by Susan Hayes
Remington and Sinjin exchanged glances, and then both of them looked straight at Val. She could see the unspoken question in both their faces. They wanted her opinion. If she said no, they’d send Aedan on his way. They were going to trust her judgment. She looked over at the man who had helped her last night, and she knew what her answer was. “I’d like to have Aedan on board for this.”
“Good.” Remington nodded once in agreement. “Since you bunch went and started stirring up all this supernatural crap, I haven’t had a single good night’s sleep. I’m glad to have a ringer with us on this one. We’ve been playing catch-up too long.” Remington pushed back his chair and stood up before nodding to Aedan. “I’ll leave you to it. Welcome to Paladin’s Division S, Mr. Doyle.”
Aedan visibly relaxed once Remington had left the room. “You’re going to have to bear with me a bit, everyone, as this isn’t my usual sort of thing. I’ve read enough about Paladin to know you lot are military issue through and through, but I’m cut from a very different bolt of cloth. So if I rub you the wrong way from time to time, it’s just because I don’t do well with authority.”
“Brethren aren’t military, then?”
“Not even close! Closer to it to say we’re one part crusty librarian, one part MI6, and one part vigilante.”
“MI6?” Michelle chimed in, curious.
“James Bond stuff, coded messages and weapon caches, that sort of thing. It’s not so easy carrying a vampire-hunting kit through customs these days. It tends to make the security folks all twitchy.”
Jase snickered. “Yeah, I’ll bet.”
Aedan leaned back in his chair and glanced over at Val. “First thing we’ll need to do is gather up the rest of the team from that mission. Everyone is going to need a crash course in basic vampire defense. When Christoph realizes Nick isn’t rising tonight, he’s going to start looking for a new target.” He reached out and gently touched the bandage on Val’s neck. The brief contact left a lingering frisson of heat where his fingertips had brushed her skin. “You’re going to need extra protection, Val.”
“Why, because I’m a woman?” Val instantly went on the defensive, the delicate caress forgotten as she prepared to take him apart of he went chauvinist on her.
“No, not because you’re a woman, though don’t think I didn’t notice that.” Aedan winked at her again. “It’s because Christoph’s got a taste of your blood now, and that means he can tune into you like a tracking beacon. If he were a stronger psychic, he’d be able to mess with your dreams, too, but I doubt he’s got that sort of juice. There’s no mention of it in the files. Still, you’ll need someone to watch over you.” Her heart hit a double beat as a slow, sexy grin curved his lips. “I’m hoping you’ll let me volunteer for that duty.”
“She’s vulnerable now he’s bitten her?” Sin cut in, his face creased into worry lines.
“To some extent, yes, she is. He’ll likely want to hurt her any way he can before he comes for her. He’s a sick, twisted bastard who gets off on revenge.” Aedan gave her another smile, trying to soften his words, but she could see the truth in his eyes. He was worried about her.
Sin nodded brusquely. “Then she’s not getting a vote in this. Val, Aedan’s assigned to escort you from now on.”
She opened her mouth to argue, and Sin raised a big hand and glowered. “Don’t waste your breath arguing with me. You’re in protective custody until I tell you otherwise. Clear?”
“Yes, sir.” She tried her damndest to ignore the happy little flutter in her stomach at the idea of spending more time with Aedan. She had sworn off men, even hot men, and most especially hot, charming men with sexy accents.
“Val, can you tell us who else was on that mission and where are they now?” Michelle asked, bringing her mind back to the issue at hand.
“Dirk, Tara, Denise, and Ryan. Tara is somewhere in New York with her brother, dealing with a haunting. Dirk’s here in Seattle, Denise is back at her desk in communications, and Ryan’s en route back here from his protection assignment in Dubai.”
Sin arched his brow and Val shrugged. “Remington needed a body for a mundane mission, and you know how Ryan loves the heat. He volunteered.”
“Mundane mission?” Aedan parroted Val, looking lost.
