The Community Series, Books 1-3

by Tappan, Tracy

  They’d barely made it off the streets of San Diego before dawn hit, and one sunny ray on their Vitamin D-allergic bodies would’ve immediately led to anaphylactic shock, and from there, death. Cutting it that close hadn’t even been worth the risk, either. The Om Rău they’d chased had gotten away.

  Dev scrubbed a hand over his face and winced. He felt beat to shit. Tired and sore, his left cheek throbbing like a sonofabitch where Videon had socked him. He’d caught a glance of himself in the rearview, and his face was swollen like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man’s, his cheek sporting a nasty bruise. All in a night’s work. He sank deeper into his seat…

  He jerked out of a doze when the elevator lurched to a halt.

  He felt the Town Car drive slowly forward off the elevator platform, then stop. The door locks shot up. He and Gábor climbed out, stepping into the vast garage that was home to Ţărână’s half dozen or so vehicles. Some were delivery trucks for the Travelers to bring food and supplies from the surface down into the community, the others were kept on hand for the warriors’ various shenanigans.

  Llawell, Ţărână’s body shop guy, was even now busy replacing the Dodge’s blown out window. The man was going to have a field day with the rest of it. The van looked like a damned colander.

  A woman dressed in olive drab coveralls was leaning against the driver-side door of the Dodge and chatting with Llawell. Candace was the man’s wife, and a Traveler, one of the regular human females who’d been brought into the community twenty years ago to reproduce with Vârcolac males, before it was discovered that only Dragons could produce viable offspring. Candace had to be in her fifties by now, but barely looked thirty-five. Ah, the many perks of Fiinţă.

  Dev and Gábor nodded to the couple as they tramped past, both warriors aiming for the long corridor that led into the main part of Ţărână’s mansion. Serving as home to Roth and his wife in the penthouse suite on the fourth floor, the new Dragon females on the third floor, and the single warriors on the second, the mansion provided every conceivable amenity. The basement housed a huge gym—for both the warriors’ training and fitness-minded others—an armory, Roth’s office, a medical clinic, accommodations for the mansion’s staff, and two luxurious “lockdown” suites for the married women to hole up in during their fertile period when they wanted to avoid pregnancy.

  One flight up on the main floor was a grand entrance hall, several parlors of various sizes, a library, a vast computer center for Ţărână’s two techno doinks—a dopey young Vârcolac named Cleeve and Alex Parthen—a rec room, a kitchen with an attached formal dining room, and now there was a large conference room, newly remodeled for the Council with a sliding wall partition that could be opened and closed according to space requirements.

  He and Gábor strode by the community’s electrical generator, which purred contentedly behind its floor-to-ceiling metal grate. Overhead an interwoven gray pipeline channeled California’s precious water from topside into the community—stole it, really—turning this part of the corridor into the bowels of a battleship.

  Gábor slung his M16 over his shoulder. “So what do you think of those new girls?”

  “Hard to say.” Dev shrugged. “They were out of their natural element, you know.”

  “Well, I thought they were cute.” Gábor bobbed his eyebrows. “And that brings the total up to eleven.”

  “If the three new ones stay.”

  “Shit, bro, can you imagine eleven Dragons in one room, how good they’d smell? Hoo-rah.”

  Dev smiled. “You’d swoon like a lady in a corset, guaranteed.”

  Gábor laughed in a burst. “So would you, Nichita. Last I checked you were just as horny.”

  He couldn’t argue the point. The instinct to jump-and-hump always jacked high near an unmated female, especially a Dragon, who smelled like a rockin’ sex Popsicle to an unmated Vârcolac male. His near-paralytic inability to hoist himself out from between the legs of that mega-biscuit in the van was a case in point. And with eleven? He probably would come embarrassingly close to fainting.

  He and Gábor strode along in silence for a few minutes.

  “I’m getting one of those Dragons this time,” Gábor said with quiet intensity. “There’s none of that mate-choices bullshit this time, so it’s anybody’s game. No offense to my homies in the Warrior Class, but it’s been way too many decades of a sausage fest.”

