“That’s Agent Bitch to you.” The sharp crack of a bullet surprised Gunnar, and Ren cried out. The tang of blood—old and putrefied, but with a strange, familiar tang—filled the air. She’d got him, not in the belly as threatened, but in a meaty, muscular thigh.
“Your middle is next, then I go for your crystal.”
“All right, all right,” Ren gasped, and started to move to grip his wound. When she leveled the gun, he stopped. “It was that woman Tonja. I got the security code from her.”
Gunnar stiffened. “Impossible. She’d never— You bastard.” His eyes glowed so hot he felt them burn with vampiric fury. “What did you do to her?”
“Let’s just say,” Ren replied evenly, “she won’t be keeping next week’s appointment either.”
He started to move, but Lyla shifted, blocking him. “Wait. Not yet. I have more questions—don’t you?”
“No,” Gunnar growled, flexing his hands. Damn, he needed to get that necklace away from her so he could take a step without wanting to puke. And move when he needed to, with the strength and speed required. “Lyla, could you take off that damned necklace?”
“Oh, crap, sorry.” Still holding the gun steadily on her husband, Lyla flipped the necklace over her head and tossed it lasso-like beyond Ren and into the hall. Immediately, Gunnar felt better—in more ways than one. Surely she wouldn’t have thrown it away if this were a trap.
“If you two are finished,” said Ren, whose blood was pumping, dark and shiny and almost tempting from the hole in his thigh, “I really could use a doctor.” But as he said those words, he moved sharply, grabbing the slender leg of the side table and whipping it toward Lyla.
The table caught her in the chest, and she staggered back, flailing, as the safety deposit box tumbled to the ground. The container’s lid disengaged…and all of a sudden, Gunnar was on his knees. Suffocating, paralyzed, with pain stabbing him everywhere.
A mass of white feathers spilled from the upended box less than a yard away from him—far more concentrated than even the choker he left in the living room on Tuesday evenings.
Dimly, through a roar of pain, he heard Lyla’s horrified shriek. The shout was cut off as Ren grabbed her and yanked her toward him. He had a grip on her gun hand, holding it pointing away from him, and squeezed her wrist until the firearm dropped from her hand.
“Now…where were we?” said Ren, his breathing labored and the blood streaming wildly from his leg. “Right. I’m here to kill you. She’s got that right, Malkensen. But my dear wife just made things a little easier for me.” He grinned.
“Get your hands off me,” Lyla said. “You’re assaulting a federal agent.”
“But that’s the beauty of my new plan—you’re going to make this much easier for me than I’d even imagined. We already know Gunnar Malkensen has a violent temper; that he nearly killed a woman two years ago—that was you, my dear, which I hadn’t actually planned to have happen, but since you were clearly fucking him behind my back—”
“As if you cared,” she retorted. “I haven’t shared your bed since our wedding night. Fifteen years ago. And even that was a chore.” Since Ren must be aware of that bit of information, she was clearly saying it for Gunnar’s benefit.
Which…if he could actually feel anything but debilitating pain, it might matter, but at the moment, he was simply trying to keep his mind from collapsing along with his body.
“What would your dear mother and father think if they knew you weren’t being faithful to the husband they oh so carefully selected for you?” Ren asked, still holding her immobile. “Darling?”
Lyla was watching Gunnar, her eyes wide with horror, as he could do nothing but try to breathe. Even that was nearly impossible. A vampire wouldn’t actually die from being exposed to his Asthenia, but it made him a sitting duck for anyone to stake him or cut off his head.
“I’ve never been a wife to you in any real sense of the word,” Lyla responded calmly. “And the only reason you agreed to marry me was because you thought you’d get access to my parents’ crystal beds.”
“Well I did, didn’t I?” Ren grinned. “And thanks to you, I’ve become unimaginably wealthy and powerful. I can get anything I want from anyone in this town—including Cezar Moldavi.”
Gunnar tried to follow the conversation, but it was hard to make sense while he was battling the constant radiating pain. He was trembling with the effort of fighting off the agony, sweat dripping from his brow and running down his arms and chest. He didn’t know how much longer he could stay conscious.