Jase jumped in to explain. “No supernatural stuff, just a straight-up protection mission. Division S has been in existence less than a year. We don’t have enough cases to make it a full-time thing yet, so when they need us, we get dragged back into the mundane crap. It pays the bills around here. But once you’ve duked it out with werewolves and angry ghosts, stalkers and kidnapping threats just don’t seem nearly as exciting.”
“Like you have to worry about it now, Jase,” Val pointed out with a laugh. “Since you went and got yourself wolfed-out, Remington doesn’t send you on mundane missions anymore.”
“Yeah, ’cause I’m special.”
“That’s one word for it,” she sassed back. “Or maybe he’s afraid you’ll shed on the nice, normal people.”
“Children, I’m going to send you both on a time-out if you don’t behave yourselves.” Sin’s voice brought them all back to the present situation, and Val shot her supervisor an apologetic look.
Sin glanced over at Aedan. “Sorry about these two. I swear, the way they bicker, you’d think they were married.”
Val could have sworn Aedan looked disappointed for a moment, and he seemed to shift back in his chair, away from her. Before she could figure out what had changed his mouth quirked into a grin as he said, “Not a problem. Frankly, it’s just nice to be around other people for a change. To be honest, I hunt alone most of the time. I haven’t done the team thing in years.”
“Alone? Isn’t that dangerous?” Val recalled the desperate battle they’d had against just the three fledgling vampires they’d destroyed in Portland. It had taken the five of them everything they had to beat the undead creatures.
Aedan laughed before answering. “Danger is the point, isn’t it? Otherwise, we’d all be working nice, safe desk jobs somewhere. But to answer your question, no, it’s not too dangerous, not for me. Most of the Brethren’s hunters work in pairs, but the dhampir usually hunt alone. A human partner would just slow me down.”
“You are going to be able to work with us mere mortal types though?”
“Well, one of you is not exactly human already, and from what I’ve read, you lot aren’t exactly average. All military trained and all with commendations. Paladin’s considered one of the best in the world, which is why you get to charge more per mission than I make in a year. I think we’ll find a way to work together.”
“Glad to hear it.” Sin pushed back from the table and stretched out his legs in front of him. “I’m going to go call in the other members of the Oregon team and warn them they need to be here by nightfall, for their own protection.”
“Including Tara?” Val realized that the team’s empath was the one person who would not be able to make it back in time.
“She should be safe enough,” Aedan said confidently. “Tell her to stay there. I can give you some instructions for wards and self-defense to send to her. I can even have the Brethren send another hunter to help her out.”
Val couldn’t keep the worry out of her voice. “Tara’s an empath, and her brother’s a medium. They’re not military, and I’ve only had time to give them basic hand-to-hand training. If anything happens to them…” Guilt churned in her stomach at the thought of Tara and Tristan having to face an angry vampire alone. “I asked Tara to come on that mission because we needed her abilities.”
“They’ll be safe. Christoph is here, right? Then he can’t be going after her. He’s made this personal, and that means he won’t bring in another vampire to help. It isn’t in his nature to share the bloodshed. He’s a sick son of a bitch, and he enjoys it too much to let anyone else in on the fun. We’ll have her well protected by sunset.”
Aedan glanced over at Sinjin. “She’s safer out there
anyway. I don’t remember seeing her name in the police report. It’s possible Christoph doesn’t know she was even a part of it.”
“You’ve read the police report?”
“The report, the officer’s notes, the local press coverage, and the victim’s witness statements.”
Val and everyone else at the table turned to stare at Aedan.
“Nice information network your people have,” Jase muttered, impressed.
Val wasn’t impressed. She was livid. “You jerk! When you appeared last night, you already knew I was with Paladin! I bet you knew my name, too, and you were just playing dumb with me!” She was bothered more than she wanted to admit by the discovery that Aedan hadn’t been completely honest with her the night before.