  “I’ve done the math myself, Pavenic.” Hell, he’d lived the math. “We’re going to have to ugly down Thomal, though, if we want half a chance of getting close to one. You know, put some teeth black in his toothpaste or zit powder in his shaving cream.”

  “If a pussy Mixed-blood needed to shave, you mean?”

  They both laughed. Black-haired, Pure-bred Vârcolac like themselves were the only males who could grow facial hair. It was a masculine advantage they never failed to shove into the face of a blondie: known as a Mixed-blood because they were a combination of both Dragon and Vârcolac.

  “Besides, speak for yourself,” Gábor went on. “I know I’m good-looking, bro, even standing next to Golden Boy.”

  Dev cocked a brow. “But do the girls know?”

  They came to the end of the corridor and stopped in front of another elevator. Dev slipped in his key card, opening the doors, then they went one flight up to the basement floor of the mansion. The elevator doors swished open, and—

  Jacken Brun was standing directly in front, his burly arms crossed over his broad chest and his stance wide. A married man now, Jacken had exchanged his usual black leathers for black jeans and a dark blue T-shirt. Still not exactly cruise wear, but at least he didn’t always look like the headliner for an Ultimate Fighting bout anymore.

  “Hi, Mom,” Gábor chirped. “We’re home.”

  Jacken’s black Om Rău eyes zeroed in on Dev’s bruised face, then shifted over to Gábor. “Any injuries on you I need to know about?”

  Gábor swept a hand across his chest. “You mean besides my achy-breaky heart?” He grinned, the pointed tip of a fang peeking out. “When do we get to meet the chicks?”

  Jacken’s eyelids narrowed. “Well, Pavenic, there’s an introductory cocktail party scheduled for tomorrow night, but if you can’t get that smile of yours throttled back, you’ll be scrubbing toilets with a toothbrush instead.”

  “Roger that.” Gábor chuckled. “Throttling back now, sir.”

  Yeah, the whole town was under strict guidelines about keeping their fangs hidden until the Big Reveal. A total pain, but a necessary evil. “How’s Thomal?” Dev asked.

  “Fine. You and I need to debrief.” Jacken made a curt gesture of dismissal to Gábor. “Let’s go to my office.”

  Shit, really? He was hungry, needed to take a piss, and his armpits were emitting some kind of nuclear waste smell. He caught back a sigh. “Yes, sir.”

  They headed up one more flight to the mansion’s main floor.

  Not exactly a paperwork guy, Jacken maintained an office in the rec room—basically little more than a desk crammed into a corner by the Foosball table. “Take a seat.” Jacken indicated the chair situated at the corner of the desk, while he landed in the one behind it. He got right to the point. “You split your team.”

  “I did,” Dev admitted. “One of the women had been—”

  “Sedge and Thomal debriefed me about what happened to the women,” Jacken cut in. “Your orders were to extract the Dragons and bring them safely into Ţărână. Nothing more.”

  Dev leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “It was my assessment that this kind of abuse would be repeated unless we taught the Om Rău a lesson.”

  “Bullcrap, Nichita,” Jacken returned. “You’re not stupid. You know damn well that nothing you could ever do is going to stop Om Rău from hunting Dragons…and being assholes about it.”

  Dev felt the muscles in his body tighten, a defensive anger rising in him like a hot wind. “I didn’t botch the mission, Jacken. I made sure the women were securely on
their way to the community before I broke off with Gábor.” He leaned forward in his chair. “You didn’t see this girl Videon raped, okay? She’s the tiniest damned thing, couldn’t weigh more than a buck-and-a-nickel, and there she was, looking at us with these big eyes, and her—”

  “You take whatever risks necessary to save a woman, Nichita, absolutely, but in this case, the deed had already been done. You acted out of a need for vengeance, pure and simple.” Jacken gave his head a taut shake. “And it’s exactly unwarranted risk-taking that puts a burr up Roth’s butt, and makes it ten times more difficult for us to get mission clearance the next time.”

  Dev sat back again. “Since when do you let Roth dictate what the Warrior Class does?”

