Taffeta & Hotspur

by Claudy Conn

  * * *

  He studied her for a long moment and realized he’d decided to give her the job the moment he realized that was what she wanted. He gave her his hand, and when their hands clasped he felt a bolt of lightning shoot through his arm and aim straight at his heart. He was in trouble. This one … this little American … did something to him she wasn’t supposed to be able to do. Only ‘the one’, his intended only one, the one he was meant to take as mate, should affect him the way this one affected him. He was momentarily off his game.

  She smiled warmly and said, “Key?”

  He went to a side table, retrieved it, and dropped it in her open palm. He didn’t want to touch her, was afraid to touch her, afraid that he would not be able to control himself, because at that moment all he could think of doing was tearing off her clothes, laying her down on the wood planking, and ramming into her …

  What was wrong with him? He watched her sway as she walked to the door, and then she said over her shoulder, “If you need me … you know where I’ll be, but I don’t start till tomorrow. I have to get settled first.”

  He watched from the side window as she got into her car and drove off. Then he leaned back against the wall and blew out air … What the hell?

  Like sexy vampires?

  Meet Damon from ShadowHeart—Slayer

  ~ Prologue ~

  DAMON DRUMMOND STOOD on a rooftop—arms at his side, legs spread in a wide stance—and stared at the scene that had just begun to unfold five stories below in an alleyway only dimly lit by the lights from the various apartments above it.

  At both ends of the alley, New York City was ablaze with activity and bright with its city lights. Even at one in the morning the streets were still filled with a flow of people out on the town.

  Damon made quite a picture. His black, thick hair fell in layered waves and framed his handsome face. The wind at the top of the building whipped at his shiny locks and at his tall, rugged body, but he didn’t bother to zip his black leather jacket closed. He rubbed his cold hands against his jeans as he watched the red-haired beauty below lure her prey deeper into the deserted alley.

  Damon’s eyes, brightly alert with interest, were lit in their recesses with gold at a striking variance with their dark depths. He was keenly intrigued as he studied her style and took her measure, filing away his observations as though he were a research scientist observing an exotic new species. He watched her move and sway and entice her prey deeper into her web, and he waited for the inevitable. This was not the first time he had followed her into the night.

  He saw the newbie slink in after her as the beauty pretended she didn’t know he was coming up behind her. She put on a grand show. Damon saw that her hand was already inside her unbuttoned denim jacket, and he knew her fingers were wrapped around her deadly weapon.

  She stopped, turned, and pushed a long strand of her fire-lit hair away from her provocative features. She smiled bewitchingly at the young man now tripping with anxious need and awful, raging blood-lust towards her.

  Her voice was disdainful when she spoke. “Oh—hi there … Are you following me?”

  An animal grunt came out of the newbie’s mouth as his lips drew back, and he bared his fangs. What happened next went down so swiftly that a lesser person watching would not have realized the skill and strength it had taken. It looked so easy … she made it look so easy, but Damon knew otherwise. A newbie’s brutal strength was derived from the bloodlust, and no human could withstand its onslaught.

  The newbie charged, but she went into a spin and was lightly, easily, and gymnastically out of his way and at his back. Before the newly made vamp understood enough to recover, she had her sharply pointed stake plunged into the nape of his neck and just as quickly had it withdrawn.

  He turned to stare, stunned but not down. He made an agonized sound and reached back for his neck. His hand filled with blood, and he stared at his hand as his body filled with the poison that wood inflicts on a vampire.

  She took his moment of confusion and used it to ram the wooden stake into his undead heart, and he collapsed in a heap. He stared at her before he whispered, “Your time … will come …”

  She stood back from him for a moment as though saying a prayer. Then she withdrew the stake, wrapped it in some kind of cloth, and slipped it into its Kevlar sheath, which was strapped around her shoulder under her jacket.

  Damon’s dark, well-shaped eyebrow arched with interest as she turned and slowly walked away, leaving the body in the alleyway. A newbie vampire would not disintegrate. She didn’t seem to care.

  He supposed, as she did, that the police would list it as they did so many others as an unsolved case, and it would be filed with the cold cases as time went by.

  The beauty picked up her pace, and Damon noted the style of her walk was controlled; she was careful not to use her slayer ability at super-speed.

  He couldn’t stop himself from noting that her butt was perfectly shaped and tantalizing, and he could see she didn’t give a damn about her looks. She had only one goal, and that goal was totally at odds with his.

  She was confident—probably overconfident, and that wasn’t good. She was killing at least two vampires nearly every other night, and one of these nights she would come across a vampire who knew just how to handle and overcome her …

  However, she was smart, and she had been piecing the puzzle together. She had discovered bits and crumbs, and she’d tracked the clues relentlessly. It had Damon deeply concerned, because she was looking for one vampire in particular.

  The beauty’s name was Nikki Walker. She was a vampire slayer, and Damon Drummond—well, he was a vampire …

  ~ One ~

  NIKKI STARED UP at the small inn not too far from Harcourt Street in Dublin. It was a perfect location. Quiet, and it seemed to cater to older couples and a few business sorts. It wasn’t too far from the Temple Bar area, where she would do her vampire scouting, and so it was perfect for a home base.