“That’s how you did it, isn’t it?” Lyla asked. “You put crystal grit in the massage oil that night.” Her voice, growing further away with every breath, seemed to also have a thin thread of panic woven through it.
Dammit, Gunnar thought, his vision wavering into something like lights flashing through a tunnel. Inevitability set in. I could have been happy with her. I could have loved her.
“I’m surprised it took you so long to figure it out—but that’s what brought you here tonight, isn’t it? You realized what happened when—”
“That’s right. You did it again, and this time it was Barry Rudolph who died,” Lyla said. “And that’s how I figured it out. I found a sample of the grit.”
“It’s the perfect murder, really,” Ren said. His voice was fading too, even though Gunnar tried to hold on. “You’re the only one who could’ve figured it out, and as of tonight, you’re going to be murdered by poor, mad Gunnar Malkensen. Then I’ll kill him while I’m trying to save you, and no one will ever know.”
“And how are you going to do that?” Lyla asked.
“Like this.” Ren’s hand moved, something flashed, and even through the haze of pain, Gunnar saw the red stripe laid open on Lyla’s arm…and the beautiful scent of her lifeblood filled the air.
Chapter 7
The Whole Crystal Thing…
Is Pretty Amazing
Lyla couldn’t hold back a cry of pain and rage as the knife sliced down her arm. She saw Gunnar tense, tight as a bowstring, his nostrils flaring even as he shook with agony. The scent of her blood in his weakened state would send him over the edge.
If she didn’t do something soon, it would be too late.
She gave a rough heave of breath, allowed her eyes to roll back into her head, and went into a dead weight in Ren’s arms.
He staggered a little at the unexpected weight—and surely his leg must be on fire by now, with the bullet she’d put into it. She forced herself to remain still and as heavy as possible as he steadied himself against Gunnar’s heavy desk.
The moment the arm around her waist loosened, his grip slipping, his leg trembling with effort, she came back to life. Her head slammed back into his face, crunching his nose with a satisfying crackle, then she jammed an elbow into his wounded thigh.
Ren screamed with pain as she spun away and dove for the gun. Her husband tried to recover, dodging clumsily toward her. The blood from her arm flung in little droplets through the air, splattering on the floor and Gunnar, who gave a horrible shudder at her feet.
But Lyla didn’t have time to tend to him, for just as she scooped up the gun, Ren’s massive body plowed into hers. The force of his hit knocked the breath out of her, whipping her against the edge of the table, and the Glock skittered from her grip, spinning across the rug.
She stumbled away, dizzy and out of breath, and saw Ren go after the gun. It was too far from her, but the safety deposit box was right at her feet. Lyla grabbed it, tucking it under her arm, and ran for the hall.
She was just crossing the threshold into the corridor when Ren dove for her, catching her by the ankle. Grunting, she threw the box as far from her as possible as she fell to the ground, and had the satisfaction of seeing it crash onto the floor and tumble halfway down the hallway.
There was a roar behind her, and she knew it was Gunnar, surging to his feet at last. The gun discharged, there was the sound of brief struggle—and when Lyla tu
rned, she found that Gunnar had Ren pinned to the wall by his throat.
Blood spewed from her husband’s leg, and also from a massive hole in the front of his chest. The gun dangled from his hand; he must have tried to shoot Gunnar, but caught himself instead and at close range.
Ren already looked white, turning to blue, and she could see he was wounded almost exactly where his life crystal was. The darkness of dying skin was already spreading, far more rapidly than usual—probably due to his crystal grit habit—and was creeping up from behind his button-down shirt and beneath its cuff, over his hand.
Ren looked at her over Gunnar’s broad shoulder. Loathing and fury burned in his eyes. “You…bitch.”
She shook her head. “You did it to yourself, Ren. Gunnar, you can let him down. He’s dying.” She went over to him, resting a light hand on a powerful arm that trembled. “Gunnar?”
“He came here to kill me tonight. But even worse—he would have killed you as well. Or made me do it. And he tried two years ago as well. So I’m going to wait and make certain this is finished now.” Gunnar’s words were flat and cold.
