Ellowyn Found: An MM Vampire Trilogy Omnibus Edition Books 1 - 3

by Kayleigh Sky

  Their escort climbed halfway to the cottage. “Jere! Your guests are here.”

  A human appeared in the open door. “Guests?”

  The vampire shrugged. “You’ve got two. Decide what you want to do with them.”

  The vampire turned away without a glance until Isaac said, “Thank you.” Then he paused and narrowed his eyes at the kid. A moment later, still not responding, he walked off.

  Jere appeared to be in his midthirties, skin reddened from the outdoors, crows feet at the corners of his eyes. Dour faced now.

  “Which one of you is Emek?”

  “I am,” said Asa.

  “I can work too,” said Isaac. “I’ll take any job.”

  A sneer appeared on Jere’s face. Isaac was a pretty kid, and Asa had no doubt about the thoughts going through Jere’s mind. But Asa was no better. He only had a purpose some important vampires seemed to care about.

  “What is it you think you can do?” Jere asked.

  “He’s my friend,” said Asa, as taken aback by the words as both Isaac and Jere appeared to be.

  Jere shrugged. “I know of one job. Anything else is up to Mr. Lotis.”

  “Who is Mr. Lotis?”

  “The king’s butler. C’mon.”

  Jere pushed past them, and Isaac nudged Asa’s arm again. He glanced over and got a flicker of a smile before Isaac mouthed “Thank you” and hurried after Jere.

  Great. A bestie. Just what he needed.

  Jere led them to the back of the house, a sheer, unadorned wall of gold stucco and sparkling windows. They entered through the back door into a narrow hallway. The sounds inside were muted but made Asa think they were coming from a kitchen. The door Jere stopped at, though, led to a small office. It was a cozy space despite its lack of windows. Heat wafted from a small wood-burning stove in the corner, and an incongruously modern desk of glass and aluminum took up half the floor space. Behind it sat an angular, sharp-featured vampire, his compelling face utterly without tells. Asa had no idea what went on behind the creature’s eyes.

  Jere dipped his chin. “Sir, this is Emek, the guy I told you about. His friend is looking for work too.”

  The vampire’s gaze shifted from Asa and narrowed on Isaac. He studied him for a moment, then turned back to Jere.

  “You may go.” The vampire waved a long, thin hand over his desk. “Emek. Sit, please. And you…” He raised his chin toward Isaac. “Pull over the chair by the door and take a seat.” After they’d complied, the vampire steepled his fingers under his chin and eyed Isaac again for a moment. “What is your name, young man?”

  “Isaac, sir.”

  “Your timing is excellent, Isaac.”

  Isaac’s exhale was close to a gasp. “You have a job for me?”

  “Yes. We’ve experienced some turnover, and I need to hire new staff for an upcoming event.” The vampire turned to Asa and added, “Jere vouched for you. I will take your word for Isaac for now. My name is Justin Lotis, and I am King Dinallah’s butler and personal servant. I run his household. This covers meal preparation, supply runs, housekeeping, event planning, entertaining, and a myriad of other organizational tasks. On occasion, we might also assist on the grounds. For now, I’ll introduce you to Marcus, our cook, and Adalyn, the head housekeeper. Adalyn will get you situated. You’ll take your orders from either one of them, depending on where you’re assigned. We offer room and board, of course, and a beginning stipend of twelve hundred dollars a month. Do well and you’ll see an increase. Any questions?”

  Twelve hundred bucks. Holy fuck.

  Asa had never made that much. He cleared his throat. “Do we start today?”

  “You may. Unless you have something you need to complete first.”

  “I don’t,” said Asa.

  “Me either,” said Isaac. “I can definitely start today.”

  Justin flattened his hands on his desk. “Good. Come with me then.”

  They followed more of the tapping and pinging noises into a spacious kitchen. The floor was white and black tiles, the walls a crisp, plain white. There were two refrigerators side by side, a stove with a dozen burners, two pot racks hanging from the ceiling, and three sinks.

  “This is the primary kitchen,” Justin said. “The king has his own as well. You won’t usually have call to enter that part of the house though.”

  Damnit.

