Outlaw Alpha

by Dakota Cassidy

  Until then, she’d just keep right on proudly wearing her Spencer the Scentless Virgin Vampire badge for her family members at the parlor.

  Funeral parlor, that is.

  Polanski Brothers was family run since—well, since the beginning of funeral parlors, she figured. It was an easy source of blood for them due to the fact that each body had to be drained of all fluids anyway.

  However, there was a strict “no dining on cadavers” edict. Her father Edgar was adamant about the care and respect Polanski Brothers gave each human client, and part of that respect required a code of honor he insisted upon. No fangs ever met with the neck of a client—period.

  Owning a funeral parlor was the perfect gig for a family of vampires. Aside from the availability of blood, most of her duties were at night for wakes and in sync with her night dweller tendencies. And in this sleepy burg, the deaths she handled were almost always due to natural causes or an accident of some kind, leaving the blood she drained virtually untainted.

  Polanski’s was located just outside of Cedar Glen, New Jersey, in a town called Easton, population ten thousand and four, and home of one of only three funeral homes in the entire area.

  Her father had set up shop here where they’d rouse the least suspicion amongst humans, yet still have a steady influx of clientele. While they lived and raised their families in Cedar Glen alongside other paranormals with all sorts of afflictions, some much worse than hers, it wasn’t exactly good for business when the lifespan of the average paranormal was forever.

  Her father also didn’t believe you should eat where you played. Some old proverb or something he was stuck on like glue.

  So they’d opened up shop one town away from their homes and business was good. They’d built a solid reputation by fair practices and genuine concern for their clients. Everyone came to Polanski Brothers because of the special attention to detail and the family atmosphere her father took such intense pride in.

  And Spencer.

  They came to Polanski’s because of her. Because she cared about the families of the clients she readied for their final resting place.

  “Hey, vampire. Who the hell is that?” Her cousin Andrew poked his head around the corner of the embalming room and gagged comically. “Christ, he smells. Good thing you can’t, huh?”

  Embalming not only involved horrific smells and the need for plenty of ventilation, it was also a solitary task. Meaning with the exception of her cousin, most of her family steered clear of the embalming room with their ultra-sensitive noses and snarky, unoriginal jokes.

  And for the most part, she liked it that way. It gave her time to think.

  Spencer narrowed her eyes at Andrew’s handsomely pale face and gave him a scathing look. “Don’t you have a grave to dig, Supermodel?”

  Andrew was beautiful to look at, and he knew it.

  “Nope, got nuthin’ but time on my hands.” He smiled smugly, accentuating his perfect bone structure and one of the many reasons she’d dubbed him supermodel. He came to stand by the table where the body of her latest victim was laid out. “So who’s this guy?”

  She grabbed the clipboard left with her by the coroner’s office and scanned it. “Alan Perkins. Thirty-four. Found three weeks ago in a wooded area just off I-36. He’s been on ice since, but because the yahoos over at the coroner’s office screwed up their timing on delivery, he’s beginning to thaw. Coroners figure he was dead about three days before they discovered him. Cause of death…” Spencer paused, tamping down the almost overwhelming tidal wave of empathy at the coroners ruling. Those waves of feelings that sometimes interfered with her professionalism, but it slipped out anyway. “Aw, damn…”

  Andrew’s smile turned to a frown. He cocked his gorgeous head in question. “What’s wrong?”

  Her eyes perused Alan’s body with sadness. Spencer lifted Alan’s arm and saw the evidence of wounds on his wrist. Indeed indicating his death was a suicide. “He killed himself. You don’t see that too often around here, at least not in the five years or so we’ve been in Easton. Damn, that really sucks. Look at him, Andrew. He was a young guy.”

  He gave her a consoling nudge. “Not compared to you he wasn’t.”

  She rolled her eyes at him, knowing he was trying to lighten the dark mood her compassion for the dead brought. “You’re older than me by a hundred years.”

  He chuckled, the sound rich and low, his eyes thickly lashed, smiling down at her. “Maybe so, but at least I can smell.”

