by Debra Dunbar
Dare doesn’t wake up even when she pulls up to her trailer and kills the motor. She can hear the horses in the barn, and the door of the main house slam shut. “Hey,” Penny says.
Dare doesn’t move. His head is tilted back, and his lips are slightly parted. Weirdly, she can’t see his fangs at the moment.
“Hey!” she smacks him across the thigh, and somewhere in her brain it registers that she just smacked a vampire, but she isn’t afraid of Dare.
Dare starts and looks across the lawn. “That’s your home?”
“Yep,” says Penny.
“Oh, no,” Dare whispers.
Stung by his words, she snaps, “Yep, it’s a trailer, and while I’m at it, I’m also from West Virginia. Get over it, Count, or hit the road.” Sure, it’s only a trailer on cinder blocks, but she keeps it clean, and it doesn’t leak, or have more bugs than you’d expect in Orlando. It’s shaded by pretty trees—except that dead one—and she keeps the area around it clear of junk. It’s kind of picturesque, actually.
Dare rolls his head toward her, and his eyes narrow. “I am concerned about the sunlight.” For the first time ever, his voice drips venom, and it startles her.
Penny looks out across the lawn. In the moments since she turned her head, sunlight has dappled the grass between the drive and her trailer.
“I could go get a blanket,” she suggests, feeling bad about being defensive.
“No,” Dare says, dipping his chin. “I think it’s better if I make a run for it.”
“I’ll go first and open the door,” Penny suggests.
Dare nods and she sees his Adam’s apple bob. She can’t help notice how striking his profile is … he can probably get any woman he wants. Shaking her head, she hops from the car, runs across the lawn, retrieves the spare key from under a rock, and unlocks the door.
Turning around, she sees Dare sprinting toward her. He passes through one strip of sunlight, and then another, and then at the third, he comes to a stop. Lifting the hand without a pistol in it, he holds it before his eyes as though expecting something terrible to happen.
Penny hops off the stoop and runs toward him, her heart seizing up. “Don’t turn into a pile of ash on me, Dare!” The urgency in her voice surprises her; she decides to examine it later.
“Beat me daddy eight to the bar!” he murmurs as she approaches, and she half expects to see smoke rising from his fingers.
“Beat you?” says Penny.
“Your sunscreen works,” he says, sunlight haloing his dark curls. “Even in the 1940s there was nothing like this. It’s only been what? Seventy or so odd years?”
Penny hears Todd’s truck start, and realizes she and Dare both are splattered with blood, and Todd will see them when he goes past them on the main drive. “Come on. We have to get inside.”
Dare’s hand drops, and he gets a little wobbly. Penny throws an arm around his waist, and he leans heavily against her. “Yes, all the magic and the sun, and not enough … ” He trails off.
Not enough blood, Penny’s brain finishes, helping him toward the stoop. He hadn’t taken a lot; she hadn’t even been dizzy when he finished. He’s not going to say it, because he’s too nice.
As she helps him stumble up the stoop, he pitches forward. Penny thinks he’s going to fall over, but then realizes he’s just eyeing the space between the ground and the trailer bottom. Straightening, he says, “There are probably snakes under there,” and shudders.
“Yes,” she admits.
“Well, that’s a real corker,” he mutters.
They go inside and before she can say a word, Dare pulls away from her and dives onto the ancient couch in her living room. Penny goes over and kneels beside him. His eyes are closed and his breathing is gentle. She has a lot of questions to ask: where vampires come from, how can they be killed besides a bullet up the nose, and what their other weaknesses are. But that is all going to have to wait. She feels the pressure of exhaustion behind her eyes. Going to her room, she takes off her clothes, puts on the t-shirt and shorts she usually sleeps in, and almost goes to bed … but then she thinks about all her phone contacts and sends out an email to all of them instead. Had my phone stolen last night by a real creeper! If he asks for my address, don’t give it!
Afterward, she still can’t sleep. At nine, she gets up and starts pacing and thinks of going out to help with the horses, even though she told Emma and Todd she was taking the day off.