“Guilty as charged. But can you really blame me? You’d just been attacked, and your friend was dead. I could have walked up and opened the conversation with, ‘Hello, Valentina Farro, I know you led a team against a vampire nest a month or so ago and I’m here to tell you you’re all on their sire’s hit list now,’ but I somehow doubt that would have gone over well.”
“You could have said something!”
“I did. I told you I was a vampire hunter, and that you’d be seeing me again soon. You had enough to deal with already, and to be honest I wasn’t too keen on sticking around when your teammates showed up. You lot are more than a little intimidating, and I didn’t want to get shot by someone who got the wrong idea about which side I was on.”
“So you took off like a bat out of hell.” Val knew she was sulking, but she didn’t care. It had been a lousy two days, and she wasn’t feeling charitable.
“Not quite that fast, Val. I do believe he stopped long enough to kiss you good-bye,” Jase pointed out from across the table and Val wished he was close enough she could smack him for bringing that up.
Aedan looked sheepish and flicked an errant curl out of his eyes as he looked straight at Jase. “Yeah, sorry about that, I didn’t mean to put the squeeze on your girl.”
“His—oh hell no!” Val interrupted before Jase could say a word. “Jase is with Jazz, not me. He’s like an annoying sibling. You thought he was—we were—ugh, no! Not in a million years.”
“Way to make a man feel loved, Val. You’re hell on my ego. You know that right?” Jase pouted.
“Someone has to be. After all, Jazz can’t be here all the time,” Val replied airily. That was when she noticed the sensuous smile on Aedan’s lips and the way he was looking at her. Like she was the cherry on top of a decadent dessert and he was coming off a three-day fast. Her insides quivered, and she had to resist the urge to squirm in her chair as her pussy started to tingle. He shouldn’t be able to make me feel like this with just a look. I need to get a grip.
Val realized the others had gone silent, and she broke eye contact with Aedan to look around the table.
No one was talking, and instead they were all watching her and Aedan. Ignoring the looks she was getting, she cleared her throat and jump-started the conversation. “So where are you staying Aedan? I’m sure we could put you up here at Paladin if you wanted. It’s got better food than most hotels, and you’ll be close at hand if things get hairy later.”
“I’ll be staying with you.”
Val was certain she couldn’t have heard him right. He couldn’t be that arrogant, could he? “There’s no chance that’s happening, Aedan.”
“There’s every chance. You’re in protective custody, remember? Where you go, I go.”
Shit. Val blew out a breath and gave him her most withering stare. “Fine, then you have a date with my couch tonight. That way I’ll be the only target outside of Paladin. That should make it more tempting for him to come after me again. Better me than any of the others.”
“I’m not sure that’s the best idea, Val,” Sin protested.
Val was surprised when Aedan supported her idea. “I think Val’s plan is a smart one. I’ll show you how to protect this place with wards, and I can see to it Christoph doesn’t get near Val. If he gets close, he’ll sense me and that should be enough to back him off for at least one night. It might buy us some time while I get you all up to speed.”
“If you’re going off the property, I want a security detail to watch your house.” Sin was frowning now.
Aedan just shook his head. “They won’t be able to stop him. At worst he’ll kill them, too, just like your man last night.” He stood up and laid his hand on Val’s shoulder. “You have my word, she’ll be safe. I’m the only one who can keep her that way.”
Val twitched her shoulder from underneath his hand. “I can take care of myself, thank you.”
“Not against him you can’t, luv. Not alone.”
“Stop calling me that!”
“No.” He gave her another dazzling smile, and she swatted his hand away.
“You’re an ass.”
“So I’ve been told.” He winked at her and then looked at the others. “Now that’s settled, could one of you point me toward that cafeteria that was mentioned earlier? I’m famished. And while I’m eating, we can start working out a plan for catching ourselves a very nasty vampire before he catches any more of you.”