  “Oh to be so physically perfect and have a sense of smell. What wonders your unlife must behold,” she joked back, easing the spear of sadness for Alan’s life cut so short by whatever pain had led him to suicide.

  Andrew shot her a sympathetic glance. He knew how some deaths ate her up, lingered long after their bodies were buried. “Maybe you need to take a vacation. Take a break or something. Stop hanging around dead people for a while, Spence.”

  “Then that would rule out almost everyone I know, including you, Tall and Chiseled.” Spencer turned away before Andrew could respond and set about making a small incision to inject disinfectant into Alan’s body, his little remaining blood and gases having safely been removed.

  Andrew covered his nose with his arm and made a face. “That’s my cue to hit it. Take a day off, Spence. Soon,” he reprimanded gently before exiting the embalming room.

  Yeah, yeah. A day off. She was the only embalmer on site at Polanski’s. Besides, who would take the kind of care in the details when preparing a body the way she did?

  She always used great reverence when handling any corpse, thinking often what it might be like if it were her own family member. Of course, her family members didn’t die, not unless there was a rare case of garlic OD. But the mere thought of losing one of them—even smart-ass Andrew and his incessant teasing—terrified her.

  Spencer clucked her tongue. Poor Alan. She wondered if he had children, maybe a wife, and she certainly didn’t want their last memory of him to be what he looked like now. He was really suffering the strains of decomposition. It would take some work to make him presentable.

  “Well, Alan,” Spencer said quietly, examining his glassy, gray eyes with the pads of her gloved fingers. “I’ll make sure you’re perfect for your viewing. Promise.”

  If she had a heart it would constrict, thinking about this poor man’s loved ones, what his life was like before death.

  Sometimes that interfered with her job, always wondering about the details of a client, how their families would move forward without them. Sometimes, the sadness of her work, day in day out, left her feeling heavy and depressed.

  A suicide was always worst.

  But when his family came in to speak with her father, and the funeral director at Polanski’s, she’d discreetly ask for a picture of Alan in life and then she’d return him to a reproduction of himself in death, or at the very least, a close facsimile.

  Leaning over Alan’s body, she patted his pale shoulder. “What led you to this, Alan? What hurt so much you’d end it all?”

  And she was doing it again. Wondering. Making up stories in her head to justify a man this young taking his own life. If she put half the energy into her own life that she did into a clients, she might actually have one of her own.

  Spencer gave Alan a final glance, one last sympathetic scan of his body. “I’m sorry for whatever caused you so much pain, but it’s time. So let’s do this, okay?”

  Alan stared blankly back at her.

  She nodded her head and chuckled. “I know what you’re thinking, Alan. The ‘I talk to dead people’ joke is right on the tip of your tongue, but keep it to yourself. It lacks originality.”

  Alan continued to stare up at her.

  Yeah. It was time to get out more.

  * * * *

  As the Perkins family gathered for the seven o’clock viewing, Spencer smoothed her conservative black suit over her hips and went to greet Alan’s friends and family. She often took on the role of counselo
r, sympathetic shoulder and bathroom locator. As it turned out, Alan Perkins didn’t have any children or even a wife, but he had droves of friends and distant family members lining up to view him.

  And of course, there was his mother Adelaide, weeping softly as she had from the moment she was allowed to view his body in private. Spencer fought that fear again, the one involving any one of her family members dying. Well, except maybe Darren.

  Darren was a dickknuckle bottom feeder who’d lived for centuries just to make Spencer miserable at family gatherings and when she stopped to think about it, she still wouldn’t wish death on him.

  But to lose her father or mother—one of her siblings? She couldn’t comprehend it even if they did tease her unmercifully about her smelling issue. Being a vampire had its issues, but it beat the shit out of living for eighty years and croaking.

  She caught a glimpse of a flower arrangement dangerously close to spilling over by the foyer and moved to prevent disaster. Inching her way through the throng of people in the waiting room, she came out the other side of the crowd to the marble foyer.

  As she made her way to the flowers her shoe slipped out from under her and she stumbled, only to be caught by a firm grip and a hard chest covered in a white shirt beneath a crisp, navy blue suit.