She had no choice but to wait, and watch, until Ren took his last breath. By then, the darkness of death had radiated from the crystal and taken over most of his neck and the bottom of his face, turning his skin hard and black and shiny—almost as if he were mortal and had been burned.
Lyla shuddered a little. That was how most of her kind died when they lived on land; it was probably how it would happen for her some day. Once the life crystal was nicked or otherwise injured, unless seawater was applied, it was like a mortal getting shot in the heart or head. The life dried up, so to speak. It was over in moments, and it left the body like an ebony statue.
“What’s happening to him?” Gunnar asked, at last easing his hand away and allowing Ren to sink to the ground. The man shuddered and gave his last breath, then relaxed into as his body continued to evolve into a shiny, shell-like carcass. “I’ve never seen anyone die like that.”
Grimly, Lyla stepped forward to close Ren’s eyes before they hardened. She pulled away his shirt to show Gunnar where the life crystal was—set in the softest part of the skin below the clavicle. Instead of being translucent with life, glowing slightly with every breath, it was now dull and opaque and black. The bullet had taken a big chip out of it.
“What the hell is that?”
She looked at him in surprise. “I thought you knew. You’ve seen mine.”
Gunnar stared at her. He seemed to still be recovering from the torture. “Your what?”
“My crystals.” For some reason, Lyla was flushing. Had he forgotten what had happened that night two years ago—before things went bad? Had he not even noticed them? But how—
“Your crystals.” Gunnar was pulling at her shirt, yanking it over her head, and she was too shocked to stop him as he looked at her torso. “What are they?” he asked, reaching out to touch the larger one, set in the same location Ren’s had been. “They’re not some sort of tribal marking, or body jewelry?”
Lyla’s skin prickled, reacting to his light, wondering touch. He traced his thumb over the pale golden crystal about the size of his thumbnail, and she was aware of it glowing brighter and faster as her breathing changed.
And then, with a quiet sigh of something that could only be described as awe, he slid his broad, tanned hand down the left side of her torso, beneath her breast, lightly skimming the ten other crystals that were embedded between her ribs, scattered from front to back. Those were pale blue, hardly colored at all, and they were about half the size of her life crystal. They, too, ebbed and flowed, shivering with light as her breathing changed.
“You don’t know?” she said, covering his hand with hers. “You didn’t realize?”
“I thought… Well, what are they? They change…they sort of glow…with your breathing. Of course I remember them…I thought they were…beautiful. Exquisite. But I just thought they were body jewelry.”
“They aren’t body jewelry any more than Chas Woodmore’s vis bulla is a belly ring, Gunnar. I’m an Atlantean,” she said, and watched him closely. Not that it should matter to an immortal vampire that he’d been messing around with another non-mortal being, but you never knew with men.
“Atlantean.” He didn’t seem completely shocked, but there was still a lot of confusion in his eyes. They still seemed dull with pain and stress.
“The crystals—well, the smaller ones allow me to breathe on land. I’m born to breathe underwater, you know. And the larger one…that’s my life crystal. It lets me live…a long time. A little like the necklace the elves wear in Lord of the Rings, but real.”
“Atlantean,” he said again, rubbing his forehead. “Are there a lot of you?”
“Not very many—at least, not up here. A few. My parents—”
“The ones who made you marry him?” He was speaking, but at the same time, his attention was drawn to her plunging pink bra, and she heard his breath catch.
She nodded, suddenly ready to put them on even ground and drag off his shirt, and maybe his jeans too. As quickly as possible.
But her husband lay dead next to them, and it wasn’t—
They both looked over at the door at the same time. Someone was coming.
Gunnar started to shove Lyla aside, but she stood placidly, holding on to his arm as Chas Woodmore stepped into the doorway.
“What the fuck is this?” Gunnar muttered. “Grand Central Station?”
Chapter 8
There Always Has to be a Debrief
“Apparently you’ve got things under control,” Chas said as he looked around the room. “I was afraid I’d be too late.” If he noticed Lyla was shirtless, he didn’t let on.