  A tic pulsed in Jacken’s cheek. “The Council was created for a reason, Nichita. It exists to help make decisions about important issues that affect the community. Reasonable decisions, and not half-cocked judgment calls that could end up getting men killed.”

  Dev knotted his jaw. This wasn’t a debriefing, it was a hand-Dev-his-ass session. “I didn’t think,” he said through set teeth, “that it was half-cocked to try and track those fuckers into their lair. When else would their scent be so fresh? You do want to know where this topside faction holes up, don’t you, Jacken?”

  “Why sure, Dev. So what was this, then?” Jacken arched his brows in a way that brought a sting to Dev’s cheeks. “A recon mission you were on or a lesson-teaching one?”

  He glanced away, cursing under his breath.

  “It was a different mission for a different time, that’s what it was.” Jacken gestured abruptly. “You were already outnumbered, for chrissake, and then you take only one man with you to go chase down two factions of Om Rău?”

  Heat burned through Dev’s chest. “There wasn’t one warrior on the team who didn’t agree with what I did.”

  “Who gives a shit? Leadership isn’t about providing everyone with a happy hard-on. It’s about the ability to make difficult decisions.” Jacken thrust to his feet. “We clear?”

  “Yes, sir.” Dev stood, too, fighting the urge to ball his hands into fists. “And I should probably make it clear that if I had it to do all over again, I’d make the same decision.” Because he hadn’t been fucking wrong.

  Jacken paused, then exhaled forcefully. “You’re one of the best fighters I have, Dev, quick and strong and a great strategist, but this is where you fall off the vine—you do what you want to do and damn the consequences. I have plans for you, but you need to learn to view the big picture when you’re out in the field and not just your own self-involved version of it.”

  Dev’s throat filled, but this time, he kept his comment to himself.

  “I won’t pull you off leadership for now. But I need you to think about what I said.” Jacken jerked his chin toward the door. “Hit the showers.”

  Dev turned on his heel and stalked out of the rec room, heading straight for the armory. He slammed his mangled M4 into the gun rack, then took off for the mansion’s front door rather than continuing one more flight up to his bedroom. He smelled like a dump—an actual pile of shit or a garbage site, it was a toss-up—but, screw it. He was going to Garwald’s Pub for a drink.

  Chapter Seven

  Luvera stole soundlessly along the mansion’s second floor landing, the thick burgundy Berber carpet silencing her footsteps. Murals of famous European cities decorated the doors lining the hallway on either side of her. Rome, with a beautiful depiction of the Colosseum came first, situated right across from Paris and its famous, soaring Eiffel Tower. Here, she faltered. This was Toni’s former room, now occupied by her brother, Alex, the only man on this floor of single males who wasn’t a warrior. She stared at the door for several long minutes, until she started to feel stupid, then moved on. From Rome, the doors continued along with Oslo, London, Dublin—her brother, Dev’s, room—and Berlin, Jacken’s old room, now home to Vinz. On the other side, Paris led to Copenhagen, Vienna, Amsterdam, which, with its whimsical tulips, was the oddest room to give to Nyko Brun, the biggest, scariest-looking warrior of them all. And next door to that, her destination: Istanbul.

  She knocked right on the soaring minarets of the Blue Mosque.

  A moment later, the door swung open, and Shon Brun stepped into the jamb.

  To say that Shon was the smallest of the three Half-Rău Brun brothers would be officially accurate, but far from precisely descriptive. Being a few inches shorter than his brother, Jacken—it wasn’t even fair to compare him to gigantic Nyko—didn’t qualify him as small. And if his muscles bulged a little less, they were still steely and whipcord taut, not an ounce of softening fat visible on his body.

  He had strong, angular features, a sullen mouth, and his eyes were black and bright at the same time, like coals halfway through the process of becoming diamonds. His hair was currently a mass of tangled black spikes, making him look like a porcupine or hedgehog…with the personality of a cobra. Yes, to say that Shon, despite his smaller stature, exuded the most dangerous energy of the Brun men…well, now, that would be right on the money. An aura which was only enhanced by his long, glistening canines; even when retracted, they protruded into his mouth a bit, the longest fangs of any Vârcolac.