She stops by Dare, dead to the world … or undead to the world … or … whatever. He doesn’t look very vampiric clutching one of the dingy throw pillows. He looks young and vulnerable—and who knows, maybe for a vampire he is young? Maybe he was turned in the 1940s or something, and that’s why he uses the slang, and why he is so tall—weren’t people before that really short? He’s not supposed to be vulnerable. He’s supposed to be wicked and powerful and have a thirst to kill his enemies, or her enemies.
She remembers his stance when he aimed the gun at Rayne across the car. She’s not an expert … but he’d looked professional. Her eyes narrow. Which is really strange since he seemed to not know what a gun was when Nor had first confronted him, or when he’d studied the weapon after Nor shot himself. And how exactly had Nor shot himself? He didn’t seem like the type to look down the barrel and pull the trigger. Also, she was sure Rayne had locked the door to the cell, and the floor had not been cracked.
She stares down at Dare, irritated by all that she doesn’t know, all she needs to do, and his ability to just sleep. She should go to Chantilly’s resting place now, but she’s so keyed up that she knows she shouldn’t drive, and she’s not sure she should leave Dare here … or leave him at all. That’s what happens in horror movies: people split up and then they die. In most horror movies the vampire is the horror, and those other vampires are horrors, but not bumbling Rayne, and not Dare. Dare is maybe not bumbling, but he is afraid of spiders … and possibly snakes.
She bites her lip, and her hands ball into fists. He can’t sleep peacefully, he can’t be afraid, and he has to be strong.
Dare wakes up to the smell of blood. Before he knows what is happening, the blood is at his lips. “Drink. You have to be strong.”
His eyes slide to the side. Penny is kneeling beside him, her bleeding wrist close to his lips. He knows, dimly in the back of his mind, that she’s still in shock, and he should push her away—not just for her sake, but his own. The blood of a single donor occupies a unique and terrible place in the soul somewhere between addiction and love. But he’s tired, he does need to be strong, and it’s been too long. He throws out an arm, pulls her on top of him, and drinks deep.
When he is done, she is lying across his chest, her head turned to the side. He can see her eyes, gazing at nothing. He wants her … if she looked at him, he’d kiss her. With one hand he strokes her hair, completely undoing the binding. His other hand skims along her spine. Everywhere their bodies touch he feels heat and electricity; he wants to shift her weight so it is on him just so … but then he notices the vacancy in her eyes.
“What is it—” He almost calls her love.
“I can’t sleep,” she says, her voice inflectionless.
For a moment, it’s Dare who is in shock. But then he releases a long breath and lets the heat he feels disperse into the atmosphere. He wraps his arms around her and pulls her tight. “Yes, you can. You’re safe.”
He doesn’t use magic, but her eyes slip closed.
Chapter 4
Penny wakes up on the couch alone. After Dare finished drinking, she’d somehow managed to fall asleep, and at some point she’d found herself on her side, Dare’s body pressed behind hers. She’d never imagined herself spooning with a vampire, but she’d felt safe and she’d slept without nightmares … she wonders where he has gone.
“Penny, you have no food, and thanks to Loki’s refusal to allow me to prepare for this journey, I have no money,” Dare complains from her kitchen, and for some reason she finds herself smiling.
A minute later, Dare’s sitting down on the trunk that passes for a coffee table in front of her, a plate of toast in one hand and a glass of juice in the other. He’s wearing a different shirt. She blinks and realizes it’s probably an undershirt. It’s cream colored and thinner than what he was wearing last night, and made of what she thinks is maybe linen. He’s silhouetted by the light peeking beneath the shade, and she can see the outline of his body through it. He’s tall and rangy, with broad shoulders, and a trim waist. She knows guys that bulk up think women want muscles on top of muscles, but from all she’s seen, Dare is what most girls want. What had Chantilly called it? “Otter bod,” or some such. Penny feels herself flush, wondering if he’s catching her staring.
“My tunic was gory,” he says. “But I didn’t want to put it in the washing machine and wake you up.”