  Asa wasn’t sure how he was supposed to seduce somebody he never got close to. “We don’t wait on him?” he asked.

  Justin’s eyebrows lifted, the only real expression Asa had seen so far. “I wait on him.”

  “Oh.”

  “This way.”

  They wove through stainless steel tables toward a man with dusky brown skin and curly gray hair. He refused to acknowledge them until Justin said, “May I introduce our new employees, Marcus?”

  Marcus shut down a small machine that had been slicing thin strips of ham and faced them with his hands on his hips.

  “Well, this must be my lucky day. I was expecting only one of you, but unless I’m seeing double, there are two.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Isaac.

  Marcus’s eyes softened the moment his eyes lit on Isaac. “And who are you, son?”

  “Isaac.”

  “Not afraid of hard work, I hope?”

  “No, sir.”

  Marcus shifted his gaze to Asa. “And you are?”

  “Emek Henley.”

  “Good, strong name. Emek means valley.”

  “I-I didn’t know that.”

  “Marcus knows many things,” Justin said.

  A thin smile creased Marcus’s face. He wasn’t young anymore, but maybe not very old. Sixties possibly. The lines on his face had a settled feel as though they’d been there for a long time. “That I do, vampire. That I do.”

  Justin sighed. “We will continue our tour.”

  “Don’t let Adalyn scare you,” said Marcus. “She paid her dues and got early release for good behavior. Nothing scary about her at all, I say.”

  “Are you done, Marcus?”

  “Send them back after they’ve seen Adalyn. They need to eat, and I can keep one of them busy after that.”

  “Of course.” Back in the hall, Justin said, “Marcus is a card, as you humans say.”

  Asa met Isaac’s quick stare. The kid choked back his laughter, and Asa shook his head. He wasn’t getting pulled into thinking these people were any way normal. Maybe Isaac still had faith in the world, but Asa had seen enough not to buy into the warm, cozy feel they had going on here. Nobody was loyal when it came to his own skin, and Asa planned on taking care of his.

  Adalyn, the housekeeper, was gray, rumpled, and apple cheeked, and maybe came up to Asa’s bottom rib. With that name, he’d been expecting a vampire, but she was as human as he was.

  “Well, look what you brought me,” she said, rubbing her hands together with a cackle. “’Bout time.”

  “I told you I would get you help. Here’s help. Marcus gets one of them though. You can pick who best suits your needs.”

  “In that case… him.” She pointed at Asa. “I need somebody tall. Cobwebs.”

  While grappling with the fact that he wasn’t that tall, only taller than Isaac, the word cobwebs sank into his consciousness. “Cobwebs?”

  Adalyn lifted a single finger into the air, and they all gazed at the twenty-foot ceilings. “Who’s going to get the cobwebs? Not me.”

  Not me either, for fuck’s sake.

  Asa was not a fan of heights. “I don’t think I’m tall enough.”

  “We have a ladder.”

  He refrained from telling her that a ladder made it possible for pretty much anybody to get the cobwebs down. He glanced at Justin, who still had no expression, and Isaac laughing into his hand.

  “It’ll be my pleasure,” Asa said.

  “You’re getting paid for it, young man, no need to be polite. It doesn’t have to be your pleasure.”

  His jaw dropped before he snapped
it closed again. “Right.”

  “So.” Adalyn snatched Isaac’s hand from his face and patted the back of it. “Looks like you’re Marcus’s tomorrow. Just don’t make any sudden moves, an’ you’ll be just fine. Sleep tight now.”

  She let Isaac go, grabbed the bar of the cart behind her, and wheeled it away.

  Was this place a joke?

  “Now that’s done,” said Justin with a clap of his hands. “Let’s visit your room, shall we? Our servant rooms are all double occupancy, so I’ll put you two together now. We’ll be adding more staff soon.”

  Justin led them past the kitchen on the bottom floor and down two other corridors. The last one was lined on one side with doors. Asa figured they’d circled around to the back of the kitchen, and the hum of refrigerators through the corridor wall confirmed it.

  “You can have the corner room,” Justin said. “It’s slightly larger than the others and has a nice view of the garden.”