  She believed he’d been politely asked to make himself scarce around the new Dragon women. Not that he was being kept from anything he could’ve had; only Dragon women of the rare Royal variety, similar to Toni, were the type of females the Half-Rău Bruns could safely have children with. And until another came along—if another came along—Nyko and Shon were pledged to remain celibate in order to keep their tainted demonic genes out of the community.

  Restraint, unfortunately, wasn’t one of Shon’s strong suits. He tended to go a little bonkers around the scent of an unmated Dragon woman. Luckily, Luvera, as a Vârcolac woman who only ovulated about twice a year, gave off a scent that was much less…aromatically motivating than a Dragon’s.

  “The lovely Miss Nichita,” Shon drawled, propping a shoulder against the doorjamb. “What do you want?”

  She crossed her arms beneath her breasts, saw Shon’s gaze follow her boobs lifting up, then dropped them again. Okay, still…never a good idea to underestimate Shon’s capacity for going bonkers. “You took a package of mine from the post office, Shon.”

  “So?”

  So? He didn’t have anything to say for himself. “Why would you do such a thing?”

  He straightened and braced a forearm high up on the door frame, his hand hanging relaxed, the bulky swell of his bicep put on display. She wanted to take a step back, but forced herself not to. “Thought it might have something interesting in it.” He flicked his fingers forward, flipping the hair on her forehead. “What do you want with medical books, anyway?”

  “Shush!” she hissed, shoving him into his room. “Be quiet, would you!” She followed him inside and shut the door. “I can’t believe how rude you are to have opened my—” She broke off when she noticed the state of his room. My goodness. It felt like she’d just stepped into the inner workings of an insane mind.

  There was clutter everywhere, shelves and shelves of books and more piled on the floor, covering every topic from mechanics, engineering and gadgetry, to mysteries, history, and the Kama Sutra; even the classics were represented, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Faulkner. A pile of sports equipment dominated one side of the room, tools another, and on his bed, there were so many blankets and clothes piled on the mattress, there could’ve been three dead bodies buried underneath and no one would’ve known. On the counter of his wet bar—a supplement to every bedroom in the mansion, complete with microwave and mini fridge—were beakers, stoppered bottles of chemicals, along with Petri dishes and test tubes in various stages of growth.

  “You want to be a doctor or something?” Shon idly rubbed his jaw with the edge of his thumb, a hint of scorn around his mouth. “Now here’s a surprise, a Nichita who thinks she’s above everyone else.”

  Her face burned. Not fair. Just
because her mother and Dev were a couple of bigheads, didn’t make her one, too. “I’m studying to become a nurse, okay? Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “Well, last I checked, doll-cake, the community wasn’t sending anybody topside for college.”

  None of them had exactly been of college age for years, seeing as the reproduction of their genetically kaput race had come to a standstill. Except for the Stânga Town kids, but they’d never go. They were too busy hanging out almost exclusively in their own squalid part of the cave and engaging in all manner of troublesome behavior.

  “I’m taking some Internet courses to start,” she said, although she had no idea why she was explaining herself, “until night classes become an option. So I need those books, Shon. I’ve got a quiz coming up.”

  “All right.” He scratched the top of his head, pushing more spikes of hair up. “I’ll trade you.”

  “You’ll…?” She blinked. “For what?” What could she possibly have of his?

  His chin edged down slightly, his glittering eyes peering up at her through the think fringe of his lashes.

  The hairs on her nape prickled and rose. He hadn’t moved an inch, but suddenly she felt like he was circling her.

  “A kiss.”

  “A—? Oh, my stars!”

  “For each book.”

  “That’s it,” she snapped. “I’m leaving.” She turned around and headed for the door.

  “Am I threatening you, Luvera?”

  She stopped with her hand on the doorknob. No, and, shoot, she needed those books. She turned back around.

  He laid an arm across a bare space on the counter of his wet bar, displaying a forearm tattooed with the same black interlocking teeth that his brothers, Jacken and Nyko, wore. “I’m asking you, not trying to force you.”

  “No, you’re manipulating me with my medical books.”

  He showed her his long fangs in a mordant smile. “I did think some leverage might help.”