Yep. She’s been busted. “You know what a washing machine is?” she asks, to take the focus off her checking him out.
“The 1940s weren’t so very primitive,” says Dare. “Did you think we relied on a rock in a river?”
Penny snorts, and he holds out the plate. “Eat … and then you must tell me everything you know about Prince Aurel’s little operation.”
“No, you’ve got to tell me some things,” Penny says, balancing the plate on her knees.
Dare’s head tilts. “Such as?”
“Will I become a vampire?”
“Night Elf,” Dare says, and she swears his pointed ears twitch. “No, we’re a species. We’re born this way, just like humans …”
Her eyebrow dances. “Yeah, you’re just like us.”
He looks away. “We’re not so different. The myths of extreme strength and speed are largely false. We have a nutritional requirement that is … unique. We live long if …” He trails off.
“If you drink human blood,” Penny guesses.
Dare meets her eyes, and there’s something angry there, but there shouldn’t be. Humans are the ones being eaten—or drunk, or whatever. Her skin gets hot. “So are there like … hundreds of you, thousands, preying on us? Hidden government conspiracies and covens and—”
“No.” Holding her gaze, Dare gives her a tight smile. “There are not thousands of us, even in Alfheim, our homeworld.”
Penny’s brain spins a little at “homeworld,” but he’s a vampire, and another planet doesn’t seem like quite that big a stretch at the moment.
Dare continues. “The twenty-three Night Elves here under the sway of Prince Aurel are the only ones on Earth.”
“But if you need our blood to survive …”
Dare looks down. “We drink all kinds of blood—horse, sheep, cow, and the occasional wolf or dragon if we’re feeling adventurous. The young vampires in my realm have never had any from humans.”
“Prince Aurel said you need it, though,” Penny protests.
Dare massages his temples. “Why did he have to try and impress me by speaking English?”
“Is that true?” Penny demands.
Dare doesn’t even look at her.
“It is, isn’t it?” Penny sits straighter. “Why aren’t there more of you here?” Her country went to war for oil that they could have gotten other places for slightly more money … why weren’t the vampires, or Night Elves, or whatever, pouring through what Rayne had called the Veil or World Gate to come here?
He gives a tight smile. “It is against Odin’s law for any magical being to live on Earth. It is to keep us from taking advantage of humans. Odin has considerably more warriors than there are Night Elves so … ”
“And you’re okay with this?”
Dare crosses his arms over his chest. “I am against Night Elves like Aurel using humans against their will, and against other magical creatures doing the same. It was a problem in your ancient times. Magical beings—elves, Asgardians, Vanir, and Jotunn—would set themselves up as gods. Without Odin’s law, they would do so again.”
Penny tilts her head. Yep, Dare’s lawful good, but she doesn’t like the idea that humans are helpless. “Not if we can shoot them with guns,” she says defiantly.
His lips quirk. “Against many of us that would work quite well. Most magical beings don’t develop their magical abilities and would be easy enough to manage.”
“Most magical beings?” Penny says.
A knock sounds before Dare can answer. Penny stands, but Dare is already up and across the room, hand on the doorknob, ear pressed to the door. “It’s a human man,” he says.
There’s another knock and then Penny hears a familiar man’s voice. “Penny, it’s me! Are you there?”
Dare looks to her, his eyes glowing a bit in the low light, one of his eyebrows arched. There’s something cat-like about him, and he’s not bumbling like Rayne at all.
“It’s all right. Let him in,” Penny says.
Dare opens the door, and Todd, one of Penny’s employers, and the owner of the trailer, gapes up at him. “Oh,” he says. He looks quickly to Penny. “Penny, are you all right?”
Todd is in his late 50s, gray haired, soft around the middle, and is perpetually red cheeked. Penny doesn’t think he’d be even a match for Rayne, and she has no idea what he’d do if she wasn’t “all right.”
“I’m fine,” she says. “This is my friend Dare. Dare, this is—”
“Just call me Todd!” Todd says, holding out a hand with a grin.