  If blood ran through her veins she might have blushed at her clumsiness.

  Way to be the bull in the china shop, Spence.

  “You’re not a bull. The floor’s pretty slippery,” a deep, gravelly voice that made her feel gooey on the inside said.

  Spencer looked up from the chest her face was so ungracefully mashed against and cocked her head, startled. “I’m sorry?”

  That was when she got her first real glimpse of the voice attached to the man, and if she breathed, her breath would be caught in her throat.

  Because wow. So much wow.

  A very tall, rather redwood-tree-like man gazed down at her, his blue-gray eyes intent. “I said no, you’re not at all like a bull in a china shop. The floor really is slippery. Whoever maintains it deserves a raise.”

  She paused, pressing a hand against his stomach of hard ripples without thinking. Had she said that out loud? No, she hadn’t said anything.

  Spencer’s brow furrowed as she tried to push away from him, realizing her palm was still on his belly and liking it a little too much. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Yes, you did,” he insisted as his gaze darkened and his grip on her arm tightened.

  She searched his eyes, his dreamy, beautiful eyes, eyes she momentarily got lost in. “Did what?”

  Now he frowned, making the winkles in his forehead deepen. “Said you were like a bull in a china shop.”

  Okay, so he was cute, but nuts. The way her life had played out so far, that made perfect sense. “No. No, I didn’t.” Now back away, crazy but hot dude, or I’ll use my mighty vampire resources and kick your redwood ass.

  The hot stranger’s hard jaw clenched and Spencer watched in fascination as the muscles tensed, rippling under his tanned skin, an indication he was wrestling to maintain his cool. “I am not crazy,” he muttered indignantly. “And I’d like to see you try to kick my redwood ass. All five foot three of you.” After he spoke, he shook his head full of thick, dark brown hair, obviously as confused as she was.

  Spencer squirmed out of his grip and brushed at her suit to straighten it. This was officially a “what the fuck” moment and she wanted out. “If you’ll excuse me, I have things to take care of.”

  But he didn’t move. Not one delicious inch. The solid wall of his well-muscled body covered remained firmly rooted in her line of vision. “Wait. Did you say vampire?” His deep voice raised an octave and his eyes darkened again as obviously, his words caught up with his ability to process.

  No again. She hadn’t said anything—not a word. Okay, now Mr. Sexy-McSexy was damn well scaring her. Was he vampire? Hah! As if she’d be able to tell with her bum nose anyway. “I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about, Mr.—”

  “McBride. Detective Larkin McBride, and yes you damn well do. You just wondered if I was a vampire, too.”

  He was…Was he was reading her mind? Her eyes flew open as Spencer took all of him in, from his delicious mouth, bracketed by deep grooves on either side of it, to his thick eyebrows raised in question.

  Holy Amazing Kreskin.

  “Kreskin?”

  “He’s a mind reader.” Spencer cringed, because really, why not offer confirmation and a frame of reference to the man who was reading her thoughts? “You know, the guy who says he can read people’s minds?”

  She watched as he mentally scratched his head. “Um, no. I don’t know who he is. What the hell is going on here anyway, Ms.—”

  “Polanski. Spencer, and I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I have people to tend to, so if you’ll excuse me…” She began to pull away again, mostly because he was beginning to freak her out with his intense gaze and his interrogation-like questions.

  But like a dog with a bone, the detective became insistent. “You damn well did say vampire or think it or whatever the hell I heard—it was clear as day.”

  Spencer shot him a flirtatious smile and laughed at him to cover her fear. She put her hands on her hips and rolled her eyes. “Well, that’s just silly, Detective, don’t you think? Vampires aren’t real. What kind of a detective believes in vampires?”

  Larkin narrowed his thickly fringed eyes. “The kind that knows when someone is yanking his crank.”

  As if you’d ever be so lucky to find my hand on your crank.

  Fuck! Stop thinking, Spencer.

  His jaw tightened—a jaw with the dark shadow of stubble. “Keep your innuendo to yourself. You know what I meant, lady.”