Chapter 4
The next few hours of Aedan’s life flew by in a blur. He’d been fed then debriefed and re-briefed on everything he knew about vampires in general and Christoph in particular. Throughout the day Val had been with him, though she’d kept her distance ever since he’d made it clear he was going to be protecting her from here on in. He knew she didn’t like his being assigned to watch over her, but he wasn’t taking her resentment personally. The file the Brethren had on Val had made it clear that she prided herself on being self-reliant. She’d been a well-respected member of the army’s Military Police force, with a jacket full of commendations before she’d left and taken a job with Paladin when her active duty had ended.
More than once, he glanced over at her and felt a chill at the idea of Christoph getting his fangs into her again. She was tough, but the vampire had spent centuries honing his twisted sense of vengeance into a terrible weapon. There was no way Aedan was leaving her to fight this battle alone.
It was early afternoon, and he was heading back to his hotel to pick up his things. With the sun still up, Val had pointed out she was perfectly safe and had stayed back at headquarters. He already missed her prickly presence, and his thoughts kept drifting back to that brief kiss he’d stolen the night they’d met. He couldn’t help but wonder if she’d ever let him do it again. I hope so. He’d been surprised at how unhappy he’d felt when he thought she was involved with the werewolf. When he’d found out she wasn’t, he’d been tempted to stake a claim on her then and there. He’d felt drawn to her since he’d seen her walking into Christoph’s trap the previous night, and the feeling wasn’t going away. If anything, it was only getting stronger the more time he spent in her company.
Aedan usually preferred his affairs brief and uncomplicated, but apparently this time was going to be different. She’d gotten under his skin somehow, and he was looking forward to getting some time alone with her tonight. He wanted to know more about her than her name, rank, and service record. Not that he’d ever tell her how much information he had on her and the rest of Paladin. She’d likely take the invasion of privacy very badly.
Dirk had offered to drive him, and Aedan was enjoying the views of downtown Seattle as he relaxed and watched the scenery fly by when Dirk’s voice gravelly voice broke into his thoughts.
“You’d better take good care of her.” Dirk’s voice was slightly louder than a hoarse whisper, and Aedan knew the roughness was due to an injury that had ended the other man’s military career and very nearly killed him in the process.
“I won’t let Christoph hurt her again.” Aedan sat up a little straighter and met the other man’s eyes in the rearview mirror.
“That’s not what I meant.” Dirk’s expression changed, and Aedan thought he caught the faintest hint of a smile.
“Please tell me it’s not that bloody obvious.” This time there was no doubting Dirk’s knowing smirk.
“Not to everyone, no, but there are advantages to being quiet while other’s do the talking. You see more.”
“And you’re the quietest man I’ve ever met,” Aedan observed.
“Wouldn’t you be if you sounded like this?” Dirk tapped his throat.
“No, I wouldn’t. I’m Irish. Nothing short of death would stop me talking.” Aedan grinned “And from what I’ve seen of Val, I’m the one you should worry about getting bruised. She’s one tough girl.”
“She’s not had it easy. Guys get all worked up over the tough-girl image and then can’t handle it when they realize it’s not just an image, it’s who she is. If you’re thinking of trying to get close to her, be sure that’s what you really want, or don’t even try.”
“I’m a professional vampire hunter,” Aedan pointed out. “Not to mention the fact I’m technically a different species. It would take a very brave, tough sort of woman to even consider taking up with a guy like me. But your warning is duly received and acknowledged.”
“Paladin is like family to us, which means she’s got a fair number of big brothers, and we’re all looking out for her.”
“Whether she wants you to or not?”
“Exactly.” Dirk flashed another tight smile Aedan’s way. “I don’t know how much information you have on us, but Paladin’s a refuge for folks like Val and me. People who have trouble fitting back into the civilian world. We’ve all got scars.” Dirk tugged aside the high collar of his shirt to reveal a mass of scar tissue across his lower throat. “Some of us just hide them better than others.”
“I know all about scars. I’ll do my best not to give her any more than she already has.”
“Good,” Dirk growled the last word and lapsed back into silence. It was the most Aedan had heard him speak all day.