  She picked up her two bags and climbed the high steps that took her inside, where a small but brightly lit lobby greeted her. A man behind a mahogany counter, with an office of sorts at his back, caught her attention with his deep, Irish brogue, and she had to concentrate in order to understand what he was saying.

  He laughed and clipped whatever he had said into a simple, “Good morn’ to ye, miss.”

  “Oh hi …” Nikki smiled as she put down her suitcases and moved towards him. “I have reservations … Nikki Walker.”

  “Ah, yes … ye requested the top floor … a suite.” He looked to be in his early twenties, and she couldn’t help but notice that he gave her an interested once over as inconspicuously as he could before he gently pushed some papers across the wooden high counter for her to sign and requested to see her passport.

  As she bent to take care of the paperwork, her long, gold-lit red hair fell about her face. She pushed it away, looked up, and saw that he was staring. She smiled amiably as she could see he was about to ask a question.

  “Are ye here on business then?”

  She smiled and said ambiguously, “In a manner of speaking.”

  “Oh, aye then,” was what he thought an appropriate response, and Nikki gave him a warm, friendly smile. It was obvious that he wondered what a young (and she could see he thought her pretty) woman was doing all alone at a hotel frequented by the senior crowd on this quiet street in Dublin. He couldn’t know it was the perfect place for what she had to accomplish.

  Quiet and secluded was everything she needed.

  She wasn’t who she had been, not anymore. She didn’t feel young and pretty and ready to take on the world in the normal way young women did. Graduate school was a thing relegated to another time in the future … friends, love … out of the picture for now.

  What her mother had told her was her birthright (or bane depending on how you looked at it) had come to pass. She was a vampire slayer, and she had more than slaying vampire after vampire on her mind. She w
anted one in particular—the one that had murdered her brother! She knew the vamp was a female of some years and experience, and she knew that the dangerous female vamp was known as Deadly Moon.

  She and her brother had lost their parents to a drunk driver when she was sixteen, and her brother had stepped in and become the sun, the stars, ‘the everything’ she needed to get through the heartache of their loss. Jack had even taken over where her mother had left off and did his best to train her to become the slayer she might one day have to be.

  During those early days with her mom, she had kept her own council. She hadn’t wanted to disappoint her mother by telling her that ‘slaying vampires’ was not something she had ever wanted to do.

  And then her mother and father were gone, and she wanted to accomplish all the goals her mother had set for her. She heard her mother whispering in her ear, “Baby … I know this doesn’t seem fair … all this extra work, but one day it will save your life. Want it or not, you are a slayer, and one of them might come for you …”

  Jack wasn’t a slayer by birth, but he had learned everything he could from his parents and took up the job of ‘slayer training’ when they lost their parents.

  She’d allowed him to put her through all the trials, the gymnastics, the karate, the wielding of the deadly wooden stake, but now Jack was gone as well. He was gone because of a vampire, and she wanted to rip the creature from limb to limb and feed the pieces to the beasts of hell …

  Nikki had money enough. Their parents had left them comfortably provided for, and Jack had made a fortune in the computer software business and left everything to her.

  The weeks before she lost her brother, Nikki had graduated from NYU. Jack had managed to pull on a few friendship strings and got her started doing little fluff pieces for a national travel magazine. She had been accepted to graduate school and had been looking forward to it and the life that went with it … but, no longer.

  She had to find his killer, and she had the advantage of her slayer abilities. She had questioned the police about what they knew, but all they had been able to tell her was that Jack Walker had met an incredibly beautiful woman at some charity function at Lincoln Center and that they had left together.

  Jack had been found in a suite at the Plaza with his throat torn and most of the blood drained from his body.

  The police thought it was a serial killer, but Nikki knew better. She called on her slayer skills and went to work. She quietly, unobtrusively took on her own investigation and painstakingly followed where the details took her.

  It was leading her to a vampire of unusual abilities, and she would have to be careful, because although she might have super-hearing, super-speed, and super-strength, she could be killed as easily as any human. She was not immortal.

  The same week that Jack had been mutilated and killed, she went out looking for information. She visited the clubs she knew vamps frequented in NYC when they went looking for easy prey.

  She had walked into one dance club and was surprised to see a great number of vamps mingling with petty, expectant women. She made her selection and sidled up to him.

  He wasn’t expecting an attack from a human. He didn’t know she was a slayer because she hid it well. And so her first encounter went off easier than she had expected.

  It wasn’t difficult to get him into a position in the dark alley behind the club where she laid him low with the skill and the strength that was hers as a slayer.

  Some of her success was due to the shock and surprise he experienced when she threw him hard to the ground. The rest was the point of the wooden stake held directly and threateningly to his cold heart. She explained to him then that she would free him if he told her what she wanted to know.

  He wasn’t a newbie, but he didn’t have a great number of years or experience as a vampire, so he caved immediately and told her that the rumor was Deadly Moon had been with the Walker human. It was the first time she had heard a name in relation to the dangerous, ‘never seen ancient’ vampire.

  He told her everyone in vamp circles was talking about it because Deadly Moon did not usually make a spectacle of her kills.