However, she swooped down and snagged her tee from the floor, then pulled it back over her head. Chas knew about her crystals, of course, but she was wearing her sexiest bra, and he didn’t need to have that additional distraction to contend with.
“What the hell are you doing here, Woodmore?” Gunnar’s antipathy toward the vampire hunter was blazing loud and clear.
Great. Was she going to have to handle another altercation tonight? Lyla looked from one to the other, gauging the situation.
“Tonja didn’t show up for our meeting tonight, and I was, understandably, concerned,” Chas replied, speaking to Lyla—who couldn’t hold back a flush, realizing he had arranged to make payment to Sabrina Frost’s associate after all, “so I tracked her down. I was almost too late. Ren had left her for dead—but she’ll live, thank the Fates. So, naturally, I came here after getting help for her. I wanted to make certain nothing else had gone wrong.” He fixed a dark look at Gunnar, who went rigid next to Lyla.
“Thank goodness,” she said before he could verbalize the angry response radiating from him. “And Ren confirmed what I suspected happened two years ago—it wasn’t Gunnar. It was crystal grit.”
“You said that earlier,” Gunnar said. “But I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Crystal grit, or dust, is a—for lack of a better term—drug that’s derived from particular Atlantean crystals that grow in the deepest part of the ocean. Grit’s introduced into the body by rubbing it into the skin, and it causes a beautiful, mellow high to an Atlantean—hardly more powerful than an earth person’s reaction to caffeine or chocolate. But to a mortal, it’s far more dangerous and potent, and extremely addictive. Ren’s been making bank distributing this very rare and expensive drug, completely underground to the movers and shakers in LA and Hollywood. I’d long suspected it was him who’d created the market; he got access to my parents’ crystal gardens when we married, and it wasn’t until today—at the scene of Barry Rudolph’s murder—that I was able to get a sample of the grit to match it to the crystals my parents own.
“But more to the point, while it’s dangerous and addictive to mortals, to an undead, crystal dust has even more lethal implications—as we learned two years ago. It wasn’t you that lost control
and became so violent, Gunnar. It was the grit.”
“Wait—the massage oil,” he said, his eyes filling with comprehension. “You said something about the massage oil. That night—at the wrap party, that’s how it happened, wasn’t it?”
She could almost see him filtering through the details of that night like he was flipping through an old-fashioned Rolodex—probably hazy, imperfect, dark details. There’d been lots of people at the wrap party for Belarus Showdown, which had been held at the Beverly Hills home of one of the producers.
There was food and entertainment—cocktails, tapas, hot tubs, the fountain-fed pool was open and available for swimming (clothed, bathing-suited, or nude—take your pick), live music in three areas of the house, and many, many nooks and crannies for private tête-à-têtes.
A team of masseuses had also been engaged to provide natural muscle relaxants—as opposed to alcohol or drug-fueled ones—and Lyla knew Gunnar had been the recipient of at least one, in a private room. She knew because she’d been wildly envious of the woman who’d convinced him he needed a full-body massage, and had watched with frustration as the woman led him away to put her hands on that glorious body.
“It wasn’t until Ren admitted it tonight that I knew for certain,” Lyla said. “But I’d recently come to suspect it—and that’s why I came here. To tell you, and because he knew I was on his trail. I needed to find him—after what happened to Barry Rudolph, he was the prime suspect.”
“So it really was about Rudolph,” said Chas. “You sure as hell weren’t giving me much more than a cock and bull story earlier today.”
“The whole thing was confidential,” she replied smoothly. “I’m still a federal agent. I needed to find proof it was Ren who’d killed Rudolph—and, more importantly, to bring him in.”
“But what the hell was his grudge? We’d been friends—but that was two decades ago, and I hadn’t had anything to do with Tyroli since,” Gunnar said. “In fact, I’ve avoided him for years.”
Taming the Vampire: Over 25 All New Paranormal Alpha Male Tales of Contemporary, Military, Shifters, Billionaires, Werewolves, Magic, Fae, Witches, Dragons, Demons & More Page 60