  And access to the outside, Asa noted. He wasn’t expecting a big room, and it wasn’t, but it had an attached bath and was spacious enough. Each of the two beds had its own nightstand. Two dressers stood against the wall and two wingback chairs flanked a round table.

  “Wow,” said Isaac.

  “You’ll be spending limited time here, but you will be comfortable, I’m sure.”

  Asa paused to set his knapsack beside one of the beds and peered out the window. A barren rose garden sat in the center of a lawn that stretched to the pine-covered mountain. No other buildings stood on this side of the house. He looked at the latches on the window, then turned around again and forced himself to smile at Isaac. Isaac might be a problem in the same room with him, but if he had to get out, nobody was stopping him.

  12

  Coffee Break

  Asa wiped his hands off on his jeans and knocked the cold mud from his fingers. After a week of rain, Jere had borrowed him, and now he stood in a rose garden behind the house.

  Most of the fog had blown off, but the day was dull and gray.

  Asa rubbed his palms together, wincing as slimy mud got in the creases, and gazed from under his brows at the corner of the house. The muscles in his neck and shoulders pulled into knots. Why didn’t the bastard show himself? Was something wrong with him? Maybe he was an invalid like the prince Isaac had fed.

  Asa wasn’t outside much, but it was early, and the king supposedly took walks every day, so maybe…

  But nothing happened, so he took his wheelbarrow back to the lean-to behind the garage and filled it with bags of bone meal, burlap strips, and metal hooks. Grunting as he lifted it, he wheeled it back, not looking up until he got partway down the slope to the garden. He set his load down and rolled his shoulders, his gaze falling on half a dozen vampires crossing the property toward the trees.

  Shit.

  The one in the center had to be the king. His long hair lifted in the breeze like a crow’s wing, and Asa’s heart slammed in his chest as though it wanted out, the force knocking the breath out of him.

  Mine.

  For fuck’s sake.

  He took a breath, but the ache inside him swelled to bursting and… The king stopped, his companions almost running into him. As though something had called to him—as though Asa had called to him—he looked over his shoulder. So far away… too far away to see his face.

  There was no reason for Asa to imagine him standing in the shade of the trees in the Lakewood Refuge. That had been another vampire, not this… Not this one. This was a king. A conqueror. Asa pictured a slash of lips over dripping fangs and coal black eyes lit with sulfurous fumes, not the sensuous mouth and merry eyes he really imagined.

  A laugh floated on the air. The creature’s wavy hair had blown across his face, and Asa’s heart jumped again. He ached to sweep it away.

  A few moments later, the king strode off, this time heading into the trees alone. Not wise. Going without his enforcers was asking for it even.

  But so what? The thing was a monster.

  After a moment, Asa’s heart slowed. He grabbed the handles of the wheelbarrow and pushed it to the garden and returned to work. After he covered the root bases of the roses with strips of burlap, he stuck them in place with the metal hooks. His skin prickled, but he ignored it. Nobody in the house was watching him, though it felt like it. If he looked over, all he’d see was shadow as black as vampire eyes.

  As black as vampire hearts.

  He made it to the end of the row of bushes and stood, arching his back.

  “Emek!”

  With a glance over his shoulder, he watched Isaac run up to him.

  New employees had taken over half their wing already. He kept his distance, but it was pointless with Isaac. Even if they didn’t share the same room, the kid had glommed onto him.

  “Come to town with us. I want to get some more granola bars and coffee.”

  He hoarded granola bars, but Asa didn’t blame him. There’d been a time he’d been willing to do anything for a green chile cheeseburger.

  “Coffee, huh?” Asa made his voice flat, but he needed to go and check the town out. Check out Jaan’s shop. “Yeah. Okay. I just need to clean up. I’ll see you out front.”

  Isaac nodded and hurried off.

  The hose against the side of the house burped cold, metal-scented water. Asa washed his hands off, then sprayed his boots and stomped mud loose on the mossy brick walkway. By the time he got to the waiting truck, Isaac already sat inside. Asa opened the door, and Isaac scooted over. Jere sat behind the wheel.

  “I’ll drop you boys off. I have to hit the hardware store.”

