouth, where he had bitten her? “Yu sn o bith!”
“Did you really think I’d agree to marry a cold bitch who doesn’t know her place, Phoebe? Did you think I wouldn’t know how powerful you are?” He eyed her with disgust.
He reached over and broke off a piece of the wooden arbor. He was going to stake her. Helpless, she braced herself, while she frantically looked around for help.
She looked to Adcock. His beady eyes darted between her and Trevor’s broad shoulders before he dashed off the platform toward the heavy stand of trees at the end of the yard.
Bedlam erupted as vampires on both sides leapt to their feet and turned on each other. Roars and hisses were followed by a several crashes when chairs were flung or crushed as the crowd clashed in hand-to-hand combat.
A male vampire rushed up on the platform and pounced on Trevor, shoving him away from her. The two struggled, their teeth bared, fighting for control of the stake. Trevor twisted the young male’s arm, snapping it, and swung him toward Phoebe. Her would-be rescuer tripped over her and tumbled away.
Trevor leaped off the platform and advanced toward Arthur, her sire. If he killed Arthur, every vampire in his line would go down, including her. With one strike, an entire clan would be murdered. But if she took out his sire first… Phoebe shook her head to clear her vision.
The clamor around her faded into the background while she focused on the lit candles on either side of the arbor. She stretched out a hand, letting loose the witchy part of her that had survived her transition. Heat rushed over her, making the leather pants and bustier feel tight. As though through the bottom of a bottle, she saw the fire, a dull light, and called it to her. The flame leaned toward her.
The candle dropped off its holder and she caught it. The fire stung her skin momentarily before it built into a ball of flame cupped in her palm. She drew its power into her, holding the fire inside and projecting it outward. Her limbs wouldn’t obey her when she tried to get to her feet, so she rolled on the wooden platform, fighting against Trevor’s toxin.
She couldn’t throw the fire, but she could roll it. She slung the flame along the floor, and it sped toward Trevor’s dark-haired sire, Armanno Ricci. His legion of men surrounded him. One vampire ran forward and stomped at the fire, but it dodged his feet and looped around him, climbing his leg and setting his suit on fire. He screamed and twisted, batting frantically at his clothing, while the other vamps scattered.
For a time she lost control of the flame and, like a thing possessed, it leapt from vampire to vampire, setting their hair and clothing on fire, burning their faces off, growing larger with every vampire it consumed. She struggled to contain it, to pull it back, but she was getting weaker by the moment.
Her body shook while she gathered it. Like a tornado of flame, it speared into the sky, then lanced downward, stab
bing into the heart of the Ricci clan, and pointing like a finger at Armanno Ricci. She held it poised over him.
Armanno screamed, staggered back, and fell, throwing up an arm to protect himself. His small legion of vampires froze, the threat of his death holding them in thrall. They would all fall should he burn.
Arthur stepped through the throng. His shirt was ripped, and his hair mussed, but he remained in one piece. “You will heal my daughter, Armanno. Otherwise, you and your people will all die. Especially that ball-less ass you call a son.” Arthur pointed at Trevor, who was being held by three of his men.
The Ricci sire slithered out from under the finger of fire, and reaching into his pocket, removed a vial. “It is the antidote. And you must hurry! Otherwise, she will not survive.” He tossed the glass tube.
Arthur caught it in midair and rushed to Phoebe’s side. Phoebe shook her head. What if it was a trick and she ingested more poison instead of a cure? Sound reached her as though she heard each word through a layer of cotton.
“He’s telling the truth, Phoebe,” Arthur urged. “You must release the blaze.”
She rolled onto her back and opened her fisted hands. The fire collapsed into itself and disappeared. Her vision blurred, then went dark while her head swam. Arthur raised her to a sitting position, cracked open the vial of clear fluid, and emptied it into her mouth.
The bitter taste coated her tongue, beating back the numbness. Arthur rubbed her throat as though that would help her swallow the fluid. Blackness closed around her, and she died.
CHAPTER 3
ROGER HAINES, VAMPIRE investigator for Have Wand, Will Travel, eyed him across the desk. Roger’s face, lit by the glow of a small lamp, appeared to be all hollows and angles. Vampires weren’t supposed to lose weight or change in any great way after their transition, but damned if ol’ Roger didn’t look overworked and undernourished.
Roger dove directly into why he’d called Hunter. “Hunter, I’ve been asked by the Vampire Council to investigate what happened at the wedding of Trevor Ricci and Phoebe Stewart. Seventeen of Armanno Ricci’s clan were burned to dust in a matter of moments. And Council member Harry Adcock is making some pretty wild accusations.”
Hunter raised a brow. “And you’re telling me this because…?”
“Some of the stuff he’s saying is…out there, Hunter. He’s making accusations against Phoebe and Arthur Stewart, saying it was an ambush.”
“Based on what I’ve heard, there’s a question of who ambushed who.”
“So you know about it?” Roger seemed relieved.
“One of our staff looked into it. I only know what was said around the blood cooler.”
Roger leaned forward in his seat and rested his elbows on the desk. “Which was?”
“Trevor Ricci, the groom, attempted a coup. He married Phoebe, the adopted daughter of Arthur Stewart, then attempted to kill her when they exchanged blood bites. She nearly died on the platform. A fight broke out, and one of the members of Ricci’s party caught fire during the struggle. It seems there were candles everywhere. In the throes of his burning, it spread to several other members of Ricci’s party.”
“Adcock insists that Phoebe had a fire-throwing device.”
“While she was lying on the platform, dying, she was also throwing fire?”
“It’s what he’s alleging.” Roger paused and rose to his feet. “She’s in the room next door, waiting to see you.”
“To see me? Why?”