  Spencer gave him her best bewildered look and smiled innocently with a shrug of her shoulders. “No, Mr. McBride, I have no idea what you mean, but I do have a job to do. Now, move.” Spencer kept a tight rein on her musings. “Please,” she said as an afterthought.

  Detective Larkin McBride stepped out of her way, his tall frame looming over her as he scowled with his mean-cop face.

  Spencer swept past him, feeling the hot gaze of his stare on her back as she pushed through the crowd on shaky legs, fighting her rising panic.

  What the hell had just happened?

  Well, whatever it was, don’t think about it because Detective Carved in Granite will hear you.

  “Are you all right?”

  Spencer skidded to a halt as the second hand in the course of a day grabbed her arm. Her gaze wandered up the arm attached to the hand and she found a very pleasant face smiling down at her. Kind of pretty—certainly nothing like the gruff detective. This face was lean and the owner’s hair was blond—most definitely not like the detective.

  He smiled at Spencer, encouraging her to answer by tilting his head.

  “I’m fine, thanks, really,” she replied, oddly mesmerized by his nose.

  His very pretty nostrils flared. “Was he bothering you?” he asked as his nose twitched.

  Spencer removed her arm from his light hold and smiled pleasantly. “Who?”

  “That man that’s staring at us. The big one.” He nodded his head in Larkin McBride’s direction.

  “No.” She shook her head. Not anymore, anyway. “No, everything’s fine. Can I help you with something?”

  His lean face split into a cool smile and a flash of white teeth. “No, not yet.”

  Um, okay. She’d had enough of bizarre encounters for tonight. “Well, then if you’ll excuse me,” she said tentatively, hoping he’d dismiss her.

  He leaned forward just a bit and took a deep breath, then motioned for her to pass. “Of course,” he said regally and Spencer took the opportunity to skedaddle.

  She headed for the bathroom on shaky legs, forgetting the blond guy but still shivering over the detective.

  Detective? Larkin McBride. An Irish detective. How cliché.

  “I heard that!” the g
ravelly voice said right behind her, following her down the hall and into her private offices.

  Shit.

  “Yeah, shit,” Larkin responded sarcastically to her thought when he rolled up right behind her. “Now why don’t we go sit down and figure this out?” He wasn’t asking—his tone of voice suggested he was demanding.

  Spencer stopped at the door to her office and turned to face him, once more struck by how gruffly sexy he was. His nostrils were flared and his square jaw set with determination. “There isn’t anything to figure out, Detective. You’re obviously losing your marbles.” So go clean up the scattered remains and leave me alone.

  “If I were a weaker man, I might be offended by that statement. You aren’t the first to tell me I’m a little left of center. How about you shoot for original?”

  Spencer rolled her shoulders and tried to clear her mind of all the excess stuff hanging around just waiting to be “heard” by the detective.

  Backing up against her office door, she gripped the doorknob. “Okay…original. How does go the fuck away strike you? Original enough?”

  She was never rude to a patron at Polanski Brothers, but her temper was notoriously short and if the detective found out they really were vampires that could be very bad for business. Might even get ugly. People would start showing up with crosses and garlic necklaces just like they had in the last town.

  So Dark Ages.

  Larkin’s laughter was deep and rich as it erupted from his tanned throat. “It strikes me as exceptionally rude for a funeral parlor hostess—or whatever you are. I’m grieving, shouldn’t that concern you?”

  Tilting her head up to eyeball him, Spencer pursed her lips. “I’m not a funeral parlor hostess. I’m an embalmer. I suck blood out of bodies and stitch them back up. Do you still wanna play now? Oh, and my condolences on your loss,” she offered dryly.

  “Well, if there’s any truth to your thoughts, that’s exactly what you do. Suck blood out of bodies, that is.”

  How utterly last century, Detective.

  Shit and shit again.

  Larkin crossed his arms over his chest and smirked. “So let’s go into your office and sit down. Maybe then you can explain why I can read your thoughts and why you won’t admit you’re as freaked out as I am. Because that’s exactly what I’m doing, and you know it.”