  He didn’t know anything more, but instead of setting him free as she had promised, Nikki had made her first vampire kill.

  Remorse? None. She had not kept her word—she had not released him when he gave her the information—but she had no regret. He wouldn’t be able to kill some poor, hapless human, now would he?

  Everything she did from that moment on was with the intent of finding Deadly Moon, the vampire other vamps seemed to fear.

  Nikki knew enough to be discreet when she singled out a vampire for questioning … and killing. She never did so when other vamps could look on and listen in.

  Her latest kill, two nights ago, had won her the information that Deadly Moon was in Dublin. Nikki still had no description of the female vamp. None seemed to know her, only of her.

  Nikki put aside these thoughts as she took the key the man at the counter handed her and went to the small elevator. She had taken the largest suite he had, as she didn’t know how long she would have to be in Dublin.

  She had been to Dublin and the Irish countryside once before, with her brother …

  She arrived at her door, #110, and opened it wide before she stepped in. The day was misty and gray. Night would come fast on a day like this. She scanned the place with more than her eyes as she stepped inside. All clear …

  Or so she thought.

  A hand came from nowhere and clamped down on her mouth. Another strong, muscled arm went around her and pinned her arms at her side, and a voice with a distinguished English accent whispered in her ear, “Go home, Nikki Walker, before you get yourself killed.”

  She tried to spin around and see her attacker, but even with her super-strength she couldn’t budge. One hand was still on her mouth, but the other managed to slip under her open jacket. She struggled hard then, harder than she had ever done before, but he was too strong and quick for her. He snatched her weapon and tossed it before he let go of her mouth and turned her to face him.

  She could have screamed then, but she didn’t. She didn’t want to bring attention to herself, especially on her first day. And there was something in this one’s aura that made her think he wasn’t really there to harm her—after all, he had warned her off instead of immediately killing her.

  So instead of screaming like a banshee, which she desperately wanted to do, she looked him over.

  What she saw made her raise her dark eyebrows. He was tall, and his black hair fell in layered waves around a ruggedly good-looking face. His shadow beard added mystery to his chiseled features. His clothes were expensive and jet-black. Black leather jacket, black tee beneath it, and black jeans and silver-tipped black boots. Whoa—just who was this?

  Vampire—that’s who! All at once Nikki’s slayer sense kicked in and told her, Stupid … he’s a vampire.

  As though reading her mind he chuckled. “Aye, then—that established—all I am here for today is to indulge in a reasonable discussion.”

  “That established—what established?” she returned warily. Had he read her mind? Different vamps had different ‘abilities’.

  A short laugh escaped his lips, but then he grew serious all at once. “Let’s skip the game playing, Nikki, shall we?”

  “I will if you will, English …”

  “Again, game playing,” he chided.

  “I’m not playing a game. How could I when I don’t know the rules?” She shrugged. “Besides, I don’t play with strangers. You know my name … I don’t know yours.”

  “Rules, eh? I shall have to list some for you. Firstly, and most importantly, stay out of my way—meaning, don’t look for Deadly Moon. As to my name?” He inclined his head and brought up his dark eyes to her face. “My name is Damon Drummond.”

  Nikki stiffened and shot him a warning look. “I have no quarrel with you, Damon Drummond. I don’t know how you know what you do, but I don�
�t follow other people’s rules—especially when the person listing the rules is a … vampire. Deadly Moon and I … we have a problem, and I mean to solve it.”

  “You will have two problems if you keep trying to track her.”

  Was he threatening her? It felt like he was threatening her, and yet, she didn’t really feel threatened. What then? Was he saying that he would be a problem for her if she didn’t stop tracking Deadly Moon? Why? And if that was so, well then, he seemed to think a great deal of himself, and something told Nikki that he probably had cause to do so.

  He was not like any vamps she had ever encountered. She also wondered if Deadly Moon was his lover. She eyed him speculatively, but before she could retort he had her shoulders and brought her in close. A sizzling, spidery electricity tickled the air between them.

  “I have never seen anything like you, Nikki Walker. From the top of your fiery head to your dainty and dangerous feet, you are unique. You look at me with eyes the deepest shade of blue I have ever encountered in all my four hundred years, and it would be a shame to see them permanently closed.”

  “Are you threatening to do that—permanently close my eyes?” Nikki shook her head, “Then go ahead, have at me, because nothing is going to stop me. My brother’s eyes were even more blue than mine, and his were permanently closed before his time … I don’t mean to suffer the same fate … at least not until I get my ounce of justice for him.” She held herself stiffly aloof. “So that brings us to my rules … the first being, stay out of my way, Damon Drummond, and perhaps I will let you live.” It was bluster, she knew. This vamp could do her in with the blink of his eye.

  He smirked at her and said, “You will get yourself killed if you throw words like that at some vamp you simply cannot take because he has age and experience, and there are some out there, slayer, that you cannot take.” He let her go and wagged a finger at her, “So you want to know if I am threatening you. Fine. Call it what you will, it is still a warning. If you pursue Deadly Moon, you will find yourself a target because your presence will become obvious in their world, and these are bad times in Dublin.”