  The truck rocked when Jere shifted it into gear, and Asa glanced back at the two vampires sitting in the bed. One, Nalith, met his eyes with a smirk that made him shiver.

  He had to get it together. He’d done nothing suspicious. No reason to worry. He was just a guy.

  Just a guy who was after their king.

  When he turned forward again, his gaze crossed Isaac’s, and worry shook loose inside him. No matter what he did—if he got away or not, fucked the king stupid or killed him—there’d be fall out.

  On Isaac?

  Who hadn’t done anything?

  Couldn’t be helped, he guessed.

  He gazed outside and watched the shadow of the trees cross over the glass.

  Oaks and eucalyptus mixed with the conifers, then grew sparse as they neared the ocean and entered New Seaside. Many of the old towns had been washed away with the Upheaval, but this one looked like it had been there forever. Old squat buildings made of masonry lined both sides of the street. A few had blue or pink clapboard fronts, color gone dull from the salt air. The center of town was no more than four blocks long.

  Jere pulled into one of the diagonal parking spots and shut off the engine. “You’ve got thirty minutes,” he said. “Don’t keep me waiting.”

  He gave a quick nod to Asa before exiting the vehicle.

  A gray pall hung over the town, but a few of the shops had left their Christmas decorations hanging as though to cheer the place up.

  Asa nudged Isaac. “Why don’t you get your groceries, and I’ll meet you at the coffee shop.”

  “Starbucks?”

  “I want to try the other one. Jaan’s.”

  “Okay.”

  The vampires in the truck made no sound when they dropped to the pavement, and they didn’t follow him.

  Asa forced himself not to look back. He walked along the broken sidewalk, pausing only when a small temblor rolled underneath him with a shallow shudder. He waited, palm against a building, until it stopped, then continued, gazing into the shop windows until he strode into Jaan’s on the corner. The walls of the narrow space pressed in on him, pushing the glut of vampires sitting at the tiny tables too close. Dark stares locked on him.

  He expected fangs, but the king pretended to be peaceable, so maybe they did too. But, Jesus, where did they all come from? Jaan’s must be the vampire version of Starbucks.

&
nbsp; He gazed at the chalkboard menu behind the register and found the normal selection of drinks. No surprises in the pastry case. Coffee and cinnamon scented the air.

  He got in line and ignored the stares on him. Instead, he focused on the menu, though the words blurred. A long time ago, he’d pitied vampires. Driven from their homes. Lost to the world they’d always known. He’d imagined them orphans and wanderers.

  He’d been a silly, idealistic kid, but that had meant nothing because he had protected Asa.

  A beautiful vampire. With a mouth Asa had longed to kiss. A mouth that hid an evil inside.

  “What’ll you have?”

  “Um…”

  “Get the Machiato.” Isaac materialized beside him. “Jere wants an Americano, and regular coffees for Pan and Nalith.”

  “You know their names?”

  Isaac shrugged. “Yeah.”

  The kid didn’t dislike vamps, but maybe he hadn’t met the right kind yet. Asa knew enough about Isaac’s life to know it mirrored his own in some ways. The kid was used to calling his own shots but stonily resistant to Asa’s cynicism. Quick to give a hand, yet skittish in a way that told Asa he wasn’t always trustful. But under all that…

  Asa trusted him.

  Which was ironic really, because when it came down to it, Asa’d fuck over anybody in his way.

  A few minutes later, he picked up the coffees and shoved them at Isaac. “You take them. They’re your friends.”

  Isaac blinked—was that fucking disappointment?—then fitted three cups between his arm and body. He held his own in his other hand, spun into Nalith, and hissed as coffee spread across his shirt. The vamp stepped back and looked down at himself.

  When the creature raised his eyes, they smoldered.

  “You stupid shit. Get out of here. You’re too stupid to work for the king.”

  Isaac didn’t move. Coffee dripped off the bottom of one of the cups. His emotions played on his face like a movie with no surprises. Asa clenched his fists at his sides, willing Issac to look him in the eye. Come on, Isaac. Tell ’em to fuck off. No job was worth turning himself into a punching bag for. But the kid’s gaze fell to the floor and fixed on Nalith’s shoes.