Dare takes it with a bemused smile. Todd looks Dare up and down and Penny realizes she has no excuse for Dare’s odd clothing—though fortunately his pointed ears are covered by his curls.
“You must work at the park!” Todd says, stepping back.
“Yep, he’s from a magic kingdom, all right!” Penny exclaims nervously. Dare looks at her in alarm, but then the look of betrayal on his face morphs into a look of confusion when Todd asks, “Are you a pirate or a prince?”
“Prince!” says Penny at the same moment Dare says, “Pirate!”
Which makes Penny scowl at him. He is so not a pirate, Count Afraid of Spiders.
“Errr …” says Todd.
Dare bows theatrically. “I am the Prince of Pirates, at your service.”
“Ha, ha! You’re good!” Todd laughs. “Must be that new ride everyone’s talking about.”
He turns to Penny. “Emma and I were about to ask you up to the house.”
The cat-like Dare who’d just been at the door is suddenly back. In a cool business-like voice, he says, “Why?”
At that single word, Todd stares up at Dare, eyes glazed. “Someone left messages on our business line asking for Penny’s address.”
“Did you give it to them?” Penny asks, alarmed.
Straightening, Todd says, “Oh, no, we’d never do that.”
“I’m sure I’ll be fine, then,” says Penny.
Todd coughs nervously. “Penny, anyone who knows the business number can Google it, get our address, and our address is—”
Penny puts a hand to her chest. “My address.”
Todd nods gravely. “Emma’s calling the cops, but I don’t think there is much they can do at this point. We thought you might want to come up to our place—”
Penny bites her lip. They’re always asking her to come over to dinner, and she always says no. It would be too terribly awkward. “That’s so nice of you, but—”
“—to have dinner, and maybe spend the night,” Todd finishes.
“We’d love dinner!” Dare exclaims.
Grinning, Todd says, “Well, we’re about to put it on the table.”
Dare beams. “We’ll just get our shoes!”
Todd beams right back. “Great! Well, I’d better head on up. See you in a few.” Just before Dare closes the door, Todd looks back at Penny, does a sort of sideways winky-wink thing in Dare’s direction, and gives Penny the thumbs up.
Oh, no. She has the feeling “terribly awkward” has just multiplied by two.
“But I had to say yes,” Dare says, heading up the hill to the abode of Tod
d and Emma. It’s just past sunset, but not too bright. Or maybe it is just human blood, and a human who is smart, courageous and generous is altering his view of the world, tinging it in welcome shadow. “Todd smelled delicious.”
Penny’s eyes go wide.
“Not like that,” Dare says, and he can’t resist putting a hand on the small of her back. “One human is enough for me.”
She doesn’t pull away, but crosses her arms over her chest. He gets the feeling he’s making her uncomfortable, not comforting her. He drops his hand, and the movement physically hurts. So different from when she nestled in his arms. He wants to believe that it’s grief that separates them, but feels that there is something more that hangs over her, maybe more than one thing. She’d been defensive about her home, clean and comfortable as it is, and had defensively mentioned the region she hails from. Are either or both a signal of belonging to a lower class? Norns know, that can be stress inducing.
Trying to lift her mood, he adds, “He smells like ghee, spices and naan bread. Blood has hardly any calories. I’m hungry for food, Penny. ” It’s true, but he is more worried about her. She has found out that magical beings exist and that her sister is dead in a single night, that combined with whatever other demons she is fighting … She needs to eat, even if she doesn’t know it. He could compel her with magic, of course, but she’d figure it out eventually … like she’ll eventually realize he used compulsion to make her go quietly with Rayne.
“But they’re … they’re … Christians,” Penny sputters. “And not like my mom, they actually go to church, and not just on Sundays!”
Maybe it’s a difficult parental relationship that dogs her? They don’t have time for such a discussion though. They’re not five paces from the house, and Dare can smell the rich aromas of Indian food. “Crosses and Holy Water don’t hurt me,” he says. Neither would Jesus, but that could lead to an awkward discussion of his age, and he doesn’t like being a name dropper either.
“Maybe I’m thinking of myself, not you,” Penny huffs.