“Look, Hunter. I’m overwhelmed here. I have so many cases I don’t have time to deal with this one. And it’s a conflict of interest for me to work for both her and the Vampire Council at the same time on the same case. I’ve already told her I’m passing it off to a different agent, saying you work for another PI agency. I think she’s gotten a raw deal, and she needs your help.”
“How so?”
His thin face tautened, and his mouth compressed. “She’s dying. The antidote for the poison was only a temporary fix. Trevor was being held to stand trial before the Council, but he’s escaped. If you don’t find him, retrieve the poison, and get it to our human scientists so they can find a real antidote, she’ll die—permanently.”
“Shit!” He didn’t know this female vampire, but his outrage and concern kicked in anyway.
Roger stood and moved around his desk. “Her poisoning is proof of attempted murder, and it could be a threat to others. We both know how hard we are to kill. If this should kill her, it would prove he’s in possession of something so deadly it could wipe out any number of our kind. That alone should give you sufficient reason to pursue this.”
Hunter remained silent for a moment. “You haven’t told her who I work for?”
“No. She thinks you’re on loan from another private detective agency.”
He nodded. “Okay. I’ll meet with her.”
Roger grinned and nodded. “Come with me, and I’ll introduce you.”
Hunter followed Roger down the hall to another office. A woman was standing at the window, her back to the room, but she turned to face them as soon as Roger spoke. Her skin glowed pale and flawless. Her large violet eyes tracked Hunter as he crossed to the desk and came to a standstill.
There was an elfin quality in the width of her cheekbones and the point of her chin. Her hair was a blend of different shades of blond, but had been streaked with dark mahogany. She wore a short leather jacket, a turtleneck sweater, jeans, and boots.
She walked toward the desk with the preternatural grace of the vampire she was, but there were shadows beneath her eyes, and just above the edge of the turtleneck a purplish-black bruise discolored the skin.
She stopped across the desk from Hunter and nodded.
Roger made the introductions. “This is Hunter Knox, Ms. Stewart. I trust he’ll give your case his full attention. He’s agreed that, as long as he’s on the case, he’ll have no other clients but you.”
That wasn’t quite true, unless Hunter’s bosses at the National Vampire Security Council decided this was as important as he thought they would. His report would make the poison the center of the investigation, though saving Ms. Stewart’s life would certainly take precedence too.
“Thank you, Mr. Haines.”
The hoarse, raspy sound of her voice surprised Hunter. Was that an aftereffect of the poison, or her normal voice? He wondered what her laughter sounded like.
“I’ll leave you two to talk.” Roger bowed his way out and closed the door.
“You can call me Hunter, Ms. Stewart.” He offered his hand across the desk. She returned his handshake with a businesslike pressure. As Stewart’s daughter, she’d be used to dealing with men.
Hunter moved to take a seat in one of the clients’ chairs, leaving the desk chair to her. She lowered herself into the seat very carefully.
They stared at each other for several moments. At once aware of her simmering power, his pulse picked up. He had met vampires with special abilities before. Though she attempted to hide it, her control was slipping, undoubtedly because of her illness.
“How are you feeling?”
“I’ve been better.” She reached for a plastic cup with a straw in it and drank deeply. He smelled fresh blood.
“I’d rather hear about how the poison has affected you. We need to document everything, so when we find your fiancé, appropriate measures can be taken to punish him.” He grabbed a legal pad and pen.
She hesitated for a moment, fidgeting. “The bite burns incessantly. Trevor bit me, then rubbed poison into the wounds with his thumb. I feel dizzy when I move too quickly. My body is wearing itself out trying to heal, so I must feed often.” She lifted the cup in demonstration. “My physician has told me when my body can no longer keep up with the demands of the poison, I’ll die.”
Hunter swallowed to moisten his suddenly dry mouth. Her death would be a damn shame. He didn’t know what her gifts were, but every diverse member of their species brought something valuable to the clans.
> “Tell me about your—fiancé.” He was strangely reluctant to call the man her husband.
“I underestimated him. I thought he was just a self-absorbed weenie, but instead he was a treacherous, murderous asshole.”
She had a right to be angry, but it wouldn’t help Hunter build a case. “Tell me about him, where he might go, what he might do, now he’s on the run from his clan and most other vamps.”
“I don’t really know him. We only met twenty-four hours before the ceremony. I’m not old enough to rise early during the day, so we only spoke for about two hours the night before the wedding. He and his sire Armanno Ricci and Arthur spent most of the night in the library hammering out some last-minute changes to the contract.” She shot him a wry smile. “It was supposed to quell the violence between our clans.”
“I see. How did you feel about the marriage?”
She remained silent for several moments. “Arthur is my sire, and he was doing what he thought best for our clan.”
Meaning she hadn’t been happy with the arrangement, but she wasn’t going to say anything negative about her sire. But he sensed pain behind the care she took choosing her words.
“And Trevor? How did he seem?”
“He was gaining control of a third of his sire’s territory. I thought he was pleased with the deal.”
“What can you tell me about him?”
“He looks thirty. He’s fifty years older than I am, which makes him about a hundred. He spoke of finishing his degree long after his transition so he could help Ricci with his business interests. They’ve been together since before he was turned. He can ride horseback. Likes to go for moonlight swims.”
Hunter raised a brow at that.
Phoebe grinned as though sharing a joke, and for a moment he saw the vibrant young vampire behind the illness. And she was very, very ill.
She sipped more blood before setting the cup aside. “He thought I’d find it romantic. He also mentioned some friends. I met one of them. His name is Randal Hawkins. The other is Jack Kinney, who plays poker for a living.”
Magic and Mayhem: Once Bitten, Twice Shy (Kindle Worlds Novella) (Have Wand, Will Travel Book 2) Page 2
